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How to Play the Cleantech Energy Boom: Pavel Molchanov
Source: Zig Lambo of The Energy Report (3/29/12)
With ever-higher oil prices encouraging record investment interest, the cleantech energy sector looks poised for leaps and bounds. The most successful investors will be those who understand the challenges facing not only different industry segments, but individual companies within the same segment. In this exclusive interview with The Energy Report, Raymond James Energy Analyst Pavel Molchanov explains the four principal areas that comprise the cleantech arena—wind, solar, smart grid technology and biofuels—focusing on case-by-case investability. He also shares some names that just might be the next big winners in this rapidly developing space.
Pavel Molchanov: The cleantech arena comprises four key areas in terms of what's investable in the public equity markets today. Solar carries the biggest market caps. Solar power companies in the public market tend to mainly be in the photovoltaic (PV) hardware manufacturing arena. These include producers of wafers, cells, modules and inverters, and to a much lesser extent, companies engaging in project development and system installation.
The biofuels subspace is quite a bit smaller in market cap than the solar arena, but it's been growing more quickly because most of the recent initial public offering (IPO) activity in cleantech has been in biofuels. Many investors associate biofuels with ethanol, and there are still a few publicly traded corn ethanol producers. But most of the recent IPO activity involves more advanced, next-generation biofuels, such as cellulosic, algae and other emerging products.
There is also the wind arena. This one is more difficult to invest in because many of the companies with exposure to the wind industry are highly diversified. Some of the largest industrial conglomerates are in the wind turbine manufacturing business. There are many overseas companies in this space, as is also true of solar. But whereas many of the international solar companies, especially from China, trade in the U.S., when it comes to wind, many of the companies trade in overseas markets, such as Spain and Germany.
Lastly, there is the smart grid subspace, which is at the crossroads of cleantech and communications. Similar to wind, many of the companies with smart-grid exposure are larger businesses, both in the information technology sector as well as the industrial sector. But there are some smart grid pure plays that are publicly traded.
TER: As far as stages of development, how evolved are the various industries?
PM: Let's take a look at solar and wind first. The global solar market last year was approximately 27 gigawatts (GW), whereas the global wind market was about 50% larger at 41 GW. Both markets are in the tens of billions of dollars, in terms of total industry revenue, and quite large as far as cleantech goes. Still, the market share of both solar and wind in total electric generation remains very low. In the U.S., solar is well below 0.5% of total electricity sales and wind is about 2%. In some European countries like Germany, the numbers are higher, but in general they are quite low.
We have to differentiate between first-generation and second-generation biofuels. Corn ethanol already encompasses about 10% of the gasoline market in the U.S., and sugarcane ethanol is even more prevalent in Brazil. Next-generation biofuels, on the other hand, tend to be very early-stage. Generally speaking, the cellulosic and algae companies are pre-revenue, pre-production businesses. It's going to take two to three years before the industry scales up and enters the mainstream. Certainly, it's going to be smaller in gallon terms than the corn ethanol market well into the second half of the decade, possibly even until 2020.
Next is the smart grid industry, which encompasses a lot of different products. Smart meters are perhaps the widest known product in this subsector, and they have been unquestionably ramping up in adoption both in North America and elsewhere. As of the end of last year, approximately 27 million (M) smart meters had been installed in the U.S. There are many more in Europe, China and Brazil as well. But there are other elements of smart grid technology that are a little bit more difficult to measure because they don't lend themselves to counting units of hardware that are installedâthings like demand response.
TER: The more established companies in ethanol, wind and solar have their basic technologies already in place. Are smaller companies largely focused on the research and development (R&D) stage, and therefore not generating much cash flow?
PM: Essentially, all of the publicly traded companies in the solar and wind arenas are currently generating commercial product sales. In the smart grid arena, that is also true. The one area where there is a significant number of public companies that are still in the pre-revenue commercialization stage is advanced biofuels. Over the past two years, there have been more IPOs of biofuel companies than all other cleantech companies put together. The vast majority of those have been pre-production, early-stage businesses.
TER: Government subsidies have been instrumental in giving alternative energy and fuels a kick-start to compete with conventional oil and gas. Will these new technologies be able to compete without subsidies?
PM: Yes, and again we have to look individually at the different subsectors within cleantech. In solar, the vast majority of demand for PV right now is in Europe. Last year, it was about 70%. A few years ago, it was even higher. Just about every major country in Europe has what's called a solar feed-in tariff, which is a guaranteed purchase price for solar electricity that is set by the government. Utilities have to purchase the solar electricity that's produced both by individual households that have a solar panel on the roof and solar developers with their own solar farms. Because it's government-set and government-guaranteed, the economics are extremely visible and secure.
It's not a subsidy in the sense of a direct cash payment by the government because the utilities pay the money and ultimately pass on the costs to the rate payers, but clearly it is an incentive. In the U.S., there are a few small programs in a couple of states, but certainly nothing comparable to Europe, which is why last year Germany installed more solar in the month of December than the U.S. did in the last two years combined. Keep in mind that Germany has one-quarter of the U.S. population and a lot less sunlight. So subsidies can be very important, and solar is a good example of that.
In the renewable fuel arena, the dynamics are a little bit different. With oil prices in the triple digits, it's quite possible for renewable fuels to be cost competitive relative to gasoline or diesel without subsidies. The fuel tax credit for corn ethanol that had been in place for decades went away Dec. 31, 2011, and the U.S. continues to blend ethanol in billions of gallons annually. Government support is, however, important for the development of the next-generation biofuel industry. The greatest help comes from Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture loan guarantees to these early-stage companies.
Many early-stage businesses, even if they have a good technology platform and a well-defined business plan, have difficulty getting financing. Clearly, the IPO option is open, and many companies have been going public. Commercial lenders are certainly reluctant to lend to pre-revenue businesses in many cases, so the federal loan guarantees have been very valuable. The Department of Defense has also been quite active in supporting advanced renewable fuel through R&D partnerships, and in many cases, purchasing fuels from these early-stage businesses helps provide these companies with cash as well as the seal of approval from the Pentagon, which is the biggest energy consumer in the U.S.
TER: When oil prices were down at $40 or $50/barrel (bl), it made it pretty tough for alternative energy companies to compete. Have higher oil prices changed the economics for cleantech companies?
PM: Absolutely. At $40-50/bbl oil, it's very difficult for most renewable fuels to compete strictly on economics. I will note in this context that many of the renewable fuel companies have been pursuing opportunities in the chemicals arena. You might ask, why would they sell into the chemicals market? The global chemicals industry is about a $3 trillion (T) market, certainly smaller than transportation fuels, but still enormous in absolute terms, and a huge addressable market. Most importantly, pricing and margins tend to be higher for chemicals, especially specialty chemicals, than for commodity transportation fuels. So many of the companies that are developing next-generation biofuels, both public and private, have been focusing their early stages of commercialization on selling into the chemicals industry, because it's easier for them to make money without subsidies.
TER: But the volumes are much lower, correct?
PM: Three trillion dollars is the size of the overall global chemical industry, and within that, specialty chemicals are about $200 billion. For companies that in many cases have zero production today, that is more than enough running room. The name of the game here is market penetration. The addressable market is very large indeed.
TER: What technologies hold the greatest potential for longer-term economic success at this point?
PM: One of the difficulties in investing in cleantech has been commoditization. Five years ago, solar panel manufacturing was a relatively specialized business that tended to carry pretty high margins, 25â30% or even higher. Since then, the Chinese competitors in solar have been so aggressive in grabbing market share and expanding production that pricing has cratered amid this severe industrywide glut of solar panels. Margins have dramatically compressed to barely 10% on average for just about everyone. That's the lesson of commoditization. Therefore, I would encourage investors to focus on technologies across cleantech that do not have the same degree of commoditization.
In the long run, perhaps just about everything can be commoditized, but certainly for the foreseeable future, there are a few areas that stand out. For example, the market for solar inverters tends to be significantly less commoditized than solar cell or solar panel manufacturing. Why? For one thing, there are a lot fewer companies making inverters. It's a more sophisticated and fairly complex piece of electrical engineering compared to a solar panel. There is also not the same element of competition from China: There are just a few significant solar inverter producers in China compared to at least 100 on the solar panel side.
Within the biofuels sector, next-generation biofuels are all about intellectual propertyânot simply converting corn into corn ethanol at very slim margins. Each company has its own "secret sauce," or production process and technology platform, and there is a myriad to choose from. While the different players in this arena are still in their early stages and have lots of execution risk, over time they should have the ability to generate pretty good margins because they benefit from their own internally developed intellectual property.
TER: What criteria do you use in deciding which high-potential companies to cover?
PM: My coverage encompasses 21 companies, both good and bad. So, by no means do I recommend every company that I cover. In fact, at this point, I have a fairly large number of sell-rated stocks simply because of some of the industrywide challenges I mentioned earlier, especially in solar. It's certainly important to look at investability. Wind is a very interesting market with a large global footprint. But it's very difficult for investors to play wind because, again, many of these companies are mega-conglomerates for whom wind is a tiny portion of their business.
Therefore, I tend to focus more on the cleantech pure plays. Within every industry, there are companies that are in a better competitive position than others. So we have to look at everything case-by-case. It's very hard to make a universal, far-reaching call regarding whether a particular subsector is now the right or wrong place to invest. The solar industry is facing a lot of headwinds and yet there are still companies in that space that are quite profitable and successful.
TER: Can you tell us about some of these companies that you cover and why you like them?
PM: Within solar, Power One Inc. (PWER:NASDAQ) is the world's second-largest manufacturer of solar inverters. This is a company that has been consistently profitable in recent years. Gross margins have been under some pressure, but nothing compared to the pressure that solar panel makers have faced. It has no debt on its balance sheet and about $200M in cash. It's actually generating free cash flow just about every quarter. It has been repurchasing some stock, and I think there is lots of room for it to accelerate repurchases in 2012 and beyond.
In biofuels, I would mention two names. One is KiOR, Inc. (KIOR:NASDAQ), a true cellulosic biofuel company. It takes woodchips, uses a catalytic process very similar to a refining catalytic process and turns those woodchips into what we call biocrude, or renewable crude oil. It actually is crude oil but unlike petroleum, it is entirely renewable. That crude oil can be refined using normal refining infrastructure into just about any finished productâgasoline, diesel, jet fuel, you name it.
I would also highlight Solazyme Inc. (SZYM:NASDAQ), which is an algae-based company. Unlike KiOR, which uses a thermochemical process, Solazyme uses a fermentation or biological process utilizing its internally developed algae. It needs to use a relatively more expensive source of feedstock, sugar cane, rather than KiOR's cellulosic biomass. The tradeoff is it can sell into very high-value markets such as cosmetics and specialty chemicals. In fuels, it would tend to focus on the most high-value products, such as jet fuel.
TER: What sort of revenues are these companies generating?
PM: KiOR is entirely pre-production. Its first plant is expected to come online late 2012. Solazyme has a bit of product revenue for the time being, but in 2013, its first large-scale fuels and chemicals plant is expected to start up in Brazil. Both companies are in their early stages of commercialization.
TER: Do you have any parting thoughts you'd like to leave with us?
PM: The key message to investors is twofold. Number one, focus on companies with a defensible technology platform and distinct intellectual property, rather than a pure commodity business. Number two, be very company-focused when looking at cleantech. Don't make any far-reaching or sweeping conclusions about cleantech as a whole or even within individual subsectors, because there is so much differentiation from company to company. Companies that may look superficially similar can have very different fundamentals.
TER: Thanks for joining us today.
PM: Thank you for having me.
Pavel Molchanov joined Raymond James & Associates in June 2003 and has worked as part of the energy research team since that time. He initiated coverage on the alternative energy sector in fall 2006. Molchanov became an analyst in January 2006. He graduated cum laude from Duke University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics with high distinction.
Want to read more exclusive Energy Report interviews like this? Sign up for our free e-newsletter, and you'll learn when new articles have been published. To see a list of recent interviews with industry analysts and commentators, visit our Exclusive Interviews page.
1) Zig Lambo of The Energy Report conducted this interview. He personally and/or his family own shares of the following companies mentioned in this interview: None.
2) The following companies mentioned in the interview are sponsors of The Energy Report: None. Streetwise does not accept stock in exchange for services.
3) Pavel Molchanov: I personally and/or my family own shares of the following companies mentioned in this interview: None. I personally and/or my family am paid a small retainer by the following companies mentioned in this interview: None. I was not paid by Streetwise for participating in this story. Raymond James & Associates makes a NASDAQ market in shares of KiOR, Inc. and of Power-One, Inc.


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VAIO - Troubleshooting for lines/spots on the display
This article enables you to determine the cause of
Difficulty rating: Easy |
Time needed: 10 minutes activity |
Bright or dark spots in the imageThese spots can have various causes, but have the common characteristic that the image is completely visible. To identify what the cause of the spots in question is, proceed as follows:
Vertical or horizontal lines on the displayTo verify if lines in the image (see example below) are caused by a hardware problem, please proceed as follows: Figure 5 - Vertical Lines
More generally, for such or similar issues, The first thing to check, is whether the issue appears only in Windows, or also in the BIOS. Note: the BIOS is a pre-boot environment, which can be accessed by pressing the F2 button multiple times directly after starting the VAIO. The problem does not appear in the BIOS, but only in WindowsThe issue may be caused eg by a corrupted graphics driver. In this case, appropriate troubleshooting steps include:
If none of the above steps solved the issue, please contact VAIO Link for support. A repair may be required. The problem appears only in a specific applicationCheck system requirements of the application, and compare with your VAIO's specifications if the program should work. Depending on the cause of the problem, this may not be covered by the VAIO's warranty. Please contact VAIO support if you want to arrange a repair. |

subset: commoncrawl


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Identifying New Ideas for Breakthrough Products
This article is derived from the authors' book, Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2001, ISBN: 0139696946).
A Focus on Consumer Value
The demand by consumers for better products has continued to increase during the last three decades. During the 1980s and early 1990s quality development programs, reengineering and concurrent design were the initiatives that drove American and international companies to constantly improve their products. At the beginning of a new century, the emphasis has shifted from the back end to the front of the product development process. It is increasingly harder to find the right product concept and the time and processes needed to bring that concept to market. Technological innovation and maintaining manufacturing standards are still an intrinsic part of developing successful products; if, however, a product does not connect with the values of consumers, it will fail. People use products to improve their experience while doing tasks. They relate these experiences to their fantasies and dreams. Successful products fulfill a higher emotional value state, whether it is the excitement and security of driving in an SUV, the comfort and effectiveness of cooking in the kitchen, the relaxation and escapism of sipping coffee in a coffeehouse, or the independence and adventure of using a two-way communication device. The mantra that form follows function is no longer relevant; we are now in a period where form and function must fulfill fantasy.
What is it that makes some product programs fail and others succeed? How did Black & Decker corner the flashlight market from 19941997 with a product called the SnakeLight? How could OXO GoodGrips evolve from a single product to a full line of products, a significant market penetration, the most prominently displayed product line in stores that carry the OXO line, and reinvent the profit margins in the industry? How could Motorola develop a major presence in the consumer product category with the hit of one new product, the Talkabout? How could Starbucks, initially a small coffee house in Seattle, reinvent how Americans drink coffee and turn a 50 cent cup o' Joe into a $3.00 Cafe Latte Grande (make that skim milk)? How could the car companies look to the past for ideas that would sell so effectively in the present, starting with the Mazda Miata, following with the Volkswagen Beetle, and continuing with the Chrysler PT Cruiser?
All breakthrough products merge style and technology in a way that maximizes customer value, not based on cost but based on what people need, want and desire.
We have found that there are three key factors that must be present to guarantee the highest potential of success. First is the ability to identify product opportunities. As cultures continue to change, opportunities emerge for new products. These products do not just solve existing problems; they also create possibilities for new experiences. The second is a heightened understanding of customer needs translated into actionable insights leading to product attributes of form and features. In order for products to be successful, they must have features and forms that consumers quickly recognize as useful, usable, and desirable. Third is a true integration of engineering, industrial design, and marketing. Merely putting teams together in a multidisciplinary context is not sufficient. They must be supported and managed effectively in an atmosphere in which each discipline respects and appreciates the perspective of the other. Failure to achieve success in any one of these areas can significantly jeopardize the success of a product, yet most companies are fortunate to be good in even one area. The successful companies have found ways to incorporate the product development trends of the '80s and early '90s into new ways of developing products by including deeper consumer insight and better integration of teams.
While a number of companies claim they use a customer-centered interdisciplinary approach, they have failed to make a total company commitment to this approach. Their management structure encourages a turf mentality through a vertical, or "silo" reporting structure. Customer characteristics are often generated by mass-marketing methods that provide limited insight based solely on highly quantitative surveys. These companies are often hammers looking for nails as they seek new ways to package or repackage impressive but inaccessible technologies. For companies to succeed, they can no longer afford to be either marketing-, technology-, or design-driven. In order to stay competitive, they must integrate the way designers, engineers, market researchers, and market strategists work. Corporations can no longer just rely on large statistical surveys or just search for applications for promising technologies. Instead, qualitative research tools have proven to be an excellent source for deeply understanding the potential customer and product opportunities. This new trend means that companies should plan technological innovation around an insightful understanding of consumer trends and the constant change in the needs, wants, and desires of its customers. Companies must learn to identify opportunities for the potential of products before they think in terms of concrete product concepts.


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The Ombuds Office of Lehigh University, open to all members of the Lehigh community, can help resolve problems or complaints within the university community. Its services are independent of the university administration and are confidential. It can provide information on university policies and practices, help examine alternatives, and find the proper authorities to resolve the conflicts. As an unbiased "third party," the office can frequently find solutions that have eluded the interested parties.
In recent years, Ombudsmen in the United States have moved to a less gender specific word, Ombuds or Ombudsperson, to reflect current societal norms. The word Ombud is of Swedish origin and means the people's representative, agent, attorney, solicitor, deputy, proxy, or delegate. The first Ombudsman was appointed by the Parliament of Sweden in 1809 to resolve problems in the absence of the country's abducted king. The Swedish model of a public sector Ombudsman who deals with complaints from the public regarding decisions, actions or omissions of public administration was widely adopted by other nations. In addition, many countries have established human rights commissions, which use Ombuds as a means of promoting and protecting human rights. It is estimated that there are Ombuds at the national level of government in 110 countries around the world.
Source: Catherwood Library, Cornell University


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SteppIR SARK-110
The SARK-110 is a completely new design concept for an Antenna Analyzer. This is a truly pocket size device, so you can take it anywhere. It offers a gorgeous 3" high-resolution, active-matrix color display that allows information-rich diagrams.
Its small size does not mean compromising the features and measurement performances. It has a frequency range from 0.1 to 230 MHz with 1 Hz of resolution. It has full vector measurement capability and accurately resolves the resistive, capacitive and inductive components of a load. The accuracy is excellent over a broad range of impedances and rivals any of the competitive devices in the market, see comparative. The provided Open / Short/ Load calibration ensures the highest level of measurement accuracy. There is a transmission line calculator feature that allows adding or subtracting the effect of feed lines.
The functionality of the SARK-110 is not restricted to antenna analysis, but it is a multifunction instrument featuring a TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer) mode which is intended for fault location and length determination in coaxial cables as well as a programmable RF signal generator. The analyzer is intended for standalone operation but also operates connected to a personal computer in combination with the SARK Plots client software for Windows, further enhancing the capabilities of the instrument.
The SARK-110 allows you to quickly analyze any antenna over a user defined frequency range. In real time, you can see at a glance the resonant frequencies of the antenna, the VSWR, the complex impedance, reflection coefficient, return loss, and R-L-C as series or parallel equivalent circuits. You can test and tune coaxial cables and phasing stubs. You can adjust and test RF matching networks, antenna tuners, and RF amplifiers without applying power. Besides you can measure the impedance of components such as inductors, capacitors, and traps at RF frequencies. As a signal generator it is ideal for receiver calibration, sensitivity tests and signal tracing.
The user interface has been designed to be intuitive and easy to use. On screen menus provide user guidance and the operation is mainly controlled by the two navigation keys. The graphical impedance displays provide a quick view of the antenna impedance characteristics on a user selected frequency range. This includes the graphical plot of two user selectable parameters in a rectangular diagram or the complex reflection coefficient in a Smith chart form. To help speed up measurements, two markers are available, both of which are user positionable or can operate in automatic tracking mode.
The Multiband mode is a unique feature of the SARK-110 whereby it is able to display simultaneously the plot of an impedance parameter in four scalar charts. This feature is ideal for tuning multiband antennas.
The SARK-110 provides as well a single frequency measurement mode which presents the complete impedance parameters at a user selectable frequency. To facilitate the reading, the analyzer displays graphically the R-L-C as both series and parallel equivalent circuit and the SWR as a convenient bar graph.
The analyzer uses an internal 2MB flash disk for the storage and recall of measured parameters, screenshots, analyzer configuration and firmware updates. This disk is accessible via USB so the measured parameters can be downloaded to a PC for analysis using the ZPLOTS spreadsheet program or with SARK Plots client software for Windows.
The SARK-110 is as well a hackable device. You can experiment with the device by writing an application using the provided open-source SDK. Besides the SDK includes a device simulator for the PC so you can easily debug your application before loading to the device. For more advanced users, the SARK-110 board provides connections to the STM32 SWD interface so you can use the ST-Link in-circuit debugger or equivalent to program or debug your software.
With its pocket size, features, and simple user interface the SARK-110 offers a perfect device for HF/VHF impedance measurements for the RF experimenter and for the amateur radio operator. Whether you are at home in your shack or in the field during a field day or expedition.
Please let us have your suggestions, through the site Join the Discussion as we are highly motivated to extend this device's functionality based on community requests.
- Pocket size and lightweight
- Solid aluminum case
- Intuitive and easy to use
- Operating modes: Scalar Chart, Smith Chart, Single Frequency, Cable Test (TDR), Field Mode, Multi-band, Signal Generator, and Computer Control
- Excellent accuracy over a broad range of impedances
- Resolves the sign of the impedance
- Manual and automatic positioning tracking markers
- Transmission line add and subtract
- Circuit models function: transmission line, inductor, capacitor and crystal
- Internal 2MB USB disk for the storage of measurements, screenshots, configuration and firmware upgrade
- Exports data in ZPLOTS-compatible format for further analysis on a PC
- SARK Plots client software for Windows
- Lifetime free firmware upgrades
- Open to community requested features
- Open source Software Development Kit (SDK) including a device simulator for development of user applications


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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, April 3 (UPI) -- Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak dissolved Parliament Wednesday, readying the country for what could be hard-fought general elections.
In a national televised address, Najib, who heads the United Malays National Organization, asked all but two of the country's 13 states to also dissolve their state legislative assemblies so state elections can be held simultaneously with general elections, Bernama news agency reported. Najib completed four years in office Wednesday.
The next general elections would be the 13th since Malaysia, a Muslim-majority, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country, won independence in 1957 from Britain. The date for the election is to be set by the election commission.
Najib's UMNO leads the coalition of the Barisan Nasional or the National Front which has ruled the country since 1957 but this time the three-party People's Alliance led by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim could put up a tough election fight.
About 13.3 million people would be eligible to vote in the election for 222 parliamentary seats. In the 2008 election, the Barisan Nasional failed to get a two-thirds majority, winning 140 seats, while opposition parties won 82 seats.
The Wall Street Journal said the opposition has called for a more open and transparent society.
"There is a high degree of uncertainty on the election outcome as large section of youth will be voting for the first time," Ibrahim Suffian, director at independent pollster Merdeka Center, told the Journal.
The Najib government has been seeking to achieve faster economic growth. The Journal said if the opposition wins more seats, it could encourage internal leadership challenge to Najib.
In his television address, Najib said the Barisan Nasional, if re-elected, would continue with its national transformation programs.
The Financial Times said Malaysia achieved economic growth of 5.6 percent in 2012, one of the best in Asia.
"This is the first election in Malaysia's history when the electorate will have a clear choice over whether to keep the longest running coalition in the world in power," Bridget Welsh, Malaysia expert at Singapore Management University, told the Financial Times.
In an interview with the newspaper last week, Najib, talking of corruption, said: "It is a scourge and we all have to fight it and it's going to be a hard battle."


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How do Millennial small business owners differ from their older counterparts?
A recent study by Wells Fargo examined some generational differences. But first, some similarities: 59 percent of Millennial entrepreneurs and 51 percent of older entrepreneurs say they started their businesses because they felt passionate about them.
Older entrepreneurs are more likely than Millennials (55 percent vs. 43 percent) to say they started their companies out of a need for challenge and growth. This makes sense because older entrepreneurs are more likely to feel a bit stagnant in their jobs simply because of their age and experience.
While Millennials may have a reputation as flighty, the survey shows that when it comes to business ownership, this generation is focused on the long term.
80 percent of Millennial entrepreneurs say they hope to pass their businesses onto their children someday — even though most of them don't yet have children! By comparison, two-thirds of older entrepreneurs hope to pass their businesses down to their kids.
Millennials also have big plans for their small businesses. Nearly eight out of 10 older small business owners (79 percent) say they would be happy for their businesses to stay small — all they want to do is create a comfortable living for themselves and their families. Among Millennials, however, just 59 percent are satisfied with the idea of keeping their businesses small; 41 percent hope to grow their businesses as big as possible.
Perhaps it's because of their big plans and long-term horizons that Millennials are more likely than older entrepreneurs to be willing to take on debt in order to grow their companies. Two-thirds of Millennial entrepreneurs believe that some amount of business debt is needed for business growth and say they are willing to take on financial risks to expand their businesses. Among older entrepreneurs, however, only about half agree with these opinions. Millennial men are even more likely than Millennial women to be willing to take financial risks in order to grow (77 percent vs. 55 percent).
Putting their money where their mouths are, 43 percent of Millennial small business owners say they have already taken on some personal debt in order to finance their companies, compared to one-third of older small business owners. Many have maxed out their credit cards, on top of the student debt that three out of 10 Millennial entrepreneurs are already dealing with.
Millennials in the survey are more optimistic than older business owners about the prospects for their businesses in the next 12 months. Three-fourths of them believe their businesses will grow in the next year, compared to half of older entrepreneurs.
However, Millennial small business owners admit they have some shortcomings.
For instance, fewer than half of them say they are "very knowledgeable" or "successful" in managing their business finances. They are willing to learn, though: Millennial business owners in the survey are more likely than older entrepreneurs to ask friends and family, peers, social media contacts, online sources, and even competitors for advice to help them grow their businesses.
Entrepreneurs of all ages can learn a lot from Millennials' willingness to admit when they don't know something and to ask for help. If you need help with your business, one of the best places I can think of to get it is from the mentors at SCORE. Visit www.score.org to get matched with a mentor today.
Copyright © 2024 SCORE Association, SCORE.org
Funded, in part, through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.


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It's difficult to keep your distance in a grocery store or pharmacy, so now the CDC says we should wear a homemade mask in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus — particularly in areas with high community transmission.
Officials don't want healthy people using medical masks because of fears they would buy them all (kind of like toilet paper) and not leave them for health care workers.
We have the answer: Make your own.
The masks don't need to be professional-grade to help fight against COVID-19. According to recent studies, the virus can spread between people in proximity by coughing, sneezing or even speaking.
It is important to note that covering your face with a piece of cloth won't protect you. But, it could help you from spreading the virus if you're like some people who lack symptoms and don't know they have it.
Sewing your own mask is easy, says Jeannette Childers, who's 77 and lives in Mesa, Arizona. She's among scores of volunteers across the country sewing masks. So far, she's made 65.
Materials you need to make a cloth face mask
Where to buy the materials to make masks at home
How to download a face mask pattern
Note: Make sure your printer is set up to print at "actual size."
1. Cut material and interfacing to 12 x 9 inches
2. Iron interfacing to material (adhesive side to back of material)
3. Once ironed, fold fabric in half with interfacing on the outside
4. Cut two pieces of elastic — each 7-inches long
5. Pin and sew 1/4-inch from edge leaving a 2-inch gap in the center
6. Put elastic band on each corner, inside the material and pin to keep in place, making sure the elastic is not twisted. Pinning in center as well
7. Using the pattern, mark locations of pleat lines and add pins on both sides
8. Fold 3 pleats. Sew around the entire perimeter of the mask, this holds the pleats in place, and closes the 2-inch gap
All you have to do is remove the pins, test out your new mask and head out to do your grocery shopping or wherever might make social distancing difficult.
While you're at it, make extra to donate. The cloth face coverings recommended are not surgical masks or N-95 respirators, which are critical supplies that must continue to be reserved for health care workers.
Angelica Jaramillo Harding, a nurse in Mesa, Arizona, picks up donated masks from a Joann fabric and Craft store every Friday to distribute at hospitals, medical centers and clinics. Last week, she gave away 350 of them.
Since March 23, Joann stores nationwide have been providing supplies to make masks for free if you donate the finished products. Since then, they've donated more than 16 million. "We're definitely touched by the community," Harding said. "It helps us not to feel alone in this."


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"Tell us about the American miracle."
It was in 1983 when West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl spoke those words to President Ronald Reagan. They were gathered at the annual "G7" economic summit attended by the heads of the leading industrialized nations.
Two years earlier, Reagan had gone to his first G7 meeting in Ottawa, where he outlined his economic recovery plan. The other world leaders didn't appear to be very impressed. By 1983, though, it was a different story. Reagan's plan was in full swing -- and the U.S. was defeating inflation and unemployment at a time when the rest of the world was still in recession.
Gathered in historic Williamsburg, Va., those leaders had one question: How did he do it? According to Reagan:
First, I gave them my thoughts about how excessive tax rates take away the incentive to produce, and how lower tax rates, in the end, generate more economic growth and also greater revenue for government. Then I told them what we had done to lower our tax rates, and some of the other things we were trying to do, such as reducing the size of government, eliminating unnecessary regulations and interference in the free market, and turning over to private enterprise some of the functions government had taken over.
He must have made quite an impression. Before long, Reagan was reading about their own efforts to cut taxes and reduce regulations back home. "The next time I'd see them," he wrote later, "they'd say the policies were stimulating a turnaround like the one we had had in the United States."
That's what the United States has been doing since its inception -- spreading the gospel of freedom across the globe. And as we celebrate another birthday (our 232nd), it's worth taking a second look at that "American miracle."
What's the common thread in what President Reagan told the other leaders that day? Liberty. Yes, the very idea that sparked a revolution in this nation -- indeed, that created this nation. After all, if you cut taxes, reduce regulations and shrink the size of government, what are you doing? You're freeing individuals to use their God-given talents and imaginations to build a better life for themselves and their children. That's what America has always been about.
You simply can't spark an "American miracle" if you put your faith, first and foremost, in government. You have to believe in the individual. You have to trust that free men and women will innovate and strive in ways that aren't possible when big government stands over them, watching and scolding like an unwelcome nanny.
Liberals may profess concern for "the little guy," but their policies clearly show they don't believe in him. This view puts them at odds with our Founding Fathers -- the ones who wrote the very documents we celebrate today: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Taking a cue from Thomas Paine, who declared government "a necessary evil," they fashioned a form of self-government that carefully defined the powers of government -- which, it must always be understood, come from the "consent of the governed."
As Thomas Jefferson said at his first inauguration in 1801:
A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulation their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
To truly appreciate what "good government" is, you have to go to the source. That means actually reading the Declaration and the Constitution. Most of us probably haven't even looked at these seminal documents. If so, I urge you to get your own pocket-sized copy of these cornerstones of American freedom. The Heritage Foundation will send you one, free of charge, when you sign up at our "What Would Reagan Do?" Web site.
We can't hope expect liberty and self-government to survive in an atmosphere of ignorance. To keep the "American miracle" alive, Heritage is making these documents available in an easy-to-carry form for you and everyone you know -- your schools, your scout troops, your churches and your family and friends.


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Leave a lasting impression with this stunning arrangement of roses, poms and hypericum adorned with natural raffia in a round pot cover to show her how much they means to you. Measures 12"H by 11"L.
Order by 2:00 PM CST for same day delivery and by 4:00 PM CST for same day pick up.
* Fee charged in addition to the Standard Delivery Fee
Enter full name. We'll ask for delivery information at checkout.
Add a cute plush from our plush selection. Selected plush will vary.
18" Happy Birthday Mylar Balloon. Styles may vary.
18" Happy Anniversary Mylar Balloon. Styles may vary.
18" I Love You Mylar Balloon. Styles may vary.
Huggable, adorable and ready to cuddle. Our Lotsa Love teddy bear wears a checkered brown bowtie to match his cream-colored, plush fur. This lovable friend is ready to deliver warmth to someone you care about. Plush bear wearing brown checkered bowtie Measures overall approximately 18′′H
Card isle test product


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For more information on holiday pick-up schedules please visit:
Show All Answers
Do you have usable items that you want to get rid of or could you use free or low cost surplus or used functional items? CalMAX is prepared and updated by the California Integrated Waste Management Board. Individuals and organizations can post items needed and usable items that are no longer needed. Items are listed by counties and provided via the internet. To learn more about this FREE service call (877) 520-9703 or visit CalMAX.
Beginning July 1, 2012, Assembly Bill 341 [AB341] requires all businesses in California that generate four or more cubic yards of waste per week to recycle. In an effort to assist you with this new law, our contracted hauler (CR&R Environmental Services), offers a wide variety of recycling services. Please visit their website at www.crrwasteservices.com for further information. Information about California's new business recycling requirement is available from the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) at https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/Recycle/Commercial/
Contact CR&R at 1-800-755-8112
Beginning April 1, 2016, Assembly Bill 1826 (AB 1826) requires all businesses in California that generate 8 cubic yards of organic waste per week and multi-family residential dwellings of 5 or more units to arrange for recycling services of organic waste.
This new law phases in the mandatory recycling of commercial organics over time, such that by January 1, 2019, a business that generates 4 or more cubic yards of organic waste per week must arrange for recycling services of organic wastes. Organic waste consists of food waste, landscape waste, nonhazardous wood waste, and food soiled paper waste that is mixed with food waste.
To assist with the implementation of this new requirement, CR&R has prepared an Organic Waste Fact Sheet, which includes an overview of AB 1826 and a self-assessment guide to help identify when a business or multi-family facility may need to establish organic waste services. Please contact CR&R at 1-800-755-8112, or visit their website at www.crrwasteservices.com for further information.
In September 2016, Governor Brown signed Senate Bill 1383 (SB 1383) establishing methane emissions reduction targets in a statewide effort to reduce methane emissions. Methane gas is created in landfills when organic waste naturally decomposes. In accordance with this law, all local jurisdictions must provide recycling and organics waste collection services to all residential and commercial generators by January 1, 2022. This will help divert organic materials from landfills. If you have not done so already, please reach out to CR&R, the City's waste hauler, to sign up for collection services.
In addition to organics recycling collection programs, SB 1383 regulations also require businesses to minimize throwing out "edible food" by requiring the implementation of an Edible Food Program.
Starting January 1, 2022: All Tier One edible food generators will need to either sign up for organics recycling services or donate their food waste to a food bank or non-profit charitable organization. Tier One generators include supermarkets, grocery stores, food service providers, food distributors, and wholesale food vendors.
Starting January 1, 2024: All Tier Two edible food generators will need to either sign up for organics recycling services or donate their food waste to a food bank or a non-profit charitable organization. Tier Two generators include restaurants, hotels, health facilities, large venues, large events, state agencies, and local education agencies.
For more information on SB 1383, please visit calrecycle.ca.gov/organics/slcp/
Assembly Bill 827 (AB 827) amended existing California statute, namely the Mandatory Commercial Recycling (MCR) and Mandatory Commercial Recycling Organics (MORe) laws. Effective July 1, 2020, MORe-covered businesses must provide organics recycling containers to collect products purchased and consumed by customers on the premises. These containers must be placed adjacent to trash containers and be visible, easily accessible, and clearly marked. This law targets businesses that sell products meant for immediate consumption. If a business does not sell any of the organic materials for immediate consumption on the premises, then the business does not have to provide an organics container in all areas where disposal containers are provided for customers. Click the link for more information on Customer Access to Recycling (AB 827).


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Chad Michael Murray and his underage-when-they-met fiancee, Kenzie Dalton, 19, celebrated the new year by watching a hockey game. These two are still together? What the puck?!
The actor and Posh-bobbed hottie were spotted at the NHL AMP Energy Winter Classic in Buffalo so Chad could blog about it for NHL.com. So far, no wedding date has been set for the "One Tree Hill" star and the girl he met while she was working extra on the show ... but at least they waited until she was out of high school. You listening Casey Aldridge?
In 2005, Chad divorced his "One Tree Hill" co-star, Sophia Bush, after five long months of marriage.


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Back from a brief holiday - and some more cricket.
After New Year in West Wyalong with Katie's mum, we set off for the final Test Match in Sydney. The first day's play was spectacular: 320 runs, 10 wickets, a Gough hat-trick, big innings from both Waugh's. We were guests of the Australian Cricket Board, along with lots of English Cricket Board members - and John Howard (very relaxed, and buoyed by news of his son's exam results) and Jackie Kelly the new Minister for Sport.
We were still buzzing when we caught a bus from the SCG to the Opera House for the opening night of the Sydney Festival. The bus was full of the Barmy Army in equally good spirits - but in a pleasant rather than an obnoxious way. They are getting quite a good write-up in Australia, partly from relief that they're not the soccer hooligans that some were expecting.
The opening event of the Festival was Belshazzar's Feast with the London Symphony Chorus - and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, with Katie's niece Sarah singing - we tried not to be too obvious waving from the VIP box! The performance was great, especially the singing. Lady Walton (Sir William's widow) had come over from Italy where she lives - she and Katie discovered a common love of gardens.
Then on to the opening night party, in the passenger terminal opposite - a lovely walk round Circular Quay with the Opera House lit in red, the theme of the Festival. The party was loud and boisterous, with lots of people we knew.
Back to the Sydney Cricket Ground on Sunday via breakfast at Bondi. A more dour day on the field, with England struggling with the bat. Then a couple of days at work in Canberra, catching up after the Christmas and New Year break.
We'd decided to have a couple days on the beach after all this travelling. So we invited ourselves to stay with various friends in Pittwater and Palm Beach, just north of Sydney. First at Towler's Bay, which can only be reached by boat. So we parked the car and rang up our host, who came across in his run-about to collect Holly while Katie paddled her surf-ski and I wind-surfed across. We both got rather sunburnt - the weather was around 30 degrees, which made it great to be by the water. That evening we sailed in a very informal race on Pittwater, marred by me putting a hole in the Commodore's boat. Oops. Some drinks afterwards to recover left Katie and me in good form to play and sing at the barbecue - Katie had had a wonderful mandolin made for my Christmas and birthday presents.
Back across the water the next day and a couple of days in Palm Beach with friends not doing very much except mucking around in and on the water, then back to Canberra via a night at Katie's aunt and uncle at Newport Beach. I feel fit and relaxed for work - except that this is holiday time in Australia so things are pretty quiet!


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Heck, Michelle | |
Peter, Kari | |
BEREMAN, MICHAEL - University Of Washington | |
Howe, Kevin | |
Fish, Tara | |
SMITH, DAWN - Cornell University | |
GILDOW, FRED - Pennsylvania State University | |
MACCOSS, MICHAEL - University Of Washington | |
Gray, Stewart |
Submitted to: PLOS ONE
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: 9/21/2012 Publication Date: 10/30/2012 Citation: Cilia, M., Peter, K.A., Bereman, M., Howe, K.J., Fish, T., Smith, D., Gildow, F., Maccoss, M., Gray, S.M. 2012. Discovery and targeted LC-MS/MS of purified polerovirus reveals differences in the virus-host interactome associated with altered aphid transmission. PLoS One. 7(10). Interpretive Summary: Many plant viruses are transmitted by sap sucking insects such as aphids and there are few effective options for preventing the spread of disease. Aphids acquire viruses when feeding on an infected plant and then carry the virus with them when they move to feed on another plant. The transmission process is very specific and only one or a few insect species can transmit each virus. We have discovered many of the aphid and virus proteins that interact with each other and regulate the transmission process, but here we report that plant proteins are also involved in how well a virus can be transmitted by an aphid. Serendipitously, we discovered that we could chemically change a virus so that it was no longer transmitted. Further investigation revealed that the changes in the virus did not directly cause the loss of transmission, but rather that was due to an alteration of plant proteins adhering to the virus. Using mass spectrometry methods several plant proteins were identified that bind to transmissible virus. Altering the surface features of the virus changes the suite of plant proteins associated with the virus and prevents the virus from moving through the various aphid tissues; a requirement for successful transmission. Knowing the details of the plant – virus protein interactions could allow for the development of novel strategies to disrupt the normal interactions and reduce the spread of disease. Technical Abstract: The transmission of viruses in the Luteoviridae, such as Cereal yellow dwarf virus (CYDV), requires a series of precisely orchestrated interactions between virus proteins, plant proteins, and aphid proteins. These viruses are retained in the phloem for aphid acquisition and are transmitted by aphids in a circulative manner. We show that treatment of infected oat tissue homogenate with sodium sulfite reduces transmission of the purified virus by aphids. Transmission electron microscopy shows no gross change in virion morphology due to treatments. However, treated virions are not internalized into aphid hindgut epithelial cells and are not transmitted when injected directly into the hemocoel. LC-MS/MS analysis of virus preparations reveals a number of host plant proteins co-purifying with viruses, a number of which are lost following sodium sulfite treatment. Using targeted mass spectrometry, we show that several of the virus-associated host plant proteins accumulate to higher levels in aphids that have fed on CYDV infected plants as compared to healthy plants. We propose that sodium sulfite treatment disrupts critical virion-host protein interactions required for aphid transmission and that disulfide bonding is essential for protein-protein interactions during virus entry into aphid cells. |


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Notice: this Wiki will be going read only early in 2024 and edits will no longer be possible. Please see: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Wiki-shutdown-plan for the plan.
Planning Council/October 6 2010
Meeting Title: | Planning Council Conference Call |
Date & Time: | Wednesday, October 6, 2010, at 1600 UTC / 1200 Eastern |
Dial-in: | For the call-in numbers, see the "Project Review" number on Foundation Portal page. |
PMC (and Strategic) Reps
Strategic Reps
- ?
Helios SR1
- Any issues? complaints?
- One issue to document as feedback (that I have heard about from TPTP PMC/Planning Council Rep): EMF didn't deliver any maintenance until the day after RC4 +1 day [but, unclear to me is if that was just download zips or any form of delivered fixes, even in helios repo?] I think, it deserves repeating that communication is key. We all need to make an effort to keep others informed. The late (or last minute?) changes caused TPTP to have to do a lot of re-work and was made worse by there being no notice or announcement on cross-project list. I'm sure there's many things that could have been different, from all teams involved ... but just documenting this case as once example of the importance of keeping others informed. Not to mention, of course, that incremental delivery of fixes allows for better testing. I also suggested the TPTP team communicate more directly with EMF team either through their mailing list or cross-project list, to let them know when impacted, but I think in this case, by the time it was discovered there wasn't much to do. Anything we, as Planning Council, can do to help situations like this? Foster timely communication?
- Ed said they will communicate better in future.
- The build machine failure and slow recovery was nearly enough to derail the scheduled release. Not sure what more we can do, but glad to hear IT team will provide more support for build machine recovery (See bug 325969).
- The mirrors were a bit overloaded with our "outflow" the day or two before, and had trouble "catching up".
- There is no longer any need to wait until "day before" for projects to put their artifacts in their final location, as long as leave "invisible" until the official release. Everyone waiting until the day before means the mirrors are very busy pulling content the day before, and have trouble getting caught up and in a steady state before the actual release. So, one action is to make sure everyone is properly educated about his. It might take some thing more formal ... some projects promote 5 days before, some 4 days before, some 3 days before, etc. Also, may need better directions on how to promote but leave invisible ... perhaps many projects wait and promote at last minute because they don't know how to do that?
Maintenance Schedule
SR2 Fourth Friday of February 2/25/2011
For detailed RC schedules, see Service Release Schedule in master plan
Helios Retrospective
Any additions? No additions. Move to reference section.
Indigo Status
- M2 repo successfully created [discovered after meeting I forgot to promote! Done now]
- No M2 EPP packages
- And I've pestered Markus enough he's stopped returning my emails? :(
- 3 projects not in M2:
- jetty
- riena
- subversive
- Do they really intend to drop out? Or does this violate "once in always in"?
- Tom with discuss with jetty and riena, Wayne and/or Chris to discuss with subversive
Indigo Plan and Schedule
Suggestions during meeting:
- Make explicit that to be in repo, feature includes must be strict, so installs or builds are reproducible. (Even if there might eventually be improvements that allow additional features, with loose constraints ... but "minimum" requirement is the strict inclusion. Unclear what loose requirement solution will be. Note: the strict requirements are the way things are currently done ... just best to make explicit, since it has come up before.
- Move capabilities to "good citizen" section (and check wording to make clear that to document "not supported" is one option ... or, possibly "we don't know what this means" :).
- Consistent license. No real change to requirement, but should provide pointers to bugs where standard "user agreement" may change (to include EDL) and where p2 may be improved to allow pointer to URI ... or something.
- Add a "must do" to be in EPP package, must run on/test on Eclipse 3.7.
- Add a "should do" to have a 4.1 theme item in plan to describe what project is doing for 4.1 (and give some examples).
Tracking "setup" required from Foundation in bug 321522
See initial Indigo Wiki page
Review: There is a subtle implication of specifying Java 6 as "minimum runtime" requirement. Currently, we require contributors to use Java 5 when using pack200, since if not, and if involves a jar that contains no Java (e.g. source or documentation) then it can not be unpacked with Java 5, Java 6 would be required. This has been a headache for people since for many it means tweaking build scripts so an "old" (1.5) VM is used for that one step. During aggregation, we purposely use Java 5 to catch errors in this regard. For Indigo, I propose we not worry about being consistent here, and just use Java 6 during aggregation. Some projects may still want to use 1.5 VMs to do their pack200 ... if their adopters want it ... but I see no reason for mass consistency here ... if Java 6 is assumed to be minimum runtime VM. Any issues? Dissent?
- Some concern expressed, but mostly a matter of letting people know and documenting options. For example, for projects that want compatibility with VMs less than 1.6, they still can, of course, but will no longer get "built in" test from aggregation. Plus, should make clear, even a VM less than 1.6 can still use a pack200 (or, an unpack200 executable) from another VM, such as a 1.6 distribution, and specify it on their command line using
Issues and Proposal for 3.7 versus 4.1
- See working notes in http://wiki.eclipse.org/Indigo/HowToAddress37And41Platform
Other business
- We were reminded Mylyn is Top Level project now, and we should be sure to invite rep to Planning Council.
- John mentioned Platform may drop Motif support from swt ... decision not final yet, and not sure if it effects any adapters or members ... just giving a heads up
ToDo Items
- Note from Wayne, to Wayne: (actually from last meeting) Remember to review plans starting after M4 (at latest) so questions can be clarified before "road map" produced.
- Wayne teased us all with promise of new tools to check CQs against downloads, which we projects can use ourselves ... but he wasn't ready to tell us about them today and he'll be saying more over next few days or weeks.
- dw to sort out tracking path.
Next Meeting
November 3, 12 noon Eastern
Simultaneous Release Roles and Simultaneous Release Roles/EMO


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This article is more than 1 year old
Microsoft's idea of Family Protection? Block Google
Too much, too young?
Install Microsoft's Family Safety Filter (FSF) – and protect your family from vile and extreme websites such as, er, Google.
At least, that's the experience of slashdot poster, Mike Rimov. In a recent post he describes what happened when he installed the FSF. He writes: "Turned it on, set it to "basic filtering" (their lowest level), and went to Google... oops, it blocks Google! So I logged into the settings and added Google as an exception. Google still wouldn't come up. Just in case, I turned off the family filter... voila, Google."
There is undoubtedly a simple explanation for this episode. Alongside a cute photo of an adult and child holding hands, Microsoft tell us: "As a parent, you want to help make your family's experiences safer and more secure, and you want to provide good guidance. Windows Live Family Safety can help.
"Windows Live Family Safety is a Web service that's free to people who use Microsoft Windows XP. The American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) helped Microsoft develop age-based guidance for Internet use that's included in."
The package should "configure safer Web browsing and searching, with content and communication filters that you can personalize for each family member". In addition, you can "supervise your kids' activities from any computer, using Web-based reports that show what your kids are doing online. You can grant or deny requests to view certain Web sites, even when you are not home."
Oddly, their blurb says nothing about blocking Google. A spokesman for Microsoft told us: "While we don't have specifics on this user's experience we do not actively filter the Google home page. General portal pages like MSN, Google.com and Yahoo are included in a custom section marked 'sites we haven't categorised': if that box is left unchecked, then access might be denied."
In other words, if you DO want access to Google when this package is running, you have to opt in.
Mike Rimov continues: "As we all know, "Don't be evil" is not part of Microsoft's motto!".
However, "with the filter on, Microsoft's own search engine, live.com comes up." ®


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To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:device pci device twe
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf5:
The driver provides support for AMCC's 3ware 5000/6000/7000/8000 series PATA/SATA RAID adapters. These adapters were formerly known as ``3ware Escalade''These devices support 2, 4, 8, or 12 ATA disk drives and provide RAID0 (striping) and RAID1 (mirroring) functionality.
The driver supports the following PATA/SATA RAID controllers:
- AMCC's 3ware 5000 series
- AMCC's 3ware 6000 series
- AMCC's 3ware 7000-2
- AMCC's 3ware 7006-2
- AMCC's 3ware 7500-4LP
- AMCC's 3ware 7500-8
- AMCC's 3ware 7500-12
- AMCC's 3ware 7506-4LP
- AMCC's 3ware 7506-8
- AMCC's 3ware 7506-12
- AMCC's 3ware 8006-2LP
- AMCC's 3ware 8500-4LP
- AMCC's 3ware 8500-8
- AMCC's 3ware 8500-12
- AMCC's 3ware 8506-4LP
- AMCC's 3ware 8506-8
- AMCC's 3ware 8506-8MI
- AMCC's 3ware 8506-12
- AMCC's 3ware 8506-12MI
Controller initialisation phase
- twe%d: microcontroller not ready
The controller's onboard CPU is not reporting that it is ready; this may be due to either a board or system failure. Initialisation has failed.
- twe%d: no attention interrupt
- twe%d: can't drain AEN queue
- twe%d: reset not reported
- twe%d: controller errors detected
- twe%d: can't drain response queue
- twe%d: reset %d failed, trying again
The controller is not responding correctly to the driver's attempts to reset and initialise it. This process is retried several times.
- twe%d: can't initialise controller, giving up
Several attempts to reset and initialise the controller have failed; initialisation has failed and the driver will not attach to this controller.
Driver initialisation/shutdown phase
- twe%d: register window not available
- twe%d: can't allocate register window
- twe%d: can't allocate parent DMA tag
- twe%d: can't allocate interrupt
- twe%d: can't set up interrupt
- twe%d: can't establish configuration hook
A resource allocation error occurred while initialising the driver; initialisation has failed and the driver will not attach to this controller.
- twe%d: can't detect attached units
Fetching the list of attached units failed; initialisation has failed.
- twe%d: error fetching capacity for unit %d
- twe%d: error fetching state for unit %d
- twe%d: error fetching descriptor size for unit %d
- twe%d: error fetching descriptor for unit %d
- twe%d: device_add_child failed
- twe%d: bus_generic_attach returned %d
Creation of the disk devices failed, either due to communication problems with the adapter or due to resource shortage; attachment of one or more units may have been aborted.
Operational phase
- twe%d: command completed - %s
A command was reported completed with a warning by the controller. The warning may be one of:
- redundant/inconsequential request ignored
- failed to write zeroes to LBA 0
- failed to profile TwinStor zones
- twe%d: command failed - %s
A command was reported as failed by the controller. The failure message may be one of:
- aborted due to system command or reconfiguration
- aborted
- access error
- access violation
- device failure
- controller error
- timed out
- invalid unit number
- unit not available
- undefined opcode
- request incompatible with unit
- invalid request
- firmware error, reset requested
The command will be returned to the operating system after a fatal error.
- twe%d: command failed submission - controller wedged
A command could not be delivered to the controller because the controller is unresponsive.
- twe%d: AEN: <%s>
The controller has reported a change in status using an AEN (Asynchronous Event Notification). The following AENs may be reported:
- queue empty
- soft reset
- degraded mirror
- controller error
- rebuild fail
- rebuild done
- incomplete unit
- initialisation done
- unclean shutdown detected
- drive timeout
- drive error
- rebuild started
- aen queue full
AENs are also queued internally for use by management tools.
- twe%d: error polling for signalled AE
- The controller has reported that one or more status messages are ready for the driver, but attempting to fetch one of these has returned an error.
- twe%d: AEN queue overflow, lost AEN <%s>
A status message was retrieved from the controller, but there is no more room to queue it in the driver. The message is lost (but will be printed to the console).
- twe%d: missing expected status bits %s
- twe%d: unexpected status bits %s
A check of the controller's status bits indicates an unexpected condition.
- twe%d: host interrupt
The controller has signalled a host interrupt. This serves an unknown purpose and is ignored.
- twe%d: command interrupt
The controller has signalled a command interrupt. This is not used, and will be disabled.
- twe%d: controller reset in progress...
The controller is being reset by the driver. Typically this is done when the driver has determined that the controller is in an unrecoverable state.
- twe%d: can't reset controller, giving up
The driver has given up on resetting the controller. No further I/O will be handled.
- controller reset done, %d commands restarted
The controller was successfully reset, and outstanding commands were restarted.
An -nosplit The driver and manual page were written by An Michael Smith Aq [email protected] .Extensive work done on the driver by An Vinod Kashyap Aq [email protected] and An Paul Saab Aq [email protected] .
The controller cannot handle I/O transfers that are not aligned to a 512-byte boundary. In order to support raw device access from user-space, the driver will perform alignment fixup on non-aligned data. This process is inefficient, and thus in order to obtain best performance user-space applications accessing the device should do so with aligned buffers.


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LOCAL Variables Scope Conflicts With ColdFusion Query of Queries
I just helped someone on the House of Fusion CF-Talk list who was having trouble with his ColdFusion query of queries. Like some of us do, he was declaring a local variable, LOCAL, in a function and then declaring variables within it. This is done so that only one variable (LOCAL) has to be "var'ed" to enable many variables to be considered local to the function's memory space:
// Declare local scope.
var LOCAL = StructNew();
// These are now all local.
LOCAL.Foo = 1;
LOCAL.Bar = QueryNew( "id" );
LOCAL.Test = StructNew();
His problem was that he was doing a query of queries using a query stored in the LOCAL pseudo scope:
<cfquery name="qTest" dbtype="query">
This throws the error:
Query Of Queries syntax error.
Encountered "LOCAL.
This can be frustrating because if you change the name LOCAL to something like LOCAL2, it works just fine. The problem, while frustrating, has a very simple answer: LOCAL is a reserved word in SQL and ColdFusion Query of Query SQL. The solution: use the [ ] notation:
<cfquery name="qTest" dbtype="query">
Want to use code from this post? Check out the license.
Reader Comments
You did NOT just save me hours of grief. :-) found your blog post on google and wanted to say thanks. I always ended up var'ing another variable to use in my QofQ. Thanks for the insight!
No worries dude. Please let me know if there IS anything I can do to save you hours of grief?
Using structure in Query of queries is buggy to say the least:
Using your example as a reference.. the following fails. I can't find anyway in which to get this to work, so must be a bug
var LOCAL = structnew();
LOCAL.Data = QueryNew( "id,name" );
LOCAL.Data2 = QueryNew( "id,name" );
LOCAL.Test = StructNew();
<cfquery name="qTest" dbtype="query">
[LOCAL].Data ,[LOCAL].Data2
[LOCAL].Data.id =1
The problem is in the WHERE clause. For some reason, it cannot handle the [LOCAL].Data.id line. However, if you take that away, and just have id = 1, it will parse correctly. However, it then throws an ambiguous column name (since neither ID nor NAME are prefixed and are available in both join tables).
And since you can't alias table names, you might be out of luck with this example. Sorry.
would you guys please reduce using query of queries so much, and perhaps put a bit more time into sharpenning your sql join skills.
Can you point out a place where you feel that a JOIN would be more appropriate than a query of queries?
I ran into this issue recently and decided the quick fix at the time was to simply rename my LOCAL variable to LocalScope. Renaming LOCAL to fix a QoQ seemed odd to me at the time and it has been bugging me because I have not had the time to work on it.
I was about to ask you this very question, but I tried a quick search and there was the answer on the first result. I should have tried that earlier...
It's nice to be able to keep using LOCAL without worrying about query of queries inside functions. =)
I love the idea of scoping all variables in a function inside a single "var" struct. However, if there's an evolving standard, then using a variable name without a naming conflict makes far more sense. If the name "local" creates a conflict in QoQ, why not change the variable name, not use a workaround.
The first two that sprung to mind were "func" and "my". They're both descriptive (enough) and they're short, which is nice considering the scope is prepended to all the variables local to the function.
Any thoughts on this? I guess it just bothers me that the "accepted" practice is one that includes an unnecessary bump in the road.
At CFUNITED 2008, Adam Lehman actually said that in ColdFusion 9, functions would have an explicit LOCAL scope. So, it looks like they are endorsing this idea of "local" even though it causes issues in Query of Queries.
What about the highly descriptive term localVar? It's only eight characters, 1 more than REQUEST, 1 less than VARIABLES and 3 less than APPLICATION
<cfset var localVar = structNew()>
Since query of queries is so limited with functionallity and it takes a performance hit on your page, I opted to exclude it from my coding.
Instead sharpenning up my SQL has really taken away the need for QoQ. For example, get the rows and columns you'd like them on the first call to the SQL server. I know that is a long term fix but it's better in the long run.
Query of queries definitely do NOT run as fast as native SQL calls to the database. However, they can work quite synthetically. For example, let's say you have to return a report of Students and last 10 test scores. To do this you could start out:
- Return all students
- Return all recent test scores
Then, loop over the students and for each students, do a query of queries on the recent test scores to get the test scores for that given student.
This allows us to leverage the goodness of SQL when necessary, but we can then use query of queries to leverage the existing query in the page's memory space.
Point taken, but in that case I would do one single SQL statment:
select top 50 student, score
from studentscores
order by id desc
that will give me a list of 50 students ordered from newest to lowest.
so then I can show them like this:
<cfif currentrecord lte 10>

#student# #Score#

#student# #Score#

This will bold the top 10 last scores as well as give you the full list. And i didn't need the QoQ. and only one call to sql.
On the other hand if I wanted to add sorting to that SQL result by the provided columns in the query, it does make sense to use QoQ without a trip to the sql server.
Sorry but looping over a cfquery with a cfloop and on each iteration calling a query of queries to calculate the students test score looks like more processing on my server. And it looks like a workaround for something. Not to mention that if your original query was a large amount of rows it really takes a hit on performance.
One could then say: if performance is not at question then use QoQ.
I used to use QoQ a lot, then I was asked to do really complex reports requiring calculations based on many tables is when I realized that spending my time learning to make QoQ work for me was not as efficient time spent than learning sql to get the same results. (and faster)
But that's just my opinion. :)
The problem with that way is that in many reports that I have to run, I am getting a lot of additional data such as school contact information and district information and principal information. With too many joins, there gets to be a lot of data pulled down for each record that is not necessarily worth the transfer time.
I am not saying one way is better - I think its more of an art than a science to figuring out which way will be faster.
Most of where I use this is in reporting where time of execution is not necessarily mission critical.
Art vs. science, interesting comparison it reminds me of MAC vs PC.
I know you are a master at coldfusion, I do really appreciate all the articles you have ever provided, in many cases it has saved my week from falling short and I love your site for that. But let me quote you with all due respect on this: "With too many joins, there gets to be a lot of data pulled down for each record" I don't exactly see it that way, what I would do in that case is:
select top 50 students.firstname,students.lastname, school.name,school.location,ss.score
from students
join school on student.schoolid=school.id
join studentscores ss
order by ss.id desc
That outputs only 5 columns and 50 rows. The important note is not to use "select * from" when using joins for multiple tables therefore avoiding too much data out.
Usually what I do is create a function in a component i.e. students.cfc that returns this data in a query ready to use for any template or component. Having that in a component makes it even faster since it is already compiled code.
One good scenario where you'd be better off using joins and more specific SQL vs. QoQ is lets say you land on a job that used to have a full department of IT employees, such as a DBA and a couple of CF developers but now for some strange reason, perhaps the company was in financial trouble, now they only have you to do minor maintenance and some IT support. You will find out that a lot of the tables in SQL are normalized with 1NF or 2NF or so that is the job of the DBA, it will be very intuitive for someone who has been using joins to get what they need in their queries, vs. the programmer who relies in QoQ for everything, and will have a nightmare trying to match id's of the perhaps 4 tables needed to be called for a normalized database in any given report.
I am not sure where you are getting this "top 50" from? This is a report - it might have thousands of students that need to have scores returned. Sure it might only return 5 columns and 50 rows, but your SQL does not address the actual gesture of the sample report.
top 50 was just an example, usually I limit the amount of rows returned by my sql, with a variable that works similar to "maxorws" Its a scary thing not to do so, I hate to see cfml templates spinning the cursor, going back to the QoQ vs. SQL I ran into this post in the IRC channel.
Using a limit or top on the SQL is nice; however, when you are reporting, this is generally not possible unless the report concerns a TOP X percentage of some sort. Sometimes, a client just wants to see all 8 thousands records :(
True, but you got to limit it somewhere, what if its 700 billion rows in that report. You could cover the world on paper a few times, we will freeze to death from lack of heat from the sun catastrophic loss of species while making the world a lonelier and less interesting place. I would think twice before coding that report.
Trust me, I have already campaigned heavily *against* the reports that they want now.... I think we're on the same page :)
Hoaah :) you saved me once again, really thanks
Awwww yeah :)
I had a similar problem back in 07, not quite the same result, but the same cause. Here is my scenario in case it helps anyone.
It looks like you are using "locals" in your example, rather than "local", to get around the reserved word issue, correct?
I think some of the issues you were experiencing with the comparison operators been since been resolved, thankfully!
Hey Ben,
I recently started "following" you on Twitter. This blog finally helped me answer my question of why I always saw your "local" structs in other blogs (although I guess I could have easily figured the reason behind it). That struct makes sense, and you are less likely to need one of those "var" validator tools because there is less var variables to maintain.
I was wondering why my comment was deleted? I posted a very elegant solution to the problem allowing local variables to be declared anywhere in a CF8 function using syntax similar to the var declaration. Was it because I expounded on it's usefulness, giving multiple examples?
I think this is very important as it is not documented anywhere on the web. It took me hours to work out the solution myself.
Please don't delete it, so others can benefit. I've removed the extraneous examples and include only the function and sample usage.
The function:
function var(somevar)
var oldlocal="";
getPageContext().popFunctionLocalScope();//Get rid of current local scope.
oldlocal=getPageContext().getActiveFunctionLocalScope();//Get old local scope.
if (ArrayLen(Arguments) GT 1)
{//Inject with value passed in.
{//Inject with default of empty string.
oldlocal["#somevar#"]=""; }
getPageContext().pushNewFunctionLocalScope();//Put a local scope for CF to pop when this function exits.
function somefunc()
var("test");//Defaults to empty string.
var("test1",1);//Assign simple value.
for (var("i",1); i LTE maxval; i=i+1)
Sorry if it was deleted. Some comments get flagged as spam based on a lot of different criteria (name, link, comment content, relevancy, etc.) - there are definitely false positives.
This is actually a very interesting approach. I never thought about toying with the active local scopes. I can actually see this being useful in other situations (such as when dealing with threads).
One thing I've noticed when playing around with active function local scopes and popping them is that it can mess with the stack trace.
If an error occurs or if you purposely throw an error and you have popped function local scopes (in other words, it happens before you have restored the function local scope) then the stack trace gets screwed up indicating the error occurred on the line of the top level function call. To illustrate:
function somefunc()
function someotherfunc()
//error happens here
somefunc();//Error will indicate this line.
To fix this, you should set a flag (or a counting semaphore if you plan recursion) in a shared scope such as Request so in the event of an error you can push some new FLSs to prevent this problem.
Here is an update of the function with a counting semaphore in the Request scope and an error thrown if somevar is not a string.
//Allows creation of a local variable anywhere in a function.
function var(somevar)
var oldlocal="";
getPageContext().popFunctionLocalScope();//Get rid of new local scope.
if (IsDefined("Request.poppedFLSCount"))
{ //We have to keep track of how many are popped in case of errors.
oldlocal=getPageContext().getActiveFunctionLocalScope();//Get old (now current) local scope.
if (IsValid("string",somevar))
if (ArrayLen(Arguments) GT 1)
oldlocal["#somevar#"]=Arguments[2];//Create new local variable with passed in value.
oldlocal["#somevar#"]="";//Create new local variable with default of an empty string.
throw(type="invalidParameter",message="Invalid Parameter",detail="The parameter somevar must be a string containing the name of the variable to be locally scoped.");
getPageContext().pushNewFunctionLocalScope();//Push another local scope for CF to pop.
--Request.poppedFLSCount;//Reduce count as we have created a new one.
Here is the throw function so you can see how to correct the problem.
<cffunction name="throw" output="false" returnType="void" hint="CFML Throw wrapper">
<cfargument name="file" type="string" required="false" default="Unknown" hint="File throw is located in.">
<cfargument name="line" type="string" required="false" default="Unknown" hint="Line throw is located on.">
<cfargument name="func" type="string" required="false" default="Unknown" hint="Function throw is located in.">
<cfargument name="type" type="string" required="false" default="Application" hint="Type for Exception">
<cfargument name="message" type="string" required="false" default="" hint="Message for Exception">
<cfargument name="detail" type="string" required="false" default="" hint="Detail for Exception">
<cfargument name="errorCode" type="string" required="false" default="" hint="Error Code for Exception">
<cfargument name="extendedInfo" type="string" required="false" default="" hint="Extended Info for Exception">
<cfargument name="object" type="any" hint="Object for Exception">
<cfif IsDefined("Request.poppedFLSCount")>

<cfloop condition="Request.poppedFLSCount GT 0">
<cfset getPageContext().pushNewFunctionLocalScope()>
<cfset Request.poppedFLSCount=Request.poppedFLSCount-1>
<cfset var("functxt")>
<cfif file EQ "Unknown" OR line EQ "Unknown" OR func EQ "Unknown">
<cfif type NEQ "getStackTrace">
<cfset caller=GetCallerStack()>
<cfif ArrayLen(caller) GTE 1>
<cfset file=caller[1]["template"]>
<cfset line=caller[1]["line"]>
<cfset functxt='in function #caller[1]["function"]# '>
<cfif file EQ "Unknown">
<cfset caller=GetErrorLineAndFile()>
<cfset file=caller["template"]>
<cfset line=caller["line"]>
<cfif not isDefined("object")>
<cfthrow type="#type#" message="Error: #type#

#message#" detail="#detail#
Error occured on line #line# #functxt#of #file#" errorCode="#errorCode#" extendedInfo="#extendedInfo#">
<cfthrow object="#object#">
If anyone needs the getCallerStack function to make this all work, just say so and I'll add it to the conversation.
If you are trying to debug some code and are not throwing your own error, then wrap this around code you suspect of creating the error.
//your code
catch(Any excpt)
if (Is(Defined(Request.poppedFLSCount))
while (Request.poppedFLSCount GT 0)
rethrow();//wrapper for cfrethrow tag
You could also put the if and while loop in a function called restoreAllFunctionLocalScopes for convenience.
I never cease to be amazed that almost EVERY random CF issue I come across lands me on your site.
Thank you for documenting your findings for the world.
@Curt Self - Yup... you and the rest of the CF community. Adobe should be paying Ben, I reckon there'd be a lot less CF websites out there without him.
@Ben - Thanks for solving yet another issue. Previously I've been copying a Local variable to an unscoped variable in order to use in QOQ, which just seems ugly and inelegant.
@Curt, @Gary,
My pleasure, fellas!


text:
Anthony J. Celebrezze
Anthony J. Celebrezze
(1910 - 1998)
Anthony Celebrezze was born in Anzi, Italy. He was brought to the United States at the age of two, and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Ohio Northern University where he received his LL.B. degree in 1936 and his admission to the Ohio State bar. Mr. Celebrezze's first job as an attorney was on the legal staff of the Ohio Bureau of Unemployment Compensation. After three years there he opened his own law office in Cleveland, where he had a general practice for the next thirteen years, except for a period during World War II when he served as a seaman in the U.S. Navy. Mr. Celebrezze entered politics in 1950, when he was elected to the Ohio State Senate. In 1953 he was elected Mayor of Cleveland, serving an unprecedented five terms in that city. Then in 1962, President Kennedy appointed Mr. Celebrezze as Secretary for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a position he held until 1965.


text:
PHILADELPHIA— People who try to quit smoking often say that kicking the habit makes the voice inside telling them to light up even louder, but why people succumb to those cravings so often has never been fully understood. Now, a new brain imaging study in this week's JAMA Psychiatry from scientists in Penn Medicine and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Intramural Research Program shows how smokers suffering from nicotine withdrawal may have more trouble shifting from a key brain network—known as default mode, when people are in a so-called "introspective" or "self-referential" state— and into a control network, the so-called executive control network, that could help exert more conscious, self-control over cravings and to focus on quitting for good.
The findings help validate a neurobiological basis behind why so many people trying to quit end up relapsing—up to 80 percent, depending on the type of treatment—and may lead to new ways to identify smokers at high risk for relapse who need more intensive smoking cessation therapy.
The brain imaging study was led by researchers at University of Pennsylvania's new Brain and Behavior Change Program, led by Caryn Lerman, PhD, who is also the deputy director of Penn's Abramson Cancer Center, and Elliot Stein, PhD, and collaborators at NIDA. They found that smokers who abstained from cigarettes showed weakened interconnectivity between certain large-scale networks in their brains: the default mode network, the executive control network, and the salience network. They posit that this weakened connectivity reduces smokers' ability to shift into or maintain greater influence from the executive control network, which may ultimately help maintain their quitting attempt.
"What we believe this means is that smokers who just quit have a more difficult time shifting gears from inward thoughts about how they feel to an outward focus on the tasks at hand," said Lerman, who also serves as the Mary W. Calkins professor in the Department of Psychiatry. "It's very important for people who are trying to quit to be able to maintain activity within the control network— to be able to shift from thinking about yourself and your inner state to focus on your more immediate goals and plan."
Prior studies have looked at the effects of nicotine on brain interconnectivity in the resting state, that is, in the absence of any specific goal directed activity. This is the first study, however, to compare resting brain connectivity in an abstinent state and when people are smoking as usual, and then relate those changes to symptoms of craving and mental performance.
For the study, researchers conducted brain scans on 37 healthy smokers (those who smoke more than 10 cigarettes a day) ages 19 to 61 using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in two different sessions: 24 hours after biochemically confirmed abstinence and after smoking as usual.
Imaging showed a significantly weaker connectivity between the salience network and default mode network during abstinence, compared with their sated state. Also, weakened connectivity during abstinence was linked with increases in smoking urges, negative mood, and withdrawal symptoms, suggesting that this weaker internetwork connectivity may make it more difficult for people to quit.
Establishing the strength of the connectivity between these large-scale brain networks will be important in predicting people's ability to quit and stay quit, the authors write. Also, such connectivity could serve as a clinical biomarker to identify smokers who are most likely to respond to a particular treatment.
"Symptoms of withdrawal are related to changes in smokers' brains, as they adjust to being off of nicotine, and this study validates those experiences as having a biological basis," said Lerman. "The next step will be to identify in advance those smokers who will have more difficultly quitting and target more intensive treatments, based on brain activity and network connectivity."
Co-authors of study include Hong Gu and Yihong Yang of NIDA, and James Loughead of Penn's Brain and Behavior Change Program, and Kosha Ruparel of Penn's Brain Behavioral Laboratory in the department of Psychiatry.
JAMA Psychiatry


text:
05/26/07 Jailed for Life
After the death of another wild animal caged in a zoo Animal Friends protests
In spite of numerous appeals from Croatia and abroad, Split's zoo of horrors hasn't yet been closed. Instead of improving hard and unnatural way of living for zoo animals, Split zoo tries to disguise its shame with some minor beautifying changes. In Osijek zoo so far nobody was charged for negligence and death of a lion cub. In fancy Zagreb zoo animals suffer just the same what is evident in the case of a female snow leopard which died just the other day. In private zoo in Ivanovac a wolf ran away and then in shock returned back to zoo by himself.
On Saturday, May 26, 2007, Animal Friends will hold a demo in front of Zagreb Zoo in Maksimir park in order to draw attention to the very bad living conditions for animals in Croatian zoos and to protest against the very idea of confining animals in zoos.
Animal Friends is against acquiring of new animals and believes that animals from Zagreb zoo should be relocated to an area outside of city center where they would be protected from city noise and pollution and could get at least minimum appearance of freedom which was taken away from them forever.
Despite alleged care for the animals, zoos are neither animal shelters nor simulated natural habitats but they present lifelong imprisonment for wild animals without any conditions for natural behavior. This fact makes any educational role of zoos highly questionable.
For people it is fun to visit zoos and watch the animals as live exhibit displays. To people those animals are beautiful, sweet and cute. But after a few hours of fun and curiosity people go home while animals stay in their cages where they are bored to death, confined, lonely, far away from their natural habitats what makes them psychotic and self-destructive and causes the disease known as zoochosis.
The future of zoos should be modeled upon the Worldlife Center in London which plans to create a high-tech zoo without live animals in it. Visitors will be looking at animals in the wild through live satellite connection, even in very distant locations such as the Amazonian rainforests, the Great Barrier Reef or Africa.
In the 21st century zoos as we know them today should belong to the past, and people should be aware of real needs of animal species instead of using primitive instinct of caging animals for simple reason of staring at them. Therefore, Animal Friends calls citizens to boycott zoos and to stop supporting the caging of wild animals in prizoons.


text:
This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Bruce Hughes owns a 3.4-acre lot on the west side of Cedar City that he has hoped to develop into commercial real estate for years. But the presence of a protected rodent on the land makes it impossible for him and many others in Iron County to get building permits, rendering their land unusable and worthless, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Salt Lake City.
In the mid-2000s when Hughes first proposed building on West View Drive, there were 58 prairie dogs on the property that would presumably be displaced. But under federal rules Iron County property owners could "take" only a total of 72 prairie dogs a year and any one owner was limited to removing 10 a year, according to Hughes, a longtime Cedar City CPA. Seventy owners were ahead of him.
"By the time I got to the top of the list, it was several years later and the market turned and the banks wouldn't loan to build," Hughes said.
The suit seeks to toss U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rules that restrict the removal of Utah prairie dogs from private land. The Pacific Legal Foundation filed it on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners, a property-rights group whose name plays on that of the animal-rights group PETA.
Lead counsel Jonathan Wood argued the rules hold Iron County residents "hostage to a species that has become an out-of-control pest." Though the animal has been listed under the Endangered Species Act since 1973, it appears to thrive in Iron County, burrowing in golf courses, cemeteries, airports and agricultural fields to the dismay of property managers and local officials. A prairie dog disrupted a recent funeral at the historic Cedar City Cemetery by scampering around and barking, while others chewed up remembrances left at grave sites, the suit alleges.
"The federal government should protect and preserve the species on its own land, and leave the citizens of Cedar City and other towns free to take common-sense measures to control the prairie dog population in their midst," Wood said.
Federal officials said they could not comment on the property-rights action, which names Fish and Wildlife Service and its parent Department of Interior, because it pertains to pending litigation.
The Utah Legislature sympathizes with people like Hughes. Last session, lawmakers passed a resolution asking the federal government to hand prairie dog recovery to Iron County.
Federal prairie dog regulations pose a major drag on the local economy, derailing numerous projects such as a proposed dairy expansion, according to Iron County Commissioner Dave Miller, who testified before the Legislature in February.
The Utah prairie dog is the western-most of the nation's five species, inhabiting a few counties in southwest Utah. At the time of listing, there were just 3,300 in 37 colonies, but now exceed 40,000 with most living on private land, according to federal documents.
Federal authorities have moved thousands to public lands, but prairie dogs continue to proliferate on private holdings and many of the remedies the government offers are far from adequate and prohibitively expensive, critics say.
"It is not something the federal government should even be even involved in," Wood said. "You have a constitutional right to use your property. The government can't make you buy that right back just because it passed a regulation."
The regulation in question, known as the 4(d) Rule, carves out exemptions for public safety, burial sites and some agricultural lands. This generally requires the landowner to exhaust non-lethal remedies, which is why expensive fences encircle the Parowan airport and Paragonah cemetery.
"There are many reasonable resolutions to conflicts between landowners and prairie dogs, short of killing them," said Taylor Jones of WildEarth Guardians.
While prairie dogs' digging damages agricultural equipment and wrecks golf courses, these three-pound rodents are considered a "keystone species" that plays a vital ecological role whose benefits are hard to quantify, according to biodiversity advocates. Their burrows help aerate and mix the soil, allowing for greater penetration of water and nutrients and resulting in healthier vegetation and better habitat for other species.