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Welcome to Pollock Dickerson
For more than twenty-five years, prestigious clubs nationwide have relied on Pollock Dickerson Associates for exceptional architectural and interior design services. We are club design experts our sole focus is club design. We are best known for our classic timeless designs that embrace the future while honoring the heritage of the memberships we serve.
Pollock Dickerson Associates has completed over eighty projects, both large and small, for more than thirty clubs. We are known and respected throughout the design industry for the integrity and success of our designs. This is evidenced by the number of prestigious design awards we have received, and the number of repeat clientele that call upon us to solve their most challenging design problems.
Our award-winning portfolio includes the master plan and design of clubhouses, banquet and dining facilities, kitchen and service facilities, year-round athletic facilities, tennis and pool facilities, childcare facilities, golf shop and golf practice facilities, and cart and maintenance facilities. Pollock Dickerson Associates offers a range of design services including membership and facility surveys, master planning, construction estimation and administration, and architecture and interior design. Whether you are embarking on a new club project or need to update an existing facility, let our experienced team tailor a solution to meet your membership's unique needs.


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Before our month of farm-fresh inspiration ends, I just had to create one more moodboard. This is what I really think of when I imagine a farm-to-table wedding – something organic, and natural, and rustic but very romantic. With a bit of a botanical feel and a neutral palette, and including fresh produce and natural textures. It may not seem 'wedding-ey' as a concept, but when you put it all together, I think it's so pretty! If you're drawn to this look, be sure to balance the 'rougher' elements with more elegant, traditional ones – calligraphy, fine linen and china, or touches of metallics, for example. The best part? You can send your guests home to cook their centrepieces for Sunday lunch ;)
Colours: Sage, taupe & white
Top posts (l-r): Artichoke table number (Sylvie Gil Photography/Shannon Leahy/Natalie Bowen) | tablescape (Ace Photography/Cedarwood Weddings) | calligraphy eggs (Ali Harper)
Row 2: Bride & groom (welovepictures) | artichoke centrepiece (Moira West Photography/Dear Idea) | cutlery tied with twine (Illuminate Photography)
Row 3: Seed packets | bridesmaids (Brosnan Photographic/Elegant Events) | cheese cake (Michelle Joubert-Martin/Fairview) | vegetable escort cards (Jeremiah And Rachel Photography/Habitat Events/Habitat Floral Studio)

subset: commoncrawl


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At Mustang Freightways, we take pride in our equipment. Our customers rely on us to deliver their freight in a safe and timely manner and we trust our equipment to help us do the job right.
The Mustang fleet is consistently maintained to the highest standards and we use Green initiatives to operate our fleet wherever possible. Our fleet is replaced with new equipment even before it shows its age.
Currently, Mustang Freightways operates a combination of company-owned and dedicated owner operator units.
Company owned:
- 16 –Tractors
- 84 – Trailers
Trailers include 53 Ft, 48 Ft, 34 Ft, 28 Ft models. Specific trailers are equipped with power tailgates.


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When a fan got in the way of his attempts to roll out a banner when a message of support from his grandchildren, new Al Wasl gaffer Diego Maradona lashed out like it was Brazil '82 all over again.
"I'd like to apologise to one of the fans. I was trying to unfurl and see the whole banner and, by mistake, I perhaps injured him."


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International Service Learning
ISL strives to enhance learning through service experience, while providing health care and other services in developing communities. We offer volunteers practical experience through pre-health, medical, nursing, optometry, pharmacy, physical therapy, public health, and veterinary programs which observe the highest ethical standards and inspire volunteers to a lifestyle of service.
Teams are open to volunteers aged 18+ who are interested in gaining valuable experience in their chosen field, exploring another culture, and assisting those in need. ISL offers 9 to 14 day opportunities throughout the year; no experience or certifications needed unless specifically stated.
ISL has been providing quality service opportunities for nearly 20 years.
Program Photos
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The Caribbean, South America, Central America, Africa
Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Tanzania


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As you may know, there are two kinds of people in this world; those who stay within the lines and think only inside the box and those who do NOT and consequently get themselves in trouble or become famous, rich and otherwise break free of the constraints society wishes to put on them.
But did you know there is a third type of person? Yes, there is, and I'm married to him. Tom is the kind of person who does NOT stay within lines but not because he doesn't want to...he simply refuses to see boundaries, you see. If he doesn't see lines there is no need to stay within them...get it?
And as for thinking inside the box? He just doesn't believe this mythical box exists...he certainly has never seen or felt it, so, of course, why would he make himself stay in a place that does not exist... Let alone his brain function!?
As far as I can tell there is only one Tommy of my acquaintance although there must have been a few others-- all of them innovators, inventors and otherwise near or actual geniuses. They can see far beyond the average person's line of vision and also think far beyond most people's ability.
They are a special breed and therefore need understanding. They do NOT often have what we ordinary folk call "people skills", you see. We must make allowances for them because, let's face it, without them we might very well be still in the stone age rubbing sticks together to make fire...or maybe not even that!
I'll bet anything the first guy to rub two sticks together to make fire was labeled a kook. Gotta love the kooks of this world! At least I do.
©2016 Glory Lennon All Rights Reserved


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I have two Zyxel Prestige 660 HW T1 routers which are extremely unstable. Both routers will drop the DSL/internet signal and reboot at random. This problem is occuring with increasing frequency and it is extremely frustrating! I have tried various things including updating the firmware using the latest version from Zyxel. Before I dispose of both routers and buy something new, I would like to try if possible to load a third party firmware to see if this helps. I can't find any recommendations regarding this particular model router and I wonder if anybody has any experience with this particular Zyxel router?
I am not concerned if I brick either Zyxel as they are almost useless. I would even be willing to donate one of the units to somebody who might be willing to experiment.


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The "Turn Grease into Fuel" recycling program started by 14-year-old Cassandra Lin (林心瑜), a US citizen of Taiwanese descent, has been chosen by CNN as one of the young wonders in its Top 10 CNN heroes of the year.
The annual show, hosted by Anderson Cooper, began in 2007 and honors individuals who have contributed to humanitarian projects. Each episode has 10 individuals, as well as three Young Wonders honorees featuring young men or women who have helped out in humanitarian efforts.
Lin and seven friends started the community project four years ago, in concert with local restaurants and Newport Biodiesel, a company that processes used oil, helping restaurants turn used grease into fuel.
Lin said Guardian Fuel & Energy Co in Westerly, Rhode Island, distributes all the fuel produced by the project to needy families.
"It is our sincere hope to help both the environment and the community at one go," she said.
A total of 118 restaurants and 10 public storage places participate in the recycling program, and residents in the area are encouraged to donate household grease to the public storage places.
"We haven't accomplished much yet, and we hope to be able to provide 21,000 gallons [79,493 liters] of fuel to be used by 210 families, the equivalent of US$81,000 worth of biofuel," Lin said, adding that they were also hoping to expand the program and offer fuel throughout New England in the next five years.
The New England region includes Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Newly enrolled at the Williams School in New London, Connecticut, Lin and her Westerly Innovations Network team appeared on CNN Heroes: An All Star Tribute, on Sunday night.
Lin said that being recognized by CNN was an honor, and it was heady to be on the same stage with all the other CNN Heroes.


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I am a Wedding & Event Planner available for hire in Southern CA! Let me plan your event, provide inspiration, and provide hand-made creative decor for your event! All you have to do is contact me for a FREE consultation to discuss your wedding and/or event. Send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com or give me a call at 951-888-5978. There is no obligation to book my services, plus I'd LOVE to speak with you about your special event! You can get more details regarding my services here as well as check out some of my work: weddings and event decor. While you are checking out my work, I'd love for you to take a moment and get to know a little bit about me.
I'd LOVE to hear from you so please share your thoughts, inspiration, recommendations, and ideas! Ask your question(s) or send me a note by emailing me at firstname.lastname@example.com.
If you have a DIY project or event decor that you would like to share on 3D Memoirs, please check out our Submissions page for additional details!


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Everyone from ministers to bureaucrats are "very happy" to construct large dams but not interested in developing command areas to ensure that water reaches farms, Union minister Nitin Gadkari today said.
Everyone from ministers to bureaucrats are "very happy" to construct large dams but not interested in developing command areas to ensure that water reaches farms, Union minister Nitin Gadkari today said as he pitched for focusing on expanding the irrigation cover.
Gadkari added that he was not against dams, but was for 100 per cent utilisation of water to increase agricultural productivity.
Command area development (CAD) involves on-farm improvement activities such as construction of field drains and channels and scientific management of water, to ensure that the agricultural production goes up.
"All are very interested in constructing dams. I don't know what the interest is, but everyone is quite interested in it. Big contractors (of dams) come, don't know…from ministers to bureaucrats are very happy when there are big projects," Gadkari said.
"I am sorry to say, but the issue of CAD is of no interest (to them). What is the use of the scheme then?" the water resources minister asked.
Gadkari made the remarks at a one-day conference on command area development here.
Seeking to drive home his point, Gadkari said his ministry had prioritised 99 projects at a cost of Rs 78,000 crore under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP). Rs 29,000 crore of these has been marked for CAD to develop canal systems, he added.
"But only Rs 2,000-crore worth (CAD) projects have come for Sardar Sarovar (in Gujarat). I was told that Telangana (also) has sent a Rs 12-crore proposal. So, there are no proposals (coming)," he said.
The minister also asked what was the use of a dam if water did not reach farms after.
"Hence, I will say 100 per cent utilisation of resources," he said, stressing on supply of water to farms using modern techniques of pipes, drip irrigation, etc. to increase agricultural production.
The minister also laid emphasis on finding out ways to save cost on various projects.
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To learn about obesity, researchers turn to grizzly bears
On a recent visit to a laboratory where he researches obesity, Kevin Corbit walked over to one of the patients he is studying to say hello. Then he clasped a claw.
Dr. Corbit, a scientist at drug maker Amgen Inc., is conducting his research on grizzly bears. He believes insights gleaned from the animals, who can take in as much as 58,000 calories in a day and weigh 1,000 pounds, could reshape understanding of obesity and identify new treatments for a condition that has stymied doctors and drug developers.
"When I thought about obesity, I thought about Yogi bear," Dr. Corbit says.
Ursus arctos horribilis isn't the typical lab rat. A grizzly can lift a heavy tree trunk—with one paw. In the wild, the bears win duels with wolves and mountain lions. They are powerful enough to tear through the side of a barn or even crush a small car. Also, the bears growl.
But bears do know a thing or two about weight gain, and that makes them more like people than rats whose genes are manipulated to make them obese.
In the weeks before hibernating, bears pack away enough apples, berries and salmon to put on 100 pounds or more under their brown fur. Their bad cholesterol jumps and blood pressure spikes.
But unlike humans, their health doesn't suffer. Bears' arteries don't clog from the gorging, nor do the animals battle heart attacks or turn into diabetics. To figure out why, the researchers draw the bears' blood, biopsy their fat deposits and listen to their hearts—carefully.


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We had a nice story today in the Plain Dealer about activists wanting a new emphasis on poverty in the Plain Dealer. Thanks to Larry at Organize!Ohio for putting together this event. We also read about a press conference in Washington DC from Senator Marco Rubio bashing the "War on Poverty" and previewing the conservative response to the high poverty rates in the United States. I would like to mark the 50th anniversary of the Lyndon Johnson announcement of the "War on Poverty" in January of 1964 as a big step forward for the United States.
First, it has to be said that the entire War metaphor is off base and problematic. By no stretch of the imagination can this be seen as the same as the US response to German/Japanese aggression in the late 1930s or even the Vietnam conflict that was ratcheting up to a full scale war in the early 1960s. The Johnson administration should accept some criticism for using the war metaphor and the political symbolism of fighting a two "wars" at the same time or using one assault on poverty to distract the public from the drums of war heating up in Southeast Asia.
Progressives who came to the event in Cleveland on Wednesday at Lutheran Metro Ministry want a renewed interest in supporting the programs created by the Johnson administration. All of these programs are under attack. With cuts to Food Stamps, regular attacks on Medicaid, and misunderstandings about unemployment assistance, there is a lack of support for government programs. We have not done enough to put a dent in poverty with record numbers of people falling below the poverty line. The minimum wage and wages in general has been stagnant in America for decades. There are more than 46 million people living in poverty, and we have not worked to address income inequality since the early 1970s.
Regarding the response from the other side led by Senator Rubio who was also calling for fundamental changes are not ready for prime time. No legislation was proposed by Rubio and some of the ideas have already been tried and failed. We already reformed welfare nearly out of existence and that did not reduce poverty and lift the boats of single moms who utilized the program. Rubio said that, "Our government programs at best offer only a partial solution." His push was to turn over all the Johnson poverty programs over to the states. These block granting of programs will only make communities such as most of the South fall further behind in education, health of their citizens, and real income. The reality is that despite Rubio's comments the needs of the poor are the same in Portland and Toledo as they are in St. Petersburg and St. Louis. We all need the proper housing, nutritious food, health care, employment that pays a living wage for a family, and quality education to leave poverty. It is not complicated, and we should not make this into some science experiment. Every time we try block granting, the state takes their cut and half the states do not meet the goals of the national program and those citizens are left behind. The proof that letting the states make the decision about how to address poverty will not work can be summed up by the graphic from FamiliesUSA showing 25 states that are not going to expand Medicaid. These states, for purely political reasons, are not going to help their poorest citizens gain access to health care.
I wanted to put in a pitch for the value of the Johnson administration effort to reduce poverty. While we have not figured out how to move large numbers out of poverty, these programs have improved the safety net. The health of children across the United States has improved because of access to immunizations and doctors. Infant mortality has decreased and people have better access to food and clean water. The life span of Americans has increased. Sanitation is widely available which has reduced disease. Early childhood education is available and preparing kids for school. Yes, those gains are often lost because of our poor schools, but we need to look at the gains and not throw those out as a way to reduce federal expenditures toward reducing poverty. We need to boost our commitment toward housing which was not emphasized in the 1964 speech. We need to quickly move beyond the Affordable Care Act to a Medicaid-for-all system to eliminate the for-profit middleman involved in our health care. We need to do more to place people into jobs that pay a families living wage and charge companies a fine for every full time employees using food stamps or other government subsidies. Even though Johnson used an awful metaphor to kick off this struggle to reduce poverty, it has to be said that the programs kicked off in 1964 have made America stronger.
Brian Davis
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.


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The Jackson County Board of Education held a specially called meeting last week.
During the meeting Board members voted on and approved several personnel actions including the resignation of Heather Harper at Section High School; the retirement of Sandra Houser; the transfer of Michelle Grant of North Sand Mountain; the transfer of Jeri Brown from Rosalie; the transfer of Jamie Whitley to teacher at Paint Rock Valley; the transfer of Johnny Holman from Bridgeport Middle School; the transfer of Jesse McCutcheon to 50 percent teacher at Hollywood; the transfer of Carlton Pittman from Section/Pisgah. Board members voted 3-2 to deny the motion to transfer Sam Houston to teacher at the Alternative School. The Alternative School teacher previously retired. Board members Charles West, Ken Storey and Cecil Gant voted no. Houston, a 22 year employee for the Jackson County Board of Education first served as a teacher for 12 years and then as principal at North Jackson High School for ten years, prior to his resignation from the position last year. Houston was placed at Paint Rock Valley as a history teacher. However, when Paint Rock Valley lost teacher units, the position Houston was filling in for was cut. He is currently a teacher within the system, with no position.
Houston stated that following the meeting he spoke to both Storey and Gant. According to Houston, Storey stated, "It was a rough vote". Houston said, "I was told by him (Storey) last week I was the best man for the job. I asked him why he voted no. He said, 'that's not how we vote here. We vote for our buddies around here. We did when Chief was here and we're still doing it.'" Houston stated that he went to Gant and asked why he voted no. According to Houston, Gant responded, "I have no problem with you. I've committed myself to Jack Allen and I'm going to remain committed."
Superintendent Kevin Dukes stated, "I feel Mr. Houston is the best candidate due to his work experience. He has 22 years experience in our county, with 9 of these years serving as a Principal. Mr. Houston is currently a teacher in Jackson County. We will not have a teacher at the Alternative School until further notice. Board members are elected to vote based on my recommendations, keeping in mind what is best for the children in our system. They are not elected to choose who or make suggestions as to who is hired."
Efforts to contact Gant, Storey and West for comment were unsuccessful.


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First malaria vaccine nears approval for use in Africa
from BBC
(elbcradio.com/July 25, 2015)-The world's first malaria vaccine has cleared one of the final hurdles, prior to it being approved for use in Africa.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) gave a positive scientific opinion after assessing the vaccine's safety and effectiveness.
According to the BBC, the malaria vaccine represents a 'green light' for the Mosquirix jab, developed by Glaxo-Smith-Kline.
The BBC quotes the World Health Organization (WHO) as saying it will consider, later this year (2015), whether to recommend the vaccine for children, among whom trials have yielded mixed results.
Malaria kills over 500,000 people yearly worldwide, most of whom are children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.


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Sidenote: This blog was meant to be published about a month ago...but since we didn't have internet yet at my new apartment, I kept forgetting to publish it when I went to internet cafes. So, while it is outdated, I thought you still might like it.
While you have read of my crazy hikes in the past month, the recent hike Joseba and I did was one with a party as the destination. You might remember me writing about a mountain named Ernio, where we trekked up to the peak of a mountain half-covered in fog. Ring a bell? Well, this weekend we headed back, but not just for the hike, but for a Basque festival atop a mountain!
Each Sunday in the month of September, Basques from all over hike up the mountain and celebrate the fiesta which honors this old pilgrimage route. Dressed all in hiking clothes, everyone gathers at two buildings on a flat grassy area. Blessed with a cloudless day, we were able to fully enjoy the day and all it brought - which for any Basque party means food, drink, dance and music.
After the hike up, hungry tummies are happy to eat sandwiches with chorizo (sausage) or bacon (which I thought was kind of an odd sandwich option, but was happy to eat it). To drink, Basque cider is always on hand, but we opted for the chicken broth drink, which is typical on cold hiking days. While it was sunny, the brisk mountain breeze called for the warm drink. As a dessert, I tried roskillos, a Basque cookie that kind of reminded me of a wafter covered with a sweet meringue frosting. We arrived quite early to try and beat the crow, which was pointless, but after we finished eating, the festive live music started which always prompts anyone who knows a traditional Basque dance to rush towards the dance circle and show off thier toe-tapping moves. I don't know any dances, but am completely entertained watching. The moves, while they appear to be easy little hops, are so quick that it looks like the women are running from a scurrying mouse, while hopping, clapping and snapping thier fingers above thier heads while turning around all the the beat of the music, which on this occasion consisted of two singers, a tamborine and an accordian.
While we stayed where the party was happening, a good amount of people climb to the peak. With a narrow path, the way up and down looks like a constant stream of people, and although we didn't go up, the people we talked with told us it was packed up there! Atop the mountain, the trek becomes more sacred - with the crosses dotting the peak. Also, before the last few meters to the top, stands a large steel cross with several metal rings hanging from it. It is said that if you pass your body through the metal rings, that you will be free of illness for the year to come. Along with that, besides the spectacular view,those who make it to the top get a small token to remember the trek - three ribbons and a bell pinned together to display on your best hiking shirt. The ribbons are of course red, green and white - the colors of Euskadi (Basque Country).
Even as we hiked down the mountain back home, I could still make out the music and the occasional hearty laugh of an old Basque man echoing in the wind.


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South Surrey
HME is proud to be a part of many different programs that help advance the availability and managing of home medical equipment across the province. Information about the CMEDS program can be found here.
HME is committed to the long term training and education of the home medical industry professionals. We would like to assists patients, families, and trained medical professionals such as therapists, nurses, and others in making informed decisions.
HME began as a local medical equipment rental company, and during the past 26 years have grown to become one of the largest independent dealers of Mobility and Home Medical Equipment in the Lower Mainland.
With over 65 staff and 26 years in business HME is fully active in Rehab Sales and Consultations, Stairlifts and Home Modifications – the only Diamond level dealer in Canada with Bruno, and the largest independent dealer in Western Canada.
Enjoy the fearless protection of Tena products. HME carries Tena products because they have never let our customers down so we can recommend them confidently. Incontinence products need to be the perfect blend of reliable and comfortable. There are many incontinence products on the market that are effective but uncomfortable or comfortable but ineffective – we don't want our customers to settle so we offer only the best and that is why we recommend and retail Tena products.
Tena briefs have re-sealable tabs that offer maximum protection and comfort. However, they are not one size fits all so please don't hesitate to ask for help from our certified HME representatives.We offer a supportive, compassionate and understanding environment so our customers can feel absolutely confident speaking openly and feely about their needs. It is our goal to help customers get what they need the first time they purchase.
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Andrew W.K. Named Cultural Ambassador to Middle East
Published Nov 24, 2012The ongoing, increasingly wacky adventures of endless partier Andrew W.K. continue. As if being shocked by David Blaine weren't enough, the New York-based rocker has been named Cultural Ambassador to the Middle East by the U.S. Department of State.
The news comes straight from W.K.'s website [via Pitchfork], where you'll find the above photo and following statement from the artist's handlers:
The US Department of State in partnership with the US Embassy in Manama, Bahrain, has invited Andrew to visit the Middle East to promote partying and positive power. In the tradition of the American Jazz Ambassadors who traveled the world in the mid 20th century as examples of American culture and spirit, Andrew has been invited by the State Department to travel to the Middle Eastern country of Bahrain and share his music and partying with the people there. Andrew will begin his journey the first week of December, 2012 and will visit elementary schools, the University of Bahrain, music venues, and more, all while promoting partying and world peace.
W.K. himself offered his own statement on the upcoming trip to Bahrain, saying, "This is a tremendous invitation. I'm very thankful to the Department of State for giving me the opportunity to visit a place I've never been before. And I feel very privileged and humbled by the chance to represent the United States of America and show the good people of Bahrain the power of positive partying. I can hardly wait for this adventure!"
Stay tuned for more information on this bizarre story as it becomes available.
UPDATE: If you thought this was all too awesome to be true, it is.


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I received today from TreeMoon & Muahahahaha!
From TreeMoon I received these two awesome ornaments - mistletoe "Blame the Nargles" & a felt Hogwarts crest! I absolutely love them! Thank you!
And from Muahahahaha I received this really great wooden sign with one of my favorite quotes on it! The gold paint is so pretty! Thank you!
SO glad I participated in this swap!


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Winnipeg Free Press – PRINT EDITION
Centre works on hemp fibreglass replacement
By: Martin Cash
Posted: 04/12/2012 1:00 AM
Joe Bryksa / Winnipeg Free Press Lynne Yelich, minister of state for western economic diversification, checks out the Composites Innovation Centre Wednesday.
Bio-materials made with locally grown hemp fibre combined with resins and pressure-baked into a hard, lightweight material are being fashioned into parts that might someday be part of the tractors those farmers use to work their fields.
That's one of 70 different projects currently going on at the Composites Innovation Centre (CIC) in southwest Winnipeg.
They include bio-fibre composites used for floor panels on buses and the front ends of electric cars.
It's not hard to imagine that kind of technological development replacing current production materials in the 21st century.
The idea of using locally grown bio-fibre — agricultural products, in other words — to create harder, lighter and less expensive materials must be the very definition of innovation.
That's exactly the kind of work done at the Composites Innovation Centre.
Peter Bjornson, Manitoba's minister of entrepreneurship, training and trade, said it's one of those untold Manitoba stories.
On Wednesday, the CIC showed off its new 21,000-square-foot facility at the Tuxedo Business Park — that's four times the size of the site it's been in for the past nine years — and outlined its impossibly busy agenda.
In addition to hands-on research and development, the CIC is involved in project management and co-ordinating a number of private-sector research groups, with plans in place to form and manage several other similar groups.
A Winnipeg management executive who was part of a recent trade mission to Israel said Sean McKay, the CIC's executive director, is world-renowned in the composites field.
"From rather humble beginnings in 2003 it really has taken hold," Bjornson said.
Since it was launched, the CIC has benefited from about $20 million in government funding — split equally between the federal and provincial governments — and has earned another $12 million in private-sector fees.
McKay said the goal is to reach a 50-50 balance between public and private-sector revenues this year.
"I think we will be able to do it."
It certainly seems as if the CIC has the expertise and industry contacts to pull it off. And there is no denying the demand and scope of interest keeps growing, broadening and deepening.
The impetus for the centre came at least partially because the largest composites manufacturing plant in the country — Boeing Technologies Canada — is in Winnipeg. Bristol Aerospace is another of the country's largest composites companies.
Both those local operations are crucial and active partners of the CIC and valuable champions for the facility as well. But the goal of the CIC was not only to partner with large, established companies but to stimulate new economic development as well.
The CIC has all sorts of sexy examples of composites specially made for various applications, but its biggest breakthrough may come sometime this year as it helps to establish a supply chain and production for hemp-fibre composite matting that can be used in parts for commercial bus manufacturers.
It's one thing to get the technology together to produce a completely new material and have a company interested in deploying it. It's another thing to actually produce it.
The CIC has been working with Motor Coach Industries and New Flyer Industries for several years, developing composite parts made from locally grown flax and hemp fibres to build all sorts of different bus parts.
McKay said there are now a number of door component and floor panels local bus makers could use.
"The problem is, we are still in the process of developing a manufacturer in the province," McKay said. "We believe there are some interested parties that will have capabilities toward the end of the year."
Commercialization of new technologies is one of the key goals for the CIC, as challenging as that can be. Developing supply chains is also part of the CIC's portfolio of offerings.
McKay said he hopes by the end of the year there will be a local company that can produce the bio-fibre — essentially an alternative to fibre-glass — into composite bus parts.
It's not hard to imagine the demand for a product like that would go far beyond bus manufacturers.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 12, 2012 B4


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was as per the schedule. We met at Barik Ground, Danapur right at 4.30 pm. There
were total 4 members Amitabh, Mohit, Suraj and Prashant (new member). The
weather was a slight hot, but it botched by our passion of SHG meet
began with an Introduction round, where we all introduce ourselves with an experience
of stammering being affected our lives. Prashant is a new guy so we focused more
on him. He is presently preparing for the competitive exams. He is a shayri
love guy and presented some deep and great shayri related to politics and
happiness. We also thanked him with a loud round of a clause.
on emotion as said by present that he don't affect much by emotions. I think it's
a good thing to not to be affected by emotions much. As we stammer tend to show
emotion in small issues. Let not affect ourselves by our emotions.
taught some basic lessons such as acceptance and continue smiling. We have seen
quite a change in Amitabh nature, now he is more responsible toward his stammering.
take a 2minute breathing exercise which was quite relaxing for us. The meeting
adjourned by greeting each other for the Holi festive and vow for the next Sunday
from Patna stammering news center. See you next week.
Holi to all the members of TISA. Have a safe and colorful holi!


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Northern Trust appoints new head of Nordic region
Belinda Burgess is taking over from Madeleine Senior as Northern Trust's head of the Nordic region.
Belinda Burgess is taking over from Madeleine Senior as Northern Trust's head of the Nordic region.
Burgess, who has two decades of industry experience, joined Northern Trust in 2005 and was most recently a senior executive within Northern Trust's Global Fund Services business, where she was responsible for client service for global asset managers, insurance funds and in-house managed pension schemes.
In her new role, she is responsible for managing the growth and development of Northern Trust's business activities across Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark.
Burgess will report to Penelope Biggs, head of the Institutional Investor Group for EMEA, and will work closely with John Krieg, managing director of Northern Trust's asset management business in EMEA.
Madeleine Senior was appointed to her role in 2009, when Northern Trust opened a Stockholm office. She has been appointed as head of sales for Northern Trust's asset servicing business in EMEA, where she will report to Wilson Leech, CEO for Northern Trust in EMEA.
Northern Trust's Institutional Investor Group provides custody and related services to more than 900 pension fund clients across the globe, including 22 percent of the top 50 Nordic pension funds.


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Detack GmbH specializes in providing coverage in all aspects of IT security auditing – from basic penetration testing to advanced application layer auditing and up to organizational level – IT security policy assessments, security guidelines evaluation and management consulting. The service is customizable to fit the particular needs of the client.
In order to provide the best quality of service, the auditors perform vulnerability detection and research manually, thus ensuring full understanding and evaluation of security implications, and preventing any damage caused by automatic testing tools. Adding human creativity and reasoning to the testing procedures recreates real-world scenarios and guarantees a complete assessment.
The auditing services provided by Detack GmbH are modularly structured, depending on target type, complexity, perspective and layer, drawing on the previous experiences and scenarios already tested. For each client, Detack finely tunes and prepares customized auditing packages determined by the particular perspective and targets intended for analysis. As such, for specialized auditing, modules are combined and extended for the best coverage.
The IT security services provided by Detack cover various domains, such as:
Detack has more than 18 years of experience in identification of product specific security flaws, development mistakes, design errors, as well as backdoors in computer hardware and software. Covering both vendor solutions and custom or self-developed applications, this is the professional service most sought-after by Detack's customers.
Based on the experience and know-how accumulated through auditing and consulting projects, Detack provides development of custom, environment or application specific security solutions, covering a wide range, from retail banking to IoT environments and IT security automation solutions.
By assisting customers to react to attacks, contain IT security incidents, take immediate recovery measures, and follow up with technical investigations, Detack enables customers to minimize the impact of IT security incidents, take legal action, and understand and prevent such events from occurring again.
Finding intentional or unintentional IT security-related issues that enable the extraction or leakage of personal or corporate information, with a strong focus of IoT, mobile communications / smart phones, automotive, and telematics industries.
Detack covers all requirements of an IT security audit – from general penetration tests to in-depth analysis of the application layer and the organizational layer. These services are accompanied by the evaluation of the IT security policy and security guidelines as well as management consulting.
Besides the common range of professional IT security audit and consulting services, Detack is the accepted partner for specific, highly sensitive or difficult to address domains.
Detack is the leading German supplier of professional security audits, consulting, and penetration testing for IBM mainframe and midrange systems, counting some of the largest installations amongst its reference customers.
Having developed specialized knowledge in niche areas such as embedded electronics, mission critical systems and complex automation / industrial systems, Detack provides complete IT security services in testing, consulting and development in the IoT area, ranging from mobile communications, telematics, to large industrial installations, avionics, telecom operators, critical infrastructure, to big data and distributed management networks.
Endorsed and certified by ATMIA (ATM Industry Association), Detack is the leading supplier of professional IT security services for retail banking, core banking, online banking, cash and payment processing systems. The largest German banks and ATM networks are already clients of Detack for securing their ATM and POS networks.


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*Originally published here, for THE LIFE by Jules
Perspective is everything.
That's a phrase we hear all the time, probably without paying much attention to it. But go back and read it again, really slowly this time.
Perspective. Is. Everything.
I have a secret to tell you: everything is only as you see it. Which means that if you see something negatively, it will be negative, and if you see something positively, it will be positive.
Does this mean that shitty things don't happen? Nope; those things are a part of life. But if we accept that sometimes, bad things are going to happen, we can shift our perspective entirely to focus on how we react to them happening.
Let's start with a really simple example that you may have already experienced in your own life: rainy days. If you wake up, underprepared, and it's raining out, your mind probably goes "ugggghhh. What a pain in the ass. I've got a meeting, my shoes are going to be destroyed, my hair will be written off, traffic will be a nightmare, and I'm already annoyed before the coffee is even brewed."
It's already a bad day and you're not even out of bed.
But let's say that you take a different approach, and keep the perfect trench in your closet, own very simple black umbrella – that doesn't blow away and that actually DOES fit in your purse – and have a great pair of wellies on hand, the rain doesn't affect you in the same way. It's almost exciting, because you get to pull out these extra pieces on your arsenal that don't get used on the daily.
Same rain, same traffic problems, different perspective, totally different day.
The mind is a funny thing, and as humans, we get trapped in the same patterns of thinking over and over again. Our thoughts dictate our actions, so when we are stuck in the same pattern of thinking, we effectively get stuck in the same patterns of behaviour.
So if we want to change our behaviour, and make our lives feel better, fuller, richer, more exciting, more alive, more adventurous, literally all we have to do is change our thoughts.
How do we do that? It's a practice, and for many of us, a practice that unfolds over a lifetime.
But if you're keen to start now – and good for you, because in doing so you're about to uncover a whole bunch of magic, just waiting for you beneath the surface – here are three ways to get you going in the right direction.
- Be Kind – it is easy – SO EASY – to snap, blame, criticize, judge, and use sarcasm. But in doing so, you remain in a bad mood with a problem left unsolved. By actively choosing to be kind (in your words, expressions, actions, body language, daily habits, online behaviour) you are starting that first ripple. So what if someone gets ahead of you at Starbucks? Yes, the frontline staff at every 1-800 number can be frustrating to deal with. Absolutely, your kids and partner make mistakes – this is how we learn. By responding to anyone's actions in a way that is not kind, it does not serve you, them, or the situation. Responding kindly mellows people immediately and softens the exchange that is to follow.
- Practice Gratitude – we all have a lot to be thankful for. A lot. But our lives are so busy, and our messages are so mixed, that it is very easy to overlook the joy and abundance we already have, in our quest for wanting more, and pining for what we don't have. By taking pause and stopping for a minute to appreciate how lucky we already are, we draw our attention to all of the wonder we experience every day. This can be a simple thing to do when you're walking, driving, waiting, doing whatever. Stop and take note – at least once daily – to write down five things you are grateful for: a warm home, a great conversation with your mom, that your kids resolved a problem at school, that they told you about the problem in the first place, for your job, for the friendly barista who made your matcha, that your hubby still has a great head of hair. The more you are grateful for, the more you will notice you have an entire life to be grateful for, and your thoughts will immediately see the bigger picture.
- Choose Love – always. Again, it is easier in the short term to hold a grudge, to feel slighted or victimized, to carry hate in your heart even in small ways. But in the long term, it is so much easier to let that shit go. And we let go of our anger (which is essentially the opposite of love, and often disguising our fear), by continuously choosing love. Teach yourself to love what is, and to repeatedly show up from a calm place of love in everything you do, in your work life, home life, social life and beyond. Keep choosing to not only do the right thing, but to let love be the motivating force behind every move you make, rather than let old angers and fears drive you.
Each of these three perspective changes are deep, life-shifting changes in your daily thought patterns, and still, as complex as they can be, they are truly very simple practices that you can choose to adopt right this very moment, and start to witness and feel the profound effect they will have on your day to day, and overall life.


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Your Custom Text Here
Click here to see a list of recent lab publications.
Heart failure and myocardial infarction, as well as many other diseases, are characterized by significant metabolic dysfunction and cell death both of which have been shown to initiate and drive disease. Mitochondrial calcium signaling is central to these processes regulating both oxidative phosphorylation (energy production) and cell death. While much is known about how calcium exchange is regulated at the plasma membrane and ER/SR our understanding of the mitochondrial calcium microdomain remains elementary. The lab utilizes in vitro and in vivo techniques ranging from real-time measurements of calcium exchange in isolated cells to surgical and genetic animal models of disease to decipher the role of this cellular microdomain in the progression of heart failure and myocardial infarction.
Historically, necrotic cell death (characterized by cell swelling, membrane rupture, lysis and inflammation) has largely been thought to be a non-specific/unprogrammed process and thereby void of distinct signaling events and genetic players. Recently, it has become clear that necrosis, like apoptosis, may be highly regulated and involve specific gene programs. Of clinical importance, cellular necrosis underlies many human disease states such as ischemic injury, neurodegenerative diseases, and other adult onset diseases. The lab has various projects examining genes and pathways that contribute to cellular necrosis with the hope of finding new therapeutic targets to block cell death in disease.
Heart failure is characterized by a decrease in contractility and maladaptive remodeling ultimately leading to impaired cardiac output to the systemic circulation. The incidence of heart failure in the US is predicted to increase dramatically over the next 20 years. It is estimated that over 8 million people in the US will be diagnosed with HF by the year 2030 (1 in every 33 individuals) and total costs associated with the disease are projected to climb to $160 billion, representing a substantial health and economic burden on the US. Numerous studies in the lab are trying to understand how this disease develops and searching for new treatments. Facilitating these studies, the lab utilizes various mouse models of heart failure including myocardial infarction, transaortic constriction (pressure-overload) and various mutant genetic models.
Ischemia-Reperfusion (IR) injury is incurred when when blood flow to a tissue is blocked and then restored. This is a multifaceted process with significant tissue damage resulting from the lack of oxygen and nutrients and also the oxidative burst that occurs with the rapid restoration of blood flow. The most well characterized types of IR injury are myocardial infarction (coronary blockage) and stroke (blocking blood flow to regions of the brain). One of our primary areas of investigation is to uncover new mechanisms for how this type of injury progresses and discover new therapies to aid cell survival and preserve cardiac function in the setting of a heart attack.
The lab has recently begun investigating the role of mitochondrial signaling in the pathogenesis of neurodegeneration with a focus on Alzheimer's Disease. This work is in collaboration with Dr. Domenico Pratico at Temple University.
The lab regularly uses and generates new mutant mouse models for conditional overexpression or ablation of a given gene . These models allow causative testing to see if a gene really does alter the progression of disease in the intact animal. These studies are made possible by an outstanding transgenic core facility at Temple Fox Chase Cancer Center. The use of animal models allows us to assess the translational potential of a given therapy and is central to examining the likelihood of how a therapy may impact human disease.
This project first began at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in the lab of Dr. Jeff Molkentin where Dr. Elrod established a high-throughput screening core. The goal of this project is to discover modulators of programmed necrosis with the hopes of finding new genetic targets to block cell death. The lab utilizes non-biased, genome-wide functional screening in cell-based assay systems. To aid in this discovery project different types of tools are utilized including shRNA lentiviral, cDNA, and small molecule libraries. Coupling these screening techniques with bioinformatics/systems biology analyses we have identified unique players and pathways in programmed necrosis and are investigating their mechanisms of action.


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A company recently showed that shortcuts with Google are still a big no-no and that SEO remains a long-term play.
Google just essentially took a large site off their rankings when they learned that they were getting gamed.
Rap Genius, a multimillion dollar site has been written on for its successful search-engine strategies. However, when they asked their blogger "friends" to place Justin Bieber related links on their sites, and they would exchange tweets, this was the last straw for Google. This "exchange" is a very old-school tactic because it can cause issues with the search engines.
This violates their terms of service because they want links to come from "organic" sources and be natural. What they felt was that this was overstepping what would be "natural".
Rap Genius has plenty of money to hire seo and marketing consultants to do these things the right way for them, so I'm chalking this up to a high-level person coming up with an idea (that they likely didn't know had been done for years) and just going with it. It seems like the attitude was "we don't need any of those expensive marketing guys to come up with ideas for us".
Now, they are dealing with losing serious revenue as they recover from their mistakes.
In this case, being willing to pay "an expert" to do things, could have saved them hundreds of thousands.


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Join Acme Feed & Seed and Sanctuary for Yoga for another summer of the rooftop Yoga Buzz series. Experienced, casual, and newbie yogis are all invited to enjoy a one hour practice on Acme's sunny rooftop every first and third Saturday of the month at 10:00 am. After class, hang out on the rooftop and enjoy a Devil Backbone beverage to enhance your post-yoga glow, or head down to Acme's first floor to enjoy brunch.
Back to All Events
Earlier Event: May 17LadyCouch
Later Event: May 18Soul Brunch ft. Charles "Wigg" Walker


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Select a City
Proctor, OK
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Bittersweet Gallery
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Webb City, MO
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Color Connection Art Gallery : Color Connection Gallery is owned and operated by eleven nationally recognized Tulsa painters, many with roots to th...
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About Us : Ddp gallery represents contemporary art by emerging and established artists. Exhibitions are hosted on a 4 - 6 week schedule featurin...
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Eureka Springs, AR
The nine members of the Eureka Springs Gallery Association are all located on Spring Street in historic downtown Eureka. We host a 2nd Saturday Gal...
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Hainzinger Gallery
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History:Lovetts Gallery, a Tulsa, Oklahoma Art Gallery, is committed to long lasting customer relationships by providing the highest quality 2 &...
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Museum of Native American History
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Pittsburg Art Gallery
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Scott Frame and Art was established as a full service custom frame shop and art gallery in 2006. We offer the widest selection and best quali...
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Walmart Visitor Center Located in Sam Walton's original Bentonville variety store, the center contains exhibits tracing the origin and growth...
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June 24, 1988, Section A, Page 14Buy Reprints
With electric utilities feeling the strain as the water level in the Mississippi River continues to fall, the Governor of Illinois proposed yesterday that the level of the river be raised by diverting water from Lake Michigan.
Water levels in the river are so low that an electric generating station in Arkansas has been forced to close and one in Tennessee may close soon.
Barges remain stuck along parts of the Mississippi. And by midafternoon yesterday, temperatures once again hit the middle 90's to near 100 degrees from the central High Plains through the lower Missouri Valley into the Tennessee Valley and the Middle Atlantic States.
Records were broken or tied in several cities, including Kansas City, Mo., where the 99-degree reading beat the 15-year-old record by 7 degrees. The 98 degrees in Washington tied a record that has stood for 114 years. Lake Water Diversion Urged
In Chicago, at an emergency meeting of governors from 10-drought-stricken states, Gov. James R. Thompson of Illinois recommended that water from Lake Michigan be emptied into the Illinois tributaries of the Mississippi.
He said the procedure could begin in Chicago by loosening controls at the Chicago River, which empties into Lake Michigan. Water would flow from the Chicago to the Des Plaines River, and from there to the Kankakee River, the Illinois and the Mississippi.
''We could get the water there in four to five hours,'' the Governoir said. ''All we have to do is press a button in Chicago. There would be no loss to anybody else and no damage to Lake Michigan.''
Because of above-average precipitation in recent years, water levels in the Great Lakes have reached record levels. Two years ago Lake Michigan was 8 inches higher than its 1985 level, and the lake has not receded substantially since then.
The recommendation, which he said would require approval from the Supreme Court, met mixed reviews from other governors. ''Every year someone comes up with a new gimmick,'' said Gov. Rudolph G. Perpich of Minnesota. ''We have other ways of transportation. That's not where the emergency is. The emergency is on the farms.'' Change of Decree Needed
Temporarily diverting water from Lake Michigan would require changes in a decades-old Supreme Court decree restricting the amount of water diverted from the lake for use in Chicago. The decree, limiting Chicago's use of water from Lake Michigan to 3,200 cubic feet per second, resulted from a series of lawsuits filed by neighboring states protesting excessive use of lake water by the state of Illinois and Chicago in particular.
Such action would probably rekindle protests by neighboring states, fearing a threat to a major natural resource. New York and other states that depend on the Great Lakes for hydropower have opposed previous attempts to divert lake water because of a possible rise in the cost of hydropower.
In its first ''drought advisory'' for 1988, the National Weather Service said the outlook for the Plains and Middle West for the remaining days of the month was for more hot and dry weather. But a cold front brought some relief to the Northeast.
''We got tremendous rain,'' said Priscilla Palmer at her farm in Pownal, Vt., where 2.2 inches of rain fell overnight. ''It was a godsend.''
The low water in the Mississippi is slowing barge traffic, and the coal barges that get through are only partly loaded so that they can float higher. About 1,000 barges were halted along the Mississippi in the Memphis area.
Besides getting reduced supplies of coal, utilities are under pressure from the rise in electricity consumption caused by the heat and by the lack of rainfall, which shifts more of the burden to coal-burning generating plants from hydroelectric plants.
The problems are manageable, utility officials said, but a continuing drought raises the specter of electricity shortages.
''What is particularly frightening about this situation is it's coming so early,'' said Charles L. Kelly, a spokesman for the Arkansas Power and Light Company. ''The weather we're having now is not uncommon for July or August. But what has everyone concerned is, if it's this bad now, what will it be like later on?''
The drought is the worst in this century, according to officials of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Its hydroelectric output is 53 percent of normal.
Arkansas Power's 544-megawatt Ritchie power plant in Helena, Ark., had to be shut down Tuesday. Its water intake pipe, normally under 20 feet of water, was clearly visible. The plant needs 170,000 gallons of water a minute to cool steam from its turbine, turning the steam back into water. Nearly all is returned to the river.
Upstream in Memphis, the T.V.A.'s Allen plant, which burns coal to create 944 megawatts of electricity, will have to close if the river falls eight more inches, according to Mike Patterson, a spokesman for the agency. Coal Supply Down to 25 Days
Because of the shallow water, barges are already having trouble making their way to the plant, and Allen's stockpile is down to 25 days of normal power.
No coal arrived yesterday as the T.V.A. dredged the river nearby while the Army Corps of Engineers dredged other stretches.
The American Electric Power Company, which operates 21 plants and serves seven million people in parts of seven states, sold the T.V.A. 1,000 megawatts of power yesterday and will probably sell an equal amount today, said Charles Falcone, the company's vice president of systems transactions.
The company sold all the electricity it could spare, up to 5,000 megawatts at times, to utilities from Michigan to the Carolinas at prices above the cost of production but below what it would cost the buyers to produce the power themselves or buy it elsewhere.
But it is money that the governors say they need. In recommendations expected to be offered to a task force commissioned by President Reagan to study the drought, the governors said the Federal Government should assure the income of farmers facing crop failure because of the drought and offer feed assistance to cattle ranchers.
''We have to help the cattle producers so we don't see wholesale liquidation of the livestock,'' said Gov. Terry E. Granstad of Iowa. In Washington, in a reminder that the Reagan Administration policies might not always be good for Vice President Bush, the White House and the Office of the Vice President reacted differently to a high-level meeting yesterday on the drought crisis.
The President and Mr. Bush attended the session, which included a briefing by Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng. White House Is Optimistic
The White House, through a deputy press secretary, later released a statement saying that ''despite the serious potential effects of the drought, the Secretary said that rainfall in the next two weeks would alleviate much of the potential damage.''
The statement added, ''The Secretary said that in discussions he had with Congressmen and senators, farm groups and governors, there was agreement that it is too early for emergency relief measures.''
Not quite so, said a statement from the Vice President's office, issued at almost the same time.
''For every day without rain, a growing number of farm families and rural communities face an increasingly serious situation,'' the statement said. ''There is nothing worse for a farmer than to lose a crop, and it is imperative that we come to their aid with whatever means we have at our disposal.''
The White House's statement made no pledge of financial assistance. But it did announce that a hot line would begin operating Friday to answer questions about Federal services. The toll-free number is 1-800-541-3375.


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Euromoney, May 2015
An industry where asset growth regularly nudges 20% a year. But one that has been all but abandoned by many of the world's biggest investment banks. A market that fosters innovation to an extent seldom found in any other area of finance – but where that same innovation can mean accusations of compromise and even deceit. A school of finance with exponential growth in the number of people seeking to study it. But one where bottlenecks in qualification and experience curtail its whole outlook. Islamic finance: all of the above.
The next World Islamic Banking Conference, in Bahrain in December, will be the 22nd; the next Euromoney Islamic Finance Summit, the pioneer outside the Islamic world, will be the 14th. We have all been talking about Islamic finance long enough now for it to be fair to take stock. How far has it come? Has it realised its potential? What challenges remain? And what must its direction now be?
"Compared to 15, 20 years ago, when people said: 'Islamic what?', we have made enormous progress, particularly in banking," says Daud Vicary Abdullah, President and CEO of INCEIF, the global university of Islamic finance based in Kuala Lumpur. "We've got standards, we've got education, we've got a better level of common understanding. If you'd asked me 20 years ago, I wouldn't have imagined we'd have come so far.
"But looking forward, personally, I feel we've still got an awful lot to do."
Although numbers on Islamic finance can be somewhat treacherous to pin down – should the assets of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, in one of the most powerful and pious Muslim countries of all yet investing in interest-bearing T-bills, be considered Islamic? – there's no question the industry has grown at an impressive clip for many years now.
According to Ernst & Young, international Islamic banking assets among commercial banks passed US$778 billion in 2014; it projects that assets in six core markets – Qatar, Indonesia, Saudi, Malaysia, the UAE and Turkey – will hit US$1.8 trillion by 2019. (That's without counting the special case of Iran; in 2013, when Iran was included in the survey, Ernst & Young said total Islamic banking assets with commercial banks worldwide were $1.54 trillion.) Global Islamic banking assets witnessed a compound annual growth rate of 17% from 2009 to 2013; in Indonesia, the figure was 43.5%, and in Pakistan 22%; and the combined profit of Islamic banks (Ernst & Young uses the appellation "participation banks", which is partly to get around problematic definitions and semantics in secular Turkey) crossed $10 billion in 2013.
Big numbers, no question, with clear momentum, but there is much more to do. "Everyone is quite obsessed with the fact that it's becoming a trillion dollar industry, but in reality, that's less than 1% of global assets," says Vicary. "We should be tackling the 99% who don't use Islamic finance."
Clearly, though, there is immense potential growth. Which begs the question: why have so many multinationals abandoned the field?
Consider this. At any of the innumerable Islamic finance conferences in the mid-2000s, one could more or less be guaranteed to see a familiar cast of characters onstage. The most likely would be a man who was not actually a Muslim: Geert Bossuyt, a Belgian who was the head of structuring for the Middle East at Deutsche Bank, a man with an equity derivatives background who had brought his expertise to the arcane world of Islamic finance. He might well have been flanked by his colleague Harris Irfan. A well-regarded conference might have drawn Iqbal Khan, CEO of HSBC Amanah, or Afaq Khan, his equivalent figure at Standard Chartered Saadiq; Ismail Dadabhoy, executive director of Islamic finance at UBS, would likely have been a fixture, and for a couple of years you'd have got Arul Kandasamy, the head of Islamic Financing Solutions at Barclays Capital.
We mention all this because not one of those men is in the same job now, nor at any western conventional bank, and in many cases, the job itself doesn't exist anymore. Deutsche was a pioneer in Islamic structuring, the first international investment bank to be trusted to come to the holy city of Mecca to offer Islamic financing advice; for a period of three years it was a dealmaker and structuring brains trust without compare, even if some of its ideas, culminating in the deeply technical double wa'd, really did stretch the spirit of Islamic finance. But in 2009, Deutsche shut the business down, though it remains a mainstay as an arranger on sukuk. Bossuyt went on to the part-Deutsche-owned thinktank advisory group Dar Al Istithmar, which itself folded in 2013, and is now at a group called Khalij Islamic ("Innovative Islamic Finance"). Irfan, after Deutsche, wrote an outstanding book, Heaven's Bankers, which chronicled the boom and decline of investment banking fervour for Islamic finance, and recounted with considerable guilt the cheapening of its principles that sometimes took place, while remaining utterly convinced that there's a wonderful role Islamic finance can play (which is just as well, since he's now managing director of the European Islamic Investment Bank in London).
Iqbal Khan left HSBC under Michael Geoghegan, who, it is said, couldn't really see the merit in Islamic finance; after Khan's departure, in 2012 HSBC dramatically slimmed its presence in Islamic finance in most markets, shutting down everything bar Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, though it remains the clear leader in sukuk issuance. Afaq Khan saw through the good times and the bad and built probably the pre-eminent remaining international Islamic banking franchise at Standard Chartered, but announced his own departure – for undisclosed pastures – in March. Ismail Dadabhoy left UBS in 2012, setting up his own Islamic finance advisory company, AIMS, in Dubai last year. And Kandasamy, like many others, went local in the Islamic world after Barclays scaled back its Islamic business, at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and later 1Malaysia Development.
So they all left the western bulge bracket investment banks to either go local, or boutique, or both. The big investment banks decided, typically during the financial crisis, that the business was non-core, or that not enough money could be made from it, and so they left. But why, if the prospects are so good?
HSBC Amanah had seemed the most committed, but the man who founded and built that business, Iqbal Khan, now CEO of the private equity and advisory firm Fajr Capital, whose backers include Khazanah and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, is sanguine about its exit today. "The financial crisis, and the resulting regulatory framework that emerged, has made it very difficult for large global institutions to function in an unfettered way in areas that require a higher amount of capital," he tells Euromoney. "When you talk about Islamic finance in its purest form, it is a hybrid structure between debt and equity instruments, and the more the hybrid shifts towards equity, the more the capital required by the conventional banks." The geographical spread away from OECD markets is an added burden. "Each institution has its own journey in coming to Islamic finance, and each had to make rational decisions based on its internal priorities."
He continues to believe that international banks "have contributed hugely through the history of Islamic finance, and will continue to," and argues that their exit was not about Islamic finance per se but a broader retrenchment. "The model of large international banks flag-planting across a hundred countries is being penalised by the market. The market is rewarding those banks making prudent use of their capital, and in that focused business Islamic finance will always be an addendum, an appendix, an add-on; never the core for most of the large conventional banks."
But there's a case to be made that the departure of westerners is to Islamic finance's long-term good. Khan points to the opportunity for local banks, noting Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank picking up Barclays' Islamic businesses in the UAE, and Meezan Bank buying HSBC's in Pakistan. But there's also a question of approach. Harris Irfan's book reflects, in some stages, a crisis of confidence that perhaps beset many Muslims in the profession over the last decade. "Although their skill base is critical to the industry, non-Muslim conventional bankers dominate the industry, and they care little for the essence of Sharia," he writes. "The more the industry grows, the more it does so by an increasing compromise of its once core principles."
One can make a reasonable case that Islamic finance, having flown into some troubling directions in the run up to the financial crisis, is ready to settle back into more familiar and conservative territory now that the rocket scientist western structuring teams have retreated.
This might be just as well. Everyone can identify the moment when, for them, they realised the industry had just gone too far from its roots and principles. Perhaps it was the Aston Martin financing in 2009, when Islamic finance embraced the leveraged buy-out? Maybe it came back in 2006 when Bahrain's Khallej Finance and Investment launched a capital protected (despite guarantees being unIslamic) fund called Optimum? For some, it was the arrival of the Islamic hedge fund – to many, a contradiction in terms, since one can't sell something one doesn't own in Islam – through Shariah Capital in 2008. And for many the final straw was Goldman Sach's attempt to launch a US$2 billion sukuk, using an unloved structure called the tawarruq (a simultaneous purchase and resale of commodities on a metals exchange) and without any specification that the money raised would serve an ostensibly Islamic function. Every scholar at some point found themselves either at odds with another scholar about a particular structure, or troubled about it themselves; for many, the turning point was the Pakistan scholar Taqi Usmani's 2007 comment (later clarified and somewhat amended) that as many as 85% of Gulf sukuk did not really comply with Islamic law. Many feel the scales began to tip the other way when Malaysia's US$1 billion sukuk in 2010 would not be passed by its Shariah scholars – led by Nizam Yaquby, the most prevalent scholar of them all – until changes were made to documentation that in most previous years would have been passed without concern.
So are we now in a new age when innovation isn't the point anymore? Where everything that needs to be done Islamically, can be done, and the focus is instead on bedding down what's already there?
"When it comes to innovation, I don't think it has stopped in the conventional space, so why should it in Islamic? It will always be a mainstay," says Badlisyah Abdul Ghani, CEO of CIMB Islamic. "But in Islamic finance there is a lot of talk in regards to innovation, and sometimes that can cause us to lose the plot." That plot, he says, should be simple: making sure Islamic finance products are available for consumers, be they individual, corporate or institutional. "So perhaps there is now a need to have the bigger emphasis on market penetration. But you can't forget about innovation, because without it you can't penetrate the market."
Abdul Ghani has little truck with the idea that Islamic finance has come to be nothing more than a mirroring of conventional structures, cheapening the industry's principles. "My view is fairly straightforward," he says. "When the consumer asks for a particular financial solution, be it a savings account, a financing facility to buy a house or car, or whatever, we will be required to provide that service in a way that is consistent with Shariah. If it appears, when it comes out, to be mirroring a conventional financial solution, to my mind it is completely a coincidence.
"The debate," he says, "is a waste of time. It doesn't serve society and it provides a disservice to Islamic finance because it distracts Islamic finance from doing what is needed. The customer is king, and the customer gets what the customer wants, as long as it is consistent with Shariah."
Still, some believe there is scope to branch out in new directions. "I don't think we should blindly follow what the conventional world does," says Vicary, who before INCEIF was head of Islamic finance for Deloitte. "If it clicks and makes sense we should do it; we are mature enough as an industry now to make our own decisions based on our own research." Vicary's mantra – he comes back to it several times in the interview – is the principle of risk sharing, and he believes more can be done to develop products that are "more about risk sharing than risk shifting. What instruments do we need to support that?"
In his view, thinking this way is essential to avoid being vulnerable to systemic shocks. "If we are doing things on the basis of: everything's debt-based so let's do the same and the next debt crisis will never happen, then we're being naïve."
And where there is debt, Shariah requires that it remain anchored to the real world – the source of the sector's resilience through the financial crisis. "Shariah-compliant banks have targeted businesses that are connected to the real economy: trade, development, housing programmes, infrastructure," says Tirad Al Mahmoud, CEO of Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank. "Given the events of recent years, it would seem debt that is linked to real assets and the real economy would be a more appealing structure if we are serious about avoiding another financial crisis."
But if Islamic finance is to go its own way, what, in practice, does that mean?
Ijlal Alvi is the long-serving leader of the Bahrain-based multilateral the International Islamic Financial Market, which seeks to standardize contracts and product templates for the Islamic capital and money markets. Necessarily, much of his work has involved some mirroring of conventional structures, in order to help the Islamic markets live with the conventional: published standards have included Islamic equivalents of swaps, hedging, repo and derivatives. But not everything. "There are a number of transactions that are truly unique to Islamic finance, and there is a need to have more products with unique features," he says, citing wakalah and mudarabah as examples.
Others, too, think it's time to get past products which are technically compliant but with a certain lingering unease, to ones that are truly consistent with Shariah ideals. "If product development is done on a cyclical basis you give the low-hanging fruit priority over transformational products," says Khan. He uses the example of hedging. There's nothing unIslamic about wanting to mitigate the volatility created by risk, provided one doesn't veer into speculation. But the standard approach – creating a derivative product and overlaying it with a commodity programme to give it some link to the real economy – has always seemed a loose fit with Shariah principles. "To me, there is another solution: risk sharing through takaful," the Islamic version of insurance, "creating less speculative products where risk and reward can be shared. It would be a great innovation but requires a huge amount of work, education and effort. The mindset has to be how can we transform the thinking to create products that are better and fairer."
One area of tension between what the industry needs, and what the industry can do without compromising its principles, is in liquidity management. "The industry has always had surplus liquidity," says Khan. "The issue is the authenticity and integrity of liquidity management products. How can you make these products much more conducive and effective for economic growth in the real economy?" The standard approach has been to use commodity murabaha, which have always caused a certain queasiness among scholars; in Khan's view, these were approved by scholars as a temporary fix to managing liquidity, and "they were always expected to migrate eventually to an asset-backed, trade and commerce-backed form of paper, where the force of the surplus liquidity becomes a force of economic growth in the underlying economy."
Alvi, too, notes "the issue of overreliance on murabaha, especially for liquidity management," and would like to see it reduced. His favoured method is an instrument called the inter-bank unrestricted wakalah.
And the message may be getting through. In IIFM's home base of Bahrain, the central bank in April launched a new liquidity management product based on the IIFM's unrestricted wakalah standard document. It allows retail Islamic banks to deposit excess liquidity with the Central Bank of Bahrain, which is appointed as wakil (or agent) to invest the cash on behalf of the bank in a sukuk portfolio. At launch, the instruments will have a one-week duration, meeting a need for short-term placement of funds, and they may yet be followed by an overnight version.
This has a number of advantages. "Commodity murabaha needs three parties: there is an actual sale and purchase of a commodity so you need a commodity broker in the middle," says Shaikh Salman Bin Isa Al Khalifa, executive director of banking operations at the Central Bank of Bahrain. "That can be cumbersome, and very difficult to manage in short term contracts of one week or less. Wakalah is more flexible and involves no third party." It's also more palatable to scholars. "Commodity murabaha was developed in the 70s as a means to invest excess liquidity, but it was not necessarily the best instrument. In light of nothing else being available, scholars approved it, but did not necessarily like it. With the wakalah structure, feedback from the scholars has been much better."
Probably the most ambitious multi-party initiative in Islamic finance to date has been the International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation, envisaged in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008 and launched in 2010. It has 10 shareholders – a host of central banks from Nigeria to Kuwait, Luxembourg to Indonesia, plus the Islamic Development Bank – which represents a degree of cooperation difficult to achieve in the diverse Islamic economies. It, too, was invented partly as a way to wean the industry off commodity murabaha – which, in addition to its compliance questions, is not a tradable instrument – but mainly to provide an avenue for cross-border short-term paper. Even though the Islamic banking industry survived the financial crisis well, the smarter members of the profession – Bank Negara Malaysia governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz among them – recognised that this should not be mistaken for resilience, because Islamic banks could find it hard to liquidate assets in a hurry when they need to.
"Tradability is a very important issue," says Rifaat Ahmed Abdel Karim, CEO of IILM. A $990 million issue in February was typical of a continuing program of short-term Islamic paper from IILM, the closest equivalent to commercial paper in the Islamic world. "Because banks can offload them from their balance sheet when they need to, that helps with financial stability."
Yet IILM, for all that it represents the sort of foresight, preparation and cooperation that Islamic finance needs, demonstrates challenges too. Saudi Arabia, having been a founder, dropped from the IILM shareholders before its inaugural issue in 2013; no Saudi institution appears on the list of primary dealers anymore, and when asked if the paper is bought by Saudi institutions Rifaat says: "I don't know, to be honest." One leading Islamic banker, while acknowledging that IILM has fulfilled its mandate to provide liquid instruments for cross-border markets, adds: "It's all about volume at the end of the day and I don't yet see much demand for IILM liquid assets." Nevertheless, progress has clearly been made, and it may prove to be just a question of time until the IILM becomes the true benchmark it really needs to be.
At those Islamic finance conferences over the years, the handful of people who haven't been talking about innovation or market size have usually been talking about harmonization or standardization. The dream is a simple unified set of values and standards to govern the whole Islamic finance industry. "The biggest single challenge for Islamic finance is the lack of an enabling environment," Abdul Ghani says. "We could have seen a young industry growing at 1000% per annum if it had been properly enabled."
This has always been supremely difficult, partly because of the need to keep pace with structural innovation in the industry, partly because the sophistication of individual markets varies dramatically, and also because different Muslim countries have quite different views on compliance, with Malaysia and Saudi Arabia particularly distant from one another. But is this still an issue? "Some differences of opinion are extremely healthy," says Vicary. He recalls, in his Deloitte days about seven years ago, studying the available outstanding fatwas and finding that 95% of all schools of thought were in complete agreement. "The lack of convergence is blown up out of any reasonable proportion. The debate is about the fine turning now."
Vicary's issue, instead, is with the starting point of the frameworks themselves. "We have made progress. But the crux of the issue is that the existing regulatory framework is based on a risk transfer scenario where banks act as intermediaries and lay risk off somewhere else. We need some fundamental changes, in terms of regulatory understanding that there is an alternative method of risk sharing."
For Khan, the issue is not the formation of standards but coordination among the numerous institutions tasked with developing them. In addition to IIFM, there is AAOIFI, the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, which develops standards around auditing, accounting, governance and Shariah; the Islamic Financial Services Board, another standard-setting body, tasked with enhancing the soundness and stability of the Islamic finance industry worldwide; and then various other multilaterals and individual central banks that have an influence on the way frameworks are shaped, particularly in Malaysia, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. "How do we make sure these institutions work in a coordinated manner so we can create a framework that works in conjunction with the international framework?" asks Khan, who says the problem is made harder by central banks and regulators becoming increasingly parochial. "A lot of effort has been made by these groups but more needs to be done. There has to be a sense of urgency."
As one banker puts it: "There is no global unified Islamic banking framework. It doesn't exist."
Those who have been at the coalface of Islamic regulation and standards see things differently. "I always look at it this way: without IFSB, what would have happened?" says Rifaat, its former secretary-general. "In the absence of standards or guidelines each central bank would go under its own interpretation to cater for Islamic banks. IFSB provided a reference for the industry." The idea of an Islamic finance market trying to grapple with Basel 2 or 3 at an individual level without these principles is potentially chaotic, and certainly not conducive to cross-border activity. Rifaat thinks IFSB is "far ahead on the curve", and points out that it simultaneously serves as an equivalent of IOSCO, the BIS and an international supervisory group for insurance; he says it has "issued the fundamental core standards" and now needs to focus on specific issues, though he believes AAOIFI "will have to catch up if banks are to adopt a full set of accounts."
The other unarguable challenge the industry faces is around human resources. "The biggest challenge, to me, has always been about people," Khan says. INCEIF is a strong institution doing important work: not yet 10 years old, it has produced 830 graduates from over 70 countries at a masters or PhD level and has over 2,000 students on its books, the majority of them from outside Malaysia. But there's only one INCEIF and there need to be more. "What we need is not one but many INCEIFs across the world," Khan says.
The biggest challenge remains the shortage of Shariah scholars who not only have sufficient qualification in Islamic jurisprudence but the right experience of business and finance. As Abdul Ghani puts it: "We don't just need someone who is qualified in Shariah. We need an experienced advisor with Shariah qualifications to provide us with immediate advisory capacity." A decade ago, six scholars appeared on such an overwhelming dominance of Shariah supervisory boards that it had the uncomfortable appearance of a cartel; 10 years on, the same names are just as important, but has a new bench of suitably experienced talent emerged? Perhaps in Malaysia, where it was forced to happen by limiting the number of roles scholars could perform, but not much elsewhere.
The verdict? For all of its momentous growth, Islamic finance today shows the same opportunities and challenges it did at the turn of the century. Great asset growth, but with so much further potential; a permanent tension between the innovative and the impure; a yearning for a unified framework; and just not enough people to get it where it needs to go – yet.
The great theoretical appeal of Islamic finance is that it need not be sold only to Muslims. Perhaps the future engine for growth is for it to align itself more with the sustainable and ethical investment camp. "Customers are increasingly demanding more ethical products and morally sound business models and practices," says Al Mahmoud at ADIB. "Islamic banks are well suited to cater to this demand. If this business model is more successfully publicised, with Islamic banks highlighting their added value of ethical banking, then global demand for Shariah-compliant banks and their services will eventually outpace conventional banks." Al Mahmoud says his bank's model is no longer purely Islamic. "Whilst our core customer base is still predominantly Muslim, we are seeing more non-Muslim expatriates opting for Islamic banking services," he says.
An interesting take on this theme can be seen with the fund manager Arabesque – a Shariah-based fund manager whose marketing materials never refer to Shariah or Islamic finance. (In fact, even the 'Arab' bit is a red herring: Arabesque is a form of art-based geometry, a thematic pattern, and has nothing to do with the Arab world.) It is pitched, instead, as a quant fund that combines socially responsible ESG information with other fundamental considerations, with the principle that ethical investment does not exclude performance but actively generates it. In this methodology, things that are excluded by Shariah – the obvious things like armaments and alcohol, but also companies with a high level of debt – are removed by default anyway. So is its Shariah compliance an aim of the strategy, or an indirect consequence of it? "We are trying to be a global quant equity fund that uses ESG information to enhance the portfolio and drive outperformance," says Omar Selim, CEO of Arabesque. "The result is: yes, it has 100% Shariah compliance," but only insofar as the best risk/return outcome the manager can see happens to be Shariah compliant. He describes it as "the pret a manger of asset management: a healthy meal that tastes good."


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First Time Home Buyer Louisville Kentucky Mortgage Programs
Conventional Insured by approved mortgage insurance company. Minimum credit score of 620 or better. Monthly mortgage insurance premiums based on credit scores and down payment and can vary.
VA Guaranteed by the Veterans Administration for qualified military veterans. No down payment if the property appraises for the sale price or greater. Credit underwriting is flexible. No Minimum credit score for VA loans, but lenders will create overlays to protect their selling ability to VA for delinquent mortgage loans sold to VA. A lot of VA lenders want a 620 credit score, with some going down to 580, and a few will do down below that but very difficult to get approved with a VA lender. No monthly mortgage insurance payments are required, however they're upfront funding fees that range anywhere from 2.1% to 3.3% based on previous use or first time use of VA eligibility to buy a home, or if you are disabled, you may have not to pay this at all.
The VA Certificate of Eligibility will show if you have to pay a funding fee to VA or if you are exempt.
RHS Guaranteed by Rural Housing Services (RHS). Home must be located in a rural area as defined by RHS. No down payment if the property appraises for the sale price or greater. Minimum credit
score of 581. Most Kentucky USDA Lenders will require a much higher credit score, usually 640 or higher, with s few going down to 620 credit score. USDA loans have a monthly mortgage insurance premium of .35% and a upfront mortgage insurance 1% that is financed into the loan. For example, if you finance $100,000 sales price USDA loan, going no money down, then your total loan amount with 1% USDA Guarantee Fee would make the total loan $101,000.00 These premiums are kept by USDA and protect their risk of offering no money down loans to rural home buyers in case they default. They are very cheap mortgage insurance premiums when compared to FHA but can change at any time based on the fiscal condition of the rural development program.
I remember back in the foreclosure crisis of 2008, USDA raised their upfront mortgage insurance premiums to 3% because of all the losses the program incurred with the foreclosure of homes during that period. Subsequently, when the housing market improved, they reduce their mortgage insurance premiums.
(Not intended to be an all-inclusive list.)
Home Buyer Eligibility
• KHC can help both first time and repeat
home buyers statewide.
• Must be a U.S. citizen or legal status to be in
• Applicant's income ONLY through Secondary
• Property must be the borrower's principal
• Any Borrower that meets both the income
and purchase price limit can have access to
Down Payment Assistance.
Kentucky Housing Credit Standards
• 620 minimum credit score required for FHA,
• 660 minimum credit score required for
• Debt ratios: 40/50%
• Collections in most cases do not need to be
paid-off in full.
• Bankruptcies and foreclosures must be
discharged two to seven years.
• Non-taxable income can be grossed-up.
Property Eligibility
• Both new and existing property.
• Both new & existing Manufactured Housing.
• With RHS only new construction
Manufactured housing is allowed.
• Purchase price limit of $301,294 for
Secondary Market or $271,164 for Tax
• Full appraisal required on all KHC loans.
• With Existing Property, VA is the only loan
product that requires a termite inspection.
• A termite soil treatment certificate is required
on ALL new construction properties except
on conventional loans.
The state agency created by the legislature in Kentucky to offer first time home buyer programs is the Kentucky Housing Corporation. Here is a summary of the current first time home buyer programs that are offered:
Call us today for a free pre-approval at 502-905-3708 or email your mortgage questions to email@example.com
Company ID #1364 | MB73346
Joel Lobb
Senior Loan Officer
Senior Loan Officer
text or call my phone: (502) 905-3708
email me at email@example.com
email me at email@example.com
The view and opinions stated on this website belong solely to the authors, and are intended for informational purposes only. The posted information does not guarantee approval, nor does it comprise full underwriting guidelines. This does not represent being part of a government agency. The views expressed on this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect the view of my employer. Not all products or services mentioned on this site may fit all people. NMLS ID# 57916, (www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org). Mortgage loans only offered in Kentucky.
All loans and lines are subject to credit approval, verification, and collateral evaluation and are originated by lender. Products and interest rates are subject to change without notice. Manufactured and mobile homes are not eligible as collateral.


text:
We did it!
We lived through that whole extra second in the last minute of 2016, and have begun setting our sights on a successful 2017. (Wait what extra second? Is it the end of days!? Nah. Every so often the Earth's rotation doesn't line up perfectly with the atomic clock, so scientists cheat a little.)
2016 was a highly transformational year, and the workplace was not immune from these shifts. Many of the changes have been recorded and analyzed in BambooHR's recent series of infographics, Then and Now: How a Decade Changed the Workplace. The series covers research relating to workplace stress, employee satisfaction, electronic media usage, and the graphic below on the workplace environment (including working remotely).
When you think about the environment in your present-day job, how does it compare to the businesses you've worked for in the past? While every workplace is different, it is likely that you've seen some common themes of change. For example, consider the more relaxed dress codes, the flexible work opportunities and the enhanced collaboration that is more commonplace today.
The data in the following infographic was extracted from a survey completed at the end of 2016 that compared questions and responses from several 2006 surveys. Some of the findings include…
Enhanced Recognition: A variety of studies have demonstrated the value of reward and recognition in the modern workplace. Seven out of ten employees now feel that they receive meaningful recognition at work, which is a 16% increase from ten years ago.
Innovative Environments: Ten years ago, half of all employees felt that they developed their best ideas working at their desks. Today, this is still the number one place for developing great ideas, but only 27% of employees favor it.
Productivity: Seventy-nine percent of today's employees still feel they accomplish their best work at the office. This is down only 6% from 2006.
So, what has brought about these changes? And what data did the rest of the survey reveal? Check out the infographic below and click here to gain access to 3 more detailed infographics about the many shifts in the workplace over the last decade.
Annabelle Smyth is a freelance writer who covers everything from HR to technology and leadership skills. Her most recent work involves partnership marketing with BambooHR where she has had the opportunity to learn about the relationship between employee engagement and successful businesses.