text:
The Cavern: down under with cheese fiends
I visited The Cavern's Tricia Bell this morning as she put last-minute touches on her new shop, The Cavern, which officially opens Tuesday, April 9. A combination wine bar, cafe and cheesemonger, The Cavern looks like a fine addition to the downtown food and wine scene.
Located in the same building as the Phillips Lofts (10169-104 Street, 780-455-1336), The Cavern is below street level, as befits the name. Designed by Bell's business partner, Zoeb Dungarwalla, the interior is bright, sleek and inviting, but the brick walls also lend a cozy finish.
Bell, 41, was born in Edmonton, but spent 10 years living in Montreal and has traveled the globe as a volunteer in humanitarian aid. With two degrees from the University of Alberta and one from Concordia in Montreal, Bell has also been a college instructor and has spent many years working as a server in the restaurant industry. Ergo, Bell is the epitome of eclectic.
The shop reflects Bell's wide perspective and combines several different passions – wine, cheese, chocolate and coffee. But the "centrepiece of the business is cheese," she explains.
There are 75 to 80 different cheeses on sale in the retail case and they fall into five categories – fresh goat, bloomy rind, washed rind, semi-firm and firm, and blue-veined. The cheeses come from around the world, with an emphasis on Quebec fare, but there are a few from Alberta as well (including Grizzly Gouda from Sylvan Star, and Pecorino from The Cheesiry).
The shop has been 18 months in the works. Bell studied with renowned American cheese expert, Max McCalman, and with Steve Jones of Portland's Cheese Bar, voted the best cheesemonger in the world in 2011, in order to prepare for the launch. Her devotion to the cheese is apparent in her very choice of words when she discusses cheese.
"Everything is craft here, the cheese are handled well," she explains.
When they arrive after a long journey from other parts of the world, the cheese is thoroughly spoiled.
"It's like triage," laughs Bell. "The cheeses are distressed by travel, so we bring them back to a preferred state. We bathe them with a delicate cheese brush, and they'll fight us like a baby."
Bell is going to need her devotion to this product, as she has set a high bar for the shop. For one thing, it's going to be open a lot – from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Thursday, and Friday and Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., plus Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Depending on the hour of the day, customers can experience a variety of different ways to please their palates. Mornings will see pastries available, as well as Greek yogurt and granola, plus a breakfast sandwich. A daily grilled cheese sandwich (as well as vegetarian and meat-grilled sandwiches) is also on the menu. Cheese and charcuterie boards can be enjoyed with fine wines by the glass, served from an Enomatic system at a variety of prices.
Bell has also teamed with Jacqueline Jacek of Sherwood Park's Jacek Chocolate Couture to come up with cheese and chocolate pairings for dessert. Coffee is supplied by Portland's Coava Coffee Roasters.
I am looking forward to something Bell calls Cinq a Sept – literally, five to seven, or the French equivalent of happy hour. From Monday to Friday during Cinq a Sept, a changing selection of wines by the glass will be dispensed for $7 each. On Mondays and Wednesdays, there will be a Cinq a Sept cheeseboard special, $15 for two people, or $20 for four.
"I'm aiming for high quality and accessibility," says Bell. "Simple food at not-a-high-price."


text: I seem to remember that when I asked quite a while ago people preferred a skipped space between paragraphs, and that's what I try to do, but when there's a lot of dialogue on a page, I've found that page lengths and thus pagination is thrown off, so then I indent paragraphs. But, and this is the question I'd like answered, to my eye, 0.5 seems like a large indentation, so I've been using 0.25 instead. But I've been wondering if that isn't large enough for Braille readers. I should have asked this question before. When an indentation rather than a line space between paragraphs, is necessary is 0.5 preferable to 0.25? Thanks. Cindy __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! http://my.yahoo.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Photos are for members only!!
Peachmate is a 100% free sex site for adults looking for fun with no strings attached.
Escort ads, casual sex groups, personal ads, video chat and much more.
im just horny, i love sex and would like to meet like minded females, my greatest fantasy is a threesome with two females


text:
2012 NISSAN Xterra S Sport Utility 4D
Use the SHIFT key to zoom in.
Use the CTRL key to zoom out.
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2012 NISSAN Xterra S Sport Utility 4D
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text:
Hey guys,
Not sure if you were aware of this or not but the silverstripe.com rss feed is no longer working. Probably just need to update the pointing location of the feedburner feed.
Also I only realised this a little while ago that feedburner has a "health check" feed which you can subscribe to to simply get notified if the feed breaks or is unreachable for any reason. Good little service that wasn't obvious when I signed up.


text:
Topic: Nanoparticle research and testing
Has anyone in the group been following the news regarding nanoparticle technology to treat cancer? A lot has been happening very quickly in this field. Nanospectra Technology has already moved to human trials for head and neck cancer. The link is: http://www.nanospectra.com
Dr. Steven Curley at MD Anderson has completed small animal trials, with great success. He has been curing rabbits and mice of liver cancer! He begins large animal trials in September. He hopes to begin human trials very soon after concluding the large animal trials. The link is:
There is plenty of other research going on. I find this all very exciting, since progress is being made at a rapid pace (well, comparatively rapid for the field of medicine).
Anyone else have thoughts or news on this topic? Please share!
Violarob in Texas


text:
A new statewide fee for hundreds of thousands of homeowners for brushfire prevention efforts is generating a lot of controversy.
It affects more than 800,000 homeowners statewide, and tens of thousands in Ventura, and Santa Barbara Counties.
The Ventura County Fire Department is on the record as opposing the fee. Now, Santa Barbara County is taking a stand against it.
KCLU's Lance Orozco reports County Supervisors are acting after looking at the issue yesterday.
Click on link to listen to/download story: SB County SRA Fees Debate


text:
This recipe is nice served with either rice or an Indian bread such as rotis (chapatis) or puris. You may also want to add on a dish of dal (lentils) or chickpeas (channa).
Ideas for substitution/modifications:
- I you don't have the equipment to puree the ginger/chili mixture, you can finely chop the ginger and chili(s). Or leave the chili(s) whole, but remember not to eat them!
- For the canned tomatoes, you can substitute an equivalent amount of fresh ones OR 2 T tomato paste mixed in 1/2 cup water.
- If you don't like spicy food, use just 1/2 a green pepper.
Page last updated: 2/17/09
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text:
ST. PAUL, Minn., May 14, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GovDelivery, the leading provider of government-to-citizen communications solutions, announces availability of its first comprehensive guide to best practices for digital communications, highlighting the critical role of email within an integrated communications strategy. Titled "Public Sector Digital Communication Management Best Practices: The Critical Role of Email," the guide shares proven best practices for the most effective use of email, based on results from more than 500 government organizations, including many of the largest in the world.
The guide provides government organizations with a framework and specific steps for realizing value through digital communications in order to have a significant impact on a public sector organization's ability to achieve its mission. It focuses on the central role of email, because, while all digital channels can play a role in improving communication, email is the foundation of digital outreach. A report published by the Pew internet and American Life Project indicated that 92% of adult online users use email, and numerous studies show that email is the central hub of online communication for many internet users.
Digital communication channels create new ways to address the chronic challenge of improving communication with the public while meeting higher expectations and new complexities. This guide helps agencies improve and simplify communications and is organized around three main principles: effectiveness, efficiency and engagement. It uses real case studies to detail specific strategies and tactics that can be implemented immediately to maximize direct connections with citizens and other stakeholders.
"The public's expectations and access to information from all levels of government has radically changed how government needs to communicate," said Scott Burns, CEO and co-founder of GovDelivery. "A range of media outlets and traditional outreach channels have been replaced by a complex mix of digital channels ranging from email to social media. We're excited to leverage our experience working with more than 500 federal, state, local and international governments over the last decade to help government communicators make the best use of email and all digital communications channels to drive mission-critical results. GovDelivery estimates that agencies following these best practices can increase their digital outreach by 100% to 500% or more within 24 months."
For more detailed tips and strategies, download the full guide at http://bit.ly/GDemail_PR.
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BGS has been a very reliable partner to Small Planet Airlines in field of ground handling and fuelling for already many years.
BGS team has proved themselves as professionals devoted to aviation world.
We can only praise BGS and their staff for a well, efficient and safe service being provided.
On the administrative side, the BGS team is usually pretty responsive to customer inquiries.


text:
The United States needs to build things the way it used to.
It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building (381 meters tall); four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took two years; the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days it takes longer to build an overpass.
Burj Khalifa known as Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the tallest man-made structure ever built, at 828 m (2,717 ft). Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009 (just over 5 years). The building officially opened on 4 January 2010, and is part of the new 490-acre flagship development called Downtown Dubai at the 'First Interchange' along Sheikh Zayed Road, near Dubai's main business district.
Taipei 101 is 509 meters tall and was also built in 5 years (1999-2004)
The World Trade center towers took 6-7 years to complete.
1 World Trade Center (Freedom Tower) broke ground in 2006 and has a target completion of 2013 However, it took 5 years to start rebuilding.
If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator, or Reddit, or StumbleUpon. Thanks
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text:
Research May 2013 | Volume 121 | Issue 5
Prenatal Exposure to the Pesticide DDT and Hypertension Diagnosed in Women before Age 50: A Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study
Michele La Merrill,1,2,3 Piera M. Cirillo,4 Mary Beth Terry,5 Nickilou Y. Krigbaum,4 Julie D. Flom,5 and Barbara A. Cohn4
Background: Elevated levels of the pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) have been positively associated with blood pressure and hypertension in studies among adults. Accumulating epidemiologic and toxicologic evidence suggests that hypertension during adulthood may also be affected by earlier life and possibly the prenatal environment.
Objectives: We assessed whether prenatal exposure to the pesticide DDT increases risk of adult hypertension.
Methods: We examined concentrations of DDT (p,p´- and o,p´-) and its metabolite p,p´-DDE (dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene) in prenatal serum samples from a subset of women (n = 527) who had participated in the prospective Child Health and Development Studies birth cohort in the San Francisco Bay area while they were pregnant between 1959 and 1967. We surveyed daughters 39–47 years of age by telephone interview from 2005 to 2008 to obtain information on self-reported physician-diagnosed hypertension and use of hypertensive medication. We used multivariable regression analysis of time to hypertension based on the Cox proportional hazards model to estimate relative rates for the association between prenatal DDT exposures and hypertension treated with medication in adulthood, with adjustment for potential confounding by maternal, early-life, and adult exposures.
Results: Prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure was associated with hypertension [adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) = 3.6; 95% CI: 1.8, 7.2 and aHR = 2.5; 95% CI: 1.2, 5.3 for middle and high tertiles of p,p´-DDT relative to the lowest tertile, respectively]. These associations between p,p´-DDT and hypertension were robust to adjustment for independent hypertension risk factors as well as sensitivity analyses.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that the association between DDT exposure and hypertension may have its origins early in development.
Citation: La Merrill M, Cirillo PM, Terry MB, Krigbaum NY, Flom JD, Cohn BA. 2013. Prenatal Exposure to the Pesticide DDT and Hypertension Diagnosed in Women before Age 50: A Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study. Environ Health Perspect 121:594–599; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1205921
Address correspondence to M. La Merrill, University of California, Davis, One Shields Ave., CB69, Davis, CA 95616-5270 USA. Telephone (530) 754-7254. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
This research was supported through funding by the National Institutes of Health (R01ES013736-01A1, K99ES019919-01, R01CA104842-03, K07CA090685-06, and HHSN275201100020C).
The authors declare they have no actual or potential competing financial interests.
Received: 22 August 2012
Accepted: 7 March 2013
Advance Publication: 12 March 2013
Final Publication: 1 May 2013
Hypertension is a costly and debilitating health problem in countries worldwide, and the prevalence of hypertension is rising. Population prevalence rates of > 20% have been reported in the United States, Venezuela, South Africa, and Lebanon, and rates of close to 50% have been reported in Germany and Spain (Arnaout et al. 2011; Hernandez-Hernandez et al. 2000). Increases in the prevalence of hypertension are generally attributed to changes in the prevalence of known preventable risk factors and to demographic shifts in populations. There is growing evidence that chemical exposures may also be associated with hypertension. For example, in a cohort study of pesticide applicators occupationally exposed to dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), mean serum levels of DDT and its metabolite dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) were significantly higher in persons who subsequently developed hypertension than in those who were normotensive (Morgan et al. 1980). More recently, the concentration of p,p´-DDT in breast milk was associated with increased maternal systolic blood pressure (Siddiqui et al. 2002). Despite the ubiquity of DDT and DDE in human tissues due to malaria prevention and environmental contamination, the possible contribution of these exposures to the global spread of hypertension has not been quantified.
There is extensive evidence that the environment during early development influences the risk of adult hypertension. In humans, low birth weight is associated with increased prevalence of adult hypertension (Barker et al. 1990; Leon et al. 1996). In animals, prenatal exposure to undernutrition, high-fat diet/adiposity, and glucocorticoids have all been associated with increased hypertension in offspring (Alwasel and Ashton 2009; Armitage et al. 2005; Gwathmey et al. 2011). These findings gave rise to the developmental origins of health and disease model, where "causes to be identified are linked to normal variations in fetoplacental and infant development" (Barker 2012).
Our a priori hypothesis was that prenatal exposure to DDT increases the risk of hypertension in adult life. We estimated the association between adult hypertension and prenatal DDT exposure in a prospective multiyear birth cohort study of women in the San Francisco Bay area, California, followed longitudinally from the prenatal period into their fifth decade (mean follow-up, 43.7 years).
Population. The Child Health and Development Studies (CHDS) is a pregnancy cohort designed to examine the association between prenatal exposures and health and development over the life course for parents and children. The CHDS recruited women residing in the Oakland, California, area who were members of the Kaiser Permanente Foundation Health Plan and who sought obstetric care for pregnancies between 1959 and 1967 (van den Berg et al. 1988). CHDS participants gave oral informed consent for an in-person interview and collection of blood specimens at the first prenatal visit, in each trimester, and shortly after delivery (usually within 1–3 days), and gave permission for access to their own medical records and also their children's medical records.
The present study of prenatal DDT exposure and adult hypertension used data collected for a cohort study of early-life predictors of breast density that was nested within the CHDS cohort. In 2005, two groups of adult daughters of CHDS participants were recruited for the breast density study: a) those who had at least one sister enrolled in the CHDS (to facilitate control of family-level confounders such as socioeconomic status), and b) those who had a birth weight greater than the 90th percentile (> 3,835 g) for live-born, singleton female births in the CHDS cohort (to facilitate an analysis of the association between high birth weight and breast density) (Terry et al. 2011). Additional eligibility requirements were available data on birth length and weight, at least one same-day childhood height and weight measure between 6 months and 5.5 years of age, maternal interview data, and prenatal serum. The breast density study was conducted with daughters' informed consent at the time of their telephone interview and was approved by the institutional review boards of Columbia University and the Public Health Institute; the latter also oversees the continuing research based on the original families in the study and their now adult offspring. Mount Sinai School of Medicine deemed the present study not human subjects research. This study is in compliance with all federal guidelines governing studies of human participants.
Variables. At the CHDS baseline, each mother was interviewed in person to determine her race/ethnicity, parity, age at the time of pregnancy, date of last menstruation, prepregnancy body mass index (BMI), country of birth, and educational attainment. BMI at the first prenatal visit and gestational weight gain over the course of pregnancy were determined from maternal medical records. Maternal medical records were further examined to identify maternal physician-coded diabetes and preeclampsia, as well as daughters' birth weight. We determined gestational age from mother's report of last menstrual period and medical record report of infant's date of birth. We evaluated daughters' birth weight as a continuous variable and categorized as low (< 2,500 g) or normal according to the World Health Organization definition (Blanc and Wardlaw 2005).
We obtained data from adult daughters during telephone interviews conducted in 2005–2008 (Terry et al. 2011). Daughters reported their diabetes status, weight, height, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, annual household income, age, and menopausal status. Diabetes status was defined as a doctor ever or never telling a participant she had diabetes. Annual household income included salaries and all other sources. Participants were deemed premenopausal if they had a menstrual period within the preceding 12 months, perimenopausal if they had 60 days of amenorrhea of the preceding 12 months or between 2 and < 12 months passed since their last menstrual period, and postmenopausal if they either reported surgical menopause or had their last menstrual period > 365 days before interview. We calculated the BMI (kilograms per meter squared) of daughters from their height and weight. For the primary analysis, we classified hypertension based on self-report of physician-diagnosed hypertension plus use of antihypertensive medication in response to the question "How old were you when you were first diagnosed with high blood pressure or hypertension?" Age of hypertension diagnosis was a self-reported response to the question "How old were you when you were first diagnosed with high blood pressure or hypertension?"
Laboratory assays. DDT-related compounds (p,p´-DDT, o,p´-DDT, p,p´-DDE; collectively herein DDTs) were solid phase extracted from one maternal sample collected during either during the third trimester or within 1–3 days of delivery between 1959 and 1967 (Brock et al. 1996; Cohn et al. 2003; Gammon et al. 2002). There is a high degree of correlation between organochlorine chemicals levels in samples collected across prenatal and neonatal periods within a woman (Longnecker et al. 1999). Maternal sera triglycerides and total cholesterol were analyzed enzymatically as described in prior publications (Cohn et al. 2007, 2010).
Statistical analyses. We categorized DDTs into tertiles for analyses, with tertile boundaries of 6.97 and 11.9 µg/L for p,p´-DDT, 0.24 and 0.51 µg/L for o,p´-DDT, and 37 and 54 µg/L for p,p´-DDE. We conducted bivariate analyses to examine associations between p,p´-DDT exposure and possible confounders while accounting for the possible dependence between siblings in the analysis sample, using multinomial generalized linear models for categorical factors (PROC GENMOD, PROC FREQ, SAS version 9.2; all programs from SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC) and generalized linear models for continuous factors (PROC MIXED). Life table curves for time to medicated hypertension onset by p,p´-DDT tertile were drawn using the unadjusted data (PROC LIFETEST).
We estimated associations [hazard ratios (HRs)] between tertiles of prenatal DDTs and daughters' hypertension with multivariable regression analysis of time to self-reported hypertension diagnosis based on the Cox proportional hazards model using robust variance estimation to account for the correlated nature of siblings (PROC PHREG). Participants who did not report age at hypertension diagnosis were censored at their age at interview. Our model selection strategy was designed to address a single research question: Is there evidence of an association between prenatal exposure to DDTs and hypertension?
First we estimated unadjusted HR for medicated hypertension among women in the second and third tertiles of each DDT compound (p,p´-DDT, o,p´-DDT and p,p´-DDE) compared with the lowest tertile (model 1). Additionally, we constructed three multivariable models adjusted for maternal factors (model 2), adult risk factors (model 3), and the combination of these factors (model 4) (Lucas et al. 1999). For model 2 we considered potential confounding by maternal race/ethnicity, age, parity, country of birth, BMI, triglycerides, total cholesterol, preeclampsia, and gestational weight gain. The final model was adjusted for maternal race/ethnicity (African American vs. all other races, or Hispanic) only, using a 10% change in the point estimates for DDTs as the criterion for retaining potential confounders in the model (Maldonado and Greenland 1993). For model 3 we considered daughters' race/ethnicity (African American vs. all other races, or Hispanic), age at interview, menopausal status (pre-, peri-, or postmenopausal), BMI (continuous), and diabetes status (ever or never) as potential confounders, and retained BMI, diabetes, menopausal status, and race/ethnicity using p < 0.05 for the association between the covariate and hypertension as the criterion for retention. Last, we examined a multivariable model 4, combining early-life confounding (model 2) and contemporary risk factors (model 3).
Because p,p´-DDT has been associated with birth weight and decreased birth weight is associated with increased risk of hypertension, we examined whether birth weight mediated our observed association between prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure and adult hypertension (Leon et al. 1996; Lopez-Espinosa et al. 2011). We considered birth weight a mediator of the p,p´-DDT exposure if it reduced the p,p´-DDT effect size. In addition, to assess whether BMI modified the association between hypertension and p,p´-DDT exposure, we examined multiplicative interaction between prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure and either maternal or daughter overweight and obesity (BMI > 25) (La Merrill and Birnbaum 2011).
We conducted sensitivity analyses of alternative DDT exposure variables dichotomized at the median or categorized into quartiles, and ran models that were mutually adjusted for all DDTs in addition to separate models of each. As evidenced from the unadjusted data in Figure 1, there was a nonlinear relationship between p,p´-DDT and medicated hypertension. We considered categorizing DDTs by the median, tertiles, and quartiles before multivariable analyses. Although all categories produced similar results, we grouped DDTs into tertiles to facilitate development of target exposure thresholds in public health practices while maintaining analytical power. We also estimated associations with all cases of self-reported hypertension, in addition to primary analyses of cases restricted to women who reported use of antihypertensive medications. Our a priori expectation was that the effect of p,p´-DDT exposure on hypertension risk would be strengthened in hypertension severe enough to warrant medication use because it is biologically plausible. To investigate whether oversampling high-birth-weight daughters influenced associations, we also modeled data after excluding the oversampled daughters with birth weight > 3,835 g. To investigate whether sibship influenced results, we also compared associations in the full sample with associations in all nonsisters plus a) the oldest sister from each sibling set or b) the second-born sister from each sibling set.
Figure 1 – Unadjusted probability of being outcome-free as a function of prenatal p,p´-DDT tertile (n = 527 women). Outcome-free is defined by self- report of not having been treated for hypertension and censored at age at interview, whereas the outcome is defined by self-reported age at diagnosis of medicated hypertension.
The CHDS recruited 15,528 mothers who received obstetric care through the Oakland, California, Kaiser Foundation Hospital for 20,754 pregnancies between 1959 and 1967. More than 90% of those eligible participated in the CHDS. From 2005 through 2008, 80% of the 1,526 daughters who were eligible for the breast density study were successfully traced, and 85% of traced daughters participated. Of the 527 women for whom DDTs, hypertension status, diabetes status, and BMI data were available, 156 were part of the high-birth-weight oversample, 70 were nonsisters, 301 were sisters (140 sets of pairs and 7 sets of "threes"), and 70 reported taking antihypertensive medication due to physician-diagnosed hypertension at the time of interview. Table 1 shows the distributions of potential confounders according to p,p´-DDT tertiles in the study population. Proportionally more African-American women were in the highest tertile of prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure than other women. Mothers' age at birth and daughters' age at interview were highest among women in the highest p,p´-DDT tertile.
Table 1 – Distribution of maternal, early-life, and adult characteristics by prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure tertiles in 527 women of the CHDS [n (%) or LSM (95% CI)].
The unadjusted risk of medicated hypertension was increased substantially among women with prenatal p,p´-DDT in the highest two tertiles of the study population (Figure 1). There were fewer cases of medicated hypertension among women in the lowest tertile of prenatal exposure to each of the DDTs compared with their respective higher tertiles (Table 2). The unadjusted prevalence of medicated hypertension which arose in women < 35 years old was 4.0% among women with prenatal p,p´-DDT in the highest two tertiles of the study population and only 0.6% in the lowest tertile. When we adjusted for confounding by maternal race/ethnicity in model 2, adjusted hazard ratios (aHR) for the middle and highest tertiles of prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure compared with the lowest tertile were 3.6 (95% CI: 1.8, 7.2) and 2.5 (95% CI: 1.2, 5.3), respectively. Consistent with expectations, medicated hypertension was associated with known risk factors including daughters' race/ethnicity, menopausal status, BMI, diabetes, and age (data not shown), but only race/ethnicity, menopausal status, BMI, and diabetes were retained in the final model 3 based on p-values < 0.05, and associations based on this model were similar to those from model 2. Although both the model of early-life confounding (model 2) and the model of contemporary risk factors that predicted daughter's hypertension (model 3) were both included in model 4 (mothers' race/ethnicity, daughters' race/ethnicity, menopausal status, BMI, and diabetes), only the covariables from model 3 remained significant, and the p,p´-DDT effect size remained comparable (Table 2). The other DDTs—o,p´-DDT and p,p´-DDE—were not significantly associated with medicated hypertension in any of the models (Table 2).
Table 2 – Hazard ratios (HRs) of the association between prenatal DDTs and daughters' medicated hypertension.
Birth weight as a continuous measure was not significantly associated with medicated hypertension (model 3 aHR = 1.00; 95% CI: 0.99, 1.00), but low birth weight (< 2,500 g vs. ≥ 2,500 g) was (aHR = 3.3; 95% CI: 1.1, 9.9). However, associations between the second and third tertiles of p,p´-DDT and hypertension increased when adjusted for low birth weight (model 2 aHR = 4.0; 95% CI: 1.9, 8.2 and aHR = 2.9; 95% CI: 1.3, 6.2, respectively, and model 3 aHR = 4.0; 95% CI: 2.0, 8.0 and aHR = 2.8; 95% CI: 1.4, 5.9, respectively). There was also no significant interaction of either maternal (p = 0.6 for both tertiles 2 and 3) or daughter BMI (p = 0.8 and 0.9 for tertiles 2 and 3, respectively) on the association between prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure and medicated hypertension (model 3, data not shown).
We conducted secondary data analyses of alternative exposure classifications. Model 1 HRs for the association between prenatal p,p´-DDT and medicated hypertension were 1.9 (95% CI: 1.2, 3.1) for p,p´-DDT above the median of 9.00 ng p,p´-DDT/mL serum; compared with the lowest quartile of exposure, the HR for the second (6–9 ng p,p´-DDT/mL serum), third (9–13.39 ng p,p´-DDT/mL), and fourth quartiles (≥ 13.59 ng p,p´-DDT/mL) were 3.0 (95% CI: 1.1, 8.0), 4.5 (95% CI: 1.8, 11.6), and 3.2 (95% CI: 1.2, 8.7), respectively. Further, associations between p,p´-DDT and medicated hypertension based on a model mutually adjusted for all three DDTs (without other covariates) were similar to those based on model 1 (tertile 2 HR = 3.5; 95% CI: 1.7, 7.2 and tertile 3 HR = 2.6; 95% CI: 1.1, 6.1).
Associations with prenatal p,p´-DDT and hypertension were weaker when the case definition included all women with a self-reported diagnosis of hypertension (n = 111) (model 3 aHR = 2.1; 95% CI: 1.3, 3.5 and aHR = 1.5; 95% CI: 0.9, 2.7 for tertiles 2 and 3 relative to tertile 1, respectively) compared with associations with cases limited to women who reported using antihypertensive medication only (n = 70, Table 2). HRs increased when the oversampled daughters with birth weight > 3,835 g were excluded (model 3 aHR = 4.2; 95% CI: 1.9, 9.3 and 2.8; 95% CI: 1.2 to 6.9, respectively, n = 345). Last, the unadjusted association of prenatal p,p´-DDT with medicated hypertension was similar when the sample was restricted to nonsisters plus either the oldest (tertile 2 HR = 2.5; 95% CI: 1.1, 5.5 and tertile 3 HR = 2.4; 95% CI: 1.1, 5.3, n = 61 hypertensives) or second-born (tertile 2 HR = 2.6; 95% CI: 1.2, 5.9 and tertile 3 HR = 2.7; 95% CI: 1.2, 6.1, n = 52 hypertensives) sister per sibship (n = 380 total).
Summary of principal findings. We observed a positive association between prenatal p,p´-DDT and self-reported hypertension treated with medication in adult women that was robust to different modeling assumptions and adjustment for several known risk factors. Further, analyses of interactions between BMI and DDT were consistent with multiplicative joint effects.
Comparison with other studies. Although we know of no other studies that have examined the association between prenatal DDTs and offspring hypertension, blood pressure has been positively correlated with DDTs in the blood of pesticide workers in several studies (Morgan et al. 1980; Richardson et al. 1975; Sandifer et al. 1972). For instance, DDT was positively correlated with systolic blood pressure in a case–control study of South Carolina pesticide workers (Richardson et al. 1975). In another study of 120 occupationally exposed workers and 120 controls, systolic and diastolic pressures were positively correlated with DDT and DDE in plasma (Sandifer et al. 1972). In the largest occupational cohort study of the association between DDT and hypertension (n = 2,597), in which all participants were hypertension-free at baseline, the mean sum of serum DDTs was significantly higher in those who developed hypertension 4–6 years later compared with those who did not (Morgan et al. 1980). We know of only one previous study that assessed DDT congeners and blood pressure. Similar to associations observed here, the breast milk concentration of p,p´-DDT, but not of o,p´-DDT or of p,p´-DDE, was associated with increased maternal systolic blood pressure in Indian women who were admitted to a department of obstetrics and gynecology (Siddiqui et al. 2002), which together with our findings suggests that the structure of DDT congeners may influence their effects on blood pressure (Chaturvedi et al. 2010). Although our estimated association of hypertension with p,p´-DDT was consistently stronger for the second tertile than for the third, the lack of significance of this trend in our study is aligned with the linear trend in p,p´-DDT and systolic blood pressure that Siddiqui et al. observed.
Potential biological mechanisms. Experimental evidence suggests that DDTs can act on several arms of the renin angiotensin system (RAS) to possibly increase risk of hypertension. Gascon and Brodeur (1969) showed that angiotensin failed to contract guinea pig seminal vesicles ex vivo unless pre-treated with DDT. More recent studies have shown that Na-K-ATPase (sodium potassium adenosine triphosphatase) activity is reduced in prenatally programmed hypertensive rats (Alwasel and Ashton 2009; Armitage et al. 2005), and in parallel DDTs suppressed renal Na-K-ATPase in rainbow trout and bluegill fish (Campbell et al. 1974; Cutkomp et al. 1971; Davis et al. 1972). This body of experimental research together with our results suggest that future experimental studies should determine whether prenatal DDT exposure increases risk of hypertension in adult offspring.
Strengths and weaknesses. The CHDS is a prospective birth cohort with clear temporal separation between exposure and outcome. The CHDS pregnancies occurred near the peak of DDT use in the United States, allowing us to observe a large range of prenatal exposure. Further strengths of the study include clinical records of events during pregnancy, and quantitative assessment of prenatal DDTs from maternal sera.
The primary potential limitation of the study is the self-reported health status of the adult daughters. We conducted secondary data analyses to address this limitation. We expected that if prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure was a contributing cause of hypertension, prenatal p,p´-DDT effects would be more pronounced in more severe cases of hypertension. Indeed, we estimated stronger associations between prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure and self-reported hypertension treated with antihypertensive medication than associations with all cases of self-reported hypertension. Misclassification of covariables that were self-reported, such as daughters' adult weight and height, used to calculate daughters' BMI, could also be a potential limitation of this study. Although we were unable to internally validate self-reported BMI in the present study, comparisons of maternal and daughter adult weight, height, and BMI showed expected increases among daughters compared to the mothers' generation for all three measures (data not shown), similar to secular trends observed nationwide (Nooyens et al. 2009; Reither et al. 2009). However, oversampling high-birth-weight daughters might have resulted in a selection bias that reduced the strength of the association between prenatal p,p´-DDT and adult hypertension.
Because DDTs were not measured during the life of the daughters and pharmacokinetic modeling has not been attempted, we cannot rule out the possibility that exposure after birth contributed to the association between prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure and adult hypertension. Although maternal exposure to DDTs during both gestation and lactation has been positively associated with fetal and neonatal DDTs in animals (Woolley and Talens 1971; You et al. 1999) and in human cord blood (Dorea et al. 2001), lactational p,p´-DDT exposure was uncommon for most CHDS daughters because of their 34% breastfeeding prevalence, which occurred for < 4 months duration in 60% of those who breastfed (Cohn et al. 2012). Thus our findings likely pertain to in utero exposure to p,p´-DDT in the majority of CHDS daughters, rather than lactational exposure.
Public health implications. DDTs remain an important environmental exposure. Each year, malaria affects 225 million people worldwide, and 781,000 infected people, mostly children, die (Agnandji et al. 2011). The World Health Organization recommends the use of DDT for indoor malarial vector control (Eskenazi et al. 2009). The mean serum 15.9 µg p,p´-DDT/L observed in children living in areas where DDT is used lies within the highest tertile of p,p´-DDT in this population (Herrera-Portugal et al. 2005). The present study suggests that people living in DDT-sprayed areas may have increased risk of hypertension due to their prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure. This adds to the existing literature suggesting that adult DDT exposure contributes to hypertension (Morgan et al. 1980). Because the distribution of malaria vectors may expand with climate change (Confalonieri et al. 2007; Rogers and Randolph 2000), climate change hazard assessment may benefit from inclusion of DDT toxicities, including further evaluation of DDT effects on hypertension.
Further, the persistence of DDTs coupled with climate dynamics suggests that people worldwide will continue to be exposed to DDTs that are already in the environment. DDT and its metabolite DDE have half-lives of about 4 and 10 years in people, respectively (Longnecker 2005). Due to their semivolatility, DDTs are found far beyond malaria-infested regions. For example, melting glaciers contributed 46% of the DDTs entering the Canadian Archipelago, and > 60% of the DDTs entering Canadian subalpine lakes (Blais et al. 2001; Macdonald et al. 2005). These environmental sources of DDTs bioaccumulate up the Arctic food chain such that intake of DDTs by Inuit people is comparable to the intake of DDTs by the general population in tropical regions with endemic malaria (Ritter et al. 2011).
To our knowledge, our study is the first to suggest that hypertension in adult women may be increased as a consequence of early-life exposure to p,p´-DDT. Womb-to-adult studies of hypertension in humans are expensive and require long follow-up, thus making studies such as ours incredibly rare. Nevertheless, examining a larger study sample for an association between prenatal p,p´-DDT exposure and adult hypertension would be informative, and ongoing data collection in the CHDS cohort will provide this opportunity. Additional critical future research directions would focus on replicating our findings experimentally to evaluate potential hypertensive effects of p,p´-DDT exposure at different life stages, and on examining potential mechanisms of p,p´-DDT induced hypertension, including effects through the RAS.
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Cohn BA, Cirillo PM, Wolff MS, Schwingl PJ, Cohen RD, Sholtz RI, et al. 2003. DDT and DDE exposure in mothers and time to pregnancy in daughters. Lancet 361:2205–2206.
Cohn BA, Terry MB, Plumb M, Cirillo PM. 2012. Exposure to polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners measured shortly after giving birth and subsequent risk of maternal breast cancer before age 50. Breast Cancer Res Treat 136:267–275.
Cohn BA, Wolff MS, Cirillo PM, Sholtz RI. 2007. DDT and breast cancer in young women: new data on the significance of age at exposure. Environ Health Perspect 115:1406–1414.
Confalonieri U, Menne B, Akhtar R, Ebi KL, Hauengue M, Kovats RS, et al. 2007. Human health. In: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Parry ML, Canziani OF, Palutikof JP, van der Linden PJ, Hanson CE, eds). Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press, 391–431.
Cutkomp LK, Yap HH, Cheng EY, Koch RB. 1971. ATPase activity in fish tissue homogenates and inhibitory effects of DDT and related compounds. Chem Biol Interact 3:439–447.
Davis PW, Friedhoff JM, Wedemeyer GA. 1972. Organochlorine insecticide, herbicide and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) inhibition of NaK-ATPase in rainbow trout. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 8:69–72.
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Eskenazi B, Chevrier J, Rosas LG, Anderson HA, Bornman MS, Bouwman H, et al. 2009. The Pine River Statement: human health consequences of DDT use. Environ Health Perspect 117:1359–1367.
Gammon MD, Wolff MS, Neugut AI, Eng SM, Teitelbaum SL, Britton JA, et al. 2002. Environmental toxins and breast cancer on Long Island. II. Organochlorine compound levels in blood. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 11:686–697.
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Morgan DP, Lin LI, Saikaly HH. 1980. Morbidity and mortality in workers occupationally exposed to pesticides. Arch Environ Contam Toxicol 9:349–382.
Nooyens AC, Visscher TL, Verschuren WM, Schuit AJ, Boshuizen HC, van Mechelen W, et al. 2009. Age, period and cohort effects on body weight and body mass index in adults: the Doetinchem Cohort Study. Public Health Nutr 12:862–870.
Reither EN, Hauser RM, Yang Y. 2009. Do birth cohorts matter? Age-period-cohort analyses of the obesity epidemic in the United States. Soc Sci Med 69:1439–1448.
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Ritter R, Scheringer M, MacLeod M, Hungerbuhler K. 2011. Assessment of nonoccupational exposure to DDT in the tropics and the north: relevance of uptake via inhalation from indoor residual spraying. Environ Health Perspect 119:707–712.
Rogers DJ, Randolph SE. 2000. The global spread of malaria in a future, warmer world. Science 289:1763–1766.
Sandifer SH, Keil JE, Finklea JF, Gadsden RH. 1972. Pesticide effects on occupationally exposed workers: a summary of four years observation of industry and farm volunteers in South Carolina. IMS Ind Med Surg 41:9–12.
Siddiqui MK, Nigam U, Srivastava S, Tejeshwar DS. , Chandrawati. 2002. Association of maternal blood pressure and hemoglobin level with organochlorines in human milk. Hum Exp Toxicol 21:1–6.
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Woolley DE, Talens GM. 1971. Distribution of DDT, DDD, and DDE in tissues of neonatal rats and in milk and other tissues of mother rats chronically exposed to DDT. Toxicol Appl Pharmacol 18:907–916.
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Come visit EHP Editor-in-Chief Sally Darney at the 29th Annual Scientific Conference of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology, to be held in Sydney, Australia, 24–28 September 2017. She looks forward to talking with EHP authors, reviewers, and editors. Contact Sally directly to make an appointment with her.
EHP is pleased to announce that "Maternal and Cord Blood Manganese Concentrations and Early Childhood Neurodevelopment among Residents near a Mining-Impacted Superfund Site," published in EHP on 28 June 2017, has been selected by the Children's Environmental Health Network (CEHN) as its August 2017 Article of the Month. (more…)


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Pace of resolving NC map lawsuits argued in court
Posted December 16, 2011
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina's latest round of redistricting litigation got its first day in court Friday as a bevy of lawyers argued before a three-judge panel whether a trial on the legality of new Republican-penned political boundaries be fast-tracked before candidates file in two months.
Attorneys representing dozens of Democrats and advocacy groups who sued over the legislative and congressional district maps asked the judges to require a timetable that would set a trial in early February, about three months after lawsuits were filed. The candidate filing period begins Feb. 13 for the May 8 primary.
The two lawsuits, which the judges consolidated Friday into one case, allege the district lines illegally bunch more black voters within districts to decrease their electoral power, cross too many county boundaries and split too many precincts. They want the judges to order new maps drawn for the 2012 elections and have suggested the boundaries in last year's elections could be used if needed.
The political stakes are high. The GOP-favored maps, if upheld, would be used through 2020 and could help the party extend its new majority in the legislature and improve its chances for taking up to four more seats in Congress.
"We believe that these constitutional violations are so serious that it would be a stain on North Carolina for us to have an election under these maps," said Adam Stein, an attorney representing the state chapter of the NAACP.
Federal authorities have already approved the maps.
The lawsuits would cause disruption and uncertainty among candidates and likely 2012 voters if the accelerated schedule is approved, Special Deputy Attorney General Alec Peters told the judges. The state, which is defending the maps, wants more time – perhaps four months – to collect evidence and depositions and for judges to hear motions in a case involving several dozen plaintiffs.
Judges weigh speed of handling challenge to voting maps
"What they propose cannot help but result in the disruption of the election. There's no way to avoid it," Peters said.
Besides, he said, even with a fast-track plan whichever side loses likely will appeal to the state Supreme Court, almost assuredly leading to a primary delay. In the meantime, he said, the new maps should be used in 2012, and if any new maps are eventually required, they could be redrawn before the 2014 elections.
"These are the acts of the legislature. They are presumed to be constitutional. They're presumed to be valid until the plaintiffs carry their burden before the court of showing otherwise," he said.
Superior Court judges Paul Ridgeway of Wake County, Alma Hinton of Halifax County and Joseph Crosswhite of Iredell County didn't immediately rule on the schedule and didn't give an indication when they would.
State law requires trial judges to sit in groups of three to consider redistricting challenges, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Sarah Parker appointed the panel. While judges participate in nonpartisan elections, two of the three judges on the panel are registered Democrats.
Ridgeway, considered the chief of the panel, said the schedule offered by those suing "would be an extraordinary timetable."
NC congressional districts challenged in court
The case isn't as complex as the state would indicate, said Eddie Speas, a former chief deputy attorney general who sat in Peters' seat defending redistricting maps 10 years ago and filed one of the lawsuits considered Friday. There are basically three points of contention, and most facts should not be in dispute between the two sides.
"We recognize that it is an ambitious schedule," he said, but "we believe that it's the trip that should be taken."
Peters, who worked with Speas defending the 2001 maps, said the lawsuits would be easier to manage if only one or two items were at issue, which he said was the case 10 years ago. That's when Republicans won litigation that focused upon whether the state constitution's requirement that the number of counties split between two or more districts are minimized.
This year's litigation involves 48 House and Senate districts and four congressional districts and hundreds of split precincts that involve nearly 2 million people, or 27 percent of the voting-age population.
The Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, said after the hearing that the state's argument seems to suggest elections should continue under constitutionally flawed maps when there are more problems alleged, not fewer.
So "if you find they're unconstitutional, you don't remedy it now, you remedy later," Barber said. "That's absurd."
He suggested that the judges order the state to use its current voting maps for 2012 while the new ones make their way through the courts.
"We should not have an election under this kind of constitutional cloud hanging over our redistricting process. That should not happen in North Carolina for anybody for any reason," he said.
Ridgeway suggested the case could be moved along with rulings on other motions before trial, such as a motion by the state to dismiss the litigation. Hinton said the plaintiffs also could ask the panel to block the maps from being used leading up to the trial. Neither judge said how they would rule on those matters.


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Mnakind is the biggest threat to itself and other living things. many people have biohazard tattoo, so i decided that he'll have a biohazard haircut :)
Flash Draw Created Apr 09, 2008 470 x 338px Unless noted Copyright 2008 Mismas.
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Did you actually get a 'Bio-Hazard' hair cut?
wow awesome, why di't I fave that?! well now I've done ;) ... 10
ive always felt that humans were some type of planetary cancer that the earth was infected with,10.
great concept....and yes, man is the most dangerous creature in the planet...awwww... 10!!!
Love this drawing very much ... great idea and well drawn. 10!
So realistic and nice.10
Amazingg. 10~!
you did tha muskles really well 10*


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Dixons Electrical Stores
With over sixty years retail expertise Dixons Electrical stores first evolved from the photographic industry in the late 1930's. Starting off as a small photographic studio Dixons Electrical direction shifted towards the retailing of photographic equipment during the 1950's and it was here that the Dixons Electrical business began to flourish and grow at a quick rate. Mail order cemented this growth and ensured the position of leading photographic retailer in the UK market. Due to increased popularity in photography and the ability to offer top quality service at competitive prices ensured this top position throughout the 1950's. Wise acquisitions of major competitors during the 1960's and 1970's along with developing strong trade partnerships with Japanese manufacturers strengthened their position and made Dixons Electrical Store a high street name throughout the UK. Diversification into audio and visual products rapidly followed and through continued success Dixons Electrical plc emerged with the acquisition of Currys into the Dixons Electrical portfolio. Currently Dixons Electrical have built up a reputation for offering the latest electronic devices at low prices through the high street and internet. The Dixons Electrical group itself has seen continued success, with group turnover in excess of £6 billion 2003/4 with pre tax profits of over £300 million for the same time frame. The Dixons Electrical group also contains other companies (apart from Dixons Electrical and Currys) that are well known UK brands including:
PC World
The Link
There are over two hundred Dixons Electrical stores in the UK at present selling a wide range of electronic products such as Dixons Electrical digital cameras. Alongside the traditional Dixons Electrical high street store there are also outlets situated within twenty UK airports and a number of their new format massive stores known as Dixons Electrical XL placed in major British cities which on average are over 6 times larger than the average Dixons electrical store.
Dixons Electrical Online Internet Shopping
Dixons electrical launched their online mail order retail arm in 1997. The Dixons Electrical online store offered well over two thousand electrical products online. Since then their product range has expanded and the web site currently offers their entire catalogue online as well as offering products and prices which are unique to Dixons Electrical online. Regular updates on the site ensure it offers the latest technological advances online such as up and coming Dixons Electrical digital cameras. Aside from their photographic equipment other popular online departments include lcd and plasma tv, computers, gaming and Dixons Electrical audio.
- Dixons Electrical
- Dixons to end 35mm camera sales
- Death of video recorder in sight, due to DVD players
- Dixons Electrical Stores
- DSG, Owner of Electrical retailer Dixons, mulls bid for Dabs
- Dixons owner DSG seen having bumpy ride
- Dixons signs five-year deal with BT
- India's HCL Technologies Gets Lucrative British Outsourcing Order
- Dixons chain to stop selling cathode ray tube televisions
- Dixons gives unsigned artists a break after MP3 deal
- Dixons uk owner to cut office jobs
- Retailers plead for breathing space on rents
- www.Dixons.com owner signs £120m outsourcing deal with Capita
- DTV Digital 'hits 70% of households'
- Dixons worried in troubled times
- Dixons Electrical posts £30 million loss
- Farewell to Dixons luminary Robert Shrager
- Dixons Search Terms
- New formats could help Dixons Electrical owner DSG ride out the storm.
- Christmas will be hard this year for Dixons Electrical
- Things are looking up for Dixons Electrical even with £4 million losses
- Whatever happened to Dixons


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From Darth Bane To Revan, The Most Powerful Sith Lords & Dark Siders In Star Wars History
Although we've only seen a few Sith lords in the Star Wars movies, there are plenty in the Star Wars comics, books, TV shows and games that have powers even greater than we ever got to see on the big screen. By channeling the Dark Side of the Force, almost anything is possible, and with Episode VIII shaping up to be the darkest Star Wars film yet, it's possible we might finally get to see Kylo Ren harness the truly terrifying power of the Dark Side. And here's who he has to live up to.Darth Bane
Darth Bane appears in the Expanded Universe, and while most of this was declared non-canon by Disney, Bane's appearance in the animated show The Clone Wars saved him from being cast out of the canon.The sole survivor of the Sith massacre, which occurred over 1000 years before the Star Wars prequels, Darth Bane is an incredibly powerful and very popular Sith lord. In fact, he was the one to instate the Rule Of Two which commands that there must only be two Sith at any one time. This fan-made trailer explains his backstory, and it's pretty cool, too.Bane managed to stick around as a Force ghost long after he perished at the hands of the Jedi, causing all sorts of problems in The Clone Wars. Remembered as one of the most terrifying Sith lords, Bane definitely makes it to the top of this list.Darth PlagueisDarth Plagueis was known as "The Wise" because he was very close to learning the secret of immortality. He could stop people from dying but unfortunately could not prevent his own death at the hand of his apprentice, Darth Sidious a.k.a. Palpatine a.k.a. the Emperor.
Darth Plagueis was first mentioned in the films by Palpatine, when he explains to young Anakin how Plagueis could prevent people from dying.
"Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith so powerful and so wise, he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life. He had such a knowledge of the dark side, he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying."
Although Palpatine supposedly killed his master, with Plagueis's powers it's entirely possible that he could have survived this attempt on his life. And he might have been lurking in the shadows for years, waiting for his chance for revenge – which is the foundation for a popular fan theory that Supreme Leader Snoke is in fact Plagueis himself.
But we'll just have to wait until Episode VIII to find out about that.Darth MaladiUnfortunately, this Sith lord has been cast out of the official canon, as she appeared in the comics set after Return Of The Jedi. Although she's just a legend now, Maladi is still totally badass. Something of a mad scientist, Darth Maladi was the head of the revived Sith Intelligence and Assassination. She specialised interrogation, using her skills in science as well as her formidable Force powers to torture her victims.
Maladi is also one of the few Force users able to battle with lightning whilst engaged in lightsaber combat, making her a terrifying opponent, and one of the most powerful Sith lords we know of. (Darth) RevanAs the avatar of the immensely popular game Knights Of The Old Republic, Revan is definitely a fan fave.
"Savior, conqueror, hero, villain. You are all things Revan… and yet you are nothing. In the end you belong to neither the light nor the darkness. You will forever stand alone."
Crossing over from the Light to the Dark and back again (depending on what choices the player makes), Revan is one of Star Wars' most interesting characters and undoubtably one of the most powerful Dark Siders.
Asajj VentressAlthough she was never a Sith lord, Asajj Ventress was a formidable opponent for Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi as they fought in the Clone Wars. Training under Count Dooku and flirting with Kenobi at every possible opportunity, Ventress bested the Jedi on multiple occasions.
Eventually though, the character reformed in one of the show's most compelling arcs. In her last act, she absorbed the lightning blast meant for her lover, proving herself a badass even in death.
The Inquisitor(s)Finally, an article about the darkest Dark Siders wouldn't be complete without the formidable Inquisitors from Star Wars: Rebels. Assembled by the Emperor to wipe out any Jedi who survived Order 66, the Inquisitors relentlessly pursue our heroes throughout the galaxy.
The Grand Inquisitor is especially terrifying, although he was eventually defeated in the season 1 finale. The Inquisitors add a sense of scope to the Dark Side, revealing that evil is not confined to the Sith lords. Although the Inquisitors were presumably defeated sometime during the original Star Wars trilogy, it would be great to see a remnant of this order pop up in the new era of Star Wars films.Who's your favourite Dark Sider?


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Legendary investor Warren Buffet recently loaded up on 37 million shares of satellite TV company DirecTV (DTV), 27 million shares of gasoline retailer Phillips 66, and 6.5 million shares of construction company Chicago Bridge & Iron (CBI). On the other hand, the "Oracle of Omaha" recently dumped his entire holdings of General Dynamics (GD) and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).
That's news that you can use. I found it on RelationalStocks.com. (www.relationalstocks.com), an ad-supported free site. You can use the site to find the holdings and recent trades of more than 60 famous and not-so-famous investing gurus.
For most of the gurus, we'd be as interested in the their biggest holdings as well as recent buys and sells. Buffett, however, is unusual. The consummate "buy and hold" investor, he has held many of his biggest positions for dozens of years. Since few of us are that patient, what Warren Buffet is buying and selling now is of more interest than the makeup of his overall portfolio.
In any case, from RelationalStocks.com's home page, use the Guru/Institutions dropdown menu to pick a guru of interest. When you do, the Top 20 Portfolio Holdings display automatically. Click on "Buy/Sells" to see recent trades.
Besides for Buffett, here are three other gurus that I found interesting. Unlike Buffett, they do not follow a "hold forever" strategy, so their current positions are worth noting.
T. Boone Pickens
Famous oilman T. Boone Pickens, the 85-year-old billionaire who grew up in the oil fields, is one of the more colorful gurus tracked by RelationalStocks.com. Via his hedge fund, BP Capital Management, Pickens' biggest holdings include oil and natural gas producers, Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD), Apache (APA), and Goodrich Petroleum (GDP). While Pioneer and Apache are large firms with market capitalizations of $21 billion and $32 billion respectively, Goodrich, although a small player with only a $500 million market-cap, accounts for almost 10 percent of Picken's portfolio.
Picken's recently established new positions include well site service provider Basic Energy Services (BAS), which like Goodrich, is a small company. Other new adds include oil and natural gas producers Gulfport Energy (GPOR) and Apache. On the other hand, Pickens recently sold out his former positions in oil and natural gas producers SandRidge Energy (SD), Southwestern Energy (SWN) and Newfield Exploration (NFX).
David Einhorn
Although not as well-known as Buffett and Pickens, value-oriented David Einhorn, manager of hedge fund Greenlight Capital, has generated a 20 percent average annual return since founding Greenlight in 1996.
Apple (AAPL) is Einhorn's current biggest position by far, representing 16% of his total portfolio. Next comes communications chipmaker Marvell Technology (MRVL), and health insurance providers Cigna (CI), and Aetna (AET). Einhorn also holds a big short position (betting that the stock will drop) in General Motors (GM).
Einhorn recently established new positions in oil production services provider Oil States International (OIS), airplane parts maker Spirit AeroSystems (SPR), single-serving coffee and brewing equipment maker Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR), and integrated energy company Hess (HES).
On the other side of the coin, Einhorn recently closed out positions in Xerox (XRX) and Yahoo (YHOO).
Daniel Loeb
Daniel Loeb, via his hedge fund, Third Point LLC, is an activist investor that attempts to influence the actions of the management of companies that he holds. Loeb's biggest holdings include Yahoo (YHOO), paper and packaging products supplier International Paper (IP), Rupert Murdoch's media giant News Corp (NWS), and jewelry retailer Tiffany (TIF). Loeb also holds a short position in insurance company American International Group (AIG).
Besides for International Paper and Tiffany mentioned above, Loeb recently established new positions in computer software maker Tibco Software (TIBX) and packaged food producer Hillshire Brands (HSH). Recent sells include stock broker and investment banker Morgan Stanley (MS) and security software maker Symantec (SYMC).
RelationalStocks.com gets its portfolio information from documents that the gurus or their funds file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those documents are filed quarterly and the holdings information related above was as of March 31, 2013. The guru's June 30 holdings data should start appearing around the end of July. Because of the filing delays, it's best to focus on relatively low turnover gurus. Those mentioned in this column fall into that category.
Harry Domash of Aptos publishes the Winning Investing and the Dividend Detective websites. Contact him at www.winninginvesting.com or Santa Cruz Sentinel, 1800 Green Hills Road, Suite 210, Scotts Valley, CA 95066.


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The Commissioner vs. the Criminologists
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: November 19, 1995
BOSTON, Nov. 18— Combating drug dealers and gang leaders, the New York City Police Commissioner, William J. Bratton, has declared victory after victory in his efforts to clean up the streets. But he returned to his native Boston on Friday night to confront another tough crowd: criminologists who have withheld their accolades for his department's crime-fighting efforts.
In a debate before the American Society of Criminology, Mr. Bratton challenged some of the nation's most esteemed crime experts to rethink their theories linking the decline in reported crime in New York City to the easing of the crack-cocaine craze, to the aging of the baby boom generation or to a national trend of decreasing violent crime.
I'm here tonight to play the role of resident gadfly," Mr. Bratton said. "I'm here to tell you that police make a difference, and we do take offense at some of your colleagues saying otherwise."
Citing the city's 40 percent drop in homicides and 30 percent decline in robberies since 1993, Mr. Bratton credited Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for setting a tone of intolerance for graffiti vandalism, public drinking and other behavior that threatens neighborhood stability. But most important, he said, was the effort to "re-engineer" the police force away from reactive, random patrol work toward new, active strategies that focus on high-crime areas and encourage uniform officers to make narcotics and gun arrests.
"We're changing behavior in New York City," Mr. Bratton said, citing public high school enrollment statistics that suggest that the number of young people, who are responsible for a larger percentage of the city's crimes, is actually growing at a time when crime is going down.
The criminologists said they were impressed by Mr. Bratton's remodeling of the Police Department, and no one suggested the declines were due to sloppy or dishonest accounting. But they said more study was needed to determine why crime is dropping, and they expressed doubts that more profound social phenomena were not also at work.
"I'm a grizzled veteran of other homicide drops and their press coverage," said Franklin Zimring, a criminologist at the University of California at Berkeley, noting that a Massachusetts gun control law was widely viewed as a panacea in the mid-1970's, when violent crime was falling, only to prove later to be a disappointment when homicide rates went back up.
A decade later, Mr. Zimring recalled, a sharp increase in the nation's prison population was credited with another fall in the violent crime rate -- just before the crack epidemic moved crime statistics up again.
"It was J. Edgar Hoover who told us that most homicide goes on beyond the control or the ability of police to influence it," he said.
The debate was much anticipated in the world of law enforcement scholarship, ever since Mr. Bratton promised last July to challenge all criminologists and their theories and "knock them down like ducks in a row." Mr. Bratton's crime strategist, Deputy Police Commissioner John Maple, mocked the criminologists before the debate, saying, "They're all going to be up there with their wizard hats on; you know, the ones with the half moons."
But in the end, the format of the event -- successive speeches with only a short question and answer period -- inhibited both Mr. Bratton's lashing temper and much lively debate. Many of the 400 crime experts said they left the discussion with more questions than conclusions.
"Bratton may want to take more credit than he's due, but we have to study it," said Richard S. Frase, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.
"I'm not persuaded, because crime rates have gone up and down," said Freda Adler, the outgoing president of the American Society of Criminology.
Alfred Blumstein, a Carnegie-Mellon University criminologist, partly conceded the point to Mr. Bratton, saying that the causes for the decline in crime "are multiple, and certainly policing is one of them."
But Mr. Blumstein noted that a doubling of the prison population since 1985 had had an enormous impact on adult crime, and had so far negated a doubling in the youth homicide rates over that same period. And he pointed to changes in drug markets as another important reason for the fall in murder rates.
"As the drug markets have grown, they have matured," Mr. Blumstein argued, "and as they mature some of the battles that went on among the aggressive entrepreneurs who started that industry settled as they do in many other industries -- either as explicit or implicit recognition of turf. And as that happens there is a decrease in violence."
He said New York was one of several large cities in which violence associated with drug turf wars was decreasing, while turf wars continue unabated in other mostly smaller cities where drugs were slower to take hold in the 1980's and have not yet run their cycle.
"It's striking that in a good number of the large cities in the last two or three years we have indeed seen a decline in homicides," Mr. Blumstein concluded.
Mr. Bratton countered that New York City was responsible for one-third of the nation's reductions in murders and robberies and 70 percent of the decline in automobile theft in recent years.
Through Nov. 12 in New York City, murder declined this year by 28 percent from the same period in 1994, rape by 2 percent, robbery by 19 percent, felony assault by 10 percent, burglary by 17 percent, grand larceny by 13 percent and automobile theft by 25 percent.


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I don't see a mention of Leaf anywhere, but this sentence sounds ominous:"The professional cameras made by the unit cost tens of thousands of dollars each. They have 30-megapixel resolution, compared with 2-4 megapixel resolution of ordinary cameras."Apart from the inaccuracies, this does sound like it might be Leaf. Does anyone know? Is Yair around?
... the article itself must be about 5-7 years old.
April 27, 2009Thierry
Today is May 25, 2009 + www.leaf-photography.com remains healthy.Anders
You could see it as Leaf creating its own buzz, since the news came out almost a month ago and nobody saying anything about it? My own gut says Leaf is still alive but moved production to china? it makes no sense to just dump a company before trying to maybe sell it off. its a wait and see, but this will kill sales if they don't speak up ASAP.If you click the Leaf logo on the Leaf-photography site it takes you to the LeafAmerica site
try emptying your cache The link takes me to Leaf America


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NBA commissioner David Stern will step down from his position on February 1, 2014, he announced on Thursday.
In an announcement made by the league on Thursday afternoon, the NBA board of governors unanimously approved the decision by Stern to step down, and appointed the next man to lead the NBA, current deputy commissioner Adam Silver.
Stern, who has hinted at retirement earlier, confirmed these inclinations with the announcement on Thursday.
The 70-year-old has been a part of the NBA since 1978, when he served as general counsel. He took over the commissioner's job after Larry O'Brien retired in 1984.
Silver, Stern's replacement, has been in professional basketball for over 10 years, serving as Stern's right-hand-man since 2006.
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text: Evening, I have a B6 A4 Avant, I need to install some RCAs and rearrange some other aftermarket wiring that runs from the front of the car to the rear. As it currently stands I think the most vacant side of the car is the drivers side, I already have quite a few runs of power and ground wire down the passenger side so not sure if there's enough room for more wiring. As per the pic below.... I intend on doing this with a friend however I haven't really stripped out the interior before. From my experience of removing trims before it can be quite tricky but in the end I've managed to get the job done. Is there anyone who can offer some advice or tips for this tremendous task? A link to a guide or two would be much appreciated if possible, it'd also prove to be invaluable for the future as I have a water leak that I need to track down too! Thanks.


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During the @midwestfurfest hotel evacuation, this kind officer posed with me for a photo! HAWWW! (©@Karwood) #MWFF pic.twitter.com/J0dZb6u4Tw— Rucio Donkey (@RucioDonk) December 7, 2014
Thousands of people in animal costumes were forced to evacuate a hotel in Chicago on Sunday at an annual furry convention, after chlorine gas was discovered in the building.
Nineteen people were sent to the hospital with nausea and dizziness, and authorities believe that the crime was intentional based on the way in which the gas was released.
Midwest FurFest, as the event is dubbed, is an annual convention "to celebrate furry fandom, that is, art, literature, and performance based around anthropomorphic animals."
And despite the scare, the FurFest will go on as planned this week - according to a statement on the convention's site - because under all that fur, these folks have some pretty thick skin.


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Catch some free beads!
No, not that kind of beads.
My sister brought this new trend to my attention (Yes, the sister who works at Nord's. Yes, still jealous.) They're called Love Beads, and they're made by a group out in Los Angeles that believes in -- YOU GUESSED IT -- peace and love. The coolest thing about them, though, is that they're free, she said.
Come on, I told sis. Free? Really? Surely you have to fill out some annoying survey or sign your life away to a magazine subscription or pay thousands of dollars to some anonymous bank in the Caymans, right?
Nope. Free.
All you have to do, she said, is give the company your name and address, and, just like that, they send you pretty beads on a long elastic strand that can be worn as a necklace or wrapped up as a bracelet.
Okay, yes, the proposition is mildly creepy. Like, who are these weird hippie people that are now going to know where I live? But I figured, my apartment's in a safe building, and working in the news world has instilled a healthy fear of weird people who could be lurking around my parking lot. So what the heck. I gave it a shot.
Sure enough, a few weeks later I get an envelope in the mail with a big heart on the front and a bundle of beads inside. Plus a note.
"By wearing Love Beads, I hope they will be a constant reminder to share the love by giving to others, whatever you can, whenever you can. To open your heart and accept others for who they are and not what you expect them to be."
Aw, now I kind of feel bad for being cynical.
But if you never hear from me again, now you know I'm probably being kept prisoner in some organic compound and know all the words to my parents' old Grateful Dead albums. At least I've got some nice looking jewelry.
Deal Diva Kim


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In regard to the Tom Lurtz's negative "My Word" regarding Sheriff Mike Downey ("Sheriff should stick to enforcing laws," Times-Standard, Feb. 7, Page A4), isn't the sheriff entitled to voice his opinion on gun control under our American right to free speech? Our men in uniform put their lives in harm's way every day for this privilege.
Also, Carol Beaton may be a wonderful person, but I question her act of suing our city regarding prayer. The cost of this lawsuit could better be used to feed the poor or buy computers, etc., for schools. To those who are offended by prayer at council meetings, earplugs are available at any local drugstore. I salute Mayor Jager for holding prayer meetings. My spirit soars when I see a group of athletes bow in prayer before a game, whether they win or lose. I defend my right to pray anywhere, any time. In God we trust.
Donna J. Slater


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Get a perfectly manicured upper hand on beauty rituals
When it comes to style and gender, being a woman is far superior but with all the beautification options at our disposal, it can be as exhausting as it is liberating.
I'm talking about the exclusively feminine art of masking imperfections and amplifying assets, and boy, can it be a chore.
I spend a lot of time in the bathroom, and it's harder work than you think. For a lot of people, men particularly, the shower is warm and soothing place where one can relax as the hot water washes over sore muscles and tired eyes. It's a place from which you emerge refreshed and invigorated to begin the day.
For me, it's like a fire drill wrapped up in an aerobics class, and it's merely step one in a daily marathon of beautification maneuvers. After an exhausting 25 minutes of cleansing, exfoliating, detangling, conditioning, and an unreasonable amount of shaving, the real work begins: makeup and hair. Sigh. There's tweezing, toning, concealing, zit zapping, completion smoothing, eye enhancing, fine line reducing, cheekbone illuminating, lip plumping, blow drying, straightening, and styling… all BEFORE a full day of actual work at the office.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Because of science, naturally.
At its most primal root, our beauty rituals are the way we present proof of our health and fertility to prospective mates, and it never ends. For a woman, imperfections and signs of aging are indicators that either her "productive" time is up, or that her genetics are not ideal for procreation.
So in order to ensure the human race doesn't go extinct, our highly evolved species created the beauty industry. You're welcome.
Logically, I know that longer lashes and artfully sculpted brows have literally nothing to do with the actual state of my health, so why do I continue to participate in the endless prison that is my beauty ritual?
Because deep down, going makeup-free just isn't my style. Despite the inconvenience and excessive time it takes, I prefer a smooth and even complexion, lined eyes and a glossy lip over the alternative.
Makeup is part of who I am.
Through the power of makeup, a woman can transform her style from effortlessly radiant and pure, to sultry and commanding without saying a word. I can't think of a single necktie or cuff link with that kind of influence.
So instead of feeling like we're slaves to beauty, perhaps we should view it as the ultimate upper hand ... a delicate, perfectly polished upper hand, of course.


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Tabs too difficult? Try these video lessons and learn fast
"Where's the Man" by Scott Weiland from the Atlantic album "12 Bar
I've been waiting for someone to post some of Weiland's stuff up, but no
one's done it yet, so I guess I'll be the first. I think Weiland's
music is some of the best stuff out there, and I love to play it. If
anyone has any revisions, comments, yadda yadda yadda, send them to me.
I'd love to learn some more. -- Mark
Chords used:
(standard tuning - EADGBE)
Em -- 022000
D -- xx0232
Am -- 002210
Em D
WhereÕs your man
C Em
HeÕs lost and gone again
Em D
What is your name?
C Em
The name behind the shame
Em D
WhereÕs the cup?
C Em
It was filled, now broken up
Em D
WhereÕs your man
C Em
HeÕs lost and gone again
Am D C
As I get behind the wheel again
Am D C
Pray to live a million years
Am D C
You know I lied but if it makes you glad
Am D C
IÕll tell you what you want to hear
And tab more of Weiland's stuff!
Submit corrections
Hard to play? Try these video lessons and learn fast


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The quest for more space in a home makes homeowners look up in the attic, down in the basement and out in the backyard. These are traditional methods to gain more living area and many renovations are centered around these areas. However, there are other places in the homes that may provide the space you require and may save you the time and expense of other forms of room additions.
Front (or Back) Porch
A lot of older homes have porches that cover the front of the home. These were popular in the first half of the last century because sitting out on the porch was a favorite pastime before radio and television. People used the porch for socializing and the are was a way to speak with people in an informal manner without inviting them into the home. Also, before air conditioners, it was a way to keep cool.
Later on many porches became glassed in to provide a year-round sitting place. They were also used to store boots and winter jackets before entering the home and as a place for storage. The great thing abut these porches was that most of them were built on cement posts which, over the years have settled into a great support system.
In later years porches were built on the back of the home in order to appreciate the garden or swimming pool. The underside of the porch can be insulated or, if the floor is old, the floor planks can be replaced and insulated.
Many porches are just off the front door, or split by the front entrance. This space can be sealed off and a new entrance door can be put in on the outside of the porch replacing the storm door. As most porches had good lighting the basic electrical may be all there. Heating can be brought in with extra ducts, piping or an electric baseboard system.
Another prime place for an addition is one that has already been started: the deck. A deck already has the supports and joists in place so if the deck was just off the back of the house filling it in for extra living space would not be too difficult.
Many people start by putting a roof over the deck to allow a sheltered area. Some also have adjusted the roof line to match that of the main house. The project could be done in stages whereby the roof and supports are put in first and then framed-in for screens. This would only take a carpenter a couple of week in the spring to complete and then you would have the summer and fall to enjoy this area, bug-free. As it is closed in, the underside could be insulated before winter and then the rest of the addition could be completed in the winter. The other perk is that the construction mess is on the other side of the patio door.
A lot of garages are rarely used to store vehicles. They are too busy storing possessions and toys. By getting organized with your storage you can turn one or both bays of a two-car garage into 200-500 square feet of new space complete with electrical wiring, heating and, in some cases, plumbing. In fact, in most cases, a garage addition is cheaper than most basement renovations because the drywall is already complete on the walls and ceiling.
There are downsides to this proposal and one is that the majority of home buyers want a garage. Selling a home without a garage, despite the extra living space, could bring down the price or let is sit on the market for a long time. Another consideration is the, in some neighbourhoods, the covenants won't allow vehicles to sit outside on the driveway.
Garage Attic Addition
If you have a separate double-garage or an attached one going up may be a great opportunity for additional space. Creating a new story on the garage has many pluses:
- Price: For a fraction of the price of adding a story on your home you can have an upper garage living space as the job is smaller.
- Utilities: As with making living space in the main part of a garage the electrical is already there. Plumbing can be easily accessed.
- Inconvenience: Because they renovators will be working over the garage your home will not be required to move out during the renovation period. In addition there will not be near the mess involved.
- Apartment Revenue: If you use this renovation to build a complete living unit for an older member of the family you can use it later as a revenue-generating asset when they leave.
There are many designs that have been created for over-the-garage apartments. Some have dormers while others gain space by using a gambrel or barn-shaped roof. There are a couple of items of concern and one is the zoning laws for height addition and other is the strength of the walls. If the home was built in the last 30 years there is a good chance that the walls are 2†X 6" studs, which would be enough. However, the smaller 2†X 4†walls would have to be shored up. To gain more space the stairs can be placed on the outside of the building.
Bay Windows
The cheapest addition would be the classic bay window. The space is minimal but the feature gives your home a new perspective, both inside and out. Storage units under a seat can also be built into the bay area.Posted by: TrustedPros