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First team
QB-Deandre Singleton, 6-1, 170, jr., East St. Louis: Most potent arm in Illinois. Threw for more than 2,300 yards and 33 TDs in leading team to a 12-0 record before suffering a season-ending knee injury.
RB-Hickey Thompson, 5-11, 182, sr., Belleville Althoff: Set state`s single-season rushing record. Entering Friday`s final, had gained 2,848 yards on 268 carries (a 10.6 average) and scored 39 TDs.
RB-Tyrone Washington, 5-10, 185, sr., Shepard: Could have made all-state at linebacker but is too valuable in backfield. Gained 1,885 yards on 243 carries, scored 22 TDs and personally halted Richards' 34-game win streak.
RB-Corey Rogers, 5-11, 190, sr., Leo: He turned heads each week during the Lions' dream year. Rushed for 1,924 yards and 23 TDs. Said coach Bob Foster: "Best back in Catholic League in many, many years."
OL-John Horn, 6-6, 250, sr., Joliet Catholic: Rated by some as the state`s best offensive line prospect in a decade. Excellent run-blocker. Coach Bob Stone: "He really turned it up a notch in the playoffs."
OL-Charles Edwards, 6-3, 266, sr., Mt. Carmel: All-Catholic League guard paved way for powerful Caravan ground attack. Coach Frank Lenti: "At this point in time, Charles Edwards is better than (former Caravan lineman) Frank Cornish was."
OL-Bob Mehorczyk, 6-2, 235, sr., Thornton: All-SICA East center for a Wildcat team that advanced to state finals in 1989 and '90. Thornton averaged 232 rushing yards per game.
OL-Mark Hornok, 6-4, 255, sr., Larkin: Helped guide Royals to Upstate Eight title and Class 6A quarterfinal berth vs. East St. Louis, where Larkin ran up more than 500 yards of total offense.
OL-Steve Stark, 6-5, 245, sr., Rockton Hononegah: Even with broken wrist much of season, he was the lead blocker for offense that set school records with more than 3,600 yards of total offense.
WR-Homer Bush, 5-11, 185, sr., East St. Louis: Quick-footed wideout was primary target of All-State QB Singleton. Caught 68 passes for 1,367 yards and 22 TDs.
WR-Vaurice Patterson, 6-1, 170, sr., Conant: Fast-as-lightning receiver caught 42 passes for 708 yards and eight TDs in Cougars' run-oriented offense. Perhaps the most acrobatic receiver in Chicago area.
K-Brett Larsen, 5-11, 185, sr. Thornwood: A throwback to days of straight-on kickers, such as Jim Bakken and Lou Groza, with three field goals of 40-plus yards, plus 45-yard punting average.
DL-Greg Wilkins, 6-4, 280, sr., Chicago Vocational: Rated by Tribune as the state`s top prospect in preseason. Injuries slowed him early, but he rebounded with 123 tackles, six sacks and two fumble recoveries.
DL-Michael Adams, 6-2, 235, sr., Deerfield: Two-way lineman and three-year starter who broke school career record with 165 solo tackles. Voted by coaches as No. 1 Player in Central Suburban North.
DL-Tom Snyder, 6-3, 240, sr., Joliet Catholic: Lost in the limelight next to highly regarded teammate John Horn, he quietly did the job on Hilltopper`s "Fearsome Fivesome" defensive line.
DL-Lloyd Bickham, 6-3, 280, sr., Robeson: Recorded more than 125 tackles and 10 sacks for Roy Curry`s Prep Bowl finalists. Quicker than his size indicates.
LB-Chris Koeppen, 6-0, 212, jr., Richards: One of the hardest hitters around, he caused nine fumbles, picked off six passes and recorded more than 80 solo tackles. Coach Gary Korhonen: "Best linebacker Richards has ever had."
LB-Brian Tranchitella, 6-1, 215, sr., Bartonville Limestone: Recorded more than 70 solo tackles and 45 assists. Three-year starter had two picks and seven tackles for losses.
LB-Tom Cione, 6-1, 225, sr., Wheaton Central: Top defensive player on defense-fueled 5A finalists that have forced 37 turnovers. In on 123 tackles.
DB-Charles Stafford, 6-1, 187, sr., Elgin: Led Maroon defense with 10 interceptions while also excelling as an option quarterback. Unanimous All-Upstate Eight pick on both sides of ball.
DB-Rodney Harrison, 6-1, 178, sr., Marian Catholic: East Suburban Catholic Conference defensive player of the year. Led Spartan defense with six interceptions and 31 solo tackles.
DB-Tracy Graham, 5-11, 180, sr., St. Rita: All-Catholic League back blocked three field goals vs. Thornwood in Class 6A quarterfinals. Had four pickoffs and was top kick-returner as well.
DB-Matt Woods, 5-10, 175, sr., Rock Island Alleman: Top player on Western Big Six champs that went unbeaten in gaining 3A title game berth vs. Bellville Althoff. Five pickoffs while playing both ways at back.
Second team
QB-Jason Stanicek, 6-2, 175, sr., Rich East: Preseason pick as top QB in Chicago area, he got off to slow start but ended season with state-record 529 yards passing and 595 yards total offense vs. Kankakee.
RB-David Wright, 5-9, 175, sr., Thornton: Gained 2,043 yards on 220 carries for a 9.2 average. Briefly held state playoff rushing record (later broken by Hickey Thompson) with a 407-yard game vs. Homewood-Flossmoor.
RB-Dana Day, 5-10, 175, sr., Bolingbrook: Made second-team All-State as junior, and had 17 straight games of 100 yards or more. Gained 1,341 yards and scored 20 TDs on 220 carries, for a 6.1-yard average.
RB-Bobby Sanders, 5-11, 200, sr., Mt. Carmel: All-Catholic League back who was No. 1 threat for Class 5A titlists in '89 and this year's title game qualifiers. Gained 1,385 yards on 224 attempts with 16 TDs.
OL-Paul Pennington, 6-2, 220, sr., Elgin: Considered top offensive lineman in Upstate Eight. A two-way varsity player for three years and heart of the line that paved holes for Charles Stafford & Co.
OL-Justin Kovarsky, 6-1, 250, sr., Carmel: Two-time all-East Suburban Catholic pick was one of the consistent bright spots for Mike Fitzgibbons' Corsairs.
OL-Brian Kern, 6-9, 235, sr., Vandalia: Perhaps tallest lineman in state, an imposing two-way lineman who was being recruited by Illinois, Oklahoma and Missouri but opted to play basketball at Illinois State.
OL-Aaron Johnson, 6-4, 252, sr., Oak Park: Graded out at 90 percent or better for Gary Olson`s Huskies. Preseason All-America pick by Blue-Chip Magazine.
OL-Rick Bielema, 6-2, 225, sr., Bremen: Two-time all-conference tackle for Braves, who played both ways. Coach John D`Ambrosio: "Best lineman I've coached in 21 years."
WR-Bill Boor, 5-11, 185, sr., Fenwick: Averaged over 20 yards per catch with 44 receptions for 890 yards and 17 TDs. Great hands and moves well in traffic.
WR-Mike Ferega, 5-10, 175, sr., Springfield Griffin-No. 3 receiver in state after regular season. Caught 54 passes for 960 yards and 16 TDs.
DL-Mark Zundel, 6-2, 179, sr., Downers Grove North: Keyed a talented Downers North line, and also blocked six PATs, including one vs. East St. Louis in the 6A semis that ultimately spelled victory.
DL-Alex Ilich, 6-6, 278, sr., Loyola: Usually double-teamed, he nevertheless joined LB Terry Glavin in giving John Hoerster's 6A semifinalists one of Chicago`s toughest one-two defensive punches.
DL-Park Yu, 6-0, 240, sr., New Trier: Top-flight hitter recorded 54 solo tackles and four sacks for Trevians. Voted by coaches as No. 1 lineman in CSL South.
DL-Chris Stiles, 6-3, 231, sr., Galesburg: Co-Player of Year in Western Big Six, forced six fumbles and recovered three.
LB-Jeremy Nau, 6-2, 210, sr., Mt. Carmel: Leading tackler on Caravan defensive unit that shut down high-powered offenses of Cincinnati Moeller and St. Rita.
LB-Matt Armstrong, 5-11, 196, sr., Naperville Central: Unanimous defensive player of the year in Du Page Valley. Had 96 tackles, three sacks and two interceptions in '90.
LB-Terry Glavin, 6-2, 225, sr., Loyola: All-Catholic League first team as junior and senior. Had 53 solo tackles and 71 assists, including nine tackles for losses.
DB-Antoine Patton, 6-0, 185, sr., Simeon: Had 17 career interceptions for Public League`s best team while doubling at QB. One of league`s top all-around stars.
DB-David Zeitz, 5-10, 185, jr., St. Charles: Two-year starter who also made waves at running back. Unanimous All-Upstate Eight selection on offense and team MVP.
DB-James Dorsey, 6-2, 185, sr., Addison Trail: Two-way standout for Trail Blazers had five interceptions and 46 solo tackles. Voted by coaches as No. 1 player in West Suburban Gold.
DB-Eddie Grooms, 6-2, 195, sr., Mascoutah: Led team to 11-1 record with 41 solo tackles and 17 assists. Two-way starter who ranks among best DBs in southern Illinois.
All-Area Team
QB-Stanicek, Rich East; Ron Reichert, 6-2, 190, sr., Homewood-Flossmoor; Johnny Johnson, 6-2, 180, sr., North Chicago. RB-Washington, Shepard; Rogers, Leo; Day, Bolingbrook; Sanders, Mt. Carmel; Wright, Thornton; Jeremy Sample, 6-0, 196, sr., Downers Grove North; Chris Jackson, 5-11, 180, sr., Kankakee. OL-Horn, Joliet Catholic; Hornok, Larkin; Edwards, Mt. Carmel; Mehorczyk, Thornton; Pennington, Elgin; Kovarsky, Carmel; Johnson, Oak Park. Robert Johnson, 6-3, 220, sr., St. Francis de Sales. WR-Patterson, Conant; Boor, Fenwick; Reggie Britton, 6-0, 170, sr., Simeon; Bill Schmitz, 6-3, 178, sr., Maine South. K-Larsen, Thornwood.
DL-Adams, Deerfield; Wilkins, Chicago Vocational; Snyder, Joliet Catholic; Bickham, Robeson; Zundel, Downers Grove North; Ilich, Loyola; Yu, New Trier; Jimmy Wilson, 6-2, 260, sr., King. LB-Koeppen, Richards; Cione, Wheaton Central; Armstrong, Naperville Central; Nau, Mt. Carmel; Glavin, Loyola; Mark Robich, 6-4, 220, sr., Stevenson. DB-Stafford, Elgin; Graham, St. Rita; Harrison, Marian Catholic; Patton, Simeon; Zeitz, St. Charles; Dorsey, Addison Trail; Bill Korosec, 6-0, 180, sr., Naperville North; Mark Nardi, 5-11, 175, sr., Thornwood.

subset: commoncrawl


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Lot # 547 (of 1641) < Previous Lot | Next Lot >
1951 Topps Connie Mack's All-Stars PSA-Graded Complete Set (11)
Starting Bid - $1,000, Sold For - $10,665
Outstanding high-grade complete set of the legendary 1951 Topps Connie Mack's All-Stars. This landmark set issued by Topps in its first year in the baseball-card business features Connie Mack's All-Time team of great players. Offered is an extremely attractive high-grade complete set of eleven cards, highlighted by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. All eleven cards have been graded and encapsulated by PSA (except one SGC). One thing about 1951 Topps Connie Mack All-Stars: because of their die-cut design, there are so many little things that can get these cards downgraded that they tend to look a lot better than their technical grades suggest. That is certainly the case here. This is a gorgeous set of this significant issue! All cards are complete with backgrounds intact and grade as follows: Grover Alexander (EX-MT 6), Mickey Cochrane (EX 5), Eddie Collins (EX 5), Jimmy Collins (EX 5), Lou Gehrig (VG 3), Walter Johnson (SGC VG/EX 50), Connie Mack (EX 5), Christy Mathewson (VG-EX 4), Babe Ruth (VG-EX 4), Tris Speaker (EX-MT 6), and Honus Wagner (EX-MT 6). Because these die-cut cards are designed to stand up by folding back the backgrounds, they are particularly prone to damage and are often found with the backgrounds damaged or completely removed. This is an extraordinarily attractive high-grade set of this milestone Topps issue: one of the rarest, most significant, and most condition-sensitive of all postwar-card issues. When comparing the prices of cards twenty or more years ago, 1951 Topps used to be far more expensive relative to many other rare cards. In our opinion, this issue has been overlooked by collectors in recent years in large part because they are graded so harshly by modern grading companies (which of course did not exist in the 1960s and 1970s). The SMR value for just seven of the eleven graded cards (not including the VG 3 Gehrig, SGC VG/EX 50 Johnson, VG-EX 4 Mathewson, and VG-EX 4 Ruth) is $3,610. In our opinion, the SMR is very conservative on this issue, especially considering their rarity, the enormous significance of the set, and condition sensitivity. This is an extremely impressive looking complete set of one of the most important sets of the postwar era. Total: 11 cards. Reserve $1,000. Estimate $2,000/$4,000+. SOLD FOR $10,665
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DUMMERSTON, Vt. - This is for all of you who
are truly frightened by Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin: give it a
The corruption scandals, Troopergate, her musings on how to ban library books, the moose slaughter, the drill-baby-drill, the creationist stupidity, the pregnant underage daughter and the acceptance of statutory rape as a marriage-brokering tool, the bridge to nowhere and all the rest of it - including the story on the front page of The New York Times on Sunday about how she hired most of her junior high school yearbook to run her government - well, yes, Sarah Palin reeks.
Meanwhile, the real danger of her candidacy has been ignored. It took Frank Rich, on the Times' op-ed page on Sunday, to point out that McCain, in his desperation to be president, has so compromised himself that he allowed the party to pick a running mate who is younger, stronger, more vital and more forceful. With McCain so weak, Palin and the men who pull her strings will take over the office of the Imperial Vice-Presidency, Dick Cheney's operation, which is already up and running the country. The Republicans are proposing another weak, lame presidential figurehead, with the real power concentrated behind closed doors.
I'm not arguing that Palin wouldn't be a real danger to what's left of our democracy, but the reality of the 24-hour news cycle is that for every lash, there's an immediate and equal backlash. The Palin bounce? It lasted exactly two weeks. The news media, like so many young children stricken with an advanced case of attention deficit disorder, is easily attracted by bright and shiny objects.
This week it moved to another narrative: is the second great depression coming? And if so, when?
Every time a large financial institution founders, the press is on it like a pack of wolves. But they move on once they've stripped the story to the bone. Our crumbling financial infrastructure has been crumbling for quite some time, yet after Bear Stearns fell and Countrywide was bought out, all we heard about was Palin, pigs and lipstick. Now these names have returned to the news, and the names of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers are being added to the Wall of Shame.
The crumbling of the American economy raises many critical questions. The first, of course, is whether our banks - and our savings - are safe. Eleven federally insured banks and thrifts have failed this year. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which insures bank accounts and CDs up to $100,000, is reporting that its funds have dropped below the minimum target level set by Congress. A Treasury Dept. loan might be needed to shore the fund up if Washington Mutual or another struggling financial institution fails.
The Feds - using taxpayer dollars - helped Bear Stearns in its sale to J.P, Morgan Chase & Co. They just bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now they're shoring up AIG. America's capital market is going up in smoke. We're still fighting two foreign wars. Where will the money come from to bail out the FDIC, or will the government even care? Is anyone asking these questions?
Still, FDIC officials have said that 98 percent of U.S. banks are still sound and well funded. So don't panic. For now. Given the financial turmoil, we return once again to the political reality that it's the economy, stupid.
So how fit is McCain to be president? This is a man who has admitted that he doesn't know much about economics. A man whose chief economic advisor (until he was forced to fire him) was former Senator Phil Gramm, Mr. Enron-Loophole, Mr. "Nation of Whiners," Mr. Reduce-Government-Oversight-on-Banking-Insurance-and-Brokerage-Activities or, in other words, the architect of what's happening right now.
On Monday, McCain said, "The fundamentals of the American economy are strong." On Tuesday, forced to backtrack, he said he meant that "American workers, the backbone of the economy, were productive and resilient." Still backtracking, he then called the economic situation "a total crisis" and decried the "greed" in Wall Street and Washington. He sounded like a babbling fool.
McCain's solution? A commission to study what went wrong.
This isn't 9/11. We know what went wrong. The moneychangers wrecked the temple. We don't need a commission. We need a new government.
According to James Kunstler, who writes a well-respected if slightly profane financial blog whose title I cannot repeat here, "The Republicans must be clearly identified as the party that wrecked America... it's hard to imagine the American people giving the clean-up task to the very group that created the mess -- no matter how many cute little faces Sarah Palin can make on TV."
Obama's strength in this campaign has always been issues, particularly economic ones. Right now he's vague about solutions, but he's a bright man who listens to bright advisors.
The country is looking ito the abyss. Suddenly the bleats about lipstick on pigs, sexism, elitism and all the other Republican tricks don't seem to mean a thing. The campaign is back on Obama's ground - are you really better off than you are eight years ago? And if not, who do you blame? "The party that wrecked America," that's who. Do you really want four more years?
Economically, legally, morally, politically, scientifically - wherever you look, the Republicans have failed. They've even failed with FEMA again. Supposedly, the damage from Hurricane Ike in Texas is as bad as it was in New Orleans, so FEMA has instituted a 2,000-foot no-fly zone to prohibit the press from taking pictures. Brownie's successors aren't doing a heck of a job, either.
Sarah who?
Lipstick on Which Pig?
DUMMERSTON, Vt. - This is for all of you who
are truly frightened by Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin: give it a
This is the world we live in. This is the world we cover.
Because of people like you, another world is possible. There are many battles to be won, but we will battle them together—all of us. Common Dreams is not your normal news site. We don't survive on clicks. We don't want advertising dollars. We want the world to be a better place. But we can't do it alone. It doesn't work that way. We need you. If you can help today—because every gift of every size matters—please do. Without Your Support We Simply Won't Exist.


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BURY have agreed a deal to sign Sheffield Wednesday winger Danny Mayor on a three-year contract.
Shakers chairman Stewart Day announced the signing after handing the 22-year-old midfielder the players' player of the year award at the club's end of season ceremony tonight.
It is not yet clear if Bury have paid a fee for the Leyland-born player, who still had another year left on his contract at Hillsborough.
But Day said his signing was a statement of intent.
"It is a signing we desperately wanted to make and one we have worked very hard on," he said.
"I believe it shows the ambition of this club and I am delighted to have him on board."
Mayor moved to the Owls from Preston North End in July, 2012, but made just nine appearances for the Yorkshire side.
He has come of age, however, during a season-long loan at the JD Stadium, scoring five goals in 41 appearances.


text: Johnathan Gilbert's (guest star David Anders) return to Mystic Falls comes as an unhappy surprise to Elena (Nina Dobrev), Jenna (Sara Canning) and Damon (Ian Somerhalder). Caroline (Candice Accola) lets Stefan (Paul Wesley) know about her conversation with Tyler (Michael Trevino), and Stefan does his best to reach out to a confused and conflicted Tyler. Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) comforts Bonnie (Katerina Graham) after her disturbing conversation with Jonas (guest star Randy Goodwin)... When Jules (guest star Michaela McManus) takes a hostage, the situation quickly escalates into a violent confrontation.


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I teach 5th and 6th grade. I've spent this weekend in meetings and preparing for my students. I've been working hard to make the most of my few days of summer. When I had an opportunity to head home an hour earlier than expected I detoured to Lapel to make a long overdue visit to the shop of Greg Adams.
I made a brief entry last week when Greg presented me with my recent Indianapolis Monthly feature nicely framed in his trademark rustic picture frame.
I've been aware of Greg's work for years but we didn't connect until we were both named Indiana Artisans late last year. We later spent a weekend together at Marsh Madness in Linton. He surprised me last week by dropping in for a few moments at the Gathering at Garst in Greenville, Ohio.
(I didn't realize until I was doing some Googlin' for this piece that Greg and I both participated in a Traditional Arts Indiana initiative several years ago. I'm surprised we didn't meet then.)
I sat and talked with Greg for just a few moments before John Bundy pulled up in front of the shop. John spent the weekend with us in Linton. Bundy Decoys are beautifully carved and finished and can be found in shops and galleries across the country. John is a character and once he arrived we sat back and listened to his stories. They are colorful and sometimes not fit to print.
I realized that we were experiencing something akin to the gentlemen that once hung around the Corner Drug Store in Noblesville, or the Liar's Bench in Nashville or one of a million general stores, barbershops and taverns across this country.
It wasn't long before we all parted ways to head home to family, a little better for some quality time shooting the breeze.


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Reading the forum on your cell phone? There's an easier way. We've enabled a Tapatalk app that makes browsing the forum a whole lot easier. Check it out in the iPhone or Android store if you don't own it already.
Yeah, red tri-cam. Good size. And I prefer DMM Wall Nuts.And, DMan, why 5 locking biners, not just 3 and more non-locking?
Lockers ? I used to own two, lost one and never had a need for two again. It goes on my harness and comes off at the end of the day.
I would add a lightweight knife to the kit. I keep a small knife and tibloc on a biner that never leaves my harness.
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Phnom Penh
Earth : Asia : Southeast Asia : Cambodia : Mekong Lowlands and Central Plains : Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia, located at the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap rivers.
Despite being liberated from the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese back in 1979, Phnom Penh has long remained a bit rough. However, things are improving, though roads remain shabby, traffic chaotic and electricity strained.
The city is slowly gaining high rise buildings and traffic lights. The beauty that made it a 'Paris of the East' before 1970 is unfortunately well hidden, though there are few French colonial buildings remaining. The wide boulevards and promenades envisaged by the French have become parking spaces and market stalls: pedestrians are not in favour.
The most pleasant strolling is to be done along park-like riverfront, which hosts cafés and restaurants aplenty. Standard tourist sights are few, which makes the city a place to relax, watch the streetlife and absorb the local color. Phnom Penh is worthwhile destination for those who enjoy an 'edge' experience and can brave the downsides of reckless driving, noise, dust and perennial theft. Touts and beggars abound, the worst area is the tourist strip along the river. Be firm, though a polite refusal should work.
Older or disabled beggars will be happy to accept 500 riel, though bear in mind that anyone old enough to have survived the Khmer Rouge has had a tough life. Generosity here is no bad thing. Some older people may even invoke a blessing on you for your gift. Cocky young kids demanding a dollar should be not be encouraged.
Weather is hot and humid, with showers in the late afternoon in the rainy season.
In 1975 Phnom Penh was choked with up to 2 million refugees from the war between the then U.S.-backed government and the Khmer Rouge. The city fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, who completely emptied it of civilians and allowed it to crumble for several years. The city's small class of skilled or educated professionals was systematically murdered by Pol Pot, or driven into exile. Cambodia's developing economy and institutionalised corruption have concentrated wealth into a new rich class that now supports Phnom Penh's new fancy hotels and restaurants. Increasing tourist numbers are also bringing about improving tourist infrastructure.
All of Phnom Penh's streets are numbered, some major thoroughfares also have names. The scheme is simple: odd-numbered streets run north-south, the numbers increasing as you head west from the river, and even numbers run west-east, increasing as you head south (with some exceptions, e.g. the west side of what was Boeung Kak lake). House numbers, however, are quite haphazard. Don't expect houses to be numbered sequentially in a street; you might even find two completely unrelated houses with the same number in the same street.
Get in
By plane
Phnom Penh International Airport [70] (IATA: PNH | ICAO: VDPP) is the largest airport in Cambodia, located 7 km west of the city. The following airlines operate service to/from Phnom Penh:
AirAsia (Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok), Asiana Airlines [71](Seoul-Incheon), Bangkok Airways (Bangkok), Cambodia Angkor Air (Ho Chi Minh City, Siem Reap), China Airlines (Taipei), China Eastern Airlines (Kunming, Nanning), China Southern Airlines (Beijing, Guangzhou), Dragonair (Hong Kong), EVA Air (Taipei), Jetstar Asia Airways (Singapore), Korean Air (Seoul-Incheon), Malaysia Airlines (Kuala Lumpur), Shanghai Airlines (Shanghai), SilkAir (Singapore), Thai AirAsia (Bangkok), Thai Airways International (Bangkok), Tiger Airways (Singapore), Vietnam Airlines (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Vientiane)
The new terminal is a thoroughly pleasant and modern facility, and features a post office, bank (including ATMs), restaurants, duty-free shop, newsstand, tourist help desk, and business centre. As of April 2011 there is no more departure tax to be paid at the airport - all taxes are now incorporated into the ticket price. Taxis from the public taxi stand at the airport cost a flat US$9, and tuk-tuks cost US$7 officially. If you are willing to lug your bags outside the airport fence you can catch a tuktuk into town for US$5. While taxis might be a safer option, it's better to avoid them as the drivers are arrogant and tend to not return change. Tuk-tuk drivers are a lot more friendly and more flexible. For visitors on a budget without a lot of luggage, it's worth catching an official motorcycle taxi for US$2.
Duty Free prices in Cambodia seem to be horribly inflated - alcohol and cigarettes cost cost half as much at shops and supermarkets in the city, like the Lucky Supermarket - so stock up on alcohol (put it in your checked baggage due to liquid restrictions for carry on baggage) and cigarettes before you come to the airport. For example, 1L of Absolut Vodka is US$21 at the airport, and US$11 at supermarkets in the city. Electronics are also overpriced (but at least they're the genuine article) - and check out some of the antique shavers that are still on sale!
By bus
Cambodia is finally aiding its development through improving its roads. Since around 2008, asphalt has been blazing trails into unexpected and remote places making for faster, year-round accessibility. The main highways that run on either side of the Tonle Sap from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, Battambang, Sisophon and Poipet (for Thailand) are both well paved and in good condition.
The quality of buses runs the gamut, with the less desireable buses being a few dollars cheaper than more comfortable options. Safety standards are low and crashes (not always reported) are common with both 'quality' and 'cheapie' bus line alike.
The rather chaotic bus station at the southwest corner of the Central Market is the base for buses run by Mekong Express, Phnom Penh Sorya Transport, Capitol Tours, and GST Express.
Tickets are available at the bus station. Guesthouses and travel agents throughout the city will also arrange tickets for a $1-2 commission.
Some passengers have experienced valuables being stolen from their luggage when stored out of sight.
International services
Borders are not open 24 hrs: some night buses will wait at the border until it opens. If entering Cambodia, watch out for visa scams and avoid the Kumho Samco if coming in from Vietnam.
Buses arriving from Pakse enter the city at night (around 7:30 to 8:00 pm) via Monivong Ave, leaving tired and emotional travellers prone to being preyed on tuktuk touts. Watch out!
Domestic services
Phnom Penh is the domestic transport hub and direct buses run to just about every provincial capital, including far flung town like Pailin, Samraong, Banlung and Sen Monorom. The crowded peasant mover Paramount Angkor specializes in out-of-the-way towns, avoid it for intercity travel as it's the same price as more genteel companies but does not guarantee a seat.
More frequently visited destinations include:
By boat
Ferries connect Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and usually take 6 hr; tickets for foreigners cost US$32. Many, but not all, of these ferries offer the option of sitting on the roof, which makes for a much more scenic, albeit less comfortable ride than the bus; take sunblock, a hat, and enough water to last you for several hours just in case the boat gets stuck.The boat leave 7:30am. Fast boats leave every morning around 8AM from Chau Doc in Vietnam's Mekong Delta and take 5 hr to reach Phnom Penh. The boats make the return journey the same day and leave Phnom Penh around 1PM arriving in Chau Doc in the early evening.
There are 3 choices of boat to Chau Doc:
By train
There is a limited freight service running from Kampot to Phnom Penh on the Southern Line. Track repair is underway and passenger services on both the Northern (to Battambang and Poipet (for Thailand) and Southern (to Kep, Kampot and Sihanoukville) Lines are set to resume by 2013. Bamboo trains operate in various towns along the line, though the one most pushed to tourists is just outside Battambang.
Get around
Phnom Penh's main streets are in good shape; however some smaller streets and footpaths are rutted and pot-holed, clogged with garbage, stagnant water, parked motos, sleeping people and building materials. Many smaller streets bear either no or misleading signage, however Phnom Penh is logically laid out (see orientation) and navigating is not too difficult.
France's Cambodian colony was acquired late and largely neglected. Historic, colonial architecture was limited to start with and has largely decayed. The Grand Post Office Building, Central Market and Raffles Le Royal Hotel are notable exceptions. Generally any building in good condition, old or new, will be behind a big big wall and security guards.
The Khmer Riel is not used for any large purchase. Prices for anything more substational than a plate of rice will be quoted in US Dollars. Money changers are pleniful near the central market and display their rates on boards. The Cambodian Central Bank maintains the Riel at approximately 3900 - 4100 to the dollar, be wary if rates are outside this range.
Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). Electronics will likely fail within days, fake watches abound, especially in the Central Market. Only upmarket places will accept plastic (normally with a 3% surcharge). Changing dollars into Riels is generally unnecessary, though the parsimonious will notice a small benefit. Small purchases with notes above US$20 can cause problems, though vendors will manage. Do not worry if a vendor runs off with your large note, they are finding change not robbing you. Torn, damaged, or old series US currency may not be accepted.
There are plenty of ATMs. They dispense US dollars and accept international cards. Canadia Bank ATMs are fee-free, as is the ATM is inside the Mekong Bank at 220 Sisowath Quay. ANZ Royal bank charges US$4 per transaction. Union Commercial Bank plc charges US$2 per transaction (Feb 2011). Cashing traveller's cheques can be problematic; even major banks may refuse to exchange traveller's cheques of above US$100. Popular tourist buys include silk, silverware, handicrafts and curios (including Buddha figures), and made-to-order clothes (which are often of good quality). If you want to support businesses that are noted for supporting Cambodia's culture and heritage, look for the Heritage Friendly Business Logo from Heritage Watch, an organization that promotes the preservation of Cambodia's cultural legacy.
DVDs and CDs in Phnom Penh have a 20-30% failure rate; sunglasses from street vendors do not give full UV/polarized protection and will likely disintegrate within 2 weeks.
Antiques and home decor
The Cambodia Antiquities Law (1996) bans the sale, purchase and export of Cambodian antiques, and since 1999 the United States has banned their import into that country. Consequently, most of the "antiques" sold in Cambodia are reproductions.
The pirated books that children try sell for US$5 for need to be haggled down (they buy them for US$1). Spend a minute or so leafing through before buying, quality varies: pages can be in the wrong order or missing, or the book is not that described on the cover.
Clothes and accessories
Throughout the city, but especially in the Russian Market, there are tailors willing to make custom made clothes. A man can get a medium quality custom made shirt for US$12, or a high quality custom made shirt for US$15. Definitely worth the purchase, as you'll never have a shirt that is as pefect of fit.
Handicrafts and souvenirs
Street 178, just north of the National Museum, is known as Artist Street and has many interesting boutiques.
Russian Market - jewellery
There are many booths that sell fake jewellery and synthetic gemstones in the Russian Market. Don't buy from a booth which cannot issue a certificate of warranty. Make sure you are entitled to a full refund if the item is different from what you were told. Don't buy a 5-carat, 'flawless' chicken-blood ruby for US$500 and think that you have hit the jackpot. If your instinct tells you that the price is too cheap, remember the saying, "If it's too good to be true then it probably is". Buy jewellery and gemstones from a reputable shop established for many years, with a reputation to protect. Cambodian Handicraft Association, (CHA), No 54 & 56, St 113, (across from the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum), [73]. Handmade silk goods, jewellery, accessories and clothing made by women disabled from polio and landmines. If you ask, you will also be able to tour the shop, meeting the female workers and seeing where they study English. The products are absolutely beautiful and the majority of the silk is sourced from a local village, where it is all hand woven. The costs of running the project are covered by selling the artists' work in the shop, they receive no grants or aid.
Phnom Penh offers some interesting culinary treats not found elsewhere in the country. These include French-influenced dining and Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian dishes. Pizzas, banana pancakes and fried rice are always easy to find. The riverfront hosts everything from stand-up stalls to fine French bistros. Stalls likely lack hygienic practices: eating peeled fruit and vegetables and anything uncooked may have unintended consequences.
McDonald's is not yet in Phnom Penh; Kentucky Fried Chicken is. Central Market is a hawker food centre, food is cheap and the street eateries add to the area's bustling atmosphere. Beggars can make eating there uncomfortable.
Exotic treats
Duck embryo eggs are sold at the southwest corner of Sokun Mean Bun St. (St. 178) and Norodum Blvd. (in front of the green SSN Bldg.) inside a big high school compound - together with days old hatched chicks (in its wholeness) to frogs (everything is also eaten, not just the legs) dipped in batter and deep fried. Skewered and grilled pigs ears, chicken claws, and gizzards are sold in the Central Market. Pigs intestines are also sold at US$1 to 100 gm, cut into pieces and splattered with sauce. Grilled small crabs, lobsters, prawns are also sold in the market. Chicken feet are also sold in the open air restaurants as you turn to the right at St. 154 as you go northbound from Monivong Blvd.. Bugs and other insects, especially the grasshopper, spider/crab, and worm type and some life stages such as pupae stage are sold along Sothearos Blvd from 184 St. to 178 St..As of this time, it can't be described specifically because the vendors refused to be interviewed or their merchandises' pictures taken.
Take the cross river ferry to sit on mats and eat cheap hawker food while watching the sunset over the city. The most recommended on this type are the Muslim restaurants at 86 St. north of Phnom Penh Hotel. Halal Foods Mumina on the north side of the street (in front of South China Airlines office) is recommendable. The guesthouses around this area are one of the cheapest also offering US$4 per room per night. This area although in the farther north end is favored mostly by the French and Brits for their embassies are located nearby.
Places to hang out after dark include Street 104, Street 278, and Street 108 around the Street 51 corner, which all feature restaurant bars, hostess bars, and guesthouses.
Phnom Penh has a wide variety of accommodation, ranging from budget guesthouses (about US$5-20) through good quality mid-range hotels (US$20-50) to extravagant palaces (with extravagant prices to match).
A good range of accommodation is available around the city. The budget traveller centre was the area still known as Lakeside, near the now filled in Beoung Kak lake. The colony of guesthouses has been decimated but not eradicated. Remaining businesses are desperate for clients, which makes prices very cheap. Guesthouses 10 and 11 still exist and offer rooms from US$4/night and US$3/night respectively. Services include such laundry, internet, money exchange, ATM and restaurants, including an excellent Indian.
Street 258 (near the Cambodia/Vietnam Friendship Park), Street 51 (near Wat Langka) and Streets 111 and 172 also have some good budget options.
There are a number of 4-5 star hotels in Phnom Penh.
Spas and salons
Stay safe
As in any big city, be wary walking alone at night.
Daytime bag-snatching is common; western and local women are the main targets. When riding in a tuk-tik keep your bag toward the middle of the tuk-tuk to protect against bag snatching. When on a motorcycle taxi, keep your bag between you and the driver or in front of the driver. DO NOT carry/wear your bag on your back!
Scammers and conmen sometimes work the tourist areas such as the riverfront, Hun Sen Park and the Sorya Mall. A group of scammers operate around the riverside, targeting travelers. Their basic method is to start a conversation, make friends, claim to have a relative who is soon moving to your country of origin, and invite you to dinner at their house. Once you get there, they will apparently try to trick you into playing a rigged card game for money, and if that fails then they will give you stories about sick relatives and ask money for that instead.
Stay Healthy
As in most developing world countries, avoiding cold, uncooked food is desirable to prevent stomach upsets. Salads are also suspect at times. Ice is usually OK as it is made from filtered water in factories.
Unsafe sex
There are dozens of girlie bars catering to foreigners in the cross-streets back from the river. Freelance girls are picked up at establishments like Heart of Darkness, Sharkys Bar, Riverhouse Lounge and Martini Bar.
HIV is carried by about one in eight of Cambodia's female sex workers. NGOs have got the HIV rate in the general population down from around 2% to around 1% over the past decade but emerging liberal behaviour coupled with ignorance of safe practices may reverse this gain.
Condoms are strongly advised.
Cheap SIM cards for GSM phones are available on almost any major street. A vendor should have an activated test card to be used to make sure your phone will operate on that network. Calls between mobile networks can be be spotty and Skype calls from abroad to mobiles in Cambodia are sometimes dropped, so be prepared to redial frequently. It's now easier than ever to buy a sim card in Phnom Penh, just have your passport and expect to pay no more than US$2. There are plenty of phone stalls around central market. Mobitel has the best coverage around the whole of Cambodia and seems to have cheaper calls. Be warned when sending and recieveing international SMSs and calls as they only have about a 50% success rate of being received.
WiFi is available in most of the hotels that welcome western tourists and backpackers. Speed and reliability is on par with neighboring countries. There is no shortage of Internet cafés in Phnom Penh. Most are in the 1,500 riel/hour to 2,000 riel/hour bracket (~US$0.50)
Wireless and wired connections for laptops are available at a number of outlets. Most five star hotels provide high-speed broadband access, but at a premium. A number of cafés along Sisowath Quay including the Foreign Correspondents' Club (expensive), Fresco Café (under the FCC, also expensive), K-West Café (at the Amanjaya Hotel), the Jungle Bar and Grill, and Phnom Penh Café (near Paragon Hotel) and Metro Cafe (free).
The main, impressive French colonial style post office is located at the intersection of Street 13 and 102, roughly between Wat Phnum and the Riverside, also selling postcards. Another branch is more downtown, at the intersection of Sihanouk and Monivong Boulevard. Both offices offer full range of postal services, including PO boxes for affordable prices, and are open 7 days a week.
Postage for international postcards is 3,000 riel (as of March 2012) - very nice picture stamps are available, philatelists: ask for mix and match options. Letters and especially parcels to Phnom Penh's post office frequently go missing, or are not made available to recipients for up to one year.
Bring your largest pair of sunglasses: Phnom Penh is dusty year-round (even in the wet season) and riding in tuk tuks means a lot of the dust in your eyes.
Embassies and consulates
Ascertain that the doctor has a Western medical degree. If not, get out: local training is poor and treatment can be fatal. Local hospitals are generally basic, including Calmette Hospital - the city's best. A doctor's appointment should be made at one of the international clinics, which can also arrange transfer to a hospital in Thailand if necessary.
The cost of a blood test for malaria in Calmette Hospital is around US$27.50.
Get out
Sihanoukville, Battambang, and Siem Reap are within a few hours reach. Watch out for guesthouses profiteering on bus tickets. Several tour companies offer day-trips to Tonle Bati, which includes Ta Prohm, an Angkor-era temple not to be mistaken for the Angkor-area temple of the same name.
Rates at May 2012, from Mekong Imperial Int. Travel&Tours Co. Ltd. at #339 Sisowath Quay (Riverside) Tlf:0235550401/092341732/095793232, they do free pickup, it could be 1US$ cheaper to buy directly from the bus company station.
Slow boats to Vietnam (US$9-10) are a scenic alternative to the bus (US$10, 6 hr). The 8 hour journey begins at 7.30AM with a minibus to the boat, which then goes to Chau Doc in Vietnam, stopping for an hour at the border for immigration and a change of vessel. Faster boats (US$10) to Ho Chi Minh City take around 6 hours and depart 3-7 times per day. The journey can be also stretched into a 2-3 day Mekong tour (US$40-60).
Prices May 2012:
Buses to Don Det (US$19, 12 hr) leave at 6:45AM. The 27 hour journey to Vientiane costs US$46 and takes four different buses. The first leg is on the Don Det bus. Once over the border you'll spend hours on cramped minibuses heaing to Pakse before the final strech to the capital. The border is slow and bureaucratic, with endless form-filling and small bribes ('fees') to officials, long walks hauling your luggage between windows (500 m), and no-one much to assist with enquiries. There have been reports of various problems on the onward journey to Vientiane, including Lao companies not honouring tickets sold in Cambodia to nocturnal groping.
Prices May 2012:
Through tickets to Bangkok (14 hr, US$15-26) are generally unproblematic. You will change buses at the border. Anything more than US$15 is a bit steep given that Phnom Penh to Siem Reap should cost US$5 and that Siem Reap to Bangkok should cost US$10.
Prices May 2012:


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DALLAS >> Kari Lehtonen had 37 saves, including some tremendous stops, for his first career postseason victory and the Dallas Stars beat the Ducks 3-0 on Monday in their first home playoff game in six years.
Dallas captain Jamie Benn skated out of the penalty box to score late in the first period, and 19-year-old rookie Valeri Nichushkin added a goal for the Stars in Game 3 of the best-of-seven series. The top-seeded Ducks won each of the first two games at home, both one-goal results.
Game 4 of the series is Wednesday.
Lehtonen, who held up through five Ducks power plays, had a kick save near the end of one of those in the final minute of the first period. That came right before Benn came out of the penalty box and scored the eventual winning goal.
Trevor Daley, the only Stars player left from their last playoff team in 2008, passed to Shawn Horcoff, who shot. The ricochet was knocked into the net by Benn with 35 seconds left in the first period.
It had been 2,162 days since the Stars last hosted a playoff game, May 19, 2008, a 4-1 loss to Detroit in the clinching Game 6 of the Western Conference finals.
Lehtonen had been 0-4 in the playoffs, including two losses with Atlanta in 2007, with a 4.58 goals-against average and .858 save percentage.
Benn had been penalized for hooking right after Daley was having words with Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf. The back-and-forth with Daley and Getzlaf carried into the second period, and they had to be separated in the opening minute — just before an eerie replay for Ducks defenseman Stephane Robidas when he broke his right leg again.
Robidas had to be helped off the ice after his leg bent awkwardly when a sliding Ryan Garbutt of Dallas undercut him. The team said the latest fracture was just above the one he sustained Nov. 29 while with Dallas. He didn't play again until being traded to the Ducks last month.
Nichushkin, 19, took a pass from Tyler Seguin late in the second period and scored on a one-timer from the top of the right circle through the legs of Frederik Andersen, the rookie goalie who stopped 66 of 71 shots in Anaheim.
Garbutt added a goal in the third period.
It was a frustrating night all around for the Ducks and their dynamic scoring duo of Getzlaf and Corey Perry. Late in the second period, Getzlaf and Perry were exchanging punches with different Dallas players during the same stoppage in play.
Antoine Roussel delivered a left to Getzlaf, who'd already thrown a punch and was wearing a half-visor to protect the stitches from taking a puck to the face in Game 1. Meanwhile, Stars defenseman Alex Goligoski and Perry were going at it.


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The Case for Transcription in UC, Part 1 of 3
Consider how much more effectively we'd collaborate if we could consume this recorded audio and video content nearly twice as fast, understand it better and find it more easily (or at all).
One of the benefits of working in the CTO's office at a large company is that the role affords one the opportunity to ask: what if? The subject of today's geek dream relates to the timely, inexpensive, accurate transcription of audio and video content and the implications this would have on the way we collaborate in the enterprise.I was recently reviewing a few talks from a conference I attended in February and was struck by how efficiently I was able to consume the video content. My conclusion (and I use this word loosely) is that the interactive transcripts accompanying the talks help me consume the media 30-40% faster than if I'd just been watching the video and possibly with better recall.
It got me to wondering why, with so much content produced inside and outside the corporate walls in conversations, presentations, speeches and the like, we haven't seen more commercial implementations of innovative transcription solutions. In anticipation of the comments and emails highlighting the great work already being done in this area, I will point out that there have definitely been some very interesting innovations in this area, but, in my mind, not nearly enough.
I'll speak to the question of transcription in three blog posts. This, the first, addresses why transcription even matters in the corporate context. The second and third posts will outline the state of transcription today, some areas where I believe we need to take the technology and how it can be meaningfully applied to UC.
On why transcription matters...certainly there's no shortage of valuable corporate audio content. I don't think I need to expand on this point too much; simply consider what would happen if every call, presentation and video conference could be easily accessed after the fact with appropriate security and retention policies applied to the recorded media files (think Enterprise DVR).
The case for reading the transcripts of this content vs. simply listening to it seems to be pretty straightforward: consider how much more effectively we'd collaborate if we could consume this recorded audio and video content nearly twice as fast, understand it better and find it more easily (or at all).
The math is simple--we read nearly twice as fast as we listen, assuming we want to read every word (an author's dream but not necessarily reality).
The average American adult reads prose at 275 to 350 words per minute while most of us speak at around 150-165 wpm. Slide presentations and speeches are often at 100-120 words per minute. Auctioneers and most true Bostonians speak at 200-250 wpm.
Exhibit A: consider the unscientific example of the book-on-tape. It recently took me about 20 hours to read the Fountainhead vs. the 32 hours I'd have needed to spend listening to the complete audio-book. As an aside, if you're interested in the ultra-nerdy video book report I created (yes, with a Flip camera), email me.
While recorded audio can, of course, be time-compressed, listeners start to fail (as measured by comprehension and retention) at around 250 wpm. Similarly, reading rates can be improved through various techniques such as Rapid Serial Visual Presentation.*
Naturally, most of us will also skim and skip ahead when reading, a process that's much more difficult with video and audio content (when was the last time you used the well-intended five-second-advance feature in your voicemail system?). This offers even more opportunities to increase consumption speed with text vs. recorded audio.
While there doesn't appear to be conclusive evidence in the academic literature, most researchers seem to suggest that reading produces higher comprehension and recall rates than listening. I propose two simple ideas to support this hypothesis: re-reading and fewer disruptions.
With text, we frequently slow down or go back and re-read text that's complex or that we might have missed due to a distraction. With audio streams, the pace for the listener is set by the speaker.
While not impossible, reviewing, slowing down and skipping ahead are more time consuming with audio and video streams and require the use of a pointing device (finger on pointing device, touch screen, remote control or telephone keypad) with most media playing applications.
I would also argue, though somewhat less convincingly, that it's easier to get distracted when watching a video or listening to an audio stream. This is based on my own experience; I find that, despite my often vehement assertions to the contrary, I sometimes toggle over to another application (most often email) in the middle of a video or--gasp--a slow conference call.
I wouldn't do this when reading a blog or article. If I did switch away from the article, however, I would return to the same spot from which I'd departed (or maybe a bit earlier), not try to convince myself that I'd actually continued reading during my break (as is often the case when we switch away from recorded or live audio and attempt to background-process).
Why do we multi-task more when listening vs. reading? We feel inefficient. Because we're consuming content more slowly, we delude ourselves into thinking that we can take on more without impacting our understanding of the primary track. Although few admit it and many are trying to stop it, many of us multi-task this way (consider how taxing this is on conference call efficiency).
In addition to being faster, reading edges out listening for retention and recall due to the ability to quickly and easily review content missed and the higher concentration given to reading vs. listening in real world use cases.
There are other benefits to text-based representations of audio content. Most notably, the content can be indexed, searched and easily linked-to. While this is technically possible with audio and video recordings as well (think key-word spotting), text based search and folksonomies based on linking and tagging are becoming nearly ubiquitous in the modern enterprise.
In fact, my web searches in support of this post led me to this 1984 TED Talk by futurist and MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negraponte where, with a brilliantly recursive or perhaps Darwinian twist, he anticipates the interactive transcript feature that allowed me to discover his speech. To find the pertinent segment of his talk (assuming you're time constrained), simply click on the red "Open interactive transcript" link on the right side of the page and search for and click on the words "text-synch." As it did for me, I'd guess that this experience will instantly illustrate for you why the interactive transcription is necessary in the enterprise.
Just as we're seeing a burgeoning world of real-time search and analytics on the public Internet (e.g., all things Twitter), timely access to transcripts of presentations and conversations (bearing certain challenges in mind, of course) can also help define and associate conversations going on throughout the organization. One obvious example is in the contact center, where keyword spotting applications promise to identify the zeitgeist, helping management better identify challenges (scope of service outages) and opportunities (slip-ups by competitors).
I'll expand more on this notion in the third part of this post.
* * * * * *
In my mind, the case for having transcripts for recorded conversations, meetings (audio and video), presentations and speeches is clear. In the next installment of this post, I'll address some key challenges with realizing this vision and some capabilities that are available today. In the third part, I'll outline some areas of innovation that I believe would directly benefit users of UC.
If you are aware of examples of the effective use of transcription technologies today or ideas of where we should be pushing, please email me or comment on this post. I'm sure there's lots of creative work and innovative use cases that I haven't yet come across or considered.
* As an aside, I'm determined to increase my reading rate so I can consume more in the same amount of time (as my mother helpfully points out, "If you buy things on sale, you get more stuff for the same amount of money"). I've been been constructing a few experiments to measure the results of various new methods I'm trying and will report on this separately.Consider how much more effectively we'd collaborate if we could consume this recorded audio and video content nearly twice as fast, understand it better and find it more easily (or at all).


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ReleasesBack to
Gene Harris
Soul Symphony was the last album cut by the Three Sounds, of which pianist Gene Harris remained the only original member. Bassist Andy Simpkins left after 1968's wonderful Elegant Soul LP, and was replaced on this date by "the Skipper," Henry Franklin. This date is a direct follow-up to its predecessor, in that Monk Higgins returns to orchestrate and arrange a large string group; he co-produced the set with Dee Ervin. Also returning from the previous session is the criminally under-recognized vibraphonist/percussionist Alan Estes. In addition, David Duke and Art Maebe alternately played French horn, Buddy Collette guests on flutes, Freddy Robinson appears on guitars, and the Specialties Unlimited -- vocalists Clydie King, Mamie Galore, and Alex Brown -- are utilized. In other words, other than a second drummer, Soul Symphony shares a nearly identical setup with Elegant Soul. But as the music attests, that's no crime, particularly when it's this earthy. A key difference between these sides is that on this date Higgins wrote or co-wrote all five of these selections with Ervin. The feel, despite the strings and additional musicians, is a bit grittier. There are no covers of pop tunes, and blues, gospel, and funk (via the Horace Silver definition of the term) are thus the sole modus operandi in these tunes.
The set kicks off with the title cut, a nearly 26-minute opus by Higgins. It may be called a symphony, but it comes off more as a suite, with numerous interludes, asides, and thematic structures all feeding into and off of one another, almost all of them rooted in the I-IV-V blues progression. Harris is just dynamite throughout; his in-the-pocket runs, popping rhythmic accents, and tags where ostinati feed into vamps are infectious. Franklin plays electric bass here, adding more weight to Carl Burnett's crackerjack rimshots and breaks. "Repeat After Me" is a pure gritty soul rave-up; Harris articulates the theme as Franklin plays a choppy riffing bassline. Collette is overdubbed on his flutes, lending a whimsical air as the strings enter, but Harris brings it right back down to the floor, turning it into a call-and-response gospel number -- almost. Another winner is the all too brief "Popsicle Pimp," with its rolling funky street swagger and imaginative use of the French horn to almost cinematic effect. Ultimately, Soul Symphony is a fine -- if not quite as imaginative -- follow-up to Elegant Soul. That said, it may lend itself to the favor of jazz fans more because of its blues roots, and Harris' vampy improvising style here comes right out of the hard bop fake book. It is also evident that this set was as far as Harris and Higgins could take this format -- it was the third orchestral album in a row for the Three Sounds (the first, 1968's Coldwater Flat, was recorded with the Oliver Nelson Orchestra and featured loads of brass), and showcased the trio's basic sound in many different settings. Harris would dissolve this group and make it as a solo act. But Soul Symphony is far from a throwaway; it's a deeply grooved-out tough record with all of the Three Sounds magic on full view, and is highly recommended to any fan of soul-jazz or beat hunting. Soul Symphony was finally released in America on CD in 2008 as part of Blue Note's Rare Groove series.] ~ Thom Jurek


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Gregg DeGuire/WireImage; Chelsea Lauren/Getty (2)
Kelly Rowland has always loved to experiment with her hair. (Just check out this throwback photo from 2002!) From bangs and blonde highlights to a crazy kinky curl, the Celeb Style Council member's mane changes quite a lot. And her latest hair transformation is one we didn't see coming: a sleek, swingy bob.
The singer debuted her shorter do at New York Fashion Week, and it's a complete 180 from her longer highlighted strands. She sported a center part with her fresh blunt cut. And for those of you who are questioning whether or not this look is a wig (we thought it might be too!) we're pretty sure it's not, because her hairline is visible. We think she was just ready to get rid of the extensions.
Rowland has been busy hitting the NYFW scene and sharing snaps of all her looks along the way. Check out some below and tell us what you think of her new hair look in the comments!
–Brittany Talarico


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This story appears in the February 2009 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Just two weeks before he died, Charles Darwin wrote a short paper about a tiny clam found clamped to the leg of a water beetle in a pond in the English Midlands. It was his last publication. The man who sent him the beetle was a young shoemaker and amateur naturalist named Walter Drawbridge Crick. The shoemaker eventually married and had a son named Harry, who himself had a son named Francis. In 1953, Francis Crick, together with a young American named James Watson, would make a discovery that has led inexorably to the triumphant vindication of almost everything Darwin deduced about evolution.
The vindication came not from fossils, or from specimens of living creatures, or from dissection of their organs. It came from a book. What Watson and Crick found was that every organism carries a chemical code for its own creation inside its cells, a text written in a language common to all life: the simple, four-letter code of DNA. "All the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form," wrote Darwin. He was, frankly, guessing. To understand the story of evolution—both its narrative and its mechanism—modern Darwins don't have to guess. They consult genetic scripture.
Consider, for instance, the famous finches of the Galápagos. Darwin could see that their beaks were variously shaped—some broad and deep, others elongated, still others small and short. He surmised (somewhat belatedly) that in spite of these differences, all the Galápagos finches were close cousins. "Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds," he wrote in The Voyage of the Beagle, "one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends."
This, too, was inspired guesswork. But by analyzing the close similarity of their genetic codes, scientists today can confirm that the Galápagos finches did indeed descend from a single ancestral species (a bird whose closest living relative is the dull-colored grassquit).
DNA not only confirms the reality of evolution, it also shows, at the most basic level, how it reshapes living things. Recently, Arhat Abzhanov of Harvard University and Cliff Tabin of Harvard Medical School pinned down the very genes responsible for some of those beak shapes. Genes are sequences of DNA letters that when activated by the cell make a particular protein. Abzhanov and Tabin found that when the gene for a protein called BMP4 is activated (scientists use the word "expressed") in the growing jaw of a finch embryo, it makes the beak deeper and wider. This gene is most strongly expressed in the large ground finch (Geospiza magnirostris), which uses its robust beak to crack open large seeds and nuts. In other finches, a gene expresses a protein called calmodulin, which makes a beak long and thin. This gene is most active in the large cactus finch G. conirostris, which uses its elongated beak to probe for seeds in cactus fruit.
In another set of islands, off the Gulf Coast of Florida, beach mice have paler coats than mice living on the mainland. This camouflages them better on pale sand: owls, hawks, and herons eat more of the poorly disguised mice, leaving the others to breed. Hopi Hoekstra, also at Harvard, and her colleagues traced the color difference to the change of a single letter in a single gene, which cuts down the production of pigment in the fur. The mutation has occurred since the beach islands formed less than 6,000 years ago.
Darwin's greatest idea was that natural selection is largely responsible for the variety of traits one sees among related species. Now, in the beak of the finch and the fur of the mouse, we can actually see the hand of natural selection at work, molding and modifying the DNA of genes and their expression to adapt the organism to its particular circumstances.
Darwin, who assumed that evolution plodded along at a glacially slow rate, observable only in the fossil record, would be equally delighted by another discovery. In those same Galápagos finches, modern Darwins can watch evolution occur in real time. In 1973, Peter and Rosemary Grant, now of Princeton University, began annual observations of the finch populations on the tiny Galápagos island of Daphne Major. They soon discovered that the finches in fact evolved from one year to the next, as conditions on the island swung from wet to dry and back again. For instance, Daphne Major initially had only two regularly breeding ground finches, one of which was the medium ground finch (G. fortis) that fed on small seeds. When severe drought struck the island in 1977 and small seeds became scarce, the medium finches were forced to switch to eating bigger, harder seeds. Those with larger beaks fared better and survived to pass on the trait to their offspring.
Another shift took place after a competitor arrived in 1982: the large ground finch(G. magnirostris), which also eats large, tough seeds. For many years the two species coexisted, and in 2002 both became unusually abundant. But then drought struck, and by 2005, only 13 large and 83 medium ground finches remained alive. Remarkably, instead of adjusting to the drought by eating bigger seeds as they had 28 years before, the surviving medium finches experienced a marked reduction in the size of their beaks, as in competition with their larger cousins they struggled to carve out a niche by surviving on very small seeds. A finch with a smaller beak is not a new species of finch, but Peter Grant reckons it might take only a few such episodes before a new species is established that would not choose to reproduce with its parent species.
The variation seen among the Galápagos finches is a classic example of "adaptive radiation," each species evolving from a common ancestor to exploit a special kind of food. Another famous radiation took place on a different set of islands—islands of water rather than land. The lakes and rivers of Africa's Great Rift Valley contain some 2,000 species of cichlid fish that have evolved from a few ancestors, some in an instant of geologic time. For example, Lake Victoria, the largest of those lakes, was completely dry just 15,000 years ago. Its 500 diverse species of cichlid have all evolved since then from a handful of species of uncertain origin. Like the finches, cichlid fish species have adapted to diets in different habitats, such as rocky or sandy patches of lake beds. Some species eat algae and have densely packed teeth suited to scraping and pulling plant matter, while others feed on snails and have thick, powerful jaws capable of crushing open their shells. And what gene is responsible for thickening those jaws? The gene for the protein BMP4—the same gene that makes the Galápagos ground finch's beak deep and wide. What better evidence for Darwin's belief in the commonality of all species than to find the same gene doing the same job in birds and fish, continents apart?
In The Origin of Species, Darwin tactfully left unspoken how his theory would extend that commonality to include humankind. A decade later he confronted the matter head-on in The Descent of Man. He would be delighted to know that a certain gene, called FOXP2, is critical for the normal development of both speech in people and song in birds. In 2001 Simon Fisher and his colleagues at the University of Oxford discovered that a mutation in this gene causes language defects in people. He later demonstrated that in mice, the gene is necessary for learning sequences of rapid movement; without it, the brain does not form the connections that would normally record the learning. In human beings, presumably, FOXP2 is crucial to learning the sophisticated flicker of lips and tongue with which we express our thoughts.
Constance Scharff of the Free University of Berlin then discovered that this very same gene is more active in a part of the brain of a young zebra finch, just when the bird learns to sing. With fiendish ingenuity, her group infected finches' brains with a special virus, carrying a mirror-image copy of part of the FOXP2 gene, which stifled the gene's natural expression. The result was that birds not only sang more variably than usual but also inaccurately imitated the songs of adults—in much the same way as children with mutant FOXP2 genes produce variable and inaccurately copied speech.
If natural selection is survival of the fittest (a phrase coined by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, not by Darwin), then sexual selection is reproduction of the sexiest. It has the delightful effect of generating weapons, ornaments, songs, and colors, especially on male animals. Darwin believed that some such ornaments, such as stags' antlers, helped males fight each other for females; others, such as peacocks' tails, helped males "charm" (his word) females into mating. It was, in truth, an idea born of desperation, because useless beauty worried him as an apparent exception to the ruthlessly practical workings of natural selection. He wrote to the American botanist Asa Gray in April 1860 that "The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!"
His notion of sexual selection was politely ignored by most Victorian opinion, which was mildly scandalized by the thought of females actively choosing a mate, rather than submitting coyly to the advances of males. Even biologists dropped the idea for roughly a century, because they became obsessed with arguing that traits evolve to suit the species, rather than to suit the individual. But we now know Darwin was right all along. In all sorts of species, from fish and birds to insects and frogs, females approach the males with the most elaborate displays, and invite them to mate.
Darwin did not speculate much on why a female would choose an ornamented male. It is a question that still excites biologists, because they have two equally good answers to it. One is simply fashion: When females are choosing gorgeous males, other females must follow suit or risk having sons that do not attract females. The other is more subtle. The tail of a peacock is an exhausting and dangerous thing for the bird to grow. It can only be done well by the healthiest males: parasites, starvation, and careless preening will result in duller plumage. So bright plumage constitutes what evolutionary biologists call an "honest indicator of fitness." Substandard peacocks cannot fake it. And peahens, by instinctively picking the best males, thereby unknowingly pass on the best genes to their offspring.
In one of his flights of fancy, Darwin argued that sexual selection might account for human racial differences: "We have seen that each race has its own style of beauty. … The selection of the more attractive women by the more powerful men of each tribe, who would rear on an average a greater number of children, [would] after the lapse of many generations modify to a certain extent the character of the tribe." The jury is still out on that particular idea, but there are hints that Darwin might be at least partly right.
Take blue eyes. Darwin, like many Europeans, had blue eyes. In early 2008, Hans Eiberg and his colleagues at the University of Copenhagen announced that they had found the genetic mutation common to all pure blue-eyed people. The mutation is a single letter change, from A to G, on the long arm of chromosome 15, which dampens the expression of a gene called OCA2, involved in the manufacture of the pigment that darkens the eyes. By comparing the DNA of Danes with that of people from Turkey and Jordan, Eiberg calculated that this mutation happened only about 6,000-10,000 years ago, well after the invention of agriculture, in a particular individual somewhere around the Black Sea. So Darwin may have gotten his blue eyes because of a single misspelled letter in the DNA in the baby of a Neolithic farmer.
Why did this genetic change spread so successfully? There is no evidence that blue eyes help people survive. Perhaps the trait was associated with paler skin, which admits more of the sunlight needed for the synthesis of vitamin D. That would be especially important as people in less sunny northern climates became more dependent on grain as a food source, which is deficient in vitamin D. On the other hand, blue-eyed people may have had more descendants chiefly because they happened to be more attractive to the opposite sex in that geographic region. Either way, the explanation leads straight back to Darwin's two theories—natural and sexual selection.
Intriguingly, the spelling change that causes blue eyes is not in the pigment gene itself, but in a nearby snippet of DNA scripture that controls the gene's expression. This lends support to an idea that is rushing through genetics and evolutionary biology: Evolution works not just by changing genes, but by modifying the way those genes are switched on and off. According to Sean Carroll of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, "The primary fuel for the evolution of anatomy turns out not to be gene changes, but changes in the regulation of genes that control development."
Perhaps more scientists should have realized this sooner than they did. After all, bodies are not assembled, like machines in factories; they grow and develop, so evolution was always going to be about changing the process of growth rather than specifying the end product of that growth. In other words, a giraffe doesn't have special genes for a long neck. Its neck-growing genes are the same as a mouse's; they may just be switched on for a longer time, so the giraffe ends up with a longer neck.
Just as Darwin drew lessons from both fossil armadillos and living rheas and finches, his scientific descendants combine insights from genes with insights from fossils to understand the history of life. In 2004, Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago and his colleagues found a 375-million-year-old fossil high in the Canadian Arctic—a creature that fit neatly in the gap between fish and land-living animals. They named it Tiktaalik, which means "large freshwater fish" in the local Inuktitut language. Although it was plainly a fish with scales and fins, Tiktaalik had a flat, amphibian-style head with a distinct neck, and bones inside its fins corresponding to the upper and lower arm bones and even the wrists of land animals: a missing link, if ever there was one. It may even have been able to live in the shallows or crawl in the mud when escaping predators.
Equally intriguing, however, is what Tiktaalik has taught Shubin and his colleagues in the laboratory. The fossil's genes are lost in the mists of time. But, inspired by the discovery, the researchers studied a living proxy—a primitive bony fish called a paddlefish—and found that the pattern of gene expression that builds the bones in its fins is much the same as the one that assembles the limb in the embryo of a bird, a mammal, or any other land-living animal. The difference is only that it is switched on for a shorter time in fish. The discovery overturned a long-held notion that the acquisition of limbs required a radical evolutionary event.
"It turns out that the genetic machinery needed to make limbs was already present in fins," says Shubin. "It did not involve the origin of new genes and developmental processes. It involved the redeployment of old genetic recipes in new ways."
Though modern genetics vindicates Darwin in all sorts of ways, it also turns the spotlight on his biggest mistake. Darwin's own ideas on the mechanism of inheritance were a mess—and wrong. He thought that an organism blended together a mixture of its parents' traits, and later in his life he began to believe it also passed on traits acquired during its lifetime. He never understood, as the humble Moravian monk Gregor Mendel did, that an organism isn't a blend of its two parents at all, but the composite result of lots and lots of individual traits passed down by its father and mother from their own parents, and their grandparents before them.
Mendel's paper describing the particulate nature of inheritance was published in an obscure Moravian journal in 1866, just seven years after The Origin of Species. He sent it hopefully to some leading scientists of the day, but it was largely ignored. The monk's fate was to die years before the significance of his discovery was appreciated. But his legacy, like Darwin's, has never been more alive.


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Bolton Wanderers 1-2 Middlesbrough
Spanish striker Kike's second-half strike saw Middlesbrough bounce back from their defeat at Leeds to beat Bolton 2-1 at Macron Stadium.
Wanderers had taken the lead through a Craig Davies penalty, but Middlesbrough hit back through a spot-kick of their own just before half-time, scored by Grant Leadbitter, and Kike's effort 12 minutes from time saw them seal the win.
The victory leaves Boro with two wins from three games, having lost 1-0 at Leeds at the weekend, while Bolton remain on one point after slumping to their second loss of the campaign.
The home side were without Dean Moxey after he failed a late fitness, which meant that Tim Ream partnered former Middlesbrough defender David Wheater at centre-half.
Meanwhile, former Manchester City midfielder Adam Clayton made his full debut for Boro, after signing from Huddersfield last week.
The visitors started the brighter, with Kike looking threatening from the off as the summer signing from Murcia had three unsuccessful early attempts at goal.
But, despite dominating possession for the majority of the first half, Middlesbrough did not work Adam Bogdan in the Wanderers goal.
The Trotters then won a penalty in the 27th minute. Davies was put through on goal before being taken down in the area by Seb Hines, which saw the Boro defender lucky to escape with a yellow card. Davies then blasted the ball into the top right corner to put the home side into the lead.
The visitors had a penalty claim of their own as Lee Tomlin tumbled over inside the box, although referee Stephen Martin turned that appeal down.
However, it was not long after before Middlesbrough were lining up a spot-kick of their own as their former captain Wheater handled the ball in the area. Current skipper Leadbitter then stepped up and slotted the ball past Bogdan to equalise on the stroke of half-time.
Bolton had chances to retake the lead after the break with Lee Chung-yong and then Liam Feeney seeing their attempts go just wide.
Boro substitute Adam Reach then almost made an immediate impact off the bench. His powerful volley from distance was brilliantly tipped over the post by Bogdan though.
However, there was nothing the Bulgarian stopper could do about the visitors' next chance. Kike was put through before delightfully dinking the ball over the onrushing Bogdan to send Middlesbrough into the lead.
Wanderers manager Dougie Freedman reacted by sending on striker Jermaine Beckford for the final 10 minutes.
That decision looked to have had the desired effect as the former Leeds forward put the ball into the back of the net from close range, but the goal was disallowed after the referee deemed their was a foul in the build up.
Kike had a late chance to wrap the match up late on as he was put through on-on-one with Bogdan once more. The 24-year-old missed the opportunity, taking the ball out of play with the goal at his mercy, but it mattered little as Boro then comfortably held out for the win.
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U.S. stocks are closing with meager gains as traders assess a round of corporate deals and a recent spike in oil prices brought on by the conflict in Iraq.
Covidien jumped 21 percent after the Ireland-based medical device manufacturer agreed to be bought by Medtronic. Williams Companies rose 19 percent after saying it would expand its stake in Access Midstream Partners.
Indexes moved between small gains and losses for much of the day before ending slightly higher.
The Dow Jones industrial average inched up five points to 16,781 points Monday.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index edged up a point to 1,937. The Nasdaq composite rose 10 points, or 0.2 percent, to 4,321.
Bond prices were flat. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note held steady at 2.60 percent.


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Case study on river management: Kinabatangan
The Kinabatangan floodplain is the largest remaining forested floodplain in Sabah and the lower stretches of the Kinabatangan River contain some of the few surviving freshwater swamp rainforests and oxbow lakes in South-East Asia.
These evergreen swamp rainforests are of global significance for biodiversity conservation.
Socio-economic importance
The river, used for transport, trade and communication, has been the lifeblood of local people for centuries. Forest products such as edible birds' nests and bees' wax, elephant ivory and hornbill casques were once traded. Nowadays there are about 20 palm oil mills in the Kinabatangan basin, which process the produce from rapidly expanding oil palm plantations. The oil is used in the production of margarine, soap, livestock feed, lubricants, and many other industrial and household products.
Large-scale commercial logging and small-scale farming began along the Kinabatangan in the early 1950s. This provided the people of Sabah with income and employment. Several forest reserves were created in the 1970s, but these were quickly reallocated for agricultural use.
The lower Kinabatangan, with its unique biodiversity, is also increasingly recognized as a destination for ecotourism and local people are becoming involved in this activity.


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Poland, a country the size of New Mexico, is in north-central Europe. Most of the country is a plain with no natural boundaries except the Carpathian Mountains in the south and the Oder and Neisse rivers in the west. Other major rivers, which are important to commerce, are the Vistula, Warta, and Bug.
Democratic republic.
Great (north) Poland was founded in 966 by Mieszko I, who belonged to the Piast dynasty. The tribes of southern Poland then formed Little Poland. In 1047, both Great Poland and Little Poland united under the rule of Casimir I the Restorer. Poland merged with Lithuania by royal marriage in 1386. The Polish-Lithuanian state reached the peak of its power between the 14th and 16th centuries, scoring military successes against the (Germanic) Knights of the Teutonic Order, the Russians, and the Ottoman Turks.
Lack of a strong monarchy enabled Russia, Prussia, and Austria to carry out a first partition of the country in 1772, a second in 1792, and a third in 1795. For more than a century thereafter, there was no Polish state, just Austrian, Prussian, and Russian sectors, but the Poles never ceased their efforts to regain their independence. The Polish people revolted against foreign dominance throughout the 19th century. Poland was formally reconstituted in Nov. 1918, with Marshal Josef Pilsudski as chief of state. In 1919, Ignace Paderewski, the famous pianist and patriot, became the first prime minister. In 1926, Pilsudski seized complete power in a coup and ruled dictatorially until his death on May 12, 1935.
Despite a ten-year nonaggression pact signed in 1934, Hitler attacked Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Soviet troops invaded from the east on Sept. 17, and on Sept. 28, a German-Soviet agreement divided Poland between the USSR and Germany. Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz formed a government-in-exile in France, which moved to London after France's defeat in 1940. All of Poland was occupied by Germany after the Nazi attack on the USSR in June 1941. Nazi Germany's occupation policy in Poland was designed to eradicate Polish culture through mass executions and to exterminate the country's large Jewish minority.
The Polish government-in-exile was replaced with the Communist-dominated Polish Committee of National Liberation by the Soviet Union in 1944. Moving to Lublin after that city's liberation, it proclaimed itself the Provisional Government of Poland. Some former members of the Polish government in London joined with the Lublin government to form the Polish Government of National Unity, which Britain and the U.S. recognized. On Aug. 2, 1945, in Berlin, President Harry S. Truman, Joseph Stalin, and Prime Minister Clement Attlee of Britain established a new de facto western frontier for Poland along the Oder and Neisse rivers. (The border was finally agreed to by West Germany in a nonaggression pact signed on Dec. 7, 1970.) On Aug. 16, 1945, the USSR and Poland signed a treaty delimiting the Soviet-Polish border. Under these agreements, Poland was shifted westward. In the east, it lost 69,860 sq mi (180,934 sq km); in the west, it gained (subject to final peace conference approval) 38,986 sq mi (100,973 sq km).


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Celestron Telescopes Barlow Lenses
Barlow lenses offer an easy, economical way to increase the magnification range of your eyepieces, and Celestron carries two of these highly useful lenses. A Barlow lens doubles the magnifying power of your eyepiece by doubling its effective focal length. For example, an 18mm eyepiece used with a 2x Barlow lens would have the magnifying power of a 9mm eyepiece. Its like having two eyepieces in one!
If youre looking for an affordable way to achieve high-power viewing of the moon and planets, double stars and even close-up views of terrestrial subjects, Celestron 2x-1-1/4" Barlow lens is the answer. Barlow lenses mount into either your telescopes focuser or visual back.
Celestron Telescopes 2x1 - 1/4" Ultima Barlow Lens (item # 93506):
This Ultima Barlow lens 2x 1 - 1/4 " is, without doubt, the #1 choice among amateur astronomers who want the best performance from their optics. Celestron Ultima Series Barlow (2x - 1-1/4") is an air-spaced, 3-element apochromatic design with a 27mm clear aperture. Ultima Barlow Lens features a very high quality, fully multicoated design. Amazingly compact and lightweight, its just 5 ounces and 2.75" in length.
Unfortunately our dealer agreements with Meade, Coronado, Celestron and Orion only permits us to ship their telescopes and accessories to addresses inside the United States of America.
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posted by Thom Holwerda on Tue 6th Jan 2009 13:48 UTC
"The developers behind the Debian Linux distribution are preparing for the upcoming release of Debian 5, which is codenamed Lenny. The decision to move forward with the release follows a contentious vote over whether to permit the inclusion of binary blobs in the new version of the distribution. Consensus coalesced around a controversial proposal to "assume blobs comply with the GPL unless proven otherwise."


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Go to: Main Navigation
Go to: Content
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At the 11th Annual "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" hosted at Siemens in West Chicago, hundreds of girls got a chance to exercise their brains and collaborative skills in a fun environment.
17-year-old twins further research into antibiotic resistant bacteria, using a computer-aided approach to researching different compounds.
Read More
Two high school seniors from Albuquerque have developed a computer model of tree growth that could help fight climate change.
Three Long Island students win scholarships totaling $50,000 in the annual Siemens Competition.
Two New Jersey students share $6,000 scholarship prize for research "On the Distribution of Discriminants Over a Finite Field."
Three Long Island teenagers come one step closer to winning the Siemens Competition for their research in healthcare.
Over 560 proteins involved in the transmission of Dengue virus between humans and mosquitoes identified by Florida student.
Twenty of the nation's most high-achieving high school students were invited to the George Washington University for the 15th annual Siemens Competition.
Student receives scholarship for cancer research inspired by aunt's breast cancer diagnosis.
Ruchi Pandya chosen as a regional finalist for the Siemens Competition for her research in health diagnostics.


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Montana trappers will be allowed to trap wolves in the 2012-2013 wolf season. It's the first time wolf trapping will be allowed in the state. In addition, the bag limit of wolves during the hunting and trapping season has been raised from one to three.
Anti-hunting and anti-trapping groups opposed the legislation and fought to keep it from passing, but the decision by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission signals the commissioners believe trapping and higher bag limits will be effective in managing rising wolf populations in the state. The vote was 4-0 in favor of the new rules, with one commissioner abstaining.
"The idea that we're going to wipe out wolves through hunting is fairly far-fetched," Commissioner Dan Vermillion of Livingston told the Missoulian. "All of this is consistent with Montana's wolf-management plan … The goal is not to exterminate wolves, it's to manage them."
The wolf hunting season will begin Sept. 15 and run through Feb. 28. Trapping will be allowed beginning on Dec. 15. Archery hunting will be allowed during the two weeks prior to the Sept. 15 opening.
For more on the ruling, read Mike Dennison's story on the Missoulian website.


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A healthier future thanks to analytics
CrescentCare improves community outreach and patient outcomes through better data analysis
When you think of data analysis, what's the first thing that comes to mind: Relevant data? Ease of use? Or perhaps interactive reports and dashboards? Chances are you're not thinking about the fight against HIV, or meal services for cancer patients, or health care services for women.
Seema Gai is working to change that.
As CIO at CrescentCare, Gai is spearheading efforts to improve medical care and better serve community members in New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana. A key element in this effort is SAS, which helps administrators and medical professionals make smarter decisions about critical services.
Extending its reach through a full spectrum of care
Formerly known as the NO/AIDS Task Force, CrescentCare formed 30 years ago to provide health services and compassionate support to thousands of people affected by HIV and AIDS. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, community-based health care centers like CrescentCare can become Federally Qualified Health Centers.
"Once we earned that designation, we became eligible for additional funding to expand our scope of services," Gai says. With that opportunity came an increased need for business intelligence and analytics to explore patient data and prepare reports for internal and external customers.
CrescentCare now provides everything from primary medical care, dental, OB/GYN and behavioral health services to counseling, housing, transportation and meal services. Now the organization can provide more vital programs and assistance to clients from traditionally underserved communities in the area.
"Prior to becoming a Federally Qualified Health Center, we had a specific food bank and food pantry program for HIV patients," Gai says. "But now we're able to provide these services and meal deliveries to cancer patients, too."
As programs and services expanded, so did the volume of patients – and subsequently, the amount of data accumulated. CrescentCare now has 6,000 clients across its programs, and it connects with more than 20,000 people annually through HIV-prevention efforts. From these efforts, the agency collects data from many sources, like electronic health records, insurers, case management services, support services and a risk management system.
CrescentCare used a traditional reporting tool, but the agency needed a better way to manage its growing data, understand key factors influencing patient care and intervene as early as possible. "We have nine different locations, and each location offers a combination of services," Gai says. "We needed to consolidate data for each service – which comes from different information systems – and build a better data management infrastructure. So we turned to SAS Visual Analytics. Now we can analyze and explore our data through interactive, visual reports."
We engage patients from different angles, with the goal of empowering them to overcome or better manage their health and wellness challenges. And it all revolves around interactive data exploration and the ability to make sense of complex data. Seema Gai CIO CrescentCare
'They're not just data points – they're people'
CrescentCare uses SAS to study its patient population, determining how to meet clients' needs and what improvements could be made.
"When we talk about managing and analyzing data, we're talking about human lives – promoting healthy habits, taking preventative measures, and caring for the sick and disadvantaged," Gai says. "They're not just data points – they're people."
CrescentCare primarily uses SAS Visual Analytics for patient reporting and discovery, and SAS Enterprise Guide for data preparation and regulatory reporting. Both technologies are firmly integrated into the agency's business intelligence and analytics strategy.
One group that CrescentCare evaluates is the "lost to care" patient population – individuals who stopped attending medical appointments or services. "If an HIV patient hasn't shown up to a clinic in a certain number of days, we can detect this absence and determine how to reconnect with them and encourage them to continue their care services," Gai explains.
CrescentCare collaborates with local agencies to quickly determine if an HIV patient moved outside its coverage area, transferred to another care facility or passed away. And the organization can reconcile that information so that it's readily available to the appropriate care teams.
Guiding patients on a path to wellness
Since CrescentCare began using analytics to track data pertaining to the health of HIV patients, it has seen promising results. From 2011 to 2015, viral load suppression rates steadily increased from 69 percent to 81 percent. This suggests that patients are increasingly following their care regimens and responding to medical treatments.
"We identify high-risk patients based on lab and vital sign values, and the patients are classified as high need on provider schedules on a monthly basis," Gai says. "Through this process, nurses initiate conversations with patients at the point of care, helping them avoid contracting other illnesses like hepatitis C or HIV."
This system also helps CrescentCare encourage patients to better manage their existing health issues. "We looked at our database and identified the four top chronic conditions in our community: HIV, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease," Gai says. "Then we built a model with SAS Enterprise Guide for each and applied a scoring algorithm, which categorized patients as high, medium or low needs." CrescentCare shares that information with nurses and case managers to proactively guide each patient's care plan and help patients work on self-management goals.
"Patients get encouragement and support," Gai says. "We can connect them to the ideal specialists, counselors and advocates based on their individual needs. Essentially, there's an entire care team available to each patient to help them on their journey to a healthier life. We engage patients from different angles, with the goal of empowering them to overcome or better manage their health and wellness challenges. And it all revolves around interactive data exploration and the ability to make sense of complex data."


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Check the balance of your Verizon Wireless or Alltel gift card. Please note that only Verizon Wireless gift cards can be redeemed for online purchases or bill payment at VerizonWireless.com. At this time, Alltel gift cards must be redeemed at a retail location. Visit our store locator to find a store near you.
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This week's presenter: Daniel Lashof , Director, Climate and Clean Air Program, NRDC
The conversation: Cutting Carbon at Power Plants
Join us the first and third Wednesday of each month at noon eastern to hear climate and clean energy specialists talk about the latest climate change issues. Assign these half-hour calls to your students for a chance to connect with top scientists, analysts and political leaders discuss climate and clean energy solutions.
E-mail your questions prior to each call: firstname.lastname@example.com
All calls are available as podcasts, 24 hours after the event
Call-in number: 1-712-432-3100; Conference Code: 253385
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