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Feb. 18: Events for today, Tuesday, Wednesday
Aiken Women in Black will hold a Vigil for Peace from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on the first and third Monday of each month. Everyone is invited to join in on Whiskey Road at Hitchcock Drive, in front of Bethlehem Lutheran Church across from Moe's Restaurant and the new Fresh Market. For more information, call Brenda at 648-6020 or David at 215-3263.Sid Mullis reveals secrets to a great lawn at the Aiken Master Gardener Association's Lunch Box Series on today at Trinity United Methodist Church, 2724 Whiskey Road, starting at 12:30 p.m. Learn the steps needed to make your lawn the envy of the neighborhood. Topics that will be covered include proper mowing, irrigation, fertilization, thatch management, core aeration and topdressing. This free lecture is open to the public, and no reservation is required. For more information, visit www.aikenmastergardener.org or call (803) 649-6297, ext. 122, weekday mornings. The Symphony Orchestra Augusta will host the Composer Festival of Ludwing Van Beethoven from Feb. 18 to 23, starting at 7 p.m. on Feb 18. For more information, call (706) 826-4705. Audition dates for Aiken Community Playhouse's "The Nerd" are Monday at 7 p.m. The cast calls for five adult males around their late 20s to 50s, and two females around their mid 20s to 40s, though ages are just guidelines and not requirements. The director asks those interested to be familiar with pages 16 to 20 and 26 to 29 of the Dramatists Play Service published script. Show dates are late April and early May. For more information, visit www.aikencommunityplayhouse.info. Line Dance Class will be held Mondays at 6 p.m. at the Palmetto Ballroom. The cost is $5. Call 641-4800 for more information. The Aiken Stitchin' Belles Chapter of the Embroiders Guild of America will hold a monthly meeting at the Aiken County Public Library on Monday at 10:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Those attending will create a sampler using selected basic stitches. Visitors are welcome. The Twilight Belles will meet that evening from 7 to 9 p.m. Call 644-7732 for information.


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It's that time of year again: the holiday season. There are gifts to buy, parties to attend, family to visit... and it all happens around your existing crazy schedule. This can be a time for joy and celebration but it can also be a time when people experience sadness, anxiety, stress and exhaustion. Here are 10 ways to stay healthy this holiday season:
1. With the exception of one night a week, stick to the same sleep schedule. Don't try to make up for lost sleep by sleeping late. Instead, try to nap once or twice during the day for 15 minutes. Drink lots of water or other vitamin-infused drinks. Use cold compresses on your eyes to decrease swelling and increase brightness.
2. Set a limit for gift giving and stick to it. Use cash as much as you can. This can be very difficult as you may feel pressure to buy a number of gifts for people you love and popular gifts for children as well as include colleagues and neighbors. Look for inexpensive gifts to acknowledge the person (gift cards to a local coffee shop, gift certificates for manicures and pedicures or freshly ground coffee with a cute mug or travel cup). Use cash or debit cards as much as possible. One surefire way to increase holiday stress is to face credit card debt on Jan. 2. Instead, be practical and express love and goodwill as an accompaniment to a small gift.
3. Stick to a regular exercise schedule. If you don't exercise, add two days a week of brisk walking outside for at least 20 minutes. Exercise is one of the best ways to decrease stress. If you have a regular schedule already, do everything you can to preserve your workout time. If not, at a minimum, take a few walks per week. Being outside is key, so as a long as weather permits, get some fresh air.
4. Take five minutes a day to sit on a chair, close your eyes and take several deep breaths. If the idea of meditation completely freaks you out and you think you don't have the attention span to sit still, limit yourself to 10 deep breaths with eyes closed. There are many benefits of deep breathing, not the least of which is decreased stress and blood pressure and an increase of healthy hormones (and a decrease in cortisol, related to stress).
5. Put aside old grudges with family members and drop expectations for them to change old habits. Rather than going home, ready to take up the same fight and frustrations with family members, spend time with family accepting them as they are. You'll have less stress, as will they, and maybe you'll find a new middle ground on which to relate.
6. Resist the urge to attend every holiday celebration. Rather than set yourself up to be grumpy, tired and short on cash from buying multiple hostess gifts, pick one or two parties but no more. Politely decline but do it early and do it. Resist the urge to cancel at the last minute.
7. Eat as much fresh, unprocessed food as possible. Have a lot of clear-based, hot soups, salads and vegetables. I recently read that one of the best ways to increase your immunity during the winter is to refrain from eating cold foods. Along those lines, stay healthy by eating as much fresh food as you can. Good choices are sushi, Thai and Chinese where you can order steamed vegetables and hot, clear soups. Other ideas are roasted winter vegetables and grilled fish.
8. Before bed each night, do a yoga pose called "Legs up the Wall." After pushing your hips to the bottom of a wall, lie on your bed and lift your legs up the wall. Lean them against the wall for support. The legs can be slightly bent and you can cover your eyes with a towel. This pose restores the body by flushing the feet and legs of blood, lactic acid and other by-products of standing on the feet all day (or shopping!).
9. Ask for help. We all like to be able to get everything done this time of year, but one of the most powerful things to do is admit we need help. Ask your loved one to cook you dinner or get take-out one night. Hire a babysitter or a personal errand assistant (see www.taskrabbit.com) to outsource some of your holiday chores. Use the extra time to do something healthy for yourself.
10. Let yourself be sad if those feelings arise. This time of year can bring up many memories of happy times as well as sadness and loss. Instead of acting as if everything is fine and stuffing these feelings deep inside, let them out. Talk to your family about how you're feeling. Exercise and invest in massage, meditation and restorative yoga classes to express your emotions. Let yourself cry if it comes up. Only through releasing these feelings will you be able to move forward in a healthy way.

subset: commoncrawl


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Earn more membership points with a matching gift from your company.
Contact your employer's human resources department to see if the employer matches your gifts. If so, your employer can provide the appropriate form for you to complete and send to The Rams Club with your gift. The Rams Club will process the paperwork, and the contribution can be applied towards your annual giving level.
If you submit your form electronically, please remember to send a copy of your confirmation to Margie Dubnansky at email@example.com. This will help ensure you receive proper point credit.
Click here for a list of companies that honor matching gifts.
Within the last several months, many of the matching gift companies have implemented both new and stricter guidelines focusing on gifts to athletics for organizations like The Educational Foundation. In order to comply with all company requests and process the matching gift forms for approval through the Vice-Chancellor for University Advancement at UNC, please note the following guidelines for submission of matching gift requests:
· In accordance with current tax law, if a donor's gift allows them to receive the right to buy tickets to an athletic event in an athletic stadium of the college or university, 80% of the donor's gift is considered to be a charitable contribution. Matching gift companies are only allowed to match the charitable or tax-deductible portion of the donor's gift. The donor is then responsible for completing any unmatched portion.
Sample Chart for companies that match dollar-to-dollar (tax-deductible portion) up to the company's maximum:
|Annual Level
|Donor Gift
|Matching Gift
|Tar Heel
|Big Ram
|Super Ram
|Coaches Circle
· If you make several different gifts throughout the course of a year, matching gift companies now require a separate form for each donation.
· When making your gift and completing the matching gift form, please indicate The Educational Foundation, Inc. as the recipient of your gift.
· Many companies now have online filing for matching gift donations. When filing online, please follow the guidelines listed above and also submit a copy of your online request to The Educational Foundation via mail or email at firstname.lastname@example.com in order for your gift to be credited properly.
· If your company will not match athletics directly, your gift and matching gift form should indicate the University of North Carolina as the recipient of your gift. Your gift and match are then placed in a University Program Support account whose funds are used for non-athletic purposes. Your gift will be receipted as a gift to the University Program Support Fund - The Educational Foundation.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding this information, please feel free to contact Margie Dubnansky in The Educational Foundation office at 919-843-2000 or email Margie at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Home � NH Angle
Cato - Jason Bedrick: NH governor versus kids, taxpayers
In her budget address before the legislature last Thursday, New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan pledged to repeal the nascent Opportunity Scholarship Act (OSA). The law grants tax credits to businesses that help low- and middle-income students afford independent and home schooling.
NH molester gets 100-year NY sentence for molesting 5 more boys
Lecture will feature 2 retired U.S. Supreme Court justices on same New Hampshire stage
Fitzwilliam man finally able to remove previously mined stone from his property
Mazzaglia has until Monday to file appeal
New Hampshire Supreme Court upholds Nazi sympathizer�s enhanced punishment
Neighbor's alleged cemetery trespass case heads to trial in Laconia
Hampton woman hurt in crash sues Portsmouth teen driver
Concord robber�s high court appeal sparks debate on police personnel files
Concord Monitor: A legal shift for state�s taxpayers
Role Call: How �establishment� Republicans got the House candidates they wanted
Concord Monitor calls on feds to raise gas tax, unearned income tax credits
Boston Magazine: It was a weird week in New Hampshire politics
Slate - Eric Holthaus: Don't waste your money on a Farmer's Almanac
NYT - Frank Bruni: American Horror Story
Boston Herald - Kimberly Atkins: Political fallout only reason Obama waiting on amnesty
Concord Monitor decries gender pay gap in professional tennis
General News
In debate on siting Downeaster layover facility, a switch: Too few riders?
Third place goes to Exeter, New Hampshire, which is dominated by residents who commute to Boston, with 35,000 passengers.
MetroCast making transition to all-digital format
Communities affected by the change include Alexandria, Alton, Alton Bay, Barnstead, Belmont, Bridgewater, Bristol, Center Barnstead, Center Harbor, Deerfield, Epsom, Franklin, Gilford, Gilmanton, Hebron, Laconia, Meredith, New Durham, New Hampton, Northfield, Northwood, Pittsfield, Sanbornton, Strafford, Tilton, Wolfeboro and Wolfeboro Falls.
New Hampshire operates nation's second-best nursing homes after R.I.
Top ranked nursing home states included Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine. Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana were among the worst.
WaPo: Beautiful aurora timelapse captured by Mount Washington Observatory
Friday�s spectacular aurora was captured by the Mount Washington Observatory�s cameras, in addition to a beautiful show of undercast from atop the 6,300-foot New Hampshire peak.
Adam Sandler reflects on his and Chris Farley�s firing from �SNL': �It hurt a lot�
'The fact that me and him got fired? Who knows. We were on it for a few years, had our run, and everything happens for a reason.'
Group asks to meet with Monadnock Humane Society board over director's ouster
SWANZEY � The Monadnock Humane Society�s Board of Directors' decision to force out its director last month is not the end of the conversation for many of the animal lovers who volunteer and donate to the shelter.
NH man charged with streaming video from Mass. women's room is government employee
ARLINGTON, Mass. � A New Hampshire man has been charged with secretly recording women in a bathroom at a Massachusetts cafe, and authorities say they�re investigating whether he planted cameras at other restaurants.
Video: Bright fireball streaked across Northeast sky Sunday night turning night into day
The fireball appeared around 11 p.m. on Sunday night, and coincided with reports of �shooting stars� and meteors. The American Meteor Society, which tracks fireballs, has received more than 150 reports of this fireball from Virginia to New Hampshire, and as far west as central Ohio.
Keene woman arrested after losing gun at the 'Big E'
Chief Ronald Campurciani told the 22News I-Team 41 year old Gabrielle Emerson of Keene, New Hampshire told a police officer that she had lost her purse and that there was a gun in it.
Cops: Salem man arrested in Mass. for streaming video from women's restroom to device
Arlington police are investigating whether a Salem, N.H., man accused of using a planted camera to watch unsuspecting women use the bathroom at a local cafe may have videotaped female patrons at other area restaurants.
Phillips Exeter alum pleads guilty in killing of her alleged rapist
Born in Mexico, Esparza came to Santa Ana as a child and her life was forever changed when she obtained a scholarship to attend the elite Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.
Plaistow police lieutenant investigated for traffic stop irregularities
PLAISTOW � The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office and Rockingham County attorney's office are investigating longtime police Lt. William Baldwin for 'irregularities' that occurred during two recent traffic stops, Town Manager Sean Fitzgerald said.
Keene Cop Block returns with updated flyer
Rule 1 - Record your interaction; Rule 2 - 'Am I being detained?'; Rule 3 - Never answer questions; Rule 4 - Never consent to searches; Rule 5 - Be polite, but firm.
Eisenhower's Rolex on display in Manchester, expected to fetch $1M at auction
It was on display at Bellman's Jewelers in Manchester. It may be the first and last time it will be on public display before it's auctioned off this coming week.
Former captain of submarine destroyed at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard relieved of command
The reason cited is 'a loss of confidence in his ability to serve effectively as commanding officer.'
NH Fish and Game arrests ATV riders after getting stuck in wetlands
A Hudson man was arrested Friday evening in the North Country after he was found operating an off-highway recreational vehicle in a wetland, according to New Hampshire Fish and Game Conservation Officer Christopher Egan.
From TV to the big screen, 'The Leftovers' star Ann Dowd is everywhere
At some point midsummer, Twitter became an Ann Dowd fan club.
After 5-year suspension for sex with patient, Gilford psychiatrist may reapply for medical license
Bahder voluntarily surrendered his license in February 2009 after he engaged in sexual activity with a female patient following her treatment for cocaine dependency while she was incarcerated at the Belknap County House of Correction.
Manchester man dies in accident early Friday in Moira, NY
The vehicle hit a guide rail, became airborne over the river and struck several large rocks before coming to rest on the east bank.
Spectacular images of Northern Lights from perchatop Mount Washington
The Northern Lights Shined on New England in Incredible Color Last Night
Most Read
Keene Cop Block returns with updated flyer
Most Comments
NH couple hit slot for $2.4m in Las Vegas
Most Shared
John E. Sununu: Legislative session about nothing, or pure comedy gold?
Ron Cole: Where were city officials during Dover sewer fiasco?
As veto override looms, Governor Hassan to issue order re-establishing juvenile justice board
Veteran officer, 65, indicted for allegedly supplying inmate with morphine; jail superintendent doubts others involved
Undersea cable endorsed by electric group
USA Today: How a New Hampshire CEO's fast decisions saved his business


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Thyssenkrupp Elevator - ElmsfordReview me Claim this business
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Our company prides ourself on highlighting your rooms, windows and entrance ways by accenting their borders with stone moldings. Our oversized molding can be used in both interior... Read More
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By Maurielle LueFox 2 NewsThe strength of the Widzinski family is nothing short of inspirational. Mom, dad, brother and sister are standing arm in arm in their grief. 15-year-old David, their son and brother, died in his sleep."We don't know. He went to bed by eleven o'clock on Sunday, appeared perfectly normal and fine, and when his alarm went off in the morning on Monday he was not responsive," said father Paul Widzinski."We're struggling, but we're just really leaning on one another and doing everything we can to support one another," said mother Barbara Widzinski.David was found by his mother. The family first thought the teen had choked on a late night snack, chocolate chip cookies, but the medical examiner told them the teens lungs were clear.Family said David was a healthy kid who loved football and his classmates at Catholic Central. His team put up a good fight against Cass Tech for the Division 1 title on November 26.He was a good kid, but Stephen and Emily said his best quality was brother."It's tough. It's going to take a long time for this to set in and an even longer time for it to really materialize and then, eventually, it should make its impact on me," said Stephen Widzinski."It's hard to comprehend and just to even imagine that this is actually happening right now. I just keep on thinking like he's going to be home when I get home or this is just a bad dream I just need to wake up from and just hard to deal with," said Emily Widzinski."He was just a really special individual and all we can do now is live in his honor," Stephen Widzinski said.Counselors spent the day at Catholic Central, whose students prayed the Rosary early Tuesday morning. David's family needs those prayers now more than ever."Just devastating. I don't even have words to describe it. We're crushed. We're just struggling moment to moment to get through," Paul Widzinski said.
205 N. Michigan AvenueGround FloorChicago, IL 60601Station Operator: (312) 565-5532Newsroom: (312)565-5533


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The Office of New Schools (ONS) in the Chicago Public Schools oversees the application process for starting a new charter, contract, or performance school, as well as some turnaround schools. Once the schools are opened, ONS works with the charter and contract schools, while performance schools are assigned to a CPS area. ONS holds charter and contract schools accountable to the terms of their agreements with the Chicago Board of Education. In the 2010-2011 school year, ONS provides oversight for 91 schools, 82 charter campuses and nine contract schools.
The Chicago Public Schools' Office of New Schools authorizes high-quality schools (charter, contract, and performance), particularly within high need communities by:
The Office of New Schools (ONS) in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is committed to ensuring all students in Chicago have access to high-quality school options that prepare them for post-secondary success.
2013 Request for Proposals for New Schools Information
Compact Between the Chicago Public Schools and Charter Schools in Chicago
Charter Compact Schools
For additional information regarding Office of New Schools, click on the available resources below:
Parents – for those interested in or already enrolled in a charter or contract school
Who we are – learn about the Office of New Schools
School performance and accountability – information about how schools performs and how ONS holds them accountable
Process to open a new school – learn about the RFP process
School operations – resources and information for charter or contract schools in operation
To view some of the documents provided on this page, you need Acrobat Reader. If you do not have this program, click download Adobe Acrobat Reader now and follow the instructions.
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He'll be dunking like a superstar when he wears the pro-inspired adidas youth Revolution 30 Swingman® road shorts. They feature contrast-colored details and an embroidered NBA team logo patch on the left leg. An elastic waistband provides comfort.
- 100% Polyester fabric
- Basketball shorts
- Contrast-colored details
- Decorated with NBA Logoman and team graphics and colors
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"The Twelve Tribes of Hattie," Ayana Mathis' debut novel, has been a huge hit with the imprimatur of Oprah's Book Club.
Without Oprah's backing, I'm not sure the book would have made the bestseller list, but that doesn't mean it's not worth a look.
The book opens as Hattie arrives in Philadelphia as a young woman who is part of the black migration from the South—in her case, Georgia—during the mid-1920s. After the initial devastating chapter about what befalls Hattie during her first winter in the city, the rest of the book explores her "tribes" or offspring in short-storyish tales that barely overlap or intersect in time or place.
Among Hattie's children are Floyd, a sexually confused musician drifting from town to town in 1948; Six, a newly minted revival tent preacher in 1950 who ends up exploiting his gifts; and Cassie, a mentally ill mother who has to be institutionalized in 1980, leaving an elderly Hattie to raise Cassie's daughter.
Mathis' writing has the noble bearing of a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The sentences are polished, sometimes overly so, and deliberate:
"Hattie wanted to give her babies names that weren't already chiseled on a headstone in the family plots in Georgia, so she gave them names of promise and of hope, reaching forward names, not looking back ones."
The novel's message—that Hattie's grief and poverty damaged every one of her children—may resonate with those still struggling with the aftereffects of the Great Recession. It's a bleak outlook, though, so be prepared for living under a thundercloud for as long as it takes to finish the book.
Mathis said in an interview with Oprah that "we do hunger more for suffering characters simply because people, I find, often are hesitant to discuss, air or seek support for the deepest and most painful things in their lives. And so in literature we can find companions and mirrors of [our own suffering]."
While there's some truth to that, I would have enjoyed the book more had Mathis given just one of Hattie's children a little joy and a sense of possibility. As it is, there's not much to stop the expanding circle of poverty and mental illness that Hattie puts in motion.
Editor's note: This article, part of Susan Schoenberger's "Nutmeg Book Review" column, previously was published by Granby-East Granby Patch.


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Retailers Succeeding With Innovative Programs
When a competing product is scanned at the point of sale, a store-specific, short-dated coupon is automatically printed for a supporting vendor's product. Manufacturers like the program because it ensures that their marketing dollars are aimed directly at consumers who buy the type of product they're selling. And retailers see the program as both a value-add to their customers and as one more way to entice customers to return to their store soon.
With so many transactions passing through its systems, Catalina Marketing was in what was at once an enviable and a frustrating position. Even the largest retail companies only see transactional data from their own stores. From its catbird seat, Catalina could peer down at transactions across the broad and varied store base it serves.
The frustration came from not being able to analyze that rich flood of data effectively. Catalina knew that if it could flow that information into a large, central database, it could help the retailers and manufacturers it serves to target their promotions with unparalleled efficiency.
"We needed a data warehouse for a number of reasons," Bross said. "We needed a single repository of business information to answer our own decision-support needs and to provide decision-critical information to our clients.
And we needed a data warehouse to support our in-house application development plans.
"We wanted to give our analysts timely information so they could respond intelligently to clients trying to figure out what promotions they should run next," she continued. "They wanted to migrate their secondary shoppers into that profitable 'primary' group of shoppers, and they wanted us to guide them. Sure, retailers have the low-level granular data in their own systems, but that raw data wasn't doing them much good. They needed something more aggregated, and we wanted to give it to them."
Once the decision was made to launch the warehouse, Catalina acted quickly
"You have to do your homework Bross said. "We read the trade press a lot and went to the data warehousing conferences before we came up with a short list of vendors. Then we had them come in to find out if their systems were flexible enough to scale to the amount of information we were going to load.
"I can't overemphasize the importance of architecture," she continued. "When Doug Irwin of Arthur Andersen repeats 'architecture, architecture, architecture,' he's driving home a valid point. We are often called upon to talk to other customers who are trying to achieve the speeds and the load that we've been able to accomplish. That's why we sat down to work out an enterprise model."
That was especially important to Catalina because its enterprise doesn't end with the four walls of its own company. Catalina's data warehouse serves critical decision-support functions for the numerous retailers and vendors it serves. Whatever design Catalina went with had to accommodate the needs of the company's "extended family."
"We had to make sure we went with a scalable architecture, because as our retailers grow, the nightly loads into our data warehouse get bigger and bigger," she added. "We had to be sure that the data warehouse was going to be fully updated and ready to field queries when the retailers and manufacturers we deal with walk sit down in front of their PCs in the morning. We have to make sure they can access their data and make their business decisions."
Catalina went with RedBrick as its database provider. Hardware is from DEC. Hard drive crash support from Hard Drive Recovery Group. The chosen operating system is Unix. Arthur Andersen provided consulting services during and after the implementation.
"Getting the right foundation is important," Bross said. "Partner with people who can bring skills to the table that augment those you have in-house. That's especially true if you want to bring a data warehouse live in a short time frame.
The sheer scope of the data fed into Catalina's data warehouse is daunting. Cleansing and loading that data was, consequently, a challenge.
"We deal with so many retailers that we have to pull data from 40 different POS systems," Bross said. 'That's a challenge not many other people besides us have to deal with.
"We see about 143 million individual customer transactions per week through those 11,000 stores," Bross continued. "And we see over half a billion shopping baskets per month. It's kind of mind-boggling to think that we can deal with data from 11,000 supermarkets at the UPC level when many retailers are struggling to do that within their own much narrower store base."
That's one more reason retailers like the program. And its one more reason Catalina's data warehouse is considered central to its business. Retail Direct, which helps retailers identify and maintain profitable customers, is among Catalina's most successful value-added programs for retailers. Access to clean, aggregated data is a coup for many of those companies.
"We store all UPC-level information for the retailers participating in Retail Direct," Bross said. "We collect check-stand data, store that data and have put together a Web-enabled reporting system that the retailers can use to access their own information."
The information is helping Catalina's retailer partners get a handle on just who their most profitable customers are.
"We are providing key reports for top shoppers and identifying cherry pickers who are a liability for our retailer clients," Bross said. "And we are helping retailers with promotional analysis and store-performance analysis. There are 40 different reports under Retail Direct, and if the retailer wants to mull over the data with its own analysis tools, they can get their data back from our data warehouse. We're helping them work smarter. They can drill down into the information and segment customers based on profitability. And once you segment customers, you can target them much more efficiently. You can change their behavior."
So, are there any loose ends in Catalina's remarkably successful data warehouse implementation? Bross says yes. She says that an intuitive, easy-to-use, effective query tool remains a sort of Holy Grail.
"I'll tell you, finding one complete ad hoc query tool still eludes us," Bross said. "We've come to the conclusion that there probably just isn't one that will work for all users. We are actually using several now. Which one somebody uses depends on if they're a novice user, a super user, an analytical user or an IT person."
Translating Always A Difficulty With Libraries
If you have tried to use the same computer workstation to run multimedia training programs sold by different vendors or created with different authoring tools, you may have found it difficult or impossible. Ditto if you've tried to use your company's online training-administration system to track students' progress through computer-based training (CBT) courses created with authoring tools that turned out to be incompatible with the system. For instance, if you built the course with Macromedia's Authorware and your administration system is Asymetrix's Librarian, you're out of luck.
Finally, if you've followed the talk in the online-learning industry about "reusable content objects," also known as "granular" content or "chunks," you're aware that an imposing obstacle stands in the way of the visions inspired by the concept of granularity. (If you haven't followed that talk, the general idea is that brief chunks of online information – a few paragraphs of text, an audio or video clip, a pie graph – could easily be reused again and again in any number of different training or performance-support applications.)
In all three cases, the missing element is standards: a universal language, as it were, for a set of instructions that would run "underneath" or parallel to the program. In a Web page or an online CBT course, such standards would allow you to find, identify, retrieve, manipulate and manage online information regardless of its nature.
"Metadata" is the industry's term for the piece of this fundamental code that would enable the first two actions on that list: finding and identifying particular bits of data on a computer network. Applied to the World Wide Web, for instance, metadata would work like the card catalog in a library, suggests Neal Nored, a technical strategist for IBM Global Education in Atlanta who is on full-time loan from IBM to the IMS project. "It would give you a concise description of stuff without your needing to go get it."
Right now, Nored says, "the World Wide Web is a Tower of Babel. It's nuts. A million hits [from a key word search] doesn't help anybody." A metadata search could be based on standard "fields" of information, the way a card catalog lists books by title, author and subject. It would use an agreed-upon vocabulary, and specific sub-vocabularies for different subjects, such as mathematics.
"If I'm a history teacher searching the Web for material on the Battle of Gettysburg, I could search by grade level, type of content and more," Nored says. "I wouldn't find every master's thesis ever done on Gettysburg."
If the world could agree on a set of metadata specifications, search engines like Yahoo could be adapted to run metadata searches. Makers of CBT authoring systems – and programs such as PowerPoint or Microsoft Word – could add templates that would make it easy for "content providers" to include the metadata that would serve as indexing information, rendering their courses or Web pages searchable.
The imminent release of IMS's 1.0 spec will not, by itself, transform the act of searching the Web. But other organizations are also working on pieces of the standards puzzle (see box). "Within the next three years," Nored says, "you'll see a lot of things happen that will make the Web much, much more usable."
One other thing about a metadata search: It could identify not just a CBT course or a Web site but also an individual piece of the course or a particular element on the site – a "chunk." And it could tell you what kind of chunk it is: a video clip, an engine diagram, an organization chart of the United Glop Corp.
If you added to this picture some universally accepted programming that let you retrieve and manipulate these chunks efficiently, instead of just identifying them, you'd turn the chunks into reusable content objects. You could now reach into an online course created for United Glop's new-employee orientation program, grab that organization chart, and drop the chart into a different course or presentation – an executive briefing, say. And you could do this even if the orientation program were built with a different authoring tool.
Nored heads the part of the IMS project that deals with "content management" – the piece of the standards puzzle that deals with retrieving, manipulating and tracking information. But he suggests that the prospect of recombining granular learning objects will be far down on most people's lists of reasons to get excited about standards. A much more pressing concern in everything from K-12 education to corporate training is "interoperability" – the ability to use and manage different CBT or online courses on the same systems, with the same equipment.
While some vendors and developers love the idea of granularity, he says, "the reality is that people's needs are more basic."
When Nored looks at the online-learning market, he sees little interest in pasting together small pieces of different courses. He sees far more desire "to be able to author with Macromedia and run the course on an Asymetrix [administration] system." As things stand, he says, "If I have courses written in four different [authoring systems], I can't get a single report on how the student is doing. I have to get out my scissors and paste together four different reports if I want to do any student tracking."
That is the first and biggest problem that IMS and other standards agencies are trying to solve, he says. Reusable content objects will be just a happy bonus.
Less Spent On Support Means More Data Issues
A recent survey found that large companies will spend 19 percent less on service and support this year compared with last year, or $170,000 on average per firm, down from $211,000. Small businesses expect to hold spending steady at $3,000 per firm over the same time period, according to the survey, which was conducted for CRN by The Gallup Organization Inc.
Bill Gardner, president of reseller UltraServ Inc., San Jose, Calif., is already capitalizing on the services spending trend in the middle market, which he attributes to the effects of the Asian contagion. "We're seeing that trend reflected in our sales mix, particularly in the last quarter," Gardner said.
UltraServ offers data storage products and services as part of networking solutions provided primarily to midsize customers in four vertical markets: medical, financial, industrial/manufacturing and software development industries. Many of Gardner's clients, like so many companies that operate in Silicon Valley, have been hit hard by the Asian economic crisis and are cutting back on IT spending, he said.
In this time of shrinking budgets, Gardner sells his team of technicians as a cost-effective alternative to the bloated IT department. He said the cost-effectiveness factor "is a pretty powerful argument right now" because many companies are looking to cut back on overhead. He also says that offering help with hard drive failures, provided by California's Hard Drive Recovery Associates, can make for fine data synergies.
"When times get tight, the financial officers start sharpening up their pencils, and the first thing they happen to notice is, 'My God, look at all these salaries over in IS. These guys are way overpaid. Our network runs fine. Let's dump them and outsource this.' And, of course, we're capitalizing on that trend because a very significant chunk of our business is providing support."
The reseller also has begun providing a significant amount of remote management services for customers, Gardner said. UltraServ technicians log into customers' networks on a daily or weekly basis to perform routine management, such as checking the results of nightly backups and evaluating the capacities of customers' servers.
There are very few issues in business that are more important than the management of a company's data. So, it is not surprising that the majority of companies surveyed said service and support was the most important criterion they consider when selecting a supplier of mass- storage and board products.
Service and support retained its lead of eight factors companies consider when selecting a technology partner for mass-storage and board products, according to the survey. Eighty-one percent of large-company respondents named service and support as very influential when selecting a supplier, followed by 77 percent of midsize firms and 76 percent of small businesses.
"When the data's not accessible or if there's an issue with the data, it's a critical situation at that point," said Scott Slack, vice president of marketing at Cranel Inc., a $100 million Columbus, Ohio- based reseller.
Cranel offers two broad areas of services wrapped around the storage products its sells as part of document imaging solutions provided to its clients, which primarily are large and midsize businesses, Slack said. Cranel offers both hardware and software maintenance contracts for its customers' mission-critical applications, as well as professional consulting services.
"Where there's document imaging applications, there's storage opportunities," he said.
Slimmed-down IT departments and lack of in-house expertise help to drive service and support business to resellers, Slack said. "In most of corporate America these days, everybody's lean and mean," he said.
Wally Bieszczad, sales manager at Chicago-based reseller Sysix Technologies Inc., agreed: "The vendors don't necessarily provide a complete solution," he said, adding that "a lot of clients do not have the staff that understands how to set up an architecture, how to keep it running and how to keep it tuned for performance."
As companies tighten their belts and systems become more complex, it makes sense, then, that they would turn to the channel for service and support of their mass-storage and board products. And they do, in overwhelming numbers.
In the CRN survey, more than 70 percent of businesses of all sizes named a channel player as their primary source of service and support for these products. Small businesses led the way, with 80 percent citing the channel as their service provider in this product area, followed by 74 percent of midsize firms and 73 percent of large corporations.
The survey also found that VARs, systems integrators and consultants are gaining more market share in mass-storage and board service and support. VARs and systems integrators gained share in all market segments, led by a 6-point gain over last year's survey results, to 16 percent, among midsize businesses.
Getting The Systems Straight
I've never been this guy to get into the war of Linux versus Windows, or Apple versus Windows or basically any of the other operating systems that are fringe players. In fact, if you listen the most people, you would think that there is some kind of epic war that is taking place on a day-to-day basis. The problem is, there is not. I I'm not trying to downgrade the overall importance of operating systems, which is clearly quite huge, but on the other hand I feel like everything is a little bit overdone most of the time. I think we have to accept the fact that windows is basically a mainstream operating system that will live for as long as personal computers are still around. And even though there have been really good moves lately by Google and their not entirely fledgling Android operating system, I have to say that it is very likely that Windows remains king. This despite the fact that Windows 8 is a complete and total piece of junk. I think at some point is going to be a decent operating system, but for right now it is just absolutely the most horrible thing that I've ever seen.
One of the things that I feel like this only be a lot of advances in lately is hard disk technology. The reason why I say this is that I recently had a clicking hard drive, and I needed to get my data back. I get that I probably should've backed up my files, but sometimes things slip. I am not one of those guys who is checking out their computer 24 hours a day to make sure that it is running at the proper speed and is the best machine going. Frankly, I have not bought a graphics card in over five years now. But everything is still running quite well. But unfortunately, it seems like every once in a while I'll run into a hardware issue, like this hard drive, and I'll need some kind of help. I can recognize that it does suck when things like this happen, and I can only cope with it.
But there's no way that you are going to get me to say that I am absolutely happy with the way computers age. I remember back in the day when a television use a last 20 years. Now, Apple is literally making things that will fail within the first year so that they can quickly get more revenue from their customers. I find it shocking that the quality is so low, and their labor force is not very far from slavery. I've seen some of these Foxconn videos, and I have to say that I am appalled. A lot of us in the IT industry really need to stand up when it comes to foreign labor rights. I will admit that it certainly works to our bias, as we want to keep our jobs ourselves, but you always have to think about human rights in the computer world. I feel like Apple is a real problem when it comes to this.
Anyway. I'll write more when my hard drive is back online.
Coming Back To It
If you said to me that I would take a couple of years offer programming in general and take a look at my family and really see the world, I would've said that I am just not that that the guy. I guess being a somewhat conservative fellow in general ( not in politics, of course :), I just always thought that something like a sabbatical would be a little bit extravagant for me. I have certainly enjoyed programming for most of my life, and certainly I have appreciated working with the Python platform more than any other. As far as I'm concerned, this program language still as a serious future for organizations around the world. If you do not only this, you probably don't understand exactly what is going on with computer architectures these days. Things continue to change, and at the same time, they remain the same.
I will say that there are a lot of things that have changed recently in the world that have made me want to get off of my ass and get involved in community organizations. I have been lucky enough to meet a lot of great people in the programming industry, and the genius that is here continues to impress me as I move into my 40s. But, there really hasn't been a time for me to reflect upon more important things than just coding programs for major companies. Now, I'm starting to think a lot more about family and the state of America lately. Is a strange times indeed, but definitely the kind of time that I can be fairly excited about.
I will be key issues these days seems to be the Second Amendment. I certainly don't want to get too political on this love, and I never really have before, but I feel like the Second Amendment is an issue that we really need to simply let go of. I've been to countries in Europe and to places around the world, I think you pretty much have to recognize that most nations can actually survive without him. What's more, these nations tend to be actually very prolific and provide really good environment for creativity in general. While there may be isn't as much creativity as far as killing people goes, on the other hand, they also have healthcare and seem to understand exactly what is happening with their neighbor. They don't lock themselves in suburbs that are kind of creepy and don't even have sidewalks. Instead, these people actually tend to live better. All you really have to do is check the Better Life Index and you can see that it isn't the United States of America that is at the top, but instead a lot of our friends in Scandinavia and throughout Europe.
I continue to find that life is often better on the other side, and that the grass is in fact greener. Having spent a little bit of time in Europe, I recognize that America has a lot of mistakes that need to be corrected and a lot of this blog going forward will be about that.
On the other hand, a lot of this blog will also just be about coding and just straight up geeking out. Stay strong.


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West End star Louise Dearman dishes about being the only actress to play Glinda and Elphaba in Wicked (up for the BBC Radio 2 Audience Award), spoofing the show in So Jest End and her "insane" journey to becoming "Popular."
Acclaimed filmmaker Woody Allen talks to Broadway.com editor Paul Wontorek on opening night of the musical version of his hit Bullets Over Broadway.April 10, 2014
Tag along with Kyle Dean Massey as he pushes through a two-show day in Pippin on Broadway. SPOILER ALERT: it's hard!April 10, 2014
Beyond Therapy's Liv Rooth talks about the hilarious search for love in the '80s in this Christopher Durang revival.April 10, 2014
Get a glimpse of the new musical Bullets Over Broadway! See Zach Braff, Marin Mazzie and the cast sing and dance, then catch them live at the St. James Theatre.April 10, 2014
This week's episode packs in info about Denzel Washington's dream house, Kelli O'Hara's future plans and Joan River's rude tweet. Plus, Ramin Karimloo, Anna Kendrick and a whole lot to Holler about.April 9, 2014
Jasper in Deadland's Ben Crawford discusses the importance of Ryan Scott Oliver's contemporary take on a classic and it's appeal to younger audiences.April 9, 2014
Motown The Musical's Eric LaJuan Summers takes us backstage at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater to show us how the cast stays in shape and stays loose during this super high energy show!April 8, 2014
The stars of The Realistic Jonses celebrated their opening night in Will Eno's new play at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre on April 6, 2014. And never fear—director Sam Gold confirmed no squirrels were harmed in its making!April 7, 2014
It's so wrong, it's right! See Zosia Mamet, Raul Esparza, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Nicole Parker, Marc Kudsich, Meryl Streep (!) and more sing parts that are utterly wrong for them and honor Allison Janney at MCC's Miscast.April 4, 2014
Denzel Washington, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Sophie Okonedo, Anika Noni Rose and the all-star cast of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun celebrate opening night of the new revival on April 3, 2014.April 4, 2014
Kathleen Chalfant discusses the little known history and dark mysteries in David Grimm's Tales From Red Vienna.April 4, 2014
Shuler Hensley, Cheyenne Jackson & Laura Benanti are headlining the Encores! staging of The Most Happy Fella. We caught up with the talented cast in rehearsal for the show.April 4, 2014


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Studies Affirm Tamoxifen's Long-Term Preventive Benefit
Long-term follow-up data from two cancer prevention trials conducted in the United Kingdom have confirmed that women at high risk for breast cancer continue to receive a risk-reduction benefit from tamoxifen years after they have stopped taking it. That risk reduction, the reports show, is matched by another favorable development: a significantly lessened risk of serious adverse effects, such as blood clots and endometrial cancer.
The new studies also support the follow-up data from a similar study conducted in the United States, the Breast Cancer Prevention Trial (BCPT), which found a continued benefit from tamoxifen after its use had ended and a stronger benefit-to-risk ratio in premenopausal women. Read more
Guest Update by Dr. Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr.
NCI's Epidemiologic Research on Benzene Contributes to New EPA Rule
Since the British surgeon Percivall Pott reported in 1775 on the high frequency of scrotal cancer among chimney sweeps, studies of occupational groups have been instrumental in the discovery of environmental carcinogens and the development of preventive measures. In modern times, regulatory agencies have depended to a considerable extent on epidemiologic studies in the workplace in formulating public health policies to control hazardous exposures among both workers and the general population.
Most recently, a series of studies in NCI's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) was considered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in establishing a new rule to limit the benzene content in gasoline and adopt controls on passenger vehicles and portable fuel containers in order to significantly reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants. The rule was signed and submitted to the Federal Register on February 9. Read more
Studies Affirm Tamoxifen's Long-Term Preventive Benefit
Long-term follow-up data from two cancer prevention trials conducted in the United Kingdom have confirmed that women at high risk for breast cancer continue to receive a risk-reduction benefit from tamoxifen years after they have stopped taking it. That risk reduction, the reports show, is matched by another favorable development: a significantly lessened risk of serious adverse effects, such as blood clots and endometrial cancer.
The new studies also support the follow-up data from a similar study conducted in the United States, the Breast Cancer Prevention Trial (BCPT), which found a continued benefit from tamoxifen after its use had ended and a stronger benefit-to-risk ratio in premenopausal women.
"We now have additional confirmation of what we've been saying - that tamoxifen's beneficial effects don't end with the last pill, and that the risk of life-threatening side effects decreases very rapidly after your last pill," says Dr. Leslie Ford, associate director for clinical research in NCI's Division of Cancer Prevention. "That's what you want in a prevention agent."
Both studies, published in the February 21 Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), included follow-up data from randomized trials comparing 20 mg daily of tamoxifen versus placebo. In the IBIS-I trial, more than 7,100 participants took tamoxifen or a placebo for 5 years, and the research team provided data after a median of 8 years follow-up. In the other study, conducted entirely at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, approximately 2,500 participants took tamoxifen or a placebo daily for 8 years, and the research team provided data after a median of 13 years follow-up.
The updated IBIS-I trial results revealed a 34-percent reduction in the risk of estrogen receptor (ER)-positive invasive breast cancer, similar to the 31-percent reduction seen when the trial results were initially reported in 2002. The updated Royal Marsden data showed a 39-percent reduction in ER-positive breast cancer, after finding no statistically significant decrease in risk when the study's results were initially reported in 1998.
In an accompanying editorial in JNCI, Dr. Umberto Veronesi and colleagues from the European Institute of Oncology in Milan wrote that the study results "suggest a true preventive effect and not merely transient risk reduction" and "highlight [tamoxifen's] favorable risk-benefit ratio in younger women, among whom severe toxicity is rare."
In both trials, Dr. Ford notes, participants were allowed to be on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which could mitigate tamoxifen's impact. In the 13,000-participant BCPT, which saw a greater risk reduction - 49 percent when preliminary results were reported and 43 percent on long-term follow-up - HRT was not allowed.
The reluctance among U.S. primary care physicians to prescribe tamoxifen as a preventive agent has been well documented, with much of it attributed to their lack of familiarity and comfort with the drug.
"There are individual patients who…may not choose tamoxifen because of appropriate concerns about toxicity," says Dr. Lawrence Wickerham, associate chairman of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), which oversaw BCPT and another breast cancer prevention trial, STAR. "But a substantial barrier to greater tamoxifen use has been clinicians. These results may help to eliminate that."
As was anticipated, the risk-reduction benefit in both trials was limited to ER-positive breast cancer. Tamoxifen works by blocking cells' estrogen receptors, preventing estrogen from binding to potentially mutated cells and fueling their proliferation, so it was not expected to help prevent non-ER-expressing cancers.
There are no proven methods to specifically target or predict which high-risk women are likely to develop ER-positive breast cancer. But, explains Dr. Wickerham, 60 to 70 percent of breast cancers are ER positive, so using tamoxifen as a prevention agent is already a fairly targeted pursuit.
In addition, the Gail model that is frequently used to identify women at high risk for invasive breast cancer, Dr. Ford says, "contains many risk factors of ER-positive disease, such as age at menarche, age at first birth, and age at menopause." All of these are indicators of long-term exposure to estrogen.
By Carmen Phillips
Guest Update by Dr. Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr.
NCI's Epidemiologic Research on Benzene Contributes to New EPA Rule
Since the British surgeon Percivall Pott reported in 1775 on the high frequency of scrotal cancer among chimney sweeps, studies of occupational groups have been instrumental in the discovery of environmental carcinogens and the development of preventive measures. In modern times, regulatory agencies have depended to a considerable extent on epidemiologic studies in the workplace in formulating public health policies to control hazardous exposures among both workers and the general population.
Most recently, a series of studies in NCI's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) was considered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in establishing a new rule to limit the benzene content in gasoline and adopt controls on passenger vehicles and portable fuel containers in order to significantly reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants. The rule was signed and submitted to the Federal Register on February 9.
In developing this policy, EPA was influenced by the results of a 20-year collaborative research program in which DCEG investigators worked closely with scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC, formerly known as the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine). The goal of this study was to evaluate the cancer risks in a large cohort of Chinese workers heavily exposed to benzene, a known carcinogen that is widely prevalent in the environment. Using detailed exposure assessment data, the cohort study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (1997), was able to uncover an increased risk of acute nonlymphocytic leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome at exposures below 10 parts per million (ppm). There was also evidence linking benzene to other forms of leukemia and possibly non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
These findings were followed by molecular epidemiology studies utilizing a panel of biomarkers to help identify the underlying mechanisms of benzene-related leukemia, including precursor conditions and susceptibility states. It was reported in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine (1996) that hematologic toxicity occurred at lower levels of benzene exposure than generally appreciated. This prompted a larger study published in Science (2004) that uncovered hematotoxicity among workers exposed to levels under 1 ppm in the air, the current U.S. occupational standard. In addition, variants in several genes were associated with a greater decrease in white blood cell counts among exposed workers.
While this long-term collaborative U.S.-China project focused on the hazards of benzene in the workplace, it is known that large segments of the population around the world are exposed to small amounts of benzene on a daily basis, especially through inhaled air that contains benzene from vehicular and other sources. Thus, the quantitative dose-related health effects from workplace exposures have contributed not only to lowering the benzene occupational standard in China, but also to guiding the risk assessment process leading to controls on environmental benzene exposure in the United States.In addition to several intramural investigators at NCI, this binational collaboration involved a team of Chinese investigators led by Drs. Songnian Yin and Guilan Li from the Chinese CDC. The molecular epidemiology components also included Drs. Martyn Smith, Luoping Zhang, and Stephen Rappaport, at the University of California, Berkeley.
Male Tobacco Switchers Have Increased Mortality Rates
Men who switch from smoking cigarettes to smokeless tobacco (chewing tobacco and snuff) had a higher rate of death from all causes, lung cancer, coronary heart disease, and stroke than former cigarette smokers who quit using tobacco entirely, according to study results published online February 15 in Tobacco Control.
Dr. Michael J. Thun of the American Cancer Society (ACS) and colleagues identified 4,443 men who were switchers and 111,952 men who quit tobacco entirely from the Cancer Prevention Study II. This ongoing prospective study includes 1.2 million U.S. adults; it began in the fall of 1982 with a follow-up 20 years later. In the study, ACS volunteers asked friends, neighbors, and acquaintances who were 30 and older to complete a confidential, four-page mailed questionnaire on their smoking habits, alcohol intake, education, and other demographic characteristics.
Most switchers in the study began using smokeless tobacco within a year of quitting smoking and had used smokeless tobacco for an average of 9 years. The researchers found that switchers had significantly higher rates of death from all causes, lung cancer, coronary heart disease, and stroke than men who had never used tobacco or were former cigarette smokers and quit using tobacco entirely. Additionally, researchers found differences in demographic characteristics and lifestyle. Switchers tended to be less educated, more often employed in blue-collar occupations, more likely to engage in heavy exercise (possibly associated with a blue-collar occupation), and reported consuming fewer fruits, vegetables, and alcohol, but more dietary fat than those who quit using tobacco entirely. The analyses adjusted for other risk factors and the number of years the switchers smoked, number of cigarettes smoked per day, and age at quitting smoking.
The authors noted that "Our results support the stand that smokers who want to quit should be offered safe, clinically proven treatments for smoking cessation, including pharmacotherapies such as medicinal nicotine or antidepressants, behavioral counseling, and telephone quitlines."
Researchers Discover Biomarkers for Diagnosing Liver Cancer
A team of researchers led by Dr. Xin Wei Wang of NCI's Center for Cancer Research (CCR) has identified a five-gene signature that can be used to diagnose early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The findings appeared online February 20 in Clinical Cancer Research.
Currently, an elevated level of the protein alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) in the serum is the only known diagnostic biomarker for HCC. This elevated level of AFP is detectable in only about one-third of patients with early-stage HCC. Consequently, most HCC is not diagnosed in its early stages, leading to high mortality from the disease.
Using microarray techniques to examine a range of gene expression profiles from 218 HCC specimens, Dr. Wang's team and collaborators at the Liver Cancer Institute of Fudan University in China identified five candidate genes that were overexpressed in HCC. This finding, in combination with Dr. Wang's earlier research into the tumor microenvironment, suggests a potential means for increased accuracy in diagnosis and monitoring recurrence during treatment.
Men with Low-Risk Prostate Cancer Often Choose Treatment over Surveillance
Men diagnosed with prostate cancer who have a very low risk of dying of the disease and are eligible for active surveillance - also known as watchful waiting - rarely choose this option over treatment, researchers reported last week at the Prostate Cancer Symposium in Orlando, FL. An analysis of data from the CaPSURE prostate cancer registry found that only 9 percent of those eligible for surveillance selected the option.
Active surveillance involves the careful monitoring of the disease until such time as treatment is needed. Physicians may recommend active surveillance for older patients with early-stage disease who are more likely to die of another cause; some forms of prostate cancer progress so slowly that they never cause any harm.
In the study, older men chose surveillance more often than younger men. Men over age 70 were 26 times more likely to choose surveillance than men younger than 63, while men between 63 and 70 were 5 times more likely to choose surveillance than those younger than 63.
The researchers analyzed data on 1,886 patients diagnosed between 1999 and 2004. Of this group, 310 had very low-risk disease based on 5 criteria including prostate-specific antigen level, Gleason score, and stage. Only 28 of the 310 candidates (9 percent) chose surveillance.
Anxiety caused by a diagnosis of cancer may be a factor driving men to choose treatment, said Dr. Daniel Barocas of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical College, who presented the findings. Previous studies have estimated that about one in five men who choose surveillance will go on to develop prostate cancer that cannot be treated.
Dr. Eric Klein of the Cleveland Clinic, who commented on the findings, said that an issue for clinicians is the lack of adequate tools to identify which patients are likely to need future treatment and which are not. A second issue is the lack of clinical tools to determine when a person who has chosen surveillance needs treatment.
"Until we have those tools there is likely to be some hesitancy to choose surveillance," said Dr. Klein.
High Doses of Vitamin D Hormone Boost Prostate Cancer Therapy
Some men with advanced prostate cancer may benefit from taking the chemotherapy drug docetaxel in combination with a pill that delivers high doses of the vitamin D hormone, a randomized phase II clinical trial has found. The pill, DN-101, contains a biologically active form of vitamin D called calcitriol. Preclinical studies have suggested that high amounts of calcitriol may benefit patients with prostate cancer.
In the trial, the addition of calcitriol to docetaxel did not lead to an increase in toxic side effects, and it was associated with a reduced risk of death (by approximately a third over docetaxel alone). DN-101 is thought to work by producing much higher blood levels of calcitriol than the body can produce from dietary vitamin D or vitamin D supplements.
Dr. Tomasz Beer of the Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute and his colleagues reported the findings in the February 20 Journal of Clinical Oncology. Dr. Beer's team first tested calcitriol plus docetaxel in a small group of patients several years ago.
The new results are from the Androgen Independent Prostate Cancer (AIPC) Study of Calcitriol Enhancing Taxotere (ASCENT), a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial. It included 250 men at 48 sites in the United States and Canada. The men had advanced prostate cancer that no longer responded to hormonal therapy, a condition called androgen-independent prostate cancer.
"The purpose of this study was to see if there was sufficient evidence for undertaking a phase III trial, and the survival data clearly demonstrated this," said Dr. Beer. A final-stage clinical trial is underway to test the effects of docetaxel plus calcitriol on overall survival in a larger group of patients.
Secondary Sarcomas Threaten Childhood Cancer Survivors
Previous research has shown that children who received radiation therapy for cancer treatment and survived at least 5 years face an increased risk years later of developing bone and soft tissue sarcomas. Now, new findings reported in the February 21 JNCI reveal that - regardless of what treatments they received - childhood cancer survivors are nine times more likely to develop sarcomas than are their age-matched peers in the general population. On average, the secondary sarcoma appears 11 years after the initial cancer diagnosis.
When researchers compared the 104 patients who developed secondary sarcomas with the 14,258 other survivors from the Childhood Cancer Survivors Study (CCSS) who did not, a number of additional risk factors emerged. Children originally given radiation therapy had 3.1 times the risk. Three other risk factors more than doubled the risk of secondary sarcoma: a history of other secondary neoplasms and high doses of chemotherapy with either anthracyclines or with alkylating agents. Children with an original primary diagnosis of sarcoma were at greatest risk, however, with a 10.1 times higher risk than children who survived other types of cancer.
"Diagnosis of a sarcoma can sometimes be elusive because symptoms are often nonspecific," wrote lead author Dr. Tara O. Henderson of the University of Chicago. She urged clinicians and researchers to take these new findings into consideration as they evaluate the risk for second cancers in this highly vulnerable population.This is 1 of more than 60 studies based on CCSS, the largest database of prospectively gathered information on childhood cancer survivors ever compiled. The study is supported by NCI and involves 27 participating pediatric oncology research centers. Study data are available to other investigators in the research community.
Dr. Walter C. Willett is the Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and a founding investigator of the Nurses' Health Study II. He spoke about diet and cancer at NCI on February 22-23 as a Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics Visiting Scholar.
What have we learned from the completed long-term studies of diet and cancer risk?
There are still many specific components of diet that do seem to be important for cancer prevention, such as keeping red meat consumption, particularly processed meat, relatively low. The total percentage of calories in the diet from fat doesn't seem to be important. There may still be some modest benefit of higher fruit and vegetable intake for cancer prevention, but it's not the 'big bang' it was thought to be 15 or 20 years ago.
But it's also important that we don't adopt a lifestyle just for preventing one disease, and we particularly have to pay attention to cardiovascular disease, as that is still the number one cause of death. But in general, many of the same things we do for cardiovascular disease are going to have an impact on cancer.
During your visit, you mentioned that prospective observational studies might be
Also, we're often looking at factors that are much more complicated to change than just taking a pill or placebo - to actually change human behavior is difficult. It's not impossible, but to keep the two trial groups separated is the real challenge. That can be a serious problem in a randomized trial, particularly when you're dealing with items that are on the shelves of your grocery store, in pill form or in food form.
What areas of research in the field of diet and cancer are investigators really excited about right now?
Another critical area is milk consumption and calcium intake, because there are now quite a few studies showing that higher intakes of calcium or dairy products are related to increased risk of fatal prostate cancer. And that's important, because the national recommendation to drink three glasses of milk a day would double dairy consumption and production in the United States. As we have no good evidence suggesting it would reduce fractures and quite a few studies showing a relationship with fatal prostate cancer, that's an important area to resolve.Another broad area to explore is the effect of diet during earlier periods in life. There is much indirect evidence that diet is likely to have an important effect during that period of life.
Zoledronate to Preserve Bone Mineral Density
Name of the Trial
Principal Investigators
Why This Trial Is Important
Drugs called bisphosphonates have been shown to reduce the bone loss caused by menopause and some other medical conditions. Now doctors want to know if a bisphosphonate called zoledronate (Zometa) can help prevent bone loss in premenopausal women undergoing risk-reducing surgery to remove both ovaries.
In this trial, all women will have their bone mineral density checked prior to surgery and receive calcium and vitamin D supplements for 18 months following surgery. In addition, half of the women will be randomly assigned to receive intravenous zoledronate once every 6 months. The remaining women will be monitored without receiving additional treatment. Bone mineral density will be checked at 9 months and 18 months following surgery.
"Premenopausal women undergoing risk-reducing surgery typically are not monitored adequately for osteoporosis, but it is a very serious side effect for these women," said Dr. Alberts. "All women in this trial will benefit from very close observation, and those receiving zoledronate will be getting a drug with a record of preventing and reversing bone loss in cancer patients."
Who Can Join This Trial
Study Sites and Contact Information
An archive of "Featured Clinical Trial" columns is available at http://cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/ft-all-featured-trials.
Blumberg to Receive National Public Service Award
"Understanding NCI" Teleconference Slated for March 7
No registration is required and participation is free. Within the U.S., the teleconference can be accessed toll free at 800-857-6584; the passcode is PNP. Toll-free playback will be available through April 7 at 800-873-2035.
For additional information, contact the Office of Liaison Activities at 301-594-3194 or firstname.lastname@example.com. Information on the Patient Navigator Program can be found at http://CRCHD.cancer.gov.
Breast Cancer Conference Scheduled for March
The conference will seek to determine the state of the science on clinical use of preoperative therapy in breast cancer, as well as identify future research agendas. Leading breast cancer physicians will present the state of the science and engage in a panel discussion in which audience participation is encouraged.
If Memory Serves...
The first staff at NCI was comprised of Harvard personnel, most of whom had been working in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Schereschewsky in Cambridge, MA, which was later led by Dr. Carl Voegtlin (the first Chief of NCI) after Dr. Schereschewsky's retirement. Both Dr. Schereschewsky and Dr. Voegtlin were commissioned officers of the Public Health Service. (Read more)
For more information about the birth of NCI, go to http://www. cancer.gov/aboutnci/ncia.
The target audience for this meeting includes breast cancer physicians - medical and radiation oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, surgeons, and others - as well as general interventional radiologists and surgeons. Patient advocates are welcome. There is no charge for this meeting, but preregistration is requested. The meeting will be webcast at http://videocast.nih.gov and Continuing Medical Education credit is available. Information about registration, the agenda, and faculty list are available at http://ctep.cancer.gov/bcmeeting.
Chromosome Biology Conference Slated for April
The meeting is sponsored by the Center of Excellence in Chromosome Biology in NCI's Center for Cancer Research. Topics to be covered include transcriptional regulation, chromatin structure, epigenetics, DNA replication and repair, and nuclear architecture.There is no fee for this conference, but space is limited and registration is required by March 26. The deadline for abstract submission is March 16. For additional information, registration, and poster abstract submission, go to www.palladianpartners.com/cecb2007.
The Trials and Tested Agents of Breast Cancer Chemoprevention
Several phase III, randomized breast cancer chemoprevention trials have been completed and most have reported long-term follow-up data. Two other large trials are underway, one in England and one in Canada. The following is a brief primer on some of these trials.
Completed Trials
Royal Marsden - Randomized high-risk women to tamoxifen or placebo for 8 years. Initial results showed no decrease in breast cancer risk, but recent follow-up data showed a 39-percent reduction in ER-positive invasive breast cancer.
IBIS-I - Randomized high-risk women to tamoxifen or placebo for 5 years. Initial results showed a 31-percent reduced risk of ER-positive invasive breast cancer; recent follow-up data showed a 34-percent reduction.
BCPT - The first U.S.-based breast cancer chemoprevention clinical trial. Initial results showed a 49-percent reduction in breast cancer among women on tamoxifen, with an increased risk of endometrial cancer and blood clots. Longer-term follow-up revealed a 43-percent risk reduction.
STAR - Compared tamoxifen to the anti-osteoporosis drug raloxifene. Raloxifene was as effective as tamoxifen at reducing breast cancer risk and was associated with fewer serious adverse effects. Tamoxifen was more effective at reducing the risk of noninvasive breast cancers.
RUTH - Randomized approximately 10,000 postmenopausal women to raloxifene or placebo. Raloxifene was associated with a reduced risk of invasive, primarily ER-positive breast cancer, but also increased the risk of fatal strokes and blood clots.
MORE/CORE - Randomized participants to 60 mg/day of raloxifene or placebo. Over 8 years there was a 66-percent reduction in risk of invasive breast cancer (primarily ER-positive). Raloxifene use was associated with an increased risk of blood clots.
Ongoing Trials
IBIS-II - Launched in 2004 in the United Kingdom, IBIS-II will randomize 6,000 postmenopausal, high-risk women to the aromatase inhibitor (AI) anastrozole or placebo. A parallel trial is comparing anastrozole to tamoxifen in 4,000 women who have had a precancerous lesion in their breast removed.MAP.3 - Launched last year by NCI-Canada, this trial will randomize high-risk women to placebo or to the AI exemestane.
Two drugs - Two mechanisms of action
Antiestrogens such as tamoxifen bind to the estrogen receptors on breast cancer cells, preventing the hormone from binding to the cell. This keeps the cell from growing and proliferating. Aromatase inhibitors such as anastrozole and letrozole inhibit estrogen production by the body. This can slow or stop the growth of breast cancer cells that need estrogen to grow. Both types of drugs are being tested as ways to reduce breast cancer risk.


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- Summary
- Sequence
- Locus History
- Literature
- Wiki
|Systematic Name
|Feature Type
| Autonomously Replicating Sequence (1 and see Summary Paragraph)
Also known as: ARSXVI-290 1
|Chromosomal Location
|Last Update
|Coordinates: 2011-02-03 | Sequence: 2006-08-30
|Retrieve sequences
|S288C only
|S288C vs. other species
|External Links
|All Associated Seq | OriDB | Search all NCBI (Entrez)
|Primary SGDID
Autonomously replicating sequences (ARSs) function as chromosomal replication origins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and play an essential role in chromosome maintenance (2, 3). During S phase, chromosomes are duplicated so that each mother cell retains, and each daughter cell receives, a full complement as a result of mitotic cell division. Each chromosome initiates replication at multiple sites at intervals of 40-100 kb, with each origin regulated to fire only once per cell cycle, mostly around mid-S phase, although different origins are activated continuously throughout S phase (4, 5, 6). Most origins are intergenic in nature, and only a subset operate during any given cell cycle, giving rise to highly-efficient origins that function in most cell cycles and extremely inefficient origins that are used in only a small percentage of cell cycles, as well as a range of efficiencies in between (5). Origins also fire in a characteristic order, which appears to be independent of the origin itself, but often correlates with the transcriptional activity of surrounding genes, with early-firing origins associated with active genes, and late-firing origins associated with silent genes (4).
ARSs have proven difficult to identify because they vary greatly in sequence and functional element composition, although they do share an elevated A-T content, interpreted to promote localized ease of DNA unwinding, which increases efficiency of replication initiation (7). ARSs are modular in structure, generally ~100-200 bp long, and depend on an exact match, or very near match, of an essential copy of an 11-base pair (bp) ARS consensus sequence (ACS), 5'-WTTTAYRTTTW-3', mutations in which abolish ARS function (8, 9). Some ARSs also contain additional near-match ACSs that are dispensable for function (8). Substantial sequence conservation has been observed in the 3 bp on either side of the essential match ACS, allowing for the identification of a 17-bp extended ACS (EACS), 5'-WWWWTTTAYRTTTWGTT-3' (8). The core ACS is part of "domain A", and is bound by the Origin Recognition Complex (ORC), a six-subunit DNA-dependent ATPase that functions as the replication initiator protein and launching pad for the assembly of the prereplication complex (pre-RC) (8). Immediately downstream of domain A (3' to the T-rich strand of the ACS) is "domain B", which exhibits little sequence conservation among ARSs and is composed of several nonredundant sequence elements (B1, B2, B3, B4), which vary from one ARS to another (8). Some, but not all, mutations in the B1 subelement can reduce the efficiency of ORC binding, suggesting that B1 functions with domain A as part of the ORC binding site (8). The B2 subelement, or DUE (DNA Unwinding Element), is AT-rich and serves as the site for the initial DNA unwinding, allowing the replication machinery to enter the DNA duplex in this area and assemble the first new nucleotides (10, 11). The B3 subelement is a 12-bp degenerate sequence that acts as a binding site for the transcriptional activator/repressor ARS binding factor 1 (ABF1) (8, 11). The function of the B4 subelement is as yet unknown (10). Some ARSs also have stimulatory sequences upstream of domain A (on the opposite side of the ACS) known as "domain C", as well as binding sites for the Rap1p transcription factor (10).
|Nieduszynski CA, et al. (2006) Genome-wide identification of replication origins in yeast by comparative genomics. Genes Dev 20(14):1874-9
|Deshpande AM and Newlon CS (1992) The ARS consensus sequence is required for chromosomal origin function in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mol Cell Biol 12(10):4305-13
|Yang C, et al. (1999) Conservation of ARS elements and chromosomal DNA replication origins on chromosomes III of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. carlsbergensis. Genetics 152(3):933-41
|Vujcic M, et al. (1999) Activation of silent replication origins at autonomously replicating sequence elements near the HML locus in budding yeast. Mol Cell Biol 19(9):6098-109
|Raghuraman MK, et al. (2001) Replication dynamics of the yeast genome. Science 294(5540):115-21
|Poloumienko A, et al. (2001) Completion of replication map of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome III. Mol Biol Cell 12(11):3317-27
|Shirahige K, et al. (1993) Location and characterization of autonomously replicating sequences from chromosome VI of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mol Cell Biol 13(8):5043-56
|Theis JF and Newlon CS (1997) The ARS309 chromosomal replicator of Saccharomyces cerevisiae depends on an exceptional ARS consensus sequence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 94(20):10786-91
|Newlon CS and Theis JF (2002) DNA replication joins the revolution: whole-genome views of DNA replication in budding yeast. Bioessays 24(4):300-4
|Theis JF, et al. (1999) DNA sequence and functional analysis of homologous ARS elements of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. carlsbergensis. Genetics 152(3):943-52
|Chang VK, et al. (2003) Mcm1 binds replication origins. J Biol Chem 278(8):6093-100


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Alan in OH
Ram mounts are great.Read All Reviews
ART in CA
RAM makes the best mount. You can't go wrong with RAM!Read All Reviews
Ryan in CO
I ride hard over very rough terrain I was skeptical that it would stay put. After a full day of riding the unit was in the same exact spot as when I started. Priced right, durable, and you can move it with the two pivot points to just the right spot.Read All Reviews
SPENCER in TN
This is one of those products you ask why did I not invent this.Read All Reviews
Jason in AL
want something to hold a cell phone but not be forced into keeping the same type of phone for that specific holder, since this can be configured and adjusted to just about anything its exactly what i wanted.Read All Reviews
Brian in CA
I have used this mount for one summer so far and it has held up very well. I have been riding on very rough trails and never had a problem or concern that my gps was going to fall out or come loose. It holds the Garmin Oregon like a glove. Weather hot, cold or wet will not cause it to come loose. I would recommend it to anyone who would like to keep there gps in view attached to there handle bars. I would buy againRead All Reviews


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Personalized Suitcase Favor Tins Set of 12 Style 14031NA
Final sale. This item cannot be exchanged or returned.
This item is available online only. *
They've come from miles away to see you off on your journey of a lifetime, simply because you mean so much to them. Show your guests how very much they mean to you and thank them sincerely for making the trip with these Suitcase Favor Tins. Amazing detail makes these tins extraordinary tiny wheels that roll, a handle that pulls up and down and retro travel stickers on one side. Hanging from the handle is a tag that says "Thanks for Making the Trip!" Fill the tins with wrapped chocolates, Jordan almonds or another goodie of your choice. The tins measure 3 " high x 2 " wide x 1 " deep. Comes in sets of 12.
Note: Some Assembly is Required.
customers bought with this dress
Personalized Suitcase Favor Tins Set of 12 Style 14031NA 2 2
Outer Banks Unique My daughter will be getting married in May in North Carolina. This was the perfect favor according to the happy couple as all family and friends would be travelling to share their day. It's a good size holding at least 4 pieces of saltwater taffy. Seems sturdy and they liked that they could choose an appropriate label. We were also pleasantly surprised to find the back covered in "travel labels." Absolutely adorable! December 18, 2013
Perfect! I had a destination wedding in Vegas so I ordered these with the Las Vegas label. The "assembly" was just putting the labels on the suitcases which took only 15 minutes for two people doing about 50. I put candy inside. It was perfect. The guests loved them! October 22, 2013
1-2 of 2
*Color & Style representation may vary by monitor. Not responsible for typographical or pictorial errors. Product availability varies by store and online. Some in-store purchases require special order and markdown styles cannot be special ordered. Contact your local store for details.


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Graveside services for Hilda Beatrice Fallon will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Bistineau Cemetery in Heflin. Visitation will be held from noon until service time at Rockett Funeral Home in Ringgold.
Mrs. Fallon passed away Nov. 27, 2012. She was preceded in death by her husband, Edmund Daniel Fallon; her mother, Adele Harrison Watts Jones; her father, Howard Watts; sisters Voylet Evans, Norma Langford Cortez Wiener and Merle Liner; and brothers, Roy Watts and Howard Watts.
Left to cherish her memories are her children, Christy Russell and her husband, Trique, Edmund Daniel Fallon, Jr., and Kay Dauzat and her husband, Eugene; grandchildren, Kimberly Russell, Troy Fallon, Christopher Fallon and his wife, Frannie, Shannon Fallon, Melanie Hester and her husband, Daniel and Kevlin Parham and his wife, Jacqueline; great-grandchildren, Ariana, Kyleigh, Cameron, Adrian, Tristen, Carly and Kevlin; along with a host of other relatives and friends.
Condolences may be extended to the family at www.rockettfuneralhome.com.


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Happy birthday, Anne! I hope you and the kitties are having a beautiful day!
Dog of the Day
Cat of the Day
Pet of the Day
Happy birthday, Anne! I hope you and the kitties are having a beautiful day!
Yikes! I've been Boo'd ... right off of the stage!
Aaahh, I have been defrosted! Thank you, Bonny and Asiel!
Brrrr, I've been Frosted! Thank you, Asiel and Pomtzu!
"That's the power of kittens (and puppies too, of course): They can reduce us to quivering masses of Jell-O in about two seconds flat and make us like it. Good thing they don't have opposable thumbs or they'd surely have taken over the world by now." -- Paul Lukas
Cassie's Catster page: http://www.catster.com/cats/448678
We are! I slept in till 11:00. I felt nice. I mean I really slept. More later!
Thanks Elyse and Cassie
Meowmie to Mr. Spunky, Samwise, Lady Jane, Bob, and Callie.
RIP Emily (Oct 8, 2013), Rose (Sept 24, 2001), Maggie (Fall 2003)
Happy Birthday Anne. Have a great day!
All things work together for good to them that love God.
(Romans 8:28)
I've been defrosted-- Thanks, Sana
Happy Birthday!
I've Been Frosted
Happy birthday, ANNE!!! Enjoy!
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
"Cats," he said eventually. "Cats are nice."
-- Terry Pratchett, Sourcery
Happy Birthday!!!
Forever in my heart...Lacey,Sassy,Mandy,Corey,Ginger,Casey
Thank you all. It's been a do nothing sort of day. Not bad really. Taking myself out to lunch tomorrow.
It's been pleasant so I can't complain.
Meowmie to Mr. Spunky, Samwise, Lady Jane, Bob, and Callie.
RIP Emily (Oct 8, 2013), Rose (Sept 24, 2001), Maggie (Fall 2003)
Glad you had a really nice day. Happy Birthday!
"I like physics, but I love cartoons." -- Stephen Hawking
Happy Birthday - I hope you had a grand day!!
Yours in Whiskers
I'm not young enough to know everything.
"The Best Mirror is an Old Friend"
The secret of what is small is the secret of clear-sightedness; the guarding of what is soft and tender is the secret of strength.
- Lao Tzu
Happy birthday, MrSpunkysmom!
Mikey - [Pug/Beagle Mix] Spock and T'Stala - [Hermit Crabs] Rest in Peace, Bo. I love you - [African Cawed Frog] Bo II - [Guppy] Buzz - [VT Male Betta] Chippewa - [BT Male Betta]"Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you."
Happy Birthday Sounds like it was a restful day.
I've Been Boo'd
I've been Frosted
Men, it has been well said, think in herds. It will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
Charles Mackay, Scottish journalist, circa 1841
Happy Birthday - I wish you many more!
"I don't know which weapons will be used in the third World war, but in the fourth, it will be sticks and stones" --- Albert Einstein.
Cali, Diego and I hope you had a wonderful Birthday!!!
Gayle - self proclaimed Queen of Poop
Mommy to: Cali and Diego (six year old kittens)
(RB furbabies: Rascal RB 10/11/03 (ferret), Sami RB 24/02/04 (dog), Trouble RB 10/08/05 (ferret), Miko RB 20/01/06 (ferret) and Sebastian RB 12/12/06(ferret), Sasha RB 17/10/09 (border collie cross)
Happy Belated Birthday MrSpunkysMom Good you had a great peaceful rest now get going & take yourself out for a great meal.
"I've been defrosted by Cassiesmom" Spring is here somewhere?
Copyright © 2001-2013 Pet of the Day.com


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Roll Over Image to Zoom
Eli's Elephant Nursery Bedding
reg. price $99 sale $39.99
- Overview
Hand-embroidered and appliquéd elephants parade across our quilt, bumper and sham.
- Pure cotton percale.
- Quilted by hand around motifs with French-knot and pick-stitch embroidered details.
- Pure cotton corduroy appliqués and concentric stitching creates wonderful texture.
- Quilt features a pole pocket for easy display and reverses to pure cotton percale; pure cotton fill.
- Green and blue elephants dance across a field of polka dots on the fitted crib sheet.
- Fitted crib sheet is pure cotton percale interwoven with organic cotton fibers; with an Easy-Care finish.
- Nursery Bumper Bedding Set includes fitted crib sheet, bumper and crib skirt.
- Nursery Quilt Bedding Set includes fitted crib sheet, toddler quilt and crib skirt.
- Images provided (left) show bumper's distinct interior and exterior patterns; always fasten securely with exterior facing outward.
- Machine wash.
- Imported.
- Dimensions & Care
- View our nursery bedding safety tips.
- Made of pure cotton percale. A percale weave is noticeably denser and wears well over time.
- Yarn-dyed fabric has incredibly rich color that holds its vibrancy over time.
- Quilt is filled with 270-gram-weight cotton batting.
- Bumper is filled with polyester batting; features 9 pairs of pure cotton percale ties along the top and bottom.
- Secure bumper ties to the outside of the crib. Remove bumper when baby can sit up unaided, or can pull to a standing position (6–10 months).
- Sham features an envelope closure. Insert sold separately; down blend or synthetic.
- An Easy-Care finish ensures that fitted crib sheet emerges smooth and soft from the dryer.
- Crib sheet is made of soft cotton percale with 5% organic cotton fibers.
- Pottery Barn fitted crib sheets have elastic around the top and bottom only, rather than around the entire edge, a feature that makes our sheets safer for baby.
Toddler Quilt
- 36 x 50"
Crib Bumper
- 10 x 160"
Small Sham
- 12 x 16"
Fitted Crib Sheet
- 26 x 53"
- Fits mattresses up to 8" deep
- Wash bedding before first use.
- Follow instructions on the care label.
- Machine wash in cold or warm water (as specified); gentle cycle.
- Tumble dry on low or medium heat (as specified).
- Shipping Info
Please allow 5-7 business days for delivery. Delivery estimate includes monogrammed and gift-wrapped items.
To confirm delivery time frames in your area, please call 800.993.4923.
No longer available
reg. price $99 sale $39.99
Toddler Quilted Sham
No longer available
Crib Skirt
No longer available


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Story: Sep 22, 2014
Television and film writer teaching narrative writing at CIA
CIA Exhibition: Aug 28, 2014
2014 Faculty Exhibition
Story: Sep 10, 2014
Painting chair curates exhibition exploring art, materials
Events: Sep 06, 2014
Mizoguchi's Greatest Decade
Social: about 8 hours ago via Facebook
"Cleveland Ohio has become a hub of activity for visual artists. Its a hotbed of creativity." CIA grad George Kozmon '82 Read more about Kozman's commentary o...
Story: Sep 02, 2014
CIA ingenuity will be on display at arts and technology fest...
Events: Sep 26, 2014
Lunch On Fridays: GM Design
Story: Aug 27, 2014
New residence hall welcomes first-year students in comfort, ...
Events: Sep 27, 2014
Filmmaker and author John Waters to present one-man show
Blog: Sep 23, 2014
Unrelated (2007) trailer
Story: Aug 18, 2014
CIA again named to "Best in the Midwest" list
Events: Oct 18, 2014 @ William Busta Gallery in Cleveland, OH
A Creative Life featuring Paul Yanko
Academics . Animation . Faculty . Kristin Thompson-Smith
Kristin Thompson-Smith
Title Adjunct Faculty
Department Animation
Phone 216.421.7000
Courses Digital Color | Putting Artists in the Classroom: Intro to Teaching Art I | Putting Artists in the Classroom: Intro to Teaching Art II
Animation Career Review names CIA's Animation and Game Design programs as fifth best in the Midwest, noting our vast classroom/studio space.
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