For the estimated 80 million domestic cats that are kept as house pets, there are as many roaming free.
Those numbers shouldn't be surprising, considering the rate at which felines are able to reproduce. I've previously written about the overpopulation issue with cats and dogs, and getting these numbers in check has been the focus of many. Spay and neuter programs and protocols are helping to make progress.
First, understand that from a biological standpoint, we are in a battle with pets. Reproductive success drives evolution, pure and simple. It's the strongest biological factor in any species. Biology has a way of taking over, jumping any hurdle that is put in its path and compensating. The pets themselves have no control over their biological drives, and therefore can't curb their behavior when it comes reproducing.
Comprised of a clowder of free-roaming cats that are the descendants of unaltered tame cats somewhere in their ancestral line, the social structure is by no means random: at its core, it has at least one sexually-active dominant male and fertile females who are often well-bonded and who will help care for their respective litters and each other. Colonies are often formed around shelter — be it a wooded area, abandoned house, under a porch area that doesn’t get that much foot traffic or something else — and a food source of some sort.
Because of their unique resiliency, feral cat colonies have posed a special challenge. The structure and reproductive patterns of these groups have piqued the interest of researchers and got them thinking: Could the way that a feline in a feral colony is sterilized impact the overall numbers of new litters that are born?
First, TVHR is not a common way to address feral cat populations. Trap, neuter and release TNR on the other hand, is a more widely-accepted approach to controlling feral cat colony populations, and for a lot of reasons.
Because TVHR isn’t put into use as much and because the life span of feral cats is far shorter — an average of three years as opposed to the 15 that their Indoor Positioning System — it’s been difficult to extrapolate the long-term data that helps to give some solid numbers that researchers would be looking for. Each computer run simulated the feral cat population over 6,000 days, tracking individual cats on a daily basis, thus predicting effectiveness of TVHR.
Those two things are very advantageous: the cats don't reproduce, and because they no longer produce reproductive hormones, behaviors like fighting, spraying and howling are reduced, addressing the needs of the community-at-large. Behaviors like those would be troublesome to anyone who lives in close proximity to a feral colony.
A possible advantage to vasectomy as opposed to neuter procedure is that though the tube that carries semen is cut, the animal retains their testicles and their reproductive hormones. For that reason, upon being returned to the colony, the cat preserves his dominant position and can continue mating with females without producing kittens — and quite possibly protect their turf from other male competitors that are “intact”.
Conversely, a neutered male loses his dominant position in the colony, and the next most dominant male takes his place — and the cycle continues. It's important to note that when a female cat that has not been sterilized mates with a male that has had a vasectomy, she enters a 45-day pseudo-pregnancy, dipping the chance of fertile mating even further.
Your DSLR probably came bundled with a standard 18-55mm lens. This is a solid jack-of-all-trades that sports a nice wide angle and reasonable focal length. However, any photographer worth their salt needs to bolster their kit with a few additional lenses — otherwise you might as well have stuck with a high-end compact camera. In almost all cases, the type of lens employed will have a bigger effect on image quality than the camera itself.
For most photographers, a telephoto zoom lens makes the most sense for your next purchase. Most DSLR models offer affordable 55-200mm lenses that are great for capturing faraway action, such as animals at the zoo.
An ultra-wide-angle zoom lens is also worth putting on your shopping list: this will allow you to take great panoramas without any tedious stitching and are also great when you need to capture everyone in crowded group photos, making them a staple of wedding photographers. On the other end of the spectrum is the macro lens with a fixed aperture: these let you get up close and personal with the camera’s subject and are a great way of documenting nature.
One of the simplest ways to improve your DSLR’s performance is to install the latest firmware upgrade. These are usually available on the manufacturer’s website and may include everything from improved auto-focus tracking to recording RAW video files. Firmware updates are also free, which is good news for photographers on a budget.
In addition to official vendor updates, you can also find custom, third-party firmware for many DSLR models. These are capable of super-charging your camera with a wide range of features that the manufacturer didn’t include.
No really. Many dismiss 3D as a fading fad, but when it comes to user-created content the technology is more than just a gimmick. It’s capable of adding a whole new dimension to your photos both literally and figuratively. Imagine watching your baby’s first steps in a format that you can almost reach out and touch — it might seem vaguely cool now, but what about in twenty years when you kids have flown the coop? Adding 3D functionality to your DSLR will make your recorded memories far more tangible.
One recent example is the Kúla Deeper: a snap-on hardware accessory that allows you to create 3D photos and movies. The accessory adds a pair of mirrors on either side of your DSLR lens for dual image capture. The Kúla Deeper works with most regular DSLRs although viewing the results naturally requires a 3D-compatible display. Charmingly, there’s also an Anaglyph mode which lets you watch the movies with a pair of retro red-and-blue 3D glasses. Bless.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Showing posts with label own comments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label own comments. Show all posts
Monday, September 2, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Remembering Martin Luther King
The final refrain of Martin Luther King Jr.'s most famous speech will echo around the world as bells from churches, schools and historical monuments "let freedom ring" in celebration of a powerful moment in civil rights history.
Organizers said sites in nearly every state will ring their bells at 3 p.m. their time Wednesday or at 3 p.m. EDT, the hour when King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington.Commemorations are planned from the site of the speech in Washington to the far reaches of Alaska, where participants plan to ring cow bells along with church bells in Juneau.
"When we allow freedom to ring - when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, `Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, we are free at last," King said in closing.
On Wednesday, bells will answer his call from each of the specific states King named, as well as at other sites around the nation and the world. At the Lincoln Memorial, President Barack Obama and former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter will join members of the King family and indoor Tracking. John Lewis, who also spoke at the March on Washington, in ringing a bell that hung in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., before the church was bombed in 1963, organizers said.
International commemorations will be held at London's Trafalgar Square, as well as in the nations of Japan, Switzerland, Nepal and Liberia. London Mayor Boris Johnson has said King's speech resonates around the world and continues to inspire people as one of the great pieces of oratory.
"The response to our call to commemorate the March on Washington and my father's `I Have a Dream' speech has been overwhelming," King's daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, said in a written statement.Some of the sites that will host ceremonies are symbolic, such as the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kan., a monument to the landmark Supreme Court case that outlawed segregated schools in 1954. Bells will also be rung at Lookout Mountain in Tennessee and Stone Mountain in Georgia, a site with a Confederate memorial that King referenced in his speech.
In the nation's capital, numerous organizations and churches will ring their bells at 3 p.m., including the Smithsonian Institution on the National Mall. Washington National Cathedral will play a series of tunes and spirituals on its carillon from the church's central bell tower, including "Lift Every Voice and Sing," "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," "Amazing Grace," "We Shall Overcome" and "My Country `tis of Thee."The Very Rev. Gary Hall, the cathedral's dean, said bell ringing is a symbol of freedom in the nation's history and that many churches are trying to answer King's call to be faithful to the roots of the civil rights movement.
"It's a kind of proclamation of our aspirations for the expansion of freedom for all people," he said. "It's always important to remember that the civil rights movement started largely as a church movement. ... It was essentially a group of black clergy with some white allies."
King preached his final Sunday sermon at the National Cathedral in 1968 before traveling on to Memphis, Tenn., where he was assassinated. King had been turning his attention more toward economic inequalities with his Poor People's Campaign, moving beyond solely racial issues to talk about all poor people and high unemployment.
His presence at the commemorative ceremony Wednesday will embody the fulfilled dreams of the hundreds of thousands who rallied there 50 years ago for racial equality - and will personify the continued struggle for that elusive goal.
When he became president, Obama blasted through a heavy barrier that many before him had only pushed against. But his presidency has been marred by racist backlash and his administration has found itself refighting battles already thought won, such as ensuring equal access to the polls.
Obama is expected to speak just after an organized ringing of bells by churches and others at 3 p.m. EDT, the time when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his spellbinding "I Have a Dream" speech. Obama will be joined by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton at the memorial's steps. Other luminaries include Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson, who signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
A march, led by a replica of a transit bus that civil rights leader Rosa Parks rode when she refused to give up her seat to a white man in 1955, and an interfaith service also were planned for Wednesday morning. A march held Saturday drew tens of thousands to the Lincoln Memorial.
Obama considers the 1963 march a "seminal event" and part of his generation's "formative memory." A half-century after the march, he said, is a good time to reflect on how far the country has come and how far it still has to go.
The first lady spoke Tuesday before a screening of the documentary "The Powerbroker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights." It follows Young's rise from segregated Kentucky to leader of the National Urban League during the 1960s.
Young was one of the organizers for the 1963 March on Washington, which featured Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. Mrs. Obama is scheduled to join President Barack Obama as he makes a speech Wednesday commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march.
"For every Dr. King, there is a Whitney Young or a Roy Wilkins or a Dorothy Height, each of whom played a critical role in the struggle for change," she said before the screening at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex.
Mrs. Obama said she learned from the documentary that Young drew from his intelligence and sense of humor to face discrimination and challenges. He worked with three presidential administrations, community leaders, business executives and regular citizens to champion for race relations.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Organizers said sites in nearly every state will ring their bells at 3 p.m. their time Wednesday or at 3 p.m. EDT, the hour when King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington.Commemorations are planned from the site of the speech in Washington to the far reaches of Alaska, where participants plan to ring cow bells along with church bells in Juneau.
"When we allow freedom to ring - when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, `Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, we are free at last," King said in closing.
On Wednesday, bells will answer his call from each of the specific states King named, as well as at other sites around the nation and the world. At the Lincoln Memorial, President Barack Obama and former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter will join members of the King family and indoor Tracking. John Lewis, who also spoke at the March on Washington, in ringing a bell that hung in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., before the church was bombed in 1963, organizers said.
International commemorations will be held at London's Trafalgar Square, as well as in the nations of Japan, Switzerland, Nepal and Liberia. London Mayor Boris Johnson has said King's speech resonates around the world and continues to inspire people as one of the great pieces of oratory.
"The response to our call to commemorate the March on Washington and my father's `I Have a Dream' speech has been overwhelming," King's daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, said in a written statement.Some of the sites that will host ceremonies are symbolic, such as the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kan., a monument to the landmark Supreme Court case that outlawed segregated schools in 1954. Bells will also be rung at Lookout Mountain in Tennessee and Stone Mountain in Georgia, a site with a Confederate memorial that King referenced in his speech.
In the nation's capital, numerous organizations and churches will ring their bells at 3 p.m., including the Smithsonian Institution on the National Mall. Washington National Cathedral will play a series of tunes and spirituals on its carillon from the church's central bell tower, including "Lift Every Voice and Sing," "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," "Amazing Grace," "We Shall Overcome" and "My Country `tis of Thee."The Very Rev. Gary Hall, the cathedral's dean, said bell ringing is a symbol of freedom in the nation's history and that many churches are trying to answer King's call to be faithful to the roots of the civil rights movement.
"It's a kind of proclamation of our aspirations for the expansion of freedom for all people," he said. "It's always important to remember that the civil rights movement started largely as a church movement. ... It was essentially a group of black clergy with some white allies."
King preached his final Sunday sermon at the National Cathedral in 1968 before traveling on to Memphis, Tenn., where he was assassinated. King had been turning his attention more toward economic inequalities with his Poor People's Campaign, moving beyond solely racial issues to talk about all poor people and high unemployment.
His presence at the commemorative ceremony Wednesday will embody the fulfilled dreams of the hundreds of thousands who rallied there 50 years ago for racial equality - and will personify the continued struggle for that elusive goal.
When he became president, Obama blasted through a heavy barrier that many before him had only pushed against. But his presidency has been marred by racist backlash and his administration has found itself refighting battles already thought won, such as ensuring equal access to the polls.
Obama is expected to speak just after an organized ringing of bells by churches and others at 3 p.m. EDT, the time when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his spellbinding "I Have a Dream" speech. Obama will be joined by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton at the memorial's steps. Other luminaries include Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson, who signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
A march, led by a replica of a transit bus that civil rights leader Rosa Parks rode when she refused to give up her seat to a white man in 1955, and an interfaith service also were planned for Wednesday morning. A march held Saturday drew tens of thousands to the Lincoln Memorial.
Obama considers the 1963 march a "seminal event" and part of his generation's "formative memory." A half-century after the march, he said, is a good time to reflect on how far the country has come and how far it still has to go.
The first lady spoke Tuesday before a screening of the documentary "The Powerbroker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights." It follows Young's rise from segregated Kentucky to leader of the National Urban League during the 1960s.
Young was one of the organizers for the 1963 March on Washington, which featured Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. Mrs. Obama is scheduled to join President Barack Obama as he makes a speech Wednesday commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march.
"For every Dr. King, there is a Whitney Young or a Roy Wilkins or a Dorothy Height, each of whom played a critical role in the struggle for change," she said before the screening at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex.
Mrs. Obama said she learned from the documentary that Young drew from his intelligence and sense of humor to face discrimination and challenges. He worked with three presidential administrations, community leaders, business executives and regular citizens to champion for race relations.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Monday, August 26, 2013
Mutoh America Exhibits
Mutoh will be introducing a new G7-enabled process control solution for its ValueJet family. Working in conjunction with ColorMetrix Technologies and SA International, Mutoh will demonstrate an enhanced version of its ColorVerify process control software with G7-based calibration, providing its users with an advanced set of tools for ensuring consistent color reproduction over time.
The new ValueJet 1617H - 64" hybrid printer prints on both rigid and roll substrates, with CMYK plus white ink, up to a half inch thick. Perfect for any sign shop looking to expand applications, increase production and save floor space. Print packaging prototypes, trade show graphics, POP signage, vehicle wraps and indoor and outdoor signage. The VJ1617H will be show in Mutoh's booth as well as the "Inkjet Candy Store," booth 1631.
Mutoh will also be demonstrating print/cut solutions with the new ValueCut Cutting Plotters. Available in three different cut widths, the ValueCut plotters are ideal for home, office and professional users providing the finest cutting quality with unsurpassed tracking capabilities. All models come standard with a roll support system for Indoor Positioning System, perfect tracking and multi-segment registration for long run cut job accuracy.
With the new ValueJet 1617H, Mutoh will also be presenting printing demonstrations on the ValueJet 1624 - 64" and 1324 - 54" printers. With blazing print speeds up to 600 sqft/hr (VJ1624), the VJ1624 and VJ1324 include a two year warranty, SA International FlexiPrint software and take-up system. Both printers have Smart Printing features including: Intelligent Interweave print technique that virtually eliminates banding, ValueJet Status Monitor app for remote printer monitoring, and can both printers can be equipped with Mutoh's SpectroVue VM-10 on-printer spectrophotometer for easy customized profile creation. The ValueJet 1624 printer is known as the "Wrapper's Choice" printer for speed, size and quality. Mutoh will be showcasing vehicle wrap tips and tricks at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. daily.
Mutoh will also be partnering with the Printerverse, booth 5440, providing an interactive booth for print professionals that includes seminars, meet and greets, social media forum and more.
An iPad or laptop, along with a cell phone or smartphone, will be a staple in some students’ backpacks this fall, as a growing number of districts now allow students to bring their own electronic devices with them to use in school.Once banned from school, schools are now recognizing today’s students are tomorrow’s digital citizens, and have adopted “bring your own device” policies.
The policy is new for Carlisle Area, Cumberland Valley and East Pennsboro Area school districts this year. Mechanicsburg Area School District piloted it last year, and is expanding it this year.Lower Dauphin, Northern York and West Shore school districts adopted the practice last school year, and Derry Twp. and Harrisburg Academy have had “bring your own” practices for two years.
Hazen said young people have some form in technology in their hands almost constantly. “For them to come to school and suddenly disconnect” isn’t realistic, he said. “School shouldn’t be a technology- free zone. We should try and incorporate it as best we can in daily practice.”
At Cumberland Valley, the reaction to the “bring your own device” policy was “very positive” when it was unveiled last spring, said Amy Lena, district supervisor of curriculum, instruction and indoor Tracking.“Of course there are some people who are a little nervous, because we don’t know what it will be like on a full scale,” she added.
But students “need to know how to be digital citizens. By allowing them to bring devices into the classroom, they can learn to use them in a real world situation,” Lena said. Students will learn how to evaluate Internet sites, and learn why some are not appropriate or credible as sources.
At Lower Dauphin High School, students can use cell phones “door-to-door,” Hazen said. “We allow teachers to regulate how they manage their classrooms, rather than making it a blanket rule,” Hazen said.
“It has worked really well in terms of students knowing what the rules were,” Hazen said. “Putting them away for tests – the kids get that.”One of the first uses in Cumberland Valley classrooms will be to allow students to provide immediate feedback or answers to teachers, either through their Internet-ready device or response pads the district purchased.
Students will also be able to type their work directly on their electronic tablet or laptop. That answers the questions posed by students who had been asking why they have to do a rough draft on paper, rather than type it, Lena said.“We will also save money, since we will not need to print as much, and can give it to them electronically,” she said. “We still will have.
devices available, since not everyone will be able to bring them right away.” But the district doesn’t have enough to give to every student, which is where the “bring your own” initiative helps.Lena said she isn’t sure how many students will be bringing their devices. The district did a survey on home Internet access, which showed most have some type of device at home.
As to whether the policy will highlight difference between the affluent and less fortunate, Lena doesn’t foresee it being an issue.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
The new ValueJet 1617H - 64" hybrid printer prints on both rigid and roll substrates, with CMYK plus white ink, up to a half inch thick. Perfect for any sign shop looking to expand applications, increase production and save floor space. Print packaging prototypes, trade show graphics, POP signage, vehicle wraps and indoor and outdoor signage. The VJ1617H will be show in Mutoh's booth as well as the "Inkjet Candy Store," booth 1631.
Mutoh will also be demonstrating print/cut solutions with the new ValueCut Cutting Plotters. Available in three different cut widths, the ValueCut plotters are ideal for home, office and professional users providing the finest cutting quality with unsurpassed tracking capabilities. All models come standard with a roll support system for Indoor Positioning System, perfect tracking and multi-segment registration for long run cut job accuracy.
With the new ValueJet 1617H, Mutoh will also be presenting printing demonstrations on the ValueJet 1624 - 64" and 1324 - 54" printers. With blazing print speeds up to 600 sqft/hr (VJ1624), the VJ1624 and VJ1324 include a two year warranty, SA International FlexiPrint software and take-up system. Both printers have Smart Printing features including: Intelligent Interweave print technique that virtually eliminates banding, ValueJet Status Monitor app for remote printer monitoring, and can both printers can be equipped with Mutoh's SpectroVue VM-10 on-printer spectrophotometer for easy customized profile creation. The ValueJet 1624 printer is known as the "Wrapper's Choice" printer for speed, size and quality. Mutoh will be showcasing vehicle wrap tips and tricks at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. daily.
Mutoh will also be partnering with the Printerverse, booth 5440, providing an interactive booth for print professionals that includes seminars, meet and greets, social media forum and more.
An iPad or laptop, along with a cell phone or smartphone, will be a staple in some students’ backpacks this fall, as a growing number of districts now allow students to bring their own electronic devices with them to use in school.Once banned from school, schools are now recognizing today’s students are tomorrow’s digital citizens, and have adopted “bring your own device” policies.
The policy is new for Carlisle Area, Cumberland Valley and East Pennsboro Area school districts this year. Mechanicsburg Area School District piloted it last year, and is expanding it this year.Lower Dauphin, Northern York and West Shore school districts adopted the practice last school year, and Derry Twp. and Harrisburg Academy have had “bring your own” practices for two years.
Hazen said young people have some form in technology in their hands almost constantly. “For them to come to school and suddenly disconnect” isn’t realistic, he said. “School shouldn’t be a technology- free zone. We should try and incorporate it as best we can in daily practice.”
At Cumberland Valley, the reaction to the “bring your own device” policy was “very positive” when it was unveiled last spring, said Amy Lena, district supervisor of curriculum, instruction and indoor Tracking.“Of course there are some people who are a little nervous, because we don’t know what it will be like on a full scale,” she added.
But students “need to know how to be digital citizens. By allowing them to bring devices into the classroom, they can learn to use them in a real world situation,” Lena said. Students will learn how to evaluate Internet sites, and learn why some are not appropriate or credible as sources.
At Lower Dauphin High School, students can use cell phones “door-to-door,” Hazen said. “We allow teachers to regulate how they manage their classrooms, rather than making it a blanket rule,” Hazen said.
“It has worked really well in terms of students knowing what the rules were,” Hazen said. “Putting them away for tests – the kids get that.”One of the first uses in Cumberland Valley classrooms will be to allow students to provide immediate feedback or answers to teachers, either through their Internet-ready device or response pads the district purchased.
Students will also be able to type their work directly on their electronic tablet or laptop. That answers the questions posed by students who had been asking why they have to do a rough draft on paper, rather than type it, Lena said.“We will also save money, since we will not need to print as much, and can give it to them electronically,” she said. “We still will have.
devices available, since not everyone will be able to bring them right away.” But the district doesn’t have enough to give to every student, which is where the “bring your own” initiative helps.Lena said she isn’t sure how many students will be bringing their devices. The district did a survey on home Internet access, which showed most have some type of device at home.
As to whether the policy will highlight difference between the affluent and less fortunate, Lena doesn’t foresee it being an issue.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Monday, August 19, 2013
Latest traveling exhibit to open at ECHO
Change the twist of a tornado, swirl water into amazing patterns, spin the colors of a rainbow and more at “Cool Moves! Artistry of Motion”, ECHO’s newest traveling exhibit, opening to the public on Saturday, September 14.
COOL MOVES! features fun, interactive exhibits that allow visitors to discover the beauty of motion that takes place around us every day. Through hands-on experimentation, each interactive exhibit explores how motion in a variety of things can be characterized by simple types: translation vs. rotation, continuous vs. vibrating, and predictable vs. unpredictable.
At the “Dancing Wall” exhibit, motion detectors are triggered by visitors’ dancing movements and these movements create a unique light and sound show! “Animals in Motion” specialized computer video kiosk allows guests to manipulate the speed of movement of various animals, such as frogs, owls, otters, cheetahs, kangaroos, hummingbirds, rtls, and dolphins. By slowing down and then speeding up the motion, guests can see the amazing micro movements of these animals in the wild. Guests can zoom a strange car down a track, see a miniature tornado, or use the wind to swirl shimmering water into swirling patterns. The giant pendulum feature allows visitors to move magnets into different patterns and watch how the pendulum swings to investigate the unpredictability of chaotic motion.
Digital Rapids announced today that the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is using Digital Rapids' StreamZHD encoding system to educate students and deliver online streams of its live productions from its state-of-the-art mobile audio and HD video recording and production facility.
The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is a non-profit organization that has traveled across the U.S. and Canada for the past 16 years serving as a living legacy to John Lennon by providing young people with free access to hands-on music and video creation. Students and emerging artists alike are afforded the opportunity to create original content alongside today's most recognized musicians and the team of experienced engineers on board.
Through studio tours and workshops — which include celebrity appearances, live performances and live multi-camera video productions streamed online in real time — young musicians can learn how to write, perform, record and produce original songs and music videos. The StreamZHD system encodes HD source signals into multiple concurrent live-output streams ranging from mobile to HD resolutions.
Digital Rapids' StreamZHD ingest, encoding and archive systems deliver high-quality, multi-format video capture, encoding, transcoding and streaming in versatile configurations that integrate easily into any professional environment. Offering one of the industry's deepest feature sets, they provide flexibility, format support and efficient automation for transforming media for applications from post production and archive to live and on-demand multi-screen distribution.
It is the first sign that Barnes & Noble's Nook arm is groping to finds its way after announcing it would jettison its business making tablets like its Nook HD and Nook HD+, followed shortly thereafter by the news that CEO William Lynch would resign. That marked the departure of a tech-focused executive who rose to the company's helm from its online business, and put more authority in the hands of Leonard Riggio, Barnes & Noble's chairman and biggest shareholder.
At the time, Barnes & Noble said it wasn't searching for a CEO successor, and would instead it review its strategy and "update when appropriate." Since then, the only peeps out of Barnes & Noble about the division have been more discounts to devices such as Sunday's $20 price cut to the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, the second reduction since September.
Discounts on the Nook were the main culprit behind Barnes & Noble's last quarterly report plagued by losses. The company is supposed to report its performance in the most recent quarter Tuesday.
The new video apps make Barnes & Noble's Nook store more applicable for more devices, after the company had made its own device more applicable to other companies' shops. In May, it added the Google Play store to meet market and customer demand for access to the full breadth of Indoor Positioning System, but it also gave customers the opportunity to buy e-books and other content from Google just a few swipes away from the Nook store.
In the Nook Store, movies and TV shows are available to purchase or rental, and now can be streamed or downloaded on Nooks or on other devices through the video apps. Customers can also shift their viewing across devices, starting a movie on one and then picking up on another.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
COOL MOVES! features fun, interactive exhibits that allow visitors to discover the beauty of motion that takes place around us every day. Through hands-on experimentation, each interactive exhibit explores how motion in a variety of things can be characterized by simple types: translation vs. rotation, continuous vs. vibrating, and predictable vs. unpredictable.
At the “Dancing Wall” exhibit, motion detectors are triggered by visitors’ dancing movements and these movements create a unique light and sound show! “Animals in Motion” specialized computer video kiosk allows guests to manipulate the speed of movement of various animals, such as frogs, owls, otters, cheetahs, kangaroos, hummingbirds, rtls, and dolphins. By slowing down and then speeding up the motion, guests can see the amazing micro movements of these animals in the wild. Guests can zoom a strange car down a track, see a miniature tornado, or use the wind to swirl shimmering water into swirling patterns. The giant pendulum feature allows visitors to move magnets into different patterns and watch how the pendulum swings to investigate the unpredictability of chaotic motion.
Digital Rapids announced today that the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is using Digital Rapids' StreamZHD encoding system to educate students and deliver online streams of its live productions from its state-of-the-art mobile audio and HD video recording and production facility.
The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is a non-profit organization that has traveled across the U.S. and Canada for the past 16 years serving as a living legacy to John Lennon by providing young people with free access to hands-on music and video creation. Students and emerging artists alike are afforded the opportunity to create original content alongside today's most recognized musicians and the team of experienced engineers on board.
Through studio tours and workshops — which include celebrity appearances, live performances and live multi-camera video productions streamed online in real time — young musicians can learn how to write, perform, record and produce original songs and music videos. The StreamZHD system encodes HD source signals into multiple concurrent live-output streams ranging from mobile to HD resolutions.
Digital Rapids' StreamZHD ingest, encoding and archive systems deliver high-quality, multi-format video capture, encoding, transcoding and streaming in versatile configurations that integrate easily into any professional environment. Offering one of the industry's deepest feature sets, they provide flexibility, format support and efficient automation for transforming media for applications from post production and archive to live and on-demand multi-screen distribution.
It is the first sign that Barnes & Noble's Nook arm is groping to finds its way after announcing it would jettison its business making tablets like its Nook HD and Nook HD+, followed shortly thereafter by the news that CEO William Lynch would resign. That marked the departure of a tech-focused executive who rose to the company's helm from its online business, and put more authority in the hands of Leonard Riggio, Barnes & Noble's chairman and biggest shareholder.
At the time, Barnes & Noble said it wasn't searching for a CEO successor, and would instead it review its strategy and "update when appropriate." Since then, the only peeps out of Barnes & Noble about the division have been more discounts to devices such as Sunday's $20 price cut to the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, the second reduction since September.
Discounts on the Nook were the main culprit behind Barnes & Noble's last quarterly report plagued by losses. The company is supposed to report its performance in the most recent quarter Tuesday.
The new video apps make Barnes & Noble's Nook store more applicable for more devices, after the company had made its own device more applicable to other companies' shops. In May, it added the Google Play store to meet market and customer demand for access to the full breadth of Indoor Positioning System, but it also gave customers the opportunity to buy e-books and other content from Google just a few swipes away from the Nook store.
In the Nook Store, movies and TV shows are available to purchase or rental, and now can be streamed or downloaded on Nooks or on other devices through the video apps. Customers can also shift their viewing across devices, starting a movie on one and then picking up on another.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Police storm camps supporting ousted president
Riot police backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers and helicopters Wednesday swept away two encampments of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, setting off running street battles in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. At least 278 people were killed nationwide, many of them in the crackdown on the protest sites.
Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-reform leader in the interim government, resigned in protest over the assaults as the military-backed leadership imposed a monthlong state of emergency and nighttime curfew.
Clashes broke out elsewhere in the capital and other provinces as Islamist anger spread over the dispersal of the 6-week-old sit-ins by Morsi’s Islamist supporters that Indoor Positioning System.It was the highest single day death toll since the 18-day uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
The Health Ministry said 235 civilians were killed and more than 2,000 injured, while Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said 43 policemen died in the assault. He said Morsi supporters attacked 21 police stations and seven Coptic Christian churches across the nation, and assaulted the Finance Ministry in Cairo, occupying its ground floor.
The violence drew condemnation from other predominantly Muslim countries, but also from the West, with Secretary of State John Kerry saying it had dealt a “serious blow” to Egypt’s political reconciliation efforts.
The assault to take control of the two sit-in sites came after days of warnings by the interim administration that replaced Morsi after he was ousted in a July 3 coup. The camps on opposite sides of the capital began in late June to show support for Morsi. Protesters _ many from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood _ have demanded his reinstatement.
The smaller camp was cleared relatively quickly, but it took hours for police to take control of the main sit-in site, which is near the Rabbah al-Adawiya Mosque that has served as the epicenter of the pro-Morsi campaign.
Several senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood who were wanted by police were detained after police stormed the camp near the mosque, according to security officials and state television. Among those seized were Brotherhood leaders Mohammed el-Beltagy and Essam el-Erian, and hard-line cleric Safwat Hegazy _ all wanted by prosecutors to answer allegations of inciting violence and conspiring to kill anti-Morsi protesters.
Police dismantled the main stage near the mosque in the eastern Cairo district of Nasr City, the official MENA news agency said. An AP reporter saw hundreds of protesters leaving the sit-in site carrying their personal belongings.
Smoke clogged the sky above Cairo and fires smoldered on the streets, which were lined with charred poles and tarps after several tents were burned.In imposing the state of emergency, the government ordered the armed forces to support the police in restoring law and order and protect state facilities. The nighttime curfew affects Cairo and 10 provinces.
The Egyptian Central Bank instructed commercial banks to close branches in areas affected by the chaos. The landmark Giza Pyramids and the Egyptian Museum also were closed to visitors for the day as a precaution, according to the Ministry of Antiquities.
The turmoil was the latest chapter in a bitter standoff between Morsi’s supporters and the interim leadership that took over the Arab world’s most populous country. The military ousted Morsi after millions of Egyptians massed in the streets at the end of June to call for him to step down, accusing him of giving the Brotherhood undue influence and failing to implement vital reforms or bolster the ailing economy.
The coup provoked similar protests by Morsi’s backers after he and other Brotherhood leaders were detained as divisions have deepened, dealing a major blow to hopes of an end to the turmoil that followed the 2011 revolution against Mubarak.
Morsi has been held at an undisclosed location. Other Brotherhood leaders have been charged with inciting violence or conspiring in the killing of protesters.
“The world cannot sit back and watch while innocent men, women and children are being indiscriminately slaughtered. The world must stand up to the military junta’s crime before it is too late,” said a statement by the Brotherhood’s media office in London emailed to The Associated Press.
ElBaradei, a former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, was named only last month as interim President Adly Mansour’s deputy for foreign relations.
In his resignation letter, he wrote that he is not prepared to be held responsible for a “single drop of indoor Tracking,” and that only more violence will result, according to a copy that was emailed to The Associated Press. He said Egypt is more polarized than when he took office.
The smaller of the two protest camps was cleared of protesters by late morning, with most of them taking refuge in the nearby Orman botanical gardens on the campus of Cairo University and the zoo.
An AP reporter at the scene said security forces chased protesters in the zoo. At one point, a dozen protesters, mostly men with beards and wearing traditional Islamist garb, were handcuffed on a sidewalk under guard outside the university campus. The private ONTV network showed firearms and ammunition allegedly seized from protestersSecurity forces later stormed the larger camp near the mosque in the Cairo district of Nasr City. The mosque has served as the epicenter of pro-Morsi campaign, with several Brotherhood leaders wanted by police believed to be hiding inside.
The pro-Morsi Anti-Coup alliance claimed security forces used live ammunition, but the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police, said its forces only used tear gas and that they came under fire from the camp.
The Interior Ministry statement also warned that forces would deal firmly with protesters who were acting “irresponsibly,” suggesting that it would respond in kind if its men are fired upon. It said it would guarantee safe passage to all who want to leave the Nasr City site but would arrest those wanted for questioning by prosecutors.
Army troops did not take part in the two operations, but provided security at the locations. Police and army helicopters hovered over both sites hours after the police launched the simultaneous actions shortly after 7 a.m. (0500 GMT).The Health Ministry said 149 people were killed and 1,403 injured across Egypt, but it did not immediately provide a breakdown.
An alliance of pro-Morsi groups said Asmaa Mohammed el-Batagy, the 17-year-old daughter of the senior Brotherhood figure who was detained by police, was shot and killed. Her brother, Ammar, confirmed her death on his Twitter account.
Two journalists were among the dead _ Mick Deane, 61, a cameraman for British broadcaster Sky News, and Habiba Ahmed Abd Elaziz, 26, a reporter for the Gulf News, a state-backed newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, the news organizations reported. Both had been reported to be shot.
A security official said 200 protesters were arrested at both sites. Several men could be seen walking with their hands up as they were led away by black-clad police.The Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm claimed that more than 500 protesters were killed and some 9,000 wounded in the two camps, but those figures could not be confirmed and nothing in the video from AP or local TV networks suggested such a high death toll.
Before he was detained, Mohammed el-Beltagy put the death toll at more than 300, urged police and army troops to mutiny, and said Egyptians should take to the streets to show their disapproval of the crackdown.“Oh, Egyptian people, your brothers are in the square. ... Are you going to remain silent until the genocide is completed?” said el-Beltagy, who is wanted by authorities to answer allegations of inciting violence.
Police fired tear gas elsewhere in Cairo to disperse Morsi supporters who wanted to join the Nasr City camp after it came under attack. State TV also reported that a police captain had been abducted by Morsi supporters in the area, but there was no official statement about that.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-reform leader in the interim government, resigned in protest over the assaults as the military-backed leadership imposed a monthlong state of emergency and nighttime curfew.
Clashes broke out elsewhere in the capital and other provinces as Islamist anger spread over the dispersal of the 6-week-old sit-ins by Morsi’s Islamist supporters that Indoor Positioning System.It was the highest single day death toll since the 18-day uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
The Health Ministry said 235 civilians were killed and more than 2,000 injured, while Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said 43 policemen died in the assault. He said Morsi supporters attacked 21 police stations and seven Coptic Christian churches across the nation, and assaulted the Finance Ministry in Cairo, occupying its ground floor.
The violence drew condemnation from other predominantly Muslim countries, but also from the West, with Secretary of State John Kerry saying it had dealt a “serious blow” to Egypt’s political reconciliation efforts.
The assault to take control of the two sit-in sites came after days of warnings by the interim administration that replaced Morsi after he was ousted in a July 3 coup. The camps on opposite sides of the capital began in late June to show support for Morsi. Protesters _ many from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood _ have demanded his reinstatement.
The smaller camp was cleared relatively quickly, but it took hours for police to take control of the main sit-in site, which is near the Rabbah al-Adawiya Mosque that has served as the epicenter of the pro-Morsi campaign.
Several senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood who were wanted by police were detained after police stormed the camp near the mosque, according to security officials and state television. Among those seized were Brotherhood leaders Mohammed el-Beltagy and Essam el-Erian, and hard-line cleric Safwat Hegazy _ all wanted by prosecutors to answer allegations of inciting violence and conspiring to kill anti-Morsi protesters.
Police dismantled the main stage near the mosque in the eastern Cairo district of Nasr City, the official MENA news agency said. An AP reporter saw hundreds of protesters leaving the sit-in site carrying their personal belongings.
Smoke clogged the sky above Cairo and fires smoldered on the streets, which were lined with charred poles and tarps after several tents were burned.In imposing the state of emergency, the government ordered the armed forces to support the police in restoring law and order and protect state facilities. The nighttime curfew affects Cairo and 10 provinces.
The Egyptian Central Bank instructed commercial banks to close branches in areas affected by the chaos. The landmark Giza Pyramids and the Egyptian Museum also were closed to visitors for the day as a precaution, according to the Ministry of Antiquities.
The turmoil was the latest chapter in a bitter standoff between Morsi’s supporters and the interim leadership that took over the Arab world’s most populous country. The military ousted Morsi after millions of Egyptians massed in the streets at the end of June to call for him to step down, accusing him of giving the Brotherhood undue influence and failing to implement vital reforms or bolster the ailing economy.
The coup provoked similar protests by Morsi’s backers after he and other Brotherhood leaders were detained as divisions have deepened, dealing a major blow to hopes of an end to the turmoil that followed the 2011 revolution against Mubarak.
Morsi has been held at an undisclosed location. Other Brotherhood leaders have been charged with inciting violence or conspiring in the killing of protesters.
“The world cannot sit back and watch while innocent men, women and children are being indiscriminately slaughtered. The world must stand up to the military junta’s crime before it is too late,” said a statement by the Brotherhood’s media office in London emailed to The Associated Press.
ElBaradei, a former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, was named only last month as interim President Adly Mansour’s deputy for foreign relations.
In his resignation letter, he wrote that he is not prepared to be held responsible for a “single drop of indoor Tracking,” and that only more violence will result, according to a copy that was emailed to The Associated Press. He said Egypt is more polarized than when he took office.
The smaller of the two protest camps was cleared of protesters by late morning, with most of them taking refuge in the nearby Orman botanical gardens on the campus of Cairo University and the zoo.
An AP reporter at the scene said security forces chased protesters in the zoo. At one point, a dozen protesters, mostly men with beards and wearing traditional Islamist garb, were handcuffed on a sidewalk under guard outside the university campus. The private ONTV network showed firearms and ammunition allegedly seized from protestersSecurity forces later stormed the larger camp near the mosque in the Cairo district of Nasr City. The mosque has served as the epicenter of pro-Morsi campaign, with several Brotherhood leaders wanted by police believed to be hiding inside.
The pro-Morsi Anti-Coup alliance claimed security forces used live ammunition, but the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police, said its forces only used tear gas and that they came under fire from the camp.
The Interior Ministry statement also warned that forces would deal firmly with protesters who were acting “irresponsibly,” suggesting that it would respond in kind if its men are fired upon. It said it would guarantee safe passage to all who want to leave the Nasr City site but would arrest those wanted for questioning by prosecutors.
Army troops did not take part in the two operations, but provided security at the locations. Police and army helicopters hovered over both sites hours after the police launched the simultaneous actions shortly after 7 a.m. (0500 GMT).The Health Ministry said 149 people were killed and 1,403 injured across Egypt, but it did not immediately provide a breakdown.
An alliance of pro-Morsi groups said Asmaa Mohammed el-Batagy, the 17-year-old daughter of the senior Brotherhood figure who was detained by police, was shot and killed. Her brother, Ammar, confirmed her death on his Twitter account.
Two journalists were among the dead _ Mick Deane, 61, a cameraman for British broadcaster Sky News, and Habiba Ahmed Abd Elaziz, 26, a reporter for the Gulf News, a state-backed newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, the news organizations reported. Both had been reported to be shot.
A security official said 200 protesters were arrested at both sites. Several men could be seen walking with their hands up as they were led away by black-clad police.The Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm claimed that more than 500 protesters were killed and some 9,000 wounded in the two camps, but those figures could not be confirmed and nothing in the video from AP or local TV networks suggested such a high death toll.
Before he was detained, Mohammed el-Beltagy put the death toll at more than 300, urged police and army troops to mutiny, and said Egyptians should take to the streets to show their disapproval of the crackdown.“Oh, Egyptian people, your brothers are in the square. ... Are you going to remain silent until the genocide is completed?” said el-Beltagy, who is wanted by authorities to answer allegations of inciting violence.
Police fired tear gas elsewhere in Cairo to disperse Morsi supporters who wanted to join the Nasr City camp after it came under attack. State TV also reported that a police captain had been abducted by Morsi supporters in the area, but there was no official statement about that.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Capital's role in the economic crisis
Two stories illustrate central dynamics of our time – the climate of fear generated around migration and the rise in house prices ('Go home' campaign denounced by human rights groups, Buy-to-let fuels property boom, both 9 August).
The house price rise, especially in London, is caused partly by the international movement of money as the wealthy seek to capitalise on speculative investment. At the same time those with access to money can borrow more and invest in buy-to-let properties, to profit from those who must rent. So this system works to move capital to where it will make more and to divide those who have it from those who don't. Wealth accumulates in fewer hands and and its movement produces rapid, uneven developments.
Writ large, that is the story of our world, and the free flow of capital is followed inevitably by the flow of rtls, as people move from areas of forced decline to wherever there is a prospect of work. Employers benefit from cheaper labour but the migrants are blamed for displacing unskilled workers and competing for scarce resources in housing and health.
To reverse these processes requires economic planning and wealth taxes to put accumulated private capital back towards social use; in the UK the ￡4.5 trillion owned by the top 10% could pay off the national debt four times or finance re-skilling, infrastructure, green technology and much else. It also requires politicians and media to stop blaming the migrants, refugees and other victims of the system, and to look instead at how to rebuild our world so it is more use to all who have to live in it.
As Larry Elliott rightly says, the proliferation of zero-hours contracts represents an increase in the "reserve army of labour" in an attempt to reverse a long-term decline in profitability (Why stop at zero hours? Why not revive child labour, 5 August). But neither this nor the other responses he mentions, such as financialisation, can ultimately overcome the tendency for profit rates to fall.
This is an inherent feature of capitalist competition, resulting not from pressure on prices but from each capitalist's attempt to raise their individual profit rate by investing in more capital-intensive production processes. The overall capital, relative to total profit, goes up, and the profit rate goes down.
Although such things as attacks on wages can offset the basic tendency, sooner or later it results in crises such as the one in progress since 2008. Since the cause is too much capital, the only cure (within capitalism) is destruction of capital through bankruptcy of less-profitable enterprises. Palliatives such as increasing workers' purchasing power can help the system limp along for a while but only at the cost of preparing a bigger and worse crisis.
Said quarterback Andrew Luck: "He's a phenomenal football player. He's going to make plays. You do sort of say, 'All right, T.Y.' He's going to do something special when he's on the field. He has that factor to him."
It's been a long time, maybe forever, since the Colts have had anyone like Hilton. And to think, the Colts got Hilton in the third round with the 92nd pick. Twelve receivers went before him, in large part because a quadriceps injury kept him out of the Senior Bowl and the NFL Scouting Combine."That bothered me," Hilton said. "I've always played with a chip on my shoulder."
Indy has learned quickly, Hilton is much more than simply a burner. He's got hands. He's a superior route runner. And he's a student of the game, having spent the off-season studying what it is that has made Reggie Wayne so great all these years. Specifically, he spent the summer studying Wayne's footwork and his ability to come back to the football.
The same couldn't be said of the Colts in general, who looked awful their first time out. But again, Indoor Positioning System. How many times did the Colts go winless prior to ripping off another 12-win season? If they look this bad in the third game, then howl.
It's darned near impossible to offer sober analysis on a first preseason game, especially with so many starters either sitting or playing only two series. Keep in mind, Buffalo played many of its first-team players deep into the first half, using rookie quarterback E.J. Manuel the entire half.
The house price rise, especially in London, is caused partly by the international movement of money as the wealthy seek to capitalise on speculative investment. At the same time those with access to money can borrow more and invest in buy-to-let properties, to profit from those who must rent. So this system works to move capital to where it will make more and to divide those who have it from those who don't. Wealth accumulates in fewer hands and and its movement produces rapid, uneven developments.
Writ large, that is the story of our world, and the free flow of capital is followed inevitably by the flow of rtls, as people move from areas of forced decline to wherever there is a prospect of work. Employers benefit from cheaper labour but the migrants are blamed for displacing unskilled workers and competing for scarce resources in housing and health.
To reverse these processes requires economic planning and wealth taxes to put accumulated private capital back towards social use; in the UK the ￡4.5 trillion owned by the top 10% could pay off the national debt four times or finance re-skilling, infrastructure, green technology and much else. It also requires politicians and media to stop blaming the migrants, refugees and other victims of the system, and to look instead at how to rebuild our world so it is more use to all who have to live in it.
As Larry Elliott rightly says, the proliferation of zero-hours contracts represents an increase in the "reserve army of labour" in an attempt to reverse a long-term decline in profitability (Why stop at zero hours? Why not revive child labour, 5 August). But neither this nor the other responses he mentions, such as financialisation, can ultimately overcome the tendency for profit rates to fall.
This is an inherent feature of capitalist competition, resulting not from pressure on prices but from each capitalist's attempt to raise their individual profit rate by investing in more capital-intensive production processes. The overall capital, relative to total profit, goes up, and the profit rate goes down.
Although such things as attacks on wages can offset the basic tendency, sooner or later it results in crises such as the one in progress since 2008. Since the cause is too much capital, the only cure (within capitalism) is destruction of capital through bankruptcy of less-profitable enterprises. Palliatives such as increasing workers' purchasing power can help the system limp along for a while but only at the cost of preparing a bigger and worse crisis.
Said quarterback Andrew Luck: "He's a phenomenal football player. He's going to make plays. You do sort of say, 'All right, T.Y.' He's going to do something special when he's on the field. He has that factor to him."
It's been a long time, maybe forever, since the Colts have had anyone like Hilton. And to think, the Colts got Hilton in the third round with the 92nd pick. Twelve receivers went before him, in large part because a quadriceps injury kept him out of the Senior Bowl and the NFL Scouting Combine."That bothered me," Hilton said. "I've always played with a chip on my shoulder."
Indy has learned quickly, Hilton is much more than simply a burner. He's got hands. He's a superior route runner. And he's a student of the game, having spent the off-season studying what it is that has made Reggie Wayne so great all these years. Specifically, he spent the summer studying Wayne's footwork and his ability to come back to the football.
The same couldn't be said of the Colts in general, who looked awful their first time out. But again, Indoor Positioning System. How many times did the Colts go winless prior to ripping off another 12-win season? If they look this bad in the third game, then howl.
It's darned near impossible to offer sober analysis on a first preseason game, especially with so many starters either sitting or playing only two series. Keep in mind, Buffalo played many of its first-team players deep into the first half, using rookie quarterback E.J. Manuel the entire half.
With a Little Bashing
I’m not a sedentary person. In my 30s and 40s, I was a runner, and for decades, I played singles tennis three or more times a week. After a back injury in my late 30s, I took up swimming and cycling.
Now, in my 70s and with artificial knees, I walk or cycle and swim laps daily, all of which has kept me aerobically fit, free of pain, reasonably trim and energetic. So in combing recently through the professional literature on exercise and bone health, I was quite disappointed to learn that neither swimming nor cycling is especially good for my bones — at least, not the ones most susceptible to fracture. Swimming, in fact, might compromise the strength of those bones because it lacks the tug of Hands free access.
That’s what researchers have found when they measured bone mineral density in young athletes who swim or cycle, and even in some who run. There are two reasons for this. One is the continuous nature of these activities. Bones, it seems, don’t like constant pressure. They respond better to exercise that involves forceful muscle contractions, occurring in starts and stops and with some variety — as happens, for example, when playing tennis or training with weights.
To maintain strength, bones also need the stress of gravity, which is lacking in cycling and swimming and not as powerful when walking as it is when running. Being suspended in water is like floating in space for a short time: once they leave Earth, astronauts lose bone.
But before I was too discouraged (and before you abandon exercises like mine and retreat to your recliner), I did some more research. Regular walks can indeed offer some protection against hip fractures among women (and presumably, men) of a certain age, I found. In the famous Nurses’ Health Study, which has followed tens of thousands of postmenopausal women for decades, those who walked for at least four hours a week were 40 percent less likely to suffer hip fractures than those who walked less.
Those who walked for at least eight hours a week (or did the equivalent amount of another activity) were as unlikely to suffer hip fractures as women on hormone replacement therapy, long known to protect bones. As a bonus, walking briskly for exercise also lowered the women’s risk of developing heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
Activities like walking may not be perfect bone-builders, but they are far better than doing nothing. “As a bone doctor, I’ll take anything,” said Dr. Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon at the Center for Sports Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Her studies of 3,000 athletic seniors, whom she described as “normal people,” have shown that even in their 70s and 80s, they are able to maintain bone densities higher than the general population’s.
Still, she emphasized the need to “bash our bones” to make and keep them strong. This can be done, she said, through “dynamic impact” — by hopping or jumping rope 100 times a day, for example — or through “positive stress” by walking rapidly uphill or upstairs, or even standing on the pedals while cycling uphill. Although many bone experts recommend weight-training on resistance machines like those found in gyms, Dr. Wright realizes that most older adults won’t or can’t join a gym. Or, like me, they simply don’t like machines and won’t use them regularly.
Rather, she recommends home-based exercises that more closely mimic how the body functions in the real time Location system. “The house or office can be as effective as a gym,” Dr. Wright said.
“We never prescribe machines anymore,” she said. “Pushing leg presses is so unnatural. It’s not how the body uses squats. We train the body functionally, using the body’s own weight and free weights for resistance instead of machines.”
Without any equipment, you can strengthen your body’s core and multiple muscle groups by doing what trainers call a prisoner squat. Stand straight with feet shoulder-width apart, knees and toes pointed forward, hands behind your head and elbows pointed outward. Sink down, keeping your weight on your heels as if you were about to sit in a chair. Rise up with your back straight and repeat, working up to two sets of about 10 squats each. For a slightly greater challenge, the same exercise can be done against a wall using an exercise ball between you and the wall. You can use hand weights, or even hold cans of food, to strengthen the upper body at the same time.
Dr. Wright also encourages people to use the stairs at home and at work. Walking up and down 100 steps five times at a fast pace provides both an aerobic workout and one that strengthens bones. Walking rapidly uphill is another option. If jumping rope has some appeal, Dr. Wright suggested using a cordless digital jump rope to reduce the risk of tripping. It also records the number of jumps with each turn of the wrists.
If you have access to chest-high water in a pool, lake or seaside, you can build muscle mass and strengthen bones by walking forward and backward and side-to-side in the water, she said. This can strengthen the quads, buttocks and core, providing bone stimulation for the spine and hips and shock absorption for the knees.
And don’t forget dancing. “The waltz or swing dance is one of the most popular things I prescribe,” Dr. Wright said.
Of course, if your back can handle it, there are many ordinary tasks that can strengthen bones, among them carrying heavy items or small children for short distances. In the warmer months, I do a lot of outdoor tasks — pushing a lawn mower, raking, sawing, digging and the like — that involve intermittent bone-building stress.
Bone density exams typically involve only the spine, hips and forearms, the areas most susceptible to compression or fragility fractures. But other bones, like those in the thigh, upper arm and shoulder, can also break under minimal stress if they are weak, so activities that strengthen them — like walking, cycling and swimming — can indeed be helpful. While some doctors think measures of the internal structure of bones may more accurately indicate strength than traditional bone density tests, several experts told me that there is as yet no standard by which to judge bone health based on structure.
Now, in my 70s and with artificial knees, I walk or cycle and swim laps daily, all of which has kept me aerobically fit, free of pain, reasonably trim and energetic. So in combing recently through the professional literature on exercise and bone health, I was quite disappointed to learn that neither swimming nor cycling is especially good for my bones — at least, not the ones most susceptible to fracture. Swimming, in fact, might compromise the strength of those bones because it lacks the tug of Hands free access.
That’s what researchers have found when they measured bone mineral density in young athletes who swim or cycle, and even in some who run. There are two reasons for this. One is the continuous nature of these activities. Bones, it seems, don’t like constant pressure. They respond better to exercise that involves forceful muscle contractions, occurring in starts and stops and with some variety — as happens, for example, when playing tennis or training with weights.
To maintain strength, bones also need the stress of gravity, which is lacking in cycling and swimming and not as powerful when walking as it is when running. Being suspended in water is like floating in space for a short time: once they leave Earth, astronauts lose bone.
But before I was too discouraged (and before you abandon exercises like mine and retreat to your recliner), I did some more research. Regular walks can indeed offer some protection against hip fractures among women (and presumably, men) of a certain age, I found. In the famous Nurses’ Health Study, which has followed tens of thousands of postmenopausal women for decades, those who walked for at least four hours a week were 40 percent less likely to suffer hip fractures than those who walked less.
Those who walked for at least eight hours a week (or did the equivalent amount of another activity) were as unlikely to suffer hip fractures as women on hormone replacement therapy, long known to protect bones. As a bonus, walking briskly for exercise also lowered the women’s risk of developing heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
Activities like walking may not be perfect bone-builders, but they are far better than doing nothing. “As a bone doctor, I’ll take anything,” said Dr. Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon at the Center for Sports Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Her studies of 3,000 athletic seniors, whom she described as “normal people,” have shown that even in their 70s and 80s, they are able to maintain bone densities higher than the general population’s.
Still, she emphasized the need to “bash our bones” to make and keep them strong. This can be done, she said, through “dynamic impact” — by hopping or jumping rope 100 times a day, for example — or through “positive stress” by walking rapidly uphill or upstairs, or even standing on the pedals while cycling uphill. Although many bone experts recommend weight-training on resistance machines like those found in gyms, Dr. Wright realizes that most older adults won’t or can’t join a gym. Or, like me, they simply don’t like machines and won’t use them regularly.
Rather, she recommends home-based exercises that more closely mimic how the body functions in the real time Location system. “The house or office can be as effective as a gym,” Dr. Wright said.
“We never prescribe machines anymore,” she said. “Pushing leg presses is so unnatural. It’s not how the body uses squats. We train the body functionally, using the body’s own weight and free weights for resistance instead of machines.”
Without any equipment, you can strengthen your body’s core and multiple muscle groups by doing what trainers call a prisoner squat. Stand straight with feet shoulder-width apart, knees and toes pointed forward, hands behind your head and elbows pointed outward. Sink down, keeping your weight on your heels as if you were about to sit in a chair. Rise up with your back straight and repeat, working up to two sets of about 10 squats each. For a slightly greater challenge, the same exercise can be done against a wall using an exercise ball between you and the wall. You can use hand weights, or even hold cans of food, to strengthen the upper body at the same time.
Dr. Wright also encourages people to use the stairs at home and at work. Walking up and down 100 steps five times at a fast pace provides both an aerobic workout and one that strengthens bones. Walking rapidly uphill is another option. If jumping rope has some appeal, Dr. Wright suggested using a cordless digital jump rope to reduce the risk of tripping. It also records the number of jumps with each turn of the wrists.
If you have access to chest-high water in a pool, lake or seaside, you can build muscle mass and strengthen bones by walking forward and backward and side-to-side in the water, she said. This can strengthen the quads, buttocks and core, providing bone stimulation for the spine and hips and shock absorption for the knees.
And don’t forget dancing. “The waltz or swing dance is one of the most popular things I prescribe,” Dr. Wright said.
Of course, if your back can handle it, there are many ordinary tasks that can strengthen bones, among them carrying heavy items or small children for short distances. In the warmer months, I do a lot of outdoor tasks — pushing a lawn mower, raking, sawing, digging and the like — that involve intermittent bone-building stress.
Bone density exams typically involve only the spine, hips and forearms, the areas most susceptible to compression or fragility fractures. But other bones, like those in the thigh, upper arm and shoulder, can also break under minimal stress if they are weak, so activities that strengthen them — like walking, cycling and swimming — can indeed be helpful. While some doctors think measures of the internal structure of bones may more accurately indicate strength than traditional bone density tests, several experts told me that there is as yet no standard by which to judge bone health based on structure.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Tictail’s trick for easy e-commerce
As I cosily swap mobile numbers with 27-year-old Swede Carl Waldekranz, founder of Tictail, the new e-commerce tool for shops that is sweeping European high streets, I have a strong sense that I am sitting with the next Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak or Mark Zuckerberg, all internet entrepreneurs who started young and took the world by storm. In two or three years’ time, the boyish Waldekranz could join their ranks as another global icon – and one who will no longer be taking my calls. He certainly seems to be on the brink of something big.
Tictail launched only a year ago – although after long gestation around Waldekranz’s kitchen table in Stockholm – but already it has attracted headlines, backing from noted venture capitalists, and even investment from key personnel at Skype and Spotify. These two major-league web operators see big potential in Tictail’s offer of an internet platform for shopkeepers who want to create an online store to complement their Indoor Positioning System.
“While I was working in an advertising agency in Sweden,” the engaging Waldekranz explains, “I was very drawn to e-commerce. It is the most exciting area, where the message we create and the buying done by consumers converge. Elsewhere, people see the advertising and then, later, go into the shop. In e-commerce it is all one.”
So far, so good, but then he spotted one big obstacle. “Many retailers, particularly smaller ones with indie brands and boutiques, who could benefit from e-commerce, can only do it by spending a lot of money that they can’t afford on constant technical support or having their own IT section.”
Which is where no-cost, no-frills Tictail steps in. “Back in January,” Waldekranz recalls, “we received an email from a guitar shop in Dublin. It had been in the hands of the same family for 150 years but e-commerce was driving it out of business. They told us, 'We thought that this Christmas would be our last, and that going online was beyond our means and expertise, but within weeks of using Tictail to sell online we are doing so well that we are going to be here for another 150 years.’”
It sounds like a line from a television advertisement – especially to this default technophobe. Doesn’t Tictail require some aptitude for computers, or at the very least access to a willing teenage helper? Waldekranz laughs. “You sound like my mother. She is a brilliant artist but not great with technology and so she hasn’t been able to sell the ceramics she makes online. I told her that is absurd.” And he immediately opens up on his ever-present laptop the “By Mutti” website to display ceramicist Eva Gernandt’s distinctive porcelain designs, plus those handy boxes where you can click to buy one.
“It became our benchmark when we were planning Tictail,” Waldekranz says with one of those toothy smiles that stretches across his face. “If my mother couldn’t set it up and operate it on her own, then we hadn’t got it right.”
And since she clearly can and is profiting by it, this must count as a case of mission accomplished. Which brings us neatly to Tictail’s mission statement. It wants not only to be the world’s most used e-commerce platform, but also its most loved. E-commerce and the Hands free access of shops can suddenly be friends, not foes, and Britain’s stand-alone high-street retailers can more easily get a share of the UK’s ￡78 billion online sales market.
So if Waldekranz’s mother was instinctively hostile to using the internet to promote her business, I can’t help wondering, where does her son get his can-do attitude from? “Oh, my dad. He was always buying the latest bit of technology, even though he couldn’t work them.” And, he adds, then there was also what sounds like a very different approach to technology in the classrooms of Sweden.
“I’m not a digital native,” says Waldekranz, “like children in Swedish schools today. I only got my first computer when I was 11. But there is also a spirit in Sweden that we know we are a small country of nine million people, and that anything we develop can never be sustained if the only market we envisage is Sweden. We have to think global from day one. That mindset is part of our culture.” As evidenced by the success of Skype and Spotify, both now worldwide brands with their roots in Sweden.
Waldekranz is the public face of Tictail but is always careful to stress he is one of four founders, anxious perhaps to avoid future disputes such as those that engulfed Zuckerberg and his early Facebook collaborators. “In Sweden,” he says, “we prefer flat hierarchies.”
So I can see how Tictail could benefit smaller, independent high-street retailers and sole traders in all sorts of other fields – like Waldekranz’s mother – but since this is a business not a charity, how does he make any money?
“Well, businesses getting started on Tictail is good,” he says, “but it is not enough if they are going to succeed. The important question then is what happens next? How do you get traffic to your website? How do you handle your first sales? How often do you keep refreshing your site? How do you use social media to encourage people to take a look at what you are offering? How do you seek feedback? And that is where we offer Tictail feeds. These applications help you tackle all these issues.” And for these there is a charge.
The “feed” is essentially a stream of messages that acts as an automated adviser, prompting and occasionally cajoling shop owners not to rest on their laurels. The idea is both to offer as good a service online as off, and to build loyalty and repeat custom, using social media features such as newsletters and alerts about new products. New plans include allowing users to add extensions, such as the ability to hand out discount codes to their store.
So Tictail is definitely a business, with a bottom line, but what gives Waldekranz that added edge of persuasion is his vocal attachment not just to being profitable but also to the democratic ideals of the world wide web. So he compares the rise of Tictail in relation to the major retailers as akin to that of the blog in recent years. “It wasn’t that long ago that the big media outlets controlled most of the written content on the web, but now that has changed. Anyone can write a blog and go mainstream. It can be the same with e-commerce. Right now the big giants are controlling it, but my belief is that we can now offer a way for small, independent retailers on the high street to take them on. It is a major shift.”
Tictail launched only a year ago – although after long gestation around Waldekranz’s kitchen table in Stockholm – but already it has attracted headlines, backing from noted venture capitalists, and even investment from key personnel at Skype and Spotify. These two major-league web operators see big potential in Tictail’s offer of an internet platform for shopkeepers who want to create an online store to complement their Indoor Positioning System.
“While I was working in an advertising agency in Sweden,” the engaging Waldekranz explains, “I was very drawn to e-commerce. It is the most exciting area, where the message we create and the buying done by consumers converge. Elsewhere, people see the advertising and then, later, go into the shop. In e-commerce it is all one.”
So far, so good, but then he spotted one big obstacle. “Many retailers, particularly smaller ones with indie brands and boutiques, who could benefit from e-commerce, can only do it by spending a lot of money that they can’t afford on constant technical support or having their own IT section.”
Which is where no-cost, no-frills Tictail steps in. “Back in January,” Waldekranz recalls, “we received an email from a guitar shop in Dublin. It had been in the hands of the same family for 150 years but e-commerce was driving it out of business. They told us, 'We thought that this Christmas would be our last, and that going online was beyond our means and expertise, but within weeks of using Tictail to sell online we are doing so well that we are going to be here for another 150 years.’”
It sounds like a line from a television advertisement – especially to this default technophobe. Doesn’t Tictail require some aptitude for computers, or at the very least access to a willing teenage helper? Waldekranz laughs. “You sound like my mother. She is a brilliant artist but not great with technology and so she hasn’t been able to sell the ceramics she makes online. I told her that is absurd.” And he immediately opens up on his ever-present laptop the “By Mutti” website to display ceramicist Eva Gernandt’s distinctive porcelain designs, plus those handy boxes where you can click to buy one.
“It became our benchmark when we were planning Tictail,” Waldekranz says with one of those toothy smiles that stretches across his face. “If my mother couldn’t set it up and operate it on her own, then we hadn’t got it right.”
And since she clearly can and is profiting by it, this must count as a case of mission accomplished. Which brings us neatly to Tictail’s mission statement. It wants not only to be the world’s most used e-commerce platform, but also its most loved. E-commerce and the Hands free access of shops can suddenly be friends, not foes, and Britain’s stand-alone high-street retailers can more easily get a share of the UK’s ￡78 billion online sales market.
So if Waldekranz’s mother was instinctively hostile to using the internet to promote her business, I can’t help wondering, where does her son get his can-do attitude from? “Oh, my dad. He was always buying the latest bit of technology, even though he couldn’t work them.” And, he adds, then there was also what sounds like a very different approach to technology in the classrooms of Sweden.
“I’m not a digital native,” says Waldekranz, “like children in Swedish schools today. I only got my first computer when I was 11. But there is also a spirit in Sweden that we know we are a small country of nine million people, and that anything we develop can never be sustained if the only market we envisage is Sweden. We have to think global from day one. That mindset is part of our culture.” As evidenced by the success of Skype and Spotify, both now worldwide brands with their roots in Sweden.
Waldekranz is the public face of Tictail but is always careful to stress he is one of four founders, anxious perhaps to avoid future disputes such as those that engulfed Zuckerberg and his early Facebook collaborators. “In Sweden,” he says, “we prefer flat hierarchies.”
So I can see how Tictail could benefit smaller, independent high-street retailers and sole traders in all sorts of other fields – like Waldekranz’s mother – but since this is a business not a charity, how does he make any money?
“Well, businesses getting started on Tictail is good,” he says, “but it is not enough if they are going to succeed. The important question then is what happens next? How do you get traffic to your website? How do you handle your first sales? How often do you keep refreshing your site? How do you use social media to encourage people to take a look at what you are offering? How do you seek feedback? And that is where we offer Tictail feeds. These applications help you tackle all these issues.” And for these there is a charge.
The “feed” is essentially a stream of messages that acts as an automated adviser, prompting and occasionally cajoling shop owners not to rest on their laurels. The idea is both to offer as good a service online as off, and to build loyalty and repeat custom, using social media features such as newsletters and alerts about new products. New plans include allowing users to add extensions, such as the ability to hand out discount codes to their store.
So Tictail is definitely a business, with a bottom line, but what gives Waldekranz that added edge of persuasion is his vocal attachment not just to being profitable but also to the democratic ideals of the world wide web. So he compares the rise of Tictail in relation to the major retailers as akin to that of the blog in recent years. “It wasn’t that long ago that the big media outlets controlled most of the written content on the web, but now that has changed. Anyone can write a blog and go mainstream. It can be the same with e-commerce. Right now the big giants are controlling it, but my belief is that we can now offer a way for small, independent retailers on the high street to take them on. It is a major shift.”
Monday, July 29, 2013
The More Regulation, the Better
New survey research sponsored by the Drug Information Association indicates that a country with a strong regulatory commitment for advancing drugs for rare diseases does better in getting orphan drugs to patients than countries with lesser regulatory frameworks.
In his study, ‘The Effect of Market-Based Economic Factors on the Adoption of Orphan Drugs Across Multiple Countries,’ John Matthews, Associate Director of Project Management at Merck examined the relationship between how market-based a country is, and how many patients with rare disease actually receive approved treatments for their disorder. Contrary to the widely held belief that the more free-market a country is, the more likely drugs will be adopted, Matthews found that countries with more regulation actually did a better job of getting orphan drugs into the hands of patients. In other words, in examining data from 13 orphan drugs across US, Germany, UK, Spain, and France, the US was actually the least successful in providing access.
Using the Index of Economic Freedoms and the Economic Freedoms of the World Index, the study used business, labor, and trade restrictions; government spending; prevalence of corruption; taxation rates, and other economic factors to assess how free-market these countries were at the time of study. While Matthews initially hypothesized that ‘Countries with more market-based economies will be associated with a greater adoption of orphan drugs’, with adoption defined as ‘purchase of an orphan drug’, he noted that the exact opposite was true. “Based off of general economics, the literature out there suggests countries with greater economic freedoms are more efficient markets. But perhaps those mechanisms are not at work in the orphan drug market. No one has examined this issue from an orphan drug perspective, real time Location system,” he said.
Matthews looks to study this issue in greater detail, examining reimbursement systems across these different markets and how they affect orphan drug adoption. Additionally, his study points out the fact that there is no central organization that represents the views of patient groups, and thereby there is no hard data on how they affect access. “There are several organizations aspiring to this role, including the Genetic Alliance, and the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), but I don’t think anyone’s assuming a coordination role. There’s a lot of anecdotal information on patient groups’ wielding their clout to increase drug adoption, but no empirical research discussing observable impacts a patient advocacy group can have on adoption,” he explained. The patient movement in the US has been more robust in its influence, with its close connection to the needs and actions of patients, contrasted with the EU’s more paternalistic approach, focused on governments’ invention to sponsor groups to suit patient needs. Clearly, while patients in the US have a particular flair for advocacy, the relationship between this effort and its ability to move the access needle warrants closer examination.
Matthews does not believe a study looking at newer datasets from a broader range of countries and orphan drugs will produce different results. At the end of the day, he explains, “The results of this study basically say that greater government regulations are able to support better delivery of these medicines. Intervention is an option that can work.”
“Our summits have a proven track record of turning handshakes into Montana jobs. The more we get focused on jobs and work together, the closer we can get to the day when no Montanan is forced to leave the state to find a good-paying job,” said Baucus. “The key to success is getting all hands on deck which is why I encourage Montanans to join us in September in Butte.”
The jobs summit will feature all-star keynote speakers including some of the most innovative business leaders of our time along with ambassadors from some of the world’s most dynamic economies. The summit will also feature more than 40 breakout panel sessions tailored to every aspect of business from writing a business plan to getting your business online, learning how to export and the best ways to access capital.
Montana Economic Development Summits have resulted in hundreds of new Montana jobs over the years by bringing new private investment to the state and helping elevate Montana’s top notch goods and services at the global level.
Keynote speakers this year will include Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, former Presidential candidate and international businessman Jon Huntsman, Jr., Alan Mulally of Ford Motor Company, Oracle’s Safra Catz, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, founder of FedEx Fred Smith, Delta’s Richard Anderson and, Montana’s own, Ryan Lance, CEO of ConocoPhillips.
You also get a richly detailed, high-definition 3D cartoon world, compared to the standard-definition Skylanders: Giants from last year and Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure from the year before. Your characters can also jump. That’s right. Now they can jump around and get themselves out of nasty cul-de-sacs. The Skylanders can also fly, climb, and teleport to special areas in the environment. The level cap is now 20 for each character. That makes the title more difficult to master.
Players will have more than 100 forward-compatible toys available from the three games — including never-before seen non-swappable characters from the upcoming release. For some, that’s bound to get a little confusing. But the new Swap Force characters have symbols on the bases of their toy counterparts that tell you what type of Swap Force power they have. The marks indicate where you can best use those creatures in the Skylands.
As Portal Master, you will embark on a new adventure in the mysterious Cloudbreak Islands in the sky. They are the home to a mystical volcano that erupts every hundred years to replenish the magic in the Skylands. During an epic battle, the volcano’s eruption hit a group of Skylanders, blasting them apart and giving them the ability to swap halves. The evil leader Kaos has come back with a scheme to “evilize” characters using the power of petrified darkness. The Portal Master must buy as many Swap Force creatures as possible (are you listening parents?) and reassemble them into new forms to save the Skylands. Actually, that’s a joke. You can get through the whole experience with the three heroes in the $75 starter pack.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
In his study, ‘The Effect of Market-Based Economic Factors on the Adoption of Orphan Drugs Across Multiple Countries,’ John Matthews, Associate Director of Project Management at Merck examined the relationship between how market-based a country is, and how many patients with rare disease actually receive approved treatments for their disorder. Contrary to the widely held belief that the more free-market a country is, the more likely drugs will be adopted, Matthews found that countries with more regulation actually did a better job of getting orphan drugs into the hands of patients. In other words, in examining data from 13 orphan drugs across US, Germany, UK, Spain, and France, the US was actually the least successful in providing access.
Using the Index of Economic Freedoms and the Economic Freedoms of the World Index, the study used business, labor, and trade restrictions; government spending; prevalence of corruption; taxation rates, and other economic factors to assess how free-market these countries were at the time of study. While Matthews initially hypothesized that ‘Countries with more market-based economies will be associated with a greater adoption of orphan drugs’, with adoption defined as ‘purchase of an orphan drug’, he noted that the exact opposite was true. “Based off of general economics, the literature out there suggests countries with greater economic freedoms are more efficient markets. But perhaps those mechanisms are not at work in the orphan drug market. No one has examined this issue from an orphan drug perspective, real time Location system,” he said.
Matthews looks to study this issue in greater detail, examining reimbursement systems across these different markets and how they affect orphan drug adoption. Additionally, his study points out the fact that there is no central organization that represents the views of patient groups, and thereby there is no hard data on how they affect access. “There are several organizations aspiring to this role, including the Genetic Alliance, and the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), but I don’t think anyone’s assuming a coordination role. There’s a lot of anecdotal information on patient groups’ wielding their clout to increase drug adoption, but no empirical research discussing observable impacts a patient advocacy group can have on adoption,” he explained. The patient movement in the US has been more robust in its influence, with its close connection to the needs and actions of patients, contrasted with the EU’s more paternalistic approach, focused on governments’ invention to sponsor groups to suit patient needs. Clearly, while patients in the US have a particular flair for advocacy, the relationship between this effort and its ability to move the access needle warrants closer examination.
Matthews does not believe a study looking at newer datasets from a broader range of countries and orphan drugs will produce different results. At the end of the day, he explains, “The results of this study basically say that greater government regulations are able to support better delivery of these medicines. Intervention is an option that can work.”
“Our summits have a proven track record of turning handshakes into Montana jobs. The more we get focused on jobs and work together, the closer we can get to the day when no Montanan is forced to leave the state to find a good-paying job,” said Baucus. “The key to success is getting all hands on deck which is why I encourage Montanans to join us in September in Butte.”
The jobs summit will feature all-star keynote speakers including some of the most innovative business leaders of our time along with ambassadors from some of the world’s most dynamic economies. The summit will also feature more than 40 breakout panel sessions tailored to every aspect of business from writing a business plan to getting your business online, learning how to export and the best ways to access capital.
Montana Economic Development Summits have resulted in hundreds of new Montana jobs over the years by bringing new private investment to the state and helping elevate Montana’s top notch goods and services at the global level.
Keynote speakers this year will include Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, former Presidential candidate and international businessman Jon Huntsman, Jr., Alan Mulally of Ford Motor Company, Oracle’s Safra Catz, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, founder of FedEx Fred Smith, Delta’s Richard Anderson and, Montana’s own, Ryan Lance, CEO of ConocoPhillips.
You also get a richly detailed, high-definition 3D cartoon world, compared to the standard-definition Skylanders: Giants from last year and Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure from the year before. Your characters can also jump. That’s right. Now they can jump around and get themselves out of nasty cul-de-sacs. The Skylanders can also fly, climb, and teleport to special areas in the environment. The level cap is now 20 for each character. That makes the title more difficult to master.
Players will have more than 100 forward-compatible toys available from the three games — including never-before seen non-swappable characters from the upcoming release. For some, that’s bound to get a little confusing. But the new Swap Force characters have symbols on the bases of their toy counterparts that tell you what type of Swap Force power they have. The marks indicate where you can best use those creatures in the Skylands.
As Portal Master, you will embark on a new adventure in the mysterious Cloudbreak Islands in the sky. They are the home to a mystical volcano that erupts every hundred years to replenish the magic in the Skylands. During an epic battle, the volcano’s eruption hit a group of Skylanders, blasting them apart and giving them the ability to swap halves. The evil leader Kaos has come back with a scheme to “evilize” characters using the power of petrified darkness. The Portal Master must buy as many Swap Force creatures as possible (are you listening parents?) and reassemble them into new forms to save the Skylands. Actually, that’s a joke. You can get through the whole experience with the three heroes in the $75 starter pack.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Cambodia Opposition Rejects
Cambodia's main opposition party has rejected the results of a parliamentary election and has called for an investigation into allegations of widespread electoral fraud.Prime Minister Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party [CPP] claimed a narrow victory in Sunday's vote, admitting to its weakest showing since taking a dominant role in Cambodian politics almost three decades ago.Shortly after the polls closed, the CPP said it won 68 seats in the nation's 123-member parliament - a significant decline from the 90-seat majority it previously held. It said the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party [CNRP] took the remaining 55 seats, almost doubling the 29 seats it held in the outgoing parliament.
The CPP appeared to base its claims on partial results released by the National Election Committee, which was not expected to disclose final election figures for several weeks.CNRP leader Sam Rainsy told reporters Monday the CNRP would not accept the results of the ballot because of what he characterized as widespread fraud.
"We ask local and international bodies to send experts now to be part of a joint committee to investigate all the Hands free access, and to assess the implications of those irregularities on the election results," said Rainsy.Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan told VOA the opposition's announcement was typical of its election behavior. "The opposition party uses this game after every election," he said.
"There were serious fraud allegations leading up to the elections," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch [HRW], who was in Cambodia observing the election campaign. "They included illegal behavior on behalf of government security authorities; things like 'ghost' voters, de-registration of opposition voters, biased behavior by the national election commission, unequal access to national media, the list goes on and on. It is a serious problem and it does deserve an independent investigation."
The non-profit Transparency International Cambodia echoed those concerns. The group, which sent 900 observers to about 400 of the nation's 19,000 polling stations, says it found a litany of breaches.
Chief among those was that in 60 percent of polling stations, some people who had the right identification papers could not find their names on the voting list. It also found that people who lacked the correct identification were allowed to vote in a quarter of the polling stations.
"The opposition does not have access to funds, weapons or patronage. So the financial power will continue to be in the hands of the CPP. Foreign aid will flow to the government, which is controlled by the CPP," he said. "I think politics will become more interesting and vibrant, but I do not think that will involve the transfer of power to any extent."
The CNRP appeared to get a boost in the election from the merger of two of its founding parties, who joined forces last year to challenge the long-ruling CPP. The united opposition party touted a populist platform calling for a sharp rise in civil servants' salaries, monthly payments to those over 65 years old, and an increase in the minimum wage. It also pledged to regulate government prices for agricultural products, lower gas costs and provide free health care for the poor.
Robertson of HRW said the promise of change made many voters more enthusiastic about participating in the election."It really propelled the opposition to make major gains. But, we should not confuse outcomes with processes and procedures," he said. "The processes and procedures of the election were not fair and favored one side. They were designed to deny the civil and political rights of the Cambodian people."
Last week a Kansas healthcare management company, Nueterra, cleared the first hurdle to open a privately-owned, third surgical hospital in Casper. What’s bothersome about the proposal is the possibility the project could jeopardize vital public health services while a few people get rich. But the company and their rumored local doctor investors aren’t talking about it. Period. No discussion. Their response was to file a site plan for the project with the city but without much comment. Apparently their strategy is to ram it down our throats, like it or not.
County government and others have expressed multiple reasons why added hospital capacity would be detrimental to nearly everyone in the county. As reported in the Casper Journal during the past month, at risk are trauma care and indigent care at Wyoming Medical Center. There’s been some talk of a possible new property tax to support the public hospital if necessary.
When the doctor-owned Mountain View Regional Hospital was opened, the reason was clear. A very public falling-out between the medical center and the doctors involved with the new hospital made it easy to understand. There have been ups and downs and good and bad with the competitive hospitals, but the competition has arguably been good in some respects. Both existing hospitals accept Medicare and Medicaid. WMC maintains the only full-service emergency room with trauma care and a cardiac catheterization lab, where doctors can open blocked arteries during a heart attack.
But Nueterra’s newly-proposed Summit Medical Center appears to be different. The public is only hearing from one side: basically the county and the operator of the county-owned hospital’s side. Nueterra and its rumored local doctor investors are mum. Sources have told the Casper Journal the company employs a comprehensive confidentiality agreement. It’s a private business, but its actions will likely impact delivery of other public health services and could cost every citizen in the county more money. No wonder they don’t want to talk!
By their silence, these doctors and their Kansas partner leave us to draw our own conclusions. They apparently aren’t interested in explaining who or how another hospital in Natrona County will benefit anyone. We’re left with the impression this project is just about the money, greed that would dilute the quality of healthcare for the common man to benefit a few.
A free enterprise argument may apply in some areas of the complicated world of healthcare, but not in emergency room, trauma or indigent care. When your loved one has a stroke or accident, there’s no thoughtful decision where to seek care; you go to the nearest, if not the only, emergency room. And if you need elective surgery, most often your doctor decides where that procedure will be performed. And if the doctor owns an interest in a hospital, where do you think they’ll believe is best for you to have the procedure? This isn’t free enterprise because the customer is most often not making the buying decision.
Dependable emergency care are services private hospitals shun because they are, by their comprehensive nature, expensive and must be supported by the more predictable procedures private hospitals siphon away from publicly-supported medical centers.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
The CPP appeared to base its claims on partial results released by the National Election Committee, which was not expected to disclose final election figures for several weeks.CNRP leader Sam Rainsy told reporters Monday the CNRP would not accept the results of the ballot because of what he characterized as widespread fraud.
"We ask local and international bodies to send experts now to be part of a joint committee to investigate all the Hands free access, and to assess the implications of those irregularities on the election results," said Rainsy.Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan told VOA the opposition's announcement was typical of its election behavior. "The opposition party uses this game after every election," he said.
"There were serious fraud allegations leading up to the elections," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch [HRW], who was in Cambodia observing the election campaign. "They included illegal behavior on behalf of government security authorities; things like 'ghost' voters, de-registration of opposition voters, biased behavior by the national election commission, unequal access to national media, the list goes on and on. It is a serious problem and it does deserve an independent investigation."
The non-profit Transparency International Cambodia echoed those concerns. The group, which sent 900 observers to about 400 of the nation's 19,000 polling stations, says it found a litany of breaches.
Chief among those was that in 60 percent of polling stations, some people who had the right identification papers could not find their names on the voting list. It also found that people who lacked the correct identification were allowed to vote in a quarter of the polling stations.
"The opposition does not have access to funds, weapons or patronage. So the financial power will continue to be in the hands of the CPP. Foreign aid will flow to the government, which is controlled by the CPP," he said. "I think politics will become more interesting and vibrant, but I do not think that will involve the transfer of power to any extent."
The CNRP appeared to get a boost in the election from the merger of two of its founding parties, who joined forces last year to challenge the long-ruling CPP. The united opposition party touted a populist platform calling for a sharp rise in civil servants' salaries, monthly payments to those over 65 years old, and an increase in the minimum wage. It also pledged to regulate government prices for agricultural products, lower gas costs and provide free health care for the poor.
Robertson of HRW said the promise of change made many voters more enthusiastic about participating in the election."It really propelled the opposition to make major gains. But, we should not confuse outcomes with processes and procedures," he said. "The processes and procedures of the election were not fair and favored one side. They were designed to deny the civil and political rights of the Cambodian people."
Last week a Kansas healthcare management company, Nueterra, cleared the first hurdle to open a privately-owned, third surgical hospital in Casper. What’s bothersome about the proposal is the possibility the project could jeopardize vital public health services while a few people get rich. But the company and their rumored local doctor investors aren’t talking about it. Period. No discussion. Their response was to file a site plan for the project with the city but without much comment. Apparently their strategy is to ram it down our throats, like it or not.
County government and others have expressed multiple reasons why added hospital capacity would be detrimental to nearly everyone in the county. As reported in the Casper Journal during the past month, at risk are trauma care and indigent care at Wyoming Medical Center. There’s been some talk of a possible new property tax to support the public hospital if necessary.
When the doctor-owned Mountain View Regional Hospital was opened, the reason was clear. A very public falling-out between the medical center and the doctors involved with the new hospital made it easy to understand. There have been ups and downs and good and bad with the competitive hospitals, but the competition has arguably been good in some respects. Both existing hospitals accept Medicare and Medicaid. WMC maintains the only full-service emergency room with trauma care and a cardiac catheterization lab, where doctors can open blocked arteries during a heart attack.
But Nueterra’s newly-proposed Summit Medical Center appears to be different. The public is only hearing from one side: basically the county and the operator of the county-owned hospital’s side. Nueterra and its rumored local doctor investors are mum. Sources have told the Casper Journal the company employs a comprehensive confidentiality agreement. It’s a private business, but its actions will likely impact delivery of other public health services and could cost every citizen in the county more money. No wonder they don’t want to talk!
By their silence, these doctors and their Kansas partner leave us to draw our own conclusions. They apparently aren’t interested in explaining who or how another hospital in Natrona County will benefit anyone. We’re left with the impression this project is just about the money, greed that would dilute the quality of healthcare for the common man to benefit a few.
A free enterprise argument may apply in some areas of the complicated world of healthcare, but not in emergency room, trauma or indigent care. When your loved one has a stroke or accident, there’s no thoughtful decision where to seek care; you go to the nearest, if not the only, emergency room. And if you need elective surgery, most often your doctor decides where that procedure will be performed. And if the doctor owns an interest in a hospital, where do you think they’ll believe is best for you to have the procedure? This isn’t free enterprise because the customer is most often not making the buying decision.
Dependable emergency care are services private hospitals shun because they are, by their comprehensive nature, expensive and must be supported by the more predictable procedures private hospitals siphon away from publicly-supported medical centers.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Navy's sex-assault prevention plan
What surprised the development team was that even though the PvP mode was the game's weakest link, it was also one of the most popular elements of the game. There was demand for a rock/paper/scissors-style multiplayer mode where players could jump in and have quick matches against opposing teams. Paradox North looked into what the community wanted, and the result is Magicka: Wizard Wars.
During a hands-on demo of the game, Hargelid explained that the original game's PvP mode was very unbalanced. The game had everyone starting on a level playing field, but it also gave everyone access to all the magicks. The problem with this was anyone could then endlessly spam the most powerful attacks, allowing them to either unfairly win using no skill at all, or causing a stalemate where both sides hide in corners of the map while they shower the game board with meteor strikes.
In Magicka: Wizard Wars, players have to fill a focus meter in order to access the more powerful magicks. One of the lower tiers is the power of haste, which allows a character to move quicker for a short burst of time. As players fill up their focus meter by killing enemies, they unlock the ability to summon Death — a NPC that will fight on the player's side for a short amount of time. The highest tier triggers a meteor shower, which can destroy almost everyone within the vicinity of a selected region, but it requires a full focus meter in order to be activated.
According to Hargelid, the development team has made the game more strategic by introducing capture points that also act as spawn points. In the demo Polygon played, we had to ensure we always held at least one capture point, because if we lost them all to the enemy then our team members would not be able to respawn. This led to an often frantic experience where remaining players would rush to try to capture a spawn point to ensure their survival, while the enemies ganged up on survivors to try to take them out.
"I like the tactical depth of the game — you always have to be on the lookout to understand if you have your spawn points secured or not," Hargelid said. "That means you can turn the tide at any point."During our time with the Hands free access, some matches were an on-going tug-of-war, with one side capturing all the spawn points, only to have the other side make a last-minute comeback. Other matches were over in less than five minutes when a team was wiped out and all its spawn points swiftly captured.
Magicka: Wizard Wars is due to launch this year on Windows PC and tablets. The game will be free-to-play, but the developers have not determined how players will be charged. Hargelid told Polygon that Paradox will talk to its community about what they're willing to pay for, but he assured us that the studio will not be pursuing a pay-to-win strategy.
“This department is committed to using all available resources to prevent this crime, aggressively investigate allegations and prosecute as appropriate,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a July 18 statement announcing the changes. “We will not hide from this challenge — we will be active, open and transparent.”The effort is the latest drive to show offenders will be punished, which victim advocates and officials believe is central to stemming the tide of sex assaults. But the push must contend with a stark reality: No one was punished in about three of every four Navy cases closed in the latest fiscal year.But some are skeptical that releasing court-martial verdicts will prove a deterrent without disclosing names. Officials say the main point is to have a more transparent naval justice system that sailors can trust to come forward.
“The goal here was to show that the judicial process works, that these cases are going to trial and they are being dealt with,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Navy’s chief of information. “We have heard, again anecdotally, that some victims express some concerns about the names being out there because they don’t want the offender to get any more attention.”
Investigations also may need work. Of a random sampling of 195 cases from 2010, NCIS mishandled 26 of them, or 13 percent, making serious mistakes like not completing a crime scene investigation, not collecting key evidence or not interviewing witnesses, according to a Pentagon Inspector General report issued July 15. NCIS reopened 14 of the cases, according to the report.“A lot of this is about education but it’s also about trying to change their personal behavior,” said Rear Adm. Ted Carter, who until recently was head of the 21st Century Sailor office that oversees the latest counter-sex assault initiative.
Carter said the rovers would be there to watch for “anything that would be unusual,” such as drunkenness, a passed-out sailor, or a large gathering. “Just having that security there will help keep everybody in line,” Carter explained in a recent interview.The Navy’s sexual assault experts are unsure exactly why the pilots worked, but they’ve decided the dramatic gains are important enough to try everywhere to stem the mounting toll of sexual assaults that concerns lawmakers and the public. Sailors reported 773 assaults during fiscal year 2012 — a 33 percent jump over the previous year.
Top personnel officials attribute the rise in incidents to sailors reporting assaults from fiscal 2012 and previous years, which they view as evidence that the Navy’s full-court press for prevention training is encouraging victims to come forward. Nonetheless, the brass is concerned.The “overwhelming majority of both victims and offenders are junior sailors, both male and female,” said Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mark Ferguson, in a July 9 message to all admirals and commanding officers. Most of the incidents occurred after the work day and involved alcohol; half take place on base or aboard ship.
“Sexual assault ruins lives, divides teams and erodes trust,” Ferguson said in his “personal for” message. “As leaders, we must provide our sailors a responsible, professional, and safe environment in which to work and live.”Similar to college dorms, barracks will be required to have resident advisers, or RAs, to mentor and keep the peace. RAs must be first classes or above and will be trained in preventing sex assaults.
As part of the San Diego pilot, chiefs and junior officers also patrolled on-base clubs, bowling alleys and theaters that off-duty sailors frequent. There was no mention of these patrols in NAVADMIN 181/13, released July 18, and Carter emphasized that there would be no shore patrol stood up.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
During a hands-on demo of the game, Hargelid explained that the original game's PvP mode was very unbalanced. The game had everyone starting on a level playing field, but it also gave everyone access to all the magicks. The problem with this was anyone could then endlessly spam the most powerful attacks, allowing them to either unfairly win using no skill at all, or causing a stalemate where both sides hide in corners of the map while they shower the game board with meteor strikes.
In Magicka: Wizard Wars, players have to fill a focus meter in order to access the more powerful magicks. One of the lower tiers is the power of haste, which allows a character to move quicker for a short burst of time. As players fill up their focus meter by killing enemies, they unlock the ability to summon Death — a NPC that will fight on the player's side for a short amount of time. The highest tier triggers a meteor shower, which can destroy almost everyone within the vicinity of a selected region, but it requires a full focus meter in order to be activated.
According to Hargelid, the development team has made the game more strategic by introducing capture points that also act as spawn points. In the demo Polygon played, we had to ensure we always held at least one capture point, because if we lost them all to the enemy then our team members would not be able to respawn. This led to an often frantic experience where remaining players would rush to try to capture a spawn point to ensure their survival, while the enemies ganged up on survivors to try to take them out.
"I like the tactical depth of the game — you always have to be on the lookout to understand if you have your spawn points secured or not," Hargelid said. "That means you can turn the tide at any point."During our time with the Hands free access, some matches were an on-going tug-of-war, with one side capturing all the spawn points, only to have the other side make a last-minute comeback. Other matches were over in less than five minutes when a team was wiped out and all its spawn points swiftly captured.
Magicka: Wizard Wars is due to launch this year on Windows PC and tablets. The game will be free-to-play, but the developers have not determined how players will be charged. Hargelid told Polygon that Paradox will talk to its community about what they're willing to pay for, but he assured us that the studio will not be pursuing a pay-to-win strategy.
“This department is committed to using all available resources to prevent this crime, aggressively investigate allegations and prosecute as appropriate,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a July 18 statement announcing the changes. “We will not hide from this challenge — we will be active, open and transparent.”The effort is the latest drive to show offenders will be punished, which victim advocates and officials believe is central to stemming the tide of sex assaults. But the push must contend with a stark reality: No one was punished in about three of every four Navy cases closed in the latest fiscal year.But some are skeptical that releasing court-martial verdicts will prove a deterrent without disclosing names. Officials say the main point is to have a more transparent naval justice system that sailors can trust to come forward.
“The goal here was to show that the judicial process works, that these cases are going to trial and they are being dealt with,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Navy’s chief of information. “We have heard, again anecdotally, that some victims express some concerns about the names being out there because they don’t want the offender to get any more attention.”
Investigations also may need work. Of a random sampling of 195 cases from 2010, NCIS mishandled 26 of them, or 13 percent, making serious mistakes like not completing a crime scene investigation, not collecting key evidence or not interviewing witnesses, according to a Pentagon Inspector General report issued July 15. NCIS reopened 14 of the cases, according to the report.“A lot of this is about education but it’s also about trying to change their personal behavior,” said Rear Adm. Ted Carter, who until recently was head of the 21st Century Sailor office that oversees the latest counter-sex assault initiative.
Carter said the rovers would be there to watch for “anything that would be unusual,” such as drunkenness, a passed-out sailor, or a large gathering. “Just having that security there will help keep everybody in line,” Carter explained in a recent interview.The Navy’s sexual assault experts are unsure exactly why the pilots worked, but they’ve decided the dramatic gains are important enough to try everywhere to stem the mounting toll of sexual assaults that concerns lawmakers and the public. Sailors reported 773 assaults during fiscal year 2012 — a 33 percent jump over the previous year.
Top personnel officials attribute the rise in incidents to sailors reporting assaults from fiscal 2012 and previous years, which they view as evidence that the Navy’s full-court press for prevention training is encouraging victims to come forward. Nonetheless, the brass is concerned.The “overwhelming majority of both victims and offenders are junior sailors, both male and female,” said Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mark Ferguson, in a July 9 message to all admirals and commanding officers. Most of the incidents occurred after the work day and involved alcohol; half take place on base or aboard ship.
“Sexual assault ruins lives, divides teams and erodes trust,” Ferguson said in his “personal for” message. “As leaders, we must provide our sailors a responsible, professional, and safe environment in which to work and live.”Similar to college dorms, barracks will be required to have resident advisers, or RAs, to mentor and keep the peace. RAs must be first classes or above and will be trained in preventing sex assaults.
As part of the San Diego pilot, chiefs and junior officers also patrolled on-base clubs, bowling alleys and theaters that off-duty sailors frequent. There was no mention of these patrols in NAVADMIN 181/13, released July 18, and Carter emphasized that there would be no shore patrol stood up.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Monday, July 22, 2013
What Hindus can & should be proud
A bhadralok friend of mine is of the view that the Government of India should celebrate every December 16 as Vijay Diwas, Victory Day, to mark the surrender in 1971 of the Pakistani forces in Dhaka to the advancing Indian Army. My friend argues that such a celebration would take Indians in general, and Hindus in particular, out of the pacifist, defeatist mindset that he claims has so crippled them. The triumph in Dhaka represents for him the finest moment in a millenia otherwise characterised by Indian (and more specifically Hindu) humiliation at the hands of foreigners.
I was reminded of my friend’s fond fantasy when reading about the posters in Mumbai recently put up by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party. These carry portraits of a prominent BJP leader, with two accompanying slogans: ‘I AM A HINDU NATIONALIST,’ in English, and ‘Garv sé Kaho Ham Hindu Hain’, in Hindi. The latter slogan needs perhaps to be translated for south Indian readers, and set in context for younger ones. ‘Proudly Proclaim Our Hindu-Ness’, would be a faithful rendition. The slogan originates in the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign of the 1980s and 1990s, when it was used by the VHP, RSS, BJP, and Bajrang Dal cadres to mobilise men and materials in the drive to demolish a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya believed by many to be sited on the birthplace of the (mythical) God Ram.
Should Hindus be proud of the Indian Army’s victory in Dhaka in 1971? Perhaps as Indians, but not specifically as Hindus. The war had its basis in the savage repression of Bengalis in East Pakistan by the West Pakistan Army. The refugees who came to India were both Hindus and Muslims. The help rendered to them by the Government of India did not discriminate according to their faith. As for the Indian military campaign, the chief commander in the field was a Jew, his immediate superior a Sikh. A Parsi served as Chief of Army Staff. His own superior, the Prime Minister of India, had notoriously been disallowed from entering the Jagannath temple in Puri because she had not married a Hindu.
To be sure, many soldiers and officers in the Indian Army were of Hindu origin. Yet they never saw themselves in narrowly communal terms. In our armed forces, then and Indoor Positioning System, Hindu and Muslim, Christian and Sikh, Parsi and Jew, lived, laboured and struggled together.
Unlike the military campaign in East Pakistan in 1971, the campaign to build a temple in Ayodha was unquestionably Hindu in intent and content. No Muslims or Sikhs or Parsis or Jews or Christians participated in it. But should Hindus have been proud of it? I rather think not. In a society where so many are without access to adequate education, health care and housing, where malnutrition is rife and where safety and environmental standards are violated every minute, to invest so much political energy and human capital in the demolition of a mosque and its replacement with a brand-new temple seemed wildly foolish, if not downright Machiavellian. As it turned out, the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign led to two decades of strife across northern and western India, with thousands of people losing their lives and hundreds of thousands their homes and livelihoods.
The war of 1971 was not a Hindu war, and the destruction of the Babri Masjid was not something that could fill Hindus with pride. What then, should Hindus be proud of? The answer is that rather than seek for one defining moment, one heroic triumph, Hindus who care for the fate and future of Hinduism should instead valorise the quiet, persistent work of reformers down the centuries to rid an ancient, ossified faith of its divisions, its prejudices, and its closed-mindedness.
The story of Hindu pride that I wish to tell also begins with Bengal, not with the surrender of the Pakistani Army in 1971, but with the work in the early 19th century of Rammohun Roy, who was unarguably the first great Indian modernist. Rammohun campaigned for the abolition of sati, for greater rights for women more generally, for the embrace of modern scientific education and for a liberal spirit of free enquiry and intellectual debate. His example was carried forward by other Bengali reformers, among them Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Swami Vivekananda, who focussed on, among other things, education for women and the abolition of indoor Tracking.
The torch first lit in Bengal was taken over, and made even brighter, in Maharashtra, which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the epicentre of reformist and radical thinking in India. The pernicious practice of ‘untouchability’ was attacked from below by Jotirau Phule and from above by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Maharashtra also gave birth to India’s first home-grown feminists, such as Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai, who wrote searing tracts against patriarchal practices and motivated young girls to emancipate themselves through modern education.
In 1915, Mohandas K. Gandhi came back to India after two decades in the diaspora. Living in South Africa, he had been seized of the need to build harmonious, mutually beneficial, relations between Hindus and Muslims. This commitment to religious pluralism he now renewed and reaffirmed. Meanwhile, he progressively became more critical of caste discrimination. To begin with, he attacked ‘untouchability’ while upholding the ancient ideal of varnashramadharma. Then he began advocating inter-mixing and inter-dining, and eventually, inter-marriage itself.
Gandhi was pushed to take more radical positions by B.R. Ambedkar, the outstanding lawyer-scholar who was of ‘Untouchable’ origins himself. A modernist and rationalist, Dr. Ambedkar believed that for Dalits to escape from oppression, they had to not look for favours from guilt-ridden reformers but themselves ‘educate, agitate and organise’ their way to emancipation. He remains an inspirational figure, whose work and legacy remain relevant for Dalit and Suvarna alike.
When India became independent in 1947, a central question the new nation faced was the relation of faith to state. There was a strong movement to create India as a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, a mirror-image of the Islamic nation that was Pakistan. The person who stood most firmly against this idea was the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In a letter written to Chief Ministers on October 15, 1947, he reminded them that “we have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want to, go anywhere else. They have got to live in India. This is a basic fact about which there can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilised manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State.”
I was reminded of my friend’s fond fantasy when reading about the posters in Mumbai recently put up by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party. These carry portraits of a prominent BJP leader, with two accompanying slogans: ‘I AM A HINDU NATIONALIST,’ in English, and ‘Garv sé Kaho Ham Hindu Hain’, in Hindi. The latter slogan needs perhaps to be translated for south Indian readers, and set in context for younger ones. ‘Proudly Proclaim Our Hindu-Ness’, would be a faithful rendition. The slogan originates in the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign of the 1980s and 1990s, when it was used by the VHP, RSS, BJP, and Bajrang Dal cadres to mobilise men and materials in the drive to demolish a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya believed by many to be sited on the birthplace of the (mythical) God Ram.
Should Hindus be proud of the Indian Army’s victory in Dhaka in 1971? Perhaps as Indians, but not specifically as Hindus. The war had its basis in the savage repression of Bengalis in East Pakistan by the West Pakistan Army. The refugees who came to India were both Hindus and Muslims. The help rendered to them by the Government of India did not discriminate according to their faith. As for the Indian military campaign, the chief commander in the field was a Jew, his immediate superior a Sikh. A Parsi served as Chief of Army Staff. His own superior, the Prime Minister of India, had notoriously been disallowed from entering the Jagannath temple in Puri because she had not married a Hindu.
To be sure, many soldiers and officers in the Indian Army were of Hindu origin. Yet they never saw themselves in narrowly communal terms. In our armed forces, then and Indoor Positioning System, Hindu and Muslim, Christian and Sikh, Parsi and Jew, lived, laboured and struggled together.
Unlike the military campaign in East Pakistan in 1971, the campaign to build a temple in Ayodha was unquestionably Hindu in intent and content. No Muslims or Sikhs or Parsis or Jews or Christians participated in it. But should Hindus have been proud of it? I rather think not. In a society where so many are without access to adequate education, health care and housing, where malnutrition is rife and where safety and environmental standards are violated every minute, to invest so much political energy and human capital in the demolition of a mosque and its replacement with a brand-new temple seemed wildly foolish, if not downright Machiavellian. As it turned out, the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign led to two decades of strife across northern and western India, with thousands of people losing their lives and hundreds of thousands their homes and livelihoods.
The war of 1971 was not a Hindu war, and the destruction of the Babri Masjid was not something that could fill Hindus with pride. What then, should Hindus be proud of? The answer is that rather than seek for one defining moment, one heroic triumph, Hindus who care for the fate and future of Hinduism should instead valorise the quiet, persistent work of reformers down the centuries to rid an ancient, ossified faith of its divisions, its prejudices, and its closed-mindedness.
The story of Hindu pride that I wish to tell also begins with Bengal, not with the surrender of the Pakistani Army in 1971, but with the work in the early 19th century of Rammohun Roy, who was unarguably the first great Indian modernist. Rammohun campaigned for the abolition of sati, for greater rights for women more generally, for the embrace of modern scientific education and for a liberal spirit of free enquiry and intellectual debate. His example was carried forward by other Bengali reformers, among them Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Swami Vivekananda, who focussed on, among other things, education for women and the abolition of indoor Tracking.
The torch first lit in Bengal was taken over, and made even brighter, in Maharashtra, which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the epicentre of reformist and radical thinking in India. The pernicious practice of ‘untouchability’ was attacked from below by Jotirau Phule and from above by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Maharashtra also gave birth to India’s first home-grown feminists, such as Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai, who wrote searing tracts against patriarchal practices and motivated young girls to emancipate themselves through modern education.
In 1915, Mohandas K. Gandhi came back to India after two decades in the diaspora. Living in South Africa, he had been seized of the need to build harmonious, mutually beneficial, relations between Hindus and Muslims. This commitment to religious pluralism he now renewed and reaffirmed. Meanwhile, he progressively became more critical of caste discrimination. To begin with, he attacked ‘untouchability’ while upholding the ancient ideal of varnashramadharma. Then he began advocating inter-mixing and inter-dining, and eventually, inter-marriage itself.
Gandhi was pushed to take more radical positions by B.R. Ambedkar, the outstanding lawyer-scholar who was of ‘Untouchable’ origins himself. A modernist and rationalist, Dr. Ambedkar believed that for Dalits to escape from oppression, they had to not look for favours from guilt-ridden reformers but themselves ‘educate, agitate and organise’ their way to emancipation. He remains an inspirational figure, whose work and legacy remain relevant for Dalit and Suvarna alike.
When India became independent in 1947, a central question the new nation faced was the relation of faith to state. There was a strong movement to create India as a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, a mirror-image of the Islamic nation that was Pakistan. The person who stood most firmly against this idea was the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In a letter written to Chief Ministers on October 15, 1947, he reminded them that “we have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want to, go anywhere else. They have got to live in India. This is a basic fact about which there can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilised manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State.”
Thursday, July 18, 2013
For Heroin Users Who Overdose
A drug called naloxone can bring heroin users who overdose back from the brink of death.But naloxone is not always available, especially in rural areas. One nonprofit — the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin (ARCW) — is working to change that.If you're an injection drug user in south-central Wisconsin, you may know or have heard of a guy named Jimi, also known as James Reinke. Reinke works for ARCW’s Lifepoint Needle Exchange program, which tries to prevent the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C through shared needles.
Reinke drives a van around all day, meeting users at their preferred location where they swap out their dirty needles for free clean needles and other supplies.Reinke also carries Narcan, a form of naloxone. He hands it out, along with a prescription, and provides training.“Really, the naloxone is just a muscle shot,” says Reinke. “You hit ’em in the shoulder, you hit ’em in the thigh, in the top of the butt. So you can't miss.”
In the event of an overdose naloxone reverses the effects of opiates, like heroin and OxyCodone. At one of Reinke's regular stops, he provides a refill to a woman in her 40s who doesn't want to share her hands free access. But says she's used the drug many times on others — and recently it was used on her.
“I said to my friend ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ and that's all I remember,” she says. “And I guess I turned purple. Narcan saved my life this last week, and I've had five saves in the last year-and-a-half myself.”ARCW started providing naloxone to users in 2005 at its nine locations across the state after a rise in overdoses. Scott Stokes, the group’s prevention services director, says since then thousands of lives have been saved. But the program has its critics.
“A lot of people feel that if [others] are going to use drugs, then they need to suffer the consequences that go along with it,” says Stokes. His response to the critics: “This isn't alcohol, where if you're drinking and driving you lose your license. If you overdose, you die.”
He says they are currently the only source in the state where users can get naloxone — physicians could prescribe it, but they don't. He says without a Good Samaritan Law which would provide immunity to users, many won't call 911 because they're afraid they could face criminal charges.Stokes also says there's another reason for the need for wider distribution: Many ambulances don't carry naloxone. In Wisconsin, only Advanced Life Support level services — those that can start IVs — can legally carry the drug. Madison Fire Department Paramedic Paul Poker says that's a real issue in the suburbs and rural communities with basic level EMTs.
“If you have to wait 15, 20, 25 minutes to get that drug, or wait for them to transport you to the hospital, the chances of long-term affects, whether it's brain damage or something like that, can go up significantly,” says Poker.There is an inhaled version of Narcan that many basic level providers across the country are carrying. The state Department of Health Services — which licenses EMS providers — says that would require additional training and a change in law but that it is under consideration.
After an American Civil Liberties Union report found police increasingly can track law-abiding drivers’ whereabouts with few restrictions, the group’s Massachusetts branch renewed its calls for lawmakers to impose limits and said the state already may collect such information.
The national report raises concerns about cameras mounted on patrol cars, street signs and overpasses that automatically scan license plates on passing vehicles and check them against databases of stolen cars or people wanted on arrest warrants, among other things.
In the report, the ACLU does not question the use of plate scanners for these purposes, but warned that the devices retain images and details on the time and location of every passing vehicle – including a vast majority of motorists who have done nothing wrong.
Police agencies vary widely in how long they keep such information – anywhere from two days to years or even indefinitely – and in some cases feed it into larger law enforcement databases, according to the report, based on 26,000 pages of documents obtained through public records requests in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
During my five months in Syria, there's one remark I keep hearing from the rebels: we need ammunition and we need heavy weapons. The makeshift army fighting Bashar al-Assad's troops may be armed with plenty of ancient Kalashnikovs, a steady stream of young men ready to fight and die, and an unshakeable belief that Allah is on their side. But they're facing a regime equipped with Russian-made tanks and fighter jets, a regime that's apparently happy to unleash huge scud missiles and chemical weapons on its own population to keep itself in power.
The rebels and Assad's forces are locked in a particularly sticky, horrendously bloody stalemate; the rebels can hold the front lines but find it almost impossible to advance because they don't have the weapons and ammunition to make a push. The regime is able to fire heavy artillery at the residential neighborhoods held by the rebels, occasionally picking off fighters while simultaneously destroying the homes of ordinary citizens.
Away from the front lines I found a slightly more professional operation. Three months ago, a local Free Syrian Army commander named Abu Firas realized that his fighters were missing a trick by attacking the regime’s tanks with explosives and leaving them burnt out on the side of the road. Now when the rebels attack a regime checkpoint they try to leave the tanks in one piece so they can bring them over to the other side.
“Now that we are capturing heavy weapons, our fortunes will change,” Abu told me. He explained that some particularly fearless jihadist fighters from Yemen leap onto the regime’s tanks as they're still moving, rip open the doors, and unload their weapons upon the soldiers inside. Brutal and foolhardy, perhaps, but definitely effective, and a method that results in only superficial damage inflicted on the tank.
The rebels bring their prizes to a mechanic’s workshop opposite Abu Firas’s office, where they're soon fixed up and real time Location system; a bit of welding and a new rebel logo to replace the regime’s and they’re good to go. It was Ramadan when I visited so the mechanic isn't working. As Abu swung the garage doors open open—we're met with the bizarre sight of two camouflaged tanks parked up next to a Toyota pickup truck—he told me he used to work on bulldozers and trucks and was able to teach himself how tanks operate pretty quickly.
After my visit to the war workshop, I heard about another rebel-run battle studio, a factory where fighters are turning out hundreds of weapons every day. The commander in charge is named Ahmad Afesh and he's the leader of Aleppo’s Free Syria Brigade. He got nervous when I first spoke to him—he’d never let a journalist anywhere near the factory before and he was unsure about letting me in, never mind allowing me to take photographs inside.
After two days of negotiations via Skype and over the phone, he came back with his answer: he'd granting me access on the condition that I don't photograph the outside of the factory or reveal its location. That's a compromise I was perfectly happy to make, so the next day we drove to the factory with the commander.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when they did I found myself in front of a scene resembling a cross between Santa's workshop and a Industrial Revolution–era Britain. Only instead of gift-wrapped toys or steam engine parts, the factory is cluttered with mortar casings and rockets—a Christmas grotto fit for the most battle-ready child you know.
Reinke drives a van around all day, meeting users at their preferred location where they swap out their dirty needles for free clean needles and other supplies.Reinke also carries Narcan, a form of naloxone. He hands it out, along with a prescription, and provides training.“Really, the naloxone is just a muscle shot,” says Reinke. “You hit ’em in the shoulder, you hit ’em in the thigh, in the top of the butt. So you can't miss.”
In the event of an overdose naloxone reverses the effects of opiates, like heroin and OxyCodone. At one of Reinke's regular stops, he provides a refill to a woman in her 40s who doesn't want to share her hands free access. But says she's used the drug many times on others — and recently it was used on her.
“I said to my friend ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ and that's all I remember,” she says. “And I guess I turned purple. Narcan saved my life this last week, and I've had five saves in the last year-and-a-half myself.”ARCW started providing naloxone to users in 2005 at its nine locations across the state after a rise in overdoses. Scott Stokes, the group’s prevention services director, says since then thousands of lives have been saved. But the program has its critics.
“A lot of people feel that if [others] are going to use drugs, then they need to suffer the consequences that go along with it,” says Stokes. His response to the critics: “This isn't alcohol, where if you're drinking and driving you lose your license. If you overdose, you die.”
He says they are currently the only source in the state where users can get naloxone — physicians could prescribe it, but they don't. He says without a Good Samaritan Law which would provide immunity to users, many won't call 911 because they're afraid they could face criminal charges.Stokes also says there's another reason for the need for wider distribution: Many ambulances don't carry naloxone. In Wisconsin, only Advanced Life Support level services — those that can start IVs — can legally carry the drug. Madison Fire Department Paramedic Paul Poker says that's a real issue in the suburbs and rural communities with basic level EMTs.
“If you have to wait 15, 20, 25 minutes to get that drug, or wait for them to transport you to the hospital, the chances of long-term affects, whether it's brain damage or something like that, can go up significantly,” says Poker.There is an inhaled version of Narcan that many basic level providers across the country are carrying. The state Department of Health Services — which licenses EMS providers — says that would require additional training and a change in law but that it is under consideration.
After an American Civil Liberties Union report found police increasingly can track law-abiding drivers’ whereabouts with few restrictions, the group’s Massachusetts branch renewed its calls for lawmakers to impose limits and said the state already may collect such information.
The national report raises concerns about cameras mounted on patrol cars, street signs and overpasses that automatically scan license plates on passing vehicles and check them against databases of stolen cars or people wanted on arrest warrants, among other things.
In the report, the ACLU does not question the use of plate scanners for these purposes, but warned that the devices retain images and details on the time and location of every passing vehicle – including a vast majority of motorists who have done nothing wrong.
Police agencies vary widely in how long they keep such information – anywhere from two days to years or even indefinitely – and in some cases feed it into larger law enforcement databases, according to the report, based on 26,000 pages of documents obtained through public records requests in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
During my five months in Syria, there's one remark I keep hearing from the rebels: we need ammunition and we need heavy weapons. The makeshift army fighting Bashar al-Assad's troops may be armed with plenty of ancient Kalashnikovs, a steady stream of young men ready to fight and die, and an unshakeable belief that Allah is on their side. But they're facing a regime equipped with Russian-made tanks and fighter jets, a regime that's apparently happy to unleash huge scud missiles and chemical weapons on its own population to keep itself in power.
The rebels and Assad's forces are locked in a particularly sticky, horrendously bloody stalemate; the rebels can hold the front lines but find it almost impossible to advance because they don't have the weapons and ammunition to make a push. The regime is able to fire heavy artillery at the residential neighborhoods held by the rebels, occasionally picking off fighters while simultaneously destroying the homes of ordinary citizens.
Away from the front lines I found a slightly more professional operation. Three months ago, a local Free Syrian Army commander named Abu Firas realized that his fighters were missing a trick by attacking the regime’s tanks with explosives and leaving them burnt out on the side of the road. Now when the rebels attack a regime checkpoint they try to leave the tanks in one piece so they can bring them over to the other side.
“Now that we are capturing heavy weapons, our fortunes will change,” Abu told me. He explained that some particularly fearless jihadist fighters from Yemen leap onto the regime’s tanks as they're still moving, rip open the doors, and unload their weapons upon the soldiers inside. Brutal and foolhardy, perhaps, but definitely effective, and a method that results in only superficial damage inflicted on the tank.
The rebels bring their prizes to a mechanic’s workshop opposite Abu Firas’s office, where they're soon fixed up and real time Location system; a bit of welding and a new rebel logo to replace the regime’s and they’re good to go. It was Ramadan when I visited so the mechanic isn't working. As Abu swung the garage doors open open—we're met with the bizarre sight of two camouflaged tanks parked up next to a Toyota pickup truck—he told me he used to work on bulldozers and trucks and was able to teach himself how tanks operate pretty quickly.
After my visit to the war workshop, I heard about another rebel-run battle studio, a factory where fighters are turning out hundreds of weapons every day. The commander in charge is named Ahmad Afesh and he's the leader of Aleppo’s Free Syria Brigade. He got nervous when I first spoke to him—he’d never let a journalist anywhere near the factory before and he was unsure about letting me in, never mind allowing me to take photographs inside.
After two days of negotiations via Skype and over the phone, he came back with his answer: he'd granting me access on the condition that I don't photograph the outside of the factory or reveal its location. That's a compromise I was perfectly happy to make, so the next day we drove to the factory with the commander.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when they did I found myself in front of a scene resembling a cross between Santa's workshop and a Industrial Revolution–era Britain. Only instead of gift-wrapped toys or steam engine parts, the factory is cluttered with mortar casings and rockets—a Christmas grotto fit for the most battle-ready child you know.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Indoor Location Highlighted at Famous
Used to be that changes to equipment in and on cars took decades to enter production — as an example just how long did it take to get head-rests/restraints into most vehicles? Head restraint patents were originally filed in 1921, and people started to get interested in putting them in cars in the 1950s, but they didn’t start to show up in vehicles until the 1960s and weren’t mandated until 1969 in the US. Since then the rate of technology adoption by the auto-makers has accelerated.
Now, it seems that almost every new car has Internet, Bluetooth phone, GPS navigation, rain-sensing wipers, touch screen, automatic foot sensing/hand waving/ touch sensitive lift-gate/door-locks/touch screens and even massaging seats and automatic seat positioning… And safety devices galore — including multiple air-bags and anti-lock braking systems, indoor positioning system, intelligent speed adaptation and now even lane-departure and forward collision mitigation/collision avoidance systems.
Safety has finally become a major selling feature on almost every make and every model, thanks in large part to organizations like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the Vehicle Research Center (VRC) near Washington, D.C. The VRC is the principle location for U.S. vehicle crash testing that we see regularly on TV and YouTube videos with crash-test dummies being bashed around in all sorts of simulated vehicle accidents. These tests have lead to significantly enhanced safety features in today’s vehicles.
Automation in vehicles, particularly automation of safety devices, is seen as the next most promising phase of vehicle safety improvement. And as these safety devices become more complex, they need to be verified in realistic conditions. Hence, the VRC is now undertaking a major expansion of its testing capabilities with the addition of a continuous vehicle test track that transverses not only open-air roadway areas, but also includes a 300-foot by 700-foot fully covered testing area.
The $30 million upgrade will include a Locata supplied ‘LocataNet’ which will provide the VRC with high-precision positioning to enable rigorous, consistent and repeatable scientific evaluation of new vehicle crash avoidance systems. Along with the cm level positioning provided by the Locata network, VRC is also working on state-of-the-art robotics to enable the required level of testing precision. The LocataNet will furnish the IIHS with a locally controlled positioning system that is seamless over all the VRC test areas, including extremely accurate and consistent automated positioning of vehicles.
In the covered enclosure VRC intends to set up collision avoidance testing for areas such as parking garages and urban canyons — areas where GPS is either not available, or is degraded to a level where positioning is intermittent or isn’t available. Locata will provide a consistent level of accuracy and reliability that the VRC requires for these GPS-degraded scenarios.
The VRC site currently looks very much like a construction site with the track extensions under way and the under-cover area just starting to be built. The VRC facility will come online in two stages — the outdoor track before the end of the year and the indoor around early Q2 next year. Locata engineers have been working with Perrone Robotics on very early integration testing. Perrone is contracted to deliver a system for testing vehicle safety systems in the test vehicles that IIHS is testing. For the first phase, the system includes a robot target vehicle with the footprint of a car, but only 4 inches high and 1 inch of ground clearance. If the vehicle being tested fails to prevent a collision with the robot target vehicle, the test vehicle runs over the robot target vehicle, dislodging a soft target, but avoiding damage to the test vehicle, robot target vehicle, or soft target.
To ensure that the test vehicle drives repeatedly, the system also includes a drop-in actuator kit that can be installed into any test vehicle in 30 minutes or less. The system is designed to allow a human driver to sit comfortably in the vehicle and drive, but is also capable of controlling the throttle, brake and steering to drive test profiles. Perrone is using Locata as the positioning system. In addition to alleviating concerns about GPS outages or dead/weak signal spots, it also allows the system to be operated on the new covered IIHS test track currently under construction.
Locata’s autonomous positioning technology uses terrestrial networks that function as a “local ground-based replica” of GPS-style positioning. Locata works with GPS, but can also operate independently when GPS is not robust or is completely unavailable. Instead of orbiting satellites, Locata utilizes a network of small, ground-based transmitters that blanket a chosen area with strong radio-positioning signals. Because it is terrestrially based and provides relatively high power signals, Locata works in any internal or external environment.
A fundamental requirement for radio-positioning systems is nano-second level synchronization of all transmitters in the positioning network. In the past multiple atomic clocks were used to achieve this level of synchronization. Instead, Locata’s technology relies on a patented synchronization method called TimeLoc which allows Locata to replicate GPS in a ground network.
Locata’s technology encompasses both transmit and receive sides of the positioning network, allowing the system to be configured to meet specific, localized demand for availability, accuracy, and reliability. This flexibility ensures that signal integrity can be guaranteed in even the most demanding environments — especially indoors, like the covered test track section of the expanded VRC.
Locata has also made significant progress in North America with the recent award of a contract to instrument the White Sands missile range to Locata’s partner TMC Design. The 746th Test Squadron’s new Non-GPS Based Positioning System is expected to be operational by Q3 2013, with a network that covers 2,500 sq miles (6,500 square kilometers). Locata technology will provide the USAF’s “gold standard GPS truth system,” supplying continuous centimeter-level, independent positioning when GPS is completely jammed. This award followed several months of USAF testing and evaluation of an initial LocataNet installation at the White Sands facility.
So following the recent IIHS endorsement of the Locata technology for use at the VRC, Locata appears to be well on the way to acceptance as a reliable truth system for use alongside GPS. Along with other mining related installations elsewhere in the world, it would seem that we are no longer in evaluation mode; rather we should anticipate other future Locata production installations.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
Now, it seems that almost every new car has Internet, Bluetooth phone, GPS navigation, rain-sensing wipers, touch screen, automatic foot sensing/hand waving/ touch sensitive lift-gate/door-locks/touch screens and even massaging seats and automatic seat positioning… And safety devices galore — including multiple air-bags and anti-lock braking systems, indoor positioning system, intelligent speed adaptation and now even lane-departure and forward collision mitigation/collision avoidance systems.
Safety has finally become a major selling feature on almost every make and every model, thanks in large part to organizations like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the Vehicle Research Center (VRC) near Washington, D.C. The VRC is the principle location for U.S. vehicle crash testing that we see regularly on TV and YouTube videos with crash-test dummies being bashed around in all sorts of simulated vehicle accidents. These tests have lead to significantly enhanced safety features in today’s vehicles.
Automation in vehicles, particularly automation of safety devices, is seen as the next most promising phase of vehicle safety improvement. And as these safety devices become more complex, they need to be verified in realistic conditions. Hence, the VRC is now undertaking a major expansion of its testing capabilities with the addition of a continuous vehicle test track that transverses not only open-air roadway areas, but also includes a 300-foot by 700-foot fully covered testing area.
The $30 million upgrade will include a Locata supplied ‘LocataNet’ which will provide the VRC with high-precision positioning to enable rigorous, consistent and repeatable scientific evaluation of new vehicle crash avoidance systems. Along with the cm level positioning provided by the Locata network, VRC is also working on state-of-the-art robotics to enable the required level of testing precision. The LocataNet will furnish the IIHS with a locally controlled positioning system that is seamless over all the VRC test areas, including extremely accurate and consistent automated positioning of vehicles.
In the covered enclosure VRC intends to set up collision avoidance testing for areas such as parking garages and urban canyons — areas where GPS is either not available, or is degraded to a level where positioning is intermittent or isn’t available. Locata will provide a consistent level of accuracy and reliability that the VRC requires for these GPS-degraded scenarios.
The VRC site currently looks very much like a construction site with the track extensions under way and the under-cover area just starting to be built. The VRC facility will come online in two stages — the outdoor track before the end of the year and the indoor around early Q2 next year. Locata engineers have been working with Perrone Robotics on very early integration testing. Perrone is contracted to deliver a system for testing vehicle safety systems in the test vehicles that IIHS is testing. For the first phase, the system includes a robot target vehicle with the footprint of a car, but only 4 inches high and 1 inch of ground clearance. If the vehicle being tested fails to prevent a collision with the robot target vehicle, the test vehicle runs over the robot target vehicle, dislodging a soft target, but avoiding damage to the test vehicle, robot target vehicle, or soft target.
To ensure that the test vehicle drives repeatedly, the system also includes a drop-in actuator kit that can be installed into any test vehicle in 30 minutes or less. The system is designed to allow a human driver to sit comfortably in the vehicle and drive, but is also capable of controlling the throttle, brake and steering to drive test profiles. Perrone is using Locata as the positioning system. In addition to alleviating concerns about GPS outages or dead/weak signal spots, it also allows the system to be operated on the new covered IIHS test track currently under construction.
Locata’s autonomous positioning technology uses terrestrial networks that function as a “local ground-based replica” of GPS-style positioning. Locata works with GPS, but can also operate independently when GPS is not robust or is completely unavailable. Instead of orbiting satellites, Locata utilizes a network of small, ground-based transmitters that blanket a chosen area with strong radio-positioning signals. Because it is terrestrially based and provides relatively high power signals, Locata works in any internal or external environment.
A fundamental requirement for radio-positioning systems is nano-second level synchronization of all transmitters in the positioning network. In the past multiple atomic clocks were used to achieve this level of synchronization. Instead, Locata’s technology relies on a patented synchronization method called TimeLoc which allows Locata to replicate GPS in a ground network.
Locata’s technology encompasses both transmit and receive sides of the positioning network, allowing the system to be configured to meet specific, localized demand for availability, accuracy, and reliability. This flexibility ensures that signal integrity can be guaranteed in even the most demanding environments — especially indoors, like the covered test track section of the expanded VRC.
Locata has also made significant progress in North America with the recent award of a contract to instrument the White Sands missile range to Locata’s partner TMC Design. The 746th Test Squadron’s new Non-GPS Based Positioning System is expected to be operational by Q3 2013, with a network that covers 2,500 sq miles (6,500 square kilometers). Locata technology will provide the USAF’s “gold standard GPS truth system,” supplying continuous centimeter-level, independent positioning when GPS is completely jammed. This award followed several months of USAF testing and evaluation of an initial LocataNet installation at the White Sands facility.
So following the recent IIHS endorsement of the Locata technology for use at the VRC, Locata appears to be well on the way to acceptance as a reliable truth system for use alongside GPS. Along with other mining related installations elsewhere in the world, it would seem that we are no longer in evaluation mode; rather we should anticipate other future Locata production installations.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
It's College Students vs. the Corporate Machine
Once this nation saw higher education as a citadel of learning, growth and opportunity. Now student debt is being used as a cash cow to subsidize corporate tax breaks, while universities become incubators for corporate employees and cheap laboratories for private-sector patents.
The new student loan deal being cooked up in Washington is part of a larger picture. The forces of technology, globalization and wealth are calling the shots in government nowadays, and they've got higher education in their sights. Corporations want colleges and universities to serve them, not students.
In the dystopian future unfolding before our eyes, whole segments of the population are being offered up to the Corporate Machine. And unless we reject the corporate commodification of our common humanity, there's no end in sight.
As Andrew Leonard notes in Salon, the Internet is creating new and unjust markets for piece work. Online workers provide temporary "assistant" tasks for the well-to-do, competing for the jobs based on who's the most eager to please -and who's cheapest."Fancy Hands, "Mechanical Turk," "Task Rabbit": As the website names make clear, we're not talking about the dignity of labor here. And it's a buyer's rtls. The consulting group Deloitte waxes rhapsodic in a report for its corporate clients.
Then there's automation, often described (or mis-described) nowadays as "artificial intelligence" or "AI." A PBS program quotes Prof. Gary Marcus of NYU as saying, "Once somebody develops a good AI program it doesn't just replace one worker. It might replace millions of workers."
As Deloitte's consultants breathlessly put it: "Talent clouds make it possible to engage individuals anywhere in the world. AI and other technologies make it possible to automate knowledge work ... These trends are anticipated to shape the future of knowledge work."
"Knowledge work" is what we typically acquired a college education to perform. Think it'll be worth taking on a six-figure student loan debt to become a "Task Rabbit"?Colleges and universities have traditionally taught critical thinking, offered a breadth of social and human knowledge, and sought to provide students with the insight, skills, and courage to become the leaders of the future.
Not anymore. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, corporations want to turn college education into an employee training program. "To expect business to bring graduates up to speed," says an executive for Boeing, is "too much to ask." ("Too much to ask"? Boeing receives billions each year in government contracts and corporate profits are at record highs.)
"Once upon a time, 'trainee' used to be a common job title," says Philip D. Gardner of Michigan State University. "Now companies expect everyone, recent graduates included, to be ready to go on Day One. The mantle of preparing the work force has been passed to higher ed."
But students, not corporations, will be expected to pay for these 'trainee' programs -- along with whatever government subsidies can be extracted from taxpayers.Two-year colleges were created, in part, to meld workforce needs with educational resources. But the Corporate State sees no need for any other form of education. The university lecture halls of the past are becoming incubator pods for the disposable corporate employees of the future.
This corporatization of education is reflected in the appointment of Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary and former Governor of Arizona, to head the statewide University of California system. As the Los Angeles Times reports this week, it was "an unusual choice ... (for) a position usually held by an academic." The Times reports that unnamed officials felt Napolitano's Cabinet background "will help UC administer its federal energy and nuclear weapons labs and aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas."
Energy and nuclear weapons research helps fund university budgets. It also leads to lucrative government contracts for corporations. Medical research leads to lucrative drug patents for Big Pharma.That's how the Corporate Machine works. Colleges and universities are there to generate its "inputs," intellectual and human, not to advance our collective understanding and knowledge.
It's all part of a decades-long pattern. Once we had a thriving middle class. Then the ability of working Americans to earn a living wage was systematically destroyed by a series of deliberate policy decisions.The minimum wage was frozen, driving ever-greater numbers of working people into poverty. The rights of employees to organize and negotiate were eroded, driving down wages even more. Elected leaders looked the other way as corporations gutted pension plans. NAFTA and other trade deals drove working wages down even further.
As middle-class Americans plunged further behind, their families and their communities fell with them. That's when the Corporate Machine learned something very important: It didn't need them. Business leaders discovered the Workerless Economy.There was good money to be made by using cheaper workers overseas and temporary and unskilled employees at home. The U.S. job market increasingly swung toward unskilled jobs, a trend that's been accelerated by the current "recovery" -- which is really a radical economic shift toward a corporate boom for the few, and away from prosperity for the many.
As the collapsing middle class lost much of its buying power, Corporate America discovered another way to make money: Why pay you to buy their goods when they can lend you the money instead?Americans plunged into ever-increasing cesspools of debt, fueled first by the Clinton stock market bubble and then by the bank-designed (and fraud driven) mortgage bubble. Deregulation meant that anybody with a large enough corporate presence could get in on the bank boom.
But what goes up must come down -- and you can be sure the Corporate State didn't plan to pick up the tab. Once they had been rescued -- by the same taxpayers they'd been exploiting -- financial executives went back to profiting from the declining wage base of the middle class.Building and selling things takes a lot of work. You have to hire and pay people, both to produce and ship your goods and so they can buy the goods you produce. It's easier to financialize your corporation and capitalize on government's extraordinary generosity to bankers.
To squeeze out even more profit, they learned how to charge more for holding and managing money. Thomas Philippon of the New York Federal Reserve found that the cost of "intermediation" (banking services) was 2 percent in 1870, rose to 6 percent by Depression-era 1930, and fell below 4 percent in 1950.These banking charges rose slowly to 5 percent in 1980 -- and then shot up to almost 9 percent by 2010. They become banks for the same reason Willie Sutton allegedly robbed them: That's where the money is.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
The new student loan deal being cooked up in Washington is part of a larger picture. The forces of technology, globalization and wealth are calling the shots in government nowadays, and they've got higher education in their sights. Corporations want colleges and universities to serve them, not students.
In the dystopian future unfolding before our eyes, whole segments of the population are being offered up to the Corporate Machine. And unless we reject the corporate commodification of our common humanity, there's no end in sight.
As Andrew Leonard notes in Salon, the Internet is creating new and unjust markets for piece work. Online workers provide temporary "assistant" tasks for the well-to-do, competing for the jobs based on who's the most eager to please -and who's cheapest."Fancy Hands, "Mechanical Turk," "Task Rabbit": As the website names make clear, we're not talking about the dignity of labor here. And it's a buyer's rtls. The consulting group Deloitte waxes rhapsodic in a report for its corporate clients.
Then there's automation, often described (or mis-described) nowadays as "artificial intelligence" or "AI." A PBS program quotes Prof. Gary Marcus of NYU as saying, "Once somebody develops a good AI program it doesn't just replace one worker. It might replace millions of workers."
As Deloitte's consultants breathlessly put it: "Talent clouds make it possible to engage individuals anywhere in the world. AI and other technologies make it possible to automate knowledge work ... These trends are anticipated to shape the future of knowledge work."
"Knowledge work" is what we typically acquired a college education to perform. Think it'll be worth taking on a six-figure student loan debt to become a "Task Rabbit"?Colleges and universities have traditionally taught critical thinking, offered a breadth of social and human knowledge, and sought to provide students with the insight, skills, and courage to become the leaders of the future.
Not anymore. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, corporations want to turn college education into an employee training program. "To expect business to bring graduates up to speed," says an executive for Boeing, is "too much to ask." ("Too much to ask"? Boeing receives billions each year in government contracts and corporate profits are at record highs.)
"Once upon a time, 'trainee' used to be a common job title," says Philip D. Gardner of Michigan State University. "Now companies expect everyone, recent graduates included, to be ready to go on Day One. The mantle of preparing the work force has been passed to higher ed."
But students, not corporations, will be expected to pay for these 'trainee' programs -- along with whatever government subsidies can be extracted from taxpayers.Two-year colleges were created, in part, to meld workforce needs with educational resources. But the Corporate State sees no need for any other form of education. The university lecture halls of the past are becoming incubator pods for the disposable corporate employees of the future.
This corporatization of education is reflected in the appointment of Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary and former Governor of Arizona, to head the statewide University of California system. As the Los Angeles Times reports this week, it was "an unusual choice ... (for) a position usually held by an academic." The Times reports that unnamed officials felt Napolitano's Cabinet background "will help UC administer its federal energy and nuclear weapons labs and aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas."
Energy and nuclear weapons research helps fund university budgets. It also leads to lucrative government contracts for corporations. Medical research leads to lucrative drug patents for Big Pharma.That's how the Corporate Machine works. Colleges and universities are there to generate its "inputs," intellectual and human, not to advance our collective understanding and knowledge.
It's all part of a decades-long pattern. Once we had a thriving middle class. Then the ability of working Americans to earn a living wage was systematically destroyed by a series of deliberate policy decisions.The minimum wage was frozen, driving ever-greater numbers of working people into poverty. The rights of employees to organize and negotiate were eroded, driving down wages even more. Elected leaders looked the other way as corporations gutted pension plans. NAFTA and other trade deals drove working wages down even further.
As middle-class Americans plunged further behind, their families and their communities fell with them. That's when the Corporate Machine learned something very important: It didn't need them. Business leaders discovered the Workerless Economy.There was good money to be made by using cheaper workers overseas and temporary and unskilled employees at home. The U.S. job market increasingly swung toward unskilled jobs, a trend that's been accelerated by the current "recovery" -- which is really a radical economic shift toward a corporate boom for the few, and away from prosperity for the many.
As the collapsing middle class lost much of its buying power, Corporate America discovered another way to make money: Why pay you to buy their goods when they can lend you the money instead?Americans plunged into ever-increasing cesspools of debt, fueled first by the Clinton stock market bubble and then by the bank-designed (and fraud driven) mortgage bubble. Deregulation meant that anybody with a large enough corporate presence could get in on the bank boom.
But what goes up must come down -- and you can be sure the Corporate State didn't plan to pick up the tab. Once they had been rescued -- by the same taxpayers they'd been exploiting -- financial executives went back to profiting from the declining wage base of the middle class.Building and selling things takes a lot of work. You have to hire and pay people, both to produce and ship your goods and so they can buy the goods you produce. It's easier to financialize your corporation and capitalize on government's extraordinary generosity to bankers.
To squeeze out even more profit, they learned how to charge more for holding and managing money. Thomas Philippon of the New York Federal Reserve found that the cost of "intermediation" (banking services) was 2 percent in 1870, rose to 6 percent by Depression-era 1930, and fell below 4 percent in 1950.These banking charges rose slowly to 5 percent in 1980 -- and then shot up to almost 9 percent by 2010. They become banks for the same reason Willie Sutton allegedly robbed them: That's where the money is.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
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