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Topic Index:
Annunciation (Botticelli, Glasgow)
The Annunciation is a painting created by Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. It is a tempera on panel and measures 49.5 cm tall and 58.5 cm wide. It is in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland.
Annunciation (disambiguation)
The Annunciation is the revelation to Mary by the archangel Gabriel that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God.It may also refer to other similar revelations to figures including Saint Joseph and the shepherds, or to:-Art:
Annunciation (Pontormo)
The Annunciation is a wall painting by the Italian mannerist artist Jacopo Pontormo, executed in 1527-1528 as part of his commission to decorate the Capponi Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita, Florence.
Annunciation (Titian)
The Annunciation is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Titian, executed between 1559 and 1564. It is housed in the church of San Salvador, Venice, northern Italy.
Annunciation (van Eyck, Washington)
The Annunciation is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish master Jan van Eyck, from around 1434-1436. It is in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C. It was originally on panel but has been transferred to canvas. It is thought that it was the left wing of a triptych; there has been no sighting of the other wings since before 1817
Annunziata is the Italian word for Annunciation. It is generally understood to refer to the Virgin Mary, receiving the word of the Angel Gabriel that she is to bear the Christ child; that is, the Virgin Mary after the Annunciation
Ano or ANO may refer to:* Ano, Ethiopia* Ano family, a noble family of Japan* Ano , a sport with two 12 cm balls, conducted at Tuvalu* Abu Nidal Organization, Palestinian Revolutionary Council, founded by Abu Nidal
Anoa, also known as Dwarf Buffalo and Sapiutan, are a subgenus of Bubalus comprising two species native to Indonesia: the Mountain Anoa and the Lowland Anoa . Both live in undisturbed rainforest, and are essentially miniature water buffalo
Anoche is the eighth album by Argentine rock group Babasónicos. The album was composed in Córdoba in March 2005, and then recorded and produced by Andrew Weiss, as well as by the band themselves, in May 2005.- Track listing :
Anoda is a genus of flowering plants in the mallow family. There are 23 or 24 species of these herbs, most native to Mexico and South America. They are generally erect plants with a variety of leaf shapes, and many bear colorful flowers
An anode is an electrode through which electric current flows into a polarized electrical device. Mnemonic: ACID .
In medicine before the 20th century, an anodyne was a medicine that was believed to relieve or soothe pain by lessening the sensitivity of the brain or nervous system In medicine before the 20th century, an anodyne was a medicine that was believed to relieve or soothe pain by lessening the sensitivity of the brain or nervous system In medicine before the 20th century, an anodyne was a medicine that was believed to relieve or soothe pain by lessening the sensitivity of the brain or nervous system (Greek ἀνώδυνος anōdynos
Anointed is a Contemporary Christian music group from Columbus, Ohio, known for their strong vocals and harmonies, featuring siblings Steve Crawford and Da'dra Crawford Greathouse, along with former members Nee-C Walls and Mary Tiller . Their musical style includes elements of R&B, Pop, Rock, Funk, and Piano ballads
To anoint is to pour or smear with perfumed oil, milk, water, melted butter or other substances, a process employed ritually by many religions. People and things are anointed to symbolize the introduction of a sacramental or divine influence, a holy emanation, spirit, power or God
Anointing of the Sick
Anointing of the Sick, known also by other names, is distinguished from other forms of religious anointing or "unction" in that it is intended, as its name indicates, for the benefit of a sick person
Anointing of the Sick (Catholic Church)
Anointing of the Sick is a sacrament of the Catholic Church that is administered to Catholics who because of sickness or old age are in danger of death, even if the danger is not proximate
Anomaly may refer to:-Astronomy and celestial mechanics :* In astronomy, an anomaly is a quantity measured with respect to an apsis, usually the periapsis
Anomie is a term meaning "without Law" to describe a lack of social norms; "normlessness". It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community ties, with fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide
-People:* Anon Boonsukco , a professional footballer from Thailand* Anon Nanok , a football Defender from Thailand* Anon Sangsanoi , a Thai footballer
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a person might choose to obscure their identity and become anonymous
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a person might choose to obscure their identity and become anonymous
- People :* Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author* Anonymous IV, a 13th century English student of medieval music theory whose works are a major source for modern scholars of that era
- People :* Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author* Anonymous IV, a 13th century English student of medieval music theory whose works are a major source for modern scholars of that era
Anonymous (album)
Anonymous is the third studio album by Tomahawk. It was released on June 19, 2007 via Ipecac Recordings. The album features Native American songs that guitarist Duane Denison researched after working with Hank Williams III. The name of the album comes from the many uncredited people that contributed to the ancestral Native American music that Denison uncovered in his research
Anonymous (band)
Anonymous is a band from Andorra that in 2007 represented the country with the song "Salvem el món" in the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 after winning the national selection. The song, however, failed to make it through past the semi-final stage.
Anonymous (Bobby Valentino song)
"Anonymous" is the second single from Bobby Valentino's second album, Special Occasion The song features and was produced by Timbaland.-Background information:
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, chaotic, global brain
An anorak or parka is a type of heavy jacket with a hood, often lined with fur or fake fur, so as to protect the face from a combination of freezing temperatures and wind
- Eating conditions :* Anorexia , the symptom of poor appetite whatever the cause* Anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder of excessive weight loss and usually undue concern about body shape
Anorexia (album)
Anorexia is an album by the band Showbread. It was released on May 13, 2008 simultaneously with its companion album Nervosa . Anorexia is the first of a two-CD collection entitled Anorexia Nervosa, which is an accompaniment to the short story Anorexia Nervosa which comes pacakged with the records
Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate
Anorthite is the calcium endmember of plagioclase feldspar. Plagioclase is an abundant mineral in the Earth's crust. The formula of pure anorthite is CaAl2Si2O8.-Mineralogy :
Anos is a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in south-western France.-References:*
Ans is a Belgian municipality in the province of Liège.As an acronym ANS may refer to:Music:* ANS , a box set from the British band Coil* ANS , a single by the British band Coil
Ans is a small Belgian municipality located in the Walloon province of Liège. On January 1, 2006 Ans had a total population of 27,322. The total area is 23.35 km² which gives a population density of 1,170 inhabitants per km²
ANS (DNS server)
The Authoritative Name Server is high-end commercial authority-only DNS server software product from Nominum, a company founded by Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of the DNS. ANS was designed to meet the needs of top level domain servers.-External links:
ANSA (news agency)
ANSA , is the leading wire service in Italy, and one of the leaders among world news agencies. ANSA is a not-for-profit cooperative, whose members and owners are 36 leading news organizations in Italy. Its mission is the distribution of fair and objective news reporting.-History:ANSA was founded on 15 January 1945, and it is based in Rome
Ansa (queen)
Ansa or Ansia was the wife of Desiderius, King of the Lombards. She was probably a Lombard, the daughter of Verissimo and sister of King Hildeprand, Arechis, and Donnolo, and niece of King Liutprand.
The word anser comes from Latin, meaning goose, and can refer to:* Anser , the genus of grey geese* The star Alpha Vulpeculae, or Anser, in the constellation Vulpecula* ACME Anser, an amphibious jet fighter project of the 1950s
Anser (genus)
The waterfowl genus Anser includes all grey geese and sometimes the white geese. It belongs to the true geese and swan subfamily . The genus has a Holarctic distribution, with at least one species breeding in any open, wet habitats in the subarctic and cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in summer
Anshan may refer to :*Anshan , an ancient Persian capital*Izeh, a city in Iran*Anshan, Liaoning, a major city in Liaoning Province in Northeastern China*Anshan, Changli County, town in Hebei Province, China*Anshan , a Chinese ship
ANSI (disambiguation)
ANSI or may refer to:*American National Standards Institute, a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards
Generally, an answer is a reply to a question or is a solution, a retaliation, or a response that is relevant to the said question.In law, an answer was originally a solemn assertion in opposition to some one or something, and thus generally any counter-statement or defense, a reply to a question or response, or objection, or a correct solution of a problem.In the common law,
Answer (comics)
The Answer is the name of two fictional comic book characters, owned by Marvel Comics and appearing in that company's Marvel Universe. Aaron Nicholson first appeared in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #92. After his "death", S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, David Ferrari took the name of Answer in Captain America vol
Answer print
Answer print refers to the first version of a given motion picture that is printed to film after color correction on an interpositive. It is also the first version of the movie printed to film with the sound properly synced to the picture.
Answering machine
The answering machine or message machine, also known as the telephone answering machine in the UK and some Commonwealth countries) and previously known as an ansaphone, ansafone, or telephone answering device is a device for answering telephones and recording callers' messages.Unlike voicemail, which can be a centralized or
Answers may refer to:* The plural of Answer, a civil procedure* Answers.com, a reference website* Answers , a 1994 album by the band Casiopea* The Answers , an album by Blue October
Answers (Casiopea album)
- Personnel :CASIOPEA are* Executive Producer: Yoshiaki Mizutani* Recording & Mixing Engineer - Ross Cockle* Mastering Engineer - Tohru Kotetsu* Assistant Engineer - Porter Miller* Instruments Technician - Yasushi Horiuchi, Eisuke Sasaki
ANT (network)
ANT is a proprietary wireless sensor network technology featuring a wireless communications protocol stack that enables semiconductor radios operating in the 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical allocation of the RF spectrum to communicate by establishing standard rules for co-existence, data representation, signalling, authentication and error detection.The ANT
Ant (newspaper)
Ant was a weekly leftwing publication in Turkey, which first appeared in 1967. Ant supported the Workers Party of Turkey , and sought to resolve the differences betweenthe TİP and other sectors of the left
-Peru:* Anta, Ancash * Anta Province * Anta District , several districts in Peru-Portugal:* Anta , a civil parish of the municipality of Espinho
Antagonism is hostility that results in active resistance, opposition, or contentiousness.Additionally, it may refer to:*Antagonism , where the involvement of multiple agents reduces their overall effect
Antagonism (chemistry)
In chemistry, antagonism is a phenomenon wherein two or more agents in combination have an overall effect that is less than the sum of their individual effects.
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend
Antagonist (band)
-Formation and S/T Demo' :Antagonist A.D started in 2005 by vocalist Sam Crocker and bassist Joshua Moffitt. The intention was to create a fast heavy metallic hardcore band - in the vein of unrelenting American acts such as Martyr A.D
Antal (surname)
Antal is a surname, and may refer to:* Emese Antal, a Romanian speedskater* Frederick Antal, a Hungarian art historian* Károly Antal, a Hungarian sculptor* László Antal, a Hungarian linguist* Milan Antal, a Slovak astronomer
Antarctic Circle
The Antarctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. For 2011, it is the parallel of latitude that runs south of the Equator.-Description:
Antarctic Peninsula
The Antarctic Peninsula is the northernmost part of the mainland of Antarctica. It extends from a line between Cape Adams and a point on the mainland south of Eklund Islands.
Antarctica (album)
Antarctica is The Secret Handshake's first full-length album. It was released in 2004. Besides the Summer of '98 EP, it is the only The Secret Handshake release not available on iTunes
Antarctica (Vangelis album)
- Personnel :* Vangelis – arrangements, all instruments and producer* Raine Shine – engineer
Antares is a red supergiant star in the Milky Way galaxy and the sixteenth brightest star in the nighttime sky . Along with Aldebaran, Spica, and Regulus it is one of the four brightest stars near the ecliptic
Antares (album)
Antares is the second studio album by Sybreed, released across Europe on October 1, 2007 through Listenable Records. The album was released to the US on August 15, 2008 through Koch Entertainment.-Track listing:# "Emma-0" – 4:27
Antares (band)
Antares was a Eurodance act that became known in the spring of 1995 with the release of their first song entitled "Ride on a Meteorite". The group, also notable by how little information was known at the time about its composition, produced a couple of other hits before disappearing in 1997.-Discography:* "Ride on a Meteorite" 1995 Antares was a Eurodance act that became known in the spring of 1995 with the release of their first song entitled "Ride on a Meteorite". The group, also notable by how little information was known at the time about its composition, produced a couple of other hits before disappearing in 1997.-Discography:* "Ride on a Meteorite" 1995 Antares was a Eurodance act that became known in the spring of 1995 with the release of their first song entitled "Ride on a Meteorite". The group, also notable by how little information was known at the time about its composition, produced a couple of other hits before disappearing in 1997.-Discography:* "Ride on a Meteorite" 1995 (Radio Mix/ Alternative Mix/ Extended Mix/ Acca
Antares (film)
Antares is a 2004 Austrian film directed by Götz Spielmann. It was Austria's submission to the 77th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not accepted as a nominee.-See also:*Cinema of Austria
Association of Tennis Professionals
The Association of Tennis Professionals or ATP was formed in 1972 by Donald Dell, Jack Kramer, and Cliff Drysdale to protect the interests of male professional tennis players. Since 1990, the association has organized the worldwide tennis tour for men and linked the title of the tour with the organization's name
Association of Zoos and Aquariums
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums was founded in 1924 and is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of zoos and public aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation.The AZA headquarters is located in Silver
Assumption College of Davao
The Assumption College of Davao is a private Catholic academic institution in Davao City, Philippines. It was established in 1958 by the Daughters of Mary of the Assumption or FMA. It is currently owned and managed by the Missionaries of the Assumption
Assumption of Mary
According to the belief of Christians of the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and parts of the Anglican Communion and Continuing Anglicanism, the Assumption of Mary was the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her life
Assyrian Siege of Jerusalem
In approximately 701 BCE, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, attacked the fortified cities of Judah, laying siege on Jerusalem. The historical outcome of the siege is unclear.-Background:
Assyriology is the archaeological, historical, and linguistic study of ancient Mesopotamia and the related cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers the Akkadian sister-cultures of Assyria and Babylonia, together with their cultural predecessor; Sumer
The family Astacidae comprises the freshwater crayfish native to Europe and western North America. It is made up of three genera. Pacifastacus is found on the Pacific coast of the United States and British Columbia and includes the signal crayfish and the Shasta crayfish
Astatine is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol At and atomic number 85. It occurs on the Earth only as the result of decay of heavier elements, and decays away rapidly, so much less is known about this element than its upper neighbors in the periodic table
Astaxanthin is a carotenoid. It belongs to a larger class of phytochemicals known as terpenes. It is classified as a xanthophyll, which means "yellow leaves". Like many carotenoids, it is a colorful, lipid-soluble pigment. Astaxanthin is found in microalgae, yeast, salmon, trout, krill, shrimp, crayfish, crustaceans, and the feathers of some birds
Asterix at the Olympic Games
Asterix at the Olympic Games is the 12th comic book album in the Asterix series. Serialized in Pilote issues 434-455 in 1968 , it was translated into English in 1972
Asterix in Spain
Asterix in Spain is the fourteenth volume of the Asterix comic book series, by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo . It was originally serialized in the megazine Pilote, issues 498-519, in 1969, and translated into English in 1971
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones
Asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets
Asteroid deflection strategies
Asteroid mitigation strategies are "planetary defense" methods by which near-Earth objects could be diverted, preventing potentially catastrophic impact events. A sufficiently large impact would cause massive tsunamis or an impact winter, or both
The asthenosphere is the highly viscous, mechanically weak and ductilely-deforming region of the upper mantle of the Earth
Astley Cooper
Sir Astley Paston Cooper, 1st Baronet was an English surgeon and anatomist, who made historical contributions to otology, vascular surgery, the anatomy and pathology of the mammary glands and testicles, and the pathology and surgery of hernia.-Life:Cooper was born at Brooke Hall in Brooke, Norfolk on 23 August 1768 and baptised at the parish church
ASTM International
ASTM International, known until 2001 as the American Society for Testing and Materials , is an international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services
Aston Martin Virage
The Virage was Aston Martin's replacement for the decades-old V8 models. Introduced at the Birmingham Motor Show in 1988, it was joined by the high-performance Vantage in 1993, and the name of the standard car was changed to V8 in 1996.
Astoria, Oregon
Astoria is the county seat of Clatsop County, Oregon, United States. Situated near the mouth of the Columbia River, the city was named after the American investor John Jacob Astor. His American Fur Company founded Fort Astoria at the site in 1811
Astra-Unceta y Cia SA
Astra Unceta y Cía. was a Spanish weapons manufacturer founded on July 17, 1908 under the name of Esperanza y Unceta by Juan Esperanza and Pedro Unceta
Astrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the left bank of the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea at an altitude of below the sea level. Population:
Astrakhan State University
Astrakhan State University is a university located in Astrakhan, Russian Federation. It was founded in 1932.
-Concepts of the non-physical:* Astral body, a subtle body posited by many religious philosophers* Astral journey , the same as having an out-of-body experience
Astral projection
Astral projection is an interpretation of out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of an "astral body" separate from the physical body and capable of traveling outside it
An astrarium, also called a planetarium, is the mechanical representation of the cyclic nature of astronomical objects in one timepiece. It is an astronomical clock.-Greek and Roman World:
AstraZeneca plc is a global pharmaceutical and biologics company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's seventh-largest pharmaceutical company measured by revenues and has operations in over 100 countries
Astro All Asia Networks plc
Astro Holdings Sdn Bhd is a Malaysia investment holding media and entertainment company that began in the form of a pay digital direct broadcast satellite radio and television service, Astro.- Corporate Information :
Astrocytomas are a type of neoplasm of the brain. They originate in a particular kind of glial-cells, star-shaped brain cells in the cerebrum called astrocytes. This type of tumor does not usually spread outside the brain and spinal cord and it does not usually affect other organs
Orbital mechanics or astrodynamics is the application of ballistics and celestial mechanics to the practical problems concerning the motion of rockets and other spacecraft. The motion of these objects is usually calculated from Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation. It is a core discipline within space mission design and control
An astrolabe is an elaborate inclinometer, historically used by astronomers, navigators, and astrologers. Its many uses include locating and predicting the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars, determining local time given local latitude and longitude, surveying, triangulation, and to cast horoscopes
Astrological symbols
Astrological symbols are images used in various astrological systems to denote relevant objects. A number of such images are shown below.-History and origin:
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world
Astrology and the classical elements
Astrology has used the concept of classical elements from antiquity up until the present. In Western astrology and Indian astrology four elements are used, namely Fire, Earth, Air and Water.-Western astrology:
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft.
Astronomical interferometer
An astronomical interferometer is an array of telescopes or mirror segments acting together to probe structures with higher resolution by means of interferometry.
Astronomical surveys
An astronomical survey is a general map or image of a region of the sky which lacks a specific observational target. Alternatively, an astronomical survey may comprise a set of many images of objects which share a common type or feature
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth
Asuncion Island
Asuncion is the third northernmost independent island in the Northern Mariana Islands chain at .It is located in the far northern part of the Mariana arc of volcanic islands, situated northwest of Agrihan and southeast of the Maug Islands; the island of Pagan lies to the southwest
Aswan , formerly spelled Assuan, is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate.It stands on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist centre
An Aswang is a mythical creature in Philippine folklore. The aswang is an inherently evil vampire-like creature and is the subject of a wide variety of myths and stories, the details of which vary greatly
Asylum Records
Asylum Records is an American record label founded in 1971 by David Geffen, and partner Elliot Roberts, who had previously worked as agents at the William Morris Agency. Founded specifically to provide a record contract for Jackson Browne, the label signed Tom Waits, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan for two albums
In analytic geometry, an asymptote of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as they tend to infinity. Some sources include the requirement that the curve may not cross the line infinitely often, but this is unusual for modern authors
Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a standard switching technique designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing, and it encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells. This differs from approaches such as the Internet Protocol or Ethernet that use variable sized packets or frames. ATM provides data link layer services
AT-3 Sagger
The 9K11 Malyutka is a Manual Command to Line-of-Sight wire-guided anti-tank guided missile developed in the Soviet Union. It was the first man-portable anti-tank guided missile of the Soviet Union and is probably the most widely produced ATGM of all time—with Soviet production peaking at 25,000 missiles a year during the 1960s and 1970s
Atacama Desert
The Atacama Desert is a plateau in South America, covering a strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes mountains. It is, according to NASA, National Geographic and many other publications, the driest desert in the world
The Atakapan people are a Southeastern culture of Native American tribes who spoke Atakapa and historically lived along the Gulf of Mexico. They called themselves the Ishak, pronounced "ee-SHAK", which translates as "The People". Although the people were decimated by infectious disease after European contact, descendants still live in Louisiana and Texas
Atari Bigby
Atari David Bigby is an American football safety for the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League. He was signed by the Miami Dolphins as an undrafted free agent in 2005
Atarot Airport
Atarot Airport , is a small airport located between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It was the first airport in Mandate Palestine. It has been closed since the Second Intifada.-History:
Ataulf was king of the Visigoths from 410 to 415
Atchafalaya Basin
The Atchafalaya Basin, or Atchafalaya Swamp, is the largest swamp in the United States. Located in south central Louisiana, it is a combination of wetlands and river delta area where the Atchafalaya River and the Gulf of Mexico converge. The river stretches from near Simmesport in the north through parts of eight parishes to the Morgan City area in the south
Atchafalaya River
The Atchafalaya River is a distributary of the Mississippi River and Red River in south central Louisiana in the United States. It flows south, just west of the Mississippi River.
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often abbreviated as Santa Fe, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The company was first chartered in February 1859
Aten is the disk of the sun in ancient Egyptian mythology, and originally an aspect of Ra. The deified Aten is the focus of the monolatristic, henotheistic, or monotheistic religion of Atenism established by Amenhotep IV, who later took the name Akhenaten in worship in recognition of Aten
Ateneo de Davao University
The Ateneo de Davao University is a private and research Catholic university administered by the Society of Jesus in Southern Mindanao in the Philippines. It was established in 1948
Ateneo de Iloilo
The Ateneo de Iloilo – Santa Maria Catholic School is a private, Catholic preparatory school run by the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus
Ateneo de Manila University
The Ateneo de Manila University is a private teaching and research university run by the Society of Jesus in the Philippines. It began in 1859 when the City of Manila handed control of the Escuela Municipal de Manila in Intramuros, Manila, to the Jesuits
Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan or Athabascan is a large group of indigenous peoples of North America, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is also a shrewd companion of heroes and is the goddess of heroic endeavour
Athenian democracy
Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 508 BC. Athens is one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, and even though most followed an Athenian model, none were as powerful, stable, nor as well-documented as that of Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state
Athens High School (Troy, Michigan)
Troy Athens High School is a public high school located in Troy, Michigan. It is attended by more than 1,600 students, serving grades 9-12. Athens is one of four high schools in the Troy School District, along with Troy High School, Niles Community High School, and International Academy East
Athens Lunatic Asylum
The Athens Lunatic Asylum was a mental hospital operated in Athens, Ohio from 1874 until 1993. During its operation, the hospital provided services to a variety of patients including Civil War veterans, children, and violent criminals suffering from various mental disabilities
Athens Mass Transit System
The Athens Mass Transit System is the largest mass transit system of Greece. The system serves all areas in Athens Metropolitan Area and other parts of Attica Region.-Companies:
Atherton Tableland
The Atherton Tableland is a fertile plateau which is part of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland, Australia. It is located west to south-south-west inland from Cairns, well into the tropics, but its elevated position provides a climate suitable for dairy farming. It has an area of around 32,000 km² with an altitude ranging between
Athletic scholarship
An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university awarded to an individual based predominantly on his or her ability to play in a sport
Athletic shoe
Athletic shoe is a generic name for the footwear primarily designed for sports or other forms of physical exercise but in recent years has come to be used for casual everyday activities.
Athletics (track and field)
Athletics is an exclusive collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking. The most common types of athletics competitions are track and field, road running, cross country running, and race walking
Athletics at the 1908 Summer Olympics
At the 1908 Summer Olympics held in London, England, 26 athletics events were contested, all for men only.Each nation was allowed to enter up to 12 competitors in most of the events. In the team races , each nation entered one team. The medley relay was run by four athletes, with four alternates allowed
Athletics at the 1968 Summer Olympics
At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, 36 athletics events were contested, 24 for men and 12 for women. There were a total number of 1031 participating athletes from 93 countries.
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Saturday, September 6, 2014
Credit in the Straight World!
He had felt some trepidation at accepting the request. But as Waeg these days is more interested in earning credit in the straight world, he clicked yes. Besides, he was curious.
He remembered her from years past. Obviously intelligent, but lacking the will and focus that would give her the 0.2 points more necessary to earn a top spot for admission to SNU. When asked by her mom years back, Weag had not sugar coated the pill: she'd never be that top student getting into that top school. She was smart, but needed a more hands on engagement with life. Her parents responded somewhat uncharacteristically: they didn't send her overseas, or pay for a ringer at a top hogwon to pave her way through math and English into a top position. Instead, they seemed to take Waeg's advice to heart: they bought her a harp.
Waeg remembers it vividly: this monster of a musical instrument showing up, and the expensive lessons that followed. Soon, she no longer had time to take his lessons.
Fast forward ten years. She had gotten into one of the best music high schools, and then acceptance into an SNU music program. Waeg was not surprised, as her parents were loaded, and her mom only cared about grooming her to be the brood mare for a scion from another well to do family. That's the way things rolled pretty much everywhere when concerns for family are paramount. In her case, buy an instrument that is ridiculously expensive that no one else plays. Who the fuck plays the harp? Make the right amount of donations to the right people, and rejoice at being 'selected'.
But as he looked at her photos now, he wondered: why, despite the plastic surgery on an already attractive woman with impeccable social standing and background, did she look so. . . unsatisfied? Incomplete? Sad? Waeg writes despite knowing the answer to be obvious: she was always astute enough to know that following what adults told you in elementary and middle school is what is. . . but when faced with lessons on how to make valid decisions based in self understanding, elicited by top hogwon teachers to add verisimilitude to a good college essay, and realizing that the vague details represented have no substance and only serve to ghost an essay for admission . . . and during the process you see things you'd never seen about yourself, yet being told that engaging this train of thought should inspire anathema, since you must win, and you will, but still, it nags, since the persona the hogwon bunnies create is such a total fiction, and who exactly are you anyway? You've never gone out and lived and know only what has been prescribed since grade six, so really, you have no idea. . . the look in her eyes spoke that same old story in those photos.
Waeg laughs, as he knows she will lose the existential angst sooner rather than later. It's a moment that is usually quickly overcome, since family and friends will encourage her to revel in her success, in her plastic surgery, in the attention she'll receive from appropriate suitors. She had made it after all, so live the life that this entails. Yet from experience, Waeg knows it won't be enough. Later in life she'll either meet him or his ilk in some random dating app, and while it won't be good for either one of them, she actually may entertain for just a moment why she should raise her kids in the same manner. She'll tell her story which has been told many times before, blame society, blame her parents, blame the penicillin she takes to clear out that nasty infection she picked up from random Joe Kim taxi driver. She'll never know why she can't get over it, why she even thought it in the first place, but her daughter will marry someone higher on the social ladder, since well, that's how things are, and what they are meant to be. To think otherwise is foolish and blind. Till then, she'll keep herself safe and true, yet not knowing that she's exempt from earning:
Labels: life on the streets
2 comments:
- 4S said...
Yes great song and great CD at the time. What were you drinking when you wrote this. Take care buddy
- September 20, 2014 at 9:23 PM
- F5Waeg said...
Maybe had a nip or three of single malt
- September 26, 2014 at 4:59 PM
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
There are three main global transformations that brought the world order on a new stage - the stage that rules the current post-modern era. However, it started more than ten years ago, the main predominant turn happened at the very beginning. To list those are: the collapse of the Soviet Union; terrorism; and the appearance of 'rouge' states.
To point out, the prior one, which gave the starts to all others was the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the official Gorbachev's speech of dissolution , the world had stopped to be bipolar but has not yet become either multipolar nor, of course, unipolar. With the fall of the Soviet Union the United States has nobody and nothing to struggle with because its enemy (USSR) for at least forty years was an antagonist and the absolute opposite of it. Even though that the soon collapse of the Soviet Union was expectable and desirable at that time, the fact of it became a big shock to the whole western hemisphere.
The whole US politics, especially the foreign one was oriented to the rival against the east. Now it had to turn its politics on the situation of a sole dominance, which showed itself as a very hard task to realize because the US politics was based on the identification, making strategies and then implementing various policy models aimed to struggle with the enemy.
Moreover, if the world order before the collapse of the Soviet Union could have been described by such concepts as: 'threat perceptions', 'deterioration', 'arms-race', 'total conservatism', 'East and West', 'modern era' and 'realism', today it can be defined by such slogans as 'national missile defense', 'globalization', 'liberalism', 'North and South', 'post-modern era', 'terrorism', 'rouge states' and "clash of civilizations and others.
To go back to the...


text:
This is a new model for delivering prenatal care in which eight to twelve pregnant women and their partners meet for ten sessions throughout their pregnancy. Each meeting is two hours long and includes a brief prenatal appointment with the provider as well as a facilitated discussion about relevant topics including:
Group Prenatal Care works because we learn best from each other – it is a truly empowering model of care! Group Prenatal Care has been shown to improve all pregnancy outcomes including decreasing preterm birth, lowering Cesarean Section rates, and increasing breast-feeding. In addition to the Centering sessions, you may have individual meetings with providers if needed.
For more information, please feel free to contact us!


text:
Study of Gene Modified Immune Cells in Patients With Advanced Melanoma (F5)
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Know the risks and potential benefits of clinical studies and talk to your health care provider before participating. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00910650
Recruitment Status : Recruiting
First Posted : June 1, 2009
Last Update Posted : January 12, 2018
|Tracking Information
|First Submitted Date ICMJE
|May 1, 2009
|First Posted Date ICMJE
|June 1, 2009
|Last Update Posted Date
|January 12, 2018
|Actual Study Start Date ICMJE
|October 13, 2009
|Estimated Primary Completion Date
|December 2018 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure)
|Current Primary Outcome Measures ICMJE
|Response rate: The two-stage phase II study design includes response rate by RECIST criteria as the primary endpoint. [ Time Frame: 3 months ]
|Original Primary Outcome Measures ICMJE
|Same as current
|Change History
|Complete list of historical versions of study NCT00910650 on ClinicalTrials.gov Archive Site
|Current Secondary Outcome Measures ICMJE
|Other key measures that will be used to evaluate the intervention(s) or, for observational studies, that are a focus of the study. [ Time Frame: 3 months ]
Within the first 8 patients in the two-stage phase II design, an assessment of safety (less than 33% dose limiting toxicities) and feasibility (adequate cell therapy manufacture) will be made.
|Original Secondary Outcome Measures ICMJE
|Safety and feasibility: Within the first 8 patients in the two-stage phase II design, an assessment of safety (less than 33% dose limiting toxicities) and feasibility (adequate cell therapy manufacture) will be made. [ Time Frame: 3 months ]
|Current Other Outcome Measures ICMJE
|Not Provided
|Original Other Outcome Measures ICMJE
|Not Provided
|Descriptive Information
|Brief Title ICMJE
|Study of Gene Modified Immune Cells in Patients With Advanced Melanoma
|Official Title ICMJE
|Adoptive Transfer of MART-1 F5 TCR Engineered Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMC) After a Nonmyeloablative Conditioning Regimen, With Administration of MART-126•35-Pulsed Dendritic Cells and Interleukin-2, in Patients With Advanced Melanoma
|Brief Summary
The purpose of this phase 2 study is to find the best way to give this new experimental regimen and determine if it can treat metastatic melanoma in humans. In this phase 2 study, the experimental products are given initially to a group of 8 people. If safe and found to have significant anti-tumor activity, it will be given to up to 14 other people, for a total of 22 people in this study. Physicians watch subjects carefully for any harmful side effects. Although the experimental regimen has been well tested in laboratory and animal studies, and a similar regimen has been given to a group of patients at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD, the side effects in people cannot be completely known ahead of time. This protocol is offered only to people whose condition cannot be helped by other known treatments.
The study procedures will start with the collection of white blood cells through apheresis (a procedure in which blood is drawn from a patient and separated into its components, some of which are retained, such as white blood cells, and the remainder returned by transfusion to the patient).
Subjects will be asked to undergo two aphereses, one to make the gene-modified MART-1 TCR CTLs and the dendritic cell vaccines, and a second one after the subject receives the gene modified cells to later study them in the blood.
On the day of the first apheresis, subjects will be admitted to the hospital and will receive chemotherapy over the next five days which decreases the risk of rejection of the transferred cells by the subject's immune system and facilitates their expansion and attack of the melanoma lesions. During this time, the gene-modified MART-1 TCR CTLs and the dendritic cells will be manufactured in the laboratory from the apheresis product and will be extensively tested to assure that they express the appropriate TCR and that they do not contain any contaminating bacteria or virus. Then the gene-modified MART-1 TCR CTLs will be given back to the subject through a vein in the arm. It will be followed by vaccination with the dendritic cells under the skin. During the next fourteen days, subjects will also receive interleukin 2 (IL-2), which is a standard treatment for patients with metastatic melanoma. During the next 2 to 3 weeks, subjects will stay in the hospital until the study investigators determine that the subject has fully recovered from all of the procedures, and it is safe for the subject to go home. Chemotherapy frequently causes a decrease in the platelet or red blood cells, and therefore subjects may require platelet and/or red blood cell transfusions.
|Detailed Description
This is a two-stage phase II clinical trial with the combined primary endpoints to determine the safety, feasibility and anti-tumor activity of adoptive transfer of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) genetically engineered to express the alpha and beta chains of a high affinity T cell receptor (TCR) specific for the HLA-A*0201-restricted MART-1 melanoma tumor antigen to patients with locally advanced or metastatic melanoma. This gene transfer will be facilitated by a retroviral vector pseudotyped with a gibbon ape leukemia virus (GaLV) envelope. The two transgenes are linked by a picornavirus 2A sequence. Their expression is driven by the retroviral long terminal repeat (LTR).
Patients with MART-1-positive locally advanced or metastatic melanoma who are HLA-A*0201-positive, and HIV, hepatitis B and C seronegative, will receive a non-myeloablative but lymphocyte depleting chemotherapy conditioning regimen consisting of cyclophosphamide and fludarabine, and then receive the adoptive transfer of autologous PBMC transduced with the MSGV1-F5AfT2AB retroviral vector, which expresses a high affinity TCR for the MART-1 melanoma antigen (MART-1 F5 TCR). The cell dose will be up to 10^9 autologous PBMC transduced with the MSGV1-F5AfT2AB retroviral vector. The transgenic T cells will be infused fresh on the day of harvest as done in the last three patients within this protocol, prior to which, thawed cryopreserved cells were infused. Following adoptive cell transfer, patients will receive MART-1.26-35 peptide-pulsed dendritic cell (DC) vaccines and low dose interleukin-2 (IL-2).
The MART-1 F5 TCR was provided by Dr. Stephen A. Rosenberg from the Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute (NCI). The MART-1 F5 TCR is derived from the DMF5 tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) clone, and was selected from several MART-1-specific TCRs because of its high affinity and biological activity. This TCR delivered by the same retroviral vector is currently in clinical testing at the Surgery Branch/NCI. Both the NCI clinical trial and the trial at UCLA are based on the same retrovirus expressing the MART-1 F5 TCR used to transduce whole PBMC and re-infused to patients after a non-myeloablative but lymphodepleting chemotherapy conditioning regimen. Major differences between both clinical trials include the shorter ex vivo expansion of TCR transduced PBMC, the use of MART-126-35 peptide pulsed DC and the use of positron imaging tomography (PET) for non-invasive imaging of adoptively transferred TCR transgenic cells in the UCLA clinical trial.
The primary endpoints will be safety, feasibility and objective tumor response. The phase II clinical trial design will have two treatment stages following a Simon optimal two-stage clinical phase II clinical trial design 1. The clinical trial will have an initial stage with 8 patients followed by a second stage with up to 22 patients.
Safety will be determined in stage one, and if 3 out of 8 patients have MART-1 F5 TCR-induced dose limiting toxicities (DLT), then further accrual will not be warranted. Feasibility will be also determined in the first stage, and if 3 out of 8 patients cannot receive the intended cellular therapies, or if they result in suboptimal TCR transgenic cell in vivo persistence, further accrual will not be warranted to the protocol as currently designed. Objective tumor responses will be determined by RECIST objective response criteria with a design to rule out a 10% response rate as the null hypothesis, and a 35% response rate as the alternative hypothesis. With this statistical design, if 2 or more of 8 patients in stage one have an objective response, the study will proceed to stage two and accrue a total of 22 patients. If 5 or more patients in the overall study have a complete response (CR) or partial response (PR), which combined result in the objective response rate, the study will be declared positive.
Secondary study endpoints are transgenic T cell persistence in humans and their ability to home to MART-1 positive melanoma metastasis. Analysis will be performed by sampling of peripheral blood and tumor deposits for T cell persistence and by non-invasive metabolic imaging using PET scans.
|Study Type ICMJE
|Study Phase
|Phase 2
|Study Design ICMJE
|Intervention Model: Single Group Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary Purpose: Treatment
|Condition ICMJE
|Metastatic Melanoma
|Intervention ICMJE
|Study Arms
|Experimental: F5 TCR transgenic cells
F5 TCR transgenic cell adoptive transfer therapy
|Publications *
|Ma C, Cheung AF, Chodon T, Koya RC, Wu Z, Ng C, Avramis E, Cochran AJ, Witte ON, Baltimore D, Chmielowski B, Economou JS, Comin-Anduix B, Ribas A, Heath JR. Multifunctional T-cell analyses to study response and progression in adoptive cell transfer immunotherapy. Cancer Discov. 2013 Apr;3(4):418-29. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-12-0383. Epub 2013 Mar 21.
* Includes publications given by the data provider as well as publications identified by ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier (NCT Number) in Medline.
|Recruitment Information
|Recruitment Status ICMJE
|Estimated Enrollment ICMJE
|Original Estimated Enrollment ICMJE
|Same as current
|Estimated Study Completion Date
|December 2019
|Estimated Primary Completion Date
|December 2018 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure)
|Eligibility Criteria ICMJE
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria
|18 Years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers
|Contacts ICMJE
|Listed Location Countries ICMJE
|United States
|Removed Location Countries
|Administrative Information
|NCT Number ICMJE
|Other Study ID Numbers ICMJE
08-02-020 ( Other Identifier: UCLA IRB )
|Has Data Monitoring Committee
|U.S. FDA-regulated Product
|Not Provided
|IPD Sharing Statement
|Not Provided
|Responsible Party
|Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
|Study Sponsor ICMJE
|Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
|Collaborators ICMJE
|Investigators ICMJE
|PRS Account
|Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
|Verification Date
|November 2017
ICMJE Data element required by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and the World Health Organization ICTRP


text:
Do you have a nagging feeling that there is more to life?
Perhaps you spend your days daydreaming of a better life but with little clue how to create it? Do you feel like the deep well of potential within you is in danger of drying up? Perhaps you have a big dream of walking away from it all and embarking on an epic adventure to discover a deeper meaning to your life? To discover what you are really made of?
I hear you. That used to be me. I worked a 9-5 job I hated, I had a daily four-hour commute and whilst I had the pay check and the credentials to indicate success, I felt unfulfilled and miserable. I became increasingly aware that something drastic needed to happen.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~ Mark Twain
In March 2012, I boarded a plane with nothing more than a one-way ticket to Thailand, a small backpack and a BIG dream. I put everything on the line to pursue my dream of creating a life filled with freedom, love and purpose. People thought I was crazy and I had no idea what would come next.
I'm here to tell you that big dreams can come true.
Over the last four years I've visited many wonderful places around the world, I've made more deep and loving friendships than I thought possible, I've met the man of my dreams and I'm now a successful Life Coach who helps people to discover what they really want and to own the power within them to create it.
I'm in love with my life and I've never looked back but it hasn't all been plain sailing. There have been plenty of lows to accompany the incredible highs and there have been lots of lessons learned, some harder to master than others.
Back in March 2014, I launched a free 8-week course detailing 8 principles that supported me to live a life without limits. Since then nearly 400 people have signed up for this course. I recently took the course down to revamp and revise it to make it better and more effective at supporting people to live limitless lives. The new course will be launched later this year.
To be kept up to date about the new course and to get early bird discounts, please sign up to my mailing list below. You will be the first to hear the news about this new and improved course.
Subscribe to our mailing list here:


text:
'The Showtune Mosh Pit' for August 20th, 2014
Overheard last weekend under the showtune
video screens at Sidetrack and The Call:
The "Summer Concert At Millennium Park" was once again a huge draw for Mosh Pit peeps, as everyone interested in the upcoming season's offerings from Broadway In Chicago showed up at the Pritzker Pavilion on Monday evening to hear and see stars and songs from fifteen stage shows, including "Amazing Grace," "Dee Snider's Rock And Roll Christmas Tale," "Evil Dead," "Pippin," "Cinderella" and more. And there was an unanticipated bonus! Broadway In Chicago announced that a tour of "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical" would play our Oriental Theatre for 12 weeks, from December 1, 2015-February 21, 2016. Now, that's the longest in advance anybody has ever announced anything (well, almost), at fifteen and a half months from now. And nobody can predict whether Tony-winning star and Evanston native Jessie Mueller will recreate her role as Ms. King here, but wouldn't it be wonderful if she did! Actually, the real big news is that there will in fact be a tour of the Tony-nominated show. Aside from a concurrent announcement that the show would appear in Providence, Rhode Island, in September of 2015, I can't find any evidence that a tour has been confirmed previously at all. So, this is great news! Now, to pray that whatever happens with a London production of the show, or with any other property anxious to get their hands on Ms. Mueller, she is able to beg, demand and insist that this run of the show be hers. Come on, Jessie, you can do it!
One other bit of news concerning Broadway In Chicago reached our ears last week--confirmed dates for "On Your Feet: The Story of Emilio And Gloria Estefan," based on the lives and music of the Latin supercouple. The show will have its world premiere at the Oriental Theatre here from June 2-July 5, 2015, begin previews at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway on October 5 and open on November 5. Casting work is underway now in Miami and New York, in anticipation of a developmental workshop in New York from October 27-November 21 of 2014. Jerry Mitchell ("Kinky Boots" ) is directing, with choreography by Sergio Trujillo ("Jersey Boys"). The show's book is by Alexander Dinelaris, who did those honors for the London production of "The Bodyguard," starring Tony winner and former Northwestern University student Heather Headley ("Aida").
Speaking of Northwestern University, the Evanston school is part of a one-two punch that I don't know whether is a random bit of luck or some great celestial bit of planning. You remember "The Wild Party," the jazz era poem that inspired two New York stage musicals in the same season (the spring of 2000, to be exact)? Well, Chicago will have productions of both of them during our 2014-2015 season!
First up will be the Bailiwick Chicago production of the Broadway "The Wild Party," with a score by Michael John LaChiusa and book by him and George C. Wolfe. Brenda Didier will direct, with music direction by Aaron Benham, and the production will play the Richard Christiansen Theater at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater from October 2-November 1, 2014. And the show has been cast! Jeff Award-winner Danni Smith will star as Queenie, with Matthew Keffer as Burrs and Danielle Brothers as Dolores, with a cast featuring such non-Equity standouts as Sharriese Hamilton, Ryan Lanning and Khaki Pixley. The production is the start of Bailiwick's season, which will conclude next April and May with the Chicago premiere of "Murder Ballad," directed by James Beaudry of the Timber Lake Playhouse.
And the off-Broadway version of "The Wild Party," with score and book by Andrew Lippa, will be produced by Northwestern University in February of 2015, directed and choreographed by Matt Raftery. The show is part of the just-announced season by NU's Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center For The Performing Arts, which will also feature the musical "Little Women" (astonishing), directed by Dominic Missimi (November 7-23, 2014) and of course the student-written, spring "Waa-Mu Show."
"Clemente: The Legend Of 21" opens this Friday night, August 22, at Stage 773, after one preview performance tomorrow night. The run of the Chicago premiere of this musical is four weekends, produced by NightBlue Performing Arts Company. Modesto Lacen stars as the late baseball legend Roberto Clemente, with Lorraine Velez as Vera Clemente. The show is written and directed by Luis Cabellero, and reportedly features cast members from Chicago, New York and Puerto Rico.
But many folks are looking forward to next Monday, August 25, when the annual fundraising performance benefitting Porchlight Music Theatre will take place. This year's theme is "Chicago Sings Disney," and Rogers Park's Mayne Stage will be overflowing with talent, as more than 25 Chicago musical stage stars are slated to appear. Now in its 9th year, "Chicago Sings..." has become an annual end-of-summer rite of passage for Chicago's musical theater community, conceived and directed by supercouple Rob Lindley and Doug Peck. Who is your favorite singer? E. Faye Butler? Christine Mild? Meghan Murphy? Jeff Parker? Hollis Resnik? Bethany Thomas? The talent boggles the mind. Be there!
Come to think of it, we have a number of special events going on this time of year. Tony winner and sometime Chicago resident Levi Kreis ("Million Dollar Quartet"), fresh off appearing in the Broadway revival of "Violet" and the Arena Stage production of "Smokey Joe's Café" in Washington, D.C., will be appearing at Davenport's for one night only, August 29 (a week from Friday). His work as a singer-songwriter has been featured on a number of TV shows lately. Come and witness the continuation of his remarkable talents in "An Evening With Levi Kreis."
That weekend, August 29-31, will see a workshop presentation of the new musical "Toulouse," written by and starring the latest Chicagoan to prepare for a Broadway bow. Musical director, composer and performer Josh Walker, a cast member of the revival of "Side Show" at Washington's Kennedy Center (which is heading for Broadway this fall), has written the music for "Toulouse," with book by John David Nelson and lyrics by both. The life and world of poster artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec will be brought to life at the Athenaeum Theatre, directed by Derek Rienzi Van Tassel and starring Walker (who has nine editions of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular under his belt). Other cast members will include Megan Buckley, Kristine Burdi, Nathan Carroll, Zachary Drane, Meredith Freyre, Spencer Gartner, Keith Green, Kevin Grubb, Megan Householter, Kyle Hustedt, Stephanie Stockstill, Derek Rienzi Van Tassel and Justin Vidovic. You can say you were there then.
An unusual item, and a first for the Mosh Pit, is the following mention: Chicago's fabled Venetian Night is back, and this year is has a Broadway theme! Formerly in Monroe Harbor in August, the 2014 edition will take place on Saturday, September 6, but at Navy Pier, co-sponsored by the Chicago Yachting Association. All you boating types, disguise your boat as a Broadway musical, and get in on the action! Or something like that. (How would I know?)
Last but not least, I got a tip from a little Mosh Pit bird ("peep!") that told me that none other than Chita Rivera will be appearing in concert on Saturday, September 27, at the Moraine Valley Community College in southwest suburban Palos Hills. "Chita: A Legendary Celebration" will be in the college's Dorothy Menker Theater, as the kickoff for this year's Mainstage Series. Featuring numbers from "West Side Story" as well as from her Tony Award-winning roles in "The Rink" and "Kiss Of The Spider Woman," written for her by the legendary John Kander and Fred Ebb, the show sounds like required attendance, especially for the younger ones among us. If you've never seen this octogenarian in person, you owe it to yourself! She works constantly, and she knows EVERYBODY. What are you waiting for?
So that's it for this week! I'll be back next week with the latest Jeff Award nominations, and who knows what else. It'll be a lot, I can assure you! Never a dull moment in the Mosh Pit. And of course, I'll see you under those video screens in the meantime.....-PWT
[Be sure to subscribe to the Mosh Pit! Click here to subscribe to our BroadwayWorld Message Board discussion thread. Receive your e-mail notice that the weekly "Showtune Mosh Pit" is available!]
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text:
The climategate papers....
Here's a tremendous history of what the e-mails from Climategate show...
Throughout the Climategate emails, in addition to a few possible smoking guns, we get smoking tempers, scientific and political disagreements and arguments, larger-than-life personality clashes, intercontinental rivalries, global politics and personal drama, not to mention individual notes that seem to have been taken from an old John le Carré novel. The Russian role in the emails, and that of Mr. Shiyatov, becomes crucial later in the story. But in that first email, Mr. Shiyatov writes: "Of course, we are in need of additional money" to carry out their vital collection of remote Siberian tree-ring samples. "It is important for us if you can transfer the ADVANCE money on the personal accounts... Not more than 10,000 USD [in any one day]. Only in this case can we avoid big taxes and use the money for our work."But, read the whole thing...and this is just part one...
The context for all this, much of it conducted over the Internet between sometimes warring camps in Britain and the United States, is the greatest scientific research story ever told, an attempt to accomplish two main objectives under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN agency set up in 1988 to orchestrate global reaction to the perceived threat of man-made global warming.
The 13-year email exchange, while often chaotic and disjointed, follows two main tracks that, in the end, must somehow converge. The first is to develop a convincing history of global temperature going back over thousands of years. The second is to develop models and scenarios that allow the scientists and the IPCC to forecast climate change to 2100 and beyond.
I have not read all the emails. But I have read hundreds of them, including every word of the first five years. Only by plodding through them in chronological order, I believe, is it possible to get a sense of them as a vast and genuine documentary record. One immediate observation is that the early years — from 1996 to maybe 2000 — seem have been organized and whittled down to eliminate the long trails of redundancy that pile up in email communication. The emails in the later years remain cluttered and at times impossible to follow — as if whoever was collecting them ran out of time or had not finished the assembly work before they hit the Internet, whether by chance or by choice. It also seems possible that the emails were culled from more than one source, not just the CRU at the University of East Anglia.
By my reading, the emails contain many disquieting revelations about the state of climate science and the process. Other readers, investigators, scientists and activists on all sides of the climate issue will of course make up their own minds on this. But as the email story unfolds over the years, it is clear that the history of climate and temperature change over the past 10,000 years remains mostly speculative and largely unknown. The emails also imply that, in part because the past is so unknown, any attempt at long-range forecasts is, at best, uncertain.
Also clear is that the official science on climate change as we know it today, looking backward and forward, has been developed and controlled by the relatively small collection of scientists who wrote most of the emails. Working directly or indirectly for the IPCC, the scientists seem to have become captive of that organization's objectives, which was to find "the hand of man" in climate records to justify plans to change the climate in future. The scientists, in other words, became engaged in the all-too-familiar business of decision-based evidence making.
Whatever the source of the emails, they are a dynamic record of how scientists sought to plot the past and predict the future of climate. In 1996, the first year of the emails, there is clear internal skepticism among these official IPCC-linked scientists over what would turn out to be one of the greatest sources of conflict, the role of paleoclimatology — the science of reconstructing world climate history over tens of thousands of years. More specifically, doubts existed especially over dendrochronology, the use of tree rings as a way to measure and document climate history. "I support the continued collection of such data, but I am disturbed by how some people in the paleo community try to oversell their products," Tom Wigley, previous director of CRU and now at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in Boulder, Colo., wrote in August of 1996.
In Mr. Wigley's view at the time, ice cores were unreliable and "correlate very poorly with temperature." He said the link between ice core and temperature variation was "close to zero" and tree rings were less than 50% reliable. "The main external candidate is solar, and more work is required to improve the 'paleo' solar forcing record." Another U.S. scientist, Gary Funkhauser of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, was also cool to the idea of tree rings as indicators of past temperatures. He wrote in September, 1996, that he tried "every trick out of my sleeve" to get meaningful climate records out of certain tree ring records collected by Russian scientist Stephan Shiyatov.
Over in Britain, however, scientists had other ideas. Tree rings could be the answer to the paleoclimate problem. Keith Briffa at CRU, among others, believed that tree-ring science could be the magic bullet that would prove what the IPCC wanted — evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" of a "discernible human influence on global climate."
In October, 1996, Mr. Briffa told a journalist that there were signs that recent warming in Siberian Russia was setting records. "The trend seems to be accelerating. We are getting reports back from Stephan (Shiyatov), our man in the Urals, that it is warmer this spring on the Yamal peninsula there than ever before... It is a major warming, like nothing seen there for a thousand years."
Soon, however, problems emerged over Russian data. What with sampling issues, missing data and other problems, by November of 1997 Mr. Briffa is struggling with results. While the Russian tree rings produce seemingly good results for past climate, results for the 20th century are a problem. On Nov. 3, he writes to Tom Wigley: "Equally important though is the leveling off of carbon uptake in the later 20th century." The density of the tree rings also declines, a finding inconsistent with carbon-induced warming. "I have been agonizing for months that these results are not some statistical artifact of the analysis method, but I cannot see how."
Another U.S. scientist, Gordon Jacoby, a tree-ring specialist at Columbia University, writes about another tree-ring scientist, Fritz Schweingruber, and his work in Russia. "He should not represent his data as definitive... His opinions are influential, but there is an accumulating body of ring-width data that clearly shows him to be missing important information with his style of sampling." This kind of skepticism runs through the emails.


text:
Flash Airlines Flight 604
SU-ZCF, the aircraft involved, at Zurich Airport in March 2002
|Accident summary
|3 January 2004
|Unresolved (dispute between investigators)
|Red Sea
near Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
Lua error in Module:Coordinates at line 668: callParserFunction: function "#coordinates" was not found.
|148 (all)
|Aircraft type
|Boeing 737-3Q8
|Aircraft name
|Flash Airlines
|Flight origin
|Sharm el-Sheikh Int'l Airport
Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
|Cairo International Airport
Cairo, Egypt
|Charles de Gaulle Airport
Paris, France
Flash Airlines Flight 604 was a charter flight operated by Egyptian charter company Flash Airlines. On 3 January 2004, the Boeing 737-300 crashed into the Red Sea shortly after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport, killing all 135 passengers, most of them French tourists, and all 13 crew members. The findings of the crash investigation are controversial, with accident investigators from the different countries involved not agreeing on the cause.
Flight 604's death toll was the highest of any aviation accident in Egypt until Metrojet Flight 9268 crashed more than ten years later. It remains the deadliest accident involving a Boeing 737-300, and the deadliest involving the Boeing 737 classic series.[1]
History of the flight
The aircraft, a Boeing 737-3Q8, had originally been delivered to TACA Airlines in 1992. Other operators included Color Air, Egypt-based Mediterranean Airlines, and the prior corporate identity of Flash Airlines, Heliopolis Airlines.
Passengers and crew
|Passenger and crew countries of origin
|United States
Khadr Abdullah[2] (referred to as Mohammed Khedr in a Times Online article[3]) was the captain. He was 53 years of age and was a highly respected pilot with almost 7,500 flight hours under his belt. Amr Shaafei served as the first officer.[4][5] He was 25 years old with fewer than 800 hours of flying experience. Ashraf Abdelhamid, who also held Canadian and US citizenship,[6][7] was training as a first officer and had experience flying corporate jets; he sat in the cockpit with the pilot and copilot.[4]
Most of the passengers were French tourists who originated from the Paris metropolitan area. FRAM (FR), a French travel agency, sold most of the tickets to the flight.[8] A provisional passenger list dated 5 January 2004 stated that twelve entire French families had boarded the flight.[9] Members of seventeen families appeared at Charles de Gaulle Airport to take passengers from the flight; this fact gave the airport staff indication that entire families died on Flight 604.[8][10]
One of the passengers that was supposed to be on the flight was French citizen Pascal Mercier and his family. He cancelled their reservation because he didn't like the early departure time since he had young children.[4]
Initially, it was thought that terrorists might have been involved, as fear of aviation terrorism was high (with several major airlines in previous days cancelling flights on short notice). The British Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, was also vacationing in the Sharm el-Sheikh area. A group in Yemen said that it destroyed the aircraft as a protest against a new law in France banning headscarves in schools. Accident investigators dismissed terrorism when they discovered that the wreckage was in a tight debris field, indicating that the aircraft crashed in one piece; a bombed aircraft would disintegrate and leave a large debris field.[4]
The wreckage sank to a depth of 1,000 m (3,300 ft), making recovery of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder difficult. However two weeks after the accident, both devices were located by a French salvage vessel and recovered by a ROV. The accident investigators examined the recorders while in Cairo. The maintenance records of the aircraft had not been duplicated; they were destroyed in the crash and no backup copies existed.[4]
The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA) investigated the accident, with assistance from the American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)[11] and the French Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA).[12]
The MCA released its final report into the accident on 25 March 2006.[11] The report did not conclude with a probable cause, listing instead four "possible causes".[13]
The NTSB and the BEA concluded that the pilot suffered spatial disorientation, and the copilot was unwilling to challenge his more experienced superior. Furthermore, according to the NTSB and BEA, both officers were insufficiently trained. The NTSB stated that the cockpit voice recorder showed that 24 seconds passed after the airliner banked before the pilot began corrective manoeuvres. Egyptian authorities disagreed with this assessment, instead blaming mechanical issues.[14] Shaker Kelada, the lead Egyptian investigator, said that if Hamid, who had more experience than the copilot, detected any problems with the flight, he would have raised objections.[4] Some media reports suggest that the plane crashed due to technical problems, possibly a result of the apparently questionable safety record of the airline. This attitude was shown in a press briefing given by the BEA chief, who was berated by the first officer's mother during a press conference, and demanded that the crew be absolved of fault prior to the completion of the investigation. Two months after the crash Flash Airlines went bankrupt.[14]
US Summary Comments on Draft Final Report of Aircraft Accident Flash Airlines flight 604, Boeing 737-300, SU-ZCF 3 January 2004, Red Sea near Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Quote from page 5 of 7:
"Distraction. A few seconds before the captain called for the autopilot to be engaged, the aircraft's pitch began increasing and airspeed began decreasing. These deviations continued during and after the autopilot engagement/disengagement sequence. The captain ultimately allowed the airspeed to decrease to 35 knots below his commanded target airspeed of 220 knots and the climb pitch to reach 22°, which is 10° more than the standard climb pitch of about 12°. During this time, the captain also allowed the aircraft to enter a gradually steepening right bank, which was inconsistent with the flight crew's departure clearance to perform a climbing left turn. These pitch, airspeed and bank angle deviations indicated that the captain directed his attention away from monitoring the attitude indications during and after the autopilot disengagement process. Changes in the autoflight system's mode status offer the best explanation for the captain's distraction. The following changes occurred in the autoflight system's mode status shortly before the initiation of the right roll: (1) manual engagement of the autopilot, (2) automatic transition of roll guidance from heading select to control wheel steering-roll (CWS-R), (3) manual disengagement of the autopilot, and (4) manual reengagement of heading select for roll guidance. The transition to the CWS-R mode occurred in accordance with nominal system operation because the captain was not closely following the flight director guidance at the time of the autopilot engagement. The captain might not have expected the transition, and he might not have understood why it occurred. The captain was probably referring to the mode change from command mode to CWS-R when he stated, "see what the aircraft did?," shortly after it occurred. The available evidence indicates that the unexpected mode change and the flight crew's subsequent focus of attention on reestablishing roll guidance for the autoflight system were the most likely reasons for the captain's distraction from monitoring the attitude".[15][clarification needed]
Problems associated with the complexity of autopilot systems were documented in the June 2008 issue of Aero Safety World.[16] Before the completion of the investigation, Avionics writer David Evans suggested that differences in instrumentation between the MiG-21 (with which the captain had experience) and the Boeing 737 may have contributed to the crash.[17]
See also
- Gulf Air Flight 072
- Pan Am Flight 816
- Adam Air Flight 574
- Air India Flight 855
- Viasa Flight 897
- Kenya Airways Flight 507
- Kogalymavia Flight 9268, the deadliest air disaster in Egypt, which also left Sharm el-Sheikh en route to Europe.
- John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash
- [EgyptAir Flight 804]]
- ↑ "Accident description". Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved 12 August 2008.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ "Report blames technical failure for 2004 Flash Airlines crash". Daily News Egypt. 27 March 2006. Retrieved 14 January 2009.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ Bremmer, Charles (27 March 2006). "Investigators dispute crash finding". The Times. London. Retrieved 14 January 2009.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 "Desperate Dive". Mayday [documentary TV series].<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ "Peace for victims brings no solace". Al-Ahram Weekly (752). 21–27 July 2005. Retrieved 14 January 2009.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ "Crews find Egyptian plane crash 'black box'". CTV.ca. Associated Press, Canadian Press. 6 January 2004. Retrieved 14 January 2009.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ McDonald, Jeff (8 January 2004). "Local victim in Red Sea crash a man of mystery". San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved 14 January 2009.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Websterm, Paul (4 January 2004). "Families of air crash victims fly to Egypt". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 June 2009.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ Lichfield, John (5 January 2004). "Twelve entire families named among Red Sea crash victims as Swiss reveal airline safety fears". The Independent. Retrieved 14 January 2009.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ "Des familles entières ont péri dans le crash de l'avion égyptien". CAMEROUN LINK: Le portail du Cameroun (in French). 5 January 2004. <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Flash Airlines flight 604". National Transportation Safety Board.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ "Accident on 3 January 2004 off the coast of Sharm el-Sheikh". BEA.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ "Final Report of the Accident Investigation: Flash Airlines flight 604". Ministry of Civil Aviation: 1171.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Sparaco, P. (10 April 2006). "Safety First, Always". Aviation Week & Space Technology.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ "NTSB comments on ECAA Draft Final Report – Summary Letter" (PDF). National Transportation Safety Board.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ Rosenkrans, Wayne (June 2008). "Autoflight Audit" (PDF). AeroSafety World. Flight Safety Foundation. 3 (6): 30–35.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- ↑ Evans, David (1 July 2005). "Safety: Mode Confusion, Timidity Factors". Avionics Magazine.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
External links
- Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority: Flash Accident Final Report (Archive)
- Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile
- Cockpit Voice Recorder transcript and accident summary
- CS1 maint: Unrecognized language
- EngvarB from July 2014
- Use dmy dates from July 2014
- Wikipedia articles needing clarification from June 2010
- Airliner accidents and incidents caused by instrument failure
- Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error
- Aviation accidents and incidents in 2004
- Aviation accidents and incidents in Egypt
- 2004 in Egypt
- Accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 737
- History of Sharm el-Sheikh
- Marine salvage operations


text:
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Pre-filter for use with Kasco's ZA2P3 pesticide filter (Item No. 060119-1, sold separately); requires a pre-filter retainer (Item No. 070506-1, sold separately).View All Kasco Replacement Parts
2018 Reference Guide: Page 48


text:
Civil Servants Strike
Greek civil servants walk off the job for four hours protesting recent government austerity measures. Video courtesy of Reuters.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... the ... the the the ... demonstrators gather at cycling's world ... affordable for our public sector strike the the ... lawmakers inside reporting on aspects of recent austerity measures ... aimed at fixing Greece's battered economy and bringing in debt ... the civil servants however oppose much of the plan ... which curves early retirement and reduces wage benefits in an effort to cut costs ... unions have staged several protests and strikes over the past six months but as the summer holiday season kicks in ... these events are winding down ... one union leader about a renewed fight in the fall ... was in better ... then again the government would get one in demand ... all wheel telling the government for the most claiming that really take that policy as he uses the bankrupt policy that has to exit ... during preparations will begin within weeks of two of resistance against the decision ... you'll see in September of that people will rise up and demonstrate ... the Europeans do as well ... because they have also realise that these policies are a catastrophe for the people of Europe ... that would add a ... little bacon ... but at the outset ... among locations affected by Thursday's four hour strike ... with Athens International Airport ... some twenty three flights were canceled and sixty four rescheduled ... as air traffic controllers joined the strike leaving the airport nearly empty ... air traffic controllers and other workers related to the tourism industry ... have limited air strikes out of respect for the tourism season ... on Tuesday employees at the popular Acropolis toward site also walked off the job for four hours ... leaving visitors to queue outside ... David Bhakti ... Reuters ...


text:
On my own for the weekend and hoped for great flying every day but today started with heavy rain which eventually eased after lunch and looked like it would brighten up so I took my Race M and Alula up so Kilspindie.
Got there to discover low cloud and fine drizzle. It brightened up after a while and I was able to fly from the east slope with my Alula in the very light wind. A lot of low cloud kept blowing through and my Race M stayed hiding in it's bag.
I had to move to the south corner when the wind swung and I had another half hour with my Alula before the rain returned and drove me back to the car. No Indian summer yet then!
South wind forecast for Sunday with rain by late morning. Hmmm….
Saturday, 10 September 2011
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text:
From the Office of Planning:
"Foulger-Pratt has made some revisions to the LTR submission for 5929 Georgia Avenue, NW (LTR 2011-03.) The revisions are to the automobile entrance from Peabody Street. As revised, the vehicle entrance to the garage is shortened and the façade of the garage level of the building as viewed from the east is modified from brick to white concrete panels."
The changes are outlined in red in the following document:
LTR Revised


text:
Happy Fall everyone! Fall is my favorite season of all 4. The looks and the shoes releasing this fall is seriously something to get excited about and the release I am most excited about is the winter NMD human race and the fall/winter Adidas Yeezy release. Take a look down below to see the upcoming releases from Adidas.
(Pictures via Yeezy Mafia)


text:
- Short Report
- Open Access
A hyperactive sleeping beauty transposase enhances transgenesis in zebrafish embryos
- Morgan Newman1Email author and
- Michael Lardelli1
© Newman et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010
- Received: 21 June 2010
- Accepted: 4 November 2010
- Published: 4 November 2010
Transposons are useful molecular tools for transgenesis. The 'sleeping beauty' transposon is a synthetic member of the Tc1/mariner transposon family. Davidson et al. (2003) previously described a vector for zebrafish transgenesis consisting of the inverted repeats of 'sleeping beauty' flanking the gene to be transposed. Subsequently, there have been attempts to enhance the transpositional activity of 'sleeping beauty' by increasing the activity of its transposase. Recently, Mates et al. (2009) generated a hyperactive transposase giving a 100-fold increased transposition rate in mouse embryos.
The aim of this experiment was to determine whether this novel hyperactive transposase enhances transgenesis in zebrafish embryos. Using our previously characterised mitfa- amyloidβ-GFP transgene, we observed an eight-fold enhancement in transient transgenesis following detection of transgene expression in melanophores by whole mount in-situ hybridisation. However, high rates of defective embryogenesis were also observed.
The novel hyperactive 'sleeping beauty' transposase enhances the rate of transgenesis in zebrafish embryos.
- Zebrafish Embryo
- Transpositional Activity
- Sleep Beauty Transposase
- Transposase mRNA
- Germline Transgenesis
Transposons direct integrations of single copies of genetic material into chromosomes [1] and are useful molecular tools for transgenesis in vertebrate species. They function by delivering a gene of interest to the chromosome in a cut and paste manner. The 'sleeping beauty' transposon is a synthetic member of the Tc1/mariner transposon family. The transposon was engineered from a consensus sequence of inactive fossil transposon sequences from various Salmonid fish genomes [2]. Sleeping beauty consists of the transposase gene flanked by terminal inverted repeats of direct repeats. The transposase protein catalyses the excision and integration of donor DNA into a TA dinucleotide site of a recipient genome [1]. The derived sleeping beauty vector system (SBT) has been shown to enhance production of transgeneic animals in comparison to simple methods of transgenesis such as injection of naked DNA [3, 4]. It is active in various vertebrate species such as fish, frogs, mice and rats [3, 5–7]. There have been attempts to enhance the transpositional activity of the SBT, specifically by increasing the activity of the transposase. Almost every amino acid has been changed to derive hyperactive mutants of the SB transposase and this has yielded modest increases in transpositional activity [8–11]. Recently, Mates et al. [5], used a large-scale genetic screen in mammalian cells to generate a hyperactive transposase that gave a ~100-fold enhancement of transpositional activity over the original SB transposase in mouse embryos.
Alzheimer's disease may be caused by the accumulation of amyloidβ peptides in the brain [12]. Recently, we used the SBT system to generate a zebrafish melanophore model of amyloidβ toxicity [7]. We generated transgenic zebrafish possessing human amyloidβ under the control of the mitfa promoter that drives expression specifically in melanophores (dark pigment cells) using our vector pT2-mitfa- amyloidβ-GFP. In that study the transposase mRNA was generated from the plasmid pSBRNAX that includes sequence from the 3' UTR of the Xenopus β-globin gene for mRNA stabilisation. In this experiment, we compared the rates of transient transgenesis in zebrafish embryos using the original transposase mRNA (SB10, generated from pSBRNAX [3]) or the hyperactive transposase mRNA (SB100, generated from pCMV(CAT)T7-SB100X [5]). It is important to note that the pCMV(CAT)T7-SB100X vector does not contain the Xenopus β-globin 3' UTR sequences for mRNA stabilisation. Therefore, SB100 mRNA may not be as stable as SB10 mRNA and, once injected into the zebrafish embryos, may possibly degrade at a faster rate.
Results of injections of transposase mRNAs alone or with the mitfa-amyloidβ-GFP transgene
Normal % (n)
Mild % (n)
Severe % (n)
98 (59)
2 (1)
mitfa- amyloidβ-GFP only
94 (60)
3 (2)
3 (2)
-with SB100 mRNA
62 (36)
28 (16)
10 (6)
-with SB10 mRNA
97 (59)
3 (2)
SB100 mRNA only
40 (20)
16 (8)
44 (22)
SB10 mRNA only
83 (39)
8.5 (4)
8.5 (4)
TOL2 mRNA only
83 (38)
8.5 (4)
8.5 (4)
In their tests of SB100-driven transgenesis in fertilised mouse oocytes, Mates et al. (2009) did not observe a decreased survival rate relative to uninjected controls at day 7 of mouse embryogenesis and high rates of transgenesis were observed in mouse litters. However, the slower rate of cell division that occurs in cleavage stage mouse embryos relative to zebrafish embryos may mean that the transposase mRNA breaks down in the mouse zygotes before it can cause developmental defects.
The enhancement of transgenesis in zebrafish embryos from use of the novel hyperactive transposase was not ~100-fold greater than the transgenesis rate using the original SB transposase. Nevertheless, the observed 8-fold increase is a considerable improvement for two reasons. First, the amyloidβ-GFP transgene is under the control of a tissue-specific promoter, mitfa, which directs expression of the transgene to melanophores. Melanophores make up only a small fraction of the total cells in a zebrafish embryo at 24 hpf. Thus, transient transgenesis is not expected to label this cell type frequently. Secondly, the SB10 mRNA is generated from pSBRNAX which has the Xenopus β-globin 3' UTR sequence for increased mRNA stability while the SB100 mRNA does not include such sequences. Therefore, the SB100 mRNA would be expected to degrade at a faster rate which might also affect transgenesis efficiency. If one considers that the germline transmission frequency of mitfa- amyloidβ-GFP in the original study using SB10 mRNA was 20% (for a <3% rate of observable transient transgenesis), then the 8-fold enhancement of transient transgenesis observed in this study would presumably further improve the rate of germline transgenesis in zebrafish. Overall, we conclude that the novel hyperactive 'sleeping beauty' transposase enhances the rate of transgenesis in zebrafish embryos.
Would like to thank Dr. Zsuzsanna Izsvak for providing the pCMV(CAT)T7-SB100X vector. This work was carried out under the auspices of the Animal Ethics Committee of The University of Adelaide. Research was supported by funds from the School of Molecular and Biomedical Research of The University of Adelaide, National Health and Medical research Council (NHMRC) Project Grant 453622 and the Cancer Council of South Australia.
Authors' Affiliations
- Wadman SA, Clark KJ, Hackett PB: Fishing for answers with transposons. Mar Biotechnol (NY). 2005, 7: 135-141. 10.1007/s10126-004-0068-2.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Ivics Z, Hackett PB, Plasterk RH, Izsvak Z: Molecular reconstruction of Sleeping Beauty, a Tc1-like transposon from fish, and its transposition in human cells. Cell. 1997, 91: 501-510. 10.1016/S0092-8674(00)80436-5.PubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Davidson AE, Balciunas D, Mohn D, Shaffer J, Hermanson S, Sivasubbu S, Cliff MP, Hackett PB, Ekker SC: Efficient gene delivery and gene expression in zebrafish using the Sleeping Beauty transposon. Dev Biol. 2003, 263: 191-202. 10.1016/j.ydbio.2003.07.013.PubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Dupuy AJ, Clark K, Carlson CM, Fritz S, Davidson AE, Markley KM, Finley K, Fletcher CF, Ekker SC, Hackett PB, Horn S, Largaespada DA: Mammalian germ-line transgenesis by transposition. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2002, 99: 4495-4499. 10.1073/pnas.062630599.PubMed CentralPubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Mates L, Chuah MK, Belay E, Jerchow B, Manoj N, Acosta-Sanchez A, Grzela DP, Schmitt A, Becker K, Matrai J, Ma L, Samara-Kuko E, Gysemans C, Pryputniewicz D, Miskey C, Fletcher B, Vandendriessche T, Ivics Z, Izsvak Z: Molecular evolution of a novel hyperactive Sleeping Beauty transposase enables robust stable gene transfer in vertebrates. Nat Genet. 2009, 41: 753-761. 10.1038/ng.343.PubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Liu G, Aronovich EL, Cui Z, Whitley CB, Hackett PB: Excision of Sleeping Beauty transposons: parameters and applications to gene therapy. J Gene Med. 2004, 6: 574-583. 10.1002/jgm.486.PubMed CentralPubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Newman M, Wilson L, Camp E, Verdile G, Martins R, Lardelli M: A Zebrafish Melanophore Model of Amyloidbeta Toxicity. Zebrafish.Google Scholar
- Geurts AM, Yang Y, Clark KJ, Liu G, Cui Z, Dupuy AJ, Bell JB, Largaespada DA, Hackett PB: Gene transfer into genomes of human cells by the sleeping beauty transposon system. Mol Ther. 2003, 8: 108-117. 10.1016/S1525-0016(03)00099-6.PubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Yant SR, Park J, Huang Y, Mikkelsen JG, Kay MA: Mutational analysis of the N-terminal DNA-binding domain of sleeping beauty transposase: critical residues for DNA binding and hyperactivity in mammalian cells. Mol Cell Biol. 2004, 24: 9239-9247. 10.1128/MCB.24.20.9239-9247.2004.PubMed CentralPubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Zayed H, Izsvak Z, Walisko O, Ivics Z: Development of hyperactive sleeping beauty transposon vectors by mutational analysis. Mol Ther. 2004, 9: 292-304. 10.1016/j.ymthe.2003.11.024.PubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Baus J, Liu L, Heggestad AD, Sanz S, Fletcher BS: Hyperactive transposase mutants of the Sleeping Beauty transposon. Mol Ther. 2005, 12: 1148-1156. 10.1016/j.ymthe.2005.06.484.PubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Kirkitadze MD, Kowalska A: Molecular mechanisms initiating amyloid beta-fibril formation in Alzheimer's disease. Acta Biochim Pol. 2005, 52: 417-423.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Jowett T: Tissue in situ hybridization. 1997, John Wiley and Sons, New YorkGoogle Scholar
- Higashijima S, Okamoto H, Ueno N, Hotta Y, Eguchi G: High-frequency generation of transgenic zebrafish which reliably express GFP in whole muscles or the whole body by using promoters of zebrafish origin. Dev Biol. 1997, 192: 289-299. 10.1006/dbio.1997.8779.PubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Kawakami K, Takeda H, Kawakami N, Kobayashi M, Matsuda N, Mishina M: A transposon-mediated gene trap approach identifies developmentally regulated genes in zebrafish. Dev Cell. 2004, 7: 133-144. 10.1016/j.devcel.2004.06.005.PubMedView ArticleGoogle Scholar
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


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Posts Tagged 'labour'
Cameron has struck easy gold. But it won't last.
14 December 2011
Who knew politics was this easy? Appear to stand up to Europe and the polls surge in your direction. Unruly backbenchers snap back into line.
It worked for David Cameron. After his "veto" of the new EU treaty in Brussels, the Prime Minister was greeted in the Commons by a torrent of Tory admiration, as the party pulled ahead of Labour in the polls for the first time since the election. Read the rest of this entry »
Austerity till 2017 – and that's the best-case scenario
5 December 2011
So the shifting sands of last Tuesday's autumn statement have had nearly a week to settle. We now know that the government will miss its self-imposed target to eliminate the structural budget deficit by 2015, Osborne will borrow £158bn more than originally planned, and austerity will be extended two years beyond the next election to 2017. The Tories, and probably the Liberal Democrats, will go into 2015 promising not balanced books and tasty tax cuts, but £30bn of further spending cuts. This was not the path intended. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
A Memory of Light
4 comments:
- David Bridger said...
"I envy the readers who have still to pick up The Eye of the World for the first time and read through to this ending..."
That's me! I don't usually wait for a series to finish before I start reading (although there have been times when I wished I had) but when I became aware of The Wheel of Time is was already BIG so I decided to save it for the future. Guess what my wish list will be for next Christmas. :)
Thanks for an excellent review!
- 16 January 2013 at 18:30
- Douglas Smith said...
Well it's definitely well worth the effort - the series does have a big slump in the middle, unfortunately, but the last 4 books have really pulled it back to this excellent ending. Hope you enjoy it when next Christmas rolls around David!
- 16 January 2013 at 18:39
- Lisa Taylor said...
Like David, I have yet to read even The Eye of the World. But I've now bumped the series up quite a bit on my TBR list. It's daunting to start it, but it really helps to know that it has a great and satisfying ending.
- 16 January 2013 at 18:51
- Dominic Stevens said...
Thanks Doug. look forward to finishing this in the summer.
- 17 January 2013 at 00:24