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Trackmania Nations – ESWC
200 Tracks Map Pack
This is a mappack for trackmania nations with 200 (!!) nice custom maps, perfect to play in rounds, timeattack or team modus. The map pack includes some easy and some hard tracks, ideal for your lanparty or your gamesserver.
Offical Nadeo TMN Bonus Tracks
Nadeo have released an offical pack of maps created by them! This pack includes 20 new maps for you all to set you World Records on!
Speedtek corporation secret weapons research facility "Vulture", has been conducting experiments on a new weapon design which changes the pressure in the atmosphere.
We, that is Derek and Hastings, present to you "Speedmatazz" (5000C), a duo track of us two. Our goal was to create a fluent, spectacular, smooth, challenging and, of course, fast track, and I dare say that we succeeded.
SuperTek 3000 NP Challenge
This is a small but suspensful map that I have created because I wanted a map that is difficult but looks easy. Try it if you dare!
evilempire's Track Pack
This small track contains 8 of my best tracks so far.
Collection of Stunts v1 (PF)
This track from ceo_tw contains a collection of stunts.
3CDO Loops
This track is very hard, so isn't really suitable to host online, though its great if you like to play single player tracks with a real challenge.
Jump Around
A Trackmania Nations map from Mr. Thox.
Smooth Santa
With world population ever growing, Santa Claus finds it more and more difficult getting everything done by himself. He's looking for assistants - reckless drivers in this case.
The Trump Card
Today we will begin operation Trump Card. The primary target is the enemy field headquarters, which is heavily guarded. A direct attack would be suicide, so we're going to use a hit n' run tactic.
Four In One
What is your preferred racing style: Stunts? Speedracing? Technical driving? Offroad? Choose one of the subpaths and get the best times!
Scooby Doo Track
This track lasts for roughly 1 minute and is only one route, yet it is quite difficult.
Autobahn (1.0)
Full throttle track. Easy to learn, hard to master - and a lot of fun!
Basic Instinct
This track contains lots of speed so control is the main issue here.
OWN Turn-On Track Pack
Four Wonderful tracks bundled into one small zip file, extract this file and you will have four tracks each with there own great features.
Green Style
A lot of variation in this track. Loops, jumps, a little offroad and some nice corners. Full speed 'n' flat out.
Experts Only
Please only play this track, if you are an expert. Otherwise you couldn't even stay on it for more than five seconds.
Airways 1
A really nice track. Effort has been put into this and its nice and stylish and most of all: fun.
The Big One
A speedy slalom start. You need to keep your speed up to make the first jump. Also, watch out for the offroad grass bit and a nice big jump at the end.
The Jump
An enjoyable track where jumping is the focus, It took many turns to get a good jump, lovely effects and features added.
3CDO Run
This was a level created by AccursedAce (3CDO Ace) Combining speed skill and control, this map is tough and will be a challenge.
United For Speed
A fast, yet difficult track from OnD.Arild.
Twin Twister 2
This is a remake of one of my older Sunrise tracks. This version of the track is formatted for Nations and includes a bunch of new features only found in Nations.
Devils Vortex (1.0)
You will have to focus more than ever. It takes a long time to get to the top, and many small tricks may throw you off the track.
Hot Nations
A short track which is loved by the track mania nations community.
Micro Machines
A very clever, awesome track. It involves skill and good judgement but it's fun and a nice concept that is a amazingly done.
Fast Tech 2
OnD.Arild has released the sequel to Fast Tech. It's pretty high speed from start to end, but containing some rather technical turns and curves from time to time.
Belzebu 360!
Dificult track with 360 wallride, loops and jumps, tecnical and speedy.
Reaching Perfection
A track containing lots of speed and fun, but it can be a little technical.
Twist, Flip and Enage
The Second Track Created in my recent comeback to the track creating bussiness, this is a complex track with some nasty bits.
A Little Snack
This is a new track for TrackMania Nations.
500cc drift
A track designed for drifting from ceo_tw.
BurnOut : Revenge
Fast and full of loops you will love it.
Mission: Speedtek
Among our goals is to acquire Speedtek's financial documents which may reveal discrepancies which would lead to previously unregistered third party investors.
Reach the Sky II
This new version of Reach The Sky is kind on the user, with a speed ramp to the top alot easier to climb you will gain some good speeds. This version is slightly longer than the previous with an added twist.
Tunnels II
Welcome to tunnels two, this track was inspired by tunnels my first map involving tunnels, this one has some interesting tunnels.
MotoCross (1.0)
MotoCross is a dirt track that is made to look like a motocross, closed stadium. The detail, signs, and ground textures echo the effect the author is trying to make; and he does it well. This is a great map for any motocross fan.
Long Track (1.1.1)
This is a very long track. the first time I completed it it took me around 17:00min. The best time is some were around 13:00min.
Loops and Twists
Here is a track i brewed up, its got lots of bumps and you will be doing many wheelies.
WOW Jumps
WOW Jumps is a map that uses some interesting tricks that have not been seen in other maps. The maneuvers in this track are also original with their own twists. Expect to see a lot of big air and jumps!
This is actually an improved version of a track I made for Trackmania Sunrise Demo. The track's theme is all about going up, higher and higher, till you get to the final long jump. Custom music, signs, intro, and ingame fx.
Reach the Sky
This map is all about getting frm the bottom of the map to the top, the top is worth all the wait with some extreme speeds availble.
Kalako73 Ten Pack Tracks (1.0)
Kalako73 Ten Pack Tracks is esially what the title suggests, a pack of ten tracks.
2 Laps
This is a rather basic track to play around on, a few bumps and twisted tracks.
OWN The Knot 3
Since releasing "The Knot 2" I've gotten several requests for making a third one. Like the previous knots #3 is a demanding technical track.
Sticky Tarmac
Drive in the sun and get that track sticky, around 45 seconds long.
Fast Tech (1.0)
Fast Tech is, you guessed it, fast! It is 30" by 35" and is very technical with some large jumps. It hosted at a night stadium which will add some night-racing fun.
A huge jump, long curve, speed and tech track that averages 45 seconds.
Alien Pack
Venort brings a new track and skin. The track is named Roswell, and for good reason. Roswell is a desert type map with cactuses and a small city within. The skin is welled suited for Roswell, as it is alien themed.
Even though this is Nemesis' first track, it looks very cool. Do try it out!
Big 360º (TMN)
Big_360º is a fast, oval shaped map that hopefully will not get you too dizzy. The author did not concentrate on the complexity or the difficulty when making this map, but instead, he wanted to make it realistic.
This map is the ultimate love child between sadism and pure evil. Its hard (extremely) and only people with true skill and patience will be able to finish this.
Adieu 500cc
Lots of fun and speed.
TrickShot 1
This track will be fairly tricky so keep at it if you fail.
A nice enjoyable track.
Autobahn (No Jumps)
Due to request I made a version w/o the jumps - the track is now even more faster.
The Dirt Track (V2)
This is one of my best tracks. This is my tenth track I have made so far. My sister played and she liked it and so did my cousin and three of my friends.
THis track was created for pure enjoyment prupose, have fun, the tunnels on the map are great fun, and I have added in a normal loop and other nice jump.
This is my third track and definately the best. It's a very smooth track which is a lot of fun to play. Track length is around a minute.
Speed/Acrobatic Car Control Challenge Beta v1.01
I have tried to design and build a track that is quite unusual and very hard to master. The track has many special tricks, and different types of tracks (dirt, etc...).
Panagiotis - speedy and tech track with a back flip at the end through the check points and back to the finish line.
Dragon Jumps
First of hopefully many tracks from Botznoy.
Kick and flip, lots of fun and speed.
Map Pack by Chimeracranium
A challenging collection of four maps by Chimeracranium of the {UK-TF} clan. The four maps are a decent challenge to any racer. There is a copy of the readme below and in the file. I hope you find my work satisfactory.
This is a complex track, created to fuse the ideas of confusion and thats of a normal track. It will involve some leaps and jumps into an unknown future.
Just Give Up (2.0)
The track consists of several turns which all involve acrobatic, speed and really quick reflexes.
500cc Luxuria
First track from my 500 Copper Club "Seven Deadly Sins" series. Luxuria: Lust. Depraved thought, unwholesome morality, desire for excitement, or need to be accepted or recognized by others.
Mini Pot
A fast technical track with some loops.
Track Helix
This is a custom track for Trackmania Nations, race time is approximately two minutes and is a relatively easy track to complete.
This is a hard track and will involve you attempting every route possible, it can be tricky and will involve drops and jumps , so don't be afraid to try a different route, you may find it knocks off 30 seconds off your time.
Indy style track, well this is only for fun and for people that loves speed and multilap tracks.
Double Driftings for lots of fun.
This track was a result of a competition over at trackmania exchange.
Route iI
This map is fully validated so you can play to your desire. For this map you need to decide on what way you are going to take, with many routes, you could get confused.
Ups!de Down
Lots of twists and turn making you think you are upside down most of the time.
A wallride, offroad, jump and loop, some spice fast and addictive see all my tracks and if you want to play them online just join us on my server on the POR (Portugal) list of server online.
Fast Tech
This is a somewhat speedy track, with some technical cornerings, and semi-difficult brake-ins, also one small part consists of grass.
Technique & Style
This track starts off pretty technical, but smoothly changes into a more speedy track towards the end.
Kicker (1.0)
A decent time relies on getting the jump after the loop perfect. There are a few ways to go at different points on the track. Pick the right one! Don't be deceived by direction arrows.
CodWars- Tech (1.0)
CodWars- Tech splits into two, symmetrical tracks. The player either chooses to go right or left and chooses the track which they will be on for the majority of the race. It is high speed and has a lot of tight turns.
A highly popular track over at trackmania exchange, this track is a very smoothly designed track and will impress.
The "scary movie mask" was built when making SuperMoto series, and the "symmetric track" idea came from the showcase.
Well a little diversity is the spice of life so we found this great Coast gp track nice flow with a jump to the finish definatly worth a look.
A simple track with two tracks, should take around a minute to complete.
Fast track with wallride and serial jumps, fast and good flow, hope you like it see my other tracks and if you want to play them online just join us on my server on the POR (Portugal) list of server online.
OWN The Knot
The track really makes you work the car to get round the corners. It's smooth and entertaining, and a pleasure to drive.
braving the elements (1.0)
This pack contains 5 tracks based on the 4 classical elements of earth, water, fire and air, plus a multi-challenge containing a section in the style of each one.
own3d's Largest Track (v1)
This map is addicted to be played on servers where the timer is not less than 10min. It's best if the timer is set on this track to min: 20min. It's a very big track.
OWN The Knot 2
It's technical, fast, and demands your attention at all times.
Highway 45
This fast-paced map is wide and open, allowing for maximum speed. Loops, flips, and obstacles are all over Highway 45 so players can't just rush through the map without some type of skill.
Highway 17 (V1)
This is a remake of the Half-Life 2 level, Highway 17.
TAW Test-Track#1
This track was made to promote TAW (The Art of Warfare) in a positive way and to introduce people that are new TrackMania to the different track types (within TMNF) in one track.
Vassanger 1/3
Easy map, You might say it hard its not that hard go now and try it maybe you will be pro after playing my maps who nows. the point is to have fun.
Airways 2
The second part of the track Airways. Dont be fooled by the fact that it looks small.
Tevan's Track (V2)
This track was made by my cousin. Try to beat the time if you can.
Crappy River Hidden Danger
The track is made up of jumps and distorted tracks so you wll be jumping t the left then the right without warning.
Monster Stuntrack II
The Second Monster Stuntrack , lots of stunts for you to play around with, enjoy!
Jumps n' Tunnels
The original concept for this track was to make a lap race where you could go in a different section for the second run.
Bay Racer Advance 1-1
A top down perspective racer, first in the series.
Made For Crazy
Made For Crazy is track the author made for the Crazy Clan! There is not much speed, but still it is still quite a funny map.
Just Follow Me
A quick track with a nice layout with some tricky spots.
A new map took me around 30mins to create, takes around 3 mins to complete and can be quite hard, I will be developing more maps within the next week.
Top Thrill Dragster
This was a track was made to look like the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. It has huge drops and tight turns. This track is for moderate players, it is not too hard or easy.
Super Moto 2
The second track in the supermoto series from ceo_tw.
Fast Food
This Track is an enjoy map where you can get some good speeds.
Just Another Speedtrack
Zooz created a track with lots of speed and agression.
Casi Imposible
Super Moto 1
This track contains three laps of speed and acceleration. It also contains a few twists and turns for you to enjoy!
Mind Break
Here is a very nice track which will make u go crazy.
The Launch
Another decent track by ganjarider where speed is the game and you have the power!
OWN Turn-On 3
This is the third track in my Turn-On series. As the others, this is a medium speed technical track.
OWN Turn-On 2
This is the second track in the OWN Turn-On series. Its a medium speed technical track.
Ring Accelerator (ReUse)
This track from ceo_tw contains a lot of speed and acceleration.
Up n' Down
A speedy track from ceo_tw. Some ideas came from "Black and white" and some are from my previous track(the PF start) and my BASCO track(the stunt).
SuperMoto 3
The Third SuperMoto track, hope you all enjoy!
Another amazing track.
Highway 65
Highway 65 is an upgraded version of the other map Highway 45. This one is longer, with more obstacles, and cool stunts.
Core Roll
A Cool track with lots of great features from Crusard.
Yum yum its lunch time and its time to play.
Jumptek 2
The second edition, this time even more fun.
OWN Turn-On 4
This is a medium speed track with som tight corners in the start, but it opens up and ends up with high speed turns and straights.
OnD.Arild has created a highly technical track for Trackmania Nations.
Twist, Flip and Burn
My first Track ina while and this one is quite tricky, if you like to be high in this game then this map is perfect.
Monster Stuntrack I
ceo_tw has created a track for Trackmania Nations. It includes lots of stunts.
500cc ceo
Lots of fun and speed with this nicely designed track from ceo_tw.
One start, one goal. Three checkpoints. Four small jumps. Three tight turns.
OWN Turn-On
This is the first track in the OWN Turn-On series. It's a technical track with good rythm. When you find the right line, it's possible to maintain good speed throughout the course.
Waves of Fury
A nice track to keep prepare you for bigger and faster tracks.
I called this track longway, for two reasons: If you take the wrong route you end up taking the "long way" around. It took me a long time to validate.
Nations Ride
A short speedy track which will keep you wanting more.
Racing Station
This is a lovely track. I myself found it very hard and didn't get past the first section, but looking at it from the track editor I saw a wonderful track.
Flying High Again... And Again
CrymzonMoose releases his new map Flying High Again... And Again. As the name suggests, the player will get some big air. The map is covered in huge jumps and ramps, which proves a challenging, yet fun experience.
CodWars- Dirt (1.0)
CodWars- Dirt will make your car go speeding out of the gate! The map is a dirt track that has many turns, but despite the turns, the map encourages you to put the petal to the metal through its straight a-ways.
Devils Ride (1.0)
You must exercise caution while speeding through this long ride. There are many routes. Its up to you to find out the best combination.
Speed Snake (1.0)
Speed Snake is a long, high speed track that runs on like a snake. There is one main track and another track zips through the main track like in a "snake" motion, hence the name.
Upside Down
This map aint about time, it's about making it to the finish.
The map may take quite a few tries to complete the first time.
Chaos Lane
My first track. It is supposed to be a challenging track with Multiple environments.


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Today in A State of Trance 761 new tracks by Chris Metcalfe, Ian Standerwick, ilan Bluestone, Manse, Mark Sixma, Markus Schulz, Rodg, Ruben de Ronde and many more! Plus new Future Favorite and Tune of The Week! Enjoy! asot 761
Artist: Armin van Buuren
Title: A State of Trance 761
Date Of Release: 28-04-2016
Source: DI.fm (Trance Channel)
Genre: Trance
Quality: MP3 / Joint Stereo
Total Size: 273.71 Mb [SBD 320kbps]
Get ready to nice mix today!! For further info, when radio show starts and how to get broadcast links, please check on "About" page!
Read more… »
Tags: a state of trance 761, a state of trance 761 download, Armin van Buuren, ASOT, asot 761, asot 761 cue, asot 761 Cue sheets, asot 761 download, asot 761 tracklist, Cue sheets for asot 761, state of trance 761

subset: commoncrawl


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Reviewed By Justin M (EATON, CO) Reviewed for a 1993 Honda Del Sol —9/20/2013 1:41 PM
these bars shipped fast and installed easy. I had to purchase the brackets, hardware, and lower control arms for a 94+ vetec model from honda for the rear bar as mine didn't have a stock bar. The difference is night and day. corners on rails with stock tires. love em


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Visitors' Comments
Here are some comments we have received from past guests. Please email us your comments!
Federico e Paola – Amici:
Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you, but it's taken quite a while to download, adjust, select and print some of the 450 pictures we took along the Cinque Terre, Levanto and Portofino, and the Frankfurt skyline and environs.
I must tell you that you two and Mario and your sweet ladies who made our breakfasts such a treat each day, made this visit to la bella Italia one of the most delightful trips we have made in our fifty years of traveling – and we have visited and worked in Italy many, many times, from Cernobbio to La Spezia down to Capri and all the other delightful historic, scenic and artistic places in between.
The way you received us, took care of us, put us up in lovely, spacious apartments with modern facilities and wonderful views, where we woke up to the sound of birds and church bells, gives you high ratings for warm hospitality and kindness.
Hopefully we will have an opportunity to visit you again, but meanwhile we have recommended you to all of our friends who are even thinking about visiting Italy. And, by the way, your recommendation to dine with Massimo at Scaramouche and at the Osteria Tumelin were perfect.
Mille grazie per lei gentilezza e grazioso ospitalità,
Shirley & John B. – from Annandale, VA – August 2005
Dear Federico,
Our visit at Villa Margherita was the highlight of our vacation. Everyone was so helpful and the villa is just beautiful. We have fond memories of the courtyard and the beautiful views. We were particularly pleased at how the villa seemed removed from the town, yet was just a two minute walk to the beach.
We particularly loved your town of Levanto. Everyone was so kind, despite our language barrier. We plan on returning next year as it has become our favorite place on earth.
Thank you again for your hospitality.
Anne and Larry – from Florida – July 2004
Dear Federico,
Thank you, your father and sister for the friendliness and assistance we received at Villa Margherita. We had a great holiday and you and the staff at V.M. contributed to that. We found the people of Levanto and the Cinque Terre to be friendly and helpful, perhaps it has something to do with the climate. We returned to very cool and windy weather and wished ourselves back in Levanto.
Thank you, and we will have no hesitation in recommending Villa Margherita to our friends.
Tony C. – July 2004
Hi Federico,
Just wanted to say thanks and that we had a really nice time in Levanto and the Cinque Terre area. Can't wait to come back – was probably our favorite part of Italy. Especially liked the quaintness of Levanto. Everything was close and a great selection of shops and restaurants. The bed & breakfast was wonderful breakfast and your staff were great also. Tell your dad hi for us.
Ken & Susan – from USA – May 2004
Federico, We just got back from our trip to Italy and wanted to thank you for the wonderful stay we had in your hotel and the Cinque Terre. Your recommendation on the Levanto-Monterosso hike was the highlight our trip!
We got a place about 5 meters from the finish line in San Remo on Saturday. While our favorite Mario Chipolini didn't make it over the Poggio with the first group, at least we got to see him roll across the line with a smile! To see La Primavera up close was a major moment for a cycling fan like me.
Your villa and your hospitality were a great start our trip. Thanks for all your help!
Gary & Mary Morgan – from USA – March 2004
Dear Federico,
Thank you for having our family stay recently at the Villa Margherita. The flat downstairs was very convenient. Jan and her husband, Sarah and the baby Helena, and my wife Margaret and I, all fitted into the flat very comfortably. It was just right. Please pass on our thanks too to your sister and your father, and to the other staff, who were so pleasant and helpful. I apologize for our noisy family, which I am sure, made breakfast 'different' for your other hotel guests!! We really enjoyed our visit, and meeting local people who were so friendly.
Again with many thanks. I hope we can some again!!
Ted A – from New Zealand – October 2003
Federico, I am happy to recommend your wonderful Villa!
My wife celebrated her 50th birthday while staying at the beautiful Villa Margherita! We were joined by 5 other friends. We all enjoyed our stay at Villa Margherita tremendously! Our room was clean and cozy with a great view from the ample balcony. Our English friends were in the downstairs apartment and they raved for weeks about how nice it was!
The Villa is an exquisite old mansion that has been lovingly restored and retains its charming character. The whole atmosphere is warm and welcoming. Federico and his sister's hospitality made us all feel very much at home in their B&B. The buffet breakfast was excellent and served in the lovely breakfast room. Rates are very reasonable and definitely are a good value for such nice accommodations.
Levanto is very convenient for visiting the Cinque Terre. The train station is a short walk away and it is literally a five minute ride to the first town of Monterosso. I can only say one other thing about Villa Margherita…. if you go to Levanto be sure to stay at this jewel of a B&B!!!
Federico, we hope to come back to your beautiful Villa and enjoy Italia very soon!
Chris and Elizabeth M. – from Pleasanton, California – January 2003
Hi! We enjoyed our stay at Villa Margherita in May of 2000 and plan to return soon.
Tiffany from Bellevue – WA, USA – November 2002
Ciao Frederico,
Back at the office and the holiday seems so long ago. I want to thank you for a most pleasant stay at Villa Margherita, certainly the most friendly and best accommodation we had in Italy. My only regret was that it was too short to explore everything on offer in the Cinque Terre. I will certainly recommend a stay in Levanto and at Villa Margherita to my colleagues and friends. Thank you for the lift to the train station.
Hope that we can visit again in the near future.
Lawrence V.R. – September 2002


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That's because Heinz is partnering with the Wounded Warrior Project for the Our Turn to Serve project, through which smartphone owners can scan QR codes on a bottle of Heinz ketchup. For each scan that prompts a user to send a thank-you note to military servicemen and servicewomen, Heinz donates $1 to Wounded Warrior, up to $250,000.
Instead of a message in a bottle, you can send a message with a bottle.
This is the campaign's second year, following a 2011 campaign that reached its $200,000 goal. Scott Bacco, Brand Manager of Heinz Ketchup, Condiments & Sauces for Heinz Foodservice says he expects the company to reach its donation ceiling again in 2012. It's already well on its way.
Simple choices
Heinz partnered with the Wounded Warrior project in 2011 for Our Turn to Serve, but the project is really part of a long history of supporting veterans, Bacco says.
"During World War II, the company re-fitted part of its Pittsburgh factory to produce glider planes and parts and provided almost half of Heinz's total food production to the Allied armed forces," he says.
Bacco didn't offer extensive details about how Heinz's partnership with Wounded Warrior came to pass, but he said the company was looking for a way to honor veterans when "the opportunity to partner with Wounded Warrior Project presented itself."
The project kicked off Oct. 5, 2011; this year it began Sept. 28 and the donation portion will last through July 1.
Bacco explains that the company chose to put QR codes on its bottles because they're simple and effective.
"Whether it's in a restaurant while people are waiting for their food or at home while they're sitting down to the dinner table, a QR code reaches consumers directly at the point of consumption," he says. "We hope that this accessibility makes it easier for people to get involved."
The codes are on bottles available at participating restaurants and on bottles people can buy in grocery stores, Bacco says.
Other avenues
Ketchup lovers who don't have smartphones can do their part, too, he says. Each bottle also has the URL for the Our Turn to Serve mini-site, where people can choose thank-you e-cards to send.
Folks can also participate via social media. For each Facebook or Twitter message people send—and they're prompted to do so after sending a thank-you card—Heinz donates an additional 57 cents to Wounded Warrior.
"Last year's program showed us that the Our Turn to Serve campaign is something that our fans can rally around and actively endorse," Bacco says.
Changes and response
According to a YouTube video about the 2011 project, more than a half-million people scanned QR codes on Heinz ketchup bottles during that campaign. People sent almost 75,000 personalized notes to veterans. In that version of the program, Heinz donated 57 cents to Wounded Warrior for each note or "like" on Facebook.
This year, "likes" aren't part of the equation, but Bacco says he expects the company will reach its donation goal, just as it did in 2011. In just a few weeks, people have already sent more than 76,000 thank-you cards.
"We've also seen thousands of shares through social media," Bacco says.
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All News Releases By Date
EPA Awards $400,000 to Help Attleboro Cleanup and Revitalize Neighborhoods
Release Date: 08/3/2012
Contact Information: Paula Haschig, 617-918-1027
(Boston, Mass.--August 3, 2011) EPA is providing two Brownfields Cleanup Grants, totaling $400,000 to the Attleboro Redevelopment Authority (ARA): $200,000 in petroleum funding to cleanup the former Automatic Machine Product site, & $200,000 in hazardous substance funding for the former American Metalcraft Company site. The funding is part of more than $17 million in EPA brownfields investments across the six New England states announced by EPA to protect health and the environment, create jobs and promote economic re-development in American communities.
The grant money can assist work to reclaim sites including old textile mills, sites containing hazardous substances and petroleum products and other abandoned industrial and commercial properties. EPA's Brownfields program encourages redevelopment of America's estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites.
The City of Attleboro & ARA are in the process of redeveloping & revitalizing the area surrounding the Attleboro MBTA Commuter Rail Station as part of the City's Urban Renewal Plan. The end result of this project will turn this former industrial/commercial area into one of mixed use including commercial, residential & recreational uses. Also, substantial expansion and improvements of bus & rail transportation will be completed. This initiative brings concentrated technical & financial assistance from State & Federal agencies to this project.
In Massachusetts this year, EPA is providing $6.75 million in 33 separate Brownfields grants to communities across the state.
"EPA Brownfields funding helps strengthen the economic foundation and is a catalyst for further growth in our communities," said Curt Spalding, regional administrator of EPA New England's office. "Cleaning and revitalizing contaminated sites helps create jobs, and can help a community to create new businesses and neighborhood centers, while making our environment cleaner and the community healthier."
Since the beginning of EPA's Brownfields Program, in New England alone EPA has awarded 296 assessment grants totaling $72.7 million, 62 revolving loan fund grants and supplemental funding totaling $68.4 million and 213 cleanup grants totaling $47 million. These grant funds have paved the way for more than $1.45 billion in public and private cleanup and redevelopment investment and for 9,756 jobs in assessment, cleanup, construction and redevelopment on over 2200 sites across New England.
Nationally, the figures are impressive: As of May 2012, EPA's brownfields assistance has leveraged more than $18.3 billion in cleanup and redevelopment funding from a variety of public and private sources and helped create approximately 75,500 jobs. More than 18,000 properties have been assessed, and over 700 properties have been cleaned up. These investments and jobs target local, under-served and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods – places where environmental cleanups and new jobs are most needed.
More Information:
EPA Brownfields program in New England: http://epa.gov/region1/brownfields/index.html
Search this collection of releases | or search all news releases
View selected historical press releases from 1970 to 1998 in the EPA History website.


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SILC Showcase
Showcase October 2013: Hitting the slopes: Gradient cues in child navigation
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Hitting the slopes: Gradient cues in child navigation
Corinne A. Holmes1, Nora S. Newcombe (PI)1, Daniele Nardi2 and
Steven M. Weisberg1
1 Temple University, 2 University of Rome
For the archival version of this research, and the preferred citation, see:
- Holmes, C. A., Nardi, D., Newcombe, N. S. & Weisberg, S. M. (2015). Children's Use of Slope to Guide Navigation: Sex Differences Relate to Spontaneous Slope Perception. Spatial Cognition & Computation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 15(3), 170-185. [DOI]
How do we know where we are? How do we get from one place to another? To successfully navigate, humans and animals must accurately encode external cues in the surrounding environment. For humans, environmental cues are predominantly visual. For example, to get to the post office, you might turn right at the grocery store, and then head towards the tall bakery sign adjacent to the post office. Now imagine traveling to the post office in pure darkness. What cues would you use? You could travel towards the "hustle and bustle" of town, then follow the scent of cooling pies. In this hypothetical, you would have to rely on auditory and olfactory cues, which typically form "gradients." Gradient cues, such as scent, sound, luminance, and geomagnetic fields, emanate from a source and produce multiple vectors that provide directional information, facilitating spatial orientation (scent: Wallraff, 2004; sound: King & Parsons, 1999; luminance: Petie, Garm, & Nilsson, 2011; & magnetic fields: Boles & Lohmann, 2003).
Cues such as auditory or olfactory gradients are encoded by a single sensory modality. The slope of the terrain underfoot is a unique gradient because it is a multi-modal cue; slope can be perceived by the kinesthetic, vestibular, and/or visual sensory systems (Nardi, Newcombe, & Shipley, 2011, 2012). For human adults and many animal species (e.g., rats: Miniaci, Scotto, & Bures, 1999; pigeons: Nardi, Nitsch, & Bingman, 2010), slope is highly salient and successfully guides navigation, although human adults exhibit significant variability in performance (Nardi et al., 2011, 2012). In a series of studies, Nardi and colleagues (2011, 2012) asked human adults to locate a target, hidden in one of four corners, in a completely featureless, but sloped square enclosure. Following disorientation (mild spinning in a swivel chair), only the slope accurately predicted a goal's location. Performance in this task was significantly above chance, suggesting that slope was a salient and reliable cue for humans, with one caveat: men consistently outperformed women (Nardi et al., 2011) and were significantly more confident in their target choice (Nardi et al., 2012). Men noticed the slope, and effectively used this cue, significantly more than women; 1.4 SDs more to be exact (Nardi et al., 2011), an effect size exceeding those detected in tests of mental rotation (Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995).
Does female footwear (e.g., heels) impede slope perception? When given flat slippers, women's performance remained the same (Nardi et al., 2011), and no correlation was detected between reported mean heel height and performance (Nardi et al., 2012). To test the "footwear hypothesis" more concretely, and to examine the developmental origins of slope perception and use in general, we tested the use of slope in school-age children (8-10 years).
Participants were assigned to one of three conditions: control (no slope, featureless room); slope (5° slope, otherwise featureless room); and ball drop (identical to slope condition, with the addition of a "ball drop" demonstration). In each condition, participants explored the enclosure and were asked if they noticed "anything unusual about the room." Positive slope recognition was recorded if the sloped floor was verbally noted using such words as "slanted, tilted, sloped, uneven, uphill, downhill, higher end, lower end" and so forth. Immediately afterward, participants were disoriented and asked to recall the location of a hidden target over four trials. Because the room was square and completely featureless, successful target identification indicated the use of slope for reorientation. (see Figure 1)
Figure 1. Views of the enclosure, digital and actual.
Data analyses indicate that in the presence of slope, children are significantly more likely to locate the target, although males significantly outperform females. Furthermore, it appears that the ability to notice the slope (termed "slope recognition"), not sex per se, may be driving this gap in performance. Males' and females' performance, analyzed by both response accuracy and error type, did not significantly differ when both sexes noticed, or did not notice, the slope of the room.
Although males were significantly more likely to notice the slope in both experimental conditions, performance did not significantly differ by sex when slope recognition was held constant. Additionally, performance in the ball drop condition was significantly greater for participants who noticed the slope unprompted, compared to those who only noticed the slope following the "ball drop" demonstration. Thus, performance may be influenced by one's ability to notice the slope on one's own. (see Figures 2 and 3)
Figure 2. Mean percentage of correct trials (± SEM) for males and females in the control, slope, and ball drop conditions.
*** p < .001, ** p < .01
Figure 3. Mean percentage of correct trials by slope recognition and experimental condition.
* p < .05
So, what factors may lead to greater slope salience for males? There could be a variety of reasons, but let's concentrate here on environmental exposure to slope. A wealth of research shows that boys and girls are differentially socialized, specifically by play type (Miller, 1987). Boys are given a wider variety of toys, ranging from blocks to cars to sports equipment, while girls are given toys largely related to domestic activities, such as dollhouses and mock cooking ware (Baenninger & Newcombe, 1989; Bradbard, 1985). Masculine toys elicit movement, and often incorporate sloped terrains (e.g., sports are played on non-uniform fields, toy cars come with multi-level ramps, etc.), potentially sharpening the kinesthetic, vestibular, and visual sensory systems' ability to perceive slope (Liss, 1983).
Previous experience with sloped terrains might hone the ability to perceive slope at varying degrees. Compared to a novice, an expert has multiple conceptual categories within a single domain, and is thus better equipped to discriminate small variations among stimuli (e.g., x-rays: Sowden, Davies, & Roling, 2000; gender: Biederman & Shiffrar, 1987; phonemes: Liberman, Harris, Hoffman, & Griffith, 1957; etc.). Termed "categorical perception," this theory posits that people are better able to perceive differences among stimuli when the stimuli belong to different conceptual categories (Goldstein & Hendrickson, 2010; Goldstone, 1998). Applied to the current study, minimal exposure with sloped terrains would limit the number of slope conceptual categories. Thus, girls would be less likely to differentiate a 5-degree incline from a flat surface, as their perceptual systems would be less tuned to this mild differentiation in terrain. Furthermore, when the slope was made explicitly salient, participants who did not initially notice the slope did not use the slope simply because they had little experience in doing so. Because the slope lacked reliability as a navigational cue, it appeared irrelevant to the task at hand and was thus ranked behind other erroneous, unstable cues. Future work is needed to examine slope discrimination in similar paradigms across other sensory modalities, to better define the factors that shape slope perception in the visual, kinesthetic, and/or vestibular sensory systems.
- ♦ Baenninger, M., & Newcombe, N. S. (1989). The role of experience in spatial test performance: A meta-analysis. Sex Roles, 20, 327-344.
- ♦ Biederman, I., & Shiffrar, M. M. (1987). Sexing day-old chicks: A case study and expert systems analysis of a difficult perceptual-learning task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 13, 640-645.
- ♦ Boles, L. C., & K. J. Lohmann. (2003). True navigation and magnetic maps in spiny lobsters. Nature, 421, 60-63.
- ♦ Bradbard, M. R. (1985). Sex differences in adults' gifts and children's toy requests at Christmas. Psychological Reports, 56, 969-970.
- ♦ Goldstone, R. L. (1998). Perceptual learning. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 585-612.
- ♦ Goldstone, R. L., & Hendrickson, A. T. (2010). Categorical perception. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1, 69-78.
- ♦ King, A. J., & Parsons, C. H. (1999). Improved auditory spatial acuity in visually deprived ferrets. European Journal of Neuroscience, 11, 3945-3956.
- ♦ Liberman, A. M., Harris, K. S., Hoffman, H. S., & Griffith, B. C. (1957). The discrimination of speech sounds within and across phoneme boundaries. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54, 358-368.
- ♦ Liss, M. B. (1983). Learning gender-related skills through play. In M. B. Liss (Ed.), Social and Cognitive Skills: Sex Roles and Children's Play (pp. 147-166). San Fransisco, CA: Academic Press.
- ♦ Miller, C. L. (1987). Qualitative differences among gender-stereotyped toys: Implications for cognitive and social development in girls and boys. Sex Roles, 16, 473-487.
- ♦ Miniaci, M. C., Scotto, P., & Bures, J. (1999). Place navigation in rats guided by a vestibular and kinesthetic orienting gradient. Behavioural Neuroscience, 113, 1115-1126.
- ♦ Nardi, D., Newcombe, N. S., & Shipley, T. F. (2011). The world is not flat: Can people reorient using slope? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 354-367.
- ♦ Nardi, D., Newcombe, N. S., & Shipley, T. F. (2012). Reorienting with terrain slope and landmarks. Memory & Cognition, 41, 214-228.
- ♦ Nardi, D., Nitsch, K. P., & Bingman, V. P. (2010). Slope-driven goal location behavior in pigeons. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes, 36, 430-442.
- ♦ Petie, R., Garm, A., & Nilsson, D. E. (2011). Visual control of steering in the box jellyfish Tripedalia cystophora. Journal of Experimental Biology, 214, 2809-2815.
- ♦ Sowden, P. T., Davies, I. R. L., & Roling, P. (2000). Perceptual learning of the detection of features in X-ray images: A functional role for improvements in adults' visual sensitivity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 26, 379-390.
- ♦ Voyer, D., Voyer, S., & Bryden, M. P. (1995). Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities: A meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 250-270.
- ♦ Wallraff, H. G. (2004). Avian olfactory navigation: Its empirical foundation and conceptual state. Animal Behaviour, 67, 189-204.


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Cracking Open the Shell on the Personal Health Record
Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly Media, a highly respected book publisher and technology information provider. An employee of the company since 1992, Andy currently specializes in open source, software engineering, and health IT, but his editorial output has ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic novel about teenage hackers. His articles have appeared often on EMR & EHR and other blogs in the health IT space. Andy also writes often for O'Reilly's Radar site (http://oreilly.com/) and other publications on policy issues related to the Internet and on trends affecting technical innovation and its effects on society. Print publications where his work has appeared include The Economist, Communications of the ACM, Copyright World, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Vanguardia Dossier, and Internet Law and Business. Conferences where he has presented talks include O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, FISL (Brazil), FOSDEM, and DebConf.
The concept of maintaining your own health data enjoyed a brief flurry of activity a few years ago with Google Health (now defunct) and Microsoft HealthVault (still active but not popular). It has gotten a second chance with Apple HealthKit, Google Fit, and other corporate offerings explicitly tied in with the convenience of mobile devices. Microsoft itself has galvanized HealthVault with a Microsoft Health initiative similar to Apple's HealthKit. Recently I've been talking to health care reformers about the business and political prospects for personal health records (PHRs).
Patient access to data was enshrined as a right back when HIPAA was passed and is still championed by the US government through Meaningful Use (whose Stage 3 may well focus on it) and other initiatives, and has been endorsed by the industry as well. But this requirement won't be satisfied by the limited patient portals that hospitals and clinics are hanging out on the Web. Their limitations include:
- Many provide only viewing data, not downloading or transmitting it (all of these are mandated by Meaningful Use).
- Data maintained by providers can't easily be combined into a holistic, comprehensive view, which is what providers need to provide good care.
- Data on portals is usually a thin sliver of all the data in the record: perhaps prescriptions, appointments, and a few other bare facts without the rich notes maintained by clinicians.
- You can't correct errors in your own data through a portal.
- Clinicians rarely accept data that you want to put in the record, whether personal observations or output from fitness devices and other technical enhancements.
All these problems could be solved by flexible and well-designed personal health records. But how does the health care field navigate the wrenching transition to giving people full control over their own data?
Dr. Adrian Gropper has investigated PHRs for years and even considered building a simple device to store and serve individual's health data. Now he says, "I can't recall any physician in my medical society that has ever said they wished their patient had a PHR. Nor do I, after many years on the Society for Participatory Medicine list, ever recall a patient praising the role of their PHR in their care. Today's PHRs are clinically irrelevant."
This is not a condemnation of PHRs, but of the environment in which vendors try to deploy them. Many health reformers feel that several aspects of this care environment must evolve for PHRs to be accepted:
- PHR data must become appealing to doctors. This means that device manufacturers (and perhaps patients themselves) must demonstrate that the data is accurate. Doctors have to recognize value in receiving at least summaries and alerts. Many benefits can also accrue from collecting vital statistics, behavioral data, and other aspects of patients' daily lives.
- The doctor's EHR must seamlessly provide data to the patient, and (we hope) seamlessly accept data from the patient–data that the doctor acts on. Currently, most manufacturers store the data on their own sites and offer access through APIs. Another programming step is required to get the data into the PHR or the doctor's EHR.
- Clinicians have to agree on how to mark and collect the provenance of data. "Provenance" deals with assertions such as, "this data was generated by a Fitbit on October 10, 2014" or "this diagnosis was challenged by the patient and changed on August 13, 2010."
- Add-on services must make the data interesting and usable to both patients and physicians. For instance, such apps can alert the patient, clinician, or family members when something seems wrong, let them visualize data taken from the PHR and EHR over time, get useful advice by comparing their data to insights from research, and track progress toward the goals they choose.
"A critical force in increasing consumer engagement in digital health is the development of compelling, easy to use tools that make it simple to collect, understand and use health information to reach the goals consumers define for themselves, whether that's managing a chronic condition, saving money, or fitting into their 'skinny jeans'," writes Lygeia Ricciardi, former director of the Office of Consumer e-Health at the ONC. "In an age of 'one click purchasing,' it must become incredibly easy for patients to access and share their own health information digitally–if it's too complex or time consuming, most people probably won't do it."
In addition to sheer inertia, a number of disincentives keep PHRs from congealing.
- Many doctors are afraid of letting patients see clinical notes, either because the patient will ask too many questions or will be upset by the content.
- Hospitals and clinics want control over records so that patients will return to them for future treatment.
- Marketing firms live off of rich data lodes on our health data.
- Other organizations with dubious goals, commercial and governmental, want to track us so they can deny us insurance or control our lives in other ways.
Wait–what about the patients themselves? Why haven't they risen up over the past several years to demand control over their data? Well, maintaining your health data is intimidating. The data is highly detailed and full of arcane medical concepts and terminology. Most patients don't care until they really need to–and then they're too sick and disabled to form an effective movement for patient control.
Still, several leaders in health care believe that a viable business model can be built on PHRs. The spark of hope comes from the success of apps that make people pay for privacy, notably SnapChat and Whatsapp. Although some sloppy privacy practicies render these services imperfect, their widespread use demonstrates that people care about protecting their personal data.
Private storage can be offered both in the cloud and by personal devices, using standardized services such as Direct and Blue Button. These will start out as high-end services for people who are affluent and have particular concerns about storing their own data and choosing how it is shared. It will then become commoditized and come down in price.
What about people who can't afford even the modest prices for cloud storage? They can turn patient data into a civil rights issue. There's a potent argument that everyone has the right to determine who can get access to their health data, and a right to have data generated during their daily lives taken into account by doctors.
We don't need one big central service–that's insecure and subject to breaches. Multiple services and distributed storage reduce security risks.
We'll see change when a substantial group of people start to refuse to fill out those convoluted forms handed to them as them enter a clinic, saying instead, "Get it from my web site before you treat me." Before that protest begins, there's a lot of work in store for technologists and businesses to offer patients a usable record system open to the wide range of data now available for health.


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Why Were We in Vietnam?
Doing business in China is beginning to cost real money. Not that Chinese workers are buying second homes or anything like that: Their average wage is still a little short of a dollar an hour. But so many Chinese have now left their villages for the factories that the once bottomless pool of new young workers is beginning to run dry, and the wages of assembly-line employees are rising 10 percent a year.
Worse yet, new labor laws are making it harder for employers to cheat their workers out of their wages and benefits. Many American businesses that do their manufacturing in China had warned against those laws; the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai had flatly opposed them. But the good old days of Maoist labor discipline, when the government could send tens of millions of skilled workers down to the farms to be toughened up and periodically tortured, are gone. Mao's heirs, though not above a touch of torture here and there just to keep the system humming along, are concerned, as he was not, with achieving social harmony, even if that means compelling employers to sign, and honor, contracts with their employees.
Confronted with such appalling squishiness, what's a good, cost-cutting American business to do? Many are fleeing south of the border -- not our border (Mexico costs way too much) but China's.
They're bound for Vietnam.
According to a report by Keith Bradsher in the New York Times last month, such multinational companies as Canon (the printer and copier maker) and Hanesbrands (the North Carolina-based underwear empire) are expanding or building factories in Hanoi, where they churn out products for Wal-Mart and other American retailers. Foreign direct investment in Vietnam increased 136 percent between 2006 and 2007, while it increased just 14 percent in China.
The reason for the move south is straightforward: Vietnamese factory workers make about a quarter of what their Chinese counterparts earn.
But why Vietnam and not, say, Thailand, where labor is similarly cheap?
Vietnam's edge, it seems, is political. "Communism means more stability," Laurence Shu, the chief financial officer of Shanghai-based Texhong, one of the world's leading manufacturers of cotton fabrics, told Bradsher. This view, Bradsher reports, is common among Asian executives and some American executives, too, though they have the presence of mind never to say so on the record. After all, Vietnam, like China, outlaws independent unions. Absent free speech and free elections, no radical shifts in the government's economic policies are likely to be sprung upon unsuspecting American businesses.
Now, far be it from me to begrudge the Vietnamese their moment in the sun before global capital finds them too costly and moves on to Bangladesh and Somalia. But didn't we fight a war to keep Vietnam from going communist? Something like 58,000 American deaths, right? And now American business actually prefers investing in communist Vietnam over, say, the more or less democratic Philippines? In all likelihood, it would prefer investing in communist Vietnam to investing in a more chaotic, less disciplined democratic Vietnam, if such existed.
Let's imagine, just as an exercise, that we're trying to explain this to those 58,000 Americans and their loved ones. We could argue that by investing in communist countries, we're pushing them toward democracy. But everything we know about China suggests that, in reality, such investments merely make authoritarian regimes stronger. We could argue that what we're really doing is bringing communist nations into the world capitalist system. Then again, the effect of bringing into the global labor pool hundreds of millions of low-wage workers -- people whose wages are held in check by both capital mobility and communist repression -- is to hold down wages in democratic nations with advanced economies and with no national strategy to preserve and expand good jobs at home (i.e., in the United States).
Or we could argue that our onetime opposition to communism was noble and all that but that, unburdened by the illusions of the past, American business, backed by the American government, has realized that the problem with communism wasn't that it was undemocratic but that it was anti-capitalist. And that once communism was integrated into a world capitalist system, its antipathy toward democracy not only wouldn't be a bad thing but would actually be good. That is clearly the political logic that underpins our involvement with China. It's a little dicier to say this about our growing involvement with Vietnam, since all those Americans whose names are on that wall on the Mall probably didn't realize how compatible with global American enterprise Vietnamese communism would turn out to be or how the cause of democracy would turn out to have been of no real importance at all.
I guess a note from the American establishment to those men and women with their names on the Wall would be in order. Something like: Say, guys -- sorry 'bout that!


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Cybernation production
Dear artists and guests of AudioJungle. I`m happy to welcome you to Cybernation production profile page!
My PORTFOLIO is regularly updated with new stuff – just FOLLOW to stay tuned!
If you liked any of the published tracks, It always can be edited, so that it can match certain criteria.
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Cybernation won't only take part in commercial work – but also be happy to participate in creative projects!
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Some things on the Internet simply cannot be logically explained. Like this photo shoot from a LiveJournal blog by Russian user strenger.
According to the Google Translate, which I often doubt the accuracy of, strenger was called to a friends one evening to document some sort of dinner preparation when things took a turn for the interesting. Apparently, the woman found torturing the Galaxy Nexus in the photo shoot is doing so because she had a fight with her significant other. And he's the one who bought her the phone.
The pictures really speak for themselves. The Galaxy Nexus was fried, used as a cutting board, drenched in raw eggs, covered in ketchup, used as a sponge to do dishes, thrown in a blender and dumped into a pot of boiling hot water. After all that, the phone supposedly still works. Yeah, sure.
I'm not quite sure if this is some sort of odd marketing campaign, or just one man's freakish fetish finally coming to fruition. It's almost disturbing in a weird way. But I'm sure there's some sort of message to get out of the whole thing. I'll let you know when I figure it out.


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The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) ensures eligible employees for up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave each year for qualified reasons. Under FMLA, the University may require eligible employees to substitute accrued paid time in lieu of unpaid time. The associate director of benefits & wellness administers the FMLA program for the University, including determining employee eligibility, notification, required reporting, and any return-to-work issues.
On January 16, 2009, new regulations were issued under the FMLA. These new regulations expand leave for military personnel and their family members under certain conditions. Changes were also made to the notification and certification provisions associated with the FMLA. In addition, the regulations clarify employer and employee obligations under the Act. See the links below for more detail.
For more information, contact the benefits & wellness office at ext. 1365 or refer to your Policy manual. Additional information, including Fact Sheets, can be found at http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/.


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So, the Ordo Dracul was behind all sorts of monstrosities that befell the city. They kept a drauger chained up, and "observed" him in this bestial state for 30 years before idly tossing him into Dorian's domain. They have been dealt with…and Raphael Pope was sacrificed on the alter of expediency. 2 threats removed. Not a bad way to cap the events.
Kat is now a hound…and an Acolyte of the Crone. I cannot say it surprises me; the "freedom" espoused by the Pagans would appeal to her sensibilities. Vitale is now the sole Vassal for Hell's Kitchen, free to make whatever horrid arrangements or dealings he feels necessary. I fear for the safety of that domain.
Myself, on the other hand, have inherited Vassalage of Chelsea. I have fulfilled my obligations to former Coterie members: Jimmy has been…altered…and send to California. Evalysse and Vincent Cole Jr I have embraced. The former tenants of Chelsea have left, and I wanted to ensure my dominion of the area was not challenged…and could be molded to fit my ideal.
As I sit in the Limelight, watching the herd mingle and indulge in absent minded pleasures, I frequently wonder what is in store for the future. Will the Carthians rise up against the Invictus? Will the Sangiovanni attempt to betray the Lance? Will Salvaro be replaced as Regent? All these things clutter my mind, but as the pretty young woman that catches my eye mingles throughout the club, the potential for sweet, sweet Vitae tempts me more. Sometimes the best course of action is to focus on the future 10 minutes from now, instead of 10 years from now. For now…unlife is good.


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Barcelona's Lionel Messi says injured knee feels better; feared it was career-threatening
BARCELONA, Spain – Lionel Messi says that his injured knee feels much better despite fearing the worst when he collided with the goalkeeper during a Champions League match against Benfica.
The Barcelona forward says he may miss Sunday's league match at Real Betis, but had originally thought his career might be in jeopardy.
Messi says "I sincerely thought it was the last ball I would be touching for a long time because of the pain. I tried to go ahead and shoot, but I didn't have the strength."
Messi is trying to equal a 40-year-old scoring record held by Gerd Muller. He has scored 84 goals in 2012 and has four games to catch Mueller, who scored 85.


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I recently attended a workshop sponsored by the Greater New Orleans Foundation and presented by the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations on "Board of Directors Basic Roles and Responsibilities."
I recently attended a workshop sponsored by the Greater New Orleans Foundation and presented by the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations on "Board of Directors Basic Roles and Responsibilities." This enlightening meeting would be excellent for all current board of director members of all organizations to attend. I am hoping this will come to fruition in 2013.
The law requires that nonprofits have boards to allow community members to hold the nonprofit "in trust" to help ensure that community needs are represented and funds are spent wisely. The board is there to protect the public and stakeholders' interest, carry out fiduciary responsibilities, comply with legal and contractual requirements, develop and monitor policies and to hold the CEO or executive director accountable. Boards are also there to support the organization and serve as an ambassador.
In addition to board and committee meetings and assuring that all policies are in place, a board member should be cognizant of any conflict of interest it may have. In fact, a conflict of interest policy is encouraged as part of compliance with state and federal statutes. All policies should be designed to protect the organization and its board.
There are even seven deadly sins of board governance! Lack of knowledge about the organization is a critical flaw. Board members should not over-rely on a finance committee for decisions, not understand and act upon conflicts of interest, remain silent when there are problems, allow one or a few people to dominate the board, not be remiss in evaluating the CEO and should not be part of confusing governance with micromanagement.
South Central Industrial Association works diligently to implement the above standards for its own board. Our board members are dynamic community leaders representing both Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes and include: Ted Falgout, Ted Falgout & Associates; Lori Davis, Rig-Chem; Lynn Falgout, Bollinger; Robert Clemons, Seacor; Charles Theriot, Charles Theriot, CPA; O'Neil Malbrough, Shaw Coastal; Ed Bouterie, Bourgeois Bennett; Travis David, RAMCO; Kirk Meche, Gulf Island; and Tony Alford, ASLR. These people have made a major long-term commitment to SCIA and I thank them for their continued support and affirmation of the organization.
Though SCIA doesn't have very many appointments to other boards, we do provide appointments to Terrebonne Economic Development Authority and the Terrebonne Port Commission. We take great pride in our nominations for these boards, knowing they will serve us well and have the best interest of SCIA at heart. There are no stray cats in the bunch. They are all good solid citizens who are willing to serve and are parallel to people who are elected to serve.
Most recently, Morris Hebert, with Morris Hebert Inc., retired as the SCIA rep from the TEDA board having served from its inception. His wisdom and knowledge brought much integrity to the essence of TEDA in helping to develop the structure of the association.
Don Hingle with Business First Bank has served SCIA in multiple ways having been an SCIA president and board member. Additionally, he has served us well on both the TEDA and Port Commission boards. Don's enthusiasm and sincere commitment are more than evident in serving both organizations in a leadership role. It has not been an easy task to juggle multiple organizations, but he has helped to grow these groups.
The stars are still aligned as Lori Davis with Rig-Chem and SCIA executive vice president continues to be our female representative on the TEDA board. She has brought amazing intuition and insight that continues to serve SCIA well.
Our newest SCIA TEDA board representative is Robert Le Blanc with Manson Gulf who is a longtime resident and known by many people in Houma. We look forward to his participation on behalf of SCIA during his term.
I must give credit where credit is due to other members of the SCIA President's Council that includes, Kerry Chauvin, Gulf Island; Francis Richard, John Deere-Thibodaux; Danny Cannon, Valerus; Bobby Barthel, Le Beouf Towing; Neil Suard, Suard Companies; Chet Morrison, Chet Morrison Contractors; Kenny Smith, T. Baker Smith; and Tony Boudreaux, Allied Shipyards. Also those who have served on the SCIA board in a professional capacity, namely Ann Walton, Business First Bank; CJ Domangue, DL Wealth Management; Stephanie Hebert, Stephanie Hebert Insurance; Dionne Chouest, Edison Chouest Offshore; Pat Seely and Steve Becnel, McDermott. These dynamic leaders who have proven their leadership in the communities have stepped up to the plate to support and serve SCIA!
We wish to thank all who are serving or have served SCIA, which has taken much time away from personal interests without any expected financial compensation. There is no money in the world that we could repay any of our board members, president council members or appointees for what they have done for SCIA and the communities we serve. Thanks people! It's all good!
Jane Arnette is executive director of the South Central Industrial Association.


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From cchtml.com
ATI Linux fglrx driver version 8.34.8
Release date: 21 February, 2007
New Features[edit]
- This release of the Catalyst™ Linux graphics driver introduces support for the ATI Xpress™ 1250 IGP for AMD based motherboards.
Issues Resolved[edit]
- A system hang no longer occurs when attempting to resume from hibernation mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-22059
- Loading the XVideo Extension on 64-bit Xorg 6.9+ systems no longer results in the X Server segfaulting when launching. This issue was known to occur with Radeon X1K products. Further details and the workaround can be found in topic number 737-22837
- Running aticonfig--dtop=(horizontal|vertical) no longer results in clone mode being activated when attempting to enable big desktop mode
- Running through the un-install of the Linux graphics driver no longer results in the fglx and ati folders failing to be removed
Known Issues[edit]
- Attempting to install the ATI Catalyst™ Linux software suite on distributions that have updated certain 3D components outside of the stock XOrg 6.8.2 may result in the driver not initializing 3D applications properly. Further details can be found in topic number 737-20868
- Enabling stereo may result in rectangular corruption in X Windows on the screen's right hand side. Further details can be found in topic number 737-26088


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Template:Troop Leader Qualifications
From MeritBadgeDotOrg
Revision as of 14:43, May 8, 2008 by Milominderbinder2 (Talk | contribs)
- Inclusion text for troop leadership positions
- At least 21 years old
- Subscribe to the precepts of the Declaration of Religious Principle
- Abide by the Scout Oath or Promise and the Scout Law.
- Possess the moral, educational, and emotional qualities that the Boy Scouts of America deems necessary to afford positive leadership to youth.
- All volunteers are expected to complete Youth Protection training. It is available online on the Web site http://olc.scouting.org. As a volunteer, you are expected to complete the training within 90 days of assuming a leadership position.
Troop Committee
- Troop Committee Chair
- Troop Secretary
- Troop Treasurer
- Troop Outdoor/Activities Coordinator
- Troop Advancement Coordinator
- Troop Chaplain
- Troop Training Coordinator
- Troop Equipment Coordinator
- Troop Membership Coordinator
- Chartered Organization Representative
- Scoutmaster (non-voting member)
- Troop Committee Challenge] Online Training
- Boy Scout Fast Start Training
- New Unit Applicaiton
- New Adult Applicaiton
|Official Boy Scout Forms & Resources
|Applications & Reports:
|Youth Application
|Adult Leader Application
|Advancement Report
|Uniform Inspections
|Training Materials:
|Youth Protection Training
|Safe Swim Defense
|Safety Afloat
|New Leader
|Online Training:
|Youth Protection Training
|Safe Swim Defense
|Safety Afloat
|New Leader
|Other Guides:
|Boy Scout Requirements
|Insignia Guide
|Advancement Guide
|Leave No Trace
|Permit Applications:
|Informed Consent
|Activity Consent (Permission Slip)
|Unit Money-Earning Project
|Medical Exam Forms:
|Annual Health and Medical Record
|other forms…


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Business Travel Consultant
- Recruiter
- Corporate Traveller
- Location
- Woking
- Salary
- £21000 - £27000 per annum + Uncapped commission + benefits
- Posted
- 31 Dec 2012
- Closes
- 28 Jan 2013
- Ref
- Contact
- Corporate Traveller
- Sector
- Travel, Leisure & Tourism
- Function
- Sales
- Contract Type
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full Time
Corporate Traveller's Business Travel Consultants are among the highest earners in the industry. Our continued success has led to an impressive growth spurt, which means we're scouring the nation for ambitious individuals to join our team of Business Travel Consultants. Currently, we have brand new Business Travel Consultant opportunities in Woking.
Why Join Our Business Travel Consultant Team?
Corporate Traveller's company culture simply radiates energy. We're exceptionally proud of our service and it shows. As part of the global Flight Centre Group, we also offer our Business Travel Consultants award-winning benefits including:
- Uncapped commission structure and business ownership scheme
- Discounted travel and fantastic incentives from the world's top travel providers
- Industry renowned social events and excellent company culture
- Exceptional career progression with worldwide opportunities
- Fast-track leadership programme to develop our future leaders
- Comprehensive induction, sales, product and leadership training
- Free and confidential financial advice from our in-house financial advisors
- Free health consultations, discounted fitness sessions and gym memberships
- Discounted physiotherapy, massage, reflexology, tax-free bikes and more…
- Opportunityto take a three month sabbatical after five years
These benefits not only make us stand out from other travel companies, but have also placed us in 'The Sunday Times Best 100 Companies to Work For' for eight years.
Business Travel Consultant Responsibilities?
Drawing upon unsurpassable communication skills and a love of all things travel, our Business Travel Consultants build and manage a portfolio of corporate clients, each with a spend of between £50,000 and £2M. This client portfolio essentially becomes your personal (and profitable) business. From booking flights and accommodation to arranging visas and travel insurance, you will ensure your clients' travel plans run without a hitch.
Business Travel Consultant Requirements?
Corporate Traveller is renowned for a fantastic team culture and an extraordinary level of customer care. As such, we're looking for enthusiastic individuals with the ability to build lasting relationships with their clients. Specifically, you will need:
- A minimum of one years experience in travel sales
- An insatiable appetite for sales; after all, the more you sell, the more you earn
- Outstanding people skills and an impressive client focus
- Confidence when handling key accounts
Finally, ambition and a tenacious streak is also an essential ingredient. Corporate Traveller has a realm of career opportunities available in the UK and overseas. As the company continues to grow, we want your career to grow with us.


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Bang Design is an award winning development advisory. We work hands-on with many of the most influential businesses and institutions worldwide, to create meaningful products, services and experiences.
Latest News
A Virtual Reality
Prashant Subhedar, one of our founders was recently featured in "The New Indian Express...
Amara Raja launches Tribal brand and Tribal Life Lantern
Amara Raja Electronics Limited (AREL), an integral part of Rs. 2420-crore Amara Raja Group, today...


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SILC Showcase
Showcase June 2013: Neural Coding of Real-World Locations and Directions
- Details
- Category: Showcase
Share this article using our bitly.com url: http://bit.ly/1nPTysF
Neural Coding of Real-World Locations and Directions
Lindsay K. Vass and Russell A. Epstein
University of Pennsylvania
For the archival version of this research, and the preferred citation, see:
- Vass, L. K. & Epstein, R. A. (2013). Abstract representations of location and facing direction in the human brain. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(14), 6133-6142. [DOI]
To navigate successfully from place to place, many animals, including humans, rely on a "cognitive map" that represents the locations of familiar places and the spatial relationships between them (e.g., the bookstore is 2 blocks east of the parking garage). In order to use this map, you also have to know where you are currently located and what direction you are currently facing, a process called self-localization. Like a "You Are Here" sign on a physical map, these self-localization signals are important for determining where your destination is relative to your current location and planning a route to get there. What is the neural basis of these location and direction signals?
Previous work in rodents and humans provide different predictions of where in the brain these signals might be found. Invasive studies on rodents, which allow the researcher to measure the activity of individual neurons, have revealed specialized cells in the medial temporal lobe that appear to code for the animal's current location ("place cells"; O'Keefe & Dostrovsky, 1971) and the animal's current direction ("head direction cells"; Taube et al., 1990). However, data from studies of human navigation indicate that a region in medial parietal cortex known as the "retrosplenial complex" (RSC) is also particularly important. In fMRI studies, RSC is strongly activated when people navigate through a virtual environment (Maguire, 1998) and when people make decisions that require long-term spatial knowledge, like whether a certain place is on the East or West side of campus (Epstein et al., 2007). When RSC is damaged due to a stroke, these patients are able to recognize their surroundings, but cannot use this information to orient themselves on their cognitive map (Takahashi et al., 1997). For example, a patient could see the building in front of them and know that it is the post office, but could not use that information to decide whether to turn left or right to get home.
In this experiment, we wanted to determine which regions of the human brain carry information about your current location and current direction. Ideally, one would want to measure brain activity when people are standing at different places in the real world. Since that is not yet possible with fMRI, we showed students pictures of their campus and asked them to imagine being there (Vass and Epstein, 2013).
We went around to 8 intersections on campus and took photographs depicting the view facing North, South, East, and West (Figure 1). We then showed these photographs to students one at a time while they were in the fMRI scanner and asked them to tell us which direction the camera was facing when it took the picture (i.e., North, South, East, or West). Critically, in order to solve this problem, they also had to determine the location depicted in the picture. In other words, every time they saw a picture, they had to think about the real-world location and direction implied by it.
Figure 1. Schematic of the locations used in the experiment. A) Locations consisted of 8 intersections on the Penn campus. B) At each intersection, we took many photographs of views facing to the North, East, South, and West.
We then tested whether specific brain regions contained information about the location or facing direction implied by the photographs. To do so, we measured the activity patterns in these brain regions evoked by the different photographs. We hypothesized that if a region contains information about a particular spatial quantity, such as location, the evoked activity patterns for two stimuli that share that quantity (e.g., same location) should be more similar than the evoked activity patterns for two stimuli that do not share that quantity (e.g., different locations; Figure 2).
Figure 2. Example of location coding logic. If a region codes for location, the pattern for 1N should be more similar to 1E than to 2E, because 1N and 1E come from the same location.
To demonstrate coding of location, we wanted to find a brain region that could generalize across the different views at a given intersection and recognize them as coming from the same place. Thus, we tested whether there was a consistent pattern for each intersection that is activated whenever a person sees a picture of it, regardless of which direction the picture is facing. To demonstrate coding of direction, we asked whether each brain region exhibited a consistent pattern for a particular direction (e.g., North) across the different intersections. In other words, we tested whether there is a consistent "North" pattern that is activated whenever you face North, regardless of which intersection you are at.
We first looked for location and direction coding in the regions predicted by the prior human and rodent literature. These included RSC and six regions in the medial temporal lobe: anterior and posterior hippocampus, presubiculum, entorhinal cortex, perirhinal cortex, and parahippocampal cortex. We found that RSC coded for location in its activity patterns, but there was only a trend for direction coding. Of the medial temporal lobe regions, only presubiculum exhibited sensitivity to spatial quantities, coding for both locations and directions. This result is consistent with the reports from rodent studies, which indicate that presubiculum contains a mixture of cells that carry information about direction and location, including head direction cells, among others (Boccara et al., 2010, Cacucci et al., 2004).
Figure 3. Coding of spatial quantities in RSC and presubiculum. A) Multiple regression analyses revealed that patterns in RSC exhibited location coding and a trend for direction coding. B) Multiple regression analyses indicated that patterns in presubiculum contained information about both location and facing direction. † P<0.10; * P<0.05; ** P<0.01.
To look for any brain regions we may have missed in our targeted analyses, we tested for location and direction coding everywhere in the brain by using a "searchlight" technique, in which we measure activity patterns in small spherical regions that cover the entire brain (Kriegeskorte et al., 2006). These exploratory tests confirmed the effects from the previous analyses and identified new areas exhibiting spatial coding that were not predicted by the prior literature. This analysis showed that location could be decoded not only in RSC, but also in a swath of cortex along the parietal-occipital sulcus (POS) that extended into the precuneus (Figure 4). The analysis for direction coding confirmed that this information was present in presubiculum, and also showed that nearby territory in the anterior calcarine sulcus contained direction signals.
Figure 4. A whole-brain analysis for location coding revealed that this information was represented in the parietal-occipital sulcus (POS), overlapping with RSC. A whole-brain analysis for direction coding revealed coding in anterior calcarine sulcus, overlapping with posterior presubiculum.
In summary, we demonstrated neural coding of spatial quantities necessary for navigation within a large-scale, real world environment. We find that these self-localization signals are represented in distributed activity patterns in specific brain regions, with medial temporal (presubiculum) and medial parietal (RSC, POS) regions coding location, and medial temporal (presubiculum) regions coding direction. These results link the animal and human navigation literatures, and suggest that these location and direction representations may be critical for our ability to navigate through our environment.
- ♦ O'Keefe, J. and Dostrovsky, J. (1971). The hippocampus as a spatial map: Preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat. Brain Research, 34, 171-175.
- ♦ Taube, J. S., Muller, R. U., & Ranck, J. B. Jr (1990). Head-direction cells recorded from the postsubiculum in freely moving rats. I. Description and quantitative analysis. Journal of Neuroscience, 10, 420-435.
- ♦ Maguire, E. A., Burgess, N., Donnett, J. G., Frackowiak, R. S., Frith, C. D., & O'Keef,e J. (1998). Knowing where and getting there: A human navigation network. Science, 280, 921-924.
- ♦ Epstein, R. A., Parker, W. E., & Feiler, A. M. (2007). Where am I now? Distinct roles for parahippocampal and retrosplenial cortices in place recognition. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 6141-6149.
- ♦ Takahashi, N., Kawamura, M., Shiota, J., Kasahata, N., & Hirayama, K. (1997). Pure topographic disorientation due to right retrosplenial lesion. Neurology, 49, 464-469.
- ♦ Vass, L. K. & Epstein, R. A. (2013). Abstract representations of location and facing direction in the human brain. Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 6133-6142.
- ♦ Boccara, C. N., Sargolini, F., Thoresen, V. H., Solstad, T., Witter, M. P., Moser, E. I. & Moser, M. B. (2010). Grid cells in pre- and parasubiculum. Nature Neuroscience, 13, 987-994.
- ♦ Cacucci, F., Lever, C., Wills, T. J., Burgess, N., & O'Keefe, J. (2004). Theta-modulated place-by-direction cells in the hippocampal formation in the rat. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 8265-8277.
- ♦ Kriegeskorte, N., Goebel, R., & Bandettini, P. (2006). Information-based functional brain mapping. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, 3863-3868.


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1 killed in crash on Interstate 93 in Salem, NH
June 11, 2013
SALEM, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire State Police have identified the person killed in a rollover crash in Salem.
Police say 34-year-old Cornelius V. Stanley of Lawrence, Mass., died Monday night on Interstate 93 southbound near the Massachusetts State Line.
Troopers say witnesses told them a pickup truck was speeding and switching lanes when it hit the side of another vehicle. Stanley, the driver of the pickup truck, then lost control, hit a guardrail and rolled over several times.
Authorities say he was thrown from the truck and pronounced dead at the scene.
The people in the second vehicle were not hurt.
State police continue to investigate.


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Saturday, April 4th 2009, 10:06am
This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "dabretty" (Apr 4th 2009, 10:14am)
Supreme Member
Location: Houston, Texas
Saturday, April 4th 2009, 10:51am
Saturday, April 4th 2009, 2:10pm
Supreme Member
Location: Metro NYC
Saturday, April 4th 2009, 4:02pm
Location: USA
Saturday, April 4th 2009, 5:02pm
Sunday, April 5th 2009, 10:41am
Supreme Member
Location: Metro NYC
Sunday, April 5th 2009, 1:19pm
The photos you posted are probably the original camera images, at 3264 x 2448 pixels and over 3 MB file sizes. No one with dialup internet is likely to ever read this page. You can go beyond what Imageshack can do, and really trim the file sizes. Note the following thumbnails, with the second two having been edited for jpg compression in my own computer. You can still see the brand name on the tool handle. If you include images with emails, you really want to be able to pare down image file sizes, especially if any dialup users are on your mailing list.Sorry for the big pictures. I thought I scaled them to 1024x768 on imageshack, I didn't realize the width of this forum's text was forced to basically 640 or so ...
Location: USA
Sunday, April 5th 2009, 1:51pm


text:
As a long-time writer with only marginal success (I've not yet earned enough to pay for the ink and paper I've used over the past decade, not to mention postage), I consider myself to be quite skilled at converting story ideas into rejection letters from major publications. I'm also a professional computer geek and Linux system admin who has been avoiding payments to Microsoft by using Star Office / Open Office / LibreOffice for my writing. I've actually been successful at converting my children, who prefer LibreOffice even when MS Word is available at the college discount rate.
Imagine my frustration when I learned that my word processor of choice has been corrupting the page headers on my stories when I save them in .DOC or .RTF format for transmission to a prospective publisher. To be specific, .DOC files saved from LibreOffice Writer lose their page headers altogether, and .RTF files saved from Writer have their default page header applied to every page, even the title page. Either way, the resulting document is no longer formatted properly (e.g., per http://www.shunn.net/format/format.pdf).
As I said, I really don't need any external help getting my stories rejected, but I can't seem to find a workaround that won't cost me hundreds of dollars. More and more of the top SF markets are expecting electronic submissions in .DOC format (Asimov's, Analog, and IGMS for three), and I desperately want to send them the best possible work.
What do other writers out there use to generate their final .DOC files for submission? Am I really going to have to pay protection money to the owner of the .DOC file format to make my stories acceptable?