text:
Online Exclusive: Read more about GC's roles in corporate crises
The Penn State sex-abuse scandal. Wal-Mart exposed for possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations. The Cinemark movie theater shooting in Colorado. Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Last year, companies and organizations faced an array of crises that forced them to confront some of their worst nightmares. And general counsel likely were at the front lines.
"Often, when there is a crisis, it's either because of a legal matter—an investigation, some type of bet-the- company litigation—or it's something that likely will result in a lawsuit," says John Wilson, a partner at Foley & Lardner. "Therefore, the general counsel needs to be a key player in forming and carrying out a company's crisis-management plan."
Some lawyers who've been involved in corporate crises compare the experience to trying to tame a wild beast. "The situation is what one fellow described to me as riding a tiger," says Tom Campbell, a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and leader of the firm's crisis-management team. "Over the months, he became so exhausted and overwhelmed that he felt like he couldn't hold on. But he knew that if he let go, he'd be consumed alive."
Unfortunately, when it comes to crisis management, experience is the best teacher, according to Patricia Poole, a partner at Baker Hostetler and head of the firm's emergency-response and crisis-management team. "Once a company goes through a crisis, no matter how small, it generally knows what its strengths and limitations are," she says.
Because all crises are fact-specific and unique, it's impossible to plan out highly detailed response and management strategies. But there are common threads that companies can anticipate, which will help them prepare for forthcoming bumps and prevent problems from evolving into explosions.
On the following pages, experts share crisis-management tips that aim to help GCs guide their companies when they find themselves in dire situations.
Imagining the Worst
Shortly after Sandra Leung became the corporate secretary at Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1999, the biopharmaceutical company experienced a series of regulatory crises that she worked hard to navigate. Leung, who now is the company's general counsel and corporate secretary, says she's immensely proud of helping Bristol-Myers Squibb work through those crises and contributing to a commendable turnaround that has helped the company thrive over the past decade. Part of what helped her to succeed was keeping a level head and following the company's crisis-management plan.
"It's important to have a crisis plan because if you don't navigate through the crisis well, you could have disastrous results within the company—not only from a shareholder and stock price perspective, but also from a public opinion perspective," she says. "The company's reputation could be damaged if a crisis is not handled appropriately. Companies must be proactive in crisis management and actually have a plan in place."
To formulate effective crisis-management plans, GCs should complete broad risk assessments to ascertain their companies' weaknesses as well as the possible natural disasters they could face. GCs and their boards should conceptualize all-encompassing crisis-response plans for their companies, as well as individual plans for each of the company's business units.
"Companies should have a written crisis-management plan that includes as many scenarios as possible," says Poole. "It depends on the nature of the business. For some businesses, a chemical spill or explosion is possible. And depending on location, companies need to plan for tornadoes and snow storms. All companies are subject to fire crises and workplace fatalities, too."
Randy Mastro, a partner at Gibson Dunn and co-chair of the firm's crisis management practice group, says having procedures and protocols in place for reporting, decision-making, investigative steps, public relations, disclosure obligations and crisis-response actions helps mitigate crises when they actually hit. "There's a tendency to react spontaneously or emotionally to crisis situations," he says. "Having protocols in place helps eliminate problems down the road and reduces panic."
Once plans are in place, companies should drill employees on them and update them annually, according to Poole.
Key Players
The members of companies' crisis-management teams will vary depending on the crisis. For example, if the crisis relates to a government investigation, the general counsel should recruit the CEO, chief financial officer, head of corporate communications and the heads of any business units that may be implicated as team members. For other crises, such as white-collar crime, members of senior management may need to be excluded from the team.
In all crises, it's critical for companies to seek help from outside counsel who are experts in the types of crises they're facing. "Crisis-management professionals go from crisis to crisis to crisis, and they begin to identify and see patterns in highly complex circumstances," Campbell says. "Those complex circumstances, to someone who has seen and done it before, are far more manageable than they are to somebody who's experiencing that complexity for the first time. Don't go it alone."
Campbell adds that companies should designate their crisis-situation outside counsel before crises even unfold. "You don't want to be putting your team together in the midst of the crisis because there's a very good chance that you will not find the right people in time," he says.
It's also crucial for companies to select outside counsel they'll feel comfortable working with in high-stress, high-emotion situations. "The last thing you want to do is be stuck in the proverbial lifeboat with someone who you really don't like and don't particularly trust," Campbell says. "Literally, in these crisis-response situations, you will be staking your professional career on the experience and judgment of your crisis-management team."
Companies also must seek help from external public relations firms that are already familiar with them. Experts say it's imperative that companies develop these relationships ahead of time. "If there's an inkling that something might evolve into a crisis, giving the public relations firm a heads up so they can help the company be the eyes and ears of what's being said about the crisis is a very good practice," Leung says.
A good PR firm will help companies develop draft questions and answers that will be readily available in the event of a crisis or negative event. They'll also guide the company in choosing crisis-response spokespeople. "Spokespeople should be selected for their quality, their ability to look good during a crisis and [their ability] to think on their feet," Poole says. "The head media spokesperson, even if it's not that person's full-time job, is a very important role and should be assigned to someone who's going to put the company in the most favorable light."
Game Time
Once a crisis hits, GCs should begin investigating immediately.
"You need to understand what it is that happened," Campbell says. "The general counsel needs to lead the crisis-management team, most often in coordination with a very senior executive so that you have both the management and legal sides of the equation."
Leung says GCs should focus on integrity as they enact their crisis-management plans. "You must make sure that the facts are known and not let emotions or subjectivity get in the way," she says. She adds that it's important for GCs to realize that employees will rely on them for leadership during crises. "People will look to you and will open up to you if they know you're someone they can trust. It's important to have that reputation within the company before the crisis happens—to be known as a person who will do the right thing and the type of person people can go to for advice."
Overall, Leung says, a crisis is a time for a general counsel to shine or to fail. "People will remember how you reacted and how you supported them," she says. "It's important to remember that not all crises are the same, and general counsel have to think about how they will lend the most value in each situation. You have to think beyond just getting the company through that particular crisis and have a view toward how to avoid that type of crisis in the future. All the actions you take have to be taken in a bigger-picture context. Sometimes that means additional training, fixing a few processes or something even deeper than that. But it's really important to learn what led the company to be in that position to have that crisis arise and try to avoid that."
When a crisis breaks, GCs must remind their companies and PR teams that there isn't a quick fix. Crises often involve investigations, remedial plans and sometimes litigation. Therefore, delivering accurate information in the correct tone and at the appropriate time is essential.
"Developing the right public message while you are doing the hard work that needs to be done to find out the true facts is critically important," Mastro says. "There have been situations where the company is intent on doing exactly the right thing, but because of the PR message that comes out at the outset of the crisis, there's a distorted view or misperception about the company that will linger and dog the company throughout. That can be a real problem in these situations: perception replacing reality. You have to give reality a chance to catch up to perception, but you have to play some role in shaping the perception by being smart about the public message."
Deal With It
In the heat of the crisis, GCs must prioritize communication with management, the board, outside counsel, insurance carriers and PR teams to effectively coordinate a response.
"What I learned from working with [Bristol-Myers Squibb] in these types of situations is the importance of staying calm and focused, and making sure your board of directors are fully informed as to what's going on," Leung says. "You must keep them abreast of the facts, and that means sometimes having regular meetings or information sessions for the board; you don't want any information gap with your board."
Poole says GCs also must keep in mind the expense and time involved in dealing with crisis. "You have to keep a handle on who's doing what and how much it's going to cost," she says. "Try to come up with a budget. Although it's hard to anticipate what the needs will be depending on how the scenarios change as they go, you must keep a handle on the work being done and the hours being spent so there isn't sticker shock when you get the bills."
Experts say successfully ushering a company into a crisis-recovery phase depends on how good of a crisis-response plan the company had in the first place. "If you had protocols in place and they worked, that's the most comforting thing for everyone," Mastro says. "Typically, what will come out of an internal investigation is fact-finding and remedial recommendations, which will ultimately go to company management and the board. What you're really trying to do as a GC is to make sure the company responsibly addresses the crisis by finding out the true facts, assessing the different potential exposures and liabilities, and proposing a plan for how to address them and prevent such crises from occurring in the future. If you have that kind of action plan as a GC, you will have gone a long way toward the corporation coming back to normal after those steps have been taken."


text:
Biology IQ test: How smart are you = look
Debate and discussion of any biological questions not pertaining to a particular topic.
Moderator: BioTeam
4 posts • Page 1 of 1
Biology IQ test: How smart are you = look
I found these questions on my iphone "iq biology test" application. According to the application, if you can answer 8 right.. then your above normal (USA)
I. True or False:
1) The local increase in entropy seen in the conversion of free glucose into cellulose is offset by a
release of energy.
2) Maxwell's demon seems to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but really does not because
of energy required for the demon to "think."
3) Diamonds are forever because their conversion into graphite has a G>0
4) Enzymes speed reaction rates by facilitating the development of the transition state.
5) An enzyme with a suicide inhibitor bound to it will likely be subject to ubiquitination.
6) An enzyme with an allosteric activator bound to it will likely be subject to ubiquitination.
7) A particular enzyme is likely subject to only a few forms of the regulation we discussed in lecture.
Cooperativity is rare in enzymes with tertiary structure.
9) Glycolysis is inefficient and therefore rarely found in present day organisms.
10) Metabolic pathways lack apparent design logic because they are evolved.
11) The free energy of glucose is exactly matched by the total free energy of the ATPs generated in
glycolysis and respiration.
12) Unabated at the current rate, cyclic photosynthesis will one day convert all available planetary water
into oxygen.
13) The oxygen generated by photosynthesis is coupled with the removal of electrons from water
in PSI.
14) Plants perform photosynthesis and do not use oxygen as a terminal electron sink in
15) RUBISCO is optimally evolved to work in an oxygen atmosphere.
16) The chlorophyll A molecules of the two photosystems are chemically different which causes
their difference in absorbance spectra.
17) The large +G of life (all life collectively) is ultimately made positive with the energy of light.
18) Proton gradients provide the energy for ATP production in both glycolysis and photosynthesis.
19) The protons of the thylakoid space come entirely from protons that once were in the stroma
20) Most, if not all, of the valence electrons on the carbon atoms in your body were recently
in a water molecule (recently: meaning non-geologic time).
III. Multiple Choice:
21) Evolutionary adaptations which mitigate photorespiration include
B) Separating the light reactions from the carbon fixing reactions in space
C) Separating the light reactions from the carbon fixing reactions in time
D) B or C depending on the plant
22) On the Planet Smudge there is a type of autotrophic organism which absorbs light of at 250 nm
and powers its strange "metabolism" with it. What do you automatically know about this organism.
A) It is likely a normal flowering plant like we have here on Earth
B) It likely to have a chlorophyll-like photosynthetic pigment and resemble modern algae
C) It would have a photosystem I like that found in algae on the Planet Earth, but no PSII
D) It would be nothing like anything here on Earth, and in fact intact carbon biochemistry in it is
dubious due to the high energy of light at 250 nm.
23) Another set of organisms on Smudge live in caves and take in hydrogen sulfide gas and exhale pure
sulfur. What is likely the basis of their use of hydrogen sulfide.
A) They are heterotrophs that use hydrogen sulfide as a terminal electron sink in their electron transport
B) They are autotrophs which reduce the hydrogen sulfide to sulfur gas in a chemoautotrophic process
C) They are using hydrogen sulfide the way photosynthetic organisms on Earth use water as a source of
electrons and the elemental sulfur is being produced through this oxidation
D) They are producing sulfur in a way that must be unrelated to their uptake of hydrogen sulfide
24) Glycolysis does not require oxygen and yet oxidations are occurring? How is this possible?
A) It isn't. Glycolysis does require direct gaseous oxygen input for its oxidations.
B) At least two of the oxidation reactions do involve the addition of phosphates whose later elimination
converts aldehydes to carboxylates and alcohols to carbonyls—both reactions are oxidative
C) Glycolysis requires 2 molecules of NADH to give up their electrons to form 2NAD+ and pyruvate
D) Not all oxidations require electron movement and therefore not all oxidations require an oxidant
25) A disturbed Dallas County employee was recently apprehended as a member of "Libros Mios," an
extremist librarian terrorist cell. It was discovered that she was impregnating the
"overdue" mailers with a toxin she prepared in her basement lab. A subsequent investigation
demonstrated that the chemical in the envelopes resembled a proton channel purified from bacteria.
It is likely that this poison was intended to:
A) Function as a pore forming toxin to stop ATP production in mitochondria by dissipating the proton
gradient used by the ATP synthase
B) Stop electron transport by binding to cytochrome as a suicide inhibitor
C) Cause excessive proton accumulation in the intermembrane space and burn out the ATP synthase
through over-activity
D) Decoy for the real weapon which was a 700 pound statue of Ralph Nader in a Corvair made
completely of salmonella laden parakeet droppings.
IV. Which came first in evolutionary history?
26) A. Respiration B. Glycolysis
28) A. RUBISCO B. Oxygen in the atmosphere
29) A. Chloroplasts B. Mitochondria
30) A. Cyclic photosynthesis B. Noncyclic photosynthesis
31) Overlapping kinase cascades must
A. never occur in cells
B. by definition engage in cross talk
C. be very unlikely since there are only two kinase pathways in cells
D. all of the above
32) Checkpoint control
A. is the way the cell examines internal and external conditions prior to a G1/S or G2/M
B. never malfunctions in cancer cells
C. does not require input from signal transduction pathways
D. is independent of the activity of kinases
33) Cyclins
A. act as allosteric inhibitors of checkpoint kinases
B. are present at the same level throughout the cell cycle
C. are activators of CDKs
D. all of the above
34) Primary cells
A. have a Hayflick limit
B. are immortal
C. divide in culture independent of added growth factors
D. none of the above
35) Chromosome always shortening occurs in
A. Primary cells
B. Cancer cells
C. Embryonic stem cells
D. Immortal cell lines
36) You might expect the Bristlecone pine telomerase to be
A. found in all cells
B. a hallmark of transformation
C. present in just germ cells
D. highly processive and very active in the pine meristems and in the cambium
37) The heredity model which Mendel developed emphasized
A. blending of traits to create hybrids
B. the particulate an indivisible nature of heredity material
C. DNA as the source of all genetic material
D. all of the above
38) Alleles refer to
A. two possible forms of the hereditary element
B. an entire chromosome
C. the dominant form of the gene only
D. the recessive form of the gene only
39) Mendel's dihybrid crosses test the hypothesis that
A. the heredity material for a single trait has 4 alleles
B. mixed alleles actually blend
C. the alleles for two different traits do not influence each other's odds of being present in the same gamete
D. heredity material for a trait occurs in two forms
40) The law of independent assortment fails to account for
A. the fact the many genes are linked together on the same chromosome
B. the fact that many traits do not assort independently
C. the chemical nature of a gene is a linked polymer
D. all of the above
Some of them make no sense, and these obviously come from a specific class and hit details given there.
And I'm not a fan of true-false statements that are both, but are false because both aren't true. Too tricky for trickiness' sake.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Wilson (John P.) Park
1122 W. 34th Pl. Chicago, Illinois 60608
(312) 747-7002
Fee: Free
Age Range: Any
Little Zizou
Little Zizou is a comedy for audiences of all ages and nationalities. It is the rambunctious and moving story of how two battling Bombay families finally come to terms. In the spirit of Federico Fellini, with just a hint of Mel Brooks, Little Zizou presents characters who show us the necessity of love and the possibility of grace.
NR | 101 minutes | 2008
Presented by Charter One, with additional support from RCN.
Underwritten by Eye on India
Movies in the Parks is presented by:
With additional support from:


text:
State Views: Education in Wisconsin resembles two-hump camel
Education in many parts of Wisconsin has turned into a two-hump camel.
Many young people are doing very, very well academically—with one of the humps on charts showing results. The other hump is composed of students doing very poorly in school. The numbers of B-minus and C students are down dramatically.
"The middle is missing," said Bruce Dahmen, well-known and beloved Madison Memorial High School principal, just weeks before he died unexpectedly Feb. 11.
Elected state officials are scrambling to find inexpensive answers to the education questions. Gov. Scott Walker wants to expand voucher schools, but the idea suffered a black eye when one Milwaukee voucher school closed abruptly late last year after getting hundreds of thousands of state tax dollars. Three former Assembly speakers, all Republicans, are lobbying for expanded vouchers and other taxpayer-helped private school choices.
Other interest groups think the answer might be privately run charter schools operated with taxpayer funds. Unanswered is whether these schools should undergo uniform testing to show which are successful. This is called "accountability," but what should be done to improve those that get poor test scores remains an unanswered question. One idea is force under-performing schools to close.
That assumes that some new organization—be it a charter school, a voucher school or private education—will better educate the struggling students. Many minority families see the need for more teachers of color for their children.
Alas, statistics indicate a close relationship between failing student achievement and poverty. The Madison School District's reading tests show that link. One elementary school with 76 percent economically disadvantaged students had fewer than 4 percent rank as proficient and advanced in reading.
But it's not just urban areas such as Milwaukee and Madison that are struggling with education of those in poverty. State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, has cited the problems facing rural districts in northwestern parts of the state.
Taxpayers can't afford higher taxes. Schools have reduced staffs, and the number of special-needs students has increased, she said, citing testimony by school superintendents at public meetings.
Arcadia had no English-language learners 15 years ago. Now every third student primarily speaks Spanish, she said. Spanish-speaking students in the Independence district have doubled in three years, and three out of five students live in poverty.
"Many of these students had no opportunity to attend good schools before they came to Wisconsin," Vinehout said.
Political twists and turns also play roles in the education dialogue. Tea-party groups are upset with Wisconsin's acceptance of a Common Core program of standards to improve education. Some 45 states are using it as a way to improve education.
Common Core is a program that details what students should know in math and English arts at each grade level. Backed on a bipartisan basis by government and corporate leaders, its aim is to ensure high school graduates are ready for college or the workplace.
Gov. Scott Walker has responded to tea-party concerns, and his office has helped draft new legislation under which Wisconsin would create its own program with a 15-member oversight board. Walker could get to appoint six of the citizens. Some business groups have urged Walker to stay with the Common Core approach.
There is evidence that the education struggle isn't new. Michele Erikson, executive director of Wisconsin Literacy Inc., has said that one-third of adults "lack the necessary literacy skills to function above a basic level."
What does this mean for today's children?
"Whatever progress is made from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. stands to come unraveled from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. if parents aren't part of the literacy equation," she said.
Matt Pommer writes this Wisconsin Newspaper Association weekly state government newsletter. He is dean of the state Capitol correspondents, having covered government action in Madison for 36 years. Readers can contact Pommer at email@example.com.


text:
Unframed – An Exhibit With Kathi Couch and Tyler Arnold
An exhibition of abstract works by regional artists Kathi Couch and Tyler Arnold are on display at the Regional Art Center's Open Gallery space.
Additional Information
This exhibit is free and open to the public. The Regional Arts Center is located at 321 W 4th Street at Texas Boulevard. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (903) 792-8681 for more information.


text:
Firebug Roadmap
- This page is intended to summarize plans and directions for Firebug.next
- This summary should also help FWG to prioritize planned steps and features.
- Provide any feedback on Firebug newsgroup
- 1 Status
- 2 Goals for Firebug.next
- 3 Summary
- 4 New Features for 1.10
- 4.1 Delayed Firebug Load
- 4.2 Orion Text View Integration
- 4.3 Firecookie Integration
- 4.4 Remote HTTP Monitor
- 4.5 Restart-less Firebug Extensions
- 4.7 Review Internal File Structure
- 4.8 Style tracing
- 4.9 New Inspector
- 4.10 Net Panel Improvements
- 4.11 HTML entities
- 4.12 Breakpoint Improvements
- 4.13 Group Console Messages
- 5 Further Suggestions
Current status of Firebug development.
Firebug 1.8
Development frozen on this branch.
Firebug 1.9
Firebug 1.9 is the last released version (available on AMO and getfirebug.com) compatible with Firefox 5-13. Selected patches will be back-ported from 1.10.
Firebug 1.10
Development happens on Firebug 1.10 branch (currently alpha).
Goals for Firebug.next
- Improve memory footprint & performance
- Reuse built-in dev-tools API and components
- Innovate features that only Firebug can deliver
See the following table that summarizes list of features and dev folks working on them. Append yourself as a developer to features you are interested in to participate.
|Related Issues
|Delayed Firebug Load
|Honza, Harutyun
|Issue 4989: Separate global UI (browser.xul) from Firebug UI (firebugFrame.xul)
|Orion Text View
| Issue 5219: Use SourceEditor (Orion) for Command Editor
Issue 5175: Integrate Orion as replacement for the Script panel UI
|Issue 5422: Integrate Firecookie into Firebug
|Remote HTTP Monitor
|Issue 5423: Integrate HTTP Monitor into Firebug
|Restart-less Firebug Extensions
|Issue 5421: Implement JSD2
|not started
|Review Internal File Structure
|Honza, Sebastian
|Issue 4960: Review internal file structure
|Style Tracing
|Issue 2916: Trace Styles Feature
|New Inspector
|Issue 4848: Create new SVG inspector
|not started
|Net Panel Improvements
|Issue 2617: Net panel header should be fixed on top instead of scrolling with the content
|not started
|HTML Entities
|Issue 3159: Show numeric character reference of MathML
|Breakpoint Improvements
| Issue 4378: Move editing of breakpoint conditions to Breakpoints Side Panel
Issue 2817: Hit counts for breakpoints
|not started
|Group Console Messages
|Issue 4979: Group console messages
New Features for 1.10
This section lists of all suggested areas FWG should focus on in Firebug 1.10
Regular Tasks:
- Firebug 1.10 blockers
- Memory leaks (Zombie Hunter is necessary)
- Fixing memory leaks is still the top Firebug priority.
Delayed Firebug Load
Firebug UI & Logic is mostly running inside an iframe (chrome://firebug/content/firebugFrame.xul). The goal here is to load the content of the iframe on demand at soon as the user needs Firebug the first time.
However there are some pieces that are running within the global Firefox UI (browser.xul) and must be loaded immediately after the browser window is loaded.
- Page context menu (inspector, open with editor)
- Firebug global menu (tool, view, web developer, ...)
- Firebug start button (Firefox toolbar)
- Firebug iframe and a splitter
Firebug iframe content should be automatically loaded when the user presses F12 or uses any command available through an existing menu or a keyboard shortcut. Such functionality requires all global parts to be clearly separated and independent for the Firebug UI itself (the one running in the iframe).
- Separate Firebug UI from Global UI (create separate directory for global parts)
- Create a command dispatcher for global commands that loads Firebug if necessary.
- Initialize global UI independently of Firebug availability (e.g. translations)
- Adapt to the current
Orion Text View Integration
The Script panel content (JavaScript text view) should be based on Orion Text View. The goal here is to have syntax coloring and improved performance for huge scripts.
- Remove all code related to Script panel content generation (firebug/js/sourceBox module)
- Integrate Orion Text View
- Create a new Orion breakpoint ruler
- Support for tooltips displaying result of and evaluated expressions under the mouse (based on Orion Text Styler)
- Part of the integration is also using SourceEditor (Firefox 8+) for multiline console (command editor).
Firecookie is a an extension for Firebug that makes possible to view and manage cookies in your browser.
It was required many times to have such functionality included in Firebug by default.
- Firecookie code base doesn't support AMD
- The code should be divided into more (AMD) modules
- Support for backward compatibility can be removed
- Blocking issues should be fixed
- Firecookie automated tests should be merged into Firebug test list
Remote HTTP Monitor
The Net panel should use Remote Debugging Protocol (RDP) to communicate with the server side that is performing HTTP monitoring. This should enabled remote HTTP monitoring e.g. for mobile devices.
The server side script should be using the following interfaces (to monitor HTTP):
- nsIActivityDistributor
- nsIActivityObserver
- nsIWebProgressListener (monitors the file:/// protocol)
- nsIObserver (monitors http-on-* events to catch also BFCache responses)
- nsITraceableChannel (intercepts response bodies)
- Define new actors and extend the RDP protocol
- Clean separation of the client and server parts
- Communication between client and server based on JSON packets
- Optimization
Restart-less Firebug Extensions
There should be a way how to install Firebug and extensions without Firefox restart. Some API related to dynamic registration are already available.
- Review API for dynamic adding/removal of panels
- Review API for dynamic adding/removal of modules
- Review extension example
- Update documentation/tutorial
JSD2 (also known as JSDBG2 or JSDBGAPI) represents new API for JS debugging in Firefox.
Jim Blandy and Jason Orendorff are working on a JS implementation of JSD built on top of the JSDBG2 API (a wrapper). This wrapper should be injected into Firebug and make it compatible with JSDBG2. Prototype implementation is available (Firebug 1.9 fork).
Work on this goal depends on how much ready JSD2 is.
Review Internal File Structure
If parts break extensions, they will go into 2.0.
- Convert last few files into (AMD) modules
- Split huge files into more modules
- Suggest places/modules that needs refactoring (e.g. TabWatcher)
Style tracing
The CSS Panel should offer a different view on CSS properties to allow to find out how a specific value was generated.
- Investigate built-in CSS API
- Create a new property-based view for the CSS panel using the built-in CSS API
- Add option to the CSS panel to toggle between the current view and the property-based view ⇒ reused the Computed Side Panel for this
- Add display of assigned properties, which can be expanded to see the trace
- Allow disabling of single styles in the trace and the complete style trace ⇒ put into issue 5527.
New Inspector
Firebug should reuse the existing built-in Inspector to avoid conflicts with the page styles.
- Investigate built-in Inspector API
- Investigate related Firebug API
- Replace Firebug Inspector
Net Panel Improvements
Proposed Net panel improvements
- Net panel header should not scroll.
HTML entities
The HTML Panel needs different options how entities are displayed.
There should be three display options inside the HTML panel's options menu:
- Show Entities as Symbols
- Show Entities as Names
- Show Entities as Unicode
- Find out how the API is working exactly
- Implement new mapping function in
lib/string.jsincluding the API
- Implement the new options
Breakpoint Improvements
Several new features related to breakpoints should be introduced. It should be possible to specify how many times a breakpoint should be hit before it breaks the script execution as well as to create and edit breakpoint conditions in the Breakpoints Side Panel.
- Change the Breakpoints side panel to allow inline editing (required for the other tasks)
- Hit count for breakpoints
- Implement hit count into debugger
- Add hit count to Breakpoints side panel
- Move breakpoint condition editing to the Breakpoints side panel
- Add breakpoint condition to Breakpoints side panel
- Add context menu to Breakpoint Column containing option to edit the condition
Group Console Messages
Console messages optionally need to be grouped to avoid spamming the Console Panel.
- Group error messages
- Group messages produced by the 'console' object
Further Suggestions
Please append further suggestions for new 1.10 features in this section so. We'll yet discuss all these suggestions.
Better user feedback
This has been already discussed before. It could be useful to have more feedback from Firebug users and use it for targeted improvements. The feedback should be collected using Testpilot and its related infrustructure and/or through a Firebug extension.
- What specific data should be collected?
- What kind of knowledge we can get from the collected data?
- Issue 2633: Instrumentation for Firebug aka "Help Improve Firebug"
- BugPilot
Mapping of URLs to file system paths
Firebug currently doesn't have any connection to the server files. Many people don't understand that and they are asking how to achieve that. This change would at least allow mapping between local server URLs and the file system.
- How is this related to Firediff?
Integrate more extensions into Firebug
Apart from Firecookie integration, EventBug was asked to be integrated into Firebug. Question was also if further extensions should be integrated:
- FireStarter: No, because it just enhances the current activation model.
- NetExport: Possibly in a future release.
- ConsoleExport: No, export functionality probably won't be used that often.
Instead Swarms should be pushed, so users will install the extensions they need.
Integrate more web dev tools APIs/Components
Firebug should share more APIs with the web dev tools team.
Possible candidates:


text:
City of Delavan considers its Sho-Deen options
DELAVAN—City officials still are considering how to respond to a court decision that might mean 600 new homes just outside the city.
Last week, the town of Delavan board approved the rezoning and conditional use permits necessary for the Sho-Deen Group's plan to build more than 600 homes on an estimated 285 acres. The land is located northwest of the Delavan Lake Inlet at the corner of County F and Mound Road.
The town action followed the District 3 Court of Appeals ruling the city of Delavan could not impose density limits on the subdivision in the town. The city had used its extraterritorial rights and denied a preliminary plat for part of the development. Sho-Deen took the city to court and won. An appeals court affirmed the lower court's opinion.
Delavan City Administrator Denise Pieroni said the city had not decided how—or even if—it will respond to the court's decision.
"We won't know anything until our meeting on March 11, when the city council meets," Pieroni said.
It's possible the city council could hold a special meeting to address the issue, but so far nothing has been planned, Pieroni said.
Pieroni declined to comment on any of the city's options, saying that any options would have to be discussed in closed session.
If the city decided to appeal to the state supreme court, it would have 30 days to do so, according to document from the city's attorney Steven Koch.
The city originally denied the preliminary plat for part of the development because it "failed to comply with the city's extraterritorial land division requirements," Koch wrote.
Sho-Deen's plans for the area in question called for 74 lots over 36 acres with an average lot size of 0.36 acres. The city's land division requirements call for a minimum lot size of one acre. Those requirements were established when the city updated its code in February, 2011. The changes were made to bring the city into compliance with state statutes, Koch wrote.
The area where the Sho-Deen Group plans to build was zoned residential when the company bought the land.
The area had been designated "urban density residential" in long-range plans by the town and county with less than five acres per dwelling. The Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission had designated the area for sanitary sewer service.
Last updated: 4:54 pm Monday, February 24, 2014


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School bus seat belt use is issue in Janesville, state
JANESVILLE—Three years after Janesville became the only school district in the state to have seat belts in school buses, the belts are not always doing the job that officials had foreseen.
The belts work fine, but students don't always wear them, a bus company official said.
"Our experience in the Janesville School District is, they do and they don't," said Allen Fugate, operations manager for Van Galder Bus, which provides school bus service to the district.
Tim Cullen, who was a school board member at the time, championed the cause of school-bus seat belts, getting the school board to agree to pay for belts whenever Van Galder bought a new school bus.
Cullen, now a state senator, announced this week a bill that would make seat belts mandatory on all new Wisconsin school buses.
Fugate calls that idea "admirable," but he suggests the issue is not as clear-cut as it might seem.
"Who wouldn't want their kids in seat belts? But you're leaving the kids to themselves to make sure they're properly belted," Fugate said. "That's the issue; are the things going to be used? Is there any benefit if they're not buckled up?"
"The high school students absolutely refuse to wear them," Fugate said.
Younger students don't always wear them, he said.
Students put their belts on until the bus starts but then get "antsy," Fugate said.
"You can only stop them to a certain extent. How many times are you going to pull the bus over and holler at them?" Fugate asked.
The school district issued a statement in response to a question about enforcing seat belt use, saying the driver is usually the only adult on the bus, and Van Galder owns the equipment, so the driver is in charge of enforcement.
Cullen said some kids might not wear their belts, but it's a small percentage.
Cullen noted that seat belt use in cars keeps rising in Wisconsin, and this generation of schoolchildren has always buckled up in cars, so it's natural for them to do the same in buses.
Cullen noted that everyone must be belted in private cars, but children travel in buses at 55 mph without belts.
Cullen calls that "completely outrageous."
Fugate pointed to the bus industry position, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also touts, that children are protected in school buses by something called compartmentalization.
School buses are high above the traffic, so passengers absorb less of the crash force than they would in cars, the theory goes. In addition, the high, padded seat backs and tightly spaced seats protect students in accidents.
"It's like the kids are in an egg carton. They're compartmentalized in these padded seats," Fugate said.
"There's no such thing when a crash occurs. The kid goes flying," Cullen responded. "If that (compartmentalization) was so safe, why don't the car makers create those kinds of safe seats in cars?
The bottom line is that seat belts save lives, Cullen said.
"It only makes sense to me that we can prevent more injuries by requiring seat belts, especially three-point lap and shoulder safety belts that are required in cars," Cullen said in a news release
Cullen's proposal would require seat belts only in newly manufactured school buses and would require that all passengers on school buses wear seat belts. School buses already on the road would not have to be retrofitted. The bill creates a grant program that would reimburse school districts for half the cost of adding belts to new buses.
The Janesville School Board has paid $141,100 to Van Galder Bus to cover the added costs of equipping buses with three-point belts since 2010. The company now has belts in 11 of its 27 large school buses, Fugate said.
The average cost of the belts comes out to $12,827 per bus.
Small buses, often used to transport students with disabilities, are a different issue. They have had lap belts for many years, as required by federal law.
Cullen noted that Greyhound has installed seat belts in recent years, and he cited an April accident in northeastern Illinois, when a school bus collided with a Jeep, causing the school bus to spin around and tip onto its side. The passengers were not wearing seat belts.
Twenty-five of the 35 passengers were taken to the hospital. Injuries included broken bones from falling from their seats, including an 11-year-old girl with a skull fracture, Cullen said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website recommends that states "take into consideration the increased capital costs, reduced seating capacities, and other unintended consequences associated with seat belts that could result in more children seeking alternative means of traveling to and from school or school-related events."
School buses are statistically safer than other forms of travel, the agency says, so more kids in cars means greater risks.
The agency cites a 2002 National Academy of Sciences study that found about 815 fatalities related to school transportation each year, 2 percent of those associated with official school transportation, compared with 22 percent from walking or bicycling to or from school, and 75 percent from passenger car transportation.
"Pedestrian fatalities account for the highest number of school bus-related fatalities," the website continues. "There are about 17 such fatalities per year, two-thirds of which involve the school bus itself and the rest involving motorists illegally passing the stopped school bus."
The agency concludes that "states and localities should focus their efforts toward improving school bus loading zones."
The National PTA, American College of Preventive Medicine and American academies of pediatrics and orthopedics all call for seat belts in school buses.
The National Association for Pupil Transportation, which advocates for school bus companies, says the federal government should conduct research, including crash tests, to settle the argument.


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Today, Intellectual Property (IP) management is a critical application for innovation-focused enterprises, so having the right product is vital in the success of the organization.
Recently, Lecorpio, a provider of cloud-based IP management and analytics, has been recognized in Hyperion Research's 2014 MarketView Report: IPM Systems for Corporations – further validation of Lecorpio's ability to meet the needs of the world's most innovative and demanding IP organizations. Hyperion's annual report provides corporate IP departments a comprehensive review and assessment of the IPM software market. Out of 27 identified vendors, Lecorpio was one of only seven to achieve Hyperion's Advanced Solution designation and the company earned high marks in the Product Maturity and Implementation categories.
"This kind of independent validation is tremendous for us because it puts Lecorpio at the top of the short list for companies that are serious about best practices in managing their IP," said Mark Bullard, vice president of product management at Lecorpio.
Lecorpio helps companies turn ideas into assets with its suite of applications that span the entire IP supply chain, including invention disclosure management, patent and trademark management, e-billing, licensing management and general matters management. Additionally, the platform includes workflow capabilities that easily configure to a company's business process, and includes an IP dashboard with over 160 key performance indicators.
This year, Lecorpio performed strongly across all categories with significant improvements in Product Features, Technology, Implementation, and Support & Maintenance and even earned the designation of Market Leader and Highly Innovative in these categories:
- Market Leader in User Interface: Advanced UX architecture and design provide flexibility, usability and excellent UI performance
- Market Leader in Prosecution Docketing: Unique template-based prosecution, together with workflows, forms and data validation provide high-quality docketing
- Market Leader in IPM Business Intelligence: New data analytics engine enables multi-dimensional reporting and graphical dashboards
- Highly Innovative in Social Collaboration: Integrated collaboration tools provide advanced information sharing and project management
"Based on our direct evaluation and client references, we have found Lecorpio to be a strong solution option across the full range of IPM requirements from core docketing through the most complex and sophisticated workflows," said Ralph Schroeder, managing director of Hyperion Research. "We recognize Lecorpio as an Advanced Solution provider, placing it amongst a select few in the market for true enterprise-capable IPM solutions."
So, out of 27 vendors, how did Lecorpio achieve Hyperion's Advanced Solution designation? According to Bullard, it all comes down to how Lecorpio is delivering on the company's mission of helping organizations get the most value from their IP. Lecorpio purpose-built a configurable cloud-based solution suite with an advanced workflow-centric architecture, which means the company is able to meet customer needs and market demands at scale.
"By listening closely to enterprise customers — and we have over 500,000 users at this point, so we get a lot of regular feedback — we continuously improve our software and stay ahead of the pack," he explained.
For Product Maturity, Lecorpio's high mark comes from its focus on delivering a rich, reliable feature set. And, with its roots in Silicon Valley, the company does what it takes to accommodate the most innovative companies. On the Implementation side, Lecorpio received high marks because its solution is cloud-based, making installing and maintaining the software efficient and effective. On the user interface (UI) front, Lecorpio provides an end-to-end view of the entire IP supply chain – from idea to asset.
"Our solution has an advanced UX architecture, our design provides flexibility, usability and excellent UI performance, and the suite has extensive UI configurability. The web-based application is compatible with any major browser, as well as mobile browsers on smartphones and tablets. Lastly, personalization enables users to configure their own workspaces, including a user-defined stream capability for monitoring matter activity, a calendar-based activity view, and a new mobility layer that enables custom workflows to be defined for mobile devices," said Bullard.
When it comes to IPM business intelligence, Lecorpio gives organizations visibility into their IP supply chain. The application suite provides a set of visual analytics tools to drive better business decisions at every stage of the process, including 160+ key performance metrics, heat maps, and family tree mapping. Heat maps provide a graphical look at the data and performance against corporate goals, giving enterprise customers the ability to optimize their IP supply chain. The family tree feature provides a visual representation of all related matters and their relationships and easy navigation to explore each matter.
Finally, the IP supply chain brings together many different contributors who have to work in tandem, providing customers with a central communication tool is essential to any IPM solution and it needs to be intuitive so that people will use it. Lecorpio's integrated collaboration tools provide advanced information sharing and project management.
Bullard added, "The bottom line here is that Lecorpio scored so well in the Hyperion Research report because we had the right vision out of the gate, we always listen to what customers tell us will make their lives easier, and we have a corporate culture of continuous improvement in everything we do."
For more news on Intellectual Property, check out these articles:
Beasties win copyright infringement suit against Monster energy drinks
Choosing wisely: Practical considerations for choosing venues for IP disputes
McDermott's Columbia succeeds at patent infringement jury trial for BlackBerry
Supreme Court rules for Limelight in patent infringement appeal


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Drugs & Medications - Aquatensen oral
Aquatensen oral
Common Brand Name(s): Enduron
Aquatensen oral Warnings
Aquatensen oral Uses
This medication is used to treat high blood pressure. Lowering high blood pressure helps prevent strokes, heart attacks, and kidney problems. Methyclothiazide is a "water pill" (diuretic) that causes your body to get rid of extra salt and water. This increases the amount of urine you make.
This medication also reduces extra fluid in the body (edema) caused by conditions such as congestive heart failure, liver disease, and kidney disease. Getting rid of extra water helps to reduce fluid in the lungs so that you can breathe easier. It also helps to decrease swelling of the arms, legs, and stomach/abdomen.
OTHER USES: This section contains uses of this drug that are not listed in the approved professional labeling for the drug but that may be prescribed by your health care professional. Use this drug for a condition that is listed in this section only if it has been so prescribed by your health care professional.
This medication may also be used to treat a condition known as "water diabetes" (diabetes insipidus) and to help prevent calcium kidney stones.How to use Aquatensen oral
Take this medication by mouth with or without food, usually once daily or as directed by your doctor. It is best to avoid taking this medication within 4 hours of your bedtime to avoid having to get up to urinate. Consult your doctor or pharmacist if you have questions about your dosing schedule.
The dosage is based on your medical condition and response to therapy. The manufacturer recommends that you do not take more than 10 milligrams as a single daily dose to treat edema or more than 5 milligrams daily to treat high blood pressure.
Use this medication regularly in order to get the most benefit from it. To help you remember, take it at the same time each day or as prescribed. Do not increase your dose, skip doses, or stop taking this medication unless directed by your doctor. It is important to continue taking this medication even if you feel well. Most people with high blood pressure do not feel sick. For the treatment of high blood pressure, it may take up to several weeks before the full benefit of this drug takes effect.
Cholestyramine and colestipol can decrease the absorption of this medication by your body. If you are taking either of these drugs, separate them from methyclothiazide by at least 4 hours.
Inform your doctor if your condition does not improve or if it worsens (e.g., swelling increases, your routine blood pressure readings increase).
Aquatensen oral Side Effects
Dizziness, lightheadedness, headache, blurred vision, loss of appetite, stomach upset, diarrhea, or constipation may occur as your body adjusts to the medication. You may also experience decreased sexual ability or increased sensitivity to the sun. If any of these effects persist or worsen, notify your doctor or pharmacist promptly.
Remember that your doctor has prescribed this medication because he or she has judged that the benefit to you is greater than the risk of side effects. Many people using this medication do not have serious side effects.
This medication may cause a loss of too much body water (dehydration) and salt/minerals. Tell your doctor right away if you have any of these unlikely but serious symptoms of dehydration or mineral loss: very dry mouth, thirst, muscle cramps, weakness, fast/irregular heartbeat, nausea, vomiting, severe dizziness, unusual drowsiness, fainting, confusion, seizures.
Tell your doctor right away if any of these unlikely but serious side effects occur: numbness/tingling of the arms/legs, joint pain (e.g., big toe pain).
Tell your doctor right away if any of these rare but very serious side effects occur: signs of infection (e.g., fever, persistent sore throat), easy bruising/bleeding, stomach/abdominal pain, persistent nausea/vomiting, unusual/persistent tiredness, yellowing eyes/skin, dark urine, signs of kidney problems (such as change in the amount of urine).
Get medical help right away if you have any very serious side effects, including: decrease in vision, eye pain.
A very serious allergic reaction to this drug is unlikely, but seek immediate medical attention if it occurs. Symptoms of a serious allergic reaction may include: rash, itching/swelling (especially of the face/tongue/throat), severe dizziness, trouble breathing.
This is not a complete list of possible side effects. If you notice other effects not listed above, contact your doctor or pharmacist.
In the US -
Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088 or at www.fda.gov/medwatch.
In Canada - Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to Health Canada at 1-866-234-2345.
Aquatensen oral Precautions
Before taking methyclothiazide, tell your doctor or pharmacist if you are allergic to it; or if you have any other allergies. This product may contain inactive ingredients, which can cause allergic reactions or other problems. Talk to your pharmacist for more details.
This medication should not be used if you have certain medical conditions. Before using this medicine, consult your doctor or pharmacist if you have: severe kidney disease (inability to make urine).
Before using this medication, tell your doctor or pharmacist your medical history, especially of: kidney disease, liver disease, untreated salt/mineral imbalance (e.g., imbalance of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium), loss of too much body water (dehydration), gout, lupus, certain recent nerve surgery (sympathectomy).
If you have diabetes, methyclothiazide may affect your blood sugar levels. Check your blood sugar levels regularly as directed and share the results with your doctor. Tell your doctor right away if you have symptoms of high blood sugar such as increased thirst/urination. Your doctor may need to adjust your anti-diabetic medication or diet.
This drug may reduce the potassium levels in your blood. Ask your doctor about increasing the amount of potassium in your diet (e.g., bananas, orange juice) or about using a salt substitute containing potassium. A potassium supplement may be prescribed by your doctor.
This medication may make you more sensitive to the sun. Avoid prolonged sun exposure, tanning booths, and sunlamps. Use a sunscreen and wear protective clothing when outdoors.
Before having surgery, tell your doctor or dentist that you are taking this medication.
This drug may make you dizzy or cause blurred vision. Do not drive, use machinery, or do any activity that requires alertness or clear vision until you are sure you can perform such activities safely. Limit alcoholic beverages.
To reduce the risk of dizziness and lightheadedness, get up slowly when rising from a sitting or lying position. Significant loss of body water from too much sweating, vomiting, or diarrhea can also lower your blood pressure and worsen dizziness. Drink plenty of fluids to prevent these effects and dehydration. If you are on restricted fluid intake, consult your doctor for further instructions. Contact your doctor if you are unable to drink fluids or if you have persistent diarrhea/vomiting.
Kidney function declines as you grow older. This medication is removed by the kidneys. Therefore, the elderly may be more sensitive to the effects of this drug, especially dizziness.
This medication should be used only when clearly needed during pregnancy. Discuss the risks and benefits with your doctor.
This drug passes into breast milk. While there have been no reports of harm to nursing infants, consult your doctor before breast-feeding.
Aquatensen oral Interactions
See also the How to Use section.
Your healthcare professionals (e.g., doctor or pharmacist) may already be aware of any possible drug interactions and may be monitoring you for it. Do not start, stop, or change the dosage of any medicine before checking with them first.
This drug should not be used with the following medications because very serious interactions may occur: cisapride, dofetilide.
If you are currently using any of these medications, tell your doctor or pharmacist before starting methyclothiazide.
Before using this medication, tell your doctor or pharmacist of all prescription and nonprescription/herbal products you may use, especially of: diazoxide, digoxin, lithium, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (e.g., ibuprofen, indomethacin).
Check the labels on all your medicines (e.g., cough-and-cold products, diet aids, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs-NSAIDs for pain/fever reduction) because they may contain ingredients that could increase your blood pressure (e.g., pseudoephedrine, phenylephrine) or reduce the effect of this medication (e.g., ibuprofen, naproxen). Ask your pharmacist about the safe use of those products.
This product can affect the results of certain lab tests. Make sure laboratory personnel and all your doctors know you use this drug.
This document does not contain all possible interactions. Therefore, before using this product, tell your doctor or pharmacist of all the products you use. Keep a list of all your medications with you, and share the list with your doctor and pharmacist.
Aquatensen oral Overdose
If someone has overdosed and has serious symptoms such as passing out or trouble breathing, call 911. Otherwise, call a poison control center right away. US residents can call their local poison control center at 1-800-222-1222. Canada residents can call a provincial poison control center. Symptoms of overdose may include: severe dizziness, severe weakness, fainting.NOTES:
Do not share this medication with others.
Lifestyle changes such as stress reduction programs, exercise, and dietary changes may increase the effectiveness of this medicine. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist about lifestyle changes that might benefit you.
Laboratory and/or medical tests (e.g., blood mineral levels such as potassium, kidney and liver function tests) should be performed from time to time to monitor your progress or check for side effects. Consult your doctor for more details.
Have your blood pressure checked regularly while taking this medication. Learn how to monitor your own blood pressure, and share the readings with your doctor.MISSED DOSE:
If you miss a dose, take it as soon as you remember. If it is near the time of the next dose, skip the missed dose and resume your usual dosing schedule. Do not double the dose to catch up.STORAGE:
Store in a tightly closed container at room temperature between 59-86 degrees F (15-30 degrees C) away from light and moisture. Do not store in the bathroom. Keep all medicines away from children and pets.
Do not flush medications down the toilet or pour them into a drain unless instructed to do so. Properly discard this product when it is expired or no longer needed. Consult your pharmacist or local waste disposal company for more details about how to safely discard your product.
Information last revised July 2016. Copyright(c) 2016 First Databank, Inc.
Report Problems to the Food and Drug Administration
You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
IMPORTANT: About User Reviews on RxList
RxList is part of the WebMD Health Network. The opinions expressed in the WebMD User Reviews are solely those of the User, who may or may not have medical or scientific training, and do not represent the opinions of WebMD. These member reviews have not been reviewed by a WebMD physician or any member of the WebMD editorial staff for accuracy, balance, objectivity, or any other purpose except for compliance with our Terms and Conditions. Some of these opinions may contain information about uses of the drug products that have not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. WebMD does not endorse any specific product, service or treatment.
WebMD User Reviews should not be considered as medical advice and are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Never delay or disregard seeking professional medical advice from your physician or other qualified healthcare provider because of something you have read on WebMD. You should always speak with your doctor before you start, stop, or change any prescribed part of your care plan or treatment. WebMD understands that reading individual, real-life experiences may be a helpful health information resource but they are never a substitute for professional medical advice from a qualified healthcare provider.


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The Center for Innovative Materials Research (CIMR) at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield has five projects that are expanding its research capabilities:
• The U.S. Army Tank Automotive, Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) has asked LTU to develop testing procedures measuring flammability, smoke and toxicity for composite materials used inside vehicles. The goal is to develop a standard for the military, contractors, and civilian and European agencies.
• CIMR is also testing the impact of environmental conditions on composite materials in military vehicles for TARDEC. These materials are subjected to a cycle of humidity and high and low temperatures.
• The transportation departments of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Oregon have asked CIMR to test a new bridge designed by Nabil Grace, dean of LTU's College of Engineering, that utilizes high-performance concrete and composite materials. A series of tests must be run on a half-scale bridge that is 40 feet long.
• The National Science Foundation is funding research on Grace's design of a deck bulb T-beam bridge to replace the box-beam design prevalent in Michigan. Tests must be run on the high-performance concrete and corrosion-free reinforcing materials.
• The Michigan Department of Transportation has asked Lawrence Tech researchers to test ultrasonic sensors that could provide non-destructive evaluation of deterioration inside concrete.
"We are investing in new testing equipment that will enhance our research capabilities in the future," Grace said.


text:
Illumination Source
Lighting Sources: Know your bulb
Bulbs vary by their type of technology, the amount of light they produce, the amount of energy they use, and the color of the light they emit.
Incandescent Incandescent bulbs are the most commonly used bulbs today. They are inexpensive and widely available, but they are being replaced by more energy efficient choices.
Halogen bulbs Halogen bulbs produce a bright, white light that comes closer to replicating the color spectrum of the midday sun than incandescent bulbs.
Fluorescent Fluorescent bulbs use 20-40% less electricity and can last up to 20 times longer than incandescent bulbs.
LED (Light Emitting Diodes) An LED is a semiconductor chip embedded in a plastic capsule. Because they are small, several LEDs are sometimes combined to produce a single light bulb. LED lighting is vastly more efficient and longer lasting than any other type of light source.
5" Recessed Housing


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Viette Nurseries
Welcome to Viette's
The Viette History
The Viette Gardens
Well Worth the Trip
History of the Gardens
Lectures and Events
Guest Appearances & Special Trips
Viette Appearance Fees
Andre's Lecture Fees
Mark's Lecture Fees
Viette Daylilies, Peonies, Iris
About Daylilies
Daylily Photo Gallery
Daylilies A - D
Daylilies E - J
Daylilies L - O
Daylilies O - S
Daylilies T - Y
New Viette Hybrids A-E
New Viette Hybrids F-L
New Viette Hybrids M-S
New Viette Hybrids S-W
Catalog of Viette Daylilies
All Season Color
Daylily Hybridization
Great Daylily Companions
How to Grow
Keep 'Em Blooming!
Name Your Own Daylily
A Fund Raising Story
All About Peonies
Peony Photo Gallery
Peonies A - M
Peonies M - W
Peony Catalog
How to Grow
Peony Flower Forms
No flowers?
Dividing Peonies
Tree Peonies
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About Tall Bearded Iris
Controlling Iris Borers
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How to Grow Iris
Iris Catalog
Iris Photo Gallery
Tall Bearded Iris
More Great Perennials
Amsonia hubrichtii
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About Hosta
Fabulous Foliage
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All About Garden Soil
Importance of Soil Testing
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About Aphids
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A home compost pile is an inexpensive source of great organic matter.
The following are a few tricks to keep in mind when you create your pile.
Locate your bin in a level, well-drained area with good sunlight & air circulation
Your compost bin(s) should be at least 3'x3'x3' to ensure proper heat build-up
Try to keep the proper ratio of carbon-rich ingredients (browns) and nitrogen-rich ingredients (greens), generally 25-30 parts brown to 1 part green.
"Browns" are dry ingredients and include dry leaves (shredded leaves are best), straw, sawdust or wood chips, shredded newspaper, and the dried trimmings from your garden in spring.
"Greens" are usually fresh and moist and include green grass clippings, weeds from the garden, vegetative kitchen scraps, and manure.
Keep your pile moist but not wet. If it becomes too wet it will begin to stink!
Turn and mix your pile with a pitchfork every 3-4 weeks to increase aeration and ensure that the whole pile begins to decompose. This process is made easier if you turn your compost into a series of 2 or 3 adjacent bins.
Using shredded material and turning your pile more often will produce finished compost much sooner - perhaps in 1-2 months rather than 4-5 months.
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Sheriff: Man told police Aprina Paul's body was in backyard fire
TOWN OF PORTER—A town of Porter man admitted he was with a Dane County teen when she died and told authorities they would find her remains in his fire pit, but he denied killing the woman, Sheriff Robert Spoden said Monday.
Nathan C. Middleton, the 29-year-old whose home near Evansville that has been the focus of a sheriff's office investigation since Friday, remained a person of interest in the case, Spoden said.
Authorities have not yet filed criminal charges against Middleton but he remains in custody at the Rock County Jail on suspicion of probation violation, officials said.
Given what Middleton told them, Spoden said authorities believe the remains they found in the home's fire pit are those of a Fitchburg 18-year-old last seen Oct. 27.
"We are confident that this is Aprina Paul," he said.
Paul had been staying with relatives in Fitchburg, though her permanent home was in Madison, Fitchburg police Lt. Todd Stetzer said.
She was last seen leaving a home in Fitchburg the night of Oct. 27, authorities said. Middleton told police he was with Paul that night, Spoden said, though investigators are working to confirm that.
Middleton and Paul met through a website, Spoden said, though he declined to get any more specific. Stetzer said his department is not releasing information about how Paul and Middleton knew one another.
Middleton told detectives from Fitchburg and the sheriff's office that Paul died inside his home in the 12000 block of West Highway 14 sometime late Oct. 27 or early the morning of Oct. 28 while he was there, Spoden said.
"We have no reason to believe that is not the case," Spoden said.
Middleton also told detectives he did not kill Paul, Spoden said, and gave an explanation for how she died.
That aspect of the story is still being investigated, as authorities try to determine if Paul's death was from homicide or other causes, Spoden said.
When Fitchburg police interviewed Middleton on Friday, he told them Paul's body was in his fire pit, Spoden said, which launched the sheriff's office investigation.
Along with the remains, authorities found what appear to be clothes and items from a purse that had also been burned in a barrel in Middleton's yard, Spoden said.
An intensive weekend search of the property also turned up computer equipment and other physical evidence inside the house, he said, though he declined to elaborate.
Bones and bone fragments recovered from the fire pit will be examined this week, Rock County Coroner Jenifer Keach said.
Investigators still want to confirm Paul is the person they found, Keach said, and are hoping they'll have enough evidence to determine a cause of death. Along with DNA testing, the office also is looking into dental records and other ways to identify the remains, she said.
"We're working on different angles to get her positively identified," Keach said.
Authorities could also send some of the remains to a Chicago-area lab that specializes in examining "burnt bone fragments," Spoden said.
Now, though, Rock County detectives are hoping to retrace Paul's steps before she went missing more than a week ago, Spoden said, to figure out how she might have died.
"Processing that scene and that house and that shed … in itself was very time-consuming," Spoden said. "This is where we actually start to get into the nuts and bolts of the case."
Last updated: 6:18 pm Monday, November 4, 2013


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Passed in 2010, the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is designed to detect offshore banking activities geared toward evading U.S. taxes. The law requires foreign financial institutions and other organizations that accept deposits to identify account holders who may be U.S. taxpayers, then pass on information about those individuals to the IRS so that agency can root out taxes owed. Transactions that involve an undocumented account holder and/or a noncompliant foreign financial institution will be subject to a 30 percent withholding tax.
FATCA will have a large impact on foreign financial institutions. Treasury & Risk sat down with Erick Christensen, vice president and head of the compliance practice at CapGemini, to find out how the law will impact corporate treasurers and other finance managers.
T&R: First of all, what are the impending FATCA deadlines, and who needs to be concerned about them?
Erick Christensen: The first deadlines related to FATCA revolve around getting global intermediary identification numbers (GIINs). Every financial institution that is going to be paying out qualified payments has to sign up with the IRS and get a GIIN that it can present when it goes to settle transactions. It also needs to make sure it's capable of capturing information that comes from correspondent banks. If you're a U.S. bank, most of the work has probably already been done, but if you're a non-U.S. bank or if you're a U.S. bank with foreign subsidiaries, you'll have to get your foreign subsidiaries ready.
T&R: So, only banks have to worry about getting a GIIN?
EC: It's not just banks; it's brokerage firms, it's insurance companies. It's anybody that takes deposits.
T&R: What are the dates for financial institutions around getting a GIIN and registering with the IRS?
EC: July 15, 2013, is when the IRS portal opens and you can apply for this number. The IRS is saying that if you haven't registered by October 25, 2013, you will miss the first publication of GIIN numbers in December. If you miss the first deadline, then you'll start queueing into subsequent time frames. It will start to impact banks pretty dramatically if they can't get this GIIN number in place and start to show it when they settle transactions.
The law also says that on January 1, 2014, financial institutions have to have a new on-boarding system for customers, to identify whether new clients are U.S. taxpayers.
T&R: What are the biggest challenges banks will face in becoming compliant with FATCA?
EC: Well, FATCA is the U.S. regulation, but the implementation of FATCA in foreign countries is being done through what we refer to as intergovernmental agreements, or IGAs. These are agreements that the U.S. Treasury enters into with foreign governments. They take FATCA, the U.S. law, and make it the law of the land in another country. Most countries have privacy laws that prevent financial institutions from sharing client data with a foreign government. Under the IGA, banks provide client information to the local tax authority, and then the local tax authority ships it over to the IRS. This eliminates the privacy law conflict, but there are inconsistencies between the FATCA rules and the IGA rules, so financial institutions have to set up different processes in different countries. A large bank that operates in 50 countries may have 50 separate processes that it'll have to go through to comply with FATCA.
T&R: How will this affect banking customers? Do you anticipate that costs will increase?
EC: Well, some industry analysis has determined that the total cost for global financial institutions to become compliant with FATCA will be almost $1 trillion over 10 years. It's a little too soon to tell whether they will pass those costs on to clients, but someone's going to have to pay for it. For global institutions that operate in 40, 50, 80 countries, becoming completely compliant with FATCA may cost up to $250 million over the next four or five years. In each country, they'll have to do analysis, put processes in place, and be able to report up to the local tax authority. That's a lot of work, and the time frames are relatively short.
T&R: For corporate finance departments, will this mean slower processes when working with banks?
EC: If a bank doesn't use software to automate FATCA compliance—maybe they want to extend out the spend on updating all their systems—the time to on-board new clients is going to get extended. If you currently take 30 days to on-board a new client, including all your AML [anti-money laundering] checks and suitability checks, then adding FATCA checks could increase your on-boarding time to 60 days or 90 days. This could be frustrating for companies because they won't be able to do business with a new financial institution until the on-boarding process is complete.
The other piece of this is, if a bank goes through the series of questions it needs to ask new clients and one of the questions triggers a "yes," then that client has U.S. indicia, meaning the person is potentially a U.S. taxpayer. So then the bank has to go back to the client and say, "Our information shows that you are potentially a U.S. taxpayer. If you are, please certify to us that you are. And if you're not, provide us with the documentation to rebut the presumption that you are a U.S. person." Banks have to have documentation to show the tax authorities why they made a particular determination on whether a client is or isn't a U.S. person. (See the sidebox "Requirements for determining U.S. indicia.")
T&R: For a corporate treasurer who's trying to work with a new financial institution, will this translate into a lot more paperwork?
EC: For big, publicly traded companies, it has no impact to at all. The challenge is for smaller entities, where the bank has to pierce through the entity to determine whether there's a controlling investor who might be a U.S. person. The threshold is 10 percent or 25 percent ownership, depending on which country you're in. If an individual owns more than that threshold, the bank has to get information on whether that individual is a U.S. person. Or if there's a company that holds an amount over the threshold, then the bank needs to go to that company and determine whether it has any controlling investors and get information on their U.S. taxpayer status. For a privately held company that is owned by an individual or a family, this can become a very elongated and invasive process.
T&R: Will a company go through this process only once, or will it have to go through the same process every time it works with a new financial institution?
EC: That's a good question. I was in Spain recently, talking to some clients, and one of the things that came up was whether financial institutions can come together and create a database of information about their clients. A lot of them have the same clients, so why does everybody have to replicate the same piece of information over and over? The answer is that privacy laws prevent the sharing of client-level data between financial institutions, although two groups within the same organization can share information. Suppose that Company A is owned by Family B. If Company A opens an account in the wealth area at HSBC and then wants to go open an account in HSBC investment banking, the wealth area can share the company's FATCA information with investment banking. But if Company A goes from HSBC and wants to open an account at RBS, RBS will have to collect all the same data.
T&R: What happens if a company's answers to the questions about U.S. indicia change over time?
EC: Financial institutions have to be notified of any change in circumstance so that they can determine whether they have a U.S. person within the schema and they can figure out whether that triggers an occurrence that is reportable to the tax authorities. For example, one of the questions FATCA asks is: Do you have a U.S. green card? Let's say when a bank does the initial on-boarding of Company A, no one has a green card. But then a member of Family B goes to work in the U.S. and gets a green card. That person becomes a U.S. taxpayer at that point in time.
T&R: In that case, would the company have to go out and proactively notify all its banks?
EC: The way the law is written, the financial institution has to be aware of any changes in circumstances that would change the company's categorization. So the financial institution has to tell clients to notify it if anything changes. Now, if the client lies or withholds something, the bank is not liable for rooting out that information. But if the bank knows about a change—even if the client doesn't mention it—then the bank has an obligation to get that information verified.
T&R: And if you're a finance person, this is something that you're supposed to be doing.
EC: Yes. Suppose you're a finance person in a family-held company that is owned by two brothers. They've always lived in Canada, and each of them owns 50 percent of the company. All of a sudden one brother gets a green card in the U.S.—or buys a condo in Florida so that he has a forwarding address in the U.S., which is one of the indicia of U.S. persons. Once that happens, the corporate finance person would have to go to the company's banks and say, "Hey, we've got a change in circumstance. Brother B has bought a place and now has a forwarding address in the U.S." That doesn't necessarily mean that he's a U.S. taxpayer now, but the financial institutions have to look into it.
AML is similar. To on-board someone through AML, banks ask a bunch of questions: How much money is going to pass through the account? Where is it going to come from? And if you're going to invest with a brokerage firm, they have to ask you a bunch of questions about your investment suitability, your experience, things like that. FATCA is an extension of where the regulations are going. As a corporate finance person, you have to have that information available to pass on if there's a change of circumstances.
T&R: So, this is where regulations are going?
EC: When FATCA was first announced, no one thought it would ever see the light of day. It was too draconian, too intrusive; it was the U.S. being extra-territorial. They would never be able to enforce it. Well, now it's been enacted, and it's rolling forward. And other tax authorities around the world are starting to see this as an opportunity to capture revenue from their own taxpaying base. Last month, the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain announced that they are working together to create a sharing of information, and they're patterning it after FATCA and the IGAs. So financial institutions around the globe are going to start asking not just about U.S. persons, but is it a U.K. person? Is it a French person? Is it an Italian? They're going to want more and more information about their clients so that they can pass it on to the appropriate regulatory authorities.
T&R: Ultimately, the finance people in a private company that has several owners around the world will need to keep track of every time they buy a house?
EC: Well, yeah. If you're a privately held company in Canada that does business in the U.S., and an owner of your business buys a home in a third country, all these different tax authorities—which the corporate finance team was not previously engaged around—are going to start asking questions. If you wire money to France to buy a house, you're going to be a client over there, and that financial institution is going to want to know more about your company. Transparency around taxpaying is a huge initiative around the globe right now. Even the secrecy and the privacy that the Swiss have long held are starting to crumble on a daily basis. And it's because of the pressure from tax authorities that are saying, "We need to know, because tax evasion is a huge problem."


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What's going on here? Darien diner getting a face lift
DARIEN--The West Wind Diner, a popular restaurant for truckers and local residents, is getting a face lift.
"We've been in the same restaurant for 14 years," said restaurant manager Shqiprim Xheladini. "This is our way of saying, 'Thank You' to our customers."
Xheladini is the son of restaurant owner and cook Advije Isa.
The restaurant's exterior will get a new fa�ade that is part stone, part stucco. A new patio also will be added.
"I can see businessmen stopping there after work for a drink," Xheladini said.
Inside, the d�cor will be going from "country" to "rustic modern," he said. Ceramic tile designed to look like hardwood floors will be installed.�
The restaurant eventually hopes to get a license to sell beer and wine.
Xheladini hopes to make the restaurant a little more "upscale, more of a family restaurant." The menu will change slightly, but restaurant regulars will be able to get their favorite dishes, such as biscuits and gravy.
Xheladini expects the work to be completed before Christmas.
Last updated: 5:50 pm Monday, November 4, 2013


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VAQ -134 "Garudas" Decal
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This decal is OUTSIDE APPLICATION and usually ships with 3-6 business days. The larger sizes typically take longer because they are made to order. Like all of our products, this item carries a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee.
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Death notices for Sept. 7, 2013
William W. House, 76, Beloit, died Wednesday at Alden Meadow Park Nursing Home, Clinton. Services will be at 2 p.m. Thursday at Hansen-Gravitt Funeral Home, Beloit. Visitation will be from noon until the time of services Thursday at the funeral home.
Jean Alice Martin, 94, Beloit, died Thursday at home. Services will be at 11:30 a.m. Friday at Wesley Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Beloit. Visitation will be from 10:30 a.m. until the time of services Friday at the church.
Patricia Ann McCann, 47, Beloit, died Thursday at home. Services will be from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday at Rosman, Uehling, Kinzer Funeral Home and Crematorium, Beloit.
Elizabeth M. "Betty" Perdue, 63, East Troy, died Aug. 30 at home. A celebration of life will be from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12, at the Milton High School library, with a time of sharing at 5:30 p.m. Schneider Apfel Schneider & Schneider Funeral Home and Crematory, Janesville, is assisting the family.
Ramon C. Selvera, 78, Delavan, died Thursday at home. Services will be at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at St. Andrews Catholic Church, Delavan. Visitation will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday at Betzer Funeral Home, Delavan.
Paul E. Tjaden, 63, Janesville, died Wednesday at home. Services will be at noon Monday at Whitcomb-Lynch Funeral Home & Cremation Services, Janesville. Visitation will be from 10 a.m. until the time of services Monday at the funeral home.


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Villawood population statistics
Villawood population statistics including population, dwellings, age, employment, ethnicity, religion, income in an accurate, up-to-date, website.
Did you mean...
Population statistics for Villawood can be found for the period 1991 to 2011 (latest Census) in a series of demographic websites. The data is sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, compiled by population experts, .id and funded by the local council, so you can be confident when using the figures that they are up to date and accurate.
These websites convert detailed population data into stories of place. How many people live in an area, what are their characteristics, how are they changing and how do they compare to other areas?
Data for Villawood includes age structure, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, income, qualifications, occupations, employment, unemployment, disability, disadvantage, volunteering, childcare, family structure, household structure, housing tenure, mortgage and rental payments, and the size and type of the dwellings people live in. For some areas population forecasts and economic information are also available.
The data in simple, clear tables, maps and charts with concise factual commentary for use by community groups, investors, business, students and the general public.


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Death notices for Feb. 7, 2014
Gazette staff
Friday, February 7, 2014
Frederick A. Berg, 71, Janesville, died Thursday at Agrace HospiceCare, Fitchburg. Arrangements are pending at Schneider Apfel Schneider & Schneider Funeral Home and Crematory, Janesville.
Marian Rose Jensen, 85, Janesville and Orfordville, died Wednesday at Cedar Crest Health Care Center, Janesville. Services will be at 11 a.m. Monday at Luther Valley Lutheran Church, Beloit. Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Sunday at Newcomer-Silverthorn Chapel on the Hill, Orfordville, and from 10 a.m. until the time of services Monday at the church.