text:
[Last September, Kirk Woodward contributed a profile of George Bernard Shaw (published on ROT on 5 September). One of the greatest fans of the Anglo-Irish playwright in this country is Eric Bentley, arguably one of our most prominent public intellectuals and theater authorities. Kirk acknowledges that Bentley is one of his strongest influences, going back to his teen years, and in "Eric Bentley – An Appreciation," Kirk presents a view of the American writer and critic that's tinged not a little with his personal attraction.
[Kirk mentions in passing that he had a brief encounter with Bentley in a Manhattan theater bookstore sometime back before 2000. I had my own brief meeting with Bentley at another theater bookstore in Manhattan. Somehow I'd been invited to a 70th birthday party for Bentley hosted by Applause Books on the Upper West Side in 1986. I'm ashamed to report that I have no recollection of what we said to one another on that occasion; obviously it wasn't especially significant. Of course, it was a social occasion, so maybe that's an excuse.]
As I write this piece, Eric Bentley is living in New York City at the age of ninety-six. This means that at this moment, at least, we still have among us possibly the greatest writer about theater who has ever lived, and I include Aristotle in that estimate, particularly since we're not certain that what we have of Aristotle's comments on theater – and on drama, a distinction I will return to – isn't some student's lecture notes.
Being – let's say it again for argument's sake – the greatest theater critic in the world doesn't necessarily make one well-known. I met Bentley once, in the Drama Book Shop at its former location on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. I had seen a notice that said he would be signing books at the "DBS" one evening, so I went, bought a book, and took it over to him so he could autograph it.
He was standing by himself on one side of the room, gamely waiting for someone to come along. I remember him as looking rather small, and quite dapper. I told him about his influence on me (a story I will recount below), and he listened politely, said thank you, and signed my book. That was that. My major emotion was mortification that he wasn't surrounded by a crowd of eager listeners, but then New York can be a blasé town.
My experience with Bentley begins with my parents' purchase, through the old Literary Book Club, of a book by Bentley called In Search Of Theatre that, perhaps wrongfully, I assume my parents never read. But I did. I devoured the book, which is made up of about seven years' worth of essays written about theater all over the world, between 1947 and 1953. When I read the book I must have been in my early teens. My ideas about theater were heavily influenced by the book, and I still return to it often.
A few biographical details: Eric Bentley was born in Great Britain in 1916, studied at Oxford (under C. S. Lewis, professor of literature, popular theologian, and author of the Tales of Narnia stories) and then, moving to the United States, at Yale. He taught at Columbia University and reviewed drama for the New Republic for four years. He has forged a number of careers for himself in addition to teaching, criticism, and reviewing; he has also been a director, a translator, a playwright, an editor of a number of important collections of plays, and a noted musical artist, performing and recording the songs of Bertolt Brecht, whose works he more or less introduced to the United States.
His doctoral thesis for Yale was published as A Century Of Hero Worship (1944), a book I have never warmed to. The book that followed, The Playwright As Thinker, has been credited with helping make the study of playwriting a respectable academic field in the United States. The next year he published Bernard Shaw, which he said was the first book written about Shaw by someone who hadn't met him. In Search Of Theatre followed in 1953; then The Dramatic Event and What Is Theatre?, his collections of New Republic reviews, in 1954 and 1956; his Brecht Commentaries in 1981; and Thinking About The Playwright in 1987.
Bentley's best known book, however, is The Life Of The Drama (1964). Bentley has complained about the book's notoriety, saying that it's drawn attention away from the rest of his work. It is certainly his most teachable book, because it contains a systematic approach to drama, while much of his criticism is contained in collections of short pieces. With this exception, his books do not appear to be staples of the academic world. How then can I claim his superiority as a critic of theater? Much of the answer has to do with the natures of theater, of drama, and, of course, of academia.
As I'm using the word, theater is an immediate, present-moment activity, and each moment of a theatrical performance is unique. One might object that plays are rehearsed with the object of making them the same every time. However, that goal, if it is a goal (not all directors feel it is), of making every live performance the same, simply cannot be achieved, because for the experience to be exactly the same at each performance is impossible, whether for audience member or for actor. Moods, knowledge, relationships, all undergo modification each day, even each minute. As T. S. Eliot writes in The Four Quartets:
Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;(The Dry Salvages)
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
As a result, almost any actor will testify that, like snowflakes, no two nights' performances in theater are ever exactly alike. (Even in film, directors demand numerous takes of scenes because each take, for whatever reason, is different.) We may ignore this fact because typically we may see only one performance of a play, making it seem that the one performance is the performance. Also, performances can be filmed, taped, or digitally recorded, freezing them in time. Live performances of the play itself, however, are not frozen; they move forward in time, picking up subtle or not-so-subtle alterations as they go.
On the other hand, as opposed to theater, drama, as I'm using the word, means, in practice, the reading and understanding of scripts and the theory that can be derived from them, and drama can be taught in schools. Theater, however, is never a fixed point. So in general Bentley, to the extent that he writes about theater rather than drama, is not and cannot be a systematic writer, a fact that makes it difficult for the academic world to take full advantage of his work, despite the years he spent as a teacher. It is much easier to gain academic recognition for subjects that aren't moving targets.
However, I believe that without imposing an arbitrary structure on Bentley's writing on theater, we can find teachable principles there, and as for drama, the success of The Life Of The Drama in the academic world is clear. I want to lay out an approach to Bentley's writing on theater using primarily In Search Of Theatre, the book that introduced me to Bentley in the first place, and then look at the theory of drama presented in The Life Of The Drama. (Since the words "theater" and "drama" are often used interchangeably, I am grateful to Bentley that he titled his books in the way I'm using the words!)
The title In Search Of Theater illustrates in itself the difficulty of teaching theater: if you want to see it, you have to go out and look for it. In Search Of Theater is written, much of it, on the road, between 1947 and 1953. It begins with a series of reports on theater in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Dublin . . . the geographic range of the book is dazzling. Nor is that all. It also contains detailed looks at, among others, Strindberg, Ibsen, Pirandello, Yeats (his plays), O'Neill, and at a number of the greatest performers of the time, including, among others, Jean-Louis Barrault, Martha Graham, and Charlie Chaplin.
If only because of how much it describes, the book would be a treasure, but the quality of the description is just as important. When I first read the book I knew almost nothing about any of the people Bentley writes about, but subsequent experience has validated his observations time after time. But what I learned from the book, even more than a remarkable amount of reporting, was a first principle that I would cite in making a case for Bentley's importance: the distinction, which I will put in the italics he loves, between the spurious and the genuine.
An example occurs in the essay "Trying To Like O'Neill" where Bentley describes his experience directing a production (in Switzerland) of The Iceman Cometh:
There seemed to [Bentley and his co-director] to be in The Iceman Cometh a genuine and a non-genuine element, the former, which we regarded as the core, being realistic, the latter, which we took as inessential excrescence, being expressionistic. . . . To get to the core of reality in The Iceman – which is also its artistic, its dramatic core – you have to cut away the rotten fruit of unreality around it. More plainly stated: you have to cut.
There are, Bentley suggests, genuine and spurious elements in the play, and the task – in this case, the director's task – is to separate the one from the other.
One might make a case that there is no distinction between "genuine" and "spurious" in theater – that all theater is artifice. That might be so if theater were not, as Bentley continually insists, a part of life, not to mention a reflection of it.
Bentley is at base a moral writer. Like Shaw, he believes that theater matters, and that what it shows as it "holds the mirror up to nature" makes a difference. So there is truth and falsity, he insists, in theater. How can we tell which is which?
It is not enough, Bentley says, to be on "the right side" of issues about life. That too can be spurious, even if the impulse is itself moral. "The road to good theater," Bentley writes, "is not paved with good intentions." Looking at Broadway plays of the time, he writes:
A "serious play" is one with a message or at least with modern – preferably liberal – ideas in it. You can easily change any non-serious play into a serious play by changing the color of the heroine and inserting a speech or two against race hatred. The formula for serious drama is: non-serious drama plus a small dose of "modern ideas."
Nor must we think that the spurious is necessarily harmless. A report from 1949 finds Bentley in Italy, only five years after the end of World War II and the apparent demise of the Fascist regime:
They have removed the statue of Mussolini from the Teatro delle Arti in Rome. Behind the statue, however, there were Fascist inscriptions inlaid in the wall. These, I am told, have not been removed; they are simply hidden, for the time being, by a curtain. . . . You don't see anything as candid as a piece of Fascist propaganda in the Italian theater. The statue of the Duce is gone and the inscriptions are curtained off. It is the special aestheticism of the Fascist era that persists.
In some ways the distinction between the genuine and the spurious is almost the same as between the generalized and the specific. There is a general idea, for example, he says, that Pirandello's subject matter is "illusion and reality." That's too general, Bentley says, and he goes on to demonstrate how Pirandello's plays are rooted in the real suffering that people endure. "Real" – another possible opposition of words in Bentley's work is realism and – what? Vagueness? Generality? Non-specificity?
I haven't found a useful antonym in Bentley's writing, but realism is central to his writing, not in the sense of a kind of theater that uses store-bought kitchen sinks and actual running water, but in the sense of a theater that is in touch with the truths of life. In his introduction Bentley quotes Shaw: "When an art becomes effete, it is realism that comes to the rescue." Art, Bentley suggests, is always becoming effete; realism is always needed.
I would not have to search for an antonym to "real" if I were writing about Shaw; a word would be at hand, the ideal. Bentley, I have already mentioned, wrote a book about Shaw, and although hardly uncritical of Shaw (particularly Shaw's later turn toward dictators and the use of force to bring about change), is significantly influenced by him.
Shaw's antonym for "realism" is idealism. In "ideals" – I am putting this concept in my own terms – Shaw sees generalities that take the place of understanding the real – that word again – the real nature of the world. What sort of ideals? Love . . . patriotism . . . nationalism . . . fatherhood . . . motherhood . . . any high-sounding, well-meaning generality can conceal an ideal that takes the place of serious analysis and comprehension.
Bentley's reviews abound in illustrations of this phenomenon. Here, for example, is his comment on the works of Jean Cocteau, the French playwright, filmmaker, and poet:
There is brilliant writing in Les Parents. There are lovely visual images in the more romantic films. What is disturbing is the awful vacuity of all these pieces, a deliberate but in no way justified meaninglessness. Or are we supposed to find significance in some of the nice things that are said to us? The film of The Eagle ends, if I recall, with a narrator's voice assuring us that love is more powerful than politics. Tell it to Molotov [who was at that time the foreign minister of Stalin's Soviet Union].
I could cite numerous passages in Bentley's writing that make this same point. Just as interesting is what he sees as the remedy: no magic formula, no "silver bullet," but the firm intention to get down to the real core of the theatrical moment, using what he describes as a "humble, yet deliberate and determined approach," as in this passage on staging the plays of Shakespeare:
As for realism, I am not offering it as a panacea, but only a timely banner – modern, without quotation marks – under which Shakespeare might be more seriously interpreted. It appropriately suggests that one should start with the simplest, solidest rudiments . . . . [T]oday is a time to go back to the beginnings and realize that, in taking another look, we are seeing things for the first time. We must be content to rediscover the Shakespearean A B C. Let the director ask himself the naïvest questions of each scene. … And to the degree that he answers them in action, forthrightly, clearly, he will find himself a path-breaker.
And what will that director find as he breaks that new path? To discover Bentley's answer, or part of it, we turn to the much more systematic The Life Of The Drama. Before we do, however, in fairness to Bentley I must acknowledge again that he is not happy that this book is all that many people know about him, and he's right to feel that way.
For example, his work as a translator is well known, and so is his commentary on what the work of a translator is and how it is done (see in particular "How Translate A Play?" [sic] in Thinking About The Playwright). One comes away from his essays on the subject awed by the difficulty of the translator's task, and energized by the examples.
Bentley's career as a playwright, which he began fairly late in his life, is also substantial. Interestingly, the play for which he is best known, Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been, is literally realistic, being based on the transcripts of hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s. I have no experience with his singing and recording career, but it has been widely acknowledged.
Still, The Life Of The Drama is an exceptional book, a landmark, and it deserves the attention it has received. The book is divided into two sections. The first looks at plays in terms of plot, character, dialogue, thought, and "enactment." The second looks at genres of drama: melodrama, farce, tragedy, comedy, and what Bentley, at a loss for a better word (I don't have one either), calls "tragi-comedy," a category that includes plays by writers as different as Chekhov and Beckett, Goethe and Brecht.
One might suppose from an outline of the book that it presents reasoned descriptions and comments on the areas and genres listed. In a way this is true, but what the book really does is more surprising: it looks at the emotional, rather than just the intellectual, foundations on which drama is built. Bentley's comment on the book, in an interview with the Voice of America, is significant:
My friends had said it would be an elaboration of Brecht's ideas. I myself thought it might be Aristotle's Poetics as rephrased by a Freudian – I was being "analyzed" in those years. What surprised me was that the philosophy of theatre in the book wasn't either Brecht (my father) or Freud (my guru at the time) but Pirandello, one of a number of Europeans I had translated. He saw life as role playing.
Bentley's friends, one may assume, thought he would write a restatement of Brecht's ideas because Bentley is so closely identified with Brecht, whom he knew and with whom he directed, and whose plays and poems he translated. But Bentley is clear that Brecht has his faults and limitations, telling the Voice of America that what interested him was Brecht's "savvy, his talent, his genius, anything but his theories." Bentley is forthright about the elements in Brecht that he finds genuine, and those that he finds spurious.
With the reference to Freud, we come closer to the heart of the book, because in its pages Bentley looks at the "subterranean" life of the drama, the emotions and impulses and instincts that emerge, masked by the veneer of civilization, in the way we behave in our everyday activities. We put on a civilized face in our day to day life, but beneath that face – that role playing – boils an emotional brew that begins to be created in our first moments as infants, that develops particularly in our formative years, and that never goes away, and that in moments of greatest conflict emerges in behavior worthy to be captured in a play, sometimes as comedy or tragedy, and often, perhaps more appropriately, as melodrama or farce.
I don't mean to suggest that Bentley reduces drama to psychology. For one thing, "psychology" is too timid a word for the forces that surge and roar in the subconscious. As the Bible says, our minds ("the wicked," the verse says) are "like the sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no rest…" (Isaiah 57:20-21 edited). We see these forces at work in our dreams, and in a sense drama is a projection of those dreams onto the stage.
A good actor will look at a character role on several levels. There is the level of meaning, of interpretation and significance. There is the level of behavior, of our attempts to remain civilized in the face of all the obstacles that threaten to drag us down. And there is the subterranean level, the dream level, the level where great forces struggle for mastery within us.
Macbeth, for example, gives us the interpretive level of questions of fate and inevitability, of individual responsibility and of helplessness in the face of circumstances, including those of our own nature. It also gives us the behavioral level, as Macbeth and his wife move within their social circles in an ever-accelerating cycle of violence. And it gives us the subterranean level that surfaces in the presence of the Weird Sisters, and that provides the forces that make a man capable of murdering father figures, children, people who might conceivably oppose him . . . powerful forces indeed.
Bentley refuses to consider these emotional tsunamis as any less important to the drama than the civilized behavior that both embodies them and covers them up. This refusal makes it possible for him to see with remarkable clarity the importance of elements of drama that might at first glance seem random or trivial, as in this discussion of a "bit" in a Charlie Chaplin movie:
Suppose you saw one man force the head of another through the glass of a street lamp so that the latter will be gassed by the fumes. It sounds like some Nazi atrocity, and Plato would no doubt be indignant at the notion of re-enacting the incident in a work of art. Nevertheless it was re-enacted in Charlie Chaplin's film Easy Street, and in all the years no one has protested. . . . The villain is a giant whose strength passes the limits of nature. He can bend lamp posts with his bare hands. Since the "little man's" revenges have to be more than proportionate to the provocation . . . he can drop a cast-iron stove on the villain's head and ram that head inside a street lamp with the gas turned on.
This vivid set of images – including the giant, a figure out of a dream world – shocks by its violence, and yet it only represents moments in a funny and popular film. But all three of the levels of living that we have described here – the interpretive, the social, and what I'm calling the subterranean – are at work in those moments. The strength of Bentley's book is that he is able to make us understand that the more fearsome aspects of ourselves are not factors to be ignored, but to be embraced and understood, in any discussion of drama.
As a result, the book, in my experience at any rate, takes on extraordinary interest. No matter how many times I read it, I find passage after passage that is startling and nourishing. Not least of the great things in it is its continual common sense. For example, my recollection is that in his book Tragedy And Comedy, Walter Kerr disparages the popular idea that the difference between the two is that tragedy ends sadly and comedy ends happily. Bentley, on the contrary, writes:
The popular definition of a word, like the popular understanding of a subject, always irritates the expert, but is always of great interest in itself, and usually provides an ideal starting point for study. The popular understanding of tragedy and comedy is simply that one has an unhappy, the other a happy, ending: that one ends in death, the other in marriage, which will lead to birth: that, by consequence, the one is represented by a mourning and weeping mask, the other by a rejoicing and laughing mask. All these propositions are full of sap and substance.
Kerr accused Bentley of an over-intellectual approach to drama, but who is the intellectual here? It is Bentley who sees truth in the popular understanding of tragedy and comedy. He can do so because he understands that we all share the psychological makeup that turns some of us into neurotics, some into playwrights…
I could continue to write at length about Bentley's work, but I hope what I have said gives a glimpse of how interesting a writer he is. He is startlingly intelligent and well-read; he irritates, provokes, stimulates. He can be belligerent or eccentric – the price, perhaps, that one pays for caring about art in a sometimes unfriendly climate. He is like some marvelous conversationalist, rattling on about one's favorite subject, raising the status of a chatterbox to high art, providing startling insights on nearly every page.
Criticism, Bentley writes in Thinking About The Playwright, "is good talk committed to the printed page. Even a critic is a person. No: especially a critic is a person, and the voice of a person must be heard in all his work. Conversely, all criticism in which a human voice is not heard is bad criticism." Words to live by!
I am so grateful for all that his writing has done for me, and for the theater, and for our understanding of the mystery and complexity of our lives, and of how they are reflected in art.
[I said above that I'd met Bentley briefly at a reception for his 70th birthday. I don't know for certain why my name was on the invitation list, but I had been in contact with Bentley earlier that year—we'd never met; it was correspondence only—and that might have accounted for my invitation. In the mid-'80s, I edited two theatrical newsletters, one for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America (now ". . . of the Americas") and the other for the now-defunct American Directors Institute. ADI organized panel discussions and conferences to promote a better understanding, both among the public and among theater professionals, of what stage directors and artistic directors actually do. (You might be surprised how little most people understand that.) In November 1986, ADI held its second conference, Symposium II: The Director's Vision, and had invited Eric Bentley to give the keynote address. Bentley turned us down and in two letters to ADI's artistic director, Geoffrey Shlaes, explained his attitude toward the profession of stage director. In the Winter 1986 issue of Directors Notes, I ran excerpts from those letters, dated 20 June and 12 July, to share some of Bentley's provocative thoughts with ADI's members. Among his statements, Bentley wrote: "I don't believe in a Director's Theatre. . . . No director is needed: the function is properly performed by either the playwright (Molière, Brecht) or the leading actor (Booth, Irving)" and "A constant irritant is the Nutty Production. You set a story in another time and another place—the more inappropriate, the better. That is how to make your name as a brilliant young director." He also declared that "while in technology there is progress, in the arts there is not; otherwise Arthur Miller would be a better playwright than Aeschylus." (By the way, amidst his disparagement of directors, Bentley also called dramaturgs "Ph.D. gofers" and warned that he'd "remove [dramaturgs] one day before removing [directors].")]


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Corporate Tax Compliance, Associate, Birmingham
- Recruiter
- Location
- West Midlands
- Salary
- Competitive
- Posted
- 16 Apr 2018
- Closing date
- 16 May 2018
- Industry
- Finance & accounting, Accountancy, Financial services, Legal, Commercial, Technology, IT support
- Job function
- Finance
- Job level
- Experienced (non manager)
- Hours
- Full time
- Contract
- Permanent
- Listing type
- Job vacancy
About the team
Compliance Services currently employs approximately 350 people across the UK in a number of different areas, Corporate Tax, Global Mobility, Private Client and Accounting Services.
There is opportunity to progress to senior associate grades, based on overall performance of the duties above together with studying for one of the relevant qualifications (see below).
About the role
Your responsibilities will include a wide range of tasks, some of which are detailed below::
- Produce and send data requests to clients and taxpayers.
- Handle client queries in relation to data requests and escalate them to the Data Technician as necessary.
- Collect, validate, process and transform client tax data received
- Preparation and completion of a wide range of corporation tax computations
- Tax accounting
- Technical research
- Dealing directly with clients and attending meetings, where required.
- Establishing and developing third party relationships e.g. HMRC, other related stakeholders
- Drafting correspondence for client related work
- Opportunities to work in other areas of Compliance Services such as Private Client Compliance.
Essential skills and experience
- The candidate must have ATT, CFAB or similar qualification. There will be an opportunity to study further relevant qualifications.
- The candidate should have relevant work experience from a similar professional environment.
Who we're looking for
CS provides a range of compliance services including preparing accounts and tax returns, to enable clients to meet their statutory obligations. You will join a team of experts who specialise in Corporate Tax Compliance.The team provide clients with advice on various Compliance issues including paying and minimising their tax liabilities. Your role will be to provide them with support and assistance in a demanding yet rewarding environment.
Location: Birmingham
We help organisations and the people who run them answer the big business questions. How should we raise finance? Where should we be based? How should we reward our people? With some 3,300 experts whose expertise covers every conceivable area of taxation, we're one of the UK's leading tax practices.
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We work in a changing world which offers great opportunities for people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. We seek to attract and employ the best people from the widest talent pool, as well as those who reflect the diverse nature of our society. And we aim to encourage a culture where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths. Creating value through diversity is what makes us strong as a business and as an organisation with an increasingly agile workforce, we're open to flexible working arrangements where appropriate.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Office Naughtiness Ch. 02byGeorgeTasker©
Erica stretched, holding the heavy box of files above her head as she tried to place it on the high shelf. The pretty young secretary was about an inch short of reaching.
"Here, let me help you," said Paul Anderson, her boss. He stepped up behind the beautiful blonde, placing his hands around her slim waist to offer her support. As she reached for the shelf again he tried to lift her up. Instead, his hands slipped up off her hips, slithering around the front of her torso and sliding up over the underside of her heavy breasts, cupping the ample melons through her top.
Erica gasped as her boss squeezed her large, full breasts through her top. She felt him press up against her from behind, the clearly discernable bulge of his crotch rubbing up against her ass.
"Wh...what are you doing Mr Anderson?" Erica stammered as he thoroughly groped her big tits.
"Oops, sorry babe, my hands slipped," he apologised, giving her nipples a tweak through the thin material of her top before he finally released her breasts and stepped back. "Why don't you let me put that box away."
Erica wordlessly handed him the box and hurried off, biting down an angry comment as she made a bee-line for the corner office where Maria Chessman, the branch manager was located.
"He's impossible!" she furiously declared as she entered Ms Chessman's office and took a seat in front of the attractive brunette's desk without being invited.
Maria glanced up in surprise. "Hello Erica."
"We need to get rid of that slime-ball now!" snapped Erica, still raging from the groping she'd just been on the receiving end of.
Maria nodded and smiled. "I've got an idea about that. We've simply got to get some evidence of Mr Anderson's bad behaviour, then you can take that to Jim O'Reilly. I won't be involved at all."
Erica nodded slowly in response. "What sort of evidence?"
"Just set up a camera by my desk and I'm sure we'll get some groping footage," said Erica bitterly.
Maria shook her head. "Not enough. We need something really powerful if Jim is going to fire Paul. A little groping won't cut it."
"Like what?" asked Erica uncertainly.
"My plan is to entrap him. We've got drinks tonight. If he sees a lovely drunk beauty such as yourself passed out in the sick room he won't be able to resist. I'll arrange for a surveillance camera to be set up to capture all the evidence."
"You want me to pretend to be drunk and then let him...rape me?" asked Erica, visibly whitening.
Maria nodded.
"No way!" said Erica, refusing adamantly. "I'd rather put up with the fondling."
Maria frowned. "I want him gone just as much as you do."
"You do it then!" shot back Erica.
"I know," said Maria, "Jennifer will do it. Paul has a real soft spot for her anyway, it's perfect."
Erica looked surprised. "Do you think she'll agree to do it?"
"She will if she wants to keep her job," retorted Maria brusquely.
They were interrupted by the sound of Jennifer's voice on the intercom. "Hi Maria, Paul Anderson is here to see you."
Erica jumped, feeling like she'd just been caught out in a guilty secret.
"Fine show him in, we're done here," Maria said.
Erica nodded, still a little pale at thought of what Maria was proposing. She turned and let, meeting Paul in the doorway. Paul turned sideways to let his pretty young secretary past. The gap was quite small and Erica had to turn sideways herself to slip past. As she squeezed by him, Paul thrust forward with his crotch, rubbing himself across her firm posterior as she pushed past. He was clearly hard.
Erica scowled, her guilt at the plot against her boss suddenly gone as she headed back to her desk.
Paul grinned as he kicked the door closed and walked over to Maria Chessman's desk and unbuckled his belt. "B.J. time," he announced as he dropped his suit pants to the floor and stepped out of them. His fully erect penis was jutting out of the fly of his boxers.
Maria grimaced as the horny sales manager moved in front of her chair and sat on the edge of her desk. She gave a sigh as she reached out and took hold of his throbbing erection in one soft hand. With any luck this would be the last blowjob she was forced to give him.
Maria swiped her tongue around the head of Paul's erection, then gave the tip of his dick a tender kiss, leaving a slight smear of lipstick. She ran her tongue down along the underside of his shaft and then swiped her tongue across his scrotum, teasing his testicles.
"Don't tease me, just suck it," instructed Paul.
Maria reluctantly moved back to the end of his cock, slipping her warm lips down over him and sucking his stiff erection into her wet mouth.
"Oh yeah!" Paul groaned with obvious relish. "I really needed this!"
Maria's cheeks hollowed as she forcefully sucked on him and her head began to bob over his lap. The office filled with the sounds of her slurping, her pouty lips sliding up and down the thick pole of his cock.
"That's it, suck that cock like you mean it!" said Paul with a loud groan as Maria's pace picked up. With each bob of her head the tip of his cock was nudging right against the very back of her mouth causing her to gag slightly.
"You look beautiful with my cock in your mouth," Paul told her as she sucked him off.
Maria's mouth popped off the end of his dick and she looked up at him. "Why don't you keep the commentary to a minimum and just let me get on with this?" she snapped irritably.
Paul grinned mischievously. He held his cock by the base and slapped it against Maria's closed mouth. "Whatever you say, you're the boss."
Maria scowled up at him. If it wasn't for the fact that this was hopefully the final blowjob she had to give him then she would probably have thrown him out.
Paul spanked his erection against her forehead. He was certainly pushing his luck.
Maria reached up and smacked away his hands, holding his dick firmly around the base as she put her mouth back over the head of him. Paul gave a moan as Maria resumed her blowjob, rapidly bobbing her head over his cock as she sucked.
He reached down and took hold of Maria's sizeable boobs, squeezing them through her blouse as she blew him. He could feel the stiff lacy texture of her bra as the large melons overflowed his groping hands. He still wished he could get those puppies out in the open one day.
"Oh yeeeaah!" Paul gave a long groan of pleasure as his cock jolted between Maria's lip. He moaned as his salty seed exploded, filling the gorgeous brunette's diligently sucking mouth. Paul squeezed down tight on Maria's titties as he spurted, his erection flexing in her mouth.
Maria swallowed, quickly drinking down all of Paul's load without spilling a drop. The last thing she wanted was her office stinking of cum.
"Mmm, that was amazing as always," murmured Paul in appreciation as Maria sucked him clean.
She sat back, grabbing a glass of water off her desk and taking a long swallow.
"Maybe we could have a repeat performance after drinks tonight?" suggested Paul hopefully.
"No. I'm leaving early today," Maria curtly replied. "I'm going to dinner with my husband."
"Fine," replied Paul with a shrug. "Make sure you give the old man a big kiss from me," Paul added with a wink.
Maria shook her head as Paul left her office. The man was definitely an obnoxious asshole.
For some reason, Friday drinks always brought out the worst in Paul. He was all over the ladies of the office, hitting on them, making lewd comments and plenty of touching.
Glenda from accounts seemed to bear the brunt of it this week. Neither Maria nor Erica, his usual victims had shown up for drinks and Jennifer seemed to be staying well clear of the lecherous sales manager that evening.
Glenda wasn't quite as pretty, and certainly not as stacked as Maria, Erica or Jennifer. But the thirty three year old red haired accountant was a keen jogger and kept quite fit. Paul was standing uncomfortably close to the relatively shy office worker, one hand resting on the small of her back as he told her an inappropriately sexual and racist joke. Every so often his hand would wander down from Glenda's back and slide over the taut round swells of her buttocks, which were perfectly encased in a pair of slim fitting black suit pants.
"...a donkey's dick!" announced Paul, reciting the joke's punch line and roaring raucously with laughter at his own joke.
Glenda smiled politely as Paul pinched the well toned accountant's bottom once again.
The slender accountant had clearly had enough as she began to politely excuse herself, claiming an early morning run the next day.
Paul barely even heard her as his attention was suddenly caught by the sight of Jennifer across the other side of the office.
The gorgeous personal assistant was swaying as she walked, clearly quite inebriated. This was rather unusual, as Jennifer almost always maintained control. She was dressed in a pretty, charcoal grey dress which was quite tight fitting across the upper half, nicely displaying her expansive bosom. The lower, skirt part of the dress, was short and flared slightly as she walked, giving Paul a great view of her long, tanned legs.
As Paul watched, the drunk blonde staggered through the door into the sick room, disappearing from sight.
Paul frowned in thought. He glanced around the room to see if anyone else had seen Jennifer depart, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to her.
Paul hesitated about another minute and then followed Jennifer, slipping quickly into the sick bay without anyone noticing. His heart was rapidly beating as he quietly closed the door behind him and then looked around the room. Jennifer was lying face down on the small single bed that filled the far side of the room. The hem of her dress was up around her sleek thighs, inches short of revealing the swells of her buttocks. She was snoring softly.
Paul let out a quivering breath and walked softly across the room. He reached out a shaking hand towards Jennifer's pert ass and then stopped, thinking better of it.
"Jennifer?" he said, reasonably loudly. "Are you okay?"
He reached down and prodded her shoulder. "Jennifer?" he repeated, more loudly. The sleeping beauty still did not stir.
Paul shook Jennifer's shoulder to try and wake her up, but her drunken slumber could not be interrupted.
"Thank you God," he whispered.
Still a little cautious, Paul reached down and touched the back of Jennifer's thigh, right down by her knee. He gave her leg a gentle squeeze, glancing up towards her face to make sure she was still asleep. Paul traced his palm up the back of his boss's gorgeous personal assistant's slender thigh, enjoying the incredible feel of her smooth, soft skin. Inches away from the hem of her dress he stopped again.
Paul turned and moved back to the sick-bay door, locking it. It would be bad if someone from the office stumbled in on him while he was molesting the unconscious woman.
He grinned to himself and rubbed his hands eagerly together, before moving back across the room and sitting on the edge of the bed where Jennifer was slumbering.
This time he laid both hands on the back of Jennifer's smooth thighs. As he ran his hands up the back of her sleek thighs he pushed the hem of her skirt up. His hands slid up the swells of Jennifer's beautiful round buttocks, cupping one taut mound in each palm. Jennifer was wearing the skimpiest of g-string's beneath her dress, leaving her lovely ass pretty much bare for Paul to grope.
"Gorgeous," he murmured in admiration as he squeezed and kneaded the firm cheeks of her ass. This was a dream come true for the sleazy sales manager.
Paul gave Jennifer's ass a hard slap, watching the quiver of flesh. He grinned and slipped one hand up between the lovely blonde's thighs, rubbing his fingers across the crotch of her g-string and feeling the heat of her pussy.
Paul unzipped his fly and pulled out his now erect penis, stroking it as he rubbed the gorgeous blonde's crotch. He briefly considered just jerking off, but realised that this was an opportunity not to be missed. Instead, he climbed up on the bed, straddling the back of Jennifer's thighs.
Holding his cock in one hand he rubbed it over the firm spheres of Jennifer's ass, using his shaft to slap her butt. Paul then leant forward, leaning over his sexy colleague and rubbing himself against her ass, humping her from behind as he ground himself into her perfect bottom. It would be so easy to just pull aside her g-string and slip into her.
"What the hell," said Paul with a shrug. "You only live once."
He reached down and tugged aside Jennifer's g-string. With his other hand he guided his erection into Jennifer's pussy.
As Paul thrust into the sexy blonde from behind, she lay there motionless, still fast asleep lying face down on the bed.
"Oh yeah!" groaned Paul as his hard erection slid smoothly into her pussy and his hips ground against her ass. Holding his weight on his elbows as he lay over top Jennifer, the horny sales manager began to fuck her from behind, driving his cock into her clutching pussy.
"This is much better than a blowjob or a quick grope," he murmured, thinking of Maria and Erica.
Paul humped against Jennifer for a few minutes, pinning her down on the bed with his thrusting penis. The whole forbidden, non-consensual element to the sex was turning him on and his balls were churning in no time.
Paul wasn't sure if the beautiful blonde was on the pill and he certainly didn't want to knock her up so he pulled out before it was too late. He wasn't about to finish off using his hand however, so instead he moved up towards where Jennifer's head lay.
Paul rubbed the tip of his cock over Jennifer's angelic face, leaving a smear of pre-cum over her nose, cheek and lips. He then grabbed her head in both hands as he stuffed his erection into her unwilling mouth, spearing her full lips open with the tip of his penis.
"Fuck!" he grunted as his hard cock thrust into Jennifer's mouth. He gripped her hair tightly and began to quickly saw his hard cock in and out between her full, pouty lips. It perhaps wasn't as nice as Maria's oral talents, but the workout he'd had in her pussy had him close to the edge anyway.
With a few vigorous thrusts, he gave a choked grunt of pleasure and blasted his sticky wad of jism into Jennifer's sleeping mouth. "Oh yeah!" he groaned as he emptied his load across Jennifer's tongue. He pulled out and sat back on the bed, breathing heavily.
"Thank God for Friday drinks," he murmured with a satisfied grin.
To be continued...
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Archive for the 'Renewable Energy' Category
Monday, February 2, 2015
Earth Can't Wait for Snyder
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Why Wacky Weather
Monday, December 31, 2012
Snyder Embracing Energy-Efficiency
Friday, November 30, 2012
Mayors Knock On Doors for Home Energy Efficiency
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
U.S. Military Strategy To Sustain The Planet
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
No Debate. Make Michigan Green Like Sweden
Monday, October 22, 2012
Guns Wrong Measure of Security Says Diplomat
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Sign Up & Save On Heat Bills
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Santorum: "We're Here as Stewards of the Earth… But Not to Serve It."
Wednesday, October 19, 2011


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ivory and shades of blue natural delphinium confetti 1litre
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|Degree Code:
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(a) The common regulations for the Masters degrees in the School of Physical Sciences shall apply.
(b) In addition to meeting (a) above, candidates wishing to register for Master of Science in Analytical Chemistry must have any of the following:
(i) A degree of the University of Nairobi of at least an Upper Second Class Honours in Chemistry or equivalent from any other institution recognized by the Senate.
(ii) A lower Second Class honours degree of the University of Nairobi in Chemistry or equivalent from any other institution recognized by the Senate plus at least two years relevant research/work experience.
(iii) A pass degree of the University of Nairobi in Chemistry or equivalent from any other institution recognized by the Senate plus at least five years relevant research/work experience
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In the first year all students are required to take ten units. Eight of these are the Core Units and the remaining two chosen from the elective units. On successful completion of the first year, students devote the second year to research in a given area and writing up of an MSc Thesis.
|Duration and Mode of Study
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(i) The course shall be evaluated in terms of units; a course unit being defined as series of 45 one- hour lecture equivalents. For this purpose one 1-hour lecture is equivalent to one 2-hour tutorial or one 3-hour practical or any combination of these that may be recommended by the School Board and approved by Senate.
(ii) The course consists of coursework, continuous assessment, written examination and a research project.
(iii) The continuous assessment shall comprise tests, assignments, practical in certain units and term papers.
(iv) The candidate shall be required to take 10 course units; 9 of which shall be core and 1 elective.
(v) In second year the candidate shall undertake a mandatory research and thesis equivalent to eight course units.
(vi) The course shall be covered in a minimum of four (4) and maximum of eight (8) semesters of 15 weeks each.
Mode of study
Day programme: MONDAY- FRIDAY 8 AM -5 PM
Evening programme: This is tailored for those working during normal working hours. MONDAY- FRIDAY 5.30 PM - 8.30 PM; SATURDAY 8 AM - 5 PM
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1 Written examinations
1.1 A candidate shall not be allowed to sit any examination unless he or she has attended at least two thirds of the total lecture hours.
1.2 Each unit shall be examined by a two-hour written examination at the end of the semester during which the course is offered.
1.3 The end of semester examination shall constitute 70% of the total marks in each course while the continuous assessment shall constitute 30%. Continuous assessment shall comprise of assignments, tests, term papers and practical where applicable.
1.4 Pass mark for each course unit shall be 50%
1.5 In order to proceed to the second year, a candidate must pass in all ten course units.
1.6 A candidate who fails in not more than two course units (score of 40—49 %) shall be allowed to take supplementary examinations in the failed units in accordance with The School of Physical Sciences' Regulations and Senate's approval
6.1.7 A candidate who scores less than 40 % in a unit shall be discontinued
1.8 The maximum score for a supplementary examination shall be 50%.
1.9 A candidate who fails in more than three courses or does not pass in the supplementary examinations shall be discontinued from the programme.
2 Thesis examination
2.1 The Second year of study shall be by thesis (equivalent to eight units) based on a research proposal submitted and approved by the end of first year. The thesis shall be examined in accordance with the common Regulations of the University of Nairobi for the Masters Degrees in all Schools and Faculties.
2.2 Each candidate will submit, with approval of supervisors, a duly completed thesis for examination. The candidate shall defend the research findings at a Board of Examiners meeting recommended by the School.
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D. All fees due should be paid before registration can be effected.
E. Appropriate field work fee shall be charged separately.
F. These are the minimum recommended research funds in each category.
Fees will be payable by Money Order or Bankers Cheques only drawn in favour of University of Nairobi Enterprises and Services (UNES) Limited.
The Fees indicated below do not include accommodation, personal maintenance costs, books and stationery.
A book allowance of about 40,000/= will be required.
|objectives of the course
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Analytical chemistry is the science of measurement and identification of the chemical compounds that underlie most aspects of modern life and plays a central part within the chemical industry. It also involves the processing and communication of information about the composition and structure of matter.
In addition to the traditional chemistry areas, the course covers research methods, chemical separation and instrumentation and statistics and chemometrics.
Postgraduate students in analytical chemistry will acquire skills that will enable them develop new methods for use of instruments in the analysis of chemical compounds.
Career opportunities
Graduates of analytical chemistry can find employment in government departments, parastatals, quality control laboratories, research and development, production, pharmaceutical industry, water purification industry, wastewater management industry, forensic science, process design and product development, instrumental design industry, cement industry, tanning industry, fertilizer industry, plastics industry, consumer industry, textile industry, dyes and paints industry, , glass industry, pulp and paper industry just to name a few.
|Level : 1
|Semester: Non Specified
|Course Code
|Course Name
|Course Hours
|Advanced Analytical Chemistry
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Advanced Analytical Chemistry Description
Review of spectroscopic methods for structure elucidation and practical uses; Complex Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) methods: recording techniques, analytical applications of exchange phenomena, double resonance, spin-lattice relaxation, Nuclear-Overhauser-Effect (NOE), analytical applications of two dimensional (2D) and multipulse NMR spectroscopy, shift reagents; Instrumentation of mass spectrometry: Principles and techniques of ion formation, focusing, collision, fragmentation, and reaction (soft ionization, desorption, and spray methods); Interpretation of mass spectra of organic and inorganic molecules; Mass analyzers and ion traps (time of flight and ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry); Coupling of separation with identification methods;Applications to analysis of large molecules and chromatography (selected chemical; analytical and biological applications); Fourier transforms in chemistry: introductory fourier mathematics; spectroscopic oscillators; noise and multiplex advantage; discrete fourier transform and applications to spectroscopy.
|Chemical Applications Of Group Theory (elective)
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Chemical Applications Of Group Theory (elective) Description
Principles, definitions and theorems of group theory; Molecular symmetry representations of groups; Group theory and quantum mechanics; Applications: Symmetry aspects of molecular orbital theory, ligand field theory; VIS and UV spectra of transition metal complexes; Metal -ligand bonding; Molecular vibrations and symmetry rules.
|Polymer Characterization (elective)
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Polymer Characterization (elective) Description
Characterization of synthetic polymers by various analytical techniques including spectroscopy (e.g., light scattering); Molecular weight measurements (e.g., gel permeation chromatography (GPC), viscometry, sedimentation); Structure, surface studies and mechanical properties; Course includes sufficient introductory material in polymer synthesis to relate structure and properties; Fundamental theories of polymer chain statistics and the thermodynamic theory of polymer solutions will be treated.
|Research Methods
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Research Methods Description
Overview of business research; Role of business research; the research process; Quantitative and qualitative research techniques; Critical approaches: Text and discourse analysis; Problem definition and research proposal; Research designs and samples; Data collection, measurement and scaling; Data analysis; Communicating research results; Ethical issues in business research
|Analytical Procedures In Environmental Chemical Analysis (elective)
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Analytical Procedures In Environmental Chemical Analysis (elective) Description
The chemistry of soil; Water and the atmosphere; Soil: Gross structure of soil, soil acidity and basicity, the organic and inorganic components of soils; plant nutrients; pollution and wastes (including land filling); Water: Physical properties and structure of water, the water cycle, water quality measurements, sewage treatment, drinking water disinfection, industrial waste water, water analysis; Atmosphere: Structure and composition of the atmosphere, aerosols, ozone (including the ozone hole), sulfur and nitrogen oxides, carbon oxides, atmospheric reactions (including smog formation), indoor air pollution; Students are required to write an essay on an assigned topic in each section. Stages in analytical procedures: Problem formulation and planning, sampling strategies, sample manipulation, conservation, storage and work-up; Extraction, clean-up, preconcentration, derivatization; Instrumental analysis: Data evaluation and method validation; Methods for determination of ultra-trace concentrations of inorganic, organometallic and organic compounds in air, soil, water, sediment and biota. Practicals.
|Electronic Spectrometry
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Electronic Spectrometry Description
Review of electronic and spectrometry concepts; Instrumentation for ultraviolet and visible absorption spectroscopy; Optical components; Overall design strategy; Signal processing; Analytical performance from both theoretical and practical standpoints; Luminescence spectroscopy; Phosphorimetry and fluorimetry; Atomic spectroscopy: Principles of operation, instrumental requirements, mechanisms for free atom formation, effect of temperature on the excitation and transport of analyte species and analytical application and limitations; Methods for sample preparation and introduction; X-ray absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy.
|Sample Preparation Techniques In Analytical Chemistry
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Sample Preparation Techniques In Analytical Chemistry Description
The analytical perspective of sample preparation: Preservation of samples, post-extraction procedures, quality assurance and quality control during sample preparation, extraction and enrichment in sample preparation; Principles of extraction: Recovery, methodology, procedures and recent advances in liquid extraction techniques; Sorbents: Sorbent selection and recovery, methodology, procedures and recent advances in liquid–solid extraction sorption; Solid-phase extraction (SPE) and solid-phase microextraction (SPME); Sorbent and analyte recovery, methodology, and recent advances in stir bar sorptive extraction techniques; Extraction of volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds from solid and liquid matrices: Extraction mechanism, pre- and post-extraction procedures, Soxhlet and soxtec extraction, ultrasonic extraction; Theory, instrumentation, comparisons, and operational procedures of supercritical fluid extraction (SFE); Accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) and microwave-assisted extraction (MAE); Dynamic headspace extraction or purge and trap with GC; Solid-phase microextraction (SPME); GC injection techniques; Membrane extraction; Preparation of samples for metal analysis: Wet digestion methods, dry ashing- organic extraction of metals; Solid-phase extraction for pre-concentration; Sample preparation for water Samples; Precipitation methods; Preparation of sample slurries for direct AAS analysis; Metal speciation for soils, sediments and plants.
|Principles Of Chemical Instrumentation
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Principles Of Chemical Instrumentation Description
Data domains: Direct current (DC) and Alternating current (AC) electrical circuits, Operational amplifiers, Digital circuits; Signal-to-noise: hardware; Signal-to-noise: software, gates and devices (largely TTL), field effective transistors, digital-to-analog converters (DAC), analog-to-digital converters (ADC), voltage-to-frequency converters (VFC)), microprocessors; Factors limiting accuracy, precision and speed of measurements with instruments; Signal bandwidth and orthogonality; impedance relationships; modulation and phase sensitive detection; Sampling ; Fourier transform ; Information theory: Analog and digital signal handling with negative feedback; Electronic and computer-aided measurement and control in scientific instrumentation and experimentation.
|Surface And Selected Spectrochemical Methods Of Analysis
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Surface And Selected Spectrochemical Methods Of Analysis Description
Spectrometric methods: Components of optical instruments; Optical atomic spectroscopy; Atomic absorption spectrometry; Atomic emission spectrometry; UV/visible spectrometry; Molecular spectroscopy; Molecular and atomic fluorescence and phosphorescence spectrometry; Infrared and Raman spectroscopy; Principles and applications of lasers; Survey of successful lasers including N2, Ar+, Kr+, Ruby, He-Ne and dye lasers; Applications of lasers to analytical problems in: high resolution spectroscopy, life time measurements, photo-thermal and photo-acoustic methods and thermal analysis; Surface analysis methods: Electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (ESCA), Auger, Secondary ion mass spectrometry, scanning microscopy; Further topics in inductively coupled plasma (ICP)-atomic emission spectroscopy (AES) and ICP-MS.
|Statistics And Chemometrics For Analytical Chemistry
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Statistics And Chemometrics For Analytical Chemistry Description
Chemical data analysis: Bias and precision, statistics of repeated measurements, normal distribution and properties; Significant tests; Quality of analytical measurements; Calibration methods: Regression and correlation, confidence limits, limit of decision, limit of detection, standard additions; Non-parametric and robust methods (Box and Whisker plot); The relation between model and data; Experimental design and Optimization: Two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), stepwise approach to Univariate search, response surface for 2-factors, contour diagram for a 2-factor response surface, factorial design, simplex optimization; Multivariate data analysis: Principal component analysis, dendograms; Applications of analytical techniques in research and development.
|Advanced Electroanalytical Chemistry
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Advanced Electroanalytical Chemistry Description
Structure of electrode interface; diffusion; Kinetic and thermodynamic factors controlling the rate of reactions at electrodes; Linear and cyclic voltammetry; Polarography; potentiometry; Potential step methods: Differential- and square-wave voltammetry, amperometric stripping, hydrodynamic voltammetry, rotating electrode technique and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Practicals.
|Advanced Chemical Separations
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Advanced Chemical Separations Description
Physical and chemical principles of separations; Column technology for gas, liquid, and supercritical fluid chromatography: Theory, principles, and instrumentation; Estimation of the quality of a separation system and van Deemter equation; Applications of chromatography: high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ion chromatography, gel permeation, packing material, elution gradients, retention index, gas chromatography (gas-solid, gas-liquid, capillary gas), Gas Chromatography/Liquid Chromatography; Mass Spectrometry (GC/LC-MS); Electrophoresis; Capillary electrophoresis (CE); Zone electrophoresis; Isoelectric focusing; 2D gel electrophoresis; Electrochromatography; Sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE); Supercritical fluid chromatography (SCFC); Physical processes, modern instrumentation, and response characteristics of detectors relevant to these methods; Ancillary techniques: solvent extraction, thin layer techniques, membrane-based separation; Chromatographic measurements of physico-chemical parameters; Chemical methods for separation-oriented and detection-oriented derivatization. Practicals.
|Special Topics In Organic Chemistry (elective)
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Special Topics In Organic Chemistry (elective) Description
Topics of current research interest in organic chemistry including, but not limited to
alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, alcohols, ethers, alkyl halides, aromatic compounds, carboxylic acids, amides, esters, amines, phenols, amino acids, peptides, proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, heterocycles, organometallics, spectroscopy, secondary bimolecules, polymers, nanochemistry, medicinal chemistry, fullerenes, stereochemistry and organic synthesis.
|Level : 2
|Semester: Non Specified
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|Course Name
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Thesis Description
A candidate identifies a research topic and develops a concept paper; the student is allocated at least two supervisors from among the academic members of staff to assist the student develop a research proposal; the student presents the proposal at a departmental seminar where the audience critiques the research proposal and makes appropriate recommendations for changes to improve it; the student submits the proposal to the Board of Postgraduate Studies through the Dean of School, for approval; the student conducts the research according to the proposal and under the supervision of the supervisors; the student analyses and presents the results at a departmental seminar for critique and review; the student finalizes the research in a form of thesis for examination.
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y Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Carlos Delgado Kloos, Israel Gutiérrez, Derick Leony, Hugo A., & Parada G.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been a very promising innovation in higher education for the last few months. Many institutions are currently asking their staff to run high quality MOOCs in a race to gain visibility in an education market that is increasingly abundant in choice. Nevertheless, designing and running a MOOC from scratch is not an easy task and requires a high workload. This workload should be shared among those generating contents, those fostering discussion in the community around the MOOC, those supporting the recording and subtitling of audiovisual materials, and those advertising the MOOC, among others. Sometimes the teaching staff has to assume all these tasks (and consequently the associated workload) due to the lack of adequate resources in the institution. This is just one example of the many problems that teachers need to be aware of before riding the MOOC wave. This paper offers a set of recommendations that are expected to be useful for inexperienced teachers that now face the challenge of designing and running a MOOC. Most of these recommendations come from the lessons learned after teaching a nine-week MOOC on educational technologies, called "Digital Education of the Future", at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid, Spain.
To read/download the full paper...
click here


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Calendar of Events » Events
Whistler Pride and Ski Fest - Jan 21 to 28
Sunday January 21 thru Sunday January 28
Whistler, BC, Canada
Visit Website Buy Tickets
Voted the #1 Winter Pride event of the year by GayTravel.com Whistler Pride and Ski Festival now celebrating 26 years out on the slopes at Whistler Blackcomb combines both award winning ski/snowboarding with legendary gay dance and cultural events. Attracting an average of 3,000 gay men and women from 26 countries for the 8-day festival.
The largest ski resort in North America with the greatest vertical (5280 feet), 8,171 acres, over 200 trails and an impressive 30+ feet of snow annually. Combine this with the best LGBT ski guide program on the planet and you have an experience of a lifetime!
Legendary performers at Whistler Pride have included Margaret Cho, Bianca Del Rio, Pam Ann, the Cube Guys, Zyra, Destineak, Sara McLachlan and many more!
Join us in Whistler, BC, Canada January 21-28, 2018 visit gaywhistler.com for more information.


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|Support Technical and other questions related to the use of SuperBeam
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|15th January 2015, 10:54 AM
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: North Newbald
Posts: 22
Stiffeners to openings
Having to add lots of service and duct holes to a set of 16.5m primary beams, the openings sit below 200mm depth cold-formed secondary beams at 400mm centres which are inset into the top of 610 deep primaries, designed as fully restrained. Got snagged on the lack of torsional restraint despite lateral restraint being near perfect using flat plate cleats welded into the upper flange and web. Fixed that with a 45° knee brace at 2.4 pitch which when the restraint was limited to 2.4m pitches results in the same beam. Next snag was the opening had to be set low in the beam, to clear the secondaries, so exploited the larger sized hole available using stiffeners, but with the hole size reduced at the top only so the entire 'letterbox' slot was in the lower section, this gave a handy limit to how close you could cut the slot to the bottom flange, by inferring this from a centrally located larger stiffened hole.
Fabrication now want to know if the stiffeners can be 50% stitch welded as they are quite long, 1200mm or so so the welding is becoming onerous?
Hope you can help
|16th January 2015, 11:16 AM
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 856
Re: Stiffeners to openings
I don't think there is any scope to reduce the welding as the stiffeners combine with the residual webs and flanges to form two I-sections which resist the Vierendeel moment across the opening.
The current design guide SCI P355 Design of Composite Beams with Large Web Openings is available as a free download from http://www.steelconstruction.info/in...t=SCI+P355.pdf . Stiffeners are covered on page 63ff.
Tony Bryer, Greentram Software Pty Ltd
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Citigroup Inc has followed its competition into the small business lending market, connecting with Biz2Credit to provide access to business loans of up to $1 million for qualified small firms. Based on the lack of promotion for the new service, it seems the company may be looking simply to "fulfill its obligations to small and undeserved borrowers under the Community Reinvestment Act" Whether this is a requirement fulfill meant or a genuine business strategy matters not for the hundreds of small businesses who should qualify for the new service.
While the service looks to challenge other recent partnerships including JP Morgan Chases' offering with popular online lender OnDeck, another Citigroup lending service will be shut down for good. DCSmallBizLoans.com "a small business lending website backed by Citigroup and the U.S. Treasury Department and run by Biz2Credit", will cease operations. The initiative was geared towards helping low-income communities match with " four Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), government backed lenders".
According to Fox Business " Citigroup had agreed to fund the website for two years, after which it was expected to become self-sustaining, said Steve Glaude, president and chief executive officer of the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development, a non-profit that organized the effort.
Though it would only have cost each CDFI about $1,000 per month to keep the site operating, there was not enough interest to warrant even so small an investment, according to Glaude." This is unfortunate as I'm sure the service positively impacted a few businesses within the area. With no information on the reasoning behind the lack of support, the new small business lending service should go well for Citigroup as it looks to develop a new revenue stream within the industry.
I am always a fan of new, innovative, and time friendly ways for small businesses to obtain funding opportunities. With more experience, promoting, and advertising, Citigroup may have a great opportunity on its hands.


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Requested in "Request & Fill Corner" section...
ALPHA was an american band previously known as Aura which used to have guitar wizard Chris Impelliteri as member.
Their one and only release is this obscure and pretty hard to find self-titled album from 1987. Despite the indie production and being a trio, the record sounds terrific with a polished sound.
After an intriguing and spacey intro, "Throwin' It All Away" blast your speakers with a classy mid-eighties uptempo AOR melody. A really good song with great keyboards all over, solid guitar licks and a catchy chorus. The interesting thing about this band is the harmonic dual lead vocal job of Jon Quinn and Brad Sandlin.
"Run For Your Life" is a pompy-AOR track featuring a marvelous parping keyboard line. Love this kind of songs.
"To The North" has some lite-prog influences, with a style / sound that brings to mind '80s Rush. I really like the way guitars are played, somehow like a violin with a dense tone, very melodic and original.
The canadian style is also present on "In Sync", but this time definitely AOR. Again, lots, lots of keyboards and clever arrangements. You never get bored with this band.
On the semi-ballad "Let The Music" they mix acoustics with electricity with taste. Excellent vocal harmonies and awesome clavinet keyboard sounds on this one. Awesome track.
Last track "Let It Go" starts climatic with a melodic in-crescendo. Remarkable guitar job by Brad Sandlin (check the intricate arrangements) and a superb solo.
ALPHA is a little gem, sadly running only 7 tracks (6 if you exclude the intro), but if good and short, twice good.
Seems this LP was reissued on CD some time ago with the addition of newer tracks, but it's impossible to find / purchase because only was available through the band's website, now defunct. If you have a copy, please share it with us.
Anyway, this is a rip from vinyl at maximum quality. The LP was terribly wasted, I am very happy with the restoring result. It took me hours to get it fine, specially track 2 which had a click noise every three seconds.
Sometimes I wonder why don't make my living doing this. I suppose because I like my job as well, and leave the audio restoration as a hobby, to share my work with all of you.
Good and Rare. Recommended.
1 - Intro
2 - Throwin' It All Away
3 - Run For Your Life
4 - To The North
5 - In Sync
6 - Let The Music
7 - Let It Go
Jon Quinn - Vocals, Bass, Keyboards
Brad Sandlin - Vocals, Guitars
Randy Jason - Drums
ALPHA 1987 Re-posted HERE
Monday, May 30, 2011
Published by Camelblue on Monday, May 30, 2011
Labels: ALPHA
3 Comments:
- Aggelos978 said...
thanks for your time in restoring this L.P.
Sounds greta...Keep it up buddy.
- May 30, 2011 6:41 PM
- Raul said...
great work!!! thanx
- June 01, 2011 8:02 AM
- Anonymous said...
Thank you so much for your hard work! I've been trying to find this for years.
- July 17, 2011 11:39 AM
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A man has been arrested in connection with a hit and run which killed two young men in Yaxley yesterday.
The 38-year-old man from Essex was arrested in Chelmsford late last night (Tuesday January 3).
He has been arrested on suspicion of death by dangerous driving and ABH against a member of the public in Yaxley and has been taken to Chelmsford Police Station and is expected to be transferred to Cambridgeshire later today.
Police are also looking into whether a call from a member of the public reporting a man entering their home yesterday is connected to the incident and the discovery of a briefcase containing a quantity of cash which was recovered in the area.
Local sources suggest the case contained around £100,000.
Officers were called at 11.12am on Tuesday January 3 to reports of a collision involving two pedestrians and a BMW.
The air ambulance attended the scene but sadly the two men died.
The men, believed to be in their late teens to early twenties, have not yet been identified.
The driver left the scene on foot. The police helicopter and dog unit assisted with a search of the area.
The road was shut until late into the night but is open today.
UPDATE: Yaxley hit and run victims named locally as best friends walking between villages
RELATED: Tributes to two crash victims and anger at lack of footpath between Yaxley and Farcet promised over 10 years ago


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Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has demonstrated curative potential in several types of cancer, but only for a small number of patients. Thus, the identification of reliable and noninvasive biomarkers for predicting ICB responsiveness is an urgent unmet need. Here, we show that ICB increased tumor vessel perfusion in treatment-sensitive EO771 and MMTV-PyVT breast tumor as well as CT26 and MCA38 colon tumor models, but not in treatment-resistant MCaP0008 and 4T1 breast tumor models. In the sensitive tumor models, the ability of anti–cytotoxic T lymphocyte–associated protein 4 or anti–programmed cell death 1 therapy to increase vessel perfusion strongly correlated with its antitumor efficacy. Moreover, globally enhanced tumor vessel perfusion could be detected by Doppler ultrasonography before changes in tumor size, which predicted final therapeutic efficacy with more than 90% sensitivity and specificity. Mechanistically, CD8+ T cell depletion, IFN-γ neutralization, or implantation of tumors in IFN-γ receptor knockout mice abrogated the vessel perfusion enhancement and antitumor effects of ICB. These results demonstrated that ICB increased vessel perfusion by promoting CD8+ T cell accumulation and IFN-γ production, indicating that increased vessel perfusion reflects the successful activation of antitumor T cell immunity by ICB. Our findings suggest that vessel perfusion can be used as a novel noninvasive indicator for predicting ICB responsiveness.
Xichen Zheng, Zhaoxu Fang, Xiaomei Liu, Shengming Deng, Pei Zhou, Xuexiang Wang, Chenglin Zhang, Rongping Yin, Haitian Hu, Xiaolan Chen, Yijie Han, Yun Zhao, Steven H. Lin, Songbing Qin, Xiaohua Wang, Betty Y.S. Kim, Penghui Zhou, Wen Jiang, Qingyu Wu, Yuhui Huang
Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is characterized by a progressive accumulation of pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells (PA-SMCs) in pulmonary arterioles leading to the narrowing of the lumen, right heart failure, and death. Although most studies have supported the notion of a role for IL-6/glycoprotein 130 (gp130) signaling in PAH, it remains unclear how this signaling pathway determines the progression of the disease. Here, we identify ectopic upregulation of membrane-bound IL-6 receptor (IL6R) on PA-SMCs in PAH patients and in rodent models of pulmonary hypertension (PH) and demonstrate its key role for PA-SMC accumulation in vitro and in vivo. Using Sm22a-Cre Il6rfl/fl, which lack Il6r in SM22A-expressing cells, we found that these animals are protected against chronic hypoxia–induced PH with reduced PA-SMC accumulation, revealing the potent pro-survival potential of membrane-bound IL6R. Moreover, we determine that treatment with IL6R-specific antagonist reverses experimental PH in two rat models. This therapeutic strategy holds promise for future clinical studies in PAH.
Yuichi Tamura, Carole Phan, Ly Tu, Morane Le Hiress, Raphaël Thuillet, Etienne-Marie Jutant, Elie Fadel, Laurent Savale, Alice Huertas, Marc Humbert, Christophe Guignabert
Adult vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) possess the peculiar ability to de-differentiate in response to extracellular cues, such as vascular damage and inflammation. De-differentiated VSMCs are proliferative, migratory, and have decreased contractile capacity. VSMC dedifferentiation contributes not only to vascular repair, but also to cardiovascular pathologies, such as intimal hyperplasia/restenosis in coronary artery or peripheral vascular diseases and arterial aneurysm. We here demonstrate the role of ubiquitin-like, containing PHD and RING finger domains, 1 (UHRF1) as an epigenetic master regulator of VSMC plasticity. The expression of UHRF1 correlates with the development of a wide array of vascular pathologies associated also with modulation of non-coding RNAs, such as microRNAs. Importantly, miR-145, a pivotal gene regulating VSMC plasticity, which is reduced in vascular diseases, was found to control Uhrf1 mRNA translation. In turn, UHRF1 triggers VSMC proliferation by directly repressing the promoters of cell cycle inhibitor genes, such as p21 and p27, and of key pro-differentiation genes via the methylation of DNA and histones. Local vascular viral delivery of Uhrf1 shRNAs or Uhrf1 VSMC-specific deletion prevented intimal hyperplasia in mouse carotid artery and decreased vessel damage in a mouse model of aortic aneurysm.Our study demonstrates the fundamental role of Uhrf1 in regulating VSMC phenotype by promoting proliferation and de-differentiation. UHRF1 targeting may hold therapeutic potential in vascular pathologies, modulating also the VSMC component.
Leonardo Elia, Paolo Kunderfranco, Pierluigi Carullo, Marco Vacchiano, Floriana Maria Farina, Ignacio Fernando Hall, Stefano Mantero, Cristina Panico, Roberto Papait, Gianluigi Condorelli, Manuela Quintavalle
BACKGROUND. Sporadic vascular malformations (VMs) are complex congenital anomalies of blood vessels that lead to stroke, life-threatening bleeds, disfigurement, overgrowth, and/or pain. Therapeutic options are severely limited and multi-disciplinary management remains challenging, particularly for high-flow arteriovenous malformations (AVM). METHODS. To investigate the pathogenesis of sporadic intracranial and extracranial VMs in 160 children in which known genetic causes had been excluded, we sequenced DNA from affected tissue and optimised analysis for detection of low mutant allele frequency. RESULTS. We discovered multiple mosaic activating variants in four genes of the RAS-MAPK pathway, KRAS, NRAS, BRAF, and MAP2K1, a pathway commonly activated in cancer and responsible for the germ-line RAS-opathies. These variants were more frequent in high-flow than low-flow VMs. In vitro characterisation and two transgenic zebrafish AVM models which recapitulated the human phenotype validated the pathogenesis of the mutant alleles. Importantly, treatment of AVM-BRAF mutant zebrafish with the BRAF inihibitor, Vemurafinib, restored blood flow in AVM. CONCLUSIONS. Our findings uncover a major cause of sporadic vascular malformations of different clinical types, and thereby offer the potential of personalised medical treatment by repurposing existing licensed cancer therapies. FUNDING. This work was funded or supported by grants from AVM Butterfly Charity, the Wellcome Trust (UK), the Medical Research Council (UK), the UK National Institute for Health Research, L'Oreal-Melanoma Research Alliance, the European Research Council, and the National Human Genome Research (US).
Lara Al-Olabi, Satyamaanasa Polubothu, Katherine Dowsett, Katrina A. Andrews, Paulina Stadnik, Agnel P. Joseph, Rachel Knox, Alan Pittman, Graeme Clark, William Baird, Neil Bulstrode, Mary Glover, Kristiana Gordon, Darren Hargrave, Susan M. Huson, Thomas S. Jacques, Gregory James, Hannah Kondolf, Loshan Kangesu, Kim M. Keppler-Noreuil, Amjad Khan, Marjorie J. Lindhurst, Mark Lipson, Sahar Mansour, Justine O'Hara, Caroline Mahon, Anda Mosica, Celia Moss, Aditi Murthy, Juling Ong, Victoria E. Parker, Jean-Baptiste Rivière, Julie C. Sapp, Neil J. Sebire, Rahul Shah, Branavan Sivakumar, Anna Thomas, Alex Virasami, Regula Waelchli, Zhiqiang Zeng, Leslie G. Biesecker, Alex Barnacle, Maya Topf, Robert K. Semple, E. Elizabeth Patton, Veronica A. Kinsler
Intake of hemoglobin by the hemoglobin-haptoglobin receptor CD163 leads to a distinct alternative non–foam cell antiinflammatory macrophage phenotype that was previously considered atheroprotective. Here, we reveal an unexpected but important pathogenic role for these macrophages in atherosclerosis. Using human atherosclerotic samples, cultured cells, and a mouse model of advanced atherosclerosis, we investigated the role of intraplaque hemorrhage on macrophage function with respect to angiogenesis, vascular permeability, inflammation, and plaque progression. In human atherosclerotic lesions, CD163+ macrophages were associated with plaque progression, microvascularity, and a high level of HIF1α and VEGF-A expression. We observed irregular vascular endothelial cadherin in intraplaque microvessels surrounded by CD163+ macrophages. Within these cells, activation of HIF1α via inhibition of prolyl hydroxylases promoted VEGF-mediated increases in intraplaque angiogenesis, vascular permeability, and inflammatory cell recruitment. CD163+ macrophages increased intraplaque endothelial VCAM expression and plaque inflammation. Subjects with homozygous minor alleles of the SNP rs7136716 had elevated microvessel density, increased expression of CD163 in ruptured coronary plaques, and a higher risk of myocardial infarction and coronary heart disease in population cohorts. Thus, our findings highlight a nonlipid-driven mechanism by which alternative macrophages promote plaque angiogenesis, leakiness, inflammation, and progression via the CD163/HIF1α/VEGF-A pathway.
Liang Guo, Hirokuni Akahori, Emanuel Harari, Samantha L. Smith, Rohini Polavarapu, Vinit Karmali, Fumiyuki Otsuka, Rachel L. Gannon, Ryan E. Braumann, Megan H. Dickinson, Anuj Gupta, Audrey L. Jenkins, Michael J. Lipinski, Johoon Kim, Peter Chhour, Paul S. de Vries, Hiroyuki Jinnouchi, Robert Kutys, Hiroyoshi Mori, Matthew D. Kutyna, Sho Torii, Atsushi Sakamoto, Cheol Ung Choi, Qi Cheng, Megan L. Grove, Mariem A. Sawan, Yin Zhang, Yihai Cao, Frank D. Kolodgie, David P. Cormode, Dan E. Arking, Eric Boerwinkle, Alanna C. Morrison, Jeanette Erdmann, Nona Sotoodehnia, Renu Virmani, Aloke V. Finn
Disordered coagulation contributes to death in sepsis and lacks effective treatments. Existing markers of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) reflect its sequelae rather than its causes, delaying diagnosis and treatment. Here we show that disruption of the endothelial Tie2 axis is a sentinel event in septic DIC. Proteomics in septic DIC patients revealed a network involving inflammation and coagulation with the Tie2 antagonist, Angiopoietin-2 (Angpt-2), occupying a central node. Angpt-2 was strongly associated with traditional DIC markers including platelet counts, yet more accurately predicted mortality in two large independent cohorts (combined N = 1077). In endotoxemic mice, reduced Tie2 signaling preceded signs of overt DIC. During this early phase, intravital imaging of microvascular injury revealed excessive fibrin accumulation, a pattern remarkably mimicked by Tie2 deficiency even without inflammation. Conversely, Tie2 activation normalized pro-thrombotic responses by inhibiting endothelial tissue factor and phosphatidylserine exposure. Critically, Tie2 activation had no adverse effects on bleeding. These results mechanistically implicate Tie2 signaling as a central regulator of microvascular thrombus formation in septic DIC and indicate that circulating markers of the Tie2 axis could facilitate earlier diagnosis. Finally, interventions targeting Tie2 may normalize coagulation in inflammatory states while averting the bleeding risks of current DIC therapies.
Sarah J. Higgins, Karen De Ceunynck, John Kellum, Xiuying Chen, Xuesong Gu, Sharjeel A. Chaudhry, Sol Schulman, Towia A. Libermann, Shulin Lu, Nathan I. Shapiro, David C. Christiani, Robert Flaumenhaft, Samir M. Parikh
Before insulin can stimulate myocytes to take up glucose, it must first move from the circulation to the interstitial space. The continuous endothelium of skeletal muscle (SkM) capillaries restricts insulin's access to myocytes. The mechanism by which insulin crosses this continuous endothelium is critical to understand insulin action and insulin resistance; however, methodological obstacles have limited understanding of endothelial insulin transport in vivo. Here, we present an intravital microscopy technique to measure the rate of insulin efflux across the endothelium of SkM capillaries. This method involves development of a fully bioactive, fluorescent insulin probe, a gastrocnemius preparation for intravital microscopy, an automated vascular segmentation algorithm, and the use of mathematical models to estimate endothelial transport parameters. We combined direct visualization of insulin efflux from SkM capillaries with modeling of insulin efflux kinetics to identify fluid-phase transport as the major mode of transendothelial insulin efflux in mice. Model-independent experiments demonstrating that insulin movement is neither saturable nor affected by insulin receptor antagonism supported this result. Our finding that insulin enters the SkM interstitium by fluid-phase transport may have implications in the pathophysiology of SkM insulin resistance as well as in the treatment of diabetes with various insulin analogs.
Ian M. Williams, Francisco A. Valenzuela, Steven D. Kahl, Doraiswami Ramkrishna, Adam R. Mezo, Jamey D. Young, K. Sam Wells, David H. Wasserman
Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a common complication of obesity. Here, we have shown that activation of the IgG receptor FcγRIIB in endothelium by hyposialylated IgG plays an important role in obesity-induced insulin resistance. Despite becoming obese on a high-fat diet (HFD), mice lacking FcγRIIB globally or selectively in endothelium were protected from insulin resistance as a result of the preservation of insulin delivery to skeletal muscle and resulting maintenance of muscle glucose disposal. IgG transfer in IgG-deficient mice implicated IgG as the pathogenetic ligand for endothelial FcγRIIB in obesity-induced insulin resistance. Moreover, IgG transferred from patients with T2DM but not from metabolically healthy subjects caused insulin resistance in IgG-deficient mice via FcγRIIB, indicating that similar processes may be operative in T2DM in humans. Mechanistically, the activation of FcγRIIB by IgG from obese mice impaired endothelial cell insulin transcytosis in culture and in vivo. These effects were attributed to hyposialylation of the Fc glycan, and IgG from T2DM patients was also hyposialylated. In HFD-fed mice, supplementation with the sialic acid precursor N-acetyl-D-mannosamine restored IgG sialylation and preserved insulin sensitivity without affecting weight gain. Thus, IgG sialylation and endothelial FcγRIIB may represent promising therapeutic targets to sever the link between obesity and T2DM.
Keiji Tanigaki, Anastasia Sacharidou, Jun Peng, Ken L. Chambliss, Ivan S. Yuhanna, Debabrata Ghosh, Mohamed Ahmed, Alexander J. Szalai, Wanpen Vongpatanasin, Robert F. Mattrey, Qiushi Chen, Parastoo Azadi, Ildiko Lingvay, Marina Botto, William L. Holland, Jennifer J. Kohler, Shashank R. Sirsi, Kenneth Hoyt, Philip W. Shaul, Chieko Mineo
Abnormal activity of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system plays a causal role in the development of hypertension, atherosclerosis, and associated cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction, stroke, and heart failure. As both a vasoconstrictor and a proinflammatory mediator, angiotensin II (Ang II) is considered a potential link between hypertension and atherosclerosis. However, a role for Ang II–induced inflammation in atherosclerosis has not been clearly established, and the molecular mechanisms and intracellular signaling pathways involved are not known. Here, we demonstrated that the RhoA GEF Arhgef1 is essential for Ang II–induced inflammation. Specifically, we showed that deletion of Arhgef1 in a murine model prevents Ang II–induced integrin activation in leukocytes, thereby preventing Ang II–induced recruitment of leukocytes to the endothelium. Mice lacking both LDL receptor (LDLR) and Arhgef1 were protected from high-fat diet–induced atherosclerosis. Moreover, reconstitution of Ldlr–/– mice with Arhgef1-deficient BM prevented high-fat diet–induced atherosclerosis, while reconstitution of Ldlr–/– Arhgef1–/– with WT BM exacerbated atherosclerotic lesion formation, supporting Arhgef1 activation in leukocytes as causal in the development of atherosclerosis. Thus, our data highlight the importance of Arhgef1 in cardiovascular disease and suggest targeting Arhgef1 as a potential therapeutic strategy against atherosclerosis.
Maria Luigia Carbone, Gilliane Chadeuf, Sandrine Heurtebise-Chrétien, Xavier Prieur, Thibault Quillard, Yann Goueffic, Nathalie Vaillant, Marc Rio, Laure Castan, Maxim Durand, Céline Baron-Menguy, Julien Aureille, Juliette Desfrançois, Angela Tesse, Raul M. Torres, Gervaise Loirand
Primary congenital glaucoma (PCG) is a leading cause of blindness in children worldwide and is caused by developmental defects in 2 aqueous humor outflow structures, Schlemm's canal (SC) and the trabecular meshwork. We previously identified loss-of-function mutations in the angiopoietin (ANGPT) receptor TEK in families with PCG and showed that ANGPT/TEK signaling is essential for SC development. Here, we describe roles for the major ANGPT ligands in the development of the aqueous outflow pathway. We determined that ANGPT1 is essential for SC development, and that Angpt1-knockout mice form a severely hypomorphic canal with elevated intraocular pressure. By contrast, ANGPT2 was dispensable, although mice deficient in both Angpt1 and Angpt2 completely lacked SC, indicating that ANGPT2 compensates for the loss of ANGPT1. In addition, we identified 3 human subjects with rare ANGPT1 variants within an international cohort of 284 PCG patients. Loss of function in 2 of the 3 patient alleles was observed by functional analysis of ANGPT1 variants in a combined in silico, in vitro, and in vivo approach, supporting a causative role for ANGPT1 in disease. By linking ANGPT1 with PCG, these results highlight the importance of ANGPT/TEK signaling in glaucoma pathogenesis and identify a candidate target for therapeutic development.
Benjamin R. Thomson, Tomokazu Souma, Stuart W. Tompson, Tuncer Onay, Krishnakumar Kizhatil, Owen M. Siggs, Liang Feng, Kristina N. Whisenhunt, Tammy L. Yanovitch, Luba Kalaydjieva, Dimitar N. Azmanov, Simone Finzi, Christine E. Tanna, Alex W. Hewitt, David A. Mackey, Yasmin S. Bradfield, Emmanuelle Souzeau, Shari Javadiyan, Janey L. Wiggs, Francesca Pasutto, Xiaorong Liu, Simon W.M. John, Jamie E. Craig, Jing Jin, Terri L. Young, Susan E. Quaggin


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Health reminders for October from Twin Cities Community Hospital
Breast Cancer Awareness, Birth and Baby Center open house are topics of hospital newsletter
The folks at Twin Cities Community Hospital, located at 1100 Las Tablas Road in Templeton, would like to remind community members of importance of taking control of your personal health. The monthly newsletter is filled with various health topics for October, including information on Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the hospital's Birth and Baby Center for expecting parents.
As the TCCH newsletter points out, "There just aren't enough hours in the day for busy schedules. But the last thing that should be neglected is your health. One out of every eight women will develop breast cancer in their life, and mammograms are the most effective form of early detection." Read more here.
Pregnant women and their families are invited to the Twin Cities Birth & Baby Center Open House on Saturday, Oct. 21 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The newsletter states, "If you or someone you know is pregnant, you're invited to tour our spa-like facility—known for its family-centered, naturalistic philosophy—at our fall open house. During the tour, you'll meet members of our caring birth center team while receiving information about birth center classes and lactation support." Read more here.
For more information on these and other programs offered at Twin Cities Community Hospital, see twincitiescommunityhospital.com or call (805) 434-3500.


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Cognac Lace-Wrapped Combat Boot
Get ready for an outdoor adventure! Crafted with smooth faux leather, a lace-up front that wraps around the ankle and lug soles, these combat boots can go from the trail to the runway.
- Side zip
- Measures 8.75 in. high
- Heel: 1 in.
- Non-skid sole
- Man-made materials
- Imported


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The dram (Armenian: Դրամ; code: AMD) is the monetary unit of Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It is subdivided into 100 luma (Armenian: լումա). The word "dram" translates into English as "money" and is cognate with the Greek drachma. The Central Bank of Armenia has the exclusive right of issuing the national currency according to Armenian law.
The first instance of a dram currency in Armenia was in the period from 1199 to 1375, when silver coins called dram were issued.
The modern dram came into effect on 22 November 1993, at a rate of 200 rubles = 1 dram (1 USD : 14.5 AMD). The dram is not pegged to any other currency.
Exchange Rate
The dram is currently approximately 330 to the US dollar. It has been stable since shortly after its introduction.


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Lotus diving is located on the main road in the small fishing village of Chaloklum. They are a 5 star PADI training facility, offering everything from beginner to professional. This dive company is probably of the most experienced and respected dive companies on Koh Phangan, they been established over 15 years. This resort is also recommended by the Lonely Planet.
All of their staff are highly trained to professional level, and all of their equipment is high quality and checked frequently by their own in house maintenance staff. Lunch and refreshments are included in their dive packages, with all of their training done in small groups of a maximum of 5 people; you spend more time with your instructor and diving.
They offer all of their courses in many languages including Thai.
Dive Courses
Discover Scuba Diving
Pool & 1 Local Dive – 2300 Baht
Pool & 2 Local Dives – 3500 Baht
Scuba Diver (2 days) – 6500 Baht
PADI Open Water (4 days)
A - 2 x Beach Dives – 9800 Baht
B – 4 x Boat Dives – 10800 Baht
PADI Open Water Live Aboard – 12800 Baht
PADI Adventure Diver (2 days) – 7000 Baht
PADI Advanced Open Water (3 days) – 9500 Baht
PADI Rescue Diver (4 days) – 10500 Baht
EFR & Rescue Diver (5 days) – 12900 Baht
Divemaster – 32000 Baht
Assistant Instructor – 17000 Baht
Home Search Accommodation Koh Phangan Satellite Map Phangan Photos Links


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29 Apr Victim Support is Good in the Hood
Good in the Hood is Z Energy's community initiative to give back money to the communities where they have petrol stations. Community groups were invited to submit an application and the station owners and staff went through them and then chose four community groups they want to support.
The chosen four groups will each be allocated a 'bin' in store, and Z customers can take a token after each purchase, and vote for the community group of their choice. $4,000 per station will be divided amongst the four groups, according to the number of customer votes they receive.
Voting starts 1 May and closes on 31 May.
What do we need to do to support this?
Need to fill up? If there's a Z station in your area that is supporting Victim Support, how about popping in there to fill up, and vote for Victim Support? How much we get depends on how many votes we get!
Spread the word to friends and colleagues: shop and vote at the 'Victim Support Z stations'.
If you don't get handed a token, just ask for one.
And wait there's more – if you download the Z App now, at midday on 1 May all Z App users will be given a Good in the Hood voucher for a free token straight in to their Z App account – to be used at any time over the month of May.
Where are the 41 Z stations supporting Victim Support?
You can vote for Victim Support at any of the following Z stations:
Z Station
|Nearest VS Office
|Z Greville Road
|North Shore
|Z Sunnybrae
|North Shore
|Z Manly
|Z Wilmot Motors
|Z Ellerslie
|Auckland East
|Z Hillsborough Road
|Auckland West
|Z Botany Downs
|Tamaki East
|Z Harris Rd
|Tamaki East
|Z Ormiston Road
|Tamaki East
|Z Glen Eden
|Z Wiri Station Road
|Counties Manukau Central
|Z Pukekohe
|Counties Manukau Pukekohe
|Z Waiuku
|Counties Manukau Pukekohe
|Z Dinsdale
|Z Five Crossroads
|Z Stadium
|Z Ngatea
|Z Matamata
|Z Ngaruawahia
|North Waikato/ Ngaruawahia
|Z Te Awamutu
|Z Kawerau
|Eastern Bay of Plenty
|Z Opotiki
|Eastern Bay of Plenty
|Z Gisborne
|Z Heretaunga St
|Z Taradale
|Z Putaruru
|South Waikato
|Z Palm Beach
|Z Waiouru
|Z Seaview
|Lower Hutt
|Z Trentham
|Upper Hutt
|Z Crofton Downs
|Z Hornby
|Z Bryndwr
|Z Belfast
|Christchurch Rural North
|Z Rangiora
|Christchurch Rural North
|Z Redwood
|Z Bowater Motors
|Z Stoke
|Z Alexandra
|Central Otago
|Z Oamaru
|Z Washdyke
|South Canterbury