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Employing the same design used in Therm-a-Rest's line of innovative inflatable sleeping pads, the NeoAir Pillow provides comfortable support while keeping weight to an absolute minimum. An integrated valve makes inflation quick and easy.
With an inflatable air core, soft synthetic fill and a weight of only 2.4 ounces, the Cocoon Hyperlight AirCore Pillow saves you from having to choose between comfort and packability. A 2" x 3" stuff sack is included.
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Unique and versatile, the Exped MultiMat serves as a minimalist sleeping pad, a ground cloth or even a carpet for your tent! Made of EVA foam and backed on one side by a ripstop nylon surface, the MultiMat is lightweight, waterproof and durable.
If you are an ounce-counting backpacker who hasn't been able to justify carrying a pillow in your pack, the ergonomic Exped Air Pillow UL may change your mind. The Medium size weighs a mere 1.8 ounces and the Large just 2.8 ounces!
Made of compact, closed-cell foam with an aluminized coating for increased warmth (Silver/Limon color only), the Therm-a-Rest Z-Seat has a minimalist design that is ideal for backpackers and anyone who is traveling light.
An ultra-lightweight, dual-purpose stuff sack and Exped sleeping pad inflation device, the Schnozzel PumpBag UL is a versatile backpacking accessory. Waterproof fabrication and a sealed roll-top closure fully protect the contents of the bag.
Weighing just 11.1 oz and packing down to 6" x 4", the NEMO Fillo pillow makes a strong case for inclusion in your pack. A combination of memory foam and inflatable air tubes makes the Fillo more comfortable than traditional backpacking pillows.
New for 2014! The Sierra Designs DriDown Pillow is an innovative backpacking pillow that includes three components: a pillow top made with 600 fill DriDown water-resistant down, a removable synthetic insert and a convenient stuff sack.
Thanks to the Exped Air Pillow, ounce-counting backpackers no longer need to live with a stiff neck. Feather-light and boasting compact packed dimensions, the Air Pillow barely takes up any space in your pack. Available in 2 sizes.
If you backpack or travel light then you understand the importance of having one item pull double duty. Weighing just 5.3 oz, the Exped Pillow Pump doubles as a pillow and a pump for your Exped SynMat Basic 7.5, AirMat 7.5 and all Exped SIM mats.
The convenient and easy to use Exped Schnozzel allows you to combine the Exped Shrink Bag to Exped AirMats and Exped SIM mats that do not have an integrated pump for rapid pad inflation without the use of your mouth.
Designed to work in tandem with sleeping pads and other sleep system accessories (all sold separately), the Therm-a-Rest Tech Blanket is a versatile addition to your camping or backpacking sleep system.
The ultra-lightweight NeoAir Pump Sack is a versatile sleeping pad accessory that serves as a stuff sack, an inflation device and, when used with a NeoAir pad (sold separately), a camp seat.
Saving your lungs from having to blow up your inflatable pad and moisture from reaching the pad's interior, the Therm-a-Rest NeoAir Torrent Air Pump is quiet, lightweight and compact. Can inflate a NeoAir pad in 1 minute!
The Therm-a-Rest Down Pillow is ideally suited for backpacking and travel. Fully compressed, the pillow takes up surprisingly little room in your car, pack or luggage and lofts up quickly to provide a soft, comfortable headrest.
Ultra-soft and expandable, the Cocoon Down Travel Pillow is ideally suited for travel and family camping. Fully compressed, the pillow takes up surprisingly little room and lofts up quickly to provide a comfortable headrest.
Lightweight, durable and water-resistant, the Therm-a-Rest Fast & Light Stuff Sack is built to safely carry Therm-a-Rest NeoAir inflatable and Fast & Light Series self-inflating sleeping pads (sold separately).
Sleep more comfortably with the Big Agnes Air Core Pillow.
Convert your sleeping pad into a camp chair with the Big Easy Chair Kit from Big Agnes. This kit can be used with 20 inch wide pads in either 72 inch or 78 inch lengths. Made of durable polyester with fiberglass stays. Mesh stuff sack included.
Designed to work in tandem with sleeping pads, the Therm-a-Rest Universal Sheet is a versatile addition to your backpacking or camping sleep system. The Universal Sheet is sure to enhance the comfort of your next outdoor adventure.
Weighing just 1.95 ounces and packing down small (3" x 1.25"), the Klymit Pillow X allows backpackers to enjoy backcountry comfort without having to worry about weight or space.
The field-ready Therm-a-Rest Instant Field Repair Kit, complete with clear adhesive patches, Glue Dots and cleaning supplies, allows you to make instant, semi-permanent repairs to any sleeping pad.
Therm-a-Rest's Trekker Pillow Case is ultralight and fits inside a shirt pocket.
Restore worn or damaged Therm-a-Rest self-inflating sleeping pads (sold separately) with the Valve Repair Kit. The valve promises high-flow inflation and deflation and tightens efficiently to ensure that your pad remains fully inflated.
The Trekker Lounge Kit from Therm-a-Rest let's you convert your self-inflating mattress (sold separately) into a comfortable, lightweight camp lounge with a built-n Stuff-It pillow.
Convert your sleeping pad (sold separately) into a camp chair with the Big Easy Chair Kit from Big Agnes. Fits wide/large 25 inch wide pads.
The Mattress Snap Kit enables your Therm-a-Rest sleeping pad to accommodate a Tech Blanket or Ventra Down Comforter (both sold separately). Adhesive backing makes attachment easy.
By accommodating a wide range of mattresses, fitted sheets, blankets and other sleep system components, the Therm-a-Rest Camp N' Carry Sack makes packing and unpacking easy. Large enough to carry Therm-a-Rest Luxury Map and BaseCamp mattresses.
A multi-purpose storage sack for your Therm-a-Rest sleeping pad, the Trekker Roll Sack offers a convenient way to stow your pad when not in use and doubles as a comfortable, textured sleeping surface for your head.
The streamlined Compack Chair Kit lets you convert your Therm-a-Rest mattress (sold separately) into a comfortable camp chair. Ultra-lightweight construction makes the Compack Chair Kit ideal for backpacking.
The Therm-a-Rest Trekker Chair Kit lets you convert your Therm-a-Rest self-inflating or inflatable sleeping pad (sold separately) into a comfortable, lightweight camp chair. A minimalist design allows for quick and easy setup.
Weighing just under a pound and packing down as small as a 1 liter water bottle, the NEMO Fillo Luxury travel pillow uses a combination of memory foam and inflatable air tubes to make it more comfortable than traditional travel and backpacking pillows.
Saving you from having to manually blow up your inflatable pad (sold separately) and keeping destructive moisture from reaching the pad's interior, the Therm-a-Rest NeoAir Mini Pump is lightweight and compact. Inflates a NeoAir mattress in 3 minutes.
The Therm-a-Rest Permanent Home Repair Kit includes strong adhesive and fabric patches to allow you to make effective mattress repairs (NOTE: 24-hour required curing time).
The Exped Shrink Bag allows you to free up space in your pack by reducing the packed size of bulky items like your sleeping bag or extra winter layers and doubles as a pump for Exped inflatable sleeping pads.
Offering the maximum comfort, the Big Agnes Sleeping Giant memory Foam Deluxe Pillow consists of an air core pillow wrapped in a contoured layer of memory foam. An external cover combines the two into a single ultra-plush camping headrest.
With an inflatable air core, multiple layers of premium synthetic fill and touch-friendly exterior fabrics, the Cocoon AirCore Travel Pillow saves you from having to choose between comfort and packability.
The Exped Waterproof Compression Bag uses a unique horizontal compression system to free up space in your pack by reducing the packed size of bulky items like your sleeping bag or extra winter layers and is available in three different sizes.
Many Exped pads have integrated hand pumps, but, if you prefer to utilize your Exped Mini Pump, Pillow Pump or Schnozzel PumpBag (all sold separately) for fast and efficient inflation, the FlatValve Adapter is required to create a securely sealed connection point.
Light, warm and inexpensive, these mats are ideal for beginners, no-frills hikers and as an underpad for winter camping.
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St. Louis County Police Expand Chase Rules
Chief says it's likely to lead to more high speed pursuits
Chase Suspect Wears Ink That Reads "Never Surrender"
Charged with violating Washington Ave. closure early Saturday.
High-Speed Chase Leads To Fatal Crash
Driver identified as Ted Fitzgerald, 27, of St. Peters.
Car Chase Suspect Charged
Led officers from St. Peters, into Illinois then back to Missouri
Man Charged In Chase, Attempting To Hit Officers, On His Birthday
Started chase by fleeing traffic stop
Suspected Robbers Caught After Televised Police Chase
Pair suspected of robbing two gas stations in Caseyville.
Burglary Suspect Causes Wreck While Fleeing
The burglary suspect and two others are seriously injured after the suspect ran a red light while trying to avoid police.
Angry Bikers Chase Westboro Protestor Out Of Joplin
Lone protestor faced hundreds of angry bikers, onlookers.
Three Arrested After Webster Burglary, Car Chase
May be responsible for more area berak-ins
Willcoxson: Long History of Trouble With The Law
"(Willcoxson) was very good" at escaping custody.

subset: commoncrawl


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Life is good for the four humans in Cleveland who know that mice have evolved into possibly the smartest species on earth. Eleven-year-old Megan and her cousin Joey have great summer jobs at the mouse-powered factory that makes Thumbtops-the tiny computers mice use to spread the word about climate change.
But suddenly, the Big Cheese, leader of the Mouse Nation, needs their help. There's trouble at his Headquarters in California. The four humans rush to the rescue, only to find themselves on a crazy road-trip-with way too many mice. Their journey takes them clear across the country, always just one step ahead of the mysterious enemy. Will the humans save the Mouse Nation, so mice can continue their fight for the health of the planet?
Get ready for the exhilarating sequel to Mousenet! This updated take on the classic mouse tale is charmingly illustrated and filled with friendship, humor and heart.
About the Author
Prudence Breitrose grew up in the part of England where Winnie-the-Pooh once roamed, but now lives in California. She worked as a health education writer until she had a dream that confused computer mice with the real thing. That got her started on her mouse books first Mousenet and then this sequel, Mousemobile. Visit her and the Big Cheese at www.mousenet.org.
Stephanie Yue is a transplant from Atlanta, Beijing, and Hong Kong. She studied illustration in New York City, and currently shares a home with a hamster in Providence, RI. When she's not drawing, you may find her zipping around on a scooter, training in martial arts, and pretending to be a superhero. More of her work can be found at www.jellycity.com
Praise for Mousemobile…
Gr 3-5 In order to spread the word about climate change, mice have created and perfected tiny computers called Thumbtops. Humans Megan, her cousin Joey, and her Uncle Fred have great summer jobs at the plant that makes the technology. There's just one problem. The organization, W.A.T.C.H. (We're Against the Climate Hoax), is upset that someone has been spreading "lies" about climate change and they are determined to bring them down. The organization learns that mice, along with Megan and her Uncle Fred, are somehow involved. Inside the Mouse Nation, one or more of the mice have spilled most of the crackers in exchange for a reward. Now the animals and the humans are trying to escape the organization's clutches, and the Big Cheese (the leader of the mice) suspects Megan and her uncle of betrayal. Can they clear their names? Although it is a little preachy, this story teaches an important lesson. The characters are likable, strong, and well developed, and the plot is simple, but well done. The illustrations are detailed and complement the text. Readers who liked Mousenet (Hyperion, 2011) and enjoy fantasy, animal books, and adventure will appreciate this novel. Kira Moody, Whitmore Public Library, Salt Lake City, UT—SLJ
In this follow-up to Mousenet (Disney-Hyperion, 2011), Megan, Joey, the adults, and the mice in their lives drive across country to save the mouse nation. In this series, some mice can speak and use their thumbtops to send emails. Someone is trying to sabotage their work to end climate change, and it is up to Megan and her mice friends to save it. The crew travel across country, trying to get to a secret camp where movie stars are educated about climate change. Filled with amusing word choices and plays on words, this is a fun read that allows one to imagine what it might be like to talk and interact with the little rodents. Carl Harvey II, School Librarian, North Elementary School, Noblesville, Indiana [Editor's Note: Available in e-book format.] Recommended—Library Media Connection
In this charming sequel to Mousenet (2011), mice who use tiny Thumbtop computers need some rescuing by the very few humans who know that mice have evolved. Everything's going fine at Planet Mouse, the mostly mouse-staffed factory that manufactures Thumbtops in Cleveland. Thumbtops are critical for Operation Cool It, Mouse Nation's plan to stop climate change. These mice have no special powers -only sophisticated brains and regular 21st-century technology (if very small)-so when they hear of a threat to (literally) exterminate Mouse Nation headquarters in Silicon Valley, 11-year-old Megan and her uncle Fred rush to California. Carefully protecting the secrecy of the intelligent mice, they drive an RV holding 2,243 mice up through Oregon, pursued by a mysterious truck. One not-too-bright mouse offers sensitive information to climate-change deniers in exchange for an Amazon gift certificate to buy a sparkly pink dress. The text chides her girlieness and fondness for "chick flicks"; action films, conversely, are lauded, and action-movie stars help save the day. Credulity strains sometimes-the Rocky Mountain valley that's home to mercenary climate-change deniers is, coincidentally, right next to Megan's mom's summer job, and the ending is too neat-but Mouse Nation's efficient, rational society, from Mouse Sign Language to legal proceedings, remains enchantingly believable. Closing the book, readers may wonder: Will these mice return, and can they really stop climate change? They will hope so. (Animal fantasy. 8-12)—Kirkus


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Eternal Edge - Made from Fiendish Codex, Haunting Guise, Sheen. 300 Mana, 300 Health, 120 Ability Power,10 Mana Regen, Unique Passive - 25% Cooldowns, Unique Passive - Magic Penetration + 30, Unique Passive - 5% Attack Speed and 5 AP plus 5% Attack Speed and 5 AP per stack for 10 sec for each ability use. Stacks up to 7 times. cost - 3860. appearance - a blue legendary Sword. Death's Render - Made from guinsoo's rageblade and Hexdrinker 80 Damage, 50 Ability Power, 50 Magic Resist, Unique Passive - 5% Attack Speed and 5 Attack Damage plus 5% Attack Speed and 5 Attack Damage per Stack for 5 sec on basic Attack. Stacks up to 5 Times. cost - 4010 appearance - a black and silver sword stained with blood
Senior Member
Jax is fine without these.
The reason why the Eternal edge is so cheap after you get the other three builds is so it matches the Infinity Edge pretty much, but they could bump it to 4060.
What happened to the mpen from Guise and the unique from Sheen? What happened to the shield effect from Hexdrinker?
When a weapon upgrades sometimes inherit abilities drop such as the afforementioned shield but I will update the magic penetrarion thank u
Both items seem incredibly overpowered, because someone like Jax would get these, and he would never lose a 1v1. Not just for Jax, but 120 AP + Health? That is not balanced at all, that amount of AP on a single item can't give health...Rabadon's has 130 AP, and gives the passive. If you had just an item with 120 AP, and a passive that included something NONE AP related, then the first item would be okay to buy. The second item is just plain stupid, all you did was mash two items together.
that's how most of the items are though in reference to your comment about the death's rendering.
maybe the eternal edge should be riot games first of few 5000 gold weapons. it could have a price tag of 4660 maybe. It's either that or reduce the AP to 100 and sell it for 4260.


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4.5 Great Buy SenuaDigital | 07/05/2013 | See all SenuaDigital's reviews (4) Great purchase as described, prompt delivery as I received the product in time for Christmas. The item itself is very impressive and my kids use it all the time for gaming, watching a film, all wireless. The fly touch is a brilliant buy and is recommended to anyone who wants a cheaper version of an iPad for themselves or for children. Fantastic gadget and does rberything outlined by the supplier. I read some reviews which were negative about the product prior to my purchase but since having bought the Flytouch I have had no real issues that cannot be rectified. Its android, so loading apps takes seconds when on wi-fi, I cannot think of anything it cannot do as has an additional memory capability aswell as USB ports. All in all a great buy.
4.5 a bad e pad. dodger26 | 03/10/2012 | See all dodger26's reviews (1) not a good pad. do not buyi brought this pad in march with in one month it gave up the ghostit keeps crashing,over heating,turning off,stopped charging and a hole lot more. DO NOT BUY THIS E PAD!!!!!!!.
4.5 pen mfer1979 | 05/01/2012 | See all mfer1979's reviews (1) its a good bit of kit but you need to use the pen on the screen . finggers dont work that well
4.5 Poor Purchase evomark | 03/01/2012 | See all evomark's reviews (1) My son bought this for me and it is a very slow and poor Tablet.The GPS does not work and settings show my Location as China.Some apps will not work.There were no Instructions with the Tablet and no user manual.


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Dale Cregan 'lured PCs to their deaths', court hears
A fugitive lured police officers to him before shooting them repeatedly and then throwing a grenade at his victims, a court has heard.
Dale Cregan, 29, had evaded a nationwide manhunt when he set the trap, Preston Crown Court heard.
Mr Cregan denies killing PCs Nicola Hughes, 23, and Fiona Bone, 32, in Mottram, Greater Manchester last September.
He also denies the murders of David Short, 46, and his son, Mark, 23.
Mr Cregan appeared in court wearing a false left eye made of black onyx.
Mr Nicholas Clarke QC, prosecuting, said PCs Hughes and Bone were killed as they responded to a report of a burglary on the morning of 18 September.
Mr Clarke said: "[Cregan] lay in wait with a Glock firearm with an extended magazine that was fully loaded.
"PC Fiona Bone and PC Nicola Hughes attended. As soon as they arrived Cregan, who was on the run, shot the officers repeatedly, until his magazine was empty.
"As he left the scene he again threw a grenade towards the victims."
'Son died in his arms'At the time the officers were killed, Mr Cregan was on the run and a suspect in the shooting of Mark Short and his father David Short.
The court heard the pair had been targeted after Mr Cregan was recruited with his friend, and fellow accused, Leon Atkinson - whose family had a long-running feud with the Short family.
Mr Clarke told the jury that Mark Short was shot at the Cotton Tree pub in Droylsden, Manchester, on May 25 last year
"At the time that his son Mark was shot, David Short, the head of the Short family, was using the toilet," said Mr Clarke.
"Otherwise he himself would have been a target. His son died in his arms."
On the morning of 10 August, David Short was at home in nearby Clayton when his killers came calling.
"He was chased through the house and shot many times," said Mr Clarke.
"He tried to run around the side of the house to escape. His injuries were already un-survivable and then a grenade was thrown on to him.
As the prison vans carrying Dale Cregan and his co-accused arrived at court, police officers armed with machine guns stood guard and a police helicopter clattered in the sky above.
Just over an hour later the families of the two murdered officers walked into court under the gaze of dozens of cameras.
PC Fiona Bone's partner Clare Curran walked in hand in hand with her sister Vicky Bone. Her parents Paul and June came in together. The parents of PC Nicola Hughes are separated.
Dale Cregan is one of 10 men in the dock who watched and listened as the prosecution opened the case against them.
There are so many barristers and relatives in Court 1 that most journalists have to follow the case on video screens in an annexe in another part of the court.
"Its explosion had devastating consequences for his torso.
"It is the first time in this country that a military grenade has been deployed in this way."
The catalyst for these attacks was a row on 13 May in the Gardeners Arms pub between Theresa Atkinson - dubbed "the matriarch of the Atkinson family" - and Raymond Young, a member of the Short family.
Mr Clarke said: "Theresa Atkinson was drunk and lashed out with a bottle, striking Young.
"It led to Raymond Young backhanding Theresa Atkinson."
She responded by shouting: "I'm going to get you done by my sons."
'Murder plot'The jury was told Theresa Atkinson then phoned her son Leon, who contacted his two brothers and texted his "old friend" Dale Cregan.
Mr Cregan recruited Luke Livesey, Matthew James and Ryan Hadfield, the other defendants alleged to be involved with the Cotton Tree murder.
Mr Clarke said: "They [Mr Cregan and Mr Atkinson] decided to exact revenge for the lack of respect shown to Theresa Atkinson and so the shootings at the Cotton Tree were a direct reprisal."
Mr Cregan, Mr Atkinson, 35, from Ashton-under-Lyne, Mr Livesey, 27, from Hattersley, Damian Gorman, 38, from Glossop, Mr Hadfield, 28, from Droylsden, and Mr James, 33, from Clayton, are all accused of the murder of Mark Short and the attempted murders of three others in the pub at the time. All six defendants deny the charges.
Accused of the murder of David Short are Mr Cregan, Francis Dixon, 37, from Stalybridge, Anthony Wilkinson, 38, from Manchester, and Jermaine Ward, 24.
All four are also jointly accused of the attempted murder of Sharon Hark on the same day, and a single charge of causing an explosion.
They all deny the charges.
Mr Wilkinson is also charged with possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and Mohammed Ali, 32, from Chadderton, is accused of assisting an offender. They deny the charges.
Only Mr Cregan is charged with the murder of the two police officers.
The trial continues.


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Distance-based methods are popular for reconstructing evolutionary trees thanks to their speed and generality. A number of methods exist for estimating distances from sequence alignments, which often involves some sort of correction for multiple substitutions. The problem is to accurately estimate the number of true substitutions given an observed alignment. So far, the most accurate protein distance estimators have looked for the optimal matrix in a series of transition probability matrices, e.g. the Dayhoff series. The evolutionary distance between two aligned sequences is here estimated as the evolutionary distance of the optimal matrix. The optimal matrix can be found either by an iterative search for the Maximum Likelihood matrix, or by integration to find the Expected Distance. As a consequence, these methods are more complex to implement and computationally heavier than correction-based methods. Another problem is that the result may vary substantially depending on the evolutionary model used for the matrices. An ideal distance estimator should produce consistent and accurate distances independent of the evolutionary model used.
We propose a correction-based protein sequence estimator called Scoredist. It uses a logarithmic correction of observed divergence based on the alignment score according to the BLOSUM62 score matrix. We evaluated Scoredist and a number of optimal matrix methods using three evolutionary models for both training and testing Dayhoff, Jones-Taylor-Thornton, and Müller-Vingron, as well as Whelan and Goldman solely for testing. Test alignments with known distances between 0.01 and 2 substitutions per position (1–200 PAM) were simulated using ROSE. Scoredist proved as accurate as the optimal matrix methods, yet substantially more robust. When trained on one model but tested on another one, Scoredist was nearly always more accurate. The Jukes-Cantor and Kimura correction methods were also tested, but were substantially less accurate.
The Scoredist distance estimator is fast to implement and run, and combines robustness with accuracy. Scoredist has been incorporated into the Belvu alignment viewer, which is available at ftp://ftp.cgb.ki.se/pub/prog/belvu/ webcite.
Estimating divergence time of protein sequences is one of the fundamental problems in bioinformatics. Evolutionary distance estimates are used by many of the most commonly used phylogenetic tree reconstruction algorithms [1-3]. In current research, phylogenetic trees are used for many types of subsequent analysis, e.g. orthology inference [4-6]. Early models for sequence evolution focussed on nucleotides. They commonly employ Markov chains and assume independent evolution at every site. Each of the four nucleotides is identified by one state and the substitution probability is modelled as a state transition probability from one state to another. In the most straightforward approach, the same state transition probability is assigned to every substitution [7]. Subsequent models take account of more nucleotide specific properties, e.g. transitional and transversional substitutions as well as GC content (see [8] for an introduction). These more advanced approaches are bound to nucleotide sequences and cannot be directly used with protein sequences.
Markov chain models for protein evolution differ from nucleotide approaches in their larger number of states and transitions for which parameters need to be estimated. The protein sequence Jukes-Cantor model assigns the same probability to each substitution and is hence a rather poor approximation. This method essentially takes the observed differences between two sequences and corrects this value to the estimated evolutionary distance using a logarithmic function. Other similar methods exist that also correct observed differences, e.g. Kimura's method [9]. Although they produce rather inaccurate distance estimates, correction-based distance estimators are popular because of their simplicity. More advanced protein evolution models estimate parameters from protein sequence alignments. Assuming the same substitutions for closely and distantly related sequences leads to the construction of the Dayhoff matrix series [10]. Following this approach, it suffices to collect data from alignments of closely related sequences to build an evolutionary model of amino acid substitution.
Dayhoff and co-workers introduced the term Percent Accepted (point) Mutation (PAM), which denotes a commonly used measure for evolutionary distance between two aligned sequences (insertions and deletions are ignored). In other words, two sequences at a distance of 150 PAM are related to each other by 1.5 substitutions per position on average. As substitution is a stochastic process, some positions will experience multiple substitutions while others will experience none. It is also possible that secondary substitutions at one site will result in the original residue, making the evolutionary steps invisible. This is in essence the reason why estimating evolutionary distance is so hard – multiple substitutions cannot be observed directly. An evolutionary distance of 250 PAM corresponds roughly to 80% observed differences. The term PAM is found in literature for both the matrix series given by Dayhoff et al. as well as for evolutionary distance unit. In this publication we refer to the matrices as Dayhoff matrices and reserve the term PAM for distance units.
There are two major shortcomings connected with the derivation of the Dayhoff matrices. First, potential errors inherent in the experimental data will be magnified by extrapolation. Additionally, it is questionable whether substitution probabilities observed on closely related sequences can accurately reflect the evolution of more distantly related sequences. The efforts of researchers since the publication of the Dayhoff matrices have led to several other matrix series, sharing the idea of an underlying Markov chain. They differ in terms of the data they are built upon and account for the above-mentioned shortcomings in various ways [11-13].
The approach behind the BLOSUM matrices [14] is different from Dayhoff's evolutionary model. Whereas the Markov model assumes that any transition probability matrix may be derived from another matrix in the same series, the BLOSUM matrices do not imply any evolutionary time. There is no direct mathematical relationship between matrices in the BLOSUM series. Sequences with identities above a given identity cutoff are clustered and used to derive score matrices. The BLOSUM matrices are known as a good general-purpose choice. Especially, BLOSUM62 is frequently chosen for the alignment of sequences.
We here introduce Scoredist, a novel correction-based distance estimator for protein sequences. It applies a correction function to an observed reduction in normalised score, rather than to observed differences as other correction-based methods. This gives a better estimate of the divergence in the well-established PAM measure and allows the popular BLOSUM matrix series to be used. Other matrices could in principle be used, but the BLOSUM matrix has proved to be the most universal. Scoredist distance estimates are calculated directly by a simple equation and do not require cumbersome computational approximations, which is needed for e.g. Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Expected Distance (ED) estimates [15]. Additional calibration opens the possibility to make Scoredist tuned to other evolutionary models.
In order to evaluate our novel protein distance estimator Scoredist against other estimators, we generated a large testset of artificial sequence alignments. Simulation is the only way to exactly know an alignment's evolutionary distance. The substitutions were made by ROSE [16] according to an evolutionary model that can be chosen arbitrarily. It is to be expected that a distance estimator based on a particular evolutionary model will perform optimally on a testset generated with the same model. We therefore generated testsets using four different matrix series: Dayhoff [10], MV [12], JTT [11], and WAG [13]. For each model, 2000 alignments were created for evolutionary distances between 1 and 200 PAM units, i.e. 10 alignments for each distance. The Scoredist, Maximum Likelihood, and Expected Distance estimators can all be tuned towards a particular evolutionary model. We therefore used three evolutionary models which were also used to generate the testsets for these distance estimators, and use a shorthand to refer to these as "method-model". For instance, Maximum Likelihood using the MV model is denoted ML-MV. The Jukes-Cantor and Kimura estimators can not be tuned to a specific model but were tested on all four datasets.
Table 1 shows a compressed summary of the results. For each combination of distance estimator and dataset, the average root mean square deviation from the true distance was calculated for all 2000 alignments. The Expected Distance results were similar to ML, as the methods are akin in nature, but ML was generally more accurate and is much more widely used. As expected, low RMSD values as a sign of good distance estimates were generally obtained when using the same model for alignment creation and subsequent distance estimation. This is seen in the diagonal of low RMSD values from Dayhoff/Dayhoff to JTT/JTT. The only exception to this rule was observed when the testset was generated with Dayhoff. Here, ML-JTT was slightly better than ML-Dayhoff. This result was also verified for distances up to 250 and 300 PAM (data not shown). Comparing Scoredist and ML accuracies when training and testing using the same model resulted in a tie. Scoredist was better for MV, ML was better for JTT, and they were equally accurate for Dayhoff. When comparing accuracies for different training and testing models, however, Scoredist dominates. Here, Scoredist performed better than ML in five of the six cases. For the MV testset the difference was very big. The only case where ML was better than Scoredist was again when running ML-JTT on the Dayhoff testset, which for unclear reasons produced very accurate distance estimates.
Table 1. Accuracy as average RMSD values for combinations of data modelsand estimators
The Jukes-Cantor and Kimura correction methods are generally less accurate than Scoredist and ML estimators. In some cases they reached higher accuracy than Scoredist and ML trained on the "wrong" model. For instance, on the Dayhoff testset Kimura was better than Scoredist-MV and ML-MV, and on the MV testset Jukes-Cantor was better than Scoredist and ML trained on Dayhoff or JTT. However, Jukes-Cantor and Kimura never came near the Scoredist and ML accuracy when trained on the "right" model. In a real situation, it is of course not known which evolutionary model is most appropriate. Therefore, taking the average RMSD values for each training model reveals the generality and robustness of the method on different testsets. The average accuracy of Scoredist is consistently better than for ML, and Jukes-Cantor and Kimura are even further behind.
Figure 1 two shows a more detailed picture of the different distance estimators. The average of 10 estimates from 10 independent simulations at each evolutionary distance is plotted for data generated with the Dayhoff matrices. The variance among the 10 estimates is not shown for clarity; they are however reflected by the RMSD values in Table 1 which may give a slightly different picture. For instance, it is possible that the average deviation is close to zero if the individual estimates have large positive and negative deviations that cancel each other out. Therefore, the RMSD values should be trusted more than the deviation plots when in doubt. Figure 1A shows the dependence on evolutionary model for Scoredist and ML. Testing on the Dayhoff testset, Scoredist-Dayhoff and ML-Dayhoff stayed reasonable accurate in the entire range (below 5% error). In contrast, Scoredist-MV and ML-MV deviated considerably from the true distance. It is however clear that ML is more affected by switching model than Scoredist is. In Figure 1B the testset was generated with the MV model. Again, the corresponding deviation was observed for "wrong model" estimators. Here it is even more pronounced that ML is more dependent on the model, and generalizes poorly. Scoredist was less affected by the change of model – Scoredist-Dayhoff was considerably more accurate on the MV testset than ML-Dayhoff. As expected, when Scoredist and ML had been trained on MV data, the accuracy is very good for both estimators. In conclusion, we observed that although the Scoredist method is very simple compared to the ML method, it is approximately equally accurate when testing and training using the same evolutionary model. However, when testing on a different model, Scoredist is considerably more accurate.
Figure 1. Stratified accuracy analysis of Scoredist and ML. To illustrate how estimated distance depends on the model, the average deviation is plotted as a function of true distance for two evolutionary models, Dayhoff and Mueller-Vingron. For each evolutionary distance between 1 and 200 PAM, 10 alignments were generated. For each alignment, the deviation was calculated as the difference between the estimated distance and the true distance used for data generation by ROSE [16]. The average of the 10 deviations was plotted using a running average with a window of 10 residues. Note that positive and negative deviations at the same true distance can cancel each other out – the curve only shows the average deviation and not the variability. The values in Table 1 measure the accuracy more correctly by using RMSD of every datapoint. The testset data was created with the matrices given by Dayhoff (A) or Müller-Vingron (B). In both cases, the estimators using the same evolutionary model as the testset data perform well. However, when switching the model in the estimator, Scoredist diverges less than ML, indicating that Scoredist is more robust. The curves show that ML-MV is more different from ML-Dayhoff than Scoredist-MV is from Scoredist-Dayhoff, particularly for the MV dataset in (B). The less difference between estimates using different models, the more robust is the method.
The Scoredist estimator was implemented in Belvu, which is a general-purpose multiple alignment viewer that allows basic alignment editing. Belvu can calculate and display phylogenetic trees. The tree reconstruction can be based on Scoredist or other common correction-based distance estimators available within Belvu.
Multiple alignments can be coloured in Belvu according to conservation using average BLOSUM62 score in the column, or by residue-specific colours. User-specified cutoffs can be employed to fine-tune the display. Belvu has a range of functions for sorting, colouring, marking up, and printing alignments. In Figure 2, the alignment is coloured according to conservation, and sorted according to the tree. The effect of distance correction with Scoredist is illustrated.
Figure 2. The Belvu multiple sequence alignment viewer. Belvu is a multiple sequence alignment viewer that implements the Scoredist distance estimator. The alignment window (A) shows a subset of the Pfam family DNA_pol_A (PF00476). Uniprot IDs are shown throughout. A sequence with known structure is included (DPO1_ECOLI) – the SA line showing surface accessibility and the SS line showing secondary structure. The neighbour-joining tree in (B) used uncorrected distances (observed differences), while the tree in (C) used Scoredist correction. Belvu assigns a colour to each species if provided with species markup information. The distance correction mainly affects the longer branches, and affects the tree topology in some cases, e.g. the placement of DPOQ_HUMAN. Structural markup and taxonomic information were embedded in the Stockholm format alignment provided by the Pfam database.
Belvu can also be utilised for batch mode operations on the multiple alignment, or for producing distance matrices or phylogenetic trees without graphical output. It is available for the most common UNIX operating systems and can be obtained from [20]. A Windows version exists but is less frequently maintained. See [17] for instructions, and [18] for information on the Stockholm format, which is used by the Pfam project.
Our analysis was based on four different evolutionary models – Dayhoff, MV, JTT and WAG. We chose these because they represent the spectrum of models well. The only tuning done in the Scoredist method is the estimation of the calibration factor c. This factor can be seen as a scaling factor for the logarithm base in equation (5) that needs to be set empirically.
The difference between Scoredist and ML becomes particularly apparent in the MV dataset. There are several hypotheses for this behaviour. The Dayhoff matrices were constructed with the limited data available at the time. Given the substantial increase of research output in this field particularly during the last decade, it is not surprising that the Müller-Vingron model (published in 2000) reports substantially other results than the Dayhoff (1978) and JTT (1992) matrices. Additionally, the calibration factor c can also be interpreted as measure for the similarity of the respective models. Following this argument, JTT and Dayhoff are more akin given a Δc ≈ 0.05. The MV model is more distant to both JTT (Δc ≈ 0.11) and Dayhoff (Δc ≈ 0.16).
The Expected Distance estimator generally overestimates distances. For instance, among Dayhoff-calibrated estimators on the MV testset, Expected Distance is more than 10 PAM RMSD units (over 50%) poorer than the best method Scoredist. Similar values are observed for JTT calibrated estimators. Generally, MV-trained estimators are prone to underestimate evolutionary distances (Figure 1A). In combination with the ED higher distance estimation, this rather fortuitously leads to good results for ED – MV. However, the scope of this research was to identify a robust method that performs well on various data sources. An estimator which is highly sensitive to the data source or possible incorrect calibration is of less value. The best single estimator was JTT-calibrated Scoredist. If the method per se is measured by averaging over all calibrations and testsets, Scoredist receives 15.39, ED 16.89, and ML 17.14 PAM RMSD units. This highlights Scoredist as the most robust estimator, with the distance between Scoredist and ED (ΔScoredist, ED ≈ 1.50) being 6 fold the difference between ED and ML (ΔED, ML ≈ 0.25).
We here only present Scoredist results using BLOSUM62 for calculating the score σ between two sequences. In principle one could use some other score matrix, but we found that this had little effect on the results. Since the goal was to make a general-purpose method, BLOSUM62 was an obvious choice. The key to Scoredist is the usage of scores rather than identities, and the choice of somewhat arbitrary parameters is not of primary concern. At present, gaps in the alignments are not included in the Scoredist calculation. Traditionally, gaps have been difficult to embody in evolutionary models. In the models used here, they are at best crudely modelled by treating every gap equally. An inherent problem is that the probabilities for insertions and deletions (indels) are not necessarily synchronized with the substitution probabilities. Some protein families are more prone to indels than others, hence it is hard to make a generalizable model that suits all protein types. We have experimented with affine gap penalties in the Scoredist method (this is an option in the implementation), but this resulted in decreased accuracy. We therefore do not recommend using gaps to estimate protein distances.
We have developed the score matrix based distance estimator Scoredist for aligned protein sequences. Its main advantages are computational simplicity and high robustness. Most other distance estimators produce good results for certain evolutionary models but perform poorly on others. The Maximum Likelihood and Expected Distance were found to overfit their estimates to the evolutionary model so much that the results on testsets generated with other models suffered heavily. The correction-based methods Jukes-Cantor and Kimura also favoured a particular evolutionary model, but were not competitively accurate on any testset. It seems that Scoredist achieved the best compromise between accuracy and generalization power.
For the estimation of divergence time, let s1 and s2 be two aligned protein sequences (gaps are ignored) of identical length l. A similarity score σ is defined as
where S is a log-odds score matrix. Log-odds score matrices are constructed such that substitutions by the same or a similar amino acid receive a positive score, whereas substitutions to dissimilar amino acids are attributed a negative score. The expected value for this kind of matrix is negative. This ensures that the comparison of unrelated sequences returns a negative score. For two random sequences of length l the expected score σr(l) = σ0 * l, where is the expected value of the score matrix. As we strive to measure scores above the scores for the null model of sequence independence, the score σ(s1, s2) is deducted by the expected score σr, giving the normalised score σN
σN = σ(s1, s2) - σr (l). (2)
For two random sequences of length l the expected score σr (l) = σ0 * l, where σ0 is the expected value of the score matrix.
The expected score σr for unrelated sequences can be regarded as lower limit. The upper limit of the score between s1 and any other sequences is given by σ(s1, s1). For two different sequences, the upper limit of the score σU is, for the sake of symmetry, assumed to be
and normalised
σUN = σU (s1, s2) - σr (l). (4)
Any sound score σN is situated within the interval [0, σUN]. The validity of the upper boundary follows from the score's definition. The lower boundary might, however, get violated if two sequences receive a score σ(s1, s2) <σr (l). As the model assumes independent evolution already for σr (l), a score below σr does not contain any additional information. A lower score is therefore set to σ(s1, s2) = σr (l). We model the raw distance as a modified Poisson process
As seen in Figure 3, dr is linearly related to the true distance, deviating only by a constant factor. The Scoredist evolutionary distance estimate of two sequences is given as the product of the raw distance and a calibration factor
Figure 3. Estimation of the calibration factor c in Scoredist. This factor rescales the raw distance dr to optimally fit true evolutionary distances. The plot shows how c is estimated by least-squares fitting of raw distances dr to true distances for 2000 artificially produced sequence alignments, using the Dayhoff matrix series. The linear relationship between the raw distance dr and the true distance of the sequence samples justifies the introduction of the calibration factor c, which was here determined to cDayhoff = 1.3370 (See Table 2).
ds = c * dr. (6)
Evolutionary distances of 250–300 PAM units are commonly considered as the maximum for reasonable distance estimation and, therefore, the Scoredist estimate ds is restricted to the interval [0, 300] PAM.
Calibration factors can be determined for various evolutionary models. We used the ROSE program [16] to simulate evolution with three different matrix series and generated 2000 sample sequence alignments for distances up to 200 PAM units. The calibration factor c was calculated by least squares fitting on this data, using the BLOSUM62 score matrix for calculating the score σ in the estimator (Table 2, Figure 3). The simulated evolution started with a random sequence of 200 residues. For each integer distance within the interval [1, 200] PAM, we produced 10 alignments, yielding 2000 alignments per dataset. The default gap parameters of ROSE V1.3 were applied. Each dataset was generated with the transition probability matrix and the stationary frequencies of the respective evolutionary model.
Table 2. Calibration factors for three evolutionary models
Calculation of Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Expected Distances (ED): ML distances were estimated by applying the Newton-Raphson method to the derivative of the likelihood of the evolutionary distance given an alignment. To calculate ED, the same likelihood function was numerically integrated, to get its "center of gravity" [15]. Both methods are implemented in the program lapd (L. Arvestad, unpublished), which uses Perl and Octave. The Jukes-Cantor and Kimura distance estimators were run as implemented in Belvu. The popular PROTDIST program from the PHYLIP package [19] calculates only ML-Dayhoff and Kimura distances. We therefore chose to use lapd in order to assess Scoredist by a broader range of distance estimators.
Authors' contributions
ES had the initial idea and implemented the method. VH carried out the evaluation and wrote the first manuscript draft. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
We thank Lars Arvestad for the lapd program, for helpful discussions, and for reading the manuscript.
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Double knitting is an important skill for the enthusiastic knitter to add to her skill set. Join sock expert Kate Atherley as she explains and demonstrates this amazing technique step-by-step in which you knit two socks at the same time on the same set of needles, one inside the other. The best part of this class is that sock knitters will never suffer that dreaded "Second Sock Syndrome" again! Kate gives instructions and demonstrations for double-point needles, magic loop and circular needles. In this online video class, you'll learn:
Annie's online classes include downloadable and printable class patterns in PDF format in addition to the online video content. You can view online classes at your convenience, 24/7, 365 days a year from any mobile device, both tablet and non-tablet (phones, iPod Touch, etc.) but classes are best viewed on tablets or computers. |
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Vol. 6, No. 6 April 2002 |
Can Encouraging Employee Commitment and Buy-In Change an Organization's Culture
Change is in the air. In the next year, there will be at least 20 new
state governors. The President has proposed several major changes to TANF. The
changes in the last five years to welfare and workforce programs can provide a
road map to organizations in successfully managing change. Successful change
implementation begins with acquiring employees' buy-in and commitment to the
change process. Setting up new procedures, and informing employees that the
way they work has now changed, is relatively easy. The most formidable barrier
to change is adjusting the organizational culture so that employees truly
adapt to a changing work environment.
and Electronic Resources
Buck, Maria. Charting New Territory: Early
Implementation of the Workforce Investment Act. Public/Private Ventures,
January 2002. Available at http://www.ppv.org/pdffiles/charting.pdf.
Gabris, Gerald and Douglas Ihrke. How Well
Intentioned Reforms Can Lead to Unanticipated Failures: Some Lessons from
Local and Federal Government. American Society for Public Administrators,
2001 National Conference, March 2001. Conference papers are available for
$6.00. To order, contact Deloris Toye at 202/585-4319 or email@example.com.
Houston, David J. Public Service Motivation: A
Multivariate Test. University of Tennessee, at Knoxville, 1999.
Available at http://web.utk.edu/~dhouston/articles/motivate.pdf.
Jerri. Comparing Non-Profit and Local Government Organizational Climates:
Implications to Employee Commitment. American Society for Public
Administrators, 2001 National Conference, March 2001.
Contact Dr. Jerri Killian, Wright State University, Department of Urban
Affairs, 937/775-3867 or email@example.com.
Conference papers are available for $6.00. To order, contact Deloris Toye at
202/585-4319 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
KPMG Consulting. Organizational Survival Series.
Four part series (including overview) about organizational development. Link
will take you to the main page where the parts are housed as separate PDF
files, April 2001. Available at
Kramer, Fredrica. Seeing TANF from the Inside
Out—Reconsidering the Program's Role in the Wake of Welfare Reform.
Research Forum on Children, Families and the New Federalism, The Forum, Vol.
3, No. 2, July 2000. Available at http://www.
Lurie, Irene. Changing Welfare Offices.
Brookings Institution, WR & B Brief #9, October 2001.
Available at http://www.brookings.edu/wrb/publications/pb/pb09.htm.
One-Stop Competencies Workgroup. Recommended
Front-Line Staff Competencies for One-Stop Centers in California. Report
to the State Job Training Coordinating Council, 1996. Available at
Plein, L. Christopher. Welfare Reform in a Hard
Place: The West Virginia Experience. The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute
of Government, Report No. 13, November 2001.
Available at
Rangarajan, Anu. Keeping Welfare Recipients
Employed: A Guide for States Designing Job Retention Services. Mathematica
Policy Research, Inc., June 1998. Available
at http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/PDFs/Pesdemp.pdf
or contact: 609/275-2350 or 609/275-2334.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A
Guide to Developing Public-Private Partnerships In Child Support Enforcement.
Administration of Children and Families, 1996.
Available at http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cse/rpt/pvt/ch5.htm.
U.S. Department of Labor. Recruitment Through
Interagency Collaboration. Employment and Training Administration, Ideas
That Work Newsletter, Issue 3, December 1998.
Available at
Winn, Ellen. Understanding How Change Occurs:
Implementation Research in the TANF Era. Research Forum on Children,
Families and the New Federalism, The Forum, Vol. 2, No. 3,
November 1999. Available
at http://www.
Resource Contacts
American Public Human Services Association, contact
Susan Christie, 202/682-0100, or visit
Caliber Associates, contact Jeanette M. Hercik,
703/385-3200, or visit
Center for the Study of Social Policy, contact Cheryl
Rogers, 202/371-1565, or visit
Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation,
212/532-3200, or visit http://www.mdrc.org.
Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., contact Anu
Rangarajan, 609/799-3535, or visit
National Governors Association, Center for Best
Practices, 202/624-7857, or visit
Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government,
Federalism Research Group, 518/443-5844, or visit
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Administration for Children and Families, Office of State Systems Policy,
contact Mark Graboyes, 202/401-7237, or visit
Urban Institute, 202/833-7200, or visit http://www.urban.org.
What States and Localities Are Doing
Five years ago the director of Colorado's
El Paso County Department of Human Services changed the fundamental
orientation of the agency to be family centered. Through a process of
developing tasks forces staffed by key community stakeholders and conducting
focus groups with clients, the agency was able to get the community rallying
around a unifying vision for the community and for the agency. This unifying
vision resulted in the "Twelve Guiding Principles" around which agency
staff centers their work. Agency staff developed a workbook that guides staff
in translating these principles into work processes and operations, such as
income disregards and relaxed pay penalties. The director was able to support
staff as architects of change through cheerleading, encouragement and
reminding staff that their primary focus is being strong, innovative and in
control for people who are vulnerable. Although staff's salaries are not
based on performance, the board of commissioners openly appreciates their
efforts and allows the department to reinvest the savings from initiatives
back into programs. As a result of this change process, the agency has
experienced a decline in the staff turnover rate. For more information,
contact David Berns, Director of El Paso County Department of Human Services,
Colorado Springs, CO, at 719/444-5532 or
on a long-standing team-based structure and a climate of innovation, Hampton, Virginia's
Department of Social Services is implementing major new initiatives designed
to create better outcomes for Hampton's VIEW families. The Agency has rebuilt its internal structure around five
strategic outcome areas: Family Independence, Performance & Learning,
Positive Work Environment, Quality Service & Compliance, and Work Systems
Reengineering. Each strategic outcome area is advanced by a group of agency
workers led by a member of a new leadership group, the Performance Support
Team. Hampton's workers have long worked in self-directed teams, promoting a
self-sufficiency agenda for families. The
current initiative builds on the self-sufficiency agenda toward a whole range
of new opportunities for family independence, including dramatically improved
employment and education services, parenting and child literacy programs, life
management skill-building, home and car ownership. The agency is currently
designing and preparing to open the Hampton Opportunity Center, a new space
where customers will be connected with the new services and resources.
Simultaneous work systems reengineering and new staffing strategies have
already improved customer service, accuracy and timeliness; these systems
changes and the emphasis on positive work environment have decreased staff
turnover significantly. Hampton's workers also helped overhaul and redesign
their team-based compensation system in which workers are paid through
negotiated performance contracts and are rewarded for collective
accomplishment of agency goals. For more information, contact Walter Credle,
Director of Hampton City Department of Social Services, 757/727-6188 or firstname.lastname@example.com,
or Tharon Greene, Performance Consultant, Hampton City Department of Social
Services, 804/694-5211 or email@example.com.
The Prince William County Department of Social
Services in Virginia shifted from a hierarchical structure to a
self-directed team environment in response to TANF. Agency officials believed
that the systems needed to be realigned with the changing outcomes.
Cross-functional teams were established in order to reset processes. Frontline
workers were given the freedom to make decisions in order to respond quickly
to clients' needs. There was some staff resistance to this major system
overhaul. The agency overcame this resistance by including staff in the design
and implementation of the work restructuring initiative. Initially, agency
officials identified champion employees who were willing to take the leap and
lead others through this change initiative. From there, a guiding coalition
surfaced. Staff were trained on how a self-directed team structure would
change the way they do work. Employees were also reoriented to focus on the
big picture—serving clients as quickly and effectively as possible.
Ultimately, employees were given the option to choose alternative employment
if they were not willing to be change agents. Since restructuring, the agency
usually ranks second or third in the statewide annual benchmarking exercise.
For more information, contact Ricardo Perez, Director of Prince William County
Department of Social Services, 703/792-7521 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
WIN Staff Contact:
Tasha Harris, 202/587-1016, email@example.com.
Welfare Information Network is supported by grants from the Annie E. Casey
Foundation the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard
Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and
the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services.
for information on innovative practices in welfare reform? See WIN's revised Best Practice Page http://www.welfareinfo.org/bestprac_matrix.asp for links to promising program examples collected by WIN and other organizations. Have links or programs you'd like to add? E-mail information to email@example.com. |


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Lots of people requested a shorter version of luffy's record scratch.wav so I trimmed it with audacity. I hope this is good, it's certainly a smaller download.
Note: Not a hip-hop type scratch, this is more of a "oops" sound effect, tape stop sort of thing.
Thx a lot that you help me soooooo much!!!!!!!!!!!
sweet sample, will be using it in next dubstep banger, check out the youtube www.youtube.com/chiefwobbl3
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5 Stocks Rising on Big Volume
Consol Energy
Consol Energy (CNX - Get Report) is a multi-fuel energy producer and energy services provider that mainly serves the electric power generation industry in the U.S. This stock is trading up 4% at $33.03 in recent trading.
Today's Volume: 3.62 million
Average Volume: 2.54 million Volume % Change: 52% >>5 Stock Charts You Need to See From a technical perspective, CNX is ripping higher here back above its 50-day moving average of $32.02 with above-average volume. This move has started to push shares of CNX into breakout territory, since the stock has taken out some near-term overhead resistance at $32.99. At last check, CNX has hit an intraday high of $33.18 and volume is well above its three-month average action of 2.54 million shares. Traders should now look for long-biased trades in CNX as long as it's trending above $32 to $32.99 with strong upside volume flows. I would consider any upside volume day that registers near or above its three-month average action of 2.45 million shares as bullish. If CNX can maintain that trend, then this stock will set up to re-test or possibly take out its next major overhead resistance levels at $35.27 to $35.50. Any high-volume move above those levels will then put $37 to $37.12 into range for shares of CNX. To see more stocks rising on unusual volume, check out the Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume portfolio on Stockpickr. -- Written by Roberto Pedone in Winderemere, Fla.Follow Stockpickr on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.
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Old Pickup rims on My 98 3.4
I have acquired a set of the old steel rims from a '91 pickup. I've got a set of BFG A/T tires the same size as stock to mount on them. The fellow I bought the rims from said that the wheel nuts on my stock rims wouldn't fit the older rims. He has worked on Toyota pickups for over 20 years, so I believe him, but he is on vacation right now.
What wheel nuts do I need to use with the old rims? |
are the rims hub or lug centric?
I see no reason to switch over to a different lug unless it's a different size hole size. Throw them on there and check for clearance and see what interference there might be |
Will try when I get my new bfg a/t mounted on them, thanks!
And they are the hub.. |
All times are GMT -7. The time now is 01:44 AM. |


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Armello is a strategy RPG/card battle game has been pushed to a 2014 release. We originally took a look at this game at GDC earlier this year and thought we'd check in for progress. The game currently looks absolutely stunning. You can't really see it from the Instagram below, but the graphics and animations are some of the best I've seen even though it's only running on an iPad mini. Certainly one to be on the look out for.
Posted in: BlogTagged with: Armello, Pax, PAX 2013


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File Sharing Software
DC++ A Windows client for the Direct Connect networks
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Calendar of Events
Carls Against Cancer Dance Marathon
Date: Saturday, February 23rd, 2013
Time: 5:00 pm
Duration: 6 hours
Location: Cowling Gym
Sponsored by: Acting in the Community Together
Contact: Maria C. Sterrett
Import into your calendar programDo you have Saturday Night Fever? DANCE MARATHON 2013. Come for some non-stop dancing fun, with hits from the 60s to today. Live DJ, raffles, games and much more! Not to mention it benefits sarcoma cancer research. Saturday of 8th weekend, Cowling, 5pm to Cowling Dance (11pm). Hosted by Carls Against Cancer and SAO. Can You Feel the Beat?


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bnp paribas (BNP:EN Paris)
Executive Profile*
Sonal KhotDirector of Structured - Credit Group, BNP Paribas SA |
Age | Total Calculated Compensation | This person is connected to 24 board members in 1 different organizations across 1 different industries. See Board Relationships |
-- | -- |
Sonal Khot has been Director of Structured-credit group of BNP Paribas SA. since September 2006.
Corporate Headquarters*16, Boulevard des Italiens Phone: --Paris, Ile-de-France 75009 France Fax: -- Board Members Memberships*There is no Board Members Memberships data available.Education*There is no Education data available.Other Affiliations*There is no Company Affiliations data available. |
Annual Compensation*There is no Annual Compensation data available.Stock Options*There is no Stock Options data available.Total Compensation*There is no Total Compensation data available. |
Recently Viewed | |||
Name | Position/ Company | Compensation |
Kenneth I. Chenault | Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of American Express Travel Related Services Company Inc and Chief Executive Officer of American Express Travel Related Services Company Inc American Express Company | $8.0M |
Antony P. Jenkins | Group Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director, Member of Regulatory Investigations Committee, Group Chief Executive Officer of Barclays Bank Plc and Director of Barclays Bank Plc Barclays PLC | 3.2M GBP |
José Antonio Alvarez Alvarez | Chief Executive Officer, Director, Member of Executive Committee, Member of Risk Committee, Member of Technology, Productivity & Quality Committee and Member of International Committee Banco Santander, S.A. | -- |
Lloyd C. Blankfein | Chairman and Chief Executive Officer The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. | $8.3M |
James P. Gorman | Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman of Morgan Stanley Smith Barne Morgan Stanley | $6.9M | Compensation as of Fiscal Year 2013. |
Sponsored Financial Commentaries
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To contact BNP PARIBAS, please visit . Company data is provided by Capital IQ. Please use this form to report any data issues.
Our data partners will research the update request and update the information on this page if necessary. Research and follow-up could take several weeks. If you have questions, you can contact them at email@example.com.


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Florida Governor Signs New Seat Belt Bill
Updated: 06/10/2005 - Tougher seat belt laws in Florida.
Updated: 06/10/2005 - Tougher seat belt laws in Florida.
Updated: 06/10/2005 - A more efficient, durable and lighter form of firepower in the holsters of an area police department.
Updated: 06/09/2005 - Thoughts of teenagers spending their summers in the sun are being replaced with images of teens using the time off from school to get real world work experience.
Updated: 06/09/2005 - The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to be taking a toll on the Army's recruiting efforts, according to the latest official numbers.
Updated: 06/09/2005 - Schools grades are out, and only one F among Leon County schools.
Updated: 06/09/2005 - As Tropical Storm Arlene heads toward the Gulf, Floridians are flocking to their local hardware stores to take advantage of the last few days of the sales tax holiday on hurricane supplies. Stores have already set sales records.
Updated: 06/09/2005 - The United Way of Thomas County will be spreading the wealth to different organizations in the area after raising more than $200,000, money that directly helps the community.
Updated: 06/09/2005 - Gadsden County officials are elated to hear the good news. A large percentage of the schools earned passing grades, but it's a mixed bag for officials. One school has earned a failing grade, and if vouchers prove to be constitutional, those students can change schools.
Updated: 06/09/2005 - The "HEAT" could soon be on for drunk and aggressive drivers in Valdosta.
Updated: 06/09/2005 - Could the color of your environment affect your mood or health?
Updated: 06/09/2005 - Schools are out for the summer, the temperatures are rising and many children are left wondering what to do.
Posted: 06/09/2005 - A fire totally destroys a couple's home, but they blame more than just the flames.
Updated: 06/08/2005 - A man accused of murder took the stand Wednesday and called the shooting death of his friend an accident.
Updated: 06/08/2005 - There is increasing concern about the future of Florida's largest historically black university.
Updated: 06/08/2005 - Students are out for summer, and there's a great way for them to stay out of trouble and get their scientific juices flowing.
Updated: 06/08/2005 - A hit and run accident in the Killearn Lakes area knocks out power to hundreds of people.
Updated: 06/08/2005 - Counselors are often called in to help people deal with traumatic events, but often times no one comes forward to help doctors and nurses through the stress. A new program is underway in Valdosta to help change that.
Updated: 06/08/2005 - The numbers are in for the performance of Florida schools on this year's FCAT. An overwhelming majority scored an A or B.
Updated: 06/08/2005 - The National Safety Council reports nine children are killed every day from gun violence. A new "smart gun" could help keep guns from going off in the wrong hands.
Posted: 06/08/2005 - Two Aruban men go to court on Wednesday to face murder charges in the case of Natalee Holloway, the Alabama girl missing for more than a week.
Updated: 06/08/2005 - A tight Lowndes County budget prevents the sheriff from getting the equipment and manpower he needs for the next year.
Updated: 06/07/2005 - There's a major development in a Tallahassee murder trial.
Updated: 06/07/2005 - Twelve hundred soldiers from the Florida National Guard are gearing up for war. WCTV follows them while they train.
Updated: 06/07/2005 - The National Consumers League has a warning for young people looking for summer employment. The organization says some of those jobs may be hazardous to your health and safety.
Updated: 06/07/2005 - Only 741 students use Opportunity Scholarships, but there are 11 other school choice programs, including Bright Futures and Mackay Scholarships, that allow students to use taxpayer-financed vouchers at religious schools. Those parents are also nervously watching to see how the high court rules.


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There are 10 million farmers in Ethiopia, a country of 80 million, growing mostly cereals such as wheat, maize, sorghum, barley, sesame, and an Ethiopian grain called "teff." Yet, few farmers travel more than 12 miles from their homes in their lifetimes, so they have very little information about what their food would be worth if they did decide to sell it. When they do sell, they sell to a local trader, who then sells to another trader, and another, adding cost to the food when it finally reaches the consumer in large cities like the capital, Addis Ababa.
"The farmer doesn't know the price – he might get five cents here, but on the other side of the country, where there's a drought, he might get three times the price," says Gabre-Madhin. "So let's imagine the farmer goes to a warehouse where you have constant updates with the latest market prices. Now the farmer starts thinking nationally, not locally."
Similarly, traders in Addis Ababa would never buy product unless they saw the quality themselves. This is understandable. Some farmers have a nasty habit of adding dust and stones to their grain to increase the weight – and, thus, the value – of each sack sold. Under Gabre-Madhin's plan, each warehouse would have an independent neutral party that would test and grade the farmer's harvest, allowing traders in Addis Ababa, and potentially outside Ethiopia, to place bids on food, sight unseen.
Convincing farmers and traders to abandon the only system they've ever known will not be easy, of course. But by making the process of buying and selling food more transparent and predictable, everyone should benefit.
"As an investor, I need stability, and only a commodity market can offer that," says Guruprasad Rao, an agricultural commodities broker from Dubai, on a recent trip to Addis Ababa to buy sesame seed. "Whenever you have a lack of information, nobody knows the size of the crop. If everyone knows the size of the crop, they can predict prices better, and they can make better decisions."


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Current Time
user posts + reviews
Posted on: August 20, 2009 at 7:57PM
The best decision we made when visiting Capri on our honeymoon was to skip the group trip to the grotto and hire a private boat. For not much more money we got a private tour of the grotto minus the crowds....we also got a lot of good advice on things to do and an absolutely fabulous recommendation for dinner...also, staying in Anacapri made for a more relaxing honeymoon without the crowds of the cruise ships tours. report a problem


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I haven't brewed in awhile, so I am not necessarily the best resource. But, I do fully believe in brewing unique beers that are not the norm. I would read up on acorns as a food and look at how they are prepared. I have never eaten an an acorn, but like other nuts, I imagine they wouldn't be too bad if roasted.
Haha after watching the show I too am interested in brewing a acorn beer.
Goose Conical:Red Chair Clone Tapped: Bavarian Wheat, Crazy Train IIPA Bottled: nothing
Pair the acorns with spruce tips for bittering and you can brew like a true mountain man. I want a taste!
Fermenting: Nothing Secondary: Nothing Bottled: Oatmeal Porter, Double Chocolate Chipotle Porter Kegged: IPA, Red Rye
I saw this show and have two 40-year-old oak trees in the front yard. Here's the plan I have been thinking about. Harvest a boatload of acorns. Leach tannins with water, changing water a few times a day for a few days. Dry acorns. Roast acorns. Rig some kind of oil press (oil content between 5 and 31% depending on species) Mill acorns into meal. Brew. I haven't brewed in a while and I've always stuck to traditional recipes with very few adjuncts. I think the farthest I've gone from straight barley/hops/yeast/water was a Belgian White I did a few years ago. My inexperience in certain areas leads me to a thought. If you were to brew a beverage (not sure if it would still be called beer) using acorns as your only source of sugars, would you need to malt the acorns before roasting? If that's the case, I would think you could do that after leaching but before pressing out oils. The next question I would have is sugar yield, then use that to figure out the quantity you would need to hit a target gravity. I can't wait to fill a few buckets with acorns and try it out.
I will echo what erik said. White Oak acorns are much less bitter than red oak. They are almost palatable when compared to red oak acorns which are completely, totally, bitter beyond belief.
the acorns from the white oak are definitely best ie lowest in tannins(this is why the white oaks are the best to hunt around early in the season, the animals don't like the bitterness of the tannins anymore than we do). i would also think that if you froze them. then tried to malt them would be the best way to minimize the tannins and oils present in them. i have a serios mix of red and white oaks in my yard and every 2 yrs i get a bumper crop from them since the reds take 2 seasons to mature and drop their nuts. as such i get a lot of deer in the yard late at nite during the winter pawing up the frozen and by now less tannic reds.
primary1 :UTOPIA BABY(still searching for it) secondary:middling bastard ipa kegged:simcoe blonde, crystal pale ale, yellow jacket golden ale, lemon shandy blondeDRINKIN DAWG BREWERY LET'S GO RED WINGSjoin michigan mashers here extraction calculator grains in pounds(G) X 36(average points per gallon of grains) / batch size in gallons(g) = maximum efficiency(ME) OG / ME = brewhouse efficiency
Saw the same thing got me thinking. Here is what im going to try. Im going to take the acorns from my ront ward and wash out the tannins. Then im going to slow roast them to take out most of the fat. Im going to crush them and do a quick char on them. Im going to mix them with some caramel malt grains and then sttep the two in my mash. Dont know if its going to be any good bt m thinking I can make a decent amber or red beer like this. Maybe some crushed chocolate too. Let ya know if its any good.
I watched "how beer saved the world" and I'm interested in your research.


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I'm getting ready to update my MIUI rom to the new 1.8.5 update, but I have a question about my Link2SD Partition. If I install the 1.8.5 update, will this render my ext4 partition unusable? I don't want to have to rewipe my ext4 and lose all my apps and their data.
I guess if you didn't wipe data and sdext, but I don't like installing dirty, always believed in a good healthy wipe. It takes so little time to move the apps to the partition since you can either choose to have link2sd auto move upon install, as well as, the ability to just batch using multi select. It wasn't as easy when those weren't part of the app, but now it takes barely any additional time. You just never know what could be on your data partition now that won't gel with the latest version. walkin the walk while tappin the talk danceswithbongs
I had success with the following: 1. Full backup (just in case) 2. Wipe cache 3. Flash new 1.8.5 rom 4. Install link2sd from market 5. Run link2sd 6. Reboot All apps and data were there. Had to delete and re-add Widgets. Sent from my Droid using DroidForums
I am confused on one item, why did you need to download link2sd if you only wiped cache? Or is every user app you have, moved over to the ext partition? Would love to know as this is great information. Thanks for including us with your newly gained knowledge thatcha can't get in college. Quick question, what kernel do you use and what scripts do you use to get link2sd set up initially the first time? Thanks for any additional information DWB walkin the walk while tappin the talk danceswithbongs
If u had link2sd moved it wont see itself... personally I leave links2sd msg app and any 'i want it fast' app on main partition. The reinstall if its already there is redundant. The app detects if the startup script is there or not and should prompt for it if not there. Sent from my Droid using DroidForums
I probably had link2sd linked too. I am just using the kernel included with miui. The first time you run link2sd, it sets up the scripts for you. That is why the reboot. Then the extra partition is mounted after reboot. Sent from my Droid using DroidForums
There is a good write up on xda developers , just search the forum there for partitioning sd card. Essentially , you download a partition manager which I used the free version of minitool partition manager. Then either use a card reader or in recovery enable usb mass storage. Start program and you should see all the drives on your computer plus the drive letter for your phone sd card. Make sure you have already backed up your SD card because you will lose data . Once you see your drive in the program , select it and using the buttons in the program interface you delete partition. Now you should have the drive show up as the size of your sd card unallocated. Then select create partition and make first partition fat 32 primary and make it so it uses approximately 90% of card size. It will show you what changes it will make then select approve to actually make the changes. Now, for the second partition select the amount of unallocated space left, should be about 10% . Create partition making this one either ext2, or ext3, or supposedly you can even keep it fat32 as well. Make sure it is also primary and then approve.. Once that is finished you are all done, before you unmount close the partition manager program then open the drive from your computer .. and drag and drop your backed up files . Now you should be able to go to the marketplace and download link2sd and run the program.


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Health Protection Agency
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Hurricane Preparedness Center - Reston, VAWebMD Physician DirectoryReston, VirginiaHurricane PreparednessIntroduction to preparing for a hurricaneHurricane damage accounts for on average of $5.1 billion in damages per year. From 2000 to 2010 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded 1,153 deaths due to hurricanes, wi... Other Related Hurricane Preparedness ArticlesEmergency Contact for Reston
Nearby Reston Hospitals *Reston Hospital Center Inova Fair Oaks Hospital Inova Fairfax Hospital Northern Virginia Mental Health Inova Loudoun Hospital Dominion Hospital Adventist Rehab Of Maryland Shady Grove Adventist Hospital Adventist Behavioral Health Virginia Hospital Center Sibley Memorial Hospital Suburban Hospital Halquist Memorial Inpatient Ctr NIH Clinical Center Walter Reed Ntnl Mltry Med Ctr Psychiatric Institute Prince William Hospital Georgetown University Hospital Inova Alexandria Hospital Grafton Intergrated Health Net North Spring Behavioral Hlthcar George Washington Univ Hosp Holy Cross Hospital King Health Center Howard University Hospital Medstar National Rehab Hospital Children's National Medical Ctr Washington Hospital Center Washington DC VA Medical Center Washington Adventist Hospital Seton House Providence Hospital Providence Hospital Specialty Hospital Washington The HSC Pediatric Center Saint Luke Institute Speciality Hosp Of WA-Hadley Montgomery General Hospital Saint Elizabeths Hospital Inova Mount Vernon Hospital Dewitt Army Community Hospital United Medical Center Sentara Potomac Hospital Prince George's Hospital Center Fort Washington Medical Center Doctors Community Hospital Malcolm Grow Med Ctr 79Th Laurel Regional Hospital Southern Maryland Hospital Ctr Fauquier Hospital Howard County General Hospital Frederick Memorial Hospital Clifton T Perkins Center *Provider Directory Terms of Use: The WebMD 'Provider Directory' is provided by WebMD for use by the general public as a quick reference of information about Providers. The Provider Directory is not intended as a tool for verifying the credentials, qualifications, or abilities of any Provider contained therein. Inclusion in the Provider Directory does not imply recommendation or endorsement nor does omission in the Provider Directory imply WebMD disapproval. |


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World turns upside down for Sadguru Sairam Nagar residents on Deepavali
As many as 102 houses along with the household articles were destroyed in a fire that swept Sadguru Sairam Nagar in Madhurawada area on Tuesday. Apart from this accident, fire accidents were caused reportedly due to Deepavali crackers in some other areas. However, there was no loss of life while some suffered burns.
Minister for Tribal Welfare P. Balaraju, along with Collector V. Sheshadri, MLA of Bheemunipatnam M. Srinivasa Rao, RDO Rangayya and other officials visited Sadguru Sairam Nagar on Wednesday and consoled the victims. Mr. Balaraju said victims who had lost their houses would be sanctioned units under the JNNURM or Indiramma programme, according to the rules. Rice, dal, kerosene, and blankets were supplied to the victims.
Compensation of Rs. 15,000 would be paid to each house. Fire accidents were also reported from Rajakaveedhi in China Waltair, near Chaitanya Engineering College at Kommadi, where huts were destroyed. Hay stocks were burnt at some places.
Succumbs to burns
A seven-year-old girl Pavani of A. Kothapalli in Devarapalli mandal succumbed to burns she had suffered when raw material for making flowerpots caught fire at her house four days ago. Elders of the family were preparing flowerpots and the mix of raw material was kept aside before it was packed into the flowerpot shells. This was ignited as the elders went for lunch and the children around it suffered burns. Pavani was shifted to the Burns Ward of King George Hospital where she died while undergoing treatment on Wednesday morning.
Four children, who suffered burns in a Deepavali eve fire accident at Anakapalle, are undergoing treatment at the Burns Ward.


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At just 7 days old, my little peanut's belly blew up. It was so distended that she looked like a pregnant baby. We have seen the specialist, done the test and they have no clue. It's a ton of air in there. Anyone else gone threw this? FYI she's almost 6 months old and still having issues..
I'm so fed up with the specialist we go to. She'll like it's just air.. The quit investigating the issue.. I'm just going to call it quits going to that dr. I heard there it pt that can help relieve the issue.
we go for 6 month on tue, so I'm going to ask the ped their opinion..
mmm air? has she had a BM? I haven't had this happen but my little ones belly seems to be pretty tight when she's gone 3-4 days without a poop. She's gone back the age that I heard of in the NICU about preemie bellys being big. Our daughter never had this problem, she's on the little side. It makes diapers and clothes still small. I would def look into a new dr. I hate when they don't seem to have an answer and just wanna wait and see.
she poops and burps good. Little poop machine went 3x in the last 24hr. They were like it's from the bottles... She had the issue while tube feeding. Personally I think it has to do with how her body breaks stuff down and creating air, not swallowing air..
We are going to try Craniosacral Therapy


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Welcome to VACHIP.ORG
We provide the abc's for prevention education & abduction awareness for parents and guardians!
Thank you for visiting VACHIP.ORG. Our program is a comprehensive child identification and protection tool designed to give families a measure of protection against the ever increasing problem of missing children. Not only do we include children, but teenagers, adults and senior citizens in the event that they go missing. Because EVERY ONE IS SOMEONES CHILD. This program is provided "free of charge" to every Virginia family who wishes to participate.
And follows the exact protocols established by The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children – the agency responsible for the "Amber Alert" national response system. We collect every bit of data law enforcement officials require when a child is reported as missing or abducted, and provide it to the parent or guardian. We do not retain any of the information collected. Our computers are certified as such for your child's protection.
To date the program has held 778 VACHIP events and has provided 35,026 children with identification packets. It is our sincerest hope that no family will need the resources provided in our packets, but if the need should arise we believe the information that we provide from our program will be instrumental to law enforcement agencies in recovery of missing children.
The Virginia Freemasons schedule and bring this fine program to communities throughout Virginia. VACHIP is a part of the International Masonichip network (www.masonichip.org) sponsored by the Conference of Grand Masters of Masons in North America. All identifying items generated at VACHIP Events are placed in a pack and given to the parent or guardian to take home for safe keeping. If their child becomes missing, the pack can then be provided to law enforcement to aid in recovery and identification. The Virginia Freemasons keep nothing but the permission form signed by the parent prior to participation in the event. Vachip is a Donor based 501(c)3 program.
Upcoming events
Event Stats:
Upcoming Events: 7
Held Events: 211
Kids Identified: 6704
Masonic CHIP's Statistics:
An estimated 797,500 children were reported missing...
1999 was the last time official reports were published.


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Tony TODD
Poll gives far-right Le Pen boost ahead of regional vote
More than a third of French voters believe the country's far-right leader Marine Le Pen "embodies French republican values", according to a shock poll for left-leaning newspaper…BUSINESS
Is HSBC whistleblower Falciani the 'French Snowden'?
Hervé Falciani, who revealed how HSBC's Swiss banking arm helped wealthy customers avoid taxes and hide millions of dollars, is a man with an ambiguous and chequered personal…FRANCE
The flawed case against 'libertine' Strauss-Kahn
Few eyebrows were raised when prosecutors in Lille decided Tuesday to recommend a "pure and simple" acquittal of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on "aggravated pimping" charges – not…FRANCE
Prosecutors call for Strauss-Kahn acquittal
The day after four plaintiffs in the so-called Carlton pimping trial withdrew allegations against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, French prosecutors have called for the disgraced former…FRANCE
Prostitutes drop allegations against DSK in pimping trial
Four prostitutes and one associate in a high-profile French prostitution trial have dropped their allegations against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, saying that there isn't enough proof…FRANCE
DSK leaves court confident, despite new orgy evidence
A confident Dominique Strauss-Kahn left court Thursday after further lurid details of his sexual mores apparently failed to undermine his main line of defence – that he didn't…FRANCE
DSK loses cool as trial focuses on his sexual preferences
Disgraced former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn seemed to lose his cool for the first time in a trial in which he is accused of "aggravated pimping" as the court on Wednesday…FRANCE
'Libertine' Strauss-Kahn admits orgies, denies prostitutes
Disgraced former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a French court Tuesday he was unaware that any of the women participating in orgies he attended were paid, contrary to the…FRANCE
Paris restricts filming of action scenes in wake of attacks
Paris is a popular city with filmmakers. But with the French capital on alert after last month's terror attacks, officials say filming some scenes, like those with actors in…FRANCE
'Dodo the Pimp' takes centre stage at Strauss-Kahn trial
A trial in which former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of involvement in an illegal prostitution ring swung between the comic and the tragic Thursday, as a convicted…UKRAINE
US 'looking at options' to arm Ukraine against separatists
The United States is having a "fresh look" at the option of arming Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed separatists, senior administration officials admitted Tuesday,…FRANCE
Paris to ban the most polluting diesel vehicles by July 2015
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo wants to make Paris a diesel-free city by 2020. The first step, she said Wednesday, will be to ban the "most polluting" diesel delivery trucks and buses…US MEDIA