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Steelcase Sale: Scoop Up Classic Modern Office Furniture Bargains While You Can!
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Hey All! Just a reminder that Steelcase is on sale for 10% off through November 30th, so act fast!
Why buy Steelcase? Well, without even getting into the classic aesthetics that have stood the test of time since before the Mad Men era, Steelcase seating means comfort. If your alignment feels out of whack, save yourself on chiropractor bills and invest in a proper desk chair. You deserve it; think of how many hours of your life you spend perched in it!
One of the most popular of Steelcase's desk chair offerings is the Think Mesh Back Work Chair with Arms. You can roll across your office in no time flat thanks to its speedy casters, adjust your height for maximum ergonomic comfort, and most importantly to me, choose from a plethora of killer colors, from bright purple to cool neutrals; there's something for everyone.
Looking beyond the office, I'm also partial to the Steelcase Turnstone Alight Lounge Round Ottomans. They are super clean and modern, but somehow they look a little like fun marshmellow-esque cartoon characters, and I mean that in the best possible way. They work great as footrests, as extra seating, and when you place a tray on top of them, they transform into coffee table.
These guys also come in a rainbow of fun colors, as well as black and white. Shown above we have Wasabi.
Finally, we have one of the most hard-working chairs in the business, the Steelcase Move Multi-Use Chair (Without Arms). This chair can easily transition from the conference table to the dining room table, from the desk to the eat-in-kitchen, bringing with it a simple, clean-lined, mid-century modern style wherever you place it. In this image, you can see that it has fresh cafe style:
In addition, the chair stacks, so you can keep extras stowed away and bring them out when you have extra guests:
That's just a quick teaser of all that Steelcase has to offer. Any company that has been producing furniture for over a century is certainly doing everything right! Hop on these deals while you can!


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Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Brussels and Brugge
Brugge in reality looks even better than it does in the movies. Medieval and perfect, with all those canals and horse carriages. We asked our friendly waiter at the sixty four year old restaurant on the square La Civiere D,Or, about the movie and he said he had not bothered to watch it after watching the unit shoot the film in the square over five long months.
I am ready to go home... am sick of living out of a suitcase and eating strange food , gourmet or otherwise. Now for some serious varan bhaat with a dollop of home made tup.
More from Mumbai.
Au revoir mon amies.
11 comments:
- Shwetha said...
Brugge is so cute, I liked it better than Brussels which was a tad too touristy for me. One could sit for hours in the square with a chocolate dripping waffle and a book. I was there last fall when I was pregnant with my (now) 8 month. A fantastic way for my husband and I to wrap up the joys of vacationing as just a couple before the brat arrived!
Have a safe and comfy trip back. Look forward to your type after some well deserved resting from travel fatigue.
- August 2, 2011 at 11:03 PM
- raj said...
I started writing travel blogs while visiting my son in USA...find relating to your's so natural...you have a real facile pen and great ability to write so enticingly...keep writing for us sake...regards
- August 2, 2011 at 11:04 PM
- Shailee said...
Shobha!! I guess I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of yours with each passing day!
I even dreamt about you last night :P
I saw that I was back to high school (for some stupid reason) and that I was supposed to take part in the debate competition. I had prepared this awesome speech and was ready to rock the stage when out of no where I realized that you are out there, sitting in the audience with a paper and pen. I got so tongue tied that I managed to somehow mumble my speech which of course was met with a lot of skepticism from everyone. I was so scared that you just might write me off completely!!
Silly me
- August 2, 2011 at 11:25 PM
- Right Gadgets. Maxx Mobile said...
Videocon is the trusted brand that India should be proud of. After creating millions of satisfied customers, this time its turn to enter the mobile market regiment. The brand reputation that Videocon has in its intangible asset has worked in this venture as well. One can check out www.rightgadgets.in/items_subcat.asp?Category=Mobiles_India_Online&cid=1&brand=Videocon for more.
- August 3, 2011 at 10:23 AM
- Tsomo85 said...
I feel the same way too, home sweet home. I completely agree with the comments above, you're hard to resist. Love your writing style; straight from heart, amusing, adventures, & real as well!
- August 3, 2011 at 11:55 AM
- Charuta Gondhalekar said...
"varan bhaat with a dollop of home made tup."
The ultimate food for any maharashtrian! nothing beats it
- August 3, 2011 at 3:05 PM
- Dreamlike said...
My friend said the only public transport in Brussels is tramcar...interesting:)
- August 3, 2011 at 3:58 PM
- raj said...
thanx Mrs De for reading and acknowledging my comment..
- August 3, 2011 at 6:19 PM
- sphat09 said...
Hi Shobhaa, I recently had the good fortune of meeting you at the BMM convention in Chicago and got introduced to your interesting blogs after reading the one you wrote about the convention. I look forward to reading your blog each day since. I am the one who introduced myself as a Queen Marian in case you might remember......I know you meet thousands of people every day!
Love your blogs...
- August 3, 2011 at 7:34 PM
- Unknown said...
ok, mz de. we never wanted to win any cricket matches in the first place. we were participating in the Mz Congeniality contest! and guess what? we won! a very proud day for our men in blue/white/yellow! i wish they would stick to one colour, less confusing. dhoni was absolutely correct in recalling the idiot who thought every time the bowler got his jersey from the umpire - it is tea-time! he is english, for god's sake! tea is everything to these people. and dhoni rightly understood this. so after chai-shai, he got the bozo to play again. all these reporter types are now tearing into our team captain. especially sardesai. he should learn from arnab. the trick is to screech at the interviewee till he faints right away. so, enough already. your holiday sounds great. the jewel in the country? st jean de luz!
stay awake, mz de!
ps: some people object to the treatment of norwegian mass murderer. they want him labelled "terrorist" and fed biryani in his cell.
- August 4, 2011 at 11:09 AM
- Unknown said...
A truly motivational and life changing book
This book is really a good book which shows us right path. but i read
one more book named "ONE BOOK FOR LIFE SUCCESS" which is truly
motivational and life changing . .The writer has described in Plain English with lot of examples which is easy to understand...For More
Please watch the videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biORjS8ngv0
- July 5, 2014 at 10:56 AM

subset: commoncrawl


text:
New Mexico
When red earth meets a crystal sky, something magical happens. When the Rocky Mountains meet the Great Plains and the Rio Grande; when three cultures intersect and burst with art, atomic bombs and possibly even extraterrestrials, New Mexico happens. In the heart of the American Southwest, New Mexico is at once home to Native American pueblos, Hispanic haciendas, modern skyscrapers and rustic artist colonies. Capital Sante Fe is small only in size—its expansive art scene and cultural vibrancy lends a low-key worldliness. Students add to the diverse offerings of laid-back Albuquerque, and artists reign in rural Taos. Delve into older cultures in the Navajo Nation; make your base in Farmington, and visit the Native American ruins in Chaco Culture National Historical Park and the craft markets of Shiprock. Crawl deep into the earth—about 2 miles deep—in Carlsbad Caverns, where the swoop and squeaks of resident bats may spook you. If that's not other-worldly enough, head to Roswell and learn about the alleged UFO landing that made the town legendary at the International UFO Museum. Toss in a couple mining towns and, oh yeah, the site of atomic bomb testing, and you've got a place like no other. It might be magic, or it might just be New Mexico.
Regions in New Mexico
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text:
Fayette boys: Fayette fans got their money worth Saturday when some last-second heroics secured an overtime win.
Trailing late in the game and trailing again in overtime, the Eagles came back to pull out a 48-45 non-conference victory.
Fayette was on top by seven points, 33-26, heading into the final quarter, but that's when the Tigers started hitting—and the Eagles started turning it over.
Liberty Center was up by two points with time running out. A Tiger shooter missed the front end of a one-and-one and Evan Hibbard grabbed the rebound. He got the ball to Shelby Franks who raced down court and pushed the ball back to Hibbard when he started to fall.
Hibbard put the ball up to tie the game and send it into overtime.
The Tigers regained their lead, but buckets by Jason Rodriguez and Tyler Keefer gave the Eagles the lead. A free-throw by Keefer raised the margin to the final three-point spread.
Missed free throws were almost Fayette's downfall as they hit just seven for 17.
"We're doing a great job of getting to the foul line," coach Todd Mitchell said, "we're just not making them."
Coty Griffiths led the offense with 13 points. Austin Hylander and Rodriguez each added nine. Liberty connected on seven three-point shots.
HILLTOP—Hilltop's varsity boys outscored Fayette in the second half Friday, but it wasn't quite enough to overcome the Eagles' strong start.
Fayette finished the BBC contest with a 44-39 victory.
Fayette girls: Tied at intermission, one point difference after three quarters—this one was going to go down to the wire.
Hilltop could have made it easy on themselves with success at the free throw line, but they hit only eight of 25 tries and eked out a 34-32 BBC win over Fayette.
The Cadets had already been to the line 11 times before Fayette had its first opportunity. Finally, in the fourth quarter, the Eagles made 12 trips and connected on seven shots, but they needed another couple buckets from the floor to pull out a win.
The game ended with four in foul trouble. JeriAnn Lewellen, Katelyn Downing, Danni Wyse and Trisha Bates each finished the game with four fouls hanging over their heads.
Wyse led scoring with nine, followed by Rachel Seiler with seven, including a pair from outside the arc. Bates was a solid four for four at the line.
Morenci wrestling: Morenci's wrestlers have certainly had better days on the mat. Two lop-sided contests and two close losses left the Bulldogs without a win at the Jonesville Invitational.
"Everybody on the team won a match," said coach Scott Clark, "they just couldn't do it at the same time. There were some close matches, but they ended up getting pinned before it ended. It was our worst day of the season."
Morenci started off with a 70-7 loss to the host squad. Chris Delaney (119) posted a 9-3 decision win and Jeffrey Nofziger (145) won 22-11.
Dustin Roller (130) lost a decision and everyone else was pinned.
The situation worsened against Edwardsburg. Delaney scored the Bulldogs' only points with a pin at 1:03 and Morenci lost 75-6. Nofziger lost an 8-10 overtime decision and went out with an injury.
Morenci fell one point short against Portland, losing 39-38 and lost to Pittsford by six, 36-30, despite winning only a single match. Roller scored a quick pin in 42 seconds.
Morenci boys: With Jacob Bovee averaging 27 points a game from the past five contests, it was obvious what Sand Creek needed to do Friday night to stop Morenci.
The plan had to be to take Bovee out of the game and hope no one else would fill the gap.
One Bulldog did take over the scoring—Anthony Barron finished with 23—but that wasn't enough to match the Aggie offense.
Morenci played close for a half, but watched the game slip out of control after intermission and ended with a 77-51 TCC loss.
Barron scored three times in the opening quarter, aided by a three-pointer from Anthony Tompkins to keep Morenci on top. Bovee dropped a three-pointer late in the quarter for a 14-14 tie, but he scored only once more all night.
Barron remained strong in the second quarter with eight more points, but when Devin Martinez made a lay-up halfway through the period to tie the game, 26-26, that was the last time the Bulldogs weren't trailing.
Scoring dropped dramatically in the third quarter with shots not making their mark and the Bulldogs' foul tally grew. Early in the third, they were called for three within about 15 seconds.
The Aggies (9-3, 7-2) ended up scoring 20 points from the line from 34 tries.
Morenci girls: A short-handed Morenci girls squad eventually shut down Deerfield's outside game Thursday to claim a TCC victory, but they weren't able to get the job done when Sand Creek visited Jan. 21.
"We had two starters out against Deerfield and that made a difference from the defensive side," coach Jim Yatzek said. "They had a girl who hit seven threes in the first half. She was hot, but weren't getting to her."
Deerfield's Shelby Shindler had 23 of her team's 32 points at half-time, but a defensive shift by the Bulldogs took away her outside game and she scored just six in the second half.
The Minutemen scored only five points in the third quarter as Morenci increased its lead to 14 and finished with a 64-51 win.
"Without having two starters [Nicolette Swimmer and Tricia Black], I think the girls played well off the bench," Yatzek said.
Morgan McVay and Jade Pfund each had season-high nights with 15 and 13 points. Chanler McCaskey also scored 15. Pfund led under the boards with 12 rebounds.


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When Billy Flynn croons All I Care about is Love, hes suave, swell and all smiles. You know hes putting you on.
Billy is the kingpin of the dark musical Chicago, the John Kander and Fred Ebb satire on American crime and its link to celebrity. Now playing in a stylish production at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts, Chicago has stellar leads, a disciplined cast and a clear vision of its cynical core.
Chicago is based on a 1926 play by Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins. In the summer of 1924, she covered a string of murders by bitter women who were represented by a sleazy lawyer. In the midst of Prohibition, the murder spree gripped Chicago, and the link between crime and celebrity was promoted by the tabloids. In the process, the line between the criminal justice system and show business also got blurred.
The stories became so popular that Watkins created a play centering around a fictional triangle: Attorney Billy Flynn and two of his questionable clients, Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly. Watkins also skewered her profession for its complicity. Her play opened on Broadway in 1926. The first film version came after in 1927.
Fifty years after the murders, Kander, Ebb and choreographer Bob Fosse created a new American musical based on Watkins play. Making a hard left turn, Kander, Ebb and Fosse drove the American musical theater out of Oklahoma farmland and into gritty urban satire. The rest is theater and film history.
Pagosas adroit actor-singer Tim Moore delivers a confident, fast-talking Billy. Hes ably joined by the effervescent Marcelina Chavira as Roxie Hart and the simmering, multi-talented Elyse Neubert as Velma Kelly. This manipulative triangle keeps the action going through Roxies arrest and trial, Velmas jealousy, Billys shifting attentions and one of the oddest happy endings in musical history.
Director Laura Moore and Designer John Santangelo have paired down the work to its essentials. Played on a bare stage, the Pagosa interpretation reads appropriately as vaudeville entertainment.
Santangelos Art Nouveau painted proscenium arches over an upper stage framing a 1920 Chicago skyline. Lighting Designer Jacob M. Welch skillfully uses this frame to shift and intensify moods, going from hot pink to cold blue. Its especially effective when Roxies hapless husband, Amos Hart (Billy Pinto) disappears into the silhouetted buildings singing Mr. Cellophane.
Costumer Jason Weiner simplifies the color palette by keeping all the players in black except for the sob-sister reporter, Mary Sunshine (vamped by Ammon Swofford) in smoky blue. Only a few white touches contrast: Billys jaunty carnation, his chorines feather fans and Amos crisp white shirt.
Neubert deserves accolades for splendid choreography throughout. Shes taken a hip roll or two out of the Bob Fosse handbook, but doesnt overuse the signature shoulder shrug. Without the elaborate scaffolding and cell-block cages seen in so many productions, Neubert gives her dancers a few simple props to work with. Black poles, canes and fans help create a fresh movement vocabulary for this Chicago.
Still, the production isnt perfect. The singing is uneven; the acting varies in intensity and focus. Last weekend, a few questionable flourishes or possible ad-libs interrupted the flow and pierced the silky texture. For example, does Mary Sunshine need to loudly trumpet an uncertain falsetto just for a laugh?
That said, this is a complicated musical to stage. Some fans might wish for a live band, but the custom-made, recorded orchestration by Mitch Samu serves the company well. Its rich, textured and slightly sardonic. Listen for a snippet of Rock of Ages when Billy seeks to persuade a gullible jury.
With our current celebrity culture booming, not to mention a summer crime wave in Chicago, this musical may be more relevant than we realize.
Judith Reynolds is a Durango writer, artist and critic. Reach her at email@example.com.


text:
Serving Size (1 of 16 brownies), Calories 390 (Calories from Fat 150), Total Fat 17g (Saturated Fat 5g, Trans Fat 0g), Cholesterol 30mg, Sodium 210mg, Total Carbohydrate 58g (Dietary Fiber 1g, Sugars 42g), Protein 2g; Percent Daily Value*: Vitamin A 0%, Vitamin C 0%, Calcium 0%, Iron 10%.
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.
* Ensure all recipe ingredients are gluten free by referencing the ingredient labels, as products may vary. If uncertain, contact the ingredient manufacturer.
Load More
Brownies are great—and we've got a few ways to make them even more amazing.


text:
In rare occasions ld.exe may hang during the linking stage of the compilation. This problem is confirmed under both 32 and 64 bit Windows 7. It is unknown if the problem is present under Windows Vista. Windows XP is immune.
For the end-user the linking never finishes and the hard drive experiences high activity. ld.exe uses 0% CPU usage and can't be killed. Logging out and in doesn't help either - the process is not shown in Task Manager after logging in, but more advanced process managers show its presence. Unusual side effect is that ld.exe tries to write to the resulting .exe file with the maximum throughput of the machine. However, the file doesn't grow, because ld.exe enters a loop and writes the same data over and over again at the same offset.
Current stack trace shows a problem, related to a Windows kernel filesystem function, but the cause is uncertain. The problem is currently investigated, but appears only if the used filesystem is NTFS.
Creating a small partition in FAT32 to store your source tree is known to work around this problem.


text:
Step 1
You request a custom assessment via the dashboard.
Adaface Oracle Fusion Applications Test will be customized to accurately evaluate on-the-job skills required for your role. This assessment test is useful when you are hiring candidates for roles like - Oracle Fusion Technical Consultant, Oracle Fusion Developers and can test candidate skills on topics like Oracle WebCenter Portal, Data Model, Tree Hierarchy, Oracle Data Integrator, Business Process, ADF Business Components, Flex fields, WebLogic Admin Upgrading and Migrations, WebLogic Admin Cluster Setup and Management, WebLogic Admin Backup and Recovery, etc.
The assessment will have 20 multiple choice questions (MCQ) and will take ~45 minutes. We can also combine multiple skills into one assessment.
Adaface automates first round interviews with a conversational AI. Candidates prefer Adaface because our AI, Ada has a friendly chat involving relevant challenges with them as opposed to asking trick questions on a test. Read about why we are different here.
We use multiple factors to customize the assessment to your role:
Seniority level of the role
The seniority level of the role decides which concepts are more important to test. Simply increasing the difficulty level of the test does not necessarily make it more suited for a more senior role.
Combining multiple skills into one test
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Step 2
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Step 3
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What is a custom assessment?
Each role is different and requires a custom assessment to identify the top candidates efficiently. Once you request an assessment (via the Use this assessment button), the request is forwarded to Adaface subject matter experts who understand the ideal candidate persona based on your inputs. Then they pick the most relevant questions from our internal questions library of 5000+ questions to create an assessment which helps you identify the most qualified candidates for that role.
Can I use the default assessment?
There is no default assessment, each assessment is customized.
How is the assessment customized?
We use multiple factors to customize the assessment to your role:
How long is a typical assessment?
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Can I combine multiple skills into the same assessment?
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Can I add my own questions?
Yes, our enterprise plan gives you the option to add your own questions.
I have more questions. Who do I ask?
Please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com, we'll get back with a few hours.


text:
3rd Congressional District candidates prepare for Club 20 debate
GRAND JUNCTION — There's nothing like a Club 20 debate with cheers, jeers and lots of applause as candidates make their points.
Without a U.S. Senate or gubernatorial race on the ballot, the big showdown tonight is the 3rd District match up. Democratic state Rep. Sal Pace and unaffiliated voter Tisha Casida, both of Pueblo, are trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez.
Casida said she was "nervous," yet "excited." "This is the first time I've ever debated," said Casida, who petitioned her way on to the ballot.
This is the second debate between Pace and Tipton. Tonight's debate begins at 7:30.


text:
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Services on Demand
- Cited by SciELO
Related links
- Similars in SciELO
Anales de la Asociación Química Argentina
Print version ISSN 0365-0375
An. Asoc. Quím. Argent. vol.94 no.1-3 Buenos Aires Jan./July 2006
QSPR modeling of metal halides lattice enthalpies
1Castro, E. A.; 2Toropova, A. P.; 2Toropov, A. A.; 2D. Mukhamedjanova, V.
1 INIFTA, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Exact Sciences, La Plata National University, Suc. 4, C.C. 16, La Plata (B1906ZAA), Argentina,
Fax: 54-221-4254642, E-Mail: email@example.com
2 Uzbekistan Republic, Academy of Sciences Geology & Geophysics Institute, 700125, Abdullaev Street 41, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Received September 14th, 2005. In final form March 31st, 2006
Dedicated to Prof. Imre G. Csizmadia on the occasion of his 75th birthday
By means of optimisation correlation of local invariant weights in graph of atomic orbitals, one-variable quantitative structure-property relationships have been obtained. Statistical characteristics of the best of such a model are the following: n = 13, r = 0.9999, s = 1.21 kJ/mol, F = 55060 (training set); n = 7, r = 0.9990, s = 7.68 kJ/mol, F = 2485 (test set)
Se ha obtenido una relación estructura-propiedad cuantitativa unidimensional utilizando la optimización de la correlación local invariante de pesos en gráficos de orbitales atómicos. Las características estadísticas de dicho modelo son las siguientes : n = 13, r = 0,9999, s = 1,21 kJ/mol, F = 55060 (conjunto de preparación); n = 7, r = 0,9990, s = 7,68 kJ/mol, F = 2485 (conjunto de prueba)
With the exception of the inert gases, all the elements in the periodic table form halides, often in several oxidation states, and halides generally are quite important and common compounds. There are almost as many ways of classifying halides as there are types of halides , and there are many. There are not only binary halides which can range from simple molecules, ionic or molecular lattices to complicated polymers but also oxyhalides, hydroxy halides, and other complex halides of various structural types.
Metal halides are substances of predominantly ionic character, although partial covalence is important in some of them. On the whole there is a uniform gradation from halides which are for all practical purposes purely ionic to those of intermediate character to those essentially covalent. As a rough guide we can consider those halides in which the lattice consists of discrete ions rather than definite molecular units to be basically ionic, although there may still be considerable covalence in the metal-halogen interaction. The size and polarizability of the halide ion is also important in determining the character of the halide. Thus we have the rather classic case of the aluminium halides, where AlF3 is basically ionic, whereas AlCl3, AlBr3, and AlI3 exist as covalent dimers.
Metal fluorides have a higher heat of formation than the remaining alkaline metal halides and this feature is due to the reduced heat of formation of the F2 molecule and the high lattice energy of the compounds themselves. Heat of formation of fluorides decreases when the cation volumes increase, but in the remaining halides this behaviour is just the opposite. This is due to the fact that the magnitude 1/(ranion + rcation) decreases rapidly in the fluoride series due to the smaller anion size. This change has more influence than the decrease of the ionisation potentials and sublimation energies of the corresponding metals.
Heat of formation of chlorides, bromides and iodides increase descending along I, II, IIIA, IVA and VA groups. In the remaining groups of the periodic table in general the inverse behaviour is observed, although there are some interesting enough irregularities, specially in the first two periods. The heat of formation of hypothetical halides can be calculated by means of standard treatments. Numerical models of physical and chemical properties of metal halides in general and their enthalpies in particular have many interesting applications in so diverse fields such as inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry and geochemistry [1].
Study of structure-property and structure-activity relationship continues to attract considerable attention in chemical literature. Various statistical methods have been found useful in such studies, including the Principal Component Analysis [2], the Pattern Recognition [3], the Partial Square method [4], the Artificial Neural Networks [5].The oldest data reduction method, the Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA) [6], is currently widely used. Most molecular descriptors used in MRA are characterized by fixed numerical values, which are independent of the property/activity under consideration [7]. To better describe the property/activity studies, Randic proposed the employment of some flexible descriptors [8-11] to improve regression results, with the idea that a variable parameter undergoes change during the regression analysis.
Hydrogen-suppressed and hydrogen-filled molecular graphs, which are a particular sort of valuable resource to define variable descriptors, are used as a particular representation of molecular structure in quantitative structure-property relationships (QSPR) of organic compounds, but they are not good tools to encode the main features of molecular structure of inorganic substances such as different crystalline arrangements. However, these substances are object of research works in mineralogy, geochemistry, and geology itself. Under such circumstances, it is preferable to use an alternative set of variable descriptors, recently described as graph of atomic orbitals (GAO) [1, 12-15].
The present study aims to estimate the capabilities of using the GAO approach in QSPR modelling of enthalpies of metal halides and to compare the results with available experimental data.
Two types of molecular graphs are under consideration in this study. The first type calculated with classical molecular graphs (MG) of two vertices (metal and halogen) and one edge. Descriptors for such graphs are calculated as
where Ak denotes a metal or a halogen, N is the number of vertices and CW stands for Correlation Weights. The dk is the vertex degree in MG. In the case of the metal halides under consideration, dk= 1.
The second type of molecular graph is the GAO. GAO can be obtained from 'classical' graphs by means of a change of atoms by groups of atomic orbitals and the subsequent reconstruction of the adjacency matrix. The procedure was described in detail in Ref. [14], so that we deem it is not necessary to repeat them here. Descriptors for such graphs are obtained by means of the following formula
where AOk is an atomic orbital (i. e., 1s1,…, 2p3,…, 3d10 , …), dk is the vertex degree of the k-th vertex in the GAO, and N is total number of vertices (atomic orbitals) in the GAO.
Results and discussion
Atomic orbital groups on each atom under consideration are listed in table 1.
Table 1. Atoms and atomic orbital groups for alkaline and halogen atoms.
Numerical values of the CWs of Eq.(1) or Eq. (2) can be obtained by the method of Monte Carlo optimization [15], which produces the largest as possible correlation coefficient between the descriptors and enthalpies. After the CWs are determined one can calculate D(MG) or D(GAO) for metal halides of the training set, and by means of the Least Squares method one calculate C0 and C1 for the linear model
where G stands for MG or GAO.
One can estimate predictive potential of the eq. (3) with substances of the test set. Results of three probes for such optimization procedure with MG and GAO are presented in table 2. Similar final results are obtained for each probe, so that we present data for just one of them. It can be seen from table 2 that GAO based models of enthalpies are better than MG based models. The GAO based model of enthalpy calculation obtained in the first probe of the optimization procedure is the following
It can be seen that in spite of the large number of optimised parameters (29), the most important attribute of the model is the lack of any information on metal halides belonging to the test set in the process of obtaining CWs (table 3) as well as the model to get eq. (4). Calculation of the enthalpy with eq.(4) is displayed in table 4. Experimental data have been taken from Ref. [12]. The percent deviations are rather small, so that the predictions are very accurate (see sixth column in table 4).
Table 2. Statistical characteristics of models of lattice enthalpies of metal halides obtained inthree probes of optimization of the correlation weightsin the
MG and results ofthree such probes on correlation weights in the GAO. Here r, s, F, and n arecorrelation coefficient, standard error,Fischer
F-ratio, and number ofcompounds in the set, respectively.
* r = regression coefficient, s = standard deviation, F = Fisher coefficient
Table 3. Correlation weights of local invariants in MG and GAO on three probes of the
Monte Carlo optimization method.
Table 4. Calculation of the Enthalpy with Eq. (4).
The enthalpies of metal halides are defined by the structure features of metal and halide atoms (i.e., by the presence of different types of atomic orbitals), since the statistical characteristics of the models based on information of structure atoms are better than those of models based only on information of the presence of metal and halogen atoms. We have outlined a novel way of deriving powerful structure-property models to calculate enthalpies of metal halides lattices. Even though the approach has been demonstrated here for one physical-chemical property of metal halides, it is general and can be applied to the analysis of other properties for different sort of molecules, as shown in several previous articles (see, for example, references [16-20]).
The advantage of the outlined approach is that it yields regressions accompanied with considerably smaller standard error than those given by similar studies using standard molecular descriptors (i.e. rigid molecular descriptors). The "flexibility" of the molecular descriptor, such as Graph of Atomic Orbitals employed in this study, makes it possible to describe very accurately metal halides lattice enthalpies. At present we are extending this treatment to other molecular sets in order to model different physical-chemical properties. Results will be presented elsewhere in the forthcoming future.
The authors are indebted to a reviewer for suggestions.
[1] Jenkins, H. D. B.; Glasser, L., Inorg. Chem. 2002, 41, 4378. [ Links ]
[2] Hotelling, H., J. Educ. Psychol. 1993, 24, 417. [ Links ]
[3] Wold, S.; Sjöstrom, M., in Chemometrics: Theory and Applications, ACS Symp. Ser. No. 52, Kowalski, B. R., Ed., American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C., 1977, p.243. [ Links ]
[4] Wold, S.; Sjöstrom, M.; Eriksson, L., Partial least squares projections to latentstructures (PLS) in chemistry, in Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry, von Schleyer, R.; Allinger, N. L.; Clark, T.; Gasteiger, J.; Kollman, P. A.; Schaefer III, H. F.; Schreiner, P. R., Eds., Wiley, Chichester, England, 1998, 2006-2021. [ Links ]
[5] Zupan, J., Neural networks in chemistry, in Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry, von Schleyer, R.; Allinger, N. L.; Clark, T.; Gasteiger, J.; Kollman, P. A.; Schaefer III, H. F.; Schreiner, P. R., Eds., Wiley, Chichester, England, 1998, 1813-1827. [ Links ]
[6] Malinowski, E. R.; Wiley, New York, 1991. [ Links ]
[7] Randic, M., New J. Chem. 2000, 24, 165-171. [ Links ]
[8] Randic, M., Chemom. Intel. Labl. Syst. 1991, 10, 213-223. [ Links ]
[9] Randic, M., J. Chem. Inf. Compout. Sci. 1991, 31, 970-980. [ Links ]
[10] Randic, M.; Pompe, M., J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. 2001, 41, 631-638. [ Links ]
[11] Randic, M.; Basak, S. C., J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. 2001, 41, 614-618. [ Links ]
[12] Pogliani, L., Croat. Chem. Acta, 2004, 77, 193-201 [ Links ]
[13] Castro, E. A.; Toropova, A. P.; Toropov, A. A.; Mukhamedjanova, D. V., J. Argent. Chem. Soc. (this Journal) 2003, 91, 85-90. [ Links ]
[14] Mercader, A.; Castro, E. A.; Toropov, A. A., Chem. Phys. Lett. 2000, 330, 612-623. [ Links ]
[15] Toropova, A. P.; Toropov, A. A., Russ. J. Struct. Chem. 2001, 42, 1230-1232. [ Links ]
[16] Pérez González, M.; Toropov, A. A.; Duchowicz, P. R.; Castro, E. A., Molecules 2004, 9, 1019-1033. [ Links ]
[17] Castro, E. A.; Torrens, F.; Toropov, A. A.; Nesterov, I. V.; Nabiev, O. M., , Molec. Simul. 2004, 30, 691-696. [ Links ]
[18] Castro, E. A.; Toropov, A. A.; Nesterova, A. I.; Nazarov, A. U., , J. Theor. Comput. Chem. 2004, 3, 31-41. [ Links ]
[19] Duchowicz, P. R.; Castro, E. A.; Toropov, A. A.; Nesterov, I. V.; Nabiev, O. M., Molec. Diversity 2004, 8, 325-330. [ Links ]
[20] Nesterov, I. V.; Toropov, A. A.; Duchowicz, P. R.; Castro, E. A., The Scientific World Journal 2004, 4, 956-964. [ Links ]


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One of the greatest possibility of photography is its ability to show us the world around us in ways we aren't normally able to see it.
Perhaps no other area of nature photography shows us things that normally go unnoticed.
The Black Forest (German: Schwarzwald) is a wooded mountain range located in the southwest corner of Germany in the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg (Wikipedia).
I am traveling for mainly one reason - Under Water Photography - my passion.


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I am a mother of six from the ages of 28 to 10 year old twins. I have felt a deep connection to birthing women my entire life. My becoming a midwife is the culmination of over 20 years of dreaming and patience, while I raised my own family. I feel every birth is a sacred rite of passage, for you and your baby. In my care your wishes and desires will be respected while your health and the welfare of your baby will be safely guarded. I believe in the midwifery model of care, and most importantly, I believe in relationship-based care.
I have home educated my children for most of the last 25 years. I am an active member of Fort Worth Presbyterian Church, an amazing church that loves Jesus. In my spare time I love to read, visit tearooms and antique malls, quilt and garden. When I'm not at the birth center, I can be found on the sidelines cheering one of my teens, or snuggling up, reading to my dear ones
Jenee is a former nursing student, a former EMT with emergency room experience, a former medical and dental assistant, has worked as an in-hospital doula as well as a CNA on the postpartum floor and in the newborn nursery of a hospital.
Jenee is a Certified Professional Midwife and a Licensed Midwife in the State of Texas. She is on staff at the beautiful new Grapevine birthing Center. Prenatal visits are held for your convenience in Coppell, Grapevine, Keller and south Fort Worth.


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Here are some of the things I intended to write about last year, but which got heavily procrastinated and failed to make it past the event horizon. Until now…
1) – Holm Oaks. Also called Holly or Evergreen Oaks because they hold onto their tough, waxy leaves all through the year. A few weeks after writing about them in a comment on my Balanophagy post I was walking up a road I'd not been on for a while and bumped into this huge sucker:
He had lovely wrinkly-grey bark and was the largest of three, apparently of the same species, providing a hefty barrier to the road on the right and completely shading out the small houses on the left. A quick hunt around on the floor confirmed my suspicion – a thick layer of half-rotted leafmould, practically nothing growing and lots of small, pointy, shiny brown acorns:
Jackpot! I bent down and gathered a couple of pockets' worth, earning the usual suspicious glances from people walking past. I noticed that many more of the nuts showed signs of nibbling by small mammals than I've found with regular acorns, perhaps confirming the lower tannin content I'd heard about. A quick taste test revealed only a slight astringency at the end, coupled with a lingering starchy sweetness which was in a different league to any other acorns I'd nibbled on. I've since noticed several more trees on my winter walkabouts – they're much easier to spot when all the other trees have dropped their leaves.
Unfortunately it took longer to process a decent amount of the acorns, using the usual method of cracking, peeling, rubbing off the inner skin and roasting for around half an hour, but then I'd done Beechnuts earlier in the season, so couldn't really complain…
Overnight soaking improved the raw flavour of the second batch (I had to do it because most of them had dried to stone-hardness by the time I got round to them), but I think I overdid the roasting in the end. The first lot came out better, approaching Ken Fern's description of 'a soft, floury texture and a sweet flavour that is rather like sweet chestnuts' (Plants For A Future, p.36). I've put them into morning porridge, meat stews, lentil dishes and even a couple of fry-ups, and they seem to keep rather well in their glass jam jar – better than the regular acorns I kept in a paper bag which had to get washed and re-roasted to kill the mould that was growing on several of them.
2) – Linden Leaf Stew. As promised I finally got round to making a Creole-style 'gumbo' dish using the Lime leaves I dried and powdered previously. I loosely followed this recipe, frying ground beef and chunks of chicken with onions, carrots, garlic, spinach, misc. herbs and spices, then pouring boiling water over the top, adding the lime leaves, salt'n'pepper, some baking soda and, even though the idea seemed pretty strange to me, a dollop of peanut butter.
This then stewed away for about half an hour and eventually got served with plain rice:
Incredibly rich and flavourful, I was the only one who managed to finish their plate. Unfortunately I have to report that the meal gave me pretty terrible gas for the rest of the night 😯 . Hopefully that was due to the baking soda and not the lime leaves or anything else essential to the recipe…
3) – Cattail Rhizomes. Ooh boy, this wasn't successful! I maybe gave a false impression of abundance with my picture of two plastic bags full of rhizomes gathered from a local pond during a conservation task back in September. In reality my harvest wasn't as substantial as it looked because the root material is very spongy with only a thin solid core going through the middle.
Well, I washed, scrubbed and cut them into manageable segments, keeping the tender young shoot separate. Then I tried boiling and roasting them like you would with potatoes, as recommended by several sources. The yellow outer skin remained tough and indigestible, but it was possible to tease out the inner fibres with my teeth and basically suck the pure starch off them – not the most satisfying culinary experience!
Then I spent a good long time peeling the outer skins off and chopping the white centers into smaller chunks. At first I tried drying these in the oven and whizzing in the food processor as a short-cut for flour, but the fibres just lumped together on the blade and didn't show any signs of breaking up into smaller particles.
Then I decided to try and separate the starch by soaking them in tepid water, squashing by hand, boiling (after which they were vaguely edible in a chewy, fibrous kind of way), mashing and more squashing into several bowls of starch-water, which I then allowed to settle before pouring the water off the dirty white sludge at the bottom.
This then got poured into trays, dried out in the sun and the oven, then finally ground in my coffee grinder. I was NOT impressed by the amount of flour I ended up with.
So either people are talking bollocks when they say, for instance, that 'Yields of 8 tonnes of flour per hectare have been recorded' (Plants For a Future, p.135) or one way or another I'm not doin' it right. Maybe I went for them at the wrong time of year, or perhaps I needed to go for the main root matter at the base of the stem rather than the creeping rhizomes. Either way I'm thoroughly sick of the plant by now, so probably won't be revisiting it (at least for its roots) for a good long while. Sorry Cattails!
4) – Angelica & Sweet Cicely. Dug up a bunch of these on a gardening job and decided to save them. Both got washed, scrubbed and fine-sliced in the food processor (a grating attempt on the Cicely didn't work too well). Angelica got tinctured in vodka and also dried in the oven for tea
…while Cicely got dried in the same way and simply ground to a fine powder, the idea being to use it as some kind of sweetener, as well as for a nice aniseedy tea.
Both gave the house a really strong aromatic smell (somewhat like gin!) during the various processing stages.
5) – Rosehips. Went out and made my usual harvest and my usual laborious attempts at making jam (too runny this time).
My main thought recently was about wildcrafting. Reading Kat Anderson's Tending The Wild over the summer and going on a gardening course that touched on the principles & practices of pruning for trees, shrubs, hedges and, yes, roses made me start thinking about actively managing wild plants for an increased harvest, rather than passively taking what they had to offer come fruiting season. Perhaps I should be bringing secateurs/loppers or a pruning saw with me along with the hooked stick (useful for pulling down long rambling rose stems) and plastic bag? I would like to get my eye in with cultivated roses first, but maybe next year I'll start on the wild specimens. I'm guessing it would be the same approach as pruning for an abundance of flowers, except you would leave them on through the winter as they swelled up to form the hips. A mindful approach would do miles better than insensitive hedge-trimmers cutting them back to the same height each time.
Still need to figure out how to make flour from the seeds…
6) – Sloe Gin. My camera ran out of battery so I couldn't take a picture of my harvesting technique. Basically I find a nice overhanging branch with bare ground or relatively short grass underneath (sometimes I bring a tarp or just lay out my jacket), then I thwack at it with a stick until most of the berries have fallen and finally just pick them up from where they've landed. This year I seemed to have the timing right, as the berries tasted almost sweet right off the bush, with just a hint of the normally face-shrivelling astringency after a couple of frosts had caused the tannins to retreat back into the body of the plant (I've heard the recommended practice of simulating frosts by putting the picked berries in the freezer doesn't work because the tannins have nowhere to go to. Also it's a pain handling frozen fruit, especially if you have to pick bits of iced mud, grass and wood off them.) Last year's batch of sloe gin was too acidic for my taste, so this year I wanted to put more sugar in, as well as trying some nice warming spices – ginger, ground cloves & cinnamon. I used an old fondue fork to stab 3-4 holes into each berry and thus ease percolation of the juices and the supposedly almond-like flavour of the inner seed. One 75cl bottle of cheap gin became two 75cl bottles half full of sloes with the spices and sugar stirred into the gin and then poured over the top. I had just enough berries to plop in and raise the level of the liquid to the top of both bottles.
(It may have been a mistake to use dark brown sugar, as for the moment it looks rather like poo-water… (!) Hopefully that will change as the dark purple-redness of the berries seeps out in the coming weeks & months.)
Also, on a tip-off from R, I re-used last year's sloes to make sloe cider with my last bottle of home-brew from 2010. Should have quite a kick to it!
7) Acorn germination! I planted nine fatties from tree d) of the Autumn harvests.
Still don't know where I'm going to plant them…
That about covers it for plant happenings. Otherwise I've got posts brewing on food vs. population, cultivation & the production imperative, disturbance revisited, plus various summer reports and perhaps even the long-awaited 'Coming Down From the Mountain #2'. Plenty of time & no rush to get into all of that 🙂
Enjoy the predicted cold snap in the next couple of days. It might be the only winter we get this year!
Tags: acorns, angelica, blackthorn, cattail, hedges, holm oak, lime, oak, propagation, pruning, rosehips, sweet cicely, wildcrafting


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San Jose Sharks forward Raffi Torres was suspended for the remainder of his team's Western Conference semifinal playoff series against the Kings -- a ban of up to six games -- for what the NHL judged was an illegal hit to the head of Kings center Jarret Stoll on Tuesday.
The decision was announced Thursday by Brendan Shanahan, the league's director of player safety, following a hearing in New York that was attended by Torres.
Stoll, one of the Kings' primary penalty-killing forwards and a valued third-line center, likely sustained a concussion from the hit, which occurred near the end of the second period of the Kings' 2-0 victory in the series opener. Stoll is expected to miss the first four games of this series and could be out longer than that, although the team has not released the exact nature of his injury.
Shanahan cited the injury to Stoll as a factor in his decision (see video below). The other influential factors he listed were that the hit was an illegal check to the head, and that Torres is a repeat offender.
Torres has previously been suspended three times and fined three times by the league for illegal actions. Torres' biggest punishment was a 25-game ban levied against him a year ago for a hit to the head of Chicago's Marian Hossa. The Chicago forward suffered a concussion. Torres got the ban reduced to 21 games upon appeal.
Shanahan said that even though Torres might have struck a "glancing blow" to Stoll's shoulder, the principal point of contact was Stoll's head.
"Torres approaches from the high slot as Stoll is heading up ice and tries to play a bouncing puck," Shanahan said. "Rather than hit Stoll through the core of his body, Torres takes a route that makes Stoll's head the principal point of contact….
"If he chooses to attempt a hit such as that Torres must take a route that ensures he hits through the core of the body and does not make the head the principal point of contact."
Reaction to the hit has varied from declarations that it was a hard but clean hit to insistence that it was a dangerous and dirty play that should have gotten Torres a lengthy ban.
The NHL tends to put more weight on missing playoff games than on missing regular-season contests, so a six-game ban is considerable. But as a multiple repeat offender, it can be argued that Torres could have gotten an even longer punishment.
Watch Raffi Torres' vicious hit on Jarret Stoll
All eyes will be on Kings' Brad Richardson in Game 2
Live discussion: Previewing Game 2 between the Kings and Sharks


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There are reports emerging - some of them conflicting - that a 4chan user known as "Stephen" tried to take his own life on Saturday night by setting himself on fire. And broadcasting the whole thing.
The Daily Dot has collected a number of posts and images from 4chan, which suggest that after stating "As an oldfag who's been on 4chan since 2004, I thought I would finally give back to the community", and "I am willing to an hero on cam for you all", "Stephen" took some pills and vodka, set fire to the corner of his room, crawled under his bed and continued participating in a chat room until the end.
The Daily Dot report shows a log revealing he typed "#imdead #omgimonfire," and "I'm fuck3d" as the fire began to consume his bed.
The video of the event shows the room filling with smoke, but "Stephen" is eventually pulled from the flames by firefighters.
It's unclear what happened to the man after this. There are two local news reports of single males being rescued from fires on the night; one is a college student who survived, the other a man who was killed.
While it's easy to accuse this is being a hoax, the video - which is still available online (though viewable on a NSFW site) - does show what look like emergency workers enter the room, remove the bed and carry "Stephen" out.
There are a number of suicide prevention hotlines available in the US, such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and Hopeline.
4chan user sets himself on fire in livestreamed suicide attempt [The Daily Dot]


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It's time for another installment of our Lake House Tour. Last week I shared the Living Room and this week we're moving to the outdoors. I've plan to add a House Tour option in the menu at the top of the page very soon where our tour will live on for eternity so feel free to pop on over there to see the whole shebang as we go along.
I pretty amazed by the progress we've made. While you're living through the changes it all seems to go slowly and the small things that add up over time seep into your consciousness making them feel somehow less dramatic overall. Well let me tell you the before and after pictures of this post are dramatic, each time I found one I thought "Wow I can't believe it used to look like that!"
By far the most work we have done is to the landscaping. The yard before was perfectly fine. It has good bones was nice size yard lot, but it lacked personality and defined areas Gafas Ray Ban Baratas to enjoy it. Obviously the best thing it had going for it was the view. Our goal always has and always will be to maximize the spaces to relax, eat and enjoy the weather while simultaneously loving the view.
The very first project we tackled outside was the addition of a the garden above, it was mostly just grass before with a few random shrubs thrown in for good measure. The area needed to be defined and plantings to soften it up. We built a rock wall added soil and plants to make it a focal point.
Next up we added another garden along the fence to soften those linear lines. Our plan was to tackle the smallest least expensive projects first while saving up some funds for the more expensive projects. Gardens are the cheapest thing to add for a dramatic impact. Plantings can be added over time without killing your pocketbook and it's surprising how quickly buying a plant here or there will make a big impact. The fence is over 100 feet long and felt overbearing before. Now it's a cool rustic backdrop for our lush garden.
Arguable the single most defining project of the yard was building (and later staining) the deck around the above ground pool. This change increased the usefulness the pool by leaps and bounds. Before the pool felt like it was an island floating off in the distance, there was no place to sit and relax. This deck integrated it into the yard seamlessly and made if feel more like an in-ground pool.
Staining it was no small feet, rather than keep it light and have it be the focal point we chose a dark color to help it blend into the landscape. The fence and railings that enclose the pool and separate the top portion of the yard from the lake below was part of that project and was critical to keeping Nikolas out of harms way while simultaneously defining key areas. Now with three distinct zones created. The grassy area, the pool area and the/lake area the direction of our yard had been established.
The pathway that was there before wasn't easy to navigate, it made walking up and down difficult at best and dangerous at worse. This picture does not give the true angle of the slope justice. It was bad
It got worse before it got better and we had a few uhoh moments while the stones stairs were being built. Like uhoh are we really going to be able to shimmy these into place? It took some time a ton of sweat and good old brute forces to push those large stones around but it all worked out in the end and they look gorgeous.
Since those stairs have been done it's now one of my favorite moments around the yard. I like to sit on a step and enjoy the breeze coming off the lake as the boats hum by.
Another garden added on the side attracts butterflies and dragonflies that like to sun themselves on the warmth of the stones.
We added a cool wood patio under the shade of the Maple trees what was once just dirt. We've chosen to keep the materials similar throughout the yard to give it a cohesiveness that was once lacking.
The shade is a welcome retreat in the hot summer days. Is nice a comfy place to sip ice tea and relax in the shade.
We've been surprised everyday how much we use this space. Nikolas' sand pit/horseshoe pit is just beyond in the clearing. I like to sit and read while he plays.
The yard slopes from the house down to the lake so the addition of a new set of stairs helps ease the transition were added. Grass wasn't an option due to the dense shade and trees that suck all the moisture from the ground so we brought in river stones to cover the remaining dirt areas.
Next we turned our attention to the area nearest the lake. White rocks blanketed the space, weeds were almost impossible to pull. The lack of trees and spiders that hid in all the crevices made it very uninhabitable.
The before picture is taken from standing on the stone steps, the after picture below shows the same area but with your back to the lake. The planters on the left side along the fence are waiting for the summer and will be filled with tomatoes that will surely love the spot filled with sunshine.
More white rocks and a barren wall make for a great before picture.
To add even more functionality the wood patio was added along the seawall which we usually refer to as the dock even though it's not technically a dock. This house lacks storage both inside and out so a shed was built to store life jackets, fishing equipment, tubes, and general boating supplies as well as a ton of other things. In the spring we'll paint it out but we have yet to agree upon any kind of colors.
The Rubbermaid outdoor storage unit will move along with all the odds and ends that still need to find a proper home. I'm lobbying for an outdoor shower in that area but that project has yet to be "approved" ha!.
And my newest favorite project has to be the outdoor bar. Just (mostly) completed a month before the cold set. We'll trim it out in the spring add a bar top and stools. We also want to add an dining table and a few lounge chairs.
Wow that was a lot. Is anybody still here? We still have lots more we'd like to accomplish. There are areas of the yard (not picture here) that still need a ton of work and machinery to make it workable. All in good time though.


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Much can come from collaboration, as was the case recently when graduate students in the Departments of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and Architecture worked with local community partners to revitalize struggling post-Katrina neighborhoods. With proposals for a new health clinic and an innovative fabrication center in New Orleans, the two teams of MIT students claimed first and second prize in the 2010 Chase Community Development Competition.
The final presentations for the competition were held in New Orleans on Nov. 30, and the two teams traveled to New Orleans to present their proposals and returned having won $25,000 and $15,000 in pre-development grants for their respective local partners. Public Service Center Grants helped support travel costs for both teams.
A neighborhood health clinic
DUSP graduate student Laura Manville and a team comprising fellow DUSP and architecture students designed the winning proposal for a health clinic in New Orleans East. The neighborhood was one of the worst hit during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but over the years has rebuilt quickly with the help of the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation. Despite this growth, the community still suffers from a lack of medical facilities.
The team's proposal, "BRIDGE," directly addresses this need through its provision of a community clinic providing extended care and specialty services to the area's diverse demographic. It is the hope that this project not only will provide high quality, affordable, and accessible health care to residents, but will also act as a bridge to bring together and celebrate New Orleans East's various ethnic groups.
Manville, who spent this past summer as a Public Service Fellow working with the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative, explained by e-mail that her "team was especially excited to work on this project because it filled such an obvious need for the community. Residents either visit one of two small [health] clinics in one of the commercial strip mall areas, or drive half an hour to a hospital in downtown New Orleans. All of us believed that this project should be realized, and I think our presentation did an especially good job of communicating that to the judges. Our team took advantage of each other's strengths and backgrounds, and our proposal was a truly collaborative process."
An innovative fabrication center
The idea of linking was a signature theme in the second group's proposal for a vocational school and fabrication facility in the Broad Street area of New Orleans. A team of DUSP and architecture graduate students worked with the non-profit Broad Community Connections to develop a proposal to rehabilitate an abandoned school building into a construction and design center. The redeveloped space would provide a home for the Priestley School of Architecture and Construction, a charter school that serves at-risk students. A permanent home for the Priestley School — on its fourth location in four years — will allow the school to focus on providing a quality education. In addition, the building will feature a Fabrication Laboratory, or Fab Lab, as a complementary use on site. Fab Labs are workshops for high-tech digital fabrication that aim to bring innovation and entrepreneurship to the local community. The final piece of the team's proposal calls for sustained relationships with the MIT community to add additional capacity to both the development project and the operations of the school.
"Several community members approached our team at the finals (even some that had come to support other proposals!) to tell us how important the renovation of the Augustine school would be to the local community," said Caroline Todd Edwards, a graduate student in urban studies and planning who was part of the team.
Both teams are thrilled with the opportunity the competition gives their community partners to transform whole neighborhoods. The national competition, sponsored by Enterprise Community Partners and Chase Bank, brings together students and local non-profits to develop real estate plans that address issues of sustainability in post-Katrina New Orleans. Last year, graduate students Aditi Mehta SM '10 and Jacquelyn Dadakis SM '10 were awarded second place in the same competition for their redesign of an urban grocery.


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Taken for a ride: loopholes for lemons and the secret history of salvaged cars
It sounds like something from the Twilight Zone. A Scottsville woman goes into a local auto dealership and shells out nearly $20,000 for a late-model used car. Within a year, she discovers the car has a secret past: Before she bought it, it had been totaled in a tangle with a tractor-trailer. But the dealer won't give her more than $8,000 to take it back.
"It's a quagmire out there" is how Art Bushey, owner of Brady-Bushey Ford, describes the world of used-car sales. You won't hear any disagreement from Mickie Sykes Damron. Nearly two years ago, Damron bought the used car from Brady-Bushey that would soon introduce her to a questionable– if not outright shady– aspect of the used-car business.
The story begins on April 6, 2001, at Brady-Bushey, a dealership on Pantops Mountain. The salesman, Bill Bennett, had sold her a used car three years earlier that she'd considered a good deal; she had no reason to expect this car would be any different.
This time Damron was looking at a 2000 Honda Accord Coupe V-EX. After taking it for a test drive, Damron thought she'd found the perfect car. But she did notice that the paint on the rear driver's side panel didn't quite match the rest of the car. Damron agreed to an extra $1,000 for a entire-car paint job. Including the new paint, Damron paid $19,516 and took possession on May 11.
The problems began almost immediately. While cleaning the interior, Damron says, she noticed cuts in the leather seats. She paid C-Ville Auto Upholstery $280 to repair them.
She also began noticing a shaking in the steering wheel, and the brakes began to squeal loudly. She took the car to University Tire, which found the tires did not match, and the car badly needed brakes. She purchased four new tires and paid for a lifetime brake job for the front and rear.
Damron called Bennett to complain about the car's condition and says she asked him to find her another vehicle so she could trade in the Honda.
She says, however, that Bennett did not want to take the Honda on trade. Instead, he advised her– as the car was still under factory warranty– to take it to Brown Honda & Dodge, a dealership on Route 29. On June 7, she took the car to Brown's, where the seatbelts on the driver's side, front and back, were found "faulty" and replaced.
Matters continued to worsen late on the evening of Saturday, December 15, 2001.
"While driving home from a movie with my three-year-old daughter and my neighbor's two daughters in the Honda," says Damron, "the car completely cut off on Rio Road. I had no brakes or steering."
It was around 11pm, and she was able to guide the car down to Walker's Auto Body, where she called her neighbor for help.
The following Monday, she called Brady-Bushey. Again, she says, she was advised to take the problem to Brown's. Brown's replaced the motor, which was under warranty, as well as the fog light on the driver's side and the wiring to it, which wasn't working.
The repairs took 37 days, during which time Damron rented a car at a cost to her of $1,150.
"I called Brady-Bushey again to try to trade the car and to complain about its performance," Damron claims, "but got no response. Bill Bennett did not return my calls." Bennett says he has no recollection of this call.
In February 2002, three weeks after getting the Honda back, Damron says, she began to smell gasoline every time she drove it. She returned to Brown's, which found a fuel leak, replaced the gaskets, and fixed a rattle in the transmission. Once again, the repairs were covered under Honda's warranty.
By this time, Damron's car wasn't the only thing she had to worry about. She and her husband had split up the previous October, and she was raising their daughter alone with no financial cushion. That could explain why she took no action when a Brown employee allegedly remarked that cracks on the steering wheel suggested that the car could have been in a "horrendous accident."
After putting her house up for sale and retrieving the Honda from Brown's a second time, Damron set a goal: "to get rid of my car."
After advertising it in all the local papers for two months with only one response and no sale, she decided to explore trading it in.
In early July she found a car she liked on a used-car lot in Amherst. The salesman at Amherst Motors test drove her Honda, and then called her into the manager's office.
He offered her $5,200– about a quarter of what she'd originally paid.
But that wasn't the biggest shock of the day. The salesman handed her a Carfax vehicle history report that showed the Honda had been branded as salvage in Maryland. It had then been sold and retitled– this time with a clear title– in Virginia.
"I was floored!" says Damron.
Determined to learn exactly what had happened to the car before she bought it, she says she immediately called Brady-Bushey and was told to come in and see Art Bushey the next morning.
It was never a secret that the car had belonged to Rodney Deane, Brady-Bushey's accountant, and his wife, Nancy, who had been the car's main driver. They had traded it in on a Jeep. According to Damron, when she first noticed the mismatching paint, salesman Bennett said he would call and find out what had happened. When he returned, she says, he reported that the car had been "tapped."
Now, as she sat in Bushey's office over a year later, complaining about Bennett, Bushey allegedly told her the salesman had resigned several months earlier. Bushey then handed Damron a copy of the title he had on file for the car, which was indeed clear and nowhere mentioned the car having been declared salvage.
Relations quickly soured. As Damron describes it, "Earlier Mr. Bushey assured me that he would take care of this problem, and now he was telling me to hire an attorney, and he would see me in court. I became extremely upset and started to cry. I told him I was working two jobs and struggling to feed my daughter, and there was no way I could afford an attorney."
According to Damron, Bushey changed course again. Now he was telling her not to worry, because the dealership had insurance for "fraud situations." He instructed her to prepare a settlement request. Damron asked for the price of the car plus the $4,530 she'd paid in interest over the intervening 14 months. Bushey allegedly read over the proposal and suggested she add the amount of the repairs not covered by warranty.
"He told me I was owed that money too," she says. In the end, Damron tallied the cost of the repairs, new tires, the lifetime warranty for the brakes, and the rental car (as well as the price of a rear spoiler and sun-roof visor she'd bought and had Brady-Bushey install before she took possession). Grand total: $27,319.
On August 22, Damron drove to Maryland to get a copy of the salvage title to include with her claim. She says she delivered it to Bushey the next day.
According to Damron, who has neatly chronicled her receipts and notes in a black binder, she called the dealership and left messages for Bushey on September 9, 10, and 11, but didn't connect with him until September 12, when he "said he would call me back after he called his insurance company." He did not call back, she says.
On September 13, Damron directly contacted Brady-Bushey's insurance company, Lee Insurance, and was told to call Dave Jonske at Selective Insurance in Mechanicsville, as that was the office that handled claims.
What Jonske told her was particularly disturbing. "He told me he had asked for the claim file several times but had not received it," she says.
So she faxed the salvage title, list of expenses, and related documents straight to Jonske that day. Ten days later, she called Bushey, whose "entire demeanor," she claims, had changed yet again.
"He told me that the insurance company had denied the claim, and he felt he owed me nothing," Damron says.
Although she kept after Bushey, she says that on October 1 she got the same response: "He told me that he did not owe me a penny because he had done nothing wrong. He informed me that he had turned all the paperwork over to an investigator at the DMV" and been told that the car's clear title had been issued legally.
Damron went back to the paperwork she'd found in Maryland, which listed a State Farm Insurance office in Washington as the applicant for the salvage certificate.
She tracked down the agent who had handled the claim, Gerene Behrens, who, Damron says, informed her that what had really happened to that Honda back on May 9, 2000, was no "tapping."
Damron says Behrens told a story of a tractor-trailer coming across the median and striking two vehicles. As Behrens wrote in a letter: "Due to the extensive damages to the vehicle, State Farm deemed it a total loss and paid the owner the value of the vehicle." (The owner, who'd had the car less than six months, received $21,000.)
As for the wrecked vehicle, it was "towed to Insurance Auto Auction in Laurel, Maryland, for salvage sell."
Damron called Bushey for the last time on October 16, 2002, to share this new information with him. "He was very abrupt with me and did not want to hear about my new findings. He told me again that he did not owe me anything, and it was no longer his problem," she says.
Bushey, she claims, "told me I should just trade the car and get rid of it. I asked him if I could trade it with Brady-Bushey. He responded, 'You certainly can,' and offered me $8,000 for the car." When Damron replied that he was "lacking greatly in integrity," he again told her to "hire an attorney."
Welcome to the world of title-washing.
Title-washing begins when a car has been so badly damaged that it's branded salvage, which usually means damage from a collision– but can also mean damage from flooding, fire, theft, etc.– that an insurance company deems severe enough to render the vehicle a total loss. The car is then rebuilt and issued a clear title– i.e., one that doesn't mention the car's history of damage and repair.
Such secrecy can be deadly. Seattle television station KIRO reveals that a 21-year-old driver was killed and her brother permanently disabled when a truck sideswiped their rebuilt Volvo and its roof sheared off. Parents of the victims say they never would have bought the car had they known it had been wrecked– or that its roof support posts had been glued on, not welded, after the wreck.
Consumer's Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, conducted a six-month investigation into what it calls a "shadow auto industry." The study, which analyzed data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Carfax, concluded that consumers have no way of knowing for sure the history of any used vehicle.
"It's not uncommon for rebuilt wrecks to hopscotch from state to state, receiving new titles 'washed' of any hint of past problems," says Consumer's Union. The report also found that while wrecked cars can be safely rebuilt, there are financial incentives to cut corners. "Consumers should especially steer clear of newer-model vehicles that have been totaled and rebuilt, unless a trusted mechanic can vouch for the repairs," the report advises.
That describes Damron's Honda Accord to a T– minus the trusted mechanic.
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"It was ugly," Art Bushey says when asked about his experience with Mickie Damron and the used Honda. But that doesn't mean he believes he owes Damron anything, since he was as surprised as she was to learn of the car's past: "We did not know the DMV would issue a clear title for a vehicle with a branded title."
Bushey learned about this aspect of his business, he says, when, in the early days of the dispute, he asked DMV inspector W.T. Jackson to review the Honda's history. As Jackson later explained it to me, a car such as Damron's can be issued a clear title in Virginia if it meets three criteria: the damage is 75 percent or less than the car's value; the rebuilder is licensed by the DMV; and the car passes inspection and contains no stolen parts.
Even so, Jackson tells rebuilders that "It's probably better to let people know [a car's] got a salvage history, even when you're not required to." He adds that he's been called to testify– i.e., to explain how a salvaged vehicle can be granted a clear title– in a number of civil cases lately.
Jackson's advice on Carfax: "Don't take that as total gospel."
That's advice Bushey wishes he'd been given when the Honda first came onto his lot. Although he doesn't routinely order Carfax reports for used cars, he did order one for the Honda. He showed me the report when we met, and indeed, there's no mention of the car's Maryland salvage certificate– which illustrates why such reports can be unreliable.
So why did the Amherst dealer's Carfax show the fuller history?
Perhaps it was because the salvage certificate wasn't issued until five months after State Farm had declared the Honda a total loss, and it still hadn't been entered into Carfax's database when Bushey ordered the report seven months after the accident.
Since he says he had no knowledge that the car had been sold for salvage and rebuilt– and because his insurance carrier concluded there was no fraud involved– Bushey is unwilling to do more than buy the car back from Damron for "whatever it's worth."
When asked about his estimate of $8,000, he says that was based on the high mileage Damron has put on the car. She concedes she drives about 2,000 miles a month.
Bushey and Bennett– who now sells cars for Dennis Enterprises– seem to believe that Damron should have known what she was getting into.
"She knew it had been damaged," Bushey says.
Bennett went further when I asked whether he had told Damron the car had merely been "tapped."
He contradicts that version of the events, claiming that he spoke to neither Rodney nor Nancy Deane. Instead, Bennett claims it was obvious the car had been hit on both sides. How could he know? "It's easy," he says. "Just look at it."
Bennett claims that Damron knew the Honda had been "around the horn," he says. "I never would have bought it," says Bennett. "She bought a well-used Honda."
Nancy Deane owned the car only from January 26 to March 10, 2002. Why had she kept it such a short time?
"My husband trades in cars like he trades in gum," she replies, adding that when she got the car, she'd actually wanted a convertible (which she eventually got).
When Deane heard about Damron's experience and the car's history as salvage– and the fact that Virginia allows clear titles to be issued for such cars– she said, "That's a horrible thing."
Deane assumes that means that the seller, a Northern Virginia firm, lied to them. In her presence, Deane claims, her husband had asked the same question he always asks when buying a used car: "Has this car ever been involved in an accident?"
"The guy said no," she says. It's possible that the seller didn't know, although the car's title history suggests that the Northern Virginia seller probably bought the car from the rebuilder.
What about the mismatched paint? Deane doesn't remember a problem with the paint– and, in any case, she says she had "no problem with the car" during the six weeks she drove it.
In Virginia, as in many other states, this procedure is perfectly legal. But it won't be for long– if a bill introduced in the House of Delegates this session passes.
"Once branded, always branded." That's how Colonial Auto Center owner Carter Myers summarizes the intent of House Bill 1521, which was introduced in the General Assembly earlier this month. The bill requires that the titles of repaired and rebuilt vehicles be permanently branded to show that they are salvage vehicles.
Myers, a longtime auto industry activist and now chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, has stepped up the fight to ban title-washing.
"Virginia's taking a lead position," says Myers, "and hopefully other states will follow."
Myers knows how frustrating title-washing can be. "I've had that happen two or three times," he says. In "a couple of situations," he says, his dealership bought the car back.
"Unless they're a body-shop expert," he points out, it's unlikely that a buyer would be able to detect signs that the car had been rebuilt.
The bill, whose patron is Clarke Hogan (R-South Boston), applies only to cars that are rebuilt and retitled in Virginia. It wouldn't have helped Damron, since her had been rebuilt in Maryland and issued a clear title there before being brought into Virginia. However, if she'd had access to a nationwide database that tracked all vehicle titles, Damron might have quickly learned of the car's history– and such a database is in the works.
The National Motor Vehicle Title Information System– which NADA also supports– was originally part of the Anti Car Theft Act of 1992. The system, which is now in the test stages, would link motor vehicle-department computers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia so that consumers could research a car's title history without the frustration and time Damron was forced to invest.
"Most people wouldn't want to buy a salvaged vehicle," says David Regan, NADA's legislative affairs director. For their part, dealers consider such cars a "severe problem," Regan says. "Dealers don't want to take those vehicles into inventory in the first place."
If House Bill 1521 becomes law– and especially if it's buttressed by the system in all 50 states and D.C.– Virginia consumers will be able to easily ascertain whether they're looking at a car that's been damaged and rebuilt.
In the meantime, there are few guarantees that the car you buy isn't a junker. But experts do have tips. [See sidebar.]
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Damron, meanwhile, continues to hope that Brady-Bushey will offer some kind of restitution. Her attorney, David Heilberg, wrote the dealership in late December to say that Damron will be suing for breach of contract.
The car has been problem-free now for several months– so much so that when Damron listed the amount she felt Brady-Bushey's insurance carrier should reimburse her, she added that she would like to buy the car back at the "'salvaged' fair market" price.
"I have put," she explains, "quite a bit of work into this vehicle." Most people would consider that an understatement.
Barbara Nordin writes The Fearless Consumer, a weekly column (which is taking this week off).


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While going through StreetViewFun the other day, I saw a picture of a really cool car. I went onto Google Earth StreetView and found it, capturing a few more angles. The location was in Turin (Torino), Italy.
I confess that I'm not up on supercars, but I don't think it's a production car. Also, if you'll notice, it's being followed by a movie industry camera truck (with the cameras pointed the wrong way!). It may be a custom car for whatever it was they were shooting. Any ideas? More pictures after the jump.
|Click to enlarge
UPDATE: Mystery solved thanks to a Jalopnik reader named Raphael. It's the Giugiaro Quaranta Concept car from 2008. This is a quote from the Jalopnik article:
"The Italian design house used Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive to power their idea of a futuristic super car employing state-of-the-art F1 technology. Giugiaro claims: "It is an "extreme", ecological, 4WD super-sportscar, the first hybrid car with mid-engine and driving position and a roomy cabin able to accommodate three adults plus a baby in complete comfort."
What it was doing on the street with a camera truck following it, I have no idea, but apparently it's also been used as at taxi!! Go figure.