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Recent publications
Astral Intimacy: Fifty Spirits Speak About Life, Love, and Sex After Death, by Miles Edward Allen
From the publisher's website: This groundbreaking – and sure to be controversial – book is a collection of statements about life hereafter as made between 1852 and 2001 by spirits who speak from experience. The editor has examined and reviewed 50 different sources and selected, collated, and critiqued nearly a thousand descriptions that provide a fascinating and enlightening multifaceted picture of the heavenly and hellish realms that face us all when we leave the physical world. Intimate relations truly can be experienced in the hereafter, so be prepared for some intriguing information that you won't find in any other contemporary book.
Astral Intimacy. Momentpoint Media, November 2014. ISBN: 9781503285132
The Spiritualist Movement: Speaking with the Dead in America and around the World, by Christopher M. Moreman (ed.)
From the publisher's website: At once controversial and intriguing, Spiritualism has spread from the United States to become a global movement. Bringing together perspectives from within the movement and without, this unique collection treats readers to insights about Spiritualism's history, belief, and practice.
Based on the belief that the dead can communicate with the living through mediums, Spiritualism touches concepts as timelessly fascinating as human mortality and the continuing existence of the soul beyond bodily death. This comprehensive work will help readers parse the mysteries of this uniquely American religion through three thematically organized volumes: Spiritualism in the U.S. and Globally, Evidence and Beliefs, and Cultural and Social Issues. Drawing on fields as diverse as psychology, sociology, religious studies, anthropology, history, ethnic and gender studies, literature, and art, this broad-based collection frames Spiritualism through the views of a team of international scholars.
Among the many things that separate Spiritualism from mainstream religions is the involvement of women in central leadership roles. Such cultural and political elements of the movement are one aspect of this study. Of equal interest to believers and sceptics alike will be the work of scholars who have devoted themselves to examining the claim that communication through mediums proves the existence of life after death.
Documents Spiritualism's history as it grew from a small 19th-century movement in upstate New York to a global presence
Takes an interdisciplinary approach that includes psychical research, as well as more traditional fields
Discusses human experiences that have been documented across cultures and throughout history
Explores the Spiritualist movement in nations as diverse as Italy, France, Australia, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States
The Spiritualist Movement. ABC-CLIO, August 2013. ISBN: 978-0-313-39947-3
Physical Séance Room Recollections: Compilation Album No. 1 (2014), by Stewart Alexander (ed.)
From an article by Stewart Alexander in Psychic World, November 2014, p.9: 'In the 1990's I was, for some years, the Archives officer and, for a while, the President of the now defunct Noah's Ark Society for Physical Mediumship. Prior to that, over a period of several years, I had been most fortunate to meet, on a number of occasions, elderly Spiritualists who some years earlier had sat with legendary Physical Mediums. Unfortunately for us, by then we could only read about these amazing people. However, when relating to me their experiences it was almost as if they were telling of séances which they had attended the previous night as against 10/20/30/40 and in one case, 50 years earlier. Such had been the impression made upon them by what they had witnessed that those séances had been indelibly stamped into their memories. Always, as I listened, it had invariably struck me that I was as close to living history as it was possible to be.
When, therefore, I became the Society's Archives Officer, I determined to appeal to such people to come forward – to make contact with me and arrange to leave on record audio recordings of those wonderful inspiring sittings that, in past years, they had been privileged to attend. Now, no matter how harsh this may seem, the fact is that one by one our forebears were leaving this earth and taking with them their recollections and one by one their experiences – their stories – were being lost to our movement.
So, in an effort to address that situation and catch them whilst there was yet time, I placed, on behalf of the Society, an advertisement in its monthly Newsletter and in various Spiritualist publications inviting and imploring them to send in their invaluable accounts. Pleasingly many responded and eventually I was to select a number of them which I grouped together on to a single cassette and this was subsequently marketed by the N.A.S. for its members and understandably proved to be extremely popular. However, with the later collapse of the Society that single cassette was to be the only one produced with the result that so many voices from the past were for many years to remain silent and unheard upon my library shelves.
Then, one day, two years ago, I was working at my computer when my eyes fell upon those cassettes and suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, it struck me that I had been guilty of failing to fulfil the wishes of all those contributors. Inadvertently, I had been singularly responsible for failing in my duty to them to keep their inspiring memories alive. …
Enter Lew Sutton (friend of many years) who, with the necessary equipment, graciously volunteered to take on the project of transferring all the cassettes on to CD and, in the process, clean up the sound quality which, on some of the tapes, was far from good. Anyway, it was when Lew was working on the old Ark compilation cassette that he telephoned to say that unfortunately the final accounts would not fit onto the one CD and in consequence they would have to be carried over onto a second one. Instantly, it then occurred to us both, that if we made a further selection of accounts to follow on beyond the Ark recording we could fill up the second CD and perhaps issue and make available to anyone interested in Physical Mediumship a double CD album.
Now – following months of work … the project has at last been completed. … To the best of my knowledge, with the single exception of that Ark cassette, I know of no other such multiple recording within or outside of our Movement. I therefore believe that not only is this present album historic but it is also unique and it is my absolute intention to make it widely available both in this country and abroad. I believe it to be 'that important'!
The Survival Hypothesis: Essays on Mediumship, by Adam J. Rock (ed.)
From the publisher's website: Contemporary parapsychology tends to be preoccupied with ESP (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition) and psychokinesis. In contrast, this cutting-edge anthology assembles an international team of experts from the fields of psychology, parapsychology, philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience to examine critically what is referred to as the survival hypothesis: the tentative statement or prediction that some aspect of our personhood (e.g., consciousness) persists subsequent to the death of the physical body.
The appraisal of the survival hypothesis will be restricted to the phenomenon of mediumship; that is, humans who ostensibly communicate with the deceased. The book has been divided into four main sections: Explanation and Belief; Culture, Psychopathology and Psychotherapy; Empirical Approaches; The Present and Future. The issue of postmortem survival is supremely relevant to us all because the human encounter with death is, of course, a certainty.
About the Author:
Adam J. Rock is a lecturer at the School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia. His primary research interests are in the area of altered states of consciousness, mainly focused on shamanism, the conceptual problem of consciousness, and mediumship.
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Lance Storm 1
Preface 5
Introduction: The Medium and the Message (Adam J. Rock) 7
Part 1: Explanation and Belief
The Possibility of Mediumship: Philosophical Considerations (Stephen E. Braude) 21
Is Postmortem Survival the Best Explanation of the Data of Mediumship? (Michael Sudduth) 40
Non-Parapsychological Explanations of Ostensible Mediumship (Chris A. Roe and Elizabeth C. Roxburgh) 65
A Skeptic's View of Mediumship (Krissy Wilson) 79
The Psychology of Belief in Discarnate Communication (Tony Jinks) 90
Part 2: Culture, Psychopathology and Psychotherapy
Cultural Aspects of Personality, Beliefs and Attentional Strategies in Mediumship (Joan H. Hageman and Stanley Krippner) 107
Shamanism and Mediumship: Confluence and Difference (Rafael G. Locke, Adam J. Rock and Roger N. Walsh) 122
Communication with Gods and Spirits in East and Southeast Asia (Christopher C. Cott) 135
Mediumship and Psychopathology (Jacob Kaminker) 146
Mediumship and Psychotherapy (Rafael G. Locke) 160
Part 3: Empirical Approaches
Advances in Quantitative Mediumship Research (Julie Beischel) 177
A Review of Qualitative Mediumship Research (Kylie Harris and Carlos S. Alvarado) 196
A Mixed Methods Approach to Mediumship Research (Elizabeth C. Roxburgh and Chris A. Roe) 220
A Systems Level Neuroscience Approach to Mediumship and the Source-of-Psi Problem (Graham A. Jamieson and Adam J. Rock) 235
Neuroscience of Trance and Mediumship (Julio F. P. Peres, Alexander Moreira-Almeida and Leonardo Caixeta) 254
Part 4: The Present and the Future
Mediumship and Its Place Within Parapsychology (Julie Beischel, Mark Boccuzzi and Edwin C. May) 275
The Future of the Field of Mediumship (Carlos S. Alvarado; Julie Beischel, Mark Boccuzzi and Edwin C. May; Stephen E. Braude; Joan H. Hageman and Stanley Krippner; Kylie Harris; Tony Jinks; Jacob Kaminker; Rafael G. Locke; Julio F. P. Peres; Adam J. Rock and Graham A. Jamieson; Elizabeth C. Roxburgh and Chris A. Roe; Michael Sudduth; Krissy Wilson) 285
About the Contributors 303
Index 307
The Survival Hypothesis. McFarland, April 2014. ISBN: 978-0-7864-7220-8 (print) ISBN: 978-1-4766-1442-7 (ebook)
Why Science is Wrong … About Almost Everything, by Alex Tsakiris
From the publisher's website: A Rollicking Assault on Science's Inability to Answer Life's Most Important Questions
Alex Tsakiris has interviewed many bestselling authors and dozens of world-class academics on his popular science podcast Skeptiko.com. In this book he shares with us what he's learned through his 200 plus interviews with some of the world's leading consciousness researchers and thinkers. In doing so, he reveals what the best research is saying about 'big picture' science questions and the limits of science in general. What's he's learned, in short, is that science-as-we-know-it is an emperor-with-no-clothes-on proposition. It mesmerizes us with flashy trinkets, while failing at its core mission of leading us toward self-discovery. Science is wrong about almost everything because science depends on our consciousness being an illusion—and it's not!
About the Author: ALEX TSAKIRIS is a successful entrepreneur turned science podcaster. In 2007 he founded Skeptiko.com, which has become the #1 podcast covering the science of human consciousness. Alex has appeared on syndicated radio talk shows both in the US and the UK. He lives in Del Mar, California. Visit the author's website at whyscienceiswrong.com.
Why Science is Wrong. Anomalist Books, November 2014. ISBN-13: 978-1938398315
Co-habiting with Ghosts: Knowledge, Experience, Belief and the Domestic Uncanny, by Caron Lipman
From the publisher's website: How does it feel to live in a 'haunted home'? How do people negotiate their everyday lives with the experience of uncanny, anomalous or strange events within the domestic interior? What do such experiences reveal of the intersection between the material, immaterial and temporal within the home? How do people interpret, share and narrate experiences which are uncertain and unpredictable? What does this reveal about contested beliefs and different forms of knowledge? And about how people 'co-habit' with ghosts, a distinctive self - other relationship within such close quarters?
This book sets out to explore these questions. It applies a non-reductive middle-ground approach which steers beyond an uncritical exploration of supernatural experiences without explaining them away by recourse only to wider social and cultural contexts. The book attends to the ways in which households in England and Wales understand their experience of haunting in relation to ideas of subjectivity, gender, materiality, memory, knowledge and belief. It explores home as a place both dynamic and differentiated, illuminating the complexity of 'everyday' experience - the familiarity of the strange as well as the strangeness of the familiar - and the ways in which home continues to be configured as a distinctive space.
Contents: Approaching the ghost. Part I Spaces and Times of the Haunted Home: The material uncanny; The temporalities of the haunted home. Part II Strategies of Cohabitation: Embodying, domesticating, gendering the ghost; Strategies of distance and communication. Part III Belief, Knowledge and Experience: Knowledge and uncertainty; Belief, evidence and experience; Conclusion: the liminal home/self; Appendix: the households; References; Index.
About the Author: Dr Caron Lipman is Research Fellow at the School of Geography, University of London, UK.
Co-habiting with Ghosts. Ashgate, March 2014. ISBN: 978-1-4094-6772-4
Pseudoscience and Deception: The Smoke and Mirrors of Paranormal Claims, by Bryan Farha (ed.)
From the publisher's website: Pseudoscience and Deception is a compilation of some of the most eye-opening sceptical articles pertaining to extraordinary claims and pseudoscience. The articles explore paranormal, extraordinary, or fringe-science claims and reveal logical explanations or outline the deceptive tactics involved in convincing the vulnerable. Topics include claims of astrology, psychic ability, alternative medicine, after-death communication, psychotherapy, and pseudoscience. The contributors to this book are among the most accomplished critical thinkers, scientists, and educators in the world and tackle their respective topics from a rational, logical, and sceptical perspective. Most students are seldom excited to study "critical thinking"—with the exception of allegedly paranormal phenomena as the subject matter. Educators must seize this golden opportunity to witness and experience students' genuine engagement in studying critical thinking.
Bryan Farha is professor of behavioural studies in education at Oklahoma City University. He received a doctor of education degree in counselling psychology from the University of Tulsa. A scientific and technical consultant to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), his work in combating deception has been recognized by CNN, TIME.com, The National Geographic Channel, and A&E.
Pseudoscience and Deception. University Press of America, December 2013. ISBN-13: 978-0761862925
The Everyday Psychic: A Practical Guide to Activating Your Psychic Gifts, by Karen Harrison
From the publisher's website: Discover how psychic you really are with this comprehensive and practical guide to developing and honing your psychic skills. The Everyday Psychic shows you how to harness your natural psychic abilities and experiment with psychic tools to get answers, guide your decisions, and enrich your life.
For the curious seeker as well as the skilled practitioner, The Everyday Psychic offers techniques, tips, and tools designed to awaken, refresh, and sharpen one's natural psychic gifts by:
Activating Your Psychic Gifts
Becoming More Intuitive
Remembering Your Dreams
Tools and Techniques for Accessing the Subconscious
Karen Harrison has helped many thousands of people awaken their psychic selves and improve their daily lives. Now she offers that in this book.
The Everyday Psychic. Weiser Books, January 2013. ISBN: 9781578635290
Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife, by Greg Taylor
From the publisher's website: Did Steve Jobs have a vision of the afterlife on his death-bed? Does quantum physics suggest that our mind might survive the physical death of our body? How do some near-death experiencers 'see' outside of their bodies at a time when they are supposed to be dead?
In Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife, author Greg Taylor covers all these questions and more. From Victorian séance rooms through to modern scientific laboratories, Taylor surveys the fascinating history of research into the survival of human consciousness, and returns with a stunning conclusion: that maybe we should stop worrying so much about death, because there probably is an afterlife.
Stop Worrying! Daily Grail Publishing, October 2013. ISBN-13: 978-0987422439
Haunted Farnham and The Little Book of Ghosts, by Peter Underwood, Paul Adams
Haunted Farnham, by Peter Underwood
From the publisher's website: This fascinating collection reveals the dark side of Farnham's history. This idyllic town has seen murders, betrayal and great battles, and these stories remain, trapped within its walls. President of The Ghost Club for thirty-three years, Peter Underwood has been called 'a giant in psychical research', and 'the world's leading ghost-hunter'. He has personally investigated hundreds of hauntings during his career, and brings his expertise to bear on his home county in this amazing selection of tales. T he author explores Farnham's castle and many manor houses, as well as inviting us into his own home and investigating the paranormal occurrences he lived with for many years. The town's pubs, castle, church, homes and shops are all included here, revealing some extraordinary encounters with the unexplained. With first-hand accounts and more than sixty photographs, this collection will enthral both residents and visitors alike
The Little Book of Ghosts, by Paul Adams
From the publisher's website: Compiled by paranormal historian Paul Adams, this spine-chilling book features intriguing, obscure, and strange trivia about all things that go bump in the night. Here you will find haunted houses and castles, parks and woods, highways and byways, phantom animals, royal ghosts, angry poltergeists and haunted objects. Also included are spooky séances and time slip ghosts, as well as some of the famous ghost-hunters themselves, including Harry Price, Elliott O'Donnell and R. Thurston Hopkins. Anyone curious enough to pick up this book will be terrified and enthralled and never short of some frivolous fact to enhance a conversation or quiz!
Haunted Farnham. The History Press, September 2013. ISBN: 9780752472454;The Little Book of Ghosts. The History Press, September 2014. ISBN: 9780752498683
Natural and Supernatural: A History of the Paranormal from Earliest Times to 1914, by Brian Inglis
From the publisher's website: Did Moses turn rods into serpents? Does Uri Geller bend spoons? Did Socrates and Joan of Arc have spirit guides? Did Daniel Home levitate? The 1970's provided a striking revival of interest in the paranormal which has continued unabated into the twenty first century.
Telepathy ESP, clairvoyance, premonitions, and psychokinesis – the action of mind upon matter – it was not long ago that orthodox opinion, both scientific and religious, rejected the possibility of such things out of hand. Today, their reality has been demonstrated and tested in laboratories all over the world and the results are published in serious scientific journals. Natural and Supernatural is the first full survey of the subject for over a century. With scrupulous thoroughness and a wealth of extraordinary detail, Brian Inglis presents his evidence, drawing on anthropological studies of primitive tribes and records of classical antiquity and taking his story to the outbreak of the First World War, when the first phase of scientific psychical research came to an end. He pays particular attention to the work of the mesmerists and of the early psychical researchers in the last century. He deals, too, with related aspects such as hauntings, poltergeist outbreaks, scrying and dowsing.
Contrary to popular belief, the evidence for psychic phenomena and non-locality, and the mass of material available to researchers is huge. Inglis meticulously sifted the genuine from the false, singling out such episodes as may reasonably be identified as historical and allowing the reader to make up his own mind, on the basis of the fullest and soundest knowledge, whether to accept paranormal phenomena or not. If they are accepted – and informed opinion is more and more moving that way – then a real revolution in our way of thinking is due to follow. For if mind can communicate with mind at distance, or move objects without contact, not merely will there have to be extensive revision of science textbooks. History, too, will need to be re-written, to allow for the possibility that reports which have long been dismissed as myth or illusion may have been accurate after all.
The implications of the subject are great, and Inglis does them full justice.
Natural and Supernatural. White Crow Books, June 2012. ISBN 978-1-908733-20-7
Talking with the Spirits: Ethnographies from Between the Worlds, by by Jack Hunter and David Luke (eds.)
From the publisher's website: Talking With the Spirits is a cross-cultural survey of contemporary spirit mediumship. The diverse contributions to this volume cover a wide-range of ethnographic contexts, from Spiritualist séances in the United Kingdom to self-mortification rituals in Singapore and Taiwan, from psychedelic spirit incorporation in the Amazonian rainforest, to psychic readings in online social spaces, and more. By taking a broad perspective the book highlights both the variety of culturally specific manifestations of spirit communication, and key cross-cultural features suggestive of underlying core processes and experiences. Rather than attempting to reduce or dismiss such experiences, the authors featured in this collection take the experiences of their informants seriously and explore their effects at personal, social and cultural levels.
Chapter and author listing:
Believing Impossible Things: Scepticism and Ethnographic Enquiry • Fiona Bowie
An Agnostic Social Scientific Perspective on Spirit Medium Experience in Great Britain • Hannah Gilbert
Spirits in the City: Examples from Montreal • Deirdre Meintel
Mediumship and Folk Models of Mind and Matter • Jack Hunter
Cyber Psychics: Psychic Readings in Online Social Spaces • Tamlyn Ryan
Spirit Possession in East Africa • Barbara Stöckigt
Developing the Dead in Cuba: An Ethnographic Account of the Emergence of Spirits and Selves in Havana • Diana Espirito Santo
Mediumship in Brazil: The Holy War against Spirits and African Gods • Bettina Schmidt
Psychedelic Possession: The Growing Incorporation of Incorporation into Ayahuasca Use • David Luke
Anomalous Mental and Physical Phenomena of Brazilian Mediums: A Review of the Scientific Literature • Everton Maraldi, Wellington Zangari, Fatima Regina Machado, Stanley Krippner
Spirit Mediums in Hong Kong and the United States • Charles Emmons
Vessels for the Gods: Tang-ki Spirit Mediumship in Singapore and Taiwan • Fabian Graham
Talking with the Spirits. Daily Grail Publishing, March 2014. ISBN-13: 978-0987422446
Why Materialism Is Baloney: How true skeptics know there is no death and fathom answers to life, the universe, and everything, by Bernardo Kastrup
From the publisher's website: A hard-nosed, logical, and skeptical non-materialist metaphysics according to which the body is in mind, not mind in the body.
The present framing of the cultural debate in terms of materialism versus religion has allowed materialism to go unchallenged as the only rationally-viable metaphysics. This book seeks to change this. It uncovers the absurd implications of materialism and then, uniquely, presents a hard-nosed non-materialist metaphysics substantiated by skepticism, hard empirical evidence, and clear logical argumentation. It lays out a coherent framework upon which one can interpret and make sense of every natural phenomenon and physical law, as well as the modalities of human consciousness, without materialist assumptions. According to this framework, the brain is merely the image of a self-localization process of mind, analogously to how a whirlpool is the image of a self-localization process of water. The brain doesn't generate mind in the same way that a whirlpool doesn't generate water. It is the brain that is in mind, not mind in the brain. Physical death is merely a de-clenching of awareness. The book closes with a series of educated speculations regarding the afterlife, psychic phenomena, and other related subjects.
Why Materialism Is Baloney. Iff Books, April 2014. ISBN-13: 978-1782793625
Paranormal Guides from Amberley Publishing, by Rob Kirkup, S.D. Tucker, Alvin Nicholas, Daniel Codd
Ghosts of Edinburgh, by Rob Kirkup
Paranormal Merseyside, by S. D. Tucker
Supernatural Wales, by Alvin Nicholas
Paranormal Devon, by Daniel Codd
From the publisher's website:
Ghosts of Edinburgh: From the murderous cannibalism of Sawney Bean to the bodysnatching exploits of Burke and Hare, Edinburgh has seen its fair share of ghoulish happenings over the years. But does it truly deserve its reputation as one of Britain's most haunted cities? Along with his fearless team of 'spook seekers', Rob Kirkup donned his ghost-hunting gear and took to the streets of Scotland's capital to find out whether today's visitors have anything to fear.
Might one meet a foul-mouthed poltergeist beneath the South Bridge, or have a close encounter at Edinburgh Dungeon? Should one avoid Greyfriars Kirk at night, or keep their eyes peeled at Bedlam Theatre? From the disembodied voices of Cammo Estate to suspicious sounds at Mary King's Close, the team really did see it all, and now's your chance to join them on their quest. Using state-of-the-art paranormal detection equipment, and drawing on his extensive field experience, the author shows us why it's worth keeping your wits about you in one of the world's most terrifying cities.
Paranormal Merseyside: Join Steven Tucker on this unique exploration of the myths and legends, and the tales of the fantastic, that are supposed to have happened along the Mersey's shores. Some are just stories; but others apparently have some kind of truth behind them, from pig-killing poltergeists, to tales of Spring-Heeled Jack, to the 'great leprechaun invasion' of 1964. Some are funny, and others are terrifying; claims that both Adolf Hitler and Jack the Ripper were one-time Liverpudlians are nothing more than attention-seeking urban legends. True or not, the tales speak of a population who are interested and engaged in the city and landscape around them. Unless you love a place, why both mythologising it?
This book will not only deal with hauntings, UFO sightings and legends from the city of Liverpool itself, though; the surrounding towns and settlements, places like Widnes, Runcorn, St Helens, the Wirral, Frodsham, Rainhill, Southport, Formby, Newton-Le-Willows and Warrington are also included.
Supernatural Wales: Wales is a land of ghosts and dark legends, strange animals and unexplained phenomena. From the Abergele Ghost Ship to the Witch Lakes of the Brecon Beacons, Alvin Nicholas takes the reader on a comprehensive A–Z tour. Supernatural Wales is the definitive guide to Welsh ghosts, hauntings, monsters and mysteries. Here you will find haunted castles and manor houses, mountain spectres and ghost ships. Learn how to track mystery panthers, try your hand at ghost hunting and explore a land of lake monsters, sea serpents, vampires and werewolves. With well over 100 entries, Supernatural Wales covers everything from spooky secret passages to phantom armies and mystery light phenomena.
Thoroughly researched, this book includes new information and first-hand research that will lead you to the heart of mysterious Wales. The book includes never before-published OS grid references so you can walk where ghosts walk and stand, if you dare, where disembodied voices are heard and where grim goblins, spectral horsemen and dogs of darkness appear. Sure to delight both armchair enthusiasts and serious researchers alike, Supernatural Wales is packed with fascinating stories and intriguing information that will compel readers to refer to this book again and again.
Paranormal Devon: Devon claims so many classic tales of the supernatural and paranormal: the beckoning White Lady of Berry Pomeroy Castle, the terrifying Whisht Hounds of Dartmoor, the notorious Hairy Hands that wrestle with driver's steering wheels near Postbridge, and the melancholy story of Jay's Grave near Widecombe-in-the-Moor to name but a few.
But Devon is also a county where mysteries continue to surprise us. Author Daniel Codd has unearthed hundreds of strange tales, old and new, to capture the imagination and to sometimes even chill the blood. Could it really be that a lone Roman soldier's ghost was spotted forty years ago on the fringes of Okehampton? Did a Hatherleigh man really see the Devil before murdering his wife in 1752? What was the shimmering white figure that stared at drivers from Hardwick Wood, Plympton? Have buildings and even people spontaneously combusted in Devon? Was a ghost actually photographed near Okehampton's castle? And what to make of the physical encounters with pixies that recent history has presented us with? Not to mention the baffling reports of UFOs, wild men, prowling panthers, mermaids, sea creatures and even werewolves that have turned up in the county…
Covering an area from the county's northern coastline to its southern beaches, Paranormal Devon has been researched and compiled from archive sources, is fully up-to-date and includes many mysterious first-hand accounts and contributions from county folk. Most of all, these thought-provoking reports remind us that Devon, even in the twenty-first century, is still an extremely paranormal county.
Ghosts of Edinburgh, Sept 2013, ISBN-13: 978-1848682672; Paranormal Merseyside, Jan 2013, ISBN-13: 978-1848687295; Supernatural Wales, March 2013, ISBN-13: 978-1445611518; Paranormal Devon, April 2013, ISBN-13: 978-1848681668
Light Changes: Experiences in the Presence of Transforming Light, by Annekatrin Puhle
From the publisher's website: Ever since the dawn of recorded history, humans have reported encounters with an exceptional light which appeared to them to be different, more intense, and brighter than sunlight. Often, these experiences had a strong and lasting effect on those concerned, changing their lives completely. But what exactly did they experience? In which shape did the light appear? Did it come along with a message, and what could it possibly communicate to them? And why did it change in their lives? All these and many more questions require answers. This book faces those questions and offers the thoughts and feelings of more than 800 individuals reporting these experiences over a time span of 130 years.
Light Changes explores 'Seeing and Inner Sight', myths, folklore, religion, philosophy, science, and in particular, psychical research, and offers clues into understanding how these important and meaningful encounters with light may affect us all.
Annekatrin Puhle Ph D is a philosopher, health consultant, and psychical researcher in the area of exceptional human experiences. After receiving her doctorat from the Free University, Berlin, she worked at The Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany. Currently she is a guest lecturer at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, guest researcher at King's College, London, and the author of several books and papers on apparitional experiences and healing.
A sample chapter can be read here:
Light Changes. White Crow Books, January 2014. ISBN 978-1-908733-18-4


text:
More than a mere survivor in the natural foods business, the multimillion-dollar company has experienced a minimum of 40 percent growth year-over-year.
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text: Supporters of same-sex marriage gathered at Court Square Wednesday. They asked the circuit court clerks for Charlottesville and Albemarle to allow them to file for a marriage license. They all knew the answer, but it was done to highlight the recent ruling by a judge who declared Virginia's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. The case is now under appeal and one step closer to going to the U.S. Supreme Court. Charlottesville Clerk of Circuit Court Llezelle Dugger accepted the request along with a box of chocolates. Dugger said that while she can't grant a marriage license now, all couples are welcome if and when the ban is lifted. The Charlottesville Pride Community Network originally planned the gathering for Valentine's Day, but weather put the event on hold. Instead, they chose the first day of Lent, encouraging people to give up hate.


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Sapphire and ECS X79 Motherboard Review
Reviewed by: BluePanda
Reviewed on: September 3, 2012
Price: $259_$350
The 2011 socket is a breed entirely on its own. The desktop processors are for larger wallet enthusiasts with the i7 3820, 3930K, and 3960X ranging from $305 - $990 in price. The upper of the two have six cores or twelve threads while the lower end 3820 has only four cores or eight threads. They all start with a relatively high clock and an even higher boost speed for those who can afford them. The 2011 socket is probably more known for its server abilities as we all know more processing power is often needed in such field; there are about a dozen or so CPUs to choose on that spectrum of things. However, most of you aren't here because you have a server chip and are looking for motherboards -- you're here because you've got a desktop chip and need a new board to support it. The X79 market has about the same variety of boards and options as the rest of the sockets so it isn't quite as simple as picking one out of a barrel of a few. Today we'll be taking a look at a board from ECS, the X79R-AX Black Deluxe, and a board from Sapphire, the Pure Black X79N. The ECS board is on the lower end of the pricing scale but still has a ton of features to offer. The Sapphire board on the other hand is a little higher up in the price listings, but also has quite a bit to offer.
Closer Look:
Looking at the ECS and Sapphire boards we should get a pretty good idea of what each company has available for the 2011 socket. We will see if price will amount to performance and exactly how much more you get with a $350 board compared to a $250. Perhaps you will find something to add to your shopping cart, or perhaps you will keep to what you have. Let's dig in and see what these two boards really have to offer in terms of performance and how extensive the feature set is for the Extreme user.
Let's start out with ECS X79R-AX Black Deluxe.
Closer Look:
The Black Series really helped ECS become a part of the quality market, and today we are looking at another quality member: the X79R-AX . The box on ECS boards changes from launch to launch so each time it has a "new" look to it. Even I still have an old ECS board mobo box – and the only similarity is the classy dragon, not bad considering the three year lag. Anyway, the box has a unique prism effect that really allows it to stand out on a retail shelf. It glimmers left to right as you move side to side and has a bit of "sparkly" nature to it; thankfully no vampires. Jokes aside the front shows off the 4-way GPU support, quad-channel memory support, higher frequency currents, and long lasting ruggedness. The back flips over to reveal 18 different features with each having its own unique icon image. Among the first to come to sight are: EZ Charger, Intel Rapid Storage Technology, and ECS GUI UEFI BIOS, which will all be covered ahead.
Opening up to find what glories may be inside, I'm first stopped to find a user guide and BIOS setup visual direction pamphlet . I generally toss these to the side with most packages, but the motherboard ones are good to hold on to – never know when you might have to hook up something new. Beneath the cardboard is a collection of the real goodies: six black SATA cables, the back I/O shield, an SLI bridge, and of course the motherboard itself! It's a bit on the "slim pickings" side of added accessories but there is at least enough to get you up and running.
Pulling the board from its happy home inside the static-free bag we find the black edition is truly black! I honestly love all black boards and even this mix of greyscale coloring leans to satisfying my tastes. First things to pop out at me are the lack of VRM cooling and a MOLEX connector on the board? I am happy to see, as promised, the four channel memory support as well as the four PCI-E Gen 3 slots. There are also ten SATA ports to support any of your RAID needs; I'll get to the coloring rational a bit later (I'm sure you know it's related to speeds).
Looking at the I/O panel you'll find a little more than usual. There are six standard USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports nicely colored in blue. I appreciate the color coding as I still have a few older products I occasionally use that don't play well with USB 3.0. You still have your PS/2 mouse/keyboard connection for those of you with PS/2 keyboards or mice (if you have both, you've likely already picked only one as most boards only have one PS/2 port these days). You also have your Ethernet port with a flashy indicator light to help troubleshoot. Your onboard sound allows output for 5.1+mic and still have a bonus Toslink optical output for some of you audio junkies.
There are four PCIe 3.0 slots capable of running 4-way SLI on NVIDIA setups and Quad CrossfireX on AMD setups. However, the four slots aren't quite electrically the same – the two grey slots are 16x where the white slots are only 8x slots. Nonetheless you can still run SLI or CrossfireX on two cards with maximum performance (three cards will run 16x/8x/8x, four cards 8x/8x/8x/8x, and two cards 16x/16x). ECS is a little ahead of the game planning for those of you who will be running more than two cards; an extra power connector (Molex plug) is on board to support the additional cards. However you only have to plug it in if you are using three or more cards.
The board also has two PCIe x1 slots nested between the x16 slots for any RAID cards, soundcards, or network cards you may have. The CMOS battery and jumper are worked in this area as well space for a diagnostic LED that comes on the Deluxe model. Along the bottom edge you can see some of the standards output headers: the front audio, S/PDIF, standard COM, USB 3.0 (shown in first picture), the ME_UNLOCK (factory use), SPI_DEBUG (factory use), the two front panel USB connections, and the generic front I/O panel connections (shown in the second image), which will require some manual reading to connect up properly. The last picture shows a little close up of the LED post display to help work out any odd issues you may come across.
Getting back to the SATA ports I casually dropped hint at earlier we get a closer look at exactly what we have going on. This board really has a lot of options here with ten total SATA ports. The lower four grey ports are SATA 3Gb/s directly connected to the SATA controller. The four white ports in the middle area have the SATA 3.0 interface capable of 6Gb/s off the SATA controller. The last two ports, seemingly the same as the lower four, are actually SAS ports (Serial Attached SCSI), which are capable of running SATA 6Gb/s speeds and basic compatibility with SAS devices. From the RAID perspective, SAS will support RAID 0/1, the SATA 6Gb/s ports handle RAID 0/1/5/10 and the 3Gb/s ports support RAID 0/1/10. So whatever your RAID fancy is, it's here, at least standard wise. The southbridge behind the SATA ports has a nice standard heat sink on it, which you can see again from the other side. It's a nice gunmetal grey that really supports the theme ECS has going with this board. I really like that it doesn't have some stupid logo on it or some dumb "gun" design. It's nice and clean.
Enough on SATA – looking down at the socket the happy shipping protector plate is right in place protecting the pins. If you've ever bumped a pin or had to re-align one you can appreciate this little piece of plastic as much as I can. There are four RAM slots with two on either side of the socket showing off the quad-channel circuitry. Unfortunately this means with any cooler you have to deal with double the "RAM in my way" problem, but having twice the bandwidth is nice. Rotating the board around we can get another look at the RAM slots with DDR3 clearly marked on the board. From this angle we can also see three fan headers; two system fans and a power fan. The 24-pin connector is solidly mounted between two mounting screws so you won't have to worry about any bending of the board when connecting it up. Rotating the board again you can see the second CPU fan header, fan2, with a nice 4-pin connector allowing for PWM control, and if you slide up the board to the second RAM slots there's the first CPU fan, fan1, which is also a 4-pin connection.
The ECS X79R-AX isn't too shabby looking at all. Overall it has a nice themed greyscale appearance without the gaudy yellows and kindergarten colors plastered about. The performance options also seem to really be there as well; with four PCIe slots and quad-channel memory it really isn't a bottom barrel board. I'm excited to see how it performs as it's a board that most definitely catches my eye.
Closer Look:
Recently I've had reviews for video cards from Sapphire, and though I see it as a well doing company I still tend to forget Sapphire as a motherboard manufacturer. Sapphire does have an interesting line of motherboards and today we'll be looking at the Sapphire Pure Black X79N, one of its higher end boards and likely one of the more expensive X79 boards on the market today. The box is a black and chrome-esque style that attempts the premium look. Some circuitry drawings pull from the edges of the box to the center where they meet up with a Black X79N shield. The bottom edge of the box runs through the standard Intel support, chipset support, PCIe support, etc. The back of the board continues with the black and chrome-esque look as it outlines some of the "PURE" Features with an icon and brief description. The standard big blue Sapphire logo takes the lower right corner of the box. This is a box that begs to be opened – it looks elite without bragging about it on the box, and only a little flashy bling.
Opening up the box, as with any motherboard box, you are led to yet another box to open; this one is black and simple. Opening it up there's a neat bundle of cables, a USB 3.0 bracket, a back I/O panel cover, some Sapphire literature as well as a X79N Manual. Beneath all that is the board! However, with a "Pure Black" edition board, I was kind of expecting to not see a lot of color. There seems to be a bit of Sapphire Blue on this Pure Black design. I hate to say it but it's harder and harder to find another all-black board after retiring my Gigabyte 990FX board last year; at least the PCB appears to be all black.
Pulled out of the packaging we can get a closer look at the goodies that came inside. The manual and driver CD sit with the Sapphire ad that will eventually go unfound months down the road. The manual is something good to hang on to if you can – figuring out the right plugs for your chassis I/O panel is not a fun guessing game. The I/O panel is well labeled to help you out when at the back and aren't exactly sure what you're doing – I was expecting this to be black though, yet it's on the back so no one will see it. There are eight black SATA cables included all with clips to keep them securely in place while you wire your mess up. The USB 3.0 mount comes in a bracket to be installed in a 5.25" bay; however, if you don't want to muddle up the front, nor have the space, it comes with an additional bracket to install it in a rear expansion slot.
The I/O panel cover is a little more interesting than most. If you look at it closely it has a little bit more to it than just a pressed metal piece. It actually has a layer of EMI foam; it reduces the electrical noise between the motherboard and your outputs. I'm not sure exactly how great it will work but it is an interesting concept.
With the board out of the static bag it most definatly isn't the "Pure Black" board I was imagining. The lighting even gives a tinge of brown to the PCB with blue slots and red SATA connectors. But this review isn't all about how it looks, though I find that a strong selling point often – it is more about what this board has to offer and how well it performs. It has the standard X79 socket as expected and dual-channel memory settling two sticks on either side of the CPU. There are six PCIe slots that run the length of the board, a southbridge fan, and cooling on the MOSFETs. There's definitely a lot here and a lot to talk about – we'll get more into it with some close ups. As far as the back of the board goes – there isn't too much to really look at, pretty bare, except for the LOTES back plate. You can see the holes in the board for any 2011 socket style CPU cooling mount and you know with a metal backing plate you won't break it or wear it out.
If we rotate the board around a bit we can get an up close look at the I/O panel. You start up with your typical PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port, six USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, an S/PDIF Coaxial output, an optical output, dual gigabit LAN, two e-SATA ports, Bluetooth 2.1, and six audio outputs. Now that was a mouthful of features; not shorted at all. Moving down the side of the board, need you reminding, there are six full PCIe slots; three at x16 and three at x8 (I'll explain more how this works later). What you need to know now is this board appears to be nothing but a beast!
There is a 6-pin power connector on the board sitting below the left RAM slots and just above the six PCIe slots. As you guessed it is additional power to feed the semi-unhealthy video card purchases you may make. It is right in the middle of the board so other than having an ugly cable job, it shouldn't be an issue to get a cable to reach. Back down to the PCIe slots let's discuss a little how the x8 versus x16 works. There are six total expansion slots that all utilize the PCIe x16 interface. However, only three of the slots support the full x16 bandwidth while the other three run at half that, x8. Looking at it slot by slot: Slot 1 runs at x16, Slot 2 runs at x8, Slot 3 & 5 run at either x16/x8, while Slots 4 & 6 run only at x8. Filling this setup would be pretty difficult but as a work machine you could have several CUDA cards or perhaps RAID cards to fill it up. For now video wise you are limited to CrossfireX for multi-card use (limited to 3-way as well) as there is still no support for SLI. Just keep that in mind when setting up your monster rig with this one.
Looking at the bottom edge of the board we can see the input and output buttons and headers. There is a display for POST codes to help troubleshoot the hardest problems, a COM1 header, and a 3-pin fan connector (shown in the second picture below). The third picture below further shows off the onboard power and reset buttons as well as the CMOS reset button – no need for correctly connecting case I/O pins or jumping pins to get what you need; it's a nice setup. You can also see the optional BIOS select tool so if you do manage to mess up – you've got a backup. To the other edge of the board you have your typical USB 2.0 and 3.0 headers as well as a color coded and labeled front I/O chassis header.
There are eight total right angle SATA ports onboard. Six of the ports are controlled by the chipset while the other two are controlled by an on-board Marvel chip. The red ports utilize the 6Gb/s interface while the black feed from the 3Gb/s interface – so be sure you pick the right one to go fast during your setup. As for RAID, there is native support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10.
Moving up near the socket and dual-channel RAM we've got a bit more to cover. Looking at the top corner there is your usual 24-pin connector right next to one of the mounting points of the board (a nice sturdy point). There are six jumpers each corresponding to a PCI slot on the board to allow you to enable or disable each individually (you can see this at a couple different angles below). There are also nine test points on the board for voltage checks via a multimeter. Hold the ground and one lead on the component you wish to check and you can see exactly what problems you may be having or causing. Looking behind the tall Sapphire VRM heatsink you'll find the 8-pin board connector that you've probably been trying to find in all these pictures – well here it is, don't forget to plug it in. Overall there is a lot going on around the socket here on the board but the cooling is sufficient and looks to be ready for a little abuse.
Looking a little closer at the cooling options here on the board I wanted to leave you with a couple close ups. The VRMs are extensively cooled by a neat little heatpiped heat sink that sits nicely above the socket. The southbridge not only has its own little heatsink on it but has its own fan cooled heat sink to keep temperatures down low. I'm not sure why they decided to put a fan here – it just creates noise. I would have rather seen a full heatsink to dissipate heat rather than a small fan, which tends to be whiny and often doesn't have a long life.
Overall this is a beast of a board. It has a few flaws here and there, but I've yet to see the "perfect" board. It comes down to exactly what you need from a board that makes it perfect from one build to the next. The appearance of the board was a disappointment for a "Pure Black" but again this isn't all about looks – let's get on to seeing what this board can handle.
Closer Look:
The ECS board comes with a utility to allow you to update your BIOS within Windows. When you open up the utility you will see your processor information, motherboard information, BIOS version, and your current operating system. If there are no recommended updates, your window will look like the first image below. You can force it to check for updates by clicking on "Check Update." When I clicked it, there was an update for me! It shows the type of update, in this case a system BIOS update, the current version compared to the available version, and exactly how large a download it will be. If you check the box you can start the update. Another little window will pop up confirming system information and then you can click "start" to search for the updates. This will then take you to the ECS website to get the newest supporting BIOS and or software for the board. You will no longer have to look things up manually.
Once you install the ECS software you can see a little more information. The little application gives you four simple tabs: Monitor, Easy Tune, Advance Tune, and Options. The Monitor tab shows you the current system and CPU temperature on little graphical icons. The Easy Tune allows you to change the CPU Frequency in Windows with a slider mechanism. It also reports system voltages and allows you to return to previous settings. Advance Tune allows you to control the voltages you found on the easy tune page and apply them immediately. Under Options you can set the delay for the apply button to actually apply settings, enable the software to start on boot, and whether or not to apply the settings when resuming from sleep.
Another feature that comes with the ECS software is a fan controlling application. There are four preset fan options based on full, normal, quiet, and silent speeds. The profiles are automatically set when you click on them. A graphical representation is also shown when looking at the different profiles. Each button has a type of aircraft to give you an idea of the fan noise; a jet to represent full, a carrier to show normal, a helicopeter for quiet, and a paper airplane for silent. It is pretty cute and clever. You can also adjust the graphical representation for a custom setting under the "custom" button.
EZ Charger is an application is an application that is used to manage the charging process for portable devices including many popular devices, especially iPad, iPhone and iPod. Three times the current of a traditional USB connection is available to the supported USB ports onboard to provide this method of charging your devices. The icon in the system tray is used to provide a visual indication of the charging status of the device.
Sapphire's TriXX is has been a popular alternative to MSI's Afterburner software when you are looking at video cards. Sapphire has put together a version of TriXX to support its motherboard line up and offers up a way to tweak the system performance while in the OS. Monitoring functionality is incorporated to give the end user a way to monitor voltages and temperatures without having to use an aftermarket utility. A widget for TriXX is installed as part of the installation package so that the full window can be minimized yet the monitoring functions are still open for the user in the widget tray.
Closer Look:
Jumping into the BIOS, it's a little friendlier looking than what most of us may have been used to without the blue and black. You'll have full control with lots of graphics and can even use your mouse! Okay so this whole UEFI thing isn't really all that new and novel but I'm not really a huge fan of it either. I still prefer my keyboard interaction only (which can still be done here). I just feel the more friendly the BIOS appears, the more trouble one may find themselves – but it's nice to see more people "playing." You have options for language, option to set default settings, a standard just boot option, and "advanced"to launch you into the actual BIOS for settings. That is where we shall go…
Into the Main screen you can change system language here as well as check the date and time on your BIOS. The Advanced Tab allows control of LAN options as well as SATA and ACPI settings as needed. Going into the SATA Configuration you can ensure AHCI is enabled or IDE/RAID depending on your particular setup. You can even setup a staggered spin-up on boot to have multiple drives spin up at various steps to lower draw on your systems power supply – keeping you from having your max power use at boot. This was pretty neat – I could really see using this on a system with multiple drives even, such as my home theater (which has eleven drives running from it now) and struggles a bit at boot sometimes.
Moving into the Chipset tab a couple of options are avialabe here. We can play with the PCH Configuration or the ME Subsystems. Opening up the PCH Configuraiton you can ensure your rig stays down when a power outage occurs or to have it come back up – but I'd highly recommend you just let it stay down. I'm sure most of you know, or can at least agree, having your rig cycle up and down with a lightning storm does nothing good.
The M.I.B.X (MB Intelligent BIOS X) tab opens up what I call the fun parts of the BIOS. Here we'll be able to Configure the CPU, OC, and change Memory settings. If you want to change your memory run speeds up or down you can do it here at the MIBX screen. Opening up the CPU Configuration gives us the Ratio Setting Controls (such as by Turbo Boost or not) as well as that specified ratio. You can then set your core ratio limits accordingly and your power limit overrides. Opening up the Memory OC panel we can setup different XMP Profiles for your memory settings. There's tons of settings and plenty of room to fine tune if you have the skill – though 95% of these will often go untouched.
The Boot tab looks like it has a bunch of options but in reality it's not too many. Here you can decide how the keyboard numberpad or lack of numberpad works (NumLock State) – a personal preference type deal. You can also set your preferred boot order if you have multiple inputs. You have options for HDD, CD/DVD, USB, USB HDD, USB CD, USB Flash, and Network. So it definitely has some perks if you are trying to install an OS from a USB stick versus the "standard" CD format. The Security tab really doesn't have mouch – just allows you to password protect the rights to the BIOS.
The Save & Exit tab really has more than just the Save function to it; it actually allows you to save multiple profiles for different OC settings, or in progress settings. But it also has the standard Save and Exit features as well as the Discard feature to get rid of anything you may have changed. Overall there are more than enough options in this BIOS to keep you happy.
Closer Look:
The Sapphire BIOS is another UEFI type with mouse enabled activity; though not limited to the little mouse alone. The main screen shows you your basic information including BIOS vendor, Core version, and even your build date and time (though I assume this changes anytime the CMOS is reset). There is a little memory information provided and a spot to denote the current access level – here I'm accessing the BIOS at the "admin" level.
Moving on to the performance tab we get a little more to play with. Here we have some access to the CPU configuration as well as memory and voltage configurations as well. Opening up the memory configuration specifically you can change XMP profiles, memory speeds, timings, and all the little things if you have the talent and/or patience. The voltage settings allow you to configure loadline controls, vcore, and memory frequency and voltages. Along the bottom this whole time you are able to see quick current settings on voltages on the CPU FSB, CPU, DIMM, and even frequencies and temperatures respectively. It's nice to not have to flip back and to be able to easily monitor things while in menu.
The advanced tab opens up for some more fun. From the main list you can enable boot options, change ACPI settings, configure CPU, SATA and USB, as well as check onboard device configurations. There seems to be a lot to work with. Under CPU configuration you can see the current CPU speed settings and whether or not 64-bit is supported. You can enable/disable hyper theading, change the CPUID limit, change the number of active cores, as well as enable/disable Intel Virtual Technology. The next window shows off the marvell controller and its settings. You can control the LAN ports and even the three USB 3.0 controllers. This page also allows you to disable/enable Bluetooth for whatever devices you may have. Be sure to also note the PS/2 port type connection here as well; you're able to tell it whether you want to recognize it as a mouse or a keyboard. The chipset tab really only has a couple of options so I tossed it in here as well. You can allow for Virtualilzation I/O or I/OAT.
Boot and security are the next two tabs to take a look at. The main boot screen allows you to change prompt time out, two boot priority options, and how to deal with USB, CD, and DVD drives on boot. Going into the boot option page you can set a specific drive to boot from as well as what exactly you would like it to try to boot first (or second). The security page allows you to setup passwords for the admin, and or a user. If only the admin password is setup only access to setup will ask for a password upon entering setup. If only a user has a password set then a password will be asked for on boot or to enter setup. However, the user will have admin rights to the setup. The only requirement on the password is length: 3-20 characters. The final exit tab allows for exactly that – allows you to save and exit, discard, or restore defaults – all very common yet useful.
Supports 2nd Gen Intel Core i7 processor family for the LGA 2011 Socket
DMI 5.0GT/s
Intel® X79 Express Chipset
Quad-channel DDR3 memory architecture
4 x 240-pin DDR3 DIMM socket support up to 64GB, per one DIMM support 16GB
*Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® 32-bit OS.For Windows® 64-bit OS with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation
Expansion Slots:
4 x PCI Express x16 Gen3.0 slot (2 slots run at x8 bandwidth)
2 x PCI Express x1 slots
Support by Intel®X79
• 2 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s devices
• 4 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s devices
• 4 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s devices(SAS6G1_2, SAS6G3_4) *
• RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID 10 configuration
Support by ASMEDIA ASM1061
• 2 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s devices
• 2 x eSATA 6.0 Gb/s ports
*User please be notice due to chipset limitation, the compatibility and stability of SATA port(SAS6G1_2/3_4) may differ by different devices.
Realtek ALC892 8-Ch High Definition audio CODEC
Compliant with HD audio specification
Ethernet LAN:
Dual RealTek RTL 8111E Gigabit LAN
Rear Panel I/O:
4 x USB 3.0 ports
6 x USB 2.0 ports
2 x eSATA 6.0Gb/s ports
1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port
2 x RJ45 LAN connectors
1 x Audio port (1x Line in, 4x Line out, 1x Optical SPDIF Out)
1 x Wireless LAN Dongle
1 x Bluetooth Dongle
1 x Clear_CMOS button
Internal I/O:
1 x Power on button
1 x Reset button
1 x 7S-LED Display
1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector
1 x 8-pin ATX Power Supply Connector
1 x 4-pin power connector for VGA card
2 x 4-pin CPU_FAN connector
1 x 3-pin SYS_FAN connector (with smart fan)
2 x 3-pin PWR_FAN connector
4 x Serial ATA 3Gb/s connectors(90 degree)
8 x Serial ATA 6Gb/s connectors(90 degree)
2 x USB 2.0 headers support additional 4 USB ports(Gray One support EZ Charger)
1 x USB 3.0 header supports additional 2 USB 3.0 Ports
1 x COM header
1 x SPDIF out header
1 x Front panel switch/LED header
1 x Front panel audio header
1 x Clear CMOS header
1 x Buzzer
6 x Voltage measure points
Form Factor:
ATX Size, 305mm*244mm
OS Support:
Windows Vista (32/64) bit
Windows 7 (32/64) bit
- AMI BIOS with 64Mb SPI Flash ROM
- Supports Plug and Play, STR (S3) / STD (S4) , Hardware monitor, Multi Boot
- Supports ACPI & DMI
- Audio, LAN, can be disabled in BIOS
- Support ECS M.I.B X Utility
- Support EZ Charger
- Support eBLU
- Support eOC
- Support eDLU
- Support eSF
Information Provided By: http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Product_Detail.aspx?DetailID=1303&CategoryID=1&MenuID=151&LanID=0
Supports Intel LGA 2011: Unlocked Intel Core i7 Series processors
Intel® X79 Express Chipset
Dual –BIOS
32 GB Max.
Quad Channel 240 pins DDR3 up to 1600+MHz, non-ECC, Unbuffered
Expansion Slots:
3 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots
3 x PCI Express 2.0 x8 slots
4 x Serial ATA III 6Gb/s connectors
4 x Serial ATA II 3Gb/s connectors
Realtek ALC892 HD Audio CODEC with 8-Channel
Ethernet LAN:
Dual Marvell 88E8057 PCI-Express Gigabit LAN
Rear Panel I/O:
6 x USB 2.0 port
4 x USB 3.0 port
1 x SPDIF Coaxial OUT
1 x Audio I / O ports
1 x SPDIF Optical Out
1 x Supporting Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR by Atheros AR3011
2 x e-SATA port
PS/2 KB/MS combo port
Dual RJ- 45 Gigabit LAN with ESD
Internal I/O:
4 x USB 2.0 headers
4 pins CPU PWM Fan connectors
3 Pin Chassis Fan connectors
24-pin ATX Power connector
8-pin ATX 12V Power connector
1 x COM headers
Control (Front) panel headers
2 x USB 3.0 headers
Audio I/O (Front) header
SPDIF out header
Power Button
Reset Button
CMOS clear Button
Dual BIOS select switch with indicator LED
Form Factor:
ATX, Size 304x 244 mm
OS Support:
Windows 7 (32/64) bit
Information Provided By: http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=2&gid=1100&sgid=1101&pid=1300&psn=&lid=1
Testing the ECS X79R-AX Black Deluxe and Sapphire Pure Black X79N will involve running them through OCC's test suite of benchmarks, which includes both synthetic benchmarks and real-world applications, to see how each of these products perform. The gaming tests will also consist of both synthetic benchmarks and actual gameplay, in which we can see if similarly prepared setups offer any performance advantages. The system will receive a fully updated, fresh install of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit edition, in addition to the latest drivers for each board and the latest AMD Catalyst drivers for the XFX HD 7970. To ensure as few variables as possible, all hardware will be tested at their stock speeds, timings, voltages, and latencies – unless otherwise stated. Turbo Boost is disabled to make a fair comparison without skewing results.
Testing Setup:
Testing Setup: Intel Core i7 Socket 2011
- Processors: Intel Core i7 3960X
- CPU Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H100
- Motherboard: ECS X79R-AX Black Deluxe, Sapphire Pure Black X79N
- Memory: Mushkin 993997 Redline PC317000 9-11-10-28 16GB
- Video Card: XFX HD 7970 Black Edition
- Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
- Hard Drive: Corsair Force 3 GT 240GB
- Optical Drive: Lite-On Blu-Ray
- Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D
- OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
- ECS X79R-AX Black Deluxe 103Mhz x 45 4635Mhz
- Sapphire Pure Black X79N 101Mhz x 45 4543Mhz
Overclocking each of these boards required similar tactics and revolved around proven means to overclock the SB-E Core i7 3960X. After looking at the lack of a heat sink over half of the VRM package I was leery of pushing too hard on the ECS X79R-AX. But push it did and offered up a higher overclock than the Sapphire Pure Black X79N by over 100MHz. The ECS BIOS allows the user to adjust the voltages in positive or negative increments instead of a fixed value for the CPU. By adjusting the vcore up and enabling LLC I was able to push the Core i7 3960X to 4653MHz using 1.46v. If working in the BIOS is a little daunting than ECS' eOC tool is another way to boost the performance of the system. BClock and voltage adjustments are available but not multiplier adjustments. It is a light weight utility and will allow for fine tuning the settings needed for stability at the chosen overclock.
Sapphire's Pure Black series boards have been surprising overclockers in the past but this board seemed to offer some resistance to the maximum capable speeds of the 3960X. Only able to reach just over a 100MHz bclock, the board yielded an overclock of 4543MHz; still a 1GHz plus overclock over the rated speed of the Core i7 3960X. Turning on LLC and adjusting the vcore again to 1.46v delivered the overclock. Sapphire's TriXX utility is familiar to many with the coverage it sees on the myriad of Sapphire video card reviews on the web. What most people do not know is that it is available for its motherboard suite as well. Much like the ECS eOC utility, Sapphire's TriXX utility offers bclock and voltage tuning. Each board is going to deliver performance once overclocked that fits in a small envelope with the differences only measurable in benchmarks but not actual use. With a 100MHz differential between the ECS and Sapphire boards maximum overclocks the choice based on performance is a toss up.
Maximum Overclock:
Each CPU and motherboard has been tested for stability at the clock speeds listed when in an overclocked state. These clock speeds will be used to run the test suite and will show the performance increase over the stock settings in the overclocked scoring.
Scientific & Data:
- PCMark 7
- HD Tune 5.0
- Sandra 2011
- Handbrake
- 3DMark 11
- DiRT 3
PCMark 7 is the latest iteration of Futuremark's popular PCMark system performance tool. This version is designed for use on Windows 7 PCs and features a combination of 25 different workloads to accurately measure the performance of all PCs from laptops to desktops.
Surprisingly yet not so surprising the two boards performed about the same in PCMark 7. The only difference between the scores was near negligible and doesn't definitively give us a win either way.
HD Tune measures disk performance to make comparisons between drives or disk controllers.
AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a software utility designed to be used for hardware diagnosis and benchmarking. I will be using the CPU Queen test that looks for the solution for the "Queens" problem on a 10x10 chessboard. This tests the branch-prediction capabilities of the processor. The FPU Mandel test measures double precision floating point performance through computation of several frames of the "Mandelbrot" fractal.
Again there seems to be no defining moment for either board in these tests. One doesn't really win one way or the other. The amount the boards' scores are apart is minimal and likely only of marginal error at this point. Unfortunately nothing is showing that more money gets us much more number wise at this point -- just more physical features.
SiSoft Sandra is a diagnostic utility and synthetic benchmarking program. Sandra allows you to view your hardware at a higher level to be more helpful. For this benchmark, I will be running a broad spectrum of tests to gauge the performance of key functions of the CPUs.
Overall Score
X.264 Benchmark: This benchmark is used to measure the time it takes to encode a 1080p video file into the x264 format. The default benchmark is used with an average of all four tests on each pass taken as the result.
HandBrake 9.5 is an open source application used to transcode multiple video formats to an h.264 output format. The test file size is a 4GB full length movie that is reduced in size to a 1.5GB file.
Still nothing to pull the boards apart in rankings; they both sit neck and neck with little to draw one versus the other as "better." I was hoping to see a little more discrepancy this far into testing yet; they are essentially the same when you get past the features offered.
Moving data to and from an external device is something we all do as a means of backing up sensitive data whether it is family pictures, movies, music, or projects. The speed with which this transfer occurs is measurable and can improve with different board partner specific tools. I will be using ATTO version 2.47 to measure an external drives read/write performance through the USB 3.0 interface. The default test algorithm is used for this test.


text:
Top Definition
Faster than light speed, but not as fast as ludicrous speed.
When pursuing a space-winnebago, first you gotta go light speed, then ridiculous speed, then, as a last resort, ludicrous speed.
by chuenweing February 21, 2008
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text:
Event Information
Louisville Gay & Lesbian Film Series
Event Information
In June, 2009, Apex Entertainment will
host the Annual Louisville Gay & Lesbian Film Series as part
of the Louisville Exclusives Films project which brings art and
foreign films to the Louisville community.
Apex Entertainment will also be promoting this event with the
Kentucky Fairness Alliance which is an organization dedicated to
the advancement of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
community throughout the state of Kentucky.
The 2009 Gay & Lesbian Film Series will be held at Apex Village 8
Theaters located at 4014 Dutchmans Lane, Louisville, KY.
Village 8 Theaters
4014 Dutchmans Lane
Louisville, KY 40207
Office Line: 894-8697
Movie Line: 897-1870


text:
Potto (Perodicticus potto)
|Also known as:
|Bosman's potto
|Poto De Bosman
|Perodicticus (1)
|Head-body length: 30 - 42 cm (2) (3)
Tail length: 5 - 10 cm (2)
|0.8 - 1.6 kg (2)
The potto is classified as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List (1), and listed on Appendix II of CITES (4). Four subspecies are currently recognised: Perodicticus potto potto (western potto), Perodicticus potto ibeanus (eastern potto) and Perodicticus potto edwardsi (central potto or Milne-Edwards' potto) are classified as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List (1), while Perodicticus potto stockleyi (Mount Kenya potto) is a recently described subspecies known only from a single specimen and as such is classified as Data Deficient (DD) on the IUCN Red List (1).
The largest member of the Loridae family (lorises and pottos) (5), the nocturnal, tree-dwelling potto (Perodicticus potto) is a fairly compact and robust primate, with a dense woolly coat and a tail that, while relatively short, is longer than that of other lorisids (3) (6) (7). Coat colour varies from reddish brown to blackish or brownish grey, slightly lighter on the underparts (3) (5) (6) (8), while young adults may have silvery-grey guard hairs on the back and a black 'mantle' on the shoulders (9). The snout is slender but short (5) (7) (9) and, like other Loridae, the head is round, with small, rounded ears and large eyes, which give good night vision (3) (5) (6) (7). Although the body and limbs are relatively long and slender, the potto's thick fur and characteristic hunched posture mean that this is not usually noticeable (5). The four subspecies of potto vary in size and colouration, and may be distinct enough to warrant separate species status (5).
A unique feature of the potto is the bony processes that project from the neck vertebrae between the shoulder blades, forming a spiny 'shield' on the neck, covered in a layer of highly sensitive skin and thick fur (3) (5) (6) (8). The exact function of this is debated; it may help protect the potto against predators while it forages with its head down, or may play a role in social behaviour, being highly sensitive to touch (3) (6). Pottos have a powerful grasp, with pincer-like hands and feet that have a specialised arrangement of blood vessels, allowing the potto to maintain its grip for long periods of time (3) (5) (6) (8), a perfect adaptation for life in the trees. Pottos usually climb with a slow, deliberate movement, rather than leaping or jumping (6) (10). To aid grip, the index finger is reduced to a mere knob, the large thumb is opposable to the other toes, and the wrist and ankle joints are highly mobile (5) (6) (8) (10). All the digits have nails except the second digit of each foot, which possesses a 'toilet claw', used in grooming (3) (5) (8) (9). A comb-like arrangement of teeth in the lower jaw also plays an important role in grooming, and a special cartilaginous 'brush' on the underside of the tongue fits between these teeth, serving to clean out hair and particles (8).
The potto has a wide distribution across the tropical forest belt of western, central and eastern Africa, from Sierra Leone and Guinea east to Kenya, at elevations of 600 to 2,300 metres (1) (2) (11). P. p. potto occurs in West Africa from Guinea and Sierra Leone to Nigeria, P. p. ibeanus to the south of the Ubangi River and north of the Congo River in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and eastwards to Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and southwest Kenya, and P. p. edwardsi from the Niger River in Nigeria south to northern Angola and eastwards, south of the Congo River, through Democratic Republic of the Congo (1) (5) (11) (12). P. p. stockleyi is known only from Mount Kenya, at an elevation of 1,830 metres (1) (12), about 210 kilometres from the nearest other known potto population (5).
Inhabiting lowland, swamp, riverine and montane forest, the potto is most common in secondary forest and along forest margins, and is also found in primary forest and even in disturbed forest near human settlements (1) (2) (5). Pottos may also venture out into isolated trees in savanna or cultivated areas (9).
The potto generally lives and forages in trees at heights of between 5 and 30 metres, spending the day sleeping curled in the foliage (5) (6). The diet shows distinct seasonal variation, comprising mainly fruits, as well as insects, nectar, snails and even small vertebrates, and gums during drier periods (2) (3) (5) (6). Eggs and fungi may also be taken (2) (5). If faced with a predator, the potto may grip a branch with the hands and feet, tuck the head into the chest to present the bony 'shield' on the neck, and sway from side to side while making threat grunts. The potto may then thrust forwards in an attempt to dislodge the predator, or even lunge at it with an open mouth (5).
Pottos are mainly solitary, although they may show some degree of sociality (1) (5) (6) (13). This species exhibits a dispersed social structure in which individuals associate on a regular, but not necessarily daily basis, and rely on olfactory communication (scent) to a greater degree than the more gregarious diurnal primates (5). A study of P. p. edwardsi in Gabon found the home range of a male to overlap those of several females (2) (3) (6), indicating a dispersed 'unimale-multifemale' social structure. Interestingly, a later study in Cameroon on the same subspecies reported male and female home ranges to be of similar size, with the most range overlap and social interactions occurring between 'paired' males and females, indicating a dispersed 'unimale-unifemale' social structure (14).
Female pottos usually give birth to a single infant each year, after a gestation period of about 180 to 205 days (1) (6) (7). The young potto is born white or pale cream, with blue eyes (5) (9), and is carried on the female's belly or left hidden on a branch until it is weaned at about four to five months (6) (7). Pottos reach sexual maturity at between 9 to 18 months (6) (9) and may live for up to 11 years in the wild, or even to 26 years in captivity (7) (8). Young males disperse when mature, while young females usually share parts of the adult female's range (2) (6).
The potto's tree-dwelling, nocturnal and secretive lifestyle may help protect it from hunting, and traps set for other animals are not usually a threat, as the potto prefers to stay high in the trees rather than descend to the ground (11). However, hunting for food does occur in some areas (5) (7) (11) (15) and pottos are also occasionally electrocuted on electricity cables (11).
Despite this, the potto remains widespread, even in disturbed and secondary forest, and is not thought to be undergoing large population declines (1). However, local declines may be taking place due to habitat loss, as a result of logging and intensive agriculture (1) (5) (11). Despite its ability to survive in disturbed areas, the potto cannot survive in habitats completely devoid of trees (15).
The potto is listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), meaning that international trade in pottos should be carefully monitored and controlled (4). It is also protected under Class B of the African Convention, which only allows it to be hunted, killed or captured with special authorisation (16), and it occurs in many protected areas throughout its range (1). A priority for potto conservation is to determine the range, abundance and conservation status of P. p. stockleyi, which is likely to exist only at low densities or have a highly localised distribution, or may even already be extinct (12).
For more information on potto and loris conservation see:
Conservation Database for Lorises and Pottos:
For more information on primate conservation see:
IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group:
Authenticated (12/10/10) by Dr Elizabeth Pimley, Senior Ecologist, Worcestershire Wildlife Consultancy.
- Diurnal: active during the day.
- Gestation: the state of being pregnant; the period from conception to birth.
- Guard hair: in some mammals, long, coarse hairs that protect the softer layer of fur below.
- Home range: the area occupied by an animal during routine activities, which is not actively defended.
- Montane forest: forest occurring in the montane zone, a zone of cool upland slopes below the tree line dominated by large evergreen trees.
- Nocturnal: active at night.
- Opposable: referring to a digit, (thumb or toe), that can be turned so that its pad makes contact with the pad of each of the other digits on the same limb.
- Primary forest: forest that has remained undisturbed for a long time and has reached a mature condition.
- Secondary forest: forest that has re-grown after a major disturbance, such as fire or timber harvest, but has not yet reached the mature state of primary forest.
- Subspecies: a population usually restricted to a geographical area that differs from other populations of the same species, but not to the extent of being classified as a separate species.
- Vertebrates: animals with a backbone.
IUCN Red List (December, 2008)
- Kingdon, J. (1997) The Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals. Academic Press, London.
- Ankel-Simons, F. (1999) Primate Anatomy: An Introduction. Academic Press, San Diego, California.
CITES (December, 2008)
- Pimley, E.R. and Bearder, S.K. (in press) Potto (Perodicticus potto). In Kingdon, J., Happold, D. and Butynski, T. (Eds.) Mammals of Africa. Volume 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Nowak, R.M. (1991) Walker's Mammals of the World. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London.
- Burton, M. and Burton, R. (2002) International Wildlife Encyclopedia. Third Edition. Marshall Cavendish, New York.
- Macdonald, D.W. (2006) The Encyclopedia of Mammals. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Kingdon, J. (1971) East African Mammals: An Atlas of Evolution in Africa. Volume 1. Academic Press, London and New York.
- Oates, J.F. (1984) The niche of the potto, Perodicticus potto. International Journal of Primatology, 5(1): 51-61.
Conservation Database for Lorises and Pottos (December, 2008)
- Butynski, T.M. and de Jong, Y.A. (2007) Distribution of the potto Perodicticus potto (Primates: Lorisidae) in Eastern Africa, with a description of a new subspecies from Mount Kenya. Journal of East African Natural History, 96(2): 113-147.
- Pimley, E.R., Bearder, S.K. and Dixson, A.F. (2005) Social organisation of the Milne-Edward's potto. American Journal of Primatology, 66(4): 317-330.
- Pimley, E.R., Bearder, S.K. and Dixson, A.F. (2005) Home range analysis of Perodicticus potto edwardsi and Sciurocheirus cameronensis. International Journal of Primatology, 26(1): 191-206.
- Wolfheim, J.H. (1983) Primates of the World: Distribution, Abundance and Conservation. University of Washington Press, London.
African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (January, 2009)