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Lower airfares, cheaper food and rising profit margins are among the benefits that should flow from tumbling oil and commodity prices – but only after a long lead time.
Having poured $400 billion into commodities over the past decade, many investors are now selling. Their confidence that risky assets could only float higher on a rising tide of cheap central bank money has crumbled as the global economy fails to respond to the stimulus.
Even China, an important buyer of natural resources, is slowing. Inflation, against which gold in particular is a classic hedge, is falling nearly everywhere.
Price pressures will ease further if natural resources keep falling. That is bad news for exporters such as Saudi Arabia and Brazil but good news for net importers.
Weaker commodity prices should be positive for the world economy on average because falling inflation supports consumer spending, said ABN AMRO economistHan de Jong.
Standard and Poor's Goldman Sachs Commodity Index has fallen 6.6 percent so far this year.
But raw materials represent a small part of most firms' costs, so it is not surprising that some businesses, especially those in very competitive markets, are not getting carried away.
"There are thousands of components in a car so the impact might not be that great," said Cui Liyan with Great Wall Motor Co Ltd <601633.SS> <2333.HK>, China's top maker of SUVs and pick-up trucks. "Great Wall has never passed on additional costs to consumers when commodity prices have surged in the past."
For a U.S. economy experiencing slow growth, cheaper energy is a positive, said Michael Ward, chief executive of CSX Corp <CSX.N>, the country's second-largest railroad. But CSX itself is indifferent because it runs a fuel surcharge programme. "Over time, we're passing the increases or decreases in fuel to the customer," Ward said.
An official at South Korea's largest food maker, CJ CheilJedang Corp <097950.KS>, said it normally takes four to six months before a fall in agricultural futures prices passes through into the firm's product prices.
Commodities so far in 2013 http://link.reuters.com/reb25t
Commodities vs equities http://link.reuters.com/baf47t
Gold price timeline http://link.reuters.com/jem47t
The lurches in gold, including the sharpest one-day drop in 30 years on Monday, have grabbed the attention, but falling oil prices are of much greater economic significance.
Brent crude is down about 16 percent from the year's high at $119.17, hit on February 8.
Economists at JP Morgan estimate a 15 percent drop in the price of oil, caused by a supply increase, would be enough to lift global economic output this year by 0.2 percentage points.
But if the price fall reflects a darkening economic outlook, the same 15 percent decline is consistent with a 0.5 percent downgrade in global growth prospects for the year, the bank calculates.
An executive at Indian engineering company Larsen & Toubro <LART.NS> said the broader fall in commodity prices cut both ways. Cheaper materials would help profit margins and, if the trend were sustained, would increase the chances of lower interest rates, he said. But prices were falling for a reason.
"Prices are down today because the investment cycle has slowed and demand for commodities has slowed. If this extends over the long term, it cannot be a good thing for a projects company such as ours," he said.
Pinpointing the repercussions of the commodity sell off is further complicated because it cannot be seen in isolation.
KCE Electronics Pcl <KCE.BK>, a Thai maker of printed circuit boards, should be sitting pretty because it uses a lot of copper, which is down 12 percent so far in 2013.
But executive director Panja Senadisai said the savings are outweighed by the strength of the Thai baht against the dollar, which hurts KCE's exports.
The story is similar at Tenneco Inc's <TEN.N> Indian subsidiary: the auto components maker is seeing lower prices for steel and rubber – the key Tokyo Commodity Exchange rubber contract has shed more than 8 percent this week – but a weak rupee and high inflation are diluting the benefit.
Currencies also muddy the waters for Japan Airlines Co Ltd <9201.T>, with a weakening yen on balance a negative for the airline, said JAL spokesman Taro Namba. Still, JAL has already responded by announcing a 7.6 percent cut in cargo fuel surcharges from May 1 to 122 yen per kilogram on long-haul international routes. And Korean Air Lines Co Ltd <003490.KS>, South Korea's biggest airline, expects a drop in fuel surcharges to lead to lower passenger ticket prices with a one month's lag.
Cheaper food is a particular boon in countries with uncomfortably high inflation. Take Indonesia, where inflation scaled a nearly two-year high of 5.9 percent in March.
Thanks to falling prices for everything from rice to meat and shallots, the month-on-month rise in consumer prices will probably be less than 0.1 percent in April, according to deputy central bank governor Perry Warjiyo.
Business models differ and not everyone is rushing to pass on cheaper inputs. Danish shipping group A.P. Moller – Maersk Group is an example.
"Our job is to make sure that the customers understand that they actually have a big value proposition by shipping with us… The customers are willing to pay a bit more. This is not a commodity. There's more to it than just shipping a box," said chief executive Nils Anderson.
With global inflation by and large benign, the door is open for leading central banks to provide even more monetary stimulus. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said he would favour increasing the pace of the Federal Reserve's bond buying if inflation continues to go down.
Falling commodity prices and slower wage growth give the Bank of England more scope to resume bond-buying to try to galvanise the economy, BOE policymakerMartin Weale argued.
Even the conservative European Central Bank has hinted that it is open to doing more. With the bank's economists forecasting an inflation rate of just 1.3 percent in 2014, well short of its target of just under 2 percent, more and more economists expect an interest rate cut next month.
China too has increased policy room. "The drop in global commodity prices is obviously very good news for China, because it will help lessen imported inflationary pressure and leaves Beijing much more scope to expand credit and loosen monetary policy to bolster the domestic economy," said Yuan Gangming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
India, Asia's third-largest economy, is hoping that the commodity rout will not only dampen inflation but also reduce its twin deficits. Crude and gold imports contribute nearly 45 percent of India's total import bill.
"The fall will help us deal with the widening current account deficit, which is the biggest worry for the government," said a senior official at the ministry of finance inNew Delhi.
India spent $169 billion on foreign oil in the fiscal year that ended in March, 9 percent more than the year before. That is a big factor behind a full-year current account deficit likely to have been around 5 percent of GDP – a level the central bank governor has called unsustainable.
And because India heavily subsidises consumer fuels and fertilizer, the government's budget deficit for the new fiscal year could well come in below its target of 4.8 percent of GDP if global commodity prices keep declining, the official added. The fall in crude prices could halve the oil subsidy bill.
Australia would appear to be an obvious loser from an end to the commodities super-cycle. The 'Lucky Country' has enjoyed more than 20 years of unbroken growth, largely thanks to booming exports of minerals and energy to Asia.
Lower commodity prices and a strong Australian dollar have already forced Treasurer Wayne Swan to slash his forecast for tax revenues, especially from company earnings and a new profits tax on big iron ore and copper mines. As a result the government has had to abandon its promise to return to a budget surplus for the year ending in June. But Swan remains optimistic about growth prospects across Asia.
"The growth in the middle classes across the Asian region will produce demand for a whole range of goods and services, not just in resources, not just in agriculture, but across a wide range of activities and I think the consequence of that will only be good for Australia," he said. (additional reporting by Reuters reporters globally; editing by Janet McBride)


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The National Toxicology Program Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM) is looking for scientific experts and data for a scientific review panel that it is planning to convene to assess the validation status of in vitro tests and integrated non-animal testing strategies proposed for identifying eye injury hazard potential of chemicals and products.
The panel will be convened in collaboration with the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM). NICEATM requests nominations of scientific experts who can be considered for the panel. In addition, it is requesting data from substances tested in in vitro tests for identifying eye injury hazard potential.
Of particular interest are data generated in the short time exposure (STE) and isolated rabbit eye (IRE) tests and data from approaches using two or more in vitro tests. However, NICEATM also requests data from other in vitro tests, as well as corresponding in vivo data from any ethical human or animal studies or accidental human exposures.

subset: commoncrawl


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Green and Inexpensive SuperMagnets
The Center for Microwave Magnetic Materials and Integrated Circuits has developed a green, one-step process for creating samarium cobalt permanent magnets that could usher in a new breed of hybrid automobiles using smaller, inexpensive motors.
Rare earth permanent magnets could enable smaller, higher-performance motors and power generators. The rub is that they require an expensive, multi-step process to fabricate.
Now, Northeastern University researchers claim to have invented a cheap, green, one-step process for creating samarium cobalt permanent magnets. Cutting the cost of producing the powerful magnets could usher in a new breed of hybrid automobiles using smaller, cheaper motors. Space and aircraft applications are also possible.
Lead scientist C.N. Chinnasamy of Northeastern University's Center for Microwave Magnetic Materials and Integrated Circuits, said samarium cobalt — the strongest of the rare earth magnetic materials — could be manufactured using recyclable chemicals. The manufacturing process would be scalable for high-volume production, and magnets could be built at a fraction of their current cost, Chinnasamy added.
"Rare earth magnets are essential to NASA and [the Defense Department] for small, high-performance motors and power generators that can operate in high-temperature environments," said Chinnasamy. "With our process, they can be manufactured much more economically."
Chinnassamy worked under the direction of principal investigator Vincent Harris, director of the Center for Microwave Magnetic Materials and Integrated Circuits.
Harris said samarian cobalt magnets are well suited for use in aircraft turbines where temperatures are too high for other types of rare-earth magnets. Chinnassamy's single-step process "is not only less expensive, but the chemicals he uses to make them can be recycled over and over again in a green process that is perfect for high-volume manufacturing," Harris claimed.
The researchers came up with a nanotechnology approach to manufacturing that replaces the expensive, multi-step metallurgic technique currently used to make rare earth magnets. In the current process, the metallurgic approach melts the cobalt and samarium ores in the correct proportions, but must perform the work in a vacuum to prevent oxidation, increasing the cost of the process.
Northeastern's technique instead dissolves cobalt and samarium salts in the correct proportions in a high-temperature solvent. That induces magnet nanoblades — tiny dipoles measuring just 10×100 nanometers — to form and drop to the bottom of the solution. An oxidation-preventing coating of polyvinylpyrrolidone is then applied to the nanoblades, resulting in a black magnetic powder that can be formed into powerful magnets in the presence of a strong magnetic field.
Other techniques for creating supermagnets composed of nanoblade dipoles have succeeded for high operating temperatures, but the rare earth magnets performed poorly at start-up when the magnets operated at room temperature. However, Northeastern University researchers claim their formulation performs well both at room temperature and at very high operating temperatures, thereby permitting applications such as smaller motors with the same performance as larger engines.


text: For the person who wants a subtle custom appearance with all the benefits that a Flowmaster Cat-back exhaust system provides. S.O.S. (Single out side) systems are the perfect choice. Force II systems delivers a moderate exterior tone and moderate to mild interior tone, and are suited to customers looking for efficiency improvements without a lot of noise. Especially recommended for towing applications. Like all Flowmaster systems, the benefits include improved throttle response, power and mileage. Designed for an easy fit, these systems include all necessary parts and hardware for easy installation.


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Velvet two stripes (CH)
Swiss trio Velvet Two Stripes is going to self-release its third album Sugar Honey Iced Tea on October 14th 2021. It's packed with nine fuzzing and buzzing, kicking and howling beasts of songs. A raw sound based on blues, garage rock and riot grrrl punk, crafted in true D.I.Y.-spirit. It's the sound of road-warriors that had their unfair share of confrontations, encounters and contradictions that women are experiencing all day every day. But Velvet Two Stripes don't take that Sugar Honey Iced Tea any longer..


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DES LANDES, JOSEPH, Jesuit, professor of hydrography; b. 10 Nov. 1691 in India; d. 25 Jan. 1742 in Paris, France.
Nothing is known of Joseph Des Landes's early life until he entered the noviciate of the Jesuits of the province of France in Paris on 10 Sept. 1710. He studied theology in Paris in the period 1722–26, and in 1727 he landed at Quebec. His special aptitude for mathematics enabled him to take responsibility for the teaching of mathematics and hydrography at the Jesuit college in Quebec until 1732. The courses included arithmetic, geometry, physics, as well as the use of the rule and dividers. Practical exercises had an important place in the teaching: pupils learned the use of essential astronomical instruments, map-reading, and map-making so that they would be able "to survey newly discovered regions." The aim of this instruction was above all to prepare pilots and surveyors, but the latter could also obtain their certificate of proficiency by apprenticeship to a recognized surveyor, without having to follow the courses. The apprentice pilots received theoretical courses during the winter; when fine weather returned they embarked under the orders of the second in command of the port for practical training in the pilot's profession. After 1717, the hydrography teacher issued certificates to his pupils attesting to their qualifications and authorizing them to call themselves pilots.
From about 1661 instruction had been given in New France by the king's hydrographer [see Boutet* de Saint-Martin; Franquelin*; Louis Jolliet*; Deshayes*]; in 1708, however, the teaching of hydrography was entrusted definitively to the Jesuits, who assumed it until the end of the French régime [see Silvy*; Guignas; Lauzon; Mesaiger; Bonnecamps*].
From 1732 to 1735 Des Landes probably "looked after the boarders" at the college and again taught hydrography during the academic year 1735–36. Nothing is known of his activities from then till the beginning of 1741, when his provincial, Father Jean Lavaud, chose him to succeed Father Joseph-François Lafitau as procurator in Paris of the Jesuit missions in Canada. He sailed for France in the autumn of 1741 and on 25 Jan. 1742, "about one or two months after his arrival in Paris," he died of "an inflammation of the lungs," despite "all the care possible" that he received from Claude-Michel Sarrazin [see Michel Sarrazin*]. Des Landes was succeeded as procurator by Charlevoix, who wrongly believed that this post "would only be a slight and necessary distraction" for him from his literary work.
AN, Col., B, 73, f.69. ASJCF, Fonds Rochemonteix, 4018, f.184. [Melançon], Liste des missionnaires jésuites. P.-G. Roy, Inv. jug. et délib., 1717–1760, II, 26. L.-P. Audet, Histoire de l'enseignement au Québec, 1608–1971 (2v., Montréal, 1971). Amédée Gosselin, L'instruction au Canada. Léon Pouliot, Charlevoix (1682–1761) (Classiques canadiens, 15, Montréal, Paris, 1959), 9. Rochemonteix, Les Jésuites et la N.-F. au XVIIe siècle, I, 213–15. L.-P. Audet, "Hydrographes du roi et cours d'hydrographie au collège de Québec, 1671–1759," Cahiers des Dix, XXXV (1970), 13–37. J.-E. Roy, "La cartographie et l'arpentage sous le régime français," BRH, I (1895), 49–56. Henri Têtu, "Le chapitre de la cathédrale de Québec et ses délégués en France," BRH, XVI (1910), 231, 295, 329.
© 1974–2024 University of Toronto/Université Laval
Cite This Article
Louis-Philippe Audet, "DES LANDES, JOSEPH," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 25, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/des_landes_joseph_3E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
Permalink: | http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/des_landes_joseph_3E.html |
Author of Article: | Louis-Philippe Audet |
Title of Article: | DES LANDES, JOSEPH |
Publication Name: | Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3 |
Publisher: | University of Toronto/Université Laval |
Year of publication: | 1974 |
Year of revision: | 1974 |
Access Date: | February 25, 2024 |


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Dining & Lodging
Food Requirements
All restaurants and retail food establishments must obtain health department approval prior to the event from the Garfield County Health Department (located in Rifle).
Alcohol Service
Any establishment wishing to sell alcohol must contact the City Clerk's Office and apply for a Liquor License.
An event at which alcohol will be served or sold requires a special event liquor license. The applicant must be a nonprofit organization registered with the Colorado Secretary of State for purposes of social, fraternal, patriotic, political or athletic activities; a regularly chartered brand, lodge, or chapter of a national organization or society; a regularly established religious or philanthropic institution; or a political candidate or committee. For more information, contact City Clerk Catherine Mythen Fletcher at 970-384-6403.
Temporary Vendors
If you are a temporary vendor doing business in Glenwood Springs, you will need a business license to operate. Please submit an application online. Temporary vendors or event vendors must pay $25 and also provide a $100 deposit. Returning vendors should call 970-384-6455 before submitting the application to see if the deposit is still required. Temporary Vendors such as produce stands, peddlers, solicitors, short-term displaying of goods for retail sale and vending carts also need a Temporary Sales Permit. For more information please contact Community Development at 970-384-6411.
Food Trucks
Food trucks are responsible for all applicable regulations listed above for temporary vendors. Additionally, the Fire & Building Departments require an inspection in order to operate in Glenwood Springs city limits. All food trucks require a building inspection in the county where the truck is registered. Please contact GSFD at (970) 384-6482 for more information.
All overnight lodging business will need to have individual sales tax licenses for each property where lodging occurs and will also need to remit lodging tax revenue. The types of lodging establishments include Bed & Breakfast, Hotel/Motel, Short-Term Rentals and Accessory Tourist Rentals. Check with the Community Development Department for more information about permitting for each of these uses.
Bed and Breakfast
A detached single-family dwelling, which is owner-occupied or occupied by a resident manager, where individual bedrooms are offered as single accommodations to guests for transient lodging and which facility includes incidental eating and drinking service from a single kitchen serving only residents and guests and is not operated in the manner of a commercial restaurant, or as a facility for commercial activities such as for-profit private parties or receptions, retail sales or similar activities. Bed and breakfasts shall have a minimum of two (2) bedrooms available for lodging and one (1) bedroom available for the owner or manager residing on-site. For buildings in existence on or before January 1, 1987, the total number of bedrooms shall be limited to those rooms historically used as sleeping quarters prior to January 1, 1987. For buildings constructed after January 1, 1987, the maximum number of bedrooms shall be limited to five (5). Bed and breakfast lodging shall not be allowed in planned unit developments unless specifically listed as an allowed use. Nor shall bed and breakfast lodging be allowed in any dwelling unit(s) permitted as an accessory dwelling unit.
A building or group of buildings where transient lodging is offered in bedrooms, sleeping rooms, and dwelling units. The building or buildings may include accessory facilities such as parking, restaurants, meeting rooms, on-site check in lobbies, recreation areas or similar facilities commonly associated with lodging. The term "hotel/motel" does not include bed and breakfast, short term rental or an accessory tourist rental.
Short Term Rental
The rental of an entire dwelling unit for monetary consideration for a period of time less than thirty (30) consecutive days, not including a bed and breakfast, residency unit, boarding or rooming house, or hotel.
Accessory Tourist Rental
The rental for monetary compensation for any period of less than thirty (30) consecutive day, of not more than one (1) bedroom in those residential dwelling units which contain a minimum of two (2) bedrooms; are owner-occupied or occupied by a resident manager.


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A couple tablespoons of bleach and stainless steel water troughs could be your next arsenal in the fight against Johne's disease. That's the conclusion from Kim Cook, a USDA Agricultural Research Service microbiologist at the agency's Animal Waste Management Research Unit in Bowling Green, Ky.
Thinking that water troughs could be an excellent home for bacteria, Cook compared the bacteria load in the slimy layers in water on the sides of the most commonly used troughs: concrete, plastic, stainless steel, and galvanized steel.
Three days after inoculating the water with bacteria, high concentrations of the bacteria were on all troughs, and they survived 149 days. But, the bacterial survival rate was lowest on the stainless steel. When three tablespoons of chlorine bleach was added per 100 gallons of trough weekly, she found that, by the end of the third week, less than 1 percent of the bacteria remained on stainless and galvanized steel troughs. When compared to other troughs, 20 percent remained on plastic and 34 percent remained on concrete. While stainless steel toughs can be expensive, it is estimated that a herd of 1,000 cows can lose as much as $200,000 each year due to the drop in milk production and culling as a result of Johne's infections.


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Às vezes sinto-me o Grinch da confecção, sempre a pensar "tantos passos! isto demora um tempo louco! enfrentar os moldes, cortar os tecidos, decifrar instruções, engomar, coser, engomar, coser...". O que vale é que fazer roupa é um bocado como passar por um parto: custa mas, quando uma pessoa olha para o resultado, acha que tudo valeu a pena. Aquele fenómeno curioso da memória selectiva também acontece: as partes difíceis são apagadas e só nos lembramos do quanto aprendemos, de como crescemos, de como nos tornámos pessoas melhores...
Em relação às fotografias... há qualquer coisa de ridículo nisto de nos pormos a fazer poses em frente à máquina para mostrarmos a roupa que fizemos e depois publicarmos as imagens na internet. Há quem o consiga fazer muito bem, mas eu? Nem por isso. Ainda pensei mostrar apenas as fotografias do vestido no manequim, mas não há dúvida de que a roupa ganha outra vida quando é vestida, por isso deixo aqui uns outtakes de uma sessão fotográfica que fizemos em cima de uns fardos de palha, durante as nossas férias na costa este da NZ.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the Grinch of dressmaking: I'm always thinking things like "so many steps! I can't believe this takes sooo looong! all this dealing with the paper patterns, cutting fabric, deciphering instructions, press, sew, press, sew...". But sewing clothes is a bit like going through labour —it's painful but when you look at the result, you feel like it was all worth it. That curious phenomenon of selective memory also occurs: all the difficult bits are wiped out and you only recall everything you've learned along the way, how much you've grown as a human being, how you're a much better person now...
I'm kidding, of course, but let's all agree that making clothes is indeed a lot of work. So if I keep whining about it (in silence! or maybe not?...) why do I insist on doing it? Well, the fact is that making clothes is great. Even if the resulting garments look homemade, if the sleeves aren't properly set in, if you can spot the odd puckering, if the hems are a bit wavy, if the pleats are inconsistent... Taking a flat piece of fabric and turning it into something you can actually wear is fabulous. You feel powerful, independent, the creator of something! In addition to this and as far as I'm concerned, shopping for clothes in NZ is hard. I know we've all got different tastes and I don't want to say bad things about NZ, as it's a wonderful country filled with good people. But I haven't bought new clothes for years so, at the moment, I haven't got much to wear. That means that, if I can't buy, I must sew.
Well, my skills in this area are very limited, I can't alter a pattern and I am incapable of shifting darts, correcting shoulders, etc. etc., so I have to start by making simple clothes. In past years I've sewn a few dresses (some of which have been worn more than others), a t-shirt (which I must make again because I wore that one until it almost fell apart), pyjama bottoms and children's clothes. I've been buying lots of vintage patterns (I'm hoping to put some up for sale soon) and I decided to try making a 1980s potato sack. Let me tell you all about it:
1. Pattern
Style 4090 (© 1984). Here's what caught my eye: the collar and placket, the kimono sleeves and that band (in the shorter version of the sleeves), the fact that it's loose and therefore cool. And, of course, the fact that it's easy to sew. Potato sacks don't have to fit very well because they aren't flattering on anyone. No, I'm lying: they do look great on skinny women but since I'm miles away from that category... But you know what? Life is short and summers in NZ are hot and humid, and dresses like this one are cool and comfortable to wear.
2. Fabric
In a city near my house in England, there was a fabric shop that was a real Ali Baba cave. In addition to the usual rolls of fabric, there were these baskets with remnants that were sold by weight (every remnant had some kind of flaw). This fabric came from one of those baskets. It features orange paisleys on a hot pink background and it's a funny sort of material: very lightweight, quite hard to sew (I had to mess around with both the tension in my machine and the pressure of the foot) and it changes colour when it's pressed (as soon as it cools down it goes back to normal). It looks like cotton to me because it doesn't smell or feel like polyester, but I can't be sure, and it's not really appropriate for a dress because it's sheer. But I really wanted to try out this pattern and I wasn't feeling like making a toile out of, you know, muslin, so I went with it anyway. I think it's perfectly acceptable as a beach cover-up.
3. Alterations
Usually I write about all the alterations I've made to the pattern I'm blogging about because it might be useful to someone who's contemplating using the same pattern (before I start sewing something I'll always look for how people have interpreted the pattern in question). However, since this is an old and apparently rare pattern (I can't find anything online about it), I'll be brief: I skipped the buttons and buttonholes on the placket, I cut the length somewhere between tunic and dress (to balance out all that volume) and I stitched a jacquard ribbon near the hem.
4. Final notes
In regard to photographs... I can't help but feel that there's something a bit ridicule about this whole thing of posing for clothes photos and posting about them on the internet. Some people can get away with it — but me? Not really. So I thought of only showing you the dress on the dress form but that felt a bit short... clothes do get a new life when they are being worn by a person. So here are a couple of outtakes from a photo session we did during our holidays on a hay field.
Anyway, back to the dress. It's a very comfortable potato sack and I'll make it in a better fabric next time.


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OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), announces the Company's plan to enter mass production of the Z-Drive R2 Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, the second rendition of the original Z-Drive family. The Z-Drive R2 builds on the existing solution but provides greater performance and design flexibility due to the implementation of a series of optimized NAND modules.
"Our 4th generation PCIe SSD, the Z-Drive R2, tackles the performance challenges facing enterprise IT professionals head-on" said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "The Z-Drive R2 is a total solution that delivers exceptional performance over a wide of range of applications due to its superior sequential performance, making it a winner in both high IOP and high-throughput environments. In addition, it is the only bootable and field serviceable PCIe SSD option on the market today, and due to an innovative interchangeable module design, it enables low cost field upgradability and capacity increases giving storage architects unprecedented flexibility."
The innovative Z-Drive R2 SSD maximizes bandwidth by taking the SATA bottleneck out of the equation and utilizes the speed advantages of the PCI-Express interface. Unlike competing solutions, the Z-Drive family is bootable and with 8 PCI-E lanes and an eight-way RAID 0 configuration, the R2 delivers performance ideal for enterprise applications that are limited by HDD technology. What also makes the R2 especially exceptional is the use of interchangeable modules in the place of permanent, surface-mounted NAND; this unique feature-set is designed to make the Z-Drive field-serviceable and field-upgradeable.
Promoting greater productivity for a broad range of applications spanning across virtualization, caching, and high-end storage, the Z-Drive R2 can also provide cost savings when considering the total cost of ownership (TCO) versus complex and hard to maintain HDD infrastructures. With capacities ranging from 256GB to 2TB, the R2 makes SSDs a viable alternative to large, power-consuming hard drive arrays. Furthermore, OCZ offers customization options for OEM clients that may require tailored hardware or firmware solutions for their business.
Addressing the emerging performance demands of storage area networks (SANs), workstations, and servers, the Z-Drive R2 creates new possibilities in enterprise data management. The R2 delivers extremely fast transfer rates up to 1.4 GB/s, while offering enhanced reliability and durability compared to mechanical hard drives.
Source: OCZ


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About ICCES查看更多
About ICCES
The International Conference on Computational & Experimental Engineering and Sciences (ICCES) founded in 1986 by Prof. Satya N. Atluri and Prof. Genki Yagawa is comprised of highly skilled and reputable researchers from global academia, industry and governments with expertise in computational and experimental engineering and sciences. Since inception, ICCES has held the following international gatherings:
ICCES 2015 in Reno, USA
ICCES 2014 in Changwon, Korea
ICCES 2013 in Seattle, USA
ICCES 2012 in Crete, Greece
ICCES 2011 in Nanjing, China
ICCES 2010 in Las Vegas, USA
ICCES 2009 in Phuket, Thailand
ICCES 2008 in Honolulu, USA
ICCES 2007 in Miami, USA
ICCES 2005 in Chennai, India
ICCES 2004 in Madeira, Portugal
ICCES 2003 in Corfu, Greece
ICCES 2002 in Reno, USA
ICCES 2001 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
ICCES 2000 in Los Angeles, USA
ICCES 1998 in Atlanta, USA
ICCES 1997 in San Jose, Costa Rica
ICCES 1995 in Big Island, Hawaii, USA
ICCES 1992 in Hong Kong, China
ICCES 1991 in Melbourne, Australia
ICCES 1988 in Atlanta, USA
ICCES 1986 in Tokyo, Japan
Virtually each year since the inaugural conference in 1986, ICCES conferences have brought together over 500 of the world's most respected researchers in disciplines such as Nanoscience and Technology; Nanostructured Materials; Engineering, Biology and Medicine; Bio-MEMS/Bio-NEMS/Labs-on-Chips/Life-Chips, Complex Engineering Systems; Molecular and Cellular Biomechanics; Computers, Materials, & Continua; Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences; Sustainability, Environment, & Climate; Disaster Prevention & Control; Computational Biology, Biomechanics and Bioengineering; Meshless and Novel Computational Methods; Soft Computing and Fuzzy Logic, etc.
ICCES is primarily geared towards strengthening ties and encourage interaction between highly talented individuals in engineering, life sciences, and the physical sciences, and to promote research at their interfaces, so that the fast-paced developments in these disciplines can be quickly translated in to engines for global economic growth.
ICCES conferences have attracted the attention of various national academies, national governments, and multinational corporations where for brief example, the 1991 conference was inaugurated by the Australian Minister of Science and the 1997 conference in 1997 was inaugurated by the Costa Rican Minister of Education and Technology. A comprehensive inaugural address on Science Policy was given in the 2005 Chennai, India conference by His Excellency Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the then President of the Republic of India. The conference in Chennai was also financially supported by such industrial giants as Tata Consultancies, Caterpillar Inc, etc.
In recognition of distinguished researchers for their life's work, outstanding young, upcoming researchers, and those who made substantial, multi-faceted contributions in engineering, industry, commerce and the sciences for the advancement of human society, awards have been instituted and given by ICCES. In 2010, the organization's highest award, the Satya N. Atluri Medal, was awarded to Dr. Ratan Naval Tata (Chairman of Tata Sons of Mumbai, India, a privately held conglomerate with assets of over 4 Trillion USD) in recognition of his foresight in the Nano-World, and for his continuation of his family's legendary philanthropy.


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schwit1 (797399) writes "Eugene Goostman, a computer program pretending to be a young Ukrainian boy, successfully duped enough humans to pass the iconic test. The Turing Test which requires that computers are indistinguishable from humans — is considered a landmark in the development of artificial intelligence, but academics have warned that the technology could be used for cybercrime. Computing pioneer Alan Turing said that a computer could be understood to be thinking if it passed the test, which requires that a computer dupes 30 per cent of human interrogators in five-minute text conversations." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
View article:
Turing Test Passed


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Residents can get up-to-date information about recycling pick-up service by downloading the Eureka Recycling app. It provides neighborhood-specific service notifications. Just go to the App Store on your iPhone or visit Google Play on your Android device and search "Eureka Recycling."
Residents can also visit Eureka Recycling's website to view their recycling schedules and set up recycling notifications by phone, text or email. Select "My Schedule" and enter your address, then select "Get a reminder!"
If you have questions, please contact Eureka Recycling at 612-NO-WASTE (612-669-2783).
Roseville switched to Single Sort Recycling on February 17, 2014. Roseville contracts with Eureka Recycling for recycling service on behalf of residents. Recycling is picked up every other week. The city is divided into zones which determine the day of service. Service will be delayed a day for certain holidays. To see what zone you are in, and when your collection may be modified by a holiday, see the Recycling Zones and Calendar below.
If you would like to start recycling, or would like a different size bin, email Eureka Recycling or call 612-NO-WASTE (612-669-2783). With Single Sort recycling, paper products, bottles and cans can be placed in the same bin, excluding type 3 and 6 plastics. You can also recycle clean and dry Clothes and Linens by placing them into a labeled sturdy plastic bag set beside your cart.
Recycling should be placed at the curb by 7 a.m., and it's helpful to put recycling on the opposite side of the driveway from your trash. Seniors and people with disabilities may sign up with Eureka Recycling for free walk up service where the driver will pick up your recyclables at your garage door or stoop.
At apartment and condominium complexes recycling is collected in carts located near trash dumpsters. Carts are single sort so you don't have to separate your paper, bottles & cans into different containers. For more information, see the sorting guidelines which are the same as the curbside program. Carts will typically be emptied once a week, usually on Fridays. For free information, posters, and flyers for your building, call Eureka Recycling at 612-NO-WASTE (612-669-2783).
You may have heard of the 3 Rs - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. It's more important to reduce than reuse which in turn is more important than to recycle. Putting all 3 into personal practice benefit the economy and the environment.
How to generate less waste
Salary Notification
Copyright Notices
Privacy Policy
Important Health Coverage Tax Documents
Government Websites by CivicPlus®


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Upper Deck - Cinema Series - Team Field Banner
Upper Deck - Cinema Series - Team Field Banner
Upper Deck - Cinema Series - Team Field Banner
Create this amazing banner for your travel ball team to hang on their dugout, stadium or gym using this template. We have created this template in multiple layers to allow you to change text and move elements around to finalize the design specifically for the team. This template comes with boxes that you can remove to add your sponsors at the bottom of the design as well.
This Adobe Photoshop template is completely customizable (Layered Tiff Format). All of the elements can be edited, disabled and adjusted to give you the flexibility to create your final custom artwork. 14400x7200 Resolution for high-quality printing all the way up to a 4'x8' Banner or Poster! Also, because this template is in layers it allows you to adjust the file to different ratios so you can print at any size just by moving around the elements to fit within your new canvas ratio!
• Layered Tiff Adobe Photoshop File*
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One of the oldest winemaking companies in the Republic of Moldova was founded in century XIX.
In the State Record Office there are documents certifying that the Company "Trade and Production Partnership N. L. Shustov & Sons" set up in 1898 in Chisinau a cognac plant. The complex was one of the biggest in Russia. Its headquarters were located in Moscow city, and it had subsidiaries in Erevan, Odessa, Smolensk etc. The opening of a subsidiary in Chisinau town was not accidental, since all the wine produced in Basarabia was stored here in that period.
The basic activity of the Industrial Complex was production of cognacs, which were competitive with the French ones. The factory was equipped with a modern device for the production of distillates with French system "MARSETE" from Cognac town in France. The product was kept in small barrels, and then transported by railway to Moscow where it was bottled.
The Company passed through many reorganizations and changed many names. Since 1959 it had been widely known as the Chisinau Wine and Cognac Combine. The present name appeared in 1983 as a result of the incorporation of the Production Union "AROMA". After the dissolution of the Union, the Company retained that name and in January 2000 it was reorganized in the Joint Stock Company "AROMA".
The Company is specialized on the production of strong drinks, predominantly on divin. The range of products under the trademark "AROMA" includes more than 30 items of divin. About 80% of the manufactured products are destined for export.
JSC "Aroma" has built its image gradually and at the moment it is highly positive and quite reputable. Credit for building a good image should be given to the whole staff, that pays a special attention to the whole technological process by looking for new solutions in the production process, procuring modern equipment (bottling lines, refrigeration devices, distillation devices etc.), which does not remain unnoticed by partners, experts and, ultimately, by the final consumer.
Aware of the fact that quality is a sure way to achieve success JSC "Aroma" was one of the first wineries in the country that was honored with the certification in Quality Management System and Conformity to International Standards ISO – 9001 and ISO – 22000 . The worldwide recognition of the quality of its products benefits the company in terms of its positioning on the global market. The rigorous quality assessment criteria require active marketing, design strategies and always competitive products.
High quality of the products under the trademark "AROMA" is confirmed by 9 GRAND PRIX, 3 Big Gold Medals and more than 30 gold and silver medals awarded at the most prestigious international events. Our beverages, made according to the classical technologies with due regard for the modern winemaking trends, can successfully compete with the most famous beverages of the world.
JSC "AROMA" will make sure both experts and ordinary consumers enjoy refined beverage preserving the flavor, color and taste of grape berries.


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If you are looking for Voteview.com, PLEASE CLICK HERE
This site is an archived version of Voteview.com archived from University of Georgia on
May 23, 2017
. This point-in-time capture includes all files publicly linked on Voteview.com at that time. We provide access to this content as a service to ensure that past users of Voteview.com have access to historical files. This content will remain online until at least
January 1st, 2018
. UCLA provides no warranty or guarantee of access to these files.
Welcome To the K7MOA Website (Permanent Archive of the Research of Poole and Rosenthal and Colleagues)
Updated 7 January 2017
This site was originally established at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie-Mellon University in August of 1995. The orginal web-server was a 100 mhz machine running WINDOWS NT 3.51. The original link was:
In 2000 the web-server was moved to the Department of Political Science at the University of Houston with the link:
In 2005 the web-server was moved to the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego with the current link (
This website is now affiliated with the Department of Political Science at the University of Georgia. It is maintained off campus solely for stability purposes.
The primary purpose of this website is to make available the data that Howard Rosenthal and Keith Poole generated out of their many research projects. Keith and Howard adhere to the policy that all of their datasets and software are made freely available to anyone who asks for them. This webserver was established for this purpose. If you cannot find what you need on the various pages send Keith an E-Mail at:
Recently Updated Data Pages
DW-NOMINATE Scores 1
to 113
(10 March 2015)
DW-NOMINATE Roll Call Coordinates and Issue Codes for Houses 1 to 113
(24 January 2015)
DW-NOMINATE Roll Call Coordinates and Issue Codes for Senates 1 to 113
(24 January 2015)
Party Unity Scores by Democrat and Republican Members: 1857 - 2012
(8 February 2013)
Party Unity Scores by Congress: 1879 - 2012
(8 February 2013)
Percent Voting on the Winning Side by Member -- Houses/Senates 1 - 112
(8 February 2013)
Party and Chamber Medians, 1 - 112 Congresses (DW-NOMINATE Scores)
(8 February 2013)
Chamber Means and Winning Policy Means for 1
Dimension, 1 - 112 Congresses (DW-NOMINATE Scores)
(8 February 2013)
Cutting Line Angle Files for the House and Senate 1
to 112
(7 February 2013)
Republican and Democratic Party Splits on all roll calls cast in Congresses 35 - 112
(7 February 2013)
Rank Orderings all Houses and Senates -- 1
to 112
(6 February 2013)
Common Space DW-NOMINATE Scores 1
to 112
(6 February 2013)
DW-NOMINATE Probabilities for Legislator Choices: 1
to 112
(6 February 2013)
One-Congress-at-a-Time DW-NOMINATE (Nokken-Poole) data for the House and Senate 1
to 112
(6 February 2013)
Political Polarization Measures: 1879 - 2014
(18 January 2013)
Optimal Classification in R Program with Examples
(1 January 2013)
WNOMINATE in R Program with Examples
(15 December 2010)
R Package for Aldrich-McKelvey and Basic Space Scaling
(20 May 2010)
Recent Papers
"The Polarization of Contemporary American Politics"
(with Christopher Hare, September 2013)
"Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?"
(with Adam Bonica, Nolan McCarty, and Howard Rosenthal, August 2013)
"The Structure of Utility in Spatial Models of Voting"
(with Royce Carroll, Jeffrey B. Lewis, James Lo, and Howard Rosenthal, December 2012)
"Bayesian Aldrich-McKelvey Scaling"
(with Dave Armstrong, Ryan Bakker, Royce Carroll, and Christopher Hare, October 2012)
"Bayesian Metric Multidimensional Scaling"
(with Ryan Bakker, October 2012)
"NOMINATE and American Political History: A Primer."
by Phil Everson (Swarthmore), Rick Valelly (Swarthmore), and Jim Wiseman (Agnes Smith)
"A Spatial Model for Legislative Roll Call Analysis."
GSIA Working Paper 5-83-84, September 1983 (With Howard Rosenthal). (This is the 1983 original -- our first paper on NOMINATE. For historical purposes only. Please note the discussion on pages 14 and 15.)
The Unidimensional Congress, 1919-84.
GSIA Working Paper 44-84-85 (With Howard Rosenthal) (This is the 1985 original -- For historical purposes only.)
Picture of the Day
Zoom Zoom Loves Rugs
Site Links
VOTEVIEW Blog
NOMINATE Data, Roll Call Data, and Software
Course Web Pages: University of Georgia
(2010 - )
Course Web Pages: UC San Diego
(2004 - 2010)
University of San Diego Law School
Course Web Pages: University of Houston
(2000 - 2005)
Course Web Pages: Carnegie-Mellon University
(1997 - 2000)
Analyzing Spatial Models of Choice and Judgment with R
Spatial Models of Parliamentary Voting
Recent Working Papers
Analyses of Recent Politics
About This Website
K7MOA Log Books: 1960 - 2017
Bio of Keith T. Poole
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Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant intends to sign a bill aimed at strengthening laws against drunken driving, his spokesman said Monday.
The response from the Republican governor came the same day the American Beverage Institute, based in Washington, D.C., urged Bryant to veto House Bill 481.
The group said it represents 80 Mississippi restaurants. It said if the bill becomes law, it would be expensive to enforce and would create too much work for Mississippi probation officers.
The bill is expected to hit Bryant's desk in the next several days. With his signature, the bill will become law July 1, 2014.
It says when someone is convicted for a first-offense DUI, the person's driver's license could be suspended for 90 days, or a judge could order a 30-day license suspension and require the person to use an ignition interlock device for six months. The device prevents a vehicle from starting if the driver has alcohol on his or her breath.
The bill also says that a fourth offense DUI would automatically be a felony, carrying two to 10 years in prison. It wouldn't matter how many years had passed between the previous convictions and the fourth one.
Under current law, a person can face a felony by having three or more DUI convictions within five years.
The American Beverage Institute's managing director, Sarah Longwell, said in a news release that requiring ignition interlock devices for first-time offenders is a bad idea because it might be a too-harsh punishment for people who unintentionally have a bit too much to drink.
"Requiring interlocks for hardcore … offenders is a much more effective and financially sound way to fight drunk driving," Longwell said.
She defined hardcore offenders as those with high blood-alcohol content measurements or people with multiple convictions.
In Mississippi, a person with a blood alcohol content of 0.8 percent can be convicted of DUI.
The bill was sponsored by House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, whose parents and sister were killed by a drunk driver in the late 1980s. One of the co-sponsors is Rep. Mark Formby, R-Picayune, whose young niece was killed two months ago after her parents' vehicle was hit by a driver that Formby said had previous DUI convictions.
Gunn told reporters last week that he considers the bill one of the top accomplishments of the 2013 legislative session, which ended this past Thursday.
On its website, the Mississippi chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving has a form letter that people can send to lawmakers, urging support for the bill.
"In 2011, 149 people were killed in drunk driving crashes in Mississippi representing 24 percent of all total traffic fatalities," the MADD letter says. "People who have previous drunk driving convictions make up approximately one-third of the drunk driving problem in America. Additionally, even first-time offenses are serious indicators that a person is likely to become a repeat offender. Research shows that first-time offenders have driven drunk an average of 80 times before they are convicted."
The final version of the bill passed the House 112-4 and the Senate 52-0.
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text: Jun Takahashi's Undercover embodies the quintessence of Japanese cool, channeling raw edged rebellion and dramatic high-concept elegance to produce an inimitable auteur vision that fascinates in its dualities. Takahashi founded his long-lauded label in 1993 on the way to graduating from Tokyo's Bunka Academy of Fashion, breaking the unwritten "apprenticeship first" rule for young Japanese designers. Such irreverence and restless energy carried his early punk-inflected work, which quickly found support and mentorship from Comme des Garçons icon Rei Kawakubo. Indeed, he convincingly broke through the streetwear-couture divide many years before luxury-casual hit the mainstream. Operating beneath the maxim "We Make Noise Not Clothes", Takahashi's menswear continues to enchant in its wit and rebellion, dissolving binaries like high/low, avant-garde/utiltarian, and macabre/beautiful in unexpected unions of materials, colors, and cuts. Deconstructive tailoring and hybridized detailing impart a sense of precariousness, chaos, resolve, and peace at once, offering men an uncommonly deep, philosophical take on urban style. Taken at a distance, Undercover's oeuvre generates a coherent yet surrealist universe, one which Takahashi presides over and continues to expand one collection at a time.


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Has IRS Probe Re-Energized the Tea Party?
The tea party movement, after heating up to a roaring boil in the 2010 election cycle, diminished to a simmer over the past few years.
Some of the movement's allies who helped Republicans retake the House in 2010 were defeated two years later, President Barack Obama was re-elected by a wide margin to serve a second term in the White House, and House Tea Party Caucus founder Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., went straight from a failed run for the GOP presidential nomination to a narrow re-election to hold her seat.
A Rasmussen poll earlier this year revealed that the movement was at its lowest popularity since its inception, with only 8 percent of respondents identifying themselves as tea party supporters, down from 24 percent in 2010.
But in the wake of revelations that tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status were among those targeted by the IRS for extra scrutiny, things are starting to look up for the national coalition of lawmakers, political operatives and concerned citizens who preach for smaller government, advocate lower taxes and fight against infringements on civil liberties.
For perhaps the first time in three years, tea party leaders are seeing a renewed recognition of their relevance, which they anticipate will bring back old supporters, enlist new allies and perhaps even broaden the political base.
"There's no question" that the movement has been reinvigorated, Bachmann said several hours after a tea party news conference that attracted nearly three dozen congressional lawmakers and representatives from every leading tea party group across the country.
Started with the slogan "Taxed Enough Already," the tea party has, since its 2010 start, catered primarily to those on the far right who slam excessive taxes and efforts to tighten gun laws. The movement arose as part of the backlash against the 2009 health care debate that offended many who believed that government should not make the types of demands of its citizens that Obamacare would.
Now more moderates could be drawn into the fold, Bachmann said, in part because the IRS scandal is so difficult to renounce.
Democrats have joined with Republicans in vilifying the agency's actions as a united, bipartisan front with the House Ways and Means and Oversight and Government Reform committees scheduling hearings on the matter. The Senate Finance Committee, helmed by Montana Democrat Max Baucus, has also scheduled a hearing for next week.
In this particular case, politicians of all stripes are finding it easy to sympathize with the tea party groups that claim mistreatment by IRS officials.
"This happened because of what appears to be missteps on the part of the administration to the point of flagrant abuse of power," Bachmann said. "Constitution-oriented groups, they are inflamed right now and enraged right now."
They do not want to cast themselves as victims, but rather as proactive warriors for their cause.
"We could see a very different outcome in 2014 that resembles that of 2010," said Bachmann, who, along with other tea party leaders, has sought to tie the other scandals plaguing the Obama administration this week to potential converts.
At the Thursday news conference, Todd Cefaratti of TheTeaParty.net made a tongue-in-cheek appeal to the journalists in attendance by referencing the circumstances surrounding the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records.
"I'd like to be the first one to welcome the press as part of the tea party moment," he said, suggesting that reporters' vulnerability to government overreach should sound familiar.
The IRS and Justice matters also provide tea partyers the opening to discuss the systemic failures of a too-large government, which could appeal to libertarian-minded allies who might not have bought into the movement earlier on.
"We need to simplify our laws, and we need to downsize the federal government," said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on Thursday morning.
Tea party activists say they wouldn't have wished for bad things to happen, especially the four deaths of Americans in Benghazi, Libya, last September — another issue congressional Republicans are investigating with fervor.
It doesn't mean, though, that they will pass on the opportunity to use all three events as leverage, as tea party ally Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., suggested.
"To the extent that the Benghazi scandal, the AP scandal, the IRS scandal, has provided the fuel necessary to rekindle the tea party fire," Mulvaney said, "I got no problem with that."


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
City Hall: 3301 Silver Lake Road
Phone: 612-782-3301
Hours: M - F: 8:00am - 4:30pm
Contact Us
The proposal includes housing for seniors, single people, and families, which will have an effect on traffic. A traffic study has been completed which specifies the needed intersection improvements to accommodate this development. The traffic study is being updating to include specific information on the increase in volumes on Stinson Parkway and Lowry Avenue, and is expected to be completed by mid-August. It will be available on the website at that time.
Show All Answers
Continental Property Group, a development company, purchased the former Lowry Grove manufacturing home community and the Bremer Bank site for the purposes of closing the manufactured home community and re-developing the site. On June 30, 2017, the park was officially closed by the landowner.
There are three steps to development: sketch plan, preliminary plat, and final plat. The developer is also asking for two other land use actions, a re-zoning and a comprehensive plan amendment to increase the maximum allowable housing density on the site from 40 units per acre to 48 units per acre.
The developer submitted a sketch plan in 2016 and completed a community meeting. Now, the developer has submitted a preliminary plat, preliminary Planned Unit Development (PUD) rezoning application, and a comprehensive plan amendment application for consideration by the city council. The Planning Commission must review this request at a public hearing (set for August 28) and formulate a recommendation to the City Council on action. The City Council must review the application and take final action prior to 120 days after application (November 16, 2017, unless the applicant voluntarily extends the deadline).
If approved, the final step will be final plat and final PUD development plan. At the final plat stage, a development agreement is entered into that specifies the developer responsibilities and any financial responsibilities related to the project, including any possible provisions of tax increment financing for the project.
There will be many meetings/discussions about this project. The first formal meeting will be a public hearing at the Planning Commission meeting on August 28. All other meetings will be updated on the website as they get scheduled. The city council will be conducting a work session on affordable housing on August 10 at 7:00 PM in the City Hall Council Chambers.
Please go to: http://www.savmn.com/293/Redevelopment-of-Lowry-Grove to find more information.
The City Council has publicly stated its values for consideration of development on this site:
1) The provision of affordable housing. The city has a history of including, requiring, and financially supporting the development of affordable housing in the community, and this commitment will continue;
2) Compatibility with surrounding land uses. It is important that new development match existing surrounding land uses in scale, height, and use;
3) Provision of adequate public infrastructure. All new development must provide appropriate infrastructure to manage water, sewer, runoff, streets, and access, and all other infrastructure needed to adequately serve itself and protect the surrounding community;
4) Protection of the environment. All development must meet all Federal, State, watershed district, and local requirements for environmental protection. The city will ensure all pollution and contamination is properly remediated;
5) A fair and open public process. When a formal application is received for development, the city will provide outlets for community discourse and discussion on the proposal.
The proposal includes housing for seniors, single people, and families, which will have an effect on enrollment at the school. The extent to which enrollment will increase has been studied by the school district. The school district is expecting increasing enrollment, and is planning for that.
Sign up to receive automatic email and text notifications regarding this project at: http://www.savmn.com/list.aspx
Contact the City Planner, Breanne Rothstein at firstname.lastname@example.com
A Planned Unit Development (PUD) is a re-zoning request that any applicant with at least three acres can make. A PUD allows flexibility from the standard zoning district for the purposes of allowing better design or other public benefits and, in exchange the developer is allowed flexibility from the standards set forth in code (examples can be setbacks, lot coverage, height). For example, Silver Lake Village was developed as a PUD. Through a PUD request, more review is necessary than the standard zoning and items like urban design, walkability, public use amenities, affordable housing and other items not otherwise required by the code will be reviewed.
A preliminary plat is the second stage in the subdivision of land (sketch plan is the first stage) and signals the beginning of the formal development process. During preliminary plat review, all the details of a development are reviewed including, but not limited to: utilities, surface water (runoff), housing and density, parkland dedication, environmental clean-up, traffic and transportation, and the provision of other infrastructure. After action is taken on the preliminary plat, if approved, the development is "entitled" to the rights to development. The preliminary plat is the longest, and most critical step in the development process.
A Comprehensive Plan amendment is a request from an applicant to amend the city's comprehensive plan. The Comprehensive Plan is the city's guiding document for growth and development, and also sets policy with regard to utilities, transportation, land use and housing. They are required by statute to be updated every 10 years. Anyone may request a comprehensive plan amendment (like a PUD) at any time. A comprehensive plan amendment requires a 4/5 vote of the City Council to be approved.


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For cake pops you need a little bit of patience, they're not tricky but they do have a fair few steps to them. For me that means they need to be made for a special occasion! Halloween in our house comes a close to Christmas in the fun stakes – costumes, face painting, scary house decorating and generally having fun it what it's all about for me (nevermind the boys!) If you're having a party or want to do something different for your trick or treaters then these are just the thing.
Cake pops are a whole lot easier with these buttons that you can now get in the supermarket – no more hunting down Wilton Candy Melts or having to colour your own chocolate – perfect pumpkin colour!
You will need:
Cake 300g (ish) for this you can use up excess fairy cakes, the domes trimmed from larger cakes or you can bake up a cake specially. The flavour of the cake is entirely up to you, I'm going with chocolate which will work well with the orange flavour of the buttons.
Choc Cake Recipe follow the method here with the following quantities
45g butter
80g caster sugar
1 egg, large
20g self-raising flour
60g plain flour
20g cocoa powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
70ml milk mixed with 1 tsp malt vinegar
(Bake at 160c (fan)/180c/GM4 in an 8″ square tin for 40-45 minutes)
Chocolate Buttercream
100g butter softened, beaten with 200g icing sugar and 50g melted dark chocolate
Lollipop sticks – Available on Amazon or in Hobbycraft
2 x pkts Chocolate Orange buttons – Silver Spoon
Royal Icing – white, green and black (coloured with gel paste colours – click on the links for the individual colours by Sugarflair on Amazon)
Here's how…
Crumble the cake into teeny tiny crumbs using your fingertips.
Add the buttercream and mix it to a fairly dry paste like mixture.
Now comes the messy (ish) bit. Take a small quantity of the mixture and roll it into a ball between your hands – they should be around 1 1/2" in diameter.
I have shaped my pumpkins into two shapes – balls and more upright tall pumpkins.
Line them all up on a baking tray. If you get bored of shaping or decide you have enough you can freeze the rest of the cake pop mixture until the next time you want to make some. These quantities make approx. 24 cake pops – did I really need 24? Probably not as it's the start of October and I'm not catering for a Halloween party yet but the boys didn't seem to have the same issue with the quantity – nor did the chaps where my husband works!
So where were we, yes they're all on the baking tray. Place them in the fridge for half and hour or so to firm up.
Once chilled take one of the lollipop sticks and indent four grooves around each pumpkin cake ball. You can't do this before chilling as it just smooshes the shape so press gently on the chilled ball as you don't want to crack them.
Now melt up the chocolate – perfect pumpkin orange buttons courtesy of Silverspoon.
I've mentioned my chocolate melter before but it does make cake pops much easier – in they go, turn it on, 10 minutes lovely melted chocolate! If you're melting in the microwave a small deep bowl will work the best, short 30 second bursts – you don't want it to burn.
Take a stick and dip the end into the melted chocolate, push this into the base of the cake ball. The stick should go about ¾'s of the way into the ball.
Set it back onto the tray and repeat until all the balls are on the sticks.
Now you need to set yourself up with a cake pop stand – try an empty egg box tray it worked a treat for me. Set it onto a chopping board and then you'll be able to move it easily. Punch holes through the tall spiky bits to post the cake pop sticks into. Punching the holes initially with a skewer is much easier than trying to do it with a lolly stick. If you buy your eggs from a farm shop or the like they will usually let you have a tray or two! Alternatively you could use a piece of polystyrene to hold them upright.
Okay cake pop stand done now take each pop in turn and dip it into the melted chocolate. Twirl the cake pop around as you take it out allowing the excess chocolate to drip away. This does take a bit of patience which is not something I have by the bucket load but it is worth taking your time.
Once the excess has dripped away place the cake pop into your stand and move onto the next.
Once all the pumpkins are a lovely glossy orange allow the chocolate to set and dry. I didn't want to put them in the fridge as sometimes I find they lose their shine so mine dried at room temp overnight.
Once they're set and firm mix up a batch of royal icing – follow the directions on the box but go sparingly with the water, you need the royal icing thick enough to pipe and stay in shape.
Split the icing into three, one portion remains white and can be added to a piping bag right away. The other portions need to be coloured green and black. Gel colour pastes are far and away the easiest way to colour anything a really vibrant colour without changing the icings consistency. Here are a couple of links to Amazon but Hobbycraft and cake decorating shops sell them too. Sugarflair green gel paste Sugarflair black extra gel paste colour.
Add the coloured icings each to a piping bag. I have fitted piping tips to the bags but it can be done just as easily by snipping off a tiny piece of the end of the bag if you don't have a multitude of piping tips.
Take the white icing and pipe two small balls to the pumpkins face for eye balls. If the icing has little pointy peaks take a slightly damp paintbrush and pat them back down.
(camera setting gone wonky – sorry about that!)
Using the black royal icing pipe on pumpkin mouths – I've done a variety of different styles (because I get bored easily).
I should also mention at this point how much my hands shake…. You're never aware of it until you need to pipe. If I can do it with my tremor like hands then you definitely can!
Add pupils to the eyes, again patting down any peaks with the damp paintbrush.
Now for the pumpkin tops – my fave bit because its free form and random – shaky hands no problem! Squiggly on the green royal icing to make the leafy pumpkin top.
Allow the royal icing to set and then your pumpkin cake pops are ready to serve! Cake pops will keep for three days at room temp or upto a week in the fridge. Make sure they are in an airtight container before going in the fridge otherwise they will sweat when you take them out.
Ruth Clemens, Baker Extraordinaire


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Bizarre News: A New York woman allegedly used a $60,000 rare stamp collection in an attempt to pay to kill her husband, police say.
Elena Adams, 57, was arrested on Thursday (30/8/2013) on criminal conspiracy and criminal charges. Police say she gave a rare stamp collection and jewellery to an undercover NYPD investigator as payment in a plan to kill her husband.
The woman allegedly arranged a meeting Thursday with a person she thought was a hit man, police say. She allegedly told the undercover cop that her husband was hiding money from her and that she was the beneficiary on a life insurance policy he took out when they got married 20 years ago.
The woman allegedly planned to have her husband killed after they had lunch Sunday at a restaurant in Jersey. She wanted her husband to be hit by a car while the couple was crossing the street, police said, so it looked like an accident.
She was arrested Thursday as soon as she got out of the car where she allegedly planned the hit.
Mrs Adams, who has no criminal history, was remanded and an order of protection was taken out for her husband.


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ZURICH, Switzerland -- A sex drive-in has opened in Zurich in a bid to keep prostitutes safe and move the trade outside of Switzerland's biggest city.
Fashionably teak-colored open wooden garages, popularly called "sex boxes" by the Swiss media, will open on a first come, first serve basis, for drive-in customers, in the city where prostitution has been legal since 1942.
The several dozen sex workers who are expected to make it their new hub will stand along a short road in a small, circular park for clients to choose from and negotiate with. The park was built in a former industrial area nestled between a rail yard and the fence along a major highway.
The publicly funded facilities — open all night and located away from the city center — include bathrooms, lockers, small cafe tables and a laundry and shower. Men won't have to worry about video surveillance cameras, but the sex workers — who will need a permit and pay a small tax — will be provided with a panic button and on-site social workers trained to look after them.
As far as Daniel Hartmann, a Zurich lawyer, is concerned, it's a win-win situation.
"Safety for the prostitutes. At least it's a certain kind of a shelter for them. They can do their business, and I respect them," he said. "They do a great job, and they have better working conditions here. ... They're not exposed to the bosses, to the pimps, in here."
On Saturday, Hartmann was one of several hundred residents, including many women and a small throng of journalists, who flocked to the only "open house" that Zurich will offer to give the public a better idea of how its taxpayer money has been used.
Most of the visitors said they came out of curiosity and haven't really come to terms with the idea, but hope it will at least improve safety. Others were amazed and a bit amused that a whole group of strangers would spend a rainy afternoon openly discussing professional sex.
Brigitta Hanselmann, a retired special needs schoolteacher from Embrach, Switzerland, said: "I have to think about it for a long time, because it's so incredible that a city offers that to the men, and it's interesting that there are many, many women here who are looking at it." She called the sex boxes "an effort to control a thing that you can't really control."
Voters in Zurich approved spending up to 2.4 million Swiss francs ($2.6 million) on the project last year as a way of relocating the sex traffic away from a busy downtown area where it had become a public nuisance and safety concern due to lack of sanitation, aggressive men, and associated drugs and violence. The city, which only allows prostitution in certain areas, also plans to spend 700,000 francs ($760,000) a year to keep the sex boxes running.
Jean-Marc Hensch, a business executive who heads a neighborhood association in another part of Zurich, said he hopes the sex boxes succeed because otherwise the prostitutes might return to his area. He also cited the disgusting lack of sanitation in other city areas where prostitutes and their clients defecate and urinate in the streets and gardens, or have sex in the open because they have nowhere else to go.
"It's an experiment," he said. "It was absolutely urgent to find a solution."
The drive-in garages, or sheds, have no doors to shut and come equipped with an emergency call button on the passenger side of the structure that sets off a flashing light and a loud alarm inside an adjacent office building where the city will post social workers specially trained to provide a measure of security.
The Zurich police say they will beef up patrols around the perimeter to protect the sex workers when they leave and enter.
Modeled after the drive-in brothels used in several cities in Germany and the Netherlands, which have had mixed success improving safety, the sex boxes will be open daily from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m.
The city painted the outdoor bathrooms in soft pink and blue, strung colorful light bulbs among the trees and posted creative signs encouraging the use of condoms to spruce the place up a little and make it seem more pleasant.
"We built the place to be secure for the sex workers. It also had to be discreet for the sex workers and the clientele," said Michael Herzig of Zurich's social welfare department. "But we thought if we build the place, we can also make it look good."
Along with improving safety for prostitutes, the sex boxes are seen as a way to curb illegal trafficking among crime syndicates. Prostitution, escorts and massage parlors are a thriving business in a nation with wealthy and international clientele and tourists.
Zurich requires that street sex workers register with city and health authorities, and it offers health checks and requires that sex workers be at least 18 years old, in keeping with a Council of Europe convention on protecting children from exploitation and abuse.
In Switzerland, anyone who works in the sex trade must be at least 16, the legal age of sexual maturity. The income is taxed and subject to social insurance like any other economic activity.
But some cities have their own rules and some of the 26 Swiss cantons (states) have adopted separate legislation on prostitution. A special unit of the cantonal police force, usually the vice squad, carries out inspections of prostitutes in red light areas.
No video surveillance was installed at the sex boxes, so as not to scare off business, but also because police and city officials concluded after studying the handful of other such facilities in Europe that the only thing that would improve safety is an on-site security presence. To use the place, sex workers also must obtain a special permit, at a cost of 40 Swiss francs ($43) a year, and pay 5 francs ($5.40) a night in taxes, which helps the city offset maintenance costs.
"We can't solve the whole problem of exploitation and human trafficking," said Herzig, "but at least we want to reduce the harm, especially the violence."


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One of the interesting things about the Obama administration is the strange dominance of labor unions. Yes, Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders do owe the unions something: Unions gave $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle, and they expect to get something in return.
What they haven't gotten out of the Democratic Congress is the thing they wanted most -- the card check bill that would effectively abolish the secret ballot in unionization elections. Unions now represent only 7 percent of private-sector workers, the lowest percentage since the early 1930s. Union leaders believe that with card check they could vastly increase their dues income.
But the unions have gotten lots of other things, as Peyton R. Miller reports in The Weekly Standard. Obama has appointed as head of the National Labor Relations Board a former union lawyer who once wrote that the NLRB could institute something very much like card check without congressional action.
An Obama appointee has changed the National Mediation Board's rules in a way designed to produce more strikes by airline and railroad union members.
Obama executive orders have encouraged unionization by employees of government contractors and the seniority-based promotion practices preferred by union leaders. Obama has granted a 35 percent tariff on Chinese tires sought by the United Steelworkers and, in contravention of the North American Free Trade Agreement, has blocked Mexican trucks from U.S. roads as demanded by the Teamsters Union.
The Democrats' stimulus package includes Davis-Bacon requirements that union wages be paid on construction jobs, which means that the government will pay more or get less production than it would if contractors were free to pay market wages. The complex Davis-Bacon process also means huge delays in getting supposedly shovel-ready projects underway.
And Obama Democrats are trying to force FedEx to become unionized by subjecting it to the same law as unionized UPS.
Meanwhile, one-third of the stimulus money went to state and local governments, with the effect of propping up the pay and saving the jobs of public employee union members. As a result, while 8 million private-sector jobs have disappeared, the number of public-sector jobs has barely budged.
The cynical will see these measures as a political payoff and might venture that the unions have gotten something like a hundredfold payout for the $400 million they gave to Obama and his copartisans.
Those who insist on looking for purer motives, in contrast, might see something potentially more sinister. They might see a former community organizer acting out of a sincere conviction that America would be better off with a much, much larger unionized private sector.
That prompts the question of what the private sector would look like if nearly half its workers were union members, as is the case now with the public sector.
As one who grew up in Detroit in the heyday of the Big Three auto companies and the United Auto Workers, I have some idea what the answer would be.
Adversarial unionism, as prescribed by the New Deal-era Wagner Act, would mean an end to management flexibility and the cooperative management techniques employed by, among others, the foreign-based auto manufacturers. UAW contracts had some 5,000 pages of work rules; if any were violated, the shop steward could shut down the assembly line.
We know how that story turned out. It took the U.S. manufacturers multiple decades to achieve quality levels comparable to those their foreign-based competitors achieved with American workers.
We also have some idea how seniority promotion systems work out from what happens in unionized school systems. Incompetent senior teachers get their choice of assignments and, thanks to union contract provisions, are almost never fired, while talented junior teachers are laid off.
It is no accident that the rate of unionization in the private sector has plummeted since its peak in the 1950s. Scholars have found that unionized firms are at a competitive disadvantage against non-union firms. Over the years, their workforce tends to shrink, while non-union firms grow.
Since the 1950s, private-sector employees have gained protections that only unions once provided through pensions laws like ERISA, anti-discrimination legislation and developing human relations law. We're a long way from the 1930s.
But the Obama Democrats want to take us back to a system that produced huge inefficiencies and rigidity in the private sector. Does that sound progressive?


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(visited by Gordon Patrick Samuel)
19-Apr-2003 -- Unfortunately we were coming towards the end of another 4 wheel drive trip into the wonderful Australian Outback. Our night's camp was made at Farina and we dicovered that there was a confluence nearby.
Bright and early the next morning we were off to Witchelina Station to seek permission to travel to the confluence. The manager was just about to leave for a short holiday, but kindly gave us a few hints and set us on our way.
Fencelines impeded our progress and we could only get to within 800 metres by car. But hey ... there was a confluence to be had!! We then set out across the stoney hillsides, complete with half a million flies on a 30°C day. Recent rains had made the area as good as it gets for grazing sheep, but as can be seen from the photos, there's not much feed to be had. (Annual rainfall in the area is less than 200mm (8 inches) and this often comes in a few heavy thunderstorms.)
We made a small rock cairn on the barren hillside and returned to our 4 wheel drive to continue caching on the way home. On our way out of the property we passed through their machinery graveyard which included a horsedrawn grader.


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Under the influence of magnetic drugs
(Phys.org) -- For more than three decades scientists have been investigating magnetic nanoparticles as a method of drug delivery. Now by combining three metals - iron, gold and platinum - pharmacists at the University of Sydney believe they have discovered a method for magnetically directing drugs through the body.
The discovery has been published online today in the international journal Inorganica Chimica Acta.
Led by Dr. Nial Wheate, a team of scientists from the Faculty of Pharmacy, along with collaborators in Scotland, have developed a new anticancer drug that has an iron oxide core as small as 5 nanometres in size (1/1000th the width of a human hair).
"We coated this iron oxide core in a protective layer of gold before cisplatin, a platinum drug that revolutionised the treatment of testicular cancer, was attached to the gold coating using spaghetti-like strings of polymer."
The important thing about this new drug, says Dr. Wheate, is the ability of its iron core to move under the influence of a magnet; similar to the iron filing experiments many people have performed in science classes.
"When we take regular medication it is difficult to manage where it goes. But this discovery means we can potentially direct exactly where in the human body a drug goes. We can move it to the desired cancer tumour site using powerful magnetic fields. Otherwise, a strong magnet could be implanted into a tumor, and draw the drug into the cancer cells that way."
The technology was demonstrated when the team grew cancer cells in plates in the lab. When they placed a magnet under the plates, the drug affected and killed only those cells growing near the magnet, leaving the others unharmed, says Dr. Wheate.
"Many of the side-effects associated with chemotherapy occur because the drugs spread throughout the body, killing healthy organs as well as cancers.
"Ultimately, this technology could greatly reduce or even eliminate the severe side-effects that people associate with chemotherapy such as hair loss, nausea, vomiting, low red blood cells and an increased risk of infection."
This new drug technology could also be used to treat a range of cancers that have not been treatable with conventional platinum drugs, like prostate cancer.
Platinum drugs are one of the most regularly used family of agents in chemotherapy and include cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin.
Journal information: Inorganica Chimica Acta
Provided by University of Sydney


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University of Nebraska Sports Broadcasts Go Wireless with Shure
Story Highlights
Having been involved in University of Nebraska sports broadcasts since 1974, Mike Elliott has seen the ongoing growth of technology firsthand. As Director of Broadcast Operations for the Husker IMG Sports Network in Lincoln, Elliott oversees a radio team dedicated to bringing Nebraska sports action – especially football games – to fans throughout the region and around the world.
"One of the biggest changes in broadcasting over the past 20 years has been the widespread use of wireless, which is something that we have very much embraced," he says. "We've gone from having just one RF mic on the sideline to our whole crew being wireless, both for microphones and our IFB system. As our needs have expanded, the one thing that has remained constant is that all of those systems are made by Shure."
The Husker IMG team produces the longest game day sports coverage in the nation, and depends on Shure. "We're literally on the air for 12-and-a-half hours on football Saturdays," says Elliott, "and our Shure wireless has proven totally reliable in every way. We typically use ten microphone channels, which are Shure UHF-R. Most are bodypacks feeding headsets, except the sideline reporters, who use handhelds with SM58 capsules. In addition, everyone monitors on PSM 900 in-ear systems. That requires five more channels, one for each mix of feeds that the announcers and crew use."
According to Elliott, reliability and selectivity are the two biggest factors required of his wireless systems. "When the FCC changed wireless allocations because of DTV a few years back, we stayed with Shure because it has been extremely reliable," he relates. "In fact, that's when we expanded to make every member of the crew wireless. Everything we do at the stadium – pregame, the game itself, the post-game show, locker room interviews with coaches and players – is all done on Shure wireless."
While most productions use intercom systems for interruptible foldback (IFB) communications among the crew, the Husker broadcast team opted for the full-range fidelity of Shure's PSM 900 in-ear monitor system, with five channels offering different feeds required by the various announcer and crew functions. "We use traditional full-muff sports headsets, with the mic output feeding the UR1 bodypack," says Elliott. "The PSM 900 bodypack receiver then feeds the headphones, tuned to whatever IFB feed that announcer or crew member needs. Its primary purpose is crew communications, though the broadcast feed is also part of the mix, especially for the announcers."
This set-up enables talk among the crew to flow freely, including critical game information that Elliott relays to the game announcers. "For instance, my own main producer channel is a mix of crew chatter, the game feed, and everything else," he explains. "But the play-by-play announcer and analyst don't need all that, so all they hear is themselves, the crowd sounds, and the ref's mic, interspersed with quick little production comments or cues from me, like calling for legal ID, making sure they see penalty flags and substitutions, that sort of thing."
To do that while maintaining contact with the rest of the crew, Elliott uses the PSM 900's patent-pending CueMode feature, which enables the user to store up to 20 active channels for quick recall. Elliott uses the PSM 900's infrared linking to set names of the live channels for easy reference. "CueMode is very useful, and not just for me," he says. "For instance, our sideline reporter uses one channel when he's on the field, then switches to another when he walks into the locker room to do interviews, since that requires a separate feed to get a good signal in there. CueMode makes it easy for him to find the right feed."
Another PSM 900 feature that Elliott finds useful is MixMode, which lets the user blend two independent signals as desired, using the pan pot on the P9R bodypack receiver. "Basically, it lets you treat your stereo signal as two separate mono channels," he says. "We use it for the parabolic field mic operator on the sideline. He needs to hear what he's picking up, so he gets that signal soloed along with the crew chatter, then uses MixMode to blend them as needed." Using MixMode, announcers can adjust the headphone balance between their own voice and other production elements.
Being so reliant on wireless, a big part of Elliott's responsibilities revolve around frequency coordination. "Between the TV broadcaster, opponents radio broadcasts, referee mics, plus 80 channels for the coaches' headset systems, there's typically well over 100 active channels at a game. At the Rose Bowl, the total was about 250," he notes. "With our Shure systems, we've never had a problem finding enough clear channels for our needs."
To manage that, the university has its own frequency coordinator, who works closely with us and everyone else involved ensuring that they have the clear frequencies they need on game day. When on the road with no local frequency coordinator, Elliott works with coaches' headset crews and the national TV broadcast RF techs to fully coordinate RF at the game site.
In addition to its flagship coverage of University of Nebraska football, the Husker IMG Sports Network relies on Shure wireless for its broadcasts of men's and women's basketball, volleyball, baseball, and softball, all while producing a three-hour sports talk show that airs five nights a week year-round. To handle the inevitable conflicts when various events overlap, the network operates its own uplink, with three satellite channels to handle distribution. Live Internet streaming provides even more global reach in real time.
"One thing we've learned over the years is that you need quality equipment to do a quality job," concludes Mike Elliott. "We've been using Shure wireless for almost 20 years now, and they keep improving their products, but never lose focus on the basics, like great sound and reliability. So when we have new needs, we'll always look at Shure first."