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Meeting Highlights
AAPT 2005 Summer Meeting — Salt Lake City, UT
Aug. 6-10, 2005
The 2005 Summer Meeting was held on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Aug. 6–10. The University of Utah campus with the surrounding Wasatch Mountains provided a beautiful setting for the 1,100 participants who attended. The weather was excellent during the entire meeting with daytime temperatures in the low nineties (°F) and low humidity and with night-time temperatures in the mid-seventies (°F).
In the week preceding the AAPT meeting, the fourth Summer Institute of the Rural PTRA Program was held in the physics department at the University of Utah. Eighty Physics Teaching Resource Agents (PTRA) attended an intensive week of workshops presented by their fellow PTRA and by other professional educators. The PTRA program has extended into more rural areas by establishing Rural Centers at colleges and universities throughout the United States through funding from the current NSF grant. More than 800 teachers participated in workshops at the 33 Rural Centers this summer. The PTRA program began in 1985 and the 20th anniversary of the program was celebrated with a picnic at the end of the Institute. Additional information about the PTRA program can be found at the PTRA website (www.aapt.org/PTRA/index.cfm).
About 200 graduate students and faculty attended the Physics Education Research Conference (PERC) at the end of the Summer Meeting. The theme of PERC2005 was "Connecting Physics Education Research (PER) to Teacher Education at All Levels: K-20." Poster sessions, plenary talks and breakout groups were utilized to encourage participation and aid in an exchange of ideas about issues related to teacher education. The conference organizers are publishing proceedings from the conference, and additional information is available on the conference website (http://web.phys.ksu.edu/perc2005/).
A similar conference is being planned in conjunction with the 2006 AAPT Summer Meeting at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.
Workshops and Continuing Education
Members of the Physics Instructional Research Association (PIRA) again presented a two-day lecture demonstration workshop that was very popular; similarly, two workshops on introductory and intermediate educational laboratories attracted many participants. Thirteen commercial workshops added additional educational opportunities for meeting attendees.
Paper Sessions
Several of the sessions had papers that addressed specific subdisciplines in the undergraduate curriculum. Typical sessions of this type included Non-Linear Dynamics in the Undergraduate Environment, Thermal Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Introductory E&M, Innovations in Teaching Astronomy, Upper Level Classical Physics, and Modern Physics. Other well-attended session included two sessions sponsored by PIRA: Topics from Einstein for Demos and Labs and World Year of Physics in Progress. Others included Reading and Writing in Physics, Electronic Learning Across the Professional Continuum, and Physics and World Development in the 20th Century. The meeting also provided an opportunity for undergraduate students to showcase their research in a special poster session and a paper session entitled SPS Undergraduate Research. The abstracts for all papers presented at the 2005 Summer Meeting are available online at www.aapt.org/AbstractSearch/.
Award and Plenary Sessions
At the Tuesday Ceremonial session, John Rigden of Washington University in St. Louis, gave the Robert A. Millikan Award Lecture, "The Mystique of Physics: Relumine the Enlightenment." According to Rigden, society has held physics and physicists with higher regard than scientists in other disciplines. As a test, Rigden suggested that you ask someone waiting in line at the grocery store to name a great chemist or a great biologist. However, Rigden cautions that the role of physics and science in our society are currently being challenged as at no previous time in our history. How do we as physicists and scientists respond to this challenge? The Millikan Award recognizes teachers who have made notable and creative contributions to the teaching of physics.
At Wednesday's Ceremonial session, Patrick Callahan, recipient of the Excellence in Pre-College Physics Teaching Award, discussed how his role as a physics teacher has evolved over his 30-year career. Callahan's approach to teaching has been strongly influenced by colleagues, workshop participants, supervisors, and his participation in the AAPT/PTRA program. Callahan currently teaches at Delaware Valley Regional High School in Frenchtown, New Jersey.
Gary Gladding, recipient of the Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching Award, described the procedure that the University of Illinois Physics Department used to reform their introductory physics courses. Gladding was one of the leaders in the reform effort that changed the way introductory physics is taught for both calculus-based and algebra-based courses. The courses are now more engaging and less a burden for faculty to teach, and participation in the teaching of the introductory courses is now an expectation of most of the faculty in the department. Gladding is professor of physics at the University of Illinois, Urban-Champaign.
The three plenary sessions departed somewhat from what has become the norm at AAPT summer meetings. Plenary I, arranged by Rod Grant, John Layman and Howard Voss, was a tribute to Melba Newell Phillips. Melba Phillips was an influential leader in AAPT and the physics education community as well as AAPT's first women president. Rod Grant, Sallie Watkins, Len Jossem, and Dwight Neuenschwander shared their personal memories of Phillips and provided the audience with an understanding of her contributions both as a physics educator and as a human being. Wolfgang Panofsky, Phillip's co-author for the textbook Classical Electricity and Magnetism, concluded the session by discussing the current challenges to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the failure of nuclear weapons states, especially the United States, to de-emphasize nuclear weapons in international relations. One of Melba Newell Phillips' many interests included the search for peace in our time. Plenary II was presented by 1998 Noble Prize winner Horst L. Störmer, Columbia University. In his entertaining talk, Small Wonders: The World of Nano Science, Stormer discussed how small numbers of atoms can be manipulated at the nano-scale in physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering with the potential of shaping our technological future. The talk was sponsored by the University of Utah Physics Department and was open to the public.
The APS Forum on Education and Carl Wieman from the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (DAMOP) organized Plenary III, which featured presentations by Wieman, Philip Bucksbaum, and Steven Chu. In his talk Bose-Einstein Condensation: Quantum Weirdness When Flirting with Absolute, 2001 Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman, University of Colorado, discussed how a Bose-Einstein Condensate is created and some of the research ongoing. The study of the properties of Bose-Einstein Condensates has become an important subfield of atomic physics. Philip Bucksbaum, University of Michigan, demonstrated learning algorithms that teach laser light pulses to alter their shape in order to perform a desired task in his talk, Coherent Control: Light That Learns on the Job. This technique offers a new way to explore and manipulate matter with lasers. In his talk The Quantum Interference of Particle Waves, 1997 Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, discussed the modern double slit experiment in which the detection of many individual particles still results in an interference pattern that is described by the mathematics of waves and is believed to be an essential feature of nature. According to Chu, even though quantum interference lies at the heart of our inability to intuitively understand quantum mechanics, we have learned to use these phenomena to create the most sensitive measuring instruments we have today.
Contests and Exhibits
In Conclusion
Warren W. Hein, Associate Executive Officer


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jackin_u_up wrote:When i saw ur clan post and your name i thought how it would be cool if there was a way to join clans...perhaps an alliance of some kind ? Well if u guys are tougher than the regulators ...Then we are gonna really have our hands full....since the regulators handed our asses to us...However Skyforce has been reequipped and retrained for our Clan war vs. The Legion and right now we're kickin some ass. Just send 3Asefa or TeeGee a message...cause the Legion was just an appetizer....we're ready for the main course....Can't wait to play ur clan
The Legion has some great players and I wouldn't rank us up to thier standard, yet. As far as I'm concerned we are a clan of noobs till we have been blooded.
I participated in the Regulator/SkyForce clan-war and games were closer then final outcome AND not all of SkyForce's best players played (or at least I didn't see many of them). Regulators have some great players but some of the mates here humble me. Don't let our lower-ranked players fool you either, just about everyone here is a solid teammate.
Have TG or 3A contact me

subset: commoncrawl


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I was just asked a superb question via Facebook by my neighbor, Lt. Col. Scott Touney:
Ben, I have a question. If foreclosures are being de facto "frozen" due to legal proceedings, are those homes essentially taken out of the available supply? If they are out of the supply of existing homes, does that afford an opportunity for housing prices to increase during the period that those homes are frozen in legal proceedings?
Here is my Podcast Answer:


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Shoppers with mobile devices are changing the retail landscape
7 Comments
1. Galen20K (Posts: 550; Member since: 26 Dec 2008)
Best buy is hurting bad, they should just close up doors before it gets worse. I for one will not miss their incompetent and rude sales staff.
2. thinking (Posts: 130; Member since: 19 Jan 2012)
Last year, I had a pathetic experience with BB in Florida, US, where I was visiting. I have reason to believe I was cheated (in the form of offloading old stock that would not work). Anyway, more on topic, normally, I feel the change has come to urban areas, especially when it comes to uniform products like electronics. The consumers know what they want. Short of being able to feel the devices, they can read reviews, even SEE them (embedded videos et al) work before making the decision to buy. It's not foolproof but the retail store is also not foolproof. The retail store may not have the model you want to check out but Internet will. The disadvantage will be that if one wants to have a feel before buying something, the choices will be far limited.
3. Nickmfnjackson (Posts: 101; Member since: 21 Jan 2010)
The one thing that will always be easier at the retail store is returns/exchanges. It's much easier to just grab all the stuff you bought, stuff it in the box, and throw it on the counter for an instant exchange as opposed to filing for a return for an online transaction, printing a shipping label and send of for the refund, and then waiting (on top of any original waiting) for the return to be approved. That being said, I still do 95% of my shopping online and 70% on amazon. :-P
4. Tux4g63 (Posts: 121; Member since: 21 Oct 2011)
I feel like this will happen eventually and it will be sort of sad when it does. We won't really appreciate how much we missed seeing and feeling the products until we can't do that anymore someday because we nickel and dimed stores like Best Buy to death. Especially with how much faster and simpler the return/exchange process is physically in person compared to an online vender.
I have seen customers who want a store to price match a product within a 1-3% range then state they will buy it online if that does not happen. Although that is the customers prerogative, I guess I wonder why it has to get to that level? I can see 1-3% being a big deal on a large and expensive item, but regularly I see it happening with things in the sub-$100 range. To me that just wreaks of pride. The store is not gaining any profit at that point, that slim margin is barely letting them keep the lights on.
I strongly feel we should compare prices, but that if an item is literally a few dollars more to have right then and there, why not support a brick and mortar business some of the time?
6. thinking (Posts: 130; Member since: 19 Jan 2012)
I don't think the store earns $1-$3 on a $100 product.
5. lsutigers (Posts: 827; Member since: 08 Mar 2009)
Wow, I had no idea Best Buy was blocking mobile connections and removing barcodes to prevent customers from shopping for better prices on their smartphones. That almost seems fraudulent, considering they sell those very smartphones.
7. whothisperson (Posts: 102; Member since: 06 May 2012)
Bestbuy: Amazon's Show Room


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A boy's life: Richard Linklater's 12-year project is an epic coming-of-age film
Shot incrementally over the course of 12 years, Richard Linklater's Boyhood is a deceptively simple portrait of childhood, one that may rank among the more understated "epics" ever filmed. It follows protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane) as he grows from a moony first-grader, the kind who completes but neglects to turn in his homework, to an artistic college freshman, of the sort who receives photography scholarships. From 2002 to 2013, cast and crew assembled once a year to film the movie that takes for its plot, purpose and narrative propulsion the passage of time. With his feature's emphasis on everyday occurrences over archetypal milestones—we are not privy to Mason's first hangover or sexual encounter, for instance—Linklater is apt to repeatedly call Boyhood a depiction of "life itself."
"I've spent my whole adult life in the realm of cinematic storytelling, in and around the boundaries of that. It does have these limitations that're sometimes frustrating. I wanted to say something about childhood, but I was very much limited to the physicality of the young actor. You can't ask a little kid to suddenly be a teenager. The canvas I was trying to explore was pretty vast. So I had a problem. And I got to think about that for a couple of years. And then the idea just hit me: Oh, well, why couldn't you just film a bit every year? If you filmed and let time go by, that could create my own canvas to express what I was trying to express here. Which was, the whole maturation process," explains Linklater. "Not just of the kid, but parenting, too. You know, it encompassed the whole family," inclusive of Mason's divorced parents Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke), as well as his older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the director's daughter). "[Mason's] viewpoint was enforced in the movie, but it would be a depiction of everything. Life itself, I guess."
Such an ambitious undertaking would seem to necessitate considerable prep work before shooting could begin. This was and wasn't the case, says Linklater, who both planned prior to and tinkered his way through the dozen-year process.
"I had a rough outline. I had a grid, a lot of structure. First through 12th grade, that's a structure. I knew it would be until he went to college. I knew the last shot of the movie pretty early on. I knew all the character trajectories, had really put a lot of thought into that. But then it was just so great, every year, to be able to just think, you know?... Film, edit, and think. Edit the whole thing, and just feel your way through it, like a novel or something. Set aside, re-read, think, and imagine."
The film's treatment of time, condensing a large swath within a framework, achieving a kind of bounded expansiveness, is likewise novelistic. Its approach is reminiscent of the famous bildungsroman, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. James Joyce's debut novel opens with a collection of nursery-rhyme phrases illustrative of the narrator's developmental state: He's a small child. His fragmented understanding of the world is indicative of an unformed and forming mind. Where Joyce uses language, Linklater uses imagery to depict inchoateness: Child Mason stares at and registers a collection of images—a dead bird, scenes from a videogame, his mother flirting. Just as the language in Portrait grows increasingly fluid and sophisticated as the novel progresses, so do the observations in Boyhood become less impressionistic and Mason's engagement, like that of the actor who portrays him, more articulate as time passes.
"I would say fully halfway through the movie it's really starting to incorporate some of his own opinions," Linklater says of Coltrane. "But, you know, it's the emergence of self, that's what the film is about. Like, the kid is really powerless. You go with your parents. Older siblings kind of dominate your life. And then suddenly, he has more attitude, little more opinions. That, to me, kind of mirrors gaining our own agency as a human being."
Linklater grew paternalistic toward and a little protective of Coltrane, a Texan like his director. "I was always taking his temperature, developmentally where he was. I didn't want the film to impose much on him." This may have been a natural extension of his fatherly feelings, as Coltrane's sister in the film is played by Linklater's daughter. The director says working with Lorelei was "easy, obviously… I was so familiar with her. I could just ask her to, 'Oh, that little thing you do with your mouth? That's annoying, but it'll be funny. Do that.' That's why I think you see husband-and-wife teams as a natural fit. You know, you get these long collaborations. Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, or Woody and Mia. There's something natural about that. I've never experienced that in my own life, but with my daughter it's a similar thing, being so familiar with someone."
Though he has yet to collaborate with his wife, the filmmaker is nonetheless already half of a renowned artistic pair. Ethan Hawke has been a Linklater regular since 1995's Before Sunrise, the first film in the acclaimed Before series, which includes 2004's Before Sunset and last year's Before Midnight. Nine years separate each movie in the trilogy, which, like Boyhood, follows the same characters over a prolonged period of time. The director and his leading man's "life commitment" has resulted in a free exchange of ideas. "There's an advantage to that. Ethan and I push each other in that way. He can call me up [and say], 'Hey, I'm thinking, next year, what if my character…? You can learn so much, creatively."
Hawke brought quite a bit of himself to his role in Boyhood. Like Mason, he is a child of divorce, and like his character, Mason Sr., he would become a divorcé (from actress Uma Thurman) over the course of filming. Like Linklater, he is the son of a man who worked in insurance, a detail that informs his character arc. Says Linklater, "There's a lot from Ethan's own life that can be adapted into this, because he's a parent. Just like Patricia. Ethan was relatively young when he had kids. It was a portrait of all of us kind of bumbling through parenthood."
Mason Sr.'s awareness of his parental fumbling is made apparent in a tune he sings to his children during one of their weekend visits. That song and one other were written by author and country-music fan Hawke, who, in addition to having published several novels, penned a profile of Kris Kristofferson for Rolling Stone in 2009. "He had songs in his life, I think, in and around his own family we adapted to the movie," says Linklater of Hawke.
For a film that is "a collaboration with the culture," music plays an important role. The director chose his period-specific songs, from bands like Coldplay, Cobra Starship and Arcade Fire, "more in hindsight," although the popularity of certain hits "was noted" through the years. "My nephew was listening to that Soulja Boy song ["Tell 'Em—Crank That"]. I was like, OK, that's a big song." Cultural touchstones such as the Harry Potter book phenomenon, the first Obama election, even Will Ferrell's viral Pearl the Landlord video, make cameos in the film, illustrating Linklater's belief that nothing "can ever be too of the moment."
He continues, "I wanted the film to feel like a memory. A very specific memory, a look back, which is ironic, because you're filming it in the present tense, but it's a period film. When do you ever get that chance? I'm filming, and going, well, this won't be perceived for another 11 years." The experience heightened the director's perception of the culture, leading him to make certain observations on the decade-plus span that encompassed Boyhood's production.
"Turns out most of the changes you could point to really happened in the technological realm. iPhones, computers. There's less change in the culture. The culture looks the same. That's my assessment. From my 12 years of really thinking about this as a non-anthropological professional. I always say, if you went back from '69 to '81 [which is, likely not incidentally, the period that encompasses the 53-year-old director's own boyhood] to pick those 12 years, cars were different. Hair was different. Entire music genres have been created. But what happened between '02 and now? Almost every hairstyle, clothes [are the same]. I mean, if you're young enough, you can break it down and it would feel different to a younger person. I think the human need for change is happening in technology. I guess that's what I'm saying. That that satisfies us… Everything that is now, was then. Unless I'm missing something. I think I am."
Perhaps Linklater, the man behind cult films Slacker (his 1991 debut), Dazed and Confused and School of Rock, is overlooking his own role in the evolving culture. Most directors, for instance, don't own their movies; they're awarded a percentage of their films' profits, but have little to no say in the pattern of release. The deal Linklater brokered with distributor IFC Films, however, grants him part ownership of Boyhood. He can influence where and in what manner the film is released, how it's marketed and, if he chooses, he can sell his share to a library for considerably higher gain than the royalties most directors receive on home-video sales. It is an unprecedented move that may augur advancements in distributor-director relations to come. But then, given Boyhood's shoot, such felicitousness feels apt. "You can tell when the film gods are with you," says Linklater. "The forces weren't against us."
The positive nature of the experience does not necessarily mean Boyhood's newly adult star will pursue others like it, however. "No, he doesn't really have plans in that way," Linklater says of Coltrane's acting ambitions. "I think he's just an artist. He talks about that. If acting is his thing, if that feels artistically fulfilling, he'll do it… But I don't know if he has the drive or personality to." Linklater acknowledges the need for performers to "have nothing else" if they want to succeed in their profession. And Coltrane, "to his credit, I think he has a lot else. Which is, I think, good in life."


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Katherina has to report to the director. She is on a Catholic school and her clothes are much too sexy. Besides, her grades aren't very good either. This little slut needs to get a fitting and educational punishment! First he shows her how she can squirt from her cunt and subsequently he deflowers her tight little ass. Swallow this, you bitch!
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Men's Basketball: St. Anselm cruises past St. Mike's, leads NE-10
February 23. 2013 9:25PM
Sparked by the play of John Nielsen and Chris Santo who came off the bench to tally double figures, St. Anselm rolled past St. Michael's, 74-56, in Northeast-10 Conference men's basketball action at the Stoutenburgh Gym in Goffstown Saturday.
With the win, the Hawks stretched their overall record to 21-4 and their conference mark to 17-4. The Purple Knights are 5-16 in the league.
Nielsen and Santo each scored 13 points in just over 20 minutes of play.
St. Anselm starters Mike McCahey and Dino Mallios netted 12 points each.
St. Michael's Greg Grippo led all scorers in the game with 14 points.
The Hawks scored the game's initial six points but St. Michael's rallied to tie the game at 16-16 with 13:26 left in the first half. Roy Mabrey's layup and Mallios's three-pointer with four seconds left in the frame gave the hosts a 38-31 halftime advantage.
St. Anselm never trailed in the second half and led by as many as 21 on a Nielsen three-point field goal with 6:27 to play and again later on a McCahey jumper with 2:38 showing.
St. Anselm shot 43 percent from the field in the game while St. Michael's had trouble with the Hawks defense and converted just 20 of 51 two-point attempts. St. Michael's, however, did outrebound the hosts, 39-36.
St. Anselm closes its NE-10 regular season Tuesday when it hosts Stonehill.


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(WTVM) - People across the nation and here at home heeded Martin Luther King's cry fifty years ago to "let freedom ring."
Thousands gathered in the nation's capital today to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington and King's "I have a dream" speech.
People celebrated locally as well.
Today the Columbus Mayor's Commission on Unity, Diversity and Prosperity joined the King Center and 50th Anniversary Coalition to ring bells reflecting the legacy of Dr. King.
A busload of people from Columbus travelled to Washington this weekend to be a part of this commemoration, including News Leader 9's Barbara Gauthier.
It was definitely an emotional trip. About 60 people from across the valley traveled to the nation's capitol this weekend to remember Dr. King's dream.
They ranged in age from 12 to 84. None of them were there for King's original speech in 1963, but many wanted to be there for this anniversary to reflect on King's dream and find ways to make today's world better.
Fifty years ago, folks from all over the country converged on Washington on that historic day when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and told the world about his dream.
But in that very same spot this weekend many proclaimed that dream is still not reality.
"Everything has changed and nothing has changed, that's where we are today," said Joseph Lowery.
"Martin Luther King was a great man," said 17-year-old PJ Rodgers. "I've never even been to Washington DC so it's a great honor for me."
Rodgers was part of a group from Phenix City's TEARS program who took the bus ride from Columbus to Washington. TEARS provides support services for 'at risk" youth in the valley. Leaders hoped the trip would help inspire these young people to make the right choices in life.
"We have to get our generation straight, because little kids are shooting each other, everybody is getting in jail, people can't get jobs," said 18-year-old Howa Conneh.
"What I'm hoping is a call in action that we work together, people of all races to see how we can make things better not for us but for our children because they are dying at the hands of police they're dying at the hands of each other," said TEARS founder Anglia Walton.
As participants marched from the National Mall to the new King Memorial, many spoke of the need for African Americans to first look within to help solve many of the problems plaguing the black community.
Others pointed to recent events like the death of Trayvon Martin as evidence that the pursuit of King's dream is far from over.
Fifty years ago, Dr. King's dream was about freedom, racial equality and jobs. Today, activists wage a different war about stand your ground, voting rights and stop and frisk.
"I am energized and I'm ready to go back and start voter registration and help do what we can do to amend the stand your ground law," said Rev. Rufus Wood.
And as our group loaded the bus and headed back home, most felt renewed and energized, determined to make this – as one leader put it – not just a commemoration but continuation of King's dream.
"I'm going to fight for every child to be given an equal right an equal right at life," said Marquese Averett, organizer of the Young Minority Leaders.
"It makes me feel like I want to do my part get ahead in the world help everybody out," said Rodgers. "I'm gonna try my best."
Copyright 2013 WTVM. All rights reserved.


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Menswear has traditionally taken a background role in the world of fashion, letting women mode reign the catwalks, column inches and shopping baskets. But over the last couple of years something has been brewing and these days menswear is as interesting – if not more – than the apparel made for women.
Leading the leading the pack are brands that come from the North – no not Newcastle, not even Scotland. We're talking about brands that hail from the Nordic countries, the countries of snow, darkness and ingenuity. But why is Scandinavian menswear proving so popular on the isles known for their traditions?
Why are Scandinavian brands so popular among British men?
Anyone who has spent some time scouring the high street and internet for interesting menswear will have taken note of brands from Denmark, Norway and especially Sweden.
As a born and raised Scandinavian who is now living the life of an expat in my adopted home town of London – a modern day Viking, without the violence – it is fascinating to see the Scandi influence on British menswear these days. I won't go into much detail about how amazing Scandinavian culture, lifestyle and designs are as this could be considered rude of me (but they really are).
But something of the Nordic minimalistic design has captured the interest of British men. Perhaps it is the focus on functionality (never underestimate the power of the humble fleece jacket when it's minus 25 degrees outside!), as knitwear and weatherproof garments are seeing yet another season of popularity, combined with style and comfort.
The Scandinavian way of life
Of course the influx of Nordic flavour in all areas of life in recent years will have helped put the Norse firmly on the map: TV shows (The Killing!), furniture and housewares (Ikea is a favourite), music (think First Aid Kit and Sigur Ros), and not to forget the food and drink (meatballs, salmon, reindeer, sickly sweet cider).
It also helps that the hipsters and stylish geeks in London (and other cities) have embraced what us Norse consider practical mountain wear to be part of their uniform. Who doesn't like a Fjellraven backpack for city hiking to the summit (read: riding a fixie bike to Dalston).
Whatever the reason is, as a Scandi expat, one thing is certain: Britain is starting to feel (even more) like home…
If you're after some inspiration on which Scandinavian brands to include in your wardrobe, check out the gallery below. Just be warned, as with most Scandinavian things they also come with the price tag to match.


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NetWellness is a global, community service providing quality, unbiased health information from our partners. NetWellness is commercial-free and does not accept advertising.
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Childhood obesity has become an epidemic in the United States, where one in three children is either obese or overweight. Excess weight in childhood is of particular concern because overweight children are more likely to be overweight as adults, do not perform as well in school, and have more physical and mental health problems than children at healthy weights. Experts believe that children today will not live as long as their parents due to obesity. The increase in obesity is contributing to the rise in chronic conditions such as heart disease, type II diabetes, asthma, osteoarthritis and certain cancers. Excess weight is becoming more common at young ages. Over 20% of children ages 2-5 are overweight and about half of these children are obese. Over the next five years, the proportion of children that are overweight or obese roughly doubles.
Nearly three-quarters of all U.S. children ages 3 to 6 years are in some form of non-parental care. Of those children, 57 percent are enrolled in a center-based childcare program. Children consume a significant portion of their daily calories, and spend many of their waking hours in childcare.
There is no magic bullet that will solve the obesity epidemic. Rather, experts recommend that community-based coalitions work together to identify priorities, set goals, share information, and measure success. Furthermore, changing environments where people work, eat, play and sleep can help prevent obesity. Child care settings present an important opportunity for individuals and organizations to come together to build healthy lifestyles. The strategies included in this document are based on research and experience in other communities that have been shown to help children achieve and maintain healthy weight over their lifetimes.
Early care settings present opportunities to affect children's eating, physical activity and sleep habits. In addition, factors in this environment can influence patterns that will affect their weight, health and well-being for their entire lives. Based on expert recommendations the most important domains to consider include:
Caregivers should incorporate information about nutrition and physical activity into the curriculum. In addition, they should serve as role models by eating the same food served to children, sitting with them to eat, and eating age-appropriate portions. Caregivers should also participate in physical activity with children to serve as role models and to maintain their own health and well-being.
Engaging family members to support these healthy behaviors is essential to obesity prevention in early childhood. Parents of young children determine much of what children eat, and strongly influence their activity levels. At home, children should get messages about food choices and amounts, physical activity, screen time and sleep that are consistent with health-promoting messages in their early learning settings.
This article is a NetWellness exclusive.
Last Reviewed: Jun 23, 2013
Adjunct Associate Professor
School of Medicine
Case Western Reserve University


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Vote for Your View On Biodiversity
On September 15, thousands of people around the world held a conversation about World Wide Views on Biodiversity. You can carry on the conversation online: What do you think about the way biodiversity is managed? How do you think we should solve the problem of biodiversity loss? Tell us here – and see what others are saying!


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The Orion Nebula Cluster might be home to a black hole more than 100 times the mass of the Sun, according to a recent simulation. At 1,300 light-years away, that would make it the closest known black hole to Earth.
Most of space is empty. Even when galaxies collide, individual stars are far more likely to exchange passing glances than meet head-on.But space is a little less empty in the Orion Nebula Cluster, one of the many star clusters hanging from the mythic warrior's belt. In the cluster's early years, stars might have been packed so tightly that physical run-ins would be unavoidable. According to a new simulation conducted by Ladislav Šubr (Charles University, Czech Republic) and his colleagues in the September 20th Astrophysical Journal, these multiple mergers could have created a massive black hole that dominates the core of Orion Nebula Cluster.
The odds that a star will run directly into another star increase with the star's mass. When two normal stars do collide, the result is a single, more massive star. Because this larger star is more likely to have yet another star run into it (because it's bigger than it was before), collisions can lead to a runaway effect, as this star continues to grow via stellar cannibalism.
The computer simulation performed by Šubr and his colleagues shows that this runaway string of collisions could grow a central black hole up to 150 times more massive than the Sun.
The idea of runaway black hole growth in stellar clusters isn't new, but previous studies have focused on high-mass star clusters, ideal breeding grounds for black holes thousands of times the mass of the Sun. The new simulation is the first to show that even low-mass star clusters could grow their own, more modest black holes, says Jan Pflamm-Altenburg (Bonn Astronomy Institute), who was not involved in this study.
The team's simulation is simple in principle — the computer code calculates primarily the gravitational interactions between thousands of stars. If two stars get too close together, the code merges them into one. Stars can also escape the cluster if they gain enough speed through interactions with other stars. Stellar mergers happen often in the simulated cluster's early years, when the newborn stars huddle closer together. Multiple runs of the simulation make clear that, assuming the Orion Nebula Cluster was more compact in its past, a black hole with a mass of at least 100 Suns is inevitable.If it exists, that black hole probably isn't growing much today. Astronomers think that after only a few hundred thousand years, the Orion cluster's hottest, most massive stars began emitting intense radiation that drove away the star-forming gas enshrouding the young cluster. The cluster swells in size as the gas escapes because there is less mass holding the cluster together, and some weakly bound stars escape. The simulation mimics this expulsion, producing a cluster that loses about two-thirds of its mass and expands to five times its initial size. In the expanded cluster stars collide less frequently, and the runaway growth of the black hole slows down.
In the simulation, many of the heaviest stars either merge or escape, which might explain why only 10 OB stars are currently observed in the cluster, much fewer than the 40 OB stars expected.
Even if a black hole is inevitable in the Orion cluster, the trick will be to observe it. In general, black holes become visible when they feed on gas from their surroundings, because the gas heats up and emits light. But there's not enough gas in the Orion Nebula Cluster to feed the black hole in sufficient quantities. And even though the simulation indicates that the black hole probably forms a binary system with a star, the two will likely be too far apart for the black hole to feed off its companion.
A black hole could also be observed indirectly, by measuring its effect on the stars whirling in the cluster core. Šubr and his colleagues suggest that a 150-solar-mass black hole could explain the high speeds of the Trapezium stars, which lie at the Orion Nebula's heart. But thorough observations of the cluster's innermost 0.2 light-year are still needed to reveal whether the black hole exists, the authors conclude.
The Orion Nebula Cluster is one of the closest young star clusters, about 1300 light-years away, making it easier to study than the massive clusters, which lie at greater distances. "If a black hole really exists in the ONC, then it might be the closest black hole known to Earth," Pflamm-Altenburg adds.


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Five Ways To Improve Your Focus
1) Listening to Music
One way of improving your focus is constantly listening to music. When I talk about listening, I mean really getting to comprehend the words in the music. It helps in clearing your mind by making you focus on only one thing and hence helps in cooling your mind off. This helps in freshening your mind and removing blogs in your mind which limit your concentration and focus.
2) Meditation
Meditation also helps one in improving his or her focus and also concentration. It is highly advisable that you spend at least one hour of your day meditating. One way of improving your meditation is through breathing. When one focuses on the air he or she is breathing, the way it touches your nostrils and how it enters your throat and leaves helps in calming your nerves down. It helps you achieve a sense of peace and some satisfaction. This helps in improving your focus.
3) Make sure your goals are small, achievable and realistic
Setting very huge and unrealistic goals can really frustrate someone making him or her lose focus. One way of improving focus is setting goals which are smart (simple, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound). This helps in reducing pressure and a lot of frustrations when the goals seem to be underachieved. Accumulation of a lot of pressure in someone makes him or her lose concentration. Therefore it is of vital importance if one set goals which can be achieved in maybe a week or a month instead of very long term goals.
4) Frequent exercise of the body and mind
Studies have shown that regular exercise makes one calm his or her mind and thus improve his or her focus. Exercises such as swimming, going to the gym etc helps one to lay off burdens which he or she may be carrying in the head and mind. Exercises aids one in relaxing his or her mind and thus improving concentration and focus. Also one can improve focus by frequently exercising the mind by for example filling crossword puzzles, engaging in sentence conclusion texts etc this helps in making sure your mind is not idle.
5) Wear light clothes when you can
Wearing light and loose clothes also help in improving your focus. This is because there is sufficient ventilation in your body and free air can easily flow in and out. This helps in keeping your mind fresh and constantly on focus.


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DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — The political, business and academic elites at the World Economic Forum expressed renewed optimism at the global economy, with more liquidity, more unity in Europe and the fiscal cliff scaled by U.S. politicians. But other risks — especially that of not doing enough to combat persistent corruption — are emerging as new threats to a fragile global economy beset by challenges.
"In my view, the mood actually bordered onto complacency," said Axel Weber, chairman of UBS AG, Switzerland's biggest bank, which he acknowledged has a poor image due to a series of big corruption scandals.
"I think the mood has been 'good' — too good to be true — and therefore I think some expectation management really clearly is in order at the closing session here."
And while there was talk of restoring trust, there was less discussion of how to tackle the corruption that is undermining it.
The corruption that afflicts governments, businesses and organizations deserves more attention, says Huguette Labelle, chair of Transparency International.
"Corruption is a major issue. It feeds poverty, it seeds violence, it seeds illicit trade in drugs, in arms," she told the forum. "If you don't build transparency and a prevention of corruption right at the onset, once it comes into the fold and gets infiltrated, it becomes extremely difficult."
Part of the problem is that what's seen as corruption varies across nations and cultures and many international agencies and organizations lack the built-in accountability mechanisms that corporations have, said Joe Echevarria, CEO of the big audit firm Deloitte LLP.
"I think corruption doesn't enter into the mindset here, outside of the fact that it takes a hit on trust," he said in an Associated Press interview.
"There's no hue and cry for transparency," he added, referring to some of the non-business entities that handle billions of dollars. "No one's out there actively looking."
There was, however, some evidence of a hue and cry among demonstrators outside the perimeter of police and security guards. There, advocacy groups demanded that Swiss-based multinational corporations pay more attention to "corporate justice," ethics and their impacts on developing countries.
"Why is it so difficult to have binding rules asking for more transparency?" asked Daniele Gosteli Hauser of Amnesty International in Switzerland.
At a private dinner about anti-malaria initiatives and other global public health programs, Columbia University economist and U.N. special adviser Jeffrey Sachs told participants that fighting corruption is essential.
"You can't have transparency without accountability," Sachs told the dinner co-hosted by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership and the Center for Global Health & Diplomacy. "It takes an effort, but it is core to the discipline of public health."
Across the street, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was celebrating Germany's decision to reinstate its donation of €200 million ($270 million) a year through 2016, a change from the country's stance in 2011 when it held back some of its contributions to the $24 billion fund due to concerns about losses to corruption.
David Seaton, CEO of the Fluor Corp., says he sometimes wonders whether the anti-corruption task force he co-chairs for the Group of 20, the world's largest economies, has done anything more than pay lip service to a difficult, frustrating and often confounding problem.
"We are confronted by a scourge that presents a substantial roadblock to global growth and robs economies of resources that should be utilized to improve the quality of life," he wrote in a Davos forum blog posted Saturday.
"This is one of those challenges where failure is not an option."


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A very similar protocol was developed for the determination of antibodies to the CPS (plates coated with 5 µg/mL CPS were obtained from Statens Serum Institut), pneumococcal surface protein A (PspA; plates coated with 1 µg/mL, provided by Dr. David Briles, University of Alabama, Birmingham) and pneumolysin (Ply; coated with 1.7 µg/mL, obtained as described elsewhere [ 18 ]).
Measurement of serum opsonophagocytic activity (OPA) directed against S. pneumoniae type 6B. Because the most common serotype isolated was serotype 6B, OPA to this serotype was measured using methods established elsewhere [ 19 ]. Briefly, human polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) from healthy adult donors were freshly isolated by ficoll-histopaque density-gradient centrifugation. Heat-inactivated human serum specimens were serially diluted in eight 3-fold steps in a 96-well microtiter plate with Hanks' balanced salt solution/0.2% bovine serum albumin and were then incubated with 1000 cfu of a type 6 strain (0603, a 6B invasive isolate [ 20 ]) and complement (baby rabbit serum; final concentration, 12.5%) for 30 min at 37°C (final volume, 40 µL/well) on an orbital shaker. PMNs were then added at a 200:1 ratio (cells:bacteria; final volume, 80 µL/well), and the mixture was incubated for 45 min at 37°C with shaking. After incubation, samples from each well were diluted and plated onto blood agar plates overnight at 37°C and 5% CO 2 . The OPA titer was calculated as the reciprocal of the serum dilution that caused a 50% reduction in colony-forming units (killing), compared with colony-forming units from control wells that contained all reagents except human serum. The lowest opsonophagocytic titer that could be measured by our method was 24, the final dilution of human serum at the highest tested concentration. Serum specimens not demonstrating a 50% reduction in colony-forming units in the OPA at the lowest serum dilution were assigned a titer of 12 for the purposes of statistical analysis.Measurement of serum opsonophagocytic activity (OPA) directed against S. pneumoniae type 6B.
Statistical analyses. Differences in clinical characteristics of patients were evaluated by Student's t test or Wilcoxon rank sum test, depending on whether the data were normally distributed. Differences in antibody concentrations between colonized and uncolonized patients were evaluated by Student's t test after the log transformation of data. Comparison of log-transformed serum antibody concentrations 2 and 4 months before the acquisition of pneumococcal colonization was performed using a paired t test. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine which variables were independently and significantly associated with the acquisition of pneumococcus. For all comparisons, P < .05 was considered to be significant. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 11.0 for Macintosh (release 11.0.4; SPSS) and PRISM for Macintosh (version 4.0a; Prism).
These observations suggest that HIV did not enter the cells and integrate into the host's genome. Together, all the evidence suggests that HIV-1 did not productively infect genital epithelial cell line Ect1. The restriction is likely at the level of viral entry, presumably as a result of the absence of CD4 on Ect1 cells. Our observation is consistent with general notions that genital epithelial cells are refractory to cell-free HIV infection. In vivo studies in nonhuman primate models have shown that atraumatic inoculation of cell-free SIV onto the vagina or penis led to a productive infection of associated immune cells, but not of epithelial cells [ 22 , 23 ]
An interesting finding in the present study is that the epithelial cells were capable of sequestering significant amounts of virus particles and that the virus remained infectious even after treatment with trypsin. It appeared that Ect1 cells retained virus for a prolonged period. We estimated that only a small percentage of virus was released into the culture medium. The ability to sequester virus appeared not to be related to cell size, because HeLa CD4 − and Ect1 cells are of similar sizes and their membrane-associated proteins do not differ greatly. It is likely that this ability is associated with the content of specific viral-binding proteins on the cells. Our observation is consistent with a recent study by Dezzutti et al. [ 24 ], which showed that human primary urogenital epithelial cells could not be infected with cell-free HIV but are capable of sequestering virus and transmitting the virus to PBMCs in coculture. This phenomenon is reminiscent of dendritic cells' (DCs) sequestering and presenting HIV-1 to CD4-expressing susceptible targets via DC-SIGN [ 25 ], a C-type lectin that is highly expressed in DCs. Nonspecific sequestering of HIV by DCs is believed to play an important role in HIV transmission
In the case of Ect1 cells, our evidence indicates that heparan sulfate moieties of proteoglycans on the Ect1 cell membrane mediate the viral attachment. Epithelial cells are known to carry large amounts of HSPG [ 19 , 20 ], and the Ect1 cell line has a high level of heparan sulfate on its surface (Z.W., unpublished data). Cell-surface heparan sulfate has been shown to mediate HIV-1 attachment by interacting with viral gp120 [ 19 , 21 ], and heparan sulfate or heparin can inhibit virus infection by interfering with gp120 binding to CD4 cells [ 19 , 21 ]. However, it is not clear whether, in addition to heparan sulfate, other cell surface molecules, such as DC-SIGN, were involved in the initial viral attachment to Ect1 cells. The resistance of the sequestered virus to treatment with trypsin and the observation that the Ect1 cell–associated virus remained infectious for up to 9 days (data not shown) longer than in DCs [ 25 ] suggest that the virus is protected by cellular structures. Membrane microvilli of epithelial cells may shield the virus, or the virus could be enveloped by vesicles of the epithelial cells. The cellular mechanisms of viral protection, by epithelial cells, require further investigation
The real danger is thatthe information and social platformson the internet are being corrupted in the service of con men, political demagogues and thieves
Cambridge Analytica's wholesale scraping of Facebook user data is familiar news by now, and we are all "shocked" that personal data are being shared and traded on a massive scale. But the real issue with social media is not the harm to individual users whose information was shared, but the sophisticated and sometimes subtle mass manipulation of social and political behavior by bad actors, facilitated by deceit, fraud and the amplification of lies that spread easily through societal discourse on the internet.
Any pretense to privacy was abandoned long ago when we accepted the free service model of Google, Facebook, Twitter and others. Did the Senators who listened to Mark Zuckerberg's mea culpa last week really think that Facebook, which charges nothing for its services to users, was simply providing a public service for free? Where did they think its $11 billion in advertising revenue came from, if not from selling ads and user data to advertisers?
Let's identify the real issue. The tangible damage resulting from identity theft and the loss of personal financial information are growing problems, but they typically are not caused by our use of social media platforms, where we share a lot of information—but rarely our credit card or Social Security numbers.
The controversy about Cambridge Analytica that landed Zuckerberg before Congress actually began brewing over a year ago. It was a controversy not about privacy but about how Cambridge Analytica put vast amounts of personal data, mostly from Facebook, into its so-called "psychographic" engine to influence behavior at the individual level (see When the Big Lie Meets Big Data , published here in March of 2017).
Cambridge Analytica worked with researchers from Cambridge University who developed a Facebook app that provided a free personality test, then proceeded to scoop up all the users' Facebook data plus that of all their friends (thus leveraging the actual users, who numbered less than a million, to harvest the data of more than 80 million people). Using this data, Cambridge Analytica then classified each individual's personality according to the so-called "OCEAN" scale (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism) and fashioned individually targeted messages to appeal to each person's personality.
Neither subpoenas nor investigative journalists were needed to find all this out—most of it was publicly revealed by Cambridge Analytica's chief Alexander Nix in a marketing presentation that received wide distribution on YouTube. Cambridge Analytica (owned partly by Robert Mercer, an early pioneer in artificial intelligence who has been a financial backer of Breitbart News and other right-wing causes) had already done work for the Trump Campaign, and Nix was seeking more business.
The real danger revealed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal is that the information and social platforms of the internet, on which we increasingly spend our time and through which more and more of our personal and social connections flow, are being corrupted in the service of con men, political demagogues and thieves. Russia's troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, employs fake user accounts to post divisive messages, purchase political ads, spread fabricated images and even organize political rallies.
The danger of misinformation is not just political; it is commercial as well. Major purchasers of internet advertising know that the "pay per click" model is flawed. Competitors can set up bots (or even human campaigns) to click on their ads, driving up their costs and casting doubt on the value of an advertising campaign. The company Devumi sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities and businesses in order to make them appear more popular than they are. The followers are fake, cobbled together in automated fashion by scraping the social media web for names and photos.
Until Zuckerberg's decision to testify before Congress, there was scant evidence that Twitter or Facebook were disturbed about any of this. Still, there are a number of machine learning tools that can be used to identify fake accounts or activity.
In 2015, a University of Maryland professor, Jen Golbeck , discovered an ingenious real-time method for identifying fake social media accounts. She found that the number of a user's Twitter or Facebook friends follows a well-known statistical distribution called Benford's Law. The law states that, in a conforming data set, the first significant digit of numbers is a "1" about 30 percent of the time—six times more often than it's a 9. The phenomenon, which is quite widespread, is named after physicist Frank Benford, who illustrated it with the surface areas of rivers, street addresses, numbers appearing in a Reader's Digest issue, and many more examples.
In other words, if you looked at (say) a thousand Facebook users and counted how many friends each had, roughly 300 of them would have friend counts in the teens (1x), 100–199 range (1xx) or 1,000–1,999 range (1xxx). Only 5 percent would have counts beginning with a nine: 9, 90–99, 900–999, 9,000–9,999.
We can represent each Facebook, Twitter or other social media user as a network of linked users. A plot of an individual user's links to other users might look like the figure below:
To assess whether a user is genuine, we can look at each of that user's friends, and count friends or followers. Specifically:
1. Consider a friend or follower of the account in question.
2. Count its followers/friends ("friend of friend"); record.
3. Repeat for all the remaining friends/followers of the original account.
4. Calculate the distribution of those "friend of friend" counts.
Russian Bots Were Revealed, Yet Stayed Online
Golbeck found that the overwhelming majority of Facebook, Twitter and other social media follower and friend counts followed Benford's Law. On Twitter, however, she found a small set of 170 accounts whose follower distributions differed markedly from that law. In her 2015 paper she wrote:
"Some accounts were spam, but most were part of a network of Russian bots that posted random snippets of literary works or quotations, often pulled arbitrarily from the middle of a sentence. All the Russian accounts behaved the same way: following other accounts of their type, posting exactly one stock photo image, and using a different stock photo image as the profile picture."
Golbeck told me that she and others posted lists of Russian bots active on Twitter three years ago, and they were still active as of January in this year. Twitter does not seem to care. More to the point, a meticulous cleansing of user records would have the financially deleterious effect of reducing its user base; in Silicon Valley business plans begin and end with a large and constantly growing user base.
Does it matter that fake Russian (and other) Twitter and Facebook accounts and attendant activity persist? What harm can they do?
The Future
It is hard to see how government regulation will play a useful role. In today's digital age, regulation is like placing rocks in a streambed. The water will simply flow around them, even big ones.
It's possible that the social media titans will use tools at their disposal like those discussed here to drastically reduce the impact of fake accounts and manipulative behavior. Currently, we have the attention of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, because of the peculiar Cambridge Analytica circumstances, where the storyline runs something like "Breitbart and Trump funder scrapes massive amounts of personal data from Facebook, uses it to manipulate opinion." Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, has made some promises to improve identity verification but has otherwise escaped the most recent limelight.
The ultimate solution may lie in a smarter public. Can people be taught to approach what they see on the internet with greater skepticism? P.T. Barnum would say no, but there is one powerful example of public education that had a good and profound end: smoking. The tremendous decline in smoking around the world is due largely to public education and an attendant change in behavior, not to regulation and not to greater public responsibility on the part of tobacco companies.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
As I mentioned in the first activity described here, we love playing with buttons. This button set includes a variety of different shapes and colors, and it's a lot of fun to use them in combination with play dough. Here we made a little house,we added windows from square buttons, and decorated the roof with other shapes. You can build cars with playdough, and add button wheels, you can make a face from playdough and add button eyes, nose, mouth. The possibilities are endless, just use caution.
We try to make a bath time as fun as possible. One of the activities we do while taking a bath is painting on bathroom walls with
Mens Pant sea Island Cotton Hanro Clearance Official Site For Sale 97svgzWFE
. If you haven't tried it already, it's a lot of fun and super easy to wash. I usually squirt a little bit of paint on the side of the tub so Scarlett can dip her brush into the paint.
For this activity you need flat marbles and a paper with lines of different shape. Show your toddler how to arrange marbles on the line.Scarlett is really into marbles, so after doing this activity, she was busy transferring marbles into different containers for almost half an hour.
We made this sandbox out of cream of wheat – it's easier to clean up and to get a hold of. I drew some shapes on index cards and showed Scarlett how to recreate the shape in the sand. In our index cards we had a circle, a triangle, a square, a zigzag line, a straight line and a dotted line. Scarlett seemed to be most interested in shapes.
After drawing shapes on the sand, we converted the sensory bin into beach scene. Some animals came over to relax on the beach, but Scarlett was most interested in scooping the sand (cream of wheat) into a little cup with a spoon, and then transferring it into another cup. We also poured sand into a see-through plastic cup by using a funnel.
You can make this patches puzzle by printing these files , cutting out squares and showing your toddler how to match the squares to the picture to complete it. There are 3 picture puzzles in the downloadable file.
These animal action cards are hit with Scarlett. She started to do some of these action when she was about 18 months old, and now at 25 months old she is able to do almost all of them besides puffing her cheeks like a chipmunk. She asks me to play with these cards over and over again. I showed her how to do the actions the first time we played with these and now she does them on her own. It's fun for the whole family, we clap when she does it right, and she gets to let her energy out in a fun way. The digital version of these cards is available on etsyand a printed version is .
During these activity we look for
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in rice, and then match the letter we found to the letter card. I used flash cards that we had since they have letters on the back of the cards, but you can just draw the letters you put in the rice bin on a piece of paper for matching. Colored or regular rice can be used.
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posted by Thom Holwerda on Tue 28th Feb 2012 17:25 UTC
Apple has announced an iPad event for March 7 - iPad 3, obviously. The invitation clearly shows a high-resolution display, and some argue it's missing a home button (we'll see). If this really has a 2048x1536 resolution... What do you mean, leap-frogging the 'competition'. So, anybody want to buy a relatively pristine iPad 2 with grey smart cover? Comes with the box and warranty and everything?


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Events Calendar
Now Playing: Journey to the Center of the Earth
Date and TimeFriday, March 28, 2014
All Day
- Kirkhof Center » Big Screen Theater
Showtimes: 11am, 2pm, 5pm, 9pm.
On a quest to find out what happened to his missing brother, a scientist, his nephew and their mountain guide discover a fantastic and dangerous lost world in the center of the earth.
Stars: Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem
This event also occurred on 3/24/2014, 3/25/2014, 3/26/2014, 3/27/2014, 3/29/2014 and 3/30/2014


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As you very likely to be already aware, today we've suffered a major service outage - it was caused by major water damage to the computer network in a our data centre and it took nearly 8 hours fix.
Firstly I'd like to offer my apologies for the interruption in service and thank all of our members for their patience whilst we fixed the issue.
The service is largely back up and running now - the exception is new activations which are currently being queued and our service teams are working on a fix.
Some of you have asked about compensation - we're going to focus on fixing the issues we've had and make sure we have a stable service first - and then we'll sit down think of ways to make it up to you.
We'll continue to post updates on the support community so click here for the latest news.
Thanks once again for your patience.
Mike Fairman
CEO giffgaff
Update 21:15
Thanks for everyone's comments - especially those appreciating our way of keeping you up to date!
In response to a few of the issues raised...
Porting - those that were scheduled for today may have been delayed - we're continuing to work on these as fast as we can.
Texts - we think that for most of the outage, inbound text messages should have been delivered. Whether those that failed initially will ultimately be delivered will be determined largely by the re-try policies of the network from which they were sent. In other words, you may or may not get them depending on which network sent them.
Root cause - we will of course investigate this and report on the conclusions. Our data centre does have an uninterruptable power supply and backup generators but its possible that even if these worked the water damage to the network gear was sufficient to bring the service down.
Cheers for the update Mike. Can't have been easy for any of the staff today
Myself and others would like to hear what is being done to make sure an issue like this can't happen again in the future. Why is giffgaff relying on one server to power the entire network? Where are the backup systems?!
Many thanks for keeping everyone updated.I'm fed up of this compensation culture and people wanting to claim.When you have a burst water main there's nothing we can do but grin and bear it.It's doesn't help when people keep moaning and clogging the system up!
When will Number PORTS start working? my brother put one through on Tuesday for Today, and he has been waiting all day.
I'm alright for compensation Mike, I actually enjoyed being left alone today so thank you.
There you have it; apologies from the CEO himself. Can't ask for much more than that. Thanks Mike for the thread. Very calm and collective of you.
@gypsymu - Would you say the same if your power went off for the day? Systems around the country which people depend on go offline all the time but services remain operational because companies have the sense to have backup systems in place. Why don't giffgaff have these?
Thanks for the update, but I am utterly disappointed! To be without sevice for nearly the whole day is appalling. I've been on other networks before and this problem has occured, but has always been fixed within a few hours at most. I was expecting very important phone calls today and being without service has left me in a very bad position. What assurance do i have that this is not going to be a regular occurence?!
I'm honestly thinking about switching back to another network! #Dissappointed!
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We love Valentine's Day because it is the perfect reminder that everything we do here at Dauphine Press – every custom design, every wedding invitation, every letterpress printed card – begins with LOVE!
We hope that you are enjoying many sweet moments today with those you love most!
Happy Valentine's Day!


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I count eight cringe-worthy things in this school portrait. See if you agree with me.
When I picked up Nora from school yesterday (she goes to preschool/daycare three days a week), they handed me a fat envelope full of photos. I couldn't wait to rip into it and marvel at my gorgeous girl. And then I saw this shot. And about 35 others just like it. At first glance you may not think there's anything that bad going on here. So I will walk you through it.
First, there's the backdrop. I know I'm going to offend some people here, but I cannot stand fake backdrops on kid portraits. Like, makes-my-skin-crawl, not-for-me. My sister, who I love, loves them so I get that it's a personal taste thing. But I definitely don't remember checking the fairy tale background box when I sent in the slip for picture day.* And the Magic Kingdom in the background?! OMG. And the fake log she's perched on with the leaves scattered about. What is she a woodland creature? A fairy? A princess? Minnie Mouse? I'm so confused. Then we have the hands placed just so around the fake flowers. (I feel the same way about fake flowers as I do about fake backdrops). Gah! Why do we need props, aren't two year olds cute enough on their own?!
Of course I cannot place all the blame on the photo people and their plastic props. I am equally culpable here. The super-loud halter dress is cute for like a luau maybe but it's not really school picture-day worthy. It's also not necessarily my taste so I'm confused about why I chose to put her in it on this day.* Completing the look (and perhaps the reason I'm disliking the dress so much) are the chunky hot pink crocs. So wrong. And then we have her hair. A high, half ponytail, with a red rubber band—really? When Nick and I were gawking at these yesterday he said he remembers me doing her hair like that and he was shocked. I said I think the teachers must have done it that way, but he's probably right.* Finally, we have the smile—i.e., the pained look—on Nora's face. Is she taking a poop? Smelling poop? Does she sense how ridiculous the whole thing is? All I know is I get overstimulated every time I look at this shot. There's just so much going on! Nick said it belongs in one of those funny facebook roundups of the most ridiculous school portraits ever.
Needless to say, we won't be ordering any school pictures this time around. I never feel obligated to buy these things unless they're great (it's not like it's her third-grade portrait, the kid is two and I have a bajillion adorable shots of her that I've taken). I know my mother-in-law is going to call me momentarily to say she wants one and she'll pay for it and Nora is cute no matter how ridiculously styled she is, but here's the thing: I wouldn't want one of my MIL's friends or coworkers seeing this photo and thinking that I liked this shot enough to purchase it and send it out to family. When I took it to CVS to scan this morning, I kept it turned in and hidden from the view of anyone around me—that's how un-me it is. (Can you imagine what people thought I was hiding?!) Am I making a big deal out of something that really isn't that big of a deal? Yes. (That's sort of the point of this blog.) And I realize that there are plenty of people who would love a shot that was styled like this. That's cool. I think it's just hilarious to me because it's so not me. Or Nora.
Have you ever not ordered your kids' school pictures because of how they turned out? How do you feel about fake backgrounds?
*The truth is, all of this is my fault. This is what happens when you're too busy to pay attention to the notices coming home from school. I vaguely remember picture day and it was in the height of the campaign. I was letting a lot slide during those few months and this shot is proof. Ouch.


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Melbourne is Australia´s second largest city and the capital of Victoria. The city is frequently voted one of the best cities in the world to live in thanks to its laid back, friendly atmosphere, the many cultural and sporting events that take place all year round and a milder climate than other Australian big city counterparts. The city is divided into a number of districts, with the CBD (Central Business District) as the throbbing centre of Melbourne. The city as known as the cultural capital of Australia due to the wide range of art galleries, music and theatre productions, film festivals, and a vibrant live music scene. It also has a well established culture of wine, food and coffee.The best time to visit is in Autumn and Spring when the temperatures average between 26 - 30 C, pleasant indeed! However, whatever time of year you decide to go, there´ll be plenty of accommodation options open to you, as well as a wealth of things to do, indoors and out!
Fun Facts
- The city was nearly called "Batmania", after one of its founders, John Batman.
- The city is the greenest in the world, with 480 hectares of parks and gardens.
- Melbourne has the highest Italian city and Greek city populations outside of Italy and Greece respectively.
- Between 1901 and 1927, Melbourne became the temporary capital of Australia before this honour went to Canberra.
- Before 1966, pubs in Melbourne weren´t part of the nightlife...they closed at 6pm!
- There is a public holiday celebrated in honour of a race horse in this sportscrazy metropolis.
Things to DoThere is plenty to do in this city filled with museums, parks, beaches, and shops as well as fine restaurants and great nightlife! Melbourne is justifiably the fashion capital of Australia, with numerous boutiques and shopping malls catering to even the most discerning tastes. Little Collins Street in the CBD boasts a number of the world´s top designers and fashion houses, whereas you can find some cheaper high street fashion in the Melbourne Central shopping mall. For something more eclectic, head to the southern end of Chapel Street in Prahran/Windsor for a browse around the vintage and alternative gear shops situated there. For a day of culture, why not take a trip to one of the many museums? Melbourne Museum in the Carlton district is the largest museum in the Southern Hemisphere with 7 main galleries, a children´s gallery and a temporary exhibit gallery and features a broad range of topics such as the natural environment, culture and history. For art-lovers, the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia´s oldest gallery, is home to over 65,000 artistic objects ranging from paintings to ceramics and silverware. It hosts many shows, most recently an excellent exhibition of works by Monet.
Sports fans will find no shortage of entertainment in the sporting capital of Australia. Australian Football, which was invented in Melbourne, is the most popular sport in town, closely followed by horse racing and cricket. The National Sports Museum is located at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and has a great collection of sporting heritage.
For a day at the beach we´d recommend you visit St. Kilda. It not only has great beachside restaurants, but also the historic Luna Park (a theme park built in 1912), a botanical garden and a vibrant nightlife. There are also many nice walking trails and a Sunday market on the Esplanade, as well as the Jewish Museum of Australia depicting the history of the Jewish community. Nature lovers will most definitely enjoy a day out in the massive Royal Botanical Gardens, which are situated in the heart of the CBD. 38 hectares of well tended and beautiful gardens offer the perfect setting for long, relaxing walks. On your travels you´ll come across tea rooms offering tasty cream teas and cakes. In summer the gardens show outdoor movies and Shakespearean plays, while the Children´s Garden is a fun area for kids to play around in.


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An effective breastfeeding baby usually has little trouble breastfeeding even if his/her mother's nipples appear to be flattened. A less effective breastfeeder may need some time to figure out how he/she can draw the nipple into the mouth with latch-on. Although the benefit of using hard plastic breast shells is not conclusive, some mothers find it helps to wear them in the bra between feedings. Breast shells exert a small amount of traction to help draw the nipple outward. Using a breast pump to draw the nipple out just prior to breastfeeding may also help.
If nipples invert, or "dent" inward, with stimulation, try the interventions mentioned for flat nipples. Nipple eversion devices are available. Ask a certified lactation consultant (IBCLC) for information. Occasionally, one or both nipples are severely inverted. If one breast is less affected, your baby can breastfeed on the less affected breast. Most women can produce enough milk in one breast to exclusively breastfeed their babies. If you only nurse on one breast, it is a good idea to pump the other breast so that your breasts will be approximately the same size. You can store the milk you pump in the freezer and use this milk for times when you are away from your baby.


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Mastering the Stock Market: High Probability Market Timing & Stock Selection Tools
By John L. Person
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
$90, 292 pages
John Person believes the key to investing is selecting the right stocks in the right sectors at the right time — market timing. To make his trading decisions, he uses corroborating noncorrelated tools, such as sector analysis, seasonal trend analysis, contrarian indicators, price patterns and momentum indicators.
He notes that it is critical to first look at the stock market's health before putting any dollars at risk. Moreover, it is important to look at the market internals of the major averages for confirmation of trend and relative strength. He suggests tracking daily and weekly advance-decline data for each index in conjunction with trend lines analysis to look for divergences.
Person also urges traders to determine if sectors and stocks have any consistent seasonal trends at particular times of the year, and then to take advantage of that information, if other confirming indicators line up.
Person's spends much time on favorite tool — pivot point analysis. He has done considerable research on this subject and presents his case for its use. He has found that this approach can uncover specific price levels to enter a trade and aid in filtering out higher probability trade setups by lowering risk and setting profit targets.
One of the most interesting and timely chapters focuses on using scanning software to look for specific trade setups. He shows how to scan for doji's, momentum, and new daily and weekly signals. The current software allows traders to scan for their own criteria to locate the best trades that meet their criteria. Scanning in real-time likely will become even a more popular method of selecting suitable trades as it develops further and becomes even easier to use.
Person writes in a clear, straightforward manner, and presents charting examples to illustrate his key points. This book's in-depth explanations will be particularly useful to new traders who are looking for a well laid out, step-by-step approach to technical trading. Moreover, veteran traders are offered trading nuggets and ideas that can help improve their bottom lines.
Leslie N. Masonson is a day trader and the author of "Buy Don't Hold" and "All About Market Timing." He can be reached at email@example.com.


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Flood Paint
RealWorld Paint is a handy and reliable application designed to edit images.
The editor can import and export Photoshop, GIMP and Paint.net files with layers ad use Photoshops .8bf plug-ins. There are numerous drawing tools like Brush, Line, Curve, Ellipse, Rectangle or Flood fill and...
Platforms: Windows, 2003, Windows Vista
|License: Freeware
|Download (30): RealWorld Paint (formerly Paint.COM) Download
Ultimate Paint is designed to help you create, edit, view and manipulate images.
UP supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PCX, AVI (reading only), TGA, WMF/EMF, ICO (reading only), IFF/LBM and WAP BMP image formats and Twain compatible scanners. You can easily print your image, setting its size,...
Platforms: Windows
|License: Freeware
|Download (31): Ultimate Paint Download
Ultimate Paint Freeware Edition is a graphic editor designed to help you easily enhance your photos. It supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PCX, AVI (reading only), TGA, WMF/EMF, ICO (reading only), IFF / LBM and WAP BMP image formats, as well asTwain compatible scanners. You can easily print your...
Platforms: Windows
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http://simulations.narod.ru/This is flood fill or paint bucket tool in matlab. scanline algoritm used because it fast. Seeds shown as red dots. The function itslef is flood_fill.mrest files:zz_flood_fill_test.m - run it to test flood_fill.mzz_flood_fill_test_movie.m - run it to get...
Platforms: Matlab
|License: Shareware
|Cost: $0.00 USD
|Size: 20.48 KB
|Download (18): flood fill (scanline) Download
Now you can draw directly on the touch screen of your PDA. No more sheets of paper and pencils. Using this program you can draw lines, shapes, text, erase and copy
fragments, and zoom your drawings. You can use one of 16 millions of colors.
Paint is a drawing tool you can use to create...
Platforms: Windows CE, Pocket PC, Windows
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|Size: 303 KB
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PaintCanvas, a great natural-style paint and object based graphics making program, The program comes with many tools, including base graphics making tools such as rectangle, ellipse ,polygon, curve ,text etc and many paint tools such as Magic Wand, Flood Fill, cloning, retouching,lighting...
Platforms: Windows
|License: Shareware
|Cost: $49.00 USD
|Size: 3.14 MB
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Corel PHOTO-PAINT is an application with a long history and one that I have used off and on for as many years. This latest Version 9 is not all that different in outward appearance and the included feature set than the previous Version 8, or even 7 for that matter. However, using this new...
Platforms: *nix
|License: Shareware
|Cost: $100.00 USD
|Size: 180 MB
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DNS Flood Detector was developed to detect abusive usage levels on high traffic nameservers and to enable quick response in halting (among other things) the use of ones nameserver to facilitate spam. DNS Flood Detector uses libpcap (in non-promiscuous mode) to monitor incoming dns queries to a...
Platforms: *nix
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Tux Paint Default Stamps project is a collection of hundreds of "rubber stamp" images (and associated descriptions and sound effects) for the childrens drawing program, "Tux Paint." Both PNG and SVG images are included. Categories include animals, clothes, food, hobbies, household, medical,...
Platforms: *nix
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Tux Paint has a simple, easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who helps guide children as they use the program. Tux Paint provides a blank canvas and a variety of drawing tools to help your child be creative. Additional artwork ("stamps") can be downloaded...
Platforms: *nix
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THC-Flood Connect is a connection flooding tool which supports SSL, dumping + sending data, closing or keeping sessions etc. Just a small release. Have fun. Use allowed only for legal purposes. To compile: cc -o flood_connect -O2 flood_connect.c openssl: cc -o flood_connect -O2...
Platforms: *nix
|License: Freeware
|Size: 4.1 KB
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Picture Paint is specifically designed to enable users to create their own diagrams, images and scenes. This Picture Paint Software puts together a lot of the things. Picture Paint - pictures paint (painting) software download at picture-paint.com
To this end there are Main menu items,...
Platforms: Windows, Other
|License: Shareware
|Cost: $39.95 USD
|Size: 2.47 MB
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Standalone old MS Paint program that allows you to get your old XP Paint interface in Windows 7. One of the major user interface changes in Windows 7 is that the addition of ribbon interface to Paint program. The new ribbon interface is really handy to navigate between the options, but many old...
Platforms: Windows
|License: Freeware
|Size: 410.83 KB
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FoxPDF Paint Shop Pro to PDF Converter allows you to convert (PSP, PCX, GIF, BMP, HTML, HTM and RTF) to highly polished PDF files without the need of Paint Shop Pro. batch conversion supported. It converts Paint Shop Pro (PSP, PCX, GIF, BMP, HTML, HTM and RTF) files into vector PDF files, quick...
Platforms: Windows
|License: Shareware
|Cost: $29.95 USD
|Size: 13.7 MB
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Paint online monkey. Cool ideas, top tips, craft projects, paint effects, Your gallery,.Tips on a wide variety of topics, including home construction, gardens and yards, and home repair.How to Paint Abstracts from a Photo Topics Painting for BeginnersColor Theory / Color WheelAcrylic Painting...
Platforms: All
|License: Freeware
|Size: 10.24 KB
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" Glow Paint is the ultimate app for painting, draw glow doodle, glow sticks and to create stylish glow graffiti. It's a simple and fun app for adults and kids. Use it when you have a few minutes and then save your work! Build your kids creative skills and help kill some time when you need it...
Platforms: iPhone, iPod
|License: Freeware
|Size: 1.1 MB
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Advanced Paint is a small, easy to use application specially designed to help you create drawings.
Currentlly only the some basic features are being offered, bgut there's room to grow in future releases.
for WindowsAll
Platforms: Windows
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Creative Paint is an Image and Photo Editing Software for Computers that run Windows Xp sp2. It Features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools... Creative Paint includes simple tools for...
Platforms: Windows
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RealWorld Paint is a portable image editor with layers and layer styles optimized for bloggers and other web publishers. The editor can import and export Photoshop, GIMP and Paint.net files with layers ad use Photoshops .8bf plug-ins. There are numerous drawing tools like Brush, Line, Curve,...
Platforms: Windows
|License: Freeware
|Size: 8.12 MB
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PC Paint Font Collection is a truetype font that will allow you to give a fresh new look to all of your written documents. All you have to do is install the font onto your PC and use it for writing your texts to see how it will change their appearance.
To install it, you can simply right-click...
Platforms: Windows
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Fisher Cats do their best to stay loose, get work inBy ALLEN LESSELS
New Hampshire Union Leader
March 31. 2014 8:38PM
MANCHESTER — Cold? What cold? The New Hampshire Fisher Cats got to work on Monday afternoon to get ready for Thursday night's opener at Trenton.
Sunday was a travel day and the Fisher Cats did their Media Day duties on Monday and then some moved out into the parking lot behind Northeast Delta Dental Stadium to throw and others took their turn in the batting cage under the stands. This morning they're scheduled for an indoor workout in Bedford where they'll get to take some ground balls and throw the ball around.
They've been working hard in Florida, and Northeast weather conditions that are keeping them off the field for the moment shouldn't slow them down, said players and manager Bobby Meacham.
"We had a pretty good schedule back in Florida," said relief pitcher John Anderson, who was in Single-A Dunedin last year and is moving up.
"It's good to have a day off. We've gone pretty full throttle the last 30-something days. It was good to have (Sunday) off and relax a little."
The lefty from Pleasanton, Calif., was on his way to the parking lot to throw.
And the temperature could have been much lower.
"In 2009, my first full season, I was in Lansing, Mich., and the first day there it was 12 degrees and there was snow on the ground," Anderson said. "I'm somewhat prepared for this. I've just got to get out today and get some warm clothes and I'll be OK."
Dealing with the cold and less-than-ideal conditions is like dealing with much of baseball, said starting pitcher Casey Lawrence, who returns to the team.
"You've got to make adjustments, it's kind of like baseball anyway, you make some adjustments, get your preparation in and get ready to go in a few days," he said.
"You can't do anything about it and everybody's got to deal with the same elements," said returning infielder Gabe Jacobo, who then chuckled. "Go out there and just wait for May. I think it's more of a mind game. . . . . We're going to be wearing more clothes and more layers. Most of us have played in the cold somewhere in our careers. I think we'll be just fine."
Meacham doesn't think a little time off hurts.
"I don't think they'll miss anything," he said. "I think they welcome the break. At the indoor facility they can play long toss and take ground balls and get their arms loose. They've had a couple of days off from that, which is probably perfect."
THIRTEEN of the players on the projected Opening Day roster that Fisher Cats released on Monday have spent time with the Fisher Cats. There are 11 newcomers.Aaron Sanchez, a 6-foot- 4 right-handed starting pitcher and top Toronto prospect, is one of the new guys.
Sanchez will get the ball on Thursday to open the season.Austin Bibens-Dirkx, Deck McGuire, Lawrence and Scott Copeland — all of them right-handers — are due to follow Sanchez in the rotation.
The bullpen is made up of four left-handers and three righties.
Anderson, Richard Bleier, Tony Davis and Tyler Ybarra are the lefities. Randy Bone, Scott Gracey and Gregory Infante are right-handers.
The catchers are A.J. Jimenez, who played with the Fisher Cats last year, and Aaron Munoz.
Shortstop Kevin Nolan of Nashua is back in the infield along with Jacobo and Andy Burns. Newcomers in the infield include Jon Berti, Yusuf Carter, Andy Fermin and Peter Mooney.
Glenn, Kenny Wilson and Jon Jones return in the outfield and Michael Crouse is up from Dunedin.