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The Human Brain Project is combining wet anatomy with next-gen scanning, imaging, and networking to give neuroscience a revolutionary new tool - the globally accessible online mind.
The lobby of UCLA'S Brain Mapping Center is a lofty place, an airy, two-story atrium with a polished concrete floor and a narrow balcony that circles the room like an observation deck. It's a quiet, almost meditative space that in the bright Los Angeles sunlight seems as normal as a library. Only farther in do things get weird.
Walk through an unmarked door and a short hallway leads south, past walls crammed with pictures of human brains. A few of them - scanned, digitized, colored, and sliced - have bright lines drawn through their centers that look like bundles of insulated wire. Others, whose blue depths swirl with red and green, resemble shriveled Christmas ornaments. One, seen through the cutaway skull of a live surgical patient, has been affixed with dozens of tiny, numbered squares - troop deployments on a Pentagon war map.
The images end at a room filled wall-to-wall by a giant white cube. A 2-foot-hole bores through the center of the cube. A man's legs stick out of the hole.
Next door, in the control room, a researcher leans into a microphone. "Ready?" she asks the man. "Follow the hands." Inside the cube, wearing a $40,000 pair of virtual reality goggles, Brian (not his real name) sees a pair of videotaped hands lift and move their index fingers; he copies the movements. As he does, a wavy-patterned lilac oval appears on the control-room computer screen. It's a picture of Brian's brain - specifically, one of 92 cross sections recorded along each of three axes by the cube, a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner.
The cross section - a thin, 3-D slice - is the starting point of a project that aims to radically change the way we understand the brain. Where MRI technology spins water molecules to get high-resolution pictures of soft tissue, fMRI scans - which can be done with the same $3 million machine - record moment-by-moment variations in blood-oxygen levels, which in turn reflect neural activity. Each computer-generated slice contains a hundred thousand voxels, or 3-D pixels. Combine the information in all the voxels and slices and you get a complete picture of the brain in action. Your brain - live, on screen.
With the genome cracked and the universe mapped to its distant reaches, the brain has become one of science's final frontiers: humankind's own black box. We may know how stars burn and black holes collapse, but we still know only scraps about our own heads: why we can remember 10 phone numbers and not a hundred, or why we can recognize faces effortlessly but computers can't. Back in the 1500s, the famous Flemish anatomist Vesalius first guessed that the important parts of the brain weren't the fluid-filled pockets near its core - previously believed to house essential "animal spirits" - but the fleshy folds and wrinkles all around. (Of course, he missed a few calls, too: He asserted that our brains were awash in "fulginous excrement" that needed to be purged.) Since then, we've picked apart countless cortices - and even diced Einstein's brain in search of clues - but have found only tantalizing hints as to why some people are geniuses and the rest of us are not.
"We're like Martians looking at a car," says UCLA neuroscientist John Mazziotta, the 52-year-old director of the Brain Mapping Center. "We've driven the car, and we've taken the car apart, but we don't know how one part is related to the other." All we know is that somewhere in the homogeneous folds of our cortex, tiny aberrations drag us from normalcy into schizophrenia. Or, in rarer cases, endow us with seemingly superhuman powers: the ability to factor huge numbers, memorize a telephone book, or perceive smell as vividly as a dog does.
The past three decades of poking and prodding brought only the realization that the brain was even more complex than we'd originally suspected: 10 billion neurons and 60 trillion synapses communicating through an elaborate system of electrical and chemical signals. Worse, by the 1980s, a number of studies implied that each of our brains might have unique circuitry, with memory and language wired differently from person to person. If that were the case, comparing brains would be like trying to compare anthills, each with different tunnels and streams of information. It was possible, scientists agreed, that understanding the brain could involve mapping not a single, incredibly complex world, but mapping several billion different worlds, many of whose landmarks had yet to be found.
It was a little embarrassing. Stumped by our own brains! But during the past few years, the trackless wilderness has started yielding to advances in neurotechnology. With the help of MRIs, positron emission tomography scanners, and optical and electromagnetic signal imagers, researchers have been able to view brains down to their synapses. More important, they've peered inside the brain as it functions. With fMRI scans, introduced in 1991 by researcher Jack Belliveau and his colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital, neurologists have begun to tease out the connections between different parts of the organ: how we remember, make associations, concentrate. Meanwhile, transcranial magnetic stimulators have enabled doctors to zap areas of the brain with magnetic pulses sent through the skull - causing zappees to see flickering lights or experience twitches. Stimulating a spot on the left or right frontal lobe has more recently been tried as a treatment for depression, with some success.
"These new techniques," says Michael Huerta, associate director of neuroscience research at the National Institute of Mental Health, "are providing windows on the essence of human beings."
The upshot is that the secrets of our thoughts and talents aren't just hidden in dead cells under a microscope but in our own buzzing, rushing minds. This, at least, is the belief of Mazziotta, who, along with fellow UCLA neurologist Arthur W. Toga, is among nearly 200 researchers currently undertaking one of the largest projects in the history of neuroscience: an effort so vast and far-reaching that it's known simply as the Human Brain Project.
Launched in 1993 by the National Institute of Mental Health and four other federal agencies, the Human Brain Project aims to build an omnidimensional, computerized database that synthesizes all the subspecialties of neurological research, from the shape of synapses up through chemistry and gross anatomy. The unique effort, which is designed to help everyone from doctors treating epilepsy to researchers testing new Alzheimer's drugs, is being carried out at 19 universities and 6 hospitals in 10 countries.
The brain is medicine's greatest black-box mystery - 3 pounds of squishy superparallel electrochemical computer, capable of 20 million billion calculations per second.
The whole project may take decades, but Mazziotta and Toga's contribution at UCLA will be finished much earlier, around 2004. Their plan, underwritten by one of the first Human Brain Project grants, is to build a map that quantifies the range of variation in the human brain - and helps researchers determine whether we do, indeed, think differently.
Once finished, the UCLA brain map will represent the most comprehensive picture ever produced of the "normal" (read: healthy) human brain. Researchers who now spend days searching for information will be able to go online and find it in minutes. Physicians who have no ready basis of comparison for a patient's puzzling brain scan will be able to call up 3-D images, check for discrepancies, and target the problem. "We're trying to build a representative atlas of the human brain, similar to the one we might have for the Earth," Mazziotta says. "Except instead of looking up average rainfall and population, we'll be looking up average blood flow and neurotransmitter density."
To get the core data, Mazziotta and Toga enlisted 7,000 volunteers, ages 17 to 80, all of whom remain anonymous. Of these, 5,800 provided DNA samples and all completed background questionnaires and submitted to a 50-minute anatomical MRI test. It was, by far, the largest number of scans ever assembled - merely compiling the information took the better part of a decade, with the last scan completed in October 2000. And the process isn't over.
While the first part of the project looked at anatomy, part two, slated to begin this summer, is an attempt to map brain function. A series of nine fMRI scans will be performed on 1,000 of the volunteers, charting their brain activity. The part two information will then join the 100 terabytes of data already in storage on six servers inside UCLA's Reed Building - enough to encode all the books in the Library of Congress five times over.
Ultimately, the atlas will be wedded to the even larger Human Brain Project, along with hundreds of other studies. And as more and more segments of the HBP go online - there is no official launch date yet, since the effort is constantly evolving - neuroscientists will be able to review and combine increasing amounts of data, enhancing their ability to diagnose and fight disease. Doctors could use the data to plan surgeries, or to simulate how a Parkinson's drug affects brain cells, or, in the far future, to monitor regions where patients are likely to develop a problem.
As the vast effort grinds on, what's already certain is that the HBP will dramatically accelerate our ability to decipher brain disorders - and understand how we think. "Within 10 years," Mazziotta predicts, "these databases will have become an integral part of how neuroscience is done."
The Human Brain Project has never lacked for ambition. Back in 1982, the Department of Defense approached a UC San Diego anatomist named Robert Livingston with a wad of cash and a plan to build a computer to evaluate brain function - so that soldiers could be tested for mental strengths, among other things.
"That was the seed - futuristic stuff," says Stephen H. Koslow, Human Brain Project coordinator and associate director of neuroinformatics for the National Institute of Mental Health. Livingston organized a three-day conference at Texas A&M in College Station, which Koslow attended. "We realized that, given the complexity of the brain and the size of the image files, the computer resources you'd need would be enormous," Koslow recalls. "This was 1982, and there was just no way to do this." Soon after, Livingston gave up on the project, and so did the Army. But by 1993, things had changed. Although the military's hoped-for "ability-meter" remained far out of reach, computers were gradually making it possible to connect isolated areas of brain research. Databasing the brain suddenly seemed not just possible, but vital.
"We were getting buried by data," Koslow says. Mazziotta agrees. "Back in 1993, nobody wanted to do this work. 'This is just computer stuff,' they said. 'We want to keep working in the lab.'" In the end, frustration drove Mazziotta to the project: He couldn't stand how unwieldy brain research had become. "Have you ever been to a neuroscience conference?" he asks. "Two thousand articles are presented. You walk away with a huge book of papers, but there's no way to combine studies into something you can use."
In the Human Brain Project's first year, NIMH endowed it with a mere $2.5 million. But as computing power increased, so did the HBP's viability. Last year's budget, a still-meager $12 million - less than one-twentieth of the federal allotment for the Human Genome Project - represented an all-time high, with millions in additional funding brought in from scientists' private grants. HBP supporters believe the money could not be better spent. "It's the fastest way to understanding the brain," Koslow says.
Not everybody buys the rhetoric. Some critics who applaud its goals think the project is overblown and unrealistic - the wishful thinking of neurologists seduced by technology. The creation of a giant pool of freely shared neurological data? Not in a field where competition is stiff and a researcher's results are his only currency. "I've heard some people snicker," admits George Ojemann, a professor of neurological surgery at the University of Washington. And though it's not easy to find neurologists who will publicly fault the effort, some still have doubts.
"A brain database is built on the notion that if you throw all this data together, it will somehow naturally sort itself out in a way that's helpful," argues New York University professor of neural science Tony Movshon. "It's not a bad idea in principle, but in practice it's a complete shot in the dark. I'm just afraid that there's going to be less to this than meets the eye."
So where does the truth lie? The new millennium could be a time of cures and technology-brokered self-understanding. Machines might chart our thoughts; depression might be cured with surgical cortex tweaks; love might be quantifiable. Maybe - and maybe not. There are levels of complexity to the brain that we've only begun to comprehend, let alone manipulate. For starters, the 3-pound organ contains more possible neural pathways than there are atoms in the visible universe - enough to allow us to perform some 20 million billion calculations per second. And while we know that complicated states like self-consciousness arise from this tangle, we don't know which of the billion-billion-billion possible paths combine to create them. Jim Brinkley, a research professor in the University of Washington's Structural Informatics Group, echoes a common sentiment: "Next to databasing the brain, sequencing the human genome is a trivial undertaking." Mazziotta compares the project to "trying to figure out all of the universe and how it interacts."
Of course, this is exactly what makes the HBP so appealing. In an age when we've solved Fermat's last theorem and peered by telescope back to the Big Bang, few things remain as ripe for exploration as the brain. We've already seen the impact of imaging technology, which in the past year has brought us closer to a cure for Alzheimer's and deepened our understanding of schizophrenia, dyslexia, and alcoholism. If it all works out, the HBP may yet save us from, or deliver us to, ourselves.
It's early afternoon and I'm alone in Mazziotta's upstairs office, waiting. The room, like Mazziotta himself, is sleek and a little impersonal. There's a blond-wood desk, a polished concrete floor that he fought the university to get, and a book on architecture by Frank Gehry. The book is called Gehry Talks, and below the title someone has written "too much."
"Gehry wrote that," Mazziotta tells me, coming in with a white lab coat draped over his arm. He sits down and eyes a cup of soup on his desk; judging by its glutinous sheen, it's been waiting awhile. He and Gehry are something like friends, it turns out, although Mazziotta is reluctant to say more. The architect even consulted the doctor about designing a building that somehow approximates a brain.
"Not literally," Mazziotta says. "Just conceptually."
Mazziotta has the no-nonsense look one would want in a neurologist. He's been on call for two days and hasn't had much sleep - but seems perfectly, almost preternaturally, unaffected. He excuses himself to return a call about a woman whose brain is hemorrhaging. I bury my nose in a lurid red-and-black textbook titled Brain Mapping: The Disorders.
Figuring out the brain is like trying to do a crossword puzzle of unknown shape and pattern, whose thousands of clues are hidden around the globe. First there's the matter of finding the clues (how are neurons arranged in the brain?). Then there's the problem of finding answers that force you to look for more clues (why are neurons so densely packed in the cerebellum?). Finally, there's the challenge of answering the hardest clues (how does the density of neurons affect our coordination, musical talent, speech?) in ways that lock all the pieces together.
For now, Mazziotta and his colleagues hope to sort out the link between structure and function - and how it varies. When two people connect the word "cat" to a picture of a cat, do their brains light up identically?
That they would isn't obvious. Cut open the body and the workings are fairly suggestive: a big pulsing heart, long ropy veins, a sacklike stomach full of food. Cut open the brain, and you get nothing. No sparking wires, no tiny gears - just a spongy gray-white ball of tissue that looks, in cross section, like a slab of strudel.
The brain's featurelessness mystified early neurologists, who managed to discover such structures as a visual cortex only by autopsying stroke and tumor patients. As Toga explains to me later, "When a patient had a stroke and suddenly couldn't talk, or could hear but not understand what was said to him, you'd wait until he died, then see which part of his brain blew out."
More recently, it has become obvious that our "featureless" brain actually contains a remarkable microstructure: billions of neurons and synapses stacked in maximally connective ways to create a kind of superparallel electrochemical computer. Every time we read, remember to buy milk, or count change, electrical impulses moving through our neurons launch chemical neurotransmitters toward any of thousands of synaptic receptor sites, which in turn may trigger other neurons. Interrupt the timing or pattern of these circuits, either deliberately (with an electromagnetic pulse), or inadvertently (with a tumor, stroke, or injury), and dramatic things happen. We're suddenly unable to read words on the page in front of us. We don't recognize ourselves in the mirror.
What interests neurologists like Mazziotta is whether normal people - those not suffering brain diseases or mental illness - have their computers wired up in mostly the same way. If they do, it will be possible to establish a normal range of brain appearance and responsiveness. "We're trying to get an idea of how much variation there is," Mazziotta says, as we head downstairs to the lab where the function tests are being prototyped. More important, Mazziotta says, he would like to find out how much variation matters. Consider the folds on the outside of the brain, he says - they're believed to be as unique as fingerprints. But no one knows if that makes a difference to brain function.
Mazziotta and Toga's atlas will be a good place to look for answers. The map could potentially tell doctors which areas of a psychotic patient's brain are failing to activate - or are firing too much. (The voices that a schizophrenic hears, for instance, appear as bursts of activity in the auditory cortex.) Ultimately, such a map may sort out the nature/nurture debate. Perhaps Einstein was a genius because he was born with extra-wide inferior parietal lobes, a feature that has been associated with mathematical skills. Or maybe he widened his lobes through heavy use, the way a weightlifter builds muscle.
The brain-function lab is a tiny, windowless room containing two computers and what looks like an optometrist's chair. Fumiko Maeda, a postdoc, stands inside, preparing for a trial run. The 1,000 volunteers for part two of the mapping project will return for fMRI tests, she explains, as soon as the University of California's human-subjects review board gives its approval, which is expected to happen this summer. The volunteers will repeat a series of exercises inside the cube, like associating a verb with whatever object they see projected in the VR goggles. Maeda hits a button to demonstrate the trial, and pictures flash by: a nose, a chicken, a cigarette, a deer, a ladder, a squirrel, a shirt, a goat. After 30 seconds, the test stops and the viewer is supposed to concentrate on a small black cross in the center of the screen - a control task to help researchers sift out so-called unspecific attentional effects.
At any time, the brain signal that corresponds to, say, a ladder/climb association is deeply buried in background noise: spurious electronic signals, the thunk of a patient's heartbeat, the neural spikes of fleeting thoughts, sounds, and sensations. As a corrective, researchers measure the brain at rest and subtract that image from the test image.
The brain atlas could sort out the nature/nurture debate. Was Einstein born with extra-wide inferior parietal lobes? Or did he widen them the way a weightlifter builds muscle?
"It's as if you're looking at the Earth but it's covered in fog," Mazziotta explains later, over lunch in the neurology department's Cafe Synapse. "We can dial the fog down a little and make out Everest. Dial it down a little more and we'll see the Himalayas and the Andes." What's different about brain fog, though, is that at some point, the more of it you dissolve, the less you can see of the brain's details.
The ladder/climb association, for example, shows up on the fMRI computer screen as a scattering of 3-D green blobs suspended in our brains like lava-lamp bubbles. If researchers dial down the fog - that is, lower the statistical threshold - they'd see more blobs, but fewer that they could be sure came from the association and not from a glitch in the imager's magnetic field or another extraneous problem.
Still, neuroscientists are encouraged. The verb-association test has been done in 14 languages, and similar parts of the brain have lit up each time. Evidence is mounting that at least some functions in normal brains universally appear in the same place.
People with associative disorders might not connect any verb to the word banana, even though they would recognize a banana and could easily describe one. This seems to indicate that the brain doesn't keep a separate network for ideas about bananas. It uses one network to make all associations.
What such a clue helps reveal is how the brain is organized. One might guess, for instance, that a part of the brain would be reserved for associating words with pictures, but would one expect to find a region responsible solely for recognizing human faces? Strangely, such a thing seems to exist. Patients with similarly located brain lesions suffer from prosopagnosia - a disorder that leaves them able to recognize everything except faces.
"What interests us about people with brain injuries," says Mirella Dapretto, a language-processing researcher collaborating with Mazziotta at UCLA, "is that they begin to show us how the brain categorizes things."
In some situations, the brain is radically adaptable, able to re-create damaged circuits and route them through wholly different areas. In one famous case in the 1840s, a man named Phinneas Gage continued to function fairly well after an explosion drove a tamping iron all the way through his skull. More typically, though, brain injuries leave permanent aftereffects. Patients become angrier (as Gage did), or more volatile, or abruptly docile, or emotionless. And then there was the British political journalist who recovered from a stroke but developed a sudden obsession with gourmet food. The effect became known as Gourmand Syndrome in 1997, after doctors analyzed 36 patients preoccupied with fine food, 34 of whom had injuries to the same brain region as the journalist.
This is especially eerie because it seems to show that some of our most personal likes and dislikes - our passions - might actually be hardwired. If this is true, it may mean that we will someday be able to fix the "defects" that make us who we are. It may also mean that we will eventually be able to trace our desire for a brain atlas back to its physiological roots: pinpointing the part of our brain that, for some reason, really likes maps.
Arthur W. Toga, associate director of UCLA's Brain Mapping Center and director of the university's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, is tweedier and more approachable than Mazziotta, and occupies an office that's distinctly less luxe. Slightly peeling wallpaper frames a room dotted with toys that have grotesquely oversized heads. "You want to see brains?" he exclaims at one point. "Do we have brains!"
As a collaborator on the atlas, Toga is responsible for assembling the thousands of high-res anatomical brain scans into a public-access database. Because the matter is thorny - how do you compare one patient's corpus callosum to another's? by thickness? total volume? curvature? - he has enlisted the help of the Mitre Corporation, a government-funded think tank best known for modernizing the Federal Air Traffic Control system. At Toga's behest, Mitre has proposed a five-year plan to create the brain-atlas search software, with a preliminary version of the database scheduled to go online within two years.
At first, the atlas would be limited to anatomy. The more challenging work of integrating the function studies will come later, according to Jordan Feidler, director of Mitre's artificial intelligence division. "The problem is there are so many subtle differences between functional studies," he explains. "Differences in the stimuli, in how the subject is supposed to respond, in how researchers analyze the data. Providing enough detail for someone to correctly interpret the data while keeping the overall complexity of the system manageable is hard."
Still, just being able to search a brain for anatomical anomalies could tell doctors a lot. If, as Mazziotta puts it, you were treating a 28-year-old right-handed woman with seizures, you could ask the database to compare the patient's scan with those of other 20- to 30-year-old right-handed women, and in that way isolate - with high statistical probability - the aberrant fold that was causing trouble.
Back in the office, Toga pulls up a row of brains on his laptop. They are blue, swirled with red and green, and in this instance they show the progression of Alzheimer's. An advancing seep of red scores the normally blue-green field.
"The red shows which areas of the cortex are losing the most tissue compared to a normal brain," Toga says. If it turns out that fMRIs can pinpoint Alzheimer's before it becomes symptomatic, doctors could start treatments earlier, should they become available. The scans might also provide a way for researchers to monitor the effectiveness of Alzheimer's-inhibiting drugs and establish in successive tests whether disease progression has slowed.
"These technologies raise big questions of personal identity. If you start to change your brain - modify it, enhance it, alter it - at what point do you know it's still you?"
Scientists could also use the database to test currently held beliefs about mental disorders and brain anatomy. Some psychiatrists, for example, associate schizophrenia with asymmetry in an area near the front of our cortex called the anterior cingulate gyms. It has already been found that in normal brains, a box drawn around the ACG is always wider than it is high. In schizophrenic brains, the box is taller than it is wide on the left side - the part of the ACG that controls attention processes.
Eventually, Toga and Mazziotta believe we'll enter a golden age of neuroscience, one that will see as many discoveries on the desktop as in the operating room."Fixing broken brains is a big part of brain research right now," says Mazziotta. "But there's a whole untapped world of taking normal brains and trying to make them really good. We have some tools now that can tell us how to do things that might improve the capacity of our nervous system. I view that as one of the great upcoming challenges for those of us studying the brain: not just to fix the problems, but to try to optimize the machinery."
Already, some researchers suspect that taking certain areas of the brain "offline" may foster savant-like talents. They've seen brain injuries that suddenly allow patients to draw things in perfect proportion, or vividly remember long-forgotten scenes from childhood. It may be that we'll someday employ precisely directed electric pulses to optimize a whole array of submerged talents, temporarily turning ourselves into perfect calculators - or, as Aldous Huxley predicted, perfect drones.
Needless to say, microadjusting our brains would pose philosophical problems that make the current eugenics debate look tame. "Who will control this technology? Who will have access to it?" asks Arthur Caplan, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist who heads a group on the ethical implications of brain imaging. "Will we see some people losing access to the technology while others zoom ahead?"
And who are we, if our most intimate characteristics turn out to be simply chemical? "These technologies are going to raise big questions of personal identity," predicts Caplan. "In Western culture, we are our brains. But if you start to change your brain - modify it, alter it, enhance it - at what point do you know it's still you?"
Neurologists are decades away from optimizing anything so precisely, and in fact they may never succeed. For starters, there's the variety problem. Sophisticated mathematical warping algorithms can overcome the problem of anatomic variability, and some basic functions have been convincingly pegged to certain brain regions, but it's not clear whether higher functions will be easy to locate, let alone generalize. We may be able to map what part of our brain responds when we see a cat and say "cat," but how do we map the conversation we're holding while we're really thinking about something else? Worse, we don't even know whether a function's location on the folds is what matters, or whether the critical correlation lies in the cyto- and chemoarchitecture, the brain's cellular and chemical microstructure. Then, too, there's the question of how things like the cytoarchitecture and the larger folds are related, if at all.
"To a certain degree, this is modern phrenology," Toga says. "We're looking at shapes and structures in the brain and claiming they mean something, but not long ago we were feeling the bumps on people's skulls and claiming the same thing."
For the moment, the rest of the Human Brain Project is no help, either. Mark Ellisman at UC San Diego is building a neuron database, and Gordon Shepherd at Yale is working on chemoarchitecture - but their work is still under way. And there are other problems to overcome: the matter of imaging technology itself, for instance.
The disappointing truth about many of the new imaging machines is that, while revolutionary, they are still far from refined. An fMRI scan measures blood oxygen, not neural firing - the actual microelectric signals that make brains run. Blood oxygenation levels are recorded over seconds, while neurons fire in milliseconds. When we see a picture of a cat, our brain may play a precise neural arpeggio, but an fMRI test will measure it as an averaged-out blob of activity somewhere in the center of the piano.
"Ideally, what you'd want is to combine different scanning techniques in a way that will give you the best spatial and temporal resolution," says John George, a Human Brain Project researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. One possibility is to use an EEG, which measures electrical activity in the brain in milliseconds (but can't locate it precisely). Combining the EEG with fMRI and MRI data might create a more complete diagram.
George, like fellow Human Brain Project scientist Peter T. Fox at the University of Texas, has been working on the problem of putting multiple measurements together. "It's hard," Fox says. "With fMRI you get distortions in the magnetic field whose echoes are hard to correct. In EEG, you have electrical impulses that are reflecting and canceling off a very complicated geometry, making the source of those signals - the active parts of our brain - almost impossible to locate. It's a huge mathematical problem."
Instead of a quick transition to a microadjustable brain, Fox envisions a gradual evolution. "The next step for us will be modeling the actual circuits and systems," he predicts. "That will be the next database."
Back in Berkeley a few days after talking to Mazziotta, I see a flyer taped on the door of a cafe. BURN NEURAL RUBBER, it says. LEARN TO SPEED UP YOUR BRAIN. FREE! At the appointed time, I show up at the corner of Cedar and Bonita streets. The seminar is being held in a large, mealy-carpeted room at the back of a church. Forty-eight plastic chairs sit in rows, but only two of them are occupied; as I sit down, one of the visitors grabs his backpack and bolts. Now it's just me, an elderly woman, and the instructor, a young man with a shaved head and a whispery, hypnotic voice. "Feel gooood," our tutor intones, swaying back and forth a little. "Feel like Einstein. Feel gooood."
Ridiculous, embarrassing, perhaps even a little obscene, and yet - I can't quite bring myself to leave. I do want to be able to think faster, or more clearly, or more consistently, or something. And so I stay in my chair, trying to feel good and thereby to will Einstein's spirit to this desolate space.
Einstein doesn't come. Instead I find myself thinking about the little lilac brain that I saw on one subject's fMRI scan. Somehow, over the eons, our brains evolved into that shape, that computer-generated, ever-evolving slice. There are a million bits of information in that slice, and it's still just a tiny part of a single brain recorded at a particular moment in time.
It makes me think of something Toga said as he handed me a copy of one of his papers. "If we had machines that were sensitive enough, we'd see that the brain is always changing: year to year, hour to hour, minute by minute. By the time you finish reading this article, your brain will already be different."


text:
IBM recently announced a new project aimed at using absorption cooling to keep data centres cool. The project, known as 'THRIVE', aims to combine silica gel with some of the heat produced by data centre servers to cool those same servers through a process that could reduce the amount of power used for cooling purposes. Although using heat to cool data centres seems counter-intuitive, the principal has proven effective on a small scale.
Absorption cooling uses heat to remove heat. How does that work? To understand the principle, it helps to first understand how vapour compression refrigeration works.
A traditional air-conditioning unit utilises a compressor, heat exchanger and gas or liquid refrigerant to remove heat from a given space. The refrigerant is sent to a compressor as it enters the space that needs to be kept cool, causing that refrigerant to absorb heat from ambient air. The refrigerant continues through tubing until it exits the refrigerated space, enters a heat exchanger and is forced to rapidly expand, thereby releasing all of the absorbed heat. It then cycles through to the compressor and starts the process over again.
Vapour compression refrigeration requires electricity to power compressors and pumps. You can imagine the power and cooling needs of the average data centre make this form of cooling an expensive proposition. This is the very reason data centre designers are constantly looking for new ways to keep spaces cool. Enter IBM and its absorption cooling process.
Absorption cooling involves no mechanical parts and, thereby, no electricity. The process begins with a solid material, like silica gel, that absorbs the desired refrigerant in its natural state. Heating the solid material releases the refrigerant, which is then free to absorb heat from ambient air. Removing the heat source from the solid material causes it to reabsorb the refrigerant, thereby completing the cycle.
Some of the heat generated by the data centre server can be used to drive the system so that no external electricity is necessary. The best part is that once you get the process started, the physics keep it going without much additional energy needed.
Long-Range Potential
IBM is most likely a long way from perfecting an absorption cooling method that would be viable for large-scale commercial purposes. Unfortunately, they have to overcome some fundamental laws of physics in order to create a system that is self-sustaining over time. However, they believe they are on the right track with the goals set for the THRIVE project.
IBM researchers claim that if their theories prove correct, these could lead to a reduction in data centre power consumption by as much as 65% by 2040. At the same time, they believe they can reduce fossil fuel consumption for data centre cooling purposes by as much as 18%. These are ambitious goals, to say the least. Accomplishing them would put IBM at the forefront of new power and cooling systems that could make the data centres of tomorrow more eco-friendly.
Source: IBM Research News – http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.ch/2015/07/crazy-science-easing-strain-on-energy.html

subset: commoncrawl


text:
One of the important jobs of a product owner is to communicate how a product or feature will work. It is vital that stakeholders, developers and designers understand what is being built. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by creating wireframe simulations of functionality.
The ability to show how a piece of functionality works for users is a valuable tool in the Product Owners box of tricks. It serves several functions:
Showing the development team what we are creating
Developers can use the wireframes to work out the data structure of the page. This allows them to plan API calls and data loading sequences. It helps to inform them of the complexity of the data they need produce for the front end.
Informing the design
The purpose of the wireframes that I create are to give an accurate indication of what will be on the page. It also shows how the user interaction with the pages will work. It is not to show the design of the pages or give an accurate representation of the look and feel of the functionality. The designer can however, use these wireframes to go to the next step and work up a prototype. The wireframe will help the designer to ensure that they have included all necessary elements.
Ironing out any issues or interface dead ends
Wireframes can be very useful for working out the user flow of an interface. You can link up various interface elements to show what happens when a user chooses a particular route. If you cover all possible options you can ensure that there are no choices that lead to dead ends or ambiguous pages.
Demonstrating to stakeholders
One of the most valuable reasons for producing wireframes is to show proof of concept to stakeholders. This can be internal business stakeholders or representatives of a client. Showing detailed prototypes or designs can lead to viewers concentrating on the appearance of the software, rather than the functionality being demonstrated.
Using sketchy, stylised wireframes clearly communicates to the stakeholder what they are looking at. It is clear that they are trialing a simulation of the system, not a representation of the interface. This means they are more likely to concentrate on whether the wireframe is showing the required functionality. Hopefully you are unlikely to get comments about colours and typefaces at this stage.
Avoiding ambiguity and feature creep
Wireframes are vital to pin down exactly what the functionality will cover. This will help to manage expectations as it describes exactly what is to be delivered. It should prevent disagreement about exactly what was expected to be created. The sign-off of a wireframe means no uncomfortable conversations after comments that "I thought it was going to…"
How to create wireframes
My tool of choice for this task is a great piece of software called Balsamiq Wireframes. It allows you to create 'sketchy' looking wireframes. This helps to describe how a software will behave, not how it will look.
Balsamiq's drag and drop interface contains hundreds of interface building blocks that you can combine. Form elements, containers, icons and other objects are used to create pages that simulate how an application might work. It shows familiar controls but in a bland, hand drawn style so that the look and feel becomes irrelevant.
A sequence of pages can be simply linked together. When the wireframe sequence is exported as a PDF, the links allow a user to click through and use the wireframe as if it is a functional interface.
Over the years I've found it a vital tool to help to inform and manage the expectations of stakeholders.


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"Baby" (Boy) Personalized Christmas Tree Ornament Holiday Gift
*** This beautiful visual element makes a perfect present to give to friends, coworkers, relatives, and family members.
*** Personalizing with name, year, etc. adds so much more value to this present.
*** Makes a great stocking stuffer.
Product Details:
*** Materials: Environmental friendly Poly Resin.
*** Dimension: length 4.5" , Height 2.75", and Depth 0.5".
*** Weigh 1.2oz.
***We can personalize your ornament for you. Please provide the required information (name, year, and etc.) at checkout.
Self Personalization:
*** Use a fine tip permanent marker to fill the Name in the space provided (optional also adding year).
*** Let the writing air dry for a few minutes before touching.
*** If you make a mistake you can use Goof off or Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to remove writings and start again to personalize. (Wite-Out also works good to cover mistakes)
Shipping Information
*** Free shipping within 1 business day to speed up delivery of your ornament.
Return Policy
*** You can return any item in 30 days but have to pay shipping cost.
Contact Us
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*** God Bless and Happy Holidays.


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The Evil of Repressions and Hypocrisies
The world around us is on fire as of late which makes me think that it is appropriate to speak about the opera Faust.
The story of Faust has been told by both dramatists and composers. Marlowe and Goethe wrote great plays on the subject not to mention some thirty lesser dramatists who wrote lesser plays. Wagner composed a Faust Overture and Liszt did a cantata, Berlioz and Boito did operas but it is Charles Gounod that is easily the most popular and in many ways the best.
Faust is an opera in five acts by Charles Gounod, based more closely on the three part tragedy of the same name by the German poet Goethe. Its theme is that of the old German scientist-philosopher who sells his soul to Mephistopheles (the embodiment of the Devil) in return for wealth, power and youth.
The transformed Faust is outside a tavern, at the fairground where a crowd of people gather joined by Valentine a soldier and brother of Marguerite, and Siebel in love with Marguerite. Faust takes advantage of the distraction that Mephistopheles creates with Valentine and Siebel and escorts Marguerite as she leaves the church. Faust sets a box of jewels on the step of her house in order to win her over. Shortly after, Faust hears Marguerites confession of love and rushed to her.
In the fourth act Marguerite has been deserted. In church Mephistopheles reminds her of her sin, urging her despair. In front of her house Faust and Mephistopheles provokes Valentine, who is within, and Faust kills him. He dies cursing his sister.
Gounod's Faust is laden with beautiful music and stirring ensembles and some unbelievable arias. Some critics believe that Gounod turns his characters into stereotypes with music to match. I disagree. This melodious opera has been ensnaring audiences since its 1859 Paris premiere, but listen and judge for yourself.


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Today my mailman delivered a wonderful little golden envelope to my mailbox, and I just couldn't wait to open it! I kind of knew what was inside ~ CindyBurkeOriginals hosted a bracelet giveaway on her blog and I was the very lucky winner! Wow! I was definitely surprised when I peeked inside the lovely gold box . . . not only did I receive a beautifully handmade beaded bracelet, but also a pair of matching earrings! Double thank you Cindy ~ love them! ❤
Please visit CindyBurkeOriginals on Etsy to shop for wonderful handmade beaded gemstone jewelry ~ featuring custom, beach and wire designs. Her shop is quite lovely!
Follow CindyBurkeOriginals on tumblr too! ✿
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You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Cloud Computing' category.
Intacct, a cloud-based ERP vendor focused on midsize companies, recently held its annual user group meeting. Two of its products that were covered in the keynote are worth noting. One, already available, enables companies to manage their order-to-cash process in a continuous fashion, from the time a salesperson begins to engage with a prospect to the time funds are collected. The other is a custom report writer, to be available in the first quarter of 2017, that will provide business users with the ability to create even complex reports from any data that resides within Intacct in a straightforward, interactive fashion that is similar to building reports in a desktop spreadsheet. The company also presented modules that will facilitate compliance with the new revenue recognition standards.
Companies that offer their products or services through a subscription can find themselves challenged. Unless the subscription is a single item and is never adjusted (for example, a magazine subscription), keeping track of the items covered by the contract and its terms and conditions and billing for them accurately can be time-consuming because the relevant information often is scattered across multiple applications. Often, customers make adjustments to their services during their subscription period: the add or reduce the number of users or the type or amount of services. When changes take place, the adjustments may not be recorded in all applications at the same time or consistently. Since desktop spreadsheets are the most common way companies bring together the information needed to create their subscription invoices, those that want to be certain that their billing is accurate will always need to perform checks and reconciliations, which is also time-consuming.
Our benchmark research on recurring revenue businesses finds that only 29 percent of those in accounting roles are satisfied with their process for invoicing and billing. The issues that accounting departments face here are likely to be underappreciated by the rest of the company – the same research shows that nearly half (47%) of participants working outside of finance and accounting said they are satisfied. The gulf between the two groups reflects the reality that when parts of a business process are performed without regard to their impact on finance department operations, invoicing becomes a highly labor-intensive effort. Indeed, of those not satisfied with their invoicing, four out of five (79%) said it requires too much work, two-thirds (68%) said it involves too many resources, and more than half (54%) said it takes too long.
Intacct's Contract Billing for CRM addresses these issues by enabling companies to maintain data integrity over the entire sell-to-collect process, from the time a salesperson engages with a prospect through collection. Doing so eliminates the possibility that billing mistakes will occur because of discrepancies between data sources caused by inaccurate rekeying of data or inconsistencies between data sources that can occur because changes to the subscription are not recorded in all systems at the same time. Contract Billing for CRM has native, built-in connectivity between Intacct and Salesforce CRM applications, which creates a continuous workflow from the start of the sales process in Salesforce to billing and collection with Intacct. Throughout the process, the system maintains a single authoritative source of data.
Being able to manage a process and associated data from end to end is one of the pillars of an approach to managing finance departments that we call continuous accounting. This approach uses information technology to increase the efficiency of the department while enabling it to play a more strategic role in company operations. In this case, Contract Billing gives sales and marketing organizations greater flexibility in designing service offerings and related terms and conditions to meet market demands because the system can do so without increasing accounting department workloads.
As a result of imminent changes to accounting standards, which I have discussed (ASC 606 in the United States and IFRS 15 in most of the rest of the world), companies that do business through contracts – whether for a single transaction or a subscription – will find accounting for them more complicated beginning in 2017. As I've noted, whether it's a one-off deal or an ongoing subscription, managing sales contracts on an end-to-end basis can greatly simplify accounting for contracts and substantially reduce the chance of errors occurring.
Also featured in the keynote was the custom report writer, which is due to be generally available in the first quarter of 2017. Although it isn't as easy to use as a spreadsheet, it appears to require only a modest amount of training and a bit of experience for a business user to become productive. As a result, the trade-off between some up-front effort to save a considerable amount of time on an ongoing basis seems worthwhile. The experience is rather spreadsheet-like in that it enables business users to create and format a report on a "design canvas" in an interactive fashion. Starting with a basic report, users can keep adding details in a preview mode (such as fields or dimensions such as sales territories or product families) and immediately see the results of the modifications, which is similar to what they experience in using a desktop spreadsheet. Business users also can quickly modify the report whenever conditions require changes. Creating periodic reports using this tool can save a considerable number of hours every week month or quarter compared to creating them in a desktop spreadsheet.
Moreover, a report created in the custom report writer will be able to access any data that's in Intacct. This includes not only accounting data but also data stored in what the company calls "custom objects." These objects could contain any sort of information that wouldn't necessarily be recorded in an accounting transaction but would be useful in creating company reports or analyses. A custom object might, for example, be a list of the company's owned or leased facilities, their size and location, rent or mortgage payments, taxes and any other information that individuals with a facilities management role might maintain in a desktop spreadsheet. Intacct makes it straightforward to import the data from such a spreadsheet directly into a database table named Facilities. The facilities management group can then easily access and update this information as needed. Keeping scattered company information in Intacct rather than in spreadsheets makes the data more accessible and secure for everyone in the organization. And once it's available in Intacct, companies will find it much easier to analyze and report on a combination of financial and other types of information.
I recommend that midsize companies that are considering changing their ERP system, especially those that have a subscription or recurring revenue business model, evaluate Intacct. Larger companies that have use a subscription business model for part of their revenues also should consider using Intacct as a sort of subledger to manage the accounting for this part of their business since it could save them a considerable amount of effort in accounting as well as provide greater flexibility in creating products or offerings.
Robert Kugel
Senior Vice President Research
Follow Me on Twitter @rdkugelVR and
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
The annual Oracle OpenWorld user group meeting provides an opportunity to step back and take a longer view of business, industry and technology trends affecting the company. Last year, after listening to Larry Ellison's and Mark Hurd's vision for the future of IT, I wrote that Oracle had to continue shifting its focus to business applications because the accelerating shift to cloud computing would lead corporations to outsource their IT infrastructures, services and security to third parties. Eventually, this would substantially shrink the market for corporate IT departments, which has been Oracle's strength. At this year's conference the company demonstrated how it is applying its technology strengths to create a competitive advantage that it can apply to its broad business applications portfolio.
Adaptive Intelligent Applications is Oracle's term for its new applications that marry third-party data with real-time analytics, machine- and behavioral learning. "Adaptive" means that the applications are able to mold themselves to how organizations actually behave rather than forcing users to adjust to how the software works. The objective is to embed in its business applications situational awareness that simplifies how individuals perform tasks and provides executives, employees and customers with recommendations tailored their specific needs in the immediate context. This approach utilizes a key advantage of cloud applications: Vendors are able to bring their expertise and economies of scale to bear in expanding the scope of their services to provide capabilities that, for cost or other practical reasons, most customers couldn't duplicate on their own premises. The ability to significantly improve business performance in this manner is the primary reason why Ventana Research awarded Oracle's Adaptive Intelligent Applications its 2016 Technology Innovation Award for overall business technology innovation. Intelligent Applications have the potential to reimagine business software generally, going beyond data capture and simple process automation to support more informed and intelligent decision-making.
Oracles' Adaptive Intelligent Applications take advantage of the company's Oracle Data Cloud, which contains more than five billion consumer and business profiles, each with a rich set of attributes. Companies can use this data and analytics to continuously adapt to understand the behaviors and needs of a specific organization's users, customers and employees. For example, this data trove could be used by purchasing departments to negotiate better prices and terms, by finance organizations to prioritize payables if forecasted cash flows are tight, by HR departments to identify best-fit candidates faster and by supply chain managers to identify the best options in designing distribution networks.
In addition, this year's OpenWorld keynotes fleshed out Oracle's cloud infrastructure strategy, which is multifaceted:
- It repurposes its database, tools and IT infrastructure strengths to address the new cloud-based information technology economy.
- It continues to restructures its broad set of applications and functionality to operate well in a multitenant software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment.
- It provides the ability to more easily integrate, enrich and extend these applications in the cloud, which can help Oracle retain existing application customers by providing a practical migration path to the cloud as well as differentiated services and applications.
Over the past few years Oracle has refined its cloud strategy in a way that builds on its technology strengths to adapt to an epochal shift in how companies consume business applications. IT departments won't disappear, and for the time being they will remain a key source of revenue for Oracle. But in most organizations they will shrink considerably over the next decade as their "keep the lights on" workloads are reduced substantially. This will happen as the bulk of maintenance work shifts to the cloud application vendors and as line-of-business departments embrace more easily configured applications to take charge of the software that runs their business. Oracle's cloud infrastructure strategy provides it a way to give existing and prospective customers the flexibility to adapt to the shift to the cloud in a way that best fits their circumstances and needs.
We are well into a fundamental restructuring of how organizations source and use information technology that generally comes under the heading of "the cloud." Just as the shift to client/server computing a generation ago was more than just that computing structure (it coincided with broad adoption of relational databases and event-driven programming, for example), the cloud is better understood as a maturation of underlying technologies that significantly reduce the need for customizing applications, facilitate their implementation and make it easier to integrate them. In other words, the artisanal nature of IT that dominated the first half century of the Information Age is moving at an accelerated pace to an "off the rack" mode.
Technology also is creating opportunities for specialization and economies of scale that alter the calculus of rent-vs.-buy decisions for buyers in a way that favors the former. The new model is making outsourcing of computing capabilities by renting services such as memory and processing power a more attractive alternative for most companies. It will continue to change spending patterns for information technology and create winners and losers. Internal IT, vendors that serve internal IT staffs and systems integrators will have smaller shares of IT spend. Although this will in part disadvantage Oracle, the company will likely increase its share of applications spend and offset some of the revenue lost from its existing database and tools business with outsourcing revenue.
That said, the transition to the cloud will not be abrupt because corporations have existing investments that they will replace only when the benefits are compelling. In some cases, this will take place very slowly: Our Office of Finance benchmark research finds that ERP and financial consolidation systems, for example, are replaced on average every six and seven years, respectively. And while attitudes are shifting in favor of the cloud, outside of the San Francisco Bay Area and technology hubs around the world, reservations about the cloud persist. For these reasons, technologies that facilitate managing hybrid cloud and on-premises computing environments will be popular because this approach allows organizations to choreograph their migration paths to the cloud in ways that suit their needs. Vendors that can offer companies flexibility in how they evolve their computing environments will have a market advantage.
In our research 46 percent of organizations said that they still favor on-premises deployment of ERP, 44 percent said that for financial consolidation and 43 percent for planning, but "no preference" is a growing trend. Personally, I would rather entrust my company's critical systems to people whose only job is to ensure security, rather than those in an IT department who have less sharply focused skills and priorities. As a business executive, I would prefer to have nearly certain immediate and full recovery from system failures. Nonetheless, the world will continue to shift to the cloud at a measured pace because it is impractical for many companies to migrate core applications for financial or operational reasons.
One notable change from past OpenWorld events was that business applications were front and center in Larry Ellison's Sunday night keynote. They are an integral part of the company's positioning itself as offering a three-layer cake of software as a service, platform as a service and infrastructure as a service. Providing this range of services can enable Oracle to retain its customer base as these companies transition to the cloud by offering a range of options in how they transition from on-premises IT to the cloud.
Offering a full technology stack that spans infrastructure to packaged applications, Oracle has a differentiated product portfolio that provides value to business users. It gives companies flexibility in choosing deployment options over time. For example, it can make it easier to implement Oracle's ERP, CRM and human capital management suites in a hybrid fashion, choosing which platform is best for the company, or to create extensions to these applications in the cloud to extend their capabilities or adapt to specific business requirements. Both platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings are likely to provide Oracle with a significant revenue stream as its on-premises database license and maintenance business wanes.
Offering a common platform enabled Ellison to highlight a "full" integration of its business applications (notably ERP, CRM and HCM) in the keynote. Yet when it comes to integrating applications, the devil is in the details. At the very least full integration will make it simpler (but probably not simple) to share data, stitch together processes and potentially simplify authentications and sign-ons. Offering easier integration has some potential for increasing Oracle's share of a company's spending on applications, but one shouldn't overestimate this appeal. Our Office of Finance research finds that a plurality of companies prefer to purchase suites of functionality. However, all larger companies (and most midsize ones) already have some or all of these components implemented and are unlikely to drop an incumbent application because integration is easier. Moreover, these three application categories are purchased by different groups within a company. In the past, cross-functional purchasing has been limited by emphasis on the suitability of each piece of software to address business requirements.
Various breakout sessions showed that Oracle continues to make progress in reworking its on-premises business applications for the cloud, especially E-Business Suite, performance management and financial consolidation. Just about all on-premises ERP and performance management vendors have had to rewrite their applications to be able to offer them in a multitenant environment for two main reasons. One is that the vendors could not afford to operate their on-premises software profitably as it was written or achieve levels of performance to make them viable at scale.
The other, somewhat related reason is that software vendors also recognized that they needed to clear out the mare's nest of code that has accumulated over the years to address bugs, add a feature or two or address some architectural flaw. Often, the objective in writing these fixes is expedience, not elegance. As we enter a more mature phase of the business software industry, it may become common practice to rewrite applications every, say, seven years. While code doesn't physically deteriorate, usually there's an opportunity to revamp and rewrite the business, data and process models that undergird the application's functionality, while also clearing out the digital deadwood that piles up in the code base.
The slow, steady transitions of Oracle and other vendors to offering multitenant cloud versions of their software indicate the magnitude of the effort that's needed. While established vendors have had to slog through rewriting their code to work in a multitenant SaaS environment, the "legacy vendors are dinosaurs" pundits overlooked the steep hill new vendors have had to climb to create their software. ERP and statutory consolidation, for example, are complex applications. Writing and rewriting them appear to be difficult and time-consuming tasks.
The most significant takeaway from this year's OpenWorld is that far from being a dinosaur, Oracle has positioned itself to maintain a leading share in the business applications business. The addition of adaptive Intelligent Applications as well as creating a well-architected infrastructure and platform for the cloud positions it well for the ongoing evolution of the business software market. The business applications business will continue to be highly competitive, but Oracle appears to be heading in the right direction.
Robert Kugel
Senior Vice President Research
Follow Me on Twitter @rdkugelVR and
Connect with me on LinkedIn.


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Refuse & Waste Collection
Oldham Council's Business Waste Collection Service provides quality, value-for-money waste collection services.
These collection services can be individually tailored to specific requirements and mirror the services found domestically within the Borough.
Summary of service
- A VAT-free waste collection system tailored to your specific needs.
- A weekly collection service on all waste streams.
- Choice of paper & cardboard, and glass, cans & plastic bottles.
- Choice of a range of different collection containers to manage and store your waste.
- For schools, access to educational resources to help your pupils learn more about waste and recycling in Oldham and the wider environment.
- A free food & garden waste service to schools
Benefits of the service
- Collections provided by your local authority who manage, on your behalf, your legal requirement to keep an audit trail of all your disposed wastes.
- Provision of services which allow our customers to demonstrate a responsible attitude to their waste disposal methods.
- A range of bin sizes available to suit all needs and requirements.
- For schools educational resources which link to your schools' curriculum and a coordinated approach between with the local authority to educate children to use collection services found within the home responsibly (our future generations).
Telephone 0161 770 1203
or email us at email@example.com
The council primarily use your data for handling your query.
All information is processed in accordance with our organisational data protection policy (www.oldham.gov.uk/dataprotection).
We never sell your data to third parties or use it for marketing purposes without your consent.


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Plug out your earphones music lovers! We bring to you a musically LIT affair in a beautiful and cozy Lawn of our cafe, away from the shor-sharaba. An evening where you will be surrounded by talented local musicians and music lovers like you to enjoy some great music and meet like-minded people. Plus we'll do some unstrangering games to know each other in a fun and informal way. :D
Here's what to expect:
Following the performance, you can stick around and hang out with the musicians or fellow music lovers to unstranger and build new bonds :)


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The Virginia General Assembly is rarely the scene of inspiration. Generally speaking, this week has been no exception.
However, despite an ultimately disappointing result, I was impressed this morning at an House Education Subcommittee hearing considering HB 1575. The bill, offered by Del. David Englin of Alexandria, would mandate school authorities to set up ways to prevent bullying and hold them accountable for how they do it.
The disappointment, even anger, comes because the Subcommittee failed to move the bill forward. One young woman said afterwards, "These are bad people." Part of me wants to agree. On behalf of People of Faith for Equality in Virginia, I joined others in urging them not to delay.
What they did was refer the bill to a yet-to-be named group that will study the entire issue of bullying. Hardly action to cheer about!
And yet, all members of the subcommittee indicated their support for action against bullying. Most said they want the study to be done this year so they can act next year. This is, I am sure, a gain over what would have been the attitude a year or two ago.
I am reminded that changing public policy is generally a game of inches, not yards, and very rarely does "going long" for a successful touchdown pass work as a strategy.
I know Del. Englin is not abandoning the cause, nor will People of Faith for Equality in Virginia, Equality Virginia, and many others. We will be watching, and participating in the process every way we can.
The lives of our children are at stake. We shall not be silent. We shall not be satisfied until the law matches the need.


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The Mi-8 Transport Helicopter is the most massively produced helicopter in the world. In Soviet Union there were developed more than 50 various modifications of this helicopter and built approximately 12 000 helicopters including 3 600 built for export. These helicopters are still built at Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant, Kazan Helicopter Plant and Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant. The Mi-8 Transport Helicopters took part in a great number of military conflicts all around the world including Afghanistan and both Chechnya wars. At the moment Mi-8 with it's various modifications are operational in over 50 countries of the world including some NATO countries.Vehicle - Military - Display, Helicopters - Military - Static Display
Links: en.wikipedia.org, russianplanes.net, www.airforce.ru
By: mlc1us


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"MUM WOULD loathe to be remembered as a kind old lady and rather be thought of as a trail-blazing rebel." Selina's daughter's words at her mother's Thanksgiving Service in October spoke volumes.
Selina was, nevertheless, renowned for her kindness, too. "She was a woman of true integrity who you could trust with your innermost thoughts and fears," added her daughter, "confident in the knowledge that she would treat you with kindness."
Besides such admirable qualities, Selina's legacy included being a key member of a radical Christian movement's founding generation.
Selina was born in 1942 in Oundle, Northamptonshire. She became a Christian in 1971 and joined the Jesus Fellowship in 1973, just as the church was pioneering its radical way of Christian discipleship.
Almost 40 years later, Selina is remembered, with huge affection, by all the people into whom she poured herself. She was a devoted mother and grandmother, not only to her own four daughters and their children, whom she loved immensely, but also to the many, many people she "spiritually mothered" – including some of the most disadvantaged people in the country.
Selina's father was an eminent writer and a pioneer of British broadcasting. Her mother was a writer, critic, lecturer – and mother to six children! (One begins to perceive something of the source of Selina's character strength.)
When Selina was three, the family moved to a large old rectory in a village seven miles from Northampton. Selina's brother fondly recalls this era: "We had plenty of fun and games together in what, in retrospect, seems to have been an idyllic childhood. We had a succession of pigs – all with Old Testament names – and a wonderful orchard with all kinds of fruit, as well as cats and dogs, newts, guinea pigs, terrapins and horses as well as several butterfly collections."
Though faith wasn't part of Selina's home life, commitment certainly was; her father was a passionate Socialist. Yet Selina was struck in her childhood by "something holy and peaceful" about the nuns who taught her at her Catholic school, and by a priest who seemed to have "found the secret of life". It was perhaps her first glimpse of God.
It was Selina's father's death, in 1970, that set Selina on a determined search for life's meaning. She was determined not to make an emotional, irrational decision. After much thought, in February 1971, she found her childhood faith return in a way that was to change her life.
Two years after her conversion, Selina met some people from the Jesus Fellowship in Banbury. Having given up on political movements to come up with the radical changes she longed to see, she felt a deep attraction to the Jesus Fellowship's vision and joined the church.
Some years later, came a time of great pain for Selina. In her own words, to Julia Faire, author of Seven Silver Rings, "After 20 years my marriage folded up. It left me broken-hearted because I'd had such a strong sense of building a family, and my marriage was very precious to me.
"After the divorce, I was shocked to find, by law, I was required to return my marriage certificate. Before I posted it, I knelt down and prayed."
By this time Selina had been a committed Christian for 14 years. "As I knelt, I found myself saying aloud, 'The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, and blessed be His name.' I took off my wedding ring and that exact moment I felt the Holy Spirit say, 'I'd like to give you the gift of celibacy.' It wasn't a particularly emotional moment, but carried a sense of something being absolutely right – a door shutting properly and a key fitting a lock."
Although born out of pain, Selina's celibacy was to be a fruitful seedbed for the great devotion she showed so many in the years to come. Selina had a huge heart for people and was a gifted evangelist. "In many young people's lives there has never been love without a price tag of some kind," Selina told Julia. "When you're a celibate there's a quality to your love for people. It's unconditional, centred upon them and shows respect, rather than fulfilling some need in yourself. Celibacy is not for yourself – it's for others."
In many young people's lives there has never been love without a price tag of some kind.
Selina was extremely creative. One outlet for this was writing; she wrote many pieces for this magazine. And her natural creativity and imagination – combined with more than a dash of the prophetic – meant she often sent words of wisdom or symbolic stories to the leaders of the Jesus Fellowship; more than once these had an important influence on the direction of the movement as a whole.
For the last decade of her life Selina lived in Christian Community, at Jewel House in Daventry. As Selina's daughter described it, "She found a real home in Jewel House and valued those friendships enormously".
James Stacey, editor of Jesus Life, who worked closely with Selina said, "One of Selina's abiding qualities was her almost total lack of cynicism. Even members of radical Christian movements (perhaps especially them!) can grow jaundiced through disappointments or disillusionment. Selina never did. She wasn't naïve – but I think she resolved to be always positive because she knew that 'faith pleases God'.
It was this refection that caused Laurence Cooper, another Jesus Fellowship writer who worked with Selina, to write a poem in her memory. A poem seems a fitting way to end a tribute to a woman about whom so much more could be said, but who once said herself: "Our words should be full of meaning, like a poem; not empty like a jam pot label.""She reminded me of Lucy from C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," he added; "always the first to believe and the last to doubt."
Lucy – for Selina
Night falling on the desk and the bed in your room. Moonlight on the wardrobe opens a door to another world, as you step out from this one.
That's so you – a little bit ahead – like Lucy, explorer, absent of cynicism and pride, expectant as a child, pushing aside dust, decay, the cobwebs of here and now. You're ahead of us again! Amazed, alive, your eyes widen on a fresh and glorious day. Impossible – but not for you, who believed in the way.
Like "I love you" from a hijacked plane, that last text – I didn't get the significance of your last request. Not panicked but, as the journey was about to start, wanting a friend's comfort at the slowing of your heart. There, looking into sublimity, beyond all time and space, you felt a welcome touch, like flakes of snow, kissing your face.


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Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it
Poland.pl talks to Dr. Karol Nowicki, the director of the Second World War Museum in Gdansk about the museum, plans for the future and the merger with the Westerplatte Museum.
March 2017 saw the opening of the Second World War Museum in Gdańsk – the largest historical museum in Poland, with the main exhibition occupying an area of almost 5,000 square metres. The museum portrays the tragic experience of World War II from an international perspective. Thanks to the merger with the Westerplatte Museum, visitors will soon be able to learn more about the place where the most terrible of wars erupted. Karol Nowicki, the director of the Second World War Museum in Gdańsk, tells Poland.pl about what is on display at the exhibition as well as what the museum will look like in the future.
Poland.pl: What is your vision for the new museum created by the merger of the Second World War Museum and the Westerplatte and War of 1939 Museum? What will the functioning of the merged museums look like?
Karol Nawrocki, director of the Museum of the Second World War: Westerplatte has become a branch of the WWII Museum. It is, above all, a great honour and a huge commitment to be able to direct the institution, combining enormous memorative and symbolic potential, with the greatest museum investment in Polish history. The museum will continue to operate without major changes over the next few weeks, with the main building open to visitors, while Westerplatte remains under construction. However, the ideal long-term plan is to combine a tour of Westerplatte with the Second World War Museum. It would be possible to make it so that the first part of the story takes place at a historical time during which the spirit of heroic defence (of Westerplatte) was linked to the Polish defensive war of 1939 and the tragic Polish autumn of 1939. Then, from the Mewi Szaniec stronghold, visitors could cross the Martwa Wisła and Motlawa on a waterway tram, past the beautiful Gdańsk shore, and at the height of the Wawel Bridge walk 200 meters to the Second World War Museum building. There one will find a further part of the exposition in an international context, full of multimedia and innovative solutions that can already be seen today.
What should stick in the visitor's mind upon seeing the exhibition?
Every kind of historical exposure develops our general knowledge, broadens the context, teaches us about life, after all anyone who does not know history is doomed to repeat it. The same applies in this case, in the exhibition today we are able to become acquainted with the maturing, duration and the difficult transition of the consequences of the global conflict. Such a huge investment should, however, also give visitors the opportunity of knowing the specific, and at the same time tragic, Polish history of 1939-1945. After all, the Second World War started in Poland with the attack on Westerplatte. This was a Poland whose soldiers fought bravely on all possible fronts, a Poland which at the end would produce one of the bravest soldiers of World War II, a volunteer to the Auschwitz, Rittmeister Witold Pilecki. The phenomenon of the Polish Underground State, the complicated history of Central and Eastern Europe, which after 1945 fell into the trap of red totalitarianism, are probably among the basic challenge for visitors.
What do you consider to be the strengths of the exhibition?
I see a lot of interesting multimedia solutions creating imaginative spaces. Many areas have, in my opinion, been prepared in a thoughtful way – such as the one dedicated to the civil war in Spain, where the republican side is directly called the Communists, while also displaying horrifying pictures depicting repression. I left with the conviction that the war in Spain was fought between two vicious evils, between two terrifying totalitarianisms. So as I expected ... I am also impressed by the apartment of a Polish family, which changes according to the historical contexts in the pre-war period, during the war, and after 1945 when the Nazis were replaced by the communists.
What do you miss in the Second World War Museum in its current form?
The Museum's exhibit in its present form can be complemented with, for example, the items extracted on the Westerplatte peninsula in 2016. Military eagles, buttons, everyday items used by Polish heroes ... The entire collection of the current Westerplatte Museum (under construction) seems to be very interesting. Moreover, it is worth listening to historians who have a different historical sensitivity, whose comments have been neglected so far. The voice of professional historians such as Prof. Jan Żaryn and Prof. Piotr Niwiński, or experienced historical columnists like Piotr Semka, may help to point out things worth highlighting. As for the detailed examples, I do not like the use of the term "USSR" instead of "Soviet" in the exhibition, despite some formal premises, as well as the lack of emphasis on repressions carried out against representatives of the Gdańsk Polish community in the Free City of Gdańsk dominated by the Nazis in the second half 1930s.
What elements would you like to change, add to the exhibition in its present form?
I will most certainly use the space of the temporary exhibitions, displaying figures and historical phenomena deserving special attention. Before the changes I would also like to listen to the Council of the Museum, which is to be announced shortly. Thus, changes to the permanent exhibition will come at the end of a process of comprehensive academic discussion. Decisions will only come after this discussion.
Karol Nawrocki, PhD, is director of the Museum of the Second World War. Karol Nawrocki previously worked in the Gdańsk branch of the Institute of National Remembrance, holding the position of the head of the Regional Public Education Office since 2014. He has written and edited many books as well as scientific and journalistic articles on the latest history of Poland. Being a social activist, well-known in Pomerania, Nawrocki he has been given many awards by veteran and patriot circles. He is also the chairman of the Alliance for the Memory of Accursed Soldiers in Gdańsk. For his social involvement, educational and charity activity, he was voted by the readers of Dziennik Bałtycki the Personality of Gdańsk and Pomerania of 2016.


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The Collapse Is Getting Even Worse: Goldman Slashes Q4 GDP Forecast To Just 1%, US Households Breached Their Debt Ceiling, Citigroup To Cut 11.000 Jobs As ADP JOBS REPORT FALLS TO 118K, And Britain's Biggest Retailer Is Ready To Abandon Its US Expansion
December 5th, 2012
Goldman Slashes Q4 GDP Forecast To Just 1%
from businessinsider:
The latest data has prompted Goldman to cut its Q4 GDP forecast. It now sees just 1% growth.
The key points from Goldman's Kris Dawsey:
We expect that the positive boost to GDP growth from inventory investment seen last quarter will not persist into Q4.
Weaker inventory series in the monthly business sentiment surveys point to slowing inventory accumulation, and our quarterly models suggest some payback from Q3's inventory build.
Farm inventories will likely decline again in Q4 due to continued effects from the Midwest drought earlier this year.
As a result of our analysis, we have cut our tracking estimate of Q4 real GDP growth from 1.3% to 1.0%.
US households already went off their fiscal cliff and breached their debt ceiling
US quickly approaching another debt ceiling limit aligning with the fiscal cliff
The Rest…HERE


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I know everyone hates hearing about other people's dreams, but dreams as a phenomenon is freaking interesting! No one knows quite why we dream, but of course there is a lot of theories. Some say that dreaming is the brain's way of filtering the events and thoughts of the day, which makes sense until you consider that dream you had about your primary school teacher that you haven't thought of in years yelling at you for crocheting obscene art.
And why do some people dream so much more than others? I dream every night and I remember my dreams when I wake up. My boyfriend rarely dreams at all, and when he does he wakes up screaming because he dreams of bees. I think I've always been fascinated with dreams. When I was a kid I would sneak in to my younger sister's room and whisper random things into her ear to see if she would dream about them. In general, I feel like she was the subject of most of my psychological experiments as a child. That's what older siblings are for, I guess.
Dreams are also interesting when you consider what the brain actually does when dreaming,- it pretty much shuts down both your ability to think logically and be self-aware. I'm sure everyone has experienced dream logic at some point, but brain scans has actually shown that the prefrontal lobe is more or less deactivated when dreaming. Some people claim to be able to become self-aware and presumably capable of logical reasoning while dreaming, which is called lucid dreaming. The point of lucid dreaming is being aware that you are in fact dreaming and being able to manipulate the dream. I tried to master it when I was younger (there's a lot of online instructions on how to do it) but it only worked for a short period of time.
Another interesting (and sometimes horrifying) thing is how our bodies become paralyzed when sleeping to prevent us from hurting ourselves (or others) by acting out the movements that our dreamself is doing. For some people, the brain shuts down body control too early or turns it on too late, the so called "sleep paralysis" , when you realize you are awake and can't move. Others, like my mum, seem to lack this function entirely and ends up doing a ton of stupid things while asleep, like rearranging the furniture. I think the most terrifying story of sleep walking that I've heard was about a friend of a friend who woke up to discover all of his kitchen knives laid out neatly on the kitchen table. Luckily nothing happened, but it really makes you think about what could happen.
Of all the crap the brain pulls when dreaming, the thing I hate the most is hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations. Hypnagogic hallucinations is what you might hear or see just before falling asleep; hypnopompic hallucinations is what happens when you wake up. My number 1 reason for never wanting to drop acid is because my infrequent but terrifying hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations makes me think that me on acid is just a bad, bad, bad idea. I once woke up and screamed my lungs out and threw myself to the other side of the bed because I thought there was a spider the size of my head on my wall. More commonly, when I'm about to fall asleep, I hear a loud, monotonic beep that sets my heart racing. A common element to all my hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations is that I jerk awake with a feeling of panic and dread even though the thing I see/hear aren't that scary by themselves. Thanks a lot, brain!
Anyhow, so why can't we read in dreams? Things like reading a text and looking at a clock are often hard to do in dreams, but there isn't a solid explanation as to why. Some people also experience that the palms of their hands are messed up when dreaming, but that has never happened to me. One theory is that some part of the brain that is involved in reading text or the sense of time is deactivated during sleep.


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Varieties Grown
At Barfad Willow I currently have eighteen varieties.
For Brown Willow:
Continental Purple (Salix daphnoides): A stunning deep purple willow which develops a white bloom when dry. It's quite stout and therefore not so popular for basket making - but I can't resist growing it because it is such an incredible colour. Some people like to use it for living willow structures.
For Living Willow:
Salix viminalis: A fast growing, hardy, vigorous willow which can grow four metres in a season. The rods are brown, tough, flexible and straight. Traditionally viminalis was used to make baskets for fishing and agriculture, but it's not good for finer baskets. It's ideal for making living willow structures, furniture, drawing charcoal, wind-breaks and for soil stabilisation, waste filtration, and fuel.


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Show your love for rope with the Rope Love patch ! Created by Jo Qatana at Knot Working dot com. Click to purchase!
Continuing the links theme.
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I enjoy skirts, G has long, yummy stems. One of the reasons we play golf is the ample photo opportunities like this one.
And after looking through our photos we realized we need more skirt pics !
~Jay Morgan
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WP Designer.


text: The ODIN Society is happy to announce that the M.A.S.H. Proposal Portal is now live! Viewing, submitting, and voting on all current proposals is much more user friendly and readily available so everyone can participate in monthly network governance. This wonderful dashboard was also the first project proposal that was 100% backed by Masternode voting in the previous month. Special thanks to our developer Bohica for his contributions and the community for voting on this to be created! mash.odinblockchain.org/proposals — To view the proposals funded successfully this month check out our summary here: odin.canny.io/proposals/p/june-2019-superblock


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This sweet, salty corn salad is the perfect picnic side. Bonus: You can make the aioli the night before and fold in right before serving. Slideshow: More Corn Recipes
How to Make It
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the corn and a generous pinch of salt and return to a boil. Remove from the heat, cover and let stand for 5 minutes. Drain the corn and let cool slightly.
Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk the mayonnaise with the lime and lemon zests and juices along with the 1 tablespoon of olive oil, the mustard, garlic and cayenne. Season the citrus aioli with salt.
Light a grill or preheat a grill pan. Brush the corn with olive oil and season with salt. Grill over high heat, turning occasionally, until lightly charred all over, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a plate and let cool slightly, then cut the kernels off the cobs; discard the cobs.
In a large bowl, toss the corn with the softened butter. Stir in the citrus aioli. Add the queso fresco, cotija, parsley and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper and serve warm.


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March 2010 – Poem of the Month
Here I stand as a sinful man,
I played my cards and didn't win a hand.
I thought I knew when to hold and when to fold,
And now the road is cold because of snow I suppose.
My conscious tells me I'll be alright,
But I'm wheezing, I'm freezing and I've got frostbite.
They say my robe is in heaven but it's off white,
And when I shine it's a soft light.
Everyone rates me as a 3rd class,
I gave up on the game in the first half.
But God picked me up and saw me through,
I thought I knew it all but I had no clue.
He is there when you go through the valley,
The score doesn't matter…only His tally.
When everything shatters He'll pick up your dreams,
In the midst of crash landings He'll lift up your wings.
Written By: Todd Bates
© Todd Bates Enterprises LLC


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Digital Photography School is a blog that lives up to its name – it contains tons of information regarding digital photography, especially tips and how-tos.
Bike EXIF is dedicated to high-end motorcycle culture, design and photography.
A large collection of pictures of beautiful and sexy women.
Blog from Rick Wezenaar, a dutch photographer and IT professional.
A personal art & design blog that discusses various topics in graphic design, photoshop, photography and other digitally inspired art.
This blog is home to a helpful collection of articles, guides, reviews, tips, and news for amateur and professional photographers alike.
Equivocality is the blog of photographer, writer, and filmmaker Jeff Ngan.
The personal blog of Hrag Vartanian featuring commentary on art and pop culture.
Brilliant Prints discusses the arts of canvas printing and photo editing.
If You Write It is the personal journal of a 40-something photographer, writer, and artist.
art beauty blogging business design dogs education entertainment entrepreneur fashion finance fitness food football gadgets gardening gossip health humor internet internet marketing investing jewelry life lifestyle marketing money music news parenting personal personal finance photography politics real estate relationships reviews science seo shopping soccer software sports technology travel web 2.0 web design women wordpress writing


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If you are over shopping for Christmas gifts, or if you're like us and ordered them online, head to the movies this weekend. One flick will have you laughing out loud, and the other sparks up an already heated debate.
Jennifer Aniston (as Carol Vanstone): "You're having a Christmas party tonight?"
Kate McKinnon (as Mary): "Well, it's not a Christmas party. It's a non-denominational holiday mixer. More inclusive."
Jennifer Aniston (as Carol Vanstone): "Well, whatever you call it, it's not happening."
A holiday party goes wrong in "Office Christmas Party."
An uptight CEO wants to shut down a branch of her family business right before Christmas. The employees throw a mega party, hoping they can get a new client from the bash and save their jobs.
Jennifer Aniston: "I'm basically a woman with a grudge who is now coming in. I'm basically the grinch who wants to steal Christmas away from all of these hardworking employees."
Mark Strong (as Rodolfo Schmidt): "You're a piece of work, Elizabeth."
Jessica Chastain (as Elizabeth Sloane): "I was hired to win, and I use whatever resource I have."
A political debate gets played out on the big screen in "Miss Sloane."
Jessica Chastain is Elizabeth Sloane, a cutthroat lobbyist caught in the middle of Washington, D.C.'s gun control lobby.
Jessica Chastain: "I was fascinated by the subject matter. I didn't really know how the political system works, and I wanted to understand what a lobbyist does."
Copyright 2020 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Food Bank Users Could Top Two Million If Tories Win Election
The number of people reliant on food banks to help feed themselves and their families could rocket to more than two million, according to new research.
Research by Dr Rachel Loopstra, from Oxford University, forecasts that Tory plans for a further £12bn in welfare cuts could lead to a doubling in food banks users by 2017.
Trussell Trust, who operates over 440 food banks, gave out 1,084,604 emergency food parcels in 2014/15 – up from 61,468 in 2010/11.
The charity is just one of many food bank providers, charities and churches supporting hungry families across the UK.
The research also shows that rising food bank use is due to higher demand, rather than greater supply – as claimed by some government ministers.
According to a formula devised by Dr Loopstra, the number of food parcels given out per head of the population rises by 0.16% for every 1% cut in welfare spending.
Dr Loopstra said: "It coincides with spending cuts, welfare reform and record numbers of benefit claimants losing payments due to sanctions."
Labour's Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Rachel Reeves seized on the figures, saying they were further evidence of the hardship and misery caused by Tory welfare policy.
"It would be an absolute disgrace for food bank use to double", she said.
"The welfare state is there to provide a safety net. It's not doing what it's meant to do when people have to rely on charity."
Reeves said David Cameron's pledge of more savage cuts to welfare benefits means he has no choice but to cut working-age benefits, because the Tories have ruled out any changes to pensions and pensioner benefits.
"The Tories cannot achieve their £12bn of cuts to social security without doing so and hitting family budgets hard", she said.
"Child benefit and tax credits are now on the ballot paper next week. Labour will protect them, and families across the country now know the Tories will cut them again."
Reeves blamed benefit delays, sanctions and the hated bedroom tax for the increased demand on food banks.
She said Labour was the only party committed to reducing the reliance on food banks.
> But hang on… didn't she say Labour didn't want to be the party of the unemployed ? And aren't Labour promising more Workfare ?
"A Labour government would do this by axing the bedroom tax, getting rid of benefit sanctions targets and introducing protections for people with mental health problems, carers, pregnant women and people at risk of domestic violence."
She added: "It's inevitable, if the Tories get back in, that we will see further food bank use."
Trussell Trust's Adrian Curtis said: "Despite welcome signs of economic recovery, hunger continues to affect significant numbers in the UK today."
Source – Welfare Weekly, 04 May 2015


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Questions in 2011 to 2012
FAQ in 2011 to 2012
- Q40011108 - After changing the "Inband SAS enable" to enabled in the telnet interface of our ARC-8060, the telnet and web interface are not available.
(1197 views)
- Q40011204 -The LED lights on st3000DM001 HDD's with firmware CC46 continues to flash even no activity. We tried with other disks and they work normal.
(3403 views)
FAQ in 2011 to 2012


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Tuesday, January 24, 2017
"Demo at Ponte Vedra 2017 4" --- Sold
It has become more routine now that my last day of a 4-day workshop, all students wanted me to do landscape demo. So this was I did at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. My landscape painting is still in a developing stage. I am walking one step a time.
Posted by Qiang Huang at 12:27 PM
Labels: 9" x 12" oil on canvas, landscape
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