text:
No items found
Thursday 24/10/2019 at 15:00 in room C0.20 The next MSDSlab meeting will be on Thursday, October 24th. In this talk, Prof. dr. M. (Michael) Friendly, author of various books on data... Read more →
Thursday 06/06/2019 at 15:00 in room B1.09 The next MSDSlab meeting will be on Thursday, June 6. In this workshop, dr. R.D. (Raoul) Schram will present his research on using machine... Read more →
Thursday 11/04/2019 at 15:00 in room B1.09 The next (very hands-on) MSDSlab meeting will be on Thursday 11 April. In this workshop, Erik-Jan van Kesteren will do an interactive walkthrough creating simple, publication-ready... Read more →
Thursday 14/03/2019 at 15:00 in room B1.09 The next MSDSlab meetings will be on Thursday the 14th of March and will be presented by Shiva Nadi of Utrecht University. She will provide... Read more →
Thursday 13/12/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 Franciska's presentation can be found here. The last MSDSlab meeting of 2018 will be presented by Franciska de Jong. Franciska is the Executive Director of CLARIN ERIC (Common LAnguage... Read more →
Tuesday 27/11/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 The de Ridder lab is the bioinformatics research group of the Center for Molecular Medicine at the University Medical Center Utrecht. They... Read more →
Thursday 15/11/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 Our next meeting will be on the 15th of November. For the second time this year a cultural historian will present a MSDSlab. This... Read more →
Thursday 01/11/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 Our next meeting will be on the 1st of November. PhD candidate Danielle McCool will discuss the problems and possibilities of (smartphone) GPS data.... Read more →
Thursday 18/10/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 Our next meeting, on the 18th of October. For the first time an expert from the digital humanities will come present. Cultural historian Joris... Read more →
Thursday 04/10/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 Our next meeting will be a joint meeting of the MSDSlab Group and the Survey Group of the Statistics and Methodology Department. This time,... Read more →
Thursday 20/09/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 You can now find Jeanine's ppt here. The new academic year has started and so will the MSDSlab meetings. Kicking of is professor Jeanine... Read more →
Thank you Erik-Jan for the interactive and last MSDSlab of this academic year. Erik-Jan's presentation can be found here. The MSDSlab meetings will be back in September. Original post: The... Read more →
Monday 11/06/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 The next MSDSlab meetings will be on Monday (Instead of Thursday) the 11th of June and will be presented by Lianne Ippel from Maastricht University.... Read more →
Thank you again to Veronika and everyone who was present. Veronika's PPT can now be downloaded here. Had a great time talking about crowdsourcing in medical imaging at MSDSLAB at... Read more →
Adriënne's PPT can now be found here: Talk MSDSlab on grand challenges – AM Mendrik. Thursday 24/05/2018 at 15:00 in room A.308 Adriënne Mendrik of the Netherlands eScience Center will give a presentation... Read more →
Thursday 17/05/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 Thomas Debray from the UMCU will host the next MSDSlab. He will discuss how we can investigate, quantify and improve the generalizability of prediction... Read more →
Paul's presentation and code can now be found the MSDSlab Github page. Original post: Thursday 03/05/2018 at 15:30 in room B1.09 Paul Vierthaler, a university lecturer at Leiden University in... Read more →
Meys' slides are now available here. Original post: Thursday 26/04/2018 at 15:00 in room A3.17 Wouter Meys, of the Amsterdam based Citizen Data Lab will give a talk on data visualization. The Citizen Data Lab... Read more →
A small GitHub Repository with the R code and PPT used by Katrijn van Deun at the last MSDSlab session can be found at the MSDSlab GitHub page or at:... Read more →
Here you can find the slides of Emmeke's talk Original announcement: Thursday 22/03/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 In this meeting, Emmeke will introduce us to Hidden Markov Models. The HMM is... Read more →
You can find the slides of the presentation Georg gave here (.pdf, 3MB). Original announcement: Thursday 08/03/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 The speaker for this meeting will be Georg Krempl, who will... Read more →
The meeting was a success! Click here (.pdf, 2MB) to download the updated slides with a worked-out example of how the PC algorithm works, and contact Oisín Ryan (mailto:email@example.com) if... Read more →
We have four new books on computational social science for the MSDSlab library: If you want to read any, go to the library page! Read more →
Thursday 08/02/2018 at 15:00 in room B1.09 This meeting, Ayoub Bagheri (M&S, UMCU) gave an introduction to text mining in general and some of his work in particular. Here's a quote: Text mining... Read more →
Introducing: MSDSlab Sessions Data science is not only attending talks and discussing methods, but also analysing datasets and practical problem-solving. A true data scientist knows which methods to use as... Read more →
For those who want to review the presentation, it is available here: GitHub at Utrecht (.pdf, 4.3 MB). The github repository Mislav showed at the end of the talk can... Read more →
The last MSDSlab meeting of the year 2017 has been cancelled. Read more →
Thursday 30/11/2017 at 15:00 in room B1.09 This meeting is all about software, Daniel will go over construction of neural nets in Keras, an R interface to Google's TensorFlow. Part of the meeting will... Read more →
For the presentation, click here: Variational inference (PDF, 461KB) Thursday 16/11/2017 at 15:00 in room B1.09 How to estimate (incredibly) complex models? With machine and deep learning algorithms, we can model very complex systems. One... Read more →
We had a full house this time! Thanks all for joining. As discussed near the end of the meeting, head over to keras.rstudio.com and try out the Reuters example (almost at... Read more →
Matthieu Brinkhuis gave an exciting lecture on data analysis of the dynamic maths learning platform maths garden. A great discussion ensued about the details of the models used and their connection... Read more →
After discussing the source and uses of Mutual Information, Erik-Jan introduced the concept of Maximal Information Criterion (MIC): a relatively new measure of dependence designed to detect both linear and... Read more →
MSDSlab was on summer break and returned at the start of the 2017/2018 academic year. Read more →
Thursday 08/06/2017 at 14:00 in room B1.09 Oğuzhan Öğreden (MS Master) and Erik-Jan will be giving an explanation and demonstration of the UMC Utrecht High-Performance Cluster. It will be a... Read more →
Thursday 11/05/2017 at 14:00 in room B1.09 In this MSDSlab meeting, dr. Silja Renooij (UU Computer Science, Decision Support Systems) will tell us about her research in Bayesian networks: Bayesian networks... Read more →
Thursday 13/04/2017 at 10:00 in room B1.09 In this MSDSlab meeting, Minke Brandenburg (UU, Artificial Intelligence) will tell us about her project on the topic of text mining in police... Read more →
Thursday 30/03/2017 at 14:00 in room B1.09 For this MSDSlab, Johnny van Doorn (PhD student at UvA) joined us to give a talk about PageRank. This comes from a talk... Read more →
Thursday March 2 at 15:00 – 16:00 in room A3.17 Erik-Jan and Daniel are working on an NWO Talent Grant full proposal, to be handed in by the 6th of March. Part... Read more →
Thursday 2 February, 11:00 room A3.17 At our next meeting Joop Hox will discuss "computational social science" based on an article written for the journal Methodology. Joop's article (draft, not... Read more →
Nikolaj discussed his 2014 paper "Which method predicts recidivism best?: a comparison of statistical, machine learning and data mining predictive models", published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Association,... Read more →
CANCELED due to illness This meeting will be in our regular room at the regular time: SGG B1.09 at 14:00 Topic: Comparing predictive model performance on reconviction data Preparation: Read... Read more →
Boosting: fun and delicious. Erik-Jan explains boosting while gesticulating wildly The group launches into a tense competition for the ultimate error rate Maarten is the cunning champion of the spiral... Read more →
This meeting was on Thursday at 14:00 in room A3.17. During this meeting, Kees introduced Support Vector Machines, a famous "black-box" classification and regression method. For those who want to try out... Read more →
This meeting was on the 27th at 14:00 in room A3.17! We discussed the same paper, starting with a presentation by Emmeke to refresh our memory on how regression trees and... Read more →
Edit this excerpt before posting! [click to read] Read more →
No items found


text:
Astronauts take over Primrose Hill
PUBLISHED: 14:34 08 January 2013 | UPDATED: 11:40 09 January 2013
Rumours of a space invasion swept across north London as astronauts mysteriously cropped up in Tube stations and parks today (Tuesday, January 8).
Early morning commuters were stopped in their tracks as more than 15 spacemen marched up Primrose Hill - echoing a scene from War Of The Worlds.
And those taking the Tube to work were astonished to find themselves sitting next to galactic cowboys wearing full oxygen masks and white suits.
Twitter was afire with conspiracy, mulling on everything from NASA training to a TV advert.
Royal Parks, which manages Primrose Hill, had not been contacted about the astronaut invasion and Transport for London (TfL) had not heard about visitors from another realm.
Fashion designer Henry Holland, who was also mystefied by the spacemen, wrote on Twitter: "Whilst training at sunrise on Primrose Hill this morning, there were 20 astronauts in full suits just wandering about. #alieninvasion?"
However, there is one person in the know.
Vicky Purnell, of Mischief PR, said on Twitter: "All will be revealed on Thursday #alieninvasion."
Until then, north London residents are advised to listen out for any strange hums and report all low flying UFOs.
If you value what this story gives you, please consider supporting the Ham&High. Click the link in the orange box above for details.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
To help find out what you think of our service, and to comply with Healthcare regulations we carry out an ongoing Patient Satisfaction Survey. Upon completion of their treatment patients will be given a questionnaire and asked to fill it in and return it to our Senior Nurse, Ronnie Andrews.
We welcome comments and suggestions about the service we provide. If you want to make a complaint about your treatment, we follow the standard procedures used byour host hospitals. The facility staff will guide you through this process. Complaints about the general service and or facilities within the department will be handled by
The Managing Director Mr Philip Sayers,
LHM Healthcare Ltd.
Telephone: 020 8539 1222
e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
If you wish to make complaint about the company or your treatment in confidence, it will be handled by the Hospitals Complaints Department at the following address:
Complaints Department,
Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS-Trust,
Leytonstone, London, E11 1NR
Telephone: 020 8539 5522
James Paget University Hospital NHS-Trust
Lowestoft Road, Gorleston-on-Sea
Norfolk, NR31 6LA
Privacy and Dignity of Patients
LHM Healthcare Ltd. makes every effort to ensure that all patients are treated with respect and afforded the appropriate measure of dignity and privacy.
Toilets are available on the premises for everybody including disabled patients. Consultations and examinations are carried out in the privacy of the doctor's examination room and private changing facilities are available to all patients before and after treatments.
A separate room is available for the assessment and treatment of problem wounds.


text:
Who's Listening
NHNancy HaddadenSenior Project Officer - Coastal @ City of Fremantle08 9432 9999
Cookies help us to understand how you use our website so that we can provide you with the best experience when you are on our site. To find out more, read our privacy policy and cookie policy.
Please review and manage the Cookie settings below. Apart from 'Strictly necessary cookies', you can change other cookie settings if present, at any time by clicking the 'Cookie Settings' link in the footer of the page.


text:
On 14 August, you are invited to "an audience" with Bill Clinton. You have a choice. You can attend the "breakfast and speech" or the "brunch buffet and speech." These will take place in the white elephantine Millennium Dome, where a place in the "Kings' Row" will cost you 799. Last year, Clinton made more than 5m granting "audiences." Not only the usual corporate types attend. A few years ago, I watched a conga line of writers, journalists, publishers and others of liberal reputation shuffling towards his grotesquely paid presence at the Guardian Hay Festival.
The Clinton scam is symptomatic of the death of liberalism — not its narcissistic, war-loving wing ("humanitarian intervention"), which is ascendant, but the liberalism that speaks against crimes committed in its name, while extending rungs of the economic ladder to those below. It was Clinton's promotion of the former and crushing of the latter that so inspired new Labour's "project." Clinton, not Bush, was Cool Britannia's true Mafia godfather. Keen observers of Tony Blair will recall that during one of his many farewell speeches, the sociopath did a weird impersonation of Clinton's head wiggle.
Clinton is able to make a shedload a money because he is contrasted with the despised Bush as the flawed good guy who did his best for the world and brought economic boom to the US — the fabled American dream no less. Both notions are finely spun lies. What Clinton and Blair have most in common is that they are the most violent leaders of their countries in the modern era; that includes Bush. Consider Clinton's true record:
In 1993, he pursued George H W Bush's invasion of Somalia. He invaded Haiti in 1994. He bombed Bosnia in 1995 and Serbia in 1999. In 1998, he bombed Afghanistan; and, at the height of his Monica Lewinsky troubles, he momentarily diverted the headline writers to a major "terrorist target" in Sudan that he ordered destroyed with an onslaught of missiles. It turned out to be sub-Saharan Africa's largest pharmaceutical plant, the only source of chloroquine, the treatment for malaria, and other drugs that were lifelines to hundreds of thousands. As a result, wrote Jonathan Belke, then of the Near East Foundation, "tens of thousands of people — many of them children — have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis and other treatable diseases."
Long before Shock and Awe, Clinton was destroying and killing in Iraq. Under the lawless pretense of a "no-fly zone," he oversaw the longest allied aerial bombardment since the Second World War. This was hardly reported. At the same time, he imposed and tightened a Washington-led economic siege estimated to have killed a million civilians. "We think the price is worth it," said his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, in an exquisite moment of honesty.
Clinton's economic "legacy" — like Blair's — is the most unequal society Americans have known. In his last presidential year, 1999, I walked along the ocean front at Santa Monica in California and was struck by the number of middle-class homeless, "bag gents" who had lost executive jobs and families thanks largely to Clinton's North American Free Trade treaty. As for working Americans, the boasted high employment figures concealed a reversion to real wage levels of the 1970s. It was Clinton, not Bush, who wiped out the last of Roosevelt's New Deal. Back in Santa Monica the other day, I noted the bag gents had multiplied.
These days, you see Good Ol' Bill, or the Comeback Kid, as he is variously known, wiggling his head on the TV news, campaigning for his wife, Hillary, among Americans who, terminally nave, still believe the Democratic Party is theirs and that "it's time to vote a woman into the White House." Together, the Clintons are known as "Billary" and rightly so. Like Good Ol' Bill, his wife has no plans to address the divisions of a society that allows 130,000 Americans to claim the wealth of millions of their fellow citizens. Like GOB, she wants to continue Iraq's torment for perhaps a decade. And she has "not ruled out" attacking Iran.
Those settling down in the Kings' Row at the Millennium Dome on 14 August for breakfast or brunch with GOB, having transferred another swag to the Clinton bank account, are unlikely to reflect on the blood spilt and the epic suffering caused, or on the moral corruption of the liberal ideology that courted and acclaimed Clinton, along with the criminal Blair.
But we should.
August 10, 2007
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, filmmaker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia. His new book, Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and Its Triumphs, is published by Jonathan Cape in June.


text:
This week I went to a screening of Won't Back Down starring Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal. The movie is about a mom and a teacher who band together and use the Parent Trigger law (which is never mentioned by name) to take over and turn around a failing elementary school in Pittsburgh. The film is loosely based on real events (though in my research I couldn't find anything other than the Los Angeles based parent trigger law, which was backed by a big charter school organization), and produced by the same man who produced Waiting for Superman. As someone who has been deeply embroiled in the discussion and reality of parents advocating for better schools, for student and parent rights, and as a PA C0-President who has worked closely with many teachers and administrators, this movie got to me on many levels. So, I have decided to break it down in two parts: As a movie and then as a propaganda film.
The Merits of the Movie:
Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal are wonderful. The acting is spot on and engaging. The script however, is full of holes and clichés and desperate to create dramatic tension because just trying to get names on petitions isn't all that interesting. It could be interesting, of course, but the writer and director chose not to show any other parents other than Maggie Gyllenhaal's plucky, positive, uneducated, but so endearing single mom on a mission. They also gave Viola Davis a horrible back story having to do with being a mom who couldn't deal with a colicky baby, rather than the more difficult story I think of how a once great teacher could lose her passion and desire and become completely mediocre. Holly Hunter had the worst task of the movie playing the Pennsylvania Teachers Union boss – her role was so thinly written that people at my screening giggled when she gave her over the top pro-union scare speeches. I wondered how members of the Screen Actors Guild (or the screenwriters for that matter that just went on strike not that long ago) could play a part that so demonized another union. And that brings me to…
The Movie as Propaganda:
OK. I get it. There are terrible teachers out there and no one does a thing about it. They really don't. They cross their fingers and hope they'll retire. But, there are also a ton of great teachers, and a lot of average teachers. In this school, they pretty much all sucked except of course the young, hot, Teach for America Teacher! Though he toted a ukulele, not a Superman cape, he was clearly the hero. For the sake of romantic conflict they also made him pro-labor so he and Maggie Gyllenhaal could argue. But, don't worry, once he saw the inhumanity of Holly Hunter he quickly realized the teachers union was the ogre and the cause of all public education woes and joined the turnaround crusade.
Here's what never happened in the movie: A discussion by the teachers about how much their principal obviously sucked and how they could push him out and start to collaborate to have the school they envisioned. OR a discussion with their union leaders that they were unhappy about certain union policies and make themselves heard. Also – parents and teachers NEVER came together during this process except at the end in the council meeting. Seriously? If all you have is a bunch of parent signatures on petitions but no parents showing up for meetings or in classrooms you do not actually have parent involvement.
There was one moment in the film where I thought for sure Viola Davis's character was going to have a true conflict. Her awful principal, who knew she was organizing this attempt to take over the school, suspended Viola Davis because of attendance tampering that she did at his directive. Here we go, I thought, now she will need the union. This is why teachers formed unions right? To protect them against petty personal administrators (particularly when admins were dominantly men and teachers were women.) But, no. That would have taken away from the union as devil storyline. So, instead of a real meaningful discussion between Viola Davis and Holly Hunter about what is right and wrong about the union – the two never meet. I won't go into the ridiculous scene where Holly Hunter tries to buy off Maggie Gyllenhaal with free private school tuition for her daughter. Seriously.
I am all for parent power. I am all for getting rid of the crappy, demoralizing teachers who should not be allowed to step foot in a classroom. But, this movie made me sad. I was really hopeful in the beginning of the film because it was about teachers and parents working together – not something you usually see in movies. This wasn't some public school movie where the wide-eyed liberal white teacher swoops in to the minority student school and teaches them violin and magically makes their lives better. We don't need any more of those either. But, this was really a giant anti-union propaganda film that missed the mark. And that's too bad because it had the chance to really say something about how parents and teachers can make change – and how hard it really is to find great leadership, and what can happen if we put kids first. There was NO mention of lack of funding at the school by the way, or lack of professional development for teachers, after school programs, etc. Seems if you just hang lots of butterflies in the hallway and paint the halls you make a great new school. That's an insult to all the parents and teachers who really do work their butts off to make their schools better everyday.


text: Tempe Town Lake Update Awesome news from City of Tempe. The pH of the lake is at 9.0 and we will be swimming on Sunday!! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram or check back for more racing and training information and we'll look forward to seeing you out at the races! April 27, 2018 Posted UnderNews Jeremy Graham


text:
Action movie 'Immortals' wins weekend box office
Updated: 2011-11-14 09:43
Cast member Isabel Lucas poses at the world premiere of "Immortals" at Nokia theatre in Los Angeles November 7, 2011.[Photo/Agencies]
Action movie "Immortals" slayed its competitors at the weekend box office, taking the top spot domestically and pulling in an estimated $68 million around the world.
The 3D movie's performance surpassed expectations and beat new Adam Sandler comedy "Jack and Jill" plus another strong showing for animated film "Puss in Boots," according to studio estimates released on Sunday.
"Immortals" ruled the domestic charts with $32 million in sales at North American (U.S. and Canadian) theaters, plus an estimated $36 million from international markets.
The film attracted its core target audience of young men to watch the story of clashes between ancient Greek warriors played by Henry Cavill and Mickey Rourke. Seventy-five percent of moviegoers were under age 35, and 60 percent of the audience were male. Other films aimed at that type of audience had struggled in recent weeks.
"People were concerned action fans were staying away from the cinema. They definitely came out in force for 'Immortals,'" said Kyle Davies, president of worldwide theatrical distribution for Relativity Media, the independent studio that released the film.
"Immortals," produced at a cost of $75 million, is the most expensive film to date produced and distributed by Relativity. The studio had projected opening-weekend domestic sales around $25 million.
Audiences gave "Immortals" a B rating on average, according to exit-polling firm CinemaScore. Critics were split on the film, which earned only a 38 percent positive ranking on review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes.
With worse reviews, "Jack and Jill" reached the high end of studio expectations by ringing up an estimated $26.0 million domestically that earned second place for the weekend. Critics panned the movie, with just a 3 percent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Still, Sandler's comic appeal helped bring families to the film about a sister's Thanksgiving holiday visit, said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Columbia Pictures, the studio that released the film.
"Jack and Jill," which cost about $80 million to produce, added $2.7 million from theaters in Mexico and Colombia.
Close behind in third place was another strong performance for "Puss in Boots," the box-office champ the past two weekends. The 3D animated spinoff from the blockbuster "Shrek" series brought in $25.5 million, dropping just 23 percent from a week ago. The film's worldwide total now stands at $156.9 million since its debut.
Action-comedy "Tower Heist," starring Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller, finished its second weekend in theaters in fourth place. The movie about a plot to recoup losses from a Wall Street swindler generated $13.2 million at domestic theaters plus $7.6 million from overseas markets.
"J. Edgar," a new drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the late FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and directed by Clint Eastwood, finished in fifth place with $11.5 million from Friday through Sunday. The studio had forecast $10 million to $13 million for the weekend.
Dan Fellman, head of domestic distribution for Warner Bros., said the studio was pleased with the opening. He said the film was "well-positioned to take advantage of the holiday season" as an alternative to a string of family films coming to theaters. "J. Edgar" brought in an older audience, with 94 percent over age 25.
The film opened in about 1,900 theaters, fewer than the more than 3,000 for the weekend's other widely released films.
Privately held Relativity Media released "Immortals." "Jack and Jill" was distributed by Sony unit Columbia Pictures. "Puss in Boots" was produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom. Time Warner unit Warner Bros. released "J. Edgar," and Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp distributed "Tower Heist."


text:
Make practicing upper and lower case alphabet letters FUN with this FREE Valentine Alphabet Match-up game for Preschool and Kindergartners.
FREE Valentine's Day Printables
- Valentine's Day Number Book
- Valentine's Day Candy Box Math
- Valentine's Day Clip Cards (Numbers 11-20)
- Valentine Heart Number Match
- Valentine's Day Estimation
- Valentines Day Color by Sight Words
- Valentine Alphabet Match
- Valentine's Day Counting Cards
- Valentine's Day Rhyming Cut & Paste Worksheets
- Valentine's Day Alphabet Book
FREE Valentines Day Alphabet Game
With Valentine's day just around the corner I thought it would be fun to create a Valentine's Day Alphabet Printables !
This is super simple and LOW PREP!
This activity is great for Toddler, Preschool, and Kindergarten aged kids. I recommend laminating to make sure they are durable. Then just stick them in an envelope and save them to use again next year!
Favorite Valentine's Day Books
Download Valentines Day Alphabet Game
By downloading from my site you agree to the following:
- This is for personal use only (teachers please see my TPT store)
- This may NOT be sold, hosted, reproduced, or stored on any other site (including blog, Facebook, Dropbox, etc.)
- All downloaded materials provided are copyright protected. Please see Terms of Use.
- Graphics Purchased and used with permission from Scrappin Doodles License #94836, Teachers Resource Force, and Digi Web Studio
- I offer free printables to bless my readers AND to provide for my family. Your frequent visits to my blog & support purchasing through affiliates links and ads keep the lights on so to speak. Thanks you!


text:
When Totsapalooza celebrated its 10th anniversary last month, the organizers wanted to do something special to acknowledge the anniversary and to honour Sheila Barry, the beloved publisher of Groundwood Books, who passed away in November. The result was a special-edition colouring book, given out to those who attended the event. (The item is not available anywhere else.)
Small Print, the organizers of the kidlit/indie-music children's party, asked illustrators to contribute a colouring sheet, themed around a number between 1 and 10. The book brings together well-known artists – Irene Luxbacher, Paul Covello, Tyler Clark Burke, Evan Munday, Ashley Spires, Qin Leng, Kevin Sylvester, Hilary Leung, Sydney Smith, and Carey Sookocheff – some of whom incorporated Barry's love of cats into their drawings. Small Print provided Q&Q with four of the illustrations:


text:
State Development Corporation of Thuringia
Phone +49 (0) 361 5603-0
Fax +49 (0) 361 5603-333
This website offers to all those who want to help centralised, up-to-date information from all over Thuringia. It supports, bundles and connects all the information and all the employees and volunteers involved.
You can actively contribute and make a difference!


text:
The Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games Boys Techno 293 fleet will feature 20 hungry athletes aiming to impress, achieve their personal goals and enjoy the YOG experience.
Based on Lake Jinniu in Nanjing the windsurfers, aged 15-16, from 20 nations will fly their flag on the Chinese waters with racing at the second Youth Olympiad scheduled to commence on Monday 18 August at 11:00 local time. A continental qualification system has ensured that the best windsurfers from Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Europe, North America and the Caribbean and Oceania have got a spot on the start line. Myanmar's Set Naing Aung's has had a two year rapid rise in windsurfing and took the third qualification spot out of three at the Asian Championship in Singapore in January. He finished sixth overall but his journey to the event has been a huge upwards curve that has seen him achieve beyond his dreams, "I began preparations for the 27th [2013] South East Asian [SEA] Games 12 months before the actual event. Prior to that, I had never seen a sail boat in my life nor have I ever been to the beach and seen the open sea / ocean. "In the sports school, I was training in the sport of diving for six months before the Myanmar Yachting Federation (MYF) selected me to be a part of the sailing program. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but when I first saw the windsurfing videos during the recruitment presentation, I knew that I wanted to do just that." Naing Aung took the sport effortlessly and at the SEA Games he claimed top spot overall, "Being a newcomer to the sport, I did not plan to win the gold but rather to achieve a podium position as that was the objective set forth by the MYF. However, I tried my best and managed to secure the gold which is currently my proudest achievement in my sports career. Furthermore, the Sports Ministry also awarded me with the 'Most Improved Athlete 2014' Award which is also a very proud achievement for me." Nine nations were aiming for one of three qualification spots at the Asian Championship. Japan and Thailand picked up the first two with Naing Aung taking the final spot for Myanmar, "Qualifying for YOG was also quite unexpected since the competition was very strong. I simply sailed as fast as I could, trying to win one race at a time. Finally, when I was told by Manager and Coach that we managed to qualify, I was so happy and satisfied. I do not plan to win the YOG but I will certainly do my best to get the best results. I am just happy I qualified and get a chance to participate in such a prestigious event. "This is my first International event and I am very excited. It is already a privilege to be competing with the world's best youth sailors and I hope I can make my country, team and family proud. I hope it will be fun to visit a new country and also to experience what it feels like to be in the Youth Olympics."
Full article . . .
pic by Patrik Pollak


text:
Proverbs 29 New Living Translation (NLT)
29 Whoever stubbornly refuses to accept criticism
2 When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice.
3 The man who loves wisdom brings joy to his father,
4 A just king gives stability to his nation,
5 To flatter friends
6 Evil people are trapped by sin,
7 The godly care about the rights of the poor;
8 Mockers can get a whole town agitated,
9 If a wise person takes a fool to court,
10 The bloodthirsty hate blameless people,
11 Fools vent their anger,
12 If a ruler pays attention to liars,
13 The poor and the oppressor have this in common—
14 If a king judges the poor fairly,
15 To discipline a child produces wisdom,
16 When the wicked are in authority, sin flourishes,
17 Discipline your children, and they will give you peace of mind
18 When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild.
19 Words alone will not discipline a servant;
20 There is more hope for a fool
21 A servant pampered from childhood
22 An angry person starts fights;
23 Pride ends in humiliation,
24 If you assist a thief, you only hurt yourself.
25 Fearing people is a dangerous trap,
26 Many seek the ruler's favor,
27 The righteous despise the unjust;
New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
You'll get this book and many others when you join Bible Gateway Plus. Learn more
Starting your free trial of Bible Gateway Plus is easy. You're already logged in with your Bible Gateway account. The next step is to choose a monthly or yearly subscription, and then enter your payment information. Your credit card won't be charged until the trial period is over. You can cancel anytime during the trial period.
Click the button below to continue.
You've already claimed your free trial of Bible Gateway Plus. To subscribe at our regular subscription rate, click the button below.
It looks like you're already subscribed to Bible Gateway Plus! To manage your subscription, visit your Bible Gateway account settings.
Upgrade, and get the most out of your new account. An integrated digital Bible study library - including complete notes from the Believer's Bible Commentary and the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (NIV and NRSV) - is just a step away! Try it free for 30 days.
Three easy steps to start your free trial subscription to Bible Gateway Plus.


text:
For many years, the phrase "Java application server" was synonymous with BEA's Weblogic Java 2 Enteprise Edition-based offering. The company established a significant first-mover advantage in the J2EE space and BEA was one of the darlings of Wall Street. But the competition stiffened and now, although research methodology is always a subject of controversy, IBM leads the J2EE app server market with its J2EE solution: WebSphere. In an effort to restore its market-leading position, the company today unsheathed a new corporate identity as well as an entire new family of products -- the AquaLogic family -- that BEA hopes will position the software vendor as being less about its bread-and-butter WebLogic and more about a provider of services-oriented solutions that work with any applications server including Microsoft's .Net.
BEA claims that $200 billion is being wasted on software infrastructure every year and that, by 2009, there will be a $9 billion market for enterprise service bus-centric (ESB) software designed to drive that cost out of running IT. According to BEA vice president of product marketing Bill Roth, today's series of announcements are BEA's stake in the ground to go after both the $200 billion problem, and the market that will address it.
As BEA executives were rolling out the news in New York City, I caught up with Roth via Skype. The interview is available as an MP3 that can be downloaded or, if you're already subscribed to ZDNet's IT Matters series of audio podcasts, it will show up on your system or MP3 player automatically. (See ZDNet's podcasts: How to tune in.) Roth and I covered a lot of ground in the interview, everything from the details about what it means to "Think liquid" (BEA's new tagline) to the skinny on the new Aqualogic offerings to the pressure, if any, that IBM put on BEA when it acquired open source J2EE provider Gluecode. We also talked about whether BEA's newly claimed position of industry neutrality means that its culture is more aligned than ever with the equally neutral Borland, so much so that the two companies might finally merge. Roth wouldn't speculate, but didn't hesitate to drive home whyhe thought BEA's new-found agnosticism makes the company a better partner than IBM. Said Roth:
We think of ourselves as the uncompromised, or agenda-less, software company. In many ways, I think it's our goal to be the Switzerland of software. Some of our competitors, in their particular offerings, bring along an agenda, whether it's an applications agenda, a services agenda, or a hardware agenda. We want to solve the problem of making enterprises work better. Making enterprise IT more simple and more better and faster at lower total cost -- that's our only agenda. It has nothing to do with hardware, services, or applications, so I think we can be an honest broker to get all the vendors to work together. It's no longer about BEA or IBM. Or BEA or Microsoft. It's becoming a world of BEA and IBM, BEA and Microsoft.
When asked to describe what sets BEA's solutions apart from those of IBM, Oracle and others, Roth claimed "rigorous focus on standards." But upon further probing, Roth revealed that the standards -- many of which are Java-related -- were equally supported by other vendors, and that it might be a while before the company's solutions will do for .Net what they're designed to do now for J2EE. Among the new family of offerings is BEA's AquaLogic Service Registry, which supports version 3 of an important Web services directory standard known as UDDI. UDDI was once hailed as the be-all end-all way that users and applications would locate services on the Web, but it has never lived up to that dream. Commenting on the situation, Roth said:
People had the vision that UDDI would be the global yellow pages – a global, federated yellow pages – and that services can be found anywhere on the Internet. I think we're still five, maybe ten or more years away from that. The real value of UDDI is for a yellow pages of services inside the enterprise.
Going back to the issue of driving $200 billion of cost out of running IT, Roth said that most of that cost can be attributed to wasted man-hours. But if $9 billion of software is going to wipe out $200 billion of man-hours-based cost, then the implication is that someone -- at least a few people -- will lose their
jobs. During the interview, Roth did make one good recommendation for IT professionals who are looking to to be at the back of the pink slip line: Read the book Enterprise Service Bus by David Chappell. Chappell, who is the vice president and chief technology evangelist at Sonic, is credited with coming up with the idea of an Enterprise Service Bus.


text:
By John Gruber
Next-generation Apple device management for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS. Request access.
Charles Arthur, reporting for The Guardian:
A Guardian investigation has cast doubt on claims by a UK-based Turkish researcher that he hacked into Apple's Developer portal, which has been offline for more than a week.
Pretty damning case that Ibrahim Balic did not breach Dev Center user data as he claims. But someone did.
★ Saturday, 27 July 2013


text:
"I pray that art takes you on an emotional journey of color and peace."
Tom spent 30 years in biotech/pharma and most recently was co-founder of three start-up companies. While experienced in many mediums, Tom's favorites are oils (oil sticks preferably), acrylics, watercolor, and encaustic (wax). In many of Tom's paintings you will find that he combines his favorite mediums with a few found objects, e.g. stones, metal, paper, sand, wood, etc. to create a large, textured, mixed media canvas. Early in Tom's life his artistic influence came from an artist and great uncle, Joe Sheldon, of Asheville, North Carolina. Joe Sheldon was one of the early art enthusiasts that made Asheville such a great artist's community. Tom's artistic influence today comes from his spouse, Jeanne and the tutoring, guidance, and direction given to him for several years by the husband and wife artist team John and Theresa Frazee. I am fortunate in that I have been awarded several "Best in Show" Awards for my abstract work and have exhibited my paintings during Art Basel Miami at Spectrum Miami venue and in New York during ArtExpo NYC. In July 2014 I was selected by Art Business News Magazine as one of the Top 50 Emerging Artists for 2014. Some of South Florida finest galleries exhibit my work and I am fortunate to also have buyers/collectors from Europe.


text:
When you think of a service dog a teacup chihuahua might not come to mind, but one Winnipeg woman feels it helps her cope with anxiety and depression.
"She's here when I need her, she licks my tears if I cry, she's my best friend," Michelle McGhee said.
She got the eight pound pup Jewels one year ago, changing McGhee's life after a workplace injury.
"She's changed my life dramatically," McGhee said. "I don't know where I would be at this time if I didn't have her."
But McGhee said she's been having problems the past seven months getting into Walmart.
"Every time I pass an employee, they stop me. There was one time I was there they asked me eight times in ten minutes."
READ MORE: Pets & Pals: The training of a service dog
Walmart Canada is reaching out to McGhee for more information about her complaints, but part of the problem is there are no provincial regulations or certifications for what makes a service animal.
Isha Khan from The Manitoba Human Rights Commission said over the past five years she has been getting more and more calls and questions about service animals.
"The traditional use of the guide dog has expanded a little bit so open your mind to you may have someone who doesn't present themselves as someone who might need an animal for some kind of assistance or their disability, but maybe they are," she said.
Khan said the HRC defines a service animal by what it does for people.
"We rely on the human rights code that has a definition of a service animal and that's an animal trained to provide assistance to the person with their disability," she said.
Many people like McGhee rely on bringing a doctor's note with them to prove they need the service animal.
"I have four different letters from my doctor saying that jewels is part of my recovery and my care. She also has a patch that says service dog, do not separate dog from me," she said.
But that brings up another grey area — the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba told Global News there are no guidelines or regulations for doctors writing these notes.


text:
Services on Demand
- Cited by SciELO
- Access statistics
Related links
- Cited by Google
- Similars in SciELO
- Similars in Google
Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria
Print version ISSN 0004-282X
Arq. Neuro-Psiquiatr. vol.70 no.5 São Paulo May 2012 Epub Feb 24, 2012
Neuropsychological performance in patients with subcortical stroke
Perfil neuropsicológico em pacientes com lesões vasculares subcorticais
Silviane Pinheiro Campos de AndradeI; Sônia Maria Dozzi BruckiII; Orlando Francisco Amodeo BuenoIII; José Ibiapina Siqueira NetoIV
IPsychologist, Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), São Paulo SP, Brazil
IIMD, PhD, UNIFESP, São Paulo SP, Brazil, Santa Marcelina Hospital, São Paulo SP, Brazil
IIIPsychologist, UNIFESP, São Paulo SP, Brazil
IVMD, Federal University of Ceará (UFC), Fortaleza CE, Brazil
Vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) is characterized by cognitive compromise predominantly of executive dysfunction.
OBJECTIVES: To assess cognitive functions in VCI, focusing on executive functions, to observe functional losses in relation to activities of daily living (ADLs) and to detect early symptoms prior to the onset of dementia.
METHODS: We evaluated healthy subjects matched for gender, education and age to patients with diagnosis of subcortical vascular disease who had a stroke classified into three groups: 1) vascular lesions and no impairment; 2) vascular cognitive impairment with no dementia (VCIND); 3) vascular dementia (VaD).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The performance on neuropsychological tests differed among groups, worsening with increased impairment level. The probable VaD group demonstrated impaired performance in memory, processing speed and verbal production, while the VCIND group showed attention deficits.
CONCLUSION: Impairment in executive functions and difficulties in ADLs allow us to differentiate levels of impairment in groups of subcortical vascular disease.
Key words: cognitive impairment, vascular dementia, neuropsychological assessment, activities of daily living.
O comprometimento cognitivo vascular (CCV) é caracterizado por comprometimento cognitivo predominantemente sob a forma de disfunção executiva.
OBJETIVOS: Avaliar as funções cognitivas no CCV, enfocando as funções executivas, observar as perdas funcionais em relação às atividades cotidianas (AVDs) e detectar os primeiros sintomas antes do início da demência.
MÉTODOS: Foram avaliados indivíduos controles saudáveis pareados por sexo, escolaridade e idade com pacientes com diagnóstico de doença vascular subcortical que sofreram derrame classificados em três grupos: 1) lesões vasculares sem déficit; 2) comprometimento cognitivo vascular sem demência (CCVSD); 3) demência vascular (DV).
RESULTADOS E DISCUSSÃO: O desempenho em testes neuropsicológicos diferiu entre os grupos, sendo o desempenho tanto pior quanto maior o comprometimento. O grupo DV provável demonstrou desempenho prejudicado na memória, velocidade de processamento e produção verbal, enquanto o grupo CCVSD apresentou déficit de atenção.
CONCLUSÃO: Prejuízos nas funções executivas e dificuldades em AVDs permitem diferenciar os níveis de comprometimento nos grupos de doença vascular subcortical.
Palavras-chave: comprometimento cognitivo, demência vascular, avaliação neuropsicológica, atividades cotidianas.
Vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) has superseded vascular dementia and multi-infarct dementia as the concept to be used in cognitive decline secondary to cerebrovascular disease1.
The prevalence of dementia increases with age, and the prevalence of vascular dementia in epidemiological studies varies between 22 and 26.28%2,3. An epidemiologic study in Brazil showed a prevalence of 9.3% for vascular dementia (VaD) among demented participants aged 64 years and older4. Studies in tertiary outpatient clinics report a prevalence of vascular dementia between 24.9 and 32.25%5,6, and of 36.9% in a sample with presenile dementia7.
VCI is a risk factor for the development of dementia. Wentzel8 observed that half of the subjects with vascular cognitive impairment with no dementia (VCIND) developed dementia over a five-year period. The current findings suggest that poor mental flexibility and verbal retrieval in the context of preserved function in other domains may characterize the prodromal stage of VaD9. Cognitive impairment with vascular disease often occurs in domains of selective or divided attention, executive function (frontal lobe function) and processing speed10.
Chui11 compared groups with dementia secondary to vascular disease presenting ischemic subcortical lesions (VADIS) against those with Alzheimer disease (AD), and verified that the pattern of cognitive damage in VADIS is characterized by more extensive compromise of executive function, although with greater preservation in recognition memory.
Several studies in the literature have sought to describe a model of cognitive profile for VaD, but, due to the varied forms of clinical manifestations, dependent on the types and locations of the vascular lesions, no single model exists for the entity12. Rockwood et al.13 suggest that the cognitive syndrome of vascular disease is characterized by the predominance of executive dysfunction in contrast with the deficits of memory and language typical of patients with AD. Subcortical VaD presents a more homogeneous cognitive profile characterized by executive dysfunction and less severe impairment of memory12-15.
The aims of this study were to evaluate the cognitive functions in patients with subcortical vascular lesions, focusing on executive functions, and observe the functional losses with impairment in ADLs of each patient group in order to detect primary symptoms thereby enabling dementia prevention.
A total of 50 patients with vascular subcortical lesions (including white periventricular matter, thalamus and basal ganglia lesions) were selected from medical files of an outpatient memory clinic of the Santa Marcelina Hospital and matched (according to age, gender and education) with 50 healthy elderly controls. The patients who had subcortical lesions according to medical records were invited to participate in the study and classified by an experienced neurologist. All patients were at a chronic phase more than three months after confirmed stroke. Medical history, neurological examination and MRI were performed in all subjects. Patients were classified into three groups according to scores obtained on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), based on the education level for the adapted Brazilian scale16, and on the Functional Activity Questionnaire (FAQ)17 (Table 1). This classification was later confirmed by the results of neuropsychological tests: no vascular cognitive impairment (NVCI): FAQ<4 and MMSE scores > median value for education; VCIND: FAQ<4 and MMSE score between - 1.5 SDs and mean value for educational level; and VaD: patients with probable VaD according to NINDS-AIREN criteria16, FAQ>4 and MMSE<1.5SDs from the mean.
The exclusion criteria for the patients were: aphasia; severe paresis in dominant hand; uncorrected visual or hearing deficit; use of medications that directly affect the central nervous system, such as benzodiazepines, anticholinergics drugs and neuroleptics; orthopedic or rheumatologic disturbances that could affect the exam; presence of areas of cortical ischemia on magnetic resonance imaging.
Control group
Healthy control subjects were matched by age and educational level to each group of vascular patients. Controls were selected based on FAQ scores of less than 4 points and MMSE scores above the mean for each educational level. The control group included individuals drawn from the community, spouses and patients of the other specialties who fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Controls had no psychiatric or neurological diseases; no use of drugs with central nervous system action; no risk factors for cerebrovascular disease; no uncorrected sensory impairment; and no motor compromise due to orthopedic or rheumatologic conditions. Controls were matched with each patient group.
After assessment of the functional activities using the FAQ and brief cognitive evaluation through the MMSE, patients and controls were submitted to a neuropsychological examination with a psychologist blinded to their condition.
The demographic data (gender, age and education) of the study are shown in Table 2, with baseline MMSE and FAQ scores. We found no significant differences among the variables age, education and gender.
The study was approved by the Ethics Committees of the Federal University of São Paulo and of Santa Marcelina Hospital. All subjects gave prior written consent for participation in the study.
Neuropsychological assessment
Neuropsychological assessment included digit span18: attention span, mental control and capacity to retain and manipulate verbal information; logical memory18: episodic memory in immediate and delayed recall; Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)18: the capacity to form concepts and mental flexibility; Trail Making Test (TMT) A and B18: speed of visuospatial search, attention and mental flexibility; Rey Complex Figure - copy and delayed recall18: planning, nonverbal memory, visual and space perception and praxis.
It was applied the Clock Test - CLOX19, in which subjects are asked to "draw a clock showing 1.45" on the back of a score sheet, through which a black circle is displayed in the bottom right-hand corner (CLOX 1). Once completed, the examiner draws the clock as required in front of the subject, placing 12, 6, 3 and 9 first, then setting the hands to '1.45' and making them into arrows. The subject then has to copy the examiner's clock (CLOX 2).
Moreover, in the assessment were include Stroop Test18: inhibition of a habitual answer rather than an unusual answer, and to mental flexibility, impulsiveness and inhibitory control; verbal fluency: tests were accomplished by phonemic category - FAS18 is requested to utter as many words as possible starting with the letter 'F', 'A' and 'S'; semantic category - animals18, it is expected that the patient state, within 60 seconds, as many names of animals as possible; test of excluding letters20: assesses executive function while requiring control of impulsive answers. It consists of the generation of words for one minute, excluding a letter (in this case, letter E).
Functional evaluation of the activities of daily living
Participants were evaluated according to the FAQ scores.
The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) - version 13.0 was used for data analysis. Non-parametric tests were used to evaluate non-categorical variables among groups. The Mann-Whitney test verified possible differences among VaD, VCIND and NVCI groups and their respective controls. The Kruskal-Wallis Test was applied to compare VaD, VCIND and NVCI groups for performance on neuropsychological tests. Differences among the groups were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney Test, and Spearman's Correlation was performed to verify the relationship between ADLs and the neuropsychological tests. The level of significance was set at 0.05. A forward stepwise logistic regression analysis (diagnosis of yes/no cognitive impairment as dependent variable) was performed to establish the independent predictive ability of tests that presented p values less than 0.05 after the Mann-Whitney test. In order to perform the logistic regression analysis, we used the Mann-Whitney test to compare groups (yes or no cognitive impairment), to determine which tests could be elected for the regression model. To this, it was considered that a variable could be eligible if p<0.200. We applied the logistic regression analysis in function on the dependent variable 'group'. Once we found the variables (neuropsychological tests) eligible to the modeling process through the application of logistic regression analysis, we constructed a regression model with four variables, which achieved the balance of the regression model.
Table 3 shows the mean and standard deviations on those tests revealing a significant difference among patient groups, with differences between each group. We found poorer performance associated with severity of clinical condition. There was no difference among groups on the following tests: trail making test, WCST, Stroop Test, forward and backward digit span.
Table 4 depicts results of each group and their controls, matched by age and educational level, on neuropsychological tests. We observed significant statistical differences among VaD patients and their respective controls on verbal and nonverbal memory tests (immediate and delayed recall), on visuospatial perception and construction tasks, on verbal fluency tests, speed processing, categorization, abstract thinking, attention and working memory.
Comparison among VCIND patients and their controls revealed statistical differences on tests measuring visuoperception and construction, verbal fluency, sustained attention, processing speed, categorization and abstraction.
Comparisons between NVCI and the control group showed differences on tests of phonemic verbal fluency, visual construction, sustained attention, speed of processing, categorization and abstract thinking.
As expected, a negative correlation between FAQ scores (r=-0.387, p<0.001) was found. Correlations were performed to determine whether these measures (FAQ) were associated with neuropsychological functions (Table 5).
Based on results of the Mann-Whitney test, Animals, WCST_categ and Span_OI were selected for input to the logistic regression model. In general and concomitantly, the lower the value of Animals, of WSCT_Categ and of Span_OI and the larger the value on the FAQ, then the higher the probability of having the cognitive impairment when FAQ yields medium to high values, independently of the other variables. (Table 6).
These results showed that neuropsychological profiles differ among vascular severity groups.
Vascular cognitive impairment can be defined as cognitive alterations due to cerebrovascular lesions, in which cognition is impaired at various degrees of severity21. We have classified patients with subcortical ischemic lesions by cognitive level based on a screening test (MMSE) and a functional activities questionnaire, with vascular dementia ranging from no evidence of cognitive impairment to vascular dementia.
The MMSE cutoff scores overlapped between groups, maybe due to lack of sensitivity to subcortical cognitive impairment or owing to the inability to distinguish slight differences among VCI profiles, but largely due to an expected overlap of cutoff scores. Notwithstanding, the groups presented clear differences on many cognitive measures, showing a clear-cut division.
Our results showed progressive impairment in many executive functions from the NVCI to the probable VaD group, in phonemic fluency, visuospatial skills and sustained attention, strategy and constructional praxis, divided attention, categorization and abstract thinking tests, as well as in verbal and nonverbal memory tests. It is important to emphasize that TMT-B was greatly compromised in the Probable VaD group, with many patients unable to complete the task, proving to be a difficult type of test for low educated subjects.
Significant differences were found between the studied groups and their controls, with the probable VaD group being most impaired in relation to their controls. As observed, the NVCI group had poorer performance than their controls on many cognitive measures, particularly in relation to verbal fluency, visuospatial skills and sustained attention, and on strategy and constructional praxis, divided attention, categorization and abstract thinking. This indicates that early evaluation of these functions could prevent more serious conditions, as patients were functionally adequate. According to Laukka22, cognitive deficits could be presented in a preclinical phase of VaD, resulting from circulatory disturbances that could affect cerebral function before dementia is diagnosed. In our study, we found poorer results in patients with no cognitive impairment on the screening test and with preserved ADLs (NVCI group), perhaps suggesting that these tests are effective at screening for very mild cognitive impairments in patients with ischemic subcortical lesions.
All patient groups performed worse than their controls on tests of verbal fluency, processing speed and abstract thinking akin to other reports19 which compared healthy controls to VCI and VaD patients.
The VCIND group had impaired performance in relation to their controls on tests related to cortico-subcortical pathways, although demonstrated intact functional ADL. These patients presented depressive symptoms that did not correlate with neuropsychological performance. This fact allows us to make some inferences in VCIND profile subjects, for example, that there is early compromise of executive functions which cannot be explained by depressive symptoms alone. Pantoni and colleagues12 showed that the VCIND group demonstrated significant difficulties on measures of cognitive flexibility, verbal retrieval and verbal recognition memory, but not on measures of confrontational naming or verbal fluency. The probable VaD group was impaired on all cognitive measures assessed, suggesting that poor cognitive flexibility and verbal retrieval in the context of preserved function in other domains may characterize the prodromal stage of VaD.
Our findings comparing VCIND and probable VaD groups were similar to those of the study by Stephens et al.23 who described compromise of executive functions in both these patient groups ascribing this to early damage in VCI. Other studies have reported similar findings, in addition to decline in ADLs and frequent depressive symptoms24,25.
However, we noted that in mild stages of impairment, such as in VCIND, there is significant compromise of visual construction, verbal fluency, visuospatial skills, attention, abstraction thinking, inhibitory control and processing speed.
The VCIND group presented impairment in mental flexibility whereby this group committed the largest number of perseverative errors on the WCST. This finding is in agreement with the study of Garret et al.9 who observed significant difficulties in mental flexibility in their sample of VCIND patients.
In the study by Stephens et al.23, deficits in attention and executive function were observed in patients with stroke, but without cognitive impairment (NVCI), compared to controls. Comparing these patients with a group of patients with vascular cognitive impairment without dementia, they observed that the latter had greater impairment in tests of executive functions, memory and language. Our comparison between NVCI and VCIND groups yielded the same results as the study by Stephens, since our VCIND group was significantly more impaired on tests of memory and language. In our study, we also detected significant differences between the NVCI group and controls on the tests evaluating attention and executive functions (TMT-B, Stroop and WCST).
Comparison of our VCIND and probable VaD groups yielded results similar to those found by Stephens. Our patients differed in episodic memory, visuoconstructive ability and ADLs.
We observed a pattern of decreased cognitive functions according to the degree of early impairment in executive functions and verbal fluency, and deficits in visual-spatial skills, divided attention and abstract thinking in individuals with vascular lesions. These deficits were greater in subjects with VCIND than in ones with NVCI, and we also observed compromise in planning and mental control, even in individuals with VaD in that all the tests of executive functions were impaired, indicating early impairment of dopaminergic and cholinergic pathways that traverse the subcortical white matter26.
Depressive symptoms are common in patients with cerebrovascular disease, and cognitive impairment is common in geriatric depression. Also, depressed individuals with comorbid cognitive impairment are at increased risk for a number of adverse medical, psychiatric and cognitive outcomes27. Therefore, it is always important to differentiate executive dysfunction and depressive symptoms for adequate therapeutic conduct.
We also noted significant correlation between FAQ scores and neuropsychological measures. The results of our study reveal that patients with subcortical vascular lesions have cognitive impairment, mainly in executive functions, difficulties in ADLs and presence of depressive symptoms, indicating that searching for these types of signs and symptoms proves to be effective for early diagnosis of VCI.
Some patients presented very mild cognitive impairment, that did not result in significant ADL difficulties, and few depressive symptoms. Such cases in our survey were denoted as NVCI. In these subjects, only a neuropsychological evaluation verified decreased performance. These findings could point to a need for a more detailed evaluation in patients with subcortical lesions for early diagnosis. In these cases, it is possible that neuropsychological evaluation could represent a gold standard method for diagnosis at basal measurement in order to follow cognitive outcome.
Some limitations should be observed in our study. These concern the severity of subcortical ischemic lesions, since no ranking scale was used to evaluate their presence at the time of evaluation, precluding correlation of lesion severity with cognitive impairments. Unfortunately, we did not use quantitative scales of white matter hyperintensities or quantification of brain volume loss. Nevertheless, our patients were carefully selected with respect to the presence of subcortical lesions, seen on magnetic resonance imaging. All patients had been at a chronic phase for more than three months after confirmed stroke. The sample size was relatively small in the VCI and NVCI groups, but patients were highly selected. We believe that limitations regarding the number of patients were minimized by matching each type of patient group with its own control group, providing a neuropsychological profile with considerable consistency. Possible education influence on majority of the tests was minimized homogenizing the samples by matching for schooling.
Our results allow us to conclude that there is a continuum in cognitive profiles, from mild signs of cognitive impairment to incontestable dementia, despite the fact this was a transversal study. The pattern of cognitive deficit of VCIND and VaD are similar, except that in the probable VaD group the deficits tend to be greater than in the VCIND group. All patient groups presented difficulties on tests evaluating executive functions (planning, mental control, abstraction, perseveration, inhibitory control and processing speed), albeit to different degrees.
The results showed that executive impairments manifest early in mild impairment among subcortical ischemic lesion patients, who also present an increased frequency of depressive symptoms, as well as some difficulties in ADLs. Evaluation of functional activity seems to be a valuable approach for early detection of vascular cognitive impairment.
1. Bowler JV. Modern concept of vascular cognitive dementia impairment. Br Med Bull 2007;83:291-305. [ Links ]
2. Vas CJ, Pinto C, Panikker D, et al. Prevalence of dementia in an urban Indian population. Int Psychogeriatr 2001;13:439-450. [ Links ]
3. Rocca WA, Hofman A, Brayne C, et al. The prevalence of vascular dementia in Europe: facts and fragments from 1980-1990 studies. EURODEM-Prevalence Research Group. Ann Neurol 1991;30:817-824. [ Links ]
4. Herrera Jr. E, Caramelli P, Nitrini R. Population epidemiologic study of dementia in Catanduva city: state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Rev Psiquiatr Clín 1998; 25:70-73. [ Links ]
5. Silva DW, Damasceno BP. Demência na população de pacientes do Hospital das Clínicas da UNICAMP. Arq Neuropsiquiatr 2002;60:996-999. [ Links ]
6. Vale FA, Miranda SJ. Clinical and demographic features of patients with dementia attended in a tertiary outpatient clinic. Arq Neuropsiquiatr 2002;60:548-552. [ Links ]
7. Fujihara S. Brucki SMD, Rocha MSG, Carvalho AA, Piccolo AC. Prevalence of presenile dementia in a tertiary outpatient clinic. Arq Neuropsiquiatr 2004;62:592-595. [ Links ]
8. Wentzel C, Rockwood K, MacKnight C, et al. Progression of impairment in patients with vascular cognitive impairment without dementia. Neurology 2001;57:714-716. [ Links ]
9. Garret KD, Browndyke JN, Whelihan W, et al. The neuropsychological profile of vascular cognitive impairment-no dementia: comparisons to patients at risk for cerebrovascular disease and vascular dementia. Arch Clin Neuropsychol 2004;19:745-757. [ Links ]
10. Jager CA, Hogervorst E, Combrinck M, Budge MM. Sensitivity and specificity of neuropsychological tests for mild cognitive impairment, vascular cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Psychol Med 2003;33:1039-1050. [ Links ]
11. Chui H. Dementia due to subcortical ischemic vascular disease. Clin Cornerstone 2001;3:40-51. [ Links ]
12. Pantoni L, Leys D, Fazekas F, et al. Role of the white matter lesions in cognitive impairment of vascular origin. Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord 1999;13(Suppl 3):S49-S54. [ Links ]
13. Rockwood K, Bowler J, Erkinjuntti T, Hachinski V, Wallin A. Subtypes of vascular dementia. Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord 1999;13(Suppl 3):S59-S65. [ Links ]
14. Pohjasvaara T, Mäntylä R, Ylikoski R, Kaste M, Erkinjuntti T. Comparison of different clinical criteria (DSM-III, ADDTC, ICD-10, NINDS-AIREN, DSM-IV) for the diagnosis of vascular dementia. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke-Association Internationale pour la Recherche et l'Enseignement en Neurosciences. Stroke 2000;31:2952-2957. [ Links ]
15. Román GC. Defining dementia: clinical criteria for the diagnosis of vascular dementia. Acta Neurol Scand Suppl 2002;17806(Suppl 178): S6-S9. [ Links ]
16. Brucki SMD, Nitrini R, Caramelli P, Bertolucci PHF, Okamoto IH. Sugestões para o uso do Mini-Exame do Estado Mental no Brasil. Arq Neuropsiquiatr 2003;61:771-781. [ Links ]
17. Pfeffer RI, Kurosaki TT, Harrah CH, Chance JM, Filos S. Measurement of functional activities in older adults in the community. J Gerontol 1982;37:323-329. [ Links ]
18. Spreen O, Strauss E. A Compendium of Neuropsychological Tests. New York. Oxford University Press; 1991. [ Links ]
19. Royall DR, Cordes J, Polk M. CLOX: an executive clock drawing task. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1998;64:588-594. [ Links ]
20. Bryan J, Luszcz MA, Crawford JR. Verbal knowledge and speed of information processing as mediators of age differences in verbal fluency performance among older adults. Psychol Aging1997; 12:473-478. [ Links ]
21. Yesavage JA, Brink TL, Rose TL, et al. Development and validation of a geriatric depression screening scale: a preliminary report. J Psychiatr Res 1982-1983;17:37-49. [ Links ]
22. Laukka EJ, Jones S, Fratiglioni L, Bäckman L. Cognitive functioning in preclinical vascular dementia a 6-year follow-up. Stroke 2004;35:1805-1809. [ Links ]
23. Stephens S, Kenny RA, Rowan E, et al. Neuropsychological characteristics of mild vascular cognitive impairment and dementia after stroke. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry 2004;19:1053-1057. [ Links ]
24. Bartrés-Faz D, Clemente IC, Junqué C. White matter changes and cognitive performance in aging. Rev Neurol 2001;33:347-353. [ Links ]
25. Steffens DC, Potter GG. Geriatric depression and cognitive impairment. Psychol Med 2008;38:163-175. [ Links ]
26. Engelhardt E, Moreira DM, Laks J. Vascular dementia and the cholinergic pathways. Dement Neuropsychol 2007;1:2-9. [ Links ]
27. Starkstein S, Robinson RG. Affective disorders and cerebral vascular disease. Br J Psychiatry 1989;154:170-182. [ Links ]
Sonia Maria Dozzi Brucki
Rio Grande 180/61
04018-000 São Paulo SP - Brasil
E-mail: email@example.com
This work was supported by a grant provided by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo - FAPESP (04/11436-5) and Associação Fundo de Incentivo à Psicofarmacologia - AFIP.
Conflict of interest:
There is no conflict of interest to declare.
Received 03 November 2010
Received in final form 21 November 2011
Accepted 28 November 2011


text:
PREVNEXTAssessing and Evaluating Mirriad's Visual Impact ScoreMiaozhen Invests in MaLogic
NANJING, Jan 10, 2018 –BSH Home Appliance Group has announced the launch of its first-party DMP (data management platform) developed by Miaozhen Systems. The announcement was made during the ceremony entitled "Big Data Enabled Consumer Insights and Growth". Roland Gerke, Chairman and President of BSH RGC, Christof Jaeger, SVP for Marketing BSH RGC and heads of business units from BSH Home Appliance Group, as well as Albert Sim, SVP of Research and Consultancy, Miaozhen Systems and Dr. Lu Heng, Head of Miaozhen Marketing Cloud, were present at the ceremony.
Following the completion of the DMP, BSH Group will be able to build its first-party tag system to convert its massive trove of unstructured data into structured records. This approach will help the group gain better consumer insights for both its Bosch and Siemen brands, in an effort to improve its programmatic campaign performance, enhance marketing efficiency and increase ROI as a whole.
Christof Jaeger, Senior Vice President for Marketing BSH RGC, BSH Home Appliance Group,
reacts to the tags displayed on the board: You really know what I want.
In his opening speech, Christof Jaeger welcomed the collaboration with Miaozhen while Albert Sim and Dr.Lu Heng each shared their views on the company's expertise in DMP. Having spent over 20 years in market research and consulting, Albert Sim shared his take on three emerging trends in digital marketing: multiple touch points in a consumer decision journey, booming platforms and contents and multi screens experience.
Albert Sim, Senior Vice President of Research and Consultancy, Miaozhen Systems,
shares his perspective on the differences between the 4A model and the 5A model.
These trends reflect the fragmented nature of the publisher network in China, as well as the challenges in consumer insight studies for brands, Albert Sim said. Fundamentally, Albert Sim believed that a multidimensional database cannot be more important in marketing. However, he emphasized that a traditional approach that relies on designed data creates confusion and biases. Instead, he suggested using organic data as a better approach in understanding consumer insights. This requires a multidimensional data analysis, to consolidate designed data and organic data, in order to achieve a more desirable marketing outcome.
Meanwhile, Albert Sim also spoked about what he had learnt regarding changes in consumer path to purchase. According to him, consumers have moved on from the traditional 4A model of Aware, Attitude, Act and Act Again to the 5A model of Aware, Appeal, Ask, Act and Advocate.
Dr. Lu shows the audience how the DMP system works.
Previously, it was sufficient for brands to just find out what motivates consumers and their needs. In the digital age, however, consumers have access to information from multiple sources and their purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by the information on their fingertips. Therefore, it is essential for brands to get the data source to be from the consumers themselves during strategy planning. Brands are not only required to know what consumers need, but also what they think of them. The changes in consumer behaviors inevitably give rise to the disruption of the marketing operations to what we know as the 5A model currently, Albert Sim explained.
Speaking on the DMP system, Dr. Lu said the Chinese platform is more centered on the consumers in its design and functions compared to the DMP system used in the US and other markets. Miaozhen believes that a DMP is the complete customer value management system due to its ability to help businesses consolidate multiple data sources in real time to glean consumer insights. By using data tagging, Miaozhen's DMP provides a multidimensional analysis that incorporates various business scenarios to enhance data-driven insights.
Besides, Dr. Lu added the milestones of BSH first-party DMP since its launch on June 3, 2017. The first-party DMP, he said, is driven by consumer experience, using data to understand consumer behaviors to estimate marketing performances in order to maximize ROI.
Meanwhile, Roland Gerke, Chairman and President of BSH RGC, gave an analogy that the value of DMP is like getting into the "minds" of consumers through data, to fully understand what Chinese consumers really want and use data as the vehicle for business growth.
Christof Jaeger, Senior Vice President for Marketing BSH RGC , pointed out that DMP is useful in discovering consumer needs from the massive data trove. Through this process, brands can get a clearer picture of the word of mouth trends, market trends and their competitors. On the other hand, Jaeger acknowledged the effectiveness of Miaozhen's KOL Truth in measuring the performance of the influencers.
The successful implementation of BSH Group's first-party DMP is borne out of the affirmed effectiveness of the system in improving marketing efficiency, effective targeting and business growth. Being the world's leading electrical manufacturer, the BSH Group envisions to be the pioneer in the field in embracing digital transformation to implement a data-driven strategy in its operations. As the long-term partner of the BSH Group, Miaozhen Systems's high-tech analytics platform and competent team serve as an asset to help the German manufacturer derive a data-driven business strategy. BSH Group's first-party DMP paves the way towards a fully digital transformation and development where data and technology become the driver in innovating marketing.


text:
Inspired by his pilot training, passion for aviation and a love of Sci-fi, Derek created this ambient music piece. In retrospect, I realized that the entire production is quite symbolic of Derek's spiritual nature and his final journey Home.
Other memorial videos of his classical guitar music are found on our "Memorial Videos" page.
Rest in peace, Derek. We miss you, and pray you have flown to the heavens.


text:
Opened 8 years ago
Closed 8 years ago
Last modified 7 years ago
#23658 closed defect (bug) (invalid)
wp_deregister_script('jquery') and wp_enqueue('jquery-ui-dialog') dependancy Issue
|Reported by:
|Owned by:
|External Libraries
I've created a child theme using Twenty Eleven as the parent theme. The only Customization to the parent theme is as follows:
function load_jquery_from_google() { $protocol = ( isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && ($_SERVER['HTTPS'] == 'on') ) ? 'https' : 'http'; $url = $protocol . '://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js'; wp_deregister_script('jquery'); if (get_transient('google_jquery') == true) { wp_register_script('jquery', $url, array(), '1.9.1', true); } else { $resp = wp_remote_head($url); if (!is_wp_error($resp) && 200 == $resp['response']['code']) { set_transient('google_jquery', true, 60 * 5); wp_register_script('jquery', $url, array(), '1.9.1', true); } else { set_transient('google_jquery', false, 60 * 5); $url = get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/jquery-1.9.0.min.js'; wp_register_script('jquery', $url, array(), '1.9.0', true); } } } add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts','load_jquery_from_google');
Basically just re-registering jquery to load from the Google CDN. Now in my Child theme, I want to load 'jquery-ui-dialog', so I do so as follows:
function public_load_front_end_user_scripts() { wp_enqueue_script('jquery-ui-dialog', false, array('jquery','jquery-ui-core'), true ); } add_action( 'wp_print_scripts', 'public_load_front_end_user_scripts');
This loads all dependencies, but for some reason it loads jquery after, instead of before (even though it still queues up jquery to be loaded).
I've tried the following with no difference in results:
1) Use a lower priority value in add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts','load_jquery_from_google'); - the results moved the jquery script above the navigation.js twenty eleven theme script but not above the jquery-ui-dialog script.
2) I tried explicitly calling wp_enqueue_script('jquery') before wp_enqueue_script('jquery-ui-dialog') - did not change results
3)Tried setting $deps and leaving them blank on the wp_enqueue_script('jquery-ui-dialog') call - did not change results
4) Tried moving both sets of code to child theme to rule out any issues with order of functions loading - no change
5) Tried running the add_action of load_jquery_from_google in 'init'
6) Only thing that works, is if I set jquery to load from the HEAD.
7) I've tried using wp_deregister('jquery-ui-core') and then register it again with the proper dependancies, while this works, if it tried to load any other jquery-ui-* scripts, I have to manually deregister those and re-register in order for it to entirely work.
I'm assuming if when I run a wp_deregister_script it removes the jquery dependency on the jquery-ui-dialog script.
Change History (6)
8 years ago
- Summary changed from wp_deregister_script('jquery') and wp_enqueue('jquery-ui-dialog') dependancy Issue (using child theme) to wp_deregister_script('jquery') and wp_enqueue('jquery-ui-dialog') dependancy Issue
8 years ago
- Keywords reporter-feedback added; needs-patch removed
Related: #22739
Could not reproduce on a clean install neither in 3.5.1 nor in 3.6-alpha. My steps:
- Made a child theme of Twenty Eleven.
- Copied your code into
- jQuery UI is properly loaded after jQuery.
In 3.5.1:
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js?ver=1.9.1'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.core.min.js?ver=1.9.2'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.widget.min.js?ver=1.9.2'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.mouse.min.js?ver=1.9.2'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.resizable.min.js?ver=1.9.2'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.draggable.min.js?ver=1.9.2'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.button.min.js?ver=1.9.2'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.position.min.js?ver=1.9.2'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.dialog.min.js?ver=1.9.2'></script>
In 3.6-alpha-23582:
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js?ver=1.9.1'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://trunk.wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.core.min.js?ver=1.10.1'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://trunk.wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.widget.min.js?ver=1.10.1'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://trunk.wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.mouse.min.js?ver=1.10.1'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://trunk.wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.resizable.min.js?ver=1.10.1'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://trunk.wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.draggable.min.js?ver=1.10.1'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://trunk.wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.button.min.js?ver=1.10.1'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://trunk.wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.position.min.js?ver=1.10.1'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://trunk.wordpress/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/jquery.ui.dialog.min.js?ver=1.10.1'></script>
Note that
wp_print_scripts is not the correct hook for
wp_enqueue_script() on front-end,
wp_enqueue_scripts should be used instead.
8 years ago
As a side note:
Please don't ship a custom version of jQuery in your theme (as you are in the else branch of your code). This is bound to break other plugins and create unnecessary support requests for other developers, if people don't update your theme. There's no need to ship such a custom version, just use the version that ships with jQuery.
I can understand that loading jQuery from a CDN can be beneficial, but in your case it won't make much of a difference, as you are loading many other JS files anyway. Also note that your check for whether the Google CDN is reachable every five minutes is not that useful: You are checking whether your server can reach the Google CDN, which will not guarantee that the visitor of your site can reach the Google CDN via his internet connection.
Please also make sure that you are (if at all) only load another version on the frontend, so that you don't break the admin area.
So, in short: Just ditch that code and your problems will be solved.
8 years ago
- Resolution set to invalid
- Status changed from new to closed
Hi Tobias,
Thank you so much for your input. I can't believe I missed that I should have been adding it to wp_enqueue_scripts instead of wp_print_scripts, that's all the issue was (and seems so obvious now). Here I thought I had exhausted all the options.
I appreciate you putting in the work to resolve this.
I agree that adding a custom version of jQuery is not a good idea, I'm only loading it in the front end, and the theme is only for my own use. As far as not using google's CDN, I agree it probably isn't much help, but I run a pretty high traffic site off 1 server and I'm trying to squeeze whatever performance I can out of it.
Again, thanks for you help and input. I've marked ticket as invalid.
7 years ago
Here are examples how to use dialog in jQuery UI: http://basicuse.net/articles/pl/scripting_languages/javascript/jquery_ui_widgets_dialog_windows


text:
Developing integrative investigation concepts within "Natural Labs" in Kyrgyzstan as a model for future research.
Rural populations in Kyrgyzstan represent the majority of the country's population. Despite this, research and investment in environmental monitoring and the impacts of climatic cycles and change over time are still poorly understood in these areas. As such, there is a need to develop novel mechanisms for environmental monitoring to increase understanding of climate change as well as increasing peoples capacity to adapt to newly gathered information about their environments to improve their livelihoods.
By combining MSRI's Learning Landscapes initiative with 'citizen science' activities contributing to GFZ Potsdam's ongoing monitoring activities in the region, the PALESCA project will develop novel approaches modelled as "Natural Labs" to expand monitoring activities towards greater environmental understanding and developing future research opportunities and capacities.
The project seeks to implement integrative approaches towards environmental monitoring to address this gap. Collecting lake sediment, dendro, speleo and dust monitoring data through participatory approaches such as citizen science aims to bridge the gap between scientists and mountain societies to investigate anthropogenic feedback processes, such as amplitude and repetition rate of climatic and tectonically induced extreme events (droughts, floods, earthquakes, landslides) across differing spatio-temporal scales.
Citizen science activities will revolve around two summer schools in Naryn and Sary-Chelek region by collecting relevant data towards realizing the goals of the project. Local students will be trained in data collection using innovative technologies for citizen science such as smartphone applications. These activities will bring together multiple sectors of society including scientists, local organisations, and local community members to enhance the benefits of the project to local livelihoods and well-being.
In parallel to the citizen science approaches to be adopted by the project, several environmental measuring points will be set up featuring different types of scientific devices (e.g. pressure sensors to monitor water level changes, special rain water collectors to estimate correct values of stable isotopes) to allow for in depth analysis of various environmental indicators. These stations will build the capacities of local and international scientists to understand variations found in the natural environmental archives of trees, lake sediments and speleothems. In doing so, opening up the possibility of going far beyond the temporal framework of instrumental or historical data to understand the natural background of climate variability.
Developing integrative investigation concepts within "Natural Labs" in Kyrgyzstan as a model for future research.


text:
job search
job title, keywords
city, state, zip
Administrative Assistant
Aerospace Engineer
Air Traffic Controller
Architectural Engineer
Auto Mechanic
Automotive Technician
Biomedical Engineer
Biomedical Scientist
Business Administrator
Business Analyst
Business Broker
Chartered Financial Analyst
Chemical Engineer
Civil Engineer
Clinical Nurse Specialist
Compliance Officer
Computer Consultant
Computer Designer
Computer Engineer
Computer Programmer
Computer Scientist
Computer Technician
Contract Specialist
Correctional Officer
Counseling Psychologist
Court Assistant
Creative Director
Credit Analyst
Crime Scene Investigator
Criminal Investigator
Data Analyst
Database Administrator
Dental Assistant
Design Engineer
Dialysis Technician
Diesel Mechanic
Dietary Aide
Director of Development
Director of Nursing
Director of Operations
EKG Technician
Electrical Engineer
Elementary Teacher
Environmental Engineer
Events Coordinator
Executive Assistant
Family Nurse Practitioner
Finance Director
Financial Controller
Financial Planner
Food Scientist
Forensic Investigator
Forensic Pathologist
Forensic Science Technician
Freight Broker
Game Designer
Graphic Designer
Healthcare Administrator
Hospital Administrator
Human Resource Generalist
Human Resource Manager
HVAC Technician
Instructional Designer
Insurance Adjuster
Intelligence Officer
Interior Designer
Investment Advisor
IT Specialist
IT Technician
Juvenile Probation Officer
Kindergarten Teacher
Lab Tech
Land Surveyor
Landscape Architect
Legal Assistant
What does a Librarian do?
Librarians don't just 'shush' loud talkers or chase down overdue books. They help people find information. Librarians are organization and information specialists, utilizing advances in computing and technology to arrange and access facts, books, journals and other information resources. If you enjoy reading books, helping others or are detail oriented, library science could open an exciting new chapter of your life.
Day-to-day tasks for a librarian
In general, much of a librarian's time is spent behind a desk or at a computer. The World Wide Web and advances in information systems have revolutionized the library sciences, changing the role of a librarian in the process.
While the size of a library's staff will have a significant impact on the scope of a librarian's job description, modern librarian positions can be classified into three types- patron, technical and administrative services.
Patron or user services librarians assist guests in finding the information or documents. These services often include an educational component such as organizing workshops or assisting guests accessing and navigating the Internet. They also supervise assistants processing borrowed books.
Technical services librarians classify or catalogue materials, usually behind the scenes. They acquire new materials or information sources such as online databases and write abstracts for reference purposes. They often have significant experience in information technology.
Library administrators are responsible for the day-to-day operations of their libraries. Their duties include setting budgets, negotiating contracts, public relations and guiding institutional goals. A background in business or project management is recommended.
In addition to these main areas, librarians may specialize. Some examples include document restoration or a subject area like medicine, law or children's books. However one of the main job duties of any librarian remains assisting patrons.
The librarian, in depth
The American Library Association is a professional organization that accredits library science programs across the United States. They suggest looking into different types of libraries before starting off on your career path. Public, private, school, medical and law libraries all serve different populations and need librarians with specific knowledge or backgrounds.
Typically, a Master of Library Science (MLS) degree is required to work as a librarian. Some school and university librarians are also required to maintain teaching certification, although teaching experience is not always required.
Library technicians will perform many of the traditional research and organizational duties of a librarian. A high school diploma or associate degree is often required for this position. This position can offer great experience if you are planning to pursue a MLS.
Get Your Degree!
Find schools and get information on the program that's right for you.
Powered by
Campus Explorer
Life Coach
Lighting Designer
Lighting Technician
Logistics Coordinator
Marine Engineer
Marine Scientist
Marketing Assistant
Marketing Director
Marriage and Family Therapist
Mechanical Engineer
Medical Assistant
Medical Billing Specialist
Medical Coding Specialist
Medical Laboratory Technician
Medical Records Technician
Medical Technician
Medical Transcriptionist
Military Officer
Mortgage Broker
Multimedia Designer
Nail Technician
Neonatal Nurse
Network Administrator
Network Engineer
Nuclear Engineer
Nurse Practitioner
Nursing Assistant
Occupational Therapist
Parole Officer
Payroll Administrator
Payroll Clerk
Personal Assistant
Petroleum Engineer
Pharmacy Technician
Phlebotomy Technician
Physical Therapist
Physical Therapy Aide
Physician Assistant
Policy Analyst
Pricing Analyst
Probation Officer
Procurement Specialist
Project Coordinator
Public Adjuster
Quality Assurance Specialist
Radiation Therapist
Radiology Technician
Recruitment Consultant
Registered Nurse
Respiratory Therapist
Rocket Scientist
Sales Director
Security Officer
Set Designer
Social Worker
Software Developer
Software Engineer
Sound Technician
Speech Pathologist
Speech Therapist
Sports Agent
Sterile Processing Technician
Stock Broker
Structural Engineer
Substance Abuse Counselor
Surgical Nurse
Surgical Technologist
Systems Analyst
Systems Engineer
Teacher Assistant
Travel Agent
Truancy Officer
Ultrasound Technician
Veterinary Assistant
Veterinary Technician
Video Game Designer
Vocational Nurse
Web Designer
Web Developer
Wedding Planner
Wind Turbine Technician
X-ray Technician
Youth Counselor


text:
Head athletic trainer
Behold, the boys of winter. As of July 1, the average age of the Giants' starting position players will be 36, the highest in baseball. Barry Bonds (40 years old) might be the star, but the most valuable Giant is the guy picking up the Celebrex prescriptions -- Stan Conte. And if his spring is any indication, Conte, now in his 12th season with the Giants, will have a busy year: He spent most of March fielding questions about Bonds' bad knee, which thus far has derailed the left fielder's season. If there's someone who can handle a roster full of gouty knees, though, it's Conte. In 1997, he helped redesign the team's strength and conditioning program, and since then, according to the Giants, their players have spent the second-fewest days on the disabled list in the league.
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Sports & Recreation, Stan Conte, Major League Baseball, National League (Baseball), NL West Division