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Earlier this month, around the time of the Super Bowl, a minor controversy erupted around SodaStream, the make-your-own-soda company. SodaStream sells countertop soda makers powered by small tanks of compressed air. The cheapest machine costs around eighty dollars. You fill a small bottle with tap water and attach it to your SodaStream; when you push a button, air is injected into the bottle, creating sparkling water. Afterward, by adding flavored syrups, you can make your own soda at home. The company sells dozens of different "SodaMixes," with pleasingly generic names like Diet Cola, Dr. Pete, and Energy, but you can also make your own syrups. The instructions caution you not to carbonate anything other than water (like, say, margaritas). The Internet, though, overflows with blog posts written by people who have "gone rogue" with their SodaStreams and, for example, carbonated white wine to make "champagne."
The controversy, such as it was, revolved around an ad that SodaStream wanted to run during the Super Bowl. The ad the company proposed to CBS showed two delivery trucks, one from Coke and another from Pepsi, converging on a supermarket. While the banjo tune from "Deliverance" jangles in the background, the two drivers load up their dollies with soda and race toward the store's entrance. As they near the sliding doors, Pepsi's man starts to pull ahead—but then, all of a sudden and for no discernible reason, his soda bottles disappear, his soda splashing everywhere. We cut to a Christian Bale-like man standing alone in a darkened kitchen and forcefully working the button of his SodaStream. "With SodaStream," a voice intones, "we could've saved five hundred million bottles on game day alone." Coke and Pepsi, the ad implies, are environmentally irresponsible dinosaurs. SodaStream is the D.I.Y. soda system of the future.
It's basically a harmless ad, but CBS, which regularly meddles with its Super Bowl commercials, rejected it. Many people assumed that the network didn't want to offend Coke and Pepsi, who are two of its biggest advertisers. (CBS hasn't issued an explanation for its decision.) In any case, having its ad banned was actually a big win for SodaStream. Breathless journalists wrote about CBS's favoritism; millions saw a different SodaStream ad, in which generically labeled soda bottles explode; and millions more have gone to SodaStream's Web site, where the original ad is featured under a banner urging them to "watch the SodaStream commercial they wouldn't let you see during the big game." (It's entirely possible that SodaStream welcomed the rejection: the ad they ended up showing at the Super Bowl had itself been banned in the U.K., presumably for similar reasons, and the company had reaped a P.R. reward there, too.) Coke and Pepsi, who normally loom invincible and eternal, seemed skittish and afraid.
SodaStream is a relative upstart here in the United States, but it's actually an old company—a version of the appliance was invented in 1903—and in other countries it's been waging a campaign against Coke and Pepsi for decades. In the seventies and eighties, SodaStream was popular in England and Australia, where its jingle urged people to "Get busy with the fizzy." (The band Garbage, whose singer, Shirley Manson, is from Scotland, has written a song called "Get Bizzy with the Fizzy," and there's another, very tuneful, Australian band called SodaStream—they sound a little like the Go-Betweens, or Belle and Sebastian.) In the eighties, of course, the environmental aspect of SodaStream's business didn't have the force it does now; that angle has given the company a new raison d'etre, and makes it a more dangerous competitor. SodaStream went public on the Nasdaq in 2010, and that has allowed for expansion in the U.S. and elsewhere; the company says that in Sweden twenty per cent of households own a SodaStream. According to Forbes, in 2007, SodaStream had U.S. sales of just four million dollars. But by 2011, the company had made distribution deals with retailers like Walmart and Bed Bath & Beyond, and U.S. sales had grown by a factor of ten, to forty million. Needless to say, they've only continued to grow since then; America is now SodaStream's largest market. And since November, 2010, the company's stock has grown more than Coca-Cola and PepsiCo's, as you can see in this chart (click on the image to expand):
[#image: /photos/590952971c7a8e33fb38a8e8]
The company's "razor and blade" (or "printer and ink") business model is a classic: once you buy a SodaStream, you're hooked on its proprietary air tanks and SodaMixes. This month, SodaStream announced that it was integrating its technology into a refrigerator manufactured by Samsung. And SodaStream sodas taste good. I'm an experienced Diet Coke drinker, and I like SodaStream's Diet Cola better. People who own SodaStreams love them.
These are all points in SodaStream's favor, and even moderate success in the huge U.S. market will be a boon for the company. But there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical, too. People seem to drink more sparkling water in Europe than they do in the United States, which might make it hard to replicate Sweden-level growth here. Europeans may be more environmentally conscious than Americans. And the truth is that SodaStream is a pain. At first, the machine looks like a close cousin to the coffee-in-a-pod machines that are ubiquitous in offices and kitchens. That seems to bode well for SodaStream. But the popularity of those machines actually suggests SodaStream's limitations. Decent coffee, which Americans have grown used to drinking at Starbucks, can be hard to brew; a pod-based coffee machine makes it easily and without hassle. SodaStream does just the opposite. Its soda isn't fundamentally better than pre-bottled soda. And making it at home is actually kind of complicated. You have to wash out the machine's reusable bottle; you have to re-order soda-mixes, or make your own; and, most problematically, you have to exchange your used compressed air cannisters for new ones when, inevitably, they run out. (SodaStream, to its credit, makes this as easy as possible: you can make the exchange at any number of retail stores, like Target and Crate & Barrel.) For most people, it's only worth it if you drink incredible quantities of soda or sparkling water, or if you're a soda mad scientist, addicted to experimentation. All of this makes it hard to imagine SodaStream as a true competitor to Coke and Pepsi, from a sales point of view.
Still, even without becoming massively successful, SodaStream could pose a significant threat to Coke and Pepsi. Selling soda is a weird business. It's dependent, to an unusual extent, upon mythology and emotion. Right now, people are fanatically loyal to their soda brands; they have emotional connections with soda that far exceed the inherent qualities of the soda itself. ("I had my first kiss while I had a bottle of Coke in my hand," Charlotte Beers, a C.E.O. of Ogilvy and Mather, once said. "Coca-Cola isn't about taste; it's about my life.") That's why competition in the soda business has centered so often on advertising and distribution, and so rarely on cost competition or on innovation in the product itself. Coke and Pepsi can't compete on price, because that might reveal what a hum-drum commodity soda really is (think of down-market soda brands, like Diet-Rite); they can't introduce too many new sodas, because that might suggest, unthinkably, that our soda preferences could be more ecumenical than they usually are. Their main priority is the preservation of the aura, which, however improbably, hovers around Coke and Pepsi.
From this point of view, the absolute worst thing Coke and Pepsi could do would be to sell their syrup directly to consumers. Doing that would pull back the curtain on the whole soda enterprise. And yet, that's exactly what SodaStream is doing, in a way that's particularly unflattering to the big, high-end soda companies. The company's business revolves around honesty about the industrial sameness of all sodas. The syrup you order from SodaStream doesn't come in some artisanal Mason jar; it's packaged in a compact plastic bottle that disconcertingly resembles a bottle of laundry detergent. To measure out the right amount of syrup, you pour it into the bottle cap, then pour from the cap into your sparkling water. Watching the syrup swirl around in the bubbles, you think, That's it—that's what soda really is. The problem for Coke and Pepsi isn't that SodaStream cuts into sales. It's that SodaStream demystifies soda. Coke and Pepsi have spent a century teaching us to have feelings about our sodas. SodaStream shows us what those feelings are really made of.


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subset: commoncrawl


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Two years after the passage of Dodd-Frank, I think it is fair to say the landmark financial reform legislation has not inspired a lot of love. Free-market types naturally recoil from its enormity—the tome weighs in at 2,319 pages—and see it as a full-employment act for lawyers and compliance consultants. And there is much to be said for this point of view. The much unloved Sarbanes-Oxley Act weighed in at just 66 pages, and even President Obama's complex health care bill was slimmer by some 200 pages.
Even political liberals and financial institutions that originally supported it are down on Dodd-Frank. Business interests have called its Volcker Rule unintelligible, as the recent flap over JP Morgan's botched trade, which might have been permitted under Volcker, confirms. And the pro-Obama administration Economist magazine has questioned the wisdom of a law whose cost induces banks to reduce customer service through massive layoffs of bankers while increasing compliance staff; liberal blogger Walter Russell Mead writes of Dodd-Frank that "the medicine is worse than the disease" and should be repealed and replaced.
Our cover story ("Dodd-Frank's Many Questions") does not say what would constitute the perfect financial reform legislation. Rather, financial analyst, author and Manhattan Institute scholar Nicole Gelinas simply asks, literally, dozens of good questions the legislation still has not answered two years on.
In an effort to contribute to the debate, I would like to propose a few principles that I believe should inform the crafting or revision of regulation of this kind.
1. Micromanagement does not work. The most ambitious legislation cannot pair one regulator for every corporate employee. Rather, a blitz of rules will result in excessive costs that adversely impact markets and the economy. Post-Enron Sarbox legislation did not prevent Lehman Brothers or MF Global, but has cost business over $1 trillion that otherwise might have been channeled into productive activities.
2. Incentives do work: Shareholders with money on the line will be far more effective at policing (certain kinds of) unwanted behavior. Good regulation will therefore impose high transparency requirements; sunshine is a powerful disinfectant.
3. Focus on enforcement: What's the use of millions of costly rules, if they are not enforced? Simpler rules but swifter enforcement are more effective. Bernie Madoff's phony trades went undetected for decades, at great cost to investors and to public confidence. Make the criminals pay a price early and often.
4. Market discipline is not enough: Listen up, free enterprise advocates. While lamenting the heavy hand of government, we should never lose sight of the fact that regulation—good regulation—is vital. Next time an earthquake kills tens of thousands of people in Turkey, Haiti or China, remember their earthquakes are no stronger than ours but our building codes are far mightier. These countries deal with the costly aftermath of such crises long after the builders of shoddy structures have taken their money and run. So too American taxpayers should not be left holding the bag while corporate fat cats spend their bonuses in offshore havens.
We need sound rules. Until we get them, Nicole Gelinas' good questions are worth far more than Dodd-Frank's bad answers.


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Okay, I'll admit that when I first started writing, I had no idea what Point of View (POV) was. I head hopped in a big way. I thought that's what writers did to show the reader what was in everyone's head, what they were thinking. I justified my lack of skill by saying that as long as a reader understood the story and didn't flip out with my POV gymnastics, that my poor technique would be acceptable. Wrong!
Understanding how POV can add depth and color to a character's voice can distinguish your work from countless others who submit to publishing houses every day. Every author makes decisions about POV in their books. If an author likes challenges, he or she may test their skill level and try different ways to convey a character's story as in the classic examples below.
In THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak, the book is about a 14 year old girl who lives during the time of the Holocaust and steals books to read. The narrator of the story is Death. This was one of my favorite young adult reads. The author took a risk to distance the reader from the 14 year old girl in the story. I thought it might have been a mistake when I started reading it, but with the gut wrenching subject matter, I later came to believe the reader needed that distance. And with Death as an outside observer, that brought a beautiful narrative voice (with a literary quality) to the story. In the end, I cried like a baby, despite the distance.
In THIRTEEN REASONS WHY by Jay Asher, this story is about a girl who commits suicide, but leaves 13 audio tapes for the people who helped her make the decision to take her life. Great hook, right? The story is told through the eyes of one boy, but the structure is complicated by the ever present recorded voice of the dead girl, flashbacks to the past they shared, with jumps into the present while he spends one night without sleep, visiting all the places she put on a map. The intimacy of her voice often appears in one simple line or short spurts, mixed with the boy's POV. As a reader, I got sucked into this story and totally forgot I'm an author. That's when I know the book is really good—and the author is amazing.
If Zusak and Asher had done the standard POV thing, their critically acclaimed books wouldn't be the same. I think it's important for authors to push the envelope on their craft, but it takes understanding craft in order to know how to effectively "break the rules" with good result.
Okay, so here are my random thoughts on POV (from my POV):


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Sherlock holmes was a lonely man. But someone changed...
Deducing in Time70103431
- by mycroft_is_sassy
- Rating:
- Published: 24 Apr 2014
- Updated: 12 Aug 2014
- Status: In Progress
We all know the story of Sherlock Holmes. The mad man who seems to have all the answers. The man who is a mystery in himself. All are scared, except one. The one girl who might have the bravery to understand Sherlock like no one else. And to along the way, solve the mystery of time.
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Ooh, thats a very nice Xerox box with feather duster. J/KMan, thats in very nice condition, Congrats on acquiring this piece of nostalgic history.
For Father's Day I got a couple of loose Vintage figures that I needed.Luke, Leia, and Death Squad Commander
definitely sounds like a good deal. what parts are you not sure about? got a pic, perhaps we can help?
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Al Qaida – A Lost Cause?
The major Arab TV stations reported in detail on the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Yet there were neither grave announcements of solidarity nor large celebrations.
In Iraq, part of the Shi'a population was jubilant – the Iraqi Shi'a had been terrorised for years by the local branch of al Qaida. The authorities in Saudi Arabia –the country of Bin Laden's birth, which has also seen several terrorist attacks – welcomed the death of the al Qaida leader in clear words.
The radical Islamic Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in contrast, condemned the action, referring to it as a "killing of a holy warrior". Many Arab governments, however, failed to make any statement on the subject.
"Arab Spring" in focus
The reason is obvious enough. Since the beginning of the wave of revolutions at the start of the year, many Arabs have been occupied with other matters: What perspectives are there for democratic change in their countries? Will Libya, Yemen and Syria follow in the footsteps of Tunisia and Egypt and topple their regimes?
Apart from in Morocco, there have been no major al Qaida attacks in the Arab world in recent months. Everywhere, the focus is on the people's protests against the ruling regimes.
Al Qaida has played barely a role in these protests to date – one reason why it was seen as potentially weakened. Without Bin Laden at the helm, it could now lose further support among the general public, says the director of Cambridge University's Arab Media Project and expert on Islamism Khaled Hroub. Bin Laden's death is likely to push the organisation further into crisis. "Osama Bin Laden was once a figure of inspiration and integration for his followers, especially because of his charisma," says Hroub. "But his absence will reveal al Qaida's lack of aims and a clear agenda."
No overall strategy
Khaled Hroub points out that there are conflicts over strategic goals within al Qaida and its various branches in the Maghreb, Yemen, Iraq and other countries. The only consensus, he says, is often that violence is a legitimate means for achieving political ends.
This common ideological potential, he warns however, could now take the form of acts of revenge: "In the short and medium term, I certainly anticipate a wave of new acts of violence by al Qaida. But in the long run terrorism will be reduced."
, an expert on Islamism and a Moroccan university professor, also warns against revenge. He recalls the four French citizens kidnapped in Niger by al Qaida, who are still being held captive. Darif fears that the north African branch of al Qaida might react to Bin Laden's killing by executing hostages.
The professor also points out that al Qaida has nevertheless become far less significant in the Arab world in recent years. The organisation has trouble recruiting new followers in many countries, he says. The fact that it has not been involved in the Arab revolutions is also telling. It is not Bin Laden's strategy of violence that has taken root in the region, says Darif, but the conviction to strive for political change by means of peaceful protest.
Should these uprisings take an increasingly violent course, however, al Qaida's ideology could well become more attractive again, warns the Moroccan expert. "The Gaddafi regime's violent treatment of its own people and the brutal suppression of protests in Syria could ultimately strengthen al Qaida again. Especially if people then do start to believe that the only way to overcome the ruling Arab regimes is violence."
Loay Mudhoon
© Qantara.de 2011
Editors: Arian Fariborz, Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de


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At some point, it seems, conservative ideologues and their friends in Congress will simply get down to admitting that what they have in mind for the American tax code is the following simple situation:
The wealthy will simply pay no income taxes, capital gains or estate taxes of any kind. Meanwhile, average working people will be called upon to bear an ever-greater responsibility for funding essential public services and structures — or, at least, the services and structures that conservatives are willing to allow to continue and/or farm out to corporate interests.
The latest example of this inevitable trend in motion can be see in this new proposal from U.S. Senate conservatives.


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From time to time, a business may use a solution provider to help provide the tools it needs to send and receive messages from you. Businesses rely on these solution providers to store, read and respond to your messages.
The business you're communicating with has a responsibility to ensure that it handles your messages in accordance with applicable law and its privacy policy. For more information on the provider's privacy policy, please contact that business directly.


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2008 Mercedes SLK350 installed the OBC Error Free 6418 LED bulbs for license number plate lights. If you have any questions, please email us at email@example.com
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Twisted Architecture
September 11, 2009 — Christopher Carlson, Senior User Interface Developer, User Interfaces
I didn't set out to tie knots in Norman Foster's Hearst Tower or wrinkle his Gherkin, but I got carried away. It's one of the occupational hazards of working with Mathematica.
It started with an innocent experiment in lofting, a technique also known as "skinning" that originated in boat-building. I wanted to explore some three-dimensional forms, and a basic lofting function seemed like a quick ticket to results. I dashed off the function Loft, which takes a stack of three-dimensional contours and covers it with a skin of polygons.
Loft uses Mathematica's GraphicsComplex primitive to factor out the geometries of the polygons from their topologies. The contour point coordinates are collected in the first argument. The second argument is a list of Polygons whose coordinate values are replaced by integer indices into the coordinate list. My Loft function was straightforward to write, but required a little fancy footwork with indexing to get the polygons wired onto the points in the right way.
I tried out Loft by embedding it in a Manipulate, and was happily on my way discovering some interesting new forms. You can download the Demonstration to try it out yourself.
Even this trivial parameterization of a scaled and twisted half-sphere yields an amazing variety of forms, each of which suggests interesting avenues to explore.
The last of those forms brought to mind Norman Foster's Swiss Re building in London, nicknamed by the locals "the Gherkin."
I wondered how convincingly I could model the Gherkin in Mathematica. It was immediately obvious that my simple Loft function was not up to the task of replicating the white diagrid framing structure employed in the Gherkin, so I set out first to generalize Loft. One thing lead to another, and soon I had the much larger but much more flexible function Build, with which I could explore not only Foster's Gherkin but a large number of other architectural forms based on the simple idea of hanging panes, panels, mullions, and framing members on grids of points.
My Build function works like Loft, but gives me much more flexibility in specifying elements like tubes and polygons and how they are repeated on the contour grid. Like Loft, Build's first argument is a set of contours. The second argument is a Graphics3D-style primitive list whose primitives contain an extra argument that specifies how they should be repeated on the contour grid.
If you imagine the contours numbered from bottom to top and the points in the contours numbered from left to right, {point, contour} indices correspond to coordinates in an integer coordinate system. The primitive
Polygon[{{0,0},{1,2},{1,0}}] appears on a contour grid like this.
A primitive that has no extra repetition argument is automatically repeated to tile the grid. Explicit control over the tiling is had by specifying a pair of tiling translations, as in Polygon[{{0,0},{1,2},{1,0}},{{2,0},{1,1}}]. That polygon tiles the grid like this:
In linear primitives like Line and Tube, the repetition argument specifies the frequency with which the primitive is repeated horizontally, or for horizontal primitives, vertically. By combining repetitions of polygons, tubes, and lines, Build gives me great flexibility in describing assemblages of panes and structural members. Here's an abstract structure I generated to exercise all of Build's primitives.
With Build in hand, my next task was to determine the shape of the Gherkin's profile and build a corresponding contour grid. Always on the lookout for easy results, I experimented first with skinny ellipsoids, and discovered that the top of the Gherkin is too pointed for an ellipsoid to model. No other simple mathematical candidate shape occurred to me, so I resorted to freeform design using splines.
I recalled this Potter's Wheel Demonstration written by my colleague Yu-Sung Chang for modeling freeform solids of revolution. It was just what I needed.
With a reference photo of the Gherkin in a separate notebook, I dragged the control points of the spline profile until I had an acceptable approximation of the Gherkin's shape.
When I was satisfied with the result, I used the Manipulate's "Paste Snapshot" button to get the source code for the figure. From the source code, I cut the spline control-point coordinates and pasted them into a BSplineFunction that defines the profile.
The final step was to slice the profile curve into equally spaced horizontal sections. Mathematica's versatile meshing functions do the trick.
I extracted the mesh point coordinates from the plot output, appended the profile's boundary points, and sorted in the y coordinate to obtain a list of points from which I could construct the Gherkin's contour grid.
The contours themselves correspond to a solid of revolution, with the contour radii given by the x coordinates of the profile points, the elevations by the y coordinates, and the number of points around a contour by twice the number of glass panes around the Gherkin.
I did a quick test Build to see if my contour points seemed correct. Indeed, they did.
As a final step, I refined the contour points at the top to add the dome-like cap at the top of the Gherkin.
I won't deny that from there it required a surprising amount of detailed work using Build to make a finished model. The Gherkin's body, its cap, the topmost dome, the rings, and the boundaries of and transitions between the separate parts all required individual attention. To select material properties and lighting, I set up Manipulate rigs and exercised the sliders until I found the right values. Here is the result.
Once I had the completed model, I could begin to explore. One of the unique strengths of Mathematica is the ability to post-process structures using replacement rules. The output of the Gherkin model contains the colors I used for the dark and light panes of the body. By replacing those colors with new ones, I created this color variation inspired by the Union Jack.
Post-processing via replacement rules can operate on the geometry of an object as well as its appearance attributes. Because all of the coordinate data of my model resides in the first argument of GraphicsComplex, coordinate transformations are particularly easy. And since all of the graphics primitives are all wired to the same coordinates, the primitives automatically move in concert and remain connected when the coordinates are transformed.
Using that technique, I wrote this Manipulate to explore variations in the radial geometry of the Gherkin.
Now I could find the answers to some pressing questions. What if the Gherkin were two-sided rather than round? Three-sided? Four-sided?
What if the Gherkin's dark ventilation shafts were recessed into the building? What if the recesses ran counter to the direction of the shafts? What if London were shaken by a really violent earthquake?
You can cover territory quickly with Mathematica's Manipulate. Surreality is a mere slider's length away from reality. My explorations ended somewhere around this Dali-esque vision of the Gherkin tangoing with itself.
Energized by my results with the Gherkin, I turned my attention to another of Foster's buildings that employs diagrid framing, the Hearst Tower in New York.
Compared to the Gherkin, modeling the Hearst Tower was a piece of cake. The only part that required much thought was generating the floor polygons, which undulate back and forth between two shapes. The rest was straightforward use of the Build function. Here is my model of the main tower structure, rendered with Mathematica's default lighting.
The tower structure is generated by repeatedly translating polygons. On a whim, I substituted rotations for translations, and after adding a few floors, generated this bent tower that wraps around on itself to form a torus.
On the theory that one good turn deserves another, I took a couple of seconds to add a second rotation about an axis perpendicular to the first and created this Möbius building. I love the beautiful rhythm set up by the interaction of the diagrid frame with the curved and winding Möbius surfaces.
On Earth, the Möbius building would be a difficult sell. But I imagine it floating in space, housing a gallery of the finest in cosmic art—a sort of orbital Guggenheim with a twist. Don your Velcro slippers and padded headgear a la 2001: A Space Odyssey and pay attention to artwork on the wall to your right. Once around the gallery, you'll be hanging from the ceiling looking at the opposite wall, which of course is the same wall, the only wall in the gallery. Enjoy the backdrop of the Milky Way, and perhaps the Earth floating in the distance.
You can explore the universe of architectural possibilities with me at this year's ACADIA conference on October 21 in Chicago, where I'll be giving a one-day workshop on how to use Mathematica for parametric, algorithmic, and generative architectural design. Join me and your colleagues for a day of hands-on form exploration by registering for the conference.
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Corrigendum to "A closer look at regime shifts based on coastal observations along the eastern boundary of the North Pacific"
Southern Hemisphere humpback whales wintering off Central America: Insights from water temperature into the longest mammalian migration
Pristiophorus lanae sp. nov., a new sawshark species from the western north Pacific, with comments on the genus Pristiophorus Müller & Henle, 1837 (Chondrichthyes: Pristiophoridae)
Effect of the bat star Asterina miniata (Brandt) on recruitment of the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera C. Agardh
Marine mammal response to interannual variability in Monterey Bay, California
In situ chemical mapping of dissolved iron and manganese in hydrothermal plumes
Characterization of microsatellite loci in the European green crab (Carcinus maenas)
Cobalt and copper distributions in the waters of Santa Monica Basin, California
Temporal stability and origin of chemoclines in the deep hypersaline anoxic Urania basin
Chemical and biological interactions in the Rose Garden hydrothermal vent field, Galapagos spreading center
Modeling the upper ocean dynamics in the Subantarctic and Polar Frontal Zones in the Australian sector of the Southern Ocean
Possible food caching and defence in the Weddell seal: Observations from McMurdo Sound, Antarctica
Sediment-water exchange of total mercury and monomethyl mercury in the San Francisco Bay-Delta
The vertical distribution and feeding habits of two common midwater fishes (Leuroglossus stilbius and Stenobrachius leucopsarus) off Santa Barbara
A shark antibody heavy chain encoded by a nonsomatically rearranged VDJ is preferentially expressed in early development and is convergent with mammalian IgG
The transmission of phocine herpesvirus-1 in rehabilitating and free-ranging Pacific harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) in California
Dietary niche expansion of a kelp forest predator recovering from intense commercial exploitation
Contamination of the deep-sea
Tidal and nontidal oscillations in Elkhorn Slough, CA
Sedimentation in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica: A disturbance mechanism for benthic invertebrates
Population biology of the intertidal kelp, Alaria marginata Postels and Ruprecht: A non-fugitive annual
Particulate thallium fluxes in the northeast pacific
An overview on the role of Hexanchiformes in marine ecosystems
Entanglements of marine mammals and seabirds in central California and the north-west coast of the United States 2001-2005
Antibodies to phocine herpesvirus-1 are common in North American harbor seals (Phoca Vitulina)
Food habits of the two-line eelpout (Bothrocara brunneum: Zoarcidae) at two deep-sea sites in the eastern North Pacific
PCB and DDE contamination in harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) from North-Central California and Bristol Bay, Alaska
Development of a computer-aided age determination system
The relationship between water motion and living rhodolith beds in the southwestern Gulf of California, Mexico
First account of steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) predation on a California sea lion (Zalophus californianus)
Effects of zoospore aggregation and substrate rugosity on kelp recruitment success
Corrigendum to "Total mercury body burden in Pacific harbor seal, Phoca vitulina richardii, pups from central California"
Mouth size and predator strategy of midwater fishes
A new species of chimaera, Hydrolagus melanophasma sp. nov. (Chondrichthyes: Chimaeriformes: Chimaeridae), from the eastern North Pacific.
The level of agreement among experts applying best professional judgment to assess the condition of benthic infaunal communities
Introduction to the systematics and biodiversity of sharks, rays, and chimaeras (Chondrichthyes) of Taiwan
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Pac-12 Basketball Fantasy League Voting: Semifinal #2Posted by Connor Pelton on July 26th, 2012
Our last semifinal pits two seed Adam Butler (Pachoops) up against the fourth seed, Connor Pelton. Below are the rosters, followed by commentary from the respective owner:
Adam Butler
- Head Coach – Ralph Miller, Oregon State
- Guard – Damon Stoudamire, Arizona
- Guard – Mike Bibby, Arizona
- Guard – Michael Dickerson, Arizona
- Guard – Salim Stoudamire, Arizona
- Forward – Sean Elliott, Arizona
- Forward – Ed O'Bannon, UCLA
- Forward – Shareef Abdur-Rahim, California
- Forward – Chris Mills, Arizona
- Center – Todd MacCulloch, Washington
- Center – Bison Dele, Arizona
Adam's Take:
Oh, pardon me! I was still chuckling at Connor's lineup. Allow me to explain.
Indeed, a team centered by Steve Johnson is a formidable one. Anyone who shoots 75% from the floor for a season must be taken seriously. Conversely, anyone who looks like Sideshow Bob should not. That's Robin Lopez. Besides, Todd MacCulloch just set the high score on The Simpsons: Pinball in Springfield at six different Canadian bars, and somewhere a piece of Lopez dies.
Moving our way out of the deep frontcourt we can look at the forwards on Team Pelton. I'm inclined to dismiss Jon Brockman because hustle only counts in real basketball. In fantasy drafts, hustle is just cute. Which is why I suppose Klay Thompson gets a fantasy nod because numbers count in fantasy ball and softness is cute. Please, Chris Mills just sneezed to block a Thompson jumper. I of course have love for Richard Jefferson, but if you're a forward from Arizona and your name isn't Elliott, you're still not going to win this one. The fourth opposing forward's name is Kiki, in which I rest my case.
Guard play, as you noticed, is Team PacHoops' strength and not Team Pelton's. Sure, there's some talent, but no rings. I thought college hoops was all about solid guard play. You're telling me none of these guys could garner one championship? Wait, wait, between these four guards they mustered at best a Sweet Sixteen? Woof (not for you, IT). Reggie and Chauncey appeared in the NCAA Tournament just once each? Does Spike Lee know this? None of that sounds fun. Fun sounds more like never missing an NCAA Tournament and winning it all. That's who I like on my team. Got 'em.
At the helm, Ralph Miller Court sits inside of Gill Coliseum. I can give that and I'll be the first to admit that it's indisputably the most badass possible thing to have a coliseum with your name on it. But look, I know you saw Batman Begins and if you didn't, well, you're missing out. Point being, Bruce Wayne didn't just become Batman. He needed mentorship to become the fearless defender of Gotham he would become. Enter Ra's Al Ghul, the sensei who salvages Wayne from a Chinese prison. Protégé, meet mentor. But the relationship goes sour and the two part ways; Wayne to his seemingly playboy life, Al Ghul to what appeared to be his death (theme?). Alas, the end of the film gives us Al Ghul's villainous return to Gotham and Batman's heroic and final takedown of the mentor. In the ultimate flipping of the script, Al Ghul and all his wisdom and skill is no match for the noble monster he created.
So, what the hell am I getting at? I'm saying that if the greatest hero (or certainly superhero trilogy) of our time could defeat his mentor, so too can Ralph Miller and defeat his Oregon State predecessor, Slats Gill. Miller won more games and was twice National Coach of the Year. Goodness I love me some Ws.
Have I made a stretch here? Perhaps. But you also just got to read college hoops and Batman so you're welcome. Vote PacHoops.


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|Version 2 (modified by joswig, 13 years ago) (diff)
Apple's OS X runs (2007) on two ARM-based devices: the iPhone and the iPod touch.
Both have 128MB RAM and something like a 600Mhz ARM processor. The operating system is a flavor of OS X with a Cocoa-derived user interface toolkit.
Apple has announced that it will provide a software development kit for these computers in early 2008.
Clozure CL could be ported to such a computer:
- its memory footprint is quite low
- it has an objective-c bridge that could be adapted
- it could host a cross compiler on a Macintosh and use a runtime on the OS X machine.
- the device has IP connectivity, so the development environment and the runtime could be connected over IP
Currently Apple does not seem to the Interface Builder to specify the user interface of these devices. The user interfaces is generated by the code.


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A collection of scholarly works about individual liberty and free markets. A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.
? - ?
Historical Period:
Ancient Asia
Many Confucian texts were written by many authors over hundreds of years. In many cases, we do not know the authors' names or exact dates of their composition.


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Summary of Strategic Infrastructure
World Economic Forum © 2015. Prepared in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group
Looking for the report?
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- Innovative
Infrastructure drives all economic output, yet the world faces a $1 trillion shortfall in infrastructure spending every year. In this clear, accessible report, the World Economic Forum, in partnership with the Boston Consulting Group, highlights the political and regulatory hurdles that public-private partnerships (PPPs) often encounter in infrastructure projects. The study outlines current best practices and provides real-world examples of successful PPPs in action. While the study does not promote specific policies, the omission is reasonable, given that investment landscapes and infrastructure needs vary dramatically across countries and regions. getAbstract suggests this objective overview to senior officials making strategic decisions on infrastructure, as well as to investors, developers, executives and leaders of nongovernmental organizations.
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LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Kim Kardashian's divorce case returns to court on Friday with an attorney for the reality star urging a speedy end to her marriage to National Basketball Association player Kris Humphries.
Attorneys for the former couple disagree over a timetable for a trial to end the marriage, which Humphries wants annulled.
Kardashian, who is pregnant with a child conceived with boyfriend Kanye West, is asking a judge to order a trial to end her marriage as soon as possible.
Humphries wants the case to remain on hold until his season ends.
Kardashian filed for divorce on Oct. 31, 2011 after 72 days of marriage.
Humphries claims the televised nuptials were based on fraud, a claim that would have to be proven at trial.


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Hollywood Facial Animation Tech Comes to Sony PC-Based Games
Motion sensor technology isn't exactly a new thing; neither is facial recognition technology, although both are still being fine-tuned in their various consumer use cases.
But precise animation technology is usually reserved for Hollywood movie making. Think of movie stars standing against a green screen, wearing special suits with buttons on them while their movements are recorded and translated to an animated character. Now, add that to your PC games, with a little help from a Web camera.
At the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles this week, Sony Online Entertainment has been showing off technology that makes an animated character on screen mimic a gamer's facial expressions.
In a demo, SOE showed how an animated frog on a PC screen talks, yawns, nods its head and raises its eyebrows exactly as the gamer is doing so. Voice-altering technology also changes your voice to suit your character's.
"SOEmote" is targeted at the thousands of MMO, or massive multi-player online, gamers who are looking to convey emotion and add personal expression — and in some cases, mask their voices — to the other players they're communicating with through the games.
Sony licensed the technology from a California-based company called Image Metrics. The voice-altering tech comes from Vivox.
This feature is in its earliest stages and is expected to be available this month. To start, SOEmote only works with one title, the eight-year-old EverQuest II, though Sony says it plans to add SOEmote to all of its online games. And the SOEmote tech suffers from the same problem we've seen with other motion sensor and gesture recognition tech: When someone else walks by your screen, the sensors sometimes pick up on that movement, interrupting the intended effect.
For an idea of how it works, check out this video below:
- Nintendo Holds Back the Goods on Wii U Launch Date
- Nintendo Reveals a Wii Bit More About the Wii U
- From Sony, More Games and More Cross-Platform Play
- Ubisoft Prepping Eight Wii U Titles, Including Exclusives Like Zombi U
- EA Building Up Its Facebook Empire — This Time With SimCity Social
- Ear-Splitting, Eyeball-Peeling Demos From EA
- Microsoft Calls Dibs on New Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for Xbox
- Microsoft Doubling Down on Video and Music for the Xbox
- Microsoft Unloads the Latest for Xbox: Shooters, Sports and Songs
- Nintendo's Wii U Embraces Social Networking (Video)
- E3 Interview: EA's Riccitiello Promises to Make "Eyeballs Peel"


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Michael. I am behind my usual spot. Come on by.
I am so proud to be your hero!
Believe me, not all the QB's want Seclfo to be the OC or QB's coach.
We've signed 6 defensive backs so far. Two with JC experience.
Think Dooley plans to checkmate Bosie passing offense next year?
Varsity Bulldog
GATA Goddess and Ultimate Fan Winner 2011
Progressive King of 2011


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Pushing new boundaries in LCD (liquid crystal display) TV size, Sony will launch later this year a set that's considerably thinner than others on the market, it said at the IFA electronics show in Berlin on Thursday.
The ZX-1 is a 40-inch TV that measures just 9.9 millimeters at its thinnest point along the edges. In comparison Sharp's new XS-series sets, which were also unveiled on Thursday at IFA, are 23 millimeters thick while new plasma TVs from Panasonic due next year will be about 25 millimeters thick.
Sony has so far only announced a precise launch date for Japan, where it will go on sale on Nov. 10 and cost ¥490,000 (US$4,540), but it should be available in Europe at around the same time. Launch plans for the U.S. were not disclosed.
The thickness of a TV is fast emerging as a new battleground in the market and manufacturers are concentrating on slimming down the backlight, which sits behind the actual LCD panel and generates the light that shines through the screen.
Sony also focused on the backlight but instead of making it thinner moved it from behind the panel into the edge of the set around the LCD panel. LED (light emitting diode) arrays provide the light from the side, which is shone in and reflected out through the LCD panel.
Another secret to its size it that the TV tuner and some other signal processing technology have been removed from the TV case and put into a stand-alone unit. To connect the TV to the box Sony has developed a wireless transmission system that is capable of sending high-definition video over a distance of around 30 meters. This means a power cable is all that is required to be run to the set.
The unit is compatible with DVB-T terrestrial and DVB-C cable television and has an integrated MPEG4 AVC-HD tuner for high-definition broadcasting. It can also hook up with devices such as a Blu-ray Disc player or games console. And because the unit won't necessarily be sitting close to the TV Sony employs radio technology in the remote control, so it isn't limited to short-range, line-of-sight like current infrared remote controls.


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The Rise of Powerful Vegans
It used to be easy for moguls to flaunt their power. All they had to do was renovate the chalet in St. Moritz, buy the latest Gulfstream (GD) jet, lay off 5,000 employees, or marry a much younger Asian woman. By now, though, they've used up all the easy ways to distinguish themselves from the rest of us—which may be why a growing number of America's most powerful bosses have become vegan. Steve Wynn, Mort Zuckerman, Russell Simmons, and Bill Clinton are now using tempeh to assert their superiority. As are Ford Executive Chairman of the Board Bill Ford (F), Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, venture capitalist Joi Ito, Whole Foods Market (WFMI) Chief Executive Officer John Mackey, and Mike Tyson. Yes, Mike Tyson, a man who once chewed on human ear, is now vegan. His dietary habit isn't nearly as impressive as that of Alec Baldwin, though, who has found a way to be both vegan and fat at the same time.
It shouldn't be surprising that so many CEOs are shunning meat, dairy, and eggs: It's an exclusive club. Only 1 percent of the U.S. population is vegan, partly because veganism isn't cheap: The cost comes from the value of specialty products made by speciality companies with cloying names (tofurkey, anyone?). Vegans also have to be powerful enough to even know what veganism is.
"CEOs are smart. There just hadn't been enough exposure for people to glom onto this trend," says Ingrid E. Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "The information is everywhere now. Instead of 'Better buy this blue chip,' it's 'Better eat vegan.' " When Newkirk learned Wynn had become a vegan, she didn't think the news was crazy. "Having dolphins in a small tank outside a casino is crazy," she says. "Ordering vegetables is not."
Wynn agrees. The self-described "animal nut," who included the Humane Society of the U.S. in his will, sold the Mirage Hotel—and its dolphin tank—in 2000, and gave up meat and dairy this June. Wynn was converted when his friend—telecom mogul and recent vegan Gulu Lalvani—made him watch Eating, a documentary in which director Mike Anderson explains his strict meat- and oil-free diet. "I watched it, and I changed the next morning," says Wynn. "Bang! Just like that." The transition was eased by the fact that Wynn happened to be on a yacht with a personal chef. As soon as he got home, he began spreading the gospel as only a mogul can—like buying 10,000 copies of Eating, one for each of his employees. "I'm providing the ass for the insurance. If they're sick, we're picking up the tab," says Wynn. "If I can keep them healthier, I'm acting like a smart businessman."
Though he swears it's not a condition of employment, Wynn has persuaded most of his senior management to go vegan. And since the majority of Wynn's lunch companions ask his assistant in advance what he likes to eat, he's got the upper hand at lunch before even sitting down. He can also suggest one of his own joints—Wynn now offers vegan menus at his restaurants in Las Vegas and Macau, including the steakhouses. "Last night I had dinner with Terry Semel, and we were eating at Wing Lei, the Chinese restaurant," Wynn says. "They couldn't believe the stir fry wasn't in oil. Everybody switched to my food."
Wynn's a convincing salesman, but a decade ago even he couldn't have given away free seitan. Being a vegan then was so weird that pundits listed it as a reason Dennis Kucinich couldn't be the Democratic Presidential nominee. "People weren't sure if it was another political party or an ethnic group they'd never heard of," Kucinich says. While the Ohio representative failed to win the Democratic nomination in 2004—and in 2008—Kucinich's diet has become so accepted that he was able to persuade Representative Robert A. Brady (D-Pa.), the head of the Committee on House Administration, to include vegan options in the congressional cafeteria. When Bill Clinton announced his dietary epiphany—"I got back to basically what I weighed in high school," he told Wolf Blitzer this September—Kucinich decided to finally finish his own diet book, whose working title, The Cleveland Diet, will probably be changed by its publisher. Kucinich, however, did not go vegan for power, but rather for love. Fifteen years ago, he says, "I met someone who was vegan when I went to the state senate. This was someone I was very fond of. This was kind of a courtship strategy."
This is how most guys go vegan. According to Bart Potenza, co-owner of Manhattan power vegan restaurant Candle 79, the rise of the power vegan coincides with the rise of the vegan second wife. As the Four Seasons of seitan piccata, Candle 79 regularly hosts not only Zuckerman but also News Corp. (NWSA) CEO Rupert Murdoch and former Viacom (VIA) CEO Tom Freston, who both have pro-vegan wives. "I live in the shadow of a power vegan," says Freston, whose wife, Kathy, got Oprah to convert for a three-week trial. "I'm well on the way myself. It's pretty clear the benefits are undeniable and many." In other words, as Potenza says, "I think she has him pretty much handled."
For others, veganism is a moral imperative. In 2000, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone went to visit Farm Sanctuary, an animal rescue organization with a location in upstate New York, and returned a vegan. So far it hasn't hurt business. "My meal companions are sometimes curious at most," says Stone, "but never judgmental." Though that tends to happen when you run a company with an estimated value of more than one billion dollars.
Farm Sanctuary's board includes a number of powerful vegans, including Tom Anderson, a former partner at McKinsey and CEO of college financing company Upromise. As an associate at McKinsey, he kept his veganism quiet for fear it would make him seem like a hippie. However, as he's climbed the corporate ladder, he's become increasingly eager to share the gospel of his eating ethics. In fact, he's bonded with a few executives over their shared anti-meat-and-dairy proclivities. The only times it hurts him, he claims, are when potential business partners tell hunting stories. "I'll have to say, 'I don't want to hear about that.' Then someone is on the defensive, and you don't want that in a business context," he says. Though as one associate of Dick Cheney can tell you, it's less uncomfortable than getting shot in the face.
Veganism's image, however, could still use some updating. While it remains associated with indie rock stars, such as Moby, and people with pixie haircuts, such as Ellen DeGeneres, it also counts among its newest converts ex-NBA star John Salley, Atlanta Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez, former National Hockey League brawler Georges Laraque, professional poker player Daniel Negreanu, and, less recently, pop star and amateur bodybuilder Madonna. Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial artist and vegan Luke Cummo says that he drinks his own urine.
And herein lies veganism's appeal to moguls: It affords them the opportunity to control their own health with the same manic id with which they control everything else. Wynn says his new diet has allowed him to get off Lipitor (PFE). Clinton's diet made him a fashion darling at his daughter's wedding this summer. "It's probably a good thing in a CEO," says Freston about veganism. "At least they won't be toppling over like those McDonald's (MCD) CEOs." This latest show of power, in other words, gives them all the more time to enjoy the Swiss chalet and the private jet.
November 04, 2010 / Business Week


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por Venkataraj•
Aug 14, 2020
Amazing course for someone who seeks to improve Leadership and Governance in any non-profit organization in any country!
Don't miss out on the reading list and recommended books and TED videos ... I almost purchased all the books for my society!
por ISABELLA G B•
Jan 19, 2018
Very interesting! powerfull tools to improve governance in Nonprofit organizations
por Gustavo P•
Apr 02, 2019
Very helpful course.
por Abdul H•
Aug 13, 2018
por Michail D•
Jan 09, 2016
My overall experience with this Specialization, in general, and this 1st Course, in particular, is very positive.
On the positive side, I really like the fact that the Courses are practice-oriented and provide not only theoretical frameworks, but also insights from experts, practical guidance, and evidence-based best practices.
Also, the idea of applying Team-Based Learning (TBL), in the forms of Readiness Assurance Tests (RATs) and scenario-based RAT Application Exercises, for assessing participants' learning, is excellent!
However, there are a couple of downsides, that's why I'm not giving a 5 star positive feedback.
The first problem is that not all of the required readings are freely available via the Coursera platform, or elsewhere online. I appreciate the excellent quality of the chosen materials, but, if it becomes compulsory to spend more than US $100 for buying books, then the total cost of this Specialization elevates quite a lot, given that I had to pay €162 for it. On my opinion, there should be at least a note in the description of both the Specialization and the Courses about these requirements, in order to make an informed decision before enrolling.
The second downside has to do with Course 1 and Course 2 overlapping materials. I'm referring to guest interview videos. That's mainly a problem of the 2nd Course, as there are almost no guest interviews in this Course, and the one interview provided is already available in Course 1. I understand that the topics discussed apply to the topics of both Courses, but, still, I find it an unnecessary repetition.
The last problem is about the dates that the Courses are run. Course 1 runs during a given period, Course 2 is on demand, but it makes sense to attend it before Course 3, that also runs during a given period, which overlaps with the period of the 1st Course. Sorry, this makes it very difficult to attend everything and to seriously focus, as it's always about running for deadlines, especially when one has to produce three (3) Board Effectiveness Assessment Reflection (BEAR) papers :( .
por Pedro J M M•
Feb 27, 2018
It would be good to have all the required readings available for free.


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Utah State University joins eight schools in Idaho, Montana and Kansas to form a regional network aimed at increasing the number of Native American students entering and completing master's and doctoral programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Funded by a five-year, $750,000 National Science Foundation Infrastructure Improvement grant, the program, known as the Indigenous STEM Research and Graduate Education program or "ISTEM," is led by USU alum Ed Galindo, associate director of the Idaho Space Grant at the University of Idaho and director of the non-profit Native American Research and Education Foundation.
"American Indians have always had an awareness of STEM, yet only 0.3 percent of engineers in the United States are Native American," says Galindo, who earned a doctorate in education from USU in 2003. "We need to build a different paradigm of educating Native scholars, including providing more Native faculty members in universities and tribal colleges, as well as addressing challenges that prevent students from pursuing higher education."
ISTEM, which, in addition to USU and UI, includes Idaho State University, Boise State University, the College of Southern Idaho, North Idaho College, Salish Kootenai College, Haskell Indian Nations University and the University of Montana, will foster efforts with native communities and a national American Indian advisory board to plan ways to recruit and retain Native American students.
"The program will pioneer creative ways to reduce barriers to success for students working to obtain graduate degrees in STEM fields," says Nancy Huntly, director of the USU Ecology Center and professor in USU's Department of Biology, who serves as the USU liaison to the ISTEM Regional Native Network.
Participation in ISTEM offers opportunities for USU students to benefit from a regional network of students and faculty who will share experiences, expertise, research and training programs, Huntly says.
In August 2013, USU also initiated a local chapter of SACNAS — Society for Advancement of Hispanics/Chicanos and Native Americans in Science — that complements ISTEM efforts. The student-led chapter is active in research and outreach, including coordination of learning activities for USU's Science Unwrapped public outreach program.
"These networks allow USU students to share ideas and be part of an extended community of mentors," says Huntly, who is among supporters of the USU SACNAS chapter and also serves as Science Unwrapped chair.
As part of the NSF grant requirements, the ISTEM researchers will assess efforts during the grant's five-year span and recommend future efforts.
"We plan to expand the program to more states and institutions," Galindo says.
Prior to joining UI's faculty, Galindo, who attended USU as a NASA Space Grant fellow, served as a science teacher for the Shoshone-Bannock Junior and Senior High School on Idaho's Fort Hall Reservation. Working with USU's Get Away Special student space research team and Department of Physics, he led Shoshone-Bannock students in preparing the first Native American science experiment in space. The experiment, dubiously dubbed "Fun with Urine," was an innovative project demonstrating use of zeolite stone to purify urine into recyclable water (technology that may be crucial to future long-duration space exploration) that flew aboard space shuttle Discovery in June 1998.
"USU has provided me with many funding opportunities, but more importantly, friendship and excitement for learning," Galindo says. "ISTEM will continue this to strengthen this bond."
Related link:
Contact: Nancy Huntly, 435-797-2555, firstname.lastname@example.com
Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, email@example.com


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Category: American Restaurant
Address: 704 Purley Way, Croydon, CR0 4RS
Main: 0344 69...
Website: www.tgifridays.co.uk/
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Website: Visit Website
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Welcome to the Croydon Fridays! Along with mouth watering food and tempting drinks, we bring fun, friendliness and an extra large helping of good vibes to the table. It's what makes every day seem like Friday. From our signature loaded skins to our legendary Jack Daniels sauce, we take real American flavours and make them different. These undeniably tasty and original flavours are at the heart of everything we do, and our unique and extensive menu is exactly why you might call us the home of the daredevil. What are Fridays all about? Celebration and fun, of course! And with our tempting food, dreamy cocktails and infectious buzz, we've got all the ingredients for fun right here at 704 Purley Way, CR0 4RS. Visit us today!
TGI Fridays - Croydon
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WakeMed Physicians Support a Patient's Right to Understand His Care
"At my age, when you do these things, you get first place in your age group simply because there's nobody else as old as you," remarked Bob Schubauer about the half marathons, 5Ks, 10Ks and triathlons he has completed throughout his life. At age 64, he completed his second triathlon – just two months before his first heart attack. Chest pain and the urging of his wife, Barb, spurred Bob's visit to the Nash General Hospital emergency department in Rocky Mount, NC. "The doctor told me I had a heart attack and that three of my arteries were nearly 100 percent blocked," said Bob. "I couldn't believe it." Bob was incredulous. He felt certain he was winning the battle against heart disease that so many men in his family have been fighting. His father had a heart attack at age 50 and several of his uncles have had multiple heart procedures. Bob's physicians assured him that his healthy lifestyle is the reason heart disease became a factor in his life at a much later age than his family members. Bob was rushed to the WakeMed Heart Center in Raleigh, where he was scheduled to undergo coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery the next day. But Bob postponed the procedure and for good reason: He wanted more information about his condition and why heart surgery was the best option. "I told Dr. (Bryon) Boulton I was 50/50 on whether I wanted to go ahead with the surgery. I wasn't sure it was my best and only option," explained Bob. What happened next pleasantly surprised Bob. "I thought that postponing such a major procedure just because I wanted more information wouldn't go over well with Dr. Boulton, but I couldn't have been more wrong," said Bob. "Dr. Boulton didn't even bat an eye. He sat down and spoke to my wife and me for a couple hours. After that, Dr. Sinden came in to talk to me. He used my films and walked me through my own blockages, explaining why stents, which some of my relatives had, were not going to work for me and that the surgery was the way to go." Dr. John Sinden is a cardiologist with WakeMed Heart & Vascular Physicians. "We don't make major decisions in other facets of our lives without having all the facts," explained Dr. Sinden. "Decisions about how to treat a serious heart condition is certainly no exception. It's your right as a patient to have the information you need about your treatment, and as physicians, it is my and Dr. Boulton's responsibility to provide that information."That was a Wednesday. Bob's CABG surgery was performed the following Friday. He was up walking the day after his procedure and continues to feel better and better each day. Again, Bob's physicians point to his healthy lifestyle as a key factor in his successful recovery. Approximately one month after surgery, Bob received the OK to go back to work."I was so impressed with the time the doctors took to explain things to me and the nurses who took care of me," said Bob. "They knew their roles and didn't miss anything." Bob's experience serves as a lesson to all: When it comes to your health, you are the primary decision maker. If you have questions, don't be afraid to ask. Like the physicians and nurses who cared for Bob, your doctors and nurses should be more than happy to answer your questions.
3000 New Bern Ave.
Raleigh, NC 27610