text:
If you're into the whole pour-over coffee thing, and are looking for a brewer that fits into your kitchen by looking suspiciously like a standard drip-brewer, the Unplugged Coffee Maker is right up your alley.
Designed not so much to make your coffee as to hold the ground while you make the coffee with a pot of hot water, these coffee makers (or perhaps more accurately "stands") come in seven different colors and are a lot more compact and modern than other pour-over solutions you'll find. They're available on Amazon for between $30 and $40. [Koziol via Appliancist]


text:
Most motorcyclists spend the majority of their time dreaming about extremes: cruiser fan-boys fantasize about gliding from coast to coast, adventure riders imagine tackling the harshest of terrain, and wannabe knee-draggers superimpose themselves on a screaming rocket negotiating one of MotoGP's 18 world circuits. So you can imagine my palpitations when I found myself astride a pulsing 2014 Ducati 1199 Panigale R in pitlane of the newly minted Circuit of the Americas in Austin, TX; bestill my racing, speed-loving, pre-adolescent heart.
On the surface, Ducati's latest land missile looks like a boy-racer version of its flagship superbike, with obligatory carbon fiber bits, snazzy white stripes and a clearcoated bare aluminum tank. But your hard-earned $29995 (a $7000 premium over the S model) mainly goes towards the bike's mechanicals, whose primary purpose is to beat the field in World Superbike Racing.
The 1198cc L-twin produces the same 195hp as its more affordable stablemate, but peak power comes 500rpm higher, with maximum revs attained at a bellowing 12000rpm. Ducati also claims the R version returns 18% more torque during full-throttle acceleration from 124mph.
New titanium connecting rods and a lighter flywheel trim nearly 3 lb, while a diamond-like coating on the rocker arms ensures safe operation as the famous Desmodromically actuated valves do their business at the top end.
Revised ECU settings boost midrange torque, which resolves with a peak of 98.1 lb-ft. Two extra teeth at the rear sprocket effectively shortens the six-speed's ratios, balanced with the higher redline to yield the same top speed as the S model.
Other race-ready tweaks include a bubblier windscreen for high-speed aerodynamics, an aero piece added to the fairing, and an adjustable swingarm to optimize grip or maneuverability. Included with your purchase is a free-breathing, track-only Termignoni exhaust system.
Which brings us back to Circuit of the Americas, where the Panigale R's rumbling big-twin feels lusty, alive, and eager to pounce on any and every apex it encounters. Yours truly? Well, sometimes it seems the best thing to do at a new track on a fire-breathing bike is kick up the sidestand, click into gear, and go with the 195hp flow. But with MotoGP rider Nicky Hayden in attendance and running some demonstration laps, the pressure was definitely on.
Pitlane is the perfect place for a first taste of the Panigale R: this lonely uphill straight is quickly conquered after easing into first gear, which is engaged via a relatively light release of the slipper clutch-enabled left lever.
Set to "Race" mode, throttle response is heightened yet smooth, thanks to the re-mapped injectors. First gear is exploited faster than you can say "redline", and the bike's quick shifter enables you to tap up to the next gear instantaneously, without bothersome and time-consuming clutch-pulling rigmarole.
The 417 lb Duc leans into the first corner with an inherent sense of surefootedness, and the über-sticky Pirelli Supercorsa SC tires – chosen specifically for this track due to its relatively virgin tarmac – convey enough steering feel to encourage ballsier entry speeds than you initially thought possible.
Upon exit, ginger throttle application is normal (after all, who wants to be that guy?), but as confidence mounts, a healthier dose of throttle twist reveals inspiring grip from the 200mm rubber mounted to the forged rear Marchesini wheel.
Gradually quickening the pace around the course requires vigilance and self-control; after all, it's seductively easy to go in over your head on the high speed, decreasing radius sections like turns 3 through 5, where F1 cars enter at a mind-bending 181mph, and exit at a mere 120mph.
Dial in a touch more throttle, and the Panigale voraciously chomps at the pavement ahead; grab the right brake lever, and dual 330mm Brembo front discs shrink speed while slamming your man parts against the tank.
Although it roars its way through space, managing this crimson Italian is a delicate business, even with the electronic safety net – from traction control to electronically adjustable damper settings and ABS – lurking in the background, promising to save your bacon.
Is Ducati's 1199 Panigale R the right ride for any well-heeled Tom, Dick or Harry to spend thirty large on? Sure, it's a high-priced slap in the face to (perfectly capable) road racers like Hondas $13800 CBR1000RR, Yamaha's $14490 YZF-R1, Suzuki's $13799 GSX-R1000 and Kawasaki's $14299 ZX-10R. But the R's magic lies in knowing you're straddling some of the most cutting edge mechanical artistry this side of a World Superbike.
It may be expensive and will eventually expire into obsolescence like last year's Paris couture, but as an unfettered expression of Italian speed and style, the Ducati 1199 Panigale R is one hell of a way to embrace the maximum.
2014 Ducati 1199 Panigale R
Engine 1198cc L-twin, 8v, Desmodromic valves
Transmission six-speed manual with wet, multi-plate slipper clutch, chain final-drive
Brakes four-piston Brembo monobloc caliper, twin 330mm semi-floating radially mounted rotors f, two-piston Brembo, single 245mm rotor r, ABS
Suspension Öhlins NIX30 43mm inverted fork f, Öhlins TTX36 shock r, electronic compression and rebound
Wheels & Tires 17x3.5" f, 17x6" r, 120/70 ZR17 f, 200/55 ZR17 r
Exterior LED lighting
Power 195hp at 10750rpm
Torque 98.1 lb-ft at 9000rpm
0-60 mph N/A
Top Speed N/A
Weight 417 lb
Fuel Economy N/A

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Stunning rococo Sanssouci Palace and its verdant gardens and terraced vineyards were the summer home of Friedrich the Great.
For normal folk, Potsdam's Sanssouci is a relaxing royal treat only 30 minutes away by train from bustling Berlin. In French, the palace's name means "without a care;" it was a quiet refuge for the Prussian king. His final wish was to be buried there, a desire not granted until after German reunification.
This UNESCO World Heritage Site, built between 1745 and 1747, is known for its treasures inside and out.
Highlights include the white and gold Marble Hall reception area, loosely based on the Pantheon in Rome, the many paintings by one of Friedrich's favorite artists, Antoine Watteau, and the Voltaire Room, with its carvings of birds, flowers and fruits, named after the French philosopher and frequent palace guest. The large landscaped park is dotted with fountains, with faux ruins and classical statues among the many points of interest. Also at Sanssouci is the splendid Neues Palace (New Palace), added to commemorate the end of the Seven Year's War, a reconstructed Dutch windmill, the Orangerie, which houses a gallery, and the Drachenhaus (Dragon House), a pagoda-style building that now holds a pleasant café for park visitors.
Sanssouci is located in Potsdam, just outside of Berlin, and is easily accessible by public transportation and car. The site, which stretches out for 2 kilometers west of Potsdam's city center, is open later from Spring to Fall; music festivals are held annually on the grounds. The palace and individual buildings require ticket purchase for entry; many are only accessible with an official guided tour. Day tickets and family tickets providing access to multiple museums are available. If you are visiting with children don't miss the Historische Mühle (Historical Windmill).
The New Palace in Sanssouci Parc


text:
One lesson is clear from Jena: Ignore the media at your peril. The military, prosecutors, Ken Starr, and many others have learned this lesson repeatedly. Talk to the media and they may distort what you say, but say nothing and you'll get run over by opponents. CNN's melodramatic focus on the "schoolyard fight" and the "wrong side of the tracks" in its special report on Jena, Louisiana added to the smokescreen set up by the defendants to distract us from what this case is really about: a brutal beatdown of a young man for "dissing" that had nothing to do with the infamous "noose incident" months earlier.
Prosecutor Reed Walters finally had something to say in today's New York Times. Clearly, if he had been more forthright and persuasive earlier, his town might not have been inundated with pissed off protesters:
Conjure the image of schoolboys fighting: they exchange words, clench fists, throw punches, wrestle in the dirt until classmates or teachers pull them apart. Of course that would not be aggravated second-degree battery, which is what the attackers are now charged with. (Five of the defendants were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder.) But that's not what happened at Jena High School.
The victim in this crime, who has been all but forgotten amid the focus on the defendants, was a young man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the nooses incident three months earlier. According to all the credible evidence I am aware of, after lunch, he walked to his next class. As he passed through the gymnasium door to the outside, he was blindsided and knocked unconscious by a vicious blow to the head thrown by Mychal Bell. While lying on the ground unaware of what was happening to him, he was brutally kicked by at least six people.
Imagine you were walking down a city street, and someone leapt from behind a tree and hit you so hard that you fell to the sidewalk unconscious. Would you later describe that as a fight?


text:
Each year Macdonald Realty agents and offices are active in their community through a variety of local events and charitable initiatives.
Macdonald Realty's Annual Charity Golf Tournament raises funds for BC Cancer Foundation. Here's a video of the fun had by everyone at our 2015 event.
Arthritis Research Canada
Macdonald Realty continues to be a generous supporter of Arthritis Research Canada (ARC). Arthritis Research Canada's dedicated scientific team is focused on ground-breaking research, finding new ways to prevent arthritis and understand key causes of complications caused by arthritis, such as heart attacks, strokes, hip fractures and lung disease. Arthritis affects 4.6 million Canadians, 600,000 of whom live right here in British Columbia. With more than 100 types of arthritis including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and gout — it is now the most costly chronic disease in Canada and the biggest factor in work disability and job loss. Arthritis Research Canada is committed to changing those statistics.
The Vancouver Hospice Society
In response to the critical need for additional hospice and palliative care beds in the Vancouver area, the Vancouver Hospice Society is raising $4.5 million to create a new freestanding hospice in our community, the first on the west side of Vancouver. Macdonald Realty Ltd. donated over $12,000 last year for this great cause.
BC Cancer Foundation
Macdonald Realty is pleased to have an ongoing partnership with BC Cancer Foundation. In the past we have donated over $15,000 to support the BC Cancer Foundation's research into palliative care, pain and symptom management. Recently through our annual company golf tournament, Macdonald Realty donated funds for an early detection of Lung Cancer Research.
Community involvement is an important part of our business. Please contact the Managing Broker of your nearest Macdonald Realty office directly with any community events or charitable activities.


text:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – She is a 5-foot-3 red-headed, super-charged positive force of nature wrapped, based on what day it is, in purple, gold or black on the softball field.
What she does for the Lipscomb Lady Bisons cannot be measured by statistics. But long before the Lady Bisons take the field junior Jordan Abell is, to steal a quote from Major League Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, the straw that stirs the Lady Bisons drink.
"Ever since I have been playing softball I have always been the one to get everyone going and make sure everyone is hyped up and ready for the game," Abell said. "I feel like it is kind of my job.
"When I got to Lipscomb my freshman year we didn't have anyone like that. I was scared to step up and do that. But Peck (coach Kristin Ryman) made the point of always telling me to get everybody up. Three years later I still feel like people are looking to me for that. It keeps things fun and we forget sometimes that we are playing the game we love and it should be fun."
Abell's impact is only fully realized when she is observed as the goes about her business on the field before, during and after games.
"Jordan does so many things that you normally don't see on the field," Ryman said. "Jordan is that player who has been in the shadows for the majority of her career. She has done so many things that define the personality of our team."
Wanting to play
Abell started three games this season at second base. They are the only three starts of her career. She has made 21 appearances off the bench this season, the most for any reserve player.
"Jordan is very unselfish with how she goes about her business," Ryman said. "She wants to be out there as much as anybody. But she trusts us. She knows that if we felt like at any moment in her career that she was the best option she would be on the field."
Ryman stresses that Abell always tries to make the best of her opportunities.
"She understands her role," Ryman said. "She doesn't have to like it but she doesn't let that affect her body language or how she goes about her business on a day-to-day basis.
"She still is going to come out and work hard and bring her enthusiasm and excitement every day. She loves to play softball."
Since she started playing softball she had always been a starter. All of that changed when she came to Lipscomb.
"Coming here it was a completely different role," Abell said. "It is ironic, because in high school I didn't understand it. I would look at the girls on the bench and ask why aren't you having fun? They would say it was because they weren't playing.
"I don't want to say that I was selfish when I first came to college, but I was. I was really upset not to play. I had always been the best, but when you come to college everyone has been the best."
In many ways it has helped her gain a greater appreciation for being able to participate in the sport.
I love softball," Abell said. "I love everything about it.
"I used to hate practicing, but I love practicing here because I get to do things on the field that you get to do in a game. I think that I am better for it."
Finding ways to contribute
Abell has found ways to contribute. She programs pregame music on the bus and for practice, leads cheers from the dugout during games, catches in the bullpen, applies eye black for her teammates and many things that are truly too numerous to mention.
"She unselfishly does the things that make our team go," Ryman said. "The cheers in the dugout start with her. She is the one who keeps the energy going in the dugout. She is the first person to go and check on someone if they seem like they are down.
'She is the first person to hand someone their glove as they go on the field. If we need someone to warm up a pitcher in the bull pen in a game or in practice she is ready to do it. And that is a thankless job. I don't know where the energy comes from."
Often she discusses with Ryman certain defensive plays and the way opposing batters are performing. She will take note of things that she sees.
"I like learning about softball," Abell said. "Everything in softball matters whether it is a passed ball or the way the pitcher grips the ball. It is fun to see how it all comes full circle in a game."
A time to renew
Like most people Abell has experienced some less than happy times. She does have bad days, but she doesn't allow those negatives in her life to affect her attitude on the softball field whether it is in a game or in practice.
"It is easier said than done," Ryman said. "We tell our players that when they walk through that gate at the end of the left field line you can't worry about your classes, the test you have the next day, a family member that is ill or a boyfriend you just broke up with. There is nothing you can do about it once you step through that gate.
"Jordan can legitimately step through that gate and put it all aside. There are times when things are weighing on her heart. There are things going on with her. She has dealt with a lot off the field."
Abell knows the players need her to be a positive influence. And she needs them to be a positive for her.
"Jordan puts a smile on her face and goes out there and works hard," Ryman said. "It is her chance to get away from everything else. She is going to enjoy it while she is there. She is going to get the most out of it for herself, but she is also looking to bring out the best in other people."
For Abell practice has always been the time to not dwell on what is not under her control.
"I know my teammates and even my coaches look to me as the person who is always smiling," Abell said. "That is something they need from me.
"If I am having a bad day I can still control the way I act on the field with my teammates. That is what I do."
There is an "A" in team
Under the word "team" in the Thesaurus there should also be the name Jordan Abell. Because there is little doubt she is the epitome of a team player.
"Absolutely," senior shortstop Bridgette Begle said. "She knows she is not going to see the field as much as some people, but she is going to make her footprint in the sand.
"She is going to have an impact whether it is supporting her teammates, being loud or messing with the other team. The day she missed a game because she had to be at a funeral everyone was asking who is going to lead the cheers? Who is bringing the energy in the dugout? Being on the field it is amazing how much the players in the dugout impact your play when you are hot, tired or freezing."
Begle knows it is incredibly difficult for a player to do what Abell does with little or no promise of playing on a regular basis.
"She comes in and puts in the same number of hours we do, but she doesn't get the so-called glory of being on the field," Begle said. "There are so many roles to fill on a team and she knows her role.
"But she wants to play. She wants to be the starter."
Her teammates appreciate what she does for them during a game, but they also admire her when she does get a chance to perform on the field.
"Game days would not be the same if it wasn't for Jordan Abell," senior first baseman Kristen Sturdivant said. "She is the one in the locker room blaring the music. I bet bus drivers hate us because she plays the music on the bus. She gets everybody excited to play.
"We have a bunch of the same classes in elementary education. She takes everything so personally. She works so hard both on and outside the field. She is so creative. It is really nice to have her around."
Sturdivant has been impressed with the way Abell performs on the field, especially at the plate, when she does get a chance to play.
"I tell everybody I wish I had the swag Jordan has," Sturdivant said. "I know that is a weird word to say. The weekend she got to play when Bridgette sat out she walked up to the plate like she had done it a thousand times. I wish I could walk to the plate with that much confidence and that much swag.
"I don't know if I could be that positive if I wasn't on the field. I envy her so much. She is the ultimate teammate."
Junior Brianne Welch is a regular starter this season for the first time in her college career. She doesn't know how Abell has been able to continue to be such a positive force knowing her playing time is going to be limited.
"She amazes me," Welch said. "It is hard to just sit and watch everybody play and play. She is one of the best teammates ever."
Starter or not, Abell has persevered through it all. Maybe she finds that starting role next year. Maybe not. But she is going to be there helping in any way possible.
""My team still needs me and I need every one of them," Abell said. "I feel for every one of them and I want them to do their absolute best.
"I am not going to say it is easy standing on the sidelines and watching everyone else make the big plays. But the older I get the more I see it is not about me or what this person or that person does. We are a team and we win or lose as a team."


text:
Box Office Report for the weekend of March 18 – 20
Yes folks it's that time again, it's Monday morning and that means it's time to check out how rich you made Hollywood this weekend.
The weekends surprise winner was "Limitless", starring nouveau man of the hour Bradley Cooper as a man who takes a pill that allows him to use 100 percent of his brain power, not grow a giant melon shaped head, and draw 19 million dollars at the box office.
Battle Los Angeles was expecting stronger 2nd week numbers than what it raked it. Apparently anyone who was interested in seeing "Battle: LA" has either already seen it, was scared off by bad reviews, or drawn in by by Bradley Coopers captivating blue eyes. Either way they fell off by 59% and ended up 3rd behind the still strong "Rango" who more than likely will hit the magic 100 million dollar mark this coming weekend.
Rounding out the top five were "The Lincoln Lawyer" at number four with a respectable showing of 13.4 million and my favorite opening of the week "Paul" at number five. Paul's 13.2 million dollar opening is Simon Peggs/Nick Frost's largest opening weekend and is considered a good opening considering the rather limited marketing of the movie as sci-fi/fanboy style entertainment. With the good reviews and solid opening (as well as 41 million dollars in international ticket sales) "Paul" is expected to hold steady


text:
Home > Classes & Events > Event Search Results Detail
This group offers ongoing support for people who are caregivers for someone with Alzheimer's.
Registration is closed.
Are you a caregiver for someone with Alzheimer's? Our Alzheimer's Caregiver support group is a place to share information, experiences and emotional support. Supportive friends and family are also welcome.
Located in the lower level of Bronson LakeView Hospital, Classroom 1
Lisa Woodruff, ANP-BC at (269) 657-1595
At this location Bronson LakeView Hospital Beginning on November 20, 2019
Welcome! Setting up your profile now will make it easier to sign up for and manage classes and events later.
Sign in to register and manage your Bronson classes.
Forgot username
or password?
Create an account
Call Bronson HealthAnswers at (269) 341-7723 or(800) 451-6310
Monday through Friday8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
More Events


text:
The research and engineering experience of the Maranello team meet contemporary urban style in this avant-garde VISION-X men's jacket with CLIMAFIT system.
Ensuring superb performance even in challenging weather conditions, this new men's hooded jacket is made from VISION-X, the revolutionary nylon fabric covered with thousands of glass micro-beads, with a reflective, water repellent and windproof effect.
With edgy perforated fabric inserts and contrast piping, this piece features the exclusive CLIMAFIT system: inspired by the ventilation on race cars, it ensures constant air circulation inside the jacket.
To bring the energy of a true race driver to the streets of the city, this reflective Scuderia Ferrari Collection jacket boasts the Scudetto Ferrari logo on the front.The model is 187 cm / 6'2" tall and wears an Italian size M
VISION-X is water-repellent and windproof nylon, with a special coating made of thousands of glass microspheres. This garment reflects light in the dark.


text:
The 18th century term describing wealthy young virtuosi like Joseph Banks or Charles Darwin, who travelled the world in search of adventure and novelty were 'experimental gentlemen. Artworks, books and photographs from the Sir Russell and Lady Mab Grimwade Collection of colonial treasures displayed at The Potter help to recreate wonder and awe that inspired explorers and adventurers from over 150 years ago.
Robert Havell and Robert Dale,
'Panoramic view of King Georges Sound, part of the colony of Swan River' (detail),
1834; steel engraving, aquatint and watercolour on three sheets; 18 x 271.4 cm.
The University of Melbourne Art Collection
William Strutt
born Teignmouth, Devon, England, 1825; died Wadhurst, Sussex, England, 1915
Bushrangers, Victoria, Australia 1852 1887
oil on canvas
75.7 x 156.6 cm
The University of Melbourne Art Collection. Gift of the Sir Russell and Mab Grimwade Bequest, 1973
Goodman Teale artist
born 1819; died Kyneton, Victoria, 1885
Nathaniel Whitlock engraver
active London c. 1830–1860
The city of Melbourne, Australia 1855
engraving and watercolour
29.1 x 53.4 cm
The University of Melbourne Art Collection. Gift of the Sir Russell and Mab Grimwade Bequest, 1973


text:
FREE Shipping Worldwide on Orders $79+
Regular price
Please Note: This style is listed based on international sizing, although the label size may be Asian we have converted it to the international standard. Size may be 2.5cm/1 inch inaccuracy due to hand measure.
Receiving time = Processing time + Shipping time
FREE shipping on orders of $79+Processing Time: 3-7 Business Days after payment.Super Savings: 10 - 25 Business DaysExpress Shipping: 3 - 10 Business Days
For example, if you order a outerwear, it will need 3-5 business days of processing time and then 7-30 business days of shipping time if you select super saving shipping. Therefore, you can expect to receive it in 10-35 business days. And you can expect to receive it in 7-15 business days if you select express shipping (3-10 business days).
Return or exchange within 30 days from the delivered date. Requirement:
Sold Out


text:
YVES ROCHER submitted some of their Mens products for the 2013 Father's Day Gift List. The product line is pretty good smelling. We do feel that these products deserve some attention in our Father's Day Gift List even though the majority of men will likely not be interested in doing so much to their skin. I am in this category, although I have to say I didn't mind trying these products out and I think they are useful enough that I'll be buying some of them for personal use.
I'm going to start off with the After Shave Balm. It's a thin white splash that smells very "clean" and "fresh". Like soap and water clean. It was smooth and cooling, and I used it after I shaved with the EJ Ebony Razor I reviewed.
For the last few years I've noticed (particularly now that I ride my motorcycle all summer) that my face is has dry skin patches on it quite often. I've snuck some of my wife's Aveeno and tossed it on there which lasts for the day, but it's annoying. It's right in the middle of my forehead between my eyebrows and sometimes it itches. Plus it's kind of embarrassing. YVES ROCHER has a Anti Dryness Face Care thing that lasts 24 hours. It works too, I put it on and didn't have to do it again for two days. It's good stuff, cheap and comes in a small tube I can tuck away in my saddle bags. I look at it like putting on some sun screen.
This next bit was kind of odd. I've never been into "exfoliating face wash" stuff. It's a little girly (the concept) but hey when in Rome and when work is paying you to do it… Another surprise though… it made my shave nicer, maybe even closer. You put it on and your wet face and rub it in, then wash it off. It's kind of sandy and scrapes off all your dead skin cells (like that dry skin I was talking about). It's got some kinda stuff in it that is potent because it definitely opened up my pores and made my skin burn/flush a little. The shave was extra smooth and while I attribute a lot of that to the double edged razor, there was something extra there.
Last but not least was the Shaving Gel. It's good stuff, a lot like the Gillette gel except less expensive and better smelling. All in all the YVES ROCHER Mens products we reviewed were very impressive. I'll give them 5 out of 5 stars.


text:
Ray Lewis rides off as a champion
- Lewis cries at Alicia Keys sang the national anthem
- The warm-ups ended with yet another another fiery speech in the middle of the huddle pack
- In his last game%2C Lewis was part of the supporting cast%2C not the MVP
NEW ORLEANS -- Michael Phelps was milling around the festive, extremely cramped and steamy visitor's locker room on Sunday night, when Ray Lewis popped out of the shower.
The iconic Baltimore Ravens linebacker, clad in a towel, spotted the Olympic swimming champ and unleashed a grin so wide that it might have lit up the Mercedes-Benz Superdome during a power outrage.
"I told you I was going out on top!" Lewis told Phelps. "And somebody gave me the formula. Baltimore! Champions!"
They hugged, and Lewis grabbed Phelps behind his neck and pulled him closer. They pressed foreheads and whispered. It was a classic moment. Two outgoing champions. Two sports. One hellacious connection.
RAVENS SURVIVE:Baltimore fends off San Francisco's rally
PHOTOS:Super Bowl XLVII
PHELPS:Swimmer drops in on Ravens
Then Lewis kissed the Baltimore native on the forehead.
"I love you to death," Lewis told him. "You gave me the formula."
Phelps -- the most decorated Olympian ever with 22 medals, including a record 18 gold medals -- wouldn't reveal the specifics of the formula that Lewis alluded to.
But he insists that this goes both ways.
"We had some talks," Phelps said. "He helped me."
On a very personal level -- and as a huge Ravens fan -- Phelps could relate to Lewis' emotion of the moment.
"Being able to watch somebody put the their mind to something and do it," Phelps said, "is one of the coolest things."
So this is how the last ride ends for Lewis, 37, after 17 mostly terrific NFL seasons.
He put his mind to it, and knowing Lewis, prayed on it.
Even so, his team nearly blew it against the San Francisco 49ers. His defense gave up 468 yards, but came through when it mattered most with a goal-line stand in the final two minutes, allowing the Ravens to hang on for a 34-31 victory.
Experience and grit prevailed over the fresh legs and a fancy, new-wave offense.
That seemed fitting in its own way, after Colin Kaepernick's rolling, fourth-and-goal throw from the 5-yard line sailed wide of Michael Crabtree in the corner of the end zone. One of the greatest players in NFL history, the signature linebacker of his era, wins the final game of his career with a goal-line stand to earn his team the Lombardi Trophy.
When the pass fell incomplete, the Ravens exhaled. The bench erupted, as players and coaches leaped for joy. Two defenders slumped to the turf. Others embraced.
But where was Lewis?
The crafty veteran that he is, Lewis went to retrieve the football.
It was like giving himself a going-away present -- compliments of teammates that included MVP quarterback Joe Flacco, Anquan Boldin, Jacoby Jones, Haloti Ngata and Ed Reed, and coaches that included one of the Harbaugh brothers.
While Lewis worked the locker room, that football from the play that sealed the game was in the safe and secure hands of one of Lewis' sons -- a kid no older than 10, who sat next to his dad's locker tossing and spinning the ball in the air.
This wasn't the only momento from the weekend. On Friday night, Lewis went over to the University of New Orleans for the Super Bowl Gospel Celebration.
During media sessions leading up to the game, Lewis was grilled about allegations published by SI.com that he tried to obtain deer antler spray, which contains a substance banned by the NFL's steroids policy. He denied the claims.
And he fielded questions about an old, unsolved controversy, too. Lewis was at the scene of an incident that left two men murdered following a post-Super Bowl party 13 years ago. Murder charges against Lewis were dropped, and he was pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. But after two others were acquitted, the murders were never solved.
In his moment to crown the last ride, Lewis was agitated by the controversies.
LIGHTS OUT:Superdome goes dark after power outage
Yet he a got a much different reception from the gospel crowd at Lakefront Arena. It was about redemption. Lewis who was honored.
They gave him a Lifetime of Inspiration Award.
"Fantasia and her mother gave me the award," Lewis told USA TODAY Sports. "They sang my favorite song for me, too."
Really? What's that?
"The Sam Cooke song," he said, "A Change is Gonna Come."
So true. Lewis rides off into retirement with a championship, like Michael Strahan, Jerome Bettis and John Elway.
It wasn't a classic performance, when considering all the career highlights that a player who was twice named NFL Defensive Player of the Year supplied over the years. Lewis had seven tackles, but none of the game-changing variety, and at one point he seemed frustrated when he shoved Vernon Davis after a tackle. Maybe the most noticeable plays that he was involved in came on a couple of missed tackles, including a case early in the game when Michael Crabtree stutter-stepped on a crossing route over the middle, then broke Lewis' tackle and wound up with a 19-yard gain.
But Lewis had plenty of help. In one instance, after pulling guard Mike Iupati pile-drove Lewis to create a lane for Kaepernick, Reed and Cary Williams came over and pushed Iupati off Lewis in a classic got-your-back display.
That's fair enough. Lewis covered the backs of his defense for years. He was the rock. It really doesn't matter now, that Lewis wasn't the designated driver for his last ride.
He won. He had a perfect ending. A month ago, when Lewis announced his intent to retire, it seemed improbable that Lewis' last ride would last this long. Then the Ravens beat Denver in double-overtime, aided by Flacco's miracle 70-yard TD throw to Jacoby Jones at the end of regulation, and got sweet revenge at New England.
The stars were surely aligned. Lewis had Flacco on his team, and Jonathan Ogden was voted into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot in New Orleans. Ogden and Lewis came in as the original Ravens draft class in 1996 and were rookie roommates.
"It's the journey, man," Lewis said.
"My best play?" Lewis said, repeating a question. "When the confetti dropped."


text:
This course is a survey of fiction, biography, fantasy, folk tales, poetry, informational, and picture books for children from pre-kindergarten through middle school. Emphasis is placed on selections that consider the developmental needs of children. Students identify and critique books dealing with universal, cross-cultural, gender-fair, and special needs themes. Evaluating content in the light of Christian principles is an integral part of the course. Attention is also given to exploring ways in which children can be encouraged to respond to literature and story telling in teaching. Prerequisite: Acceptance to education major or consent of the instructor.
EDUC325 is a 3 credit course.


text:
Home »
Interior design Wollongong
A fresh coat of paint breathes new life into your home from John Harrison Painter & Decorator interior design Wollongong.
Our expert in interior design Wollongong, are professional painters and decorators specialise in interior painting, exterior painting and wallpaper hanging. With over 30 years' experience painting throughout the Illawarra region, we're the name to trust for all your painting and decorating needs.
John Harrison Painter & Decorator only uses the highest quality materials to ensure a finish that lasts and lasts. We pay close attention to detail, embrace creativity and are passionate about painting. At interior design Wollongong, we believe that adding colour and brightness to homes and commercial properties all over the Illawarra, makes it a happier place to live.
Painters and interior designers Wollongong
Talk to our interior design Wollongong experts about commercial or domestic painting and decorating services across the Illawarra region. What sets us apart from the other painters and decorators in the Illawarra? The team at John Harrison Painter & Decorator is extremely passionate about painting. If know your residence or commercial property needs to be revived; but you're unsure of colours and finishes to use, talk to us about it.
Our services in painters Wollongong are interior design , house painters Wollongong, painting Illawarra, painters Wollongong, painters Wollongong, builders Kiama, painters in Wollongong, blinds Wollongong, wallpaper Wollongong, painting Wollongong, Kiama Painting, wallpaper Illawarra, roof painting illawarra, Wollongong painting services, painters Wollongong
John Harrison Painter & Decorator
Kiama NSW 2533
Phone: 0412 610 759
Email: email@example.com


text:
It's second nature for James Slama of Hillsboro, Wis., to take care of his tractor, dubbed Fast and Furious. He's been pulling for more than a dozen years.
Outside of the Championship Tractor Pull in Louisville, Ky., Slama stays active on the pulling circuit throughout his home state.
Watch Slama talk about what's under his tractor's hood in the video below:
More 2013 Championship Tractor Pull Coverage:
- Tractor Pull Expert Recounts 40 Years of Sport
- Tractor-Pull Techs Keep Sport Safe
- Indiana Tractor-Pulling Family Talks Shop
- 2013 NFMS Tractor Pull: Russell Counce of Tennessee
- 2013 Championship Tractor Pull Preview
- 2013 Championship Tractor Pull Results
See Farm Journal Media's full coverage of the 2013 National Farm Machinery Show.


text:
It was a sunny midafternoon in a shiny new global-economy mall in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, and a young woman I was hoping to meet appeared to be getting cold feet. She had agreed to rendezvous with a go-between not far from the Payless shoe store and then come to a nearby hotel to talk to me. She was an hour late. Alone in the hotel lobby, I was feeling nervous; I was stood up the day before by another woman in a similar situation. I had been warned that interviewing anyone who had had an abortion in El Salvador would be difficult. The problem was not simply that in this very Catholic country a shy 24-year-old unmarried woman might feel shame telling her story to an older man. There was also the criminal stigma. And this was why I had come to El Salvador: Abortion is a serious felony here for everyone involved, including the woman who has the abortion. Some young women are now serving prison sentences, a few as long as 30 years.
More than a dozen countries have liberalized their abortion laws in recent years, including South Africa, Switzerland, Cambodia and Chad. In a handful of others, including Russia and the United States (or parts of it), the movement has been toward criminalizing more and different types of abortions. In South Dakota, the governor recently signed the most restrictive abortion bill since the Supreme Court ruled in 1973, in Roe v. Wade, that state laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional. The South Dakota law, which its backers acknowledge is designed to test Roe v. Wade in the courts, forbids abortion, including those cases in which the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Only if an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother is the procedure permitted. A similar though less restrictive bill is now making its way through the Mississippi Legislature.
In this new movement toward criminalization, El Salvador is in the vanguard. The array of exceptions that tend to exist even in countries where abortion is circumscribed - rape, incest, fetal malformation, life of the mother - don't apply in El Salvador. They were rejected in the late 1990's, in a period after the country's long civil war ended. The country's penal system was revamped and its constitution was amended. Abortion is now absolutely forbidden in every possible circumstance. No exceptions.
There are other countries in the world that, like El Salvador, completely ban abortion, including Malta, Chile and Colombia. El Salvador, however, has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus - the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal. Like the woman I was waiting to meet.
I was on my sixth cup of coffee when I spotted my contacts - two abortion rights advocates who work in the region and a local nurse who had heard this young woman's story. They entered the lobby surrounding another woman like Secret Service agents. A quick glance let me know that I shouldn't make a premature appearance. Even as I retreated to some large sofas, I could hear the Spanish flying - words of comfort, of being brave, of the importance that others understand what is happening in El Salvador. At last the retinue approached. I was not quite ready for what I saw. The woman, I had been told, lived in a hovel in a very poor part of the town. Somehow that had put a certain picture in my head. I don't know, call it sexism. I just didn't expect to see a tall and strikingly beautiful woman with the kind of big grin that could very well appear in one of those full-page ads you might see in an airline magazine inviting people to "Vacation in El Salvador!"
We chatted briefly about the one thing I knew we had in common - malls - before we went up to a quiet hotel room, where she and I could talk. One intermediary acted as our interpreter. I agreed to call her by her initials, D.C.; she is afraid to be identified by name, though she did agree to be photographed. (While it was impossible to confirm every detail of her story, I did later see legal records that corroborated her description of events.) D.C. sat down, and now that we were ready to talk about her experience, she started to cry. She wiped her eyes several times with a paper napkin. She spent a few minutes folding and twisting it. D.C. crossed her ankles and stared down at the shrinking napkin, now tightly compacted into a large pill. Then she began to tell me her story.
I worked in a clothing factory two years ago. I have a son, 7 years old. Well, when I found out I was pregnant, I didn't know what to do. I told my friend. She told me if I was going to have it, I needed to think about that. I had a child already. I told the father. He said he didn't want another child. He didn't want to deal with problems like this. My mother told me she would kick me out if I ever got pregnant again.
I started talking to my friend. Every day was so hard. I cried, and I didn't do anything. I didn't want to see anybody, and I didn't sleep. My friend told me to go to a man, and he gave me some pills. I was two months pregnant. He said that I could put them in my vagina. I did, and after that I just bled a couple of times. Two months more went by. I was still pregnant. I cried and didn't know what to do. When I was about four months along, my friend told me one of her friends lived near a house where there was a woman who did abortions. I felt so worried. I didn't know what to do, whether I should go talk to the woman. But then one day, I went.
With the signing of the Chapultepec Agreements in Mexico in 1992, El Salvador's civil war came to an end. As the nation turned away from its violent years, there were calls from both sides of the political divide that it was time to re-examine certain social issues. One of them was abortion. The country's abortion law, like the law in most Latin American countries at the time, was already a near-ban with only a few exceptions, specifically in cases of rape, serious fetal malformation and grave risk to the mother's life. For decades, the law was rarely discussed, and enforced quietly and somewhat subjectively. Once the issue was raised in the political arena, though, Salvadorans discovered that a brand-new kind of discourse on abortion had emerged in Latin America.
In El Salvador, a mostly Catholic country, abortion first surfaced as a potent political issue in 1993, when conservative members of the Assembly proposed that Dec. 28, the Catholic Feast of the Holy Innocents, be declared a national day to remember the unborn. In 1995, the FMLN - the former guerrilla force that had transformed itself into the country's main left-wing party - supported a very different proposal in the National Assembly. The proposal addressed a variety of women's issues, including domestic violence and rape. It also contained a provision to extend the abortion exceptions to include cases in which the mother's mental health was threatened, even if her life was not. This liberalizing proposal was rejected, but it provoked a debate, which in turn had the effect of raising the political heat around the subject of abortion.
Also in 1995, Pope John Paul II appointed a new archbishop for San Salvador, Fernando Sáenz Lacalle. Archbishops in El Salvador inherit a potent history. During the civil war, many members of the clergy in El Salvador were proponents of liberation theology, a liberal - some would say radical - evangelical doctrine of social justice. The movement was despised by the country's right-wing leaders. In 1980, in a hospital chapel, Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, a proponent of liberation theology, was shot and killed by a right-wing death squad while celebrating Mass. His replacement, Arturo Rivera Damas, was also a supporter of liberation theology.
The pope's appointment of Lacalle 11 years ago brought to the Archdiocese of San Salvador a different kind of religious leader. Lacalle, an outspoken member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, redirected the country's church politics. Lacalle's predecessors were just as firmly opposed to abortion as he was. What he brought to the country's anti-abortion movement was a new determination to turn that opposition into state legislation and a belief that the church should play a public role in the process. In 1997, conservative legislators in the Assembly introduced a bill that would ban abortion in all circumstances. The archbishop campaigned actively for its passage.
"The ban was part of a backlash," I was told by Luisa Cabal, the legal consultant for Latin America at the Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion rights organization based in New York. The proposed bill, Cabal said, was a result of "the church's role in pushing for a conservative agenda." With the archbishop's vocal support of the ban and conservative groups fully energized, opposition soon became difficult. Any argument in favor of therapeutic abortion was met with a religious counterargument.
Julia Regina de Cardenal runs the Yes to Life Foundation in San Salvador, which provides prenatal care and job training to poor pregnant women. She was a key advocate for the passage of the ban. She argued that the existing law's exception for the life of the mother was outdated. As she explained to me, "There does not exist any case in which the life of the mother would be in danger, because technology has advanced so far." De Cardenal was particularly vehement in responding in print to her opponents. As she wrote in one Salvadoran newspaper column in 1997, "The Devil, tireless Prince of Lies, has tried and will continue to try to change our laws in order to kill our babies."
Positions on the strengthened ban essentially split along party lines, at least at first. "The majority of our leadership came out in opposition," Lorena Peña, an FMLN representative in the Assembly, told me. But the FMLN held only a minority of the seats in the 84-member Assembly, and they were unable to stop the bill. The proposal to ban all abortions passed the Assembly in 1997 and became the law of the country in April 1998.
"But that was not enough," de Cardenal later wrote in an article recounting the victory. In 1997, her foundation also proposed a constitutional amendment that would recognize the government's duty to protect life from the time of conception.
A proposed constitutional amendment in El Salvador has to pass two important votes. It must be accepted by a majority in one session of the Assembly and then, after a new election, ratified by a two-thirds vote in the next Assembly. During the first vote, in 1997, FMLN legislators stood against the amendment, but they were outvoted, and the amendment passed the first round.
In January 1999, as the issue headed toward the second vote in the Assembly, Pope John Paul II visited Latin America. "The church must proclaim the Gospel of life and speak out with prophetic force against the culture of death," he declared in Mexico City."May the continent of hope also be the continent of life!" De Cardenal says that the pope's visit re-energized supporters of the constitutional ban. As the vote neared, her group rolled out a series of radio ads in favor of the amendment and presented legislators with a petition of more than 500,000 signatures. At one demonstration, members of the group sprinkled the National Assembly with holy water. To punctuate her campaign, de Cardenal arranged to have two pregnant women come to the Assembly and have ultrasounds publicly performed on their fetuses.
The leadership of the FMLN, afraid that the party would be trounced in the coming elections if they were on the record as opposing the amendment, freed its deputies from their obligation to follow the party's position and urged them to vote with their consciences. When the final vote was taken, the amendment passed overwhelmingly.
The legislative battle and its outcome did not escape the attention of leaders of anti-abortion groups in the United States. Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, the head of Human Life International, based in Virginia, is intimately familiar with the campaign in El Salvador and says that there are lessons for Americans to learn from it. For one thing, as Euteneuer sees it, the Salvadoran experience shows that all moves to expand abortion rights are pushed through by "elite" institutions of government (the U.S. Supreme Court, for example); by contrast, Euteneuer contends, when the laws are tightened, a grass-roots campaign is inevitably responsible. "El Salvador is an inspiration," he told me recently, an important victory in what he called "the counterrevolution of conscience."
Today, Article 1 of El Salvador's constitution declares that the prime directive of government is to protect life from the "very moment of conception." The penal code detailing the Crimes Against the Life of Human Beings in the First Stages of Development provides stiff penalties: the abortion provider, whether a medical doctor or a back-alley practitioner, faces 6 to 12 years in prison. The woman herself can get 2 to 8 years. Anyone who helps her can get 2 to 5 years. Additionally, judges have ruled that if the fetus was viable, a charge of aggravated homicide can be brought, and the penalty for the woman can be 30 to 50 years in prison.
D.C.: When we got to the woman's house, there was so much disorder. It was all a mess. We talked, and she felt my stomach and said: "Yeah, I can do it. Come back in four days." I asked how she would do it, and she said, With a probe.
On that day, I came in and was told to lie down. It was not even a bed. There was just so much disorder. She asked me to take off my clothes, and she put a shirt on me. She came with a piece of cloth and put it underneath my nose, and I felt a little numb. She came back with a long wire, like a TV antenna. It was not like a doctor's instrument. It was just a wire tube with another wire inside it. She put some oil on it and told me to breathe deeply.
She put it in. And she was scraping around. I was supposed to be asleep. But I felt pain. I told her it hurt. She said, "Yeah, we're almost done." But she kept scraping around, and I said: "No, no, stop. It's hurting me." Then she said, "It's done."
She said I would have a fever and I should not go to the doctor or they would report me. That night everything was O.K. So I went to sleep.
"Back-alley abortion" is a term that has long been part of the abortion debate. In the United States, in the years since Roe v. Wade, it has come to seem metaphorical, perhaps even hyperbolic, but it happens to conjure precisely D.C.'s experience. And it's easy in El Salvador to find plenty of evidence that D.C.'s story is neither isolated nor the worst case. A report by the Center for Reproductive Rights offers this grim list of tools used in clandestine abortions: "clothes hangers, iron bars, high doses of contraceptives, fertilizers, gastritis remedies, soapy water and caustic agents (such as car battery acid)." That list is meant to disgust a reader in the same way that imagery of mangled fetuses is meant to when employed by those who oppose abortion. But the criminalization of abortion in the modern age, in El Salvador at least, is not so simple as a grim return to the back alley. For the most part, the new law has not resulted in a spike in horror stories of painful and botched clandestine procedures.
To begin with, when a woman might face jail time for an abortion, she's less likely to discuss her pregnancy at all. According to a study on attempted suicide and teen pregnancy published last year by academics at the University of El Salvador, some girls who poison their wombs with agricultural pesticide (its efficacy being a Salvadoran urban legend) would rather report the cause of their resulting hospital visit as "attempted suicide," which is not as felonious a crime nor as socially unbearable as abortion. "They don't want to be interviewed about abortion," Irma Elizabeth Asencio, one of the study's authors, explained to me. "They know they have committed a crime."
Abortion as it exists in El Salvador today tends to operate on three levels. The well-off retain the "right to choose" that comes of simply having money. They can fly to Miami for an abortion, or visit the private office of a discreet and well-compensated doctor. Among the very poor, you can still find the back-alley world described by D.C. and the others who turn up in hospitals with damaged or lacerated wombs. Then there are the women in the middle; they often rely on home-brewed cures that are shared on the Internet or on a new underground railroad that has formed to aid them.
"I keep two telephones in my purse," I was told in San Salvador by one woman who wished not to be identified because her work is illegal. I'd heard of her through an abortion rights advocate, and I asked to meet her in person. "One phone is for work and personal matters," she went on to explain in fluent English. "The second one is for the other thing." Although she doesn't work directly in women's health care, her job keeps her traveling and in contact with people working for health groups and women's rights groups who do outreach throughout the country. "I would estimate that there are about 20 people who are working in different and specific places who have this phone number," she said. They pass it along when they think it is necessary.
And so when the phone rings, she has to decide whether the woman seeking an abortion is legitimate or not. On occasion, she has turned off the phone after a suspicious call. "You need to be careful, especially when the people who call are young people," she said. "One day they think one thing and the next day another thing. And they know your information." Her practice is first to find out the crucial facts of the pregnancy; then, if she decides she's willing to help, she calls a doctor she knows who lives in a neighboring country.
"When I'm calling the doctor, I never say on this telephone, 'Someone needs an abortion,"' she told me. "Rather, I might say, 'We have a situation here.' When we talk about the details, like how many weeks along she is, the doctor might ask me, 'What time is it?' I might say it's 8 o'clock, meaning the patient is eight weeks along." After all the details are worked out in code, the doctor flies in. The abortion - usually nonsurgical - is performed without charge.
"No one ever learns the doctor's name or where she's from," she said.
A doctor who works this underground circuit also agreed to meet me and discuss abortion. She seemed terrified the entire time we spoke. She constantly glanced around the cafe where we had coffee with an interpreter. She ended every paragraph with a plea not to reveal any details that might identify her. But she said she wanted to explain how abortions are done in El Salvador. Most women with some education or access to the Internet quickly learn about misoprostol, she said. It is an ulcer drug that, when inserted in the vagina, can provoke contractions and cause bleeding that looks, in an emergency room, just like a miscarriage.
"I show people how to put the misoprostol in and tell them that when they go to the hospital just to say, 'I started bleeding,"' this doctor explained. "There is no way that can be detected." The only problem, she went on to say, was that "some women go right to the hospital when there's initial staining." Then, if a doctor or nurse finds a half-dissolved pill during a pelvic exam, they are obliged to call the police.
According to nearly a dozen doctors and nurses I interviewed in San Salvador, there has been a decline in the incidence of harrowing coat-hanger/pesticide-type abortions in the time since the law was passed. (No official national statistics were available.) But the doctors I spoke to also noted - again, anecdotally - that there were still consistent numbers of pregnant women coming to the hospital with unexplained bleeding. The consensus was that more and more women were learning about misoprostol. In El Salvador, misoprostol is sold under the name Cytotec. Type that word alongside "abortion" into Google, and it becomes apparent that the old back alley of witch doctors with coat hangers could be deserted soon, replaced by online dealers peddling ulcer drugs.
In some ways, D.C.'s personal story is a transitional tale between an old world and a new one. She apparently tried the misoprostol abortion but got the wrong information about the dosage. Her later desperation and confusion about how the drug worked is what drove her, at last, into the house of a traditional back-alley abortionist.
D.C.: At 2 a.m., I started to shake. I had a fever and convulsions. My mama came, and I told her I was cold. She put more clothes on me. The next day I was fine and went to work. I started to feel bad pain but kept working. That night another fever came, and shaking. Mama said she was taking me to the doctor, and I said no. That night I began to convulse again and the pain was stronger. I didn't go to work the next day. I went to the bathroom and bled heavily.
Two days later, on Friday, even my hands and feet were hurting. My kid was sick, he had a cold. I took my son to the doctor, who asked if it was me who was there to see him. I said it was my child, and he said, "You're yellow, like hepatitis." Then I was crying because he touched me on the stomach and liver and it hurt a lot. He asked me if I was sure I was O.K. because I looked bad. When I left the clinic, I couldn't walk. My sister went to look for a cab.
Several days later, I was back at the doctor. They did some tests and called an ambulance. At the hospital they asked me what I had. I didn't want to say. I said I felt bad. They did tests on my urine, blood and lungs and found I had a severe respiratory infection. They did an ultrasound and found my kidneys, lung and liver were infected. And the ultrasound showed something else. They asked me: "Why do you have a perforated uterus? What have you done?" Then they did a vaginal exam, and it was the most painful thing for me in the world. They put something in me, and I cried out. They had two doctors holding me down. They said they knew I had had an abortion because my uterus was perforated and big and they would have to operate immediately. All I remember was going to the operating room, and then I don't remember anything because for the next six days I was in a coma.
"When we get a call from a hospital reporting an abortion," said Flor Evelyn Tópez, "the first thing we do is make sure the girl gets into custody. So if there is not a police officer there, we call the police and begin to collect evidence." Tópez is a prosecutor in the district of Apopa in San Salvador, a part of town noted for its poverty, crime and gang violence. She is a compact and tense woman. She wears a beautiful silver cross around her neck with smaller matching crosses for earrings. Her hair is pulled into a tight narrow bun across her head, held in place by small plastic flowers. Her gaze beams from steady eyes, each haloed in cobalt mascara.
Nationwide, after the ban came into effect in 1998, the number of legal cases initiated nearly doubled, according to a study published in 2001 by the Center for Reproductive Rights. Today the number of abortion cases investigated each year averages close to 100, according to Luz McNaughton and Ellen Mitchell, policy consultants with Ipas, an abortion rights advocacy group in Chapel Hill, N.C., who gathered the statistics for a study to be published later this year by the American Journal of Public Health. In 2004, the most recent year for which any statistics are available, there were 93 investigations of people associated with a clandestine abortion. In 2003, there were 111 investigations; in 2002, there were 85. (El Salvador's population is 6.5 million, roughly that of Massachusetts.) The vast majority of charges are brought against the woman or the provider. In a few cases, the boyfriend or mother or someone else who has helped out is also charged. Typically, the woman can avoid prosecution altogether if, after she is arrested, she names the provider.
When the woman is first detained, the form of custody can vary. Wandee Mira, an obstetrician at a hospital in San Salvador, told me that she had seen "a young girl handcuffed to her hospital bed with a police officer standing outside the door." In El Salvador, a person accused of a major crime is typically held in jail in "preventative detention" until the trial begins. Tópez, who said she had prosecuted perhaps 10 or 15 abortion cases in the last eight years, said that she took the severity of the case into account and sometimes argued for "substitutive measures instead of jail," like house arrest, while the accused was awaiting trial. My impression was that Tópez was emphasizing such relative leniencies as house arrest instead of detention, as well as suspended sentences for women who report the abortionist, because, like most people, she was uncomfortable with the inevitable logic that insists upon making a woman who has had an abortion into a criminal. Even Regina de Cardenal, whose group was instrumental in passing the ban, could not quite square the circle.
"I believe the woman is a victim," de Cardenal told me. "The criminals are the people who perform the abortions." When pressed about the fact that the law she helped pass does treat the woman as a criminal, she said: "Yes, it's part of the law of our country. Because the woman has murdered her baby - and that's why she is sent to jail. But I believe that the woman who is sent to jail remains a victim of the abortion doctor, the abortionist, who knows exactly what he is doing."
In the United States, this conundrum is only beginning to emerge, as it did on "Meet the Press" in October 2004, when Tim Russert, the host, asked Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican representative then in the middle of what turned out to be a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate, to explain his position in favor of a total ban on all abortion procedures. DeMint was reluctant to answer Russert's repeated question: Would you prosecute a woman who had an abortion? DeMint said he thought Congress should outlaw all abortions first and worry about the fallout later. "We've got to make laws first that protect life," he said. "How those laws are shaped are going to be a long debate."
Russert refused to leave the congressman alone. "Who would you prosecute?" he persisted.
Finally DeMint blurted, "You know, I can't come up with all the laws as we're sitting right here, but the question is, Are we going to protect human life with our laws?"
In El Salvador, the law is clear: the woman is a felon and must be prosecuted. According to Tópez, after a report comes in from a doctor or a hospital that a woman has arrived who is suspected of having had an abortion, and after the police are dispatched, investigators start procuring evidence of the crime. In that first stage, Tópez has 72 hours to make the case to a justice of the peace that there should be a further investigation. If enough evidence is collected, she presents the case before a magistrate to get authorization for a full criminal trial before a judge.
During the first round of investigations, police officers interview the woman's family and friends. "The collecting of evidence usually takes place where the events transpired - by visiting the home or by speaking with the doctor at the hospital," Tópez said. In some cases, the police also interrogate people who work with the woman. Tópez added that that didn't happen very often because, she said, "these are women who don't work outside the home." (Indeed, the evidence suggests that the ban in El Salvador disproportionately affects poor women. The researchers who conducted the Journal of Public Health study found that common occupations listed for women charged with abortion-related crimes were homemaker, student, housekeeper and market vendor. The earlier study by the Center for Reproductive Rights found that the majority were domestic servants, followed by factory workers, ticket takers on buses, housewives, saleswomen and messengers.)
As they do in any investigation, the police collect evidence by interviewing everyone who knows the accused and by seizing her medical records. But they must also visit the scene of the crime, which, following the logic of the law, often means the woman's vagina.
"Yes, we sometimes call doctors from the Forensic Institute to do a pelvic exam," Tópez said, referring to the nation's main forensic lab, "and we ask them to document lacerations or any evidence such as cuts or a perforated uterus." In other words, if the suspicions of the patient's doctor are not conclusive enough, then in that initial 72-hour period, a forensic doctor can legally conduct a separate search of the crime scene. Tópez said, however, that vaginal searches can take place only with "a judge's permission." Tópez frequently turned the pages of a thick law book she kept at hand. "The prosecutor can order a medical exam on a woman, because that's within the prosecutor's authority," she said.
In the event that the woman's illegal abortion went badly and the doctors have to perform a hysterectomy, then the uterus is sent to the Forensic Institute, where the government's doctors analyze it and retain custody of her uterus as evidence against her.
D.C.: After I came out of the coma, they moved me to the maternity hospital. My brother visited and asked me if the police had come to ask me questions. He said the police had come to our house and they had interrogated our relatives and neighbors. They had gone to where I worked. They asked everyone a lot of questions about me and who I was and if they knew whether I was pregnant and whether I'd had an abortion.
When I got home, the prosecutor came to see me, and he asked lots of aggressive questions. He talked to me like I was a criminal. I didn't want to answer because I was scared. He said if I didn't answer, even though I was in bad physical shape, he would put me in jail. He wanted me to tell him who the father of the child was and the name of the person who had done this to me. I didn't know her name. Then he made a date for me to come to the prosecutor's office.
Doctors in El Salvador now understand that it is their legal duty to report any woman suspected of having had an abortion. Abortion rights advocates point out that Salvadoran law also spells out a conflicting responsibility: the doctor's duty to keep the patient's medical information confidential. What this blurring of medical and legal obligations means, in practice, is that doctors have to choose for themselves what to do. The result is a country in which some doctors eagerly report women, some eagerly search for loopholes to avoid having to report and some simply want to stay out of trouble.
"Many doctors are afraid not to report," says Mira, the obstetrician I spoke to. This fear is heightened for doctors, she explains, by the fact that nurses also have a legal duty to report abortion crimes but are often confused about their obligation of confidentiality. So doctors are afraid that the nurses will report them for not reporting. "The entire system is run on fear," Mira said.
One morning, I got permission to hang out all day at Hospital Nacional de Maternidad, a large public hospital in San Salvador, and talk with doctors there. Somehow the Salvadoran government learned of my visit, and the federal Ministry of Health dispatched an "escort" to accompany me the entire day. The chief of the OB/GYN residents was Carmen Vargas, a young doctor with a fondness for eyeliner and lipstick. Like that of many doctors in El Salvador, her sense of the whole issue is that, regardless of what she might think personally, the law obligates her to turn women in. In the last year or so, she reported one young woman herself and was present when another was reported. For Vargas, the cases were pretty cut and dried. "When we see physical evidence, we are required to report," she explained, "because the doctor and the institution can be charged."
The physical evidence in a case can be supported by other clues. Vargas said that in medical school she read in a gynecological textbook, published in the late 1990's in Chile, that the doctor should listen carefully to the patient's story. If the woman is "confused in her narrative," Vargas said, that could well indicate that she'd had an abortion.
Vargas offered me an example. "Last year, in March, we received a 15-year-old who came referred from a hospital in an outer area," she said. "She had a confused patient history. She had already been operated on and had a hysterectomy and had her ovaries taken out. She was in a delicate state, on respiratory assistance in intensive care. The doctors there said they had seen a perforation in the space beneath the cervix.
"This was around Eastertime last year, and the prosecutor's offices were closed," Vargas said. She had not seen any of the evidence herself, she said, but saw that the other doctors "had tried to call the prosecutor's office, but it was closed. I came in, and on the chart what was pending was to call the police. So I called them."
Vargas remembered that the police interviewed her but asked only general questions. "The hard part was when I was called as a witness," she said. "That lasted a whole day. That was really ugly, and it was first time I ever testified. They asked me if I had noticed anything suspicious or if I had heard anything about the girl."
Vargas told the prosecutor that the girl's stepfather "asked me not to call the prosecutor's office because it would be better for the girl if I didn't call." She fixed me with a look. "I didn't think it was for the girl that he was asking me not to call." Vargas said her hunch was that the man was abusing his stepdaughter, and she said that she felt that she was doing the 15-year-old a favor by turning her in for felony abortion.
"It's a hard question as to whether I did the right thing," she said. "I think part of it is not right, from the point of view that you can expose the life of the patient, and because it can cause women not to seek care. But at the same time, I felt I did the right thing. I suspect she was abused in her own house. I felt like it was helping her get away from a possible bad situation."
As it happened, I located this particular patient, who resolved her case without going to jail. Two of the activists I met made contact with her by cellphone. At first, the family agreed that I should meet this young woman, but at the last minute the stepfather intervened. He said he didn't think his stepdaughter should tell her story. After that, no one answered our calls.
D.C.: At the prosecutor's office, I met a woman. She said if I talked, I might have a chance to stay free. She said there was no worse punishment than that I couldn't have any more children. So why not talk? Why defend this person? So she gave me another date to come back and talk. I told my mama, but she said that if I told them who the woman was, the woman could take revenge on my family. I didn't know what to do. But I decided to stay free and so I told her everything.
I went back to work, and everybody knew what I had done because the police had come. I was scared because I didn't know what they would say about me. A lot of people wouldn't talk to me, but some people said: "Here's my little girl! My little girl has come back!" I felt good. They loved me and they said, "It was a mistake, and everybody makes mistakes."
Later the prosecutor called again and told me I would need to go to court and hear from the judge whether I would be free or go to jail.
A policy that criminalizes all abortions has a flip side. It appears to mandate that the full force of the medical team must tend toward saving the fetus under any circumstances. This notion can lead to some dangerous practices. Consider an ectopic pregnancy, a condition that occurs when a microscopic fertilized egg moves down the fallopian tube - which is no bigger around than a pencil - and gets stuck there (or sometimes in the abdomen). Unattended, the stuck fetus grows until the organ containing it ruptures. A simple operation can remove the fetus before the organ bursts. After a rupture, though, the situation can turn into a medical emergency.
According to Sara Valdés, the director of the Hospital de Maternidad, women coming to her hospital with ectopic pregnancies cannot be operated on until fetal death or a rupture of the fallopian tube. "That is our policy," Valdés told me. She was plainly in torment about the subject. "That is the law," she said. "The D.A.'s office told us that this was the law." Valdés estimated that her hospital treated more than a hundred ectopic pregnancies each year. She described the hospital's practice. "Once we determine that they have an ectopic pregnancy, we make sure they stay in the hospital," she said. The women are sent to the dispensary, where they receive a daily ultrasound to check the fetus. "If it's dead, we can operate," she said. "Before that, we can't." If there is a persistent fetal heartbeat, then they have to wait for the fallopian tube to rupture. If they are able to persuade the patient to stay, though, doctors can operate the minute any signs of early rupturing are detected. Even a few drops of blood seeping from a fallopian tube will "irritate the abdominal wall and cause pain," Valdés explained. By operating at the earliest signs of a potential rupture, she said, her doctors are able to minimize the risk to the woman.
One doctor, who asked to remain anonymous because of the risk of prosecution, explained that there are creative solutions to the problem of ectopic pregnancies: "Sometimes when an ectopic pregnancy comes in, the attendant will say, 'Send this patient to the best ultrasound doctor.' And I'll say, 'No, send her to the least-experienced ultrasound doctor.' He'll say, 'I can't find a heartbeat here.' Then we can operate."
This doctor also told me that there are ways to avoid reporting an abortion. "I can only say what I saw when I examined the patient," the doctor said. "If I can see lacerations or cuts, I cannot say what that means if the patient says, 'I have done nothing.' I can describe what I saw, but I cannot say she has or has not had an abortion."
The doctor pondered a hypothetical situation: "If the patient says, 'Yes, I did it, but please keep that between us'?" There was a pause. "I keep that promise. The confidentiality right is more important than the legal duty to report."
In prosecutors' offices in El Salvador, as in prosecutors' offices anywhere, longer sentences are considered better sentences. "The more years one can send someone away for," I was told by Margarita Sanabria, a magistrate who has handled several abortion cases, "the better it is for the prosecutors." She cited this motivation to account for what she has observed recently: more later-term abortions being reclassified as "aggravated homicide." If an aborted fetus is found to have been viable, the higher charge can be filed. The penalty for abortion can be as low as two years in prison. Aggravated homicide has a minimum sentence of 30 years and a maximum of 50 years.
The issue of proving viability after an abortion is a tricky one, of course. There is no legal standard. But many of the people I talked to in El Salvador, including Tópez, the prosecutor, said there was a rule of thumb: if an aborted fetus weighs more than 500 grams, or a little more than a pound, then you can argue that the fetus was viable. When I mentioned this to Judge Sanabria, she said she wished she had known more about the rule before. She recalled one case, that of a 20-year-old mother named Carmen Climaco, whose abortion of a fetus estimated at 18 weeks had been recast by the prosecutor as aggravated homicide. The judge admitted that if she had known this rule of thumb, she might not have sent the case to trial. "I feel bad about it," she said.
But the case did go to trial, and the prosecutor won a conviction for aggravated homicide. At trial, the evidence included lifting Climaco's fingerprints from the fetus, which was found under her bed. The prosecutor's accusation was infanticide by strangling.
The women's prison where convicted murderers are sent is in the outer district of Tonacatepeque. I visited it in January. It's an old, creaky facility that inspires the kind of dread that comes of seeing concertina wire and much-painted cinder blocks, made all the creepier by a paint choice of baby-boy blue. Inside the first gate is a neutral area. It's filled with almond trees that provide a flickering shade on a hot winter afternoon. All the women are kept in a deeper jail, walled off inside. Through a small window, I could see an open area crisscrossed by laundry lines and arrayed by different women lying around smoking.
I was there to see Carmen Climaco. She is now 26 years old, four years into her 30-year sentence. She has three children, who today are 11, 8 and 6 years old. We talked about them for a while. Since she was the only person in the family who worked, her children's financial situation is precarious; they now stay with their grandmother. Climaco said she lives for their visits, which are brief and come only twice a month. She was dressed in red jeans and a white polo shirt. We sat with an interpreter in the half-shade in green plastic yard chairs. Climaco had a paper napkin with her that she folded and folded into a familiar-looking pill. She had light brown hair, and occasionally a smile steadied her trembling lips.
"I became pregnant at a time when my smallest child was in the hospital," she said. "I never thought I could get pregnant because I had been sterilized. Suddenly I saw two doors shutting at the same time. There was nothing I could do. My mother said she'd toss me out of the house if I got pregnant."
Her story came out in fits and starts. She said that she was innocent and had never done anything illegal. Then she said, "I keep asking God to pardon me for what I've done." She said that the day it happened, she felt dizzy and collapsed at home. She woke up covered in blood. "I stood up and it felt like something fell out of me." It took her a while to understand just what had happened. "I put my hand on its throat to see if it was moving," she said, "which is why my fingerprints were found on its neck."
I spent the better part of an hour watching Carmen Climaco's face, listening to her whimpering pleas to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and tiny prayers to me to believe in her innocence. Like anyone serving time in prison, she has inhabited the details of her story to the point that they no longer sound true or false. She has compressed her story into a dense, simple tale of innocence - she just woke up covered in blood - to hold up against the public accusation of baby-strangling. I kept looking at her face, incapable of seeing the innocent girl she described or the murderer the prosecutor sent to prison. The truth was certainly - well, not in the "middle" so much as somewhere else entirely. Somewhere like this: She'd had a clandestine abortion at 18 weeks, not all that different from D.C.'s, something defined as absolutely legal in the United States. It's just that she'd had an abortion in El Salvador.
Jack Hitt is a contributing writer. He has written for the magazine on a number of topics, including the availability of abortion in the United States.


text:
The economic crisis in Greece continues to weigh on the country's 11.3 million citizens — with Prime Minister Samaras desperately trying to secure additional time to get the nation's books in order.
A Business Insider reader traveling in Thessaloniki, Greece submitted pictures of his travels through the country this week.
If nothing else, the images are a reminder that the renewed conversation Eurozone leaders are having over the Greek bailout has massive impact on a very human face.
The reader sent us a note, which we've edited just a little bit for typos and clarity:
After 9 days in the Balkans, I can tell you, a common currency is a stupid idea. The one place we were not spending at all was Greece. Not just because they can't devalue themselves, but because they don't have any products. I spent 30 minutes in a grocery store. Every single thing they sell is imported, except olive oil.
They are trying to sell 100-dollar Italian Carrerra sunglasses for 200EUR to unemployed Greek people. Dead end. Only thing is cheap is accommodation. We paid 70USD / night in a 5* hotel. Istanbul's Four Seasons at the Bosporus was more expensive, but everybody had a job there, were doing something. Even selling paper tissues or bottled water on the streets. It doesn't matter. If you have a product in a 13 million city, you will make money.
Back to currencies: We drove up to Bulgaria, and became millionaires. And yes we started spending money. Same thing in Romania. So I say back to drachma or be prepared for a 20-year-long depression.
It's a little crude, but... there's something there.


text:
Challenge #4: Go to Whistler and Zipline Down a Mountain at Night
I'm trying to be brave and try new things—truly I am. But as I hang in my harness, my teeth chattering in the sub-zero cold, swinging in a cradle as helpless as a baby, I began to think, 'hey – what was so wrong with the old ways?'. It's pitch black ahead of me on the mountain, just a small twinkling light, god knows how far away – that's where I'm heading on this insane zipline and god help me, if they're not about to release the brakes…
A curse on this whole 'try something Canadian and new' plan. I've given ziplining at night a whirl and decided that, nope, it is absolutely not for me. Was it the screaming through the darkness god knows how high up – just attached by a wire – that made me turn my stomach? Or perhaps it was the fatal-crash feeling every time I 'zipped' into the end of each line? Or maybe it was the weird sensation of being horribly scared as I flew in darkness across the mountain and yet at the same time - feeling weirdly bored because I couldn't see anything? Whatever, as fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, this girl has gotta never do this again. And yet… I could see that if you liked it (and I was with a crew who clearly adored it) then this would be all kinds of fun.
It all started rather nicely with a heated snowcat ride up Rainbow Mountain. I loved this! The snow was deep, it felt like the most delicious sort of rufty-tufty Canadian fun inside the 'Cat; blankets-over-the-knees and the rumble of the engine as we climbed at a thrilling angle up, up the mountain. The light was on in the cabin and my fellow zippers-to-be were excited. I peered out into the night: nothing. Sadly the fun bit was over too soon – we got dropped at a yurt half-way up the isolated mountain for dinner.
Normally I'd have been dancing with excitement over this; it had been catered by the Bearfoot Bistro – one of my favourite Whistler restaurants – but as I sat down and sipped on water (never have I wanted a glass of wine more) and watched the flames dance in the log fire, I realised I was genuinely nervous about what lay ahead. I pushed my perfect short rib around the plate, forcing down a few mouthfuls of whipped buttery mash and savoury gravy before giving up. Bad enough to scream, but how much worse if I threw up later?
When you dread what lies ahead, there comes a point when you don't want to delay – you just want it to be over. Make the dinner, end, let's just get this done, I wished to the gods of bad decisions and perilous ideas. Who knows – I was not letting the tiny flame of optimism burn out at this point – maybe I would love this. But every minute we spent in that gorgeous little wooden yurt made me doubt it more and more. For those familiar with the drill, you know what lies ahead – you carry your own kit from line to line over your shoulder. I wasn't expecting this and as I slid around on the narrow trail in the half-light on the ice and snow, I wondered if I wasn't about to find a far, far faster way down.
The two staff with us on the mountain with us were fantastic – friendly, helpful, fun and – kind – when it was clear that I was struggling to stay upright one of them shouldered my load and I was never made to feel like I was making a fuss. One of the group after one line decided that was enough; and they were kind to her too. Idiot that I am, I decided to stick with it. Maybe I'd grow to love it? (I didn't.)
There were only 4 ziplines but it felt like oh, so much more; one was the longest in Canada, 600 feet above the ground and over a kilometer long. The part of me that wasn't hating it all, was wondering what it would be like in the daytime? Maybe if I had all that stunning scenery to distract me from me grinding terror, I'd have had more fun?
Not so my companions, who whooped their way through the evening. They flew down the mountain, their helmet lights like little halos, and whooped like bad angels as they went. Apologies for this most anaemic of phrases but really: if you like this kind of thing, you'd love this. It's well organised, if you could stomach the food it was delicious, the yurt and snowcat were a lot of fun and yes, if hurtling through the night is your bag then have at it.
I plan to keep my feet on the ground for now.
God bless them for having me – I was a guest of Superfly – who were so nice to me even though I clearly loathed it.
Also thank you to my chateau home away from home, the Fairmont Chateau Whistler who gave me somewhere beautiful and serene to rest my very achey bones after all this crazy. Oh, how I wished I'd have been able to stow away one of their special mustard-spiked cocktails with me on the line – maybe that would have helped?
As ever – my words though are 100% my own.


text:
This is not going to make America's $1 Commissioner very happy: Derrick Mason, Ravens wide receiver and an NFL vet so tenured that he debuted with the Tennessee Oilers, thinks Roger Goodell is a joke.
Here's what Mason had to say, after Goodell spoke at—ugh, really—a high school about why HGH is bad. (The commish now resembles the hapless mayor who thanks the superhero after he saves the city, just before we segue into cereal commercials.)
"He needs to stop crying about blood tests and HGH. He needs to try to get a deal done, that's what he needs to do. He's been on this crusade about HGH, but he needs to be on a crusade about getting these owners together and trying to work out a deal. To me, he's a joke, because every time I look, he's talking about performance enhancements instead of talking about trying to figure out a way to make sure football is played in August."
When asked, during his appearance on 105.7-FM's Norris and Davis Show, whether he'd repeat his comments to Goodell's face, Mason said, Yeah. He's a grown man and I'm a grown man." But players can't be fined during the lockout, so Mason's fairly safe in his fighting words.
And no, we would not say that to his face.
Derrick Mason: Roger Goodell 'a joke' as NFL commissioner [USA Today]
Roger Goodell: NFL insists on HGH test [ESPN]


text:
Data center, enterprise and FTTx fiber networks present a number of challenges when it comes to locating and measuring events and impairments. The sheer number of fibers to be tested can prove to be a daunting task, one requiring automated event analysis. Automatic and accurate interpretation of multiple connectors, splices and splitters is a key to increase productivity. This article unveils how the AFL M series OTDR, using TruEvent algorithm to analyze OTDR traces. TruEvent helps AFL OTDR provide users with highly accurate and reliable automated event tables.
Home » White Papers » TruEvent® OTDR Event Analysis
Thank you!
Error - something went wrong!
Previous Flipbook
New Designs Increase Functionality of Specialty Fiber
Advanced fiber designs will further improve component performance, enhance reliability, simplify manufactur...
Most Recent Flipbooks
Splicing Efficiency Improvements in Ultra-High Density Fiber Optic Cable
AFL investigates and documents each aspect of the cable joining and the ribbon fiber splicing process of ultra-high density fiber optic cable in data center applications and new access networks.
Splicer Alignment Technologies - The Technical and Data-Driven Differentiators
This white paper aims to educate the industry on the different splicer technologies, using technical and data differentiators as opposed to marketing verbiage.
Estudio de costos de empalmes Bluetooth
En el mundo de las empalmadoras, Fujikura fue el primero en utilizar tecnología de Bluetooth en una manera que se traduce en verdaderos ahorros monetarios.
OPGW and OHGW Bonding Assembly Selection
Selecting the best bonding assembly configuration is dependent on proximity from the termination or suspension hardware to the support structure, terrain and wind conditions and tower hardware.
White Paper: Splice Loss Estimation with the Fujikura 41S Fusion Splicer
This white paper will introduce the larger categories of splice loss estimation methods and applications to better explain in context how the Fujikura's 41S splicer estimation technique performs.
Optical Fiber and the Future Electric Utility
This white paper explores the options electric utilities have to bring fiber deeper into their networks and AFL's FOLLOW THE POWER® approach.
Bluetooth Splicing Cost Study
Cost study: Compared to a traditional splicer-cleaver combination, a Bluetooth-enabled splicer/cleaver combination produce a 76% cost of ownership reduction and weeks of time reclaimed.
Beyond 300°C: Reliable Long-Term Measurement of Temperature for Supercritical Geothermal Systems
Demonstration of low attenuation metal-coated optical fiber and cable capable of withstanding temperatures up to 500°C. Performance will be validated by using a DTS instrument to measure temperature.
500 C-Rated Optical Fibers High Temperature Applications
This paper will demonstrate a metal-coated fiber capable of withstanding temperatures up to 500°C.
ADSS Advantages Over Strand and Lash Fiber Cables in Aerial Electric Utility Applications
This paper will further explore some of the advantages of using ADSS cable as opposed to a strand and lash fiber cable for aerial electric utility applications.
New Approach for High Reliability, Low Loss Splicing between Silica and ZBLAN Fibers
This paper presents results obtained by using the high thermal expansion coefficient of the ZBLAN fiber to encapsulate a smaller SiO2 fiber.
High Efficiency Pump Combiner
In this paper we present an all fiber end pumped 7x1 pump combiner fabricated by CO2 laser splicing system.
Fiber Cladding Mode Stripper
Presented and characterized are an optimized cladding mode stripper design that increases the cladding light loss with a minimal device length and manufacturing time.
Ball Shaped End Caps
In this paper, general ball shaped end-caps are studied and illustrated. Different ball shaped end-caps were tested and measured for a variety of applications.
Annular Heating of Optical Fiber with a CO2 Laser Using Reflective Axicon Elements
By offsetting the light structure, precise localized zone heating and annealing of specific areas at a fiber's surface can be achieved as well.
DWDM Expansion over CWDM
DWDM allows you to add additional capacity without replacing your existing CWDM infrastructure and with minimal—if any—service interruption.
New Ultra-Density Fiber Cable Technology for FTTx and Access Markets Using New SpiderWeb Ribbon®
The new ultra-density fiber optic cable technology, called Wrapping Tube Cable (WTC), utilizes a new optical fiber ribbon arrangement technology called SpiderWeb Ribbon (SWR®).
Leveraging ADSS Cable Technology in Utility FTTx Networks
Alternate cable stub options and how they could be used to lower overall FTTx deployment costs to provide rural Americans with access to reliable, high-bandwidth internet.
Fourier Analysis Method for Asymmetric Polarization-Maintaining Fiber Alignment
The new method for alignment of asymmetric polarization-maintaining (PM) fibers improves alignment accuracy for PM fibers with asymmetric stress applying parts.
New Designs Increase Functionality of Specialty Fiber


text:
PYKL3 Radar Is a Fine Foul-Weather Tracker
Oct 5, 2012 5:00 AM PT
PYKL3 Radar, an app from PYK Consulting, is available for US$9.99 at Google Play.
If you've ever been frustrated by the inaccuracy of a television weather report, in particular the graphics, there's always been a way out -- and that's to go to the National Weather Service website and look at the online radar images pulled straight off the actual radar.
If you're fishing, hiking, or working outdoors, though, you'll find the NOAA-supplied desktop PC-designed graphics don't render all that well on mobile devices, meaning you can get wet. The official mobile version is limited.
However, there is a solution, and that's to purchase a dedicated NEXRAD Level 3 radar app. I took a look at one, PYKL3 Radar, and liked what I saw.
About Radar
Weather radars bounce radio signals off particles in the air. This is called "reflectivity" and is the foundation of a radar image. The colors you see on the map represent different strengths of reflected radio waves -- different densities of rain. That's basically it, although there can be various flies in the ointment.
For example, the particles causing the reflection could be birds, dust or insects, and not rain; and the angle of the beam caused by the earth's curvature, elevation and distance can get an interpretation squirrelly -- which is why forecasters go to school before we start paying them with out tax dollars.
However, if you're serious about outdoor activities, in particular staying dry, it's worth getting the tools and learning a bit about it. The National Weather Service provides an easy-to-understand tutorial that'll get you up to speed on radar reading techniques if you're unfamiliar with it all.
First Impressions
After loading this expensive app -- $9.99 in the Google Play Store -- I immediately realized that this was the real deal, not the tarted-up local TV, or consumer weather app version of a radar image.
Consumer products smooth the radial image creating a more aesthetic, but less detailed map. PYKL3 Radar shows true base reflectivity, with accurate, blocky pixels.
Putting It to the Test
I chose the KRAX radar in the Raleigh-Durham area to test. This was a spot where I knew a storm was pummeling through at the time.
I compared the PYKL3 Radar images to the official Weather Service images and was able to verify that both the Base Reflectivity product and One Hour Precipitation product were in line with the official images -- and were not the namby-pamby whitewash seen elsewhere.
To be fair, those whitewashed images are acceptable for seeing where it's raining at that moment, but they are unsuitable for weather geeks because you can't drill down and see nuances like tilt angle. Viewing different tilt angles helps determine storm structure and should let you make sounder judgments.
PYKL3 Radar is spot on in providing accurate non-smoothed images and animations that would help a novice determine storm location, and it also provides the serious radar products required by storm chasers, storm spotters and forecasters.
Weather pros use the work "product" to describe a deliverable -- like a type of weather radar image, or a type of forecast.
Further Details
As you might expect with this pro-level app, products include all of the National Weather service WSR-88D radar images, plus FAA Terminal Doppler Weather Radar found at airports. Optional paid subscriptions to various commercial products -- like lightning -- can be plugged in.
Neat, unexpected bonuses include the ability to layer radar images; ground-level temperature and wind observations; a national image; and most importantly, the ability to toggle between neighboring radars. Comparing adjacent radar images is an important part of the toolbox.
Not Perfect
My one criticism is that a Google Maps or similar option has not been incorporated into this app.
We've gotten used to seeing radar superimposed on sophisticated maps -- albeit as a digest, as discussed earlier -- but why not incorporate the various super-accurate reflectivity products into a street level map?
Classic radar map labels, like those in PYKL3 Radar, are limited to major highways, coasts, county lines, and so on. How hard can it be to take that data and dump it into something graphical at street level?
Overall: After a week of late-summer, 100-degree-plus temperatures here in Southern California, with PYKL3 Radar now loaded, bring on the rain I say.