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November/December 2012 Volume 18, Number 11/12 Table of Contents
Christopher Fleet National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh email@example.com Kimberly C. Kowal The British Library, London email@example.com Petr Přidal Klokan Technologies GmbH, Baar, Switzerland and Moravian Library, Brno, Czech Republic firstname.lastname@example.com doi:10.1045/november2012-fleet
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Georeferencing of historical maps offers a number of important advantages for libraries: improved retrieval and user interfaces, better understanding of maps, and comparison/overlay with other maps and spatial data. Until recently, georeferencing has involved various relatively time-consuming and costly processes using conventional geographic information system software, and has been infrequently employed by map libraries. The Georeferencer application is a collaborative online project allowing crowdsourced georeferencing of map images. It builds upon a number of related technologies that use existing zoomable images from library web servers. Following a brief review of other approaches and georeferencing software, we describe Georeferencer through its five separate implementations to date: the Moravian Library (Brno), the Nationaal Archief (The Hague), the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh), the British Library (London), and the Institut Cartografic de Catalunya (Barcelona). The key success factors behind crowdsourcing georeferencing are presented. We then describe future developments and improvements to the Georeferencer technology.
Georeferencing of historical map images involves assigning spatial information so that they align with real world geography. The essential process typically consists of adding control points to an historic map that have a real-world location; once there are sufficient control points, the historic map can be transformed so that it correctly aligns with geographic reality. The choice of coordinate system, the type of transformation method, and the method of resampling pixels in the image will all affect the end result.
Georeferencing historic maps results in a number of important advantages for libraries:
Georeferencing has always involved resources of time and/or money. Whilst the simplest cropping and transcription of four corner points of a map in a standard projection can take less than a minute, it is often necessary to georeference hundreds or even thousands of maps in a series in this fashion to create a seamless mosaic. For very accurate warping of a map without a standard projection and accurate geometry, potentially hundreds of control points are needed for one map, and the work can take many hours. Map libraries have often found it difficult to fund even the scanning and online delivery of maps, so georeferencing has therefore been a further cost to delivering maps online.
Most georeferencing work today is undertaken on desktop computers using a number of standard Geographic Information System programs, including commercial software such as ArcGIS, MapInfo, and GlobalMapper, and open-source software such as QGIS, GRASS, GDAL, MapRectifier or MapWinGIS Image Georeferencer. Bespoke applications have sometimes been developed to provide more efficient georeferencing workflows, a good example being the QUAD-G program developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. QUAD-G uses the open-source FWTools software to allow automatic cropping and georeferencing of United States Geological Survey topographic maps.
Georeferencing in an online environment has had a shorter history with fewer applications. Metacarta's MapRectifier was one of the earliest web-based georeferencing applications, developed from 2006, allowing maps to be uploaded to their server, georeferenced, and the resulting image made available as a Web Map Service. MapRectifier inspired the MapWarper software, developed by Tim Waters in 2009 and designed for use with OpenStreetMap mapping. Whilst both MapRectifier and MapWarper were open-source applications, both relied upon map images being uploaded to a server from which their owners had no ongoing control or rights over them.
Georeferencing applications for libraries have specifically addressed this issue, so that libraries could control their own map images, metadata and georeferenced outputs. In 2010-2011, MapWarper was further developed to form New York Public Library's Map Warper (Fig. 1) and Harvard University's WorldMap WARP. These implementations of MapWarper share standard functions in common with the Georeferencer application described in this paper: registration to control access, assigning of control points, rectification, visualisation of georeferenced maps, viewing map metadata, and export of georeferenced imagery in various standard formats including KML, WMS and WMTS or GeoTIFF. Other features, such as cropping neat lines to mask map sheet margins, WMS delivery, and presentation as an overlay in Google Maps using the open-source OpenLayers software, are available in some but not all implementations of MapWarper and Georeferencer. Most recently, a vector tracing tool was added to NYPL's Map Rectifier amongst the functions for crowdsourcing, allowing buildings and other features to be captured as vector layers with individual attributes.
Figure 1: New York Public Library's Map Warper interface, showing rectified map overlaid on an OpenStreetMap backdrop
Another relevant and successful project is Geospatial.org's eHarta project, organised and run by volunteers, and focusing on historical series maps of Romania (Crăciunescu, et al., 2011). Work began in 2010 and in its initial phase, some 1,800 map sheets of a single map series were processed in less than two days. A series of tools were developed using completely open-source software, including ExtJS, GeoExt, Zoomify, PHP, MySQL, GeoServer and OpenLayers. The tools are accompanied by detailed online instructions for recording map sheet-level metadata, selecting maps, cropping along map neat lines (Fig. 2), assigning four control points to the corners of the map, and automatically georeferencing the images based on shapefiles of the relevant map series. Within a few days, the images are processed into GeoServer and then made available as seamless mosaics on the Geospatial.org website. The project employed a number of important features for successful crowdsourcing: a friendly web interface, good feedback channels and a mailing list for volunteers, public recognition of individuals' efforts, as well as open data licences for the final georeferenced images. The project won the "Better Data Award" at the "Open Data Challenge", awarded at the European Commission's Digital Agenda Assembly on 16-17 June 2011.
Figure 2: Placing a control point in the e-Harta interface.Once control points are placed for the four corners, the map is automatically cropped and georeferenced using a shapefile polygon of the series.
The Georeferencer application is a collaborative online project, developed by Petr Přidal and the Moravian Library in Brno as part of the OldMapsOnline and TEMAP projects, allowing free, crowdsourced collaborative online georeferencing of map images from a number of libraries. Georeferencer is an online service based upon the open-source GDAL, Proj4 and MapServer applications, and it has allowed a cheaper, open, and collaborative way of georeferencing maps compared to in-house library georeferencing. It shares several of the advantages of MapWarper and the New York Public Library's Map Rectifier, but unlike MapWarper, it does not rely upon images being uploaded to a website, instead making use of zoomable images on existing library web servers. It is therefore easier to apply as there is no new local software installation and maintenance required.
For the user, registration, functionality and design have all improved over time and we describe here the present state of the technology in 2012. In 2011, the use of Google, Facebook, and Twitter accounts was added for authentication, and by upgrading to the latest version of OpenLayers in 2012, basic support was also added for mobile devices. The main georeferencing window presents the historic map to be georeferenced in the left-hand window and out-of-copyright georeferenced maps in the right-hand window (Fig. 3).
Figure 3: Showing the Georeferencer's Georeference window with the historic map to be georeferenced on the left,and a number of selectable georeferenced layers on the right.
The default right-hand window mapping is OpenStreetMap (with map tiles from Cloudmade and MapQuest) but other layers can be selected, including Ordnance Survey OpenData and the NLS Historical Maps API mapping for the United Kingdom, as well as Google maps, satellite and terrain layers globally. The use of out-of-copyright or open mapping avoids any issues of proprietary rights in the control points by third parties or of licensing restrictions such as for the Google GeoCoding API. For locating the modern map, the gazetteer originally used GeoNames available reliably via EDINA Unlock, but more recently the OpenStreetMap Nominatim gazetteer has been used. These gazetteers allow free, modern placename queries without licensing restrictions. Once georeferenced, the maps can be visualised using the Google Earth browser plugin as a georeferenced overlay with a transparency slider (Fig. 4).
Figure 4: The Georeferencer's Visualize window, showing the georeferenced map overlaid on a Google Earth backdrop, with adjustable transparency.
It is also possible to analyse the geometric accuracy of the georeferenced map using the online version of the MapAnalyst software. The control points are used to construct distortion grids, vectors of displacement, accuracy circles, and isolines of local scale and rotation. These visualizations can help to identify wrongly assigned control points. As a by-product, MapAnalyst also computes the historical map's scale, its rotation and statistical indicators relating to the georeferencing transformation.
Georeferencer captures a history of all editing operations and tracks each modification to individual users, similar to how Wikipedia works with encyclopaedic text. It is therefore possible to preview, use, or restore a status of editing at any given point in time; revert malicious operations; or generate multiple versions of the rectified maps applying different coordinate transformations (affine, second-order polynomial or Thin Plate Spline), which can be accessed directly via WMS/WMTS or as a GeoTIFF file.
As a result of the lessons learned from the three initial pilots, and other documented crowdsourcing projects and analyses, the Georeferencer software was substantially upgraded in 2011. With this upgraded version of Georeferencer at NLS in 2012, there was more popularity and within four months a further 200 maps had been georeferenced.
The resulting crowdsourced spatial metadata is produced in a format ready to be integrated into library catalogs. Metadata from some of the participating institutions is now included in the Old Maps Online search engine, which demonstrates the real value of enriching map images with spatial coordinate metadata. Old Maps Online is a gateway to historical maps, held by numerous cartographic collections, allowing searching of online maps via both textual (using online gazetteers) and graphic (map) geographical interfaces, and can further be narrowed by date. The search results provide a direct link to the map image on the website of the host institution (Southall & Přidal, 2012).
Amongst wider crowdsourcing efforts, georeferencing may be considered a "contributory" project, whereby professionals design a project which the public is then asked to contribute to, consisting of "correction and transcription" tasks (Oomen & Aroyo, 2011). In general terms, participants create metadata spatial coordinates to accompany the output of the digitisation process scanned maps using the tools provided. While online georeferencing projects have been undertaken using internal volunteer groups explicitly organized for the task, participation is gathered most usually by a public open call, where any interested party can contribute, thus the tools have been designed for a general Internet audience. Crowdsourcing geospatial metadata for historic maps is being accomplished by several other projects in addition to Georeferencer, most prominantly New York Public Library's Map Rectifier (Waters, 2010) and Geospatial.org's eHarta project, both discussed above.
The most significant developments in the 2011 upgrade to Georeferencer 3.0 were related to the public crowdsourcing features, and were based on a combination of the lessons learned from the previous pilots and recommendations from the wider field of crowdsourcing (Holley, 2010). These enhancements of the user experience consisted of an improved design and professional instructional video; simpler registration and user logging; and statistics and visualisation tools supporting competition in crowdsourcing. The latter includes widgets illustrating overall project progress and competitive rankings of individual contributor's input, as well as personal recognition of each contributor associated with each map completed (Fig. 5).
Figure 5: The Institut Cartografic de Catalunya's Georeferencer widgets,including the distribution map of georeferenced maps (left), and a table and pie chart of the top contributors (right).
The varying successes of early implementations of Georeferencer revealed the importance of feedback and user input, which was evaluated and actively addressed in the next release and later implementations. The NLS experience highlighted some of the areas in which better results could have been achieved. There were problems with the registration and login, with password confirmation details being slow to arrive or diverted into spam folders. Better promotion by NLS, particularly through social media channels, or by liaising with a core group of interested participants as at the Nationaal Archief, could have created a larger core of interested, engaged users.
Both the BL and ICC the only full implementations of the upgraded Georeferencer to date met with tremendous success and were completed in remarkably short amounts of time. This may to a degree be attributed to the map content and the engaging georeferencing process, but because these features were present in previous pilots, the outstanding uptake can also be said to be due to the new crowdsourcing enhancements built into the application, use of social media for publicity, and "prizes" as motivational factors, all features identified as means to increase participation and productivity (Holley, 2010). The number of participants was relatively low BL had 90 volunteers and ICC 88 with the majority of contributors georeferencing 1-2 maps, and a minority completing over half of the work. The results were sometimes surprisingly revelatory about the mindset and approach of the volunteers completing the work. For instance, while the system required a minimum input of three control points per map, in the case of one BL map, the user entered 352 control points, pointing to engagement with the map content and activity rather than a desire to gain "points"; nearly 40% of the completed maps contained at least ten control points.
Both institutions invited the top five participants to visit the library for an exclusive look at collections and behind-the-scenes operations. These 'super' volunteers were not generally map library users, or even those with a particular interest in maps, but rather enthusiastic and motivated individuals with general interests and technological literacy with web tools. This suggested that online georeferencing, rather than serving existing map users and enthusiasts, can instead be a powerful way to introduce historic maps, as well as the institutions, to new audiences.
(See the Georeferencer Roadmap page for further details.)
Whilst there are good reasons for georeferencing historical maps and projects such as Georeferencer, there are relevant methodological issues to be borne in mind. The georeferencing process emphasises the geometric accuracy of historic maps and therefore downplays other aspects of their content their symbolism, placenames, the way that they represent features, their purpose and usage, their various ideological, political and cultural contexts, and other meanings. In the course of transforming an original map, georeferencing changes lines and shapes, the distances between objects, the map's aesthetics and its value as a cultural object. As such, it can misuse or misinterpret historic maps, visualising them in ways that their makers and users would probably never have intended, and lead to false ideas and assumptions about the maps themselves. If applied in a simplistic way, georeferencing can therefore reinforce a modern fallacy that the main purpose of historic maps is representing the real world in a geometrically accurate way, that accurate maps are "better", and that the history of mapping is simply a history of improvements in accuracy over time.
In practice, these issues can be taken into account in georeferencing projects such as Georeferencer, partly by always clearly presenting the original, unwarped and uncropped map image as the original artefact, as well as any georeferenced version. They can also guide the selection of maps for georeferencing excluding those early maps where georeferencing would not assist understanding and the way that the georeferencing project and its purpose is described, as well as the presentation of any results. Through an awareness of the arguments against georeferencing, map librarians can approach georeferencing projects in a more sensitive way to take account of these criticisms. The georeferencing of the Roy Military Survey map of Scotland (Fleet & Kowal, 2007), or the Linguistic Geographies' Gough Map website, are recent examples of how maps can still be presented in their original form whilst also employing geospatial technologies.
The Georeferencer software has great potential, and allows libraries and archives to exploit many of the advantages of georeferencing their historic map collections thereby increasing accessibility and discoverability at very low costs. The five implementations of this shared service have contributed to ongoing development of the application since its first release in 2010, and the collective experience has resulted in improvements to functionality, and, most particularly, in the area of crowdsourcing. Future plans for Georeferencer allowing more flexibility and applying a more diverse set of technologies promise further improvements.
While the advantages that online georeferencing offers to cartographic collections are considerable, these very specialised benefits may be eclipsed by the broader ability to expose and share collections with the public in a new and a much more engaging way than was previously possible. As web users become accustomed to manipulating mainstream online map tools, making historic materials available in the same forum for examination and integration will evoke their relevance, and an appreciation for the landscape and past portrayals of it. Just as essential as exposing collections and making them available to the public immediately, however, georeferencing also serves as a means of investing in future access to collections by gathering essential geographic metadata.
We are very grateful to Noelia Ramos, Institut Cartografic de Catalunya, for helpful information on their Georeferencer project and results. This paper was supported by the Programme of Applied Research and Development of the National and Cultural Identity (NAKI) from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic (Project No. DF11P01OVV003 TEMAP).
Georeferencer.org beta version: http://www.georeferencer.org/ Georeferencer home page: http://www.klokantech.com/georeferencer/ Georeferencer Help Centre: http://help.georeferencer.com/home Georeferencer Roadmap: http://help.georeferencer.com/roadmap Georeferencer Library Installations: British Library: http://www.bl.uk/maps/ Institut Cartografic de Catalunya: http://cartotecadigital.icc.cat/cdm/Georeferenciacio/ Moravian Library, Mollova mapová sbírka: http://mapy.mzk.cz/ Nationaal Archief: Nationaal Archief Georeferencer (blog posting in Dutch): http://www.archief20.org/profiles/blogs/pilot-georefereren National Library of Scotland: http://geo.nls.uk/maps/georeferencer/
[1] De Boer, A.(2010). Processing old maps and drawings to create virtual historic landscapes, e-Perimetron, 5(2), 49-57.
[2] Crăciunescu, V. et al. (2011). Project eHarta: a collaborative initiative to digitally preserve and freely share old cartographic documents in Romania, e-Perimetron, 6(4), 261-269.
[3] Davie, M.F. & Frumin, M. (2007). Late 18th century Russian Navy maps and the first 3D visualization of the walled city of Beirut, e-Perimetron, 2(2), 52-65.
[4] Fleet, C. (2011). Historical maps in ScotlandsPlaces: new collaborative geographic retrieval and presentation options for the National Library of Scotland's maps, ePerimetron 6(4), 230-243.
[5] Fleet, C. & Kowal, K. (2007). Roy Military Survey map of Scotland (1747-1755): mosaicing, geo-referencing, and web delivery, ePerimetron, 2(4), 194-208.
[6] Gaspar, J.A. (2007). The Myth of the Square Chart, e-Perimetron, 2(2), 66-79.
[7] Gaspar, J.A. (2012). Blunders, errors and entanglements: scrutinizing the Cantino planisphere with a cartometric eye, Imago Mundi, 64, 181-200.
[8] Heere, E. (2011). The accuracy of the maps of Zeeland; accuracy measurement as part of the cartobibliography, e-Perimetron, 6(3) 187-199.
[9] Holley, R. (2010). Crowdsourcing: How and Why Should Libraries Do It? D-Lib Magazine, 16(3/4). http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/march2010-holley
[10] Jenny, B. (2010). New features in MapAnalyst, e-Perimetron, Vol. 5(3), 2010, 176-180.
[11] Koussoulakou, A. et al. (2011). On the Generalkarte coverage of the northern part of Greece and its interactions with the relevant subsequent Greek map series, e-Perimetron, 6(1), 46-56.
[12] Kowal, KC. and Pridal, P. (2012). Online georeferencing for libraries: the British Library implementation of Georeferencer for spatial metadata enhancement and public engagement. Journal of Map & Geography Libraries: Advances in Geospatial Information, Collections & Archives, 8:3, 276-289, 2012.
[13] Oehrli, M. et al. (2011). MapRank: Geographical Search for Cartographic Materials in Libraries. D-Lib Magazine, 17 (9/10). http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/september2011-oehrli
[14] Oomen, J. & Aroyo, L. (2011). Crowdsourcing in the cultural heritage domain: opportunities and challenges. C&T '11 Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies, 138-149.
[15] Přidal, P. & Zabicka, P. (2008). Tiles as an approach to on-line publishing of scanned old maps, vedute and other historical documents. e-Perimetron, 3(1), 10-21.
[16] Rodger, R. et al. (2010). Visualising Urban Geographies, e-Perimetron 5(3), 118-131. See also the VUG dual map viewer and NLS historic map overlays.
[17] Southall, H. & Přidal, P. (2012). Old Maps Online: Enabling global access to historical mapping. e-Perimetron 7(2), 73-81.
[18] Waters, T. (2010). Putting a Map Library on the Net: Crowdsourcing Georectification and Digitization of Historical Maps. AGI GeoCommunity '10: Opportunities in a Changing World.
Christopher Fleet is Senior Map Curator at the National Library of Scotland, where he has worked since 1994. His primary responsibilities have been on digital mapping, including scanning and providing access to the Library's collection of online maps. Georeferencing historical maps has been a more recent focus, particularly through collaborative projects including ScotlandsPlaces, AddressingHistory, and Visualising Urban Geographies. He has also researched and published on several themes in the historical cartography of Scotland, and in 2011 co-authored the book Scotland: Mapping the Nation.
Kimberly C. Kowal is Lead Curator, Digital Mapping, in the Cartographic & Topographic Materials section of the British Library. After receiving Masters degrees in Geography and Library & Information Science, she has held positions in numerous research libraries and map collections in the US and UK, focussing on geospatial data and information technologies, digitisation of historic materials, and cataloguing and metadata capture in libraries.
Petr Přidal is a software engineer, consultant and the founder of Klokan Technologies GmbH, a Swiss company offering software development services and customization of open-source projects to culture heritage institutions. The company's innovative software tools for libraries include geographical search with MapRank, crowdsourcing with Georeferencer, high-performance publishing of digital images with open-source IIPImage JPEG2000, rendering seamless maps from scans and aerial photos with MapTiler, HTML5 3D visualizations with WebGL Earth, etc. Petr works also for Moravian Library Brno, Czech Republic as technical manager of the R&D project TEMAP.
Copyright © 2012 Christopher Fleet, Kimberly C. Kowal, Petr Přidal


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Epiroc operated under the trademark "Atlas Copco" prior to January 1, 2018.

subset: commoncrawl


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By Alicia A. Caldwell
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Homeland Security Department released from its jails more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation in recent weeks due to looming budget cuts and planned to release 3,000 more during March, The Associated Press has learned.
The newly disclosed figures, cited in internal budget documents reviewed by the AP, are significantly higher than the "few hundred" illegal immigrants the Obama administration acknowledged this week had been released under the budget-savings process.
The government documents show that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released roughly 1,000 illegal immigrants from its jails around the U.S. each week since at least Feb. 15. The agency's field offices have reported more than 2,000 immigrants released before intense criticism this week led to a temporary shutdown of the plan, according to the documents.
The states where immigrants were released include Arizona, California, Georgia and Texas.
The White House has said it was not consulted about the releases, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has acknowledged they occurred in a manner she regrets.
White House spokesman Jay Carney on Wednesday said the government had released "a few hundred" of the roughly 30,000 illegal immigrants held in federal detention pending deportation proceedings. Carney said the immigrants released were "low-risk, noncriminal detainees," and the decision was made by career ICE officials.
As of last week, the agency held an average daily population of 30,733 in its jails. The internal budget documents reviewed by the AP show the Obama administration had intended to reduce those figures to 25,748 by March 31.
The White House did not comment immediately Friday on the higher number of immigrants released.
ICE spokesman Brian Hale said Friday the numbers of immigration detainees fluctuate daily, but he reiterated only several hundred illegal immigrants had been released. "Beyond that normal movement, and as fiscal uncertainty remains over the continuing resolution and possible sequestration, ICE reviewed its detained population to ensure detention levels stay within ICE's current budget and placed several hundred individuals on methods of supervision less costly than detention," Hale said in a statement. "At this point, we don't anticipate additional releases, but that could change."
The immigrants who were released still eventually face deportation and are required to appear for upcoming court hearings. But they are no longer confined in immigration jails, where advocacy experts say they cost about $164 per day per person. Immigrants who are granted supervised release — with conditions that can include mandatory check-ins, home visits and GPS devices — cost the government from 30 cents to $14 a day, according to the National Immigration Forum, a group that advocates on behalf of immigrants.
The release of thousands from immigration jails is consistent with Napolitano's early warnings on Monday — hours before anyone knew publicly that any illegal immigrants had been released — that the pending, automatic budget cuts known as the sequester would limit the government's ability to maintain enough detention center beds for at least 34,000 immigrants.
"We're doing our very best to minimize the impacts of sequester, but there's only so much I can do," Napolitano said Monday. "You know, I'm supposed to have 34,000 detention beds for immigration. How do I pay for those?"
Late Thursday, after intense criticism over what the administration acknowledged was the release this week of several hundred immigrants, Napolitano told ABC News that she had been surprised to learn about the action.
"Detainee populations and how that is managed back and forth is really handled by career officials in the field," Napolitano told ABC. "Do I wish that this all hadn't been done all of a sudden and so that people weren't surprised by it? Of course."
The announcement that a few hundred illegal immigrants were being released was among the most significant and direct implications described so far by the automatic budget cuts. Republicans in Congress quickly criticized the decision and pressed the Homeland Security Department for details, including the number of illegal immigrants released and the nature of any criminal charges they were facing as part of the deportation process.
"Simply blaming budget reductions as a means to turn a blind eye toward the national security of the American people is a dangerous plan, and one that calls into question the department's preparations for sequestration," wrote two Republican lawmakers, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who sits on the Senate panel that oversees the Department of Homeland Security, harshly criticized the administration for downplaying the number of immigrants released, adding the revelation "makes it less and less possible for lawmakers to have productive negotiations with the White House over a comprehensive immigration bill."
The senior Homeland Security Department official in charge of arresting and deporting illegal immigrants announced his retirement to his staff on Tuesday, the same day the administration first openly confirmed the release of what it called several hundred immigrants. The executive associate director over ICE enforcement and removal operations, Gary Mead, told his staff he was leaving his job with mixed emotions. A career law enforcement officer, Mead will leave at the end of April.
After AP reported on Mead's retirement, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said his decision was not related to criticism over the jail releases and said Mead had notified the agency's senior leaders "several weeks ago" that he intended to leave. She also called AP's reporting about Mead's departure "inaccurate and misleading." On Thursday, ICE corrected her statement to say that Mead has notified his bosses "more than a week ago," not several weeks ago.
The later government statement also criticized AP's reporting as "ill-informed, inaccurate information" and complained that AP had failed to contact the agency before publishing what it called a "misguided headline," although the AP had noted its unsuccessful efforts to contact Mead directly by telephone and email.


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The Effects of Trauma on Schools and Learning
from: nctsn.org
What is a Traumatic Event?A traumatic event is a sudden and unexpected occurrence that causes intense fear and may involve a threat of physical harm or actual physical harm. A traumatic experience may have a profound effect on the physical health, mental health, and development of the student.
How students process trauma depends on their age and level of development. By understanding how students experience traumatic events and how they express their lingering distress over the experience, school personnel can better respond and help them through this challenging time.
Overall Effects on StudentsFor students, a traumatic experience may cause ongoing feelings of concern for their own safety and the safety of others. These students may become preoccupied with thoughts about their actions during the event, often times experiencing guilt or shame over what they did or did not do at the time. They might engage in constant retelling of the traumatic event, or may describe being overwhelmed by their feelings of fear or sadness.
Effects on Preschool StudentsPreschool students may lose recently acquired developmental milestones and may increase behaviors such as bedwetting, thumbsucking, and regress to simpler speech. They may become more clingy to their parents and worry about their parents safety and return. These young students may also become more irritable with more temper tantrums and have more difficulty calming down. A few students may show the reverse behavior and become very withdrawn, subdued, or even mute after a traumatic event. These students may have difficulties falling or staying asleep or have nightmares about the event or other bad dreams. Typically these students will process the event through post-traumatic play.
Effects on Elementary School StudentsElementary students may show signs of distress through somatic complaints such as stomachaches, headaches, and pains. These students may have a change in behavior, such as increase irritability, aggression, and anger. Their behaviors may be inconsistent. These students may show a change in school performance and have impaired attention and concentration and more school absences. Late elementary students may excessively talk and ask persistent questions about the event.
Effects on Middle and High School StudentsThese students exposed to a traumatic event feel self-conscious about their emotional responses to the event. They often experience feelings of shame and guilt about the traumatic event and may express fantasies about revenge and retribution. A traumatic event for adolescents may foster a radical shift in the way these students think about the world. Some of these adolescents may begin to engage in self-destructive or accident-prone behaviors, and reckless behaviors. There may be a shift in their interpersonal relationships with family members, teachers, and classmates. These students may show a change in their school performance, attendance, and behavior.
Variations among StudentsIn spite of our ability to predict general responses to trauma depending on age and developmental level, there is still tremendous variability among students regarding post-traumatic symptoms and the extent to which learning and school behavior may be disrupted. The variety of individual responses to trauma is related to many factors, including a student?s prior history of trauma or loss, prior or current mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, or behavior problems, and individual differences in temperament.
Effects of Trauma on the Ability to LearnA traumatic event can seriously interrupt the school routine and the processes of teaching and learning. There are usually high levels of emotional upset, potential for disruptive behavior, or loss of student attendance unless efforts are made to reach out to students and staff with additional information and services. Students traumatized by exposure to violence have been shown to have lower grade point averages, more negative remarks in their cumulative records, and more reported absences from school than other students. They may have increased difficulties concentrating and learning at school and may engage in unusually reckless or aggressive behavior.
The involvement of the school is critical in supporting students through the emotional and physical challenges they may face following an exposure to a traumatic event.


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25 Ways to Boost Brainpower in a Recession
How are you riding rough waves or unfair performance reviews – see Forbes – that shout recession at work? Perhaps you're looking for opportunities that fit your skills. Keith Hall, commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Stats, spoke to Boston Globe staff this week, about the severe recession that… Read more »


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A Franciscan environmental activist recycles some ancient traditions for modern use.
[Read more about St. Francis, patron of ecology.]
Hundreds of years before the environmental movement, St. Francis of Assisi recognized God in creation and changed his life. Today one of his spiritual sons, Keith Douglass Warner, O.F.M., is encouraging Catholics to do the same.
But while Warner holds up St. Francis, patron of ecology, as a prime example, he doesn't expect 21st-century Catholics to live in a cave for half the year, survive on nuts and berries, or preach to birds. We need to regain the "sense of enchantment" that St. Francis had, Warner says, and we can do so by gardening, taking a walk in the park, changing our diet, and praying.
How exactly can prayer solve complex issues like climate change? The problem, Warner says, "is more fundamental. The most important problem is that we go to church and hear all of these teachings, but it doesn't affect us because we've so fractured our identity."
So yes, experiencing God in nature is not only the Catholic thing to do, but it is also the first step to caring for creation. "I have the privilege of living at a rural retreat house, so I get to see beauty and a whole host of God's creatures every day that I'm at home," he says. "That prompts me ever more fully to love and express gratitude to God for the gift of creation."
What's the single most important thing that Catholics can do to protect the environment?
Practice contemplative prayer. The fundamental problem is that we are alienated from God, ourselves, and the earth, and it's through prayer that we can come to understand where we belong.
It's our apathy, our consumerism, and our materialism that distract us from what's most important, and it's in that context of prayerful reflection upon our relationship to God that we can grow and accept our responsibility.
Is Catholicism really a nature-friendly religion?
Creation has been very important throughout the history of Catholic thought and teaching, but the current emphasis of both Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, on creation comes as a surprise to many Catholics. Somehow we've allowed our thinking about creation to be more influenced by our culture than by our Catholic tradition.
To love the earth is a sacred responsibility, but this idea has been lost. It's not just Catholicism that has lost its awareness of the importance of creation. This has been part of a broad erosion across religions, at least in the West.
Are we just throwing holy water on a secular environmental movement?
I don't think so. What people have talked about in the U.S. Catholic Church, especially the bishops in their 1991 letter Renewing the Earth, has been the notion of a distinctly Catholic environmental approach.
What makes it distinctly Catholic?
It has a much stronger emphasis on ethics rather than on individual issues. You are more likely to have tactical influence on the political process if you are issues driven, but I think most Catholics prefer to have a broader moral vision and are trying to understand what it means to live a more holistic life.
Catholic environmentalism also focuses on its integral connection to our vision of humanity in society. We've added environmental justice, the idea that the poor shouldn't bear an unfair burden of environmental degradation, as a theme within Catholic social teaching.
While this is important, I would say that it needs to be complemented by a spirituality of care for the earth, of love, gratitude, and prayerful relationship with the earth. That is what I think is most needed and most missing.
I think that so many people are repelled by the secular movement because they see it as driven by anger, not love. It makes people feel guilty rather than grateful and energized. That's a real challenge because if you just look at the data, it's really grim, verging on apocalyptic.
How do you find that spirituality of love and gratitude?
People have to open their eyes, and they have to go out and have a sensory experience of nature. I can point to the example of my father, St. Francis, here.
I don't think there are too many climate change deniers who have a direct sensory relationship with the earth. Many people have undergone very important transformations as a result of sustained contact with nature, whether it's rafting in Colorado, camping out in their local state park, or gardening.
I don't mean to sound trivial or cutesy here, but gardening can be a spiritual practice if you think of the cultivation of our own spirit and not just vegetables. Humility is instilled by the failures in gardening, and there's the potential for really luxurious sensory experiences, such as eating a fresh vine-ripened tomato from your own garden.
It has the potential to transform so much of the modern or post-modern malaise of the human spirit.
But isn't there a danger of people leaving the church to go find God in nature?
I never really understood why people seem to think this is an either/or issue, and I would point to myself as a contrary example. I find God in nature and I find God in the church community.
I don't understand how those who hear Genesis or the Gospel of John proclaimed in church can fail to see the connection to what happens outside the walls of the church. St. Francis is the example that says you can love creation and be a Catholic saint.
How did this connection develop?
Early Christian writers thought that we had to understand humanity's relationship to creation in order to understand our relationship to God. These were systems-human, creation, God-and we need to understand how they fit together.
The doctrine of the "primacy of Christ" emphasizes that before the beginning of creation, the cosmic Christ was intended to come in human form. "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation," St. Paul writes in Colossians 1:15. "In the beginning was the Word," begins the prologue of John's gospel (1:1).
Incarnation is not just a remedy for a problem, a response to sin, some said, but the highest, best form of conveying God's love. Humanity is a part of creation, and all creation, not just humanity, is able to bear Christ. Therefore, creation is born in a special dignity.
This understanding of Christ was conceived long before there was an environmental movement. But it's a resource that is fully a part of our Catholic history, and it reflects in a more formal way what St. Francis knew intuitively. These kinds of insights are in desperate need of retrieval and renewal to re-imagine our relationship with the earth today.
What changes when we start thinking of humans as part of creation?
Modern society is driven by a radical dualism-by a fundamental assumption that can't even be questioned-that we are apart from and superior to nature. This came, I would argue, as part of the package with the Enlightenment. It privileges humanity and is outraged at the notion that we somehow are to be a part of creation.
This leads to problems when we ask who is included in our moral community. We assume that the only things that matter are human beings. We do not consider the fate of Earth's diversity of life or even acknowledge that we are part of a community, an ecosystem, that is being dramatically transformed by humanity.
When I started down the Franciscan vocation path about 20 years ago, I thought that I would become a religious environmental activist. But as a result of prayer and reflection, I've come to realize that the problem is much more serious than I originally realized because it has to do with our mentality, our selfishness, our sinfulness, our greed, and our unwillingness to consider future generations.
It's a bit like getting the atom bomb. We've developed technologically, scientifically, and economically, but we have not developed morally in such a way that we're able to make wise choices.
It's not any one individual. It's all of us together. This is where the Catholic communitarian vision is important. We're moral agents within a moral community, and that moral community extends its care beyond humanity.
That might sound abstract or philosophical, but it's so fundamental to being able to get us going on the right path.
But shouldn't humans be central to the moral community, especially the poor?
Concern for the poor is one of the distinguishing features of Catholic environmentalism in contrast to secular environmentalism. This is where the notion of environmental justice comes in. It is the environmentalism of where we live, work, and play, not just an environmentalism that is concerned about what's happening elsewhere.
The vision is to incorporate the poor more fully into the human community, at the same time as we situate the human community within the earth community. What that means then is that the economic standards of people at the bottom need to be brought up, making it all the more incumbent upon us who are wealthy to simplify our lifestyle and create a more just global economic system.
It would be nice if we could all just pick out one little thing to do, but that's not the Catholic vision, especially given the enormity of the social, economic, and environmental problems we face.
What about where these two interests-the environment and the poor-collide, as with carbon emissions in developing nations?
That's where we have to draw on our tools for moral theology. It's when a decision is 51/49 that you need ethics.
With the question of who should bear the responsibilities of cutting carbon emissions, I think we have to look at history. The United States and Europe have historically created 80 percent of all the carbon emissions, so it's our responsibility to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint first. And yet there's no reason for it to happen unless the citizens of these countries demand it. We think of it as somebody else's problem.
I don't want to diminish the moral dilemmas that are in our path forward, but I think we need to rethink how we frame questions, taking a bigger perspective.
We know that we can sin against God and other human beings, but can we sin against the earth? Take mountaintop strip mining in Appalachia. Is this sinning against the mountains?
Have you ever prayed the psalms? And do not the mountains and rivers give praise? Absolutely.
The theological problem of dismantling a mountain did not concern the people who wrote scripture or theology. We have a new moral problem here. There has to be, I would argue, a re-emphasis on wisdom and restraint.
From my perspective, it is really an astonishing conceit on the part of human beings that we could destroy mountains. It's breathtaking in its arrogance. And sin means to break relationship, to withdraw oneself through one's conceit and arrogance, to put oneself above the rest of life, whether human community or earth community.
We've got this idea that we can only sin with the parts in the area of our pelvis. This very narrow understanding of sin is a fundamental obstacle to expressing our social and environmental responsibilities as Catholics.
Is it productive to talk about sin and guilt in this context?
From a pastoral perspective, it's problematic to talk about sin without also talking about God's love and grace and forgiveness.
It's important to recognize that we have responsibilities as human beings, especially given our incredible array of technology that can hurt the earth. But we also have to ask: What do we need to do as penance to remedy the situation?
Francis expressed penance in a social context. He longed for the early friars and sisters to live in humility and with very little for themselves, living a life of generosity toward others as a response to God's love.
We can do ecological repentance through things such as restoration of the earth, limiting our carbon emissions and use of fossil fuels, using local foods, eating vegetarian, buying fair trade and organic.
You've said that parish priests are largely absent in this movement. Why is that?
I'm not here to bash priests. Part of the context is full pews, empty pulpit. We put twice as much responsibility on every priest these days.
Then you also have this relatively new area in environmentalism. Most priests are not trained to be teachers in novel areas. It's reasonable and appropriate to expect that we should be led in this area by the people who are supposed to be our teachers: our bishops. A small number of bishops have been visionaries here, but then of course, they've got a few other problems on their plate, too.
Regional examples-such as bishops' letters on the abuse of natural resources in Appalachia and the pollution of the Columbia River watershed in the Pacific Northwest-are really quite creative and show us the way.
But I am saddened that a few priests stand in the way of action. They're missing the point of what the popes have told us about the need for Catholics to take seriously our collective moral responsibilities and act. Our pope says it is fundamental to our identity as Catholics to care for the earth. No one is off the hook
What keeps people from taking environmental action?
I can't really imagine how people could think of themselves as Catholic and ignore all this.
The most transformative contribution that I have been able to make is when I lay out my vision, and people begin to see the facets of their identity-I'm a Catholic over here and I'm an environmentalist over here-as integral to each other. They say, "Wow! This is exciting. There's no reason I can't love the earth and love God!"
American culture has some really bogus ideas about environmentalists. Just like my students say they're not feminists, they also say they aren't environmentalists. Who wants dirty air and contaminated water and a disrupted climate? No one. But many people don't want to be associated with activist labels.
That's why we have to more clearly articulate environmental responsibility with Catholic identity.
What about people who deny that we're doing any harm to the environment?
We have to engage people in many ways. A climate change skeptic doesn't believe all of the unambiguous evidence and scientific consensus of the disruption of the planet. At that point I pivot very hard back to tradition.
As a Franciscan, a member of an 800-year-old order, I think we need to bring forward the best wisdom and practices and insights from our tradition to bear on the present. Take the practice of virtue. How is a climate change denier practicing virtue, simplicity, living charitably?
The notion of fasting would be helpful here. It's the notion of self-control, living with less, and allowing that to inform our practice of humility, rather than "I can have anything I want, any time and all the time."
Fasting allows us to make a radically countercultural decision collectively, as a church, to say, "Our satisfaction is in God. We do not need all these extra things."
But I would push fasting beyond just eating fish-the state of the world's oceans and its fisheries is really quite dire, as we are polluting or fishing the fish to extinction-to eating a vegetarian diet. It's also a way of practicing solidarity with billions of people who don't have access to meat.
How else can we do penance inspired by St. Francis?
Where can you pray outside? It doesn't have to be a wilderness. I'm not suggesting you go to the Amazon. You can take a walk in a park or maybe there's an aquarium or a natural history museum. From a classic spirituality perspective, there's a movement out to engage and to receive God's love, but there's also a going within, a sense of silence and darkness and contemplation and solitude.
Reduce your carbon footprint. Eat vegetarian for all of Lent. I've done it. Francis did it. People have done some pretty audacious things by efforts to become locavores, eating locally.
The subtitle of Gandhi's autobiography is The Story of My Experiments with Truth. He saw his life as a set of experiments that he conducted to see what it meant to be human and how he could live in greater compassion in relationship to other people and more fully advance an ethic of nonviolence.
How can we live ever more fully in love? Yes, we need some self-sacrifice in the United States, but we can complement it with growing in love.
This article appeared in the April 2010 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 75, No. 4, pages 22-26). It accompanies St. Francis: Patron of ecology.
Image courtesy of Keith Douglass Warner, O.F.M.


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EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) D.J. Balentine scored 23 points and had seven assists in Evansville's final home game as the Aces beat Drake 61-48 on Tuesday.
Blake Simmons added 13 points for Evansville (12-18, 5-12 Missouri Valley Conference) and Egidiju Mockevicius was held scoreless, but grabbed 10 rebounds. Balentine made four 3-pointers as Evansville hit 6 of 12 from deep.
Evansville ended a three-game losing streak and pulled itself out of the conference cellar.
Ten players scored for Drake (14-15, 5-12) but none were in double-figures. Daddy Ugbede had seven, on 3-of-8 shooting, and Jordan Daniels made two of Drake's four 3-pointers, in a combined 16 attempts.
The Bulldogs made just 6 of 20 second-half baskets and were limited to 18 points after the break.
Evansville held the Bulldogs without a basket for nearly 11 minutes, spanning both halves, and led by double-digits for the final 10 minutes.


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Let's put aside for a moment President Obama and the Democrats' class-warmongering rhetoric about wanting "millionaires and billionaires" to pay their fair share (I'm pretty sure that dubbing families that make over $250k/year "millionaires" is an over-generalization, but yeah, sure), and forget that the projected revenue from hiking taxes on the wealthy is a laughably insincere, piddling effort at solving our wildly out-of-control binge-spending problem. Let's just focus on the universally acknowledged wisdom that, when you want less of something, one always-viable option is to put a tax on it.
Exhibit A, via the Telegraph:
In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs.
This number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50p top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election. …
George Osborne, the Chancellor, announced in the Budget earlier this year that the 50p top rate will be reduced to 45p from next April.
Since the announcement, the number of people declaring annual incomes of more than £1 million has risen to 10,000. …
Far from raising funds, it actually cost the UK £7 billion in lost tax revenue.
I.e., wealthy Britons probably invested a lot of resources into either reducing their taxable incomes or simply moving abroad — and no doubt our own dear Democrats would label this rational self-interest as malicious greed or a disdainful lack of patriotism. Whatever they want to call it, they can't disguise the fact that the threat of more of your money being taken from you means you're going to look for ways to avoid that fate — and when it starts to get really serious, there's a disincentive to even try and make that much money in the first place.
Maybe these higher taxes alone might not spell economic doom and recession for the economy, but they certainly don't encourage it along, and combined with the rest of President Obama's agenda of more bureaucracy, more regulation and red tape, more costs, more redistribution, and the list goes on… These together are long-term trends for economic decline, and it's not like 'nobody could've seen this coming' or anything.
This is the infamous Laffer Curve, and it's simply the common-sense recognition that you should include changes in taxable income in your calculations when trying to measure the impact of higher or lower tax rates on tax revenues.
…[L]et's now think about President Obama's proposed class-warfare tax hike. He wants higher tax rates on investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners and other "rich" taxpayers. And he wants more double taxation of dividends and capital gains. And a higher death tax rate, even higher than the ones imposed by France and Venezuela. …
Those questions are hard to answer. Ask five economists and you'll get nine answers, but there is compelling evidence that higher tax rates do have a negative impact.


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NEW YORK-Wednesday 13 February 2019 [ AETOS Wire ]
(BUSINESS WIRE) -- Union Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: LTN) ("UAC"), a special purpose acquisition company, has set the date of its extraordinary general meeting of shareholders ("extraordinary general meeting") to vote on the previously announced business combination with Bioceres, Inc., for Wednesday, February 27, 2019. The date of the extraordinary general meeting was previously disclosed in the Pre-Effective Amendment No.1 to UAC's Registration Statement on Form S-4, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on February 7, 2019. The extraordinary general meeting will be held at 10:00 a.m. local time at the offices of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, located at 250 West 55th Street Avenue, New York, New York 10019. The record date for those eligible to receive notice of and to vote at the extraordinary general meeting is February 7, 2019 (the "Record Date"). UAC expects to mail its definitive proxy statement/prospectus and related information regarding the business combination and the extraordinary general meeting on or about February 11, 2019.
Ensuring Your Vote is Counted
UAC advises holders of its securities to move their securities into accounts that do not permit the lending of securities, so called cash accounts or segregated accounts, and out of accounts that permit the lending of securities, such as margin accounts. These steps are designed to ensure that votes related to ordinary shares beneficially owned by shareholders are properly counted. Beneficial owners of ordinary shares that have been lent out (either with or without the beneficial owners' knowledge) are not permitted to vote those shares.
About Union Acquisition Corp.
Union Acquisition Corp. is a blank check company organized for the purpose of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, recapitalization, reorganization, or other similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities. UAC's efforts to identify a prospective target business are not limited to any particular industry or geographic region, although the Company has focused on target businesses located in Latin America. The Company is led by Juan Sartori, Chairman of the Board of the Company and Chairman and founder of Union Group International Ltd., and Kyle P. Bransfield, Chief Executive Officer of the Company and Partner of Atlantic-Pacific Capital, Inc.
Forward Looking Statements
This communication includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "forecast," "intend," "seek," "target," "anticipate," "believe," "expect," "estimate," "plan," "outlook," and "project" and other similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. Such forward-looking statements include estimated financial information. Such forward-looking statements with respect to revenues, earnings, performance, strategies, prospects and other aspects of the businesses of UAC, Bioceres or the combined company after completion of the business combination are based on current expectations that are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from expectations expressed or implied by such forward- looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to: (1) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstances that could give rise to the termination of the exchange agreement entered into in connection with the proposed business combination (the "Exchange Agreement") and the proposed business combination contemplated therein; (2) the inability to complete the transactions contemplated by the Exchange Agreement due to the failure to obtain approval of the shareholders or other conditions to closing in the Exchange Agreement; (3) the ability of UAC to continue to meet applicable NYSE listing standards; (4) the risk that the proposed business combination disrupts current plans and operations of Bioceres as a result of the announcement and consummation of the transactions described in the Exchange Agreement; (5) the ability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the proposed business combination, which may be affected by, among other things, competition, the ability of the combined company to grow and manage growth profitably, maintain relationships with customers and suppliers and retain its management and key employees; (6) costs related to the proposed business combination; (7) changes in applicable laws or regulations; (8) the possibility that Bioceres may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; and (9) other risks and uncertainties indicated from time to time in the definitive registration statement of UAC in connection with the proposed business combination and the proxy statement/prospectus contained therein, including those under "Risk Factors" therein, and other documents filed or to be filed with the SEC by UAC. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. UAC and Bioceres undertake no commitment to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Investors should carry out their own due diligence in connection with the assumptions contained herein. The forward-looking statements in this communication speak only as of the date of this communication. Although UAC may from time to time voluntarily update its prior forward-looking statements, it disclaims any commitment to do so whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions or otherwise except as required by applicable securities laws.
Additional Information and Where to Find It
In connection with the proposed business combination between Bioceres and UAC, UAC has filed with the SEC a Registration Statement on Form S-4, a preliminary proxy statement/prospectus and a definitive proxy statement/prospectus, forming a part thereof. UAC's shareholders and other interested persons are advised to read the preliminary proxy statement/prospectus, and amendments thereto, and the definitive proxy statement/prospectus in connection with UAC's solicitation of proxies for its extraordinary general meeting of shareholders to be held to approve the proposed business combination because the proxy statement/prospectus contains important information about the proposed business combination, UAC and Bioceres. The definitive proxy statement/prospectus will be mailed to UAC's shareholders as of the Record Date on or about February 11, 2019.
Shareholders will also be able to obtain a copy of the preliminary and definitive Registration Statement, without charge, at the SEC's website at http://sec.gov or by directing a request to: Union Acquisition Corp., 444 Madison Avenue, Floor 34, New York, NY 10022. UAC shareholders will be able to obtain free copies of these documents and other documents containing important information about UAC and Bioceres, once such documents are filed with the SEC.
No Offer or Solicitation
This announcement is for informational purposes only and is neither an offer to sell, nor a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or the solicitation of any vote in any jurisdiction pursuant to the proposed transactions or otherwise, nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of securities in any jurisdiction in which the offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offer of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
Participants in the Solicitation
UAC and its directors, executive officer, certain of its shareholders prior to its initial public offering and other members of its management and employees and affiliates, and Bioceres, its directors and management may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from UAC's shareholders in connection with the proposed business combination. Shareholders are urged to carefully read the Registration Statement regarding the proposed business combination because it contains important information, including information regarding the persons who may, under the rules of the SEC, be deemed participants in the solicitation of UAC's shareholders in connection with the proposed business combination, as well as information about UAC's executive officers and directors.
UAC: Kyle Bransfield, Chief Executive Officer, UAC +1 212 981 0633 firstname.lastname@example.com
Permalink : https://www.aetoswire.com/news/union-acquisition-corp-announces-date-of-extraordinary-general-meeting-of-shareholders-and-record-date/en


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Another Vyvanse-Assisted Suicide Streamed Live on Facebook
Two years ago, I investigated the suicide of a 7-year-old Florida foster child five years after his death, to find out whether officially recommended changes to the state's foster care program had been implemented following the tragedy. Based on records obtained from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) spanning the five-year period after the child's suicide, I concluded nothing had changed. After reviewing the DCF records, psychiatrist and child advocate Dr. Peter Breggin warned then about the foster program's ongoing and dangerous practice of psychotropic polypharmacy: "Whenever you put children on multiple psychiatric drugs you are creating an experiment that is doomed to do more harm than good... We need to stop experimenting on America's children."
We had hoped by calling attention to the lack of real progress overhauling the Florida foster care program's over-reliance on pills to cure all ills, further tragedies might be prevented.
Mission failed.
Experimenting on foster children
Recently, a 14-year-old Florida foster child, prescribed a psychotropic cocktail similar to the 7-year-old foster child, committed suicide in a nearly identical manner, only this time streamed live on Facebook.
In 2009, 7-year-old Gabriel Myers hanged himself in the bathroom of his Florida foster home. Toxicology detected amphetamine, fluoxetine and olanzapine in his system. Medical records indicated psychiatrist Dr. Sohail Punjwani prescribed young Gabriel 50mg of the ADHD drug Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine dimesylate), and 25mg of the antidepressant and antipsychotic combination drug Symbyax (fluoxetine, olanzapine). Although there was no doubt Gabriel died at his own hand, Broward Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cina did not rule his death a suicide, stating: "It is unclear whether these drugs contributed to this fatality or not." Dr. Cina noted in his report that neither Symbyax, nor one of its key ingredients olanzapine, also known by the brand name Zyprexa, was approved for use in children; and that "fluoxetine (Prozac) and olanzapine can increase the risk of suicidal ideation in children taking this drug."
It also came to light that Gabriel was among Florida foster children being used as guinea pigs for pharmaceutical clinical trials. After an investigation into his clinical trial practices, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning letter to Dr. Punjwani, citing violations including failure to protect the rights, safety and welfare of human test subjects; doses exceeding protocol-specified limits; and failure to follow clinical trial plans. Through an executive order, then DCF Secretary George Sheldon instituted a limited prohibition of the shady practice of conducting drug experiments on Florida's foster children.
Drug-induced Risks
A recent Canadian study found youth prescribed ADHD drugs were thirteen times more likely to be prescribed antipsychotic medications, and almost four times more likely to be prescribed antidepressant medications than children who were not prescribed ADHD drugs. The study's authors argued that children with ADHD have more psychiatric comordibities than children without ADHD, omitting the exceedingly relevant fact that psychosis and depression are labeled side effects of ADHD drugs. Clearly, the possibility eluded the authors that the increased rates of psychosis and depression observed may not be linked at all to so-called comorbidities of ADHD, but rather to the drugs prescribed to treat ADHD.
Indeed, the Vyvanse label warns: "Vyvanse at recommended doses may cause psychotic or manic symptoms even in patients without prior history of psychotic symptoms or mania." According to the DSM-5, up to twenty-five percent of all first episodes of psychosis are substance/medication-induced. Likewise, the label for the stimulant drug also warns: "Fatigue and depression usually follow the central nervous system stimulation."
Research suggests drug treatment of ADHD unleashes a domino effect, triggering more psychiatric diagnoses, which in turn lead to risky polypharmacy. The cascading reactions associated with drug treatment of ADHD are especially disturbing, considering many children have been misdiagnosed with ADHD in the first place.
Which leads us to the tragic case of Naika Venant, the 14-year-old Florida foster child who recently hanged herself in the bathroom of her Florida foster home, witnessed in real-time on Facebook Live. Medical records from a medication management visit the month prior to her suicide indicate psychiatrist Dr. Scott Segal increased Naika's doses of Vyvanse and Zoloft to 50mg each.
Like Gabriel, Naika was prescribed 50mg of Vyvanse. Like Gabriel, Naika was also prescribed an antidepressant. Like Gabriel, Naika also hanged herself in the bathroom of a Florida foster home. Almost inconceivably, the medical offices where Gabriel and Naika were treated have the same street address, too. Which leads to an obvious question: Was Naika involved at some point in a clinical drug trial, like Gabriel?
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) records indicate Shire, the manufacturer of Vyvanse, paid the Segal Institute for Clinical Research over three hundred seventy thousand dollars from 2013 to 2015. In response to a complaint alleging Dr. Segal enrolled a subject with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in a schizophrenia study, the FDA previously inspected the site, initially classifying the inspection in the field as requiring voluntary corrective action, a classification subsequently amended at headquarters based on evidence of a dual diagnosis later supplied by Dr. Segal.
Even so, the DCF incident report in response to Naika's suicide does not reflect as favorably on the doctor(s) who prescribed her drugs for ADHD and depression, going so far as to question whether she even had ADHD in the first place, and noting the cascading effect of such a diagnosis:
Lastly, there was a noted concern regarding possible inaccurate and multiple diagnoses. Naika's primary diagnosis consistently remained Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). An ADHD diagnosis for a child who has suffered trauma, however, comes with its challenges, including how often symptoms of trauma in young children mimic those with ADHD. A psychological evaluation conducted with Naika stated that there is much concern that her attention problems are due to anxiety and trauma rather than ADHD symptomatology and recommended further evaluation to clarify the ADHD diagnosis. However, it does not appear that further evaluation was conducted. In addition to the ADHD diagnosis, Major Depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder were given by various treating mental health professionals over the course of Naika's life. However, limited documentation within the assessments does not appear to support these diagnoses or the medication prescribed. An additional consideration is the cascading effect of a diagnosis, which drives the development of the treatment plan.
Parents, Spread the Word
With respect to other suicides noted in its recent Vyvanse pediatric safety review, the FDA seemed to trivialize fatal adverse event reports associated with the drug, chalking them up to comorbidities and teen angst: "It is difficult to perform a causality assessment of suicide-related events and lisdexamfetamine from the postmarketing cases, because of the comorbid conditions... and the prevalence of youth suicides." Readers familiar with my research published on Mad in America will recognize this FDA Vyvanse pediatric review as the same document the agency retroactively redacted to cover up the homicide of an infant by a child prescribed the stimulant – a day after Shire submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) for a chewable formulation of the drug intended for young children. Nothing to see here, move along.
Children are our most precious resource, and foster kids are among the most vulnerable of them to whom our society owes a special duty of care. As Dr. Breggin pointed out: "These children need to be treasured and protected, and to be given wrap-around loving care. They do not need psychiatric drug interventions, which inflict more neglect and abuse by suppressing their mental functions in order to make them more manageable."
If the FDA will not fulfill its mandate to seriously investigate pediatric psychotropic fatalities and adequately warn the public of elevated polypharmacy risks, then it's up to us as parents to spread the word ourselves.
Andrew Thibault is an extremely curious, inconvenient parent. He is co-founder of Parents Against Pharmaceutical Abuse (PAPA), a parent movement opposed to over-diagnosis and over-medication of children. A frequent guest of The Justice Hour on South Florida's Health Talk Radio, he has also been quoted and his research has appeared in the Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Tribune, Tampa Bay Times, and Christian Science Monitor.
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Saint Patrick's Day: Google Doodle marks patron saint of Ireland, as they continue to provide creative and artistic designs for their "search window."
Wishing a Happy Saint Patrick's Day today to all of our Irish friends in New York and around the country. Enjoy the celebration and be safe!
Here is a list of 10 things you may not know about Saint Patrick.


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Search for Missing Teen
Maine Game Wardens are asking for help from the public in locating a missing teenager.
Jaden Dremsa was last seen at 3: p.m. yesterday near the Twin Pines Trailer Park in North Waterboro. Twin Pines is located on Route 5 in North Waterboro.
It is believed Jaden was wearing a dark colored (or black) t-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. Jaden currently has longer hair than what is shown in the attached photo.
Warden Corporal John MacDonald says game wardens will be organizing ground search teams this morning to include approximately ten game wardens, K9 teams, and a warden service aircraft.
Assisting with search efforts are the York County Sheriff's Department, Waterboro Fire Department, Maine State Police, and K9 search team members associated with MESARD* (Maine Association of Search and Rescue Dogs).
Anyone with information as to Jaden's location or who might have seen him yesterday afternoon is being asked to call the Public Safety Dispatch Center in Gray at 207-657-3030.


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Hey there everyone, time for another roundup of some inspiring projects gathered up from all around the blogosphere, enjoy these links and projects on this lovely Sunday!
Dark and dramatic was the choice in this kitchen cabinet makeover by Decorating Cents, and what a smart choice it was, especially with that beautiful backsplash.
Speaking of kitchens, if organization is on your to-do list, Lindsay from Living with Lindsay shows you how to build your own pull-out trash and recycling bin.
There are a lot of painted rug tutorials out there, but this painted graphic patterned rug by the almost 40 year old intern is particularly beautiful, check out the intricacy of the detail and all achieved with paint, fabric medium, and painter's tape! (via Design*Sponge).
Here's a fun idea for adding a dose of color to your ordinary pots, consider more saturated colors like this neon pink planter by The Proper Pinwheel. The bright color makes quite an impact!
Can you guess what this garden tool container was in a former life? Check out the Before and marvel at the creativity of the After at Trash to Treasure.
Here's a great idea for a kid space, tree branch floating bookshelves brought to you by Pepper Design Blog.
Don't we all need a bathtub shelf? I do! Check out this clever DIY version over at Snippets of Design. Calgon take me away …
Kristine from The Painted Hive took a hum drum IKEA organizer into a unique library card catalog lookalike, such a creative reinvention!
Finally, it's outdoor gardening season and this is the most creative use of cinder blocks I think I've ever seen, Kristin turned them into a planter and outdoor bar (by The Hunted Interior.) Talk about transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary!
Hope you've all enjoyed this latest roundup, I'm always amazed by the creativity that exists out there! Thanks to Amanda as always for helping me round up a few of her favorites too.
Amanda is a stay-at-home mom of two who enjoys drinking mochas and indulging in shopping therapy at Target. She blogs about crafts, thrifty decorating, recipes, and home life at her blog Serenity Now. |
If you'd like your project or post considered for this bimonthly series, send it our way to [email protected] ! I'm back to work at the Alma Project house today, I'm so so tired from the past few days, but thanks to a helpful crew, at least one room (the kids' play/family room) is coming together, I'll share stories and pics soon.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!


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Ky.'s U.S. Senate candidates will appear together on Saturday for just the second time since their contentious campaign launched more than a year ago.
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell and Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes are both scheduled to speak at the annual Fancy Farm picnic.
The unique event features a raucous crowd that frequently interrupts candidates' speeches. But it will give Kentucky voters their best chance yet to see the two candidates side by side as the speeches will be broadcast live across the state by Kentucky Educational Television.
Grimes and McConnell have both committed to scheduled debates -- just not the same one. Friday, four University of Kentucky student groups announced they have partnered with eight Kentucky TV stations to host a debate on campus. The campaigns have not committed yet.


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Unfortunately I still don't have a good excuse not to take out the trash! Haha.. I have been learning lately just how important my time is. I'm really working on maximizing my time both on the job and with my family and friends.
If a top hedge fund manager takes out his own garbage, you could say that walk to the end of the driveway cost him more than $100,000. When you earn $3.9 billion in one year, your time comes to be worth a lot — even when you're not working. That's because time and money have a very tight relationship. If you earn a lot of money through a high-powered career like managing a hedge fund, you won't have much time for a personal life. And you certainly won't have to take out your own garbage. Having more personal time tends to mean having less money. That is, unless you earn so much that you can buy it. But while everyone likes to use the quip that "time is money," especially when they're feeling impatient, this equation doesn't always add up in quite the way people think. (See also: That Age-Old Conundrum: Time vs. Money)
I think we can all agree that time has value. Like money, it's a finite resource (not to mention the fact that we're always searching around for more of it). Unfortunately, we often throw it away in the same careless way we might throw around our money, not realizing that they are the same thing.
For example, a lot of people might say they don't have time to cook dinner, so they pay to have someone else cook it for them in a restaurant. Now, if you're Mr. Hedge Fund Manager, this is a trade with a lot of value. After all, for someone who makes about 44 million per hour — and that's assuming that he works 24 hours per day, 7 days per week — paying someone a few dollars an hour to cook for you is a great bargain. For someone who makes a lot less, though, this equation starts to look a little lopsided. The same goes for other things we often opt out of in the name of time, such cleaning the house or making minor repairs on the car. The problem is that if you break your time down in the same way as the hedge fund manager, your hour may not cover what you're paying the house cleaner or the mechanic. That doesn't mean paying them to do the work for you doesn't have value, but it does mean that it's an expensive transaction, and you have to be careful about how much time you buy this way.
There's another aspect to the time/money equation, and that's opportunity cost. Opportunity cost refers to the financial impact that one choice you make has on another. So, if you decide to leave work early to come home and spend time with your family, that has an opportunity cost; you gave up the opportunity to earn your hourly rate for one additional hour in exchange for more time at home. You could also consider this in terms of going back to school to gain the skills to earn more money. If you've thought about doing this, you probably realize that it'll cost you more than just tuition, but also the wages you could have been earning if you weren't in class. That's opportunity cost, and it also helps determine what our time is worth. So, when you're deciding whether to do some work around the house yourself or pay someone else to do it, opportunity cost can be a way to work out the value of doing your own labor.
We know that a hedge fund manager's time is worth millions an hour, so be warned — for most everyday people, calculating the value of your time will be a sobering experiment. One way to do this is to look at how much money you made in the last year. Then, consider any expenses you incurred because of your job, such as childcare, transportation, clothing, etc. Subtract these expenses from your earnings.
Now consider how many hours per day you spend to make this money. While you might only spend seven or eight hours per day at your post, you should also factor in commute time, business travel and dinners, and other time you have to spend because of your job. While you may not be paid during these hours, they aren't your time to use as you please, so you have to count them.
Finally, take what you earned (minus expenses) and divide it by the number of hours you worked (plus additional time related to your job). This is how much your time is worth per hour, and chances are it's a whole lot less than you thought you were making. That's not a bad thing, but it does put the value of your time into perspective. After all, if you're really only making $9 per hour, the value of doing more things for yourself rather than hiring others becomes more clear. This is especially true if you don't have the kind of job where you could put in extra hours rather than mowing your lawn.
So does this mean you have to avoid restaurants, fix your own car, darn your own socks, and make your own clothes? Not necessarily. There are two reasons for this. The first is that in the U.S., many people make a lot more than they need to just get by. That means they can afford to buy some time as well. In the Great Depression, when a lot of people were stuck without work, they spent a whole lot of time working out ways to avoid having to buy anything much at all. That's because they had the time, but no money. Think about this when you decide what services to buy. Generally, the smartest move is to hold tight to what's most dear; if you have money, you can buy time, and if you have time, you can do more of your labor.
The second reason why we buy time is that spare time has intangible value, while money has a diminishing utility. Once your needs are met and you've maybe paid for a few luxuries, spending extra time working fails to deliver a much more comfortable life. Leisure time, on the other hand, has its own special value. I think we all understand this implicitly when we're lolling on the couch on a lazy Sunday or spending a rainy afternoon in bed with a book.
The question of how much your time is worth is a personal one. Just like anything in personal finance, it involves striking a balance between what you want and what you can afford. Time and money are finite resources. So while we'll probably always be scrambling for more of both, how we eventually spend them should reflect what's important to us.
How do you value your time, and how do you decide what to do yourself versus hiring others to do it?
Disclaimer: The links and mentions on this site may be affiliate links. But they do not affect the actual opinions and recommendations of the authors.
Wise Bread is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
Unfortunately I still don't have a good excuse not to take out the trash! Haha.. I have been learning lately just how important my time is. I'm really working on maximizing my time both on the job and with my family and friends.
I think it also comes down to how much is my time worth to *ME*.
The more I care about myself and let go of the insecurities around that, the more my time is valuable to me when I am doing something that I want to do. :)
If your capable and want to do it, then it is worth your time. Dollars and sense should not be par of the equation unless it has to do with work. If the hedge fun manager derives satisfaction out of taking out the trash then its worth it,if he dreds it then its not. Your time is best spent doing what you enjoy both at work and in your leisure


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Speaking at the event in Birmingham, Davey said the government is committed to reaching the 16GW upper range of its 2020 wind energy targets.
"I know that some have concerns that we are only committed to the low end of that range, so let me tell you clearly, that is not so. Far from it. I am confident that we can deliver towards the top end of that target," he said.
"And we are absolutely determined to hold on to the UK's leading position in offshore wind. and we've set out the framework to achieve that. Contracts are for the long term, prices are visible," he added.
Davey said his department is aiming to have 39GW of capacity installed by 2030, but failed to be drawn on whether the government would push for a concrete target for renewables beyond the 2020 commitment.
The secretary of state sought to reassure the industry over recent comments by his coalition partners in the Conservative Party, which announced a review of green tariffs that are added to consumers' bills.
He said that will not interfere with plans in the Electricity Market Reform bill to introduce the Contracts for Difference scheme or the level of the strike price.
When challenged on how the government is going to deal with the integration of much higher levels of renewable energy on the grid, he said: "Energy storage is very much part of the government's thinking. We are looking to incentivise storage through auctions."
Davey went on to announce £2.5 million of funding for four offshore wind projects under the offshore wind component technologies scheme to develop technologies that cut the cost of offshore wind energy.
Ricardo UK was awarded £634,980 to develop its offshore drivetrain innovations, which are expected to increase the reliability and lifetime of drivetrains for large offshore wind systems.
Nottingham-based TetraFloat was given £134,000 to improve a floating platform design, while Blade Dynamics was handed £842,630 to design, evaluate, build and test an innovative composite wind turbine hub.
Finally, SSE Renewables received a grant of £1 million for its national offshore wind turbine test facility project, which will test foundations, logistics, and grid integration for Siemens 6MW pre-production turbine.
Separately, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult quango and the Crown Estate announced they will work together on programmes aimed at increasing the momentum of driving down the cost of offshore wind.
The three-year memorandum of understanding signed by the bodies encourages the identification of cost-cutting technologies.
There will also be the creation of task forces to gather data on performance and reliability of offshore projects, as well as best practice for offshore transmission links.


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LAWRENCE, Kan. – Allen Fieldhouse was again the site of a heartbreaking overtime Iowa State (14-5 overall, 5-4 Big 12) women's basketball loss to Kansas (13-6 overall, 4-4 Big 12) Wednesday. The Cyclones, who led by 18 points with under nine minutes left in the game, succumbed to the clutch play of Jayhawker Angel Goodrich, who finished the contest with 24 points as KU prevailed 78-75. The loss was Iowa State's third straight overtime defeat at Kansas.
Brynn Williamson had a career-high 19 points behind a career-best tying five 3-pointers, Hallie Christofferson had 18 points and Anna Prins had 16 points for the Cyclones. KU shot 62 percent from the field in the second half to drive its comeback. Chelsea Poppens had 12 points and 12 rebounds for Iowa State.
Iowa State, which shot 11-21 (.520) and made 10 of 10 shots at the free-throw line in the first half, led 34-25 at the break. The Cyclones outscored the Jayhawks 16-6 over the last 8:06 of the first half to offset 13 ISU turnovers before halftime.
Nikki Moody, who was in foul trouble for much of the second half, finished with eight points and seven assists before fouling out in overtime.
Iowa State plays host to Texas Tech in a White Out game that will start at 1 p.m. CST Saturday in Hilton Coliseum. The game will be featured on Ctv.


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The Guest-Review The Guest is a short story written by Albert Camus
The Guest-Review The Guest is a short story written by Albert Camus. Daru is a young Frenchman working as a school master in Algeria. He administrates some ration for the students. So, at the time of draught, he thinks himself as a Lord who provides ration for the livelihood of each family. One day, he sees two men climbing the deserted mountain among them one man was at the back of the horse who is a gendarme named Balducci a well- known person to Daru and behind him a stranger was coming. Balducci asks Daru to take the Arab to the French government headquarters at Tinguit. That Arab was a prisoner who killed his own cousin. But Daru hesitates to accept the responsibility and refuses very rudely. Balducci tries to convincing at last Daru reluctantly takes that responsibility. This shows the commoners attitude towards prisoners. Daru and that Arab didn't converse much they both were not comfortable at that situation. Though Daru tries to enquire about the murder the Arab goes silent. And the Arab also tries to explain him about the rebellion and asks him to take part in the revolt. They had lots of differences in their opinion and could not accept each other but they tried to maintain a decent contact with each other. Daru was in a great dilemma whether the Arab tries to attack him and escapes. Because of this tension he was unable to sleep that night. In addition to that in one point the Arab goes to drink water which creates even more frustration to Daru but these all fears are because of his distrust. The author tries to depict the human nature, there is always a psychological instability while decision making. Both the Arab and Daru are oscillating between the good and bad. The next after having their breakfast, they started to walk. At a particular point Daru gave him Arabian dates, bread and 2000 francs. And also points him two ways. One leads to the prison and other towards native tribe so that he can be free and he leaves the decision to the Arab. Daru returns reluctantly because he is in guilty to hand over the Arab to the prison and at the same time he can't accept a murderer to escape. In this the author expresses the inconvenience in deciding a person's character. After sometime his conscience makes him to come back to the same point where he witnesses the Arab is walking in the path leading to the prison. This shows the Arab's nature. When he returns these lines were written on the blackboard "You handed over our brother. You will pray for this". But the writer leaves it as a mystery that who wrote those lines. Daru feels his loneliness which explains his regret for losing his guest. The writer focuses on the relationship between Arabs and French men during conflicts between them in Algeria in a more positive way by depicting human nature. He tries to bring out us from the illusion created by life.