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I hadn't had any races planned until April, but I received a message from Ken Niemimaa asking if I would be interested going with him to Charlottesville, Virginia for the Thomas Jefferson 100k on March 12th. It didn't take much convincing for me to say yes and off we went on Thursday evening to arrive some time on Friday afternoon.
The TJ100k is in its 3rd year and is Race Directed by the somewhat famous Ultrarunner Andy Jones-Wilkins. Andy is quite the personality and as it turns out a great race director. I had seen him talk as an MC for the legends presentation at Western States and he does like to talk.
The race is a multi-loop course of 7 x 9 mile loops with 1000 ft. of elevation per loop. As it turns out the course is deceivingly difficult.
My lead up to the race is was uneventful, but I wasn't getting a lot of mileage per run, but I was getting in about 100 k per week, which is on the high side, but a good target for me. 35k being the longest run. The key for me is usually the back to back long runs, 30+ k on one day followed by 20+k the next. It was nice to taper for the two weeks prior to the race and although I usually abstain from running at all in the week before hand, I felt the need for a run or two the week before and ran twice, both at pace.
I had been working on a new exercise for my hips which seemed to give me some issues while running, so I was interested to see if things were improving or getting worse.
Back to the TJ100k, we attended the pre-race meeting the night before in which Andy filled us in with all the details and what to expect, including warmer than normal weather conditions. Ken had taken a picture of Andy during the talk and posted to Facebook which I commented on: We can't hear you Andy! ;-) (tongue in cheek)
The race starts at 5 a.m. and we were up at 3:30 to get ready. It was a 20 minute drive from our hotel to Walnut Creek Park where the race is held. We were there early and meandered around while we waited to start. I wore my hydration vest, but only used one bottle as there was an aid station about every 7k or so. This worked well. We started on time into the trails we went.
I tried to keep an easy pace, as this was the goal of the race for me, to pace myself accordingly for a long race. I may have been going a little quicker than necessary, but it felt rather easy. I was looking at two other goals: one to finish each loop in about 2 hours or less and two finish in daylight. Each loop essentially consisted of two separate loops between the aid stations. The second half containing two good climbs up switch backs. Daylight appeared about ¾'s of the way through the second half, a couple of k from the start/finish area. The advantage of starting in the dark is that the second loop seems like another completely different loop. At the end of the first loop I was in dire need of the bathroom and was looking forward to stopping. On my way in Andy was reading off everyone's name and making comments of one kind or another. After I had passed the finish are, Andy said "Oh, and by the way Keith. I saw your smart assed comment of FB", I laughed as I went into the bathroom. When I came out he asked me if I felt a few pounds lighter. I left the aid station smiling. I finished the first loop in about 1:43.
The second loop started well enough and the temperature although warm was not as warm as I was expecting. I rolled down my arm sleeves and took them off after my 2nd loop. You get a better idea of the terrain in the daylight and it was hilly and technical. On the second loop was when I started kicking rocks and roots. I was doing it so often I was getting rather frustrated. The second loop was finished in 3:30, so very consistent, but I was starting to tire. Legs felt good though. The first mistake I made was forgetting to have my shake and eshot after lap two. I went into the aid station and browsed the table and left. It was on the third loop that things went a bit sour. I was kicking every rock and root there was and I was about 5k from the finish area when I realized why… my shoes. I was wearing the Altra Lone Peaks and with the big toe box and flat last I was catching everything. A combination of that and being tired made it worse. After lap 3 I stopped, finally got my nutrition, changed shoes, socks, lubed up and changed my shirt (next mistake). The shirt I put on was way too small, at first I thought it would feel better after wearing it for a little while, but no it was squeezing my arm pits! The shoes made a difference instantly. I felt much better and started to run well again. I was looking at walking the hills, but still trying to come in each lap under 2 hours. Lap 3 was done just under 2 hours, not bad for a lap that struggled on. Still on pace.
The fourth loop started well enough, felt better, but not 100%. Gradually I started kicking the odd rock or root here and there. My confidence was also not high. About 4k from the finish area I kicked another… something and my right calf immediately went rock solid. I stopped and tried to stretch it out with no luck. It felt like a huge knot in the middle of my calf. I tried to move but was hobbling badly so I stopped again at a log and tried to massage it out. Again no luck. So I just hobbled on, the closer I got to the finish area the more I thought my race was done. It wasn't improving at all. I came in to the finish area and sought attention but there wasn't much to give. I told the race folks that I'd try some arnica and massage for a few and see how it goes. It didn't get any better, so I pulled the plug. Others said it was the best based on what I have coming up. I still couldn't feel anything but disappointment though.
I spent the rest of the race cheering Ken on and watching the other racers compete. The race for first was amazing, two guys who had never run the distance came across the finish line together in a course record time of just over 10 hours. 3rd was about 15 minutes back. The next race was for 4th and Ken was leading after the 6th loop. He held on and finished in 11:11. The women's winner finished 3 minutes ahead of second place in about 11:30, also a new course record.
An awesome event, that is well run. A very enthusiastic race director and crew. A beautiful place to run on a deceptively difficult course.
The calf is healing well and although there is still some soreness it I'm able to walk with no limp and barely a feeling of tightness. I will take most of the week off from running before getting back into the training next week.
Thank You For Reading! - Sixteen years ago, I started *A Trail Runners Blog*. What began as a "fitness diary using this new-fangled Internet thing" quickly blossomed into a decade-...
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Khaled Aljarrah1, 2*, Todd Pawlicki1, Neelam Tyagi1 and Steve B. Jiang1
1Department of Radiation Oncology, UC San Diego, CA, USA
2Department of Physics, Jordan University of Science & Technology, Irbid, Jordan
Received Date: March 08, 2010; Accepted Date: April 18, 2010; Published Date:April 18, 2010
Citation: Aljarrah K, Pawlicki T, Tyagi N, Jiang SB (2010) Evaluation of IMRT QA Point Measurement Rocesses Using a Commercial Heterogeneous Phantom. J Cancer Sci Ther 2: 063-069. doi: 10.4172/1948-5956.1000025
Copyright: © 2010 Aljarrah K, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Visit for more related articles at Journal of Cancer Science & Therapy
Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) has the potential to deliver a highly conformal dose distribution to the target volume compared to conventional radiotherapy. However, the use of IMRT introduces complexities in dose delivery and veri fi cation. Routine IMRT QA is typically performed in a homogeneous solid water phantom and does not verify the accuracy of a treatment planning system's handling of the heterogeneity correction algorithm, which is particularly important in a low density lung medium. The purpose of this work is to evaluate common IMRT QA point measurement processes that take advantage of a commercial heterogeneous phantom [CIRS IMRT thorax phantom (CIRS, Inc., Norfolk, Virginia, USA)]. Dose calculated with Monte Carlo (MC) methods and pencil beam (PB) methods are used. IMRT QA using the CIRS phantom with the MC and PB algorithms was retrospectively analyzed using control charts and a capability index. Fifteen actual IMRT treatment plans of lung cancer patients were used for this study. The dose was measured in the phantom at points located in lung, bone, and tissue with an ion chamber (IC) for 15 cases and thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs) for 5 cases. Measurements and calculations in each heterogeneity (e.g., TLD/MC in bone) were considered as separate processes. Control charts and the capability index Cpm were used to evaluate the following processes using the CIRS phantom: IC/MC, PB/MC, TLD/MC for measurements in the lung, tissue and bone. The processes PB/IC and MC/IC using conventional homogeneous water-equivalent slab geometry were also evaluated. In total, 11 IMRT QA processes were considered. Comparison of the data showed that the dose inside the lung calculated with PB was overestimated by 6% on average relative to the MC calculations. On average, MC calculations in bone and tissue agree within 3% with PB calculations and IC measurements. Process capability values (Cpm) greater than 1.33 indicate a well performing process. Using the CIRS phantom, Cpm ranged from 0.25 for the PB/ MC process in lung to 1.41 for the TLD/MC process in tissue. By comparison, the process using the conventional water- equivalent slab phantom showed the PB/IC and MC/IC Cpm values of 1.36 and 1.21, respectively. Nine of the 11 IMRT QA processes studied were not able to meet the clinical speci fi cations of 5%. However, we found the CIRS phantom is versatile to compare both homogeneous and heterogeneous IMRT QA measurements to calculations. Our results indicate that additional re fi nements of the IMRT QA processes are required. This is especially true for calculations and measurements in lung-equivalent media. The capability index is a simple and useful quantitative tool for comparing different approaches to lung IMRT QA.
Photon-beam dose calculation; Quality assurance; IMRT; Process control
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality in the United States. Significant effort has been carried out in developing highly conformal dose delivery techniques using multiple coplanar beams for these patients. IMRT is being used for lung cancer treatment and has shown the potential to deliver a highly conformal dose to the target while minimizing dose to the healthy tissues and is thus an effective tool for dose escalation in lung cancer treatment (Arriagada et al., 2004). Due to the complexity of IMRT treatment plans, patient specific quality assurance (QA) is the standard of practice (Palta et al., 2008). Different measuring devices and techniques such as TLD, EPID and gamma analysis were adopted to investigate the dose distributions for the QA purpose. An independent dose and monitor unit verification (MUV) software was investigated and benchmarked for clinical applications by Goerge et al. (Georg et al., 2007a; Georg et al., 2007b). A common procedure is based on point dose measurements using ion chamber or planar dose measurements using films in a homogeneous solid water phantom. While these measurements provide an evaluation of the linac and MLC performance for a specific IMRT plan, they do not directly verify the dose calculation accuracy of a treatment planning system (TPS) for the IMRT plan in heterogeneous materials. This is particularly important for the case of lung cancer IMRT, where the lateral electron transport at the boundaries of lung and tissue (or tumor) can not be easily handled by a conventional pencil beam algorithm (Butson et al., 2000; Laub et al., 2001; Ma et al., 2003; McDermott et al., 2003; Jang et al., 2006; Davidson et al., 2007).
IMRT QA measurements are typically influenced by the phantom setup and the machine daily output which could introduce up to 3% uncertainty in dose accuracy. Monte Carlo (MC) methods are not influenced by equipment setup and machine output fluctuations. Furthermore, MC calculates the dose to the medium of interest without introducing any correction to the medium geometry. Monte Carlo methods are a good way to test a realistic lung phantom for routine IMRT QA using realistic plans of IMRT lung patients.
Anthropomorphic-type thorax phantoms, such as the CIRS IMRT thorax phantom (CIRS, Inc., Norfolk, Virginia, USA), can potentially be used for the QA of lung IMRT plans to evaluate the dose calculation accuracy of a TPS in a heterogeneous media for a particular IMRT plan. The CIRS phantom consists of various interchangeable tissue equivalent and heterogeneous medium inserts for thermoluminescent dosimeter (TLD) and ion chamber (IC) measurements. This phantom has previously been used for validating a convolution/superposition algorithm (Breitmanet al., 2007).
Clinical specifications (e.g., ±3%) are not sufficient for the purpose of determining process performance because clinical criteria are independent of process performance. Therefore, process analysis was done using control charts and a capability indices similar to that described by Breen et al and Gerard et al. (Breen et al., 2008; Gerard et al., 2009). Control charts consist of a mean value called a center line and action limits called control chart limits. Data points within the control chart limits are considered to be subject only to random errors.
The purpose of this work is to evaluate common IMRT QA point measurement processes that take advantage of a commercial heterogeneous phantom [CIRS IMRT thorax phantom]. In this study, the CIRS thorax phantom is used with TLD and ion chamber measurements together with a pencil beam and Monte Carlo dose calculation algorithms. Fifteen physician-approved IMRT treatment plans were included in this study and process evaluation is done using control charts and the process capability index, Cpm.
Realistic thorax phantom: The CIRS phantom has been used as the realistic heterogeneous thorax phantom for this study. The phantom has interchangeable inserts with plugs to load a farmer-type ion chamber or TLDs for point dose measurements. The inserts are distributed as: 2 inserts in each lung were filled with a lung equivalent material, 1 insert at the location of the vertebral body was filled with a bone equivalent material, and 5 inserts located in the mediastinum region were filled with tissue equivalent material. A cross sectional schematic view of the CIRS lung phantom is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: A cross sectional view for the CIRS thorax phantom showing the phantom dimensions and location of the lung equivalent inserts (1, 2, 9, and 10), bone inserts (3), and tissue inserts (4, 5, 6, 7, and 8). The phantom has interchangeable inserts for lung equivalent (ρ = 0.21 gm/cm3) and bone equivalent (ρ = 1.60 gm/cm3) material in the regions corresponding to the lungs and the vertebral bodies.
Homogeneous solid water phantom: A homogeneous solid water phantom of 30×30 cm2 dimension in the beam's eye view was used for all water phantom measurements. The phantom material has characteristics very close to those of water (e.g. elemental composition, mass fraction, nominal density, mean atomic number etc.).
Treatment planning and dose calculation
Prior to the CT scanning of the phantom, 3 lead fiducial markers of 2 mm diameter (called BB's) were placed on the phantom's left lateral, right lateral and anterior surface (shown in Figure 1). These markers were used to align the phantom on the CT couch and the treatment room couch. The marker coordinates were used as a reference for coordinate transformation from the TPS coordinate to MC or pencil beam system coordinate. The phantom was CT scanned using a GE light speed scanner with 2.5 mm slice thickness. The CT data was exported to the TPS workstation for contouring and dose calculation. The location of the IC active volume (0.6ccm) in each insert was contoured in the TPS such that the contoured volume has the same size as that of the chamber's active volume.
Fifteen actual lung cancer patients' IMRT plans, generated by the CORVUS IMRT planning system (North American Scientific, Inc., Chatsworth, CA, USA), were used in this study. The CORVUS TPS uses a pencil beam (PB) algorithm that is based on a radiological path length correction. Each plan used the 6 MV photon beam of a Varian 21 EX linear accelerator (equipped with Millennium MLC) with a beamlet size of 1×1 cm2 and consists of 5 to 7 gantry angles. The same beam arrangements, fluence maps, and monitor units, were applied on the thorax phantom to generate hybrid QA plans for each patient.
The first set of measurements was done by delivering all the patient plans to the homogeneous solid water phantom. The IC was placed at the plan's isocenter. The plan's isocenter was shifted such that the measurement point would correspond with the high dose target regions in the patient's plan.
The CIRS phantom was set up for measurements in the treatment room and aligned to the BB's using the lasers. Sets of measurements were then performed by placing ion chambers at locations inside lung, bone, and tissue inside the thorax phantom. Three identical Farmer type IC chambers were used to measure the dose to the measurement points in the phantom. Followed the linac commissioning condition (depth of 5 cm, 10×10 cm2 field size, 100 cm SSD, and 100 cGy for 100 MU) a calibration procedure was used for each chamber to convert the chamber reading to dose in cGy. This was done by delivering 100 MU in a solid water phantom at a depth of 5 cm for 10×10 cm2 field size and then using the measured dose values as a conversion factor from charge to dose. The measured and calculated doses for each plan were normalized to the plan prescribed dose for the purpose of dose comparison.
The same phantom set-up was used for TLD measurements using 3 mm cylindrical TLDs. The TLDs were prepared for irradiation by annealing them at 400°C for 1 hr, then for 24 hrs at 100°C. Using special inserts TLDs were placed at same IC locations. After loading the TLDs in the phantom, the IMRT treatment plane is delivered. The irradiated TLDs were read by heating them to 100°C in a TLDs reader system. A Harshaw TLD reader Model 500A was used to read the TLDs. Measurements using TLDs were repeated 5 times and done for the first 5 patients. TLD dose measurements were also normalized to the plan prescribed dose for the purpose of dose comparison.
Monte Carlo Simulations
The Monte Carlo code MCSIM, the most recent version of the MCDOSE (Li et al., 2000; Ma, 2004a), was used to calculate the dose to the homogeneous water phantom and the CIRS phantom. The simulations were carried out using the following transport parameters: ECUT = 0.7 MeV, PCUT = 0.01 MeV and ESTEPE = 0.4. The measured average multi-leaf collimator (MLC) leaf leakage of 1.8 % was used to simulate transmission through the closed MLC leaves. Beam transmission through the jaws was considered zero. A phase space file generated below the jaws for 40×40 cm2 field size was used as the source for the photon beam (Aljarrah et al., 2006). Back scatter was corrected by calculating the fitting parameters of Jiang et al. for different fields at the linac calibration conditions (Jiang et al., 2001).
To convert the MC calculated dose per fluence to dose per MU, a calibration factor was calculated by performing a MC dose calculation with the same linac calibration conditions in water. The calibration factor was implemented in the MCSIM code to perform absolute dose calculation. Dose to material was determined for all simulations.
The fluence maps of the 15 hybrid treatment plans were exported from the TPS to the MC workstation. The MCSIM code reads the MLC leaf sequence file of the IMRT treatment plans generated by CORVUS to create the intensity map for each field. For phantom dose calculation, the simulated phantom was built from the phantom's CT data with up to 128×128×128 voxels and 0.3 cm3 voxel size. 900 millions photon histories were simulated such that the uncertainty in Monte Carlo results was less than 2% in the target for all calculations.
Process analysis
A process is considered as any individual combination of equipment and procedures to obtain a result. A total of 11 processes were studied. These consisted of: 1) PB/IC using a solid water phantom, 2) MC/IC using a solid water phantom, 3) IC/MC using the CIRS phantom in lung, 4) PB/MC using the CIRS phantom in lung, 5) TLD/MC using the CIRS phantom in lung, 6) IC/MC using the CIRS phantom in tissue, 7) PB/MC using the CIRS phantom in tissue, 8) TLD/MC using the CIRS phantom in tissue, 9) IC/MC using the CIRS phantom in bone, 10) PB/MC using the CIRS phantom in bone, and 11) TLD/MC using the CIRS phantom in bone.
Control charts require that homogeneous subgroups are obtained from the process for the purpose of calculating the control limits. Each individual IMRT QA percent difference between measurement and calculation is considered as a homogeneous subgroup of size one. The percent differences for the different processes are calculated in the following way: for a patient with a prescribed target dose of D Gy/fraction, then the percent difference between the IC, (or PB or TLD) in the CIRS phantom is (IC - MC).100/D, the percent difference between the PB (or MC) in the solid water phantom is (PB - IC).100 / D.
Upper and lower control chart limits are given by and , respectively where is the average percent difference and is the average of the moving range between successive percent differences. The upper and lower control charts limits for individual values (n = 1) are calculated using the expressions and , respectively where the bias correction factor is equal to 1.128 for the case n = 1 (Wheeler and Chambers, 1992).
When the data are normally distributed, the risk of a false positive is less than 1%, which is a property of the normal distribution. If the data do not follow a normal distribution, the risk of a false is still low but not equal to that of the normal distribution. All 15 cases from each process were used to determine the control limits. In the case of the TLD measurements, all 5 cases were used to determine the control limits. The average of the percent differences is designated as the process target, X and is used for the center line of the control chart.
The capability indices Cp and Cpk are commonly used to quantify process performance. Both of the indices need to be used together to adequately describe process performance. We elected to use the capability index Cpm (Chan et al., 1988) because, in one number, it accounts for both the proximity of the process to the target value as well as the magnitude of process variation. It is given by,
where USL -LSL is the difference between the upper and lower clinical specification limits, is the variance, is the mean, and T is the target value for the process (0% for IMRT QA). Processes will have Cpm values greater than 1.33 if they are operating optimally (Pillet et al., 1997). Values less than 1.33 indicate that a process contains excessive variability compared to the specifications and/or the process is off target. In this work, IMRT QA process performance was compared against two different clinical specification limits, namely, 3% and 5%. The clinical specification limits represent the difference between a measured and calculated value, expressed as a percentage.
Table 1 shows the results for the percentage dose difference for all 11 processes in this study. The largest average percent difference was for the lung PB/MC process at 5.8% with a minimum of -2% and a maximum of 11.4%. The average percent difference for all other processes was within 2%.
|Mean (%)
|Standard deviation (%)
|Minimum (%)
|Maximum (%)
|Solid H2O
Table 1: This table shows the mean, 1 standard deviation, minimum and maximum for all 11 processes. Results are percent difference between normalized planned doses.
Dosimetry in the conventional water-equivalent slab phantom
IMRT plans of all the patients were first delivered to a rectangular homogeneous water-equivalent phantom as part of the regular IMRT QA procedure. The dose was measured using the IC at the target isocenter and compared with calculations performed using MC and PB calculation. Figure 2 shows control chart for the percentage dose difference between IC measurements and both MC and PB dose calculation. The point dose calculation at the target isocenter for all the plans agree within 2 – 3% with the measured data in the homogeneous medium which is within the statistical uncertainty for MC simulations and IC measurements. The MC calculated dose at the target isocenter point agrees within 2% with the PB calculation.
Dosimetry in the CIRS heterogeneous thorax phantom
Percentage dose differences between the PB algorithm and IC measurements with respect to MC calculations were evaluated for all 15 patients in lung, tissue, and bone. The target location in the QA phantom was selected in regions corresponding to the target isocenter in the patient plans, and hence located in high dose regions. The PB calculated dose systematically overestimates MC calculations by about 6% in the lung regions. The difference between MC calculations and IC measurement are within 4% inside lung. The percentage dose difference between MC calculations and dose measured using the IC and TLDs in bone and tissue regions were within ±4% except for one IC/MC case in bone.
Process analysis
Table 2 shows the process capability index Cpm for both 3% and 5% clinical specifications. Neither process is capable of meeting the 3% clinical specifications for the solid water-based IMRT QA processes. Similarly, none of the IMRT QA processes using the CIRS phantom are able to meet the 3% clinical specification. At 5% specifications, both the solid water PB/IC and the CIRS phantom tissue TLD/MC processes are operating with Cpm greater than 1.33. Also shown in Table 2 are the clinical specifications that would be necessary for each process to achieve Cpm = 1.33 (the threshold value for an optimally operating process). These processes are able to meet clinical specifications ranging from 4.7% to 26.9%.
|Cpm 3% clinical specifications
|Cpm 5% clinical specifications
|Clinical specifications for Cpm = 1.33
|Solid H2O
Table 2: This table shows the process target and process capability (Cpm) for the 11 IMRT QA processes considered in this study against 3% and 5% clinical specifications. The last column of the table show the required clinical specification limit required to achieve Cpm = 1.33 (as a percent difference from the plan normalized dose) that would be required to reach an optimal performing process
Figure 3A, Figure 3C show the control charts for the percentage difference between MC calculations, IC measurements, TLD measurements and PB calculations for all the patients at points located in lung, tissue, and bone respectively. Note that only the control chart limits for the PB/IC process is shown in each figure. All processes are operating in control.
Figure 3: Percentage dose difference between MC calculations, IC measurements, and PB calculation for points located in: (a) lung, (b) tissue, and (c) bone. The upper and lower control limits are denoted by UCL, and LCL, respectively. The solid lines in the plots represent the center line, and upper and lower control limits for the PB/MC IMRT QA process.
The overall goal of this work was to analyze different IMRT QA processes using a commercial heterogeneous phantom with different measurement tools and calculation algorithms. In particular, we used control charts and the capability index Cpm to characterize process performance. Due to the retrospective nature of this analysis, it was not our intent nor was it possible to identify specific errors that were identified by the control charts or the capability index. However, we can point to some issues that may have contributed to the results.
Dose verification in inhomogeneous medium such as lung shows a difference between MC calculation and PB TPS calculation. Dose was previously verified in a slab geometry and for a single beam (Boyer and Mok, 1986; Metcalfe et al., 1993; Charland et al., 2003; Carrasco et al., 2004; Krieger and Sauer, 2005; Paelinck et al., 2005; Blazy et al., 2006; Tyagi et al., 2008). Other studies verified the dose in a thorax type phantom. Davidson et al. (2007) showed that the CORVUS pencil beam algorithm overestimated the dose by 10 – 15% in tumor, heart, and cord relative to the measured TLD using an anthropomorphic phantom (Davidson et al., 2007). Ma et al. (2000) found 4% dose difference between MC and Corvus in a cylindrical water phantom with various hypothetical target shapes. They also found Discrepancies of more than 5% in the target region and over 20% in the critical structures were found in some IMRT patient (Ma et al., 2000). Ma et al. (2000) verified IMRT dose accuracy in a homogeneous PMMA QA cylindrical phantom (Ma et al., 2003). In that study, 2 cm diameter lung and bone cylindrical inserts were used to evaluate the dose to both mediums. They found 5% discrepancy for one patient between MC and CORVUS in the bone insert. McDermott et al. (2003) showed a comparison between MC calculated dose using MCNP and CORVUS TPS in an anthropomorphic phantom (McDermott et al., 2003). They found up to 10% difference in the high dose region and 5% dose difference to the CTV between MC and TPS when the target was located in the right lung and mediastinum.
Some differences between the MC, PB, IC, and TLD results (and their associated processes) may be attributed to the dose conversion from dose to medium to dose to water. PB-based algorithms calculate the dose to water while MC reports the dose to the medium. The differences as discussed by Siebers et al. (2000) are about 1, 10, and 13% for lung, bone, and air, respectively (Siebers et al., 2000). PB-based algorithms are based on path length correction which does not account for the lateral scattered dose.
Differences of MC and PB from measurements are due to the reasons that measurements are susceptible to fluence perturbations by the medium composition and medium interfaces. The reference calibration for ion chambers (water phantom, 10×10 cm2, depth = 5, SSD=100cm), for example, is not valid for IMRT fields in the presence of heterogeneities where lateral electronic disequilibrium may effect the chamber fluence correction factor. For single static IMRT field the correction factors could be as high as 10% and requires a field dependent correction factor (Bouchard and Seuntjens, 2004). The effect of the fluence factor is reduced when the measurement device is located in a flat dose gradient region.
There are many other sources of systematic errors such as dose grid resolution, MC statistical considerations (De Smedt et al., 2005; Isambert et al., 2010), and the location of bone and tissue measurement point in low dose volumes under the jaws that may present as a systematic error in the process of IMRT QA. These sources of error are a contributing factor to the variability observed in the results.
All 11 IMRT QA processes studied were in control. In practice, as soon as a result is obtained out of the control limits, then the physicist should immediately identify the reason for the systematic error (e.g., measurement setup, MC input parameters, etc.). The process target (mean value) was non-zero at approximately 0.6 – 0.7%, which could imply an error in the calibration or that other errors are present as well. Phantom setup and the daily variation of machine output should be within 3% so one might expect a process to perform within a 3 or even 5% specifications. However, from a process control point of view, the magnitude and frequency of errors that arise in the process can not be assumed to vary within any expected range. A process could produce a result within or outside those specifications at any time. This is because process performance depends on many additional factors some of which are known and others which are unknown. One is ultimately concerned with answering the question whether or not a process produces the same expected results over time. Control chart limits depend on the magnitude of case-to-case variation, which has been shown as an effective way to identify errors in a process.
It is important to identify what is the minimum necessary complexity for QA procedures to efficiently identify errors that indicate a plan may have a negative clinical impact on the patient. In order to achieve this, one requires a metric to indicate process performance against clinical specifications. We have used the capability index, Cpm. The results show (5th column of Table 2) that the processes of IMRT QA are largely not capable of meeting clinical specifications at either the 3% or 5% level. These results are specific to the equipment, protocol, and staff at the institution where the data was acquired.
There are some differences comparing the results using Cpm to that of process ability as defined by Pawlicki et al. (2008a); Pawlicki et al. (2008b). For example, using the process ability at 3% and 5% clinical specifications, there are correspondingly 1 of 11 and 5 of 11 processes performing acceptability. In contrast, using Cpm we find 0 of 11 and 2 of 11 of the processes performing acceptably for the 3% and 5% clinical specifications, respectively. Even 10% clinical specifications, only 9 of 11 processes perform acceptably. Cpm is a more comprehensive indicator of process performance compared to process ability. Part of the reason for this is that the process ability is similar to the capability index Cp and does not account for the proximity of the measurements to the target value. Standardization of capability indices is necessary to make this approach clinically useful and relevant across different institutions so that all institutions use the same capability indices when comparing process performance.
The capability analysis shows that sophisticated phantoms and calculation algorithms alone are not enough to ensure high quality IMRT lung treatments. Either the clinical specifications need to be relaxed or processes of IMRT QA need to be re-engineered to meet the demands of the clinical specifications.
In this study, the CIRS heterogeneous thorax phantom has been investigated for routine IMRT QA using different measurement and calculation methods. Dose to different locations in the phantom, measured and calculated using IC measurements, and PB calculations were compared with the MC simulations. The PB algorithm overestimated the dose in the lung as compared to measurements and MC simulations but showed good agreement inside bone and tissue equivalent material. Measurements showed good agreement with MC calculations for majority of the patients in lung, bone and tissues. The ability of the processes to meet clinical specifications was found to be limited, however. The results also indicate that additional refinements of the IMRT QA processes are required. This is especially true for calculations and measurements in lung-equivalent media. A process capability index (Cpm) was a useful quantitative parameter for comparing different processes of IMRT QA.
The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Styliani Flampouri for her helpful discussions. Also we would like to thank Mr. Andrew Kaplan for his help with computer cluster used in this work.
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Probably a famous philosopher has written on this, but I don't want to look it up at the moment. I realized in a flash that what we do with least effort is our greatest strength. And what we do with most effort can build our strength.
Some of our culture's greatest innovators had an injury or were born with a limitation that shifted their sensory focus in some way that allowed their "least effort" to open access to a world few others saw. E.O. Wilson, George Washington Carver, and Helen Keller are a few such people that come to mind.
In my case, my "least effort" is an understanding of aquatic ecosystems thanks to profound dander allergies to all animals with fur, leading me to be a steward for fish aquariums nearly 40 years of my life. Fish have nearly always thrived in my care despite never once testing water acidity (pH) or quantifying chemical balance in their water. Instead I have learned awareness of subtle cues in fish behavior that cause me to know a change needs to be made in their environment.
An epiphany crossed my path in the course of some transcription content. I learned about aquaponics.
I asked my child, "What are things you think of first that are associated with me all my life?" Answer: "Plants, fish, and music."
Here is a glimpse of my little tropical community tank that thankfully survived intact 40 hours with no heat, plunging to 40 degrees when my power was knocked out this week in high winds. It's a bit distorted, like looking through a fish eye.
As I look toward my new school program in Environmental Conservation, I know once I get through courses in fish ecology, ecological sampling, plants of the Northwest, chemistry, ecotones, limnology and others, I will have an opportunity to do an independent study project.
I cannot imagine a more suited project to me than aquaponics (with help of some people with engineering know-how).
Unless I collect data on whether Chopin versus Mozart supercharges plant growth to solve our nation's agricultural crises, I'm not sure how my music knowledge fits in. But it feels wonderful when you encounter a system that screams "That's It!" because it's something that comes naturally to you, but can serve a greater good.
A single semester's project in aquaponics may take me no further than research paper and a small model, but possibilities seem endless for this type of sustainability project – in education, community adjunct to food bank gardens, urban agriculture, etc.
When we are faced with something that involves great effort, we can take this as an opportunity to answer these questions for ourselves: How badly do I want this change in my life? Why do I want this?
For me, commuting to school provides one such example of "most effort." I am looking into carpool options to no avail as of yet, but regardless, my route will involve 4 hours a day of commute time. Current best option involves driving 50 miles a day plus 6 buses a day. That would have been enough of a "barrier" to prevent a younger me from pursuing my dream. But now I view such barriers as windows. I can use bus time for study. I never know what wisdom I may encounter in my travels. I can thank my lucky stars to be leaving the house after 10 years working from home devoted to a young child.
Here are a few videos from folks creating aquaponics models around the U.S. One in Detroit, one in Chicago, a summer 2015 PBS spotlight on aquaponics in the US, an ambitious garden tinkerer in Washington State.
Sweetwater Foundation (Inspiring Link)


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After days of overcast, I stepped out the back door this morning before first light and say the moon. After the initial shock wore off I glanced around and saw stars too…Amazing. I had almost forgotten what clear sky looks like.
This photo is what the Bluebonnets we Texans are so proud of each spring look like at this time of year. The little star shaped leaves scattered through the background clutter are the Bluebonnets. I don't have any good digital shots of what a field of Bluebonnets looks like so I guess you'll have to wait for spring and a trip to the northwest of here for me to capture a good one. One would almost think it was the shape of the leaf that led the Texas Legislature to designate the Bluebonnet the state flower of Texas


text: Timber Frame House Building Builders Timber Frame work and design not only gives a beautiful finish and style to your home or office, which explains its popularity, but also enables the construction process to be much quicker. Derwood Homes have designed and erected many Timber frames in South Wales over the years and are one of the few Timber Frame specialist company's in South Wales. We cover Cardiff, Penarth, Barry, the Vale of Glamorgan, Bridgend and anywhere in between. As with any type of New Build or Refurbishment building work, there is a lot to consider when using Timber Frame. Derwood Homes always offers a professional service and ensures that our Timber Frames are well designed, properly treated and precision cut to size. We also ensure that our frames comply with current structural and building regulations. Our team of specialist carpenters always ensure that the erection and installation process of a timber frame is carried out as quickly as possible and to the highest standard. Oak is one of the most popular woods we work with when constructing Timber frame properties in South Wales which in turn gives a beautiful bespoke finish and style to individual rooms. As part of the comprehensive package that Derwood Homes offers, not only can we design and erect your bespoke frame, whether residential or commercial, but we can complete the whole build process right up to the point of you being able to move in. No hassle, less stress. We have all of the required tradesmen to hand. We cover all parts of South Wales including Bridgend, Cardiff, Caerphilly, Neath Port Talbot, Porthcawl, Tonypandy, Pontypridd, Cowbridge, Swansea, Carmarthen, Newport and Monmouth. For TIMBER FRAME properties, work, design, construction and help in South Wales please feel free to call Derwood Homes for a FREE quote and to discuss your needs. Quality and Professionalism Guaranteed. Contact Us »


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How Adolf Hitler Haunts Angela Merkel
Germany should be a true U.S. partner in leadership—on surveillance and everything else—but the ghosts of World War II are holding it back.
Seventy years after Adolf Hitler's suicide, Germany's unconditional surrender in World War II and its isolation and breakup, the country is a colossus once again, and its chancellor was just named by Forbes as the world's most powerful woman. Angela Merkel, one of the globe's most respected and influential statespersons, is playing a central role on at least two issues of global importance: Western relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia and the coherence and continuing survival of the EU and the common European currency, the Euro. On both matters Merkel has had a calming and stabilizing influence. She clearly is the European voice in world affairs.
And the United States needs Merkel, and Germany, beside it on the global stage. Following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and saddled with the continuing (drone-and-special-operations) war against fundamentalist terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere, the United States is less keen than ever on the role of the world's policeman. British Prime Minister David Cameron appears to have largely excused himself from dealing with global affairs and the French president has decided to be happy with a supporting role while leaving the senior role to Merkel. In terms of economic and social outlook, Germany seems a natural partner. Germany is the EU's largest nation, with a population of 80 million and by far Europe's most productive, efficient and successful economy. Conveniently, the country's political leadership apparently didn't mind spying on their European partners on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency.
Story Continued Below
And yet in important ways—in large part because Germany continues to be haunted by the terrible crimes of that earlier chancellor, Hitler—Merkel has failed to become a true "partner in leadership" for the United States, to deploy a term that George H.W. Bush once used to describe (hopefully but very prematurely) German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
The tensions between Germany's not-so-distant past and its putatively powerful future are thus growing harder to reconcile. A significant number of Germans still regard their country as a kind of larger Switzerland: rich and prosperous but rather passive in global affairs. Yet the mood is changing–both within the population at large and among the country's political elite. The tone was set in early 2014, when during a speech at the Munich Security conference, German President Joachim Gauck admonished his nation to become more active in international relations and more ready to use military force in UN- supported initiatives. Germany's defense minister and the chancellor herself quickly supported Gauck's advice.
But there are simply too many ghosts haunting the idea of a German-led Europe. The memory and legacy of German imperialism under the Kaiser that led to World War I, and the long-lingering evil legacy of Hitler and World War II, still are powerfully constraining factors. While Germany is widely recognized as the EU's leading voice in economic and financial affairs, this is not the same as the acceptance of the country as the EU's de facto political leader. In fact, the EU was founded to prevent the development of such a hegemonic position precisely because of the long history of German aggression. In particular, since the enlargement of the EU in 2004 that led to admission of the formerly communist states in Eastern Europe, a coalition of states has proved necessary to bring any legislation proposed by the EU Commission in Brussels to fruition.
Traditionally, at least Franco-German cooperation was vital. Now the inclusion of at least Poland and one or two other larger nations is necessary for obtaining the required votes. Thus building up Germany as the leader of the EU runs counter to everything the EU stands for, not least the careful balancing of nations within Europe. Turning Germany into Europe's hegemonic power may well have disastrous consequences for the well-being of the EU and the carefully nourished stability and balance of power in Europe. The risks are too great.
Secondly, French and British sensitivities and Polish, Czech and Greek suspicions about German predominance within Europe persist. At present London and Paris are too occupied with their own economic and identity problems to make much of a fuss about Merkel's new geopolitical role. Moreover, the chancellor is well-respected for being keen on mediation and cooperation, and no one suspects her of harboring global power political ambitions. But Britain and France, remembering their own hegemonic desires and the glories of their past imperial leadership roles, look with envy upon any notion that Germany is America's—and the world's—preferred European partner. Building up Germany's leadership role further is bound to increase tension and competition and animosities within Europe. This would be an unwise development. Matters within the EU about national identities, economic problems and domestic social problems are bad enough as they are.
A good point in case is the financial survival of Greece. Here Merkel and German Finance Minster Wolfgang Schauble have shown real leadership. Together with the equally hard-line European Central Bank, and in contrast to many wavering politicians in Paris and elsewhere, Germany has pursued a no-nonsense policy. Despite all attempts by the new left-wing Greek government to loosen the conditions imposed on the country for obtaining more bail-out money, Merkel stood in the way. She refused to being pushed about by Greece's new finance minister, whom she personally regards as a joke, and shrugged off as rather silly all demands for Germany to pay Nazi war crimes compensation to Greece. She adamantly refused to allow the reversal of the firm austerity measures imposed on Greece by the country's creditors–the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF. The most influential voice with the EU and the ECB is of course Germany's (with Greece owning Germany more than 54 billion euros, a huge sum).


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(This article was first published on R Blog, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)
I've released beta 2 of NppToR 2.6.0. Please take a look and report any problems. This improves the installer and the uninstaller as well as a few bugs that popped up from the transition to UNICODE.
To leave a comment for the author, please follow the link and comment on their blog: R Blog.
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Think you know video art? Do you know Wolf Vostell?Art
The father of video art and Fluxus co-founder, Wolf Vostell disrupts typical art historical assumptions of the founding of video art. Creating Sun in your head in 1963, Vostell is the creator of video art even though he did not see himself exclusively as a video artist. Finishing a two part retrospective of Vostell's video art, Rooster Gallery inserts Vostell back into the New York scene with the show Wolf Vostell: A Possible Survey on Video (1983-1993). On view from January 22 until February 22, the show is dedicated to the last decade of video works before his death in Berlin on April 3, 1998.
Just beyond the cool glow of the television screens, Vostell's manifesto "ART=LIFE=ART" prominently sets the tone for the Fluxus works inside. Constantly blurring the boundaries between works and mediums, Vostell's works are at the same time autonomous and interconnected to one another. Located in the lower gallery, Sara-Jevo (1993)–Vostell's last video work before his death–exemplifies this continuous blurring of works. The video is created from a happening of the same title that took place in Majorca, Spain on May 3, 1993, and also has a corresponding portfolio consisting of the original score, poster of the performance, and 3 prints created in response to the happening. While each piece is its own work, shown together these works display Vostell's total integration of practice and life.
Creating the first video work in 1963–shown in the first half of this survey–Vostell recognized televisions' power to captivate before they were considered a standard household item. To retaliate against a passive audience, he utilized video as a new language to force participation into his audience. This approach is termed dè-coll/age. In his 1999 essay, Valerio Dehò acknowledges the importance of Vostell's 1954 stay in Paris as when he "drew the term 'dè-coll/age' from a headline in Le Figaro, which described the crash of a transcontinental plane peu après son dècollage." Instead of adding images upon each other as a collage, a dè-coll/aged image would be broken down–just like the plane–to reflect the destruction of the 21st century. Dè-coll/age was used in Die Nackten und die Toten (1983), leaving residue of three happenings onto one screen, which resembles the rebellious torn propaganda posters in Paris during Nazi occupation.
Vostell's dè-coll/ages force the viewer to make their own connections and meanings, thus allowing a different history than what was being fed by the media. This new visual language is loaded with political symbols from Vostell's life. The events of WWII, Vietnam War, and the Cold War along with the simultaneous rise of mass media and consumerism reverberate through his dè-coll/age happenings and video works. While working in Berlin, he used concrete in his work to reference the Berlin Wall and criticize the aggressive physical divide. In the 1985 video, TV Cubisme Liege, a swirling camera captures the body parts of a female performer as blocks of concrete press against her body. At once errotic and disorienting, TV Cubisme Liege utilizes the visual language of television broadcasting to show the physical effect of Cold War politics, just as the cold concrete affects the body of the performer so too does the Berlin Wall physically affect thousands of residents.
The concrete reappears in Das Frühstück des Leonardo Da Vinci in Berlin (1988), along with identification numbers written on performers' arms referencing Nazi concentration camps, which Vostell escaped this horrible fate by running to Czechoslovakia with his family in 1939. A dè-coll/age of 11 happenings, Das Frühstück des Leonardo Da Vinci in Berlin also shows performers, including Vostell, acting out mundane acts in untraditional ways–such as a woman placing fried eggs on another's head and Vostell painting with red wine circles on top of a table. These mundane acts combined with the political imagery emphasizes that war is no longer a state of exception, but a part of life.
Vostell did use more traditional cinematic approaches to film, such as in El entiero de la sardina (The Funeral of the Sardine) (1985). Filmed in the countryside of Spain, El entiero de la sardina shows five women wearing only traditional black veils (mantillas), peinetas, and heels approach a turtle in which they follow for nearly 45 minutes until they disappear back into the horizon. A nod to Francisco Goya's El entiero de la sardina, whom Vostell greatly admired for The Disasters of War prints, both works depict the Spanish ceremony referenced by title, which ends the carnival season and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Thus considered a time of rebirth and the burial of the past, both artist omit the sacrifical sardine and focus on the procession. Vostell puts in the minimal elements to depict this carnival while Goya focused on the merriment and sinister underlyings in the pageantry.
Even with three decades of continuous video art, many continue to name Vostell's colleague, Nam June Paik, as the father of video art. Luckily, the two part survey by Rooster Gallery rectifies Vostell's importance to this medium.


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Bruce Hood Returns (BSP 88)/
The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity by Bruce Hood is a fascinating look at how our brains create both our experience of the world and our sense of being a single, coherent self. As the word "illusion" in the title indicates, neither is exactly what it seems. When I interviewed Dr. Hood (for BSP 88) he explained that The Self Illusion is a broad introduction to this somewhat surprising idea. The Self Illusion was written with a general audience in mind. For those already familiar with the topic he also puts a new emphasis on the role of development. All readers should come away with a new appreciation for the critical role social interactions play through out human life.
It was fun to talk with Dr. Hood again. I first interviewed him for Books and Ideas #34. At that time we discussed his first book, SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable.
Click here for the full show notes and FREE episode transcript.


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Week 14 of the 2018-19 NFL Season is here.
Listen as hosts Jon G and Brad D talk fantasy football, bears, and beers. The guys are joined this week by a "fart sound effect."
Get ready for mud slinging, shish talk, and apology handshakes all around. We are deep into the season and people are getting more and more sensitive.
Call the Voice Mail with any discussion topics, questions, and answers.
Call and leave a message. Do it.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download


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Genius Loci: Washington Park, Burlingame
By: Tina Mizukami
Washington Park, just two blocks away from my house, is a place that keeps giving.
We've celebrated birthdays there, we've meet our friends and family there for an afternoon of fun, and most often, you'll find us there throwing tennis balls to our dog, Cali.
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It's also one of her favorite places in our neighborhood.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
About the Box: The Giving Park
Posted by San Francisco Mobile Museum
Labels: "denver community museum", "genius loci", "looking for loci", "san francisco mobile museum", sfmobilemuseum, tina mizukami
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About Psyt:
Psyt provide accurate, scalable, real-time measurement techniques that reveal previously undiscoverable insights. Traditional psychological measurement techniques don't provide the data required to support timely and fully-informed decisions. A technique known as the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) has been advocated by the OECD as the "gold-standard" in measuring psychological states. ESM samples people's experiences in the here and now, regularly, providing a wealth of accurate, real-time, continuous data. PsyT provides this technology to organisations, academics and market research agencies on a wide scale to provide unparalleled data-driven insights
Psyt also has a novel suite of mindfulness products that enhance the learning and integration of mindfulness into daily life using biofeedback and gamificaiton. Psyt partners with Mindlab to provide these digital products in combination with live training to organisations.
Blastup in co-operation with Psyt's in-house development & design team built the website version of Mindlab's iOS & Android applications using React .JS for the front-end & NodeJS for the back-end.
We'd like to thank Mr. Nicholas Begley (Founder & CEO) as well as the whole development & design team at psyt for their trust, co-operation and business mentality throughout the development of the project.


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FDA Approved Drugs » 1998
The following drug information is obtained from various newswires, published
medical journal articles, and medical conference presentations.
Knoll Pharmaceutical
Approval Status:
Approved January 1998
Specific Treatments:
Paroxysmal atrial fibrillation
Therapeutic Areas
Cardiology/Vascular Diseases
Rymol (propafenone hydrochloride) has been approved for use in
patients without structural heart disease, for prolongation of the
time to recurrence of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation/flutter and
paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia associated with disabling
symptoms. The drug has been marketed in the U.S. since 1990 for
patients with life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias.
In a 12-month study, patients' time to recurrence of
paroxysmal atrial fibrillation/flutter, or sudden arrhythmic
attacks, was eight times longer in patients receiving Rythmol
versus patients treated with placebo.
Copyright © 1995-2015 CenterWatch.


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12:03PM Ramma Lamma "Zero Hour theme" from Zero Hour theme (2013) on Self Local
12:06PM Teen-Age Strangler (1965) trailer "Teen-Age Strangler (1965) trailer" from Teen-Age Strangler (1965) trailer
12:07PM Johnny And The Hurricanes "Beatnik Fly" from The Very Best of Johnny & the Hurricanes (2001) on Varese Sarabande
12:09PM Bo Diddley "Aztec" from The Chess Box (1989) on MCA Chess
12:11PM The Revels "Six Pack" from Six Pack
12:13PM Don Covay "Pony Time" from Let's Soul Dance (2013) on History Of Soul
12:18PM The Revelators "Serve the Man" from We Told You Not To Cross Us... (1997) on Crypt Records
12:20PM Charm Bag "I'm Crazy" from Voodoo Rock 'N' Roll - EP (2014) on Kizmiaz
12:22PM Thee Headcoats "Jaguar and Thunderbird" from Beached Earls (1990) on Crypt Records
12:25PM The MonkeyWrench "The Story As I Was Told" from clean as a broke-d**k dog (1992) on Caroline/SubPop
12:30PM The Villenettes "In My Head" from Lady Luck (2015) on Off The Hip
12:32PM The Ettes "The Pendulum" from Wicked Will (2011) on Krian Music Group / Fond Object
12:35PM Supersnazz "Papa Oom Mow Mow" from Superstupid (1993) on Sub Pop
12:41PM Daddy Long Legs "Witch Hunt" from Rides Tonight (2015) on Norton Records
12:42PM Gino And The Goons "You Won't Get Away with Murder" from Shake It! (2014) on Slovenly
12:45PM Obnox "Situation" from Boogalou Reed (2015) on 12XU
12:48PM The Dad Horse Experience "Dead Dog on the Highway" from Best Of (2015) on Off Label
12:51PM The Shacklefords "Coastin'" from The Lee Hazlewood Industries (2014) on Light In The Attic
12:54PM The Cowsills "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" from 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of The Cowsills (2001) on Polydor
12:57PM Vince Matthews & Jim Casey "Bessie That's a Lie" from The Kingston Springs Suite (2015) on Light In The Attic
01:04PM Mortgage Freeman "Palisades" from Streetcrusher (2014) on self-released Local
01:08PM Soup Moat "Band Practice" from Enjoy Your Hobbies (2015) on Triple Eye Industries Local
01:10PM Drunk Drivers "Die" from It's Always Weekend (2015) on Crustacean Local
01:13PM Mortgage Freeman "Sitting There" from Streetcrusher (2014) on self-released Local
01:20PM The Stoneage Hearts "Motor Away" from Hung Up (On You) (2015) on Off The Hip
01:22PM The Blank Stares "The Song That Brought the World to Ruin" from All Blown Up (2006) on Full-Tilt Records
01:26PM The Mayflies USA "Just for Fun" from Summertown (1999) on Yep Roc Records
01:29PM The Grip Weeds "Lead Me To It" from How I Won The War (2015) on Jem
01:31PM Outrageous Cherry "Fate's Strange Parade" from The Book of Spectral Projections (2001) on Poptones
01:34PM The Turtles "Sound Asleep" from Solid Zinc: The Turtles Anthology (1968) on Rhino
01:36PM Theatre Royal "You Sleep" from You Sleep EP (2015) on Vacilando 68 Recordings
01:40PM The Electric Mess "Every Girl Deserves a Song" from House on Fire (2014) on Soundflat
01:47PM The Catholic Girls "Young Boys (Live)" from Kiss Me One More Time (2015) on self-released
01:55PM The Untamed Youth "Hey Elly May" from Untamed Melodies (1996) on Norton Records
01:57PM Paul Collins "Little Suzy" from Feel the Noise (2014) on Alive Naturalsound
02:03PM Terry Anderson "37 Miles in Reverse" from I'll Drink to That (2000) on Not Lame
02:06PM The Doughboys "Be My Baby" from Hot Beat Stew (2015) on Ram Records
02:08PM Marcus Hook Roll Band "Quick Reaction" from Tales of Old Grand Daddy (2014) on Rhino
02:12PM J.B.Hutto "20% Alcohol" from Hawk Squat 【Deluxe Edition】 (2015) on Delmark
02:15PM Andre Williams "It's Gonna Work Out Fine (With Ronnie Spector)" from Bait & Switch (2001) on Norton Records
02:20PM Jake Starr and the Delicious Fullness "11cc" from Tastes Good (2014) on KOTJ
02:22PM The Loons "Head in the Clouds" from Inside Out Your Mind (2015) on Bomp! Records
02:26PM The Bloodhounds "La Couahuila" from Rock & Roll is a Beautiful Thing: Alive Naturalsound 20th Anniversary (2015) on Alive Naturalsound
02:29PM Watts "Sidewinder" from Flash of White Light (2014) on Rum Bar Records
02:33PM The Go Wows "We Got Something" from Gimme Some Fun (2015) on Pop Detective Records
02:37PM The Bad Detectives "Bloody Mary" from The Curious World of the Bad Detectives (2015) on Western Star
02:41PM Low Cut Connie "Shake It Little Tina" from Hi Honey (2015) on Ardent Music / Contender Records
02:45PM MotoBunny "Spider & Fly" from Motobunny (2015) on Rusty Knuckles
02:47PM The Love Me Nots "Wrong" from Sucker (2014) on Atomic A Go Go Records LLC
02:50PM Stupidity "Run" from Fore (2014) on GoFast Records
02:52PM Pow Wows "Car Cemetary" from Broken Curses (2015) on Get Hip
02:55PM The Monsieurs "Gloria" from The Monsieurs (2014) on Slovenly Recordings / Black Gladiator
02:58PM Cozy "Huggin' Machine" from Button By Button (2014) on Hozac


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Advanced Search
In the popular imagination, the Web distances learners and teachers (and "face-to-face" in the classroom is then assumed more desirable). But in reality "face-to-face" can be the most distancing experience for the student, and Web-based learning the most connected of all. It is odd to realize that in many higher education classrooms, we find the real "distance learning."
As more and more digital technology finds its way into academic, business, and social domains on higher education campuses, and as the world into which students are received when they graduate demands greater technological competency, the pleas for "digital literacy" heard at colleges and universities make sense. Sherry Turkle also argues that institutions should foster a deeper understanding of how new digital tools affect students' work and lives, though she proposes a somewhat different focus--she suggests "rethinking technological literacy."
If you find a good OER (open education resource) and copy it into your project, and meanwhile the OER keeps evolving, your project may quickly become obsolete. But OER Glue (from Tatemae), recognizing the transience of Web 2.0 resources, lets you mash live OERs into your project.
CIOs need information to do their jobs, but it's not always easy to get the right kind of information to lead proactively.
The Houston Community College System is operationally decentralized, with six colleges and 26 campuses spread out across 660 square miles. With faculty and staff running their own reports in different formats using data from various sources and time periods, it was not uncommon last year to find six different versions of the same report. HCC's Vice Chancellor of Information Technology explains how a BI solution implemented in the past year has provided centralized online reporting, a dashboard, and consistent information for better decision making.
Higher education seems stuck in a tricky dilemma: how to move, en masse, to new learning models that seem, on the surface, to require a lower teacher-student ratio. But the dilemma is tricky only if the basic assumption about how students learn remains in the box of behaviorism. And it is tricky only if technology is seen as peripheral--handy but not transformative.
WCET Executive Director Ellen D. Wagner will give a keynote at Campus Technology 2011, just prior to the CT 2011 Innovator Awards recognition ceremony. In a brief interview, CT asked Wagner for her views on IT innovation and adoption in higher education.
The phrases "faculty resistance," or the "lack of faculty buy-in" to adopting information technology for the core teaching/learning paradigm, have become by-words in academia. Yet both phrases are empty and lead nowhere.... Technology advocates urge faculty members to go away from what they've been doing but don't explain what they should go toward.
CIOs must spearhead the move to sustainable campuses, for the sake of their institutions and their own jobs.
Discussions of educational change and debates over traditional values versus new movements in education have seemed to ebb and flow over the history of education, particularly during the 20th century. But is the environment now right for a true revolution, with the push toward "21st Century skills" and new media? Michael Wesch examines trends over several decades to offer some perspective.
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We've got a special treat for you today, Justin Wood! That's right those other two dudes couldn't be here this week, but join Dustin and Justin (ustin's in the house!) as they tackle the new Tick show on Amazon! Moving over to some Spider-Man world news including the casting of MJ, though we saw no controversy with it and completely missed the fact that of course, the internet was shitting their pants over it. Runaways the TV show heading to Hulu of all places and some video game news about the next Metal Gear game... it sounds pleasant. Books reviewed on this episode:
- Warship Jolly Roger
- Revolution: Prelude #0
- Who Needs The Moon?


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A few weeks back, I was excitedly telling you about the tray table trend. It's my mobile solution of delivering treats and drinks to visiting guests, or even to myself.
I love the concept of furniture that is multifunctional and perfect for small space living.
Let me show you my newest tray table.
Introducing you to Houseology's Damien side table by Wireworks. It's made from solid American oak and wood veneer. Its compact square shape and clean lines gives it a definite contemporary feel.
Since Valentine's day is fast approaching, I thought I'd style a few vignettes made out of romantic gifts.
Admittedly, these are romantic gifts that I bought for myself.
Well, why not right? I think we should all reward ourselves, regardless of whether we have anyone to spoil us on that special day, don't you think?
Go on! set the scene with a glass of bubbly, a simple rose and a few inspirational messages on cards. On the table, is also a beautifully illustrated book of 100 iconic moments in fashion called 'The Dress'. It's by Megan Hess and a wonderful Valentine's day gift. There's no denying that I am a big fan of pink and gold. I've added my current favourite accent colour, green, into the mix.
Green is already very much on trend this season in the interiors scene. My favourite green hues are Emerald and Sage green. You'll be seeing more of them on the blog soon.
Feast your eyes on these glamorous and girly treats on my Damien tray table.
Do you spot the brass cat? I bought it last weekend from Anthropologie. It's actually a bottle opener. Really cool don't you think?
That pretty bracelet with a bow is from my favourite shop, Kate Spade New York, and those earrings in blush and Turquoise are by Philippe Ferrandis. I adore using this tray table to feature my favourite things.
It's also great to use as a white background, for flat lay photography. The added bonus being that you can transport it around the house, to where there is natural lighting for that perfect shot.
XO New York!
That's kind of a hint to my other half! I'm not sure he has noticed it yet. Oh well, maybe if I leave it up long enough, subliminal messaging may work. Here's a shot of the whole table. It's so easy to assemble. Look how elegant those oak legs are, so slimline with its simple straight cut.
I have added my matching oak Flamma candlesticks by Wireworks to the vignette. Here it is up close. The candlestick is available from Houseology, along with many more beautiful wooden home decor pieces. Hope you have enjoyed this post.Wishing you all a wonderful weekend and Valentine's day ahead.
I will be back with more colourful posts soon.
(All styling and photography are by Geraldine Tan, editor of Little Big Bell. This is a collaborative post with Houseology.The table was gifted. All opinions are my own.)


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on the majesty of my unanswered email mountain
Hinemoana Baker
I want to apologise here for my appalling (lack of) email responsiveness for the last six months. Please, if I owe you an email, I am very, very sorry. Explanation below, but not excuses.
When I arrived in Berlin my physical health took a turn for the worse, and I couldn't engage with a laptop screen/keyboard very much for several months. (Phone still, yes, hence I have remained Facebook connected, have needed to, though that also probably feels weird and annoying for some of you waiting to hear from me).
Then my laptop crapped itself (again). As my body and spirits have improved, and my laptop returned to full function (yay!) I began to feel a rising anxiety about the time I had already lost in this precious writing residency year (actually 11 months for the writers, 12 months for the visual artists, not sure why but still, GRATEFUL!).
Even though all my moving parts are working much better now, and I am living a much more balanced life here in Berlin, I have still been kind of consciously and unconsciously avoiding doing anything else except engaging with this book I'm here to write/finish. Which in itself is fairly heavy going much of the time.
Anxiety is a constant and often paralysing struggle for me. Once it gets going it's a big ship to turn. So it's taken me this long to have the courage to even look at the 804 emails I now owe answers to. I do wonder how the hell 804 emails could happen ever, to anyone, in any length of time. What did we all do before this invention? etc... But that's another conversation.
It's not only email, but all other kinds of life and work admin that I find overwhelming at times like this. So if you are waiting for a response from me, be at least assured that so is the IRD.
*weak laughter*
Still, it's probably shite to be waiting for an answer from me about stuff and then see posts of me galavanting round the city on my bike, or whatever. So this is by way of saying, there's not much galavanting involved...it all still feels like quite a struggle most days.
Anyway! I am working my way through the emails, and I feel generally terrible about it, and if anyone has any of their own email-survival strategies to share, or hints on how not to feel so terrible about it, or just what the best chocolate ice-cream in Berlin is (ElizaBishop I'm looking at you) I would be grateful. Other than that, I just - yeh, I'm on it!
Here's a cute pic of me as a kid to try and galvanise your sympathy and/or forgiveness.


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Is the studio hygienic?
We consider hygiene to be the most important element in running a successful studio.
We welcome any customer questions about the methods we employ to process our tools, jewellery and equipment but to keep this brief for an FAQ, when you are pierced with us we guarantee the following:-
- All customers will be pierced with a fresh pair of disposable nitrile gloves.
- Any furniture in the piercing room that comes into customer contact will be disinfected between uses.
- Any tools that are to come in contact with customer skin will be sterile.
- All piercing will be performed with a sterile single use disposable needle.
- All jewellery inserted into fresh piercings will be new and sterile.
- Customer skin will be appropriately cleansed prior to piercing to kill harmful surface bacteria.
- All sundries such as water based lubricant, gauze and marking agents will be sterile and single use only.


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Mt Stapylton
Time 2-2.5hrs Distance 4.6km (return) Grade – Hard
This was an amazing walk. Incredibly pretty through out
The walk starts at the Mt Zero car park. The beginning section sees you scrambling over a steep rocky path. However this soon tapers off and winds through the top of the hill and lovely scrub. the second ascent takes you through some magnificent cliff faces whose colour changes depending on the light.
the top of the second ascent gives you magnificent views looking back to Mt Zero and it is a great spot to stop, have some lunch and just watch the world below you go by.
From here you wind your way around low bush and sandy soils to the far side of Mt Stapylton, though a craggy rock formations before beginning the fourth ascent which takes you past a fantastic wind cave and to the summit of Mt Stapleton which commandeers some impressive views.
This walk while only a few hours long, is definitely for fitter walkers, and I would highly recommend packing extra layers as conditions change through out the walk. Water, and plenty of it, is also a must .
Map View


text: In Galway, we stay in the award winning 4-Star Menlo Park Hotel. The family run hotel is located just outside the city centre, and offers amenities such as a restaurant, which serves locally sourced food, and a bar, which exudes a comfortable, traditional atmosphere. The rooms are well appointed and spacious, and includes a television, a hairdryer, and complimentary Wi-Fi.


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Halo: Reach just landed on Tuesday and gamers everywhere dropped Noble Team into their Xbox 360s and started to explore all the content Reach has to offer -- the epic single player, competitive multiplayer, Firefight, Forge World, and co-op... err, well unless you happened to own Microsoft's new, fancy 4GB Xbox S. You see, 4GB Xbox S owners are not able to play Reach's co-op. It is like owners of the 4GB Xbox S are George Costanza and Halo: Reach's co-op is the Soup Nazi, "no co-op for you!"
The pre-launch buzz for the game was huge, often highlighting all the cool things you could do -- and then the great reviews started coming out only adding fuel to the fire. Halo: Reach was not to be missed. But apparently none of the reviewers played the game, or at least co-op, on a 4GB S model 360. In fact, nothing of this problem was covered prior to the game's release. I would be livid if I just dropped $199.99 on a new 4GB Xbox S and $59.99 on my new copy of Reach only to learn co-op was off limits.
When gamers try to play co-op with a 4GB Xbox S system an error message comes up providing, "[o]ne or more players do not have the hard drive required for this game type." And no, this is not a bug or glitch. In fact, the game's official Xbox page FAQ provides:
Q1: The error "One or more players do not have an Xbox 360 Hard Drive. An Xbox 360 Hard Drive is required to play co-op on Xbox LIVE or system link" occurs when I try to play. Why?
A1: One or more players do not have a certified Xbox 360 hard drive attached to their Xbox 360 console. Some multiplayer aspects of Halo: Reach require an Xbox 360 certified hard drive.
For me, playing each Halo's campaign cooperatively has always been one of my favorite parts about the games. To think Microsoft allowed one of its marquee games to be released in a way that denies co-op on its new console seems odd to me. I realize other games have required a hard drive for certain aspects before, but I feel like those games, the previews about those games, and the reviews about those games made that point clear before people went out and dropped their dolla-dolla-bills on the game. Not only does the 4GB Xbox S have 4GB of storage space, but you can also add up to 16GB of flash drive storage space, which also does not seem to solve the problem. So that means gamers with 20GB of storage space -- the same amount as the original, launch Xbox 360s with a hard drive -- cannot play co-op Halo: Reach. Crazy.
But there is some good news. According to Eurogamer, Microsoft is aware of the problem and insists it is "temporary." No word was given on when the problem would be fixed, however. But at least there is hope, something the people of the planet Reach cannot say the same thing about...
Halo: Reach is available now exclusively for the Xbox 360.


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Today is the Summer Solstice and I have decided to do a summer Project: 94 day of Yoga.
Here is the video I took after completing 108 Suns at the studio this evening.
Today is the Summer Solstice and I have decided to do a summer Project: 94 day of Yoga.
Here is the video I took after completing 108 Suns at the studio this evening.
Here's how summer usually goes.
"Oh, the phlox are in bloom! Summer, finally! Yay."
Next comes a flurry of manic activity:
Clean the garage.
Mow the grass.
Have a yard sale? Yes? No?
Have visitors.
Go visiting.
Go to Farmer's Market.
Plant stuff.
Eat outside.
4th of July.
Then suddenly…drums. And trumpets. The marching band is back and practicing up on the hill.
The sumacs are burgundy already. Asters, vervain and goldenrod are blooming in the roadside ditches.
What happened to the daisies? And the cornflowers? Did I miss them? (I totally missed them.)
Where was I? What happened? Where did summer go? How the hell is it Labor Day already?
Every year, this same nausea. Every year summer flies and I hardly see it. So this year, 3 weeks ago, to be exact, I sat down and drew up a 3-Pronged Strategy for Slowing Down Summer. I do not ever want to get to Labor Day again and feel that autumn nausea.
Because summer doesn't have to fly. It really doesn't. Summers didn't always fly. I remember childhood summers that were almost too long. And even as an adult I remember draggy hot days spent arranging lettuce leaves on platters, watching bird life, and listening to gravel crunch under my sneakers, waiting for the inexorable day to end.
And it's not like I don't I know how to slow down time. I do.Sit on a meditation cushion and set a timer for 20 minutes. That'll do it. And, on the flip side? To vaporize time? Jump on the computer "just for a sec to check FB and email." There you go. 2 hours. Poof. Vanished.
When I notice everything as it happens? Time slows down. Live like a mindless robot? Miss the daisies.
So this year I needed a strategy. I couldn't just tell myself, "I'm going to notice things as they happen this year." That doesn't work for me. I'm weak. I slip into old patterns and habits too easily.
So, after a lot of thought, here's the plan:
Let me explain.
Mindful Mondays start Sunday night when I stop eating at 8PM and don't eat again until 2 PM Monday except for a cup of Bulletproof coffee. Nothing slows down time quite as effectively as being hungry when there's still 3 more hours before food time. On Mondays I also double my meditation time from 20 to 40 minutes and severely limit screen time to 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour at night and no screens while eating.
Read Fiction. I am a non-fiction reader by choice and inclination. However, this summer I am reading novels exclusively because novels take me out of time. It's not just that they slow it down, novels remove me from time entirely. Reading a novel in a hammock seems to give the ultimate middle finger to time.
Take a Photo a Day. To take a photo is to pay attention to something. I have to stop, get still, breathe, and really look at something. I'm not that concerned with the artistic quality of the picture. What's important is the moment of stopping and paying attention. I'm using the Photo 365 app on my iphone to keep track of my daily photo.
And that's it.
I'm 3 weeks in and I think it's working. I plan to post here every Wednesday for the rest of the summer and report on how this is all playing out in my life. Follow this blog to get my weekly updates via email.
What do you think? Do you have a strategy for slowing down time? I am really interested in this topic if you care to share.
The journey back is difficult. Most of the summer I was silent here, but living loud in my life: traveling to Portland and the beach, teaching my beautiful students, playing with plants, riding bicycles, reading big books, cooking, grilling, eating, drinking, talking and laughing.
The other day I was clicking through my photos and the antics of a season seem to have flown by in a blink. So many things done, and yet so many things undone. Books not read. Dear friends not visited. The kayaks still hanging dry from the rafters of the garage.
I thought about a way to "ahem" my way back here, as if to say: Hello? Remember me? But every time I opened up the "New Post" page, the "Where to begin?" monster came and gobbled me whole.
So I took a random selection of photos from the past 3 months and opened iMovie, a program I have very little experience with, but want to learn better, and put together a raggedy scrapbook: "How I spent My Summer Vacation," the first English class composition of the school year. It's amateurish, it's raw, but if it breaks the silence, it may unleash more words and pictures as the days go on.
This has been a spectacular summer. Really. This has been the kind of summer I remember from kid-hood: long strings of sunny, followed by soft nights of starry.
Then a day of sprinkly little rains, followed by a touch of hot-hot-hot, with a dollop of humid on top.
Then a big soaking rain, with an apocalypse-like fire sky, followed by a day of blue with greeny-green grass and dancing flowers and sudden tomatoes.
When I am sitting in front of my SAD light in January, huddled in my polarfleece, with a gun-metal sky holding me hostage to another 8 weeks of drear, I want to look back at this entry and remember summer:
Yesterday I taught my 6 AM yoga class, lifted weights with Tim at the gym, spent an hour with Holosync. Then I took a 30 minute killer Spin class with Amy, ate lunch, did some housework while listening to the This American Life podcast, showered, and taught my 5:30 yoga class.
This morning I put on some Cat Stevens and yoga-ed into this blue, beachy-feeling morning, and now I am heading out to run steps or hike up the killer hill in order to break my Mandatory Sweat of The Day before my noon class in Wellsboro.
Life feels full and good and sweet.
It is high summer and the daisies are blooming wild in the fields. This weekend there is a Growers Market and on Sunday I will spend some time in Ithaca reconnecting with my dear friend Zee.
As I write this, Mojito mint is blooming in a planter on the deck, alongside two kinds of parsley. The tomato plants have baby tomatoes on them, and the pepper plants have baby peppers, too.
In the evening, after dinner, we "Walk the Yard." "Walking the Yard" gives me a chance to check on things and to tell them how much I appreciate and love them: the day lilies, the sweet woodruff, the purple hosta flowers, the soft pinkness of the sky after the sun has set.
Walking the Yard at day's end is a lullaby, a soft sigh, a fitting end to a perfect summer day.


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text: Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon is an American actress and producer. She made her film debut as the female lead in the film The Man in the Moon in 1991. In 1996, she appeared in Freeway and starred in Pleasantville in 1998. In 2000, she earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Comedy or Musical nomination for Election. Witherspoon's breakthrough role came in 2001 with the box-office hit Legally Blonde and in 2002 she starred in the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama, which emerged as her biggest live-action commercial success. In 2005, Witherspoon received worldwide attention and praise for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, which earned her the Academy Award, ... more on Wikipedia


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We selected for you the best that the grapes gave and that the best wine makers in Romania and elsewhere carefully mastered.
The wines in our menu come from famous Romanian winemakers such as: cramele Bazilescu, Cotnari, Da Vino, Halewood, Huși, Jidvei, Recaș, Rotenberg, Tohani, Urlați, Vinarte, as well as from renowned producers from the best vineyards in France, Italy, Spain, Chile, Australia and so on.
Besides the wines, Golden Blitz offers you a selection of fine spirits – cognac, whiskey, liqueur – and a wide range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic specialties from around the world. Not to mention the large number of tasty cocktails prepared by our skilled bartenders, or the beers, both Romanian and imported.


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Overtime only 10 minutes? NFL competition committee to introduce proposal
Could overtime be shortened to just 10 minutes? It's an idea the NFL competition committee is willing to propose, according to NFL.com.
The idea is that during preseason and regular-season games, overtime will be slashed from 15 minutes to 10. That way, teams that have a Thursday game the next week won't be at a disadvantage from potentially playing an entire extra quarter just four days earlier. It also could prevent some OT injuries and exhaustion for starters.
However, under the possible change, 15-minute overtime periods would remain in place for playoff games.
The NFL rules won't change in overtime — both teams will have a chance to get the ball and the first team to score a touchdown will win the game. The downside of the proposal is that there could be more ties during the regular season.
NFL committee rules state 24 of the 32 teams will have to approve of the change for it to go into effect. Team owners will have their annual meeting at the end of March to discuss potential league changes.
Per ProFootballTalk.com, in the past five years 83 NFL games have gone into overtime. Out of those 83 games, only 22 have passed the 10-minute mark. Essentially, the proposal would have a limited impact on NFL games if it's passed.


text: I love ranch dressing–and I love the powdered mix you can buy in those little packets in the grocery store, but they are expensive, and they always have hard-to-pronounce ingredients in them, including monosodium glutamate, or MSG. MSG has its issues (I have a friend who claims it gives her migraines) and so I try to avoid it whenever possible. Thus this copy cat recipe for making my own ranch dressing/dip mix. It's perfect for mixing with some sour cream to dip snow peas in (if they even make it out of the garden, which most don't). But I also toss this mix with potatoes and a little oil prior to roasting, and I also sprinkle it on popcorn. And what about ranch Chex mix? Yes, please. I'll post the recipe…one of these days when I get a little more time to write it up. Until then, you'll just have to pause the video to make sure you have all the ingredients!


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The Van Lier family started making high quality men's shoes in 1815, and the best leathers combined with technical innovations have ensured the brand's success ever since. The Dutch company sources leather from the finest tanneries in the world, supplements this traditional fabric with new ones like memory foam, and treats them with experimental processes such as the Goodyear method. The result is durable, timeless footwear that will last for years to come.


text: Herbs, such as basil, cinnamon, nutmeg and parsley, are more than just a way to add flavor to your favorite dishes. In fact, they have very powerful affects on the human body when consumed correctly. A better understanding of the foods we cook with can enable us to personalize our cooking to meet our personal tastes as well as our physical needs. If you feel you would benefit from the medicinal use of any one of these herbs or spices, contact a local naturalistic doctor.


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Climate Sceptic Professor Sacked From Australian University Was Banned By National Science Foundation For "Deceptive Conduct"Read time: 6 mins
Graham Readfearn | July 12, 2013
By Graham Readfearn • Friday, July 12, 2013 - 10:53
A CLIMATE sceptic professor fired from his Australian university for alleged policy breaches had previously been banned for three years from accessing US taxpayer-funded science research money.
Dr Murry Salby, sacked in May by Macquarie University in Sydney, was the subject of a long investigation by the US National Science Foundation.
The investigation (pdf), which was finished in February 2009, concluded that over a period when Dr Salby was working at the University of Colorado, he had likely fabricated time sheets in relation to research paid for through NSF money.
We conclude that the Subject (Dr Salby) has engaged in a long-running course of deceptive conduct involving both his University and NSF. His conduct reflects a consistent willingness to violate rules and regulations, whether federal or local, for his personal benefit. This supports a finding that the Subject is not presently responsible, and we recommend that he be debarred for five years.
The NSF subsequently decided to only "debar" Dr Salby for three years, preventing him from accessing any NSF research grants or being involved in work related to them. The investigation was carried out by NSF's Office of Inspector General - an arms-length organisation providing oversight to the NSF.