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Narrow down the 54 results:Map View
x The average starting price for a place to stay in Kos is £35 per night.
KardamenaExcellent 90%
Harmiloy 21Awesome 85%
Artemissias Str.Great 83%
Sintagmatos Dodekanision StGreat 83%
Main Street, KardámainaGreat 80%
54 Makrigianni Str.Great 80%
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Time in Buffalo World Time Directory 24TimeZones.com
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A Christmas Tale— A family tale of a wild incestuous Christmas.
Santa's Naughty Son— Dash Kringle glared at his father in shocked silence...
Santa's Elf— Santa's Elf treats Santa to a nice present.
Halloweiner Ch. 04— Danielle the elf spreads some Christmas cheer.
Slutty Sue does Santa and his Elves— Sue gets stuffed for Christmas.
It's a Small World— Magical elves can become so much more...
Betty Boots Boinks Santa— A busty girl finds a man breaking into her house XMas night.
I Saw Mommy Fucking Santa Claus— Daughter watches Mom and Santa.
Ginny meets Santa— A loyal puppy girl meets Santa Claus.
The Nightie Before Christmas— Christmas Eve in The Perv Household. A story in verse.
Candy Cane— A stressed dad meets a sexy elf with her own cane for him.
The Heroes' Bar-Santa's Tale— Silk stockings and the girl in them are hung by the chimney.
Holly's North Pole Visit— Holly Willoughby brightens up Christmas.
An Uneven Christmas— He's dressed up for Christmas and his friend's enjoyment.
Hullo, Santa— Strange happenings in the Grotto.
Santa's Little Helper— Santa's on the naughty list this year.
The Lionel Train Mixup— A Christmas Groaner.
Sarah Palin Goes Rogue With Santa— Sarah Palin gets it on with Santa...and others.
The Naughty List— Santa on the naughty list, Mrs. Clause teaches him a lesson.
The Elf Who Shagged Me— Tina's a real elf. Maggie plays one in a department store.
Twas the Night before Christmas— Just a little innocent Christmas cosplay, right?
Santa's Beard— Short funny story.
X-Rated Xmas— Holiday magic brings a family closer together.
I Saw Mommy Fucking Santa Claus— Henry titfucks his mother after she humps the mall Santa.
A Kitty for Santa Ch. 03— On the run with a broken heart & seeking solace.
Carol's Christmas [redux]— Her Christmas is ruined until Santa brings the goods.
Twas The Night Before Christmas— Santa decides she's been naughty.
Emma's Christmas Adventure— Emma's stocking isn't the only thing filled.
A Sexy MILF for Santa's Helper— A busty young thing makes use of a hungry willing MILF.
Keeping The Elves Busy Ch. 02— Santa's naughty Elves are given a new task.
Here Cums Santa— Giving myself an erotic holiday treat.
Keeping The Elves Busy— Santa's Elves are being naughty.
Taking Care of Santa— She takes care of Santa to prove what a good girl she is.
Mistletoe Kringle— Santa's slutty daughter makes the naughty list.
The Perfect Gift— Everyone deserves a little good sex.
The Gift— Santa makes a promise he can and does keep.
A Kitty for Santa Ch. 02— Kitty gets her Milk, but Santa isn't so Nice.
Oh Santa!— The girls' Christmas party.
Nice and Naughty— I hardly see him for half the year.
I Saw Mommy Doing Santa Claus— Son discovers Mom's secret relationship with Santa!
Unexpected Holiday— Ethan receives a gift from Santa: a little lady elf...
Santa Has A Big Present For Alison— Continued from Santa's on the Naughty List, too.
Store Front Santa— Sandra decides to invite the store front Santa in for a ride.
A Present for Santa— Heather finds a present from "Santa".
Santa's on the Naughty List, Too— Alison goes to see Santa as a joke, but gets much more.
Santa Max— A Santa fantasy wish fulfilled.
Santa's Little Helpers— Santa's elves give him a surprise Christmas Eve.
Daddy Takes Over Ch. 05— Daddy takes his little girl to see Santa.
They Saw Mommy Fucking Santa Claus— Another year they watch mommy fucking Santa Claus.
Waiting Up For Santa— A lonely girl waits up with hopes for a special present.
It Began on a Christmas Ch. 01— Daughter gets christmas peresent of the life!
A Bowl of Cherries Ch. 05— The True Meaning of Christmas.
Secret Santa— Lyndsey gets a surprise in her stockings for Christmas
Up the Chimney— Her Santa is coming up the chimney this year.
A Nymph for Christmas— Friends since grade school, they're all grown up now.
Santa Claus: Sex Addict— An epic adventure to save Christmas with SEX!
Santa's Milk and Cookies— Who woulda thought it? Santa's actually a hot chick.
Santa's Secret— Ladies like to sit on Santa's lap, too.
Kate's Christmas Costume Party— Kate attnds a Work Christmas party & is fucked by Santa.
Under The Mistletoe Ch. 01— Jason gets a sexy Christmas from his wife Bridget.
Tell Santa— A Christmas tale.
Santa's Lap— A woman's Christmas wish comes true.
Bad Santa— Santa brings girl Christmas Cheer.
Christmas Party with Mom— A mom and son celebrate together.
The Red Hat— Darlene paused, placing her hand on the door.
The New Santa— Handing over the reins.
Santa vs The Tentacle Monster!— Santa must protect the North Pole from a strange monster.
Merry Kissmas— Even Santa needs some luvin'.
A Most Promising Christmas— Sheila certainly didn't expect a very sexy Christmas.
The Flight of Mrs. Claus— Her erotic Christmas eve night with a hunky man.
Nativity Scene— We need to replace our Christmas Grotto.
'Tis the Season— The perks of being naughty and nice.
Dear Santa, Good, Bad, or Naughty?— Mrs. Mary Claus writes to tell she was naughty on Halloween.
Collecting Women Summertime Hobby— Walter's hobby of collecting women satisfies all his needs.
Playing Santa— He begrudgingly agrees to play Santa.
Silent Night— Mother finally gets present from her son on Christmas Eve.
Wishing on a Star— Science helps to make your wishes come true.
Santa's Special Visit— Mom helps Santa fuck her daughter.
A Christmas Story— A Christmas Story with some dirty refrences.
Black Book Diary Entry: Kathy— She holds the distinction of having two first times.
Substitute Santa— Always follow your instincts.
Twas the Night— A nicely naughty girl takes her present from Santa.
The Bitch Wench's Christmas Eve— Jerky teenage girl gets it in the chimney on Christmas Eve
Union Labor of The Elf Persuasion— A different take on Santas Workshop.
Tie Me Up, Blindfold Me, & Spank Me— Is there anything that I can do for you? Hold that thought.
Santa's Secret Naughty List— Santa does reward the naughty!
Licking Santa's Problem— Santa visits one of the "Naughties".
Claire's Christmas— The Busty Redhead goes to work as Mrs. Claus.
Dear Santa— Lonely woman gets an erotic gift.
How To Survive Christmas Alone— Lonely guy dresses up his dining room chairs.
Bad Work Day - Dept Store Christmas— When jealous boyfriend ruins Elf's day, Santa stands to gain.
Candy Cane Stripes— The headmistress of the North Pole dishes out pleasure.
Santa's Helper— A tale of holiday high-jinx.
The Night After Christmas— Santa gets to relax.
A Ski Trip to Hell— Was it Santa or trauma that changed their lives?
Miriam's Christmas Miracle— A lonely woman gets a special gift for Christmas.
All I Want for Christmas— Jamie has an erotic time with a naughty Santa.
The Secret Santa— Mike discovers his neigbor has a Santa fetish.
Bad Santa— Ole St. Nick pays a visit.
A Present from Santa— A new widow recieves a present from Santa.
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LGBT Global Persecution Leads to Asylum Seekers in Southern AZ
Marco Antonio Galdino left São Paulo in 1995, lives in Tucson while he awaits appeal of refugee rejection.
Marco Antonio Galdino left São Paulo in 1995, lives in Tucson while he awaits appeal of refugee rejection.
An abandoned Tucson girl who wishes for a "forever home" finds unlikely allies at the Valley of the Moon.
Tucsonans who were united by a love of music more than 50 years ago reunite to take part in the Tucson Folk Festival.
"Who is Dayani Cristal?" puts Pima County on international map as it premiers across the world.
Since opening 4 years ago, the village has been home to a variety of artists who can collaborate and build bonds with the public.
Tucson Jazz Institute students will be traveling to New York City to perform at the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band competition.
For many generations of native people, spring in the Sonoran Desert meant it was time to harvest cholla buds. Now, there is new interest in the prickly plants as a sustainable local food source.
Filmmakers are working on new projects that are being shown outside the island.
Blogger and advocate Jes Baker asks 'What do you love about your body?'
Mountain View High School senior hopes to land a spot on the team USA's skeet shooting team.
A story about something that might have happened in Tucson more than 80 years ago, and kept secret ever since...
Common bird is considered playful and intelligent, connected to mythology and symbolism.
'Inspiring change' is this year's International Women's Day message; as time goes by even churches are seeing a stronger presence of females in higher positions.
Transgender Pima County lawyer says situation even more difficult for trans people; most states including AZ don't have laws protecting LGBTQ people in workplace.
Thanks to parents who come from Germany, Mexico and school where 7-year-old learns English.
Find out why successful film composer Brad Fiedel decided to leave Hollywood behind in a quest to rekindle his artistic inspiration.
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Bathroom's can be hot. Really hot. Especially when a sexy daddy like Rex Silver is going into one and gives you that look.
Visit our sister sites: BrokeStraightBoys.com | CollegeDudes.com | CollegeBoyPhysicals.com | RocketTube
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Hi, I'm new here and I'm just sort of plugging my latest concept art piece. This was really my first major coloring and I don't do sketches anywhere near on par with the skill I've seen here. First off, the sketch isn't mine and I don't take credit for it but the coloring was from scratch. Anyway here it is:
(unfortunately you'll have to bear with me on it being hosted by geocities because my usual host is down for a week and this is the next best thing I have access to and geocities doesn't allow remote linking.)
to view the image you just click the link, add a space to the address in the new window that pops up, and press enter.
edit: almost forgot the original image: http://www.unreal2.com/images-dynamic/concept8.jpg


text:
Steven Tyler looks great!
Ain't no shame in a one piece, Elle.
Especially if it's a burka.
Yes. Time to stop the bikinis. Too skinny is almost as bad as too fat.
So that's what a uterus looks like
Everything in Australia is around the edges. The middle's all dry and dusty.
If she put on a few pounds she'd still look damn good. Big if though.
told ya.
Where the hell is her vagina?
Some asshole just took her walker….hehehe…it was me…
Do they have sandwiches in Australia? Go eat a couple! YOU LOOK GROSS
They have sandwiches in Australia, but by law, they have to include Vegemite. You'd stop eating, too.
Sooo, seven hours later, I'm the only one who's noticed that Elle isn't shaved. Goddamn…what's happened to the people on this site?
She shaves her face every day. I read it in People.
Is that Tara Reid's mom? It would explain a lot.
Zoom in and look at that beautiful cold sore!
Better that than fat!
Two words..Any Day!


text:
Karton Properties, LLC
P.O. Box 597
Olivia, NC 28368
Phone: 843-592-0450 for appointments
Phone: 336-263-5444 for repairs
E-Mail: email@example.com
E-Mail: email@example.com
We are proud supporters of our Armed Forces!
We are a full-service property management company in Harnett County. Our experienced team specializes in the procurement of rental homes for all types of people. Karton Properties has been in business for 9 years and has managed over 130 homes. We understand the struggles of moving and efforts of finding a new home. From the first consultation to the completion of your contract term, we guarantee dedicated service and personal attention to your requests. Allow us to ensure your family's careful placement in the home that suites you best. Contact us for an appointment!
(Not all homes displayed below are available for rent)


text: Man Discovers Bear had Climbed into Pickup Truck [VIDEO] By Nelson Jewell May 4, 2013 6:00 AM Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Photo, YouTube, CBS News These stories are always funny when they happen to someone else, but a wild bear decided to climb into a man's truck to get at one particular thing. And in the process, did a considerable amount of damage. Click the pic and see the man, the bear, the truck, and the damage: Filed Under: Bear & Truck | Bear climbs into truck | CBS News Category: Articles | Videos Share on Facebook Share on Twitter More Leave a comment Send to a friend! Print this page Pin it! Reddit This! Share on Tumblr! Best of Q 106.5 Recommended For You Best of the Web


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Researcher uses Jell-O-like substance to attract and kill cancer cells
News Source : Researcher uses Jell-O-like substance to attract and kill cancer cells
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Chasing cancer cells with chemotherapy drugs can save lives, but there's no guarantee that the treatment will kill every run-away cancer cell in the body.
What if, instead of hunting those metastatic cells, a treatment could lure them out of hiding -- every last one of them -- and eliminate them in one swift blow?
Yong Wang, associate professor of bioengineering at Penn State, has created such a therapy -- a tissue-like biomaterial that attracts cancer cells, like bits of metal to a magnet, and entraps them.
"Once we trap the cancer cells, we can deliver anticancer drugs to that specific location to kill them," he said. "This technique would help avoid the need for systemic medications that kill not only cancer cells, but normal cells as well. Systemic chemotherapy drugs make patients devastatingly sick and possibly leave behind cancer cells to wreak havoc another day. If our new technique has any side effects at all, it would be only local side effects and not whole-body systemic side effects."
Wang's idea to trap cancer cells began with a few tiny molecules called monomers, which he purchased from a company. From these, he and his Penn State colleagues -- which include Cheng Dong, distinguished professor and head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and graduate students Shihui Li and Erin Richards -- built polymers, or strings of monomers, and then wove these polymers into three-dimensional networks, called hydrogels.
"To create a tissue-like biomaterial, you have to find a material that has a lot of similarities to human tissue," he said. "Hydrogel is soft and flexible, like Jell-O, and it contains a lot of water, so when you put it into the body, the body likes it. With other implants, the body often tries to get rid of them through the immune response. We want to make sure the materials we are using are compatible in the body."
Next, the team created synthetic biomolecules, called nucleic acid aptamers, which they engineered to bind to cancer cells. The researchers then attached these aptamers to the hydrogels. Once in cell culture or in the body, the hydrogels secrete biochemical signal-only molecules to notify cancer cells of their presence. Alerted, the cancer cells come running, so to speak. The aptamers then bind to the cells, ensnaring them in a permanent "headlock."
To kill the cancer cells, Wang and his colleagues created an oligonucleotide, or single-stranded fragment of DNA, that binds to the protein-binding site of the aptamer and emits a trigger molecule that induces the release of anticancer drugs at the appropriate time.
According to Wang, previous drug-delivery implants could be externally triggered to release medication, but could deliver only a single drug. Wang's research, which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, has demonstrated the ability to deliver several drugs at certain times.
"We can control when the process of releasing the drugs will begin by injecting the hydrogel with the oligonucleotide," Wang said. "It's like a knob for a light; you turn it on and the drugs will be released, you turn it off and the drugs will not be released."
The researchers built their hydrogels in a container and then characterized them using a high-powered microscope. To test the efficacy of their product in trapping cancer cells, they added them to cancer-cells cultures. According to Wang, the hydrogels successfully trapped the cancer cells in culture every time.
"This is different from what anyone else is doing," he said. "It's a completely new research direction."
Wang published some of the initial results of his research in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2012, and he presented his most recent results at the Society for Biomaterials Meeting & Exposition in April 2014.
Wang said he thinks the technique has the potential to forever change the way metastatic cancer is treated. Seeing this happen, he added, would be incredibly satisfying.
"I started out as an environmental science major in college, but eventually switched to life science," he said. "I realized that as a researcher, I wanted to see things happen in my life. When you apply engineering knowledge to life science problems you have a chance of seeing some outcomes of the technologies you create. I think the project we are working on has the chance to make a difference for humanity."
The next step in the process, Wang said, is to design an in vivo study in mice.
Wang has another project that is already in the animal-testing phase. He is using mice to test the functionality of a hydrogel to regenerate tissues in the body. This time, he has designed the hydrogel to bind not to cancer cells, but to damaged tissues. He then delivers nutrients and/or necessary signal molecules to the area to help the tissue cells regrow.
His other work includes the use of biomolecules to develop biomimetic systems. In one project, he and his colleagues are creating artificial antibodies.
"There are a lot of reasons why we want to design artificial antibodies," he said. "For one, natural antibodies have some shortcomings; they can denature when you're trying to do a special application, like drug delivery, and, for some applications, they are too large. We have figured out how to make them smaller and much more stable. For example, when we try to congregate them to any other materials for drug delivery, they do not lose their bioactivity."
In another project, Wang is designing biomimetic materials to control the delivery of protein drugs. He is trying to figure out how to deliver therapeutic biomolecules to a specific location in the body and with a pattern similar to the way it occurs in nature. As an example, he discusses insulin regulation.
"Our pancreas secretes insulin during or after a meal," he explained. "After a certain period of time, the level of insulin secreted decreases. The process happens again at the next meal. So you see a peak, valley, peak, valley in insulin level. If our bodies always had a very high concentration of insulin, we would die. When we design a drug delivery system to deliver therapeutic protein drugs we have to mimic this kind of natural pattern to ensure protein drugs will not induce any toxicity or side effects in our body."
Wang is quick to say that it is a constant struggle to create artificial materials that do their intended jobs without triggering any unwanted side effects. When successful, though, the effect is incredible.
"It sounds like fiction, but this is real," he said. "And I think it has the potential to change the way we approach medicine."
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2004 Jeep Cherokee • 140,000 miles
My windows wont go down and the auto lock doesnt work unless the remote is used
April 8, 2013.
April 8, 2013.
Check fuses first and battery in key fob. It may have to be scanned to see if it is getting signal
Apr 18, 2013.
Apr 18, 2013.
How do I replace a battery in a 2009 Chevy Equinox LS with a 3.4L V6. Most cars are straight forward, this looks difficult. Shame on GM. Thanks.
1 answer • 2009 Chevrolet Equinox • 19,000 miles
My battery is dead and I was going to take try and take it out but it is located on the passenger side below the air cleaner. My question is how is it possible to remove/replace the ...
2 answers • 2002 Dodge Intrepid • 125 miles
About a month ago, the battery and brake light came on on my 2000 Mitsubishi Galant. The lights would sometimes stay on, sometimes flicker. A couple of weeks ago, I woke up and the car ...
1 answer • 2000 Mitsubishi Galant • 130,000 miles


text:
The Amazon Kindle Fire HD was the online retailers hottest product during the holiday shopping season, which really is no surprise. While Amazon felt it had the 7 inch end of the market covered, it needed a product that might compete better with the Apple iPad mini and its 7.9 inch panel, the 10 inch screen on the Google Nexus 10 and the fourth-generation of the Apple iPad with its 9.7 inch display. That is why in November, Amazon launched the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9. With a resolution of 1920 x 1200, the 8.9 inch slate offers a pixel density of 254ppi. That tops the 162ppi on the Apple iPad mini and comes close to the 264ppi on the fourth-generation full-sized iPad.
member of Amazon Prime. You can have a free 6 month Amazon Prime membership, or the paid membership for one year which costs $39.
If you need more than just a Wi-Fi connection, the deal is also good for the Wi-Fi/4G LTE version of the tablet. The Wi-Fi only model is available in 16GB or 32GB at prices of $249 and $319 respectively after applying the discount. The Wi-Fi/4G LTE variant can be purchased with 32GB or 64GB for $449 and $549 respectively, after the discount is applied from the price.
source: Amazon via Slashgear
All month long, students can take $50 off the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9
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3 Comments
posted on 02 Jan 2013, 00:16 7
1. sarb009 (Posts: 300; Member since: 15 Jun 2011)
Students what do you think about getting a nexus 7 instead ?
posted on 02 Jan 2013, 00:52 1
2. imkyle (Posts: 1065; Member since: 18 Nov 2010)
Its always $199 with no coupon :)
posted on 03 Jan 2013, 08:17 0
3. Slammer (Posts: 1498; Member since: 03 Jun 2010)
While the Nexus7 is certainly a better product, most students I've seen, appear to be attracted to a slighly larger screen to supplement their laptops.
In my opinion, the Kindle Fire 8.9 hits this sweet spot for students. It concentrates on informational reading material, has most all of the educational fundamentals, has the larger screen and most importantly; it is inexpensive.
All month long, students can take $50 off the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9


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Thanks very much for Chris Townsend for pointing me at this page, which shows some absolutely super photographs of the Giza pyramids dating from the Second World War onwards. I particularly like the ones showing aircraft flying over the pyramids.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Giza pyramid photos from ground, air and space
Posted by Andie at 11:02 a.m.
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Doctor insights on:
Always Cold And Tired
Always cold and tired?
Thyroid?: Could be a slow thyroid. Or anemia. You may need some blood testing. ...Read moreGet help from a doctor now ›
I am always cold and tired. I just got a blood test and all of my levels are normal, and my diet is stellar, so what could be causing my fatigue?
Many things!: There are many possible causes: infections (bacterial, viral, fungal, parasitic), nutrient deficiencies (like low vit d), toxic exposures, thyroid ; adrenal problems, sleep disorders, heart disease, stress, depression etc. Most of these don't show up on standard tests. Cold ; tired is classic for thyroid but you need thorough tests: http://bit.Ly/1cjnybx see a holistic doc: http://bit.Ly/19pettq. ...Read moreGet help from a doctor now ›
My doctor wants to run a ft4 and TSH blood test what could be wrong with my thyroid im kinda scared major weightloss always cold and tired ?
Thyroid function: Hi. The TSH and free T4 test your thyroid function. If your thyroid gland is over active (hyperthyroid) or underachieve (hypothyroid), it will show up in those tests. Abnormal thyroid function is nothing to be afraid of at your age, but it does need to be recognized and treated. Abnormal thyroid function can cause weight changes, fatigue, and heat or cold intolerance. Good luck and don't be scared ...Read moreGet help from a doctor now ›
Why am I always cold & tired?
Cold: Hard to know until you see a doctor who will take your medical history, what foods you are eating, what meds you are on, etc. You will then be examined and lab tests will be ordered. Once you both know if there is something that needs treating or you need to see a specialist all things should fall into place. ...Read moreGet help from a doctor now ›
I generally have lover body temperature of 97.5. It is now been at 95.3. I have been very sensitive to cooler temps. And am always cold. Tired..etc.
Thyroid Function?: Consider talking with your doctor about your thyroid function. Feel better soon! ...Read moreGet help from a doctor now ›
I'm 20 years old, im always cold, tired and my hair falls out. Should I go see a doctor?
Yes: You may need your thyroid tested.Get a more detailed answer ›
I'm always cold, tired & cranky, can this be from my Vitamin D level its only 33 on blood test ?
Vitamin D: A vitamin D level of 33 is fine. You now need to find out why you are cold, tired, and cranky. There are many reasons for this as you know and you could discuss this with family or friends or ask for a referral to a Psychologist - they are superb doctors! ...Read moreGet help from a doctor now ›
What does it mean when you're constantly cold and always tired?
Chills/fatigue: These symptoms might represent disease or they may be completely innocent. Infection, endocrine problems, toxicity from something you have been ingesting...All are potential causes of your symptoms. You deserve a thorough medical exam including routine urine and blood tests to clarify your complaints. ...Read moreGet help from a doctor now ›
What can I take to boost my metabolism although I have hypothyroidism and always tired, cold besides iron?
Healthy diet : Your doctor should ensure that your hypothyroidism is well controlled. Some same symptoms could be due to hypothyroidism. Your dose of levothyroidism may need to be increased. ...Read moreGet help from a doctor now ›
I'm always tired, cold, and I have always had ridged nails. Could it be anemia? I'm 20 yr old female
Yes: Iron deficiency anemia is common in young women, and your symptoms are often seen in iron deficiency anemia. It's easy to diagnose by a simple blood test, and easy to cure with oral iron supplement. Of course, other disorders could be the cause. It's just that iron deficiency anemia is more likely. ...Read moreGet help from a doctor now ›
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- Why are my hands feet and nose always cold?
- Ask a doctor a question free online
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- Why am i always hot and tired?
- Why am i cold and tired all the time?
- Why am i always tired and have severe lower back pain?


text:
Chapter One:
People of the world don't like to think that their lives are set in stone. They hate the idea of not being able to fight fate. The idea that a certain thing is going to happen and there's nothing you can do to stop it. People like to think that they always have the power to change things as long as they believe hard enough. Like in a children's movie.
I never believed in things like destiny. It was impossible for the future to be set in stone I thought and that if you fought hard enough you could change it.
Of course these beliefs would come back to bite me.
My name is Jericho. Jericho Henry. I'm from the boring town known to the rest of the world as Swansboro North Carolina. Everyone calls it the friendly city by the sea since we're right next to the Atlantic Ocean but in all reality things aren't too friendly here. Its not that I hate my little town but i've had to deal with psychopath in all shapes and sizes, mythical creatures and all sorts of unfriendly things for the last five years and when your life is constantly on the line because somebody somewhere did something selfish, stupid or ignorant then you won't think your town is 'friendly' either. I mean come on! I'm only a junior in high school and yet i've done more fighting and negotiating than most adults. Its stupid. Ridiculous even! Its not surprising so many freaks and weirdos want to burn the town to the ground because they probably did something to cause it.
Now you might think, so far, that i'm nothing more than a cynical complainer and this entire story is just going to be me bashing one thing or another. Well your about half right. At this moment I am quite cynical and bitter about the various things that have happened to me up until this point. As for the whole story being this way? Don't worry, i'm just foreshadowing some stuff. You'll see where i'm going with this.
So, this little story begins in a auditorium at my school. The school itself isn't small, but it isn't very big either. The colors are all some sort of white or blue and if you were to imagine some sort of stereotypical high school then you've got the picture of what mine looks like. The auditorium in question can hold all six hundred of us but its a tight fit. I was sitting in the middle of everything. Not in the back where the kids are playing on their phones and making fun of our principal, not in the front where everyone is paying close attention to what the woman is saying, eating it all up like candy. I'm in the middle with the kids who just don't care enough to pay attention but at the same time can catch enough to get the gist of what we've been dragged here for.
In this case, to be lectured about damages to the school. Recent ones caused by a wild animal being let loose in the halls.
I wasn't paying too much attention because I was very familiar with the wild animal. It was a werewolf who had come to make me suffer for ruining its school life and thwarting its plans to rule over all of the humans with my best friend as his mate.
You know how I mentioned i've been fighting off all sorts of psychopaths and fiends and the like? Most of them are connected to my best friend in some way. Magnet for trouble she is.
The brown haired girl in question was sitting next to me, emerald eyes focused on the principal (who was droning on about safety last I checked) and nibbling her bottom lip in worry that I would be drawn into the incident and expelled from the school. Her name was Alexandra Kent. Alex for short. I grinned at the worrywart and nudged her.
"Why so serious?" I hissed. We'd been watching batman the night before.
She narrowed her eyes at me "Shh! Do you know what they'll do to you if they find out you were involved with this? The entire hall was trashed and covered in blood!"
She wasn't even exaggerating. I'd had a little too much fun killing the little furry bastard. Alex was also convinced that killing these things was going to push me down some sort of path of darkness. But come on. I'm not Darth Vader or anything. In fact i'm a very upstanding citizen!
But none the less I hushed. I wanted her in a good mood after all. I had every intention of asking her to the winter ball later and I didn't want to start a pointless argument. Not that we argued very much. I've been in love with this girl for as long as I can remember and any disagreement we have tends to end with her victory.
No, this isn't a romance either. Really, i'm going somewhere with all of this.
So for twenty more minutes we sat there and listened to principal Andre warn us about what was and was not allowed in school, proper wild animal precaution tactics and the possible cancellation of the winter ball. I was about to drop off into a nice, blissful sleep. Its not like any of this crap applied to me or anythi...what was that last part?
"If the school hasn't been deemed safe by the local animal control department then all after school events, like the winter ball, will be canceled" Andre said. The students were in an uproar and I was one of the loudest. I mean who in the hell did she think she was?! The school was plenty safe! Sure it's attacked every other Tuesday but something or another but the winter ball was on...just hold on while I check the date on my watch...damn it its on a Tuesday. By the laws of my rotten luck we're due to be attacked. None the less my possible relationship upgrade with Alex was FAR more important than silly things like student safety. I was enraged!
"Calm down" said Alex "you don't even go to dances"
Yeah, because your usually taken when its time for one of these things!
"I wanted to go to this one!" I whined "and I would have gone to the last one but it was at the same time as your drama play thing"
Which I recorded. Alex is the best singer I know!
The girl shrugged and gave me a look that was half pitying and half exasperated. I continued with my loud protesting and threats to Andre and her neighbors and pet poodle but alas, I was ignored and the meeting was adjourned. Alex tried to get my attention to let me know she was going to third period and she'd see me later but I was too focused on what I could do to save the dance from certain doom. When I came out of my thoughts I found myself alone in some random hallway.
"I've really got to stop plotting while walking" I grumbled to myself "I'm gonna wind up in detention one of these days.." shaking my head I checked my reflection in this big mirror that just so happened to be propped up next to some lockers near a classroom. I think it was a psychology class and they were experimenting with luck or some nonsense. I thought I looked okay, not fat but not too skinny. Smooth brown skin with a bruise here and a scratch there from my recent werewolf related fight. Chocolate brown eyes and short curly black hair that wasn't messy. Yup. I could definitely sell a lie to the principal about being an innocent honor student who desperately needed to go to the dance.
Devious plan churning in my head I made to walk in the direction of the office when something slammed into me and knocked me to the ground.
It was at this very moment that my life would change forever.
Cliche? Yeah. But true.
Annoyed as all hell I looked up to see who knocked me down and drew breath to give he or she a very rude tongue lashing. Unfortunately it was a girl who had knocked me down and she was really...really hot.
She was blonde, my preference, hair falling down to her shoulders with blue eyes and dressed in a dark green sweater and black jeans. She was fair skinned and her face was heart shaped. Her vivid ocean blues stared past my eyes and saw into my soul (that's what it felt like at least) and all of the sudden my brain was assaulted with images.
A boy standing in front of a girl, yelling at someone. His arm was outstretched in front of the girl in a protective gesture.
The same boy and girl sitting on top of a clock tower, drinking milk-shakes and staring at the sunset.
The pair were watching fireworks at what looked like a flotilla.
The pair were locked in a tight embrace on a dark street. The boy was crying, begging the girl for something. The boy was yelling again at a large figure in front of him.
The boy and the girl and another boy were walking down a dirt path towards a huge castle. On either side of them was grass that sparkled in the moonlight. They were dressed in identical long black traveling coats.
I swore and clutched at my head as the images were replaced by voices, distorted so I couldn't tell who or what was speaking.
"In our world there's no such thing as a hero!"
"I won't be the reason why you die. Not again"
"In real life, people can't be put into nice, little categories of good or evil. Its about damn time you understood that!"
"I write these letters because they are the only thing that keeps me sane."
"You were wrong. I didn't forget you. I forgot what it was like to live without you"
"what are you trying to force us into now?"
"will you chose the path that is familiar, lit up by the moon?"
"Your heart was a shattered, diseased mess long before she came into the picture! It can't be changed!"
"or the path that is unfamiliar, covered by the darkness?"
"Its the best hot chocolate you'll ever drink!"
"I'm sorry but if you come after me i will never forgive you"
"She filled a hole in my heart that I never knew i had!"
"We're out of time. You have to die"
"You let her stab you on purpose didn't you?!"
"Everyone deserves to have someone special in their lives. Someone who takes away the pain and leaves joy. Even you"
"Were you not paying attention? Its all for nothing. I'm still here aren't I? That means that at the end of the day...you fail"
I gasped, sucking in a breath and sitting up. As the voices screamed in my ear I somehow wound up on the ground, clawing at my ears. I shook myself and leveled a glare at the girl
"and what the hell was that?" I growled. I wasn't sure how, but I knew she had something to do with..whatever that was.
She simply looked at me blankly
"I'm sorry" she whispered "But I have to kill you"
I couldn't even finish the thought before she was on me, a knife in her hand swinging at me so fast I'd have been skewered already if I wasn't..well..me.
Reflexively my hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist, stopping the blade before it could do anything more than put a hole in my shirt. With a growl I shot up to my feet and twisted her arm behind her, pulling her into me as the knife clattered to the ground. I hissed in her ear and applied some more pressure to the wrist I was holding, she whimpered in pain.
"I don't know who you are or what your problem is but you can't just go randomly trying to kill people!"
Another voice echoed through the hall, a baritone voice that made the hairs on my neck stand up
"Seriously. That's my schtick"
I shoved the girl hard and fell backwards as a crescent shaped blast of what seemed to be pure yellow energy passed right by where we were standing seconds before. It left a deep crack in the ground and the explosion it caused at the end of the hall was deafening. Dimly, in a small part of my mind, I knew that there was no way I was going to make it to the winter ball this year.
I turned to look and see what had sent a blast at us, at the same time trying to figure out an escape route. Whoever was attacking us had us backed into a corner! Muttering filled the hallway as people came out of their classes to investigate what had made that noise. I swore a second time and grabbed the blonde by the wrist, a wrist that would be bruised tomorrow, and yanked her behind me as I fled into the nearest classroom. It happened to be that Psychology class I mentioned earlier. I ran straight towards the window and leapt up on a desk so I could reach it better. The door slammed open behind me as I yanked at the blonde's arm
"Come ON!" I yelled "we need to go!"
She snapped out of her daze and glared at me
"You can't just pull me around like a..."
"THEN JUMP OUT THE DAMN WINDOW!" I screamed, an eye on the door, watching a figure walk into the room but not getting anything more than a glance as the girl shoved me off balance. Annoyed but still a little frightened (and I couldn't place why) I followed her out of the window and onto the grass outside. We ran, the parking lot just half a mile away. I didn't know where we were running but I knew that we had to put as much distance between ourselves and that school as possible.
It was weird. I'm never scared of an opponent. What in the world was wrong with me?
Something exploded in front of us and we skidded to a halt. Out of the flames caused by the attack stepped a woman dressed in a long black and gold military looking uniform. Her brown hair reaching her shoulders and green eyes alight with cruelty. I squinted.
It COULDN'T be..
"Alex?" I breathed
"Hello Jericho" she said "I'd forgotten that you used to be kind of cute"
I was staring death in the face but that didn't stop my heart from swelling. Alex thought I was cute!
"What are you doing here?! How are you here?!" the blonde was close to hysterics. Alex, who was all grown up for some reason, chuckled
"You can't run from us Ellie. Master always knows" she chided
There was that baritone voice again. I squinted as a figure came into view. He was dressed in a black and gold military uniform too but his was armor instead of mere cloth. His hair was black and curly like mine but cut shorter, almost shaved but not quite. In fact he looked just like me but older.
Oh and his pupils were slit. Irises golden. Plus he had a sword. A shining silver, gold and black broadsword. My head felt like it was about to split open, pain forcing me down on me knees as I clutched it with both hands. The man vanished and reappeared standing next to older!Alex. Ellie's eyes widened as blood burst out of her side like a geyser. She screamed and crumpled, the crimson liquid pooling under her. I found myself screaming too as the pain became almost unbearable
"Who...what...I don't understand!" I yelled "What's happening?!"
"There's no reason to be afraid Jericho" the man said "I'm not here to hurt you. Just had to tie up a loose end"
"Jericho" somehow the blonde could still talk. She stared up at me with pained blue eyes. I didn't know what to do! She was growing paler and paler. Clearly she was going to die soon if I did't do something! But what could I do? That was such a deep cut!
"Why would you do that to her?" I demanded "and why do you look like me? Why does that woman look like my friend? What's going ON?!"
"He's...you.." Ellie ground out "Thirteen years from now"
"...Jericho...grab my hand.."
I barely heard her. This man was...me?
"Grab my hand"
This man who was radiating evil and wrong was me? Future me? Alex...we're...no. No no no no. I'm not a bad guy and Alex is too nice to be evil. This must be some sort of mistake. A dream.
"Please...Jericho...grab my..h..hand.."
Tears were sliding down Ellie's cheeks now and she coughed. Looking pitiful.
"Little girls should keep their mouths shut" the man who couldn't be me said "Timelines aren't meant to be changed"
"Change? But how?" I looked over at him, head still pounding. She tried to kill me..probably to stop me from growing up into...that.
But she must be confused. That's not me.
"I can't hold on...take my hand...Jeri..cho.." she was clearly fighting to stay awake now. She had lost a lot of blood..too much blood.
"Just go back inside Jericho" Not!me said "This is all just a bad dream"
A bad dream. Yeah that's it. This was a dream and I was still inside math class or something. That made perfect sense!
The world stopped. I stared at the blonde who was dying right in front of my eyes. I looked at the man with the sword, who's eyes had widened in anger and...fear? Ellie had very clearly called me father. As in dad. As in my daughter from the future was dying right in front of me.
I pushed away the stray thought about how me, a black man, could conceive a white daughter and my body moved on its own.
I grabbed her hand just as she went limp. There was a flash of color and I was yanked off of my feet and before I knew it I was speeding through darkness.
My older self's rage filled roar fading away to nothingness behind me.
Author's note!
First chapter of my newest story. Read and comment!


text:
You can't deploy a SQL 2008 SSRS Report to a SQL 2005 SSRS ServerSQL
SQL 2008 and SQL 2005 use different RDL namespaces and so they pretty much aren't compatible. You can edit SQL 2005 Reports using the SQL 2008 editor, but new reports won't be able to be deployed to the SQL 2005 report server.
With enough major editing of the SQL 2008 report you can convert it to a SQL 2005 report.
In a future post (you can read this as, as soon as I figure out just what editing needs to be done) I'll cover what editing needs to be done to the SQL 2008 RDL to make it run within a SQL 2005 Report server.
This is going to come in handy as you can't have SQL 2005's UI and SQL 2008's UI installed on the same machine.
How to setup SQL 2008 BIDS to use VB.NET as the default scripting languageSQL
If you are like me and don't know anything about C#, and you don't want to have to change the script language every time to create a .NET script from C#.NET to VB.NET you can change the default.
Open BIDS, and select Tools > Options. On the menu on the left select "Business Intelligence Designers" then "Integration Services Designers". In the Script box in the middle of the right pain change the option in the drop down from "Microsoft Visual C# 2008" to "Microsoft Visual Basic 2008".
If you prefer C# you've got nothing to worry about as C# is the default option.
Back to Basics: The BACKUP DATABASE commandSQL
Now that you have objects created within your database, and data within the tables you need to secure your database in case of a server failure or accidental data deletion. This would be done by taking backups of the database. Backups are taken by using the BACKUP DATABASE command.
The frequency that full backups are taken at should be determined by how much data changes within the databases. On busier systems full backups should be taken daily. On systems which are less busy the full backup can be taken less often, every few days, once per week, etc.
The syntax of the BACKUP DATABASE command is fairly basic. You specify the name of the database to backup, and the destination that you will be backing up to. If your database name is MyDatabase and your going to backup to a file named MyDatabase.bak on the E drive your BACKUP DATABASE command would look something like this.
BACKUP DATABASE MyDatabase TO DISK='E:\MyDatabase.bak'
This command will backup all tables, views, procedures, functions, etc as well as all the data within the database. Backing up the database in an online operation meaning that users can be connected to the database, continuing to make changes to the database while the backup database command is running. The database is backed up in the same state that it was in when the command started. All changes made during the backup are logged into the database and staged in memory. Upon completion of the BACKUP DATABASE command these changes are destaged from memory to the physical file during a checkpoint operation.
If you have a full text index, and are using SQL Server 2000 the full text backup is not included as part of the backup which is created by the BACKUP DATABASE command. After restoring the database you would need to recreate the full text indexes. This issue is resolved in SQL Server 2005 when the full text indexes are added to the database backup.
If you wish to create two backups of the database so that your backups can survive a failure of the disk you backup the database to you can use the MIRROR TO clause of the BACKUP DATABASE command. This clause creates two exact duplicate backups of the database. This option is included in SQL Server 2005 and higher.
BACKUP DATABASE MyDatabase TO DISK='E:\MyDatabase.bak' MIRROR TO DISK='F:\MyDatabase.bak'
If you find that your backups are taking to long do to a large database size and/or slow disk speed on the disk you are backing up to you can strip the database backup across database backups. This is done by simply specifying additional destinations.
BACKUP DATABASE MyDatabase TO DISK='E:\Mydatabase.bak', DISK='F:\MyDatabase.bak'
Now striping your database can improve your backup performance, but it puts your backups at greater risk for a disk failure as each part of the backup disk is spread across two drives. If either backup file is lost or damaged the entire backup is useless. Because of this you can combine the striping for speed and the mirroring for safety. To do this the number of backup devices specified in the MIRROR clause must be the same as the number of backup devices specified in the initial destination clause.
BACKUP DATABAES MyDatabase TO DISK='E:\MyDatabase.bak', DISK='F:\MyDatabase.bak' MIRROR TO DISK='G:\MyDatabase.bak', DISK='H:\MyDatabase.bak'
You can read up more about detailed backup techniques in the eZine article I wrote a few months back.
Check back in the coming weeks for information about log backups and restoring your database and log backups.
A better way to index text dataSQL
Indexing text data (varchar, nvarchar, char, etc) is a good way to make it faster to find the data you are looking for. However these indexes can end up being very hard on the disks behind the index, as well as the memory of the server. This is because of the large amount of data being put in the index.
As an example, let's say that we have a table like this.
CREATE TABLE Employee
(EmployeeID INT,
FirstName VARCHAR(50),
LastName VARCHAR(50),
EmailAddress VARCHAR(255))
Now assume that you want to be able to search by the EmailAddress field. We will then want to index the EmailAddress field with a non-clustered index. If we work for a company like AMD, then our email addresses will be pretty short (firstname.lastname@example.com). However if we work for a company like I work for then the email addresses are a bit longer (email@example.com). Now when we index this column we will be putting the entire email address into the index, taking up a lot of space within the index; especially compared to a numeric value such as an integer. This becomes doubly true if you are using a uni-code data type as each character requires two bytes of storage instead of the usual one.
This also becomes a problem if you are working on a system with URLs in the field to be indexes. Depending on the length of the URL, the values may be longer than is allowed in an index which could then give you sorting problems on the indexes.
There are a couple of variations on this technique which I've seen. The one I've used the most is to use the CHECKSUM function as part of a calculated column, and then index the calculated column. This way you simply get the CHECKSUM of the value you want to find, and search the calculated column. As we are now have an index made up of integers the index can fit a lot more data on each physical data page reducing the IO cost of the index seek as well as saving space on the disk.
So doing this turns our table into something like this.
CREATE TABLE Employee
(EmployeeID INT,
FirstName VARCHAR(50),
LastName VARCHAR(50),
EmailAddress VARCHAR(255),
EmailAddressCheckSum AS CHECKSUM(EmailAddress))
Now I wouldn't recommend using this technique for each table you create. I usually only recommend a technique like this when the value to be indexes won't fit within the bounds of the index, or the table will be very large and searched often so the memory saved is worth the extra CPU time of having to hash the values before doing the lookup.
Now there are a couple of gotchas with this technique. If you are check summing domain names, some characters don't check sum correctly. Also check summing a Unicode version of a string will give you a different result than the non-unicode version of the same string.
You can see that with these three SELECT statements.
SELECT CHECKSUM('google.com'), CHECKSUM('g-oogle.com')
SELECT CHECKSUM('google.com'), CHECKSUM(N'google.com')
SELECT CHECKSUM(N'google.com'), CHECKSUM(N'g-oogle.com')
As you can see the first one you get two different values as you would expect ( 1560309903 and 1560342303 respectively). With the second query you get two very different values between the Unicode and character strings (1560309903 and -1136321484 respectively). Based on the first query you would expect to get two different values for the third query, but you don't. With the Unicode strings the – appears to not count as part of the CHECKSUM giving you the same CHECKSUM value for both strings (-1136321484).
Another version of this technique which Kevin Kline talked about recently uses the HASHBYTES function of SQL Server 2005 to get the hash of a column and use that. In his blog he's talking about using it for partitioning a table, but that same technique can be used here as well.
CREATE TABLE Employee
(EmployeeID INT,
FirstName VARCHAR(50),
LastName VARCHAR(50),
EmailAddress VARCHAR(255),
EmailAddressCheckSum AS HASHBYTES('SHA1', EmailAddress)
This will however give you a longer string, therefor taking up more space within the index. However if working with long Unicode strings this may be a better option for you to use.
Book: The Windows Manager's Guide to iSCSI SANsSQL
That's right I said a book. Well it's actually an eBook but good enough right? The best part is that it's available for free. It's a three chapter eBook called "The Windows Manager's Guide to iSCSI SANs". Each chapter was posted separately so you have to click through to each one.
Registration is required to view the chapters (don't blame me). I wrote chapter 2, I hope you find it useful.
Chapter 1: Leveraging SANs in Windows Servers
Chapter 2: Gearing up for SANs on a SQL Server
Chapter 3: Reducing Exchange Server Complexity with SANs
Using batching to do large operations without filling the transaction logSQL
Deleting large amounts of data from a table is usually an important task, but if you don't have a maintenance window to work within then you can end up causing locking and blocking against the other processes which are accessing the database. Not to mention you will cause a very large amount of data into the transaction log no matter what your transaction logging level is set to.
Say you have a table with a date column and you need to delete a million plus records. Doing this in a single transaction will put all million transactions into your transaction log, plus cause any other processes which are trying to access the table to be blocked.
However if we batch the transaction into many smaller transactions our transaction log will not fill up as we can backup the log using our normal log backup methods throughout the process, or if we use SIMPLE recovery on our database then transactions will be removed from the log automatically.
In SQL 2000 and below you have to set the ROWCOUNT session variable to a number above 0, which would cause SQL to delete the first n records that it comes across. In SQL 2005 we can use the TOP parameter as part of our DELETE command having the same effect, but without having to reset the session variable.
In SQL 2000 or below you can use a syntax like this one.
DECLARE @c BIT, @d DATETIME
SET @d = dateadd(yy, -1, getdate())
SET @c = 0
WHILE @c = 0
DELETE FROM Table
WHERE CreateDate
If you are using SQL 2005 you can use this very similar syntax.
DECLARE @c BIT, @d datetime
SET @d = dateadd(yy, -1, getdate())
SET @c = 0
WHILE @c = 0
DELETE TOP (1000) FROM Table
WHERE CreateDate
Both pieces of code are very similar. Declare a variable which tells the loop when to exit. Then start deleting the data. If no records are deleted, then set the variable to 1 causing us to exit the loop. Now this will usually take a little bit longer to complete than a single delete statement, but the system will continue to be responsive during the process.
The number of records which you are deleting should be adjusted based on the width of your records, the load on the database at the time of deletion, and the speed of your hard drives which hold the data files and transaction logs. I usually start at 1000 records and see how the system responds. For tables which a just a few numbers I'll put it up as high as 50k or 100k records. For very wide tables I'll drop it down to 100 or 500 records if the system can't handle 1000 records.
Sorry this post didn't look very good at first. The blog site seams to have eaten it, and I didn't notice until just now.
My Experience with putting a CRL Procedure into SQLSQL
A little while ago I came upon a situation where I needed to put a CRL procedure into SQL Server 2005. Now I've been using SQL Server 2005 since the day it went RTM, and this is the first occasion that I've needed to put a CLR procedure into SQL. Could I have done what I needed to without a CRL procedure? Yeah probably, but the .NET code was written, and had been working.
My code is written in C# as that's what the .NET guys here use. There is one method within the C# class called HashPassword. It takes a text string and makes a SHA1 Hash of it which we then store. We had to make a couple of changes to the C# code to make it work within SQL Server.
The original code looked like this.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Text;
namespace Rapid.Database.Security{ {
public class User
public static void HashPassword(String password, out String hash)
SHA1 sha1 = new SHA1CryptoServiceProvider();hash =
BitConverter.ToString(sha1.ComputeHash(UnicodeEncoding.Default.GetBytes(password.ToLower()))).Replace("-", "");
The changed C# code looks like this.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;
namespace Rapid.Database.Security
public class User
public static void HashPassword(String password, out String hash)
SHA1 sha1 = new SHA1CryptoServiceProvider();hash =
BitConverter.ToString(sha1.ComputeHash(UnicodeEncoding.Default.GetBytes(password.ToLower()))).Replace("-", "");
Once these changes are made and the DLL recompiled we can attach the DLL to the SQL Server database as an assembly. This is done with the CREATE ASSEMBLY command. I have to use the EXTERNAL_ACCESS flag instead of the SAFE flag because my dll requires the use of the System.IO assembly which can't be run as SAFE under SQL Server 2005.
CREATE ASSEMBLY [Rapid.Database.Security]AUTHORIZATION [dbo]
FROM 'D:\Rapid.Database.Security.dll'
We can now create our procedure which needs to have one input and one output parameter to match the number of parameters within the C# procedure. This is done with the CREATE PROCEDURE command just like creating any normal procedure.
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[HashPassword]
@Password [nvarchar](50),
@PasswordHash [nvarchar](50) OUTPUT
EXTERNAL NAME [Rapid.Database.Security].[Rapid.Database.Security.User].[HashPassword]
The three part name of the C# method are:
- Assembly name which SQL Server knows about (basically the name of the DLL without the file extension).
- The full name to the class, in our case the namespace then the class. Our namespace is Rapid.Database.Security with the name of the class after that.
- The name of the method within the C# class.
Don't forget to enable CLR within SQL Server using the sp_configure before trying to use the CLR procedure.
At this point I am able to run the procedure and pass in text and get back the hash.
declare @PasswordHash varchar(50)
exec HashPassword @password='test', @passwordHash=@PasswordHash OUTPUT
SELECT @PasswordHash
The value of this is: A94A8FE5CCB19BA61C4C0873D391E987982FBBD3
I hope that you find this useful. It took me and a .NET developer a couple of hours to get all this working correctly and loaded into the SQL Server correctly. I know that I'll be referring back to this if I ever need to attach a CLR method into SQL again.
Do keep in mind that when we were doing this, we created this as a separate DLL for the SQL Server as to get the original DLL into the SQL Server, SQL wanted us to load up a bunch of other assemblies that some of the other methods required.
SQL 2008 RC0 Intellisense doesn't work against SQL 2005SQL
I've been working with SQL 2008 RC0 for a couple of weeks now, and something I've noticed that really sucks. The Intellisense doesn't work against a SQL 2005 server any more. I've been using the SQL 2008 UI exclusively for several months now (since the November CTP at least) and I've gotten quite used to the intellisense.
While jumping around the net looking to see who else was talking about this (and several people are) I found this Connect bug about it. The notes from Eric @ Microsoft are that if the vote count shows that enough people want this fixed they'll see what they can do. The comments in the Connect bug indicate that pretty much everyone wants it back, even if it's not perfect.
The only other person I really see complaining about the lack of downlevel support is Aaron Bertrand.
Be sure to vote on the connect bug and leave a comment here or there so that the developers get the idea that we want it back.
Back To Basics: The RECEIVE command (and END CONVERSATION)SQL
The RECEIVE command is the last of the Service Broker items to cover in the Back To Basics series. The RECEIVE command is what is used to actually get the message out of the queue so that you can process the data within the message_body column. The RECEIVE command works just like the SELECT statement for the most part. It has a FROM clause and a WHERE clause (which most people don't use, but it's there if you need it). After you receive the message you will usually want to run the END CONVERSATION command. This will tell the remote machine that you have receive the message and that no more messages should be sent on this conversation. I usually only send a single message per conversation, so I don't put in any logic to see if this is the last message in the conversation.
The basic syntax is very straight forward.
DECLARE @handle UNIQUEIDENTIFIER
DECLARE @message_body XML
RECEIVE TOP (1) @handle=conversation_handle, @message_body=cast(message_body as XML)
FROM [QueueName]
END CONVERSATION @handle
It is required that you cast the message body to XML, as it's transmitted as binary data. (If you are sending a single value or a binary blob then change the cast as needed.) You don't have to write a second command to delete the message from the queue after you receive it. The RECEIVE command handles the SELECT and DELETE in a single command.
If you haven't been able to make to to one of my sessions, here is the sample source code which I use for the service broker session. This ZIP file contains not only the sample code, but also the slide deck from the presentation which covers much of which I've covered in these blogs. If you have any questions about the sample code please feel free to post those questions here so that everyone can see the answers.
I may take a little break from the Back To Basics posts for a little bit, but I haven't really decided yet, so if you see more popping up on the site, I guess that means that I've decided to keep working the series for a bit. If I do take a break, I will start back up shortly.
I promise.
My Back To Basics session was way more popular than I was expectingSQL
At the last SoCal Code Camp I did several new sessions. One of which was my Back To Basics session. When I was setting up the session I figured that a few people would show, mostly because the wouldn't have anything else to do for the first session.
What I got instead was a massive turnout. There were even people standing at the back of the room (and the room held about 40 people). As to the questions, they were all excellent, and there were so many of them. Because there were so many questions we ended up only getting about half way through the material.
Because of this I wanted to announce that next time code camp happens (Woody tells me that there will be one in October this year up at USC) I'm going to schedule it as a two part session. That way we can be sure to get through all the material that I want to cover, and have plenty of time for questions this time. As soon as Woody opens up the site for scheduling I'll be sure to get the both halves of the session posted so that we can get a good judge of what size room is needed.
Check back here and on the SoCal Code Camp website for additional scheduling details.


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Are there any efficient implementations of sparse coding (that is, minimizing (1/2)||Ax - b||^2 + lambda ||x||_1) for the JVM?
asked Jan 26 '12 at 09:53
Alexandre Passos ♦
After failing to find a public one I wrote my own and put it in a gist.
answered Jan 26 '12 at 10:57
Alexandre Passos ♦


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On sale
- Blazers
Ted Baker
- Ted Baker
- Ted Baker Blazer - Dariah$425 bloomingdales.comConsider this old-school classic of a jacket your new uniform, from Ted Baker.
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- Pre-owned Ted Baker Etina Blue Blazer$184 tradesy.comBrand new Ted Baker jacquard moto jacket has leather trim at neck and gold toned zippers. Slimming black side panels and bracelet-length sleeves give it a modern look. Would be great with a black slim pant, skirt, or the matching pencil skirt I've also listed! Fully lined with black jacquard fabric.
- Ted Baker Skinny Lapel Detail Blazer$184 $369 tedbaker.comTed Baker womenswear collection, Fitted, Skinny lapel, Button fastening, Long sleeved, Two external pockets.
- Ted Baker London 'Miako' Blazer$348 nordstrom.comBlack Friday & Cyber Monday Sale! Up to an Additional 25% Off Select Sale Items!Striking seam work adds understated interest to a woven notch-lapel blazer with a lone logoed button at the front. Brand: Ted Baker London. Style Name: Ted Baker London 'Miako' Blazer. Style Number: 667148. Approx; length from shoulder: 26"; Measurements taken from size 3 and may vary slightly by size; Front flap-welt pockets; Back vent


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Home > Mobile Computer > Heavy Duty Mobile Computer > Honeywell Dolphin 9500 > 9500L00-131-C32
by Honeywell
Description:Dolphin 9500 Mobile Computer, 802.11b, SR (Standard Range) Imager, Color Touchscreen Display, 56-keys, TN5250 Dir Connect
Please call for pricing and information
The part number 9500L00-131-C32 is associated with the Honeywell Dolphin 9500.
For more information on the Honeywell Dolphin 9500 click here
Dolphin 9500 General Downloads:
This is a mobile computer from Honeywell.
For a full product description, including specs, support and warranty details and additional models of the Honeywell Dolphin 9500 please click here.
For additional mobile computers please visit our mobile computer page.


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Recruitment Challenges
The biggest reason people turn down job offersOctober 8, 2015 03:11 pm
A new survey asked workers "What hurdles stop you from accepting a job?" Can you guess what reason was No. 1?
Category: Hiring Advice, Recruitment Challenges
Six ways to successfully use social media for recruitingSeptember 30, 2015 11:19 am
Are you maximizing the true potential of social for recruiting? Here are six ways to do that.
Category: Human Resources, Industry News & Insights, Recruitment Challenges
Somewhere between four and 100 words you should never use in your job postingSeptember 30, 2015 10:24 am
It can be a struggle to make a real impact with your job posting and cut through the cacophony to appeal to the real talent. And there are things employers and hiring managers do that make the situation worse for themselves. How you word your job posting matters – a lot.
Category: Hiring Advice, Human Resources, Recruitment Challenges
The world's coolest offices 2015September 17, 2015 12:53 pm
If you want to attract the best and brightest to work at your organization, you might have to up your office environment game.
Category: Industry News & Insights, Recruitment Challenges
How to get your team to refer their talented friendsSeptember 15, 2015 01:32 pm
If you're looking to save time and money in the hiring process, you probably know that there is no better resource for talent than the people who already work for you.
Category: Recruitment Challenges
Research suggests you can increase your chances of making the right hire by 500% (no, really)September 2, 2015 03:24 pm
While most of us know a bad hire can have dear costs, the question remains as to how one can avoid them. According to a new report, those who make this mistake a 5 times more likely to make a bad hire.
Category: Hiring Advice, Recruitment Challenges
10 hiring mistakes you will regretAugust 12, 2015 05:34 pm
We will all make decisions that we will regret. But avoid making these hiring mistakes and lessen your pain later.
Category: Hiring Advice, Human Resources, Recruitment Challenges
Eight things you can do to attract employees when you can't pay top dollarJuly 15, 2015 05:00 pm
You need to hire someone but you don't have much money. What's an organization to do?
Category: Recruitment Challenges
Why your street rep is harming your businessJuly 15, 2015 03:53 pm
Your employees can be your ambassadors or your detractors. A bad employee experience can ruin it for everyone.
Category: Human Resources, Recruitment Challenges
Why new employees failJuly 6, 2015 04:26 pm
The majority of job failures during probation are the fault of the company and the manager, not the employee. Here are eight things employers do wrong.
Category: Human Resources, Management, Recruitment Challenges


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Compaq F767NR Turns On then Off
This is a discussion on Compaq F767NR Turns On then Off within the Laptop Support forums, part of the Tech Support Forum category. The computer turns on for 1 second and then shuts off immediately. Here's what i've tried: 1. Taking out HD
Gear in this thread
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Battpit™ Laptop / NotebookBattpit™ Laptop / Notebook Battery Replacement for Compaq Presario F767NR 10.8 Volt Li-ion Laptop...
1 Review
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5x10 Vincent and the Doctor (Grading/Discussion) SPOILERS!!
View Single Post
July 3 2010, 06:09 AM
I am not Spock
Location: Australia
Re: 5x10 Vincent and the Doctor (Grading/Discussion) SPOILERS!!
Vincent And The Doctor is probably in my top five of the nuWho revival. Girl In The Fireplace, Family of Blood/Human Nature, and Blink have to be up there as well.
As for TNG vs Who, well, they're very different shows. Both have their extraordinary and not so great episodes. Indeed, TNG season five did have its share of phenomenal episodes (I'd put The Inner Light in the same category as V&TD.)
It's a FAAAAKKKEEE!
Senator Vreenak- In the Pale Moonlight
I am not Spock
View Public Profile
Send a private message to I am not Spock
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text:
A story about a man who gains incredible powers. This is the sixth chapter. More to come.
Chapter 6
As my vision cleared, I was no longer at the wall, but in the forest. Surrounding me were people covered from head to toe in dark brown. As they saw me, they reacted instantly. What I saw was unison, discipline and ability. These men weren't a rag-tag group wandering around. They knew what they were doing. They came to the mansion for a reason.
They attacked with efficiency. Each going for a spot on my body that wasn't targeted by another. two came in for a physical attack, the others stood back as notes began to form. I was completely terrified at the situation, but thankfully, my body had other plans than keep frozen. A beautiful song immediately played in my head as I watched every physical attacker break the body part they had struck with and the maence attackers' casts backfire on them.
The maence men were down, having been hit with the full force of their own attacks. The song then changed form into an adrenaline pumping tune and my body reacted in kind. It moved with the fluid sound of the music. I struck the closest man next to me with a backhand blow that send him flying into the tree next to us. Then I heard different music play as I began to move away from the first. As I turned I saw my arm reach out in the direction of the second man. The music played and condensed until I could no longer tell it was music and a ball of what I could only consider air pressure flew was released from my hand into the injured man's chest. It all happened so fast, that I could not comprehend where I was going or where I had been.
In moments every man around me was down. I was unsure whether I had killed them or not. I didn't know if I could have handled killing someone. Again, a shriek sounded in my head, and I was moving in a blur again. This time, I could hear notes playing louder and louder until finally, I was in another area of the forest with another group of men, also clad in dark brown getups. This time I didn't stand in the middle and wait for them to attack.
As I ran towards them at amazing speed, I heard notes play in my head and form into my palms. Then the notes took shape and formed into a song with deep, strong bass and razor edged notes. I was upon the closest man and my body moved with the fluid, adrenaline rich song still playing in my head. I moved right past the man, as my left hand moved swiftly in a sideward motion as we passed. Then I saw my arms extend forward towards two men directly in front of me. The men were instantly impaled by the swords I saw my hands holding. Notes then played in my head again as I released the swords. They then turned white hot. I was already in the air by the time the men began thrashing about. Then more notes played in my head and formed into screaming.
Welcome to Authspot, the spot for creative writing.
Read some stories and poems, and be sure to subscribe to our feed!


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- Equipment World - http://www.equipmentworld.com -
Diesel fuel prices fall 0.025 cents per gallon in U.S.
Posted By Amanda Bayhi On November 13, 2013 @ 12:06 pm In News & Analysis | No Comments
On-highway diesel fuel prices fell 0.025 cents per gallon in the U.S. this week, according to our sister site, Aggregates Manager [2].
The declining costs mark the third consecutive week [3] of falling diesel prices.
This week, diesel prices also fell in all regions of the U.S.
The greatest decrease this week occurred in the West Coast less California region, which experienced a $0.042-per-gallon fall from last week's prices and a $0.217-per-gallon year-over-year decline.
Overall, national prices fell $0.025 per gallon this week to $3.832, and they are $0.148 per gallon lower than a year ago.
For more information, including a chart displaying weekly and yearly changes per region, check out the full diesel fuel price report at AggMan.com [2].
Article printed from Equipment World: http://www.equipmentworld.com
URL to article: http://www.equipmentworld.com/diesel-fuel-prices-fall-0-025-cents-per-gallon-in-u-s/
URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://www.equipmentworld.com/files/2013/05/7957501854_d70c5de81a_b.jpg
[2] according to our sister site, Aggregates Manager: http://www.aggman.com/diesel-fuel-price-report-november-11-2013/
[3] third consecutive week: http://www.equipmentworld.com/diesel-fuel-prices-fall-0-013-cents-per-gallon-in-u-s/
Click here to print.
Copyright © 2012 Equipment World -- Development. All rights reserved.


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Welcome aboard!
Welcome welcome!
By the way I love Spain! I had the pleasure of visiting Barcelona last year. You live in a gorgeous place.
Nice to see you here !!
Un saludo desde España paisano.
Hello and welcome! I've had the great pleasure of visiting your country several times. No matter how late I stayed up, I was always walking into empty nightclubs because it was too early for the locals.
Thanks for the warm welcome, I live in Barcelona but I'm brazilian actually!!
And sure, is nice enjoying the globalization provided by net and forums!
Let's share the love for our cutting edges and tools that make than sharpen!
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. - Lawrence


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A majority of customers who have been without electric service since Saturday evening should have their power restored by the end of the day Monday.
Approximately 9,500 Consumers Energy electric customers are without service because of a powerful winter storm battering the state with high winds and blowing snow. Since 9 p.m. Saturday, more than 74,800 customers have been affected by weather-related outages.
"We are working to safety and quickly restore power across the state from this strong winter storm," said Garrick Rochow, the utility's vice president of energy delivery. "We are anticipating high winds to continue throughout Sunday morning and additional outages are possible. We appreciate the patience of our customers."
As of 4 p.m., the approximate numbers of Consumers Energy electric customers remaining without service in the following counties were: Allegan (478); Barry (345); Calhoun (640); Eaton (935); Genesee (633); Hillsdale (135); Ingham (1,007); Jackson (621); Kalamazoo (597); Kent (1,350); Livingston (219); Muskegon (947); Ottawa (126); Shiawassee (414) and Washtenaw (525).
Updated outage information is available at www.consumersenergy.com/outagemap.
A majority of customers who have been without electric service since Saturday evening should have their power restored by the end of the day Monday. Estimates will be updated as assessment and repairs continue. Additional storm activity may prolong restoration times.
To report an outage, call (800) 477-5050.
Comments are currently unavailable on this article
Location, ST | website.com


text:
Are you Zofia von Marschall?Claim your profile
Publications (8)32.84 Total impact
Article: Targeting osteopontin suppresses glioblastoma stem-like cell character and tumorigenicity in vivo: Osteopontin in Glioblastoma Initiating Cells[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Osteopontin (OPN) is a secreted protein involved in most aspects of tumor progression and metastasis development. Elevated OPN expression has been reported in multiple types of cancer including glioblastoma (GBM), the highest grade and most aggressive brain tumor. GBMs contain a subpopulation of glioma-initiating cells (GICs) implicated in progression, therapeutic resistance and recurrence. We have previously demonstrated that OPN silencing inhibited GBM cell growth in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, activation of CD44 signaling upon OPN ligation has been recently implicated in the acquisition of a stem cell phenotype by GBM cells. The present study is aimed to explore OPN autocrine function using shRNA silencing strategy in GICs enriched from GBM cell lines and a human primary GBM grown in EGF and bFGF defined medium. The removal of these growth factors and addition of serum induced a significant loss of OPN expression in GICs. We showed that OPN-silenced GICs were unable to grow as spheres and this capacity was restored by exogenous OPN. Importantly, the expression of Sox2, Oct3/4 and Nanog, key stemness transcription factors, was significantly decreased in GICs upon OPN targeting. We identified Akt/mTOR/p70S6K as the main signaling pathway triggered following OPN-mediated EGFR activation in GICs. Finally, in an orthotopic xenograft mouse model, the tumorigenic potential of U87-MG sphere cells was completely abrogated upon OPN silencing. Our demonstration of endogenous OPN major regulatory effects on GICs stemness phenotype and tumorigenicity implies a greater role than anticipated for OPN in GBM pathogenesis from initiation and progression to probable recurrence. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2015 UICC.International Journal of Cancer 01/2015; 137(5). DOI:10.1002/ijc.29454 · 5.09 Impact Factor
Article: Efficient trafficking of acidic proteins out of the endoplasmic reticulum involves a conserved amino terminal IleProVal (IPV)-like tripeptide motif[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Abstract Most of the proposed extracellular biomineralization processes include the secretion of proteins that interact with mineral ions and/or mineral surfaces. Typically these proteins are acidic or have acidic domains that interact with multivalent cations in the extracellular environment. We propose that most acidic, Ca2+-binding proteins challenge the cell's mechanisms for trafficking through the endoplasmic reticulum lumen due to lumenal mM calcium that cause them to form large aggregates. We have recently shown that >95% of the DSPP mutations that cause nonsyndromic genetic dentin diseases start their dominant negative affects by failing to rapidly exit the endoplasmic reticulum likely by forming complexes that cannot be normally trafficked to the Golgi. The complexes of mutant DSPP then capture more (severe disease) or less (mild disease) of the DSPP translated from the normal allele. After searching genomic databases as well as the published literature, we found the IPV-like motif at the predicted amino terminus of many acidic proteins made in the mineralizing as well as nonmineralizing tissues of many species including vertebrates, echinoderms, mollusks, and yeast. While we often focused on acidic proteins reported associated with mineralizing structures, proteins associated with hormones and their storage/secretion, digestion, blood functions, as well as milk and other secreted fluids started with variations of the motif. Our hypothesis is that the IPV-like motif interacts with a highly conserved cargo receptor in the endoplasmic reticulum that efficiently traffics the acidic proteins out of the organelle before they can form harmful aggregates in the Ca2+-rich lumen.Connective Tissue Research 05/2014; 55(S1):1-11. DOI:10.3109/03008207.2014.923852 · 1.61 Impact Factor
Article: Rough endoplasmic reticulum trafficking errors by different classes of mutant dentin sialophosphoprotein (DSPP) cause dominant negative effects in both dentinogenesis imperfecta and dentin dysplasia by entrapping normal DSPP[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Families with nonsyndromic dentinogenesis imperfecta (DGI) and the milder, dentin dysplasia (DD), have mutations in one allele of the dentin sialophosphoprotein (DSPP) gene. Because loss of a single Dspp allele in mice (and likely, humans) causes no dental phenotype, the mechanism(s) underling the dominant negative effects were investigated. DSPP mutations occur in three classes. (The first class, the mid-leader missense mutation, Y6D, was not investigated in this report.) All other 5′ mutations of DSPP result in changes/loss in the first three amino acids (isoleucine-proline-valine [IPV]) of mature DSPP or, for the A15V missense mutation, some retention of the hydrophobic leader sequence. All of this second class of mutations caused mutant DSPP to be retained in the rough endoplasmic reticulum (rER) of transfected HEK293 cells. Trafficking out of the rER by coexpressed normal DSPP was reduced in a dose-responsive manner, probably due to formation of Ca2+-dependent complexes with the retained mutant DSPP. IPV-like sequences begin many secreted Ca2+-binding proteins, and changing the third amino acid to the charged aspartate (D) in three other acidic proteins also caused increased rER accumulation. Both the leader-retaining A15V and the long string of hydrophobic amino acids resulting from all known frameshift mutations within the 3′-encoded Ca2+-binding repeat domain (third class of mutations) caused retention by association of the mutant proteins with rER membranes. More 5′ frameshift mutations result in longer mutant hydrophobic domains, but the milder phenotype, DD, probably due to lower effectiveness of the remaining, shorter Ca2+-binding domain in capturing normal DSPP protein within the rER. This study presents evidence of a shared underlying mechanism of capturing of normal DSPP by two different classes of DSPP mutations and offers an explanation for the mild (DD-II) versus severe (DGI-II and III) nonsyndromic dentin phenotypes. Evidence is also presented that many acidic, Ca2+-binding proteins may use the same IPV-like receptor/pathway for exiting the rER.Journal of bone and mineral research: the official journal of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research 06/2012; 27(6):1309-21. DOI:10.1002/jbmr.1573 · 6.83 Impact Factor
- [Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Secreted Frizzled-related proteins (sFRP) are involved in embryonic development as well as pathological conditions including bone and myocardial disorders and cancer. Because of their sequence homology with the Wnt-binding domain of Frizzled, they have generally been considered antagonists of canonical Wnt signaling. However, additional activities of various sFRPs including both synergism and mimicry of Wnt signaling as well as functions other than modulation of Wnt signaling have been reported. Using human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293A), we found that sFRP2 enhanced Wnt3a-dependent phosphorylation of LRP6 as well as both cytosolic β-catenin levels and its nuclear translocation. While addition of recombinant sFRP2 had no activity by itself, Top/Fop luciferase reporter assays showed a dose-dependent increase of Wnt3a-mediated transcriptional activity. sFRP2 enhancement of Wnt3a signaling was abolished by treatment with the Wnt antagonist, Dickkopf-1 (DKK1). Wnt-signaling pathway qPCR arrays showed that sFRP2 enhanced the Wnt3a-mediated transcriptional up-regulation of several genes regulated by Wnt3a including its antagonists, DKK1, and Naked cuticle-1 homolog (NKD1). These results support sFRP2's role as an enhancer of Wnt/β-catenin signaling, a result with biological impact for both normal development and diverse pathologies such as tumorigenesis.Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 09/2010; 400(3):299-304. DOI:10.1016/j.bbrc.2010.08.043 · 2.30 Impact Factor
Article: Dentin sialophosphoprotein (DSPP) is cleaved into its two natural dentin matrix products by three isoforms of bone morphogenetic protein-1 (BMP1)[Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The protease that cleaves the most abundant non-collagenous protein of dentin matrix, dentin sialophosphoprotein (DSPP), into its two final dentin matrix products, dentin sialoprotein (DSP) and dentin phosphoprotein (DPP), has not been directly identified. In this study, full-length recombinant mouse DSPP was made for the first time in furin-deficient mammalian LoVo cells and used to test the ability of three different isoforms of one candidate protease, bone morphogenetic protein-1 (BMP1) to cleave DSPP at the appropriate site. Furthermore, two reported enhancers of BMP1/mTLD activity (procollagen C-endopeptidase enhancer-1, PCPE-1, and secreted frizzled-related protein-2, sFRP2) were tested for their abilities to modulate BMP1-mediated processing of both DSPP and another SIBLING family member with a similar cleavage motif, dentin matrix protein-1 (DMP1). Three splice variants of BMP1 (classic BMP1, the full-length mTolloid (mTLD), and the shorter isoform lacking the CUB3 domain, BMP1-5) were all shown to cleave the recombinant DSPP in vitro although mTLD was relatively inefficient at processing both DSPP and DMP1. Mutation of the MQGDD peptide motif to IEGDD completely eliminated the ability of all three recombinant isoforms to process full-length recombinant DSPP in vitro thereby verifying the single predicted cleavage site. Furthermore when human bone marrow stromal cells (which naturally express furin-activated BMP1) were transduced with the adenovirus-encoding either wild-type or mutant DSPP, they were observed to fully cleave wild-type DSPP but failed to process the mutant DSPP(MQDeltaIE) during biogenesis. All three BMP1 isoforms were shown to process type I procollagen as well as DSPP and DMP1 much more efficiently in low-salt buffer (< or = 50 mM NaCl) compared to commonly used normal saline buffers (150 mM NaCl). Neither PCPE-1 nor sFRP2 were able to enhance any of the three BMP1 isoforms in cleaving either DSPP or DMP1 under either low or normal saline conditions. Interestingly, we were unable to reproduce sFRP2's reported ability to enhance the processing of type I procollagen by BMP1/mTLD. In summary, three isoforms of BMP1 process both DSPP and DMP1 at the MQX/DDP motif, but the identity of a protein that can enhance the cleavage of the two SIBLING proteins remains elusive.Matrix biology: journal of the International Society for Matrix Biology 05/2010; 29(4):295-303. DOI:10.1016/j.matbio.2010.01.002 · 5.07 Impact Factor
- [Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The secreted small proteoglycan, decorin, modulates collagen fibril formation as well as the bioactivity of various members of the transforming growth factor-beta (TGFbeta) superfamily. Indeed, recombinant prodecorin has been used in several gene therapy experiments to inhibit unwanted fibrosis in model diseases of the kidney, heart, and other tissues although the status of the propeptide within the target tissues is unknown. Currently the protease that removes the highly conserved propeptide from decorin is unproven. Using a variety of approaches, we show that three isoforms of the Tolloid-related bone morphogenetic protein-1 (BMP1) can effectively remove the propeptide from human prodecorin resulting in the well-established mature proteoglycan. Classic BMP1, the full-length gene transcript mTLD (BMP1-3), and BMP1-5 (isoform lacking the CUB3 domain thought to be important for efficient type I collagen C-propeptidase activity) all removed the analogous propeptides from both recombinant human prodecorin and murine probiglycan. Furthermore, the timed removal of the propeptide was found to not be necessary for the addition of decorin's single glycosaminoglycan chain. Decorin therefore joins the growing list of matrix and bioactive molecules processed/activated by the BMP1/Tolloid family. Since the third member of the Class I small leucine-rich proteooglycan (SLRP) superfamily, asporin, also contains a similar cleavage motif at the appropriate location, we propose that the removal of these propeptides by members of the BMP1 family is an additional characteristic of Class I SLRP.Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 12/2009; 391(3):1374-8. DOI:10.1016/j.bbrc.2009.12.067 · 2.30 Impact Factor
- Matrix Biology 12/2008; 27:14-14. DOI:10.1016/j.matbio.2008.09.238 · 5.07 Impact Factor
- [Show abstract] [Hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Dentin matrix protein-1 (DMP1), bone sialoprotein (BSP), and osteopontin (OPN) are three SIBLINGs (small integrin-binding ligand, N-linked glycoproteins) co-expressed/secreted by skeletal and active ductal epithelial cells. Although etiological mechanisms remain unclear, DMP1 is the only one of these three genes currently known to have mutations resulting in human disease, and yet it remains the least studied. All three contain the highly conserved integrin-binding tripeptide, RGD, and experiments comparing the cell attachment and haptotactic migration-enhancing properties of DMP1 to BSP and OPN were performed using human skeletal (MG63 and primary dental pulp cells) and salivary gland (HSG) cells. Mutation of any SIBLING's RGD destroyed all attachment and migration activity. Using its alphaVbeta5 integrin, HSG cells attached to BSP but not to DMP1 or OPN. However, HSG cells could not migrate onto BSP in a modified Boyden chamber assay. Expression of alphaVbeta3 integrin enhanced HSG attachment to DMP1 and OPN and promoted haptotactic migration onto all three proteins. Interchanging the first four coding exons or the conserved amino acids adjacent to the RGD of DMP1 with corresponding sequences of BSP did not enhance the ability of DMP1 to bind alphaVbeta5. For alphaVbeta3-expressing cells, intact DMP1, its BMP1-cleaved C-terminal fragment, and exon six lacking all post-translational modifications worked equally well but the proteoglycan isoform of DMP1 had greatly reduced ability for cell attachment and migration. The sequence specificity of the proposed BMP1-cleavage site of DMP1 was verified by mutation analysis. Direct comparison of the three proteins showed that cells discriminate among these SIBLINGs and among DMP1 isoforms.Journal of Biological Chemistry 10/2008; 283(47):32730-40. DOI:10.1074/jbc.M804283200 · 4.57 Impact Factor


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The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art
Get lost in the world of The Very Hungry Caterpillar
125 West Bay Rd., Amherst, MA 01002
119 people saved this
Bring your budding Picasso into the world of art! Eric Carle's picture books, like The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Grouchy Ladybug, have inspired generations of children, and now you can explore works by Carle and other illustrators. At the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art you'll find galleries, an interactive art studio, a reading library, live events and more!
Upcoming Event:
Gray Matter: David Macaulay's Black and White
The Carle is pleased to announce it will host an exhibition of the original art from David Macaulay's Caldecott award-winning...
Tue, May 19 - Sun, Nov 29, 2015
Upcoming Event:
The Art of Eric Carle: From A to Z
For nearly fifty years, Eric Carle's picture books have been internationally recognized for their vibrant images and distinctive collage techniques....
Tue, Sep 15, 2015 - Sun, Mar 20, 2016
Upcoming Event:
Art Workshops for Children with Celebrated Author/Illustrator Hervé Tullet
December 5, 2015 9:30am - 12:30pm $50
Sat, Dec 5, 2015
Upcoming Event:
Mister G's Holiday Concerts
December 5, 2015 10:30am and 11:30am $8 (Members $7.50) Two-time Latin GRAMMY nominee and two-time Parents' Choice Gold Award Winner, Mister G is one...
Sat, Dec 5, 2015
Upcoming Event:
Book Signing with Celebrated Author/Illustrator Hervé Tullet
December 5, 2015 12:30pm Free with Museum Admission Limit one book from home/unlimited books from The Carle Bookshop. Can't make it...
Sat, Dec 5, 2015
Of Note:
- Amenities: Accessible Facilities
Ice Skating – a Massachusetts Tradition
The Boston Globe said it best back in 1887, in a roundup of the state's...
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