text:
"Hubbard is alive and well. He lives through his
creations." - Purple Rain
"Because nothing has the be true forever. Just for long enough, to tell you the truth."
- T. Pratchett, The Truth
By the way, do you think you're accomplishing anything - in your silly multi-colored posts - by repeatedly calling those who post on ESMB "angry," etc., as in "irrational," while at the same time lecturing them on proper behavior?
Visit the Ex Scientologist Message Board web site for selected content from ESMB and more: http://exscn.net/
"Hubbard is alive and well. He lives through his
creations." - Purple Rain
"Because nothing has the be true forever. Just for long enough, to tell you the truth."
- T. Pratchett, The Truth
Visit the Ex Scientologist Message Board web site for selected content from ESMB and more: http://exscn.net/
The bottom line is this:
The "church" of $cientology wants to be thought of as a "real religion".
They told me so when I was volunteering with them, in OSA, in PR.
It's a MAJOR goal of theirs.
The "church" of $cientology couldn't be farther from what the average
person thinks is a religion. I'm not saying ALL other religions are great,
as many have their own problems, too. BUT___I think it's VERY important
to understand the difference in a CULT and a Religion.
Scientology---the "church" of $cientology IS a CULT: Period.
The FACT that they are a *total* business..charging for EVERY
SINGLE LEVEL_________Is disgusting that they have tax exemption.
Follow the $$$$$_____There is where they'll get snagged up...just like
Al Capone did, too.
You can call me, Jim, if you want. I was "in" for 30 years and escaped
out in July of 2000.
My best
(818) 588-3044
For those still "in":
"Leap and the Net will Appear"
Make the Leap!
Make it safely and come share your story with us
I understand the point of view (even though I do not hold it myself) that once people have adopted Scientology as their religion, even though done under a fraudulent basis, then a possible Academic point of view is to consider it as a religion. I will go so far as to concede that for those people who hold those beliefs about it, it is a religion to them. I also feel that they and their families and friends need to be educated about the fraudulent aspects of it, for the protection of the general public from the actions of Cult members, mainly OSA operatives and their minions.
Please be patient with us all. Some of us have been more injured by OSA than others here. Keep in mind that you are talking to cult victims and survivors who often do have a rather large personal ax to grind. To them, this discussion is not academic, it is intensely personal! They have a right to their anger and every right to be suspicious of the motives of anyone who "forwards the enemy line", the enemy in this case being OSA operatives. It's also important not to let that shut down the conversation, which is just what OSA wants to have happen! Please try not to take it personally. Keep talking, everybody!
I think it is also important when talking with anyone about Scientology to early take the measure of to what extent their considerations about the subject have been manipulated or influenced by the actions of OSA.
There is an organized effort by COS to influence and involve opinion leaders in all areas of life to be pro-COS, as part of policy, this is why there are Celebrity Centers and all the front groups which work with law enforcement, business and religious leaders and elected officials on various "causes". The main goal and purpose is to make COS seem more acceptable and legitimate in the eyes of the general public and with authorities than it would be without their influence. I think this is in part the process that Arnie is referring to when he brings up the "repeater technique", which I'm sure you are already aware of. Call it a religion often enough and it will be accepted to be so, despite all evidence to the contrary. Seems to have worked for them to a very great extent in this country, which is why some of us insist on calling it a Cult, to counteract that.
There is an old saying on this board that you have not really arrived here until somebody accuses you of being OSA... It does happen to Newbies, it happened to me! So consider it a bit of a rite of passage, and don't take too much umbrage at it. Also I think some members here are rightly probing to understand just what your viewpoints are and how best to enlighten you, if and where it is needed!
I do think that possibly Arnie and others (although I am not speaking for them) might be exasperated with the way that OSA's lies about Scientology have seemingly penetrated Academia, members of the Justice system, law enforcement and our elected officials.
For example:
Human trafficking is addressed as being a serious problem which is investigated by all of the above when it comes to sex workers or migrant farm workers or sweat-shop factory workers, but not when it comes to COS Sea Org members. Why? Because they are considered to be "religious" volunteers, not laborers, and so protective labor laws evidently do not apply to them. As if by joining a "religious group" (or Cult) they give up their constitutional or human rights.
Keep in mind that occasionally when we write, we are not only directly addressing a statement by a person on a specific issue, but sometimes we are also addressing the lurkers... all those who are reading here invisibly without joining, including OSA operatives, other former Cult members too intimidated to speak out about what they experienced yet, and the interested general public who may have a friend or loved one "in" the Cult to this day. Also we sometimes address our remarks to those unfamiliar with COS except for the Cult propaganda line about it who may be considering joining up themselves. We write to inform and persuade in addition to continuing the conversational topic. I myself frequently swing for the fences (baseball analogy for our foreign readers, meaning to slightly overreach in an effort to hit a home run out of the ball park) with my posts meant to reach and move the lurkers, in addition to directly communicating with my fellow posters on a thread.
Now guys, Jim asked to see Ron's affirmations...can we oblige him?
Last edited by SweetnessandLight; 6th March 2012 at 09:14 AM.
Yes, you can fly, but first you have to break out of that cocoon. You are capable of self rescue at all times. "Every blade of grass has its own special angel watching over it and whispering, 'grow...grow'." -The Talmud "I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be, for I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our disposition, and not upon our circumstances." -Martha Washington
I have a copy annotated by Ulf Brettstam, a clinical psychiatrist...confirming hubbard as a paranoid schizophrenic...
give me a moment...
you see lermanet got too big for a search engine... there are 15000 files
Last edited by Lermanet_com; 6th March 2012 at 09:24 AM.
"Hater" was the new "SP"
"SP" was the new "1.1"
"1.1" was the new "Communist"
"OSA" was the new "GO"
Etc, etc, etc.......
This is Hubbardism 101. Got a problem because people have caught on to your spinning propaganda lies? No problem, just change the words.
Mark knows better than to call people 1.1 or SP's. Or haters--Indies copyrighted that one.
So let's give Mark credit for at least trying.
It's a shame you blew the whistle on his multicolored "angry" marketing scheme so quickly, he only got about a week's worth of use out of it.
Mark, go back to your Thesaurus. There are plenty of other words you can try.
Scientology literally saved my life! Without Ron's books I would have frozen to death!!! (see avatar)
Scientology in one word? HelluvaHoax!
I never felt as free as when I freed myself from "Total Freedom".
For offended Scientologists reading this blasphemy about L. Ron Hubbard---my apologies for talking about real life without lying to you, like Scientology, with goo-goo theta-talk. I know you don't have a floating needle right now. You're not supposed to.
The Admissions of L Ron Hubbard, evaluated by a Clinical Psychiatrist (In Sweden)
(The commentary is priceless, this is a MUST read document, it is too long to post here, this doc is also linked from her own pages on her Narconon page, Ulf has helped tremendously fighting narconon in sweden feel to quote you favorite excerpts)
There is little question about LRH suffering from paranoic
schizophrenia at the time he wrote the above. Predominant symptoms are
auditive and likely visual hallucinations together with numbed emotions
, suicidal thoughts , extremely low selfworth, impotence , thought
disturbances and problems with articulation and memory. His fatigue and
indolence together with the anhedonia is the typical low energy , low
vigilance and numbed emotions found in the domaine of so called
negative symtoms in this disease . He is fighting a hard battle with
inner psychological conflicts, balancing between the depressed state
with suicidal thoughts and the Godlike, allmighty powerful
"chosen" one with special gifts and blessed with an inner
"Guardian". The Church of Scientology and its methods is merely the
reflection of this seriously sick mans inner world. Constantly on guard
against percieved critique and attacks from the hostile surrounding
environments. Obsessed with money , not only as a mean of survival but
as an instrument of power and evidence of success.
Ulf Brettstam
Senior psychiatrist
The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this
bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder [L. Ron
Hubbard]. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a
pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and
achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally
reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness
and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or
-- Judge Paul G. Breckenridge, Jr., 6/20/84 (Scientology v. Armstrong,
affirmed on appeal 232 Cal.App.3rd 1060, 283 Cal.Rptr. 917.)
Last edited by Lermanet_com; 6th March 2012 at 09:32 AM.
Thanks to Lawrence Brennan for the above quote.Rather the purpose is to make new scientologists.
And that is what they are trying to fool libraries, businesses and schools into helping them do - spread Scientology and make new scientologists.


text:
Apparently Burbank's Bob Hope Airport needs an image uplift.
After years of flying under the radar, so to speak, a new marketing campaign will take flight next week that emphasizes Bob Hope as a less stressful option to Los Angeles International Airport.
Residents of the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys are being targeted with the straightforward message that the airport is close, convenient and comfortable.
The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, which oversees operations at the facility, is spending $150,000 on the six-month promotional campaign being created by Encino-based Cooper Communications Inc.
"This program is slated to remind San Fernando Valley and North (Los Angeles) County residents that the Burbank Bob Hope Airport is `their' local airport that they should use whenever they make travel plans," airport executive director Dan Feger said in a statement.
The ads will appear in local newspapers, online, billboards, cable television and radio. Airport officials will also make pitches to local business and community organizations' events and give airport tours to civic leaders and travel groups.
The airport needs some more business, spokesman Victor Gill said.
Passenger traffic peaked at 5.9 million in 2007 but it had fallen to 4.3 million by the end of last year, Gill said.
Traffic is still declining because American Airlines quit serving Bob Hope at the beginning of the year.
"That pretty much guarantees going forward a 7 percent reduction every month from last year," Gill said of passenger traffic.
The campaign will stress the fact that Bob Hope is an attractive alternative because of extensive construction along the 405 Freeway and the big remodeling of LAX.
Gill also notes that parking is cheaper and more convenient at the Burbank airport.
Martin M. Cooper, owner of the agency creating the campaign, said it's important to boost Bob Hope's traffic.
"It's the responsibility of airport operators to do whatever they can to increase revenue, and revenue comes from passengers," he said.
The commercials are scheduled to run on Time Warner Cable outlets such as MSNBC, Fox News Channel, the Food Network and the Travel Channel.
It will feature four billboards targeting the Valley from Woodland Hills to Sherman Oaks and two billboards in the Santa Clarita Valley.
The radio advertisements, which will run on Playlist 92.7 FM from mid-November until mid-January, will feature Access Hollywood co-host Billy Bush. Online pay-per-click and print newspaper ads will begin running in December.
The carriers now serving Bob Hope are Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, Delta, United, Southwest and US Airways. Travelers using these airlines can make a single connection to most national destinations.
The airport also offers one-stop, no-plane change flights to destinations such as Albuquerque, Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, El Paso, New Orleans, San Antonio, Spokane and Tulsa.
"Bob Hope Airport should be top of mind to you even if you have to fly someplace like Chicago or the Midwest. It might be more convenient to use Hope and change planes," Cooper said.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I am often stressed by the sheer number of decisions I make for Lil D; making educated guesses at what he wants, what he likes, what he needs, when he must follow through on a something or endure a situation, and when we should cut him some slack. What therapies we try, what treatments we pursue, which doctors we see and when we let things ride.Two articles I recently read have burrowed their way into my head, one from an adult with autism and one from a special education consultant. Both … [Read more...]
I Hit (and Scream, Pinch, Bite, Kick, Cry or Drop) for a Reason
February 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment


text: So if you have read any of my other posts you will know that my fil has moved in. The early mornings at first left me exhausted. But they seem to have slowed to almost stopping, now it's going to bed late around 11.30-12.00 pm and sleeping till around 6.00 am. We have repeatedly showed him how to turn the telly on and it's finally stuck, so at least we get around an extra hour in bed of a morning, the kitchen has been safety proofed and we Re getting into a good routine. What is now worrying me is the rate of the decline stage 6 I feel is arriving quicker than anyone originally thought. Yesterday was a really bad day, last night even worse, every ten minutes he would come into our bedroom and sit with my partner watching him play on his playstation 3 for a few seconds say something strange then go back into his room, only to repeat the process ten minutes later. Then this morning after just half an hour of sleep he came into our room and shouted out are we getting up went downstairs and put the telly on, what gets to me about the whole thing though is when I went downstairs twenty minutes after this happened he didn't remember a thing. I'm really worried that he is going to go downhill so quickly that he won't be able to enjoy the time before this happens. We want him to have as much time with family as possible, but that time seems to be going past so quickly. He's been living with us for a week but watching it happen this quick is like seeing months happen in just seven days. I hate seeing it and wish there was something I could do to slow it down or even stop all together. My fil doesn't deserve this just like every other person who has this horrible thing.


text:
We use cookies to ensure that you have the best experience on our website. If you continue browsing, we'll assume that you are happy to receive all our cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time.
Find out more
You are here:
An interactive resource featuring stunning colour photos to help you teach about water and its significance.
Includes classroom activities, case studies, quizzes and whiteboard activities for exploring the importance of water, water shortages, and ideas for positive action. In addition, there are photo case studies about water from Senegal, Cambodia, Uganda, East Timor, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Switzerland.
Open the Water for All website
This resource is a self-contained site with separate navigation. It can be used directly by learners or on an interactive whiteboard.
See all resources in this range
See all resources in this topic
See all resources in this curriculum area


text:
This article is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Selection and adaptation of individuals to their underlying environments are highly dynamical processes, encompassing interactions between the individual and its seasonally changing environment, synergistic or antagonistic interactions between individuals and interactions amongst the regulatory genes within the individual. Plants are useful organisms to study within systems modeling because their sedentary nature simplifies interactions between individuals and the environment, and many important plant processes such as germination or flowering are dependent on annual cycles which can be disrupted by climate behavior. Sedentism makes plants relevant candidates for spatially explicit modeling that is tied in with dynamical environments. We propose that in order to fully understand the complexities behind plant adaptation, a system that couples aspects from systems biology with population and landscape genetics is required. A suitable system could be represented by spatially explicit individual-based models where the virtual individuals are located within time-variable heterogeneous environments and contain mutable regulatory gene networks. These networks could directly interact with the environment, and should provide a useful approach to studying plant adaptation.
There is an increasing awareness of how our climate is changing due to continuing urbanization and industrialization of our planet, and of the possible conservational, ecological and sociological implications. With research studies demonstrating that climate change can affect crops on a genotypic [
The levels of regulation within the proposed modeling framework. The five levels are: the genic level, genome, individual, population and environment. At the genic level, the genes interact with each other as a gene-regulatory networks (GRN) to produce a phenotype. At the genome level, these genes are arranged into chromosomes, which segregate at meiosis, and the comprising genes mutate and recombine, altering their function. The individual has various life cycle histories and if sufficiently fit from its comprising genetic material, reproduces with other individuals to produce progeny. The individuals make up the populations, which through admix through migration, and can lead to differentiation through bottlenecks and founder effects. The environment contains parameters that change cyclically (or unexpectedly), which is fed into the GRN of the individuals.
Simulation models in population genetics classically are based on a number of simplifying assumptions, such as panmixia, non-overlapping generations and constant population sizes. These assumptions allow the mathematics behind these principles to be described formally and allows the simulated populations to behave in computationally tractable and deterministic ways, such as Hardy-Weinberg equilibria (HWE) [
In reality, geographic landmarks such as lakes, mountains and even roads [
Interest in forward-time individual based-models (IBMs) has arisen in the potential for increased individual heterogeneity and stochasticity within the system. Within IBMs, the individual becomes the fundamental modeling unit within the system, unlike mean field models, where populations are represented as homogenous collections of individuals with identical attributes based on summary statistics. The various states that the individual may occupy can therefore be modeled explicitly, allowing for different life histories and other behaviors to be incorporated that may provide more biological realism to the model. These models are generally less efficient than coalescent models, as the coalescent will only simulate genealogies from survived offspring that have made it to the present, and not the entire evolutionary history as with IBMs. However, the greater flexibility posed by forward-simulation models may make them more desirable in some studies and it has been suggested that a tradeoff between the two modeling approaches exists in terms of efficiency and flexibility [
A number of software tools using IBMs have been developed. These include EasyPop, a population genetics simulator to simulate neutral loci datasets under various mating schemes and migration models [
The programs listed in [
Resistance surfaces are essentially matrices that contain variables relating to different environmental or landscape features that may impede or facilitate connectivity between individuals in the form of migration or gene flow. They can be parameterized through field data as obtained from GIS systems and are useful for providing hypotheses on the nature of how spatial genetic structure through migration, introgression and dispersal may have formed. One notable SIBM that utilizes resistance surfaces is CD-POP (Cost Distance POPulations) that contains cost distance matrices for representing resistance to movement through the landscape [
These efforts in landscape genetics simulations represent the first stages into relating genotype to environment and the resulting effects on selection and adaptation. As with CD-POP, different genotypes of unlinked loci may produce different effects on fitness of an individual according to the spatial grid point on which it is located. However, in reality genes do not exist in isolation but exist in networks, and through cis-acting and trans-acting regulatory effects can up-regulate or de-regulate each other, ultimately affecting the expressed phenotype in a dynamic way. It has therefore been suggested that in the interest of genotype to phenotype mapping, genes should be considered in the context of networks [
Efforts to ascertain all the interacting genes with regards to the expression of a particular phenotype is an area of which is highly relevant to most, if not all, disciplines within biology. Such information, for instance, could provide biologists with potential molecular targets, be they genes, proteins or metabolites, whose function may be altered through gene silencing, catabolism, or through agonistic or antagonistic ligands. The identification of GRNs has multiple uses ranging from developing drug targets in complex disease, understanding stress response (with clear uses in developing drug targets and in agronomy), decreasing antibiotic, herbicide or pesticide resistance and identifying key developmental genes. One application of a GRN can be to model transcriptional networks within a cell, although interactions at the proteomic and metabolomic level and other areas of the "interactome" may also be modeled. Transcription factors (TFs) may behave as transcriptional activators that up-regulate other TFs or behave as transcriptional repressors that can down-regulate their targets. The crosstalk between the up- and down-regulation of transcription allows dynamicity to the amount of protein product that is expressed, which ultimately, will have an effect on the phenotype of the individual. One example is the GRN regarding photoperiodicity and vernalization of barley as described by Fuller and Allaby [
Vernalization and photoperiodicity in Barley. Gene Vrn2 negatively down-regulates gene Vrn1, preventing flowering. During periods of cold, short days, Vrn2 is down-regulated. However a period of long days is required to activate genes Ppd1 and Vrn2, which activate flowering.
The genes within a network may be visualized as directed graphs containing a set of nodes, representing the genes, protein and/or metabolites, connected by a set of edges, which represent the interactions between these nodes. The number of edges that belongs to a node is its degree, and the distribution of the number of edges across networks is the degree distribution. Intuitively it may be assumed that the degree distribution would approximate a Poisson distribution, however, conversely they tend to approximate a power-law distribution, where most nodes are sparsely connected and a small number has a much larger degree [
Putative functions of these motifs illustrated in
Example network motifs. (
The apparent commonness of many of these motifs has attracted much attention, and a number of studies have been made to help explain this paradigm. One explanation is that these motifs are dynamically stable and are robust to small perturbations in signal [
Developing GRNs from experimental data is often described as reverse engineering, or network inference, and comprises a particularly large field within the discipline of systems biology. Although major advances in experimental techniques and advances in modern computing power have no doubt assisted efforts in network inference, it still remains a non-trivial task. Ultimately the quality of an inferred network model is highly dependent upon the quality of the data, and this can come at a considerable cost with large networks, as the amount of required data is proportional to the number of network nodes. Perturbation experiments such as generating gene knock-outs, stress experiments or RNAi experiments can provide an informative insight into the dynamicity of a particular network. However, the large amount of noise within expression data often requires that experiments be repeated in order to determine the extent of the noise. Constraints on the GRN can be placed to alleviate the model's complexity and data requirements, however. These include limits on the number of nodes in the inferred network (thereby generating a sparser network) and restricting the model parameters, e.g., through connectivity limitations. It is also often desirable when inferring a network to make use of prior biological knowledge (such as molecule binding sequence motifs, posttranslational modification sites or molecular interactions), which may assist with model validation or with constraining the model complexity. A number of online repositories of such information are available such as the Gene Ontology (GO) or the Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG).
The activation of some genes within a network may hold certain dependencies with the activities of other genes, such as the "AND" and "OR" behavior described previously. Thus, it is possible to represent genes in a similar manner to logic gates, where a gene may belong to one of two discrete states, namely "ON" or "OFF" and hold a set of discrete dependencies in terms of activation with other genes in the network, such as "AND", "OR" and "NOT" relationships,
Example of a Boolean network. (
Genes are not simply active or inactive, yet are transcribed at continuous rates so that the amount of transcript for one gene is dependent upon the rate of transcription of another gene (although this may be discretized through the use of "gene thresholds" for activation in modeling efforts). This lends itself conveniently to using ordinary differential equations (ODE's) to represent GRNs. The resulting modeling functions used may be linear or non-linear with an example software tool used to infer linear models from expression data being EXAMINE (Expression Array MINing Engine) [
Within this review we have discussed theory within the fields of population and landscape genetics and systems biology, and have described software and approaches to simulating adaptation. We believe that modeling efforts within evolutionary biology have reached a suitable step where coupling systems of genes to SIBMs that can interact with the surrounding environment and induce phenotype in a more complex and perhaps more biologically reasonable way, can now be considered. Ultimately, a unified approach based upon stochastic elements of GRN evolution, migration and range expansion could allow emergent paradigms in how phenotype relates to GRN topology and raise questions as to how this relates to different abiotic and biotic interactions at different spatial locations. Thus, such systems could direct research into a number of previously unanswered questions in evolutionary biology and evolutionary systems biology, including:
How does a functional (non-neutral) mutation to the sensitivity (as in threshold) or output of a GRN node affect the expressed phenotype or the fitness of an individual? How do the phenotypic effects differ from simulating single non-interacting loci?
How do perturbations of the edges within a network (such as edge deletion, addition and rewiring) or node duplications impact on the fitness of an individual within different environments?
How does the conformation of a GRN affect the quantitative trait that is ultimately expressed? Can population models or SIBMs show that certain motifs may be selected for within different environments?
What role do evolutionary forces such as gene flow and range expansion play on the diversity of GRN topologies?
Considering the effects of gene flow, can certain environments (
Which choice of GRN representations (such as static-edge, Boolean, Bayesian, ODE-based networks) is a better fit to the system in question?
The first two questions require the use of GRNs, whereas the last two require a spatial element and a landscape genetics approach to provide sufficient environmental heterogeneity. We discuss these elements in the next two subsections.
GRNs have so far received little attention within evolutionary studies at the population genetics level [
Evolution in the context of GRNs has been receiving more interest in recent years [
The GRN reverse engineering approaches described in
In this review we propose that research should be directed towards looking at the phenotypic effects of network evolution in the context of populations located within patchy landscapes. The addition of spatially explicit heterogeneous landscapes will add another layer of complexity to any model, and adding any intra-annual variation in environmental parameters will increase this complexity. Although it is not the goal of modeling to accurately represent nature in all of its complexity, we argue that such extra detail is necessary in order to fully understand how phenotypic variation (through mutation of GRNs) may emerge and become selected for or against. Firstly we need to adequately model gene flow, which provides the homogenizing force between subpopulations that would otherwise ultimately differentiate through a process of mutation and genetic drift. Although the flow of chromosomes containing genes that may interact with one-another in a GRN may be modeled within a mean-field system, gene flow itself is often spatially constrained and may be influenced through geographic landmarks, such as mountains, rivers or roads. Impeding gene flow can lead to increased population differentiation, which can lead towards speciation. The explicit modeling of space is a convenient way to allow the simulation of range expansions and the subsequent limiting effects on allelic diversity through the subsequent founder effects. Incorporating heterogeneous environments into the spatially explicit arena will also allow abiotic interaction to select for different alleles, and possibly select for different GRN conformations. For example, the GRN conformations for Barley, wheat and
We have described how the resistance surfaces that may be explicitly incorporated into an SIBM may represent climactic or edaphic factors that can impede dispersal or influence selection of the simulated individuals. However, in a similar vein, they may also represent biotic interactions from animals or plants. Biodiversity varies latitudinally across the globe [
GRNs are dynamic, and therewith comes the necessity of incorporating time-dependent environmental variation when GRNs are simulated within the context of SIBMs. A natural extension of this is that it will become convenient to study past shifts in the environment onto the genotypic and phenotypic characteristics of a population (such as through the effects of bottlenecks and migration, for example). Hypothesized future effects could also be studied in a similar manner.
Complicated models with multiple levels of regulation could be developed within a step-wise manner, yet there is no one correct path a researcher may take. The model should be validated as each level of regulation (
The relevant question here is at which level of regulation the modeler begins, which will be highly influenced by the hypothesis that the researcher intends to address. One possible hypothesis could be that certain environmental parameters would select for a particular GRN variant, for example, and so a study might involve analyzing the effects of GRN conformation on individual fitness. GRN conformation could indicate the shape of its degree distribution, or could simply mean choice of structural motif, for example. In the first study, simulations could provide data on fitness (in the form of population growth curves, for example) for different GRN configurations that are kept constant (
Another study might be to attempt to explain the spatial genetic structure of a population found in nature, for which GRN data exists, through attempting to recreate data observed in nature (such as allele frequencies or selection coefficients). Initial simulations could be within mean-field systems, with non-stochastic migration rates between subpopulations and only single gene nodes or QTLs being simulated. Subsequent simulations could add spatial explicitness, abiotic and biotic factors and GRNs. At each step of the study, likelihood densities could be generated to explain which models best explain the observed data. Our research group has previously applied Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) [
When simulating selection in models it is important to consider the role of evolutionary tradeoffs and how they may influence the adaptation of a species. Antagonistic pleiotropic effects [
Such example AD studies have the benefit of allowing researchers to quantify the effects of certain trade-offs to an evolutionary system. We believe the modeling framework proposed in this study of coupling GRNs to SIBMs could also allow for such tradeoffs through interactions between one gene and numerous target genes/traits. When considering complex interconnected networks, it becomes clear that potential trade-offs could be programmed into the system. For instance, a simple example may be where mutation of a gene may cause up-regulation of one or more of its target genes with beneficial fitness effects to trait A, whilst this may indirectly negatively impact the fitness provided by trait B. However, as with the AD framework, such interactions have to be hypothesized. This may not be the case, however, if a model is complicated enough to allow for GRN re-wiring. Through stochastic GRN re-wiring through mutation and movement through a heterogeneous landscape, emergent trade-offs may be observed that may not have previously been hypothesized. This may provide opportunities to document such trade-offs and analyze their evolutionary impact.
The complexity of SIBMs is not trivial and development of a large simulation software tool may not be without problems if inadequate care is not put into the development process, or if there is ambiguity in its function, as this may make the tool difficult to communicate or reproduce. To this end a few authors have proposed protocols that can be used in the design and development of IBMs [
Arguably the most obvious pitfall with using such models is the high computational cost associated with the large ranges in scale required, from subcellular processes within the simulated individuals to the dynamical environment in which they reside. It is generally required that SIBM simulations be run with thousands of individuals, therefore, large GRNs with large numbers of nodes and large numbers of edges may become more intractable. Furthermore, sensory based GRNs such as the delay-response element and the persistence detector mentioned in
As previously discussed, selection of individuals for certain traits may occur from a number of different selection regimes. In some populations, it may be that edaphic or other climactic effects such as light, as in the case of flowering time, or selection may be facilitated more from biotic interaction arising from pests or predators. Another example of a selection regime upon plants is crop domestication, a topic of considerable debate [
Domestication represents an important model of evolution where all aforementioned levels of regulation played a role, including the interactions at the genic level, the population level and the roles of abiotic and biotic factors (such as local climactic effects on crops and the roles of weeds and pests to crop yield). Through domestication our crops have developed traits that better serve human needs in agriculture. These traits include the non-shattering phenotype within cereals, where wind is insufficient to mediate dispersal of seeds from the ears and human intervention is necessary; increased seed size, which enables seeds to be sown deeper within the soil due to the larger endosperm, therefore preventing seeds from blowing away from the farmers field; a loss of hooks and awns, helping to prevent loss of seed from the field; and enhanced culinary chemistry, allowing superior food products to be produced (for reviews, see [
It is not uncommon for flowering plants to exhibit polyploidy [
Understanding plant growth habit and morphology is of particular importance to agronomic and ecological studies, as plants react to their environment by adjusting their growth and morphology to maximize their gained benefits from nutrient acquisition. Thus modeling efforts that take plant growth and morphology according to simulated environmental conditions could be useful for determining the impact of changes to the availability of light, temperature or moisture,
In this review we have covered a number of aspects from the need for plant genetic modeling and simulation, concepts in population and landscape genetics and network motifs and inference within the field of systems biology. We believe that modeling systems that could incorporate regulation at the genic, genome, individual, population and environmental scales would be able to provide flexible systems for studying adaptation within highly dynamical environments. Population genetics simulations are often based upon simplifying assumptions that may not necessarily represent the complexity within a real population. Conversely, the complexities within large inferred GRNs may often be to such a degree that the noise arising from the numerous nodes may add ambiguity to each of their roles. By merging the two modeling systems, both could complement each other, as the complexity of large GRNs could be culled to the minimum set of nodes that is necessary to represent the system (obtaining this set could be another application of such models), and the GRNs at the population genetic level will provide an interface for interaction of genetic material with the environment. We are not describing an unnecessarily complex modeling approach intended to accurately represent nature in all its detail. Instead we are describing a general approach containing the requisite components to be able to simulate adaptation of individuals in certain environments through networks of interacting genes. The genes stimulate or repress each other according to their input and this invokes expression of a phenotype. This system provides greater dynamicity regarding simulation of phenotypic expression than by simply simulating QTLs when we consider the role of mutation to the interacting nodes, and therefore requires a dynamic environment, such as seen throughout the year. Such a model immediately has application to the simulation of time-dependent processes such as germination or flowering. Furthermore by coupling GRNs to SIBMs and allowing GRN evolution, through network rewiring or duplication, for example, we will be given an insight into how networks evolve as populations expand throughout a landscape, a field that to our knowledge remains largely unexplored. Simulation of movement of gene networks through heterogenous landscapes combined with stochastic evolutionary forces such as gene flow, mutation and genetic drift will allow emergent properties of GRN evolution and phenotypic diversity to be observed. Such observations may be difficult to achieve without a unified simulation model. This way we envision an approach to modeling GRN evolution that incorporates all levels of biological organization.
This work is supported by the Leverhulme Trust F/00 215/BC.


text:
Whoosh is a fast, featureful full-text indexing and searching library implemented in pure Python. Programmers can use it to easily add search functionality to their applications and websites. It has support of Fielded indexing, search, scoring, text analysis, storage, Pluggable scoring algorithm, Powerful query language and spell-checker.https://bitbucket.org/mchaput/whoosh/
|search-engine searchengine full-text-search
|windows linux
Apache Lucene is a high-performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java. It is a technology suitable for nearly any application that requires full-text search, especially cross-platform.search-engine searchengine full-text-search
IndexTank search engine powers search in Reddit, Social bookmarking site. IndexTank is acquired by LinkedIn and released the project as open source. It includes features like Variables boosts, Facets, Faceted search, Snippeting, Custom scoring functions, Suggest, and Autocomplete.search-engine searchengine full-text-search facet distributed linkedin
Solr is the popular, blazing fast open source enterprise search platform from the Apache Lucene project. Its major features include powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, dynamic clustering, database integration, and rich document (e.g., Word, PDF) handling. Solr is highly scalable, providing distributed search and index replication, and it powers the search and navigation features of many of the world's largest internet sites.search-engine searchengine full-text-search facet distributed
Sphinix is free open-source SQL full-text search engine. How do you implement full-text search for that 10+ million row table, keep up with the load, and stay relevant? Sphinx is good at those kinds of riddles.searchengine search-engine full-text-search standalone
Nutch is open source web-search software. It builds on Lucene Java, adding web-specifics, such as a crawler, a link-graph database, parsers for HTML and other document formats, etc.crawler webcrawler searchengine search-engine full-text-search
Katta is a scalable, failure tolerant, distributed, data storage for real time access. Katta serves large, replicated, indices as shards to serve high loads and very large data sets. These indices can be of different type. Currently implementations are available for Lucene and Hadoop mapfiles.searchengine search-engine full-text-search cloud cloud-searchengine
Compass is a real time searchengine. It is built on top of lucene. It is transactional, distributed, supports Spring MVC, integrates with Hibernate.searchengine search-engine distributed
Carrot2 is an Open Source Search Results Clustering Engine. It could cluster the search results from various sources and generates small collection of documents. Carrot2 offers ready-to-use components for fetching search results from various sources including YahooAPI, GoogleAPI, Bing API, eTools Meta Search, Lucene, SOLR, Google Desktop and more.cluster result-cluster searchengine-cluster
ucene.Net is a port of the Lucene search engine library, written in C# and targeted at .NET runtime users. The Lucene search library is based on an inverted index.lucene lucene-port search-engine full-text-search
The Lemur Project develops search engines, browser toolbars, text analysis tools, and data resources that support research and development of information retrieval and text mining software. The project is best known for its Indri search engine, Lemur Toolbar, and ClueWeb09 dataset.searchengine search-engine full-text-search lucene-alternative search information-retrieval
We have large collection of open source products. Follow the tags from
Tag Cloud >>


text:
Dismiss Notice
Welcome To CK5!
Registering is free and easy! Hope to see you on the forums soon.
Score a FREE Membership sticker when you sign up for a Premium Membership and choose the recurring plan.
Anybody near Bishop, CA???
Discussion in 'Pacific Region' started by MTBLAZER89, Jun 21, 2004.


text: On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 04:28:34PM +1100 or thereabouts, Chris Samuel wrote: > On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 02:38 am, jason.depaul at americas.bnpparibas.com wrote: > > OpenPBS server, or do I need to upgrade everything at one time.... > > If you're upgrading to the current release 1.2.x then I think you're going to > be safest making sure there are no jobs running OR QUEUED and then stopping > OpenPBS completely, installing Torque and then restarting it. Another migration question if moving from a torque (torque-1.0.1p6) with the default '--enable-rpp' to the (torque-1.2.0p1) with '--disable-rpp' then what are the potential pitfalls with that. I'm less worried about the torque upgrade itself but changing the protocol would I assume be significant. Should I drain running, queued jobs or both? Can I just upgrade everything and restart everything and will everything be happy? Steve > > cheers, > Chris > -- > Christopher Samuel - (03)9925 4751 - VPAC Systems & Network Admin > Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing http://www.vpac.org/ > Bldg 91, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton South, VIC 3053, Australia > > _______________________________________________ > torqueusers mailing list > torqueusers at supercluster.org > http://supercluster.org/mailman/listinfo/torqueusers -- Steve Traylen s.traylen at rl.ac.uk http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/


text:
The high-profile appointment follows a $635 million recapitalisation of the highly indebted hotel company and will be viewed by many as a signal of the new owners' determination to expand the business.
Goldman Sachs (Asia), York Capital and Varde Capital are in the throes of overhauling the former trust into a pub owner and operator with the imminent purchase of 20-plus pubs from collapsed hotel manager NLG.
Mr O'Hoy bowed out of Foster's four years ago when the merger he oversaw with the wine colossus Southcorp had turned sour and the group was grappling with a series of profit downgrades and cost blowouts.
However, his 33-year stint in the industry is expected to help pitch the revitalised Redcape up against the biggest competitors in the market,
As one source pointed out, Mr O'Hoy knows the pub game "inside out" and will be invaluable in negotiating better deals with the breweries.
A source close to the hedge funds once claimed the rationale behind the Redcape takeover was to transform it into a "third force" in the industry.
However, many think the most likely outcome will be a buyout by the freshly minted Laundy Hotel Group and ALH $500 million joint venture, which is still awaiting the green light from the competition watchdog.
Peter Armstrong, Redcape's managing director, said the company was "very fortunate to have a new chairman with such a high quality and an experienced industry profile".
He claimed his "time at Foster's will be . . . invaluable as we build the Redcape estate based on a sustainable level of debt and a great platform to drive consolidation in the sector".
The pub landlord's acquisition of at least 22 hotel leases from NLG is expected to be concluded within the next three weeks. The Cabramatta Inn and Cedar Tavern are likely to be included in the portfolio.
The Australian Financial Review


text:
Site created 12/15/97.
page added: 6/14/05
The Spin Sheet
DVD reviews by Bill Hunt, editor of
The Digital Bits
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
2-Disc Special Edition
- 2004 (2005) - Touchstone (Criterion)
Film Rating: A
Disc Ratings (Video/Extras): B+/A-
Audio Ratings (DD/DTS): B+/A-
"Son of a bitch, I'm sick of these dolphins..."
Somebody really needs to give Bill Murray an Oscar or a major award or something. The guy at least deserves a leg lamp - he's had a serious career renaissance in the last few years, with restrained, yet brilliantly comedic, turns in such films as
Lost in Translation
. Here, he plays Steve Zissou, a veteran oceanographer, explorer and all-around documentarian. Think an American Jacques Cousteau with a paunch and a droll attitude, and you've nailed it. In fact, nearly every detail of this film would seem to be a tribute, in-joke or reference to Cousteau's films, society and life's work. Actually, forget I said that. Imagine that you hear a BEEP when you see Cousteau's name from now on (you'll get it after you listen to the commentary).
Unfortunately, Steve's on the downslope of both his professional career and his personal life. In an age when people have seemingly lost interest in such amazing endeavors as space travel, Steve's filmed explorations of inner space just aren't the draw they once were. His ship is in dire need of repair, his finances are a mess, his nemesis (Jeff Goldblum) is hogging up all the grant money... even his wife (Anjelica Huston) has soured on him. To make matters worse, his longtime friend and closest colleague, Esteban du Plantier, has just been eaten (to death) by a rare and mysterious Jaguar shark.
Thankfully, things finally begin to look up for Steve when a young man named Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson) appears, claiming to be the son Steve almost never knew he had. Steve's also supported by his loyal, red-capped Team Zissou crew members (and several unpaid University of Alaska interns), led by ever-faithful engineer Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe, in a scene-stealing performance). Better still, Steve's got real motivation to carry on... revenge. He's about to go on an overnight drunk, then set out to find the shark that ate his friend and (hopefully) destroy it. And he'll let nothing stand in his way... least of all bond company stooges, high-seas pirates or disillusioned, pregnant, overly-emotional female reporters (like the one played here by Cate Blanchett). Steve IS, after all, the Zissou.
Directed by Wes Anderson,
The Life Aquatic
is my favorite kind of film - the kind that more often goes for the smart joke rather than the obvious one, that's filled with amusing little details that'll make you smile as much after the twenty-first viewing as after the first, and that's rife with subtle (yet off-kilter) performances. Indeed, it's my opinion that
The Life Aquatic
is Anderson's best film to date, and was certainly one of the best of 2004. It's perfectly cast and everyone hits exactly the right note. The score, much of which consists of Portuguese renditions of classic David Bowie tunes or (alternately) music that sounds as if it was performed on a old Casio, is brilliantly executed. Even the film's underwater footage evokes just the right amount of whimsy, featuring traditional stop-motion animation of almost, but not quite, realistic aquatic creatures.
The film is presented on Criterion's DVD release in very good anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) video quality. Colors are warmly-biased and accurate to the theatrical experience, contrast is excellent and the print is clean as a whistle. There's some haloing that I think is the result of a bit of digital over-compression (there's quite a lot of material on Disc One in addition to just the film itself), but it's very, very nice looking overall. Audio is offered in both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround. The Dolby Digital track is recorded at a louder level than the DTS when you compare them directly, on the fly. Once you increase the volume on the DTS, however, it has the slight edge, with the expected additional measure of clarity and smoothness. Both tracks are quite good, with the score (by ex-DEVO member Mark Mothersbaugh) in particular benefiting from each mix.
Extras on Disc One consist of a very thoughtful audio commentary with Anderson and co-writer Noah Baumbach (actually recorded at the same New York restaurant where the film was written), a set of 9 deleted or alternate scenes (in letterboxed full frame), the film's theatrical trailer (anamorphic) and a
Starz On the Set
promotional featurette. I'd sure love to know why that bit with Klaus on fire was cut from the film. That's a damn funny moment. By the way, for those who appreciate them, there's a funny Easter egg hidden on this disc as well.
Disc Two brings a wealth of additional material, including the excellent (and lengthy)
This Is an Adventure
documentary on the making of the film, a behind-the-scenes video journal (produced by one of the actors who plays an intern in the film), 10 filmed outtakes featuring actor Seu Jorge performing Bowie songs in Portuguese, featurettes on the creation of the animated sea life, the characters of Esteban, Ned and Jane, and the film's costume and production design, a look at the shooting of the film festival reception scene, an interview with Mothersbaugh on the film's music and working with Anderson, the joke
Mondo Monda
interview with Anderson and Baumbach (featuring real life actor/film teacher Antonio Monda, who appeared in the film as the festival host, asking often absurd questions of his guests in Italian), and galleries of production photos and artwork. All of this is wrapped with menus and packaging that feature hand-drawn production art by Eric Anderson (Wes' brother). The liner notes booklet even includes Eric's cutaway drawing of Zissou's ship, the Belafonte. All in all, it's a truly lovely package.
The Life Aquatic
is not a laugh-a-minute comedy and it isn't going to appeal to everyone, but it sure as hell appeals to me. I love everything about it, from start to finish. It's a film that you either "get" almost immediately... or not (if you like Anderson's previous films and you've seen your share of Cousteau documentaries, I think you'll do just fine). In any case, it's worth viewing for Bill Murray's performance alone, which is rife with subtle humor and humanity. The actor is definitely at the top of his game here. If you think it might be your flavor, then by all means do give
The Life Aquatic
a try. You'll certainly get a few good chuckles out of it, and you might even be moved a little before it's through. Highly recommended.
Baa Baa Black Sheep
(a.k.a. The Black Sheep Squadron)
Volume 1
- 1976 (2005) - NBC/Stephen J. Cannell Productions (Universal)
Program Rating: B
Disc Ratings (Video/Audio/Extras): B+/B/D+
Now here's a show from the 1970s that I'm particularly fond of.
Baa Baa Black Sheep
The Black Sheep Squadron
for later syndication) first appeared on NBC in 1976, and ran for two seasons (it's most recently been seen in reruns on The History Channel). The series chronicles the missions of one of the most celebrated Marine fighter squadrons of World War II, the infamous Black Sheep of VMF-214. In fact,
Baa Baa Black Sheep
is loosely based on an autobiography of the same by the squadron's actual commander, Major Greg "Pappy" Boyington, who served as a consultant on the production before his death in 1988. The pilots are portrayed, somewhat inaccurately, as a band of misfits who pulled together under Pappy to become the terrors of the Pacific. Issues of accuracy aside, however, the short-lived series remains a helluva lot of fun, and it's certainly different that most TV fare of the 70s.
In addition to Robert Conrad, who played Boyington, the series is notable for its full roster of supporting players, many (in fact most) of whom would go on to have much larger roles in later, longer-lived series. These include the likes of John Larroquette, James Whitmore Jr., Sharon Gless, Charles Napier, Dana Elcar (who sadly passed away last week) and many others.
Some 37 episodes of the series were created in all, and Universal has collected the first 12 episodes on this 2-disc
Volume One
DVD set (the packaging says 11 episodes, but the first episode,
Flying Misfits
, is a 2-parter). We can reasonably assume that two more, as-yet-unannounced volumes will round out the series on disc later in 2005.
The thing that surprised me most about this set is how good the episodes look on DVD. In fact, they look great. Presented in their original full frame TV aspect ratio, the prints have been carefully handled and transferred for this release. Color and contrast is excellent at all times, and while you'll see the odd bit of dust or dirt now and again, the image is remarkably clean, with only light and appropriate film grain visible. The exception to this is the occasional use of actual combat film or outtake footage from other film productions (mostly in the aerial battle sequences). The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, and while it's nothing dazzling, it's plenty fine. Suffice it to say that the video and audio quality here is significantly better than what you'll recall from the original TV broadcasts.
There's little in the way of extras on this set, but you do get a 7-minute clip of archived NBC interviews with the real Boyington. The first interview features Boyington with actor Robert Conrad on the set of the series, taken from a 1976
Today Show
segment. The other clip is a vintage 1959 film interview with the aviator. One thing that's immediately clear, is that Boyington approved of Conrad's portrayal of him, and the two got along quite well. On future DVD volumes, it would be cool if Universal would try to license the interview clips with the real surviving Black Sheep that often run with the episodes on The History Channel, and maybe include a historical documentary or featurette on the squadron's real exploits. FYI, the two discs included here are dual-sided, and are housed in keep cases that fit into an outer slipcase.
If you're a WWII film buff,
Baa Baa Black Sheep
should be right up your alley. The series was always entertaining and the recreated aerial combat footage, much of it shot using real, vintage Corsair and Zero fighters, is outstanding. If you ARE a fan of the series,
Boyington's autobiography
is a helluva good read. You might also be interested in
Once They Were Eagles: The Men of the Black Sheep Squadron
, which was written by Frank Walton, VHF-214's intelligence officer. The books, and the DVDs, are recommended.
Coach Carter
2004 (2005) - MTV Films/Paramount (Paramount)
Program Rating: B-
Disc Ratings (Video/Audio/Extras): B/C+/C+
Okay... there's only so many variations of the sports movie formula. There's a team or a player that's down and out, and they have to overcome obstacles to reach greatness. The coach becomes a father figure to the players. Usually one of the players has personal difficulties to solve. The team either pulls together and wins it all, or they lose right at the last moment, but actually win in the larger sense, etc. You know the drill. It's The Formula (TM), and it's damn hard to make a sports movie these days that doesn't play like every other example of the genre.
This particular sports film tells the story of Ken Carter (Samuel L. Jackson), a self-made, Black businessman and former prep basketball star, who is offered the coaching job at his old high school. Naturally, his old school isn't what it used to be. It's in the wrong part of town, for one thing, and things have definitely gone downhill since Carter last walked the halls. Never one to resist a challenge, however, Carter decides to take the job. Of course, he quickly realizes that in order to teach the boys how to be winners on the court, he's going to have to teach them how to be winners in life. You can pretty much figure out the rest.
Based On a Real Story (TM),
Coach Carter
is certainly a variation of the expected formula... but the film surprisingly manages to avoid some of the most obvious clichés. And even when it does take the obvious turn, the film is just engaging enough that you're willing to go along for the ride and accept the convention. For example, just as the team begins to build up an impressive record of wins, Carter forfeits some of the season's biggest games because the players are failing in their school work (a move actually made by the real Carter in 1999, which was extremely controversial in his Richmond, CA community). That the film works is mostly the result of another excellent performance by Jackson (solid in almost every role) and a capable supporting cast. Veteran TV director Ken Carter (no relation to the coach) also keeps things moving along nicely, which always helps in a film like this.
Presented on DVD by Paramount,
Coach Carter
looks quite good in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen video, with excellent color fidelity and solid contrast. The main strike against the video is perhaps a little bit too much digital compression artifacting. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is somewhat atmospheric, but otherwise rather unremarkable. The surrounds really only get active during the game footage, and then not as much as I would have expected.
Extras include short featurettes on the real Coach Carter and the filming of the basketball action scenes (both in full frame), 6 deleted scenes (in anamorphic widescreen), the
music video by Twista (featuring Faith Evans) and previews for a bunch of other Paramount films. This disc also features that damned anti-piracy commercial that makes me want to pop this disc in my computer and burn a ROM with DVD-X Copy just so I can watch the film without having to see that damned anti-piracy commercial. I mean, come on guys... it's bad enough that people have to sit through forced previews and warning screens after paying their hard-earned $29. Don't start preaching to your customers as well.
All in all,
Coach Carter
isn't a film you're going to write home about, but it's certainly better than your average sports flick. If you like basketball, the work of actor Samuel L. Jackson or a decent disadvantaged-kids-make-good story, you'll definitely want to add it to your viewing list. There are better examples of this genre, but there are many worse ones too. If nothing else, I think you'll at least be entertained for 130 minutes. And that's not half bad, right?
Danger Mouse
The Complete Seasons 1 & 2
- 1981-82 (2005) - Cosgrove Hall/Thames (A&E)
Program Rating: B
Disc Ratings (Video/Audio/Extras): C-/C+/C-
Oh, crumbs! Ah, carrots!
Danger Mouse
has finally arrived on DVD!
I'm sure most of our U.K. readers will already be familiar with
Danger Mouse
, but the series is much less widely known to viewers here in the States, despite limited runs on Nickelodeon and in general syndication. The animated series follows the adventures of the title character - think of him as a rodent version of 007. D.M. and his hamster sidekick, Penfold, operate out of a secret London base disguised as a post box. They receive their mission orders from the blustery Colonel K (who just so happens to be a walrus). Together, D.M. and Penfold are the world's first, best line of defense against a rogue's gallery of evil-doers, including the likes of Silas Greenback and Stiletto (a toad and a crow, respectively).
Produced by the same team that created the animated
The Wind in the Willows
(1983) and
Count Duckula
Danger Mouse
ran for 10 seasons (or series) in the U.K., from 1981 to 1992, with some 90 episodes produced in all (technically 89 episodes and a pilot). This new 2-disc set from A&E includes the show's complete first two seasons - 17 episodes in all. Disc One contains the first season (eleven 7-minute episodes) plus extras, while Disc Two contains the second season (six 20-minute episodes).
As the series was produced on film, one would expect the quality of the full frame presentation to be very good. Unfortunately, the episodes on this set could have used a bit more re-mastering (both physical and digital). On some of the episodes, the color and contrast is good, but the footage itself looks like it was mastered from an analog videotape, with an overly soft appearance. Other episodes are crisp looking, but seem washed out color-wise. All of the prints used in the original transfers (whenever they might have been done) have significant dust, dirt and scratches. I would hope future seasons are given better treatment, because while this is adequate, the series should look a lot better than it does here. Thankfully, the audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, and is of more than acceptable quality. There's nothing remarkable or active about the mix, but it's always clean and clear.
In terms of extras on the set, you get the series' never-aired pilot episode,
The Mystery of the Lost Chord
, and text biographies of the characters. It isn't much, but the pilot episode in particular is a very welcome offering. For the record, the discs are packaged in a pair of plastic, Amaray-style keep cases that fit together in a cardboard slipcase.
Danger Mouse
is one of those delightful imported gems that's well worth your time, especially if you've missed it thus far. If you're a fan of animation, trust me when I say that it's entertaining, inventive and original. The DVD quality could be a little better, but given the budget-friendly price, it's reasonably deserving of a place in your library.
Bill Hunt
[email protected]
Site designed for 1024 x 768 resolution, using 16M colors and .gif 89a animation.
© 1997-2015 The Digital Bits, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
[email protected]


text:
The images used in Montclair State communications make a powerful impression. It is important to select high-quality images and photographs that reinforce the brand essence of It's all here. When choosing photography, look beyond traditional set-ups to find images with different perspectives, interesting details or unusual angles to impart a sense of motion or energy and to inspire emotion and resonance.
The signature image of It's all here is the single large, action photograph. In some cases the image will be blurred. This imagery is meant to convey movement and change. The richness of saturated color adds excitement and energy. Covers and collateral material often require a combination of motion and still photography. Subjects should exhibit a sense of confidence, drive and/or ambition.
Err on the side of restraint when using photography. One larger, well-cropped photo will create a stronger impact than a series of smaller, overly detailed images that clutter a page and make it difficult for the reader to know where to focus.


text:
This week, two streets in the river town of Quincy, Ill., will become different than all others -- under the surface, that is. The town is testing the option to run a superfast fiber to the home (FTTH) network in an unusual way -- through the wastewater system.
Before committing to full-blown FTTH via the sewer, the 16-square-mile city of 17,000 homes is using this pilot to test whether deployment in this fashion is the right approach, as was announced in mid-September. Fiber-optic cable will be installed in 1,300 feet of sewer on Harrison and S. 46th streets beginning Sept. 21 and concluding Sept. 24. Then the cable will rest there, untouched by the city for 30 days. On Oct. 24, the city will begin evaluating the cables to determine whether this method is a fit for Quincy. This will be the first sewer deployment in the U.S. for i3 America, part of i3 Group Ltd., which has deployed multiple FTTH networks through wastewater systems in the United Kingdom and Australia. The deployment comes at no cost to Quincy.
"We decided, after all the due diligence was done with our legal folks and my council, that we would allow [i3 Group] to come in and test a part of what they do," said Quincy Mayor John Spring. "We're looking forward to it. We're not sure what we'll find out, but they're pretty confident that if it's working in the older part of the world, it should work in the newer part of the world."
Fiber to the Home History
Many current U.S. FTTH networks (in about 85 cities) deployed fiber underground via trenching or other alternatives. Trenching involves digging a three-foot channel in the public right of way, which is not only costly, but also highly disruptive. Then there are alternatives like microtrenching, which while still in the public right of way, requires a smaller duct -- about half an inch wide and less than a foot deep. This method is still disruptive, though less so, and is estimated to cost less than half the cost of traditional trenching, according to OSP Magazine.
On the whole, 16 percent of North American households have FTTH broadband connections, compared to 34 percent in Japan, according to the Fiber to the Home Council. Many of these international locales that offer FTTH -- like Tokyo, Paris and Vienna, to name a few -- are using the sewer approach, which saves money. The reason for that is simple: The wastewater system already exists, so there are no costs to run separate lines for fiber-optic cables.
"From where we have all our active equipment, we actually run out using the sewer system -- or any other existing conduits that are available -- to take that fiber into the immediate neighborhood area," said Alasdair Rettie, technical director at the i3 Group. "And then we'll use traditional or other methods we've devised to actually connect to the homes. We've achieved a solution that reduces cost by 30 to 50 percent."


text:
|Hardcopy (shipping and handling)
|Standard + Redline PDF Bundle
Historical Version(s) - view previous versions of standard
Significance and Use
Site-fabricated stretch systems used as interior finish are evaluated with Test Method E84 to comply with building, fire, or life safety code requirements. This practice describes specimen preparation and mounting procedures for such materials and systems.
The limitations for this procedure are those associated with Test Method E84.
Additional Limitations—This practice does not apply to test systems that cannot be used to produce self-supporting specimens. If the test specimen is not self-supporting, further guidance can be found in the appendix of Test Method E84.
This practice shall not apply to vinyl stretch ceiling materials, which are covered by Practice E2599.
1. Scope
1.1 This practice describes procedures for specimen preparation and mounting when testing a site-fabricated stretch system to assess flame spread and smoke developed as surface-burning characteristics using Test Method E84.
1.2 Testing is conducted with Test Method E84.
1.3 This practice does not provide pass/fail criteria that can be used as a regulatory tool.
1.4 The values stated in inch-pound units are to be regarded as standard. The values given in parentheses are mathematical conversions to SI units that are provided for information only and are not considered standard. See for further details.
1.5 This fire standard cannot be used to provide quantitative measures.
1.6 Fire testing of products and materials is inherently hazardous, and adequate safeguards for personnel and property shall be employed in conducting these tests. Fire testing involves hazardous materials, operations, and equipment. This standard gives instructions on specimen preparation and mounting, but the fire-test-response method is given in Test Method E84. See also Section 10.
1.7 This practice shall not apply to vinyl stretch ceiling materials, which are covered by Practice E2599.
1.8 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.
1.9 The text of this standard references notes and footnotes which provide explanatory material. These notes and footnotes shall not be considered requirements of the standard.
2. Referenced Documents (purchase separately) The documents listed below are referenced within the subject standard but are not provided as part of the standard.
ASTM Standards
E84 Test Method for Surface Burning Characteristics of Building Materials
E176 Terminology of Fire Standards
E2599 Practice for Specimen Preparation and Mounting of Reflective Insulation, Radiant Barrier and Vinyl Stretch Ceiling Materials for Building Applications to Assess Surface Burning Characteristics
ICS Code
ICS Number Code 13.220.40 (Ignitability and burning behaviour of materials and products)
UNSPSC Code
UNSPSC Code
|Link Here
|Link to Active (This link will always route to the current Active version of the standard.)
Citation Format
ASTM E2573-12, Standard Practice for Specimen Preparation and Mounting of Site-Fabricated Stretch Systems to Assess Surface Burning Characteristics, ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA, 2012, www.astm.orgBack to Top


text:
Fred Patacchia Jr. – OAHU, HAWAII
Fourth Place, {{{Honda}}} US Open of Surfing presented by O'Neill
Five years ago, Fred Patacchia Jr. was a puffed-up prizefighter ready to knock out the World Qualifying Series. He had just triumphed at the NSSA Nationals, signed a big, five-year deal with Quiksilver and saw nothing but a golden path straight to the World Championship Tour. Then reality hit. After narrowly missing the cut in his rookie season, Patacchia fell into the 'QS vortex – a fate suffered by many tour hopefuls. "I'll be honest with you," says Patacchia. "The Qualifying Tour is a party tour, and I partook in a lot of that. I was young, there were beautiful girls everywhere… how could I not go out?" The problem was, the nights on the town dulled his competitive edge, and he's been floating in the middle of the pack ever since. Fast forward to 2004. A finals in the Hansen's Pipe Contest jumpstarted his year, followed by a fourth-place finish at the Honda US Open of Surfing in Huntington – his first six-star final since his rookie year. What's the secret to his turnaround and his current seventh-place rating? "It's contract renewal time," he laughs. "This has to be my year to shine." Fred also credits his renewed focus ("I rarely go out when I'm on tour these days") and his boards ("magic Oshiros and Kerry Tokoros"). But more than anything, it's likely just perseverance. Few surfers can jump on the World Qualifying Series and make an impact. For most, they have to be broken down before they can build themselves back up. "I've had my doubts after a few tough losses," he said. "But now I know it's just a matter of time. I belong in the WCT."


text:
Living Things
4th Grade Standards
Harcourt Brace Links (Jones)
Pacing Chart
|Life Science
Endangered Species of California
Cal. Dept. of Fish & Game Endangered Species
What's it like where you live?
There are many different ecosystems on Earth.
Tundra - Frozen ground, few trees, and long, dark, cold winters.
Taiga - cold winters and cool summers with more rain and snowfall than tundra
Grasslands - cold winters and hot summers with more rain and snowfall than taiga. Rich soil.
Prairie http://www.museum.state.il.us/muslink/prairie/htmls/eco.html National Geographic Prairie Habitat Build A Prairie
Mild forest lands - mild winters and hot summers with plenty of rain and snow. Trees lose leaves in winter. National Geographic forest Habitat
Desert - very hot all year with very little rain. Plants and animals are adapted to conserving water. What's it like where you live deserts
Tropical rain forest - hot and rainy all year with poor soil and a variety of plants and animals.
Saltwater shores - many organisms live were the water changes from high tide to low tide. National Geographic Ocean Habitat
Freshwater rivers - Many habitats are along the shore and river bottoms. Freshwater lakes and ponds - many habitats are at the shore, on surface water, and under the water. National Geographic Freshwater Habitats


text: Hi, We have been giving Gracie the biggest Nylabone edible bone to chew on and she will finish one in a day. We like these to help occupy her and keep her from chewing on household items and us. Can everyone chime in on what they are using as chew toys for inside the house. So far the cheapest I can find the Nylabone edibles are around $5.50 so this will add up quick. Any ideas are appreciated. Doug


text:
AMHERST – The premiere event at the Amherst Golf is set to return.
Approximately 140 professional and amateur golfers will hit the fairways at the Amherst Golf Club next week for the Archway Insurance-Tantramar Chevrolet Buick GMC Amherst Open with the pros chasing a purse of up to $5,000 while there are a number of other prizes available for the top amateur finishers.
"It's shaping up to be another very competitive field," Amherst club pro Frank McShane said. "We're expecting up to 140 golfers in total with a strong contingent of professionals from across the region coming to Amherst for several days."
Events actually kick off on Tuesday night with the Carter's Sports Cresting Shootout that will see 30 pro and amateur golfers hit the course for cash and prizes.
By the sixth tee there will only be six remaining with two eliminated on that hole and one each on the remaining three holes until a champion is declared.
Last year, Matt Cormier of Amherst won the top prize.
The Open itself begins early Wednesday and continues through Thursday. McShane said the tournament attracts some of the top golfers from across the region because many of the competitors enjoy the Amherst course.
"The course is very popular among those who come to the Open. It's a fun course to play that has its challenges with the wind and the pin placements," McShane said. "This year we have a group of four golfers coming from Ontario while there is another group coming from Kingswood in Fredericton. We will also have a lot of club members competing including a number of guys who are always in the running for the club championship."
Matt Cormier, who won the 2013 championship recently, is competing along with Mitchell Roy, Mark Gould, Justin Matthews and Travis Davis.
Among the pros coming to the Open are Brian Affleck and Dave Williamson from Pictou County, Tim McCullum from Fredericton, Craig Dale of Truro, Duane MacGregor of P.E.I. and Elliott Isenor, Mike Clarke and Amherst native Jamie MacKay from the Fox Harb'r resort.
Also competing is Kim Adams-Tattrie of Fox Harb'r. She has competed in two U.S. Women's Opens.
McShane will be joined Amherst's other pros, Travis Parrell and Michael Archibald (who won the tournament in 2011) will also be competing.
It's not known if last year's pro champ, Kevin Dugas of Moncton, is competing.
Twitter: @ADNdarrell


text:
Kansas City Southern
Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU) is different from both of our first two railroads in a number of ways.
First off, KSU is a bit smaller, with a market cap of just less than $8 billion, and it brings in roughly $2 billion in revenues. Kansas City Southern also occupies a different part of the country — primarily the central and south central United States, northeastern and central Mexico and the port cities of Lazaro Cardenas, Tampico and Veracruz.
One thing that's not great: KSU's dividend yield stands at a fairly paltry 1.1%. Of course, KSU just started paying a dividend in 2011 — it did not declare any cash dividends on its common stock during the prior five years because of a prohibition of stock payouys in its bank credit agreements. Just some food for thought. However, with the restrictions lifted, KSU can hopefully start to generate increasing dividends.
A cash stash of $105 million and cash flow of just over $600 million should support milder dividend increases — but if history repeats itself, recent large outlays into capital expenditures might cut into the dividend concept.
KSU actually has had a great run, trampling the market with 25% gains in the past year. Profits and revenues continued to grow at a great clip in Q2, and earnings are expected to increase in the high teens for the next couple years — and that's reflected in its somewhat loftier P/E's. So, while the income aspect isn't as solid, this might be the little growth engine that could.
Canadian National Railway
Canadian National Railway (NYSE:CNI) boasts the biggest range of these railways, managing 20,000 miles of rail operations connecting three coasts: the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. It's also the largest as measured by market cap, at $37 billion.
Revenues of $9.5 billion are a bit smaller than CSX and NSC, but CNI also sports a huge $2 billion cash flow, and $354 million in cash on hand, so it also is in nice shape for future growth.
Canadian National really shined in its second-quarter report, growing adjusted earnings by almost 20% to comfortably beat estimates, thanks in part to revenues that grew by 13% — and CNI has been able to consistently put up increases in both these areas for three years. Best of all, the company also upgraded its guidance of adjusted EPS growth, from 10% to 15%.
CNI has gained about 20% in the past year, with new highs being set on a nearly weekly basis. The company's yield isn't spectacular, at 1.7%, but Canadian National at least has been trying to keep up, growing its payout roughly 80% in the past five years.
CNI seems like a winner to me. Consistent growth, increasing dividend — and it trades at a decent 14 times future earnings? Count me in.
Wait a minute! It appears that at the end of the game, I've got myself four railroads.
I guess that makes me bullish on the sector. Just like ol' Cornelius.
Marc Bastow is an Assistant Editor at InvestorPlace.com. As of this writing he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.


text:
Small problems can potentially turn to big ones: a leaky pipe can cause water damage, and one broken air conditioner could lead to the dissolution of the European Union. Prevent the worst-case scenario with this Groupon.
Choose Between Two Options
- $119 for two two-hour handyman-service appointments (a $260 value)
- $219 for four two-hour handyman-service appointments (a $520 value)<p>
Handymen handle small tasks such as pressure washing, window cleaning, lawn care, and blowing leaves off of roofs. They can also tackle more time-intensive tasks, such as cleaning carpets, waxing floors, and repairing or laying down new tile. Though Superb Cleaning Service, Inc. sometimes features a discounted price online, this Groupon still offers the best deal available.
Superb Cleaning Service, Inc.
The experts at Superb Cleaning Service, Inc. have the ability to sweep, scrub, and remodel all the surfaces of the home. Technicians pull dust, dirt, and contaminants out of plush carpets, and they strip and wax hardwood floors to a luminous shine. Aside from these tasks, the handymen take on odd jobs, even emptying garages of junk and 50-year-old college dropouts who are still trying to invent the desktop computer.


text:
- 1/2 cup thoor dhal or yellow split peas (3 1/2 ounces), rinsed in several changes of water
- 3 1/4 cups water
- 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1/4 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
- 1/8 teaspoon asafetida
- 1/4 pound okra, trimmed
- 1 medium boiling potato, peeled and cut into 3/4 -inch dice
- 1 medium tomato, coarsely chopped
- 1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
- 1/4 cup cilantro leaves
- 1 serrano or Thai chile, cut in half lengthwise
- 2 teaspoons ground coriander
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/4 teaspoon tamarind concentrate, dissolved in 1 tablespoon boiling water
- 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon mustard seeds
- 8 curry leaves or 2 bay leaves
- 1 dried red chile
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
In a small saucepan, combine the dhal with 1 1/4 cups of water and 1/8 teaspoon of the turmeric and bring to a boil. Cover and cook over low heat until soft, about 30 minutes (45 minutes for yellow split peas). Partially mash the dhal with a potato masher.
Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil. Add the fenugreek and asafetida and cook over moderately high heat until fragrant and lightly colored, about 1 minute. Add the okra, potato, tomato, onion, cilantro, serrano chile, coriander, salt, cumin, the remaining 1/8 teaspoon of turmeric, dissolved tamarind, cayenne and black pepper along with the remaining 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to moderately low and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 18 minutes. Add the mashed dhal and simmer 10 minutes longer.
In a small skillet, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the mustard seeds, curry leaves and dried red chile. Cover and cook over moderately high heat until the mustard seeds have popped for a few seconds, then stir into the vegetable and dhal mixture. Add the lemon juice and serve.


text:
February 4
Forest Lawn Museum's History Comes Alive series- is an interactive educational program that will feature three of the nation's greatest presidents: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This educational program is free and open to the public Wednesday, Feb. 4 and Thursday, Feb. 5 from 9:30 a.m. and at 11 a.m. For more information, please call (323) 340-4745.
Los Angeles Children's Chorus- Headlines concerts at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts as art of the Center's comprehensive arts education initiative on Wednesday Feb. 4. For additional information on LACC, its auditions or programs, please call (626) 793-4321 or visit www.lachildrenschorus.org.
Burbank Noon Kiwanis- Meets every Wednesday at the Burbank Y.M.C.A. from 12-1:30 pm. Our focus is believing in and helping children, taking pride in our community, reaching out to those in need, and building enduring friendships. Join us for a free lunch and companionship to learn about service through Kiwanis. Contact Harvey Branman at (818) 954-9294 with questions, or to reserve a seat at one of our meetings.
February 6
Griffith Observatory: All Space Considered: Griffith Observatory will hold another exciting All Space Considered free public lecture on Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater. The event is free and open to the public. Seating is first-come, first-served, up to the capacity of the theater. For more information, please visit
www.GriffithObservatory.org or call (213) 473-0800.
"Swing Night," Featuring the John Burroughs High School Jazz Band- Will be held on Friday, Feb. 6 from 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at the Holiday Inn Burbank Media Center. Proceeds will be used to support the Instrumental Music Program. For more information or to order will-call tickets, e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com or call (818) 842-2240.
Shari Beaubien "Journeys of the Heart"- Shari Beaubien is a full-time mixed media artist from So. Cal. Her paintings will brighten the walls of the Creative Arts Center Gallery in Burbank from Friday, Feb. 6 though Wednesday, Feb. 25. During the opening reception, Friday, Feb. 6 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., attendees will have the opportunity to win a beautiful, matted fine art print of one of Shari's paintings. For more information, please call the Gallery at (818) 238-5397.
Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahni- will be performing this Friday at 8 p.m. at the Trinity Lutheran Church in Pasadena. Tickets are $15 and $20 with discounted season tickets available. For further information, call (323) 254-9613 or visit the website http://home.earthlink.net/~labaroque/.
February 7
National Give Kids a Smile Day- There are a couple of events happening in L.A. County as part of the National Give Kids a Smile Day taking place at Children's Dental Center of Greater Los Angeles from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and at Venice Dental Center from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information, visit
Financial Strategies for Successful Retirement- Are you 55-plus and retiring soon? Learn in this six-session seminar how to influence the outcome of your retirement with Investment Advisor Robert Crawford on Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Joslyn Adult Center in Burbank. For more information, please call (888)-HEALING.
Be A Descanso Volunteer- Volunteer orientations for adults (9 a.m.) and teens (10 a.m.) at Descanso Gardens will be held on Saturday. Put your talents to good use and meet new friends; orientations are free. RSVP to Tali Arnold at (818) 949-7978.
February 8
Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahni- will be performing this Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Contrapuntal Performances Recital Hall in Brentwood. Tickets are $15 and $20 with discounted season tickets available. For further information, call (323) 254-9613 or visit the website http://home.earthlink.net/~labaroque/.
February 9
Joslyn Center- The producers of "Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn" are holding a special screening at the Joslyn Center for those 55+ on Monday at 1 p.m. Admission is $1, or free with a BSAC car. Call (818) 238-5353 to reserve a seat.
February 10
Valley University Women- Will meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at the First United Methodist Church of North Hollywood for business and refreshments. At 8 p.m., a program arranged by the Harmony Bridge Group will feature Carl and Elia Lindgron playing South American folk music using harp and other traditional string instruments. The public is invited at no charge. For further information, call (818) 780-5006.
February 12
Valentine's Dance- Dance to music of the 40s, 50s, and 60s with the "Silvertones Trio" at the Joslyn Center for those 55+ on Thursday at 7 p.m. Admission is $6 or $5 with BSAC card.
North Hollywood Library- Celebrate our 16th President's birthday with a screening of the classic biography Abraham Lincoln, starring Walter Huston and directed by D. W. Griffith. Free popcorn. The film will be show on Thursday at 2 p.m. For information, call (818) 766-7185.
Bagel Brigade Seeks Volunteers and Contributions- The Bagel Brigade of Encino B'nai B'rith provides food, blankets, glasses, and much more to needy families and children. Now seeking old cell phones. Call (818) 788-4230 or send donations to 14236 Chandler Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91401.
Titeres Rebeldes (Rebellious Puppets)- Join us in the Bold Caballeros y Noble Bandidas exhibition for monthly in-gallery puppet performances highlighting tales inspired by Mexican Revolution. Then get ready for a puppet-show-related Let's Make History craft activity! Second Saturdays now through May 2009. All shows begin at 12:45 p.m.
Art Adventure at the Getty Center-A one-hour tour for children (ages 5 and up) and adults to enjoy, featuring an activity-filled visit to the galleries. Sign up at the information desk in the Museum Entrance Hall beginning at 1:30pm. Offered in English and Spanish. Every Sat-Sun, 2pm. Museum Galleries, The Getty Center (310) 440-7300 or www.getty.edu. 1200 Getty Center Drive, LA.
Meditation Class- Everyone is welcome for weekly meditation class ($12 per class) at the Actors Group Theater at 4378 Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information, contact Kadampa Meditation Center California at
Lyrical Pianist Travers Huff- Is currently appearing at the Bistro Garden at Ventura Blvd. and Coldwater Canyon in Studio City on Tuesday evenings from 6-8 p.m. with a program of famous motion picture themes. At 8 p.m., Travers is joined by local Jazz saxophonist Benny Golbin for jazz, bop and some funk until 11 p.m. Call (818) 501-0202 for more info.
Overeaters Anonymous- Is food a problem for you? Do you eat when you're not hungry? Do you go on eating binges for no apparent reason? No dues, No fees, No weigh-ins, No diets. We are a fellowship. www.sfvalleyoa.org. (818) 342-2222 or (818) 881-4776.
Commercial Acting for Older Adults- Sponsored by Hollywood Community Adult School. Learn the skills necessary to pursue a second career acting in television commercials. Class meets Thursdays 1:30-3:30 at Hollywood Senior Multipurpose Center, 1360 N. St. Andrews Pl., Hollywood. Registration is free to adults 62+. Call (323) 993-1800 for more information.
Pierce College Farm Market- In Woodland Hills spans over 25 acres as one of the last operating farms in the valley. The market is located on the southeast corner of Victory and De Soto at the Pierce Farm Center. The Pierce Farm Market is open every day from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. For more info, please call (818) 999-6300, or visit www.piercefarmcenter.com, or contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Media Pathfinders Fellowship- Meets the third Sunday of each month in the Chapel at Media City Church, 269 E. Providencia Ave. in Burbank from 6-8 p.m. Each meeting will feature a guest speaker from the Film and Television Industry. If you work in the Entertainment Industry, please join us for prayer, praise and testimonies. For more info, please contact Ted at (818) 427-4155 or Justin at (310) 990-9343, or email firstname.lastname@example.com.
Commercial Acting for Older Adults- Sponsored by North Hollywood Career and Education Center. Learn the skills necessary to pursue a second career acting in television commercials. Class meets Fridays 1-3 p.m. at NH Learning Center, 10952 Whipple St. (near Vineland). Registration is free to adults 62+. Call (818) 763-4377 for more info.
Mobile Pet Adoptions- The First & Third Sunday Each Month- Come early for the best selection. Sponsored by the L.A. Department of Animal Services. 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. at Moorpark Park, corner of Laurel Canyon and Moorpark in Studio City. Call (213) 485-8542 or visit www.laanimalservices.com.
Alzheimer's & Other Dementia Support Group for Caregivers- Meets every fourth Friday of the month at the Joslyn Adult Center, 1301 W. Olive Ave., Burbank. For more info, please call (818) 238-5353.
Salient Saturdays at Café Amsterdam in the NoHo Arts District- Poetry Reading and Open Mike Nights: welcomes all poets, writers, musicians, monologists and actors on the second and third Saturdays of each month at 8 p.m. Admission is $3. 10905 Magnolia Blvd., (across from Ralphs).
Support Your Farmers Market Every Sunday- 9:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. at Riverside Dr. and Sancola (at Wells Fargo Bank) in Toluca Lake. Shop for locally grown, chemical-free fresh fruits and vegetables, bakery goods, flowers, handmade jewelry, and more. New at the market is Cat Daddy Southern-style BBQ for mouthwatering lunch items straight off the grill. Please visit www.cnfmca.com for more information.
Play Bridge at Senior Citizen Center in Sherman Oaks- On Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. We are located at 5040 Van Nuys Blvd. Experienced players, please call Maggie at (818) 906-7545, or Barbara at (818) 784-5037.
The Los Angeles Breakfast Club- Meets 7 – 9 a.m. every Wednesday morning for buffet breakfast, guest speakers, and live entertainment. Complimentary breakfast for first-time attendees. We are located at the Friendship Hall; 3201 Riverside Drive, Los Angeles, a quarter mile south of Los Feliz Blvd. For more info, please call (323) 662-1191.
The Los Angeles Cinema Club- Meeting every fourth Wed. (except Dec.). 7:30 p.m. Little White Chapel Social Hall, 1711 N. Avon in Burbank. The entry is on Jeffries St. just east of Hollywood Way. Call Walt Gilmore at (818) 842-3820.
Seniors & Others with Environmental Interests- Are needed to assist local non-profit organization with enjoyable programs for conservation of energy & resources. Activities will include community outreach, recreational projects & administrative assistance. Call (818) 762-5852.
Do You Like Helping People? Would you like to give back to your community but don't think you have the time? If you can spare 2-3 hours a month, you can help a homebound senior stay independent and out of a nursing home by: giving a senior a ride to the doctor, shop for groceries or friendly visits. The Senior Outreach Department of Providence St. Joseph has opportunities in their Volunteers for Seniors Program. Bring some sunshine into someone's life! Call BJ Valencia at (818) 847-3846 or email email@example.com
Senior Peer FREE Counseling Program- At Providence St. Joseph Medical Center. If you're feeling out of sorts, can't sleep at night, gaining or losing weight, feeling sad and don't know why, feeling more pain than usual, feeling hopeless and helpless… Perhaps you would like to talk to one of our experienced Peer Counselors. Call Carolyn Young, LCSW, to make an appointment at (818) 847-3845, or email email@example.com for more information.
CALENDAR NOTICE: To be considered, send all upcoming events to firstname.lastname@example.com.