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Entangled right whale, 2010, NOAA News Archive 123110, fish2378, NOAA's Fisheries Collection.
2017 was a calamitous year for the North Atlantic right whale. The final count of the 2017 "Unusual Mortality Event" or UME, as defined by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, was eighteen animals. Fourteen North Atlantic right whales were found dead from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to Cape Cod between June and December, with an additional four strandings and entanglements through the year. An average annual mortality rate for the North Atlantic right whale is four animals. To make matters worse, these right whales began 2017 with an estimated population of just 450 animals, including only about one hundred breeding females who have exhibited such stress in recent years that their breeding rate has slowed. As proof of this, in addition to the UME, 2017 saw no recorded calf births.
The cause of the UME is no mystery; warming waters have expanded the whales' habitat further north. Bypassing their usual feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine, most of the whales were found entangled or dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where they have sought out their favorite food, Calanus finmarchicus or copepods, a cold water species. Measures in place in more southern waters to prevent entanglements and ship strikes haven't been implemented further north, but as the whales move, so too must these regulations – if there is time left. Marine ecologist Mark Baumgartner of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ominously noted in December 2017 that North Atlantic right whales, without immediate intervention and protective measures, would be extinct in twenty years. The story of the North Atlantic right whale may end in 2040, but the beginning of the end of this species may have begun a thousand years earlier.
2017-2018 North Atlantic Right Whale Unusual Mortality Event, from NOAA Fisheries Marine Life in Distress.
North Atlantic right whales, Eubalaena glacialis, earned their common name because of the ease with which they were hunted – they were literally the 'right' whales to hunt. Right whales are bountiful in blubber, giving them exceptional buoyancy, even after death. Their shallow coastal habitat, slow swimming speed, docility, and sizeable pods - averaging twenty but recorded in superpods of one hundred animals - made them accessible and attractive to coastal predation. Averaging fifteen meters in length and 40 - 100 tons in weight, a single right whale could feed and supply a premodern community for months.
The deck is stacked, it would seem, against the Atlantic species, and it is clear that all of these natural factors led to significant premodern exploitation of the right whale across the Atlantic. While a population of right whales also exists in the Pacific, predation or natural causes have not led to a dramatic population decline as we see in the Atlantic. Biologists have estimated around 5500 right whales taken across the North Atlantic from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. Reaching an estimated population low of 100 in the 1930s, the species’ brief recovery to approximately 500 animals in the modern era is cold comfort. Without a sense of a historical baseline or 'natural' population of North Atlantic right whales, both in population size and genetic diversity, it is difficult to estimate what a recovered population should look like and whether recovery is even possible.
Historians and marine biologists recognize that human exploitation and interference have had a massive impact on the North Atlantic right whale, particularly during and since the sixteenth century. Randall Reeves says that this species has suffered from “one of the most extensive, prolonged, and thorough campaigns of wildlife exploitation in all of human history.” It is a challenge, though, to determine the full extent of human interference in the case of premodern depletions of extinctions. North Atlantic right whales once existed in two presumed separate breeding populations. Still extant, for now, is the population local to the western North Atlantic and the North American coastline. An eastern North Atlantic population, thought to have bred off the coast of the Canaries and migrated along the Atlantic coast to the Subarctic, is presumed extinct. Of this population, though, we know almost nothing with respect to population size, species duration, or genetic diversity. Did changes in premodern climate – the Medieval Climatic Anomaly and the Little Ice Age – affect the whales' migrations and habitats alongside human interference? Were right whales so heavily predated in premodernity that non-industrial whaling could bring about the end of a population? This is the case typically made for North Atlantic gray whales, extinct by the eighteenth century, and for the eastern population of North Atlantic right whales. Does this also explain the precarious state of the western population of North Atlantic right whales?
Reeves, in 2007, wrote that “historical research has provided a general perspective on past right whale distribution, population structure, and numbers, but understanding of just how abundant these animals were when whaling began in the North Atlantic remains vague." In 2008, Brenna McLeod led a genetic analysis of historical North Atlantic right whale remains from whaling stations up and down the Labrador coast. McLeod and her team concluded that “the pre-exploitation population size of right whales was clearly much smaller than previously estimated [which] has effected our modern impressions of the recovery of right whale stocks.” In short, predation almost certainly played a role in the species' decline, but the degree remains unclear.
The deep history of North Atlantic right whales and their ill-fated engagements with human populations could offer a valuable lens at this critical moment for the species. Historical and archaeological proxy data on cetacean populations, especially for the North Atlantic right whale, may contribute to analysis of modern species populations, habitats, behaviors, and other statistics. Working back from peak points of exploitation through the earliest records of right whale use, historical and archaeological evidence may provide useful context for this imperiled species.
Basque Whale-Fishing. Facsimile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Thevet, in folio: Paris, 1574. Project Gutenberg text 10940.
We often begin the story of the North Atlantic right whale extirpation with the medieval Basques, who historically have been blamed for the destruction of the eastern branch of the North Atlantic right whale. The Basques established some of the earliest whale fisheries along the European Atlantic coast, maintaining those fisheries from the 13th through the early 20th centuries. Forty-seven medieval and early modern French and Spanish Basque ports have been identified as possible whale fisheries. Alex Aguilar, using catch data from its beginnings in the 16th century, estimates that each port may have taken one or at most two whales a year through the eighteenth century.
Far from the depredations wrought by industrial whaling, even this small catch was enough to make an impact on the population, as the Basques were known to target whale calves, and the Bay of Biscay may have been the winter nursery for the eastern population of the North Atlantic right whales. In some ports, Aguilar concluded that the catch of calves accounted for over 20% of records. Additionally, mothers will follow struck calves, making them more readily subject to predation as well, and removing breeding females from the population. This hunting strategy, common among preindustrial whalers, would explain the apparent downturn in catch records by the 18th century and a thinning population that may have precipitated Basque movements to new hunting grounds in North America and the Northeastern Atlantic and Subarctic, where their quarry was the western population of North Atlantic right whales. Also to be considered are possible changing habitats and migrations over the course of the Little Ice Age, when Bowhead whales may have moved south into the Subarctic, potentially competing with right whales for prey.
Basque whalers in Labrador reportedly caught well over 20,000 animals, presumed, again, to be right whales. Archaeological and historical investigations of around twenty whaling ports along the Labrador shore, focusing especially on the major Basque port of Red Bay, have forced a reassessment of the role of the Basques in right whale extirpation. In genetic analysis of nearly three hundred whale bones from ten of those ports, only one sample was identified as right whale. Over two hundred bones came from bowhead whales, of which 72 individual animals were identified. The unanticipated number of bowheads on these sites has altered our perceptions not only of the right whale's decline, but also of the expected habitats of the bowhead. While not clearing the Basques of impact in the decline of the right whales, their involvement may not have been central to this population’s decline. The Basques had another crack, potentially, at the North Atlantic right whales during their ill-fated residence in the Icelandic Westfjords, but they weren’t the only hunters targeting these animal populations.
Sléttbakur (right whale); Handrit Jóns Guðmundssonar lærð, JS 401 XI a 4to, National and University Library of Iceland.
Right whales and their utility to human societies has been documented for over a thousand years in Europe. This documentation largely comes from the Northern world, and specifically from Norse populations, from the homeland and across the diaspora. Norse whalers in Ireland, according to a Spanish geographer, spent the 11th century picking off right whale calves, perhaps from the same population travelling through the Bay of Biscay: "… on their coasts, [the Norsemen] hunt the young of the whale, which is an exceeding great fish. They hunt its calves, regarding them as a delicacy. They have mentioned that these calves are born in the month of September, and are hunted in the four months October to January. After this their flesh is hard and no longer good for eating…. Then they cut up the meat of the calf and salt it. Its meat is white like snow, and its skin black as ink." The North Atlantic right whale migration up the European coast peaked in January, but lasted from October through March, according to Aguilar's analysis of the Basque hunt in Spain and southern France. If right whale calves were being taken at multiple points up and down the European coast, the seemingly minimal catch of the Basque ports become magnified in its impact.
In addition to the Norse whalers of Ireland, Norsemen back in the homeland itself had already been targeting right whales some three centuries prior. The laconic merchant-hunter Ottar was an Arctic hunter of right whales off the coast of northern Norway, or so he told King Alfred and his court in the ninth century. The whales of Ottar's homeland, he noted, were far bigger than those he fished from the sea off Tromsø, but his ship, along with five others, reportedly killed sixty large whales in the span of two days. Ottar describes the whales as being up to 20 meters long, and while perhaps exaggerated, many historians have surmised that his quarry were right whales, a species called "the first commercial whale." For ninth-century Norsemen, the ability to shoot at and kill whales was second, perhaps, to their capacity to control and acquire. A whale that sank was of no good to anyone, but whales that floated would certainly be keenly sought. Barring any reference to netting, floats, or lines secured by harpoons, a primitive hunter could kill and acquire a right whale if conditions were right.
There is good reason to place faith in the ability of hunters like Ottar or the Hiberno-Norsemen to recognize whales they could catch. The twelfth-century anonymous King's Mirror, old Norse Konungs skuggsjá , described the behavior and appearance of over a dozen species of North Atlantic whales. Medieval manuscript illuminations from Scandinavian and Western European texts depict whales in various recognized activities that awe and delight us today - breaching, porpoising, spy-hopping, logging and especially predation. Among the most articulate and observant of all premodern authors was the late medieval Icelander Jón Guðmundsson, also known as Jón Laerði, or Jon the Learned (1574-1658). Jón was a sorcerer and a poet, a physician, outlaw, artist, fisherman, historian, and naturalist. He possessed a wealth of local, traditional environmental knowledge on seafaring, fishing, and especially on whales.
Jón Laerði, or Jon the Learned (1574-1658), illustration of whale species from his Natural History of Iceland, GKS 1639 kvart, Royal Library, Copenhagen; photo courtesy of Icelandic Museum of Natural History.
Jón was born and lived in the Snaefellsness peninsula in Western Iceland, where he says he saw many whales. He also lived in the Westfjords, where he witnessed and recorded the infamous killing of Basque whalers in 1615. Sometime before his death, perhaps around 1640, Jón wrote a work called the Natural History of Iceland in which he illustrates and describes twenty-two whale species of Iceland. According to Viðar Hreinsson, recent biographer of Jon Laerði, Jón compiled illustrations with Danish captions of nineteen whale species, in addition to a rather skinny walrus, on a loose leaf of paper preserved in the Royal Archive in Copenhagen. The right whale according to Jón exists in two varieties, one smaller, the sléttbakur and a larger animal which he calls höddunefur, measuring 35 ells at the longest (about 17 meters). The smaller whales are the ones most hunted, particularly for their valuable blubber. Icelandic waters, he notes, had been home to a large number of those whales, but the "foreign whalers have reduced the number of this species the most." One wonders which of the right whales – western or eastern North Atlantic - were being preyed upon and whether the diminished species, which he notes, was the beginning of the end of the North Atlantic right whale.
In what ways can past histories tell us something new, critical or important about modern animal populations? In the case of the North Atlantic right whale, new technologies like ancient DNA analysis offer a possible means of insight into the current state of this population and context for the references to the species throughout medieval and early modern literature and history. Through an ongoing National Science Foundation Arctic Social Science project, (NSF # 1503714, Assessing the Distribution and Variability of Marine Mammals through Archaeology, Ancient DNA, and History in the North Atlantic; henceforth Norse North Atlantic Marine Mammal Project or NNAMMP) genetic materials from whale remains found on numerous archaeological sites in the North Atlantic and Subarctic may provide evidence related to modern right whale populations.
Archaeological sites across the North Atlantic often preserve fragments of marine mammal bones both as artifacts and as butchery or bone working residue. The Norse North Atlantic Marine Mammal Project has compiled over 200 worked and waste whale bone samples from a dozen archaeological sites in Iceland, Greenland, North America, the Faroes and Orkney, ranging from 800 through 1500 CE. Whale bone is a challenging resource for archaeological analysis, defying typical zooarchaeological standards for data recording and analysis. Whale bone is not transported to archaeological sites as part of animal butchery, so bones that are found on a site do not follow regular butchery patterns. Depending on the size of the animal stranded, only 10 to 15% or less of an animal’s body weight may be derived from hard tissues; in the case of North Atlantic right whales, about 13% of an animal’s body weight is bone. This detail becomes important when you consider that the physical evidence of premodern whale use must come from this small percentage of hard tissues, of which only a fraction – if any at all – is transported from a coastal butchering site to an inland settlement.
Complicating matters, medieval laws and charters, in Iceland and across the Continent, scrupulously divide stranded whales based on location of stranding, species, class or status of the claimant, and other factors. With all of these metrics in play, recovery of whale bone is not assured on any site, and the bone present on a site may not attest to the quantity of soft tissues used from any animal. Further, to isolate the bones of a single species from massively modified and fragmented whale bone creates an additional challenge for species analysis.
Archaeological site at Siglunes, Eyjafjörður; note large fragment of whale cranium in the left foreground. Photo reproduced with permission of Dr. Ramona Harrison, University of Bergen, and Fornleifastofnun Íslands (FSI).
Despite these challenges, the Norse North Atlantic Marine Mammal Project and Brenna McLeod at the Frasier lab at St. Mary's University have identified over thirteen unique cetacean species within 200+ bone samples. In those samples, nine unique examples of Eubalaena glacialis have been genetically confirmed across the sampled site assemblages. Over the course of the next year, our project will continue to identify and analyze additional bone samples from across the North Atlantic. Microsatellite analysis of nuclear DNA from identified samples will help to refine which populations of North Atlantic right whales have been found across archaeological sites from North America, Iceland, Greenland, and the Orkney Islands. By 2020, our project will have analyzed over 400 whale bones and we hope to tell a number of species stories, not postscripts, on the whales of the North Atlantic.
Aguilar, Alex. “A Review of Old Basque Whaling and its Effect on the Right Whales (Eubalaena glacialis) of the North Atlantic.” Report of the International Whaling Commission, Special Issue 10 (1986): 191-199.
Dunlop, D. M. “The British Isles according to Medieval Arabic Authors.” Islamic Quarterly 4 (1957): 11-28.
Hreinsson, Viðar. Jón lærði og náttúrur náttúrunnar (Jon the Learned and the Nature of Nature). Reykjavik: Lesstofan Press, 2016.
Laist, David W. North Atlantic Right Whales: From Hunted Leviathan to Conservation Icon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.
Lindquist, Ole. Peasant Fisherman Whaling in the Northeast Atlantic Area, CA 900-1900 AD. Akureyri: Háskólinn á Akureyri, 1997.
Lindquist, Ole. “Whaling by Peasant Fishermen in Norway, Orkney, Shetland, the Faeroe Islands, Iceland and Norse Greenland: Medieval and Early Modern Whaling Methods and Inshore Legal Régimes.” In Whaling and History Perspectives on the Evolution of the Industry. Eds. Bjørn L. Basberg, Jan Erik Ringstad, and Einar Wexelsen. Sandefjord: Kommandor Chr. Christensens, 1995, 17-54.
McLeod., B., M. Brown, M. Moore, W. Stevens, S. H. Barkham, M. Barkham and B. White. “Bowhead whales, and not right whales, were the primary target of 16th to 17th-century Basque whalers in the Western North Atlantic.” Arctic 61.1 (2008): 61-75.
McLeod, B. et al., “DNA profile of a sixteenth century western North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis).” Conservation Genetics (30 Jan. 2009). 10.1007/s10592-009-9811-6.
“North Atlantic right whales on the brink of extinction, officials say,” The Guardian, 10 Dec. 2017.
Palumbi, Stephen R., "Whales, Logbooks, and DNA.” In Shifting Baselines: The Past and the Future of Ocean Fisheries, ed. by Jeremy B. C. Jackson, Karen E. Alexander, and Enric Sala, 163-173. Washington DC: Island Press, 2011.
Proulx, J. ‘Basque Whaling Methods, Technology and Organization in the 16th Century.” Trans. A. McGain. In The Underwater Archaeology of Red Bay: Basque Shipbuilding and Whaling in the 16th Century, Volume 1, ed. R. Grenier, M. Bernier and W. Stevens, 42-96. Ottawa: Parks Canada, 2007.
Rastogi, T., M.W. Brown, B. A. McLeod, T. R. Frasier, R. Grenier, S. L. Cumbaa, J. Nadarajah and B. N. White 2004. “Genetic analysis of 16th-century whale bones prompts a revision of the impact of Basque whaling on right and bowhead whales in the western North Atlantic.” Canadian Journal of Zoology 82 (2004): 1647-1654.
Reeves, R. R., T. Smith and E. Josephson. “Near-annihilation of a species: Right whaling in the North Atlantic.” In S.D.Kraus and R. M. Roland (eds), 39-74. The Urban Whale: North Atlantic right whales at the crossroads. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Roman, Joe and Stephen R. Palumbi. “Whales Before Whaling in the North Atlantic.” Science 301 (25 July 2003): 508-510.
Szabo, Vicki. Monstrous Fishes and the Mead-Dark Sea: Whaling in the Medieval North Atlantic. Leiden: Brill, 2008. | 2019-04-24T10:43:19Z | https://www.historicalclimatology.com/blog/category/environmental%20history |
There is no doubt the Seattle Seahawks showed a tremendous amount of heart on Sunday. Unfortunately at the end of the day the deficit was too big and time was too little. The 2015 campaign comes to a close as the Carolina Panthers defeat the Seahawks 31-24, eliminating Seattle and advancing to next week’s NFC Championship Game against the Arizona Cardinals. The NFC will be represented in the Super Bowl by a team other than the Seahawks for the first time since 2012. For this preview I will break the game down into two huge chunks, the frustrating disaster that was the first half, and the incredible comeback which fueled the second half. Here are my final thoughts of the 2015 season.
The First Half: The Seahawks spotted the Panthers 31 points going into the halftime break. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong and both the Seattle offense and defense were to blame. On the very first play of the game Panthers running back Jonathan Stewart broke through into the Legion of Boom and galloped all the way down to the Seattle 16-yard line, a gain of 59 yards. This set up a Stewart touchdown run 3 plays later giving the Panthers a 7-0 lead only two and a half minutes into the game. On the Seahawks first possession of the game Carolina stole away any momentum the Seahawks were trying to muster and held a tight grasp on it for the rest of the half. On second down Russell Wilson felt immediate pressure and forced a pass to the middle of the field in the direction of Marshawn Lynch. Lynch had yet to turn around and Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly intercepted the pass and ran it in for a touchdown. 14-0 Panthers less than three and a half minutes into the game. After a Seahawks punt the Panthers drove down the field and scored again on a Stewart 1-yard touchdown run. 21-0 Panthers. On the first play of Seattle’s next possession Wilson felt rushed again and threw a low pass which was intercepted by Cortland Finnegan. A Carolina field goal made it 24-0 Panthers with 12:37 left in the second quarter. The nightmare continued on Carolina’s next possession. After a Seahawks punt the Panthers drove 54 yards in 9 plays culminating with a 19-yard touchdown pass from Cam Newton to Greg Olsen. The Seahawks went into the halftime break down 31-0, their largest deficit in a game since 2010.
I noticed a few things in the first half that drove me crazy, some which we could control and others we really could not. For starters as the score went up I felt like our defense started to play panicked and tried to force their play. What I mean by this is instead of good fundamental tackling we would try to force takeaways by forcing the ball out which at times helped Carolina gain extra yards. Third down defense was also a problem, as Carolina converted 71 percent of their third down chances in the first half. On offense I found quarterback pressures and hurries to be particularly frustrating. One of the best facets of Russell Wilson’s game is his escapability and he did not do a good job of creating plays in the first half. He felt too comfortable in the pocket and trusted his offensive line almost to a fault. I also believe Wilson and the Seahawks offense discounted the speed of the Panthers defense. They absolutely swarmed him and ate him up in the first half, leading to two turnovers and a sack. The field also did not do the Seahawks any favors either. Players were slipping, sliding, and falling down throughout pregame warmups which led to harsh criticism which was discussed on the FOX broadcast in the early part of the game. Marshawn Lynch looked particularly uncomfortable playing on that sloppy surface, especially since the majority of his success running the ball depends on him being able to be shifty and cut sharply on the turf.
The Second Half: My hope was that if the Seahawks could somehow score 21 points in the third quarter to cut the Panthers lead to 10, we could put ourselves in position to potentially make the greatest comeback in NFL playoffs history a reality. For a time it looked like it might be doable. The Seahawks adjusted wonderfully coming out of the halftime break and came out firing. On the first offensive possession of the second half the Seahawks were set up thanks to a 50-yard kick return by Tyler Lockett. A personal foul by Carolina on the kickoff gave the Seahawks an additional 15 yards. On the fourth play of the drive Wilson connected with Jermaine Kearse for a touchdown. After forcing the Panthers to punt the Seahawks took their next drive all the way down the field resulting in a touchdown pass to Lockett. Halfway through the third quarter the Seahawks were only 7 points away from my goal. It was 31-14 Carolina. At the pace we were going I thought an epic comeback was a real possibility at this point but after our next drive resulted in a punt it started to feel like it was going to be extremely difficult. The Seahawks got the ball back with 9:34 left in the game and we drove down the field to score a touchdown in 3 minutes and 28 seconds. With just over 6 minutes left in the game, two timeouts, needing two scores, and the Panthers getting the ball again the blueprint was set in terms of what we needed to do; force a Carolina punt, score, recover an onside kick, and score again. Step one was completed after Carolina held the ball for another 3 minutes. The Seahawks got the ball back with 2:49 left and kicked a field goal cutting the deficit to 7 with the clock reading 1:12. Just like last year’s NFC Championship Game, the Seahawks season continuing depended on recovering an onside kick. Steven Hauschka’s onside attempt was a good one but the ball was caught and held on to by Thomas Davis, sealing the victory for the Carolina Panthers.
It was a gritty, heartwarming effort. The Seahawks were dead to rights and the resolve this team showed shows exactly why we are able to be competitive in any game we play. No deficit is too big for this team and we came one score shy of tying or perhaps even winning the game. Hindsight is 20/20, but if the Seahawks would have been able to kick a field goal in the first half (either Hausckha’s miss at the end of the first half or deciding to kick a field goal instead of going for it on 4th and 5 late in the first half) and if Wilson would not have thrown one of his two interceptions there is a real possibility we are talking about a Seahawks victory instead. At the end of the day, turnovers may have been the primary culprit, which is what I was wary of in my game preview.
Thoughts on Carolina: This is a defense-driven football team and they are extremely good. With today’s performance I now am questioning whether or not the Seahawks have the best defense in the league. If not, that title definitely belongs to the Panthers. They will host the Cardinals next week and if they play exactly like how they did today, it will be the Carolina Panthers representing the NFC in Super Bowl 50. I look forward to playing the Panthers next season, arguably the best opponent we will play at CenturyLink Field in 2016.
Random Thoughts: The Seahawks will pick 25th, 26th, or 27th in the first round of the 2016 NFL Draft. The pick better be used on the best offensive lineman available… The 2016 schedule will be released in April but here are our opponents next season. Home games at CenturyLink Field: Arizona Cardinals, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers, Carolina Panthers, Atlanta Falcons, Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins. On the road: Arizona Cardinals, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers, New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots, New York Jets… 37 days until the start of the NFL Scouting Combine and 102 days until the NFL Draft.
Thank you guys once again for logging on and reading this season. It always means a lot to me that you read and care about what I write. On to 2016. Go Seahawks!
We meet again. For the second consecutive season the Seahawks will take on the Carolina Panthers in the NFC Divisional playoffs. This time around however the tables have been turned. The Panthers enter this game after a 15-1 regular season, an NFC South division title, and earning home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs. With their win last week the Seahawks advanced to the NFC Divisional round for the fourth straight season but instead of hosting like they did last season they have to travel across the country to take on the Panthers this January. The Seahawks won games against the Panthers in Charlotte in three consecutive seasons from 2012-2014. In their 2015 meeting in Seattle earlier this season however the Panthers bested the Seahawks 27-23. This will be an extremely difficult matchup for the Seahawks but I believe we match up well with what the Panthers will put onto the field. Here is what I will be watching for.
The Marshawn Lynch mystery drags on for at least one more week. The star running back has practiced all week and proclaimed to ESPN that he is “ready to go” but it will come down to a game-time decision if Lynch actually suits up and plays. If Lynch cannot go it will be Christine Michael who starts at running back once again. For the rest of the Seattle offense, much improvement needs to be shown in order to compete with the Panthers on the scoreboard. Quarterback Russell Wilson must improve on his accuracy because there is little doubt the fantastic play of the Minnesota defense last week rattled him. Limiting turnovers will also be a big key in the way this game plays out. Carolina leads the league in turnovers with 39, which are 10 more than any other team. They also lead the league in turnover differential with a mark of +20. The Seahawks offense will need to take the majority of their drives deep into Carolina territory in order to stay in this game.
Many people may not realize this but the Seahawks defense will play this game with a couple of big-name players who did not play against Carolina back in week 6. Back in October K.J Wright moved from outside to inside linebacker in place of Bobby Wagner who missed the game with an injury. This week Wagner will be back starting at middle linebacker and will be a tackling machine in the middle of the field. In 3 career games against the Panthers, Wagner has averaged 7.3 tackles per game and has also sacked Panthers quarterback Cam Newton once. In addition to Wagner, Jeremy Lane will start at cornerback. Cary Williams, who is no longer on the team, started at cornerback against the Panthers earlier this season. Lane’s primary job will be to cover Panthers wide receivers Philly Brown and Devin Funchess. Last week the Seahawks only forced one turnover. If the Seahawks defense can force at least two turnovers in the game we will be in decent shape.
The Carolina Panthers offense is one of the very best in the National Football League. Quarterback Cam Newton is considered to be a most valuable player candidate this season. All year long Newton has had fantastic on-field chemistry with tight end Greg Olsen. Olsen is Newton’s number one target and his numbers correlate to this notion. 26 percent of Newton’s passes were completed to Olsen this season. That percentage translates to 77 catches for 1,104 yards (both team highs) and 7 touchdowns. Olsen’s second best game of the season came against the Seahawks back in October. There is much more to the Carolina offense however and there are two other players whose presences cannot go unnoticed. My X-Factor Players to Watch for the Panthers are Pro Bowl running backs Jonathan Stewart and Mike Tolbert. I put my X-Factor spotlight on these two guys not because of their production on the ground, but the role they can play in the Carolina passing game. Stewart and Tolbert have combined for 253 receiving yards and 4 touchdowns this season. After watching film I see the possibility of Newton targeting these backs on screen passes and wheel routes/rollout passes inside the redzone.
Each level of the Carolina defense features incredible talent. Four Panthers defenders have been named to the Pro Bowl. The middle of the field will be a risky place for Russell Wilson to throw into as the Panthers are led by veteran linebackers and tackling machines Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis. Cornerback Josh Norman has had a meteoric rise to being one of the best cornerbacks in the league. His 4 interceptions and team-leading 18 passes defensed defend this reputation. The matchup that may have the most say in the Panthers season continuing on to the NFC Championship Game will be defensive tackle Kawann Short against the Seahawks offensive line. Short recorded 11 sacks this season and is considered one of the best pass rushers in football. Short is averaging one sack in each of his last 5 games and he was also able to bring Russell Wilson down in the backfield twice earlier this year. In short (no pun intended), this Panthers defense is scary good and it will take a monster effort to take them down.
Random Thoughts: At the start of the playoffs I assumed since the Seahawks would have to play three straight road games to get to the Super Bowl, that we would be wearing white throughout January. Instead the Panthers have elected to wear white jerseys and white pants this week. This means the Seahawks will wear college navy jerseys. The Seahawks will pair these jerseys with wolf grey pants. The Seahawks won in this combination in Carolina in both 2012 and 2013… Joe Buck and Troy Aikman have the call for FOX’s only broadcast of Divisional weekend… The referee this week is Tony Corrente… Nothing and I mean NOTHING would make me happier than to see all the Seahawks players “dab” on the sideline and take a group photo if we win. For those not familiar these are the hijinks the Panthers have participated in all season long at the end of their games and it would be a tremendous troll job if the Seahawks came away victorious and stuck up the proverbial middle finger in this way. If this happens look for Michael Bennett and perhaps Richard Sherman to lead the way… Brunch n’ ball for the final time this season. I’m glad this is the final 10am game of the season… Speaking of 10am starts, a random thought unrelated to this game. I am thrilled the Rams have relocated to Los Angeles. We know better than any other city what greed and corruption happens behind the scenes when it comes to franchise relocation (SuperSonics, duh) and from this perspective it is sad to see the Rams leave St. Louis. The reason I am thrilled however is because it benefits the Seahawks. Instead of traveling to the middle of the country each season we will now fly to Southern California. This eliminates one 10am kickoff each season and the Seahawks never have to play at the Edward Jones Dome again. The Seahawks went 7-7 in St. Louis dating back to 2002. Instead these road games against the Rams will be played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the next three seasons which is a stadium not known for having an intimidating home field advantage. It is still a little weird to see “Los Angeles Rams” in print. It will take a little while to get used to.
Prediction: The Seahawks have lost 6 straight Divisional playoff games played on the road. Although I hope I am wrong I believe that streak continues on Sunday. The first half will be an entertaining defensive battle with Carolina taking a 13-10 lead into halftime. In the second half however the Panthers defense will shut the Seahawks offense down. Carolina will score a touchdown (with a missed extra point), and two field goals on their first three possessions of the second half. The Seahawks will have opportunities to claw back into the game but Russell Wilson will throw two interceptions and the Carolina defense will also force a fumble near the end of the third quarter. The Seahawks season will end and the Panthers will move on and host the Arizona Cardinals in next week’s NFC Championship Game.
When you look at the recent history of Seahawks road playoff games you see a handful of losses which end in heartbreaking fashion. It looked like this game was heading down that path as well. Instead, we survived. Minnesota kicker Blair Walsh shanked a 27-yard field goal with 20 seconds left and the Seahawks escaped a gelid TCF Bank Stadium with a stunning 10-9 victory over the Minnesota Vikings. The Seahawks will take on the Carolina Panthers next Sunday in the NFC Divisional playoffs. As astonishing as that missed field goal at the end was, this was a very frustrating game to watch. Here are a few talking points I took from today’s win.
Offense Out of Sync: Part of my frustration about this team is how hot and cold the offense is. After dominating Arizona last week, the Seahawks had an extremely difficult time moving the ball and driving deep into Vikings territory. I contribute three things to this. First and foremost, the Minnesota defense is ridiculously good; much better than I thought they would play and absolutely better than the effort they put on the field back in December. The Vikings run defense was on point and their pass rush was particularly scary. Despite the fact that he was only sacked twice, quarterback Russell Wilson was constantly feeling the pressure and the Vikings defensive ends did a fantastic job rushing behind Wilson to take away his ability to run backwards and escape. Another contributing factor I correlate to the Seahawks sluggish offensive performance is the communication issues from the sideline. The Seahawks burned three timeouts because the offense was slow approaching the line of scrimmage and had to take a timeout to avoid being penalized for delay of game. Lastly the subzero temperatures did affect the Seahawks. To me the team just did not look like they were comfortable being on the field and Wilson struggled to connect on many short and intermediate throws, something that is uncommon to see. The offense will have to be sharp next week in order to keep the game competitive.
Executed to Perfection: This was the play that changed the game. With 13:02 left in the game the Seahawks had the ball 1st and 10 at the Minnesota 39. Out of the shotgun the ball was snapped past Russell Wilson’s head. Wilson had to retreat 10 yards where he slid on top of the ball. He then got back up and scrambled to his right and floated a pass to Tyler Lockett which was caught at the line to gain. Lockett took off to the left and was knocked out of bounds at the 4-yard line. I am just going to assume that is exactly how offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell drew it up. This play gave the Seahawks a huge momentum boost and they were able to score two plays later on a touchdown pass from Wilson to Doug Baldwin, cutting the Vikings lead to 9-7. If you take away this drive, this magnificent play, and the touchdown, the Seahawks would have scored only 3 points on 146 yards of offense. This sequence saved our season and there is little doubt about it.
Wide Left: There is no good reason to miss a 27-yard field goal. I thought it was such a sure thing that I started to think about a potential Tyler Lockett kickoff return with 15 seconds left to set up a shot at a miracle ending. But there was one thing that made me feel hopeful that Blair Walsh would miss his field goal attempt at the end of the game. They had replayed the field goals he made earlier in the game multiple times and on one of his kicks the laces of the football were not spun outwards. On another one of his makes the laces were spun sideways, not all the way out. On his missed field goal at the end the laces once again were not spun out, a significant gaff that contributed to Minnesota losing this game. You have to feel bad for a guy who scored all of the Vikings points but could not come through in the clutch when the team needed him most.
Thoughts on Minnesota: This is as simple as I can state it: this team is very talented. The best part is that outside of Adrian Peterson, they are all young. The Vikings will contend with the Green Bay Packers for division titles for years to come and in a couple years I would not be surprised to see this team making deep runs in the postseason.
What’s Next: For the second consecutive season the Seahawks will play the Carolina Panthers next Sunday in an NFC Divisional playoff game. Look for my preview of next week’s game on Saturday morning.
On December 6th the Seahawks rolled into Minneapolis and delivered a monumental beat down to the Minnesota Vikings 38-7. One month later the Seahawks will look to do the same thing in order to keep their season alive. The Seahawks travel to TCF Bank Stadium once again on Sunday as they take on the NFC North champion Vikings in an NFC Wild-Card playoff game. The Seahawks enter as the number 6 seed and a win will punch their ticket to Charlotte for the NFC Divisional playoffs. The Vikings are the number 3 seed and a win will send them to Arizona to play the Cardinals next week. Of course the loser of this game sees their 2015 season come to an end. The theme in this game is “different.” There will be multiple things that will be different this week from the last time these two teams faced off 5 weeks ago. For the Vikings, several things will have to be different in order to advance to next weekend. Here are a small handful of differences I will have my attention on in this game.
Last time around Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson completed 78 percent of his passes for 274 yards and 3 touchdowns. The Seahawks also added 101 yards and a touchdown on the ground by running back Thomas Rawls. Rawls is on injured reserve and this week the Seahawks will start someone who was not even on the roster back in week 13, running back Christine Michael. Michael will be thrust into the starting role after the unexpected breaking news Friday night that Marshawn Lynch, who practiced all week and seemed ready to go, ruled himself unable to play. Michael has an opportunity to completely change critic’s opinions of him as an NFL player with a strong performance in Minnesota. Establishing the run on first down will remain important but do not be surprised to see more passes called on first down than runs. If Michael can get going early and be able to put up at least 80 yards on the ground it will take pressure off of the passing game and the Seahawks offense will be able to control time of possession, putting Minnesota at a disadvantage.
In my preview of our regular season matchup against the Vikings I talked about how important it was for the Seahawks defense to corral Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson. This is the one and only constant I will be focused on this week. It is the same story as last time: shut him down, win the game. Peterson was held to his worse stat line of his season against the Seahawks, rushing 8 times for 18 yards. In the 4 games to end the season after playing Seattle Peterson averaged 21 carries for 76 yards and recorded 3 touchdowns. Linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright combined for 17 tackles against the Vikings in the regular season so look for Kris Richard to stuff the box to help defensive tackles Brandon Mebane, Ahtyba Rubin, and Jordan Hill out.
One of the biggest reasons this game will be different for the Minnesota Vikings is unlike in our last meeting, Minnesota’s defense is close to full strength. Multiple players who were inactive or hurt during our matchup five weeks ago will be on the field this Sunday. This includes safety Harrison Smith and linebacker Anthony Barr. I am putting my X-Factor spotlight on another one of those players who may be back on the field on Sunday. My X-Factor player to Watch for the Vikings this week is defensive tackle Linval Joseph. Joseph’s absence was a contributing factor in the Seahawks being able to accrue 173 total rushing yards on December 6th. He is one of the best interior defensive linemen in the game and I believe he is extremely underrated, much like Brandon Mebane is for Seattle. Right before he got hurt he was putting up big numbers in the tackles category, averaging just over 6 tackles per game in his last 5 games. He has also recorded 7 tackles for loss this season. Against an average Seahawks offensive line Joseph could be poised for a huge game statistically. If the Seahawks run Christine Michael up the middle look for Joseph to make a big impact.
Something else that must be talked about is the weather conditions for Sunday’s game. In our last meeting in Minnesota the temperature was in the high 30’s; an abnormally warm temperature for that time of year. This week brings a completely different story as the Seahawks will be playing in the coldest game in franchise history. The temperature at kickoff is projected to be no higher than 3 degrees but I have seen reports from the national weather service over the past few days that claim the temperature at kickoff could be as low as -20 degrees plus wind chill. It will be painfully cold and the weather could absolutely play a factor in how the game plays out. I remember two seasons ago the San Francisco 49ers traveled to Green Bay to play the Packers in an NFC wild-card game. The 49ers were no doubt the better team but because the temperature was so low it allowed the Packers to play San Francisco tough almost to the point of them upsetting them. It will be harder to throw, harder to tackle, harder to kick, and harder to score. These circumstances could give the Vikings an advantage that is difficult to overlook.
Random Thoughts: The Seahawks will wear white jerseys and college navy pants this week. The Vikings will wear purple jerseys and white pants… Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth have the call for a rare NBC matinee broadcast this week… Walt Coleman is our referee in this game… I find it very interesting the NFL decided to have both NFC wild-card games on Sunday rather than one on Saturday and the other on Sunday. It makes sense going from week 17 into the postseason but one team playing this weekend will lose a day of preparation for next week because they will have to play Arizona the following Saturday… Many people approached me over the past week and asked me if I was going to Minneapolis for the game. I would love to be there even with the weather being what it is, but unfortunately I will not be there. Hopefully I get to make at least one more road trip before the end of our season… I am not a fan of the morning start in the playoffs. That’s the price we pay for going on the road I guess.
Prediction: It will not be a blowout and the weather will be a factor, but I still believe the Seahawks will punch their ticket to the Divisional round. Russell Wilson will throw touchdowns to Doug Baldwin and Tyler Lockett. A late touchdown run by Adrian Peterson will keep things close but the Seahawks will be able to convert third down opportunity with under two minutes left to seal the win. The Seahawks will come home and get ready for an NFC Divisional playoff against the Carolina Panthers.
To be honest I thought we had a very slim chance to win this game. Instead the Seahawks dominated all three phases of the game and delivered an even worse beat down to the Arizona Cardinals than last year’s matchup at University of Phoenix Stadium. I could not be happier to be wrong. The Seahawks ended the regular season on a high note, defeating the Cardinals 36-6 in a game that was never really that close. The Seahawks finish the 2015 regular season 10-6 and will face either the Minnesota Vikings or the Washington Redskins in next week’s Wild-Card playoff game. The Cardinals finish their regular season 13-3 and are locked into the #2 seed in the NFC. They will host a Divisional round playoff game in two weeks. Here now are some brief thoughts about today’s game, as well as my thoughts as we head into the second season.
Bouncing Back and Breaking Records: Although quarterback Russell Wilson only threw for 197 yards, he had yet another three touchdown/no interception day. Wilson completed 68 percent of his passes and had a passer rating of 123.7. Keep in mind he was pulled from the game after only 3 quarters. Wilson also broke two Seahawks records on Sunday. He broke Dave Krieg’s single-season touchdown pass record, ending his regular season with 34 touchdown passes. Wilson also became the first quarterback in franchise history to throw for over 4,000 yards in a season. I am extremely confident in Wilson’s ability to win in the postseason as we enter next week. What will help is the possible return of running back Marshawn Lynch. Wilson has been putting up stats and winning games without a running game. Add Lynch into the fold and even without a weapon like Jimmy Graham our offense now becomes perhaps the strongest it’s been all season.
Defense Forces Turnovers: Jeremy Lane, Earl Thomas, and DeShawn Shead all recorded interceptions on Sunday which gave the Seahawks a +3 turnover differential on the day. Turnovers and the ability to stop Arizona on third down were my two pregame defensive keys and our defense did a tremendous job making both these things happen effectively. The Cardinals finished the day with a third down conversion percentage of 41.6. There was one thing that worried me early on, when the Cardinals had the ball 3rd and 10 in the first quarter. The Seahawks rushed only three guys and Carson Palmer had a clean pocket to work with. He connected with Larry Fitzgerald for 11 yards and a first down. The Seahawks then changed their blitz packages for the rest of the game and rushed no more than 4 guys on any given Arizona third down opportunity. I was glad to see Kris Richard and the defense adjust as the game went on in order to maximize our chances to get the ball back.
Thoughts on Lockett: Today is yet another example of why the Seahawks traded three draft picks to move up in order to draft Tyler Lockett back in May. Lockett became the first player since 2002 to return three punts for at least 30 yards on Sunday. His 139 return yards on the day is the best single-game punt return total for Lockett all season. It really surprised me to see Cardinals punter Drew Butler continually kicking to Lockett. I would have thought after Lockett’s second punt return Arizona may want to start punting the ball out of bounds. Big punt returns will go to great lengths in helping Seattle advance in the playoffs. Let’s hope Lockett keeps this up.
Thoughts on Arizona: Going into this game I thought that if the Seahawks playoff run was going to end short of Super Bowl 50, it would end in Glendale at the hands of the Arizona Cardinals, most likely in a potential NFC Championship Game. After today however, those fears have been erased. Although we steamrolled the Cardinals, more importantly we proved that this team is definitely beatable in Arizona. The Cardinals are a much better team than their effort today showed. This team is still a serious Super Bowl contender and if the Seahawks can stay hot I think there is a very good chance we will be heading back to Glendale later this month.
Random Thoughts: There is something magical about our wolf grey uniforms. We are now 7-0 all-time wearing this combination and we have won those 7 games by an average of 16 points… Cardinals fans seemed to do a better job drowning out the blue and green this season. At the beginning of the game the presence of the 12’s in Arizona wasn’t very noticeable and there was more red in the stands then in prior matchups. Of course, that went away by halftime when the Seahawks had a commanding lead. By the time the game ended it was all Seahawks fans on the lower level it looked like… It’s now playoff time! This is going to be a very fun week(s).
What’s Next: Like I previously noted, the Seahawks will play the Minnesota Vikings or the Washington Redskins next weekend in the Wild-Card round. If the Seahawks are scheduled to play on Saturday, look out for my Wild-Card game preview on Friday morning. If we are scheduled to play Sunday, my preview will be published on Saturday morning.
Last week there was a possibility that this game would not matter to either the Seattle Seahawks or the Arizona Cardinals. However after losses by the Seahawks and the Carolina Panthers and wins by the Cardinals and Minnesota Vikings, the regular season finale in the desert is now extremely important for both teams. The Seahawks head to Arizona for the first time since the disastrous ending to Super Bowl XLIX as they take on the NFC West champion Cardinals. The Seahawks are 9-6 and with a win they will have won 10 or more games in each of the last 4 seasons. The Cardinals are 13-2, winners of nine straight games, and arguably the best team in football. Arizona leads the all-time series against the Seahawks 17-16. In their previous meeting earlier this season the Cardinals beat the Seahawks in Seattle on Sunday Night Football 39-32. Here is what both teams have to do in order to head into the playoffs on the right foot.
Against the Rams a week ago the Seahawks finished the day -3 in turnover differential. The only way the Seahawks can win this game from an offensive perspective is to take care of the ball. It will be a difficult challenge because the Cardinals have forced 33 turnovers this season, good for second-best in the league. What worries me is how panicked Russell Wilson may play if the running game cannot get going and the Seahawks face a deficit late in the game, much like how last week’s game played out. Note though that Wilson has thrown only one interception since these two teams last played on November 15th. If the Seahawks can also control time of possession it will put us in a comfortable position for later on in the game. If the Seahawks can keep their offense on the field and if they win the turnover battle, this game will absolutely be winnable.
Much like how time of possession is an area of importance on offense, the same can be said of defense. The way to win T.O.P. on defense is to force Arizona into punts, and in order to force punts you need to stop them on third down. The Cardinals are the best team in the league on third down this season, converting nearly half of their third down opportunities (47.3 percent). The only way the Seahawks will be successful in getting the Cardinals off the field on third down is to put constant pressure on quarterback Carson Palmer. Over the course of this season the Seahawks have been very hot and cold when it comes to pressuring the quarterback. Bruce Irvin will have to have a big impact from the outside linebacker spot and he will be a dark horse player in the game if he can successfully penetrate Arizona’s stout offensive line.
All season long the Arizona Cardinals have done an incredible job creating explosive plays. With the Cardinals still using a running back by committee since the injury to Chris Johnson, the game will be won through the air. I expect to see Carson Palmer target wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald more than any other receiver since he is the best short and intermediate threat Arizona has on the offensive side of the ball. If Kam Chancellor remains sidelined I expect head coach Bruce Arians and offensive coordinator James Bettcher to dial up several long passes down the field. If this is the case the speedy John Brown could be primed for a big game, as he will likely line up across from either DeShawn Shead or Jeremy Lane. Also keep an eye on Michael Floyd who could also have the opportunity to get loose with Richard Sherman likely covering Fitzgerald.
My number one focus on defense for the Cardinals is how the secondary will fare for the second straight week without safety Tyrann Mathieu. With Deone Bucannon likely moving from linebacker back to safety to fill in for Mathieu more will be required of the other three starters in Arizona’s secondary. Specifically I will be watching how the middle of the field will covered without the “honey badger” on the field. My X-Factor Player to Watch for the Cardinals is their other starting safety, Rashad Johnson. Although he missed last week’s game against Green Bay Johnson has recorded 48 tackles this season, sixth among all Arizona defenders. The scariest number that jumps out on Johnson’s stat sheet is his team-high 5 interceptions. If the Seahawks throw the ball in the middle of the field look for Johnson to be in on each play. If the Cardinals can record multiple turnovers they will have an excellent chance to come away with the victory.
Random Thoughts: The Seahawks will break out the wolf grey uniforms for the second time this season. We are 6-0 all-time in this look. The Cardinals are eligible to wear their black alternate jerseys but I would not be surprised to see them wear all red instead… This week’s game has been picked to be “America’s Game of the Week” on FOX. Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and Erin Andrews have the call… This week’s referee is second-year white hat Brad Allen… I hope the field is in good shape. University of Phoenix Stadium hosted the Fiesta Bowl on Friday afternoon so it is possible the field will be beat up. Luckily the Cardinals are one of the best teams in terms of getting their field prepared for a game. They’ll probably roll the field outside, work on it and let it sit in the sun tomorrow, then wheel it back into the building early Sunday morning… It feels a little strange to have regular season football being played after the new year. This is the first Seahawks regular season game played in January in 4 years (2011 season finale in Arizona)… If the Seahawks win I will be cheering like crazy for Green Bay in the Sunday night game. If Seattle loses I’ll be cheering like crazy for Minnesota instead. This is going to be a fun and wild ending to the regular season.
Prediction: If the NFL hadn’t flexed the Carolina Panthers game to 1:25pm I think there would be a better chance the Seahawks would come away victorious. However since Carolina and Arizona now play at the same time both teams will play at full strength to try to earn the number one seed in the NFC. Carson Palmer will throw for three touchdowns and the Arizona defense will force three turnovers. The Seahawks running game will be extremely inefficient for the second straight week. The Seahawks will finish the season 9-7, stumbling into the playoffs, and we will get ready for our wild-card game against the Green Bay Packers next week. | 2019-04-24T15:56:40Z | https://ehhawkblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/ |
Hace unas semanas tuvimos el placer de realizar una estupenda sesión de fotografía boudoir y femenina en un entorno con encanto: el Hotel Arabeluj de Granada. La protagonista fue Raquel, llegada desde Málaga el mismo día de la sesión para realizar su reportaje. Por la mañana realizamos nuestro ritual: el café para conocernos (que habitualmente nos tomamos unos días antes, pero como Raquel no vive en Granada, nos pusimos al día sobre a marcha) y a continuación la visita a dos de nuestros establecimientos colaboradores, Anay Lencería y Corsets Granada para la prueba de la lencería y corsets que luciría más tarde nuestra guapa protagonista.
Nos encanta esta parte de la sesión de fotografía aunque no pertenezca realmente a ella, pero es una forma de que ya entréis en situación, de que os visualicéis con esas prendas y elijáis las más cómodas y con las que os sentís más favorecidas, de ahí su importancia.
La sesión de fotografía boudoir y femenina de Raquel se llevó a cabo por la tarde, como mencionábamos antes, en la suite del Hotel Arabeluj, un hotel pequeño, con encanto, situado en el Barranco del Abogado y con unas vistas espectaculares y en el que además es una delicia cenar o tomar un aperitivo en sus terrazas. Desde aquí agradecemos todas las facilidades que nos proporcionó el personal del hotel, especialmente Araceli, a la que enviamos un fuerte abrazo.
¿Por qué un hotel? Siempre que nos es posible, intentamos buscar localizaciones diferentes y especiales. Ya hemos realizado reportajes en el Hotel Laurel de La Reina, el Café Bar Baraka, en la tienda La Montaña Invertida, en el Restaurante Al Andalus Expreso … es un plus que intentamos conseguir en cada sesión porque os veis en un decorado diferente, lo cual os ayuda a veros en otro papel muy diferente al habitual.
Os dejamos con una selección de la sesión de fotografía de Raquel, elegidas por ella. Nosotros nos quedamos con las palabras que nos dedicó al despedirse: muchas gracias, me he sentido muy, muy cómoda, una experiencia totalmente recomendable. :).
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1) Black Cameo - This little present came from an antique store in California. In addition to being a cameo, it's also a locket. While I already have one cameo, that one is edged in gold and has traditional coloring. I find that the black and silver of this one give it an edge that goes well with multiple outfits; it's girly and vintage because it's a cameo, but it's less sweet than if it were in pink and gold. I've worn it more often than not in the last week.
2) Peacock Pencil Box - This box is far from new; I got it at Papyrus at least four years ago. The wood is dark and smooth, and the painted peacock bright and silly. It's been sitting on my desk all through college, holding onto a bunch of colored pens and highlighters for me.
3) Red Leather Watch - My purple watch betrayed me back in January, falling off my wrist without me noticing. I haven't been sure since then whether or not to replace it, or whether if I did replace it I ought to invest a few more dollars and get something nicer. But I got another World Market one last week. It is leather this time, though. And it has a buckle so it won't fall off.
4) Irish Breakfast Tea - Last month around St. Patrick's Day, I kind of wanted some sort of food item for the holiday. There wasn't much to chose from. But I did get this tea at Trader Joe's (I think it was $3, for 80 tea bags). Although I usually like my tea dark (and without anything added to it), this tea is quite dark. So I figured out that, instead of brewing it for as short a time as possible, it's better to let it brew really dark and then add a little almond milk--as Liz Curtis Higgs suggests in My Heart's in the Lowlands. Given that I've gotten bored of coffee again, this has been my morning drink lately.
6) Green Bowl - My green glasses, tea cup, to go cup, and pasta strainer weren't enough. As such, I have finally acquired a bowl from Anthropologie. Yes, just one: that's all I need right now. It is green.
7) Brown Bebe Shorts - Ah, summer is upon us. I think I have now worn pants for the last time until October, possibly September. Capris and dresses are also very well, but here are some shorts also. I may not have actually bought them at Bebe. I'm not always a big fan of Bebe's style, anyway, but these shorts fit, the material is durable, and the brown fabric with light polka dots is styled but also plain enough to be a basic.
8) Cat Calendar - Since I'm sharing things that hang out around my desk, here is my calendar. I got it at the famous Changing Hands bookstore, which I guessed (correctly) would have a more unique selection of calendars. I'm not a cat lady; I just thought the look of these images (vintage cat posters) was close enough to my style to work on my wall. I use my iPhone's calendar, but the visual just isn't the same. I like to look up and see the month in front of me.
9) Flower Sandals - Phoenix has now reached 100 degrees for the first time this year; from here, the city will spiral into temperatures of doom. Since not even flats are bearable when it's 110 or even 114 outside, here are the new sandals I have picked up. The brand isn't special, but the flowers are leather. Since the color is neutral (less gray than they look in the picture), I'll be wearing them with everything.
10) Final Preparations - I was just looking for an excuse to show my graduation announcements. Most often, I tell people that the idea of graduation hasn't really hit me yet, and it hasn't. But when I look at things like this, I do start to feel a little proud and excited.
While I've been at ASU, they have combined the English and Film departments. I really don't know exactly what that means, except that I sometimes get announcements that pertain more to Film than English majors--but that could still be of interest to both. And that gets me thinking about the future of literary and film criticism. Today they are separate but with some overlaps; might they come even closer together in the future?
I have taken a few English classes that have a strong film element. Some of the films have been adaptations of books we have read; some have just dealt with the same story (King Arthur, for instance). Adaptations seem to be where most of the literature/film overlaps are today, especially given the commonness of adaptations. But this isn't the only type of overlapping that I can think of occurring.
When you study literature, you learn about different movements. Romanticism, Victorian novels, Gothic novels, the Harlem Renaissance, Modernism, Post-Modernism, etc. Film has terms like this, too, although not perhaps as many since film is a newer art medium than literature. Film noir is one.
My question is, are these labels ever going to start overlapping? Will one label come to cover both books and films from a certain period?
When you learn about traits of Romanticism, for instance, you find that they also apply to many of the paintings from the period. And when I consider authors I have little interest in (like John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway), I sometimes find that I also have little interest in films from the period. Is that just coincidence? Considering that art always, in one way or another, responds to what came before it, I think not.
"Oh, waves, there are waves."
But what type of waves, exactly, are there? Many kinds, I say. When Blondfire's song "Waves" first appeared online, I instantly dubbed it a favorite because of its duality (you can read that post here). Waves can either be the struggles that put you down or the forces that lift you up and into new places--and often they're the same thing. Now "Waves" has its own music video, shot in the So. Cal. desert, that continues the theme of duality.
As you know, I'm bound to love the desert setting of this video. Gorgeous desert and pretty, crumbly mountains mean I'm happy. But perhaps you wonder why a song about waves doesn't have an ocean backdrop? Ponder that a moment and look a little closer.
There are waves in this video: the ripples in the sand, the curves of the mountains/hills, and even the flow of fabric in Erica's outfits. These are the harsh things, the ones "picking you up, pushing you down." Desert heat and wind--the elements and Nature. But as she wanders about, Erica also finds signs of water. An anchor, a starfish, and even the nature of the desert suggest that there once was water here--and that perhaps it might come again. She is searching for the waves, knowing their power. She is wandering away from the waves, knowing their power.
As William Blake seemed to say, only by recognizing duality can you make progress.
Back in March, I wrote about some of my favorite poems from the Brontës in a copy I got from the university library. While the copy of my own I have now acquired is not nearly as exciting in looks, it appears to be pretty much the same in content--and font/typeset/whatever-you-would-call-that.
This copy is part of the Classic Reprint Series and was in fact just published last year. While it is an unexciting paperback, it was also a simple price of eight dollars--compare that to other prices you might find for Poems and you'll appreciate what this series does. It's making rarer, "Forgotten Books" available to the public at an affordable price. And what I was trying to explain about the "typeset" was that I believe the format and font and everything of this book is identical to the original published copy of Poems. Hence the phrase "classic reprint" rather than simply "forgotten classics." In the back, there is even a page with original advertisements for the sisters' novels--which, you'll note, were published after the first publication of Poems.
If you go to the Forgotten Books website, you can download up to five ebook versions for free if, unlike me, you prefer ebooks to physical copies.
It's the story of a poor man's daughter who, after her father tells the king she can spin straw into gold, falls into tears because she will be killed when she fails to complete the impossible task; a strange little man appears and helps her but ultimately asks for her first child in payment, a cost which she is only able to avoid after discovering that his name is Rumpelstiltskin.
So what is it about this story that made it one of my favorite fairy tales, and what might it mean?
Going off of the Grimm versions, while some fairy tales are several pages, this one is quite short. I think that length gets your imagination going, filling in the blanks that the story doesn't go into. Why was such a poor man even in conversation with the king? Why did he tell him such a ridiculous fib when all it could accomplish was to get his daughter into trouble? Was she happy about marrying the king? Who is Rumpelstiltskin and where did he come from? Was it good that she accepted help from him? What does it mean that she beat him in the end by saying his name?
Back in middle school, I imagined how fairy tales could make great reads as novels--and I obviously wasn't the only one to have that thought. For Rumpelstiltskin, I imagined that the poor man's daughter would already love the king, and that's why she would be glad about marrying him. I could never reconcile that part of the story if I thought that she didn't love him. But the truth of the matter is, the king is just the ultimate good marriage. From a traditional or patriarchal point of view, she gains everything there is for a woman to gain by marrying him.
But Rumpelstiltskin threatens the other traditional feminine role, motherhood. By asking for her child, he is threatening the traditional idea of a family. But why does he want the child? I always wondered that. From her point of view, it is the ultimate threat, but what does he have to gain from taking a baby?
This brings us back to the question of who Rumpelstiltskin is. At the end of the story, he stomps his foot in anger, it becomes cloven in two, and he disappears into oblivion. Maybe he didn't die; maybe he just went somewhere else. Because cloven feet, well, that's satanic imagery right there. Taking Rumpelstiltskin as a demon would explain why he wants to steal away someone's child: he wants to ruin souls, spread evil, and that sort of thing. If the woman achieves a certain victory over him by discovering his name, it is because she is rebuking him with the power of words. If Jesus's name has power, then it makes sense for a story to also give some sort of power to demon's names. When the woman reveals Rumpelstiltskin's name, she is pointing out who he is and sending him back to where he came from.
But if you go with the idea of Rumpelstiltskin being a demon, it becomes unsettling that the heroine of the story (if that's what you think she is) accepts his help and owes her entire position as queen to him. Is the story, then, endorsing a little flirtation with the dark side as long as you don't let it go too far? And I can't ignore the fact that it is three times that Rumpelstiltskin helps her; three is an important number in religion. Rumpelstiltskin saved this woman's life; what if all he wants is to save her child's life, too? Is he a demon, or something else?
Either way, she makes deals with him, and deals are dangerous if you don't understand all the details. But if he hadn't helped her and if her father hadn't put her in a position to need help from Rumpelstiltskin, she and her father would both be lost. Which makes me wonder, did her father know about Rumpelstiltskin? What if Rumpelstiltskin is her father, or her grandfather, or at least her father's friend? It may be a fairy tale, but this male version of the Blue Fairy turning up just as needed is quite the coincidence.
Is Rumpelstiltskin good, bad, or crazy? Did he use the poor man's daughter, or did she use him?
Before I graduate, there are some things I've been making sure I do or see on campus that I just never got around to before. One thing I had never done was to go inside of the ASU Gammage auditorium, even though The Phantom of the Opera was there a couple years ago and I really should have found a way to make it to that.
So when I learned that Beauty and the Beast was doing a couple of performances this month, I said, hello, more perfect timing, and made sure not to miss it. I've probably said this before, but despite enjoying seeing live things like this, I hardly see any at all. In fact, I think this was my first "real musical," which means I'm not counting any for-children productions I may have seen when I was younger.
One of the things I really enjoyed was seeing how quickly and seamlessly they turned the sets around. There is fluidity to the choreography not just of the actors but of everything on the stage. The castle set/lighting was properly creepy and all the lights and glimmer during "Be Our Guest" were as expansive and shiny as it gets. I was only disappointed by the library: although the arch of tumbling, oversized books they used fit into the set's permanent arches, I would have preferred to see an arch of shelves. The library is so huge and beautiful in the movie that I wanted to see something more similar to that instead of an abstract "books" image.
While I never felt that William A. Martin as Maurice showed enough emotion in his dialogue, Joe Hager gave a great performance as Gaston, really playing with the character. Given that this musical is almost double the length of the movie, they take more time for some of the character developments. We see more, particularly, of the servants and also more tidbits of scenes in general. While not all of the added songs interested me much, some did add a deeper angle or more development. One of these was at the end of Act I; I think it was "If I Can't Love Her."
Although I think I would utterly suffocate in New York having Central Park as the only echo of "nature" including the sky, it would also be nice to always have so many productions to go see. Then again, I'm always talking about how Phoenix does have plenty of things play during the year--I just usually don't get to see them. Maybe I'll come back in February for Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Wizard of Oz?
How did such randomness turn out so well?
Having lived, mostly, in Southern California until I was seven or eight, things like the Hollywood sign were normal and everyday for me. I never had that awe for Hollywood, Beverly Hills, or L.A. because it all just seemed part of the close-by world. But that isn't to say that, even now, I have seen everything there is to see in this the land where movies are made.
After lunch in West Hollywood, we parked at The Grove and lined up outside of CBS for a taping of The Late Late Show (with Craig Ferguson). While this probably wouldn't have been on my agenda, this was the first time I had been in a studio audience. I happened to be sitting on one of the edges, so I could see behind one of the set's side walls--you know, "behind the scenes." Simply for the experience of it, I was glad I tagged along to the show.
Oh, yes, and the day before, I decided to take a picture of the Hollywood sign for the first time--I had seen it so much before that I never even considered photographing it. In doing so, I learned something: that's a hard sign to photograph what with all the glare and my nonexistent camera skills.
While I try and write up a short reaction to most of the books I read on my own, I don't usually post about books I read in class. For one thing, there would be too many: they would overtake the blog. And I also already have to write papers and other assignments on them, so choosing to write extra on school books isn't always what I'm keen to do. But there are exceptions.
Yesterday, when I shut the last page of María Amparo Escandón's novel, González & Daughter Trucking Co., I had to pause for a couple of minutes to take it in.
I don't always feel that way, where a book has touched my thoughts in a way that goes past enjoying reading it or finding a depth of material for analysis.
Given that I was reading this book for a class, there are certainly many layers you can study it under. It deals with issues of cultural identity, taking place in both Mexico and the U.S. It studies the workings of community and also more personal relationships, most prominently father-daughter relationships (as you can tell from the title--why, asks Escandón, are companies only named "& Son?"). It questions what fear is and where knowledge comes from and how healing comes. It's written in such a format of two, three, or four voices/speakers/lenses that it interacts with the reality of stories and truth.
It's also a pleasure to read simply as a story. At our last class, we only needed to have read the first half of the book, but a few people had already finished it. I found that I needed to read the first half slower in order to take everything in, but the second half went by in a breeze. It's a book that tends to beg you to keep reading and reacting to what you read.
And that's the special part: the reacting. There are beautiful and poetic moments interspersed in the pages, moments that I really felt for. It's a book about a women's prison, a father and daughter on the road for their trucking company, and one woman's journey through discovery, pain, and ultimate healing. Amongst all of the communities and the stories, there are very personal emotions.
Click here to read my initial thoughts on The Host.
My blog background seems to have disappeared, leaving behind the forest image that was beneath it--the weird thing is that the link to the website where I got the background is still up there in the corner. Will it come back on its own, then? I can't seem to figure out what went wrong, or how to put up a new background. I feel at such a loss.
Anyway, guess what movie I went to see again yesterday? The Host, that's right. (And I'm probably going to see it again in the next week or two whenever another friend or two that I'm taking to see it can make it.) Because of my weird movie-watching habits, I'm used to sometimes seeing a movie in a fairly empty theatre. But this time, I was watching with less than ten other people and in (I think) this particular theatre's second largest space. So that did make me feel rather isolated.
But when you watch a movie without a surrounding audience, you can tell what it is you like or don't or what makes you laugh and such like. The responses are all yours, not responses based on the general audience reaction.
I have a couple of follow-up comments on this movie. The costumes and overall style of the souls really did start to bother me this time. It made it feel less like the souls try to imitate humans. The attitude of the Seekers comes up most often, and so it seemed to most define the souls--but the Seekers are only a select group of souls. So the souls, in the movie, feel like a threatening institution rather than the friendly, honest, and truly-believing-their-way-is-right group that they are. The movie makes it seem like it's specifically Wanda who is this way.
I also stared at the landscape some more. Okay, New Mexico was never going to look exactly like Arizona to an Arizonan. But still. And I know that I don't spend much time south of Phoenix (where Picacho Peak is), but when I look at pictures of the area, there's one thing in particular that I see: saguaros! And other vegetation, including gorgeous wildflowers if the season's right. But the movie portrayed this area as rather lifeless--and sandy, as I mentioned before. Considering that saguaros don't grow everywhere, I missed them. But, I say with a sigh, this isn't actually a big deal.
Why, though, does Jamie not have an accent if his sister does? Melanie has an accent to distinguish her from Wanderer, but the accent seemed to bypass Jamie.
The first part of the movie, you can say, starts slow. But I think what interests me less about it isn't the pace: it's that the "soul style" I talked about above is a primary part of these opening scenes. And while the book, because it is a book, is able to introduce Melanie's and Wanderer's characters early on as separate identities and then to form the bond between them in the desert, these developments of character happen differently in the movie.
But both times, as this movie has come forward towards its close, I have found myself in the most buoyant mood. The development happens softly, almost imperceptibly, naturally. That shot of Wanderer's face at the end, when she is saying goodbye to Melanie, that is what this story is all about. So to see Wanderer finding peace and then to see her reawaken and for her community to also find peace is powerful. It's the lingering power of success, emotion, and resolution. Wanderer has literally found herself and where she belongs.
That's why I'm loving this little, low budget movie that critics mostly criticize. That's why I'll even sit in an empty theatre to see if if I have to: because it's what I like, and like Wanderer, I don't need confirmation from someone else to choose where I give my attention. | 2019-04-21T20:42:51Z | http://www.deliriousdocumentations.com/2013/04/ |
As technology has advanced, so has the ability of law enforcement to track individuals. Some privacy advocates believe that New Hampshire needs to update state laws to protect citizens from intrusive surveillance. This article summarizes the emerging surveillance technology used by law enforcement in New Hampshire, and what laws exist to limit that surveillance.
In general, New Hampshire law enforcement may not intercept or record conversations, phone calls, or other telecommunications without permission from the Office of the Attorney General or a court order. The U.S. Supreme Court similarly ruled in Riley v. California that law enforcement officers need a warrant to look at the contents of a phone.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that law enforcement needs a warrant to ask a cell phone carrier to provide the history of a cell phone’s location — not the cell phone’s contents or calls.
New Hampshire law already limits how law enforcement officers can collect information about cell phone locations. In 2017 New Hampshire passed a law requiring law enforcement to get a warrant before using a cell site simulator.
Cell site simulators (also known as stingrays) mimic cell towers and collect data from all nearby devices, such as the number and location of each cell phone.
The 2017 law also requires law enforcement to delete almost all of the data gathered by a cell site simulator at the end of each day.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Jones that law enforcement needs a warrant before installing a GPS device on a car to track a person’s movements over an extended period of time.
New Hampshire also limits the ability of law enforcement to take snapshots of vehicles with automatic license plate readers (LPRs).
LPRs use a high speed camera and character recognition technology to record the license plates of cars driving by. Those license plates are compared against lists of vehicles involved in crimes.
LPRs cannot photograph the occupants of a vehicle.
Any law enforcement agency using an LPR must register with the Department of Safety.
Unless the car is related to a crime, the LPR must destroy the record of a license plate within three minutes.
New Hampshire does not have any laws regulating the use of infrared cameras or backscatter x-rays, both of which allow the user to see into cars or buildings to identify people and other objects.
However, in 2001 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kyllo v. United States that law enforcement needs a warrant to use a technology that is not commonly available to the public to see inside a person’s home.
There are many possible law enforcement uses of unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as UAVs or drones. Law enforcement might use a drone to conduct surveillance over private property, conduct a search for a missing person, or pursue a suspect.
The New Hampshire Legislature has considered but never passed a law restricting law enforcement use of drones. Almost every bill would have required law enforcement to get a warrant before using a drone to record over private property.
Officers must inform individuals they are being recorded.
Individuals can refuse to be recorded in certain private settings, such as the home.
Officers must turn off body cameras in many circumstances, such as during strip searches.
Recordings must be stored securely and may not be submitted to facial recognition or data mining software.
Unless the camera records the discharge of a firearm, death, serious bodily injury, or a complaint against a police officer, the recording must be deleted after 180 days. There are exceptions for recordings involved in court actions.
A body camera recording may be subject to the right-to-know law if it shows an officer using force or restraint, the discharge of a firearm, or an encounter that results in a felony arrest. That means the public can demand access to the footage. However, the law states that body camera recordings may be exempt from public disclosure if they “constitute an invasion of privacy of any person.” Courts must determine on a case-by-case basis what body camera footage to release.
In 2014 New Hampshire passed a law that prohibits the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) from using any facial recognition technology on driver’s license photos. New Hampshire accordingly does not share license photos with the FBI.
In 2018 the New Hampshire Legislature established a committee to study the use and regulation of biometric data, including photos used for facial recognition technology, by the government and private companies. That committee issued its report at the end of the summer and a related bill is making its way through the Legislature.
Law enforcement uses social media to learn about people, just like other users do. Officers can view public profiles, try to connect with witnesses or suspects, and gather information about a criminal’s associates. Law enforcement may also compel social media websites to release private information with a warrant.
Some law enforcement agencies in the U.S. also use software that aggregates all public social media posts. That software allows officers to search by geographic location, hashtag, and keyword to identify possible threats. For example, in 2014 Durham, New Hampshire police used such software to search for possible witnesses of an abduction of a University of New Hampshire student.
There are no restrictions on the use of social media monitoring software by law enforcement in New Hampshire. However, in 2018 Facebook and Twitter made significant changes to how they share user data, which has limited the power of social media monitoring software.
Predictive policing software analyzes data about past crimes to predict where and when crimes are likely to occur in the future. Predictive policing software may be used by police to identify neighborhoods for patrols.
For example, the Manchester Police Department started using predictive software in 2015 to increase police patrols at certain times and locations. The department was criticized for this after the violent arrest of a young man parked in a location identified by the software; that man was only ever charged with resisting arrest.
There are no restrictions on the use of predictive policing software by law enforcement in New Hampshire.
Requiring law enforcement to report any use of special technology, such as drones.
New Hampshire law cannot limit the action of federal law enforcement officers, who are governed by federal law. That gives New Hampshire little power to respond to global digital surveillance programs such as those revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013.
In 2017 Rep. Neal Kurk introduced a bill that would forbid any state or local official from assisting federal officials in gathering a person’s electronic data without a warrant. The Senate killed that bill, in part due to concerns that it would inhibit information sharing between state and federal law enforcement investigating crime.
This amendment would not have any specific impact on law enforcement surveillance, but it would create more opportunities for citizens to challenge unwarranted law enforcement surveillance in court.
Citizens should not have to give up privacy just because they are using a cell phone instead of a landline, a GPS device instead of a paper map, or social media instead of greeting cards. New Hampshire must update its laws to ensure that technology is not enabling law enforcement to infringe on citizens’ reasonable expectations of privacy. If New Hampshire does not safeguard privacy, innocent citizens will be viewed the same as criminals, subjecting them to police harassment and chilling their free speech through cell phones and online.
Predictive policing software bases its predictions on data from past police activity, so it tends to perpetuate any biases in policing. For example, if officers have historically focused on drugs deals on the street in poor neighborhoods, predictive policing software will indicate more crime is likely to occur in those areas — leading police to investigate more low income citizens rather than white collar criminals in affluent neighborhoods. New Hampshire needs to limit the use of predictive policing software to fight these biases.
There are many examples of law enforcement across the United States using technology to surveil political protestors (such as Black Lives Matter protestors) and certain religious groups (particularly Muslims). By limiting the use of certain surveillance technology, New Hampshire can limit the ability of law enforcement to discriminate against large groups of people who are exercising their constitutional rights.
Any time the government or a private organization gathers large amounts of private data, that data becomes a target for hackers. A 2016 poll from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center accordingly showed that half of Americans are not confident in the ability of the federal government to protect citizens’ data. The simplest and safest way to protect citizens from this is to prevent the government from aggregating large amounts of private data.
While New Hampshire places more limits on law enforcement surveillance than other states, there are still several restrictions used in other states that New Hampshire could adopt, from limiting where police fly drones to requiring an annual report on the use of infrared cameras and other technology.
Any time New Hampshire requires administrative approval or a court order to use a surveillance technology, it slows down an investigation. Given the speed of modern life, these delays can hinder the ability of law enforcement to catch criminals.
Policies that require law enforcement to disclose how they use technology provide criminals with the information they need to evade law enforcement detection.
In this day and age, citizens are willing to give up some privacy in exchange for safety. A 2016 survey from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center showed that roughly half of Americans believe the government’s anti-terrorism policies have not gone far enough to protect the country, while only one-third believe those policies have gone too far restricting civil liberties.
If you have not committed a crime, you have no reason to fear law enforcement surveillance. Similarly, citizens can take action to enhance their privacy, for example by avoiding social media and using encryption on cell phones.
Although there are many factors that contribute to crime rates, from the economy to the weather, some studies suggest that the use of predictive policing software substantially decreases crime.
Officials say that because New Hampshire law forbids the DMV from using facial recognition technology, New Hampshire has become a haven for criminals getting driver’s licenses with fake identities.
Enables the Department of Transportation to access crash data maintained by the department of safety, local law enforcement, and other government agencies.
Clarifies that any personal information found in abandoned belongings "is the property of the individual to whom it pertains regardless of its abandonment," and cannot be collected or used for any purpose. There are exceptions for law enforcement and other government officials with a warrant or at a crime scene.
Establishes a grant program for body cameras worn by police, funded by a fee for "prestige number vanity plates"—license plates with four or fewer digits.
Makes it a misdemeanor to transmit images or sounds of an individual on private property without consent, or to engage in surveillance of another without consent.
Requires a search warrant to obtain blood samples when someone is under investigation for driving under the influence. According to the Judicial Branch, however, the bill is unclear.
Requires all law enforcement officers to wear body cameras, paid for by the state. This bill also raises a penalty assessment, from 24% to 28% of criminal, motor vehicle, and municipal ordinance fines.
This bill prohibits the government from acquiring, retaining, or using personal information. There are some exceptions, such as if an individual gives written consent, a judge signs a warrant, or there is an emergency.
Modifies the definition of "surveillance" as it pertains to highways to prohibit the use of license plate scanning devices or other highway surveillance by private parties. This bill also increases the penalty for illegal highway surveillance to a misdemeanor.
Amends the wiretapping and eavesdropping law to include any technology utilizing wireless entry or access points. This would cover smart televisions, Alexa, Echo, baby monitors, smart thermostats, etc.
Requires federal authorities to get a search warrant based on probable cause to access information about residents registered to use medical marijuana.
As introduced, states that "An individual's genetic information and DNA sample are the property of the individual, and, except as expressly otherwise provided in statute, shall not be acquired, retained, or disclosed without the written consent of the individual or his or her legal representative or, after the individual’s death, his or her executor or other legal representative. This section shall not apply to the identification of individuals in criminal investigations."
Constitutional amendment stating, "An individual's right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent."
Provides individuals with an expectation of privacy in their personal materials and protection from intrusion by government. According to the bill, personal materials are "fingerprints, saliva, hair, household papers, and effects, in private and public places." There is an exception for law enforcement investigations.
Regulates the use of drones by the government, individuals, and businesses, including fines and other penalties.
Prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from assisting a federal agency in the collection or use of a person's electronic data without consent or a warrant.
Limits the use of cell site simulator devices for the purposes of locating and tracking the movements of mobile devices. For example, this bill requires law enforcement to delete data collected from cell site simulators after a certain period of time.
Requires a warrant or a person's informed consent to use a cell site simulator device, which is used to locate and track mobile devices. This bill also regulates how law enforcement can handle the data collected through a cell site simulator device.
Establishes additional restrictions on the use of number plate scanning devices by law enforcement. For example, this bill requires all license plate data to be encrypted.
Requires a law enforcement officer to wear a body camera if there is a substantiated complaint based on the officer's conduct. This bill increases penalty assessments to pay for body cameras.
Regulates when law enforcement officers should wear body cameras and how to treat the recordings.
Requires a law enforcement officer making a routine stop to notify an individual that he or she is being recorded unless such notice is not reasonable or practicable.
Declares that an individual’s genetic information and DNA sample are the property of the individual and, with limited exception, shall not be acquired, retained, or disclosed without consent.
Limits government access to personal information available to service providers such as Facebook.
Requires police to return recovered personal computers, telephones, and electronic tablets within 48 hours of recovery.
Prohibits law enforcement from collecting "personal materials" - including fingerprints, saliva, hair, and household papers - outside a crime scene without a warrant.
Originally written to increase the amount deducted from a person’s fine for each day of a person’s incarceration. The Senate amended the bill to instead regulate body cameras for law enforcement officers.
Constitutional amendment establishing a right to privacy.
Regulates the use of license plate scanning devices.
Prohibits law enforcement from using drones without a warrant or an imminent threat.
Requires state law enforcement officers to wear a camera when interacting with the public. The bill establishes a police accountability and safety fund, which is funded with a surcharge on criminal and civil fines, to pay the costs for cameras and related expenses.
Requires state police to wear body cameras when interacting with the public. The recordings are exempt from the right-to-know law. The House amended the bill to let each law enforcement agency decide whether or not to use body cameras; if body cameras are used, this bill sets out various regulations for the use of body cameras.
Requires a warrant to obtain electronic device location information, with some exceptions.
Limits the use of data obtained through highway surveillance.
Should NH do more to protect privacy by limiting law enforcement surveillance?
The Manchester police department announced plans to install a permanent surveillance camera downtown, sparking controversy over privacy concerns.
The Portsmouth Police Department has announced it is launching a drone program with the help of a nearly-$70,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security.
Is NH privacy amendment too vague?
Should towns install surveillance cameras in public parks?
Limits on law enforcement use of genealogy websites? | 2019-04-25T18:02:32Z | https://www.citizenscount.org/issues/law-enforcement-surveillance |
Pining away for climate change | Watts Up With That?
From the NIPCC report comes this study that suggests gloom and doom over pine forest growth suppression in the face of climate change is overwrought. The pine trees apparently have the tools within their genes to cope just fine.
Writing in Ecology and Evolution, Oney et al. (2013) note that species distribution modeling (SDM) is “an important tool to assess the impact of global environmental change.” However, they say that many species exhibit ecologically relevant intraspecific variation, but that “few studies have analyzed its relevance for species distribution modeling.” And, therefore, in an attempt to add to those few studies and enlarge upon their significance, the four researchers compared the results of three SDM techniques as applied to the highly variable lodgepole pine tree (Pinus contorta).
First, they employed a conventional approach called MaxEnt to model the tree as a single species, based on presence-absence observations. Second, they used MaxEnt to model each of the three most prevalent subspecies independently, after which they combined their projected distributions. And third, they used a universal growth transfer function (UTF) to incorporate intraspecific variation utilizing provenance trial tree growth data.
In light of this finding, Oney et al. concluded that “models derived from within-species data produce different and better projections, and coincide with ecological theory,” leading them to also conclude that “intraspecific variation may buffer against adverse effects of climate change,” which ultimately implies that many climate-alarmist horror stories of various species extinctions occurring in response to projected global warming are likely enormously overstated, as in totally false.
Oney, B., Reineking, B., O’Neill, G. and Kreyling, J. 2013. Intraspecific variation buffers projected climate change impacts on Pinus contorta. Ecology and Evolution 3: 437-449.
I quit reading at the word ‘Modeling’. Are there any scientists left that actually make observations in real world, rather than relying on models?
Is it really a possibility that plants that have been around as these trees have might actually be able to adapt to climate change? Does this mean that there is also a possibility that animals, with their much shorter life cycles, could also adapt? Gee Whiz!!! Who would have ever guessed?
Also interesting is a report on lab and field studies of blue mussels in eutrophic conditions that concludes food is more important that CO2 in terms of shell health.
How Blue Mussels Tolerate Seawater of High CO2 Partial Pressure. Tastier than pine trees. Well, maybe not these mussels….
I THINK I’m one of just a few foresters who regularly follow WUWT, so I guess I should stop following and contribute on a subject on which I have a little bit of knowledge and experience.
Trees, at least in NA (Pinus contorta is a NA species) are long-lived, sedentary (they can’t run away from the slings and arrows of bugs, disease, and inclement weather), wind pollinated, outcrossing higher plants. Species ranges vary in size and extent (Pinus contorta has a very extensive range). Essentially all of our commercially important species have large continuous ranges, which enables tremendous genetic buffering against environmental insults.
Trees are known to have very large genomes, much bigger than humans. This makes sense of course, because trees live for decades and centuries, and must grow, thrive, and reproduce successfully in the face of everything that nature throws at them. This isn’t true for all species, and those that have more dissected and limited ranges have less genetic ability to compete. Thus, we find species forced into tougher environments (Pinus aristata, e.g.) where they essentially have no other competitors other than weather.
Finally, one more observation (for now…). How many out there are at all concerned about the extinction of spruce and fir on the Gulf Coast? At the height of the Wisconsin Glaciation, spruce and fir survived along the Gulf Coast of the US, an area now dominated by Pinus elliottii. Compare that restricted range to the continent wide distributions of spruce and fir today.
I’m not worried about trees ability to withstand changes in climate. They always have, and they always will until the sun flames out.
I get a bit nervous when I see a headline that includes the phrase “Helping Species Survive…” Sometime this “help” can have unintended consequences, especially with species that have survived for eons without any special help.
Save the Spruce and Fir!
Another elementary school juvenile report getting some press.
Species distribution modelling. Hey Bubbas of the Climate Collective, get off your fat keesters and do something real.
“…many species exhibit ecologically relevant intraspecific variation…” Why can’t they just say ‘adaptable’? Trees are adaptable. But we knew that already, didn’t we?
The planet’s climate has been changing for as long as there have been plants. Is it any wonder that plants have the ability to adapt to change?
But wait a minute, if AGW CC CD etc. forces the lodgepoles to go all contorta on us, how will the Indians put up their “historic” Tee pees and Lodges? The White Man strikes again!
First, there may be more foresters here than you think. I am one and have a number of colleagues who read WUWT at least once a week, some daily – you are in good company.
I fully agree with your comments. Things may change, that’s what natural environments do, but the trees will be just fine.
I am curious if you have noticed any wholesale loss of plantations in your part of the world? We have had a couple occurrences in Ontario, but talking to some of the old-timers this is nothing new. Photo’s are paraded around as an indicator of the impending doom, but it seems to me this is more likely an indicator of inappropriate seed transfer and/or artificially narrowed genetic variability than climate change.
…. Essentially all of our commercially important species have large continuous ranges, which enables tremendous genetic buffering against environmental insults.
Trees are known to have very large genomes, much bigger than humans. This makes sense of course, because trees live for decades and centuries, and must grow, thrive, and reproduce successfully in the face of everything that nature throws at them. This isn’t true for all species….
One of my big problems with GMO crops, aside from horizontal gene transfer ( second link ) is the lack of genetic diversity. This is not just in GMO but in a lot of other food species.
He said it’s also important to preserve non-commercial breeds and wild birds for the purpose of safeguarding genetic diversity and that interbreeding additional species with commercial lines might help protect the industry.
The research, led by Hans Cheng of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is in Monday’s (Nov. 3) early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences at http://www.pnas.org/papbyrecent.shtml.
SAVE A TREE BURN COAL!
I’m in Oregon, and no, we are not seeing anything out of the ordinary with plantations.
BTW, I began my career in Ontario, working for the MNR in Timmins, 1980-83.
3) The number of U.S. fires has steadily decreased while total acreage burn increased until 2006.
The graphs illustrate through data that in fact it is forest policy rather than climate change that have brought on bigger fires in recent decades, as the trend is not seen in wild northern forests.
I may be wrong, but I got the impression that their modeling was a mathematical construct based on actual observations over time. Not a virtual construct based on input assumptions. If that’s the case, then the criticism of it being “only a model” isn’t valid.
I’ve got a District Ranger friend who often complains that the alleged “environmentalists” keep trying to tell her what “natural” is. In the latest episode, the Forest Service’s fuel reduction program might have just saved The Dalles, Or., water supply system close to the Columbia River, as well as some coveted big Ponderosa, from destruction by a fire there. The Forest Service cleared some surface and cut low branches off the low altitude Ponderosa which grow there. She says the fire slowed when it hit the reduced fuel area and the Ponderosa might have been spared. How utterly “unnatural” of them!
I wonder if their “MaxEnt” utilizes the Maximum Entropy Principle, first formalized by my statistics guru Edwin Thompson Jaynes. I enjoy his practical illustration of MaxEnt in the difference between Bayesian naive priors, subjective (p=0 or p=1) and objective (p=0.5). The proper objective naive prior maximizes entropy by not falsely claiming knowledge not in hand.
Trees are very resilient but cold is more deadly. About 9000 years ago trees reached the Arctic Ocean coastline and remained during the Holocene Optimum. As temperatures began to cool the trees retreated and are now several hundred kilometers further south.
HIking the high elevation in the Sierra Nevada you can see ancient tree remnants. A 1997 study in Sequoia National Park found that “Tree-line elevation was higher than at present throughout most of the last 3500 years.
We assume that “species’ intraspecific variation” means that intrinsic genetic differences affect all organisms’ response to environmental changes in ways analogous to resisting a disease. Do tell!– so AGW’s blinkered ideologues have of a sudden discovered Mendelian genetics?
Now that “cold is warm” and vice versa, the Kevin Trenberths of this world have also posited Perpetual Motion: Rising/falling deep-ocean temperature differentials produce heat-energy from nothing in the Marianna’s Trench.
At what point does one call out these preposterous frauds, re-directing their Big Government rent monies to profound socio-cultural exegeses of Gen-Y twerking skills?
Well that certainly gives a pretty good dating of the Holocene Climate Optimums doesn’t it!
Scientists found four different “generations” of above-ground remains with ages that dated 375, 5660, 9000 and 9550 years old.
And the Little Ice Age, for that matter.
So they can make money.
Rather fancy way to show that Darwin was right.
Pinus contorta is a fascinating species but perhaps not a good subject for this type of study. P. contorta is widespread but actually has a highly discontinuous range with many isolated populations. Except at northern tree line and on the high elevation ash beds of eastern Oregon and the greater Yellowstone area , populations tend to be colonizers where other species cannot grow. Despite “intraspecific” variation, P. contorta somehow very effectively RESISTS speciation in its isolated populations. Can resistance to speciation be an adaptation to prevent isolated populations from adapting to temporary local conditions for the benefit of the species as a whole? P. contorta presents major challenges to the “selfish gene” theory.
“intraspecific variation”, local “gene pools” … Yep. Commonly observed here in the “Dry Tropics”.
Livistona australis, paperbarks, casuarinas sourced in the local area grow ok and will self-replicate if given a chance. Ostensibly the “same” sub-species sourced from nearby don’t do so well. On the other hand, we have the foxtail palm, originally found only in Cape Melville National Park and listed as endangered. They struggle if planted singly on traffic roundabouts and the like. Plant three together, they do better. Plant them in an artificial canyon eg between 3-storey buildings, they shoot up to the light.
Off topic Met Office Hadley Centre has released very quitely latest temperatures through August 2012 and 0.17C previous increase in temperatures has now gone. Dead flat since 1997. See above link for better coverage.
Take a look around you. Are any humans you know exactly identical to one another?
Or are any animals you know exactly identical to one another?
Do you know of those amongst your friends and associates those who like and thrive in the cold and those who like and thrive in the heat?
The variations in genetic adaptability is universal throughout the planet’s bio -sphere.
So the variations in that genetic adaptability and the consequent natural selection from out of a species for those specimens that can adapt to a particular set of changing or changed natural circumstances is a universal attribute of life on this planet.
The cultists of global warming alarmism can in their ignorance and with their closed minds and rigid ideology, only imagine a fixed, rigid, inflexible, closed and limited in all aspects group of life forms on this planet. They are beyond imagining that any life forms might be able to adapt and adapt rapidly and yet that very immense specie’s adaptability, possibly the greatest adaptability of any life form on this planet, stares back at them every time they look in a mirror or look at another of the Homo sapien species.
Another such example here in Australia of the ability of what was assumed to be totally dead Australian outback River Gum Trees to re-shoot and start re-growing.
About a hundred or more years ago in more northern and very dry regions of inland South Australia [ the driest state in the driest continent ] a storm rain fed creek changed course to a new course some many kilometres distance away.
The great River Gums that line these outback creeks eventually died without the occasional storm fed run of the creek.
Recently the creek for reasons totally unknown, reverted back to it’s original course.
With the new runs of water a few of those old, dead trees suddenly started to throw out new shoots from what seemed totally dead and slowly rotting trunks and branches and started re-growing.
Nature is far, far more resilient and adaptable than the alarmists are ever capable of admitting or recognising.
Often due to the fact that recognising such natural resilience would seriously impact on their alarmist agenda based on creating fear of change and creating fear as as an object in itself.
The real problem in our modern society is that with over half the world’s population now living in cities of 100,000 population or more there is now a rapidly increasing lack of real down to earth knowledge and appreciation of just what Nature really is and just how tough and adaptable and resilient Nature outside of the highly rigid, artificial, mostly man made environment of the cities, actually is.
Our problem is not Nature’s adaptability or the way Nature acts and behaves and reacts.
It is in the mentally rigid picture of what Nature supposedly is and how Nature is to supposedly react to and it’s supposed inability to adapt that is being developed within the highly artificial man-made environment of the cities.
And that is a developing and major problem that politically and socially which will create immense problems for both Nature itself as attempts will be made to force natural changes and events into conforming with a rigid conformist ideology based around what Nature is supposed to look like and conform to according to the city based activists and ideologists.
When Nature refuses or fails to conform to this idealised vision then somebody must be at fault and scape goats will be sought and found. and they are most likely to come from the decreasing minorities and numbers in the rural regions of so many nations.
And immense and increasing problems for those who dwell outside of the cities and are the food producers and food providers and resource developers. will become a fact of life as the ignorance and complete out of touch with natural reality becomes a major attribute of the city based activists and ideologist who will increasingly try to enforce their idealised vision of Nature onto both Nature itself and onto those who live in, amongst and use Nature in their production and industrial pursuits.
In Georgia pine trees are the weeds of the tree family. You cannot get rid of them, the wind blows them over on peoples houses, and encroaching pine forests are taking over any piece of property that is not buzz-cut weekly.
So, the heck with pine trees. They are in no danger of disappearing. Indeed, they are like cockroaches. They seem to thrive everywhere.
Some species have adapted better by adapting the ability to adapt. Metadaptabilty!
When we lived in New England I had two wild AMERICAN Chestnuts in the back woods that managed to stay alive. One of them bloomed every year and had chestnuts. (I wish I had know at that time about the The American Chestnut Foundation.
That brought tears to my eyes. Even when all seems dead and finished, there is yet — hope.
There are so many metaphors for Life and Truth in creation. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. | 2019-04-22T22:07:36Z | https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/29/pining-away-for-climate-change/?shared=email&msg=fail |
Is the leather strap synthetic?
Or Made from cow skin? Or pig skin? Or horse skin?
Because really like the carbon fiber strap... it is made from leather right?
2)Is the ZeTime battery covered in the 2 years MyKronoz plan? I'm worry about the battery lifespan If i heavily use my ZeTime and charge it everynight.
3)if the straps isnt covered with warranty, how about the Stylish Desktop Charger? Or the 2 in 1 charger? Are the charger covered in MyKronoz warranty also?
Will there ever be a possibility to set a battery limit so that it automatically shuts off the smart watch capabilities and reverts to the regular watch capabilities? I would love to be able to set a battery percentage, so that when it gets to that limit, it shuts off and uses the battery only for regular watch functions. I fear I may not pay attention to the battery and the watch will die, thus the battery will be drained and won't even be able to use the regular watch functions either.
I am an embedded software engineer myself and played in the past with "clocks".
Synchronising the hands positions to where the CPU thinks they are.
Do you have an absolute position feedback for your individual motors driving the hands?
Or do we need to "calibrate" the hands each time the battery is discharged?
And how do you correct the hands moving by considerable (external) shocks?
Just hoping to get an honest answer.
Hi Fred, When I backed for this project I was under the impression that I could select any watch case and strap from the category that I have backed. Now I'm concerned that this is not the case rather it is based on a preselect combination. Request you to clarify this.
I'm concerned about the digital display on the Petite; will it be big enough to navigate easily and to actually read the messages that come in? I recently had to start using reading glasses, I don't want to have to put them on every time I look at the watch. At the same time, as a woman, I prefer the smaller size for wear and comfort. Know what I mean?
- Which access rights does the app need on your phone?
- What data is collected by the watch?
- What data is collected by the mobile app?
- What information is shared/fed back to your company/servers?
- Is any data collected anonymised?
- How is data transmission secured/encrypted?
- Can the user opt out/switch off data collection?
Will it have apps like stopwatch, countdown timer, tachymeter, compass?
Stopwatch and countdown timer will be good to have. Tachymeter and compass might require hardware support?
Will it have Google maps notification mirroring?
Can it have link loss notification when it gets disconnected from phone?
Many of us want the polished stainless case. Why did you decide to cancel this option as you used this model to advertise you KS campaign?
what is the amount of heat that will release from the watch itself? can our wrist feel the heat when there are a lot notification and process running in the watch?
Hello Fred, and Boris) After speaking to someone at MyKronoz via Private message I had very high hopes that an actual Titanium metal watch case would be made available for backers, who could then add the extra cost of upgrading to their pledge.
I was very disheartened to hear that you would not be making a Titanium metal case due to the cost, as I and many others have stated we would be more than happy to pay the upgrade costs to have a true Titanium metal case.....We never expected it for free.
I am interested to know more about the general "old fashioned" watch quality, lifespan etc.? Is this a watch, I will have to change like my smartphone 3-4 years, or can/will I "change the batt" like I do in my 15 year old $600 Seiko Divers 200m watch? If this is just a $189 "cheap" bad quality, no batt exchange or bad electronics (a hole in a LCD?) A lot of non answered questions? I mean what do I / you expect from a $139 watch ? quality ?
I won't always have my phone with me, or in BT range of the ZeTime. What functionality will still be available on the ZeTime when outside of range and how will the ZeTime play catchup when it comes back in range? Will the iOS app on the iPhone need to be active for any of the functions to work, such as messaging, music control, taking photos etc?
Have you measured the useful life of the battery? How many years can the ZeTime watch works and how do you plan to replace the battery?
How are you planning to ensure that the watches will be delivered in September?
Also how are you planning to keep us posted on the progress after the campaigns ends?
When will we have live demonstration of some of the core functions of the watch?
Fred-Boris, will you be able to make a silver, polished watchcase? As you can see in the comments, it is one that is wanted by a huge number of backers.
And secondly can you ship all ZeTime's without straps (or a black silicon as a $5m stretchgoal - this was suggested in the comments)? That way we aren't stuck to the combinations you have provided for our collection band (i.e. metal band for elite backers), but instead we can choose any band from the collection we pledged for?
Will there be continuous updates of the watch OS (firmware) for bug fix and new features after it's launched? Will it be updated throught the phone?
1) Please, consider Telegram as a quite popular messenger - I am pretty sure I'm not the only one among bakers who use it, as a main messenger app as well. So lack of notification from this app would be a great disappointment.
2) I'm not sure I got it right, will these watches work with navigation software (preinstalled and user installed)? That would be a great help in travelling, when you need to save phone energy and don't want to hold your phone in hands and turned on all the time.
Can you receive notifications from all apps or only the apps you will support? And will it be possible to receive only notifications from selected apps?
What is the exact difference between the three types of watches? Only the watch bands?
Is this project EU-friendly ? I.e. - will it ship from inside EU ? If not, then I'll be charged a $20 + 25% tax - which makes the price too high.
Hi, how would the desk charger be usable if the watch is used with a metal link clasp type band?
What is the plan of keeping us backers updated about the entire process after the campaign ends? Have you thought of that?
Are there plans, or will there be plans, to integrate the watch to have music control? Such as Spotify, Pandora, and iTunes?
I apologize if this question has been asked and answered already.
i can see video and hear you in the Netherlands. Chat mode is not available.
As a smartwatch is only as good as its operating system, how lang can you guarantee updates for the ZeTime?
*Some backers would like the digital face that is on the campaign page, but apparently wasn't on any of the surveys?.
Please confirm whether we would be able to choose any available straps from the list. for the watch.
For example the Titanium models are listed with Black flat silicon, Carbon with orange stitch & milanese titanium options in the available models while there are more options from the strap list. If I want my Elite watch to be with titanium metal link strap, would I be able to order it or does it have to ordered as an additional strap with extra price paid?
a) Will we be able to use existing watchfaces from the adnoid Wear market?
b) Will we ba able to create and share our own watchfaces?
b) Applications from thouse OS can be installed and used?
1) How much radiation is emitted from Zetime?
-And is that only when connected via bluetooth?
2) How much more would it cost per unit to upgrade to real titanium?
-Is this an option if enough people ask and back it?
3) Are all 5 watch cases the same regarding scratch resistance & durability?
-Meaning does the black or titanium show scratches/get scratched easier than silver or yellow gold , ect?
The rewards for 1.5 and then for 3.5 seem to both get me extra bands, but it looks like you replaced the 1.5 with the 3.5, not in addition? is that correct?
Can I pair my phone to the watch and my car stereo at the same time?
How does the battery life management work in Detail? Does the screen stay online for 3 days and afterwards I've got enough energie left so the traditional watch stays alive 27 more days?
Congrats for the super successful campaign!
1. Users may decide to use the watch for 5 or more years even if technology evolves very fast. Do you have plans for aftersales service (provision of tear down & troubleshooting guide, spare parts such as batteries). If not, kindly give it a thought.
2. I would love to see the watch bezel be equipped with indications for easy time reading in case the battery for smart functions is fully drained.
All the best and hope you'll come with an even more surprising ZeTime2 soon.
Hi, will be avaible pladge manager to add items to the pledge?
Can you show all the colors including the titanium please? Showing the watch bands would also help with our choice. Thanks.
A cheeky question. Any chance I can be a Beta tester for this amazing project and team.
I am just 6 weeks post heart transplant operation and could do with the heart monitor.
Also, did I see somewhere that you hope to add other stats such as spo2 as heart rhythm to functionality the? blood pressure as well via a Bluetooth piece of hardware even?
Must I include the shipping price in my pledge? or will it automatically be added to my pledge?
Also - I bought a twin pack, but only wants to buy one charger for $29 is this possbile by just adding $29 to my pledge?
Will there be an SDK to write own watchfaces?
Will high quality pictures be send of each watch color, so we can decide which color we want? Or do you only have renders at this moment?
How well with the colour wear on the case??
what type of guarantee can you give us (the backers) that you guys will deliver in September?
Can we adjust the time manually when smart function stops and rest of the battery is used for watch only?
Is the black just a coating that can be scratched off? How durable are the coatings?
Can screen brightness be set?
Could you make and web application to see the combinations between the smartwatch and the bands?
why do we have to choose from pre selected watch-band combinations.
please let us choose the watchbody and bands seperated.
Provided no obstruction such as brickwall, what is the maximum connection distance between phone and zetime?
i need more details about The free MyKronoz Care Plan andthe MyKronoz Loyalty Program?
Will it be possible to choose our base Elite version with the modern metal link band ? We didn't see it in the "Select your model picture" ? Is-it only an optionnal band :( ?
The titanium version didn't seems to have the white circle around the front of the watch, is-it the case or only the picture ? And what is this "white circle" around the black model ?
And like many backers already asked, will it be possible to add more band during the pledge manager and complete our order ?
Could you clarify the water resistance? A number of sources say 30m is NOT sufficient for water activities. Are you targeting for higher than that, or will this just be "splash" resistant?
02. Replacement of battery - worldwide service - I am in Dubai UAE.
03. Longevity of the watch, since even if the smart functions not there can it be used as a normal watch?
04. Integration of the physical needles with the watch interface...related to the 03 question,since usage for a normal watch.
Thumbs up for the idea, and still maintaining the core principle of time keeping.
Will there be HD space? Bluetooth connectivity? That way you could run with the watch and listen to music without having to carry your phone.
How to order the petite model?
Hi, will zetime be able to utilise the GPS on the phone it is connected to to track distances travelled?
If you did not do so already in the comment/campaign sections, explain how you will achieve the "same" specs of the "Petite" considering its size (battery life, resolution, charger compatibility), and detail its price structure (original/premium/elite) considering we can only pledge 139$ for it?
What do I have to pledge for two petit? The are a little cheaper than the regular.
Would you show us the clearer picture afterward? At least we could take a look in different color, especially brushed silver, polished silver and titanum.
I missed the beginning of the presentation, did you make progress on making the watch usable by left handers?
Question regarding waterproof? Did ZeTime get the certification? will it be a diving watch?
Do you expect any delays on certification or production tests or do you have good experience with these tests allready?
i kow you said you will support our "favorite Music app"... can you confirm that the Watch will support Spotify?
Can we see a demo of the function of the watch in this live broadcast. love the updates, keep it up!
those of us that backed the zetime the last 3 hours or so. was stock with the KS special reward, cause the early bird reward met the 20000 limit, what do we get for the last 25usd.
1) What stainless steel ratings for the watch case? Is the titanium case available?
2) Where is watch being made? Is it all Swiss made?
How long is the Pledge Manager running? So how much more time after the campaign ends do I have to add more items?
Will the heart rate function with the NATO band?
How wil shipment be arranged, via whom? Shipment to Europe. Will/Can there be a pick-up point in Zwitserland instead of shipping? Thanks for answering regards Mark (NL) PS looking forward to the product.
How is the certification for Water Proofing progressing?
BLUETOOTH connectivty, will it be good or bad? Are you going to fix the disconnect issues you had with your older devices?
What is the status of the testing (Quality)?
will you support Spotify remote control e.g. 'Next song' or 'Prev Song' in a future software update?
I would love that function because I'm only using Spotify and not the music app from iOS for listening music.
Will there be matching buckles for all watchbands - for each watchcase? At the moment titanium case only has three options for matching buckles.
how long can the battery last if the heart sensor being on continuously?
Congrats on storming through the $5m mark!
Please tell us more regarding your stainless steel quality and the quality of the polished silver as your explanation to remove polished collection was based on concerns for every-day-use/durability/sensitivity to scratches.
I am a Super EB backer for twin pack at Elite level. We will convert one of these to petite. Would like shipping split so tried to add $5 to shipping - was unable to do this, so have added $5 to total pledge - trust this is the right way to have done this.
Also - any thoughts of close out stretch goals/rewards since project is now as $5m and last other reward was at $4m?
Thanks for running a great project and top class process with plenty of feedback and interaction - please keep this going in the post-funding phase as you have set a great example for others.
1. II understand that the watch battery last for 3 days while using the smart watch functions and then after those 3 days it still lets us use the watch like a regular analog watch for 30 days? Within those 30 days of not having the "smart watch features" is it still calculating our steps and sleep and things of that nature? (I understand we wouldn't be able to use it for answering messages and check social media notifications and stuff like that. But I was just trying to see if the watch still collected the data for it and updated those measurables with the app accordingly once the watch got charged).
2. Can the watch be completely turned off for times when you are not wearing the watch for long periods of time as a week or so? Or is there not a way to turn it completely off?
I understand that the watch battery last for 3 days while using the smart watch functions and then after those 3 days it still lets us use the watch like a regular analog watch for 30 days? Within those 30 days of not having the "smart watch features" is it still calculating our steps and sleep and things of that nature? (I understand we wouldn't be able to use it for answering messages and check social media notifications and stuff like that. But I was just trying to see if the watch still collected the data for it and updated those measurables with the app accordingly once the watch got charged).
With the "Distributor Backing Option" When we receive will we be allowed to list the item for Retail sale on Big ecommerce markets like Amazon and Ebay under your Brand's listing or name.
Will there be a set limit on the price, amount and or any other restrictions such as places we may sell the watches?
Please respond as soon as you can, I have a few parties interested in purchasing the package.
Will backer be able to contribute to the device's capabilities (i.e write program compatible with the watch)? I could think of some really cool capabilities that would be awesome to have on this device.
Also, any chance that there will be a version with a chronograph-style inner ring? Just idea - I'm not saying the physical aesthetics are poorly designed in any way.
Finally, will the buttons on the watch be re-programmable? For example, say I have some IoT devices around my house/ office/ car or what have you, would I be able to toggle them with this device? or is there any on going investigations into this capability.
On a different note, I really like your company's design/ idea. It's incredibly clever and merge the best of both into one. This to me is way better than what the fossil hybrids could provide.
Will the iOS app share information and work with Apple health app to provide sleep and HR information to it?
As the watch is using your custom OS, how long can you guarantee software updates and compatibility to latest iOS/Android for the watch?
Does the watch support multiple phones? I am using an Android and iOS phone in parallel.
Hi, I think the watch is going to be absolutely amazing. But I'm just a bit perplexed as to why you can't add some sort of luminosity to the hands. Most high quality watches even cheaper watches with analogue displays have some sort of luminosity on the hands. For example, if your're in the cinema or theatre where it's ultimately quite dark, you should be able to see the time without activating the screen and if your screen isn't working and you say you're able to see the time even if there is no screen available, well you can't. Surely there should be some way of seeing where the hands are on the face. Most watches with hands have some sort of luminosity to varying degrees, surely with your engineering know how and expertise this cannot be that difficult to attain.
I have read that the optical wrist hear rate monitors are not particularly accurate. Can you comment on the accuracy of the ZeTime heart rate monitor?
I know the ZeTime has no GPS, but will there be a navigation interface with the phone to display basic navigation directions from e.g. Google Maps?
Or will this be left up to the various navigation companies to make their own interface for a Zetime?
My preference would be for ZeTime to integrate a basic way to read from the most popular navigation apps/webpages.
Hi, it is possible to make custom applications and in wich language are they written ?
If you fully charge the Zeetime and don't use the smart watch features for the entire charge will the mechanical part operate beyond the 30 day limit or is there a software limitation that limits it to 30 day regardless of how much you use the smart features?
I know the watch band sizes are 22mm for regular and 20 mm for petite, but what are the lengths of the watch bands for the regular and petite models (I'm trying to decide which model will fit my wrist best)? Will there be different lengths or are they all the same length? Thanks!
I have just read the last email where you mention the Titanium watch case/bezel.
You mention it would not be "affordable"
How much would the price be for this option please?
I would much prefer a titanium case rather than a stainless as it would bring it into line with having sapphire glass.
As many have already asked are you going to adjust the water rating higher or insure that the 30meters is enough to go swiming/ water sports such as water skiing, diving (not scuba diving), etc.
Why the switch to sapphire from gorilla glass? I have read sapphire is more prone to breaking, thicker, transmits less light, heavier, and more expensive.
Will there be a Google maps app for the watch that links with the phone?
Are there any news concerning the lefty version?
What materials are used to make the leather, carbon, and jean bands?
1) Stainless steel ratings for the watch case? What about the titanium case?
2) Where is it ultimately made? Swiss made?
Will the charger work with the metal bands or will we have to remove it?
What is the latest on accommodating lefties?
Have you considered the travel case mentioned on update 3?
Can i upgrade my pledge to include petite after campaign ends?
why is it called "ZeTime"?
Will the watch be compatible with the major fitness apps?
Hi, Can we see a demo of the functions of the watch in this live broadcast? love the updates, keep it up!
if I pledge now 10 $ or somethinglinke that, am I able to get a watch after campain with your survey?
If we choose the Elite Shiny watch. Can we still choose the carbon with orange stitch?
What is the expected battery life before replacement?
Will the desktop charger work with the metal clasp type watches (the non standing type)? it seems that the clasp would collide with the base of the charger.
If we pledge 2 Zetime, can we select 1 44mm first so after we get on September only decide for the balance 1?
How acurate is the heart rate sensor and how does this work?
Is the titanium a real titanuim case, or titanium coloured coating?
Will the titanium also be available with the titanium metal link or do I need to opt for the milanese and buy the titanium metal link seperately?
how much hot / cold temperture can ZeTime will take?
How's your plan like to overtake Apple Watch?!!!
Does the care plan cover waterproofing since certification is pending?
What is the long term support plan for the android/ios app?
will the watch be compatible with the major fitness apps available?
What is the battery lifespan...how long will it last? Is the battery replaceable via MyKronos?
Will you provide a printable template for each size to facilitate the choice between both sizes?
how do we know which size will fit use better?
How secure are the magnetic bands?
Will the watch support notifications for any Android/iOS app or is it only notifications from apps specifically supported by you guys?
How stable are the colors like titanium or black? Will they easily chip off?
Unfortunately, start the session late, but I'll be grateful if you could answer the question about battery life and the program they have in mind to replace it ... to see later the replay of today's session.
How about the colors? are they equally scratch-resistant and stable over time?
Can the watch sync with for example my polar heart beat sensor?
1. I don't know if I want the charging stand or extra bands. To claim the 50% discount, must it be part of the pledge or can I decide in BackerKit later and add money and still get the discount?
2. If I pledge for the original, can I still preorder the elite bands?
are we still comparing about the glass? Gorilla, or Saphire?
what will be the difference in price for distributor quantities from the Kick starter price to after is released to the market?
Am I correct that you will still need to pay import duties (depending on the country you are in)?
How well will the colouring on the cases wear??
What is the expected life time for the battery before it should be changed?
3 days for smart functions is gone are we still ahve 27 day for mechanical hands?
Is there any way of turning on Siri on the phone from the watch?
Can I increase the amount to my pledge after the campaign has closed down?
Oh! I would love to be a 'guinea pig' Tester here in the US of A!
did you put remote for phone camera?
Any word on full notification reply capability with iOS?
What about Pokemon Go, I see people getting AppleWatches for the purpose of playing the game, do you think games like this wil come to the ZeTime?
Are all the finishes plated (besides silver)? I'm interested in the titanium but it was said the case isn't made from titanium, so the steel may show through scratches/wear marks? It may affect my decision to go Silver or titanium.
Will I be able to adjust my pledge when the campaign is over? I am pulling my hair out trying to figure out what bands I want without the configuration tool.
will we be able to download faces from different provider?
Possible to update us on the progress of certifications and/or patents?
How high on your list of priorities is the "reject/answer call" feature?
If I like my first Zetime in Sept/Dec, how can I bulk purchase for another 5 units?
Will there be white text on a black background in case we are in a cinema, and it will not be as disruptive to other cinema goers.
1) What is the stainless steel ratings for the watch case? Is the titanium case available?
2) Where is the watch been made? Is it all Swiss made?
Will any watch band fit in the ZeTime or only your own watch bands?
is heart rate sensor can use on right hand?
Will there be push software updates for the ZeTime?
I am not sure that I did it correctly. I pledged for a super early bird for one watch, but then change an amount for two watches and 15s for shipment.
Did I do it right? Or I must change something? I really don’t want to lose a change to get a gift to my couple on good price.
When will we know more about the certification for Water Proofing?
have plane mode on the ZeTime?
..wouldn't it be easier to install android wear and just make a "zetime theme"
Could you make available an image showing the dimensions of the watch band? I want to make sure they will fit my wrists.
Hey, great work so far. I'd like to ask, if it will be possible to have the hour markers engraved on the front bezel?
Just little bars or points would really help to tell the time at the first glimse.
What would be the glass material and scratch resistant capability?
Is it possible to pick up the package (when ready) from the shop in Geneva?
I would like to ask, some people are concerned about 3atm not being perfect for swimming...are you getting a certificate for that ?
the battery . its longevity,servicability and availibilty globaly.
Also are the leather straps available seperately.
When will we be charged for the backing? During launch or at shipping?
Can we see a demo of the functions of the watch in this live session? love your updates, keep it up!!!
Is zetime and BT EARPHONE available at the same time?
Can I sync activity data with other apps like Health kit etc. ?
What logistic company will be used for the delivery? is it UPS? are we able to tracking on the delivery once the watch sent out?
I have a very small wrist but i want the original not the petite...will it fit my wrist?
Will the 2-in-i desktop charger fit the metal link watch bands?
can u show us the petite watch now?
Hello! I have a request. At the end of the campaign I need to receive copy of the invoice for my order to my email. I can get the physical copy with the delivery in September, but I need the electronic version of the invoice after my card is charged.
I pledged original ZeTime, can I add 15$ to have premium extra band?
Can I pair my iPhone to the watch and my car stereo at the same time?
Is there service centre in Singapore?
Hi Fred, will you be posting photos of all of the colours of watches in both the brushed and polished finishes?
Hi I pledged for an original collection watch – with a silicon strap.
I then paid £15 dollars for a leather carbon strap. I presume this is possible.
I ordered pledge with 2 watches, will I be able to choose 1 petite ? when?
I know that you are likely to get a lot of questions, but I urgently need the answer so I can adjust the price and not get the wrong product in the end!
Hello, I'm a backer ($184), I'd like to know if I'll have the Elite wrist bands, with Titanium.
Additionally, I'd like to know how can I buy, before the end, some specific wrist bands?
I see many "MyKronoz" apps in Google Play, will there be a new app for ZeTime ?
What shipping method will you use to South Africa?
What will be the average duration of the battery if the bluetooth is always on ?
I am from Singapore. If the watch is faulty, who should I send to for repair? If to send back to factory during warranty, will the factory pay for the courier service?
Just wanting confirmation, by ordering the elite collection and wanting Titanium, does that mean I have to take the milanese band or can I chose a different elite band? Please confirm!
Audio and video don't match.
can I pledge $10 now and up my pledge later?
We all know Pebble's story. What is your plan to compete with Apple and stay in business? In other words, how will you design your company so that you are not another Pebble?
Does the watch have a gps?
Can we use Google Maps?
Is it possible to shorten the milanese bands?
Will it be able to readread hebrew messages?
Can we use picture in what phone to make it as the background for the watch?
Is it possible to see the watches on peoples wrists?
With regard to the charger: will it be possible to use the standard 2-in-1 desk charger with a metal link band? It doesn't look like you'll be able to put the watch on there without detaching the band on one side, unless you balance it on the clasp.
Both video and audio coming through great!
Is the 50% discount on straps still possible after the campaign ends and before we submit our final selections via the configurator? e.g. I decide I want 2 more elite bands 2 weeks from now, will that cost me $25x2=$50 or $50x2=$100.
"No need to search for your phone in your pocket: with ZeTime you can control your favorite music app straight from your wrist"
My favorite Music app is Spotify ... can you confirm support for Spotify?
Is there are Blue texture silicon band available?
Pledged on an early bird offer with several pledges still available. However, it would not allow me to pledge. I was hoping to pledge for an elite watch @ $174. Is this still possible?
Will we be able to see high quality photos of each watch combination in order to help us make our decision? The spreadsheet does not show how the watches look in reality.
Do you provide tracking number of shipment?
I know you have given measurements for the overall watch sizes. But do you have the sizes (mm) of the actual screens on for the standard vs. petite?
Will you be doing another demo today ?
Will the watch be open to other apps? I'd love to see Nike Running!
will the watch have inbuilt speakers?
Do I need to pay 174$ for the early bird Elite Collection or 184$ for the Smartwatch with shipping.
I paid a pledge about 174$ and now there is written my pledge ist 164$ with 10$ shipping. But I definetly want the Elite Collection.
Is anyone else getting a double audio?
For the non numbered ZeTime backers can you not put the word Kickstarter or the KS logo, instead create a nice symbol or logo that backers will know what its for and will not look tacky and take up nice clean space on the back of the watch?
Maybe do a few symbols or logos and us backers choose?
Are there going to be a 4.5M and a 5M stretch goals? I take it the sales/backing in the last 70 hours may have taken the team by surprise.
Will you support IFTTT features from the watch?
Can I change the time manually when I am not connecting to my phone?
use twitter to ask questions?
Can it be set to hebrew language?
how do i choose Elite collection? i cant find the place to change it from original to elite...?
How will the watch determine local time?
Hello, guys. First and foremost. Congratulations for this incredible project. For those of us who have pledged for 2 ZeTimes, will we be able to get one in Regular size and one in Petite size?
Hello, do I need to write 174$ as pledge for the Early Bird Elite Selection or 184$ for the smartwatch with the shipping amount?
I paid 174$ but now there is written my pledge amount is 164$ with 10$ shipping amount.
Congratulation on an excellent kickstarter campaign.
Do you think that Kronoz could produce a ZeTime model with a full titanium case. Possibly at a later stage and as an exclusive more expensive model? I would definitely be a buyer. Cheers George.
What are your plans for supporting the watch after some time (say: a year)? It would be a pity if support and updates will stop (see Pebble).
Notepad... type your question, copy paste to Q&A and then the question arrives.
How wil shipment be arranged, via whom? Shipment to Europe.
Will/Can there be a pick-up point in Zwitserland instead of shipping?
Can we use picture in phone to make it as the background for the watch?
Do the kickstarter stretch goals apply to all backers or do the stretch goals only apply if you backed before a stretch goal was achieved?
Are you planning to attend any fair/exhibition in the next months where you'll be showing ZeTime? Can you share your calendar so that people living nearby can come and have a hands-on on the product? It would be awesome!!!
What is estimated lifespan? Is it only because of the "proof of water resistance" that I can't change the battery myself?
What is the color of Henry the IV th white horse?
Can we see the watches on Peoples wrists?
I can see and hear but no chat and this question box disappears after typing 3 words, causing me to click ask question over and over. But I can see and hear just fine.
Can High Quality Photos be submitted of all watch case finishes and band selections before the survey campaign ends?
Hi, Is it possible to change my choice of the watch after the campign and pay extra? For example: can I opt for Premium or Elite from Original when the survey is sent and pay extra?
I have just backed your project. It is the first time doing this. I was interested by your video I have seen on Facebook. I backed $159 plus shipping. What do I get. Can I upgrade afterwards if I want I different model?
Are all the finishes plated (besides silver)? I'm interested in the titanium but it was said the case isn't made from titanium, so the steel may show through scratches/wear marks?
you mentioned spreadsheets. where can we find them?
Currently a Twin pack super early bird Elite backer. Double up on that same pledge, got some feedback at the comment from the public that when double up I need to backed the early bird instead of super early bird. So I should be backing twin packed super early bird and then upgrade my pledge with another Early bird twin pack am I correct?
can the GPS on the phone be used to show, on ZeTime?
Will there be an app store?
What logistics companies will be used for the delivery? UPS? can we get tracking for the delivery?
Do I have to buy the charging stand if I want to have a metal link band with butterfly buckle or will it fit around the 2-in-1 desk charger?
1) I owned a smartwatch from another company and I had skin irritation due to the HR sensor (wrist started turning black). Is it possible to disable the HR sensor and keep the "smartwatch mode" enabled?
2) Some watches allow you to control music players (spotify, google play, beyond pod) with your watch. Will it be possible to do that with ZeTime?
Are the titanium clasps for silicone and leather straps exclusive to backers of basic / premium levels or can i as elite backer receive a full range of bands with titanium clasps should I choose that colour scheme?
Can you confirm that the blue and black jean straps are not backed by leather or contain leather as I do not wear animal skin, also will the clasps match the watch case colour?
If i double submitted on my last question I posted, sorry!
Chat test. Let me know if you get this.
Watch finish question: Is the titanium finish a 100% all titanium watch or is it just grey coated stainless steel? I assume the "gold" version also is a steel watch with a PVD coating, correct? - Awesome work - keep it up please!
How do you answer a WhatsApp message with your phone? Has it a built in microphone?
The watch support Hebrew notifications?
I still don't know how much to pledge regards to the add-ons.
The original worth 139$ you get a watch + 1 silicon bands, while premiums worth $160 with a watch + premium band.
Now if you say that you can buy extra premium band for $15. Means I can bought the original plan $139 + premium band $15 which is $154?
I presume we can just request the Petite and then the colour and strap/s colour we want, with the awareness that we won't get this til December?
Does this phone supports Line Application?
Will you support syncing data with Google Fit?
Will we be able to toggle to a whole bunch of different face looks and change them in a menu at will, and will more come with updates?
Will you involve selected kickstarter backer in your planned July Beta Testing Program?
What is the face diameter? I can only find the strap width of 22mm which would imply a rather large face (42mm+). And will you be offering more than one case shape/style (not just material/colour)?
I pledged $298, how will you know what I want? I'd like the original and the petite that was unlocked. Also does the petite get an extra strap as well or only the original?
Can you text back on a ZeTime Watch or is it just notification you get?
What material are the metal bands made of?
Question about my pledge. I pledged 149.00 If I understand correctly if I want an Elite I should up my pledge to 174 ?
Hi, is the titanium watch face made of actual solid titanium or is it titanium coating?
Just became a backer and excited to see so much excitement with your hybrid design.
- Any chance this release will have REPLY capabilities to SMS or EMAIL - either pre-canned responses or voice-to-txt?
- If so, any differences with Android vs. IOS?
I pledged $324 for 2 Elite collection watches. Do I need to add the shipping myself, is it included, or added automatically?
I'd like to pre-order a model of regular zetime "petite".
Is it already possible and if so how should I proceed ?
Will all other apps that you guys have not mentioned work on the ZeTime as well? Or let's say it this way: Will not officially supported apps still show notifications on the ZeTime?
So you don't have any electronics engineer in the team?
Are you shipping to Israel?
Can you show the back of the carbon straps, as it looks like the back of the straps might be in the same colour as the stitching colour?
Hey there - is the ladies watch availible if i give you guys the support with 139$?
will there be compatibility with runtastic app, or other fitness app?
I have not added any options to my pledge, but I am assuming that this will all be taken care of when we finalize the documents via email. Am I correct in assuming the 'add-ons' can be requested after the close?
2- Is the shipping location selected automatically by continent? This is question is about extra taxes and customs if it is shipped outside Europe.
3- Can I get a commercial invoice without TAX?
4- Will I get all the achievement goals even If I backed the project now in April 2017?
How will "answering to notifications" work? Since there is no mic, there are only templates? How will that UX work?
as there is no GPS in the watch how will the watch determine distance when i go for a run?
Would you please add a black jean watch band with green stitching as another KS edition for people that don't like the leather band?
I pledged for the early bird 1 watch Elite @ $174 plus $10 and added the charging stand for $29.90 that totals $214 pledge. Can I increase my pledge by $150 (plus $10 shipping) and qualify for the 2 watch Elite collection deal? I think I want a second watch now that you have the smaller one available. Please let me know!
wy is there no other payment option than credit card, like pay pal, bank transfer or sth.?
Can you make OLED version with sapphire glass?
Are there separate batteries between the smartwatch mode and the mechanical arms? That way, the mechanical arms can still work when the main battery for smartwatch is depleted. Better yet, will there be a kinetic support for the mechanical arms?
Is the titanium watch case full titanium or just coated?
Hi, I was wondering if you plan to include the possibility to control the playback of music on the iPhone (start/stop/pause?/skip). I very much appreciate this feature in my current smart watch.
With the petite, what is the largest size of wrist that will be able to enjoy this watch?
will it have the ability to record sport activity like running and cycling ?
1. I didn't see where you can choose for regular vs petite. How will that work?
2. Besides the physical size, are there any other differences between the regular and petite models? Does the petite have a higher DPI or a lower resolution?
URGENT: I pledged $274 and chose the 2 Zetime Elite collection as a Super Early Bird. However, somehow I am now shown as choosing only the Original version and adding $15 for shipping. Can this be fixed, as I was early enough to back as an Elite backer, but now I'm having to pay an extra $50 for the collection that I originally chose? I don't know how this happened, but it is ridiculous to me. I am also adding on a THIRD watch so my mom can also have one.
I selected the 2 ZeTime Offer (ELite Collection) and now would like to add 2 x ZeTIme Elites. How do I do this?
Hi. I was an early original collection backer and wanted to add an extra premium band + kickstand. Backing amount is now $193.00. Is this ok?
I pledge $170 in order to get the "premium". I haven't received a mail from ZE-time confirming ly pledge. Is that normal ?
Where can I select an option for 2 Zetime petite models?
How do i choose the petite version?
Will Ze Time work with the Windows 10 phone?
Will there be a window to exchange bands (ie. if it doesn't fit well or we don't like the style of it once we have it on our wrists)?
Are you still planning on having a preview configurator tool with zoom and will all bands be available with all watch faces within their sections (ie. Can I have the silver watch face with black milanese if I'm an Elite backer)?
A friend has ordered an early bird Elite and so did I. We are considering buying the smaller one too so that would be 2 each. Would it make any difference if we order the two new ones on one of our pledges or should we pledge on each of our own?
Hi, what do i do if I want to get a Zetime and a Zetime petite? Do get the 2 watch package?
Can it link with Endomondo application ?
One more thing , Is it possible to show function of application that you design ?
I looking for comparing with garmin vivoactive hr , which one is compatible with me.
If I purchase 2 sets of 2 ZeTime early birds, how much for the shipment cost? Say, if go to Taiwan area? USD 15*2 =30 ?
will you ever have a 24hr clock face . so that you can read it in Military time?
I have a small wrist...I am female...but I like your regular zetime....will it still fit my wrist or do I have to get the petite?
Will the watch have in built speakers?
I have backed this project - and see the petite is now available. I originally ordered the 2-pack; and would now like to add 2 petites to the order... how should I do that?
Correction: Can you confirm that if I wanted Early Bird - Elite watch for USA delivery it would be a $184 pledge? I believe I've done that right but wanted to confirm.
Will the watch have the capability of having items scanned? For example, the apple watch can be used for airline boarding passes. The code can be scanned at the gate.
What is the operating system? Android or something else?
Will iOS iPhone users be able to replying to notifications?
The pictures provided on the main page are insufficient to clearly see the straps and how they look together with the body. Can you provide a DIGITAL CATALOG or some kind of viewer with ZOOM function for this purpose?
It would be tremendous advantage to your purpose, as less customer will come back looking for make exchanges.
What about a Windows app - to truly distinguish you from the other smart watches?
Does this work with iOS, Apple devices?
Without illuminous hands how do you check the time in the dark using strictly watch mode?
Can you confirm that if I wanted Early Bird - Premium watch for USA delivery it would be a $184 pledge? I believe I've done that right but wanted to confirm.
Will the heart rate function work with the NATO watchband option?
how do you get the stretch goals after you have backed the project like the charger and the extra bands> is there extra warranty of discount purchase rewards? when do we find out about those.
I pledged 160$ early bird going for the premium option. However the form indicates that my pledge is 150$ and 10$ goes to shipping costs. Am I eligible for the premium option or do i need to pledge 170$ in total?
I just upped my pledge $5 to cover the additional shipping cost you requested in your last email for one of my 2-pack rewards to be a petite model. There was no item on the Shipping pulldown menu to indicate that the additional $5 I just added was for shipping and nowhere did I see an opportunity to notify you that I wanted 1 petite and 1 regular watch in my package. Will this simply be understood from the amount of the pledge now? Or do I have to indicate my revised choice somewhere else?
You already support Arabic that is Right to Left language.Why no Hebrew support?Could you commit to adding that now or at least in a short time after we have received the watches.
Have you contemplated continue developing the travel case mencioned in update #3?
And where exactly is the watch being shipped from (as a german buyer)?
The watchcase its completely made of steel? Or coated as the case of the titanium version?
I have pledged for a twin set. Am I correct that I do not need to do anything at this time to get one in petite, and one in the original size? All I have to do is specify when we are making our selections after the campaign is over, correct?
How will we be able to choose the color and the band type?
As super early bird can i choose the petite version?
Can it have link loss notification when it gets connected/disconnected from phone? | 2019-04-23T09:08:55Z | https://live.kickstarter.com/mykronoz-switzerland/live-stream/this-is-the-end-but-in-fact-only-the-beginning |
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HostGator is one of the most widely used and well revered shared web hosting companies existing these days. That being said, this review will focus primarily on the Virtual Private Servers that HostGator offers. How do they stand up against the competition in this extremely competitive industry? The people that utilize Virtual Private Servers are much harder to please than the traditional webmaster that typically only has one website.
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Both BlueHost and HostGator are well-developed brands in the internet hosting trade, who have very large client bases and are well-known for their great hosting service and excellent client support. Considering BlueHost solely provides Linux Shared Hosting whereas HostGator includes a lot of larger products from Shared Hosting and VPS hosting to dedicated server, in looking at BlueHost vs HostGator, we’ll only compare their Shared Linux hosting to see which one is better.
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The pricing is nearly identical for each HostGator and BlueHost – whereas HostGator offers three hosting packages with the costs ranging from around $4 per month, BlueHost provides a hosting package at a flat fee of nearly $5 per month.
Prices could vary between single domain and multiple domains, therefore opt for the plan that best provides you with the services you need.
Hosting is the lifeline of any website. When getting into the blogging business, the foremost recommended place to register your domain is GoDaddy. No doubt, it’s one of the simplest services to use when it comes to registering domains.
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HostGator offers several options in ensure you’ll have everything you would like in just a single internet host service. For additional information regarding HostGator, visit their website now. | 2019-04-23T16:49:19Z | http://www.hostgatorreviews.org/ |
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PARSIPPANY, NJ, Aug 07, 2013 (Marketwired via COMTEX) -- Revelwood, an IBM Premier enterprise partner and chief in designing and enforcing IBM company Analytics applications, introduced today it's the first IBM business accomplice worldwide to earn IBM Cognos TM1 Gold Accreditation. The company performed this by way of working with tons of of shoppers on successful IBM Cognos TM1 efficiency management and analytics functions.
"Revelwood is one among IBM's longest standing companions working with Cognos TM1," referred to Mark Enslin, enterprise Analytics Accreditation software manager, IBM. "This accreditation is a testament to the depth and breadth of Revelwood's competencies in assisting their consumers make the foremost use of IBM Cognos TM1 -- which interprets into improved decision making and measurable enterprise merits."
The IBM Cognos TM1 Gold Accreditation is a part of IBM's software follow Accelerator, which was launched in early 2013. This software is designed for IBM company partners to speed up and increase their skill to successfully enforce solutions which leverage IBM application. as a way to earn this accreditation, Revelwood needed to have 15 practitioners licensed on various elements of Cognos TM1 and had IBM assessment and validate a go-component of successful Cognos TM1 deployments Revelwood has delivered to their shoppers.
"This achievement is without delay regarding our stringent requirements for Revelwood consultants to have in-depth and fingers-on competencies of Cognos TM1," observed Ken Wolf, President and CEO, Revelwood. "The average length of time our consultants were the usage of Cognos TM1 is eleven years. This deep journey is why Revelwood is able to carry superb performance management and company analytics applications on-time and within funds."
The IBM Cognos TM1 Gold Accreditation is only one of a couple of prestigious honors Revelwood has earned from IBM. Revelwood became awarded the 2013 IBM enterprise Analytics skill Authorization enterprise companion success Award, which acknowledges IBM company companions who've tested excellence in providing enterprise price with business Analytics, Predictive Analytics, enterprise content administration and counsel management software. Revelwood become chosen from company partners global who have offered "ingenious options and terrific client value" for the Revelwood(TM) BPM Suite, an out-of-the-field implementation accelerator for commercial enterprise economic planning and reporting.
Revelwood additionally won the 2011 IBM Beacon Award within the unbelievable enterprise Analytics Innovation category for the Revelwood BPM Suite. Winners of the Beacon Awards are selected from greater than ninety five,000 enterprise companions international via main business journalists, analysts and executives for 27 award areas.
About Revelwood Revelwood is an IBM Premier enterprise accomplice providing implementation capabilities, practicing and support that convey ease, velocity and suppleness to economic planning and reporting, enterprise intelligence, fiscal governance and revenue performance management. Combining IBM Cognos business Analytics utility with premiere practices and pre-configured, out-of-the-box applications like Revelwood's BPM Suite(TM) and performance Toolkit(TM), Revelwood helps organizations to accelerate the building and deployment of performance management solutions. lots of of a hit implementations and proven ROI for dozens of Fortune a thousand and mid-market agencies are only a few reasons corporations turn to Revelwood for his or her efficiency administration wants. additional information on Revelwood may also be acquired via travelling http://www.revelwood.com or calling 201.984.3030.
IBM last week issued the ten.1 unencumber of Cognos TM1, its windows-based in-memory OLAP database. the brand new liberate facets several new features that IBM says will aid customers get probably the most out of giant or complicated statistics sets.
TM1 is among the product traces that IBM acquired five years ago in its $5 billion acquisition of Cognos. The software, which became previously developed by way of Applix, features a 64-bit in-memory database that IBM says is terribly respectable at consolidating, viewing, and editing big volumes of multidimensional statistics, in particular information used for budgeting, forecasting, and efficiency evaluation.
different new points include a new performance modeler, greater administration of the TM1 ambiance through its operations console, a greater allotted architecture for more desirable scalability and interactivity, more advantageous conformance to Dimensionally Modeled Relational (DMR) and non-DMR models, and multiplied language guide.
Cognos TM1 10.1 is available now. For more counsel, see IBM’s web site at www-01.ibm.com/utility/analytics/cognos/items/tm1/.
WALTHAM, Mass., Oct. 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Rocket software today introduced the widespread availability of Rocket® discover 1.6, the self-provider enterprise Intelligence (BI) solution that helps businesses profit extra cost from their existing IBM® Cognos® TM1 investments. Rocket find's native interface to TM1 lets company clients with ease access TM1 Cubes, leverage the features of the TM1 engine to boost productiveness, and collaboratively share dashboards with IBM Connections Communities via a brand new IBM Connections integration.
"find connects to TM1 very instantly and makes growing high pleasant dashboards from numerous sources extremely handy. prefer a dice, select and pivot, add a calculation, and reveal it in a visual layout it truly is effortless to consider. does not get much less demanding than that," says Ryan Clapp, technology manager, QueBIT Consulting LLC.
"it's now not satisfactory to simply have meaningful analytics - it be additionally about pace," in keeping with Charlie Brown, Middleware and Collaboration follow manager at Mercury Consulting. "it's how fast which you can get the analytics you want, have in mind it, share it, to enable the crew to take action, and put business into your social enterprise by means of infusing your information with significant, true-time analytics. Rocket discover makes all this feasible."
IBM Connections clients can be in a position to share data and dashboards and interact in actual-time discussions about company issues; developing an built-in, collaborative, BI workflow. Rocket find 1.6 comprises other enhancements so that it will benefit all users, in spite of what enterprise planning software is being used. Highlights include scheduled query updates throughout all visualizations proposing updated information for the most desirable decisions and indicators when metrics move pre-described thresholds to set off quick difficulty decision. discover the whole listing of 1.6 enhancements right here.
About Rocket SoftwareRocket software (www.rocketsoftware.com) is a know-how business that helps businesses within the IBM ecosystem build solutions that meet latest needs while extending the cost of their know-how investments for the longer term. thousands of agencies rely on Rocket to remedy their most difficult business problems with the aid of assisting them run their essential infrastructure, company strategies, and information, as well as lengthen those assets to take skills of cloud, cell, analytics, and other future innovations. centered in 1990, Rocket is based in Waltham, Massachusetts with places in Europe, Asia, and Australia.
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ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Perficient, Inc. (NAS: PRFT) , a leading information technology consulting firm serving Global 2000 and other large enterprise customers throughout North America, has experienced tremendous, ongoing growth within its healthcare practice, delivering Big Data and analytics solutions to help organizations better address industry challenges head on. In an industry where competitive pressures and regulatory demands are intense, information becomes a critical business asset. Healthcare organizations are addressing questions, including - "what do we do with all this data?"
"Every enterprise today is seeing a massive influx of data. The most successful enterprises are those that can take the data, and turn it into meaningful, actionable information," said John Jenkins, vice president of Perficient's IBM Business Group. "By having the ability to recognize trends and patterns, healthcare organizations can anticipate business challenges, identify risks and take action to mitigate them, and positively shape business outcomes while improving patient care."
"Perficient's information technology solutions help health providers and insurers better leverage their information resources to successfully address industry challenges," continued Jenkins. "Through our work with IBM, we have successfully helped our clients implement solutions that have the ability to bring the right information to the right person at the right time, driving smarter business decisions."
Perficient healthcare client - Premier healthcare alliance - has taken steps to address these challenges by implementing solutions utilizing IBM's portal and enterprise social networking software, and business analytics and Big Data technologies.
Premier healthcare alliance, a provider-owned performance improvement alliance of more than 2,700 U.S. hospitals and 90,000-plus other healthcare sites, maintains the nation's largest clinical, financial and outcomes database. It contains information on 1 in every 4 patient discharges, 2.5 million real-time clinical transactions a day and close to $43 billion in annual purchasing data.
"In an era of rapid changes in healthcare delivery and reimbursement models, providers realize they need to fundamentally transform the way they manage their organizations," said Denise Hatzidakis, Premier's chief technology officer. "Providing a social networking business component allows Premier members to collaborate in an environment that helps them filter through the overflow of information they receive. Healthcare knowledge spreads more quickly, resulting in faster adoption of the very best clinical practices. This ultimately results in lower costs and better patient outcomes."
Both Perficient and Premier will be present at IBM's Information On Demand 2012 conference. IOD is one of the largest global technical expos held by IBM that focuses on Big Data and analytics, and will be held Oct. 21 - 25 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Perficient will serve as a Gold Sponsor of IBM's IOD 2012. As a Gold Sponsor, Perficient experts will be on hand in Booth G810 to discuss how companies can address the "influx of data" challenge through the use of IBM Big Data and Business Analytics technologies, including healthcare enterprise data warehouse and analytics dashboards, and Retail Pathways Analytics solutions for specialty retailers and restaurants.
"Finance Transformation at Jabil: IBM Cognos TM1 + IBM Cognos Business Intelligence"Session: BBI-1946A takes place on Monday, Oct. 22, from 10:15 - 11:15 a.m. at the Mandalay Bay South Convention Center - Mandalay Bay B.
"Macaroni Grill - Optimizing Retail: The Evolving Culture of Retail Analytics"Session ID 3808A takes place on Tuesday, Oct. 23, from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. at the Mandalay Bay South Convention Center - South Seas D.
"Chickasaw Nation: Agility, Savings, Speed with Business Analytics by Design, on Power Systems"Session 4181A takes place on Wednesday, Oct. 24, from 10:45 - 11:45 a.m. at the Mandalay Bay South Convention Center - Banyan A.
For more information on Perficient's information management and analytics expertise utilizing IBM technologies, including Enterprise Content Management, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Performance Management, Master Data Management, and Financial Performance Management, visit www.perficient.com/partners/IBM.
Perficient is a leading information technology consulting firm serving Global 2000 and enterprise customers throughout North America. Perficient's professionals serve clients from a network of offices across North America and three offshore locations, in Eastern Europe, India, and China. Perficient helps clients use Internet-based technologies to improve productivity and competitiveness, strengthen relationships with customers, suppliers and partners, and reduce information technology costs. Perficient, traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market(SM), is a member of the Russell 2000® index and the S&P SmallCap 600 index. Perficient is an award-winning "Premier Level" IBM business partner, a TeamTIBCO partner, a Microsoft National Systems Integrator and Gold Certified Partner, an EMC Select Services Team Partner, and an Oracle Platinum Partner. For more information, please visit www.perficient.com.
Some of the statements contained in this news release that are not purely historical statements discuss future expectations or state other forward-looking information related to financial results and business outlook for 2012. Those statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the statements. The "forward-looking" information is based on management's current intent, belief, expectations, estimates, and projections regarding our company and our industry. You should be aware that those statements only reflect our predictions. Actual events or results may differ substantially. Important factors that could cause our actual results to be materially different from the forward-looking statements are disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2011 and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2012 and June 30, 2012. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements. This cautionary statement is provided pursuant to Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release are made only as of the date hereof and we undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason, even if new information becomes available or other events occur in the future. | 2019-04-23T20:36:13Z | http://www.partillerocken.com/certs.php?exam=COG-385 |
Tips on Finding the Best Touring Packages.
The trend in the travelling industry is by the offering of tour packages that are inclusive of transport, food and beverage, guided tour and many others that are all combined together. This has made travelling easy and more convenient for tourists. There are many types of tour packages that include adventure tours, city or regional tours, special interest tours, fully escorted tours and group tours. The challenge now is in deciding on the best tour package that is convenient for most travellers. In this article there are some guidelines to assist when deciding on the best tour package to settle for.
The number one thing you need to do is to carry out a research to know the available our packages. Carry out an intensive research and do not just rush through. Your research should email looking into the variety of tour packages offered by different tour companies.
While looking into their tour packages first check the destinations they have in the tour packages. The destinations they plan to visit should not be so many nor should they be so few, they should be realistic in relation to the time stipulated. Also, check whether the destinations indicated are the ones you wish to travel to.
Check the itinerary of the tour package also. A point to not would be that the lack on an itinerary in a tour package shows lack of professionalism and you should not opt to pick such a package. The reason, why an itinerary is important, is because it indicates to you the times and places to be travel in a systematic order. Another reason, why an itinerary is important, is because it manages the time of the journey.
You also need to make sure that the tor company offering the package is registered. This will ensure that you are no tricked by conmen into paying for a nun existent tour.
In relation to this you will need to consider the experience of the tour company. The more the exposure a company has in arranging tour packages, the more knowledgeable they get. On experience, you look at how many tour packages they have offered in the past and how successful have they were.
Next consideration to make is on the charges they offer for the tour package. Check for the price in the tour package document and if it is not there make a call to inquire. Ask on how they accept their payments and if they have a refund policy for instances where some services are not offered. Make sure you know what the price of the package covers and what it does not.
To sum it all up, following the above guidelines will enable you to get the best our package that will be well suited for you.
There are numerous benefits derived when one takes an online course, for example, one saves time, money and its stress-free because you study in your own way. Taking a step to read or school online is a clear indication that one is embracing technological change. Online programs are carried out just like the normal programs found in school for example one will have to start from the lowest level going up.
Nowadays we can visit every place on earth and still contact our friends or relatives with the help of the internet on our phones. You may reach your friends through social media platforms available or also by use of mobile applications such as Whatsapp and Facebook which enable one to call by use of data. For one to be able to access these services, his phone or other different means of communication must be internet enabled. These days human beings are making use of the internet to run their businesses, some schools and colleges have additionally packages which run online. One will inquire or enroll in any academic course and get all the notes or other forms of learning activities online.
People when they enroll in online spiritual courses will enjoy much freedom because one will only just need an internet anywhere in order to access the class. You can have your studies back at home, or at work as long as it’s the right time to attend the online class. Online schooling enables one to have some lessons even during holidays or anywhere where you might be going to relax. Additionally, what makes online schooling to be the most after sort, it’s due to the fact that the internet these days is being used as a source of information.
Students who enroll in spiritual courses online will not look for revision books because they will only browse and get the information they were looking for. Internet is different from classes because one will only use it during the time he is reading online not like in classes where one have to attend every other lesson.
Those who take their spiritual courses online also are examined online and their results posted online or sent directly to their emails. Internet saves one time especially in situations where one goes to school, wait for classes and then teachers fail to show up in classes. One additionally pays his fees online and you have an option to let your receipt be or not be printed. Some websites have a special page wherein you find all the common questions and their answers which you could use to answer some religious questions in the exam. Those who hate sitting down and simply just read a book for long time will not be bored now due to the fact internet permits one to study other subjects on the equal time.
The right vertical growing system are essential to enable you to grow your crops efficiently. Therefore, you need to identify a supplier who will provide you with the vertical growing system from the market. When you start your search for vertical growing system, you ought to start by checking online, and this is because there are variety of vertical growing system to choose from and some of the suppliers will ship the vertical growing system to your location. You can also find a supplier locally, and this will be easy to transport the system to the location that you intend to grow crops. Vertical growing system allows you to grow different crops according to your preference and when selecting you should make sure that you pick the one that best suits your needs. It is crucial that you follow the below guidelines so that you can purchase the best vertical growing system.
When purchasing vertical growing system, make sure that you note the size you want and the size of the vertical growing system will be determined by the area you wish to grow the crops. If you are not sure of the size of the vertical growing system that you want, you should inform the supplier how much available space you have and then they will advise you accordingly. The best vertical growing system provider should offer you installation services whereby they should have a team of qualified professionals.
Make sure that you select a vertical growing system that is not complicated in that it will not limit you to utilize its full potential. But if you find any difficulties using the vertical growing system, the supplier should send their team of employees for demonstrations on how to use the system. The vertical growing system that you select should be made of high-quality materials that will last for a long time without the necessity for repairs which might be very expensive and time costly. You should make sure that you purchase a vertical growing system from manufacturers who are renowned for their high-quality products.
The next tip to put into consideration when purchasing a vertical growing system is the cost whereby you should make sure that you have a budget that will guide you. Comparing the prices of various vertical growing system suppliers is essential because you will be able to choose the one with reasonable prices and also with top quality systems.
Safety measures should be put in place to make sure that the vertical growing system you select is safe to use. The reviews of the vertical growing system that you intend to purchase are essential because these reviews will guide you to know if the product is good or not and they should be made by people who have used the vertical growing system.
The reasons that prompt people to sell their house are many.When a person wishes to meet the debts he/she has, selling a house can be a option.In case of a person is hospitalized, he/she can consider to sell his/her house to have cash for medical bills.By the fact that a person require quick cash in these circumstances, selling his/her house to these companies will be a good option.It is important to know that these companies have short procedures, which will enable a person to secure cash in the least time possible.It is important to know that selling a house to potential buyer will delay from getting ready cash.Below are the benefits which can be obtained for we buy houses companies.
In order not to incur unnecessary expenses, these companies will be good for your use.It is prudent to now that these companies will help not to incur expenses such closing cost and commission.It is important to know these companies do not require a person to have an agent.By the fact that the agents will no longer be needed to look for a buyer, you will not pay commission.It is for this reason that you will get the exact money the company offers to pay for the house.The closing processes will be handled effectively by this company because it is not complicated.By the fact that the work will be done by the company, you will not pay closing cost.
In order to reduce the time you will use to sell your house, you these companies.It is possible that you will spend least time to secure cash because these companies have sound financial base.By the fact that a process of selling your house to these companies is kept simple, you will use less amount of time to get cash.By the reason that a person will encounter a lengthy process when using a potential buyer cash will be delayedIt will be impossible to secure the needs you have when cash is delayed.It is important to know that potential buyers have no ready cash to facilitate quick purchase of your house.It is important to know that it is a bank that gives cash to a potential buyer to buy a house.The delay to acquire cash is because the banks first assess credit score of a buyer before giving out a loan.Important to know that a bank may fail to offer loan when the request made by a potential buyer once.By this reason the process of securing cash will be long and more time will be used to get cash.
Finally, the companies buy houses in their prevailing condition.
For the sake of your business’s success, you should improve your marketing activities because this is the platform on which customers interact with the products on sale and so you can make some profits. If you are establishing a new business exploration, you should think more about the marketing activities, and you will benefit by taking over the market by a whisker and so you will be successful. It is important to absorb the improvements in technology to suit your marketing operations, and this means that you will be successful. There are some online means of marketing your business, and so this means you will boost your business activities pretty well. You should know that marketing your business can be hectic and so you are supposed to traverse the market wisely to identify the online firm that will suit your desires and expectations pretty well. Even though these online advertising companies are many in the market, you should know that not all can offer the best services to you and so the need to be keen in choosing the right one. Therefore I will elaborate on some aspects to include in the checklist when determining the right online marketing company to hire and assign the job.
You should focus on the online advertising company which is experienced in the job and so you will enjoy the best services ever. An exposed digital marketing company has understood the basis of the job pretty well, and therefore the experts in there will enable you to relate perfectly with the potential customers in the market, and your business will succeed. You should not hesitate to hire the digital marketing company by cost because their services are comparable to none.
Secondly, you should evaluate the digital marketing company to ascertain that it is recognized and allowed by the government to render the right services to the public. Before you hire the company, you should request the management to show you the right certificates which ascertain their permission so that you can determine whether or not they are credible and original. You should focus more on the license of the digital marketing company because it establishes the overall legitimacy of the services offered and so you can benefit.
If you want to enjoy the best online business promotion, you should ask around the market, and you will find the one who suits you pretty well. Since you trust the close people to you, you will be assured of getting the best digital marketing firm through them.
Finally, you should know that hiring a digital marketing firm is cost intensive and so you need to be financially prepared. Therefore, you should prepare a good budget that will allow you to meet their demands and expectations pretty well.
When we reach a certain age, we are required to attend school. Nowadays you have to be literate to do a given profession. It is believed that the only evidence of you being literate is the fact that you have attended school. The life skills you acquire in school gives you the ability to face the world if left alone. We are considered as relevant to the society when we have gone to school. Whether it is you or your child, your behavior will be greatly impacted by choice of school to attend. Some factors can guide one to choosing a good school.
It will be wise if you put into consideration the cost. The tuition fee that you will be expected to pay by the school will be quite essential. You need to confirm whether the fee structure is within your budget limit. Does the school give out scholarships as an aid for the students to study? Check whether they also give out bursaries for the students. Quality education will always be offered by the best school, but they are usually more costly.
Check on the school location. Check whether you will be comfortable with your child learning they are. The school might be at a location where there are reported shootings now and then. The area might out your child’s security at risk. The distance between your school and your home should be considered if you’re headed to college. An emergency might require you to rush home. The area should also be easily accessible so that you do not hassle as much when commuting.
You must check the kind of programs the school has to offer. The college should be offering the course that you intend to study. You might be applying to an international school because your home country school has no such programs. Besides, the programs being offered at the international school might be of better quality. Does the school have high regard such that when you are done with your program there, you will be immediately hired?
You need to consider if the school offers any other activities outside of class. School should not just involve sitting in class and listening to the teacher speak. All rounded students are what the school should strive to achieve. Sports, arts such as music and drama, and sports are some of the activities that the school should encourage students to join. The students should also take care of their talents. You will be able to make the best decision on the school to go for with the following factors in mind.
A Guide On How To Get The Right Mortgage News.
There is much information on the website of which some are reliable while some are not. In Order to make sure that the content you get helps you, then it is vital that find the right material for whatever you need. There are a lot of sites that offer mortgage news and it is critical that you take into consideration and find the best website that is reliable to give you the right information. Mortgage news is essential in ensuring that you get the right kind of mortgage loan or any other mortgage services. Here are some of the tips that you should take into account so as to make sure that you get the right mortgage news.
It is a good thing to make sure that the sort of website that you choose provides the right support for your mortgage services that you need. Some of the services that you should make sure that you have done is the fact that you should ensure that you have a services such as online calculator, budget calculator among many others.
It is vital that you make sure that you choose that kind of site that provides the best info concerning mortgage payments. This will help you overcome the worry the mortgage repayment. If by any chance you come across this kind of site, then it is necessary that you make sure that you have the services from such type of company. This will give you that surety that you have the right and the reliable news for your mortgage.
When you are choosing a mortgage news site, it is vital that you make sure that you are going for that kind of site that will offer you with the best services and in addition some extras. The kind of site that you select should be in that kind of a manner that it has a broker who will offer you with the services that will ease hustle of the mortgage loans. The need for a mortgage is that he or she is vital in making sure that you get that kind of mortgage service that you need. Always make sure that you go for that broker who will offer you the brokerage services that you need.
In order to make the best services, it is a good thing that you make sure that you get the best referral If You want to obtain the best referral, and then it is crucial that you make sure that you are in a position of going for that kind of reference from a family member or a friend.
Mobile phones are a fundamental components in today’s way of life. Today there are continued improvements done on the phones which is making them appropriate to use for various activities. Specialization makes it possible for the growth of this industry of designing applications for the mobile phones of different companies. meeting customer expectations is vital for long business deals and for such a complex phenomenon it is of essence to ensure customers get value for money. How the application will be integrated to the devices been targeted will as well be analysed to ensure as it is rolled in the market every minimal detail is known. From the following information, the necessary factors one should get right to ensure they make the right application is laid out.
Mobile devices comes in different variations in terms of their operating systems which require a different approach in designing the right application for the right mobile. When you have control over the devices you are developing the applications for the task becomes a bit easy by the challenge is when it comes to an application which should be used by virtually all devices. With differing memory capacity of different mobile devices it is normal to think that not all applications can have the same storage capacity requirements which are an important part of consideration any developer have to think of. When in the process of determining how to develop your application, the network compatibility should also be focused because there are many network platforms in use.
The use of the application in question is another element for consideration because different needs and setup require different applications. Depending on who is expected to use the application, the quality needs to be considered in that line to ensure that consumers have the good experience using the products. However, getting to know how to align your entry to the market is vital because those who sell the devices which are compatible with your new product need to know the benefits they can get by pushing your new application in the market.
The Channel you use to make your product available to the market determines the success of your application. Considering your target customers and the various channels they have access to for getting your product is an essential point to put in mind when doing mobile application development. However depending on the expected income to be generated by the use of your application, choosing the channel may not pose a great problem for it is a balance between cost and expected returns. Expect to get massive feedback and suggestions on your product as soon as you roll it out to the market which requires close attention.
Eye protection is one of the ways of keeping your eyes from different eye related infections or diseases as well as from various chemicals and other contaminants. It is important to make sure that you get the best pair of eyewear for your eye protection needs. There are several types of eyewear that one can buy depending on his or her eye protection needs. It is important to understand that wearing eyeglasses, sunglasses or even contact is not only meant for medical purposes but also for fashion and style reasons.
It is however important for every person in need of eyewear to make sure that he or she get eyewear from the best seller. Buying eyeglasses, contact lenses as well as sunglasses from various eyewear manufacturers is better and more advantageous than getting them from other local sellers. Whether you are buying the eyewear in wholesale or not, it is always vital to get them from an eyewear manufacturer. There are however so many reasons why it is better to go for an eyewear manufacturer compared to other eyewear sellers.
Below are some of the top reasons why buying eyeglasses, contact lenses as well as sunglasses among other eyewear types from a good eyewear manufacturer is much better compared to getting them from other sellers.
Buying different types of eyewear like sunglasses and many others from an eyewear manufacturer is somehow cheaper than getting them from other sellers. Most of the eyewear buyers can therefore easily afford them because of the low prices. One of the ways through which the eyewear manufacturers reduce their prices is by offering discounts to the buyers.
It is also important to understand that eyewear manufacturers provide eyewear of high quality which is a great benefit and advantage to the eyewear buyers. High quality eyewear provided by the eyewear manufacturers serve most of the customers for a longer period of time.
Most of the eyewear manufacturers offer different types of eyewear choices to the customers including various eyeglasses, contact lenses and many others to the customers. Eyewear manufacturers therefore promote a high level of customer satisfaction. | 2019-04-26T16:10:16Z | http://getcarinsurances.us/?cat=665 |
Your voice has been described by famous peers as ‘a voice never heard before’. So we’re going to set you the challenge of eloquently explaining the impossible!
I have been having singing lessons since I was 7 years old so my voice has been trained. I have been taught how to breathe properly and look after my larynx. My range is very wide and covers deep baritone to high male soprano. I think this is why people find my natural voice extraordinary – especially my high falsetto. However, I have never just been a classical singer, my repertoire even when young, covered pop – I won my school’s X factor competition singing a Michael Jackson track, musical theater, jazz and world music as well as operatic arias. Pop music is the genre I love best – that’s what I sing in the shower!
List some misinterpretations people might have about the classical music genre?
I don’t believe in categorizing things in metaphorical boxes. After all, so-called “classical” music was the popular music of its time. It is not staid, stuffy and static – there is plenty of room for improvisation especially in early 17thcentury countertenor music. Every time a “classical” song is sung it sounds different. “Classical” music has its own different genres as different to each other as bubble gum pop is to grime nowadays. For me, I am also melding the classical feel with a synth electro pop sound so I hope to bring my own stamp in this genre.
What’s it like to see you live?
I have been performing as long as I have been singing. I love performing live and getting to know an audience. I get a huge buzz from performing, can’t stop smiling, and I think the audience feels it as well. I sang in a small backing group for Kylie Minogue in a series of her Christmas concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London. She was a total professional, a master of performance and working with the audience. It was an amazing experience and something I will never forget. I still have a lot to learn but I hope the audience has as much fun as I do. I am embarking on a Heather Small Tour soon and I am so excited about those audiences.
You’ve teamed up with the iconic Boy George on a recent track – what’s the most extravagant and then most down to earth characteristic of Boy George?
George is very generous with his time, his experience, and his direction – whether on styling, photography or writing. He is a real dream to work with. There are two sides of George – of course his makeup and styling identify him and there is a very laid back type of George that is practical and shows the human side that is not seen by a lot of people.
ANOTHER fan of yours is only a certain Oscar winning Emma Thompson! What’s the sassiest thing Emma Thompson has said to you?
Just about everything Emma says is sassy! She is such fun to be with and I really value her thoughts on everything. I turned up to her party not long ago in a bright blue denim embossed suit and from across the room I heard her shouting “you pull off patterns better than I do!”She laughingly complained that I had managed to upstage her at her own party.
Sound of My Youth is a song about nostalgia – what would you change from the past if you could?
I wish I had more confidence in myself. I wish others had accepted my idiosyncrasies and me as I was growing up. I am the way I am – dyslexic and very passionate about all music – I was bullied at school for not being “normal”. Now I know who I am, have grown over 6ft tall and work out most days – I don’t get bullied any more. Back then, it hurt and I wish I had more confidence in myself then to not let it hurt as it did.
A lyric in Sound of My Youthgoes “crying out for sunshine” – what are the ingredients for your perfect summer?
Well the main ingredient has to be sunshine, lots of it – then some good friends, a beach, good music and a cocktail or five.
As a proudly gay artist, what does pride mean to you, and who inspires you?
I am proud of who I am and what I am born to be. I believe it’s not a label on life or how I live it. I just am. The proud part is that many have gone before me to path a way forward for me to live as I am and for that this makes me massively proud of being gay. Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus – the list is endless. Sexuality is different to gender, however I would also like to acknowledge Munroe Bergdorf in my answer, as I am continually inspired by her activism creating awareness of the transgender community; pushing for legislative change, greater visibility and inclusion.
We recently invited you to Superdry’s Regent Street flagship, and it was a total delight! What did you pick out, and did it shift any original impression on the brand?
Amazing, I had a terrific time. Thank you for inviting me. I picked out a super cute jumper with the rainbow flag on it. I didn’t realize the store has such an eclectic range. I’ve been pretty much living in your gym kit since then.
How does a classical kid like you dress?
I am just an ordinary guy and shop in the high street like everyone else. I love colours and I love how I can express myself in what I wear and I guess it comes out more when I’m all dressed up with somewhere to go to.
Finally, where do you see yourself in 5 years?
On the big stages worldwide, baby! Gotta stay optimistic!
FOLLOW JAMIE HANNAH ON INSTAGRAM HERE!
LISTEN TO SOUND OF MY YOUTH HERE!
JAMIE WEARS NEW SEASON SUPER, SHOP HERE!
The post Jamie Hannah: The Classic On Cool appeared first on Superdry Edition.
Fearless, intellectual, adventurous and stylish – just a few of the makings of Influencer Jordan Barron. We set the talented chap the challenge of showcasing Superdry Sport and Snow in the most epic and eclectic of locations. We also caught up with him to philosophise on all things ‘influence’ in 2019.
Introduce yourself – including fun facts and your career!
My name is Jordan Barron, I’m originally from just outside of London but spent my teenage years in New Zealand before moving onto stints in London and Sydney. This has left me with a bit of a weird jumbled accent. I have been modeling since I was discovered at the age of 18, which has seen me travel all of over the world and work with some amazing brands that align with my personal philosophies. I’m happiest when I’m playing sport (you’ll find me in my boxing gym most days) and socializing with friends old and new. I’m in love with summer, the beach and the ocean. You can’t keep me too far away from summer for too long. I went to Victoria university of Wellington and studied Accounting, Finance and Commercial Law. I picked Wellington because it had a vibrant arts scene and a balanced lifestyle. I could socialize with my friends at cool bars, had a café culture, and play sport whilst being able to focus on my study. The best part of my career has been the people and personalities I have met whilst traveling around the world.
I was there when the Banksy picture shredded!
I guessed my little brother’s birthday a week before he was due. I said to my Mum and Dad he will be born at midnight on the 20thof January, 2001 – that was exactly what happened.
I met Ellie Goulding and didn’t even realize it was her.
I am unashamedly owning up to liking a few One Direction songs and reckon I would be a great addition to the band if they ever wanted to get back together.
I love being fit and active so I can eat chocolate croissants on the weekend.
What does being an ‘Influencer’ mean to you?
To me, a true Influencer is someone that people can trust and look to for new experiences, products or ideas. I see Influencers as having an obligation to use their opportunities of influencing in a positive way with a genuine desire to help people – to change, effect, and impact the world for the better by promoting brands and services that they genuinely believe in through their social media following. I’m an honest person and my desire is to help people with the experiences I have had travelling and my day to day life creating positive content which will help improve society.
Who influences you and why?
I’m very fortunate to have a family who has always backed me. They are all extremely hard working and push one another to be the best versions of themselves. They have been a hugely positive influence throughout my life which I am extremely grateful for.
My godfather Barney has been an influencer to me. His work ethic is to be the best and whose personality is all about “anything is possible”. He also has always been there for me whenever I’ve needed him and shown me how to think about things from a professional stand-point.
Everyone whom I’ve met influences me. I appreciate the good in people in my life and use their positive personalities to improve myself.
Throughout the years, my close friends are the ones who’ve always had my best interests at heart. You can learn a lot from deep conversations with people that know you. Either someone coming from a different culture or having a different perspective is always valuable.
I think everyone can be an influence on you just by being positive and being themselves. Having your best interest at heart. I mean who really wants to spend time hanging out with negative people?
In regards to fashion, I don’t really look to wear what other people wear. I do what makes me feel comfortable and confident – I do like bright colours from time to time to spice things up.
Sir Richard Branson – inspired me in the way he believes in himself and prides himself on working with a team that share the same core values he does.
Liam Malone – one of my best friends whom is a 2x Paralympic Gold Medalist. Liam is so positive all the time, wants to stand atop the highest mountain dreaming about the biggest challenges he can set himself. I don’t know another man who could run a marathon with no training and instead just on true grit and mental strength. Look out for him on the comedy scene as well, as he will take the world by storm.
David Beckham has always influenced me, especially in how he sets trends. His drive to achieve playing for England and Manchester United and to be the best version of himself was always very inspiring. So inspiring that I didn’t have any words when I eventually met him at an fashion event in London – what a triumphant idiot I am!
Misconceptions about being a model and the modelling life?
The misconception that modeling is easy. It is harder than it looks! I see it as a sports day; you prep yourself to be the best you can to perform the best on the day. The viewer only sees the finished product but you don’t see the amount of hours that goes into it. For example, going to the gym every morning, eating the right food, sleeping the right amount of time, going to events and meeting new people. Many of these things are out of self-interest and with that you have to self motivate. You also have to be flexible with your time as things change often. For example, I was recently in Queenstown, New Zealand, and the weather affected shoot times which then impacts your personal life. Traveling to and from shoots can also be demanding – especially if they are out of proximity. Anyone who has caught a lot of flights will be able to relate to this. You can’t take it always so seriously and just have to live a little. I’ve made some great friends over the years.
You’re based predominately in London but are known for your epic travel and trips – what draws you to this ‘on the road’ lifestyle?
I get a kick out of change. For example, just last week I was modelling in the busy streets of London to the beautiful surroundings of Queenstown, New Zealand the week after. Life is about uncertainty and you have to take every opportunity you are given. In Sydney everything involves around going to the beach or being active – as soon as you finish work everyone will be at the beach or doing some sort of sport. When you are near the salt water on hot days you always seem to be active – adventures and the great outdoors go hand in hand! In London it’s more about going out and socialising in different ways such as at a bar or café. I feel as though I learn so much from other people. I take away a little bit of something from every culture and person I meet along the way. Everyday is different – but one thing’s for sure, after the modelling experience, it will be pretty hard to go to a 9 to 5 job as you are constantly working to someone else’s agent and can’t embrace your own creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.
Most inspirational places you’ve been to?
Wanaka, New Zealand – It is a place in which you look for adventures because you don’t have flashy touristy activities. A favourite of mine is the Roys Peak Track walk – it will give you magnificent views of Wanaka, the lake and the Southern Alps.
Byron Bay, Australia – I loved going to the top of Cape Byron lighthouse and watching the whales – this is panoramic views offered from Australia’s easterly point! It’s also really good for surfing. Not just catching waves but the entire culture there is free-flowing, with a laid-back attitude that allows you to express yourself – not to mention all the relax and chill.
What’s on your adventurous bucket list?
Tokyo – Japan. I’m a big fan of sushi and all my Japanese friends have said you must go to the fish market and the temples in Kyoto.
Bhutan – Himalaya’s. In Bhutan they measure Gross National Happiness – this development is measured on the quality of life based on the spiritual and mental well-being of it’s people. I would love to go mountain trekking and to visit Taktsang as it one of the most important Buddhist monasteries in Bhutan. It is situated on a vertical cliff 3000m north of Paro.
Sarengatti – Kenya – Since watching The Lion King as a kid I’ve wanted to go on a safari. Being a Leo myself I’ve always wanted to see a lion too!
Tips for someone teased but unsure at the idea of a gap year road-trip!
I would say that I’ve always found travelling makes you think in a different way once you get home. You bring this air of freshness to your thinking and a change in routine brings out the best in you. For example, I left Sydney as I was doing the same sort of jobs and routine. I needed a change in lifestyle and cultural experience therefore I decided to come to Europe to experience this and a faster pace of life. If you have the opportunity, I recommend travelling and experiencing different cultures. I think some people lose touch at what life is about, in the sense of what is important to them. Once you travel, it’s like you can’t help but reconsider your values.
You’re an influencer ambassador for Superdry – what makes our style and ethos a good fit for you?
I’m extremely passionate about Superdry from a cultural, lifestyle and wellness perspective – which enables me to promote campaigns around the world. They have given me a lot of trust and I have a very good relationship with Superdry. I like that the brand is sustainable by including animal welfare as part of their company ethos. I also love the family culture of Superdry and how welcoming everyone is – It’s one big family whether a customer, employee or partner. I’ve made a host of friends at Superdry!
How are you styling up this spring and summer?
I’m usually playing sport every day so in summer when it’s super hot. You will find me in a singlet and shorts. Superdry perfectly caters for a variety of these options. I’m pretty simple when it comes to sports gear so black and white is my go to.
I love wearing urban essentials, which are casual as well as looking sharp – a tech fabric fit is important to me, allowing comfortable movement.
When I go out I like to pair all black together, therefore a leather jacket is a must with the all black jeans and t-shirt.
I like track jackets which Superdry have plenty to choose from. You can wear these for different occasions from pre-gym to the office and even on a date! The versatility of a track jacket makes it essential to my wardrobe.
We had been looking into the possibility of working together for some time, then the chance to do this Superdry trip came up so we jumped on it! My photographer and I wanted to find a location that would really captivate our audience – and urge them to get outside and explore themselves! We ended up choosing to explore around the Peak District, as we saw there was a chance for some decent snow in the area and thought that would mesh well with the epic Superdry Snow gear. After piling all our gear into a rental car and making our way out into the countryside we soon came to realize there was a lot more snow than we had originally anticipated! Extremely underprepared for the conditions – with Jacob opting for trainers as footwear in knee-deep snow – we got exploring! We spent the day climbing up mountains, hanging off cliffs, and getting caught in blizzards. By the end of it we were all amped, knowing we had captured some unique shots of the epic Superdry gear in the rugged environment. We spent the next day exploring Manchester – where Jacob was based at the time. The city offers some cool urbanscapes to shoot in due to its rich industrial past – so in what must have been one of the few days in winter not pouring with rain – we scoured the city for shots that really showcased its heritage. We finished the trip with a nice cold beer looking over the photos we’d captured, lots of laughs, and feeling grateful to have been given the opportunity to work together on such a fun project – and we both can’t wait for the next trip we do with Superdry!
You’re also a fitness expert – how do you define good health?
Yes, I’ve recently just finished my Level 2 personal training course so I’m going to be focusing on creating more fitness led content this summer…it’s something people have asked me about for years.
I define good health as a balanced lifestyle. Making good decisions in your day to day by eating whole foods but not being completely stressful about what you eat. A big one for everyone is alcohol and making good decisions on when to drink and not to. I encourage people to pick their moments and not get forced into things that they don’t want to do. Set a plan and stick to it.
If you do fitness everyday it makes more vigorous fitness easier – even if it’s walking to work or stretching in the morning. The type of training I try to do is working on small muscle groups with lengthening muscles and joint strength through classes such as Pilates.
Festival season is on the horizon – what’s on your road-trip mixtape this summer?
FOLLOW JORDAN BARRON ON INSTAGRAM HERE!
JORDAN WEARS SUPERDRY SNOW AND SUPERDRY SPORT!
The post On The Offbeat Road With Jordan Barron appeared first on Superdry Edition.
Let’s be real: when it comes to clothes, men’s fashion trends seem straight-up predictable at first glance. Most lads turn to black jeans, oversized hoodies and comfy tees by second nature, probably because these pieces are so easy to style.
There’s actually a lot more to men’s clothes than first meets the eye – and looking into the men’s fashion trends for the year can really boost your trend appeal.
Start this year’s fashion journey off the right way with our prediction of men’s fashion trends for the rest of the year.
Sage and khaki – both versatile shades of green, these colours are the ones to watch this year.
Light wash denim – black is out and light wash is in. Swap your dark denim for edgy bleached jackets and jeans.
Crossbody sports bags – stylish and practical, what could be better?
Prints and patterns – go bold with daring prints and bright patterns.
Sherpa – also known as ‘teddy’, this cosy fabric looks surprisingly urban when worn as a jumper or coat.
White – lots of white results in a fresh, crisp outfit that works no matter the season.
When it comes to colour, turn your attention towards sage and khaki. Both versatile shades of green, khaki tends to have a yellow or tan undertone compared to the greyer green of sage. They’ve been popping up all over the runways and we’re seeing these shades are going to be everywhere this year.
Earthy tones are the perfect alternative to black and grey, which is what many of us are guilty of turning to when stocking our wardrobe. Khaki may have already popular due to the beloved camo trend, but this year is officially the year of these green hues. It’s easy to incorporate khaki into everyday looks via chinos or cargo pants, which are simple to style with darker tees.
Sage jackets, on the other hand, look sharp when paired with some dark jeans or joggers. Try rolling the cuffs of your trousers up to show off a flash of white socks for a sporty vibe. Pair it with white trainers and a navy short sleeve tee for an easy yet stylish outfit that’s perfect for watching the big game in a trendy sports bar.
You should avoid wearing khaki and sage together. One key piece, such as a tee or jacket, in either colour, is enough to show off the trend naturally.
As essential as black denim is, this year it’s all about light wash.
Not only is it more practical in the sweltering summer months, but light wash denim will also have you standing out from the usual uniform of black jeans.
Bleached jeans and shorts look pristine when worn with white clothing, such as t-shirts or shoes. White canvas trainers look tighter with light wash denim, so choose this style over dark mesh or chunky dad shoes.
In fact, base the entire outfit around lighter colours such as white, pale greys and nautical stripes as they look flawless with bleached jeans. If you’re trying this trend during the colder months, sling a sage or khaki bomber jacket on. Nail two trends at once.
The resulting look is perfect for a lunch with some mates or treating a date to a casual drink on a rooftop bar. For a more smart-casual setting, swap the tee for a white fitted shirt to show off those gym gains while sticking to the dress code.
2019 is the year for man-bags to shine. Don’t worry – these ultra-sporty sling bags aren’t going to ruin your rep. With camo prints, mesh elements and discreet pockets, you’ll look festival ready with one of these styles slung across your shoulder.
They’re probably one of the easiest trends to incorporate into your current wardrobe as it suits so many styles. For a sleek yet sporty vibe, pair your choice of bag with a monochrome sweatshirt, denim shorts and canvas trainers.
If you prefer an urban vibe, pair your sports bag with grey joggers, chunky trainers and a fitted white long sleeve top. Feeling the cold? An oversized hoodie should do the trick.
Why blend in when you can stand out? Go bold and bright by experimenting with unique prints.
Some people absolutely love clashing prints, but we suggest toning down the overall look by pairing a bright top with black jeans or tan chinos. This will put the print centre stage rather than having to battle against other pieces.
You don’t have to go overly wild if that’s really not your thing. More subtle prints such as camo and stripes still count, although you could try and get creative with botanical patterns. Rich earthy tones and leaf patterns make use of the sage trend, plus look great with light wash denim. You’ll be able to boss three of our top trends without looking like a try-hard.
If you want to meet somewhere in the middle, try featuring a patterned accessory like a hat. That way you can rock the trend without straying from your comfort zone too much.
For someone looking for an outfit that’s equally cosy as it is stylish, sherpa is a dream. Some days we just want to be comfortable, but that shouldn’t mean looking like you’ve just rolled out of bed. Swapping your regular hoodie for one with a sherpa lining is a way of instantly upgrading an outfit with ease.
Whether you’re heading to a class you’d rather miss or just chilling out with the lads, there’s no reason you can’t look your best, and sherpa proves that. Style an oversized sherpa hoodie with skinny fit joggers and slip-on trainers.
The unusual fleece-like appearance of sherpa should be allowed to shine past the other pieces. Try not to pair any bright colours with it or it may just look brash. If you do fancy a bit of colour with your look, stick with burgundy, greys and, of course, our beloved sage.
While it’s not a great trend for the clumsy amongst us, all white outfits are going to be huge in 2019. Crisp, fresh and eye-catching, this is a trend we’ll be rocking all year round.
For a summer-appropriate outfit, pair some white sports shorts with a plain white tee and some fresh trainers. All white isn’t for everyone, but you can still pull off the trend with some minor adjustments. Trade the white trainers for navy boat shoes and layer an unbuttoned shirt in the same colour over the top of the tee to stay true to the trend while adding a little more colour.
Some people may think white is just for summer, but this is far from the truth. This trend will work no matter the season. Try pairing some white joggers with a matching sweatshirt, but go for black trainers this time for a monochrome look. You may have to stay away from any sign of dirt, but it’s totally worth it.
If you’ve been inspired by our prediction of men’s fashion trends for the year, why not check out our latest collection? You’ll find all the latest fashion favourites from Superdry and get a heads-up about any other trends that pop up over the year.
The post Men’s biggest fashion trends for 2019 appeared first on Superdry Edition.
The sun is almost back and so that means it’s nearly time to toss your winter coat aside and bring out a more lightweight option. Bombers, Harringtons, military, leather and denim jackets are just a few of the options when it comes to looking good in spring weather.
Bomber jacket – Lightweight with a rebellious edge, this is the jacket you need for those spring first dates and late nights with the guys.
Harrington jacket – This versatile lightweight style is military inspired but with a softer finish.
Military jacket – Structured collars, sharp lines and good looking embellishments create a jacket that smartens up any look.
Leather jacket – Add a bad boy edge and keep out the chill.
Denim jacket – Mix and match with your current jeans selection.
Cagoule jacket – Lightweight, showerproof, perfect for April.
Hoodie jacket – Get your money’s worth and look good doing it.
Lightweight – Keeps the cold out when layered up but ideal for warmer days.
Great for layering – Can be worn on its own or over a chunky jumper for easy spring style.
Cuffed sleeves to keep any chill out – No worries if the wind chill has cranked up.
This season choose a Superdry bomber jacket in a deep khaki colour with signature orange accents – tapping into those classic Mod styles from the 80s and military themes. This jacket is perfect for throwing on over your favourite tee and jeans for a casual but classy look.
Breathable – A mesh layer keeps things cool when the weather can’t make its mind up.
Easy to layer – Lightweight enough to throw over a t-shirt and hoodie but cool enough to wear on its own.
Stylish print – Available in a range of prints from camo to colour blocked styles.
A Harrington jacket is the perfect addition to your spring wardrobe. This style is popular at the moment and the classic camo print in an unusual blue shade makes this jacket a talking piece. Pair with straight leg jeans, a polo shirt and chunky boots for a look that works whether you’re walking to the pub or shopping on a Saturday.
Structured fit – This jacket can be dressed up and down with its structured style.
Sharp lines – Tailored collars and decorated cuffs create a polished look.
Neutral colours – Tan, khaki, grey and navy make up the colour palette for this jacket style.
Military style coats are another classic cut. This type of jacket pairs perfectly with jeans and boots for a laid back and casual look. Look for sharp collars, tailored pockets and neat lines. Ideal for spring nights out waiting in line to get in the biggest bar or thrown over a simple t-shirt and joggers ensemble at the weekend.
Strong style – This jacket speaks for itself, wear it with the basics.
Easy to layer – Wear over a hoodie at the weekend or a thicker plaid shirt for easy spring style.
Comfortable fit – Leather moulds itself to your body over time, resulting in a jacket that fits like a dream.
The classic black leather jacket is always on trend, this style is perfect for casual cool looks and is definitely not one to miss out on. Real leather starts off tough but softens over time, adapting to your body for a fit that works with your shape. Avoid oversized looks this year, form-fitting jackets can pull any outfit together.
Super lightweight – Best reserved for dry days, this is the jacket for a sunny afternoon.
Structured fit – Sharp shoulders, crisp collars and neat cuffs make this the perfect smart/casual jacket for the day.
Softens over time – Like a leather jacket, denim softens the more you wear it and moulds to your shape.
Denim never goes out of style but this season consider the material but with a twist. Printed denim jacket styles are dominating the scene, stealing the show and working as the statement piece for your everyday looks. Don’t be afraid to dabble in double denim once the warmer weather hits, a denim jacket with shorts in the same material is a strong look.
Waterproof – Well, it’s showerproof, so that means you’re covered if you left the house without an umbrella.
Strong prints – Cagoules aren’t dull anymore, strong prints tap into urban, athleisure vibes.
Super lightweight – Best reserved for warmer days with a chance of rain.
The hooded cagoule is lightweight but practical and is great for those wetter spring days. Look for a style featuring a strong print. Camo is in this season, with wilder colour palettes complementing traditional khaki and navy shades.
Effortlessly layered look – You can still enjoy the layered look without the heat.
Hood – Ideal if there’s a shower, looks good too.
Neutral shade – Tan jackets work with everything from your skinny black jeans to straight leg bleached styles.
The hoodie jacket is a new breed of lightweight outerwear and perfect for creating that layered look without sweating when you leave the house. A comfy hood is stitched into the collar to add an athleisure vibe to a structured, lightweight jacket for a finish that turns heads and looks great all day.
Looking for the best men’s lightweight jackets? Check out our full range here on the Superdry site.
The post Top layers: 5 lightweight jackets for men appeared first on Superdry Edition.
Maybe you spent January and February trying to get into a new fitness routine that just didn’t stick. That means it’s time to look for something new.
We’ve been hearing whispers of some awesome classes and fitness trends for 2019 that are a little more fun than staring into space on an elliptical machine. We swear you’ll be telling your friends all about them – just like you would a first date or a night out.
Wellness festivals – Love music? Love fitness? Combine the two this year.
Nutritionist apps – Move over regular food tracking apps, innovative new ones are on the scene that look at your diet and what you’ve input that day then recommend what other nutrients you need.
Shorter workouts – We are NOT upset about this. Shorter workouts – 45 minutes is the new hour – are going to be seen in gyms up and down the country.
Virtual training – New tech means you get to do a class run by a world-class trainer from your local gym.
Exercise tracking – We’re already loving the fitness tracker but more accurate tech is entering the playing field.
We love the idea of self-care and a wellness festival is the ultimate experience. Combining fitness, great tunes and a fun atmosphere, these gems are taking place throughout the year, all over the UK. Lovefit is a popular one, as well as Festival No.6 which focuses on yoga and outdoor activities and Soul Circus. You’ll have access to tasty grub that’s good for you – no dodgy festival burgers here – sweaty workouts every day to get the blood pumping and mindfulness experiences from yoga to meditation classes.
You may track your food already but this year try tracking your food and seeing what your body is missing. Apps such as Healthspan take the data you input and suggest other vitamins and nutrients you need to feature in your diet to ensure you’re getting everything you need.
Gone are the days of the hour and a half class, when you check the clock every five minutes and want to cry. Workouts are being compacted into 45-minute slots – great to squeeze in some exercise on a lunch break if you can – and have a high-intensity training focus to ensure you’re still burning those calories.
In gyms and in living rooms, virtual classes are proving popular. Similar to following a trainer on a DVD like you did as a teenager, these track your progress via the machine you’re using to ensure you’re not slacking off and react appropriately.
Les Mills is offering these virtual options and they’re great because you get access to some of the most incredible trainers you’d likely have never had the pleasure of sweating with. They’ll be transported to your gym’s studio via a cinema style screen to get your body moving.
F45 – The cooler cousin of CrossFit has made its way to the UK.
Treadmill classes – No longer the machine you turn to when you don’t have a routine, whole classes will be focused around running this year in tailor-made studios.
Aerial yoga – Definitely a whole body workout, aerial yoga sees you suspended and improving your flexibility.
Boxing still reigns – Stress relieving and muscle building, boxing is still a heavyweight contender for the best overall fitness workout.
Parkour – Specialist classes will get your heart racing and feeling pretty damn cool all at once.
You’ve heard of CrossFit but a new breed of this high-intensity training is on its way. All the way from Australia, F45 is being slowly introduced in some of the biggest gyms in Europe this year. The F stands for functional and the 45 is how long the classes last – just enough to get you panting but not too much to leave you half dead. We promise you’ll fall in love with working out – once the muscle ache is gone. You can find a studio that offers it here.
Something fitted that is moisture wicking and won’t get in the way. Leggings, sports bra for the ladies and a form-fitting top are your best option.
You probably use the treadmill now when you’re not feeling the weights but this year it’s stealing the show when it comes to classes. Running classes that don’t rely on the weather are proving popular and treadmill focused studios are setting up all over the UK. If you wanna give it a go, go all in and try out a Barry’s Bootcamp, this treadmill class features cardio on the machine followed by weights, floor work and TRX for an all-body workout. It’s a favourite of the Kardashians.
Good, supportive trainers, your comfiest running gear and minimal layers – it’s going to get sweaty.
We’ve all done the downward dog. Tried to master the cobra. But have you ever considered yoga in the air? Aerial fitness is a 2019 trend that you need to try. Suspended in the air, you use your whole body to maintain poses while holding on tight to silks, a hoop or slings. Look into classes from the likes of Flying Fantastic who have a range of locations across London.
Sportswear that fits snug – you don’t want to get your clothing caught on the silks or in the hoop. Leggings are best to avoid friction burns when moving around on the equipment.
Move over boys, the girls are in the ring. Plenty of boutique boxing studios are popping up with celebrities joining in on the trend. Boxing can reduce anxiety/stress, plus it’s super empowering. We recommend Kobox in London, which is deemed part fight club, part night club.
Sportswear that’s breathable but easy to move in to ensure your right hook isn’t hindered.
Thought to be the sphere of adrenaline junkies and stuntmen, parkour classes are now offered to us mere mortals. Parkour Generations offers classes for all abilities and sessions focused on specific skills.
You need to move freely when attempting parkour and it’s best to cover up to in an attempt to avoid scuffs and scrapes while tackling those jumps and tucks.
Want to up your fitness game in 2019? Try out these trends and look good doing it with the Superdry Sport range for men and women.
The post Top 5 fitness trends for 2019 appeared first on Superdry Edition. | 2019-04-21T12:58:45Z | https://careers.superdry.com/blog/archive/2018-12?page=2 |
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Monday is a perfect opportunity to kick off the week right by treating your staff to a piece of pie. If you decide to bring one in for you and the team to share, this year, we recommend Boston Cream (delicious recipe!). Why?
KaVo Kerr Group will be hosting its second annual 3D Dental University (3DU) in Boston. Held October 7-8, 2016 at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, this premier educational event on cone beam 3D imaging will feature world-class speakers as well as hands-on training for dentists and practice staff. The two-day event will cover clinical topics, as well as technology integration and maximizing return on investment.
If you have 60 seconds or less, you can check out a video with insights from last year’s attendees, scan the initial agenda, or act now to register and take advantage of early-bird pricing.
Apply promo code GX50 at checkout and save 50% off Dental 3D University tuition.
Unlike other conferences, this event has a laser focus on the practical aspects of 3D imaging – providing a comprehensive look at the technology, its implications for the dentist, team and patients, and the chance to engage in a collaborative learning environment where thought leaders, peers, product experts and the uninitiated can share real-world wisdom and questions essential to a successful transition to 3D.
For more information, go to dental3du.com.
This premier educational event on Cone Beam 3D imaging promises to deliver engaging lectures and valuable networking opportunities.
HATFIELD, Pa., July 14, 2015: Registration is open for the first-ever Dental 3D University (3DU), hosted by KaVo Kerr Group imaging brands Gendex™, NOMAD™, SOREDEX™ and Instrumentarium™. 3DU is an exciting 2-day event that promises to provide dental professionals with an educational environment dedicated to Cone Beam 3D (CBCT) solutions that will enhance their practice and put them in full control of treatment outcomes.
3DU will be held October 1-2, 2015, at the Hilton Chicago in Chicago, IL. Up to 12 CE Credits can be earned and an early bird discount of $300 is available for dentists and staff who register on or before August 16, 2015.
Featured topics at Dental 3D University include: Successfully incorporating 3D into your practice Implant planning with 3D and surgical guides Reading 3D scans Insurance and billing for a smoother reimbursement process And much more!
The educational program will be anchored by world-class presenters, Dr. Lou Graham, discussing his "Journey to 3D: Working Through Data to Make the Right Decision"; and Dr. John Flucke, one of the strongest voices in dental technology over the last decade, sharing his expertise on the value of 3D in endodontic procedures.
In addition to the educational sessions, networking opportunities will offer attendees time to interact with colleagues and industry speakers. "The advancements in 3D imaging over the last several years have generated not only excitement among specialists and tech-savvy dentists, but a genuine interest from a much wider audience in understanding how these developments can make a difference in day-to-day practice and patients' overall quality of care," says Pankaj Jaggi, Director of Marketing, KaVo Kerr Group, Imaging. "We are excited to showcase an exceptional lineup of engaging lectures, outstanding speakers, professional networking opportunities and more. 3DU will offer attendees time to interact with peers and industry thought leaders, explore the technology exhibit, and learn about the latest digital solutions.This will be an event you won't want to miss!"
A KaVo Kerr Group Imaging Owners' Meeting, to be held during the event on October 1, offers an opportunity for existing Gendex, SOREDEX 3D and Instrumentarium owners to take part in advanced training and peer-to-peer networking. Reserve your spot now at dental3DU.com.
About KaVo Kerr Group KaVo Kerr Group is a global portfolio of leading dental brands that share common values of Trust, Experience, Choices, Quality and Smart Innovation. Brands include KaVo™, Kerr™, i-CAT™, Gendex™, NOMAD™, DEXIS™, Instrumentarium™, SOREDEX™, Orascoptic™, Pelton & Crane™, Marus™, Pentron™, Ormco™ and Implant Direct™. With over 500 years of combined experience and proven solutions, KaVo Kerr Group uniquely serves 99% of all dental practices. Visit www.kavokerrgroup.com for more information.
Gendex celebrates the Dentaltown “Best Panoramic X-ray” GXDP-300 and GXDP-700 at Chicago MidWinter meeting, and introduces the new Invivo 5.3 to its 3D product line.
Hatfield, PA (February 19, 2014) - Gendex, a leader in dental imaging, will showcase its full line of digital imaging solutions at the Chicago Dental Society Midwinter Meeting from February 20 to February 22, 2014.
At the show, Gendex will celebrate the recent Dentaltown “Best Panoramic X-ray” Townie Choice Award received for its GXDP-300 digital panoramic and GXDP-700 panoramic, cephalometric, and Cone Beam 3D systems. The positive response from dental practitioners and industry experts confirms Gendex’s place as a leader in extraoral imaging innovation.
Gendex will also introduce Invivo 5.3, a new edition of the award-winning 3D imaging software. Current Gendex 3D owners and visitors wanting to learn more about 3D will be able to demo Invivo 5.3. With the integration of new clinical tools to enhance the implant treatment planning process, this latest version elevates the potential of Gendex Cone Beam imaging solutions and ultimately increases the predictability of clinical outcomes.
Furthermore, the new software allows users to combine Cone Beam 3D data with digital impressions taken with an intraoral camera or CAD/CAM system. The pairing of patient anatomy datasets allows practitioners to identify a treatment plan that meets both functional and aesthetic requirements.
The GXDP-300, GXDP-700, Invivo 5.3 along with the entire family of Gendex products including digital intraoral sensors and x-ray solutions, will be showcased at the Chicago Midwinter show in Booth #1000.
In April 2013, all of my dreams came true — I opened Mahoney Family Dentistry and gave birth to my son, Keegan, just weeks apart. Caring for a newborn baby and nurturing a new practice both take patience, attention to detail, and a great support group. The caring and knowledgeable representatives from Gendex and Burkhart offered their expertise on every aspect of the practice, especially on my imaging needs. As a result, the GXDP-700™ series digital pan and 3D combination unit and GXS-700 digital sensors have become two of the most important assets for my new practice.
During my career, I have worked in many aspects of dentistry — starting as a dental assistant in my father’s pediatric practice in 1990, then studying to become a hygienist, continuing on to dental school at Boston University School of Dental Medicine, and finally completing a GPR residency at the University of Nevada School Of Medicine in Las Vegas. In 2008, I moved to Edmonds, Washington and worked in different dental practices with various levels of technology.
By the time I started my own practice, I had worked in the dental field for 20 years and had experience with a variety of software and x-ray equipment. So, I was very selective and knew exactly what I did and did not want. Burkhart representatives Jim Connor and Tami Lennox accompanied me at the Pacific Northwest Dental Convention to see my options. For imaging products, we visited multiple companies’ booths and kept returning to Gendex. For implant procedures, I wanted a user-friendly in-office CBCT that produced great images. After stopping by the Gendex booth, and seeing the excellent image quality and price of the GXDP-700, the decision was simple. As part of my imaging package, I also got both sizes of GXS-700 digital sensors.
From the time of the training, I knew that I had made the right choice. I am so pleased with the clarity of the images, and how simply I can move between 2D and 3D modes. During training, I had a cone beam and bitewings done on me because I was due for a checkup. The bitewing was so crystal clear that I found a cavity that I had suspected but that was missed with a different brand of digital imaging a year before.
3D imaging is important to different procedures in my practice. When planning implant cases, I need the most accurate and detailed information available. And 3D can help me to pinpoint precise nerve location for third molar wisdom tooth extraction cases. I can control the resolution for lower radiation exposure and still get very fine detail even at the low resolution setting. My goal is to start using guides on every case, and CBCT is an important part of that process. This will remove even more guesswork and allow me to keep more advanced cases in-house.
Another interesting feature helped out with a patient who had an extremely bad gag reflex. With the extraoral bitewing feature, we were able to get great quality images. The patient was so impressed and said that he didn’t even know a dentist could cater to his special needs.
The GXS-700 sensors have also proven to be very valuable. Almost all of our new patients get a full mouth series. During our training, my team quickly learned how to properly position the sensor to get the appropriate views. The sensors are comfortable, and we use the smaller size for children, or adults with a bad gag reflex. Patients appreciate that they get less radiation exposure with digital x-rays, and since I was an assistant cleaning the processor at the beginning of my career, I appreciate not having to waste space with a darkroom or use harsh developing chemicals.
The Gendex trainer Mary Johnson came from Portland, Oregon to get us up to speed with the VixWin Platinum and Anatomage software. I was relieved that both are easy to navigate. I love and want technology, but am not super tech savvy, so the fact that it is so user-friendly is very important. The touchscreen on the GXDP-700 makes it so simple, my assistants caught on very quickly. Also, if we need to share information, scans can easily and securely be sent electronically to referring dentists.
Setting up this office has been an interesting, and often hectic experience. In the span of a few weeks, my husband, Glenn (who is in emergency medicine and helps monitor my in-office IV sedation), and I got a loan, designed our space, signed a 10-year lease, and discovered that we were going to have a baby. Troy Schmidt from Gendex, Jim Connor and Tami Lennox from Burkhart helped to reduce this potentially stressful situation. Jim and Tami went above and beyond to help me set up my practice with the hallmark integrity that Burkhart has always shown. Troy kept in touch and answered all of my questions, ensuring that I was happy with my decisions. Mary, the Gendex trainer, was patient and kind. They became my support group and gave me tips on everything from equipment to parenting. I returned to my new practice after three weeks of maternity leave, and my dreams continue to come true as I watch my baby and my practice grow.
Dr. Mahoney began her dental career in Arizona in 1990 as a pediatric dental assistant, working for her father. After 8 years of general and pediatric dental assisting, she went to college to become a dental hygienist and graduated from Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas, Texas, in 1998. After graduation, a job opportunity took her to Luzern, Switzerland, where she practiced dental hygiene for 3 years.
After moving back to the states for dental school, she graduated, with honors, from Boston University School of Dental Medicine. She went on to complete a competitive residency at The University of Nevada School of Medicine. During her residency, she received intensive training in general dentistry, hospital dentistry, implant dentistry and sedation. Upon completion of residency, she and her husband, who works in emergency medicine, moved to Washington to be close to family.
Washington is her final home, but through her many moves and travels she has gained life experiences. She feels that these experiences make her able to communicate and work with patients of all ages and backgrounds. Besides her work in private practice, Dr. Mahoney is also affiliate faculty at the University of Washington School of Dentistry. She says that she loves being a dentist because it allows her to help improve a person’s health and smile. She finds it rewarding to get to know her patients and really understand their individual expectations and desires in regards to their oral health.
Hatfield, PA (August 29, 2013) Gendex, developers of the GXDP-700™ cone beam 3D system, has been honored to receive the Pride Institute’s Best of Class Technology Award for 2013 for its SRT™ Scatter Reduction Technology. Unique in its approach and scope, the Pride Institute’s “Best of Class” Technology Award — now in its fifth year — recognizes products that demonstrate excellence in their category.
SRT image optimization technology delivers 3D scans with higher clarity and detail around scatter-generating material. By using SRT Technology, clinicians are able to reduce artifacts caused by metal or radio-opaque objects such as restorations, endodontic filling materials, and implant posts. When a scan is prescribed near a known area of scatter generating material, the user only needs to select the SRT button from the GXDP-700 touchscreen interface to utilize this new optimization technology. From endodontic to restorative and the post-surgical assessment of implant sites, SRT offers a significant improvement to image quality.
The panel is committed to an unbiased and rigorous selection method. Throughout the course of the year, members of the panel review new and existing technologies in preparation for the vote. Panelists who receive compensation from dental companies are prevented from voting in that company’s category. This provides the dental professional with a product perspective untainted by manufacturer intervention.
Gendex’s design philosophy focuses on delivering award-winning innovations with clinicians and patients in mind, and the addition of the SRT to the GXDP-700 platform aligns with that goal. The company’s strong history in continuing innovation, along with a deep dedication to deliver products that exceed the needs of dental professionals, have earned Gendex recognition as a global leader.
Learn more about the full line of Gendex products at www.gendex.com.
With the advent of any new technology, it’s important for dental professionals to consider not only cost and risks, but also the benefits of switching. In the case of 3D dental imaging, the advantages are clear, granting practitioners and patients alike a better clinical experience.
A dental 3D scan allows clinicians to view dental anatomy from different angles. A 3D scan can help gain a better view of bone structures, such as adjacent root positions, in order to locate canals and root fractures, as well as provide the ability to more accurately measure anatomical structures. These scans also support a wide range of diagnosis and treatment planning, making them extremely flexible. Further, they increase the possibility of treatment success, granting practitioners greater predictability and confidence in preparing for extractions, performing root evaluations, and placing implants.
3D dental imaging also delivers the power of repeatability, providing fast and accurate imaging that’s consistent—and thus, reliable. Using a 3D dental scanner equips dental professionals with a comprehensive view, letting them see specific conditions in the region of interest to determine whether a treatment is necessary. Because details show up so clearly, patients can be more confident in a dentist’s decision. In addition, the use of dental imaging technology often creates a more comfortable and engaging dental visit for the patient.
The Gendex GXDP-700 Series features the pinnacle of 3D dental imaging technology, allowing dentists to plan for more predictable treatment outcomes by taking advantage of powerful 3D software analysis and simulation tools. Plus, dental practitioners can control the exposure and the size of scanned areas using the system’s flexible field-of-view (FOV) to meet individual patient and clinical needs. As a practice grows to offer additional imaging capabilities, the GXDP-700 imaging solution can be upgraded within your own timeline and budget.
NEW ANATOMAGE INVIVO 5.2 3D IMAGING DENTAL SOFTWARE IS HERE!
A new, powerful version of 3D imaging software is shipping with our award-winning Cone Beam 3D systems: Anatomage Invivo 5.2.
This software seamlessly integrates with the Gendex VixWin Platinum 3.x imaging application, bringing 3D imaging just a single click away and making all 2D images from digital sensors, panoramic, digital cameras and 3D scans conveniently available in one single patient imaging management system.
Here is a list of new key features and improvements available with the all-new version of the Invivo software.
Significantly sharper and clearer images for better diagnosis.
Better bone boundary for improved implant planning.
Ability to check for surgical interference before sending the case reduces treatment time.
Wrap image data with the Invivo Viewer and burn to a CD to easily share scans.
Export 3D/2D images with a work-up as a single-file in DICOM format.
New flexible custom section tools.
For more information about Anatomage software, please visit anatomage.com.
The Gendex GXDP-300™ and GXDP-700™ systems are the pinnacle of Gendex's innovation in dental panoramic x-ray. Their intelligent touchscreen interfaces, sleek design features, and advanced diagnostic options are only a few examples of the company's commitment to innovation. These achievements were the culmination of decades of dedication to dental imaging. So let's step back in time for a journey along Gendex innovations in dental panoramic x-ray technology.
During the 1970s, the GE-3000 was introduced as the company's first line of panoramic x-ray machines. The film support was cylindrical in shape to allow the film to rotate as it was being exposed to x-rays. A few years later, the breakthrough Panelipse™ was launched. This was a benchmark panorex and the first system to produce panoramic images with a constant magnification factor to achieve a proportionate representation of anatomical structures within the image.
During the 1980s, Gendex's continuous desire to innovate and elevate the quality of dental care led its research and development team to the design and launch of the Gendex GX-Pan, which later became truly iconic dental panoramic x-ray equipment. The next generation of dental pans was even more exciting. The Orthoralix series, with its 9200 and 9000 versions, were among the first to adopt software-driven motion. Their direct digital series, the Orthoralix 9200 DDE and 8500 DDE, led the Gendex digital revolution in dental panoramic technology and real-time imaging processing capabilities.
So what makes today's digital panoramic x-ray machines so special?
In August 2011, Gendex introduced a completely new extraoral platform featuring the GXDP-300 Pan and GXDP-700 Pan/Ceph/3D systems. These units reflect the Gendex tradition and our commitment to the clinician's experience, patient comfort, and innovation. The easy-to-use and intuitive touchscreen interfaces make operating these panoramic units as easy as 1-2-3. Gendex EasyPosition™ patient positioning system allows for a comfortable and proper patient position, resulting in crisp panoramic imaging results.
If you are wondering why you should invest in a digital panoramic x-ray machine or upgrade your existing panoramic equipment, read Dr. Velazquez's ADA Peer2Peer study case on implant planning made possible with the aid of 3D x-ray scans, or listen to Dr. Annie Sohn talking about adopting digital panoramic x-ray technology in her practice. | 2019-04-23T04:16:09Z | http://blog.gendex.com/topic/cbct-cone-beam-3d |
Read these African safari reviews from like-minded nature travelers who have been to Kenya on non-package safaris holidays that combine soft game viewing walks, birding, photography, responsible wildlife viewing way from mass tourism. Learn the sheer freedom of not being cooped up in a safari bus during your vacation in Kenya + you can do this without breaking the bank!
The African safari reviews below are from real clients who traveled with Ontdek Kenya and they give you a first hand safari experience of what happens if you go behind the tourist circuit on a slowed down itinerary that has quality time devoted for wildlife viewing with competent naturalist guides - not just someone who can point at the "Big 5".
Remember you owe yourself to get the best possible nature travel and these trip reports will help you to make an informed decision. Read the safari reviews, ask questions and contact Ontdek Kenya Safaris for planning your nature safari in Kenya.
If you've traveled with Ontdek Kenya, feel free to contact us to post your African safari reviews in this page.
Omdat ik midden april in Nairobi moest zijn, wilde ik graag ook een mooie vogelsafari maken in Kenia. Via internet kwam ik in contact met "Ontdek Kenia" van Peter Huysman en waagde ik de sprong om mij voor deze safari vast te leggen. Daar heb ik geen spijt van gekregen, integendeel. Het was prettig om vóór de reis over bepaalde zaken te kunnen overleggen.
In Nairobi werd ik door mijn 'driver' Mungai opgehaald voor de eerste bestemming (Aberdare Country Club). Daar startte de grote rijkdom van Kenia wat betreft vogels en zoogdieren. Dat hieldt niet op in de volgende grandiose bestemmingen: Samburu NP, Aberdare NP (de Ark), de meren van Naivasha en Crater, met als bekroning het Mara Masai NP met onvergetelijke landschappen. Ook onderweg hebben we veel gezien.
Mungai was een uiterst plezierige metgezel en een onvermoeibare vogelaar. Mede dankzij zijn spotter talent heb ik ruim 225 verschillende vogelsoorten gefotografeerd. Al vogelend kwamen we alle grote katten (waaronder de zeer schuwe luipaard) en tientallen andere zoogdieren tegen, inclusief de big 5. De maaltijden en overnachtingen waren uitstekend. Mungai gaf je het gevoel als een koning verzorgd te worden. WiFi in de jeep was ook super. Ik zie uit naar nieuwe safari's in Kenia.
I just wanted to say thank you for putting together and organising such a great itinerary and trip for us. Each location had something different which made it worth the visit. I appreciated that we weren't stuck in vehicles all of the time and had the opportunity to get out and walk in places like Hell's Gate. On the other hand, I thought that the itinerary was well balanced, particularly considering the age range of the students, and ensured that after a few tiring days of walking, they had the opportunity to relax a little with the drive around Lake Nakuru and enjoying the swimming pool at Tumaini Conference Centre. Ending in Maasai Mara was a definite highlight for us all. I've been on several safaris in South Africa and also in Uganda and Maasai Mara was by far the most impressive park that I have seen. The scenery and quantity of wildlife (3 different leopards in 3 days!) was amazing!
On top of everything, Mungai and Jackson were fantastic. They were enthusiastic and very informative. There was barely a question that they were unable to answer. They were flexible and understanding on the few occasions that a student was unwell and adjustments to the day had to be made. They were also very professional - arriving on time every day, driving carefully and regularly reminding the students to wear their seat belts. As well as all of this they were very well liked by the students and it was really sad for them to say goodbye at the airport.
I definitely intend to do another trip to Kenya with the school (more likely not next Easter but the following to allow for a new batch of students to move up through the school) and will make sure that Ontdek is added to our listed of trusted external providers.
Many thanks again for all of your work and best of luck with everything. Please feel free to use me as a reference if needed by any future school groups.
Its been over a month since we finished the Safari with you. The pleasant memories of hiking and driving through the game preserves still linger. We both had experiences that we will never forget.
Thank you for making the tour very interesting an satisfying. Our guide/driver, Mungai, was exceptional. You are very fortunate to have someone with his abilities on your staff. We thoroughly enjoyed his companionship, knowledge, and willingness to make our trip very special. The choice of itinerary and lodging was excellent. Even the travel days were interesting.
We know from the news that West Africa is having some severe health problems. I'm sorry that this has probably unfairly impacted the tourist activities in Kenya. Hopefully the problems will be resolved in a short period of time.
We will enthusiastically recommend your operation to our friends.
First, I cannot imagine a better guide than Mungai. He was always right on top of everything, exceedingly knowledgeable, amazing in his ability to quickly to spot the most camouflaged creatures and birds, wonderfully kind, interesting, funny, sensitive -- in short I cannot say enough good about him! And he is an absolutely brilliant driver. If we have the opportunity to return, which we would love to do, we will certainly request him again.
We (myself, wife and daughter age 14), in conjunction with 2 relatives from the US, booked with Ontdek after much research had been conducted by the US couple. They were able to start sooner than we were so we ended up each taking 12 days, with a week at Naivasha, Nakuru and the Masai Mara common to both of us. Peter was unfailingly helpful at the planning stage, suggesting destinations and tactfully pointing out where our aspirations were too ambitious given the time scale (Kakamega forest). Our interest in birds as well as animals (and the country itself, of course) was one of the factors that led us to choose Ontdek.
I find it hard to believe that we could have found a better driver/guide than Mungai. His knowledge of birds and animals was seemingly bottomless and he was endlessly patient with our questions about the sights that we encountered, both natural and cultural - a really lovely man.
All of the places we stayed were of an extremely high quality. Highlights were the Oloshaiki camp in the Masai Mara, The Ark in the Aberdare National Park, and (a totally different experience) the Kiambethu Tea Farm, where Fiona was a charming host, but all the accommodations were excellent, and I feel guilty not listing them all.
If (or, more likely, when) we go back to Kenya then we would certainly use Ontdek without any hesitation.
PS I have given 5 stars in all the rating categories below, including that for the vehicle's quality and cleanliness, because that's what I think they deserved. Bear in mind that Africa is dusty and/or muddy, so that the vehicles get dirty during each day (but each morning it arrived freshly cleaned), also it's a Land Cruiser (as almost all the Safari vans are there), not a Lexus, but absolutely fit for purpose (and we saw one 'urban 4x4' totally stuck on a muddy forest road - I imagine the luxurious internal carpets might not have been much consolation for the passengers at that point).
Tom and Ev traveled with Ontdek from February 16 through 28, 2013. They booked their tour with a partner tour operator in the UK.
First, I would like to say that we had the most marvelous experience with Ontdek in Kenya. We thoroughly enjoyed our treks, the wildlife (animal and bird), the accommodation, but mostly the people. Mungai was a pleasure to be with, and we feel we made a friend. He is extremely articulate and always willing to help foreigners understand what it is like to be Kenyan. And thank you and Anne for your organizational skills, and making sure we were OK. It was fun to meet your family on the road to Hell's Gate. Your children are beautiful.
Nancy and I also enjoyed our safari in TZ - the Serengeti and Ngorogoro Crater in particular. Every day we spent in Kenya and TZ was different and special. Our son Mike arrived a day ahead of the start of our trek up Kili. We experienced -25C and a blizzard on the way up - not for the faint of heart!
Once again, many thanks. Let me know if I can provide any feedback to other travelers or websites.
This is my second attempt to supply you with our thoughts and considerations, regarding our recent holiday. My computer may have sent half a letter to you!
Sangare tented camp. Wonderful. Just eight of us, breakfasting outdoors as we spotted birds, what a way to start the day!
Then to the Ark and all those noisy people! I found the Ark disappointing, too many people and not a lot to observe. I suppose if you have a phobia about walking anywhere you probably loved it.
Time spent at Sunbird and Sawela Lodges was time well spent. Very enjoyable, lots of birds and animals to photograph.
Wherever we stayed we were fed extremely well, too well actually, we are now on strict diets, no more cooked lunches and cooked dinners. We now operate on an either or policy, definitely not both.
And so the highlight of our holiday, time spent in the Mara. What can I say. Fantastic! Amazing! Fabulous! Wonderful! A magnificent experience! I have exhausted my superlatives.
And so to the main man, Elijah. He described himself as just a driver! He could certainly drive, and spot birds, and mammals, and tell us all about them and their habits, a mine of information. A wonderful companion, who shared our jokes and humor. He was was determined to find leopard for us to photograph. And when word came on the "old grape vine" (yet another colloquialism,) we were off. Sadly, leopard was no where to be seen. The sighting of a tortoise on our journey back to camp was but a poor substitute.
In conclusion, a wonderful holiday. Thank you. I wish the both of you every success in your new business venture.
Review of our birding safari with Ontdek. Fran and I have traveled extensively and this was our first safari, 12 days in July of this year with Ontdek. From start to finish, this trip was all we could have wished for. Michael and Mungai were exceptional birders and representatives of Kenya and Ontdek.
Our total of 325+ birds and innumerable animals was almost secondary to the overall satisfaction of a trip that covered all aspects of the country and its dedication to preservation of its way of life. Anne and Peter should be proud of the way their company's employees have represented them.
The lodges were 1st class and the birding was great. After the Sleeping Warrior Camp, our favorite, we were not impressed with the type of birding available at the Lake Baringo Country Club -- till Michael showed us more birds in 2 hours than we could imagine.
We would book, and we plan to again, and recommend Ontdek with no reservations. It was a trip of a lifetime. Thank you Anne and Peter.
We have been saving up and waiting to visit Kenya for many years. We chose this walking safari because it seemed to offer the experiences of Kenya without too many travelling miles between sites and a chance to walk in some safe areas with the animals.
We booked a 10 day Senior Tour walking safari with Ontdek in Feb ’10 and it was fantastic. From initial contact through to transfer to Nairobi airport for our return home, everything worked out great.
Want to see a lion as close as your garage? A monkey frolicking on the drainpipe of the park-keeper's hut? A rhino teasing a waterbuck at the midnight waterhole? These are just some of the stunning opportunities a spell with Ontdek Kenya will bring you – in an indeed magical way.
Sorry it took so long, but I am finally getting my feedback to you.
All the places we stayed at were fantastic... guess I was expecting more rustic dwellings and was delightedly surprised. I wasn’t that fond of Treetops, (too many people) though it was an interesting experience! Looking back, I would have preferred to have stayed another night at the Sangare tented camp instead of a Tree hotel. Sangare had a much more personal experience.
I would like to thank you enormously for our wonderful holiday of a lifetime last week. Everything went like clockwork from our first exchange of e-mails to the last minute changes that we requested and you were able to accommodate.
Well, we made it home after that crazy long day and a half of flying! We took Peter's advice and ate at the Simba restaurant at the Airport and enjoyed a long meal. Please thank him for the suggestion. We were able to look at some of our photos on our cameras and we were reminiscing about the trip. What a wonderful trip!
I just returned from a trip of a lifetime with Ontdek tours in Kenya. We experienced walking safaris with animals and birds, wildlife safaris in the Masai Mara, Amboseli, small conservatories with high concentrations of rhinos, and meeting the Kenyan people. Every day was a new adventure and we learned and saw something new. From fish eagles to hippos in the swamp or rivers, lions and the baboons. The accommodations and food was top notch and Anne Huysman does an outstanding job arranging the perfect trip for your own personal interests. You have your own driver and guide who is very knowledgeable about the area.
We did a private safari with Ontdek in March 2009, visiting Amboseli and Tsavo West as well as stays in Mombasa and Nairobi.
They are a very professional, friendly and competent company. Some companies we approached quickly grew impatient or disinterested when we wanted to discuss the best itinerary, but Ontdek were endlessly patient and helpful in refining our plans. Every aspect of our trip was organized well and the whole trip went without a hitch, even when our incoming flight was delayed by a day and they had to adjust plans at the last moment. Our driver and guide, Elijah, was superb. He spoke good English, had unbelievable spotting skills and was a friendly and humorous traveling companion. We will definitely use Ontdek again if we return to Kenya and I thoroughly recommend them without hesitation.
I traveled with Ontdek in February for 10 days on a safari itinerary to Naivasha, Nakuru, Elementaita and of course the Masai Mara. Very personal service, Elijah was great as was Peter, the owner. His wife Anne made all the arrangements and everything went really well. Nothing was too much trouble for them. I would undoubtedly use Ontdek again if visiting Kenya and unreservedly recommend them.
Sorry for the passed time since your question, but it is the first time I come here. Also sorry for my bad English speaking. Well, we did a safari with Ontdek Kenya in Jan - Feb 2009.
Out of our heart, it was fantastic!
The personal approach, the conversation possibilities to speak about the travel with e-mail and arrange everything to our expectations, and with their knowledge.
The organization was absolutely perfect!
We never did enjoy a travel more than that. The accompanying guide and driver did a fabulous job.
Everywhere we came, we never were in a crowd of vehicles, and the lodges where totally in the range we asked fore.
While we where traveling with 4 in 1 4X4 (on our own demand), we saw different other companies traveling in large groups of different vehicles where they were with about 12 persons in one 4X4 vehicle - or large buses - really pressed together - making it a worthless experience for the most of them.
The personal approach and follow up was impressive.
My advice is for sure very positive. Just go for it !!
This safari exceeded all our expectations, having the chance to actually walk in some of the nature reserves gave all the group a chance to experience a close to nature feel. with the final 3 days doing game drives in The Masai Mara to see all the big 5 was the icing on the cake. The guides Peter, Michael and Elijah could not have been more helpful and their knowledge of both birds and game was excellent. The accommodation was good as was the food, be that on a couple of occasions number of guests at the lodges was low probably due to the past troubles in Kenya. All the places we visited the local residents were most welcoming and friendly.
I highly recommend this safari itinerary, the organization and care of the guests from the time we landed at Nairobi to the time we left Kenya will stay in our memories forever.
We spent this safari in a group of 9 guests with 2 local drivers and 1 local guide throughout. In addition there were local guides at most locations. We had a first class trip, well organized by cheerful, helpful staff. Through their expertise we saw all the big 5 and much more besides particularly birds. The accommodation was good and the combination of game walks and drives gave an excellent insight into wildlife in Kenya. The meeting with the local population particularly the Masai was both interesting and rewarding. They are a fine people. Overall a wonderful experience that I would recommend to anyone with a wish to get close to Kenyan rural life. | 2019-04-18T18:37:53Z | https://www.ontdekkenya.com/E/reviews/african-safari-reviews.html |
COUN 501. Ethics: Counseling and Counseling Psychology. 3 Credits.
Focus will be on the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association, the Codes of Ethics and Standard of Practice of the American Counseling Association and corresponding ethics codes for subspecialties within the counseling profession. Students will learn to interpret these codes and apply them to professional practice, supervision, research and teaching situations. F.
COUN 502. Professional Issues in Counseling. 1 Credit.
An introduction to counseling practice and services in mental health, addiction, and other community agencies. Emphasizes professional issues in the field, professional development and career paths, and related topics. Corequisite: COUN 501; only for students in the Community Agencies Emphasis and Addictions Emphasis.
COUN 503. Professional Issues: Internship and Job Preparation. 1 Credit.
This course explores the characteristics of professional counselor preparation, including identity development, professional organizations, licensure and certification, career paths, specializations in the field, and continuing education. Preparation for counseling internship will also be explored. Prerequisite: COUN 502 or COUN 506. F.
COUN 505. History of Psychology. 3 Credits.
Historical development of modern psychology with an emphasis on philosophical precursors to psychology, experimental and systematic phases of early psychological thought, important issues during the growth of psychology, and current and future trends. Prerequisite: Graduate standing in Counseling or Psychology.
COUN 506. Rehabilitation Counseling: Foundations and Ethical Issues. 3 Credits.
Comprehensive introduction to the rehabilitation profession, including past, present, and future trends. Areas emphasized: profession philosophy; organizational structure; historical and legislative influence; rehabilitation process and service delivery systems; professional issues, ethical codes, and behavior.
COUN 507. Life-Span Development in Counseling. 3 Credits.
This course examines the foundations of human development across the life span, including pre-natal issues, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and aging. Theories that address biological neurological behavioral, social, cognitive, cultural, and environmental issues of development will be examined. Structural theories of growth, maturation, and aging will be presented with an emphasis on strategies and interventions used by counselors to deal with developmental processes and transitions. S,SS.
COUN 510. Counseling Methods. 3 Credits.
Two training components are combined to provide an intensive prepracticum experience. The didactic component introduces the basic interviewing and active listening skills; a laboratory component provides practice in the practical application of those skills in simulated counseling interviews.
COUN 514. Rehabilitation Counseling: Assessment and Evaluation. 3 Credits.
An introduction to assessment and related ethical issues in rehabilitation counseling. Assessment for vocational ability and independent living will be emphasized. Theory and research will be addressed, within a primarily applied framework.
COUN 515. Methods of Research. 3 Credits.
Methods and procedures of research development, design and analysis related to counseling and behavioral science. Experience in formulating and developing an individual research project. Considers research ethics and protection of human participants.
COUN 516. Counseling Research Laboratory. 1-3 Credits.
Introduces basic procedures in analysis of counseling research data. Topics including data coding, data entry and use of statistical packages are presented in an individualized manner. Prerequisite: COUN 515. Repeatable to 3 credits. S/U grading. F,S,SS.
COUN 517. Psychological Testing. 3 Credits.
The application of principles of psychological measurement to selected instruments in the areas of intellectual functioning and aptitudes; educational and occupational achievements; career interests; and personality. Development of test interpretation skills.
COUN 518. Group Theory and Process. 3 Credits.
Addresses the principles and practices of support, task, psycho-educational and therapeutic groups with various populations in a multicultural context. Includes study of professional issues relevant to group processes. Involves participation and leading group experiences.
COUN 520. Diagnostic and Prevention Strategies in Counseling. 3 Credits.
This course will focus on the assessment and diagnosis of individual psychiatric disorders as defined by classification systems such as the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (lCD). Understanding of defined diagnostic disorders relative to the helping context will be emphasized. Knowledge of cultural concerns associated with classification systems will be explored. Emphasis will be placed on the following: assessment strategies designed to promote healthy human functioning; prevention strategies that focus on organizational/community/social justice advocacy; and the impact of diagnostic and prevention strategies on human functioning and wellness across the life span. S.
COUN 527. School-Based Family Counseling. 3 Credits.
The course provides an overview of relevant theoretical models, approaches and specific issues of families in order for school personnel to facilitate student adjustment and achievement. Prerequisite: Enrollment in School Counseling Distance Program or permission of instructor.
COUN 529. Dynamics of Addiction. 3 Credits.
The course emphasizes the addiction and recovery process including vulnerability factors, diagnosis and treatment, and relapse prevention of addiction disorders for individuals and families. Shared characteristics of behavioral and chemical addictions, addiction theory, research, and policy will be addressed.
COUN 530. Theories of Counseling, Personality and Development. 3 Credits.
Study and analysis of counseling interventions based on different theoretical models, emphasizing personality and human development. Course involves viewing videotapes of simulated or actual counseling sessions, role-play demonstrations, and role played practice of various theoretically based counseling interventions.
COUN 531. Psychology of Women, Gender and Development. 3 Credits.
This course presents current research and trends in development theory, particularly theories pertaining to the psychological development of women and men. Issues such as abuse, ageism, depression, eating disorders, emotional experience and expression, heterosexism, feminism, and multiculturalism will be examined as related to the practice of psychology. Learning methods include writing, music, film, group discussion and creative projects. On demand.
COUN 533. Couples And Family Counseling. 3 Credits.
Prerequisite: COUN 510 or consent of instructor.
COUN 540. Advanced Vocational Psychology. 3 Credits.
Advanced study of major career counseling theories, models, and methods. Prerequisites: COUN 519 or equivalent, and admission to doctoral program.
COUN 551. Research Issues in Counseling Psychology. 3 Credits.
This seminar is designed to increase students' self-efficacy and ability to examine critically research issues in Counseling Psychology and their relationship to practice. Students will further develop and demonstrate skills necessary to conduct the science of Counseling Psychology, including problem conceptualization, study design and the writing of proposals. Prerequisite: Admission to the doctoral program.
COUN 552. Counseling Psychology Professional Seminar I. 1 Credit.
An examination of the skills necessary for developing as a counseling psychologist trainee, with an emphasis on critical analysis, writing, and self-examination. Introduction to the breadth of competencies expected in counseling and professional psychology. Introduction to organizational and behavioral health consultation. Prerequisite: Admission to the doctoral program in Counseling Psychology. F.
COUN 553. Counseling Psychology Professional Seminar II. 1 Credit.
An introduction to the profession of Counseling Psychology, emphasizing the history of the specialty, the philosophical underpinnings of Counseling Psychology values, and the organizational structure of leadership in the discipline. Prerequisite: Admission to the doctoral program in Counseling Psychology.
COUN 554. Preparation for the Predoctoral Internship. 1 Credit.
A focused preparation of skills necessary for successful attainment of a predoctoral internship in Psychology. Emphasis on self-presentation and interview skills. Prerequisites: Admission to the doctoral program in Counseling Psychology or Clinical Psychology and permission of the instructor.
COUN 555. Advanced Psychometrics. 3 Credits.
This lecture/lab course allows students to become familiar with fundamental concepts of psychological measurement. The emphases of the course is on test development strategies based in classical testing theory, but also includes an introduction to item response theory. Additional purposes include gaining knowledge of APA standards of assessment and their application to the profession of Counseling Psychology and related fields. Finally, the application of psychometric theory to relevant assessment instruments and the cultural implications of these applications are addressed. Prerequisites: COUN 517 or equivalent, and admission to doctoral program. F, even years.
COUN 560. Supervision Theory and Technique. 3 Credits.
A survey and critical examination of approaches, techniques and issues in providing supervision and consultation. Includes reading of current theory and research on supervision and consultation, critical analysis of approaches to supervision, demonstrations, and role-played experiences of different supervision techniques. Prerequisite: Admission to the doctoral program in Counseling Psychology, the Master's program in Counseling, the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology or instructor permission. S.
COUN 561. Consultation Theory and Practice. 2 Credits.
This course provides an introduction to theories, models and practices of mental health and psychological consultation and collaboration. Consultant roles, for both program and case consultation, will be defined. Practices include initiating and developing a consultation relationship, developing a consultation contract, enacting the contract, and consultation process.
COUN 562. Consultation Laboratory. 1 Credit.
Under supervision by a member of the faculty, students will develop and implement a consultation project with an organization or client from the community. Prerequisite or Corequisite: COUN 561. S/U grading.
COUN 563. Advanced Application of APA Ethical Standards. 2 Credits.
This elective course is designed for students in the second or third year of doctoral study, those who have already completed some work with clients and are seeking an opportunity to think more critically about the application of ethical expectations to professional work. The course will emphasize the integration of ethical and legal standards and the implementation of such standards in case-based exercises.
COUN 564. Advanced Therapy Techniques. 3 Credits.
This elective course is designed for advanced students who are engaged in clinical practica and have completed COUN 530 (Theories of Counseling Personality and Development) or its equivalent. The course will provide focused discussion and application of various evidence-supported techniques to case material. Prerequisite: COUN 530.
COUN 565. Professional Seminars. 1-3 Credits.
Seminars are designed to present current research and supplement coursework in several areas. May be repeated up to eight credits. Repeatable to 8 credits. S/U grading.
COUN 568. Personality Assessment. 3 Credits.
Theory, research, evidence, and training in the administration, scoring, interpretation and use of personality assessment instruments. Clinical interviewing and checklists, behavioral observations and report writing skills. Issues of race, ethnicity, gender, age and disability in the use of these instruments is emphasized. A two-hour lab provides supervised practice in test administration and scoring. Prerequisites: COUN 517 or equivalent, and admission to the doctoral program or permission of instructor.
COUN 569. Cognitive Assessment. 3 Credits.
Theory, research, evidence, and training in the administration, scoring, interpretation and use of cognitive assessment instruments. Clinical interviewing and checklists, behavioral observations and report writing skills. Issues of race, ethnicity, gender, age and disability in the use of these instruments is emphasized. A two-hour lab provides supervised practice in test administration and scoring. Prerequisites: COUN 517 or equivalent, and admission to the doctoral program or permission of instructor.
COUN 570. Cognitive Assessment Measures in Special Education. 3 Credits.
Theory, research, evidence, and training in the administration, scoring, interpretation and use of cognitive assessment measures. Practice in behavioral observations and report writing skills. Issues of race, ethnicity, gender, age and disability in the use of these instruments is integrated throughout. Prerequisite: Admission to the Doctor of Education program or permission of instructor. On demand.
COUN 580. Counseling Practicum. 4 Credits.
Introduction to counseling practice. Emphasis on development, improvement, and evaluation of counseling relationships. Interview skills in counseling practice with live supervision. Prerequisites: COUN 510 and Instructor permission. Prerequisite or Corequisite: COUN 530. F,S,SS.
COUN 582. Child and Adolescent Counseling Internship. 6 Credits.
Professional practice in counseling, assessment, consultation, teaching, or research in an approved agency specializing in child and adolescent counseling. Supervision must meet criteria established by the department and the Graduate School. Department permission needed for summer enrollment. Graded SP/UP. Prerequisite: COUN 580. Repeatable to 12 credits. F,S.
COUN 583. Doctoral Practicum. 1-2 Credits.
Participation in the activities of a counseling agency or similar appropriate organization. Continued development of counseling, assessment, and consultation skills with individuals, couples, groups, organizations, and communities in a multicultural context. Participation in small group and individual supervision and in case conferences. This course is graded as SP/UP. Prerequisite: Admission to doctoral program. Repeatable to 12 credits. F,S,SS.
COUN 584. Community Counseling Internship. 6 Credits.
Professional practice in counseling, assessment, consultation, teaching, or research in an approved community agency. Supervision must meet criteria established by the department and the Graduate School. Department permission needed for Summer Session enrollment. Graded SP/UP. Prerequisite: COUN 580. Repeatable to 12 credits. F,S.
COUN 585. Counseling Psychology Research Practicum. 1-3 Credits.
This course involves student participation in one of several, topical research groups conducted by faculty on an ongoing basis. Groups will design and carry out research studies, and prepare manuscripts for publication or presentation. May be repeated up to 8 credits. Repeatable to 8 credits. S/U grading.
COUN 586. Practicum in Supervision. 1-3 Credits.
Supervised experience in providing supervision to counselors-in-training. Experience may be gained in supervising beginning students in role-played labs, live supervision in practicum, individual supervision, and/or small group supervision of interns. May be repeated up to 6 credits. Prerequisite: COUN 560. Repeatable to 6 credits. S/U grading.
COUN 587. Addictions Counseling Internship. 6 Credits.
Professional practice in counseling, assessment, consultation, teaching, or research in an approved agency specializing in addictions counseling. Supervision must meet criteria established by the department and the Graduate School. Department permission needed for SS enrollment. Graded SP/UP. Prerequisite: COUN 580. Repeatable to 12 credits. F,S.
COUN 588. Rehabilitation Counseling Internship. 6 Credits.
Professional practice in counseling, assessment, consultation, teaching, or research in an approved agency specializing in rehabilitation counseling. Supervision must meet criteria established by the department and the Graduate School. Department permission needed for SS enrollment. Graded SP/UP. Prerequisite: COUN 580. Repeatable to 12 credits. F,S.
COUN 589. School Counseling Internship. 3-6 Credits.
Supervised internship in a school setting. Emphasis on observing and performing guidance and counseling methods and techniques. Knowledge and performance of the roles and duties of professional school counselors. Supervision must meet criteria established by the department and the Graduate School. Prerequisite: COUN 581. Repeatable to 12 credits. S/U grading. F,S,SS.
COUN 590. Problems in Counseling. 1-3 Credits.
Supervised independent study or application of selected problems in the counseling field. Repeatable. S/U grading.
COUN 593. Readings in Counseling. 1-3 Credits.
Reading in selected areas of counseling. May be repeated up to six credits. Repeatable to 6 credits. S/U grading.
COUN 995. Scholarly Project. 1-2 Credits.
The scholarly project will be collaborative investigations by two or more students of a relevant topic within the Counseling profession. Before initiating the project students must obtain approval from designated faculty. Prerequisites: Enrollment in either the on-campus Counseling MA program or the School Counseling online program. Prerequisite or Corequisite: COUN 515. Repeatable to 3 credits. F,S,SS.
COUN 996. Continuing Enrollment. 1-12 Credits.
COUN 997. Independent Study. 2 Credits.
COUN 998. Thesis. 1-9 Credits.
COUN 999. Dissertation. 1-15 Credits. | 2019-04-19T01:01:56Z | http://und-public.courseleaf.com/graduateacademicinformation/departmentalcoursesprograms/counselingpsychologyandcommunityservices/ |
The YWCA offers an opportunity for women to develop leadership skills and have a real voice in the organization’s management at the executive and board level through maintaining an all-female board and a female executive director. This empowerment carries over into other areas of life. Many former board members have expressed that their experience on the YWCA board has provided them with experience and skills to enable them to pursue other leadership positions and contribute to other organizations in the community. The guidelines for all-female boards and executive directors are set forth by the YWCA USA.
*Information from 2020 Women on Boards, 2020wob.com.
Katy Giebenhain co-hosts a poetry reading series at the Ragged Edge Coffeehouse in Gettysburg with Martin Malone and Alan Bogage. She is the author of Sharps Cabaret. Katy works in a bookstore. Her degrees are from Oregon State, University of Baltimore and University of South Wales. She and her husband have been happy YWCA members since moving to Gettysburg 12 years ago.
Betsy is a native of Pennsylvania who earned a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware and a Masters of Business Administration, finance, from Loyola University. She was employed by Sasol and its predecessors from 1976 to 2011 and lived in Baltimore, Houston and Frankford, Germany before moving to Gettysburg in 2011. She volunteers with numerous non-profit organizations, including LIU #12 Adams County Literacy Council, South Central Community Action Programs, Lake Heritage Women’s Club and Gettysburg Garden Club. Betsy and her husband of 29 years, Eric, enjoy working out at the YW and Betsy takes spin, Tai Chi and yoga classes and also organizes the YW’s Running Club. She has three grown children, a spoiled Chihuahua and is looking forward to grandchildren.
Kelly Alsedek was born and raised in Harrisburg, PA. She is a graduate of Gettysburg College, with a major in biology and minor in art. After pursuing graduate study in art and design, she worked for several years as a medical illustrator at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, and then, as a graphic artist for public television affiliate WPSX-TV in State College before moving into higher education communications. Kelly returned to Gettysburg College in the early1980s to work in the public relations office, then moved on to positions at Dickinson College and then Lebanon Valley College, where she served as director of publications and associate director of marketing and communications. Kelly retired from Lebanon Valley and moved to Gettysburg in 2013. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Y and found it to be a great resource as she became integrated into life of the community. She serves on the Communications Committee and Board of Directors of the Land Conservancy of Adams County, as well as the Gettysburg College Alumni Board of Directors. Kelly’s significant other, Ken Ross, lives in New Cumberland, PA. They met 6 years ago at a dog park—thanks to their Portuguese Water Dogs—and discovered they had many other interests in common. Their current Porties are Madigan and McDougall.
Jessica is 26 years old and has a Master’s Degree in religious studies. She focused on sociology of religion, and researched how a community (and individuals within) gendered God. Her bachelor’s degree is on sociology and religious studies as well. She is very passionate about a wide range of issues-from astronomy to violence against women, and is excited for the opportunity to engage her interests in social justice at the YWCA.
Denise grew up in Gettysburg. After attending Oberlin College, she worked in public broadcasting in the Washington DC area and then spent 20 years at AIGA, the professional association for design in New York City. She returned to Gettysburg in 2015, to be closer to her family, participate in the community, breathe fresh air, and to give Coco, her mini schnauzer, a backyard to patrol. She is a daily swimmer at the YWCA as well as an avid tap dancer, knitter, and gardener.
Linda is the product of a nurturing small town environment. She grew up in the Earlville, Illinois and received her Bachelor’s degree in Music from Millikin University. After a few years of teaching and performing, she was recruited to be one of the first women singers in The United States Army Band, Washington, DC when that military occupation was opened to women. She ultimately became the enlisted director of The US Army Chorale. When her husband Pat was transferred by his company to northern New Jersey she took retirement and began a new chapter, working for BMW of North America and later Jaguar Land Rover North America as a manager in dealer development. She retired in 2014 and continues to pursue her long time passion, instilled by her mother, of a holistic life of family and well-being. She is a certified yoga instructor and volunteers as a substitute teacher at the YWCA. She also serves on the finance committee and participated in a series of Blue Zone brainstorming sessions to help the YWCA promote longevity through the community. Linda’s son is principal trumpet of The US Army Brass Quintet, and she and Pat have three grandchildren.
Jane received her Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University, her Master’s Degree in Education from Villanova University and completed the CFP™ Professional Education Program at the College for Financial Planning. After teaching high school physics for 13 years in King of Prussia, Jane moved to Gettysburg in 1987. She worked briefly at the YWCA as Development Director in the early 1990s. Jane has worked in financial services since 1994, and started Lordeman Associates in 1997 to provide Financial Planning to families, individuals and small businesses. She has three children and three grandchildren and lives with her life-partner, Steve Askew.
Stephanie was born in Gettysburg, lived in Frederick, Md. for 10 years as a child and returned to Gettysburg. She has worked at Legal Services in Gettysburg and Frederick, the Faith Home in Hanover for victims of domestic violence and now works at the Adams County Housing Authority. Stephanie was co-owner and operator of Uncle Moe’s Soul Food Concessions for five years. She is the mother of two wonderful children, a daughter, Dorian, now 23 and a son, Taurean. Her son, now 27, was in childcare at the YWCA in one of the first classes in 1987/1988 and now works for the Department of Labor in Harrisburg. Her daughter is a graduate of Kaplan University in Harrisburg. Stephanie’s family is one of the oldest black families living in Gettysburg. She previously worked with the Improved Benevolent Order of the Elks of the World (I.B.P.O.E. of the World) as financial secretary and has been a member of the Board of Directors for the Gettysburg Black History Museum, Inc. She is a strong advocate for empowering women.
Kristin Rice is known professionally for her role as Chief Public Defender for Adams County. She is a graduate of Goucher College and Dickinson School of Law. Her profession began as a founding partner of Wolfe and Rice, LLC, which she started with her husband John Wolfe, in 1986. She has previously served on the Boards of Adams County Children and Youth Services, Adams County Library System, Apple Line Transit Authority as well as the YWCA. Kristin is a proud mother of three young men.
Megan is an adjunct professor in the Humanistic Studies Department of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. She received a Master of Arts in Critical Studies from MICA, and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, DC. Her education also includes undergraduate coursework at Gettysburg College in music performance and the history of the arts. She has taught at the Corcoran and for Penn State University and has worked in Public Relations and Development at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and in the Registration Department of the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer-Sackler Museum of Asian Art. Her mixed-media studio artwork incorporates found and shredded text and explores the myriad, subtle constraints on women living in and negotiating place in patriarchy.
Megan grew up in Gettysburg, left periodically for adventure and self-challenge, and has been back to stay since the mid-1990s. She was associated with the Adams County Literacy Council from 1998-2008 as volunteer tutor, program assistant and finally coordinator. She travels with her husband, Eddie who is from Northern Ireland, sees too little of her step-children, Laurel (who lives in LA) and Devon and his wife Shilpa (who live in Alabama), and happily retains a sense of her inner child with both of her parents still close by. She enjoys therapeutic time with her cats Wabba (named by a two-year-old) and Jack, and laments a lack of time to read all the books she’d like.
Autumn graduated honors from Messiah College with a passion of providing positive experiences for others to enrich their lives. She has worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant and interned with Capital Blue Cross, aiding their Medical Policy and Appeals and Grievance departments. Additionally she was given an opportunity to work with the Hanover Chamber of Commerce, Hanover Area Young Professionals and Main Street Hanover initiatives. She is currently the Office Coordinator and Accountant for the Hanover Area Chamber of Commerce.
She is a member of the Gettysburg Foursquare Gospel where she gave a Nutrition Seminar the last week in April. Additionally she is committed to competing in powerlifting in three divisions with the USAPL women’s division this fall. She takes interest in renewable energy sourcing, medical policy and administration, food policies, social ethics, health and wellness, accounting, genetic research, ecological sustainability, theology, business development, public relations, and marketing. Autumn is committed to living a creative, peaceful compassionate life and hopes that everything she does in some way makes the world a better place.
Leigh was born and raised in Gettysburg and is very familiar with the work of the YWCA. She participated in Leadership Hanover in 2016, a unique leadership program focused on discovering and developing the leader within yourself. Leigh is a member of the Kiwanis Club of Gettysburg, a community organization made up of men and women who share the goal of serving the Gettysburg and Adams County areas through service to children and the community.
She has a passion for advocacy and recently volunteered with the Day of Transformation, an event focused on helping women who are aspiring to make a change in their lives and could use a helping hand to gain confidence and guidance for a better future.
Professionally, her career has been spent working in both the non-profit and for-profit world which has taught her a lot about the issues individuals and families face. She truly enjoys helping people and strives to make a positive impact on her community in the short term and for the future.
Maggie grew up in Poland, however, fell in love with the United States while traveling during her time in college. When the opportunity came up to experience life in Gettysburg post-graduation, she jumped at the chance. After living here for 8 years, she was granted American citizenship, a very exciting time in her life! She has worked at the Hilton Garden Inn in Gettysburg since 2007, steadily climbing her way to Director of Sales through her dedication and hard work.
Maggie joined the YWCA for its vast offerings and found fitness as a personal love in her life. She has found it to be a positive transformation both physically and mentally. She also enjoys the new friendships she has made through her membership. She enjoys racquetball, riding her motorcycle – especially through the beautiful battlefields, and officiating youth sporting events in her spare time.
Susan Abele has lived in Gettysburg for 18 years. Her family moved here when her husband took a job at the college as an economics professor. Susan has 3 kids ages 11 – 21. Susan enjoys yoga, long walks on the battlefield with her friends and is looking forward to exploring creative hobbies in her spare time. Susan grew up in Lexington, MA with her parents, 2 sisters and a brother. Her family still lives in New England where she frequently visits to help take care of her parents. Susan says she has a tight knit family who have historically been involved in the YWCA. Susan attended college at Georgetown University and after graduating, went to Cameroon West Africa to teach English. She attended graduate school in Madison, WI where she received her Master’s in Social Work after doing a practicum on the Lac Court Oreilles Indian Reservation. Susan’s professional experience includes working at a forensic hospital in Madison, working as a patients’ rights advocate at a hospital in Williamsburg, Survivors, mobile therapy for Cornell Abraxas and working as a mental health clinician for the Adams County Adult Correctional Complex. Susan currently does outpatient therapy at True North where she specializes in trauma therapy, DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) and assists with the Suboxone program here in Gettysburg.
Lyne graduated from Shippensburg University with an elementary degree and received an administrative certification from Penn State University. She taught in the Gettysburg Area School District for 40 years where she served on many district committees. During her teaching career, she helped write grants, presented workshops, and designed programs. The Lincoln Elementary Activities Program (LEAP) and Girls Robotics were a partnership between the YWCA and local elementary schools to provide opportunities for children. Presently, Lyne is a Supervisor of Student Teachers at Gettysburg College. Since retirement from GASD, Lyne is serving the community by volunteering with St. James Lutheran Church and Gettysburg Optimist Club and wherever needed (Ruth Harvest, Cares, etc.) Lyne enjoys playing cards, dancing, traveling, and the beach. She lives in Gettysburg with her husband, Daryl, and spends as much time as possible visiting her two daughters, two granddaughters and family.
Emily is a young professional who has worked in the Gettysburg area since 2015. She is a licensed social worker in the state of Pennsylvania and has earned a master’s degree in social work from Shippensburg University and a bachelor’s of arts degree in social work from the University of Pittsburgh. In her current roles as Social Services Director for Homewood at Plum Creek and Client Services Specialist at Survivors, Inc., she is able to put her advocacy and counseling skills to good use in working to improve the lives of older adults and survivors of interpersonal violence and sexual assault. Environmental sustainability, international women’s rights, and food security are other causes near and dear to her heart! In her spare time, Emily loves being outdoors, camping, traveling, kayaking, and running. She is overjoyed at the opportunity to collaborate with other strong women leaders and the Adams County community through the YWCA!
Camille Horton is a native of Gettysburg, PA. She graduated from Gettysburg Area High School in 2008 and from Gettysburg College in 2012 with majors in Health Sciences and Environmental Studies. Before graduating, Camille studied abroad in Chile, and learned how to speak Spanish fluently through living with a Chilean host family and taking courses in Spanish. After graduating, she worked in a position funded by AmeriCorps VISTA and served as the coordinator of the Adams County Food Policy Council. Camille then decided to go back to school for public health nutrition, and took a year to gain some experience specific to this field (she took an internship with the Woman, Infants, Children supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program at the Adams County SCCAP office) and to take prerequisite courses for graduate school. In December 2016, she graduated with a Masters of Public Health from the Nutrition Department of the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC, and passed the registration exam to be a Registered Dietitian in January 2016. Camille now works at SCCAP for their Women, Infants, & Children (WIC) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program, as a nutritionist. In addition to being an active member of the Gettysburg YWCA, Camille sits on the Adams County Food Policy Council, is a volunteer for The Gleaning Project (of both Adams and Franklin Counties), co-teaches cooking and nutrition classes at the Adams County Arts Council, and is a member of the community gardens at the Adams County Agricultural Center. Camille would love to become more involved in affecting positive change specific to issues of racial division and stereotypes and professional advancement of women, and would thus be honored to have the opportunity to serve as a member of the board of directors for the YWCA of Gettysburg, PA.
Tracey is the dean of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management at HACC’s Gettysburg Campus. She joined HACC in 2005 as a technician in Financial Aid then proceeded into roles such as; specialist, Financial Aid, fiscal support specialist, and director of enrollment services. She previously served as an instructor for the Medical Billing program previously offered through Workforce Development (2004-2008). Tracey is a proud HACC graduate with an associate’s degree in Social Science. She also earned a Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Management from Eastern University, St. Davids, PA, and her Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership from Concordia University, Portland, OR. Tracey serves on the board of directors for the Learning Center at Filey’s, Dillsburg, and recently became a group mentor with Project Hope in Gettysburg. She enjoys reading, gardening and spending time with her family. | 2019-04-24T15:04:56Z | https://www.ywcagettysburg.org/board-of-directors/ |
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For Iraqi Shias and Iran, taking control of Tikrit has a special meaning. Tikrit was closely identified with Saddam Hussein.
Shi'ite fighters or Hashd-al Shabi look at smoke from an explosives-laden vehicle driven by an IS suicide bomber that exploded during an attack on Tikrit.
TIKRIT, the birthplace and the burial site of Saddam Hussain, has been a fulcrum in the Sunni heartland of Iraq that had fought the US forces from 2003 until their withdrawal in 2011 and since maintained a continuous challenge to the predominantly Shia regime in Baghdad, accusing it of sectarian bias, ill-treatment and vindictiveness. Tikrit also contributed some other top leaders of Iraq in the past. Colonel Ahmed Hasan Al-Bakr, the first President of Baathist Iraq hailed from Tikrit. Izzat brahim Al-Douri, (the sole surviving member of Saddam Husain's inner circle until his reported death last month in Tikrit), who carried on the Baathist legacy under the appellation of Nakshabandi Order that played a role in Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL)'s takeover of Mosul and Tikrit last June, hailed from Al Dour, an outlying town of Tikrit. Saddam Hussain's own brother-in-law Adnan Khairallah who belonged to Tikrit was Defence Minister until his death in a helicopter crash in the late 1980s. Until 2003, Iraq's intelligence chiefs were mostly from Tikrit. Tikrit also happens to be the birthplace of Salahuddin al-Ayoubi, ethnically a Kurd and known to the world as Saladdin, who led the Muslim armies in the 12th century crusades and retook Jerusalem from Christian control. Tikrit was renamed Salahuddin, symbolising the connection with Jerusalem’s conqueror.
In search of home: “Intense U.S. bombing around Ramadi could not contain the Da’esh onslaught.” Picture shows displaced Sunni people from Ramadi on the outskirts of Baghdad. Islamic State fighters captured the city in May.
Long-term antidote to IS is not Arab jails and American jets, but the creation of an honest and wide-ranging political dialogue in the region.
Maps depict names of places seized by the Islamic State (Da’esh) and its al-Qaeda confreres: Syria’s Raqqa, Idlib and Palmyra as well as Iraq’s Mosul, Ramadi and Fallujah. Names of places have become associated with massacres. Aerial bombardment by the West seems futile. The West cannot stem the tide of extremism. U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter says that the Iraqi forces have “no will to fight” in Iraq. When confronted by the advance of Da’esh toward Palmyra, the Syrian troops could put up little defence. Confidence in the ability of superior firepower to stop the spread of the black flag of Da’esh seems to be at a low.
For Prime Minster Modi, the visit to the Republic of Korea (RoK) formed an important part of his quest to spur growth in the manufacturing sector. Korea has compelling reasons to respond because in India Chinese companies are giving a stiff competition to its ‘chaebols’ in infrastructure, power and even mobile handsets. China also offers attractive credit and long-term payment facilities in the power sector. It was to meet this challenge that RoK agreed to provide $9 billion as tied credit in infrastructure, including smart cities, railways and power. Korea will also create a separate Economic Development Cooperation Fund of $1 billion.
Moreover, India-ROK trade that had touched $20 billion in 2011 has now slipped to about $18 billion. As the growth in bilateral trade continues to be sluggish, the target of $25 billion trade in 2015 has been abandoned and no numerical target fixed.
The HinduDifficult task: “Adding 12.5 million tonnes of stockpile would take at least five 5 years to build.” Picture shows a petrol pump in Mumbai.
With the country consuming more than four million barrels of crude a day, the argument for a strategic oil storage project is a no-brainer.
Narendra Modi has spent a year in office. How well has he handled India’s foreign policy?
In his first year in office as prime minister of India, Narendra Modi has infused vitality into India’s engagement with the rest of the world. He has worked to correct the faltering trajectory of India’s relationship with the United States and has attempted to expand economic ties with China while being forthright in his appraisal about challenges in the relationship. He has also attempted to re-engage the smaller states in India’s immediate neighborhood and has reached out to the democracies of East Asia and the West.
As of May 19, 2015 Modi has visited 18 countries in an official capacity, unprecedented for any Indian Prime Minister in so short a time. For some, it may seem surprising that Modi, whose electoral campaign focused heavily on the economy and government corruption, has dedicated as much time as he has on foreign policy matters.
David Hunter Miller in his monumental book, The Drafting of the Covenant, stated with the authority derived from his close association with Woodrow Wilson, that very early at the meetings of the League of Nations Committee in 1919 “it had been agreed that India should be a member of the League. Mr Wilson had acquiesced, and no one else seemed to care.” French opposition to the inclusion of the Dominions within the framework of the League of Nations was resolute but abandoned after a grim struggle in the green rooms of the Peace Conference, with the result that as far as India was concerned, as one commentator put it, there could not have been any difference to the Geneva organization by the addition of one more country, viz., India, to the group of hangers-on to the British Empire, viz., the Dominions which obtained admissions to the League of Nations.
Who is killing Pakistan’s educated elite?
Pakistani civil society activists hold images of assassinated rights campaigner Sabeen Mahmud during a protest in Karachi on April 30, 2015.
KARACHI, Pakistan — “We live in a kingdom of fear, fortified by religious extremism and intolerance,” columnist Ghazi Salahiddin recently wrote in The News on Sunday, one of Pakistan’s leading English-language newspapers.
Such hyperbole reinforces stereotypes about Pakistan. But sometimes, stereotypes contain more than a grain of truth.
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents, their ranks swelled by foreign fighters pushed across the border from Pakistan, nearly surrounded this northern Afghan city last month with an offensive that stunned local authorities and raised concerns over their ability to defend the country without U.S. and foreign combat troops.
Under pressure from a yearlong military offensive in neighboring Pakistan, the Taliban and allied militants – some waving the black flags of the Islamic State group – appear to be trying to carve out a new safe haven in northern Afghanistan that could give them access to Central Asia and China, Afghan officials say.
As Afghanistan’s U.S.-trained and equipped forces have struggled to fend off the insurgents – who at one point came within 3 kilometers (less than 2 miles) of Kunduz – authorities have increasingly turned to local militias and former warlords, a further indictment of the costly, decade-long U.S. effort to build an effective Afghan military.
Pakistan’s diplomacy has become a high-wire act.
Though Islamabad hasn’t yet ended the domestic terror that rips through its schools, mosques and markets, or sorted out its hostilities with neighboring India, it has embarked on a complicated foreign policy. Seeking to solve its many economic, political and security problems, Pakistan is trying, concurrently, to court four rich and powerful patrons: China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United States.
Contrary to what the US is telling India’s national security advisers, the payback for Pakistan if it brings home an Afghan-Taliban peace deal is running India out of Afghanistan. That is the primary objective behind discrediting India’s role in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s ludicrous charge that India’s spy agency RAW is behind the Karachi attack on the Ismaili community maybe laughed out of court here, given that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the incident at the same time as authorities in Pakistan maintained they had confessions from Indian operatives.
Pakistan’s sudden raising of the RAW bogey, together with the eruption of separatist violence in Jammu and Kashmir , underscores the new, undeclared state of war between Delhi and Islamabad in the extended AfPak theatre.
LONDON – With Amal Clooney, the human-rights lawyer who recently married the actor George Clooney, acting as your advocate, you would think that your case would grab headlines. And yet Mohamed Nasheed – the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, who was just sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for unnamed “terrorist offenses” by the military-backed government that overthrew him in 2012 – seems to have fallen off the world’s radar.
This is bad news for the Maldives, where the fate of a fledgling democratic regime is inextricably tied to that of Nasheed. And, with radical Islam gaining traction on the archipelago, it does not bode well for the rest of the world, either.
Nasheed’s predecessor, Maumoon Gayoom, who won the presidency in a 1978 parliamentary vote, adopted an authoritarian style, and subjected the country to three decades of misrule. While Gayoom oversaw the archipelago’s transformation into a popular holiday destination, it was he and his associates – not ordinary citizens – who benefited from the tourist industry’s success.
A spokesperson for China’s defense ministry said such operations have been going on for a long time.
The incident was especially notable given an earlier report from the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. Department of Defense is considering conducting surveillance operations within 12 nautical miles of disputed features — an area that China would claim as territorial waters and airspace. The crux of the issue is that the United States wants to publicly register that it does not believe newly-built islands in the South China Sea can generate territorial claims under international law. The publicity push surrounding last week’s surveillance flight was seen as a step in that direction.
More than two thousand years ago, China's Han Dynasty launched the Silk Road, a sprawling network of commerce that linked South and Central Asia with the Middle East and Europe. Today, the idea of a "New Silk Road," an intertwined set of economic integration initiatives seeking to link East and Central Asia, has taken hold in the United States and China—for very different reasons.
In 2011, the United States launched its vision of greater Central Asian economic and infrastructure integration in the hopes of supporting political stability as it withdrew from Afghanistan. By 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping was assertively articulating his own vision for a China-led Silk Road that would streamline foreign trade, ensure stable energy supplies, promote Asian infrastructure development, and consolidate Beijing's regional influence.
The NSA’s point about the centrality of the dispute is spot on. Not so, his claims about China’s stance on the McMahon Line. This is not a trivial or pedantic point. In many ways, it is central to understanding the history of the dispute as well as the possibilities for its settlement in the future.
It would be illogical for India to open a Cold War style front with China when the potential costs significantly outweigh geopolitical advantages.
The border dispute with China is so old but Indians are yet to come to grips with how this dispute can be resolved. The historical roots of the Sino-Indian frontiers have been narrated in several accounts. Understanding the historical variations and context around how China approaches the dispute has curiously received less attention. A focus on the intricacies of competing claims needs to be embedded in a geopolitical setting, which has been changing since the 1950s.
Although the Chinese position provides the appearance of continuity, the actual bargaining posture has been one of extraordinary flux often shaped by geopolitical considerations that have little to do with the border itself. Let us explore each of these inflexion points in China's approach to the dispute.
I don’t know whether Tagore ever made that prediction but the hope of rangzen or freedom sustained the Tibetan conference on the 64th anniversary of the signing of the fatal 17-point agreement. Roads, railways and floods of tourists have drastically altered Tibet since then, so that China’s focus has shifted from Aksai Chin to Tawang. The conference ignored this. In fact, India’s security was barely mentioned. Instead, Vijay Kranti, author of a comic book on the Dalai Lama, who chaired the proceedings, set the optimistic ball rolling by saying (not very accurately) that no one could have thought in 1945 that India would become independent in 1947.
A recent World Bank report has a grim outlook for Central Asia’s poorest state.
Tajikistan’s economic growth has dropped significantly and is unlikely to return to previous levels in the near or medium term, a recent World Bank report says. GDP growth in the region’s poorest state slowed to 6.7 percent last year from 7.4 percent in 2013 and the World Bank estimates that in 2015 GDP growth will plummet to 3.2 percent.
Editor's Note: This analysis was written by Stratfor's lead military analyst, Paul Floyd, who served in the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, a core component of the United States Army Special Operations Command. He deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan in a combat role.
On Tuesday afternoon, as President Obama was bringing an occasionally contentious but often illuminating hour-long conversation about the Middle East to an end, I brought up a persistent worry. “A majority of American Jews want to support the Iran deal,” I said, “but a lot of people are anxiety-ridden about this, as am I.” Like many Jews—and also, by the way, many non-Jews—I believe that it is prudent to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of anti-Semitic regimes. Obama, who earlier in the discussion had explicitly labeled the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an anti-Semite, responded with an argument I had not heard him make before.
The country’s political dysfunction has undermined all efforts to build an effective fighting force.
The Obama Administration has run out of patience with Iraq’s Army. On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” to discuss the recent fall of Ramadi, one of Iraq’s major cities, to ISIS. Despite possessing substantial advantages in both numbers and equipment, he said, the Iraqi military were unable to prevent ISIS forces from capturing the city.
It’s easy to see why Washington is unhappy with Baghdad. In the eight years the U.S. formally occupied Iraq, the U.S. invested $25 billion in training and equipping the country’s armed forces before withdrawing in 2011. To this day, a much smaller number of American soldiers remain in the country in order to train Iraqi soldiers.
In order to neutralize ISIS, it is important to understand what we are confronting. Synthesizing various analyses of the entity appears to provide the following composite picture: ISIS seeks to create a geographically demarcated Islamic political entity that is potentially expansionist. The leadership of the organization is hierarchical and comprises a curious mix of hardline Islamic fundamentalists combined with genuine strategic and operational nous provided by disaffected and radicalized former Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s decimated military.
The core fundamentalist theology of ISIS emphasizes a deity that is punitive, keen on preserving religious purity above else. Consequently outsiders-Muslims who disagree with them; Shia, Christians and other minority groups and their religious symbols-can be disposed of as they are regarded as filth to be cleansed, not parties to a negotiable dispute.
The ominous shadow of the notorious Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) looms over Southeast Asia and Australia, judging from the scores of recent arrests throughout the region.
Twitter is also increasingly powerful as a command and control system for the leaderless model that Daesh relies upon for its global operations. Recent attacks such as those in Garland, Texas demonstrate how guidance as well as suggested targets and tactics provided via Twitter are playing a role in the launching of Daesh activities outside of their discreet area of operations. In this instance, tweets allegedly by an Australian directly suggested the targeting of the cartoon competition. These were followed by tweets by the two operatives pledging allegiance to Daesh, and tweets from an ‘official’ account accepting this pledge all took place in close proximity to the attack. For an idea of how simply individuals can use Twitter in a sophisticated way, the attackers pre-emptively deployed a hashtag for the attack, providing a coherent stream of related tweets which other users could follow. Daesh intentionally seeks control of and actively shapes the social media coverage of themselves and empowers its supporters to participate via Twitter. This social media campaign is crucial to Daesh’s successful management of its public profile, and to the management of its global operations. Whether tweeting links to the ‘open source Jihad’ sections of Inspire, the Lone Mujāhid Pocketbook, or any of the doctrinal work that justifies and legitimises individual and small cell jihad, the network-and its empowerment-is greatly strengthened by Twitter.
The main problem with Iraq's battered and depleted military is the same one facing Iraq as a whole—the country effectively no longer exists as a unified state.
The Obama Administration has run out of patience with Iraq’s Army. On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” to discuss the recent fall of Ramadi, one of Iraq’s major cities, to ISIS. Despite possessing substantial advantages in both numbers and equipment, he said, the Iraqi military were unable to preventISIS forces from capturing the city.
Powerful: “Sufi philosophies provide major sources of resistance to Salafist and other exclusionary ideologies.” Picture shows the Dargah of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer.
On Monday, Malaysia and Japan signed a new strategic partnership to elevate their bilateral relationship during Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak’s three-day visit to Tokyo.
Malaysia and Japan already have a close relationship that goes back decades. As early as 1981, Malaysia’s fourth prime minister Mahathir Mohamad initiated the Look East Policy (LEP), which strengthened economic ties between the two nations. The relationship has since blossomed to include other areas of cooperation as well, such as maritime security, peacekeeping, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR). Ties reached a stage of “enhanced partnership” in 2010 before being elevated to a “strategic partnership” this week.
Like most documents of its ilk, the Japan-Malaysia strategic partnership, an eight-page document seen by The Diplomat, consists of several parts outlining the areas of cooperation both sides have agreed to focus on. In this case, there are five sections dealing with peace and stability, economics, maritime security, people-to-people ties, and regional and global cooperation.
Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of the country’s defense industry and an outspoken hawk, has responded to Western concerns over Moscow’s alleged militarization of the Arctic in his customary inflammatory style.
“I’ve always joked about it… so what if they won’t give us visas, put us on sanctions list … tanks don’t need visas,” he told an interviewer on Russian state television last Sunday, according to AFP.
Interview with retired US Army Special Forces Colonel David S. Maxwell.
David S. Maxwell is the Associate Director of the Center for Security Studies in the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. He is a retired US Army Special Forces Colonel with command and staff assignments in Korea, Japan, Germany, the Philippines, and CONUS, and served as a member of the military faculty teaching national security at the National War College. He is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, the Command and General Staff College, the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth and the National War College, National Defense University.
SWJ: Insurgency, counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, terrorism, counterterrorism - does this spectrum of possibilities fall within the larger framework of Unconventional Warfare (UW)?
RUSSIAN SPETSNAZ TROOPS IN UKRAINE?
Vladimir Dergachev, Dmitriy Kirillov in Mariupol, Vladimir Vashchenko, Denis Telmanov, and Andrey Vinokurov, Soldiers of fortune.
Gazeta.ru’s sources in the Security Service of Ukraine [SBU] and Donbass militia gave details of the detention of “saboteurs” who, under interrogation, described themselves as GRU [Russian army Main Intelligence Directorate] agents. Kiev is promising to present new evidence of their belonging to the Russian military intelligence service. Moscow admits that they served in the Russian Federation previously and demands their release, while in the LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic] the prisoners are being described as members of the people’s militia.
The website publicintelligence.net has placed online a 36-page intelligence briefing dated February 15, 2012 that was prepared by the U.S. Army TRADOC G2 Intelligence Support Activity (TRISA) entitled Attacks Against the Iranian Nuclear Program. The report details the killings of Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers and the cyber attacks (STUXNET) launched against the Iranian nuclear facilities. The report can be accessed here.
For most of the 20th century, Ukraine was the victim of two equally malevolent empires—Germany and Russia. Germany's contribution to Ukraine's devastation was the two World Wars; Russia's was the imposition of Soviet rule and the concomitant destruction of Ukraine's peasantry and elites. Unsurprisingly, one of the most constant images in 20th-century Ukrainian commentary is that of their country being caught between a hammer and an anvil.
The 21st century may be witnessing a fundamental break with Ukraine's tragic geopolitical position. While Russia is acting according to its historical script, post-Holocaust, post-unification Germany appears to be emerging as Europe's benevolent hegemon. As such, Germany has no choice but to exercise its clout and take a lead in Europe. But given its awful past and the continued importance of that past in shaping German foreign policy behavior, Germany also has no choice but to eschew the kind of crude realpolitik that produced two World Wars and took the lives of millions.
Analysts and journalists have begun to ask where the Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine will go next now that the second ceasefire agreement has failed. Skirmishes on the frontline in Shyrokyne, less than ten miles from Mariupol's city limits, have raised concerns that Mariupol will be the next target. Geographically and commercially speaking, Mariupol makes sense. It's the busiest commercial marine hub on the Azov Sea and considered a must-have for Russia if a land corridor to Crimea is ever to be realized. Mariupol would also be a symbolic coup for the separatists. Ukrainian President PetroPoroshenko named the city the provisional capital of the Donetsk region in 2014. The separatists have also threatened to take the city. Alexander Zakharchenko, head of the Donetsk People's Republic, warned that separatists will take Mariupolif Ukrainian forces continue their "aggression."
We are now living in an era where ungoverned spaces, long the accomplice in jihadistactivity, are playing a starring role.
One of the biggest counterterrorism concerns for the United States and its allies since the attacks of September 11, 2001, has been managing the dangers posed by ungoverned spaces. While al-Qaeda stars as the primary villain in The 9/11 Commission Report, the U.S.’s definitive account of those attacks, ungoverned spaces feature as a critical henchman. We are now living in an era where ungoverned spaces, long the accomplice in jihadist activity, are playing a starring role.At this point, it can be definitively said that ungoverned spaces that jihadist groups can exploit have multiplied exponentially, that this growth is largely (though not entirely) a phenomenon of the post-Arab Spring world, and that there are no quick fixes to this predicament. For a long time to come, the world will see jihadist groups exploiting geographic spaces where internationally -recognised governments are unable to extend their writ, and utilising these spaces to hone their militant capabilities, spread chaos into surrounding regions, and sometimes impose their hardline version ofsharia (Islamic law).
Transport infrastructure – Engine or hand brake for global supply chains?
PwC, in cooperation with the European Business School, recently conducted a RealTime Delphi survey of 104 panellists in 29 countries. Our latest publication "Transportation & Logistics 2030 Volume 2: Transport Infrastructure – Engine or hand brake for global supply chains?" draws upon the results of this survey, as well as incorporating the insights of PwC specialists from around the world. The report provides a global perspective on the status-quo of transport infrastructure and its development and how it is set to reshape the transportation & logistics industry. We address four discrete issues for transport infrastructure ─ supply and demand prospects, finance mechanisms, regional competitiveness and sustainability ─ and look at how each area might evolve, as well as how they interconnect.
The quantity of goods needed to serve the world's rapidly growing global population will increase over the next twenty years. And the demand for transport infrastructure is unlikely to be fully met in this period – if ever.
Hersh’s story should be a tutorial for all those in India who reacted with a high degree of exuberance after the Abbottabad raid, that the US would rap very hard Pakistan’s knuckles for giving refuge to the greatest terrorist in the world.
Immediately after Independence we had a police chief in the old Bombay state who was very fond of sports hunting. Police officers soon learnt that the best way to please him was to arrange a hunt. During one such shoot they managed to locate a tiger in a forest, which was successfully shot by him. However, his detractors spread the story that the tiger was very old and blind and was chased by the local policemen to fall into a dry well where it was ceremoniously shot by the chief.
Seymour Hersh’s sensational 10,000-word investigative report in the London Review of Books on how the US special forces had killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, rhymes with this old Bombay police story: “While Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false”. Hersh claims that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies had captured Osama in 2006 from the Hindu Kush. He was kept a prisoner with Saudi Arabian support till 2010, when they decided to use him to bargain with the United States for resuming military aid and for a “freer hand in Afghanistan”.
Violence in Macedonia Danger or distraction? | 2019-04-22T07:07:52Z | http://strategicstudyindia.blogspot.com/2015_05_28_archive.html |
The history of the European oil and gas industry reflects local and global political events, economic constraints, and the personal endeavours of individual petroleum geoscientists, as much as it does the development of technologies and the underlying geology of the region. Europe and Europeans played a disproportionately large role in the development of the modern global oil and gas industry. From at least the Iron Age until the 1850s, the use of oil in Europe was limited, and the oil was obtained almost exclusively from surface seeps and mine workings. The use of oil increased in the 1860s with the introduction of new technologies in both production and refining. Shale oil was distilled on a commercial scale in various parts of Europe in the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century but, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the mineral oils and gas produced primarily from shale and coal could no longer satisfy demand, and oil produced directly from conventional oil fields began to dominate the European market. The first commercial oil wells in Europe were manually dug in Poland in 1853, Romania in 1857, Germany in 1859 and Italy in 1860, before the gradual introduction of mechanical cable drilling rigs started in the early 1860s. In the late nineteenth century, the northern part of the Carpathian Mountains in what is now Poland and Ukraine was one of the most prolific hydrocarbon provinces in the world. The Bóbrka Field in the Carpathian foothills of Poland, discovered in 1853, is still producing and is now the oldest industrial oil field in the world.
The 1914–18 and 1939–45 world wars were both major drivers in exploration for and exploitation of Europe's oil resources and in the development of technologies to produce synthetic fuels from the liquefaction of bituminous coal and the combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen as the Allied and Axis governments struggled to maintain adequate supplies of fuel for their war efforts. In Britain, the first ‘accidental’ discovery of gas was made in 1875 in the Weald Basin, but it was not until 1919 that Britain's first oil field was discovered at Hardstoft, in Derbyshire, as a result of a government-funded exploration drilling campaign, triggered by the need to find indigenous supplies of oil during World War I. The period of reconstruction after World War II was also critical for the European oil and gas industry with further successful exploration for oil and gas in the East Midlands of England resulting in Britain's first ‘oil boom’, and the discovery and development of deep gas fields in the Po Valley in northern Italy fuelling the Italian economy for the next 50 years.
Drilling technologies developed during Britain's first oil boom, together with the extrapolation of the onshore geology of the East Midlands oil fields and of the Dutch gas fields, led to the discovery of the huge oil and gas resources beneath the North Sea in the 1960s and 1970s, which enabled Britain, Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands to be largely self-sufficient in oil and gas from the late 1970s until production began to decline rapidly in the early 2000s. Today, oil and gas production in most European countries is at an historical low. Exploration for new sources of oil and gas in Europe continues, although increasingly hampered by the maturity of many of the conventional oil and gas plays, but European companies and European citizens continue to play a major role in the global oil and gas industry.
The establishment of petroleum as a tradable commodity, as well as a natural resource, triggered a paradigm shift in the history of civilization, introducing a new set of values, opportunities and forces, shaping the course of social endeavours as diverse as science, technology, energy production and consumption, and leading to associated improvements in living standards throughout the world. Our 160 year-old hydrocarbon-based civilization is founded on this paradigm and, despite many criticisms and shortcomings, hydrocarbons will continue to be a key component of our lives for decades to come (Sertorio 2002; Smil 2017).
Europe is highly dependent on oil and gas as its primary sources of energy and as a basic feedstock for the chemical and manufacturing industries. Natural gas is widely used to generate electricity and for heating, while petroleum products derived from oil (petrol, diesel and kerosene) are essential fuels for transportation. Oil and gas are also used for domestic heating, and as the raw material for producing millions of items ranging from fertilizers, plastics, detergents, preservatives, life-saving medicines, clothing and cosmetics, through to appliances including computers, insulation, inks and toners, paints, glues, solvents and antiseptics to golf balls, CDs, bin bags, nail polish, and chewing gum.
The beginning of the mass consumption of oil was the result of a transnational and cumulative process of trial and error that lasted for centuries. The inception of the modern oil industry gained momentum in the first half of the nineteenth century as a result of the definition of some ‘hydro-carbon’ compounds obtained by heating oil given by the British scientist Michael Faraday in 1825, the introduction of fractional distillation to refine oil by the American Chemist Benjamin Silliman Jr and the systematic application of mechanized drilling by means of the cable tool system operated by steam power in NW Pennsylvania. After centuries of stagnation, discontinuous production and low consumption, the use of oil increased in the 1860s with the introduction of new technologies in both production and refining. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the mineral oils and gas produced primarily from shale and coal could no longer satisfy demand, and the oil produced directly from conventional oil fields in Eastern Europe, Russia, the USA and, eventually, the Middle East fairly rapidly began to dominate the global fuel market (Jevons 1865; Gerali 2012; Gerali & Gregory 2017a). Oil has been the world's most important source of energy since the mid-1950s, largely because of its high energy content, transportability and relative abundance.
Several European countries, among them France, Germany and Italy, have an important oil heritage, rich in invention and technology, despite the fact that they never achieved globally significant levels of conventional oil production. This lack of conventional oil resources influenced both their attempts to develop alternative sources of energy – France worked on oil shales, Germany on coal hydrogenation, and Italy had diversified strategies involving lignite and hydroelectric – and, in the second half of the twentieth century, the success of their citizens as ‘oil finders’ in the oil fields of the world (Yanarella & Green 1987; Bardini 1998; Pozzi 2009; Beltran & Carré 2016).
Britain, Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands were largely self-sufficient in oil and gas from the late 1970s and early 1980s, following the discovery of oil and gas under the North Sea (Fig. 1) in the 1960s and the subsequent rapid build-up in offshore production, until offshore production started to decline rapidly in the early 2000s. There is, however, a much longer and much less well-known history of oil and gas exploration and production in Europe. In fact, natural seepages of oil and outcrops of oil-bearing shale across Europe have been exploited since the Iron Age, and shale oil was distilled on a commercial scale in various parts of Europe in the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century (Forbes-Leslie 1917; Strachan 1920; Gallois 2012).
Physical features of Europe. Published in 1906 by W. & A. K. Johnston Limited, Edinburgh and London. Available from the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.
According to the BP Statistical Review of Energy 2017, the world's proved oil reserves (excluding self-sourced shale plays) are 1.71 Tbbl (trillion barrels), of which Europe (except Russia) contains a ‘mere’ 11.6 Bbbl (billion barrels). The five European countries with appreciable oil reserves today are, in decreasing order of reserves at end-2015, Norway (8.0 Bbbl), the UK (2.5 Bbbl), Romania (0.6 Bbbl), Italy (0.6 Bbbl) and Denmark (0.5 Bbbl). Out of the world's total oil production of 92 MMBOPD (million barrels of oil per day) in 2016, these five European countries produced just 3.3 MMBOPD or 3.5% of global production.
The Western and Central European countries with the largest total proved gas reserves at the end of 2016 were Norway (1.8 Tcf (trillion cubic ft)), The Netherlands (0.7 Tcf), Ukraine (0.6 Tcf) and the UK (0.2 Tcf), while Turkmenistan (17.5 Tcf), Azerbaijan (1.7 Tcf) and Kazakhstan (1.0 Tcf) hosted the largest reserves of the countries belonging to the Former Soviet Union (FSU), outside the current Russian Federation. The largest European and FSU gas producers in 2016 were Norway (116.6 Bcm (billion m3)), Turkmenistan (66.8 Bcm), Uzbekistan (62.8 Bcm), the UK (41.0 Bcm) and The Netherlands (40.2 Bcm), but Europe and the FSU (excluding Russia) as a whole today accounts for only 11% of global gas production (British Petroleum 2017). Despite these figures, there is a long history of exploration, production and consumption of oil and gas in many parts of Europe, as well as of oil- and gas-related science and technology, much of which had a profound influence on the oil and gas industry worldwide. In the history of the oil and gas industry in many European countries, there are important episodes and players that influenced the course of events; some of these are already well documented, while others have gone unnoticed or even forgotten. Nevertheless, each episode is important because, beyond the well-known stories of successes and failures, there are various elements that enable us to gain new insights into the process of the development of the oil and gas industry in Europe.
This Special Publication brings together a series of important papers dealing with different aspects of the history of the oil and gas industry in the UK, Norway, France, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Romania (Fig. 2), and examines the role of some of the key technologies and of the petroleum geoscientists who influenced the development of the European oil and gas industry between the sixteenth century and the present day.
General map of Europe showing the areas covered by the papers in this volume.
A bibliography of selected published papers and books, primary and secondary sources, dealing with the history of the European oil and gas industry is provided at the end of this volume. It is not comprehensive, and is intended only as a source of further reading. There is also a comprehensive gazetteer of the main oil and gas industry museums in Europe at the end of the volume. These can be an invaluable source of additional information for those who wish to develop a deeper knowledge of the development of the oil and gas industry in specific parts of Europe.
The manual gathering of petroleum from surface seeps, rock crevices or shallow shafts was recorded in the chronicles of Europe during the late Medieval Age, but had been occurring since the classical age with oil obtained from such surface seeps being used by Greeks and Romans for several purposes. Although petroleum was used in Europe for many centuries, it was only during the sixteenth century that alchemists, natural philosophers and, later, chemists gradually developed scientific knowledge about the nature and potential uses of oil (Huguenet & Frojo 1856; Novelli & Sella 2009). In 1556, the German mining technologist Georges Agricola published De Re Metallica, in which he documented the use of heated petroleum. Forty years later, in 1601, Andreas Libavius, a German alchemist, published in the third volume of his Singolarium, the most detailed account on every known occurrence of light and heavy oil in Europe at that time. In 1625, Johan Volck published a 30 page pamphlet, Description of the Hanau earth balsam, petroleum and soft agate stone, in which he detailed the advantages of refined oils. Many other contemporary scholars in Europe documented methods of refining petroleum, but these scientific advances had little impact on the socio-economic development of Europe at the time.
The methods used to produce petroleum in Europe remained almost unchanged between the sixteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. Basically, it was a craft activity, carried out without specific mining tools that yielded limited quantities of petroleum. Unlike coal, copper and iron, petroleum was not produced by a skilled labour force. Until the mid-nineteenth century, oil exploration was a premature concept; oil was not sought out, but simply found in the ground. Before oil products came into general commercial use during the last half of the nineteenth century, the exploitation of petroleum resources in Britain was restricted to a few surface oil seeps, such as those found in Shropshire, near Formby in Lancashire, in the coal mines of Nottinghamshire and along the south coast of England. For example, oil was distilled from oil-impregnated Carboniferous sandstone quarried at Row Brook in Shropshire during the seventeenth century (Plot 1684; Ele 1697). The use of ‘seepage oil’ in Britain increased considerably when it was found that oil-soaked peat dug at Formby in Lancashire (Bunce 2018) made good fire-lighters, and the heavy tars from the seeps were excellent for caulking boats and for medicinal purposes on livestock. The waxy green oil that seeped steadily into some of the Nottinghamshire coal mines was even used to grease the axles of colliery wagons, but the production from these ‘surface’ sources was always, necessarily, extremely limited. Seeps of natural gas, both at the surface and in mines, have also been recorded in Great Britain for centuries. One particularly early example, near Wigan in Lancashire (Selley 2012), was recorded by Camden in his book ‘Britannia or a Chorographical Description of Great Britain and Ireland’ published in 1586 and is often referred to colloquially as ‘Camden's cooker’ (Camden 1586).
One of the earliest attempts to produce indigenous oil in Britain occurred on the banks of the River Severn in Shropshire. In January 1694, British Crown Patent No. 405 was granted to Martin Eele, Thomas Hancock and William Portlock of the British Pitch Works in Bentham, Shropshire who had found a ‘way to extract and make great quantityes of pitch, tarr and oyle out of a sort of stone’ (Torrens 1994; Moody 2007). In 1716, another patent was taken out in Britain by one Talbot Edwards who claimed that, since the expiry of the 1694 patent, he had found a new and better way to extract these materials ‘by fluxing with fire only … the roch or roofe stone’ extracted from the local Shropshire coal mines. The market for the products was rather limited at the time and the oil was soon promoted as a medicine for ‘the Cure of Rheumatic and Scorbutic Affections’. A third patent was issued in 1742, this one to Michael Betton, glazier of Wellington and his brother Thomas, shoemaker from Shrewsbury, again citing the medicinal use of the oil (Torrens 1994). The manufacture of this ‘British Oil’ later continued under the famous Darby family, the descendants of Abraham Darby who first introduced coke smelting at Coalbrookedale on the River Severn in 1709, thereby triggering the Industrial Revolution.
Elsewhere in Europe, a Russian-born Swiss doctor and Greek teacher called Eyrini d'Eyrinis (also spelt as Eirini d'Eirinis) discovered asphaltum at Val-de-Travers near Neuchàtel in Switzerland in 1710. He was the author of a landmark volume on the bitumen of the area, in which he presented all the possible uses of natural and refined bitumen. He established a bitumen mine called ‘de la Presta’ that operated until 1986. In France, the light and valuable oil called naphtha was collected in the region of Alsace, near the village of Pechelbronn (which means Pitch Spring). The locals had scooped up the oil from the water spring since the fifteenth century and exploitation of the local tar sands started in 1627. Then, in 1745, the mining of oil sands began in Merkwiller-Pechelbronn under the direction of Louis Pierre Ancillon de la Sablonnière, by special appointment of King Louis XV. In the 1810s, some wells were drilled to guide the location of the mine galleries. One of these wells penetrated a layer of sand containing oil at a depth of 77 m. However, the first important oil discovery was only achieved 135 years after the beginning of the oil mining in the area, when some wells dug mechanically in 1880 yielded oil in commercial quantities: 2860 wells had been drilled by 1916 and these produced 720 000 t (tons) of oil (Heritier 1994). The oil fields of Pechelbronn were active until 1970 and were the birthplace of present-day companies such as Antar and Schlumberger.
In 1786, a canal tunnel was driven into the side of the Severn Gorge, near Ironbridge in Shropshire, England, by a Quaker ironmaster, William Reynolds, to bring out coal from the local pits (Fig. 3). The tunnel struck a spring of natural bitumen in Carboniferous sandstones about 300 yards from the entrance and seeps along the length of the tunnel yielded as much as 450 gallons of bitumen a day (Trinder 1981). Some was sold as medicine for the treatment of rheumatic and skin complaints, and some was processed for burning in lamps or converted into varnish. The rest was boiled in large cauldrons at the mouth of the tunnel to produce pitch that was used as a preservative for timber, for treating ropes and for caulking ships decks (Morton 2014).
The Coalport Tar Tunnel, Ironbridge, Shropshire. (a) The Tar Tunnel with a drainage pipe on the left and wells cut into the tunnel walls. (b) Bitumen oozing out of the brick-lined walls. (c) A pool of bitumen in one of the wells (http://geotopoi.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/coalport-tar-tunnel/).
Numerous oil and gas seeps were recorded in the Weald Basin of southern England during the nineteenth century, and gas was encountered during the sinking of a water well at Hawkhurst in Sussex in 1836. The gas was ignited by a lantern, causing an explosion that killed the two labourers who were sinking the well (Evans 2009; Wigley 2015).
In the territories of present-day Germany, petroleum production in the eighteenth century was mainly concentrated in the vicinity of Hannover, Brunswick, Wietz and Celle (Rinehart 1930). In France, thick and sticky asphalt was mined in the vicinity of Gabian, near the city of Clermont-Ferrand, in the region of Auvergne. The town of Gabian was also renowned for La Font de l'Oly (the oil spring), which produced light naphtha. Oil was recovered from La Font from 1608 onwards and the average production was 36 quintals per year. There was another seep, associated with a mineral water spring and a volcanic intrusion, at Le Puy de La Poix (the pitch mount) in the Limagne Basin. Gummy bitumen was collected in the region of Guyana (Schmitz 1938; Heritier 1994; Smith 2006). In Italy, the largest oil provinces were located in the territories of the duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and Modena and Reggio Emilia – stretching from NW to SE along the Northern Apennines (Fig. 1; Fairman 1868; Bonariva 1869; Cazzini 2018; Gerali et al. 2018).
Further scientific studies at this time paved the way to a better understanding of oil as a mineral and as a source of energy. In France, in the Dictionnaire de Chymie (1769), Pierre Joseph Macquer (1718–84) provided new evidence for the organic origin of oil. George Balthazar Sage (1740–1824) set out a classification of the different types of bitumen with reference to their density in Eléments de Minéralogie Docimastique (1772) while, in 1784, the Irish mineralogist Richard Kirwan (1733–1812) proposed a category of substances called ‘inflammables’ in his treatise Elements of Mineralogy. In 1796, Kirwan also published a study on the composition of coal and bitumen in the essay Of the Composition and Proportion of Carbon in Bitumen and Mineral Coal, in which he supported the idea of the major commercial utilization of petroleum.
In the Austro-Hungarian dominions, petroleum was produced along the northern slope of the Carpathian chain (Fig. 1), in the vicinity of the village of Boryslaw, in the region of Galicia – today in Ukraine. In Romania, the core production of oil was concentrated near the city of Ploieşti, in the foreland basin of the Southern Carpathian chain, in the principality of Wallachia. The earliest written accounts of natural occurrences of hydrocarbons in the Carpathians date back to the sixteenth century, but in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century accounts of the practical uses of oil, based on its occurrence in the Carpathians, were published by Rzączyński, Kluk, Hacquest and Staszic. Stanislaw Staszic, a Polish priest, philosopher, statesman, geologist, scholar, poet and writer, produced a geological map of the region, dated 1806, showing the numerous oil seeps and different rock types containing hydrocarbons (Krzywiec 2018) – probably the first map to specifically document surface hydrocarbon occurrences in Europe.
In the SE part of what is today Moldova, ozokerite, or earth wax (a kind of natural paraffin), had been mined for centuries (Pearton 1971), and ‘mineral resin’ was collected on the banks of some rivers. In Tsarist Russia, oil production was a burgeoning activity in the Trans-Caucasian area straddling Europe and Asia corresponding to today's Azerbaijan. The economy of the port city of Baku, on the Caspian Sea, was largely based on oil production and trading (Henry 1905).
In 1816–17, the Swiss naturalist Nicholas Theodore de Saussure made a comparative analysis of the composition and properties of petroleum samples collected in several European countries (Saussure 1816, 1817). Other scientists had previously carried out similar work, but Saussure's work has the merit of delivering a comprehensive study that went further than the mere annotation of physical characteristics of the different petroleum samples. Instead, his work highlighted the chemical properties and commercial applications of petroleum depending on its quality.
During the late eighteenth century and the nineteenth century, Scottish chemists were foremost in the development of British coal-gas, coal-tar and shale-oil industries. William Murdoch (1754–1839) and Archibold Cochrane (1749–1831), ninth Earl of Dundonald, carried out pioneering work on the destructive distillation of coal and shale oil. Archibald Cochrane developed, and in 1871 patented, a method ‘for extracting tar, pitch, essential oils and cinders from pitcoal, whereby the coals are made to ignite without flaming’ (Conacher 1938b) and in 1782 he lit Culross Abbey with gas from produced from tar. Cochrane was a brilliant chemist, but a poor businessman. He foolishly failed to repay massive loans made to his wife and died in poverty in Paris in 1831 (Tomory 2012).
Dr James ‘Paraffin’ Young, the founder of the Scottish oil industry, was much more astute. He rose from a humble background to become a noted and very successful chemist and entrepreneur. Young was born in Glasgow and trained as a chemist (Conacher 1938a). He was the manager of an alkali works in Manchester when, late in 1847, he was approached by James Oakes, the owner of the ‘New Deeps’ coal mine at Riddings in Derbyshire, to help him find a use for the thick, black crude oil that was seeping into his colliery workings from a small ‘petroleum spring’ (Fowler 1940; Lea 2018). In the autumn of 1848, Oakes and Young signed a partnership agreement and set up the first plant to produce paraffin oil for lamps. Oakes provided the crude oil from the mine and the plant to refine it, while Young was responsible for the manufacture and sale of the products (Beaton 1959). The crude oil production from the mine was only about 300 gallons a day and by 1850 the supply of oil had run out. Young returned to Scotland in 1851 having patented methods to extract paraffin from bituminous coal and oil shale, treating the extract and purifying the solid paraffin wax. He built a large plant to process the Carboniferous oil shales of West Calder, establishing an industry that was to dominate the West Lothian region of Scotland for much of the next century, and his patented technology was eventually adopted by many early commercial oil refineries worldwide (Carruthers et al. 1927; Conacher 1928; Dean 2018). Over the next 100 years, an estimated 75 MMbbl (million barrels) of oil and 500 Bcf (billion cubic ft) of gas were produced from Scottish shales.
In the early nineteenth century, small artisanal refineries with low, and variable, yields were scattered across Europe. Romania in the 1840s was the only European country with documented and consistent commercial-scale refining activity. Romania has a long oil industry history (the use of bitumen in the country dates back to the fifth century AD), and it has the best-preserved official records of oil production, refining and trade in Europe. These confirm the importance of the oil business both for the country and for European oil industry heritage (Tulucan et al. 2018). In 1840, a refinery with the capacity of 300 t per year was active in Lucăceşti, Bacău (at that time still included in the principality of Moldavia) to produce lamp fuel and greases; in 1856, a 2710 t per year plant was operating in Rafov, in the area of Prahova, and between 1857 and 1862 four more refineries opened in the area of Bacău, with a capacity ranging from 873 to 2446 t per year (Pizanty 1947; Forbes 1958).
During the second half of the nineteenth century, oil and gas produced primarily from shale and coal could not satisfy the increasing demand in the European fuel market, and new technologies for oil production (and, later, gas production) developed rapidly (Jevons 1865; Gerali 2012). In 1853, the Polish chemist Ignacy Lukasiewicz discovered how to make kerosene from crude oil. On the night of 31 July 1853, Lukasiewicz was called to his local hospital in the then Polish town of Lvov (now in Ukraine) to provide light from one of his new kerosene lamps for an emergency surgical operation. The hospital authorities were clearly impressed with his invention because they ordered several of his lamps and 500 kg of kerosene. Soon after, Lukasiewicz travelled to Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to register his distillation process in the Vienna patent office with his co-worker, J. Zeh, on the 31 December 1853. After Lukasiewicz adapted Gesner's distillation method in 1852 to refine kerosene from more readily available ‘rock oil’ seeps, Lukasiewicz and his business partners, Titus Trzecieski and Mikolaj Klobassa, established the first rock oil mine in Bobrka, near Krosno in Central European Galicia (Poland/Ukraine) in 1853. This led to the rapid growth of the oil industry in the Carpathians, with many shallow wells (30–50 m) dug manually on oil shows associated with the major anticlines in the region. Then, in 1856, Lukasiewicz set up the world's first crude oil refinery at Ulaszowice in Poland.
The world's first commercial oil wells were dug in Bibi-Heybat (Bibi-Eibat) near Baku in Azerbaijan in 1846, in Poland in 1853 and in Romania in 1857 (still 2 years before the drilling of the seminal ‘Drake well’ in NW Pennsylvania). In the late nineteenth century, the northern part of the Carpathian Mountains between Limanowa (Poland) and Kosów (Ukraine) was one of the most prolific hydrocarbon provinces in the world (Krzywiec 2018) (Fig. 4). The Bóbrka Field in the Carpathian foothills of Poland, discovered in 1853, is still producing and is now the oldest industrial oil field in the world (Koszarski & Bally 1994).
Postcard showing an early oil field in the Northern Carpathians (from Krzywiec 2018).
Romania was the first country in the world to have its crude oil output officially recorded in international statistics with an amount of 275 tonnes recorded for 1857. Oil production in Romania had started in the middle of the nineteenth century, mainly from primitive hand-dug and wood-lined wells. An oil refinery was already in operation in Ploieşti in Romania in 1856 and one year later its product illuminated the capital city, Bucharest, with 1000 oil lamps placed along the main streets (Schleder et al. 2016) – the first use of refined oil for street lighting anywhere in the world. The first oil discovery in NW Europe was made when the Wietze oil field near Hannover in Germany was discovered in 1859 (Fig. 5), followed soon after by a discovery near Ozzano in the Parma region of northern Italy in 1860 (Cazzini 2018).
The first commercially productive oil well drilled in the Wietze Field, Hannover, Germany. Drilled by the Hannovarian government in 1859, the well yielded a small amount of oil at a depth of about 100 m. Until the 1930s, it was occasionally pumped by hand. From Rinehart (1930).
From the 1860s onwards, the Majella oil district of Abruzzo in Italy played a key role in the development of the Italian oil industry through the first detailed analysis of the associated petroleum systems and the introduction of mechanized drilling (Gerali & Lipparini 2018). In 1863, Merzoeff built the first modern refinery in the town of Sourachany, close to the mature oil fields of Baku in Azerbaijan, at a time when they supplied about 90% of the oil used in Europe. Only a year later, the area of Baku had 23 fully equipped refineries (Forbes 1959). At about the same time, in Spain there was early exploitation of oil from bituminous shales, asphalt impregnations or tar sands by subsurface mining and distilling, but with limited economic success (Navarro Comet 2018). Also in 1861, the sailing ship Elizabeth Watts carried a cargo of 1329 bbl of oil for lamps from Philadelphia to London – the first recorded shipping of Pennsylvanian oil to be sold in Europe.
Exploration for oil started again in the Gabian area in France in the early 1860, and numerous shallow wells were drilled around the old oil spring. In 1884, a well drilled 300 m from the old oil spring hit an oil reservoir at a depth of 68 m but, with the exception of two other dry wells, no further exploration work was undertaken in the area until 1923 (Heritier 1994).
Four of the first 10 giant oil fields to be discovered in the world were found in the late 1880s in what was then the Russian Empire, three of them (Balakhany, Surakhany and Bibi-Heybat) within 25 km of Baku in Azerbaijan (Halbouty 2003; Sorenson 2014) (Fig. 6). The Balakhany Field on the Apsheron Peninsula in Azerbaijan was the largest producing oil field in the world in the 1870s and had 375 producing wells in 1883. It was succeeded as the world's largest producing field by the Bibi-Heybat Field on the south side of the Apsheron Peninsula in the mid-1880s, although this had certainly been in production since 1803 (Sorenson 2014).
A Baku ‘spouter’. The derrick is almost buried in sand ejected from the well (from Beeby-Thompson 1904).
The first deep well to encounter gas in Britain was drilled on the crest of the Battle Anticline at Netherfield in West Sussex by the Subwealden Exploration Company in 1875. The first well was abandoned at a depth of 1018 ft for mechanical reasons, but a second well was drilled nearby and reached a total depth of 1905 ft. While measuring the bottom-hole temperature of the well, a ‘naked light was injudiciously lowered down the hole’ (Selley 2011) which resulted in an explosion (Willet 1875). There was another accidental discovery of natural gas in 1895 when a 228 ft deep ‘artesian bore-tube’ was sunk in the stable yard of the New Heathfield Hotel at Heathfield in East Sussex (Dawson 1898). The first commercial discovery of gas in Britain occurred in August 1896, when gas was again encountered, accidentally, close to Heathfield Railway Station by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway while searching for an underground supply of water for its locomotives (Dawson 1898). The Heathfield discovery set off a widespread search for gas in commercial quantities during the years to 1910. Six more wells were drilled at Heathfield, and by 1903 some 70–80 houses and the railway station in Heathfield were lit by gas. The station continued to be lit by gas until 1930.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most domestic gas was produced by the destructive distillation of bituminous coal (so-called ‘town gas’). The gas was driven off by heating the coal in air-tight chambers, storing it in ‘gasometers’, and distributing it through a network of pipes to houses and other buildings where it was used for lighting and, much later, for cooking and heating. Gas manufacturing also produced a range of by-products which later became important feedstock for the chemical industry. Manufactured gas allowed the development of what was the first integrated utility network, and its success in Britain led to its rapid spread across Europe (Thomas 2018).
In February 1899, Paul Dvorkovitz (1857–1929), a Russian petrochemist in the service of Britain’s Petroleum Storage Tanks and Transportation Co. Ltd, published the first issue of The Petroleum Industrial Technical Review in London, with the support of British oil entrepreneurs. This was the first European technical journal devoted entirely to the oil industry and soon had a worldwide distribution. Similar editorial initiatives were also active in the USA, but were focused mostly on business and the national industry. Dvorkovitz’s journal introduced a new way to communicate the latest oil insights to industry practitioners. It led the market in oil information until the early 1910s and affirmed itself as the ‘voice’ of the European oil industry. Dvorkovitz and his firms were also the major promoters of the first four International Petroleum Congresses held in Paris (1900), Liège (1905), Bucharest (1907) and Lvov (1910). Prior to this, oil was discussed as a ‘branch’ discipline in general geology, engineering and chemistry conferences. Dvorkovitz’s Congress was the first international forum for global oil industry representatives organized in Europe.
By 1906, there were more than 7000 people working in the oil industry in the Prahova District of Romania (Fig. 7), the first area in the country to power oil rigs with electric engines fed by the local hydroelectric plant. Oil production exceeded 1 Mt (million tons) per year (Schleder et al. 2016).
‘Gusher’ in the Campina Field, Prahova District, Romania (from Suciu & Luzzati 1923).
Oil production in Austrian Galicia (an area stretching from present-day Poland to present-day Ukraine) peaked in 1910 at 2 Mt of crude oil (Krzywiec 2018), making this the third most prolific oil province in the world after Russia and the USA (Krzywiec 2016). Exploration drilling in Spain started in 1900, but the wells were usually simply located in the vicinity of surface oil seeps and impregnations with little or no geological input (Navarro Comet & Puche Riart 2018).
Among the many individuals who contributed to the development of the oil and gas industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sir Thomas Boverton Redwood (1846–1919) stands out as, perhaps, the greatest petroleum engineer and scientist of his generation (Sorkhabi 2018). Redwood, together with his many collaborators and co-authors, contributed, either directly or indirectly, to petroleum exploration and production in many parts of the world where Britain had colonial and commercial interests, and played a leading role in the development of petroleum technology and its application to Britain's oil operations around the world from the 1880s to the 1910s. He established one of the first and most successful petroleum consulting companies, trained generations of petroleum geologists and engineers, served as a technical advisor on many government committees and to many oil companies, and played a key role in securing Britain's oil supply during World War I.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Britain was importing nearly all of its oil from America and Iran. The Scottish oil-shale industry was making a modest, but important, contribution to meeting the domestic oil demand but, by 1918, Britain was importing over 100 000 BOPD (Hallett et al. 1985). Oil imports had increased by over 250% since 1913, in large part due to the increase in consumption required by the Allied Forces during World War I (Giffard 1923), but only about one-seventh of the oil imported in 1918 came from countries within the British Empire.
Access to oil was a major strategic factor in World War I (1914–18). The German invasion of Russia during World War I had as one of its objectives the capture of the Baku oil fields so that these could provide much-needed oil supplies for the German military. By the start of World War I, approximately 1335 km of pipeline had been laid in Romania to transport oil, and Germany's invasion of Romania in 1916 was driven by the desire to have access to the country's rich oil fields. The Romanians, following a request from Britain, destroyed more than 1500 wells to prevent them falling into German hands and, as a result, Romanian production dropped from 1 783 947 t in 1914 to 518 460 t in 1917 during the German occupation (Tulucan et al. 2018). However, after the conclusion of the war, the damaged fields were quickly recovered and in 1918 the production had already recovered to 1 222 582 t. From 1857 to 1918, Romania produced 21 376 295 t of oil (Suciu & Luzzati 1923). The Gbely oil field in Galicia also played an important role in supplying oil to the German military during World War I (Benadová 2016), which was much more accessible because of the alliance between Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Britain's first oil discovery at Hardstoft in Derbyshire in 1919 (Giffard 1923; Brentnall 1995) was made during a government-funded exploration programme to find indigenous oil supplies as a direct result of difficulties encountered in obtaining supplies from overseas during World War I (Craig et al. 2013; Corfield 2018). The exploration programme actually began shortly after World War I, but it was prompted by the concerns of the British government about the German submarine threat to imported supplies of essential petroleum products. Between 1918 and 1922, 11 wells were drilled (nine in England and two in Scotland), two of which proved commercial volumes of oil (Lees & Cox 1937; Brentnall 1995). The first well was drilled on a prominent faulted surface anticline at Hardstoft, near Bolsover in Derbyshire (Fig. 8), and produced some 29 000 bbl of oil before it was finally abandoned in 1945 (Craig et al. 2013). The second discovery, at D'Arcy in Lothian, 10 miles SE of Edinburgh, produced only 50 bbl of waxy oil before it was abandoned. Two wells were drilled in Staffordshire – one on the western side and the other on the eastern side of the Staffordshire Coalfield – and the other seven English wells were drilled in a roughly north–south line along the east side of the Pennines in Derbyshire, but all these except the Hardstoft well were dry (Corfield 2018).
The Hardstoft No. 1 well, Tibshelf, Derbyshire (© Devonshire Mss., Chatsworth, Tibshelf/Hardstoft Oilwell papers).
Oil was struck at Hardstoft on 27 May 1919 and production commenced in June 1919. Powers to enter onto land for the purpose of drilling for oil (but not ownership of any oil found) were provided under the Defence of the Realm Act of January 1918 and the government used these powers to take the land necessary for the nine well sites. These powers lapsed on the cessation of hostilities at the end of World War I (Hallett et al. 1985), with rather embarrassing consequences for the government.
Although modern rotary drilling techniques were first introduced in Texas in the early 1890s, most wells in Europe were still drilled using the older, slower and potentially more dangerous ‘cable tool’ method until the 1930s. Cable tool drilling did not allow the pressure in the well to be controlled, and the first indication that a high-pressure productive reservoir had been penetrated was usually the appearance of oil and gas jetting through the rig floor, which often then ignited causing dramatic oil field fires. One such spectacular ‘blowout’ occurred on 27 May 1929 at Moreni in Romania (Fig. 9) when the Romano American well No. 160 blew-out after encountering high-pressure gas (Spencer & Furcata 2016). The entire 662 m drill string was ejected from the well and sparks produced by the friction ignited the gas escaping from the well. The derrick was thrown 300 m by the explosion. Numerous attempts to extinguish the fire and cap the well, including drilling a tunnel 60 m below the casing head, were ultimately unsuccessful. The light from the burning well was visible from Bucharest, 70 km away and the blowout became internationally famous as the ‘Torch of Moreni’ (Spencer & Furcuta 2018). The fire finally went out naturally in November 1932, after burning for 2 years and 4 months, by which time the blowout and the subsequent attempts to extinguish the fire, including by the pioneer of oil-well firefighting, Myron Kinley (Spencer & Furcuta 2018), had resulted in the death of 14 workers and the injury of more than 100 others.
View of a hilly oil field in Sarata, Romania, 1899 (source: Petroleum Industrial and Technical Review, vol. 1, 30 March 1899).
After World War I, interest in exploring for oil in Britain declined when an Act of Parliament (the Petroleum Production Bill) in 1918 conferred on landowners the rights of ownership of any minerals found on their land. This discouraged oil companies from exploration. Cheap supplies of foreign crude oil also reduced the incentives to search for oil in Britain. Oil was produced at Hardstoft at an average rate of 6 BOPD until December 1927 (Craig et al. 2013). The well was prone to waxing and silting, and never flowed freely. Production increased to 14.6 BOPD during a pumping test carried out by the government in 1921, but the pumping was not continued because the government did not own the oil it produced. Several of the other wells drilled during this campaign on other structures encountered gas (Veatch 1923) but, ultimately, not in commercial quantities (Corfield 2018). On 23 March 1923, the Hardstoft well was taken over by the Duke of Devonshire, who owned the mineral rights and the land on which it was drilled. Eventually, the Petroleum Prospecting Act of 1934 gave the Crown the rights of ownership of any future discoveries of naturally occurring oil or gas and made it possible for companies to acquire exploration licences in the UK for the first time. With the new legislation, interest in exploration was renewed. The Petroleum Prospecting Act was not retrospective; the Duke of Devonshire retained ownership of the oil discovered at Hardstoft and he remains the only individual in the UK today who owns the rights to the oil under his land.
Initially, applications for licences to carry out exploration were concentrated mainly over parts of southern England, particularly Sussex and Hampshire. The first deep oil exploration well to be drilled in Britain, Portsdown No. 1, was spudded by D'Arcy Exploration Co. Ltd (the exploration subsidiary of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Ltd) in January 1936 on a site on a hill overlooking Portsmouth Harbour on the south coast (Fig. 10), but it found only a small quantity of oil. Several other wells were drilled in Hampshire, Berkshire, Dorset and Sussex in the following years (including wells at Henfield in Sussex, which encountered a small amount of gas, and at Kingsclere near Newbury in Berkshire), and a little oil was found, but all the wells were abandoned due to the poor quality of the reservoir (Lees & Cox 1937). In 1937, the D'Arcy Exploration Co. Ltd (later to become BP) found gas at Eskdale in North Yorkshire (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Ltd 1947; Haarhoff et al. 2018).
Portsdown No. 1 Well. Source: BP.
In 1937, the Anglo-American Oil Company (a subsidiary of Standard Oil) made an unsuccessful attempt to find oil at Hellingley in Sussex (Anon 1937). The search for oil then moved to the Midlands and the north of England, and particularly to southern Scotland, where, during 1937, D'Arcy made significant gas discoveries (with minor amounts of oil) in the northern culmination of the D'Arcy–Cousland Anticline at Dalkeith, SE of Edinburgh and at Cousland (Longhurst 1959). The gas was piped to the local gasworks during World War II and BP developed the field in the late 1950s. Also in 1937, Anglo-American re-drilled the southern culmination of the D'Arcy–Cousland Anticline, close to the original 1922 D'Arcy discovery well. This led to the later development of the Midlothian oil field (Underhill et al. 2008). Steel Brothers & Co. Ltd, whose association with the oil industry was primarily as the managing agents in London to the Attock Oil Company operating in India, completed an exploration well at Edale in Derbyshire in 1938 and, when this was unsuccessful, they carried out a general investigation of areas in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Cheshire and Lancashire. Further wells drilled in the East Midlands, at Gun Hill, north Staffordshire and at Alport in the Peak District also gave disappointing results (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Ltd 1947), but a small oil accumulation was discovered at Formby in Lancashire, at a depth of only 18 ft, in 1939 (Bunce 2018). Shortly after the Formby discovery, the D'Arcy Exploration Co. made much more significant discoveries in the Carboniferous succession at Eakring (in 1939), Kelham Hills (in 1941), Dukes Wood (in 1941) and Caunton (in 1943) in Nottinghamshire, and at Nocton (1943) in Lincolnshire (Lees & Taitt 1946) (Fig. 7). In 1940–41, Gulf Exploration (Great Britain) drilled a deep exploration well at Penhurst in Kent and then a second well in the Cleveland Hills of Yorkshire, with unsuccessful results in both cases.
During World War II, oil facilities were a major strategic asset and were extensively bombed. German U-boats again threatened British oil supplies from Persia and this led to the rapid, and top secret, development of domestic oil fields at Eakring and Duke's Wood in the East Midlands of England. Given the critical need for an indigenous supply of oil during World War II, the D'Arcy Exploration Company decided that, in the national interest, it would suspend further speculative exploration drilling in order to focus on developing the two fields in Nottinghamshire. The development of the fields under wartime conditions was hampered by the lack of available labour because the majority of skilled and able-bodied men had been ‘called-up’ and by the lack of steel, which was required for munitions and shipbuilding. Delays were also incurred because of the restricted lighting conditions permitted during black-out hours and, in the early stages, by periodic air-raid warnings during which drilling had to be suspended. The development of the Duke's Wood Field was further hampered by the shortage of labour and of road-building equipment need to construct access roads in the hilly and wooded area. The various drilling rigs operated by D'Arcy Exploration were moved to Eakring to begin development work, but these heavy-duty rigs proved unsuitable (Southwell 1945). Although improvements were made, by August 1942 the situation was critical – Britain had just 2 months’ stock of oil remaining and supplies from overseas were being repeatedly disrupted by German U-boats. Britain turned to its American ally, importing, in great secrecy, American rigs and American drilling crews to drill up the Eakring and Duke's Wood fields. The new American Unitized rigs with jacknife portable derricks were designed to give maximum mobility (Day 1946). What 44 American roughnecks were doing in the middle of Sherwood Forest was kept a secret – apparently, by the simple expedient of spreading a rumour that they were making a Western film starring John Wayne! The new rigs and their American drilling crews greatly reduced the time taken to drill the wells and to move the rigs between drilling locations. The average time taken to rig-up, drill and complete a production well was reduced to 7 days (Southwell 1945) and, with experience and changes in drilling practices, it became possible to drill 800 ft with a single drill bit, thereby reducing the average number of drill bits (which were in short supply) required to drill a production well from 13 to six. By the end of the war, the crews had drilled 380 wells of varying depths (amounting to 735 000 ft of drilling) resulting in 250 successful production wells, which together had produced more than 2.25 MMbbl of oil. When refined, this oil was particularly suited to power the Rolls Royce Merlin engine used in most of the Royal Air Force's high-performance fighters and bombers like the Supermarine Spitfire and the Avro 683 Lancaster. This provided Britain with a distinct advantage when compared with the low octane content of the synthetic aviation fuels produced in Germany by the synthesis of coal through the Fischer–Tropsch process. Before World War II, the German oil industry consisted of a weak upstream sector, mostly run by small- to medium-sized companies with limited financial resources, and a strong and competitive downstream sector. Because of the relatively small number of wells and the outdated technology (wooden rigs and manual gathering of the oil), the Wietze fields, in the Hannover district which is the richest oil area of Germany, produced only 11 773 567 t of crude between 1873 and 1929; while, in contrast, in the 1930s Germany had 27 efficient refineries that refined and re-sold foreign oil. It was this lack of domestic oil resources and the pressing war needs that motivated Germany to turn to the production of very expensive synthetic fuels to sustain their war effort (Rinehart 1930; Dewey 1946).
As the war progressed, supplies of oil to the ‘Axis’ troops also became increasingly vulnerable as the Allies mounted numerous attacks on German, Italian and Japanese oil resources. In 1943, some 35% of all ‘Axis’ oil supplies came from the Ploieşti oil fields in Romania, seized by the Germans in late 1940. Attacks on the oil refineries at Ploieşti culminated in the infamous ‘Operation Tidal Wave’, launched on 1 August 1943, during which 54 out of the 117 B-24 Liberator bombers that flew the low-altitude mission from Benghazi in Libya were shot down with the loss of 532 men (Al-Ani 2015). Several more raids on the Ploieşti oil fields in 1944 were more successful, resulting in substantial damage (Fig. 11) and making the refineries inoperable by August 1944, thereby substantially weakening the German war effort. At the end of the war, Romania was occupied by Russia, and the Russian influence on the Romanian oil industry remained for decades, even lasting until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 (Tulucan et al. 2018).
5 April 1944, B-24 Liberators in formation, bombing the Ploieşti oil installations in Romania.
Near the end of the war in 1944, during the ‘Italian Civil War’, the Caviaga gas field was discovered in the province of Piacenza, near Milan in the Po Valley area of northern Italy (Fig. 1), following a seismic survey that started in 1940 with American personnel and machinery, but was stopped temporarily in 1941 when the USA entered the war. Italian technicians replaced the Americans on the seismic crew and the survey was completed (Cazzini 2018). Caviaga was one of the largest gas fields in Europe at the time, second only to the Deleni Field in Romania, and it played a key role in the rejuvenation of the Italian industrial economy after the war.
Although the majority of European countries are not major producers of oil and gas, many have produced world-class petroleum geologists, explorers and engineers. Cesare Porro (1865–1940) was the first modern oil geologist in Italy. In contrast to his senior colleagues Giovanni Capellini (1833–1922), Antonio Stoppani (1824–91) and Dante Pantanelli (1844–1913), who focused on oil exploration for just a small part of their careers, Porro worked consistently in the oil sector from 1898 to 1931. He started his career with Royal Dutch Shell in Sumatra and eastern Europe. A few years later, he was hired by Deutsche Bank to work in what was then called Mesopotamia. In 1905, he documented the oil potential of the Mosul region for the first time. Hired by a Dutch private consulting firm in 1906, he was sent to explore areas of Wyoming and Oklahoma. In the early 1920s, he returned to Italy to work on oil exploration in the peninsula and then became a member of the Technical Committee of the newly-formed AGIP. He left in 1931, but was asked again in 1937 to explore the territories of Libya. Porro refused and the task was then offered to Ardito Desio (1897–2001), who between 1938 and 1939 discovered oil for the very first time in the oil formations in the province of Fezzan (Desio 1941; Candela 2014; Gerali & Lipparini 2018).
Three German geologists, Alfred Benz (1897–1964), August Moos (1893–1944) and Karl Krejci-Graf (1898–1986), made particularly important contributions to petroleum geology and exploration in the 1930s and 1940s (Kölbl-Ebert 2018). Bentz and Krejci-Graf offered their expertise to Hitler's regime, whereas Moos, because of his Jewish background, was murdered. Their biographies shed new light on how German petroleum geologists lived and worked during the span of two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century.
Switzerland has also produced many excellent petroleum geologists, including Carl Schmidt (1862–1923), Josef Erb (1874–1934), Hans Hirschi (1876–1965) and Arnold Heim (1882–1965) (Gisler 2014, 2018; Gisler & Trümpy 2016). Schmidt and Erb worked for Royal Dutch Shell, mainly in SE Asia, while Hirschi and Heim were both students of Albert Heim (1849–1937), Arnold Heim's father, at Zurich. For a while, Hirschi also mentored Arnold Heim. Arnold Heim, who could not succeed to his father's position at Zurich because of a conflict of interest, led an almost ‘nomadic’ life, working in various parts of the world. His only permanent position came in 1949 (at the age of 70) when he put together a group of Swiss geologists to work in Iran. Among these were Jovan Stöcklin (1921–2008) and Heinrich Huber (1917–92) who later led the mapping work at the Geological Survey of Iran and the National Iranian Oil Company, respectively, until the 1970s.
Another well-known Swiss geologist during the pre- and post-war period was Augustus Gansser (1910–2012). He worked for Royal Dutch Shell in South America during World War II, was another student of Arnold Heim at Zurich and later was a colleague of Albert Heim while working in the Himalaya in the 1930s and Iran in the 1950s (Sorkhabi 2012). The Swiss petroleum geologists working for Shell in South America during World War II, including Gansser and the two brothers Daniel Trümpy (1893–1971) and Eduard Trümpy (1903–66), remained in the region because of the war and undertook extensive geological mapping. Josef Theodor Erb (1874–1934) was the Chief geologist for Royal Dutch Shell, where he introduced rules and suggestions to standardize the writing of petroleum geological reports (Wannier 2018). Erb's ‘Uniformity in Geological Reports’ was written as an internal Shell report in 1917 and it eventually formed the basis of the ‘Shell Standard Legend’.
Another pioneering European petroleum geologist during and after World War II was Simon Papp (1886–1970), who is regarded as the Father of petroleum exploration in his country, Hungary. Papp was an internationally renowned petroleum geologist, who contributed enormously to oil and gas exploration in Hungary. In 1948, soon after the end of World War II, the communist regime in Hungary imprisoned Papp; nevertheless, needing his expertise, the regime arranged for him to continue his geological work from his prison cell (Tari & Bérczi 2018).
The Eakring Field in the East Midlands was the first of 25 onshore discoveries made in Britain over the next 30 years (Falcon & Kent 1960) (Figs 12 & 13), a period that defined what was, effectively, Britain's first ‘oil boom’. After World War II, both D'Arcy Exploration Co. Ltd and Anglo-American Oil Co. Ltd resumed their oil exploration efforts in Britain, but production declined to 5500 bbl per year by 1948. The search for other oil fields continued and, in 1953, BP found oil at Plungar in the Vale of Belvoir in Leicestershire – the first post-war oil field discovered in Britain. Following this, new fields were found in Nottinghamshire at Egmanton in 1955, Bothamsall in 1958 and South Leverton in 1960 (Fig. 11). The search in Lincolnshire also proved fruitful, and four discoveries were made between 1958 and 1962.
Oil and gas fields in northern and eastern England (modified from Gluyas & Bowman 1997; Craig et al. 2013).
General map of areas of Britain explored to the end of 1957 (from Falcon & Kent 1960).
In 1952, the Gas Council (GC) joined forces with BP in the search for natural gas and for structures suitable for the storage of peak-load gas. In 1958, gas from a discovery at Calow in Derbyshire was fed to the Chesterfield gas works, and a similar link was made from the Eskdale gas field to the Whitby gas works in 1960.
Elsewhere in Europe, the widespread use of seismic data from the 1950s onwards triggered an intense period of exploration. The first significant oil discoveries in Italy were the Ragusa heavy oil field, discovered in 1954 and the Gela Field, discovered in 1956, both in Sicily (Cazzini 2018). By the mid-1950s, the first offshore seismic survey had started in the Adriatic Sea (Fig. 1) and, in 1959, the drilling of the Gela 21 well, the first offshore well in Europe, boosted further exploration possibilities in Italy. In Spain, despite systematic exploration in 1940, it took more than 20 years to find a commercial hydrocarbon discovery. The Castillo gas discovery in the onshore Basque–Cantabrian Basin in Spain was later complemented in 1964 by the oil discovery at Ayoluengo (Burgos) in the southern part of the same basin, which today, more than 50 years later and after intense drilling activity during the 1960s, still remains as the only commercial oil field discovered onshore Spain, with production varying between 100 and 150 BOPD and a total cumulative production of 17 MMbbl of oil (Navarro Comet 2018).
Some exploration activity continued onshore in Britain during the late 1950s and the early 1960s (Fig. 13). BP made significant commercial oil discoveries at Kimmeridge in 1959 and subsequently at Wareham in 1964. However, in 1964, the British government ended the preferential tax treatment for producers of indigenous light oils in order to meet an obligation entered into under the European Free Trade Agreement. This had a devastating effect on the economic viability of Britain's onshore oil fields. BP's oil production from the East Midlands fell by a third and development work on several significant discoveries ceased. In 1965, Home Oil drilled Lockton 2a in the North Yorkshire Moors which tested gas at very impressive rates. Subsequent wells, Lockton Nos 3, 4 and 5, all proved dry, but Lockton was still the most important onshore gas discovery of the decade in Britain. It came on stream commercially in 1971. Gas was later also discovered in the same horizon at Ralph Cross, west of Eskdale, and at Malton to the SW of Lockton (Haarhoff et al. 2018).
In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, gas was discovered onshore at Trumfleet in Yorkshire and at Ironville in Nottinghamshire. The former was found to contain some oil during subsequent appraisal drilling in 1965. Esso made a further gas discovery at Bletchingley in Surrey in 1966, but the field was not developed commercially due to its low calorific value. All of these discoveries were small, and interest in exploring further for oil and gas onshore waned. There followed a period of inactivity while attention switched to the North Sea.
In 1958, a United Nations treaty divided the North Sea into economic zones by country and from this point onwards exploration gradually moved from onshore to offshore. The first discovery in the North Sea, the Ekofisk Field, was made in the Norwegian sector in 1969 (Jakobsson 2018), while the first discovery in the UK sector, the Forties Field, was made the following year. Oil was first produced from the UK North Sea from the Argyll Field in June 1975 (Gluyas et al. 2018).
With the increased focus on the North Sea, interest in onshore exploration declined rapidly during the early 1970s and might have faded entirely but for the events of 1973–74, when the oil supply crisis led to a sharp rise in oil prices, thereby improving the economics of exploration and development onshore in Britain. It was against this political and economic background that, in 1973, the Gas Council discovered Wytch Farm; Britain's largest, and eventually Europe's largest, onshore field, with estimated initial reserves of 500 MMbbl of oil (Morton 2014). In 1998, when it was at peak production, the Wytch Farm Field produced 110 000 BOPD.
However, it was the steep rise in prices in 1979–80 following the Iranian revolution when the price of oil again rose that really rejuvenated exploration for oil and gas in Europe, and elsewhere in the world. In 1980, 10 exploration/appraisal wells were drilled onshore in Britain, compared to five during the previous 3 years. In 1981, a gas discovery was made at Hatfield Moor in Yorkshire, and Carless Capel made an oil discovery in the Weald Basin at Humbly Grove near Basingstoke. Hatfield Moor came on stream in December 1985 with the gas transported to the nearby Belton Brickworks, and Carless Capel made two further oil discoveries at Herriard and Horndean during 1982–83. The success at Hatfield Moor was followed by another discovery at Godley Bridge in Surrey during 1983. Also in the early 1980s, another oil field was discovered near the village of Scothern in Lincolnshire and this eventually led to the development of Britain's second largest onshore oil field, at Welton. In addition to the discoveries at Horndean and Herriard, other oil discoveries were made at Farleys Wood in the East Midlands, and at Hemswell and Nettleham No. 2 in Lincolnshire. The onshore exploration success continued in 1984, with further discoveries at Cropwell Butler, Broughton and Stainton. In addition, an oil discovery was made at Larkwhistle Farm in Hampshire, a find that confirmed the attractions of the Wessex Basin as an oil-bearing area, and adding to existing discoveries in the area at Kimmeridge, Arne, Wareham and Wytch Farm, and also at Stockbridge, Hampshire and Palmers Wood in Surrey. Taylor Woodrow made another gas discovery at Kirby Misperton in North Yorkshire in 1985 (Haarhoff et al. 2018).
Further onshore exploration success came in 1985, with discoveries at Whisby in the East Midlands, and of heavy oil in the Carboniferous at Milton of Balgonie in the Midland Valley of Scotland. There was also an encouraging start to 1986 with finds at Rempstone, Kirklington and Kinoulton in the East Midlands. BP's Eakring Field in Nottinghamshire, discovered in 1939, produced more than 7 MMbbl, before it was abandoned in 1986 (Fig. 14).
The Eakring No. 1 well, Nottinghamshire in June 1964, when it was still producing.
In October 1987, a group headed by RTZ was awarded the very first new-style Development Licence to develop the Crosby Warren Field on the north side of the Humber estuary.
With the discovery and subsequent development of North Sea oil, Britain became self-sufficient in oil from the early 1980s and a net exporter of oil in 1981. Exports peaked in 1985 and production peaked in 1999. With declining North Sea production, the UK became a net importer of oil in 2004. As a result of the discovery and subsequent development of vast gas reserves offshore, mainly in the North Sea and in Liverpool Bay (Bunce 2018), the UK became a net exporter of gas in 1997, but, as these reserves declined, the UK became a net importer of gas in 2004. Overall, domestic gas production in the UK (onshore and offshore combined) began to decline in 2000 and by the early years of the second decade of the twenty-first century it was declining at a rate of about 6% per year, resulting in the UK importing 45% of the gas needed to meet domestic demand via pipeline and liquefied natural gas (LNG). In contrast, exploration in Norway continued to spread from the early discoveries in the Norwegian North Sea to the Norwegian Sea (Jakobsson 2018), where exploration started in 1980, and the Norwegian Barents Sea (Jakobsson 2018), where the first exploration licences were also awarded in 1980, with continuing success.
The development of the retail petrol industry in the UK followed a similar pattern of expansion followed by progressive contraction as oil exploration and production (Ritson et al. 2018). In 1939, there were approximately 37 000 service stations in the UK, a figure which grew to just over 41 000 in mid-1965, before the industry began a downwards trend, with about 26 500 stations in 1980, under 17 000 in 1995 and 8600 to the end of 2014. Sales of petrol in the UK peaked in 2007 and diesel sales peaked in 2011 (Energy Institute 2015).
This decline of UK gas production and the consequent implications for Britain's national energy security focused attention on the possibility of developing domestic unconventional gas resources, primarily shale gas and coal-bed methane (Dean 2018), despite the significant impediments to developing such resources in a highly populated country. The decline in UK oil production throughout the early years of the twenty-first century as the fields in the North Sea became increasingly mature also led to renewed interest in the possibility of redeveloping some of the early fields, such as the Argyll Field (then re-named the Ardmore Field), in an attempt to produce additional previously untapped reserves (Gluyas et al. 2018).
The successful exploitation of tight oil and tight gas resources in the USA, coupled with concerns about future energy security, also led to an increased focus on the potential for such ‘unconventional’ oil and gas resources in many European countries in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Poland, in particular, took a leading role in the evaluation of its potential shale-gas resources and, from 2007 onwards, the Polish government started to assign shale-gas exploration licences to both national and foreign companies in the hope of reducing Poland's dependence on Russian gas. Unfortunately, due to a combination of less than favourable geological, legislative and macroeconomic conditions, this early phase of shale-gas exploration in Poland was less successful than initially hoped (Cantoni 2018).
Exploration for new sources of oil and gas in Europe continues, but is increasingly hampered by the maturity of many of the conventional oil and gas plays in onshore areas such as in Britain, France and Italy that already have a long history of exploitation since the mid-1800s, the increasing maturity of some offshore areas, notably the UK sector of the North Sea, that have been explored extensively since the early 1960s, and increasing public opposition to the perceived environmental impact of the oil and gas industry in general, and of the technologies required to produce new tight oil and tight gas resources in particular.
The quest for oil and gas has generated geological insights and driven technological innovation since the beginning of the modern oil industry in the mid-nineteenth century. Oil and gas are natural resources, but their exploration and production are only partly controlled by the geology. Exploration is ignited by the demand for these resources, and is regulated by careful evaluations of the costs and likely revenues that will be generated. The rigorous application of petroleum geoscience reduces the risk inherent in oil and gas exploration and production, and so provides investors with improved financial returns.
Europe and Europeans played a disproportionately large role in the development of the modern global oil and gas industry. From at least the Iron Age until the 1850s, the use of oil in Europe was limited, and the oil was obtained almost exclusively from surface seeps and mine workings. The use of oil increased in the 1860s with the introduction of new technologies in both production and refining, but, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the mineral oils and gas then produced primarily from shale and coal could no longer satisfy demand, and oil produced directly from conventional oil fields began to dominate the European market.
The papers in this volume clearly show how the history of the European oil and gas industry has been controlled as much by political and economic conditions as it has by geology, and the historical insights they provide have important implications for current petroleum resource evaluations. In 1902, the State Geologist of Western Australia, Andrew Gibb Maitland, received a letter from a man interested in entering the oil business who wrote: ‘Sir, may I ask if you would kindly tell me something of the geology of petroleum and the best means of prospecting for it?’. Maitland answered that the knowledge on the topic was so vast that a library would not have enough space to contain it (Gerali & Gregory 2017b). Today, the same question would illicit an answer, not in terms of library shelves and stacks, but in terms of thousands of terabytes of petroleum geoscience data, and in the knowledge and expertise of thousands of petroleum geoscientists.
The discovery of the huge oil and gas resources beneath the North Sea in the 1960s and 1970s enabled Britain, Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands to be largely self-sufficient in oil and gas from the late 1970s until production began to decline rapidly in the early 2000s. Oil and gas production in most European countries is now at an historical low, but exploration for new sources of both conventional and unconventional oil and gas in Europe continues, although increasingly hampered by the maturity of many of the conventional oil and gas plays. Despite the decline in domestic oil and gas production in Europe – or, perhaps, because of it – European companies and European citizens continue to play a major role in the oil and gas industry worldwide.
Jonathan Craig thanks the management of Eni Upstream & Technical Services in Milan for permission to publish this paper and Massimo Pedini of the Eni Graphics Department for drafting some of the figures.
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To amend sections 2101.01, 2101.11, 2151.86, 3107.012, 3107.12, and 3107.14; to enact section 3107.141 of the Revised Code; and to amend Section 67.05 of Am. Sub. H.B. 215 of the 122nd General Assembly to revise the law regarding adoption assessors, prefinalization assessments, and rehabilitation standards a person with a criminal background must meet to become an adoptive or foster parent, and the Department of Human Services' contracting with a vendor to develop a statewide automated child welfare information system.
Sec. 2101.01. A probate division of the court of common pleas shall be held at the county seat in each county in an office furnished by the board of county commissioners, in which the books, records, and papers pertaining to the probate division shall be deposited and safely kept by the probate judge. The board shall provide suitable cases or other necessary items for the safekeeping and preservation of the books, records, and papers of the court and shall furnish any blankbooks, blanks, and stationery, and any machines, equipment, and materials for the keeping or examining of records, that the probate judge requires in the discharge of official duties. The board also shall authorize expenditures for accountants, financial consultants, and other agents required for auditing or financial consulting by the probate division whenever the probate judge considers these services and expenditures necessary for the efficient performance of the division's duties. The probate judge shall employ and supervise all clerks, deputies, magistrates, and other employees of the probate division. The probate judge shall supervise all probate court investigators and assessors in the performance of their duties as investigators and assessors and shall employ, appoint, or designate all probate court investigators and assessors in the manner described in division divisions (A)(2) and (3) of section 2101.11 of the Revised Code.
As used in the Revised Code, "probate court" means the probate division of the court of common pleas, and "probate judge" means the judge of the court of common pleas who is judge of the probate division. All pleadings, forms, journals, and other records filed or used in the probate division shall be entitled "In the Court of Common Pleas, Probate Division," but are not defective if entitled "In the Probate Court."
Sec. 2101.11. (A)(1) The probate judge shall have the care and custody of the files, papers, books, and records belonging to the probate court. He The probate judge is authorized to perform the duties of clerk of his own the judge's court. He The probate judge may appoint deputy clerks, stenographers, a bailiff, and any other necessary employees, each of whom shall take an oath of office before entering upon the duties of his the employee's appointment and, when so qualified, may perform the duties appertaining to the office of clerk of the court.
(iii) By entering into an agreement with another department or agency of the county, including, but not limited to, the sheriff's department or the county department of human services, pursuant to which an employee of the other department or agency will serve and perform the duties of investigator for the court, upon request of the probate judge, and designating that employee as a probate court investigator during the times when the person is performing the duties of an investigator for the court.
(b) Each person appointed or otherwise designated as a probate court investigator shall take an oath of office before entering upon the duties of his the person's appointment. When so qualified, an investigator may perform the duties that are established for a probate court investigator by the Revised Code or the probate judge.
(c) Except as otherwise provided in this division, a probate court investigator shall hold at least a bachelor's degree in social work, psychology, education, special education, or a related human services field. A probate judge may waive the education requirement of this division for a person the judge appoints or otherwise designates as a probate court investigator if the judge determines that the person has experience in human services work that is equivalent to the required education.
(d) Within one year after his appointment or designation, a probate court investigator shall attend an orientation course of at least six hours, and each calendar year after the calendar year of his appointment or designation, a probate court investigator shall satisfactorily complete at least six hours of continuing education.
(e) For purposes of divisions (A)(3)(4), (B), and (C) of this section, a person designated as a probate court investigator under division (A)(2)(a)(ii) or (iii) of this section shall be considered an appointee of the probate court at any time that the person is performing the duties established under the Revised Code or by the probate judge for a probate court investigator.
(ii) By contracting with a person to serve and be compensated as assessor only when needed by the probate court, as determined by the court, and by designating that person as an assessor during the times when the person is performing the duties of an assessor for the court.
(b) Each person appointed or designated as a probate court assessor shall take an oath of office before entering on the duties of the person's appointment.
(c) A probate court assessor must meet the qualifications for an assessor established by section 3107.012 of the Revised Code.
(d) A probate court assessor shall perform additional duties, including duties of an investigator under division (A)(2) of this section, when the probate judge assigns additional duties to the assessor.
(e) For purposes of divisions (A)(4), (B), and (C) of this section, a person designated as a probate court assessor shall be considered an appointee of the probate court at any time that the person is performing assessor duties.
(4) Each appointee of the probate judge may administer oaths in all cases when necessary, in the discharge of his official duties.
(B)(1)(a) Subject to the appropriation made by the board of county commissioners pursuant to this division, each appointee of a probate judge under division (A) of this section shall receive such compensation and expenses as the judge determines and shall serve during the pleasure of the judge. The compensation of each appointee shall be paid in semimonthly installments by the county treasurer from the county treasury, upon the warrants of the county auditor, certified to by the judge.
(b) Except as otherwise provided in the Revised Code, the total compensation paid to all appointees of the probate judge in any calendar year shall not exceed the total fees earned by the probate court during the preceding calendar year, unless the board of county commissioners approves otherwise.
(2) The probate judge annually shall submit a written request for an appropriation to the board of county commissioners that shall set forth estimated administrative expenses of the court, including the salaries of appointees as determined by the judge and any other costs, fees, and expenses, including, but not limited to, those enumerated in section 5123.96 of the Revised Code, that the judge considers reasonably necessary for the operation of the court. The board shall conduct a public hearing with respect to the written request submitted by the judge and shall appropriate such sum of money each year as it determines, after conducting the public hearing and considering the written request of the judge, is reasonably necessary to meet all the administrative expenses of the court, including the salaries of appointees as determined by the judge and any other costs, fees, and expenses, including, but not limited to, the costs, fees, and expenses enumerated in section 5123.96 of the Revised Code.
If the judge considers the appropriation made by the board pursuant to this division insufficient to meet all the administrative expenses of the court, he the judge shall commence an action under Chapter 2731. of the Revised Code in the court of appeals for the judicial district for a determination of the duty of the board of county commissioners to appropriate the amount of money in dispute. The court of appeals shall give priority to the action filed by the probate judge over all cases pending on its docket. The burden shall be on the probate judge to prove that the appropriation requested is reasonably necessary to meet all administrative expenses of the court. If, prior to the filing of an action under Chapter 2731. of the Revised Code or during the pendency of the action, the judge exercises his the judge's contempt power in order to obtain the sum of money in dispute, he the judge shall not order the imprisonment of any member of the board of county commissioners notwithstanding sections 2705.02 to 2705.06 of the Revised Code.
(C) The probate judge may require any of his the judge's appointees to give bond in the sum of not less than one thousand dollars, conditioned for the honest and faithful performance of his the appointee's duties. The sureties on the bonds shall be approved in the manner provided in section 2101.03 of the Revised Code.
The judge is personally liable for the default, malfeasance, or nonfeasance of any such appointee, but, if a bond is required of the appointee, the liability of the judge is limited to the amount by which the loss resulting from the default, malfeasance, or nonfeasance exceeds the amount of the bond.
All bonds required to be given in the probate court, on being accepted and approved by the probate judge, shall be filed in his the judge's office.
Sec. 2151.86. (A)(1) The appointing or hiring officer of any entity that employs any person responsible for a child's care in out-of-home care shall request the superintendent of the bureau of criminal identification and investigation to conduct a criminal records check with respect to any applicant who has applied to the entity for employment as a person responsible for a child's care in out-of-home care. The administrative director of any entity that designates a person as a prospective adoptive parent or as a prospective foster parent shall request the superintendent to conduct a criminal records check with respect to that person. If the applicant, prospective adoptive parent, or prospective foster parent does not present proof that the applicant or prospective adoptive or foster parent has been a resident of this state for the five-year period immediately prior to the date upon which the criminal records check is requested or does not provide evidence that within that five-year period the superintendent has requested information about the applicant or prospective adoptive or foster parent from the federal bureau of investigation in a criminal records check, the appointing or hiring officer or administrative director shall request that the superintendent obtain information from the federal bureau of investigation as a part of the criminal records check. If the applicant, prospective adoptive parent, or prospective foster parent presents proof that the applicant or prospective adoptive or foster parent has been a resident of this state for that five-year period, the appointing or hiring officer or administrator may request that the superintendent include information from the federal bureau of investigation in the criminal records check.
(2) Any person required by division (A)(1) of this section to request a criminal records check shall provide to each applicant, prospective adoptive parent, or prospective foster parent a copy of the form prescribed pursuant to division (C)(1) of section 109.572 of the Revised Code and a standard impression sheet to obtain fingerprint impressions prescribed pursuant to division (C)(2) of section 109.572 of the Revised Code, obtain the completed form and impression sheet from each applicant, prospective adoptive parent, or prospective foster parent, and forward the completed form and impression sheet to the superintendent of the bureau of criminal identification and investigation at the time the person requests a criminal records check pursuant to division (A)(1) of this section.
(3) Any applicant, prospective adoptive parent, or prospective foster parent who receives pursuant to division (A)(2) of this section a copy of the form prescribed pursuant to division (C)(1) of section 109.572 of the Revised Code and a copy of an impression sheet prescribed pursuant to division (C)(2) of that section and who is requested to complete the form and provide a set of fingerprint impressions shall complete the form or provide all the information necessary to complete the form and shall provide the impression sheet with the impressions of the applicant's or prospective adoptive or foster parent's fingerprints. If an applicant, prospective adoptive parent, or prospective foster parent, upon request, fails to provide the information necessary to complete the form or fails to provide impressions of the applicant's or prospective adoptive or foster parent's fingerprints, the entity shall not employ that applicant for any position for which a criminal records check is required by division (A)(1) of this section and shall not consider the prospective adoptive parent or prospective foster parent as an adoptive parent or foster parent.
(b) A violation of an existing or former law of this state, any other state, or the United States that is substantially equivalent to any of the offenses described in division (B)(1)(a) of this section.
(2) An out-of-home care entity may employ an applicant conditionally until the criminal records check required by this section is completed and the entity receives the results of the criminal records check. If the results of the criminal records check indicate that, pursuant to division (B)(1) of this section, the applicant does not qualify for employment, the entity shall release the applicant from employment.
(C)(1) The out-of-home care entity shall pay to the bureau of criminal identification and investigation the fee prescribed pursuant to division (C)(3) of section 109.572 of the Revised Code for each criminal records check conducted in accordance with that section upon a request pursuant to division (A)(1) of this section.
(2) An out-of-home care entity may charge an applicant, prospective adoptive parent, or prospective foster parent a fee for the costs it incurs in obtaining a criminal records check under this section. A fee charged under this division shall not exceed the amount of fees the entity pays under division (C)(1) of this section. If a fee is charged under this division, the entity shall notify the applicant, prospective adoptive parent, or prospective foster parent at the time of the person's initial application for employment or for becoming an adoptive parent or foster parent of the amount of the fee and that, unless the fee is paid, the entity will not consider the person for employment or as an adoptive parent or foster parent.
(D) The report of any criminal records check conducted by the bureau of criminal identification and investigation in accordance with section 109.572 of the Revised Code and pursuant to a request made under division (A)(1) of this section is not a public record for the purposes of section 149.43 of the Revised Code and shall not be made available to any person other than the applicant, prospective adoptive parent, or prospective foster parent who is the subject of the criminal records check or the applicant's or prospective adoptive or foster parent's representative; the entity requesting the criminal records check or its representative; the state department of human services or a county department of human services; and any court, hearing officer, or other necessary individual involved in a case dealing with the denial of employment to the applicant or the denial of consideration as an adoptive parent or foster parent.
(E) The department of human services shall adopt rules pursuant to Chapter 119. of the Revised Code to implement this section, including. The rules specifying circumstances under which an out-of-home care entity may hire shall include rehabilitation standards a person who has been convicted of or pleaded guilty to an offense listed in division (B)(1) of this section but who meets standards in regard to rehabilitation set by the department must meet for an entity to employ the person as a person responsible for a child's care in out-of-home care or permit the person to become an adoptive parent or foster parent.
(F) Any person required by division (A)(1) of this section to request a criminal records check shall inform each person, at the time of the person's initial application for employment with an entity as a person responsible for a child's care in out-of-home care or the person's initial application for becoming an adoptive parent or foster parent, that the person is required to provide a set of impressions of the person's fingerprints and that a criminal records check is required to be conducted and satisfactorily completed in accordance with section 109.572 of the Revised Code if the person comes under final consideration for appointment or employment as a precondition to employment for that position or if the person is to be given final consideration as an adoptive parent or foster parent.
(1) "Applicant" means a person who is under final consideration for appointment or employment as a person responsible for a child's care in out-of-home care.
(2) "Person responsible for a child's care in out-of-home care" has the same meaning as in section 2151.011 of the Revised Code, except that it does not include a prospective employee of the department of youth services or a person responsible for a child's care in a hospital or medical clinic other than a children's hospital.
(c) A distinct portion of a hospital, if the hospital is registered under section 3701.07 of the Revised Code as a children's hospital and the children's hospital meets all the requirements of division (G)(3)(a) of this section.
(4) "Criminal records check" has the same meaning as in section 109.572 of the Revised Code.
(5) "Minor drug possession offense" has the same meaning as in section 2925.01 of the Revised Code.
(d) A civil service employee engaging in social work without a license under Chapter 4757. of the Revised Code, as permitted by division (E)(A)(5) of section 4757.16 4757.41 of the Revised Code.
(3) The individual must complete education programs in accordance with rules adopted under section 3107.013 of the Revised Code.
(B) An individual employed in the employ of, appointed by, or under contract with a court prior to the effective date of this section September 18, 1996, to conduct home studies adoption investigations of prospective adoptive parents may conduct home studies perform the duties of an assessor under section sections 3107.031, 3107.082, 3107.09, 3107.12, and 5103.152 of the Revised Code if the individual complies with division (A)(3) of this section regardless of whether the individual meets the requirement of division (A)(2) of this section.
Sec. 3107.12. An (A) Except as provided in division (B) of this section, an assessor shall conduct a prefinalization assessment of a minor and petitioner before a court issues a final decree of adoption or finalizes an interlocutory order of adoption for the minor. On completion of the assessment, the assessor shall prepare a written report of the assessment and provide a copy of the report to the court before which the adoption petition is pending.
(B)(2) The present and anticipated needs of the minor and the petitioner, as determined by a review of the minor's medical and social history, for adoption-related services, including assistance under Title IV-E of the "Social Security Act," 94 Stat. 501 (1980), 42 U.S.C.A. 670, as amended, or section 5153.163 of the Revised Code and counseling, case management services, crisis services, diagnostic services, and therapeutic counseling.
(G)(7) If the minor is an Indian child, as defined in 25 U.S.C.A. 1903(4), how the placement complies with the "Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978," 92 Stat. 3069, 25 U.S.C.A. 1901, as amended.
(C) The department of human services shall adopt rules in accordance with Chapter 119. of the Revised Code defining "counseling," "case management services," "crisis services," "diagnostic services," and "therapeutic counseling" for the purpose of this section.
(C) If, at the conclusion of the hearing, the court finds that the required consents have been obtained or excused and that the adoption is in the best interest of the person sought to be adopted as supported by the evidence, it may issue, subject to division (B)(1) of section 2151.86, section 3107.064, and division (E) of section 3107.09 of the Revised Code, and any other limitations specified in this chapter, a final decree of adoption or an interlocutory order of adoption, which by its own terms automatically becomes a final decree of adoption on a date specified in the order, which, except as provided in division (B) of section 3107.13 of the Revised Code, shall not be less than six months or more than one year from the date of issuance of the order, unless sooner vacated by the court for good cause shown. In determining whether the adoption is in the best interest of the person sought to be adopted, the court shall not consider the age of the petitioner if the petitioner is old enough to adopt as provided by section 3107.03 of the Revised Code.
SECTION 2 . That existing sections 2101.01, 2101.11, 2151.86, 3107.012, 3107.12, and 3107.14 of the Revised Code are hereby repealed.
SECTION 3 . Section 2151.86 of the Revised Code is presented in this act as a composite of the section as amended by both Am. Sub. H.B. 445 and Am. Sub. S.B. 269 of the 121st General Assembly, with the new language of neither of the acts shown in capital letters. This is in recognition of the principle stated in division (B) of section 1.52 of the Revised Code that such amendments are to be harmonized where not substantively irreconcilable and constitutes a legislative finding that such is the resulting version in effect prior to the effective date of this act.
The Ohio Department of Human Services shall transfer through intrastate transfer vouchers, cash from State Special Revenue Fund 4K1, ICF/MR Bed Assessments, to fund 4K8, Home and Community-Based Services, in the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. The sum of the transfers shall be equal to the amounts appropriated per fiscal year in line item 322-604, Waiver - Match. The transfer may occur on a quarterly basis or on a schedule developed and agreed to by both Departments.
The Ohio Department of Human Services shall transfer, through intrastate transfer voucners vouchers, cash from the State Special Revenue Fund 4J5, Home and Community-Based Services for the Aged, to Fund 4J4, PASSPORT, in the Ohio Department of Aging. The sum of the transfers shall be equal to the amount appropriated per fiscal year in line item 490-610, PASSPORT/Residential State Supplement. The transfer may occur on a quarterly basis or on a schedule developed and agreed to by both departments.
Of the foregoing appropriation item 400-527, Child Protective Services, not more than $1,400,000 in fiscal year 1998 and not more than $1,400,000 in fiscal year 1999, may be used to reimburse counties for child day care services purchased in behalf of children in foster care. Such funds may be used as matching funds for federal funds that may be available for this purpose. The Department of Human Services shall adopt rules, in accordance with section 111.15 of the Revised Code, establishing reimbursement procedures and conditions to be followed by counties.
The Director of Budget and Management shall transfer $1,000,000 in fiscal year 1998 and $1,000,000 in fiscal year 1999 from Fund 198, Children's Trust Fund, to Fund 4N7, Wellness Block Grant, within the Department of Human Services' budget.
On behalf of public children services agencies and in consultation with the Department of Insurance and the Office of State Purchasing, the Department of Human Services may seek and accept proposals for a uniform and statewide insurance policy to indemnify foster parents for personal injury and property damage suffered by them due to the care of a foster child. Premiums for such a policy shall be the sole responsibility of each public children services agency that agrees to purchase the insurance policy.
Notwithstanding the formula in section 5101.14 of the Revised Code, from the foregoing appropriation item 400-527, Child Protective Services, the Department of Human Services may use no more than $2 million in fiscal year 1999 as incentive funding for public children services agencies to promote innovative practice standards and efficiencies in service delivery. The department shall develop a process for the release of these funds and may adopt rules in accordance with section 111.15 of the Revised Code governing the distribution, release, and use of these funds.
The Department of Human Services and the county departments of human services shall work to develop collaborative efforts between Head Start and child care providers. The Department of Human Services may use the foregoing appropriation items 400-413, Day Care Match/Maintenance of Effort, and 400-617, Day Care Federal, to support collaborative efforts between Head Start and child day care centers.
The Department of Human Services shall use not less than $5,000,000 in fiscal year 1998 and not less than $5,000,000 in fiscal year 1999 of the Child Care Development Block Grant moneys to support low-income families who need assistance in the provision of before-school and after-school care for their children. The Department of Human Services shall establish rules determining eligibility for these dollars adopted in accordance with section 111.15 of the Revised Code.
When the Department of Human Services adopts rules establishing a procedure for determining the rates of maximum reimbursement for publicly funded child care, the department shall adopt an enhanced rate to encourage the development of child care for parent(s) who work nontraditional hours.
From staffing levels that existed on January 1, 1997, the Department of Human Services is required to reduce its full-time equivalent positions by 150 by July 1, 1999. At least thirty-nine positions must be eliminated by January 1, 1998. The remaining positions must be eliminated by July 1, 1999.
(A) From the foregoing appropriation item 400-416, Computer Projects, the Department of Human Services shall expend at least $6,000,000 in fiscal year 1998 and at least $6,000,000 in fiscal year 1999 to implement a statewide automated child welfare information system (SACWIS) to be used by the 88 county public children service agencies.
(3) The vendor must be able to have the SACWIS operational in all 88 public children services agencies by June 30, 1999.
(4)(2) Provide for the maintenance and general upkeep of the system SACWIS.
(C) The system shall be designed to successfully interface with the Support Enforcement Tracking System (SETS) and the Client Registry and Information System-Enhanced (CRIS-E).
Of the foregoing appropriation item 400-528, Title IV-E and State Adoption Services, not more than $3,700,000 in fiscal year 1998 and not more than $3,700,000 in fiscal year 1999 shall be used in support of post finalization adoption services offered pursuant to section 5153.163 of the Revised Code. The Department of Human Services shall adopt rules and procedures pursuant to section 111.15 of the Revised Code to set payment levels and limit eligibility for post finalization adoption services as necessary to limit program expenditures to the amounts set forth in this section, based on factors, including but not limited to, any or all of the following: type, or extent, of the adopted child's disability or special need; and resources available to the adoptive family to meet the child's service needs.
Of the foregoing appropriation item 400-620, Social Services Block Grant, no less than $15,000,000 in fiscal year 1998 and $15,000,000 in fiscal year 1999 shall be used for child day care services. The remainder of the SSBG funding may be used to provide social services as authorized in section 5101.465 of the Revised Code, including adult day care.
The foregoing appropriation item 400-658, Child Support Collections, shall be used by the Department of Human Services to meet the TANF Maintenance of Effort requirements of Pub. L. No. 104-193. After the state has met the maintenance of effort requirement, the Department of Human Services may use funds from line item 400-658 to support public assistance activities.
Upon the request of the Department of Human Services, the Controlling Board may transfer any remaining unspent fiscal year 1998 funds from appropriation item 400-410, TANF State, to appropriations for fiscal year 1999 so that the state of Ohio will be able to meet the Maintenance of Effort requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Block.
Upon the request of the Department of Human Services, the Controlling Board may transfer any remaining unspent fiscal year 1998 funds from appropriation item 400-413, Day Care/Maintenance of Effort, to appropriations for fiscal year 1999 so that the state of Ohio will be able to meet the Maintenance of Effort requirements for the Child Care Development Block Grant.
Upon the request of the Department of Human Services, the Controlling Board may transfer any remaining unspent fiscal year 1998 funds from individual county consolidations from appropriation item 400-527, Child Protective Services, to appropriations for fiscal year 1999 so that the counties may meet the obligations for services funded through that line item.
Upon the request of the Department of Human Services, the Controlling Board may transfer any remaining unspent fiscal year 1998 funds from the Post Finalization Special Adoption Services portion of appropriation item 400-528, Adoption Services, to appropriations for fiscal year 1999 so that counties may meet the obligations for services funded through that portion of the line item.
Upon the request of the Department of Human Services, the Controlling Board may transfer any remaining unspent fiscal year 1998 funds from appropriation item 400-409, Wellness Block Grant, to appropriations for fiscal year 1999 so that the counties may meet the obligations for services funded through that line.
The foregoing appropriation item 400-615, Private Child Care Agencies Training, shall be used by the Department of Human Services to provide the state match for federal Title IV-E training dollars for private child placing agencies and private noncustodial agencies. Revenues shall consist of moneys derived from fees established under section 5101.112 of the Revised Code and paid by private child placing agencies and private noncustodial agencies.
Of the foregoing appropriation item 400-610, Food Stamps and State Administration, $1.5 million in fiscal year 1998 and $1.5 million in fiscal year 1999 shall be used by the Department of Human Services to purchase commodities and distribute those commodities to supplement the emergency food distribution programs. Agencies receiving commodities under this program shall provide reports in accordance with rules developed by the Department of Human Services.
Of the foregoing appropriation item 400-525, Health Care/Medicaid, $77,790 (state share only) in fiscal year 1998, and $111,477 (state share only) in fiscal year 1999 shall be used to transfer funds from the General Revenue Fund to the General Operations Fund (Fund 142) of the Department of Health. Transfer of the funds shall be made through intrastate transfer vouchers pursuant to an interagency agreement for the purpose of performing environmental lead assessments in the homes of Medicaid Healthcheck recipients.
The Director of Budget and Management may transfer cash from the Disproportionate Share Fund (3P8) in the Department of Human Services to the OhioCare Fund (4X5) in the Department of Mental Health, the Behavioral Health Medicaid Services Fund (4X4) in the Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services, and the Medicaid Program Support Fund - State (5C9) in the Department of Human Services and shall transfer cash in the amount of $14,800,000 to the Health Services Fund (5E1) in the Department of Health.
Based on an interagency agreement, the Department of Human Services may delegate authority to the Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services and the Department of Mental Health to administer specified Medicaid services. Monthly reimbursement shall be made by intrastate transfer voucher from the Department of Human Services' appropriation items 400-525, Health Care/Medicaid, and 400-655, Interagency Reimbursement, to the Department of Drug and Alcohol Addiction Services' Behavioral Health Medicaid Services Fund (4X4) and the Department of Mental Health's OhioCare Fund (4X5).
The Department of Human Services' Medicaid Program Support Fund-State (5C9) is hereby created in the state treasury. The Fund shall be used to receive earned federal reimbursement generated by the Institutions for Mental Diseases/Disproportionate Share Hospital Program. The foregoing appropriation item 400-671, Medicaid Program Support, may be used for the following purposes: to pay for Medicaid services to eligible children under age nineteen, whose family income does not exceed 150 per cent of the federal poverty level; to pay for a new Medicaid home and community-based waiver program for non-aged persons with chronic, long-term disabilities; and, to make residual payments associated with the specified Medicaid services transferred to the Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services and the Department of Mental Health.
The foregoing appropriation item 400-672, Medicaid Services, may be used by the Department of Human Services to pay for Medicaid services or to transfer moneys by intrastate transfer voucher to the Department of Mental Health's OhioCare Fund (4X5) in accordance with an interagency agreement which delegates authority from the Department of Human Services to the Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services and the Department of Mental Health to administer specified Medicaid services.
The Department of Human Services' Medicaid Program Support Fund-Federal (3P7) is hereby created in the state treasury. The foregoing appropriation item 400-668, Medicaid Program Support, may be used to pay for Medicaid services to eligible children under age nineteen, whose family income does not exceed 150 per cent of the federal poverty level; and for a new Medicaid home and community-based waiver program for non-aged persons with chronic, long-term disabilities. Funds also may be used for residual payments associated with the specified Medicaid services transferred to the Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services and the Department of Mental Health.
The foregoing appropriation item 400-672, Medicaid Services, may be used by the Department of Human Services to pay for Medicaid services and contracts.
The name of the Department of Human Services' OhioCare Start-up Fund (3P7) is hereby changed to the Medicaid Program Support Fund-Federal.
The Director of Human Services may contract with one or more organizations to develop and/or implement Medicaid Managed Care Pilot Programs in rural sections of Ohio.
The Medicaid Managed Care Reimbursement Study Committee shall meet by August 1, 1997, to begin reviewing the appropriateness of the negotiated Medicaid reimbursement rates paid to managed care organizations for services provided to Medicaid recipients in fiscal year 1998. By November 1, 1997, the Committee must report its findings and/or recommendations concerning the fiscal year 1998 rates to the Governor, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the President of the Senate.
In preparing the budget for medical assistance for state fiscal years 2000 and 2001, as it pertains to services provided to individuals with mental retardation and developmental disabilities, the Office of Budget and Management and the Department of Human Services shall review the results of any study regarding the use of a managed care system that is prepared and submitted to it by the Hattie Larlham Foundation, the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Action Committee, the Ohio Private Residential Association, the Ohio Coalition for Services to Persons with Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, or any other entity.
The Department of Human Services shall certify the cash balance of Fund 4A6 to the Director of Budget and Management who shall transfer the remaining unexpended, unobligated balance in Fund 4A6 to the General Revenue Fund.
The foregoing appropriation items 400-643 and 400-644, Holding Account Redistribution Fund Group, shall be used to hold revenues until they are directed to the appropriate accounts or until they are refunded. If it is determined that additional appropriation authority is necessary, such amounts are hereby appropriated.
The foregoing appropriation items 400-646, 400-601, and 400-642, Agency Fund Group, shall be used to hold revenues until they are directed to the appropriate accounts or until they are directed to the appropriate governmental agency other than the Department of Human Services. If it is determined that additional appropriation authority is necessary, such amounts are hereby appropriated.
The foregoing appropriation items that appear in the Department of Human Services' State Special Revenue Fund Group shall be used to collect revenue from various sources and use the revenue to support programs administered by the Department of Human Services. If it is determined that additional appropriations are necessary, the department shall notify the Director of Budget and Management on forms prescribed by the Controlling Board. If the director agrees that the additional appropriation is necessary in order to perform the functions allowable in the appropriation item then such amounts are hereby appropriated. The Director of Budget and Management shall notify the Controlling Board at their next regularly scheduled meeting as to the action taken."
SECTION 5 . That existing section 67.05 of Am. Sub. H.B. 215 of the 122nd General Assembly is hereby repealed. | 2019-04-19T08:46:52Z | http://archives.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=122_HB_446 |
Urgent Engagement is the process of engaging people into care who have experienced a crisis or have been admitted to an inpatient facility. It is intended to engage persons into care, rather than fulfilling an administrative function. The process includes ensuring effective coordination of care, engagement, discharge planning, a Serious Mental Illness (SMI) screening when appropriate (reference Provider Manual section 3.6), screening for eligibility, referral as appropriate, and prevention of future crises. Once the Behavioral Health Home completes the urgent engagement process, the Behavioral Health Home is the entity that is responsible for coordination of necessary service and discharge planning. Urgent Engagements are required to be started within one hour (at a Community Observation Center) or 24 hours (at a Behavioral Health Inpatient Facility).
Behavioral Health Homes must accept referrals and requests for Urgent Engagements 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Providers are required to record, report and track completion of Urgent Engagements.
If the member is enrolled with private insurance, the Behavioral Health Home role is to coordinate care with the current provider and health plan, determine the need for an SMI evaluation, and work directly with the health plan to ensure the member is receiving needed services and follow up. For persons who are not yet enrolled in Medicaid, Block Grant programs or the Marketplace, Behavioral Health Homes are required to continue to pursue coverage for the person.
AzCH-CCP enrolled and State Only (N19/NSMI) inidviduals who receives services at a Community Observation Unit and identifies as not engaged with a BH provider must be referred for urgent engagement. The Behavioral Health Home must arrive within one hour of the request. Once a Behavioral Health Home makes contact with the member, they are responsible for discharge planning for that member, including transportation and a follow up appointment. The urgent engagement at a COU should be an abbreviated intake in order to quickly gather the information needed. The engagement process can be completed in a follow up appointment (preferably within the next 24-48 hours).
Every AzCH-CCP enrolled or State Only individual who lives in The Health Plan covered service area and is hospitalized at a Behavioral Health Inpatient Facility and is not in active care with a Behavioral Health Home, is eligible for an urgent engagement. The selected Behavioral Health Home has 24-hours to arrive at the facility and complete the Urgent Engagement assessment. In the event the individual is sleeping or otherwise unable to participate in the Urgent Engagement process, the Behavioral Health Home shall reschedule the Urgent Engagement assessment within 24-hours and inform The Health Plan of the status.
The Health Home shall transmit the Provider Manual Form Urgent Response Disposition form to [email protected] within 24-hours of completing assessment.
Provider Manual Form 6.1.1 Urgent Response Disposition can be obtained by calling the Provider Services Call Center at 866-796-0542.
Every AzCH-CCP enrolled or State Only individual who lives in The Health Plan covered service area and is hospitalized at a Physical Health Inpatient Facility and is not in active care with a Behavioral Health Home, is eligible for an urgent engagement assessment. Behavioral Health Homes are required to arrive at the facility and complete the urgent engagement assessment within 24 hours of the request. In the event the individual is sleeping or otherwise unable to participate in the urgent engagement process, the Behavioral Health Home shall reschedule the urgent engagement assessment within 24-hours and inform The Health Plan of the status.
Every AzCH-CCP enrolled or State Only individual who lives in a The Health Plan covered service area and is hospitalized at a Behavioral Health Inpatient Facility for psychiatric reasons, and is not in active care with a Behavioral Health Home, and presents with a need for an SMI evaluation is eligible to be assessed for an SMI diagnosis.
The Behavioral Health Home shall complete the Urgent Engagement assessment with 24-hours and transmit the Provider Manual Form 6.1.1 Urgent Response Disposition form to [email protected] within 24-hours of completing assessment.
The Behavioral Health Home shall submit the SMI evaluation packet within seven days of the Urgent Engagement assessment to the designated SMI Evaluation provider, Community Response Network (CRN).
The purpose of the SMI evaluation services for persons from The Health Plan geographic area admitted to ASH are for discharge planning. The Behavioral Health Home has seven calendar days to complete the assessment and submit the Provider Manual Form 6.1.1 Urgent Response Disposition form to [email protected] within 24-hours.
Behavioral Health Homes activated by the Urgent Engagement process are required to enroll members and non-eligible members refusing services during the COE process. Once the member is Court Ordered, the Behavioral Health Home is required to proceed with engagement and service delivery; including, an SMI screening.
Behavioral Health Homes must maintain capacity to travel to locations within Arizona to complete Urgent Engagements.
Behavioral Health Homes must verify Urgent Engagement staff have access to a laptop, mobile printer and wireless web connectivity to allow access to electronic medical information in the field. The computer and wireless specifications meet or exceed The Health Plan requirements.
Health Plan contracted Behavioral Health Homes must complete a rapid response assessment within 72 hours of Health Plan activation for all children who are taken into the custody of DCS, regardless of Title XIX/XXI eligibility status.
Ensure that each child and family is referred for ongoing behavioral health services as indicated by the assessment and service plan and ensure that services start within 21 days of the Rapid Response Assessment.
Provide the DCS Specialist with written findings and recommendations for medically necessary covered services within 24 hours of Rapid Response assessment. This information shall be utilized during the initial Preliminary Protective Hearing, which occurs within 5 to 7 days of the child’s removal. (See Provider Manual Attachment 3.2.1, DCS Child Welfare Timelines and Provider Manual Attachment 6.1.1 Rapid Response Guidance Manual which can be obtained by calling the Provider Services Call Center at 866-796-0542 for more information.
Additionally, Behavioral Health Homes are expected to engage the family from which the child was removed within 5 days of the Rapid Response in order to engage them in the assessment process and invite them to participate in the Child and Family Team meeting. The Behavioral Health Home is expected to help the parents identify appropriate services and support them in the enrollment process.
Behavioral Health Homes are required to attend the Pre-Hearing Conference and Preliminary Protective Hearing to present their assessment and recommendations and continue to engage the family.
Behavioral Health Homes must maintain capacity to travel to locations within Arizona to complete a 72 Hour Rapid Response assessment.
When applicable following a Rapid Response, Behavioral Health Homes must track the transfer of enrolled Members to other Health Plan contracted Behavioral Health Homes through the Health Plan Provider Portal and continue providing coordination and treatment services until the receiving agency has fully accepted the transfer as indicated in the Provider Portal.
Behavioral Health Homes must verify Rapid Response staff have access to a laptop, mobile printer and wireless web connectivity to allow access to electronic medical information in the field. Computer and wireless specifications must meet or exceed Health Plan requirements. Ongoing Service Requirements for Comprehensive Medical and Dental Plan (CMDP) Eligible DCS Involved Children. Behavioral Health Homes are expected to provide services for a period of at least six months following the Rapid Response assessment unless the Behavioral Health Home receives a written request from the guardian or the DCS case closes.
Behavioral Health Services for DCS involved children must stay open for at least six months following the Rapid Response assessment unless the Behavioral Health Homes receives a written request from the guardian or DCS closes out the member.
DCS Involved Children must receive at least one service, identified on their service plan each calendar month.
Behavioral Health Homes are expected to participate in all court hearings as appropriate for members in their care.
Behavioral Health Homes are required to coordinate care for all CMDP members who become detained in a county detention facility located outside of the Health Plan service area.
Behavioral Health Homes are expected to engage the biological parents, foster parents, kinship parents and adoptive parents throughout the course of treatment. The purpose of this engagement is to engage the parents and caretakers in the assessment process and invite them to participate in the Child and Family Team meeting. The Behavioral Health Home is expected to help the parents identify appropriate services and support them in the enrollment process.
When the DCS Specialist/Legal Guardian is not available, the Behavioral Health Home must recognize the signature of the foster or kinship placement for the purpose of coordinating outpatient behavioral health services. Foster and kinship placements may sign a release of information, consent to treat, the service plan and other necessary documentation. If there is a disagreement between the placement and the DCS Specialist about services, the Legal Guardian/DCS Specialist shall make the final decision.
The DCS Specialist/Legal Guardian must be the one to sign a child in the legal custody of DCS in to a Home Care Training for the Home Care Client (HCTC), Behavioral Health Residential Facility (BHRF), Behavioral Health Inpatient Facility (BHIF), Brief Intervention Program (BIP) or a hospital.
AzCH-CCP Nurse Assist Line shall maintain a Foster Care Hotline for the specific purpose of answering calls about DCS involved children from Foster, Kinship and Adoptive Parents. The Foster Care Hotline shall be available 365/24/7 to meet the needs of the child and family.
When a foster parent, kinship placement, group home or law enforcement official calls the Foster Care Hotline to initiate a Rapid Response, the Foster Care Hotline staff must immediately email the Health Plan Rapid Response Program at [email protected] and the DCS Child Services liaison.
The Foster Care Hotline is required to send out a Crisis Mobile Team if a foster, kinship or adoptive parent requests a 72 Hour Higher Level of Care Determination.
The Crisis Mobile Team shall determine if the child needs to go to a hospital, CRC or BIP (for AzCH-CCP members) to ensure the safety of the child while the team meets to determine further clinical needs of the child. If the CMT determines the child is safe to stay in the current environment, a safety plan must be developed prior to leaving the home.
The Crisis Mobile Team shall immediately inform the Behavioral Health Home and The Health Plan CMDP Coordinators at the [email protected] email of the call and the need for an Emergency CFT.
The Behavioral Health Home is required to have an Emergency CFT to identify the needs of the member and if appropriate follow the Health Plan process for securing the appropriate level of care for the member.
When the AzCH-CCP Nurse Assist Line or Foster Care Hotline is called because the member is in crisis or is showing dangerous or threatening behaviors, a crisis mobile team shall be dispatched.
Crisis Mobile Team providers are required to arrive within 2 hours of dispatch.
AzCH-CCP Nurse Assist Line is required to notify the DCS Child Services Liaison via email of any CMT dispatches that do not meet the 2 hour required response time.
All calls received by the AzCH-CCP Nurse Assist Line Foster Care Hotline must be tracked and reported to The Health Plan using Deliverable EC-301-25 Foster Care Hotline Call Report.
The EC-301.25 Foster Care Hotline Call Report is due the 10th of every month for the previous month.
Behavioral Health Respite Home Providers must meet the requirements of AAC R9-10-1601.
Behavioral Health Respite Home providers must meet all prior authorization and continued stay requirements for Behavioral Health Supportive Homes as spelled out in this Provider Manual and as directed by The Health Plan.
Birth to Five providers must provide screening, assessment, service planning, interventions and practices specifically designed to meeting the unique needs of children age Birth to Five and their families. Providers are required to utilize the AHCCCS Practice Tools “Working with the Birth to Five Population” and “Psychiatric and Psychotherapeutic Best Practices for Children Birth Through Five Years of Age” for additional guidance.
Birth to Five providers must demonstrate active participation in state, regional and community sponsored best practices development and committed to working to build community knowledge base and expertise.
Brief Intervention Program providers must maintain an intensive treatment program to deliver services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with the purpose of helping persons live successfully in the community. Brief Intervention Program providers must deliver supportive and treatment services necessary to support the Member in the community and must verify access to the services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to respond to crises, as appropriate.
Brief Intervention Program providers must provide adequate staffing to maintain the safety of the Members and protect them from harm.
Brief Intervention Program providers must limit participation in the program to ten (10) days per episode. Members cannot be readmitted to a Brief Intervention Program within 72 hours of discharge from any Brief Intervention Program.
Brief Intervention Program providers must coordinate with treatment teams and family members, as appropriate, to verify continuity of care. Child and Family Teams/Adult Recovery Teams must be conducted within 72 business hours after admission. Each Brief Intervention Program provider must submit a report as indicated in Section 16 – Deliverable Requirements.
Providers can be considered “Consumer Operated” if they comply with the requirements as outlined in the SAMHSA Consumer Operated Services Evidence-Based Practices Kit. Consumer Operated Providers can hold a behavioral health license from the Arizona Department of Health Services Division of Licensing, or in some situations can be certified as a Community Service Agency per AHCCCS AMPM 961, Community Service Agency Title XIX Certification. Community Service Agency Application forms can be found on the AHCCCS website at https://www.azahcccs.gov/shared/MedicalPolicyManual/.
Crisis Line providers must comply with the requirements outlined in Provider Manual Section 14.13, Substance Use Disorder Treatment Requirements.
Crisis Line providers must maintain an administrator–on-call to address any after-hours, weekend or holiday concerns or issues.
Services must be individualized to meet the needs of Members and families. Crisis Line providers must assess the Member's perspective on treatment progress, in order to verify that the Member's perspectives are honored and they are effectively engaged in treatment planning and in the process of care. Crisis Line providers must provide monitoring, feedback and follow up after crisis based on the changing needs of the individual. The family must be treated as a unit and included in the treatment process, when determined to be clinically appropriate. Crisis Line providers must obtain and document child, family and Member input in treatment decisions.
Crisis Line providers providing SUD services must develop services that are designed to reduce the intensity, severity and duration of substance use and the number of relapse events, including a focus on life factors that support long-term recovery as appropriate.
Crisis Line providers must contact the Behavioral Health Home following a member’s utilization of crisis services. Crisis Line providers must verify coordination and continuity within and between service providers and natural supports to resolve initial crisis and to reduce further crisis episodes over time.
Crisis Line providers must promote community-based alternatives instead of treatments that remove the Members from their family and community. In situations where a more restrictive level of care is temporarily necessary, Crisis Line providers must work with the Member to transition back into community-based care settings as rapidly as is clinically feasible and must partner with community provider agencies to develop and offer services that are alternatives to more restrictive institutionally or facility based care.
Crisis Line providers must notify The Health Plan of any staff changes or incidents impacting credentialing involving Behavioral Health Professionals or Behavioral Health Medical Professionals within forty-eight (48) business hours of any additions, terminations or changes.
Crisis Line providers must participate in clinical quality improvement activities that are designed to improve outcomes for Arizona Members.
Crisis Line providers are highly encouraged to have in place a fully operational EHR; including, electronic signature, and remote access, as required to meet Federal Medicaid and Medicare requirements. In addition, Crisis Line providers must allow State and The Health Plan staff access to the EHR for the purpose of conducting audits.
Be answered within three (3) telephone rings, or within 15 seconds on average, with an average call abandonment rate of less than 3% for the month.
Provide Nurse On-Call services twenty-four (24) hours per day, seven (7) days per week to answer general healthcare questions from SMI Members receiving physical health care services and to provide them with general health information and self-care instructions.
Establish and maintain the appropriate ADHS Division of Licensing license to provide required services.
Maintain appropriate Arizona licensed medical staff, Arizona licensed Behavioral Health Professionals, ADHS Division of Licensing facility licenses, qualified Behavioral Health Technicians and Paraprofessionals, and Peer Support staff to adequately address and triage Member calls and verify the safe and effective resolution of calls.
Maintain bilingual (Spanish/English) capability on all shifts and employee interpreter services to facilitate crisis telephone counseling for all callers.
Provide consistent clinical supervision to verify services are in compliance with the Arizona Principles and all ADHS Division of Licensing, and State supervision requirements are met.
Employ adequate staff to implement the Crisis AfterCare Recovery program.
Employ one (1) full-time American Indian Warm-line Program Coordinator and part-time tribal Member employees representing the Tribal Nations served by The Health Plan who have tribal Members living on tribal lands in Arizona.
Crisis Line providers must verify that all calls for Crisis Mobile Teams and Nurse Line are answered within three telephone rings, or within fifteen (15) seconds, as measured by the monthly Average Speed of Answer. All crisis calls and Nurse Line calls must be live answered.
Crisis Line providers must report monthly, quarterly, and annually, all phone access statistics to include: total number of calls received, number and percent abandoned, average speed of answer, and number of calls outside standards. Crisis Line providers must report daily a phone access report that identifies number of calls outside standards, amount of time to answer call for each call outside standards, and number of abandoned calls associated with call outside standards.
Provide crisis counseling, triage and telephonic follow-up 24/7/365. All crisis calls must be live answered. Crisis callers must not receive a prompt, voice mail message, or be placed in a phone queue.
Provide crisis counseling and triage services to all persons calling The Health Plan Crisis Line, regardless of the caller's eligibility for Medicaid services.
Review Wellness Recovery Action Plans (WRAP Plans) and Crisis Plans identified in The Health Plan data system to assist with crisis resolution and suggest appropriate interventions.
Dispatch mobile team services delivered by provider agencies and must track mobile team intervention resolution in compliance with protocols established or approved by The Health Plan. Crisis Line providers must report on a weekly and monthly basis these dispatches in a format approved by The Health. Daily reports may be required as needed.
Assess the safety of a crisis scene prior to mobile team dispatch and track mobile teams to monitor the safety of the mobile team staff.
Follow-up with Members, crisis mobile team staff, Integrated Care Managers, and system partners to verify appropriate follow-up and coordination of care.
Assess Member dangerousness to self and others and provide appropriate notification to The Health Plan, Behavioral Health Home Health Care Coordinator, and obtain information on Member's consistent use of medications to minimize dangerousness and promote safety to the Member and community.
Follow community standards of care and best practice guidelines to warn and protect Members, family members and the community due to threats of violence.
Document all interactions and triage assessments to facilitate effective crisis resolution and validate interventions.
Conduct a follow-up call within seventy-two (72) hours to make sure the caller has received the necessary services. Verify Members are successfully engaged in treatment before closing out the crisis episode and follow-up to verify system partner and Member satisfaction with the care plan.
Support the mobile teams and arrange for transports, ambulance, etc.
Dispatch and track requests for 1 hour Urgent Engagements. Dispatch and Track requests for 24 hour Urgent Engagement referrals after hours.
Monitor and make best efforts to verify that 1 hour Urgent Engagements are completed within 1 hour of Behavioral Health Home activation. Provider must document and report any reported response delay reason, monitor and make best efforts to verify that 24 hour Urgent Engagements are completed within twenty-four (24) hours of notification by health plans, hospitals, or detention centers. Provider must document and report any reported response delay reasons.
Track all Urgent Engagement requests to verify Members are engaged in follow-up care.
Provide reports that track and summarize the requests for, daily pending inpatient report, daily call statistics report, CMT timeliness report, re-entry reports, urgent response report, acute health plan inquiry log, crisis indicator data report, client activity report, second responder tracking and 24 Hour Mobile Urgent Intake requests the disposition of such assessments in a format established or approved by The Health Plan.
Make reasonable attempts to verify that the dispositions and intake appointments are completed.
Document and report any delay reasons to The Health Plan in real time for all Urgent Response requests.
Crisis Line providers must provide customer service functions on behalf of The Health Plan when The Health Plan offices are closed. Crisis Line providers must complete transactions for Customer Service after-hours without referring anyone to call back during regular business hours unless the call is regarding a claim. The Health Plan Customer Service telephone number must be forwarded to The Crisis Call Center whenever The Health Plan offices are closed and occasionally, as arranged in advance, through Work Force Management.
Crisis Line providers must serve as a "safety net" to The Health Plan Members by re-engaging Members into treatment, as identified by The Health Plan and per data provided by The Health Plan.
Crisis Line providers must document and monitor consistent use of crisis services for persons identified as High Need by The Health Plan, provider agencies or by family report. All High Need situations involving dangerousness to self or others must be staffed immediately with an independent licensed supervisor and the supervision must be documented in the record.
Crisis Line providers must notify The Health Plan through The Health Plan data systems of any service delivery problems, grievances, service gaps and concerns raised by Members, family members, and system partners.
Crisis Line providers must encounter and document all services in compliance with the AHCCCS Covered Behavioral Health Service Guide.
Crisis Line providers must conduct outreach calls, The Health Plan, to facilitate quality improvement initiatives, as determined by The Health Plan, such as but not limited to the timely completion of Service Plans, use of medications, Health Care Coordinator selection and Member satisfaction, consistent use of treatment services, and frequency of treatment team meetings. Crisis Line providers must participate in satisfaction surveys sponsored by the State and The Health Plan as requested and must conduct satisfaction surveys from reports generated by The Health Plan.
Crisis Line providers must facilitate effective coordination of care with provider agency staff to promote effective recovery for Members. Crisis Line providers must track resolution until Member reports being successfully engaged in care and consistently engages in treatment.
Crisis Line providers must assist Members in getting their prescriptions filled, obtaining services, resolving access to care problems, and obtaining medically-necessary transportation services. Crisis Line providers must also refer Members for outpatient services and warm transfer callers to agencies or service providers whenever possible upon completion of the call. Follow up calls shall be made to verify referred caller made and kept appointment. Crisis Line providers must explain to callers the process to access services, authorization process for Behavioral Health Inpatient and Hospital services and provide names and locations of intake agencies accessible to the caller.
Members must be informed about The Health Plan website, Member rights and grievance and appeal procedures as appropriate. Crisis Line providers must assist Members in addressing third party liability and "payer of last resort" issues related to accessing services including pharmacy services.
Crisis Line providers must assist Members in managing their own care, in better understanding their rights, in identifying and accessing resources and in more effectively directing their care.
Crisis Line providers must research Member eligibility for services on behalf of providers and Members and make available eligibility information to callers to assist access to care. Crisis Line providers must make available to Members, family members, and provider agencies treatment information about Evidenced Based Practices and shall assist callers in becoming better informed about services and recovery.
Crisis Line providers must successfully coordinate services with PFROs; including, Peer Crisis AfterCare Programs, Peer Warm Lines, Peer Community Reentry Programs, and Peer Hospital Discharge Programs.
Crisis Line providers must participate in all trainings and crisis coordination meetings required or requested by the State and/or The Health Plan. Crisis Line providers must successfully implement a Crisis AfterCare Recovery Team, employing program staff during peak hours Monday through Friday. The Crisis AfterCare Recovery Team must conduct outreach, service coordination and crisis stabilization services to Members following mobile crisis team visits, crisis telephone calls, hospitalization and The Health Plan coordination of care requests. In addition, Crisis Line providers must document coordination efforts in The Health Plan software systems.
Crisis Line providers must support and strengthen the role of the Certified Health Care Coordinator through care facilitation, being careful to not diminish the relationship between the Member and the Health Care Coordinator.
Providers must successfully implement an American Indian Warm-line Program and transfer system that includes (at least) part-time tribal Member employees (aka Tribal Support Partners) from the tribes served by The Health Plan. Tribal Support Partners must conduct calls (inbound/outbound) to facilitate member engagement in treatment, instill hope and promote recovery.
The TWL must be answered by a Tribal Support Partner Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM.
Outside of these hours, the TWL must be answered by the crisis line, with a follow-up call by a Tribal Support Partner during the TWL operating hours.
Tribal Support Partners must be trained in identifying crisis calls and transferring calls between systems.
Tribal Warm Line staff must participate in all trainings and coordination meetings required or requested by the State and/or The Health Plan.
Crisis Line providers must successfully implement a 24/7 online scheduling system to schedule emergent follow-up appointments and urgent intake assessments with an outpatient provider following a crisis episode.
Crisis Mobile Team providers must provide crisis mobile team services in the assigned geographic areas and in accordance to State and The Health Plan requirements.
Crisis Mobile Team providers must verify that the Crisis Mobile Team Program is clinically supervised by a The Health Plan Credentialed Independently Licensed Behavioral Health Professional. Crisis Mobile Team providers must verify all Risk Assessments and crisis notes are reviewed and signed off by a The Health Plan Credentialed Independently Licensed Behavioral Health Professional within 24 business hours.
Crisis Mobile Team providers must coordinate all services through The Health Plan Crisis Mobile Team provider and follow crisis protocols established by The Health Plan and community stakeholders. Crisis Mobile Team providers must work collaboratively with The Health Plan Crisis Line Provider to receive mobile team dispatches, coordinate all services, and facilitate crisis resolution planning. Crisis Mobile Team providers must report all staffing changes to The Health Plan Network Development Department through the EC-312 deliverable. Crisis mobile team providers are required to carry, and use as required, GPS enabled phones provided by crisis line provider. Crisis Mobile Team Agencies are required to have a super-user available within their agency for technical support. GPS phones will enable one number electronic dispatching from the crisis line provider. GPS phones must be kept with crisis mobile team staff on shift at all times. Crisis Mobile Team staff must be trained in appropriate use of the GPS phones. Crisis Mobile Team providers are required to cover the cost of damaged or lost GPS phones as requested by The Health Plan crisis phone provider. If you are assigned a GPS enabled cellular device, it is a condition precedent that you read and sign your specific User Agreement prior to receiving any such cellular device or devices.
Crisis Mobile Team providers must participate in crisis coordination calls and meetings to facilitate effective working relationships. Crisis Mobile Team providers must verify mobile team services are closely linked to the provider's outpatient department and that coordination of care is occurring with outpatient providers for members who have been in a crisis. If the crisis occurs during business hour, the expectations is that the coordination occurs in real time.
Crisis Mobile Team providers must employ adequate staff to consistently meet the requirements for crisis mobile teams. Crisis mobile teams must have the capacity to serve specialty needs of population served including youth and children, Tribal members, and developmentally disabled. Crisis Mobile Team providers must ensure adequate coverage to maintain full crisis team capacity as a result of staff illnesses and vacations. All direct care crisis staff must be Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) trained. Crisis Mobile Team providers must participate in training events sponsored by The Health Plan and the State to enhance the performance of the crisis system.
A mobile crisis team must be able travel to the place where the individual is experiencing the crisis. Crisis Mobile Team providers must provide and maintain mobile crisis vehicles to facilitate transports and field interventions.
Crisis Mobile Team providers must ensure Title 36 screenings are conducted by staff other than mobile team staff unless The Health Plan holds a contract with the applicable County, in which case the mobile crisis team should follow the requirements specified in that contract. See Section 3.9 - Pre-Petition Screening.
Crisis Mobile Team providers shall be provided GPS enabled cell phones for all crisis staff on duty and must verify effective connectivity. Crisis Mobile Team providers must provide internet and telephone connectivity through cell phone technology to verify staff have the capacity to communicate spontaneously by phone and the internet while in the field. Crisis Mobile Team providers must verify each mobile team has the capability to wirelessly connect and access the electronic medical information in the field as well as email. In addition, Provider must verify the computer and wireless specifications meet or exceed The Health Plan requirements.
Crisis Mobile Team providers must verify the safety of Members under the care of the Crisis Mobile Team at all times, and verify at-risk Members are monitored and supervised by professional staff in person as long as the person remains at a Danger to Self/Danger to Others (DTS/DTO).
Crisis Mobile Team providers must record referrals, dispositions, and overall response time. Crisis Mobile Team providers must verify all Members are effectively engaged in follow up care before terminating crisis services.
Crisis Mobile Teams must have the ability to assess and provide immediate crisis intervention and make reasonable efforts to stabilize acute psychiatric or behavioral symptoms, evaluate treatment needs, and develop individualized plans to meet the individual’s needs. Crisis Mobile Team providers must deliver crisis response, crisis assessment and crisis stabilization services that facilitate resolution, not merely triage and transfer. Crisis Mobile Team providers must initiate and maintain collaboration with fire, law enforcement, emergency medical services, hospital emergency departments, AHCCCS Complete Care Health plans and other providers of public health and safety services to inform them of how to use the crisis response system, to coordinate services and to assess and improve the crisis services.
Crisis Mobile Teams must maintain adequate licenses to allow each team to utilize and update The Health Plan Risk Management/High Needs Tracking System to effectively coordinate care for Members in crisis.
Crisis Stabilization providers must provide crisis stabilization services in the assigned areas on a 24/7/365 basis and in accordance to State and The Health Plan requirements. Crisis assessment and crisis services must facilitate resolution, not merely triage and transfer. Crisis Living Rooms must be furnished to resemble a home living area, including the following: showers, rest rooms, living room furniture, kitchen, refrigerator, dining table, microwave oven, and exercise equipment.
Crisis Stabilization providers must verify that the Crisis Living Room Program is clinically supervised by a The Health Plan Credentialed Independently Licensed Behavioral Health Professional. Crisis Stabilization providers must verify all Crisis Living Room Assessments are reviewed and signed off by a The Health Plan Credentialed, Independently Licensed Behavioral Health Professional. Crisis Stabilization providers must verify adequate staff capacity to meet variations in the demand for services. Crisis Stabilization providers must verify all direct care crisis staff are CISM trained.
Crisis Stabilization providers must coordinate all services through The Health Crisis Line Provider and follow crisis protocols established by The Health. Crisis Stabilization providers must work collaboratively with The Health Plan Crisis Line Provider to coordinate all services, and facilitate crisis resolution planning.
Since the Crisis Living Room is an outpatient facility, Crisis Stabilization providers must verify Members are not allowed to remain in the living room for more than 23 hours a day. Crisis Stabilization providers must verify crisis living room services are closely linked to the provider's outpatient department and that coordination of care is occurring with outpatient providers for members who have been in a crisis. Crisis Stabilization providers must verify all Members are effectively engaged in follow-up care before terminating crisis services. This includes coordinating care with the members ACC Health Plan.
Crisis Stabilization providers must embrace a "No Wrong Door" philosophy and accept all voluntary referrals, regardless of ability to pay, clinical presentation, degree of intoxication, or benefit status. Crisis Stabilization providers must accept all referrals from law enforcement and the community.
In a health emergency, Provider is required to verify eligibility for Covered Services in accordance with The Health Plan Provider Manual and with federal, State, and local laws relating to the provision of Emergency Medical Services (including but not limited to A.A.C. R9-22-201 et seq. and 42 CFR 438.114), provided that nothing in this provision shall be deemed to require Provider to violate federal or State law regarding the provision of Emergency Medical Services. Provider is required to notify The Health Plan-designated crisis hotline provider within twenty-four (24) hours or by the next business day of rendering or learning of the rendering of Emergency Medical Services to a Member.
Crisis Stabilization providers must coordinate transportation to facilitate or coordinate care and discharge planning.
Crisis Stabilization providers must participate in training events sponsored by The Health Plan and the State to enhance the performance of the crisis system. Crisis Stabilization providers must participate in crisis coordination calls and meetings to facilitate effective working relationships.
Crisis Stabilization providers must maintain adequate licenses to allow Crisis Living Room staff to utilize The Health Plan Risk Management /High Needs Tracking System to effectively coordinate care for Members in crisis. Crisis Stabilization providers must verify the Crisis Living Room is equipped with a computer, printer and web connectivity to allow access to electronic medical information.
Crisis Transportation providers must provide medically-necessary transportation services in the assigned geographic areas and in accordance to State and The Health Plan requirements. Crisis Transportation providers must establish and maintain appropriate licenses to provide transportation services identified in the Scope of Work.
Crisis Transportation providers must coordinate all services through The Health Plan Crisis Line Provider and follow crisis protocols established by The Health. Crisis Transportation providers must participate in crisis coordination calls and meetings to facilitate effective working relationships as requested.
Staffing must consistently meet AHCCCS, the State, ADHS Division of Licensing, and The Health Plan requirements. Crisis Transportation providers must verify staff capacity to meet availability requirements as identified in provider’s contract with The Health Plan. Crisis Transportation providers must maintain appropriately trained, supervised, and ADHS Division of Licensing and AHCCCS qualified transportation professionals to conduct transports.
Crisis Transportation providers must provide consistent supervision to verify services are in compliance with the Arizona Principles, and verify all ADHS Division of Licensing regulations and State supervision requirements are met. In addition, all staff transporting Members must maintain DES Fingerprint Clearance cards and maintain copies in Personnel files.
Crisis Transportation providers must participate in training events sponsored by The Health Plan and the State as requested, and verify staff complete all required trainings and document trainings through Relias Learning Management System.
Crisis Transportation providers must provide and maintain safe, clean and updated vehicles to facilitate transportation. Crisis Transportation providers must provide cell phones for all transportation staff on duty to verify effective connectivity and safety.
Crisis Transportation providers must bill all medically-necessary transportation services utilizing transportation service codes. Crisis Transportation providers must maintain appropriate paperwork in accordance with State and AHCCCS regulations. Crisis Transportation providers must encounter and document all services in compliance with the AHCCCS Covered Behavioral Health Service Guide.
Behavioral Health providers must make available HIV education, screening and counseling services to The Health Plan-enrolled Members.
Behavioral Health Providers must make available HIV Risk Assessments to Members which includes pre-test discussions and counseling that assists the client in identifying the behaviors that may have possibly exposed the person to HIV.
Health Education and Health Promotion services (including assistance and education about health risk reduction and lifestyle choices) must be provided to Members at substance use, mental health and community facilities in Arizona. Providers must make available to Members information regarding HIV transmission and prevention, and should assist Members in identifying the behaviors that may expose them to HIV.
Behavioral Health providers must make available Pre-Test Counseling to Members to assist in identifying the behaviors that may have possible exposed them to HIV, focusing on the Member's own unique circumstances and risk and helping the Member set and reach an explicit behavior-change goal to reduce the chance of acquiring or transmitting HIV. Provider must make available to Members information regarding HIV transmission and prevention and the meaning of HIV test results. In addition, providers must help the Member to identify the specific behaviors putting them at risk for acquiring or transmitting HIV and commit to steps to reduce their risk.
Providers must make available Post-Test Counseling including summarization of identified risks, review of the Member's risk reduction plan, discussion of next test time or when the confirmation blood draw shall occur if the Member tested positive for HIV, scheduling an appointment for receiving future results, obtaining information on sexual or drug using contacts to enable partner notification process to occur, and providing information and assistance in accessing the HIV Care System.
Providers must provide HIV Prevention Case Management services to any individual requesting assistance from the provider in obtaining resources and accessing needed social services.
Providers of HIV testing services must obtain and retain a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certificate and verify all HIV Testing is administered in accordance with the CLIA requirements.
HCTC Providers must meet all l licensing and scope of work requirements as outlined by licensing, the Covered Behavioral Health Services Guide, and all prior authorization and continued stay requirements for HCTC as listed in Provider Manual Section 10 and as directed by The Health Plan. HCTC shall be utilized as an alternative to more restrictive levels of care when clinically indicated.
Providers are required to provide culturally-competent, evidence-based substance use treatment to a person who is experiencing acute and severe behavioral health and/or substance use symptoms, which may include emergency reception and assessment; crisis intervention and stabilization; individual, group and family counseling; outpatient detoxification and referral. Services provided to each member must be individualized to meet the member’s unique treatment needs.
Substance use disorders may include a range of conditions that vary in severity over time, from problematic, short-term use of substances, to severe and chronic disorders requiring long-term and sustained treatment and recovery management.
A return of the member to the workplace or school, as appropriate.
Be provided by clinicians who are overseen by a Behavioral Health Professional (BHP) with experience in substance use disorders and treatment.
Providers must maintain the capacity to conduct drug screening/testing on members, as defined by AHCCCS Covered Behavioral Health Services Guide and as deemed clinically appropriate by the member’s treatment team.
While not required, The Health Plan supports the use of drug screening during the substance use screening, assessment and treatment process.
Substance use treatment providers must make individualized outpatient services available to assist the client in reducing or eliminating substance use/abuse. A continuum of services including therapy (individual, group, family), case management, peer support, vocational services and any other service identified in the AHCCCS Covered Behavioral Health Services Guide must be available and must utilize and maintain fidelity to evidence-based methods.
Substance use treatment providers that offer intensive outpatient programming must ensure that operates at least three (3) hours per day and at least three (3) times per week, as required by AHCCCS Covered Behavioral Health Services Guide. Intensive Outpatient Services are limited to Mediciad enrolled members and persons with substance use disorders receiving substance use treatment.
Residential Substance Use Treatment services are available to adults and adolescents who are TXIX eligible and to individuals who are NTXIX, but eligible for Substance Abuse Block Grant (SABG) funds, as described in Provider Manual 12.10, Special Populations, and who are screened using the ASAM as needing this level of care.
Behavioral health residential facilities (BHRFs) providing substance use treatment must ensure length of stay is consistent with member’s needs and meets medical necessity. Treatment must remain individualized for each member, dependent upon ASAM placement criteria and treatment needs.
All residential treatment facilities are subject to Utilization Management review as per Provider Manual Section 10.
Substance Abuse Transitional Facility Providers must provide SUD treatment services through a licensed Substance Abuse Transitional Facility on a 24/7/365 basis. See R9-10-1401 et seq. Substance Abuse Transitional Facility Providers must verify appropriate clinical supervision to safely administer treatment services and verify availability of medical staff to provide appropriate medical consultation and supervision. To verify Members receive appropriate follow up care, providers must verify coordination of care. Substance Abuse Transitional Facility Providers must utilize Peer Support staff to maximize opportunities for Members to understand and embrace recovery. Immediate and ongoing detoxification and psychiatric crisis stabilization services must be provided in the least restrictive setting, consistent with individual and family need and community safety.
Designated staff at the treatment provider engages the member, family/guardian and natural supports to actively participate in discharge planning. Discharge planning begins at the time of admission and continues to be an active part of the treatment/service planning process. It is recommended that agencies create an individualized, medically and clinically comprehensive crisis plan as part of discharge planning.
Include arrangements for therapy and other applicable psychiatric services provided in a timely manner.
Assesses for potential safety issues.
Providers must fully educate the Member about all treatment options and strategies to promote recovery from opiate abuse; including, health risks, relapse risks, and alternative treatments.
IV Drug and Opioid Treatment Providers (OTPs) must maintain current policies and procedures designed to verify adherence to The Health Plan Provider Manual, 42 CFR Par 8, SAMHSA - Treatment Improvement Protocol 49, AHCCCS Practice Protocol - Buprenorphine Guidance, the American Psychiatric Association Practice Guideline - Treatment of Patients with Substance Use Disorders, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and any applicable accreditation requirements.
IV Drug and Opioid Treatment Providers must also ensure Members have access to any medically necessary lab or physical health screening as referenced in the SAMHSA Treatment Improvement Protocol 49.
All Opioid Treatment Providers must have in place written policies and procedures describing their agency’s Diversion Control Program.
All OTPs must have information on the Dangers of Street Drugs posted in their clinic lobbies.
Treatment must promote recovery, minimizing the impact of substances on the Member's life and assisting the Member in reaching the maximum level of functioning in life appropriate for the Member.
Assessment and treatment for adolescents that act out sexually must be supervised by qualified clinicians using acceptable treatment modalities based on Evidenced Based Practices for the treatment of adolescents who act out sexually and in accordance with State and Federal laws. Treatment teams must include Licensed Clinicians, Health Care Coordinators, and in-home family support staff. Providers of services to adolescents who act out sexually must verify Treatment and Discharge Planning is developed through Child and Family Team Practice.
Providers of services to adolescents who act out sexually must develop an effective Safety Plan that safeguards the Member and community from re-offending. Providers of services to adolescents who act out sexually must place the adolescent in a treatment program with adolescents of similar age and developmental maturity level, when group treatment is prescribed by the treatment provider.
Providers of services to adolescents who act out sexually must comply with the professional Code of Ethics of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. Reference: www.atsa.com.
Providers of services to adults who act out sexually must provide treatment services geared toward preventing further offenses and safeguarding the community from harm. Services must include assessments related to inappropriate sexual behavior, treatment planning, family support services, address family reunification and visitation, collaborate with probation/parole or other supervision or multidisciplinary professionals, engage community supports, include transition services and continuity of care.
Treatment must be supervised by qualified clinicians using acceptable treatment modalities based on Evidenced Based Practices for the treatment of adults who act out sexually and in accordance with State and Federal laws. Providers of services to adults who act out sexually must verify treatment teams include Licensed Clinicians, Health Care Coordinators, and in home family support staff. Treatment and Discharge Planning must be provided through Integrated Team Meetings.
Providers of services to adults who act out sexually must develop an effective Safety Plan that addresses risk management and safeguards the Member and community from re-offenses. Providers of services to adults who act out sexually must place the adult in a treatment program with adults of similar age and developmental maturity level, when group treatment is prescribed by the treatment provider.
To provide crisis intervention services to a person for the purpose of stabilizing or preventing a sudden, unanticipated, or potentially dangerous behavioral health condition, episode, or behavior. These intensive and time limited services are designed to prevent, reduce, or eliminate a crisis situation and are provided 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
All individuals entering the facility (based on Arizona Division of Licensing approval to accept members) shall have a basic health, risk and acuity screening completed by a qualified behavioral health staff member as defined by ACC R9-10-114. Triage assessments shall be completed within fifteen (15) minutes of an individual’s entrance into the facility. Any individual demonstrating an elevated health risk shall be seen by appropriate staff to meet the member’s needs.
Comprehensive screenings and assessments shall be completed on all individuals presenting at the facility to determine the individual’s behavioral health needs and immediate medical needs. Assessments are required to be completed by a qualified behavioral health professional as defined by ARS Title 32 and ACC R9-10-101. Screening and assessment services may result in a referral to community services, enrollment in The Health Plan system of care, admittance to crisis stabilization services, or admittance to inpatient services. At minimum, a psychiatric and psychosocial evaluation, diagnosis and treatment for the immediate behavioral crisis shall be provided. Breathalyzer analysis of Blood Alcohol Level and/or specimen collections for suspected drug use may be provided as clinically appropriate.
Crisis intervention services (stabilization) is an immediate and unscheduled behavioral health service provided in response to an individual’s behavioral health issue, to prevent imminent harm, to stabilize, or resolve an acute behavioral health issue. Crisis stabilization services are able to be provided for a maximum of 23 hours and designed to restore an individual’s level of functioning so that the individual might be returned to the community with coordinated follow up services. Services provided include assessment, counseling, intake and enrollment, medical services, nursing services, medication and medication monitoring, and the development of a treatment plan. Discharge planning and coordination of care shall begin immediately upon admission and shall be developed through coordination with the Behavioral Health Home, and the Adult Recovery Team (ART) or Child and Family Team (CFT) as appropriate.
If licensed to provide court ordered evaluation and treatment, the provider shall verify that services and examinations necessary to fulfill the requirements of ARS §36-524 through ARS §36-528 for emergency applications for admission for involuntary evaluation are provided in the least restrictive setting available and possible with the opportunity for the individual to participate in evaluation and treatment on a voluntary basis. Prior to seeking an individual’s admission to a Behavioral Health Inpatient facility for Court Ordered Evaluation (COE) Provider shall make all reasonable attempts to engage the individual in voluntary treatment and discontinue the use of the involuntary evaluation process.
Provider shall verify that staff members are available to provide testimony at Title 36 hearings upon the request of County courts.
Provider shall submit all documents, reports and data in accordance with the Deliverable Schedule in Section 16 – Deliverable Requirements. All deliverables shall be submitted in the format prescribed by The Health Plan and within the time frames specified. Provider is required to submit any additional documents and/or ad hoc reports as requested by The Health Plan.
Provider shall have a capacity of 34 (chairs) for adults, 18 years or older, and eight (8) chairs for children, to provide accommodations for overnight stay as mandated by ADHS Division of Licensing Services in accordance with AAC Title 9, Chapter 10. Provider shall have capacity to provide facility-based 23-hour crisis observation/stabilization services for at least 34 adults and at least eight (8) children at any one time.
Provider shall have a capacity of 12 (chairs) for adults, 18 years or older, to provide accommodations for overnight stay as mandated by ADHS Division of Licensing Services in accordance with AAC Title 9, Chapter 10. Provider shall have capacity to provide facility-based. 23-hour crisis observation/stabilization services for at least 12 adults at any one time.
Provider shall have a capacity of 14 (chairs) and one patient bedroom for adults, 18 years or older, to provide accommodations for overnight stay as mandated by ADHS Division of Licensing Services in accordance with AAC Title 9, Chapter 10. Provider shall have capacity to provide facility-based. 23-hour crisis observation/stabilization services for at least 15 adults at any one time.
Provider shall have a capacity of 24 (chairs) and two patient bedrooms for adults, 18 years or older, to provide accommodations for overnight stay as mandated by ADHS Division of Licensing Services in accordance with AAC Title 9, Chapter 10. Provider shall have capacity to provide facility-based. 23-hour crisis observation/stabilization services for at least 26 adults at any one time.
Provider shall have a capacity of 16 sub acute beds with the ability to covert for 23 hours chairs and law enforcement drop offs for adults,18 years or older, to provide accommodations for overnight stay as mandated by ADHS Division of Licensing Services in accordance with AAC Title 9, Chapter 10.
Providers delivering ACT Team services are required to establish ACT teams that comply with the requirements outlined in the SAMHSA Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) Evidence-Based Practices Kit, https://store.samhsa.gov/product/Assertive-Community-Treatment-ACT-Evidence-Based-Practices-EBP-KIT/SMA08-4345, in communities approved by the Health Plan.
Providers delivering ACT Team services shall participate in SAMSHA EBP fidelity audits coordinated with the Health Plan on an annual basis at minimum.
Provider shall submit all documents, reports and data in accordance with the Deliverable Schedule as indicated in Section 16 – Deliverable Requirements. All deliverables shall be submitted in the format prescribed by the Health Plan and within the time frames specified. Provider is required to submit any additional documents and/or ad hoc reports as requested by the Health Plan.
ACT Team providers must participate in all trainings and meetings required or requested by AHCCCS and/or The Health Plan n. ACT Team providers must coordinate for continuity of care between provider, member’s Behavioral Health Home, stakeholders (Adult Protective Services, Probation Officer, Department of Corrections, and other agencies), and other Specialty Providers (both physical and behavioral health) involved with the member.
Engagement Specialists are required to adhere to the parameters outlined in the Engagement Specialist Guide and Engagement Specialist Program Objectives Handbook.
Veteran Navigator through the Arizona Coalition for Military Families.
Engagement Specialist Log must be completed by each provider – see Section 16 - Deliverables. | 2019-04-25T07:58:04Z | https://www.azcompletehealth.com/providers/resources/provider-manual/pm_section_14.html |
I’m perpetually curious about how future generations will watch football, and with that in mind, I paneled a group of college students in October 2013 to discuss the differences between how they and their parents view the NFL, as well as the impact of Twitter on football Sundays and which broadcast personalities resonate with them the most.
I thought it would be interesting to check in with the students again—college newspaper editors and writers from around the country—and ask a series of questions about how they consumed the Patriots’ win over the Seahawks in Super Bowl 49, and what stories they think NFL media should pursue going forward.
Outside of being asked to keep the answers tight, the student journalists weren’t given any requirements or restrictions. And they were free to skip questions.
What do you consider your first screen for the NFL and why?
Cohen: I’ll go with my computer screen. Even though when I watch games I focus on my television, I think I spend the majority of my time following the NFL by reading stories from various news outlets on my computer throughout the season.
Kirkpatrick: I'm usually busy on Sundays so I don't watch football as much as I used to, but when I do, I'll have a game on my TV while I do other work on my computer.
Maiman: I will always consider my first screen for the NFL to be my television. I think it’s just the best way to watch the game, especially if I am tuning in as a fan. However, circumstances caused me to be traveling in the car during the NFC Championship Game. But thanks to Twitter, I was able to follow it while sitting in the passenger seat. That was one moment where I was specifically grateful that sports journalists use social media while reporting on games. Although, it took away my Dad’s excitement when he kept calling me with updates about what was happening. Sorry, Pops.
Yohannes: The television screen—not my computer, tablet or phone one. One of the most important things I learned this past season covering the Packers for SB Nation is that you learn everything about this game on the field by really paying attention. I think with the impact social media has on games, some people glance at their Twitter timeline for too long and miss important notes on the field. I’ve started to tweet less and less during games, and that’s a good thing because I’m examining what’s going on and rarely looking at other distractions.
As college journalists, how do you view Marshawn Lynch’s answers and non-answers with the media?
Cohen: I’m sure I’d feel differently if I covered the Seahawks on a regular basis, but I don’t necessarily understand all of the hoopla. I read numerous great stories this week that didn’t need Lynch quotes at all. There were 105 other players on Super Bowl rosters and dozens of coaches to talk to. I like to think if I were covering the Super Bowl, I wouldn’t feel the need to just rely on Lynch’s quotes. Lots of journalists found other ways to write great stories this week, even ones that were still about Lynch, and I think it’s a shame that they were overshadowed by other journalists who were upset about Lynch’s non-answers. I think I’d rather be fined than listen to typical quotes about execution anyway.
Goodwin: Personally, I think they’re funny. As long as an athlete produces on the field, and there’s no question Beast Mode does, they should be allowed to say what they want. It’d be different if he wasn’t any good and carried a similar attitude. At the same time, you have to think the media knows by now to avoid him if that’s what he’s going to do. His reactions and responses aren’t anything new, so go talk to someone else. I’m sure I speak for everybody else on the panel when I say we’ve all—at one point or another—run into someone who just doesn’t give good quotes. You learn to work around it, even if that person’s performance is a major part of any given story. Champions adjust.
Kirkpatrick: I look at this with a couple different perspectives. From a business perspective, Lynch is doing websites a favor—his non-answers and answers are comical and entertaining to most, and articles about that will garner significantly more page views and clicks than a normal article with the usual, standard, dry-toast quotes you get from players. From the perspective of a young journalist who has yet to master the art of interviewing, it makes me focus just that much more on the wording and substance of what I’m asking. Lynch is a smart man, and is tired of the usual nonsense. He’s not going to try if we aren’t.
Maiman: If my assignment is to write an in-depth and interesting profile on Marshawn Lynch, I am annoyed and frustrated. But also, maybe I am up for the challenge of earning his trust to talk to me. (Although that appears to be an extremely difficult task.) If getting a quote from him isn't dire for me to do my job, I am going nowhere near his table. I think it would be a great social experiment if he just sat there and no one from the media asked him questions or gave him attention. I’m curious if that would spark some sudden urge to talk. Maybe not? But it’s worth the shot and would be interesting to see.
Yohannes: Some athletes just don’t want to talk, so I let them be and move on. The best relationships are built with players without the recorder in hand, and you can still write a great story even when someone doesn’t give you an answer. It was all funny to me. Besides, when you just look at the questions he was asked, the media wasn’t genuinely concerned about Lynch’s answers. A lot of people were just asking him questions for the sound bites and that’s it.
Where did you watch the Super Bowl? Be as specific as you can, including the place you watched, the number of people you watched with, and why you chose that location?
Cohen: I watched the Super Bowl in the newsroom of The Michigan Daily. As one of the Daily’s sports editors, we spent Super Bowl Sunday putting together Monday’s edition of the paper. The entire production staff was present, even though every section but sports cared more about the halftime show than the game itself. I think everyone was more excited about the Sunday night announcement that Michigan had cancelled Monday’s classes for the school’s second weather-related closure since the 1970s than Malcolm Butler’s interception.
Kirkpatrick: I hosted a small Super Bowl party at my apartment and had five friends over. It was an equal split of Seahawks fans (including me), Patriots fans and people who were indifferent. As a Seahawks fan studying and living in Boston, the total of Pats fans probably would have been too lopsided against me had I invited too many more people.
Maiman: I recently moved to Atlanta for an internship and don’t know that many people here yet. I was invited by my friend from high school who goes to Georgia Tech to go watch the game at her aunt’s house in the suburbs. We watched in their living room with their family; there were six of us all together. My friend and her aunt are originally from the Boston area, so they obviously were invested. It was really nice meeting them, chatting about sports and trying Zaxby’s chicken for the first time. Our other option was to go to a frat party on campus, but spending time with a family just seemed more suitable for the type of experience we were looking for. I am a little homesick here and it was nice to be in that type of environment. Growing up, the Super Bowl was always a family experience for me, so it was nice to spend it in a home—so shout out to Skip and Anne for the southern hospitality.
Yohannes: I was kind of stuck having to make due at my parents’ house because we unfortunately had close to nine inches of snow here in Wisconsin. Per usual, we kept it simple by just making pizza and eating more unhealthy stuff. I watched Super Bowls with them all the time when I was a child and even now, at 21, I still enjoy watching sporting events with them because they constantly bicker about which team is better, along with the penalties. Without the weather being the way it was, I planned on meeting with four of my friends at a sports pub on the east side of Milwaukee. We’ve always done small hangouts in social settings whenever the game is played each year because of the atmosphere. The Super Bowl is also one of the last times we get to all meet up and relax before our spring semesters get rolling.
Detail all the devices that were part of your Super Bowl-watching experience (mobile, computer, television) and what you used them for specifically?
Cohen: I watched the game on television and had my computer handy both to edit stories for the paper and for the occasional Twitter update.
Goodwin: We watched the game on a massive, beautiful 60-inch television in the living room, but I also had my phone in my hand the entire time with Twitter open. I mainly used that to check for game updates that Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth didn’t know about. Prime example: Jeremy Lane’s injury. Dad and I didn’t know how serious it was at first, but then I came across that picture (through Deadspin, if I remember correctly). That was initially gross, but we wouldn’t have known how bad it was without Twitter. Also: the tweets during Katy Perry’s halftime performance were wildly entertaining. If somebody comes across one of those shark costumes, give me a holler. Please. Like, I’m serious.
Kirkpatrick: We kept it simple: One TV for watching the game broadcast, and those of us who are bigger sports fans followed updates on Twitter through our phones.
Maiman: Most of my focus was on the television and since I was with people I just met, I was trying to not be the typical obnoxious millennial who is always on their phone. (Yes, I took one for the team; you’re welcome Generation Y.) However, I couldn’t spare to not check Twitter at certain moments, specifically when an injury happened. Since Jeremy Lane’s injury was gruesome, I didn’t catch a replay and found myself wanting to know more about what happened. I was occasionally interested in checking Twitter when the game wasn’t going on. I looked to see what people were saying about the commercials and the halftime performance. That usually isn’t the case when I am watching the NFL, but since this Super Bowl was close and exciting throughout, it kept my attention.
Yohannes: The only devices used during the game were my iPhone and iPad mini for social media, and then our Sony 32-inch television that we watched the game on (the quality is always fantastic). Social media is basically one big watch party.
Which NFL journalist do you trust the most and why?
Cohen: Nationally, I have to go with Michigan Daily alum Adam Schefter. Since I’m from the Philadelphia area and worked with them last summer, I regularly read and trust Jeff McLane and Zach Berman from The Philadelphia Inquirer. There’s a certain trust I have in newspaper reporting credibility that I think too many people lose sight of in the age of always trying to get the first scoop.
Kirkpatrick: On a national basis, Ian Rapoport. He isn't really biased toward any team and keeps it simple, but still has a good personality.
Maiman: Adam Schefter. He is often reporting breaking news first or following up with new information. I respect journalists who get the facts not only right, but quickly. I gained even more respect for him after reading this feature in The Washington Post.
Yohannes: For news, it’s Jay Glazer. Jay’s always been accurate with scoops and even breaks information out pretty early (see Jim Harbaugh not returning to San Francisco). You can’t go wrong with Adam Schefter or Ian Rapoport, either. All of those guys are trustworthy, work hard and deserve credit, along with many others. On a personal level of trust for me, it’s Master Tesfatsion of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, who covers the Minnesota Vikings. He reached out to me a year ago around this time via email and has been a big mentor for me in journalism. What specifically led him to reach out is that we’re both Eritrean (people that are Eritrean are connected with Eritrea, which is located directly north of Ethiopia in Africa), and as far as I know, we’re the only two sports journalists in the country that are. It’s been great having somebody I relate to that I can pretty much ask about anything and get an honest and helpful response from in return.
If you could work on any NFL-related story, with an unlimited budget, what would it be and why?
Cohen: I’d assemble a large staff and spend the next 40 years researching the effect concussions have on football players. I’d start tracking hundreds of the country’s top players when they were in high school and have scientists study the effects of football on their brains throughout the years, with monthly checkups. For the players who made it on to college teams and then the NFL, I’d track how football hits affected the players both in terms of their health and in their personal lives as they aged. With an unlimited budget, the study could be widespread enough to make an impact on how people think about the game and give more definitive answers about safety. While fans have an idea of the toll football takes on the brains of players, I think a study that tracked players both on and off the field with frequent reports could take the acknowledgement to a new level.
Goodwin: I’d want to dive more into the CTE research and see what can be uncovered there. Concussions are such a touchy subject, so learning more about them wouldn’t hurt. It’d be a hell of a lot more interesting than listening to Bill Nye talk about deflated footballs. That’s for sure.
Kirkpatrick: Amanda Hess wrote a story last year about NFL cheerleaders and how they are severely underpaid for the work they do. This story has stuck in my mind since I read it, and I’ve thought long and hard about the psychological impact of cheerleading in a professional environment, especially when they're in such a harsh spotlight. I’d love to dig more into what women deal with in that field on a league-wide basis, and see how that impacts them later in life.
Maiman: Interesting question, that had me thinking a lot and trying to be somewhat original. I am no bio major, but I think with unlimited funds it would be fascinating to do genetic testing on various football players at different positions and then compare and contrast the data. With what football players go through physically and mentally, I think it would be amazing to have a better understanding of what makes them able and willing to play this sport. Also, I would love to do a story on administrative assistants throughout the NFL. Have them share stories about stressful and compelling moments in their job. My journalism mentors and professors are always telling me that the best way to get to know an important person or company is by talking to the secretary.
Yohannes: With an unlimited budget, there’s so much I would love to do. Seriously. One of them would be a short film about the post-NFL lives of players and how they’re living without football (physically and mentally). Another would be about guys like Marshawn Lynch, who do a lot in the communities they were raised in. Another would include me traveling overseas to do a piece on football players from different countries that have made it to the NFL. I just want to shed light on stories that aren't talked about often. But the one NFL-related story I want to work on the most is the story of Nat Berhe from the Giants. As I mentioned in the previous response, I’m Eritrean, and last spring, Berhe became the first player with Eritrean roots to be taken in the NFL draft. Some outlets ran good stories about him and what it means, but none of them can add the personal perspective I can. He does a lot more than just play football, too. There are a lot of different cultural things people might not understand about his way to the NFL.
Which NFL broadcaster would you most want interviewing Roger Goodell and why?
Cohen: I’d like to see Al Michaels interview Goodell, because it seems like any broadcaster would need a 1980 U.S. hockey team-like miracle to get a straight answer out of Goodell about any of the league’s most pressing issues at this point.
Goodwin: Dan Patrick. I think he’d ask the tough questions, keep Roger honest, but also keep it light and entertaining. What could be better than that?
Kirkpatrick: I'm putting in my vote for Pam Oliver. Wisdom, experience and patience, especially in this situation, triumph anyone more concerned with hearing the sound of their own voice.
Maiman: Rachel Nichols. Although, after Goodell sarcastically asked her for money on Friday, I’m not sure how that interview would proceed. But I have always respected how she isn’t afraid to ask tough questions. After this year of controversy in the NFL, I believe you need someone like that conducting an interview with the commissioner.
Yohannes: There’s no doubt in my mind that I would want Rachel Nichols interviewing him. She’s been nailing him—and rightfully so—in recent press conferences. Each time she’s asked him a question, it’s been fair and educated, and Goodell has been left dazed each time. Just imagine what it would be like in a one-on-one setting. | 2019-04-24T14:09:27Z | https://www.si.com/2015/02/04/nfl-super-bowl-49-media-panel-college-journalists |
DORYX MPC (doxycycline hyclate delayed-release tablets), for oral use.
To report SUSPECTED ADVERSE REACTIONS, contact Mayne Pharma at 1-844-825-8500 or FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088 or www.fda.gov/medwatch.
DORYX MPC is indicated for treatment of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, typhus fever and the typhus group, Q fever, rickettsialpox, and tick fevers caused by Rickettsiae.
Uncomplicated urethral, endocervical or rectal infections in adults caused by Chlamydia trachomatis.
Nongonococcal urethritis caused by Ureaplasma urealyticum.
Lymphogranuloma venereum caused by Chlamydia trachomatis.
Granuloma inguinale caused by Klebsiella granulomatis.
Uncomplicated gonorrhea caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae.
Chancroid caused by Haemophilus ducreyi.
Respiratory tract infections caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae.
Psittacosis (ornithosis) caused by Chlamydophila psittaci.
Because many strains of the following groups of microorganisms have been shown to be resistant to doxycycline, culture and susceptibility testing are recommended.
Respiratory tract infections caused by Haemophilus influenzae.
Respiratory tract infections caused by Klebsiella species.
Upper respiratory infections caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Relapsing fever due to Borrelia recurrentis.
Plague due to Yersinia pestis.
Tularemia due to Francisella tularensis.
Cholera caused by Vibrio cholerae.
Campylobacter fetus infections caused by Campylobacter fetus.
Brucellosis due to Brucella species (in conjunction with streptomycin).
Bartonellosis due to Bartonella bacilliformis.
Urinary tract infections caused by Klebsiella species.
Trachoma caused by Chlamydia trachomatis, although the infectious agent is not always eliminated as judged by immunofluorescence.
Inclusion conjunctivitis caused by Chlamydia trachomatis.
DORYX MPC is indicated for treatment of Anthrax due to Bacillus anthracis, including inhalational anthrax (post-exposure): to reduce the incidence or progression of disease following exposure to aerosolized Bacillus anthracis.
Syphilis caused by Treponema pallidum.
Yaws caused by Treponema pallidum subspecies pertenue.
Listeriosis due to Listeria monocytogenes.
Vincent's infection caused by Fusobacterium fusiforme.
Actinomycosis caused by Actinomyces israelii.
Infections caused by Clostridium species.
In acute intestinal amebiasis, DORYX MPC may be a useful adjunct to amebicides.
In severe acne, DORYX MPC may be useful adjunctive therapy.
DORYX MPC is indicated for the prophylaxis of malaria due to Plasmodium falciparum in short-term travelers (less than 4 months) to areas with chloroquine and/or pyrimethamine-sulfadoxine resistant strains [see Dosage and Administration (2.2) and Patient Counseling Information (17)].
To reduce the development of drug-resistant bacteria and maintain the effectiveness of DORYX MPC and other antibacterial drugs, DORYX MPC should be used only to treat or prevent infections that are proven or strongly suspected to be caused by susceptible bacteria. When culture and susceptibility information are available, they should be considered in selecting or modifying antibacterial therapy. In the absence of such data, local epidemiology and susceptibility patterns may contribute to the empiric selection of therapy.
DORYX MPC is not substitutable on a mg per mg basis with other oral doxycyclines. To avoid prescribing errors, do not substitute DORYX MPC for other oral doxycyclines on a mg per mg basis because of differing bioavailability.
Do not chew or crush tablets.
The recommended dosage, frequency of administration and weight-based dosage recommendations of DORYX MPC differ from that of the other tetracyclines [see Dosage and Administration (2.2, 2.3, 2.4)]. Exceeding the recommended dosage may result in an increased incidence of adverse reactions.
Administer DORYX MPC with an adequate amount of fluid to wash down the drug and reduce the risk of esophageal irritation and ulceration [see Adverse Reactions (6)].
If gastric irritation occurs, DORYX MPC may be given with food or milk [see Clinical Pharmacology (12.3)].
The usual dosage of DORYX MPC is 240 mg on the first day of treatment (administered 120 mg every 12 hours) followed by a maintenance dose of 120 mg daily. The maintenance dose may be administered as a single dose.
In the management of more severe infections (particularly chronic infections of the urinary tract), 120 mg every 12 hours is recommended.
Streptococcal infections, therapy should be continued for 10 days.
Uncomplicated urethral, endocervical, or rectal infection caused by C. trachomatis: 120 mg, by mouth, twice-a-day for 7 days.
Uncomplicated gonococcal infections in adults (except anorectal infections in men): 120 mg, by mouth, twice-a-day for 7 days. As an alternate single visit dose, administer 360 mg followed in one hour by a second 360 mg dose.
Nongonococcal urethritis (NGU) caused by C. trachomatis and U. urealyticum: 120 mg, by mouth, twice-a-day for 7 days.
Syphilis – early: Patients who are allergic to penicillin should be treated with doxycycline 120 mg, by mouth, twice-a-day for 2 weeks.
Syphilis of more than one year's duration: Patients who are allergic to penicillin should be treated with doxycycline 120 mg, by mouth, twice-a-day for 4 weeks.
Acute epididymo-orchitis caused by N. gonorrhoeae: 120 mg, by mouth, twice-a-day for at least 10 days.
For all pediatric patients weighing less than 45 kg with severe or life threatening infections (e.g., anthrax, Rocky Mountain spotted fever), the recommended dosage of DORYX MPC is 2.6 mg per kg of body weight administered every 12 hours. Pediatric patients weighing 45 kg or more should receive the adult dose [see Warnings and Precautions (5.1)].
For pediatric patients with less severe disease (greater than 8 years of age and weighing less than 45 kg), the recommended dosage schedule of DORYX MPC is 5.3 mg per kg of body weight divided into two doses on the first day of treatment, followed by a maintenance dose of 2.6 mg per kg of body weight (given as a single daily dose or divided into twice daily doses). For pediatric patients weighing over 45 kg, the usual adult dose should be used.
For adults, the recommended dose of DORYX MPC is 120 mg daily.
For pediatric patients 8 years of age and older, the recommended dosage of DORYX MPC is 2.4 mg per kg of body weight administered once daily. Pediatric patients weighing 45 kg or more should receive the adult dose.
Prophylaxis should begin 1 or 2 days before travel to the malarious area. Prophylaxis should be continued daily during travel in the malarious area and for 4 weeks after the traveler leaves the malarious area.
For adults, the recommended dosage is 120 mg, of DORYX MPC, by mouth, twice-a-day for 60 days.
For pediatric patients weighing less than 45 kg, the recommended dosage of DORYX MPC is 2.6 mg per kg of body weight, by mouth, twice-a-day for 60 days. Pediatric patients weighing 45 kg or more should receive the adult dose.
DORYX MPC (doxycycline hyclate delayed-release tablets), 120 mg are white, oval tablets containing yellow pellets and debossed on one face with "DC" and plain on the other. Each tablet contains doxycycline 120 mg (equivalent to doxycycline hyclate 138.8 mg).
DORYX MPC is contraindicated in persons who have shown hypersensitivity to any of the tetracyclines.
The use of drugs of the tetracycline-class during tooth development (last half of pregnancy, infancy and childhood to the age of 8 years) may cause permanent discoloration of the teeth (yellow-gray-brown). This adverse reaction is more common during long-term use of the drugs but it has been observed following repeated short-term courses. Enamel hypoplasia has also been reported. Use DORYX MPC in pediatric patients 8 years of age or less only when the potential benefits are expected to outweigh the risks in severe or life-threatening conditions (e.g., anthrax, Rocky Mountain spotted fever), particularly when there are no alternative therapies.
Clostridium difficile associated diarrhea (CDAD) has been reported with use of nearly all antibacterial agents, including DORYX MPC Tablets, and may range in severity from mild diarrhea to fatal colitis. Treatment with antibacterial agents alters the normal flora of the colon leading to overgrowth of C. difficile.
Photosensitivity manifested by an exaggerated sunburn reaction has been observed in some individuals taking tetracyclines. Patients apt to be exposed to direct sunlight or ultraviolet light should be advised that this reaction can occur with tetracycline drugs, and treatment should be discontinued at the first evidence of skin erythema.
DORYX MPC may result in overgrowth of non-susceptible organisms, including fungi. If such infections occur, discontinue use and institute appropriate therapy.
Severe skin reactions, such as exfoliative dermatitis, erythema multiforme, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, toxic epidermal necrolysis, and drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) have been reported in patients receiving doxycycline [See Adverse Reactions (6)]. If severe skin reactions occur, doxycycline should be discontinued immediately and appropriate therapy should be instituted.
Intracranial hypertension (IH, pseudotumor cerebri) has been associated with the use of tetracycline including DORYX MPC. Clinical manifestations of IH include headache, blurred vision, diplopia, and vision loss; papilledema can be found on fundoscopy. Women of childbearing age who are overweight or have a history of IH are at greater risk for developing tetracycline associated IH. Avoid concomitant use of isotretinoin and DORYX MPC because isotretinoin is also known to cause pseudotumor cerebri.
Although IH typically resolves after discontinuation of treatment, the possibility for permanent visual loss exists. If visual disturbance occurs during treatment, prompt ophthalmologic evaluation is warranted. Since intracranial pressure can remain elevated for weeks after drug cessation patients should be monitored until they stabilize.
All tetracyclines form a stable calcium complex in any bone-forming tissue. A decrease in fibula growth rate has been observed in prematures given oral tetracycline in doses of 25 mg/kg every six hours. This reaction was shown to be reversible when the drug was discontinued. [See Use in Specific Populations (8.1)].
The antianabolic action of the tetracyclines may cause an increase in BUN. Studies to date indicate that this does not occur with the use of doxycycline in patients with impaired renal function.
Doxycycline offers substantial but not complete suppression of the asexual blood stages of Plasmodium strains.
Doxycycline does not suppress P. falciparum's sexual blood stage gametocytes. Subjects completing this prophylactic regimen may still transmit the infection to mosquitoes outside endemic areas.
Prescribing DORYX MPC in the absence of a proven or strongly suspected bacterial infection or a prophylactic indication is unlikely to provide benefit to the patient and increases the risk of the development of drug-resistant bacteria.
In long-term therapy, periodic laboratory evaluation of organ systems, including hematopoietic, renal, and hepatic studies should be performed.
The following adverse reactions have been identified during post-approval use of doxycycline. Because these reactions are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequency or establish a causal relationship to drug exposure.
Gastrointestinal: Anorexia, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, glossitis, dysphagia, enterocolitis, inflammatory lesions (with monilial overgrowth) in the anogenital region, and pancreatitis. Hepatotoxicity has been reported. These reactions have been caused by both the oral and parenteral administration of tetracyclines. Superficial discoloration of the adult permanent dentition, reversible upon drug discontinuation and professional dental cleaning has been reported. Permanent tooth discoloration and enamel hypoplasia may occur with drugs of the tetracycline class when used during tooth development [See Warnings and Precautions (5.1)]. Esophagitis and esophageal ulcerations have been reported in patients receiving capsule and tablet forms of drugs in the tetracycline-class. Most of these patients took medications immediately before going to bed [see Dosage and Administration (2.1)].
Skin: Maculopapular and erythematous rashes, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, toxic epidermal necrolysis, exfoliative dermatitis, and erythema multiforme have been reported. Photosensitivity is discussed above [see Warnings and Precautions (5.3)].
Renal: Rise in BUN has been reported and is apparently dose-related [see Warnings and Precautions (5.8)].
Hypersensitivity reactions: Urticaria, angioneurotic edema, anaphylaxis, anaphylactoid purpura, serum sickness, pericarditis, and exacerbation of systemic lupus erythematosus, and drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS).
Blood: Hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, neutropenia, and eosinophilia have been reported.
Thyroid Gland Changes: When given over prolonged periods, tetracyclines have been reported to produce brown-black microscopic discoloration of thyroid glands. No abnormalities of thyroid function are known to occur.
Since bacteriostatic drugs may interfere with the bactericidal action of penicillin, it is advisable to avoid giving tetracyclines, including DORYX MPC in conjunction with penicillin.
Absorption of tetracyclines including DORYX MPC is impaired by antacids containing aluminum, calcium, or magnesium, bismuth subsalicylate, and iron-containing preparations.
Concurrent use of tetracyclines, including DORYX MPC may render oral contraceptives less effective.
Barbiturates, carbamazepine, and phenytoin decrease the half-life of doxycycline.
The concurrent use of tetracycline and Penthrane® (methoxyflurane) has been reported to result in fatal renal toxicity.
False elevations of urinary catecholamines may occur due to interference with the fluorescence test.
There are no adequate studies on the use of doxycycline in pregnant women. The vast majority of reported experience with doxycycline during human pregnancy is short-term, first trimester exposure. There are no human data available to assess the effects of long-term therapy of doxycycline in pregnant women such as that proposed for the treatment of anthrax exposure. An expert review of published data on experiences with doxycycline use during pregnancy by TERIS - the Teratogen Information System - concluded that therapeutic doses during pregnancy are unlikely to pose a substantial teratogenic risk (the quantity and quality of data were assessed as limited to fair), but the data are insufficient to state that there is no risk.1 In the U.S. general population the estimated background risk of major birth defects and miscarriage in clinically recognized pregnancies is 2-4% and 15-20%, respectively [see Data].
Results of animal studies indicate that tetracyclines cross the placenta, are found in fetal tissues, and can have toxic effects on the developing fetus (often related to retardation of skeletal development). Evidence of embryotoxicity also has been noted in animals treated early in pregnancy. If any tetracycline is used during pregnancy or if the patient becomes pregnant while taking these drugs, the patient should be apprised of the potential hazard to the fetus. [see Warnings and Precautions (5.1, 5.6)].
Tetracyclines are excreted in human milk, however, the extent of absorption of tetracyclines including doxycycline, by the breastfed infant is not known. Short-term use by lactating women is not contraindicated. The effects of prolonged exposure to doxycycline on breast milk production and breast fed neonates, infants and children are unknown.4 The developmental and health benefits of breast feeding should be considered along with the mother's clinical need for DORYX MPC and any potential adverse effects on the breast fed child from DORYX MPC or from the underlying maternal condition [see Warnings and Precautions (5.1, 5.6)].
Because of the effects of drugs of the tetracycline-class on tooth development and growth, use DORYX MPC in pediatric patients 8 years of age or less only when the potential benefits are expected to outweigh the risks in severe or life-threatening conditions (e.g., anthrax, Rocky Mountain spotted fever), particularly when there are no alternative therapies [see Warnings and Precautions (5.1, 5.6) and Dosage and Administration (2.1, 2.4)].
Clinical studies of DORYX MPC did not include sufficient numbers of subjects aged 65 and over to determine whether they respond differently from younger subjects. Other reported clinical experience has not identified differences in responses between the elderly and younger patients. DORYX MPC Tablets each contain less than 10 mg of sodium.
In case of overdosage, discontinue medication, treat symptomatically and institute supportive measures. Dialysis does not alter serum half-life and thus would not be of benefit in treating cases of overdosage.
Doryx MPC (doxycycline hyclate delayed-release tablets) for oral use, contain doxycycline hyclate, a tetracycline class drug synthetically derived from oxytetracycline, in a delayed-release formulation consisting of pellets with a modified polymer enteric coat that has increased acid resistance.
with a molecular formula of C22H24N2O8, HCl, ½ C2H6O, ½ H2O and a molecular weight of 512.9. The chemical name for doxycycline hyclate is [4S(4aR,5S,5aR,6R,12aS)]-4-(dimethylamino)-1,4,4a,5,5a,6,11,12a-octahydro-3,5,10,12,12a-pentahydroxy-6-methyl-1,11-deoxonaphthacene-2-carboxamide monohydrochloride, compound with ethyl alcohol (2:1), monohydrate. Doxycycline hyclate is a yellow crystalline powder soluble in water and in solutions of alkali hydroxides and carbonates. Doxycycline has a high degree of lipid solubility and a low affinity for calcium binding. It is highly stable in normal human serum. Doxycycline will not degrade into an epianhydro form.
Each tablet contains doxycycline 120 mg (equivalent to doxycycline hyclate 138.8 mg). Inactive ingredients in the tablet formulation are: lactose monohydrate; microcrystalline cellulose; sodium lauryl sulfate; sodium chloride; talc; anhydrous lactose; corn starch; crospovidone; magnesium stearate; cellulosic polymer coating.
Each DORYX MPC 120 mg Tablet contains 7.2 mg (0.313 mEq) of sodium.
Doxycycline is a tetracycline-class antimicrobial drug [see Microbiology (12.4)].
Following administration of a single dose of DORYX MPC under fasting conditions, the AUCinf and Cmax were 26.7 mcg-h/mL and 1.6 mcg/mL, respectively. The Tmax was 2.8 hours. In a single-dose study to evaluate the relative bioavailability in healthy adult subjects under fasted conditions, DORYX MPC 120 mg Tablets were found to be bioequivalent to Doryx 100 mg Tablets. When a single dose of DORYX MPC 120 mg Tablet was administered with a standardized high-fat high-calorie meal, (937kcal consisting of approximately 55% fat, 30% carbohydrate and 15% protein), the Cmax was approximately 30% lower, but there was no significant difference in the AUCinf compared to administration under fasting conditions [see Dosage and Administration (2.1)].
Tetracyclines are concentrated in bile by the liver and excreted in the urine and feces at high concentrations and in a biologically active form. Excretion of doxycycline by the kidney is about 40%/72 hours in individuals with a creatinine clearance of about 75 mL/min. This percentage may fall as low as 1-5%/72 hours in individuals with a creatinine clearance below 10 mL/min.
Studies have shown no significant difference in the serum half-life of doxycycline (range 18 to 22 hours) in individuals with normal and severely impaired renal function. Hemodialysis does not alter the serum half-life.
Doxycycline inhibits bacterial protein synthesis by binding to the 30S ribosomal subunit. Doxycycline has bacteriostatic activity against a broad range of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria.
Cross-resistance between tetracyclines is common.
Doxycycline has been shown to be active against most isolates of the following bacteria, both in vitro and in clinical infections [see Indications and Usage (1)].
Doxycycline has been found to be active against the asexual erythrocytic forms of Plasmodium falciparum but not against the gametocytes of P. falciparum. The precise mechanism of action of the drug is not known.
Long-term studies in animals to evaluate carcinogenic potential of doxycycline have not been conducted. However, there has been evidence of oncogenic activity in rats in studies with the related antibiotics, oxytetracycline (adrenal and pituitary tumors) and minocycline (thyroid tumors). Likewise, although mutagenicity studies of doxycycline have not been conducted, positive results in in vitro mammalian cell assays have been reported for related antibacterials (tetracycline, oxytetracycline).
Doxycycline administered orally at dosage levels as high as 250 mg/kg/day had no apparent effect on the fertility of female rats. Effect on male fertility has not been studied.
Hyperpigmentation of the thyroid has been produced by members of the tetracycline-class in the following species: in rats by oxytetracycline, doxycycline, tetracycline PO4, and methacycline; in minipigs by doxycycline, minocycline, tetracycline PO4, and methacycline; in dogs by doxycycline and minocycline; in monkeys by minocycline.
Minocycline, tetracycline PO4, methacycline, doxycycline, tetracycline base, oxytetracycline HCl, and tetracycline HCl, were goitrogenic in rats fed a low iodine diet. This goitrogenic effect was accompanied by high radioactive iodine uptake. Administration of minocycline also produced a large goiter with high radioiodine uptake in rats fed a relatively high iodine diet.
Treatment of various animal species with this class of drugs has also resulted in the induction of thyroid hyperplasia in the following: in rats and dogs (minocycline); in chickens (chlortetracycline); and in rats and mice (oxytetracycline). Adrenal gland hyperplasia has been observed in goats and rats treated with oxytetracycline.
Results of animal studies indicate that tetracyclines cross the placenta and are found in fetal tissues.
Friedman JM, Polifka JE. Teratogenic Effects of Drugs. A Resource for Clinicians (TERIS). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press: 2000: 149-195. The TERIS (Teratogen Information System) is available at: http://www.micromedexsolutions.com/ (cited: 2016 Jan).
Cziezel AE and Rockenbauer M. Teratogenic study of doxycycline. Obstet Gynecol 1997; 89: 524-528.
Horne HW Jr. and Kundsin RB. The role of mycoplasma among 81 consecutive pregnancies: a prospective study. Int J Fertil 1980; 25: 315-317.
Store at 25° C (77° F); excursions permitted to 15°C to 30° C (59°F to 86° F) [see USP Controlled Room Temperature]. Dispense in a tight, light-resistant container (USP).
that no present-day antimalarial agent, including doxycycline, guarantees protection against malaria.
to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes by using personal protective measures that help avoid contact with mosquitoes, especially from dusk to dawn (for example, staying in well-screened areas, using mosquito nets, covering the body with clothing, and using an effective insect repellent).
should not exceed 4 months.
that the absorption of tetracyclines is reduced when taken with antacids containing aluminum, calcium or magnesium, bismuth subsalicylate, and iron-containing preparations [see Drug Interactions (7.3)].
that the use of doxycycline might increase the incidence of vaginal candidiasis.
Advise patients that diarrhea is a common problem caused by antibacterial drugs which usually ends when the antibacterial is discontinued. Sometimes after starting treatment with antibacterial drugs, patients can develop watery and bloody stools (with or without stomach cramps and fever) even as late as two or more months after having taken the last dose of antibacterial. If this occurs, patients should contact their physician as soon as possible.
Counsel patients that antibacterial drugs including DORYX MPC should only be used to treat bacterial infections. They do not treat viral infections (for example, the common cold). When DORYX MPC is prescribed to treat a bacterial infection, patients should be told that although it is common to feel better early in the course of therapy, the medication should be taken exactly as directed. Skipping doses or not completing the full course of therapy may (1) decrease the effectiveness of the immediate treatment and (2) increase the likelihood that bacteria will develop resistance and will not be treatable by DORYX MPC or other antibacterial drugs in the future. | 2019-04-21T10:49:11Z | https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/fda/fdaDrugXsl.cfm?setid=f9277bb8-982d-444d-9325-35d5c53a2d35&type=display |
With its migration into the hosting environment, the current editing infrastructure consisting mainly of the WinADH editing client becomes obsolete and can no longer be used. All editing can now done via your web browser. This allows also users of non-Windows operating systems to edit the CT from their computers.
To use the editing facilities in the new web interface you will need a user account for the new hosting environment. The login details for WinADH or the CERL Website will not be recognised by the new system. There is, however, only one account for all databases hosted on http://data.cerl.org ; if you already have an account for the ISTC or MEI, let the database administrator know and they will assign the necessary editing rights to it.
If you do not yet have an account for data.cerl.org, contact the database administrator, who will then set up an empty account for you. You will be notified by email about that and will need to fill in your user details and explicitly activate it, before you can use it.
To log in, click the login button at the bottom of the page, which will take you to the login form. Fill in your username and password and hit “Login”.
Please note that an account is only necessary for editing; searching and downloading records does not require a login.
If you ever forget your password, you can request a temporary login that will allow you to set a new password (see below how). Hit the “Forgot your password?” button which you can find at the bottom of the login form and in the form popping up next, fill in either your username or, if you have forgotten that, too, your email address. You will then receive an email with further instructions.
Once you have sucessfully logged in, your name will be displayed in the bottom navigation bar, in the place where the login button was before. Clicking on your name will take you to the page where you can manage your account.
If you want to change your full name, your email address or set the preferred interface language, you can do that here. To save your changes hit “Done”.
To change your password, scroll down to the box labelled “Change your password” and enter a new password. Make sure you pick a password that is difficult to guess by others, not your name or the name of your institution, your children, your pet dog, not your birthday or anything like “cerl” or “thesaurus” or similar. The longer your password, the more difficult it is for others to guess or crack.
If you want to delete your account, scroll down to the box labelled “Delete account” and hit “Delete this account”. The system will ask you once if you are sure about it, if you confirm that, you will be logged out and your account will be deleted immediately. Please remember that your account in the new hosting environment is not database specific, this means, if you delete your account from the CERL Thesaurus interface, you delete it also for all other database (ISTC, MEI, SBTI, etc).
A deleted account is gone for good and cannot be restored. If you have accidentially deleted your account you will need to request a new one (see above).
Deleting your account will remove all your data from the system. However, the records you might have edited, will retain your (numeric) user id. Once your account has been removed, one cannot know from the user id, to whom it did belong. A user id will never be reassinged to another user.
Changing your preferred interface language on your account page, takes effect only after you log out and log in again. To change the interface language for the immedeately, click the link labelled “Language” in the navigation bar at the bottom of the page. A menu will pop up, which will let you choose a different language.
Please note that not all databases within the hosting environment are available in all languages. If you select a language which is available for the CERL Thesaurus and then switch to a different database that does not support that language, the system will try the language you've set as “preferred language” in your account settings, if you are logged in, or if that is not available either, the language set as default by your browser (check browser's help pages how to change this) or if that doesn't work either, it defaults to English.
The new CT interface provides two navigation bars, one at the top of the screen for the functions used by all users, and one at the bottom for the functions used less fequently. In addition to these, there is a menu available from the top navigation bar under the item labelled “More…”. This menu contains all other options availble. According to the access rights associated with your account the items displayed here might be different than for other users.
From the top navigation bar you can access the search results screen (“Search”), the alphabetical index browse lists (“Browse”), your search history (“History”) and your Bookmarks (“Bookmarks”). The bottom bar allows you to access your account page (see above), the main menu of the hosting environment where you can switch to another dataset (“Datasets”), the CERL Thesaurus help section on the CERL Website (“Help”) or the contact details of the CERL Secretariat (“Contact”).
As a default your search result will be grouped the types of entities it contains: Corporate Names, Imprint Names, Places and Persons. Each group will display the first 25 hits and a link to the full set, if available. You may click a heading in these list to access the full record.
The CERL Thesaurus records are accessible from a persistent HTTP URI (URL) containing the id of the record. When requested from a web browser, the record will be displayed as an HTML page. Other applications may set the HTTP-Accept header to a value other than “text/html” to retrieve the data in a different format, for details see the API documentation.
In the CERL Thesaurus there are descriptions for four different types of entities: Places (primarily places of printing, but also places of manuscript writing or places where persons were active or corporate bodies were located), Imprint names (all names that might appear in an imprint of a book and that do not denote any type of intellecutal responsibility for the content of it, i.e. primarily printers, but also publishers, booksellers, illustrators etc), corporate entities and persons (both can either have had the intellectual responsibility for a book's content or have been owners of books).
The information which type of entity a record is about is hidden in the record ID's prefix. If you use the form-based editor to create a new record, you should select the type of entity from the drop-down labelled “Type of Entity” (2nd from the top) - if you edit an existing record this drop-down has no effect at all (i.e. you cannot change the entity type by just setting it to a new value).
The CERL Thesaurus records the preferred name forms of an entity as they are used in CERL Member libraries. Heading forms differ according to the language used for cataloguing and the cataloguing rules applied. The CERL Thesaurus does not declare one of these name forms as authoritative, but lists them alphabetically indicating the institutions that use that particular form. Thus, there is no “CERL form” for a heading. The name form given as a headline in a record's full display is the first heading recorded within that record, its prominent position does not imply any indication of preference for that form.
Variant name forms do now have an additional code, indicating the type of the name form ($0 in 4xx fields). This code is mandatory. If in doubt, use varn as a default.
Geographic Coordinates should be given for place name records (cnl) only. Please note that the format of the coordinates varies according to the editing form you are using. In the form-based editor and the YAML editor coordinates are given in decimal form as a floating point number without a degree sign (°). Use positive numbers for north and east and negative numbers for soutch and west.
In the CT internal format editor, the coordinates are given in degrees, minutes and seconds preceded by a letter indicating the hemisphere, see 123 Coded Data Field: Latitude and Longitude for details.
Please note that the syntax of field 123 assumes a place is designated by a square-like shape through defining the outermost latitudes and longitudes. In the CERL Thesaurus, the coordinates of a place are that of a single point in or near the center of place - so both coordinates must be recorded twice here.
At the bottom of every record you will find the buttons that allow you to edit the data in the CERL Thesaurus (if you have the necessary access rights, that is). This follows the principle that things that are important to every user are placed on the top of the screen and items that are of importance only to the CERL appointed editors are a bit more hidden away at the bottom.
The rightmost, that shows a small rubbish bin, will delete the record. Please be careful with this one, you will be asked for confirmation (twice, acutally) before the record is deleted, but once you have confirmed that, it is gone for good.
The middle one, showing two sheets of paper, will make a copy of the record and open it in the form based editor. This might be useful if you are creating a number of very similar records and want to save some time typing the same things in over and over. Although, this is probably more of use in the other databases living in this hosting environment than to the CERL Thesaurus.
The leftmost button, showing a notepad and a pencil, will open the current record for editing. There are currently four different editors available, according to your editing rights you will presented a list where you can pick the one that is best for what you want to do with the record.
If your account has complete editing rights on the CERL Thesaurus, you will be shown the following selection of editing clients. Each of it has its strengths and weaknesses and you may want to choose the client you want to use according to the things you want to edit in the record and according to how close you feel to the Thesaurus's internal format.
The form based editor presents the record in a web form where each data element is in a separate field and where each field has a plain text label. If you are not (yet) very familiar with the CERL Thesaurus format or want to enter a new record from scratch, this editor might be a good choice. On the other hand, the record structure of the Thesaurus is quite complex and records can get rather lengthy, which can lead to enormously long forms that can be difficult to navigate.
The form consists of two main parts: data about the entity that the record describes (the actual “content” of the record) and data about the record itself. Both are folded by default, click on a part to open it.
The part Desription of the Record holds the record status, the internal (cataloguer's) note field, any internal record flags, information about definite, possible and definitely not duplicates and the editing history.
Fields you cannot edit, like the editing history, have a pale grey background.
Fields may contain subfields. In these cases subfields are contained in a separate sub-form, which by default is also folded, so you can only see the fields title. You will recognise these folded subforms by a little black downward pointing error on the left side. Click on the field's title to open the subform. A subform has an elegant grey background to make what belongs together more visible.
A big blue plus-sign on the right of a field means that this field is repeatable and that you can add another field of this kind by clicking on it. Please note that in order to add an additional complex sub-form, you have to open the last sub-form to find the blue plus-button. When adding additonal fields, the order of fields is kept as it is in the form.
When done editing, click the green Save button at the bottom of the form, or Cancel if you want to discard your changes.
See also How to use the form based editor for a more detailed introduction to the form based editor.
The “Internal Format” editor allows to edit the CERL Thesaurus data in the same Unimarc based field format as it has been the case in the old Avanti environment. It's called “Internal Format” since this has been the internal format in the old system and is still used for a ingesting and update, although the actual internal format is quite different now (JSON).
The format description and input conventions can be found here. Different from the old WinADH client, the Internal Format editor is used for editing records only - for merging duplicate records there is now a different editor available (see below).
In comparison to the form based editor, the display of the information stored in a record is much more compact and easiert to grasp at first glance. For experienced editors typing field numbers and subfields is probably faster than handling a complex form.
There is also no input validation implemented yet, any invalid fields, indicator positions or subfields will be silently ignored when the data is converted to JSON, so make sure to check from the record's full display if all information has been entered correctly.
The YAML editor is the most powerfull of the available editing clients. It allows you to directly manipulate the internal data structure and you should use it only if you know exactly what you are doing.
Internally records are stored in JSON - YAML is a way to represent JSON data structures in a conveniently readable form1), replacing all the curly brackets with indentations (use blanks, not tab stops!) and the square ones with hyphens. Before you are using this editing client, get familiar with the basic YAML Syntax.
For longer records, you can switch the editor to full screen mode by pressing [F11] or clicking the yellow button labeled “Fullscreen”. To return to normal mode press [F11] again or [ESC].
If you are trying to save your record, but nothing happens, you have most likely made an error with the YAML-Syntax. Since the editor does not yet return a validation report, you may try copying the record into an external validator (e.g. http://www.yamllint.com/) to see what went wrong.
The editor to merge duplicate records is only shown among the options for choosing and editing client if the record holds an indication of possible duplicates (#831 #1 or meta.possibleMatch). The approach the new interface takes to deduplication is slightly different from the one used within the old WinADH client: Instead of showing two records next to each other, the new client shows how the final record would look like, if all possible duplicates were merged together. This is supposed to make comparison between records easier, since all fields that are supposed to hold the same information are shown in the same spot, color coded by the source record it has been derived from.
To find potential duplicates, search for dedup: and the record type, e.g. dedup:cnp for persons. You may combine it with something useful to get smaller resultsets, for example: external_id:gnd AND dedup:cnp to limit the set to records from the GND file.
The duplicate candidate records are shown in the right column. The first (white) one is the record you started with; since this is the record the other are finally merged into, you cannot deselect it from deduplication.
Please note: If there are many duplicate candidates it might be easier to check the records one by one. To do that, you start with “Hide all” (which turns all candidates grey) and then re‐activate the first candidate and see if it is a duplicate or not. If it’s not, uncheck it and go to the next. If it is, you could click the other button next to the check mark (the one with the three stripes on it) to switch the record’s colour to white before you proceed with the next record. So you’d know that everything that’s white is checked and “ok” and the amount of different colours is a little less confusing.
Un‐select the records that are not duplicates to the first one by clicking the green checkmark in the box that represents the record in the right column. The box will turn grey and the fields that belong to that record will no longer be visible in the left column. As long as the box in the right column has a colour (other than grey, that is) the record will be merged into the first one, once you hit save.
Please make also sure to check the biographical dates (340), activity notes (350, 300) and titles (291) to decide if records refer to the same entity or not. If that is not sufficient, try also to look at the source systems the records come from and see to what titles they are linked (this is not always possible, of course). Always bear in mind, that you are most likely the person who is saying the final word about these records being duplicates or not. Once you hit save, the records will no longer show up, when someone checks for duplicates. If you say two records are not duplicates they will probably never again be considered for merging and if you say two records are, they will probably never be separated if they are not.
Once you've made your decisions and unchecked or checked the non‐duplicates and duplicates, you could change the order of the fields. This might be desirable for the following fields 200, 210, 212, 215, 340, 350. If any of these fields is repeated within a record, the first occurrence is used for generating the short display in the search result set. To change the order of the fields, you can drag and drop a field with the mouse upwards or downwards into a new position.
When done, hit Save. The first record will receive all the fields of the active (coloured) records, which in turn will get a redirect to the first record's record id. If you have merge some records and later discover that they are actually not duplicates, inform us accordingly at [email protected], so that we can restore the original situation. Please note that we can only return to the state before merging - any editing that might have been done on the merged record will be lost. | 2019-04-24T10:55:33Z | https://www.cerl.org/resources/cerl_thesaurus/editing/newinterface |
The idea of a congress of British North American Colonies was first broached in 1754 at the start of the French and Indian war, which started as the North American front of the Seven Years War between Great Britain and France. It met in Albany, New York from June 18 to July 11, 1754, and was attended by representatives from seven colonies. Among the delegates was Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, who proposed that the colonies join together in a confederation. While this idea was rejected by the Albany congress, it would be revived 113 years later among the remaining colonies of British North America to create Canada.
To present a united front in their opposition to the Stamp act, delegates of the Provinces of British North America met in the Stamp Act Congress, which convened in New York City from 7 through October 25, 1765. It issued a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, which it sent to the British Parliament in London. While Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, the First Rockingham ministry rejected any presumption of authority by the American congress.
Benjamin Franklin had put forth the idea of such a meeting the year before, but he was unable to convince the colonies of its necessity until the 1773 British blockade at the port of Boston in response to the Boston Tea Party. All of the colonies sent delegates except the newest and most southerly one, the Province of Georgia – which needed the British Army's protection in order to contend with attacks from several Native American tribes. Most of the delegates were not yet ready to break away from Great Britain, but they wanted the King and Parliament to act in what they considered a fairer manner.
The Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775, at Philadelphia's State House, passing the resolution for independence the following year on July 2, 1776, and publicly asserting the decision two days later with the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia drafted the declaration, and John Adams was a leader in the debates in favor of its adoption. John Hancock of Massachusetts was the president during those debates. To govern during the American Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress continued, meeting at various locations, until it became the Congress of the Confederation when the Articles of Confederation were ratified on March 1, 1781.
The newly founded country of the United States next had to create a new government to replace the British Parliament that it was in rebellion against. After much debate, the Americans adopted the Articles of Confederation, a declaration that established a national government made up of a one-house legislature known as the Congress of the Confederation. It met from 1781 to 1789. The Confederation Congress helped guide the United States through the final stages of the Revolutionary War, but during peacetime, the Continental Congress steeply declined in importance.
After years of frustration, an agreement was reached in 1786 at the Annapolis Convention to call another convention in May 1787 in Philadelphia with the mission of writing and proposing a number of amendments to the Articles of Confederation to improve the form of government. The report was sent to the Confederation Congress and the State. The result was the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, which was authorized by all the States thus fulfilling the unanimous requirement of the Articles of Confederation to allow changes to the Articles.
As the ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin not only secured the "bridge loan" for the national budget, but he also persuaded France to send an army of about 6,000 soldiers across the Atlantic Ocean to America—and also to dispatch a large squadron of French warships under Comte de Grasse to the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina. These French warships were decisive at the Battle of Yorktown along the coast of Virginia by preventing Lord Cornwallis's British troops from receiving supplies, reinforcements, or evacuation via the James River and Hampton Roads, Virginia.
Robert Morris, the Minister of Finance, persuaded Congress to charter the Bank of North America on December 31, 1781. Although a private bank, the Federal Government acquired partial ownership with money lent by France. The Bank of North America played a major role in financing the war against Great Britain. The combined armies of George Washington and Nathanael Greene, with the help of the French Army and Navy, defeated the British in the Battle of Yorktown during October 1781. Lord Cornwallis was forced to sue for peace and to surrender his entire army to General Washington. During 1783, the Americans secured the official recognition of the independence of the United States from the United Kingdom via negotiations with British diplomats in Paris, France. These negotiations culminated with the signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, and this treaty was soon ratified by the British Parliament.
There is a long running debate on how effective the Congress was as an organization. The first critic may have been General George Washington. In an address to his officers, at Newburgh, New York, on March 15, 1783, responding to complaints that Congress had not funded their pay and pensions, he stated that he believed that Congress would do the army "complete justice" and eventually pay the soldiers. "But, like all other large Bodies, where there is a variety of different Interests to reconcile, their deliberations are slow."
An organizational culture analysis of the Continental Congress by Neil Olsen, looking for the values, norms, and underlying assumptions that drive an organization's decisions, noted that "the leaderless Continental Congress outperformed not only the modern congress run by powerful partisan hierarchies, but modern government and corporate entities, for all their coercive power and vaunted skills as 'leaders'." Looking at their mission as defined by state resolutions and petitions entered into the Congressional Journal on its first day, it found that on the common issues of the relief of Boston, securing Colonial rights, eventually restoring harmonious relations with Great Britain, and repealing taxes, they overachieved their mission goals, defeated the largest army and navy in the world, and created two new types of republic. Olsen suggests that the Congress, if slow, when judged by its many achievements – not the least being recognizing its flaws, then replacing and terminating itself – was a success.
August 23: In his Proclamation of Rebellion (officially titled "A Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition"), King George III declares elements of the American colonies in "open and avowed rebellion" and orders officials of the British Empire "to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion"
June 21: The Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783 forces congress to flee Philadelphia.
February 21: Congress calls a constitutional convention "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein and when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government and the preservation of the Union"
July 8: A committee is formed to examine all ratifications received and to develop a plan for putting the new Constitution into operation.
^ a b Maier, Pauline (2010). Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 376–377. ISBN 978-0-684-86854-7.
^ Maier, Pauline (2010). Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 429. ISBN 978-0-684-86854-7.
Henderson, H. James (1974). Party Politics in the Continental Congress. New York: McGraw–Hill. ISBN 0-07-028143-2.
Rakove, Jack N. (1979). The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-8018-2864-3.
The 99 Percent Declaration or 99% Declaration is a not-for-profit organization based in Kentucky that originated from a working group of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in Zuccotti Park, New York City, in October 2011. The organization published a document calling for a "National General Assembly" to be held beginning the week of July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia, which was rejected by the general assemblies of OWS and Occupy Philadelphia. The Declaration includes demands for an immediate ban on all monetary and gift contributions to all politicians, implementation of a public financing system for political campaigns, and the enactment of an amendment to the United States Constitution overturning the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. FEC decision.
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 original states of the United States of America that served as its first constitution. It was approved, after much debate (between July 1776 and November 1777), by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and sent to the states for ratification. The Articles of Confederation came into force on March 1, 1781, after being ratified by all 13 states. A guiding principle of the Articles was to preserve the independence and sovereignty of the states. The weak central government established by the Articles received only those powers which the former colonies had recognized as belonging to king and parliament.The Articles formed a war-time confederation of states, with an extremely limited central government. While unratified, the document was used by the Congress to conduct business, direct the American Revolutionary War, conduct diplomacy with foreign nations, and deal with territorial issues and Native American relations. The adoption of the Articles made few perceptible changes in the federal government, because it did little more than legalize what the Continental Congress had been doing. That body was renamed the Congress of the Confederation; but Americans continued to call it the Continental Congress, since its organization remained the same.As the Confederation Congress attempted to govern the continually growing American states, delegates discovered that the limitations placed upon the central government rendered it ineffective at doing so. As the government's weaknesses became apparent, especially after Shays' Rebellion, some prominent political thinkers in the fledgling US began asking for changes to the Articles. Their hope was to create a stronger national government. Initially, some states met to deal with their trade and economic problems. However, as more states became interested in meeting to change the Articles, a meeting was set in Philadelphia on May 25, 1787. This became the Constitutional Convention. It was quickly agreed that changes would not work, and instead the entire Articles needed to be replaced. On March 4, 1789, the government under the Articles was replaced with the federal government under the Constitution. The new Constitution provided for a much stronger federal government by establishing a chief executive (the President), courts, and taxing powers.
The Continental Association, often known simply as the "Association", was a system created by the First Continental Congress in 1774 for implementing a trade boycott with Great Britain. Congress hoped that by imposing economic sanctions, they would pressure Great Britain into redressing the grievances of the colonies, in particular repealing the Intolerable Acts passed by the British Parliament. The Association aimed to alter Britain's policies towards the colonies without severing allegiance.
The Declaration concluded with an outline of Congress's plans: to enter into a boycott of British trade (the Continental Association) until their grievances were redressed, to publish addresses to the people of Great Britain and British America, and to send a petition to the King.
John Collins (June 8, 1717 – March 4, 1795), was the third Governor of the U.S. state of Rhode Island from 1786 to 1790. He was the last Independent to serve as Governor of Rhode Island until Lincoln Chafee (2011–2015).
John Dickinson (November 2 Jul./November 13Greg., 1732 – February 14, 1808), a Founding Father of the United States, was a solicitor and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware known as the "Penman of the Revolution" for his twelve Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, published individually in 1767 and 1768. As a member of the First Continental Congress, where he was a signee to the Continental Association, Dickinson drafted most of the 1774 Petition to the King, and then, as a member of the Second Continental Congress, wrote the 1775 Olive Branch Petition. When these two attempts to negotiate with King George III of Great Britain failed, Dickinson reworked Thomas Jefferson's language and wrote the final draft of the 1775 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. When Congress then decided to seek independence from Great Britain, Dickinson served on the committee that wrote the Model Treaty, and then wrote the first draft of the 1776–1777 Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.
Dickinson later served as President of the 1786 Annapolis Convention, which called for the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Dickinson attended the Convention as a delegate from Delaware.
He also wrote "The Liberty Song" in 1768, was a militia officer during the American Revolution, President of Delaware, President of Pennsylvania, and was among the wealthiest men in the British American colonies. Upon Dickinson's death, President Thomas Jefferson recognized him as being "Among the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain whose 'name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution.'"Together with his wife, Mary Norris Dickinson, he is the namesake of Dickinson College (originally John and Mary's College), as well as of the Dickinson School of Law of Pennsylvania State University and the University of Delaware's Dickinson Complex. John Dickinson High School was opened/dedicated in 1959 as part of the public schools in northern Delaware.
John Walton (1738–1783) was a Georgia delegate to the Continental Congress. Though born in Virginia, Walton later became a planter near Augusta, Georgia. He was elected as a delegate from St. Paul Parish to the Provincial Congress at Savannah in 1775, and then elected to the Continental Congress in 1778. He signed the Articles of Confederation on behalf of Georgia on July 24, 1778. He held the office of surveyor of Richmond County for several years before his death in New Savannah, Georgia in 1783. His brother was George Walton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence for Georgia and one of the first governors of Georgia.
Samuel Huntington (July 16, 1731 [O.S. July 5, 1731] – January 5, 1796) was a jurist, statesman, and Patriot in the American Revolution from Connecticut. As a delegate to the Continental Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. He also served as President of the Continental Congress from 1779 to 1781, President of the United States in Congress Assembled in 1781, chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court from 1784 to 1785, and the 18th Governor of Connecticut from 1786 until his death.
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the spring of 1775 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia between September 5, 1774, and October 26, 1774. The Second Congress managed the Colonial war effort and moved incrementally towards independence. It eventually adopted the Lee Resolution which established the new country on July 2, 1776, and it agreed to the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Congress acted as the de facto national government of the United States by raising armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and making formal treaties such as the Olive Branch Petition.The Second Continental Congress came together on May 11, 1775, effectively reconvening the First Continental Congress. Many of the 56 delegates who attended the first meeting were in attendance at the second, and the delegates appointed the same president (Peyton Randolph) and secretary (Charles Thomson). Notable new arrivals included Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and John Hancock of Massachusetts. Within two weeks, Randolph was summoned back to Virginia to preside over the House of Burgesses; he was replaced in the Virginia delegation by Thomas Jefferson, who arrived several weeks later. Henry Middleton was elected as president to replace Randolph, but he declined. Hancock was elected president on May 24.Delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies were present when the Second Continental Congress convened. Georgia had not participated in the First Continental Congress and did not initially send delegates to the Second. On May 13, 1775, Lyman Hall was admitted as a delegate from the Parish of St. John's in the Colony of Georgia, not as a delegate from the colony itself. On July 4, 1775, revolutionary Georgians held a Provincial Congress to decide how to respond to the American Revolution, and that congress decided on July 8 to send delegates to the Continental Congress. They arrived on September 13. | 2019-04-18T10:20:49Z | https://howlingpixel.com/i-en/Continental_Congress |
MISSION VIEJO, Calif.—In a hilly, tucked-away neighborhood in this city, full of dogwalkers and SUVs and neatly trimmed front lawns, American flags flap outside the front doors, and nary a fence—white picket or otherwise—can be seen. Not long ago, a pair of canvassers for the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC tied to Paul Ryan that is dedicated to keeping the House of Representatives in Republican hands, visited the homes of everyone here who isn’t a registered Democrat. They just wanted to ask the locals if Rep. Mimi Walters, a second-term Republican, has their support, they explained, and to leave behind a sunny-looking door-hanger that touts her record. It probably seemed innocuous. But the canvassers were a symbol of radical, unpredictable turmoil. They were messengers of a quiet apocalypse they’re hoping to stop.
All is not well for the Republicans of Orange County. If it were, the door knockers wouldn’t be knocking on these particular doors, or many others across California’s third most populous county. The long-term demographic shifts that have basically doomed the Republican Party throughout the rest of the state may finally have reached the GOP’s prized California hideaway. And in Washington, the Republican Party is led by a man whose crass style of politics clashes with the sensibilities of the chinos-and-mimosas conservatives and sandals-and-surfboards libertarians who still run this place.
Republicans hold four of the county’s six congressional seats. There’s buttoned-up Ed Royce, the quintessential Southern California Republican, who is retiring after 26 years on the job. To his southeast, Walters is facing the fight of her political career. To her west lies Dana Rohrabacher, a Democratic target partially thanks to special counsel Robert Mueller’s interest in him and his chats with Julian Assange. And, down the coast, voters are saying good-bye to Darrell Issa, who’s ditching Congress after barely squeaking by to re-election in 2016.
Today less than half white, roughly one-third Latino, and nearly one-fifth Asian American, Orange County would appear from the outside to be a reasonable target for Democrats. At least 18 serious Democrats are running for one of the four Republican seats. The county is heavily, and famously, suburban, and the GOP is losing ground fast in areas like it: Donald Trump in 2016 became the third straight Republican presidential nominee to fall short of 50 percent in the suburbs nationwide. When Hillary Clinton won Orange County by beating Trump in 2016, she became the first Democrat to do so in 80 years, since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was re-elected with 61 percent of the national vote.
Millions of people watch The Real Housewives of Orange County, notes Gil Cisneros, a naval veteran turned lottery winner turned philanthropist who’s now one of at least six Democrats running for the seat soon to be vacated by Royce. “That paints the image of being this affluent, white community,” Cisneros says. “Parts of it are. But that’s not the majority of the county.” The caricature of a lily white, country club-lined Orange County is out-of-date. The territory far more accessible to Democrats than most outsiders realize.
When I asked Walters if her race is competitive, her answer was a straightforward “No.” She doesn’t buy that her seat is up for grabs, and she insisted that tax cuts are the reason Republicans are going to win in this hotbed of fiscal conservatism, not to mention keep their majority.
When he chose Fountain Valley to kick off his 1984 re-election campaign after the Republican convention, Ronald Reagan shone a spotlight on Orange County, a coastal strip that was largely well-off, stacked with retirees and military families, and nearly 80 percent white. Just 10 years earlier, when Yorba Linda’s Richard Nixon landed back home after resigning the presidency, 5,000 locals greeted him. Starting in 1940, the county—whose local airport is named after John Wayne—voted Republican in 19 straight presidential elections.
The curtain is fraying. When Royce surprised Republican leaders on Capitol Hill by announcing his retirement on a Monday afternoon in early January, they immediately wondered if the seat he’d held since 1992 was salvageable, multiple GOP campaign pros tasked with saving the district now acknowledge. Over the quarter-century Royce has served in Congress, rising to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, his district changed considerably: It’s now even more highly educated, and it’s two-thirds nonwhite after years of rapid Latino and Asian American growth. In the roughly half of Royce’s territory that fits into Orange County, the Republican registration advantage is down to around 2,000 voters. “This is the kind of district that will tell us whether we have a big fight or a little fight on our hands,” concedes Ohio congressman Steve Stivers, who’s tasked this year with maintaining the House majority as the National Republican Congressional Committee’s chairman.
Thirty-five years ago, Orange County was around 15 percent Hispanic. It’s more than a third Latino now. (That group is expected to become its biggest within the next 10 years.) Local Republicans point to 1996, when Democrat Loretta Sanchez unseated GOP Rep. Bob Dornan, as their first warning sign. But their troubles go beyond the two-pronged disaster in the rest of the state—explosive Latino growth and Republican toxicity after 1994’s anti-illegal immigration Proposition 187. Local moderates have departed the party in droves. That trend accelerated with the rise of Trump.
In 1992, Republicans’ registration advantage over Democrats in Orange County was roughly 18 points. By 2016, that margin was 4 percent. Voters who decline to side with any party now make up nearly one quarter of the county. Many of them are the exact kind of upper-middle class suburbanites who for years typified Orange County. Now, they can’t stand Trump.
“It clearly is changing,” says Irvine mayor Donald Wagner, a former Republican state assemblyman. “You can’t look at the numbers and be oblivious of that.” Wagner presides over a majority-minority city that’s nearly 40 percent Asian American. Behind his desk are framed pictures of Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Pope John Paul II and Reagan.
“There is a component of dislike for the president here, and that’s fueling some of it,” he says. “Take that out of the equation—” Wagner sighs, and stops himself. “You can’t in ’18,” he concedes. “Who knows what ’20 holds—and it’s different. But you can’t take that out of the equation.” Trump’s face isn’t on the door-hangers that Ryan’s super PAC, which has field offices throughout southern California, leaves at homes in districts like Walters’. And when California’s Republican leaders asked for high-profile help last year, it was Vice President Mike Pence, not Trump, who swung by the area for October fundraisers.
Even so, in March, more than 1,000 locals gathered in Huntington Beach for a rally to support the president that ended in four arrests when they scrapped with counter-protestors. Three months later, in the same Fountain Valley park where Reagan formally announced his re-election campaign, and where a statue of Reagan now stands, 300 Trump fans held another rally.
Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley fall in Rohrabacher’s district, the whitest, wealthiest, most #MAGA-friendly of the bunch. The national Republican Party is counting on Rohrabacher’s local profile, established during 15 congressional terms, to overwhelm his downsides: namely, his unabashed Russophilia at time when the president is under suspicion for his dealings with Moscow.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has reportedly blocked Rohrabacher from talking to Trump, and one of Rohrabacher’s opponents, Harley Rouda, wrote to the FBI to flag the incumbent’s August 2017 meeting with Julian Assange. In that session, the congressman has said, he tried to arrange a deal to let Assange escape legal trouble for publishing U.S. government secrets in exchange for evidence that Russia was not WikiLeaks’ source for its trove of emails stolen from Democrats during the 2016 campaign.
Yet if national Republicans are confident about any of the Orange County districts, it’s Rohrabacher’s. A surfer and a passionate advocate of loosened restrictions on marijuana, he has long followed his own muse, a pattern that dates to a 1980s trip to Afghanistan to join a rebel infantry fighting Soviets just after his first election. As national reinforcements fly into California to save Republicans’ House majority, Rohrabacher is being used as an example of how candidates can establish local brands that can overwhelm the daily headlines coming out of the West Wing—as long as Mueller doesn’t get in the way.
Still, recent polling shows Rohrabacher in trouble: One mid-January survey revealed that nearly 9 in 10 of his constituents who disapprove of Trump say they’re unlikely to vote for Rohrabacher. And research conducted by the local Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin late last year, and shared with me, showed that Trump’s approval rating was 17 points underwater in Rohrabacher’s district, and 15 in Royce’s. Trump, Tulchin says, dominated each of the focus groups he ran in Orange County throughout 2017.
But it’s Issa, not Rohrabacher, who was blown down by the national winds before any votes were cast. Anchored in San Diego County, Issa’s district is split between fired-up Democrats and the traditional conservatives in southern Orange County who carried him to a 1,600-vote victory in 2016—the closest race in the country. Four serious Democratic contenders entered the race this time, and Issa—a car security system mogul and former House Oversight Committee chairman—got the message. One day after Royce announced he would retire at the end of the year, Issa did the same.
The mood on the Republican side of Capitol Hill was dark the day Issa pulled the plug on his D.C. career. “There’s no putting lipstick on that: They’re both competitive districts,” Stivers told POLITICO of Royce’s and Issa’s retirements. Another Ohio Republican congressman conceded to the Washington Post that the atmosphere was starting to remind him of 2006, the last time Democrats were on the right side of a wave election that handed them the House.
To local Republicans, the idea that lifelong conservatives—even the droves who've left their party in recent years—would suddenly vote for a Democrat is folly. Walters’ and Rohrabacher’s 17-point victories in 2016 came even as Clinton beat Trump in their districts, after all. Plenty of one-time Republicans may now be independents, sure, but they’re far from liberals. The area is changing, they admit, just not as fast as Democrats think, especially with the rightward bent of many in the Asian American population. Democrats’ over-exuberance is pushing their party untenably far to the left for the area’s economic conservatives, they say, pointing to primaries in which each Democratic candidate has backed a Bernie Sanders-style single-payer health care system.
Then there’s California’s quirky primary system, where only the top two vote-getters—across all parties—compete in November’s general election. A candidate glut threatens to split the Democratic vote and lock the liberals out of power. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, has threatened to step in and pick favorites if it’s forced to—a maneuver that would likely set off a messy round of intra-party finger pointing.
Press used to host conventions in Orange County simply to maintain some Democratic presence here, hoping to lay groundwork for eventual change. “But we never thought it would turn this far,” he says.
Andy Thorburn, campaigning to replace Royce, has run a digital ad calling for Trump’s impeachment. Rouda—a former Republican who gave money to John Kasich in 2016—has raised money online using a similar pitch. And at the end of January, Sara Jacobs started running the first TV spot of her campaign to replace Issa. The 30-second video opens with a recorded news program announcing Issa’s retirement, and follows with a voiceover as a large “X” lands atop an image of the nine-term congressman. “He’s out,” the ad intones. “But he’s still there,” it continues, as a clip of Trump begins. “And if we want to hold him accountable, we need to win back Congress,” the speaker says. The screen pans to reveal a scene from last year’s Women’s March in Washington.
Royce’s and Issa’s districts were among the first anywhere to get paid organizers on the ground in early 2017, courtesy of House Democrats’ campaign operation, as the DCCC also moved its Western political office from D.C. to Irvine. By mid-2017, Democratic House members were flying into Orange County to campaign against their Republican colleagues. Voters began holding mock town halls with empty seats on stage to protest the members’ unwillingness to appear. The demonstrations’ frequency and intensity increased when all four Orange County Republicans voted for the failed plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Neither Issa’s nor Rohrabacher’s votes against December's tax bill paused the drumbeat.
“I’ve never seen such political activism that’s going on,” Alan Lowenthal, one of the two Democratic House members whose districts overlap with Orange County, told me. Lowenthal helped organize a forum for candidates in Rohrabacher’s district that drew a crowd of more than 500 voters on a Saturday morning nearly a year out from Election Day.
Around the time the DCCC touched down here in early February of last year, Marian Bodnar, a Cal State Long Beach music professor and a political novice, held the first meeting of her local Indivisible group. She expected 10 people to come to the Fullerton Community Center for a meeting of the area’s podcast-woke netroots. Ninety voters packed in. A year later the group counts 1,600 Royce constituents as members.
To their south, between 300 and 800 of Issa’s constituents began showing up outside his district office every Tuesday, demanding to speak with him in an escalating protest. In May, Issa appeared at last. After talking with members of the crowd, he disappeared inside, only to re-emerge on the building’s roof. He wanted to take a picture of the scene.
Piling into Marie Callender’s Restaurant and Bakery on a chilly Monday night, down the street from a Vietnamese evangelical church, the women of the Santa Ana chapter of the National Federation of Republican Women got to chatting about the president—“Mr. Trump”—before the evening’s programming began. Trump’s name didn’t come up during the official session, a Q&A with Santa Ana’s interim police chief that largely focused on the city’s homelessness problem, followed by announcements that included logistical planning for National School Choice Week. But, bantering among themselves around a long wooden table amid brick walls and cloth-cushioned booths, the women—white and Hispanic and in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s—offered unprompted theories about why Trump lost Orange County 14 months earlier.
Swapping tales of once-skeptical family members who are now full-blown Trumpistas, they quickly reached the consensus that Trump was just too moderate then. One, behind large glasses, pointed me to a list of Trump accomplishments on the far-right website WorldNetDaily. A car with a “Remember BENGHAZI” bumper sticker sat in the parking lot, visible through the window behind me. Another of the women handed me her business card, which was festooned with American flags. Across from her contact information, it declared, in italics, Make America Great Again. And a third woman insisted a serious backlash is coming against the liberal nonsense about an impending Democratic electoral wave, fueled by women like her who are fed up with the news media calling them dumb for supporting Trump.
The answer sits in the Oval Office.
The canvassers have a third question for each voter they meet, after they’ve gauged the household’s level of support for Walters. “Do you support Donald Trump?” they ask, tentatively. The answer is usually curt, a quick yes, and the pair typically then smiles and hands the voter a door-hanger.
Less certain is whether enough of her neighbors agree. And whether Orange County has changed too much since September 2, 1984.
On that day, approaching the end of his first term in Washington, President Reagan climbed down from Air Force One at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro and stepped into the doorway of his limo. He grabbed a microphone to address the Marine families gathered to greet him just before his first re-election campaign event.
“Everyone was smiling on the plane when we headed west,” he told the crowd. Approaching the service members, Reagan uttered a one-liner he’d been rehearsing at private fundraisers for years. The joke reads a bit differently now. | 2019-04-19T06:26:09Z | https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/11/orange-county-republicans-congress-217231 |
LEGO 6174890 - Also includes eight minifigures: captain jack sparrow, Lieutenant Lesaro, Carina, Henry, Officer Magda, Captain Salazar, Officer Santos and the Silent Mary Masthead, plus two detachable ghost sharks. Bring the magic of disney's pirates of the Caribbean to your home with this impressive replica of the Silent Mary ghost pirate ship.
This highly detailed lego model with over 2, detailed quarterdeck, opening skeleton hull with decay and destruction detailing, 200 pieces features a hinged bow section, tattered sails, collapsible main mast and two further masts, long bowsprit with crow’s nest and mast, movable rudder, plus a rowboat with two oars and an array of weapons and accessory elements.
LEGO Pirates of The Caribbean Silent Mary 71042 Building Kit Ship - Features a hinged bow section, three masts including a collapsible main mast, tattered sails, detailed quarterdeck, movable rudder, long bowsprit with crow’s nest and mast, opening skeleton hull with decay and destruction detailing, plus a rowboat with two oars. Includes eight minifigures: captain jack sparrow, Captain Salazar, Carina, officer Santos and the Silent Mary Masthead, Henry, Officer Magda, Lieutenant Lesaro, plus two detachable ghost sharks.
Pirate ship accessory elements include a compass, monocular, sextant, two brooms and a ship-in-a-bottle, Care and Cleaning: Wipe Clean with a Damp Cloth. Special elements include Captain Salazar’s hairpiece and a decorated Galileo Diary with printed cover and astronomy page. The silent mary with the main mast in vertical position measures over 18 inches 48cm high, 26 inches 68cm long and 8 inches 22cm wide, and over 14 inches 36cm wide with the main mast collapsed.
This model provides a rewarding build and play experience, and the integrated stand makes it suitable for display in the home or office.
LEGO 6204049 - Ideal for display and role-play, this 6204049 has 2 removable roofs, an opening back wall in the shop for easy access, cat and 3 seagull figures, 4 minifigures, as well as loads of other cool details and elements to fire up the imagination. Build the lego ideas old fishing store, railings, with detailed exterior, shop and connected lookout tower with office.
. Visit the beachside old fishing store, featuring a shop packed with fishing-themed elements, and a connected watchtower with a 360-degree viewing balcony and office on the lower level. Old fishing store measures over 12" high, 9" wide and 9" deep. Exterior features steps to the front and side doors of the store, ventilator and assorted elements!
LEGO Ideas Old Fishing Store 21310 - Building Toy and Popular Gift for Fans of LEGO Sets and The Outdoors 2049 Pieces - Includes 4 minifigures: a captain, a fisherman, a fisherwoman and a child, plus a cat and three seagull figures. Lego ideas brick building toys are compatible with all other LEGO construction sets for creative building. 2049 pieces - for boys and girls ages 12+.
LEGO 6174050 - Head for home with the festive winter village station holiday set, and a beautiful, featuring a snowy railroad station with wreath adorned lampposts and clock tower, mailbox, platform, snowy grade crossing with twin barriers and lights, green trees, festively decorated bus with opening doors and a luggage rack with removable luggage and gift wrapped packages.
Build the lego ideas old fishing store, railings, with detailed exterior, shop and connected lookout tower with office. Old fishing store measures over 12" high, 9" wide and 9" deep. 2049 pieces - for boys and girls ages 12+. Includes 5 minifigures: a bus driver, Grandmother, barista, child and a ticket Agent.
LEGO Creator Expert Winter Village Station 10259 Building Kit - The festively adorned winter village station features a snowy train station with a clock tower, platform, ticket counter, lampposts, Grade crossing with twin barriers and lights, coffee shop, mailbox. Bus features festive decoration, opening doors, luggage rack with removable luggage and gift wrapped packages, and a removable roof for accessing the detailed interior.
Winter village station measures over 7" 19cm high, 11" 28cm wide and 5" 14cm deep. Grade crossing when closed measures over 2" 6cm high, bus measures over 3" 9cm high, 5" 13cm wide and 5" 14cm deep, 5" 15cm long and 2" 7cm wide. Includes 5 minifigures. This lego creator expert 6174050 also includes a ticket counter with a timetable and a transaction counter window with room for sliding out tickets to travelers, cups, plus a coffee shop with a serving hatch and a detailed interior with an Espresso machine, cash register and a menu.
LEGO 6212694 - Repel the dragon hunters’ hunterCopter attacks on first Bourne with Ninja warriors Cole and Kai and claim the dragon armor. Exterior features steps to the front and side doors of the store, ventilator and assorted elements! Includes 4 minifigures: a captain, a fisherman, a fisherwoman and a child, plus a cat and three seagull figures.
Lego ideas brick building toys are compatible with all other LEGO construction sets for creative building. This perfect playset for boys and girls who love ninjas and dragons! The helicopter model features stud shooters, dragon bait and assorted ninja weapons. Lego ninjago masters of spinjitzu: firstbourne dragon building kit is compatible with all LEGO construction sets for creative building.
LEGO NINJAGO Masters of Spinjitzu: Firstbourne 70653 Ninja Toy Building Kit with Red Dragon Figure, Minifigures and a Helicopter 882 Pieces - Buildable firstbourne dragon figure toy measures over 7" 19cm high, 20" 53cm long and 18" 48cm wide HunterCopter helicopter toy measures over 4" 11cm high, 9" 25cm long and 2" 6cm wide. 2049 pieces - for boys and girls ages 12+. Kids will love roleplaying epic battle scenes between the helicopter and dragon model.
Red dragon firstbourne attacks with a swiping tail, and includes flapping wings and a minifigure saddle so the ninja figures can ride the dragon. The hunter copter has stud shooters and vengestone chain element to lower minifigures, attach to first Bourne or lower the cooked turkey element as dragon bait.
LEGO 6222979 - Grade crossing when closed measures over 2" 6cm high, bus measures over 3" 9cm high, 5" 13cm wide and 5" 14cm deep, 5" 15cm long and 2" 7cm wide. Get ready for battle! kids will love building the lego ninjago Firstbourne set with a red dragon. Old fishing store measures over 12" high, 9" wide and 9" deep.
The helicopter model features stud shooters, dragon bait and assorted ninja weapons. Lego ninjago masters of spinjitzu: firstbourne dragon building kit is compatible with all LEGO construction sets for creative building. Buildable firstbourne dragon figure toy measures over 7" 19cm high, 20" 53cm long and 18" 48cm wide HunterCopter helicopter toy measures over 4" 11cm high, 9" 25cm long and 2" 6cm wide.
This expert model boat building set is built with 962 pieces and features a buildable cork and wax seal element, crow's nest, mast, sails and flag, ship with a captain's quarters, cannons, and a display stand with a nameplate. This nautical collectible building toy includes a display stand so builders can proudly show their creation.
LEGO Ideas Ship in a Bottle 21313 Expert Building Kit Model Ship, Collectible Display Set and Toy for Adults 962 Pieces - 2049 pieces - for boys and girls ages 12+. It also comes with an instruction booklet about the set's fan creator and LEGO designers. Builders of all ages will enjoy completing this advanced building set! The detailed ship in a bottle also includes a LEGO brick stand to display it proudly. Builders will love this miniature model ship build.
Lego ideas ship in a bottle model building kit is compatible with all LEGO construction sets for creative building.
LEGO 6213820 - This is the perfect model for older kids and adults who love miniature model ships! This set also includes 4 lego ninjago mini figures with assorted weapons—including nya’s double scythe and Lord garmadon’s buildable katanas—to inspire countless role-play battles. It also comes with an instruction booklet about the set's fan creator and LEGO designers.
Kids will love roleplaying epic battle scenes between the helicopter and dragon model. Red dragon firstbourne attacks with a swiping tail, and includes flapping wings and a minifigure saddle so the ninja figures can ride the dragon. This model is built with 882 pieces and includes 6 minifigures: Kai, Chew Toy and Muzzle, Jet Jack, Cole, Heavy Metal, plus a pedestal and Vengestone chain.
Help our ninja heroes rid ninja go city of evil Lord garmadon and the huge LEGO Ninjago 70658 ONI Titan. This expert model boat building set is built with 962 pieces and features a buildable cork and wax seal element, sails and flag, ship with a captain's quarters, mast, crow's nest, cannons, and a display stand with a nameplate.
LEGO NINJAGO Masters of Spinjitzu: Oni Titan 70658 Building Kit 552 Piece - This nautical collectible building toy includes a display stand so builders can proudly show their creation. The helicopter model features stud shooters, dragon bait and assorted ninja weapons. Lego ninjago masters of spinjitzu: firstbourne dragon building kit is compatible with all LEGO construction sets for creative building.
Buildable firstbourne dragon figure toy measures over 7" 19cm high, 20" 53cm long and 18" 48cm wide HunterCopter helicopter toy measures over 4" 11cm high, 9" 25cm long and 2" 6cm wide.
LEGO 6268245 - Kids will love roleplaying epic battle scenes between the helicopter and dragon model. Red dragon firstbourne attacks with a swiping tail, and includes flapping wings and a minifigure saddle so the ninja figures can ride the dragon. This model is built with 882 pieces and includes 6 minifigures: Kai, Heavy Metal, Chew Toy and Muzzle, Jet Jack, Cole, plus a pedestal and Vengestone chain.
This is the perfect model for older kids and adults who love miniature model ships! . Build darth vader's feature-packed castle on planet Mustafar with a buildable TIE Advanced Fighter for amazing LEGO Star Wars battling action!2049 pieces - for boys and girls ages 12+. Build the lego ideas old fishing store, railings, with detailed exterior, shop and connected lookout tower with office.
This expert model boat building set is built with 962 pieces and features a buildable cork and wax seal element, crow's nest, mast, sails and flag, cannons, ship with a captain's quarters, and a display stand with a nameplate. This nautical collectible building toy includes a display stand so builders can proudly show their creation.
LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader’s Castle 75251 Building Kit 1060 Pieces - Amazon Exclusive - Grade crossing when closed measures over 2" 6cm high, bus measures over 3" 9cm high, 5" 13cm wide and 5" 14cm deep, 5" 15cm long and 2" 7cm wide. Get ready for battle! kids will love building the lego ninjago Firstbourne set with a red dragon. Builders of all ages will enjoy completing this advanced building set! The detailed ship in a bottle also includes a LEGO brick stand to display it proudly.
LEGO 6247224 - This perfect playset for boys and girls who love ninjas and dragons! Build a lego interpretation of the LAS Vegas skyline featuring iconic LAS Vegas attractions! Recreate and role-play epic ninja scenes from the NINJAGO Masters of Spinjitzu TV show. Ego architecture building toys are compatible with all Lego construction sets for creative building.
Builders will love this miniature model ship build. Lego ideas ship in a bottle model building kit is compatible with all LEGO construction sets for creative building. Bottle on stand measures over 3" 10cm high, ship measures over 3" 8cm high, 12" 31cm wide and 3" 10cm deep, 5" 14cm long and 1" 5cm wide.
LEGO Architecture Las Vegas 21047, Multi - Build the posable oni titan, with gripping hands, a disc shooter on each arm and a holster with 2 big katanas, then confront this colossus with Spinjitzu masters Nya and Lloyd. This cool toy for kids includes 2 ninja figures and ninja enemy characters Lord Garmadon and Harumi with katanas, spears and other ninja weapons.
Grade crossing when closed measures over 2" 6cm high, bus measures over 3" 9cm high, 5" 13cm wide and 5" 14cm deep, 5" 15cm long and 2" 7cm wide. Get ready for battle! kids will love building the lego ninjago Firstbourne set with a red dragon. Includes 5 minifigures: a bus driver, barista, Grandmother, child and a ticket Agent.
The festively adorned winter village station features a snowy train station with a clock tower, ticket counter, Grade crossing with twin barriers and lights, coffee shop, platform, lampposts, mailbox. Bus features festive decoration, luggage rack with removable luggage and gift wrapped packages, opening doors, and a removable roof for accessing the detailed interior.
LEGO 6181905 - 2793 pieces - for boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 16 years old. Castle measures over 16" 41cm high, 11" 28cm wide and 9" 23cm deep; TIE Advanced Fighter measures over 2" 6cm high, 4" 11cm wide and 3" 9cm long. This lego star wars darth vader's castle 75251 construction toy includes lots of original LEGO building bricks for endless creative play.
This is the perfect model for older kids and adults who love miniature model ships! Lego technic building toys are compatible with all LEGO construction sets for creative building. An authentic white, gray and black color scheme and iconic 3-pointed Mercedes-Benzes Star add the finishing touches to this impressive model.
This las vegas, luxor hotel, encore hotel, Nevada Lego skyline model includes the Bellagio hotel, stratosphere tower and the downtown Fremont street experience. Measures over 7" 19cm high, 10" 27cm wide and 2" 7cm deep. This model is built with 882 pieces and includes 6 minifigures: Kai, Chew Toy and Muzzle, Heavy Metal, Jet Jack, Cole, plus a pedestal and Vengestone chain.
LEGO Technic Mercedes-Benz Arocs 3245 42043 Building Kit 2793 Piece - Build the lego ideas old fishing store, railings, with detailed exterior, shop and connected lookout tower with office. The arcos 3245 is over 12" high, 21" long and 5" wide. Build one of two fully-featured Mercedes-Benz construction vehicles with one of the largest LEGO Technic sets ever! Includes a darth vader figure, Darth Vader bacta tank figure, 2 Royal Guard figures and an Imperial Transport Pilot.
LEGO 6137063 - Exterior features steps to the front and side doors of the store, ventilator and assorted elements! Includes 4 minifigures: a captain, a fisherman, a fisherwoman and a child, plus a cat and three seagull figures. Lego ideas brick building toys are compatible with all other LEGO construction sets for creative building.
Castle measures over 16" 41cm high, 11" 28cm wide and 9" 23cm deep; TIE Advanced Fighter measures over 2" 6cm high, 4" 11cm wide and 3" 9cm long. Includes 5 minifigures: a bus driver, barista, Grandmother, child and a ticket Agent. The festively adorned winter village station features a snowy train station with a clock tower, ticket counter, lampposts, platform, Grade crossing with twin barriers and lights, coffee shop, mailbox.
LEGO Technic Bucket Wheel Excavator 42055 Construction Toy - Bus features festive decoration, luggage rack with removable luggage and gift wrapped packages, opening doors, and a removable roof for accessing the detailed interior. Winter village station measures over 7" 19cm high, 11" 28cm wide and 5" 14cm deep. 487 pieces - las vegas souvenir model for boys and girls over 12 years old.
When you feel like another building challenge, rebuild it into a Mobile Aggregate Processing Plant. Lego technic building toys are compatible with all LEGO construction sets for creative building. Recreate and role-play epic ninja scenes from the NINJAGO Masters of Spinjitzu TV show. 1060 pieces - building brick set for boys and girls aged 9+ and for fans and big kids of all ages.
LEGO 60153 - Special accessories include an MP3 player, parasol, radio, money notes, sand castle, and kayak.169 pieces - for boy and girls between the ages of 5 and 12 years old. Build the highly detailed 2-in-1 model featuring an array of different motorized functions. This lego star wars darth vader's castle 75251 construction toy includes lots of original LEGO building bricks for endless creative play.
Old fishing store measures over 12" high, 9" wide and 9" deep. Bucket wheel excavator measures over 16" high, 28" long and 11" wide. Grade crossing when closed measures over 2" 6cm high, 5" 13cm wide and 5" 14cm deep, bus measures over 3" 9cm high, 5" 15cm long and 2" 7cm wide. Get ready for battle! kids will love building the lego ninjago Firstbourne set with a red dragon.
This model is built with 882 pieces and includes 6 minifigures: Kai, Chew Toy and Muzzle, Jet Jack, Heavy Metal, Cole, plus a pedestal and Vengestone chain. Mobile aggregate processing plant with boom retracted measures over 8" high, 34" long and 8" wide, and over 12" high with boom extended. Build the lego ideas old fishing store, with detailed exterior, railings, shop and connected lookout tower with office.
LEGO City Town People Pack – Fun at The Beach 60153 Building Kit 169 Piece - Includes lego power functions such as forward and reverse driving, rotating bucket wheel, moving conveyor belt and rotating superstructure. The helicopter model features stud shooters, dragon bait and assorted ninja weapons. Lego ninjago masters of spinjitzu: firstbourne dragon building kit is compatible with all LEGO construction sets for creative building. | 2019-04-24T22:29:23Z | http://playgamesly.com/lego-pirates-of-the-caribbean-silent-mary-71042-building-kit-ship/ |
To study the hypothesis that gemcitabine treatment augments the chemoresistance to gemcitabine by clusterin (sCLU) upregulation. Clusterin inhibition could augment the chemosensitivity of human pancreatic cancer cells by inhibition of clusterin-dependent pERK1/2 activation.
Clusterin was silenced by serial concentration of OGX-011 transfection in pancreatic cancer MIAPaCa-2 and BxPC-3 cell lines, then treated with serial concentration of gemcitabine. After the cells were treated with OGX-011 for 8 h, the cells were then treated with 5 μM ERK inhibitor PD98059 for 18 h or transfected with a wt-pERK-expressing plasmid into these cells for 24 h, after which the cells were treated with 1.0 uM gemcitabine for 24–72 h. Cell proliferation was determined by MTT. Apoptosis was quantified by flow cytometry,.sCLU and pERK1/2 production was analyzed by western blot, and sCLU mRNA was analyzed by RT-PCR. Xenograft of established tumors was used to evaluate primary tumor growth and apoptosis after treatment with gemcitabine alone or in combination with OGX-011. Phosphorylated ERK1/2 and sCLU levels in tumor tissues were measured by TUNEL analysis.
As detected by MTT and FACS assay, a combination of gemcitabine + OGX-011 reflected the chemotherapeutic sensitivity and increased the gemcitabine -induced apoptosis in MIAPaCa-2 and BxPC-3 cells. Western blotting and RT-PCR analysis revealed that the expression of clusterin was higher in gemcitabine -resistant MIAPaCa-2 cells, however, decreased significantly after pretreatment with OGX-011. Furthermore, the OGX-011 or combination of gemcitabine + OGX-011 decreased the gemcitabine -induced activation of pERK1/2. wt-pERK-re-expression decreased OGX-011+ gemcitabine -induced apoptosis. Finally, OGX-011 in combination with gemcitabine substantially decreased the in vivo tumor growth and promoted apoptosis. Taken together, clusterin confers gmcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer cells.
Knockdown of clusterin by OGX-011 transfection sensitizes pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine by inhibition of gemcitabine -induced clusterin-pERK1/2 activation.
Pancreatic cancer has the worst prognosis of all major cancers, with an overall 5-year survival rate of around 5%. The current clinical standard of care for advanced pancreatic cancer is gemcitabine, a cytotoxic nucleoside analogue. Gemcitabine results in a tumor response rate of 12% and offers a median survival time of 5 months. Unfortunately, this means that the best current treatment offers very modest benefits. Recent studies have indicated that targeted therapies in combination with gemcitabine can have statistically significant benefits. However, the results to date remain meager, and new approaches to improving the effectiveness of gemcitabine are needed. One of the targets considered for combination therapy that has generated wide attention is clusterin.
Clusterin, also known as testosterone-repressed prostate message-2 (TRPM-2), sulfated glycoprotein-2 (SGP-2), apolipoprotein J (Apo J) or SP40, is a ubiquitous heterodimeric-secreted glycoprotein of 75–80 kDa. A single-copy gene in humans of nine exons, spanning over 16 kb and located on chromosome 8p21-p12, encodes an mRNA of approximately 2 kb, which directs the synthesis of a 449-amino acid primary polypeptides chain. Recent focus has turned to clusterin as a key contributor to chemoresistance to anticancer agents. Its role has been documented in prostate cancer for paclitaxel/docetaxel resistance as well as in renal, breast, and lung tumor cells. Moreover, it is abnormally upregulated in numerous advanced stage and metastatic cancers spanning gastric cancer, bladder, cervical, breast,ovarian, hepatocellular, colorectal, renal, prostate, head and neck, lung carcinomas, melanomaand lymphoma.It is noteworthy that only the cytoplasmic/secretory clusterin form (sCLU), and not the nuclear form, is expressed in aggressive late stage tumors, which is in line with its antiapoptotic function.
Many reports also document that sCLUc inhibits mitochondrial apoptosis. For example, sCLUc suppresses p53-activating stress signals and stabilizes cytosolic Ku70-Bax protein complex to inhibit Bax activation. sCLUc specifically interacts with conformationally altered Bax to inhibit apoptosis in response to chemotherapeutic drugs. sCLU sliencing alters the ratio of anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family members, disrupting Ku70/Bax complexes and Bax activation[24, 25]. In addition, sCLU increases Akt phosphorylation levels and cell survival rates. sCLU induces epithelial-mesenchymal transformation by increasing Smad2/3 stability and enhancing TGF-β-mediated Smad transcriptional activity. sCLU also promotes prostate cancer cell survival by increasing NF-κB nuclear transactivation, acting as a ubiquitin-binding protein that enhances COMMD1 and I-kB proteasomal degradation via interaction with E3 ligase family members. sCLU sliencing stabilized COMMD1 and I-κB, suppressing NF-κB translocation to the nucleus, and suppressing NF-κB-regulated gene signatures. Thus, sCLU has a key role in preventing apoptosis induced by cytotoxic agents and has the potential to be targeted for cancer therapy.
It has recently reported sCLU was overexpressed in pancreatic cancer tissues and sCLU overexpression confered gmcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer cells,. Furthermore,sCLU silencing sensitized pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine chemotherapy, however the mechanism is still unclear.
ERK1/2 is an important subfamily of mitogen-activated protein kinases that control a broad range of cellular activities and physiological processes. ERK1/2 can be activated transiently or persistently by MEK1/2 and upstream MAP3Ks in conjunction with regulation and involvement of scaffolding proteins and phosphatases. There is abundant evidence that survival factors can use the ERK1/2 pathway to increase the expression of several pro-survival BCL-2 proteins, notably BCL-2, BCL-xL and MCL-1, by promoting de novo gene expression in a variety of cell types. Clearly the ERK1/2 pathway can regulate several members of the BCL-2 protein family to achieve cell survival. ERK1/2 signalling can provide protection against chemotherapeutic cytotoxic drugs.
It has shown previously sCLU plays an important role in astrogliosis by stimulating the proliferation of astrocytes through activation of the extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 signaling pathway. Shim and Chou et al. also found significant relation between sCLU and ERK1/2 expression[33, 34]. We therefore suggested that sCLU silencing sensitized pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine chemotherapy may via ERK1/2 signaling pathway.
sCLU is not a traditional druggable target and can only be targeted at mRNA levels. An antisense inhibitor targeting the translation initiation site of human exon II CLU (OGX-011) was developed at the University of British Columbia and out-licensed to OncoGeneX Pharmaceuticals Inc. OGX-011, or custirsen, is a second-generation antisense oligonucleotide with a long tissue half-life of ~ 7 days, which potently suppresses sCLU levels in vitro and in vivo. OGX-011 improved the efficacy of chemotherapy, radiation, and hormone withdrawal by inhibiting expression of sCLU and enhancing apoptotic rates in preclinical xenograft models of prostate, lung, renal cell, breast, and other cancers[35–39].
In this study, we study the effect of sCLU silencing by OGX-011 on sensitizion of pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine chemotherapy, and eluated the mechanisms.
The human pancreatic cancer MIAPaCa-2 cells resistant to gemcitabine and BxPC-3 cells sensitive to gemcitabine were purchased from American Type Culture Collection. They were routinely cultured in DMEM supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum in a 37°C incubator in a humidified atmosphere of 5% CO2.
OGX-011 was purchased from OncoGenex Technologies. The antisense oligonucleotides were second-generation 21-mer antisense oligonucleotides with a 2′-O-(2-methoxy)ethyl modification. The antisense oligonucleotide clusterin sequence corresponding to the human clusterin initiation site was 5′-CAGCAGCAGAGTCTTCATCAT-3′ and designated OGX-011 (OncoGenex Technologies). The MEK inhibitor PD98059 was products of Calbiochem (San Diego, CA, USA), Antibodies for sCLU, and phospho-specific or the total form of antibodies against ERK1/2,GAPDH were purchased from Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Santa Cruz, CA, USA).
Total RNA was extracted from PANC-1 cells using TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen, CA, United States), according to the manufacturer’s protocol. The cDNAs were synthesized using the TaKaRa RNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR) Kit (TaKaRa, Japan). A full-length cDNA encoding human wt-pERK was cloned by PCR using 500 ng cDNA as a template and primers containing HindIII and BamHI restriction enzyme sites. The PCR products were ligated into pcDNA3.1 (Invitrogen, CA, United States) to create the plasmid pcDNA3.1- wt-pERK. MIA PaCa-2 and BxPC-3 cells were transfected with the pcDNA3.1 vector or pcDNA3.1- wt-pERK using FuGENE (Roche Diagnostic GmbH, Mannheim, Germany), according to the manufacturer’s protocol.
MIA PaCa-2 and BxPC-3 cells were treated with OGX-011(400,800,1000,1200 nM) for 24 h, then the cells were cultured overnight in 6-well plates and transfected with pcDNA3.1- wt-pERK using Lipofectamine Plus (Invitrogen) in 1 ml serum-free medium according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Four hours post-transfection, each well was supplemented with 1 ml of medium containing 20% FBS. Twenty-four hours post-transfection, media were removed and the cells were harvested or treated with gemcitabine for a further 24 hours.
About 25 μg protein was extracted, separated by 10% sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), transferred onto polyvinylidene fluoride membranes, and then reacted with primary rabbit antibodies against sCLU(1:100), pERK1/2(1:100) and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH)(1:200). After being extensively washed with PBS containing 0.1% Triton X-100, the membranes were incubated with alkaline phosphatase-conjugated goat anti-rabbit antibody for 30 minutes at room temperature. The bands were visualized using 1-step™ NBT/BCIP reagents (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Rockford, IL, USA) and detected by the Alpha Imager (Alpha Innotech, San Leandro, CA, USA).
The mRNA extraction and RT reaction for synthesizing the first-strand cDNA was carried out according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Primer sequences were below: 5′-CCAACAGAATTCATACGAGAAGG-3′ and 5′-CGTTGTATTTCCTGGTCAACCTC-3′ for sCLU;5′-TGATGGGTGTGAACCACGAG-3′, 3′-TTGAAGTCGCAGGAGACAACC-5′for GAPDH. The PCR conditions consisted of an initial denaturation at 95°C for 3 min, followed by 28 cycles of amplification (95°C for 15 s, 58°C for 15 s, and 72°C for 20 s) and a final extension step of 5 min at 72°C. PCR products were analyzed on a 1.2% agarose gel. The significance of differences was evaluated with Student’s t-test. The mean ± SD are shown in the figures. P < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.
To identify the induction of apoptosis, cells underwent propidium iodide (PI) staining and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) as to the manufacture’s instruction. In brief, cells were plated at a density of 1 × 105 cells/ml. After allowing 24 hours for cell adherence, cells were transfected and/or treated. Cells were collected by gentle trypsinization, washed in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), pelleted by centrifugation and fixed in 70% ethanol. Immediately prior to staining, cells were washed twice in PBS and resuspended in PBS containing RNAse A (20 μg/ml). Cells were stained with propidium iodide (final concentration 10 μg/ml) for 10 min at room temperature. Samples were analyzed by FACS (FL-3 channel) using a Beckman Coulter Counter Epics XL flow cytometer (Beckman Coulter, Miami, FL, USA). For each sample, 50,000 events were collected and stored for subsequent analysis using EXPO software (version 2.0; Applied Cytometry Systems, Sheffield, UK). The percentage of cells in the sub-G0 phase was quantitated as an estimate of cells undergoing apoptosis.
Cells were plated at 2 × 103 cells per well in 96-well plates for six days. Cytotoxicity was determined by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay (MTT, Trevigen, Inc., Gaithersburg, MD) in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. Plates were read using a Vmax microplate spectrophotometer (Molecular Devices, Sunnyvale, CA) at a wavelength of 570 nm corrected to 650 nm and normalized to controls. Each independent experiment was done thrice, with 10 determinations for each condition tested. At identical time points,cells were trypsinized to form a single cell suspension. Intact cells, determined by trypan blue exclusion, were counted using a Neubauer hemocytometer (Hausser Scientific, Horsham, PA). Cell counts were used to confirm MTT results.
MIAPaCa-2 or BxPC-3 cells (107) were injected into the pancreas of SCID mice. Four weeks after tumor implantation, the mice were assigned to one of the following four treatment groups (n = 10 each): (a) vehicle control; (b) gemcitabine, biweekly treatment 80 mg/kg/injection; (c) OGX-011, biweekly treatment 0.35mg/kg/injection; (d) gemcitabine plus OGX-011, with gemcitabine on Monday and Thursday and OGX-011 on Wednesday and Saturday. All groups received treatment via i.p. injection. Mice in all groups were killed after 5 weeks of treatment. Orthotopic tumors were harvested and weighed.
Five serial sections (5 um thick) were obtained for each frozen tumor, mounted on glass slides, and then fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde. The first section was processed for H&E staining. Apoptosis was evaluated by terminal transferase dUTP nick end labeling [TUNEL] staining using the Apoptag Peroxidase In Situ Detection Kit S7100 [Chemicon] according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
All statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS13.0 software. The results were presented as means ± SD of two-three replicate assays. Differences between different groups were assessed using X2 or t-test. A P value of <0.05 was considered to indicate statistical significance.
To investigate whether upregulation of sCLU expression is a cause or a result of gemcitabine -induced resistance, both MIAPaCa-2(resistant to gemcitabine) and BxPC-3 (sensitive to gemcitabine) cells cells were treated with gemcitabine at 0.5uM for 2–24 h (Figure1A) or at concentrations 0.1-1.0 uM for 12 h (Figure1B). Sensitive BxPC-3 cells rapidly responded (sCLU up-regulation peaked by 12 h and began decreasing by 16 h by increasing sCLU expression level under 1.0 uM doses of gemcitabine. MIAPaCa-2 cells already expressing higher sCLU levels, did not further express sCLU following gemcitabine treatment. Considering that changes in sCLU expression seem to be independent of sCLU mRNA, which did not change significantly as indicated by real-time PCR (data not shown). These results suggested that post-translational modification of sCLU may be altered in response to gemcitabine treatment.
Induction of sCLU in a time and dose dependent fashion by gemcitabine treatment. A. Western analysis showing sCLU expression after 2–24 hours treatment with 0.5 nM gemcitabine. Induction of sCLU is evident in chemo-sensitive BxPC-3 cells when treated with high doses of gemcitabine but not in MIAPaCa-2, in which the high levels of sCLU remained unchanged. B. Western analysis showing sCLU expression in cell extracts after 12 hours treatment with 0.1-1.0 nM gemcitabine. sCLU increased in gemcitabine -sensitive BxPC-3 cells at different doses. At difference, expression of sCLU was unchanged in the MIAPaCa-2-resistant cells. The data shown are representative of three independent experiments.
Resistance to anticancer agents is one of the primary impediments to effective cancer therapy. Both intrinsic and acquired mechanisms have been implicated in drug resistance but it remains controversial which mechanisms are responsible that lead to failure of therapy in cancer patients.
In the present study, MIAPaCa-2 and BxPC-3 cell lines were treated with 1.0 uM of gemcitabine for 24 hours, significant apoptosis (21%) was shown in BxPC-3 cell lines,compared with control(P < 0.05). However, in MIAPaCa-2 cells, 1. 0uM of gemcitabine treatment did not induce significant apoptosis (P > 0.05). It has shown above only low levels of apoptosis were detected in pancreatic cancer cells following 1.0 uM of gemcitabine treatment. This might be due to the intrinsic and simultaneous induction of clusterin by gemcitabine. Indeed, knockdown of sCLU by 1200 nM OGX-011(maximally reduced sCLU expression) led to a significant increase in gemcitabine-induced apoptosis in both MIAPaCa-2 cells and BxPC-3 cells by FACS analysis (Figure2A,*P < 0.05). However, knockdown of sCLU itself did not affact apoptosis of MIAPaCa-2 cells and BxPC-3 cells (Figure2A).
Targeting sCLU by OGX-011 sensitizes pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine treatment. A, BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells were transfected either with OGX-011 (1200nM) and then challenged with gemcitabine dose of 1.0 uM at 24 h. FACS analysis demonstrating that OGX-011 enhanced gemcitabine toxicity in both of the cells. B, Comparative viability of MIAPaCa-2 cells and BxPC-3 cells before and after sCLU sliencing. Cells were cultured in 96-well plates, then transfected either with OGX-011. Twenty-four hours after last transfection, cells were treated with gemcitabine. Seventy-two hours after drug addition ,cell viability was estimated. The data shown are representative of three independent experiments (*P < 0.05).
On the other hand, cellular viability was studied under experimental conditions similar to this described above. Figure2B shows significantly less viability of MIAPaCa-2 cells and BxPC-3 cells pre-treated with 1200nM OGX-011(*P < 0.05). Together, the aforementioned data indicate that silencing sCLU by OGX-011 enhanced gemcitabine toxicity in the pancreatic cancer cells. Control oligodeoxynucleotide did not have obvious effect on apoptosis or growth in both cells (data not shown).
Studies were then performed to assess the effects of gemcitabine on ERK1/2 activation in BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells. Exposure to 0.5-1.0 μM gemcitabine (18 hr) induced ERK1/2 activation in BxPC-3 cells (Figure3A).In MIAPaCa-2 cells, 0.5-1.0 μM gemcitabine treatment did not affact ERK1/2 activation (Figure3A). However, co-administration of the 5 μM ERK inhibitor PD98059 essentially abrogated expression of pERK1/2 in both untreated and gemcitabine -treated BxPC-3(Figure3B) and MIAPaCa-2 cells (Figure3B). These findings indicate that in breast cancer cells, 5 μM ERK inhibitor PD98059 essentially abrogate basal ERK1/2 activation as well as gemcitabine -mediated ERK1/2 activation.
ERK inhibitor PD98059 inactivate ERK1/2 in untreated and gemcitabine-treated breast cancer cells. A, BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells were exposed to the indicated concentrations of gemcitabine for 18 hr. The cells were then lysed and subjected to WB analysis to monitor pERK1/2 (Thr42/Tyr44) expression as described in Materials and Methods. B, BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells were exposed (18 hours) to either 5 μM PD98059, 0.5-1.0 μM of gemcitabine, or the combination, after which proteins were prepared and subjected to WB as described above to monitor pERK1/2 expression. For (A) and (B), lanes were loaded with 25 μg of protein; blots were then stripped and re-probed with GAPDH to ensure equivalent loading and transfer. Representative results are shown; two additional studies yielded equivalent results.
To determine whether ERK1/2 protects pancreatic cancer cells from gemcitabine -induced cell death or not, 5 μM PD98059 was used to inhibit pERK1/2. BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells was treated with 1.0 μM of gemcitabine. The results shown both BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells were significantly more sensitive to gemcitabine -mediated apoptosis compared to cells exposed to gemcitabine in the absence of PD98059 (P < 0.05; Figure4). It also shows significantly less viability of MIAPaCa-2 cells and BxPC-3 cells pre-treated with 5 μM PD98059 ,then treated with 1.0 nM gemcitabine(data not shown). These findings argue that ERK1/2 inactivation plays a significant functional role in the potentiation of gemcitabine lethality.
Inhibition of ERK1/2 sensitizes BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells to gemcitabine -induced apoptosis. BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells were treated with 5 μM PD98059 for 18 hours ,then the cells were exposed to 1.0 μM gemcitabine for 24 hours. Gemcitabine -induced cell death was determined by FACS. All values represent the means ± SD for duplicate determinations performed on three separate occasions. * Significantly greater than values obtained for cells cultured in the absence of PD98059; P <0.05).
We first evaluated the effect of sCLU silencing on the pERK1/2 activation in MIAPaCa-2 cells. MIAPaCa-2 cells were treated with 1200 nM OGX-011 for 24 hours. Figure5A shows significant decrease in pERK1/2 activation in the two cells. BxPC-3 has no basic pERK1/2 expression, so it only used for pERK re-expression. It has shown sCLU silencing itself did not affact apoptosis and growth of MIAPaCa-2 cells and BxPC-3 cells. However, sCLU silencing combined with 1200 nM OGX-011 treatment led to a significant increase in gemcitabine-induced apoptosis in both MIAPaCa-2 cells and BxPC-3 cells by FACS analysi (Figure2A).We next explored whether pERK re-expression could eliminate the effects of sCLU silencing on gemcitabine-induced apoptosis. BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells were treated with 1200 nM OGX-011 for 8 hours, then a wt-pERK-expressing plasmid was transfected into these cells, after transfection for 24 hours ,the cells were treated with 1.0 uM gemcitabine for another 24 hours. While vector transfection did not decrease gemcitabine-induced apoptosis in both MIAPaCa-2 and BxPC-3 cells (data not shown). However wt-pERK-re-expressing in BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells significantly decrease in gemcitabine-induced apoptosis (Figure5B). These data demonstrated knockdown of clusterin sensitizes pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine via pERK1/2 dependent pathway.
Knockdown of clusterin sensitizes pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine via pERK1/2 inactivation. A, MIAPaCa-2 cells were treated with 1200 nM OGX-011 for 24 hours, after which proteins were prepared and subjected to Western blot as described above to monitor pERK1/2 expression. B, BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells were treated with 1200 nM OGX-011 for 8 hours, then a wt-pERK-expressing plasmid was transfected into these cells for 24 hours, after which the cells were treated with 1.0 uM gemcitabine for 24 hours. Gemcitabine -induced cell death was determined by FACS. Representative results are shown; two additional studies yielded equivalent results (*P < 0.05).
Four, two, and three deaths were noted in the vehicle control, gemcitabine-, and OGX-011-treated groups, respectively, before the end of the 5-week treatment period because of large tumors. Conversely, all mice receiving gemcitabine and OGX-011 in combination were alive and exhibited a healthier appearance. Orthotopic tumors were dissected free of surrounding normal tissues and weighed. As shown in Figure6A, gemcitabine alone did not significantly reduced tumor weights in BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 cells compared to the controls,however, gemcitabine in combination with OGX-011 significantly reduced tumor weights by 5-fold (P < 0.001) in MIAPaCa-2 cell relative to the vehicle control, and 3-fold (P < 0.001) in BxPC-3 cell relative to the vehicle control. The further decrease in tumor weights observed in the combination treatment group was significantly different from the gemcitabine monotherapy group (P < 0.001). OGX-011 alone failed to inhibit tumor growth.
To investigate if the mechanisms involved in the induction of apoptosis in targeted lesions of tumor xenografts represented a phenotypic response of BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 tumors, the TUNEL assay was performed. Representative results are shown in Figure6B. In the combination treatment groups of BxPC-3 and MIAPaCa-2 tumors, TUNEL-positive cells in tumor sections presented with fragmented nuclei. As shown in Figure6B, gemcitabine (80 mg/kg) or OGX-011 alone did not produce significant increases in apoptosis compared with the vehicle control. However, the extent of apoptosis was significantly increased by 5-fold (P < 0.002) in MIAPaCa-2 tumors ,and 3-fold (P < 0.001) in BxPC-3 tumors, treated with gemcitabine and OGX-011 in combination.
To determine whether inhibition of Clusterin by OGX-011 enhances sensitivity to gemcitabine via pERK1/2 inactivation, we detected the pERK1/2 expression by western-blotting assay. As shown in Figure6C, gemcitabine treatment did not activate pERK1/2 in the MIAPaCa-2 tumors, and gemcitabine treatment signicantly activated pERK1/2 in the BxPC-3 tumors. However, gemcitabine in combination with OGX-011 significantly inhibited pERK1/2 activation.We therefore think that sCLU sliencing sensitizes pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine chemotherapy by inhibiton of ERK1/2 activation.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult human cancers to treat due to the inability to detect disease at an early stage and the lack of effective therapies. Although there has been some progress in the use of improved diagnostic methods and development of novel targeted therapies, the overall survival rate has not improved over the last decade. The most commonly used chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, gemcitabine, has modest clinical benefit and may not improve overall survival to a clinically meaningful degree[40, 41]. The lack of significant clinical response of pancreatic cancer patients to chemotherapy is likely due to the inherent chemoresistance of pancreatic cancer cells as well as impaired drug delivery pathways. Understanding the underlying mechanisms of drug resistance in pancreatic cancer is critical to develop new effective treatments for this deadly disease.
sCLU expression has been implicated in chemoresistance in several other cancer types[43–45], including pancreatic cancer. Because the resistance of tumor cells to various available chemotherapeutic agents has been one of the major factors leading to poor survival in pancreatic cancer patients, we therefore hypothesized that sCLU confers chemoresistance to pancreatic cancer cells.
In this study, we demonstrated that sCLU was correlated with inherent resistance both in vitro and in vivo. We found that high levels of sCLU in pancreatic cancer MIAPaCa-2 cell line was correlated with gemcitabine resistance, low levels of sCLU in BxPC-3 cells was sensitive to gemcitabine .To demonstrate the role of sCLU in gemcitabine resistance, we manipulated the endogenous level of sCLU in a gemcitabine -sensitive BxPC-3 cell line and a gemcitabine -resistant MIAPaCa-2 cell line. We found that gemcitabine -sensitive BxPC-3 cells became more resistant to gemcitabine when endogenous sCLU expression was up-regulated. Conversely, gemcitabine -resistant MIAPaCa-2 cells became more sensitive to gemcitabine and more apoptotic in vitro and in vivo when endogenous sCLU expression was down-regulated by GOX-011 treatment. These results indicated that high levels of endogenous sCLU were involved in the gemcitabine resistance of ovarian cancer cells.
Acquired drug resistance is also thought to be a reason for the limited benefit of most pancreatic cancer therapies.In the present study, we found treatment by gemcitabine increased sCLU expression in BxPC-3 cells, suggesting that sCLU upregulation is likely to be an adaptative response that mediates chemoresistance.We also investigated whether anticlusterin treatment sensitized BxPC-3 cells to gemcitabine.
GOX-011 efficiently inhibited sCLU expression in BxPC-3 cell lines, and this activity was associated with a increase in cell apoptosis in gemcitabine-treated BxPC-3 cells in vivo and vitro. This was indicated that increased sCLU, expression was correlates with gemcitabine resistance in pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells. These results provide preclinical proof of principle for the use of OGX-011 as a novel therapeutic strategy for gemcitabine resistance in the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
Though sCLU confers gmcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer cells, however, the signaling pathway was unclear. ERK activation has been identified as a potential survival pathway in several tumor types, and recent studies show that ERKs may also be activated in response to chemotherapeutic drugs[47–50], and pERK1/2 played critical roles in drug resistance. Our in vitro and in vivo studies here indicated that pERK1/2 play significant roles in gemcitabine resistance to pancreatic cancer cells. Most importantly, we demonstrated that blocking pERK1/2 enhanced the chemotherapeutic potential of gemcitabine in pancreatic cancer cells in vitro. ERK1/2 inhibitors in combination with chemotherapeutic drugs might be a better option to treat patients with pancreatic cancer than drugs alone.
It has shown previously sCLU plays an important role in regulating ERK1/2 signal[32–34].We next study whether sCLU silencing sensitized pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine chemotherapy may via ERK1/2 signal. Our results shown sCLU sliencing by OGX-011 sensitizes pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine treatment,followed by inhibition of pERK1/2 activation. Conversely, transfection with a constitutively active wt-pERK1/2 construct promotes gemcitabine resistance. These data demonstrated sCLU sliencing sensitizes pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine via pERK1/2 dependent signaling pathway.
In conclusion, gemcitabine may influence pancreatic cancer behavior via the upregulation of sCLU, which might play a major role in the effects of gemcitabine, protecting pancreatic cancer cells from the effects of gemcitabine. Inherent chemoresistance of pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine may be correlated to sCLU. Blocking sCLU, on the other hand, reverses the drug’s unwanted effects on cancer cell apoptosis and survival. In addition, our studies have firmly established a role for sCLU as a cell survival gene that is increased after gemcitabine chemotherapy to inhibit tumor cell death. The inhibition of sCLU, using OGX-011, enhances the cytotoxic effects of chemotherapy agents via pERK1/2 dependent signaling pathway.
Yong Tang, Fenghua Liu contributed equally to this work.
An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-9966-32-42.
TY, LFH, ZCN and JYS performed the majority of experiments; SSC and TY designed the study and wrote the manuscript; TY and JYS edited the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. | 2019-04-24T09:47:39Z | https://jeccr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1756-9966-31-73 |
Just as the pace of subjecting Libya to a new phase of international discipline quickens, the elites of the small club of recolonizing powers that nominate themselves “the international community” have offered painfully little when it comes to explaining Libyan dynamics. The suggestion is that, with a new “unity government,” Libya can acquire “stability,” especially by somehow “defeating” ISIS—it’s all bland verbiage, from start to finish. For my part, I am no “Libya analyst”—I am a “foreign intervention in Libya analyst,” and there is quite a difference. Nonetheless, I cannot pretend that I do not read with interest accounts of shifting power dynamics on the ground, the formation and fragmentation of regional and local military alliances and networks, the ideologies of the actors, and their ideas of where Libya ought to go. I maintain an irregular correspondence with some Libyans, residing in Libya and abroad, follow the social media accounts of Libyans (at home and abroad), and read some of their blogs. I also cannot deny that for the past 33 years I have maintained an interest in the topic of popular democracy in Libya, thanks in part to the first mailings I received as a teenager from the Libyan People’s Bureau in Ottawa, Libya’s embassy.
My comments here, however, do not substitute for the knowledge and insights of any Libyans, whether or not I may agree with them politically. What I would contest is the notion that Libyans have no “solutions” to their own problems—they clearly do, and they hold to them deeply enough to fight each other over their competing ideas of where to take Libya. Certainly, whenever I read the works of Libyans, I am treated to especially eloquent, articulate, and incisive points of view. Envisioned solutions exist in abundance, and are practical in restricted locales—it’s the mass political support for one or another national program that is awaiting formation. Nor do Libyans act out of “lack”—there seems to be a persistent, somewhat perverse tendency among foreign “experts on Libya” to concoct ideas of absence, and thus inferiority, and in turn an inevitable projection of Western solutions.
Left to their own devices, Libyans might have come up with some very interesting, novel political constructions over time, without being rushed toward a goal pre-defined by others. However, one can understand Libyans’ impatience for an immediate solution, given the rising hardships reaped from the destruction of the society of the Jamahiriya. My question then is a simple one: What is a rough political outline of the political dynamics of Libya at present? It’s the methodology for addressing this question that is the problem: not fabricating a state-centric illusion, by ignoring the impacts of external power; gaining a sense of the whole, even though knowledge of the many local parts is much needed (one recent journalistic example being Marlowe, 2016); and being able to discern the fundamental from the incidental. First of all, in producing such an outline, we have to avoid the temptation to reinscribe the phony dialectics produced by Western interventionists and their agencies, which spread confusion about scales and units of analysis, confusing the momentary with long-term, the local with the international, the desired with the needed.
The war that NATO declared over in 2011, never ended in Libya. Domestic war, having gone through various stages of development, has reached the point of producing objective conditions of suffering not seen in Libya since the Italian colonial occupation. According to the UN, which presided over the dismantling of the Libyan Jamahiriya, with the highest human development index of any nation in Africa, Libya now has at least 2.44 million people in need of aid, 1.3 million of which lack sufficient food, along with 435,000 internally displaced persons—this is in a country with roughly six million people (UN, 2015b). The news gets worse: of Libya’s six million people, about 1.8 million Libyans—nearly a third of the nation—have fled to Tunisia as refugees (Gall, 2014). Given that the figure was reported well over a year ago, one might assume that the number has increased since then, as conditions have worsened. An agricultural labourer near Tripoli was quoted as offering the following overview of Libya today: “The country has plunged into the sea. It’s gone. It’s going to be hard for it to come back” (Gall, 2014). It would require the maximum of callous indifference, dishonesty, or ignorance—or all three combined—to conclude that this is still better than “life under Gaddafi,” which comes close to describing declarations on Libya by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the neoliberal-reformed “socialists” that dominate the Western post-left.
The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Libya, Ali Al-Za’tari, calls this situation a “humanitarian crisis”. What does that mean? The terminology, meant to evoke a certain posture of liberal rescue, interventionism to halt emergency, and a restoration of a “bare life” of supposed normalcy—actually explains nothing at all. Most readers, if pressed to explain what makes a crisis a “humanitarian” one, might say that it is a crisis that affects “humans,” or that it’s a crisis that requires charitable foreign action. Otherwise, the phrase fails to illuminate, let alone educate. It is instead simply an exercise in emotions, that must be aimed at those who are not fatigued by giving for every new crisis of the day, especially the majority who are fatigued and stressed by their own economic and financial crises. Thus is it not only an emotional appeal, it is an elitist one, and it still explains nothing of what made the crisis into a crisis, and how to solve it. Food aid and resettlement will actually solve exactly nothing. That will at least keep the humanitarian coordinator in business, because next year—having solved nothing with food and blankets—he will be back to expertly alert the world to the humanitarian crisis.
Meanwhile, two response systems are further entrenched by exhortations such as those of the EU, UN, NATO, and primarily the US: a) that we must forever remain in global emergency mode, so that we can quickly turn over trust and resources to globalist elites who would collectively marshal us this way or that as convenient; and, b) that we must approach Libya as an inherently incapacitated, “needy subject,” that only we can really save—and Libyans can help us help them, of course, if they know how to follow orders.
Even with the dubious benefit of reports such as the inelegantly titled UN (2015a), “Report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to paragraph 13 of Security Council resolution 2214 (2015) concerning the terrorism threat in Libya posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Ansar al Charia, and all other Al-Qaida associates,” basic doubts persist. The Islamic State, in Libya, is discussed as if it were a mere transplant, somehow formed by people who fought under ISIS in Iraq and/or Syria, and returned to Libya—or, non-Libyan ISIS members who just moved to Libya and, lo and behold, embedded themselves within the country’s political landscape and were then able to exert considerable power, enough to be treated as a threat to multiple continents. Like the specious, pseudo-academic fluff about “radicalization” that is produced in North America, there is no credible answer as to how the Islamic State was able to grow in Libya, and go as far as taking over a bastion of support for Muammar Gaddafi, his hometown of Sirte. While our eyes are trained on Sirte by the media—that soon becomes a 150 mile wide swath of territory around Sirte, but then the US bombs a target in Sabratha last week, which is even further west than Tripoli. So where is ISIS? There is even less of a credible explanation as to how ISIS spread so quickly, and how it acquired so many adherents—though, again, some might be tempted to resort to the largely mythical wonders of their so-called professional social media recruitment campaigns (because images of mass beheadings, it turns out, are just so irresistibly appealing—if we believe the claims). In bulk terms, the suggestion is that whatever could help Libya “move forward,” ISIS stands for the exact opposite—the exact opposite of pretty well anything one favours. As a mythically constructed antithesis, it can logically be no antithesis at all.
There seems to be a creeping realization that one possible reason why ISIS may be gaining such a strong presence in Sirte, where no one else has since the end of Gaddafi, is precisely because supporters of Gaddafi and the Jamahiriya have joined ISIS out of desperation and to seek revenge. I have watched Libyans, both those in the country and those residing abroad, debating this idea among themselves. Ibrahim Bate el Mal, a spokesperson for the Misrata military council, told Middle East Eye that fighters from Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen were already gathering in Sirte in preparation for a new round of foreign intervention, and “suggested that Gaddafi loyalists motivated by revenge were also backing the group in the former leader’s home city, as supporters of Saddam Hussein have been accused of supporting IS in Iraq” (Mannocchi, 2016). He said: “We see happening here what has already happened in Iraq with the Baath party. Libyans are still paying for the consequences of the revolution”. This dynamic then, if there is any merit to it, poses a substantial challenge to what is passing under “counter-terrorist” and anti-ISIS headings.
On the other hand, there is so much speculation around this topic that it would be wise to take all of this with a few grains of salt. First, “Gaddafi loyalist” is used by most militias as a term of abuse against rivals and enemies—so it is not surprising to see the Islamic State at the receiving end of this rhetoric. Second, if “Gaddafi loyalists” have indeed joined the Islamic State, it would mean joining with groups they fought during the 2011 war, some of which have joined IS, while at the same time fighting other “Gaddafi loyalists” that are regularly depicted as forming part of General Khalifa Hiftar’s army. It’s not impossible, it just seems that there is a lack of proper substantiation, at least in English language sources.
One reality that does matter, and is the one commonality between post-invasion Iraq and post-2011 Libya, is the reality that makes a mockery of “radicalization” theses: the systematic purging of all those who worked in the previous government. In Iraq, it has been called de-baathification, and in Libya, de-gaddafication. The “antithesis” of stability in Libya is not something produced by “religion,” “ancient rivalries,” nor mysteriously supreme social media recruiting by jihadists. Nor is the problem one caused by Gaddafi allegedly centralizing the state within himself, and leaving nothing but a stateless nation when he was killed. The latter notions—ideological and deliberate in nature—have produced a fog of misunderstanding that send analysis into phony anthropological and exclusively local directions, so as to erase any sense of the impact of the recent past.
Knowledgeable Libyans and some journalists understood that the Political Isolation Law marked a severe turning point for post-2011 Libya, that would aggravate divisions and escalate violence, to the point of a breakdown where two rival parliaments have been created. On May 5, 2013, the General National Congress passed a law—under duress with gunmen laying siege to the parliament and other state institutions—that banned “anyone who held a senior position during Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule from government,” which threatened to unseat top officials despite their role in overthrowing Gaddafi (Donati & Shennib, 2013).
It’s not that Libya had no state, “thanks to Gaddafi” (as US “think” tank propagandists like to say). It is that it was being gutted from within Libya, after first being attacked by NATO and the US which resolutely targeted stated institutions and officials under the pretext of targeting “command and control” facilities. Otherwise, more knowledgeable US diplomats documented in their own cables, as published by Wikileaks, reams of evidence of a functioning, democratic state in Libya that was far from the one-man show that Western politicians and propagandists routinely tell their gullible or under-informed audiences. That Libya was not a liberal democratic state, there is no doubt—but liberal democracy is neither the only nor the oldest form of democracy. And as we should observe during this US presidential campaign, liberal democracy is neither the least corruptible nor the most sustainable form of democracy.
With reference to the political isolation law, one analyst noted that it “could result in most government administrations being gutted, without having sufficient staff or institutional memory to ensure their proper functioning” (Geoff Porter, quoted in Donati & Shennib, 2013). The law would have banned around 40 members of the existing parliament, as well as banning former government officials from joining political parties or working for any state institution. Even as the militias gained a forced legislative “victory,” they continued their siege of parliament and several government ministries (Donati, 2013). That this was a major turning point was highlighted by one Libyan analyst who alerted, “the long-term fallout from all this could be severe. For a start, national reconciliation is under threat, as are the still fragile political bonds between ministries, the police and the SSC. In addition, members of the army’s border control could be culled across the south, east and west of the country, putting at risk decades of logistical knowledge of the terrain and local tribes” (El Gomati, 2013).
Therefore, right at this point in 2013, Libyans were discovering a key lesson important for the future of Libya: there could be no “stability” without national reconciliation, and no national reconciliation without the continued participation of those who actively worked to maintain the Jamahiriya. That does not mean “restoration,” nor “loyalism,” but more of a dialectical synthesis than anything else proposed thus far. Indeed, even the discredited former UN envoy to Libya, Bernardino Leon, confessed in a private email to the UAE’s Foreign Minister: “Libyan history shows (even in the case of Qadafi) that only big social majorities can rule the country” (Leon, 2015). Libyan history shows this, and Libyan opinions reaffirm it, as we shall see below.
In terms of foreign intervention, US persecution of officials connected to the overthrown government led by Gaddafi, and persecution of his family members, continues to this day (see Duran, 2016; White House, 2016). In fact, these US sanctions have been renewed and extended by Obama each and every year since 2011. Obama uses the claim that “the situation in Libya continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and we need to protect against the diversion of assets or other abuse by certain members of Qadhafi’s family and other former regime officials” (White House, 2016). This is a very peculiar focus, at the same time that the US and others claim that ISIS is somehow the main source of destabilization in Libya. What is Obama indirectly admitting here? The same argument was used by Obama when justifying the renewal of sanctions previously in 2012, in 2013, in 2014, and in 2015, each year around this time (AFP, 2012; Boyer, 2013; UPI, 2014; Federal Register, 2014; Sputnik, 2015). Sanctions that the US imposed with lightning-quick speed as part of a rush to war in February, 2011, are re-imposed every year since then—it’s as if Obama was still at war with Libya, enforcing regime change against Gaddafi. That suggests what the US fears the most, more than ISIS: a Libyan synthesis that makes peace with the past and salvages the best of it.
In 2012, The Institute of Human Sciences at the University of Oxford, together with The University of Benghazi in Libya, published what they titled the “First National Survey of Libya,” a rare nationally representative survey that involved dozens of fieldworkers doing face-to-face interviews across the country (Oxford Research International, 2012). At first, the picture one gets from the survey and its executive summary, is one where the overwhelming majority of Libyans supported the overthrow of Gaddafi, wanted former government officials put on trial, and had a generally optimistic view of the future. Then, for those familiar with the Libyan political system between 1969 and 2011, under Gaddafi’s leadership, and for those who have read Gaddafi’s Green Book, a peculiar pattern begins to emerge hidden within the other data—one that was generally lost on the Oxford and Benghazi researchers themselves, or at least they neglected to comment on the pattern they themselves helped to reveal.
It is important to keep in mind some of the subtleties of the responses: this survey came mere months after the end of NATO’s military intervention, of which the UK was a prominent participant. Some respondents could have identified Oxford researchers with the NATO side—not that the released survey materials reflect on this possibility. Second, Benghazi was at the centre of the most violent revolt against Gaddafi, and both during the NATO war, and especially after, a reign of terror was unleashed against all those suspected of being loyal to Gaddafi or to the Jamahiriya more broadly. Thus a similar bias could have been produced by surveyors associated with Benghazi. With this in mind, the surveyors found that “social trust is low, only 17% say that most other people can be trusted” and in that context, speaking on the insurrection against the government, “82% think it was ‘absolutely right’ and 15% ‘somewhat right’”. Again, the survey report lacks reflexivity, and does not comment on what accounts for an incredible 97% positive response to what was a bloody and ongoing war that had caused so many to lose everything.
(j) Independence: the biggest group of respondents, 38%, were “adamant that ‘Libya needs no model’”—specifically referring to the idea of importing or following other countries’ models.
On a more ominous note, of relevance to what has been unfolding since then: “16% say they are ready to use violence for political ends. This represents 630,000 potential fighters”.
What is interesting is the suggestion that a large mass of Libyans indicated, by indirect means, a continued preference for key aspects of what had been the norm until 2011: centralized power; stability; no multi-party elections; secular rule; non-tribalism; a strong leader; some level of participatory democracy; state support; equitable distribution of wealth; and, political independence—with the suggestion, or implication, that if frustrated, a large minority was ready to engage in political violence.
To the extent that the survey has any merit, this then could be a portrait of the Libyan synthesis. Rather than drone strikes against Sirte, bombarding houses, or sending in commandos to kill ISIS fighters—and rather than inventing fictitious governments in the halls of the UN and installing them in luxury hotels outside the country—the path toward some sort of solution on the ground, in a way that is meaningful to most Libyans and supported by most, is the path indicated by Libyans themselves. It does not come from Geneva, the State Department, and least of all the Brookings Institution or the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On the margins of the orchestrated “breaking news” in Western media, one can spot some interesting dynamics at work. Here is a formal propaganda arm of the US government, the Voice of America, coming out and stating a few weeks ago what some of us have known for a couple of years now: “Ahmed Mohmamed Gaddaf al-Dam, the late dictator’s cousin, is seen by some observers as a man to watch” (Dettmer, 2016). The VOA does the disservice of pretending that Gaddaf al-Dam is pushing for “the return” of the “old guard”—he himself parted ways with Gaddafi and argues, very reasonably, that what happened happened, and is not reversible. He never calls for “restoration,” and has commented that such restoration in toto would now be impossible. Where the VOA is correct is in reporting that Gaddaf al-Dam “calls for the remnants of the ousted government to be included in a political settlement the United Nations is advocating,” and that without their inclusion, “a U.N.-brokered unity government struggling to get off the ground will fail and the turmoil engulfing the country will persist” (Dettmer, 2016). What is his role? The VOA calls Gaddaf al-Dam the Gaddafi clan’s “standard bearer,” the “official spokesman” of the Gaddafi tribe, related to the Houara tribe and that he is also related to leaders of the Awlad Ali tribe, which spans the Libyan Sahara and Egypt. The VOA misses or obscures the nuance in his speech—rather than restoration, Gaddaf al-Dam is calling for synthesis as outlined above. First he says, “let’s forget about the past and get together and solve the mess and stop the bloodshed we see every day” (which is neither restoration nor retribution, but coming together), and then he adds that former government figures should be in the nation’s new administration: “Why not? It is their country too” (Dettmer, 2016).
Similarly, Libya analyst and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Centre Hafed al-Ghwell, “places little faith in the peace accord because it fails to represent one of the largest maligned groups in Libya’s civil war: the tribes and figures associated with the country’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi” (Paton, 2016). Ghwell argues that by excluding and continuing to displace members of the former Jamahiriya, Western interventionist powers and the UN would only make it more likely for the excluded to work against the peace process. As was suggested above, Ghwell also thinks there is no coincidence in the fact the Islamic State’s climb to power in Libya is based on Sirte, one of the last major bastions of support for Gaddafi. As Ghwell explains, “We know from Iraq that Daesh builds on these kinds of former regimes and these disenfranchised groups” (Paton, 2016). Ghwell is no “Gaddafi loyalist”: he claims to have been exiled for speaking out against Gaddafi, and took up residence in the US. However, once again, the move toward synthesis: he “is also on record expressing support for Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam, the former leader’s cousin and aid. He explained that as well as Gaddaf al-Dam, who still has support particularly in the east, around one million supporters of the former regime remain in exile” (Paton, 2016). Other Libyan authorities also agree that members of the former government and their supporters need to be integrated, or peace will not be sustainable.
And that is the key to understanding this newest round of European and US military intervention already underway in Libya: it resorts to force to sustain an “artificial” solution, justified in terms of the wrong dialectics (humanitarian crisis, ISIS), in order to prevent an independent Libyan synthesis that could eventually block Western powers’ attempts to effectively recolonize Libya.
AFP. (2012). “U.S. Extends Sanctions on Libya One More Year”. Al Arabiya, February 24.
Boyer, Dave. (2013). “Obama Extends Sanctions against Libya”. The Washington Times, February 13.
Dettmer, Jamie. (2016). “Gadhafi Cousin Promotes Return of the Old Guard”. Voice of America, January 23.
Donati, Jessica. (2013). “Gunmen Still Hold Libya Ministries after Ban on Gaddafi Officials”. Reuters, May 6.
Donati, Jessica, & Shennib, Ghaith. (2013). “Libyan Parliament Bans Ex-Gaddafi Officials from Office”. Reuters, May 5.
Duran, Nicole. (2016). “Obama Extends Libyan Sanctions”. Washington Examiner, February 22.
El Gomati, Anas. (2013). “Why Libya’s ‘Isolation Law’ Threatens Progress”. CNN, May 21.
Federal Register. (2014). Notice of February 20, 2014: Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Libya. Federal Register, 79(36), February 24.
Gall, Carlotta. (2014). “Libyan Refugees Stream to Tunisia for Care, and Tell of a Home That Is Torn Apart”. The New York Times, September 9.
Leon, Bernardino. (2015). “Full Text of Email from UN Libya Envoy Bernardino Leon to UAE Foreign Minister”. Middle East Eye, November 5.
Mannocchi, Francesca. (2016). “Libyans Fear Military Intervention Could Set Country Ablaze”. Middle East Eye, January 27.
Marlowe, Ann. (2016). “The Next Dangerous Move in Libya”. The Daily Beast, February 22.
Oxford Research International. (2012). First National Survey of Libya. Oxford, UK; Benghazi, Libya: The Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford; The University of Benghazi.
Paton, Callum. (2016). “The Inconvenient Truth of Libya’s Peace Deal and the Gaddafi Loyalists and Revolutionary Militias it Ignores”. International Business Times, January 9.
Sputnik. (2015). “Obama Extends National Emergency Designation for Libya – White House”. Sputnik, February 23.
Sputnik. (2016). “Gaddafi’s Cousin: Libya Ruined and ‘Humiliated’ After NATO Invasion”. Sputnik, February 17.
UN. (2015a). Report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to paragraph 13 of Security Council resolution 2214 (2015) concerning the terrorism threat in Libya posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Ansar al Charia, and a. November 19. United Nations Security Council.
UN. (2015b). “Libya’s Dire Humanitarian Situation Requires Funding ‘On Time and in Volume,’ Warns Senior UN Relief Official”. UN News Centre, December 22.
UPI. (2014). “Libya Still a Threat, Obama Says”. United Press International, February 21.
White House. (2016). Letter — Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Libya, February 22. Washington, DC: Office of the Press Secretary, The White House. | 2019-04-26T10:48:08Z | https://zeroanthropology.net/2016/02/24/crisis-isis-synthesis-where-is-libya-going/ |
If you encounter a situation that you are unable to resolve on your own, please contact the program chairs. Your email will be entered into a task-management system to ensure it is handled appropriately. Please refrain from writing to the program chairs at their own email addresses.
Thank you for agreeing to serve for NIPS 2018! The community needs outstanding people like yourself to make NIPS a success, and we will work hard to make your duties as easy as possible. This page provides an overview of SAC, AC, and reviewer responsibilities and key dates.
SACs, ACs & reviewers enter domain conflicts, subject areas, TPMS information, etc.
Please respect deadlines and respond to emails as promptly as possible!
It is crucial that we are able to reach you in a timely manner. We will send most emails from CMT (i.e., [email protected]). Such emails are sometimes accidentally marked as spam. Please check your spam folder regularly and if you find such an email in there, please whitelist the CMT email address so that you will receive future emails from CMT.
If you have changed or plan to change your email address, please update CMT accordingly. We have no way of knowing whether an email sent to you from CMT has bounced, so it is crucial that you make sure that CMT has the correct email address for you at all times. You should also make sure that your domain conflicts in CMT are up to date; these are important for preventing conflicts during the review process.
The NIPS definitions of conflicts of interest (and instructions for entering them) have changed a little from last year, so please make sure you read this year’s definitions.
NIPS uses the Toronto Paper Matching System (TPMS) to assign submissions to ACs and reviewers. Please log into TPMS here and make sure that your profile is up to date.
All participants must agree to abide by the NIPS code of conduct.
Senior Area Chair. With the growth in submissions, NIPS recently incorporated the role of senior area chair (SAC). SACs work alongside the area chairs (ACs) and program chairs (PCs). Each SAC oversees the work of a small number of ACs (around 7), making sure that the reviewing process goes smoothly. SACs serve as the first port of call for ACs if they need assistance or guidance. The reviewing process is double blind at the level of ACs (i.e., ACs cannot see author identities), but not at the level of SACs and program chairs; SACs are therefore responsible for identifying conflicts of interest (and other unusual activity, such as suspicious bidding patterns) and re-assigning submissions to ACs or reviewers accordingly. SACs are also responsible for helping ACs chase late reviewers, calibrating decisions across ACs, and discussing borderline papers. During the final decision-making phase, SACs will discuss all proposed decisions with the PCs. There is no physical SAC/AC meeting; most discussions with reviewers, ACs, and PCs will take place via CMT or email, with some video conferences toward the end of the reviewing process. Although reviewer identities are visible to ACs and SACs, they are hidden from the other reviewers. Please therefore refrain from using reviewers’ names during the discussion phase. After decisions have been made, reviews and meta-reviews will be made public (but reviewer and SAC/AC identities will remain anonymous).
Area Chair. Each area chair (AC) oversees around 20 submissions, making sure that the reviewing process goes smoothly. ACs are responsible for helping the program chairs (PCs) recruit reviewers, recommending reviewers for submissions, chasing late reviewers, facilitating discussions among reviewers, writing meta-reviews, evaluating the quality of reviews, and helping make decisions. The reviewing process is double blind at the level of ACs; each AC will work with a senior area chair (SAC), who is responsible for identifying conflicts of interest (and other unusual activity, such as suspicious bidding patterns) and re-assigning submissions to ACs or reviewers accordingly. SACs serve as the first port of call for ACs if they need assistance or guidance throughout the reviewing process. SACs also calibrate decisions across ACs. There are no physical meetings; most discussions with reviewers, SACs, and PCs will take place via CMT or email, with some video conferences toward the end of the reviewing process. Although reviewer identities are visible to ACs and SACs, they are hidden from the other reviewers. Please therefore refrain from using reviewers’ names during the discussion phase. AC identities are accessible by reviewers. After decisions have been made, reviews and meta-reviews will be made public (but reviewer and SAC/AC identities will remain anonymous).
Reviewer. Each reviewer will be assigned around 4--6 submissions to review. Reviewers are responsible for reviewing submissions, reading author responses, discussing submissions and author responses with other reviewers and area chairs (ACs), and helping make decisions. The reviewing process is double blind at the level of reviewers. There are no physical meetings; discussions with other reviewers and ACs will take place via CMT or email. After decisions have been made, reviews and meta-reviews will be made public (but reviewer and AC identities will remain anonymous). This year, as an incentive, ACs will be asked to evaluate the quality of each review using three scores: “exceeded expectations”, “met expectations,’ and “failed to meet expectations.” The 200 or so highest-scoring reviewers will be awarded free NIPS registrations. The next 800 or so highest-scoring reviewers will have registrations reserved for them (for a limited time frame). The lowest-scoring reviewers may not be invited to review for future conferences.
It is okay to be unavailable for part of the review process (e.g., on vacation for a few days), but if you will be unavailable for more than that -- especially during important windows (e.g., decision-making) -- you must let the program chairs know ASAP.
With great power comes great responsibility! Take your job seriously and be fair.
DO NOT talk to other SACs about submissions assigned to your ACs without prior approval from the program chairs; other SACs may have conflicts with these submissions.
DO NOT talk to other SACs or ACs about your own submissions (i.e., submissions you are an author on) or submissions with which you have a conflict of interest.
Be professional and listen to the reviewers and ACs, but do not give in to undue influence.
If an AC wants to make a decision that is not clearly supported by the reviews, please check that they justify their decision appropriately, including, but not limited to, reading the submission in depth and writing a detailed meta-review that explains their decision.
Help calibrate decisions by working closely with your ACs. It is your responsibility to figure out how best to work with your ACs during this process (e.g., over email, phone, video conferences, etc). Pay particularly close attention to borderline papers.
It is okay to be unavailable for part of the review process (e.g., on vacation for a few days), but if you will be unavailable for more than that -- especially during important windows (e.g., discussion, decision-making) -- you must let your SAC know ASAP.
DO NOT talk to other ACs about submissions that are assigned to you without prior approval from your SAC; other ACs may have conflicts with these submissions. In general, your primary point of contact for any discussions should be your SAC. Your SAC does not have any conflicts with any of the submissions that are assigned to you.
Be professional and listen to the reviewers, but do not give in to undue influence.
Make sure your reviewers read and (if appropriate) respond to all author responses.
After the author response phase, you must initiate a discussion via CMT for each submission and make sure the reviewers engage in the discussion phase.
Read all reviews carefully. After reading a review, please evaluate its quality by indicating (on CMT) whether it “exceeded expectations,” “met expectations,” or “failed to meet expectations.” You should use the information in the reviewer instructions (see the section “Review Content” below), as well as how helpful the review and subsequent discussion by the reviewer were in making your decision about the submission. The 200 or so highest-scoring reviewers will be awarded free NIPS registrations. The next 800 or so highest-scoring reviewers will have registrations reserved for them (for a limited time frame). The lowest-scoring reviewers may not be invited to review for future conferences.
Your meta-review should explain your decision to the authors. Your comments should augment the reviews, and explain how the reviews, author response, and discussion were used to arrive at your decision. Dismissing or ignoring a review is not acceptable unless you have a good reason for doing so. If you want to make a decision that is not clearly supported by the reviews, perhaps because the reviewers did not come to a consensus, please justify your decision appropriately, including, but not limited to, reading the submission in depth and writing a detailed meta-review that explains your decision.
It is okay to be unavailable for part of the review process (e.g., on vacation for a few days), but if you will be unavailable for more than that -- especially during a important windows (e.g., discussion, decision-making) -- you must let your ACs know ASAP.
Write thoughtful and constructive reviews. Your reviews must accord with the NIPS code of conduct. Although the double-blind review process reduces the risk of discrimination, reviews can inadvertently contain subtle discrimination, which should be actively avoided.
The reviewing process will be double blind at the level of reviewers and ACs (i.e., reviewers and ACs cannot see author identities) but not at the level of SACs or program chairs. If you are assigned a submission that is not adequately anonymized (e.g., includes author names, author affiliations, acknowledgements, or other identifying information) then please contact the corresponding AC. Under no circumstances should you attempt to find out the identities of the authors for any of your assigned submissions (e.g., by searching on Google or arXiv). If you accidentally find out, please do not divulge the identities to anyone, but do tell your AC that this has happened and make a note of this in the “Confidential Comments to Program Chairs” text field when you submit your review. You should not let the authors’ identities influence your decision in any way.
DO NOT talk to other reviewers, ACs, or SACs about submissions that are assigned to you without prior approval from your AC; other reviewers, ACs, and SACs may have conflicts with these submissions. In general, your primary point of contact for any discussions should be the corresponding AC for that submission.
DO NOT talk to other reviewers, ACs, or SACs about your own submissions (i.e., submissions you are an author on) or submissions with which you have a conflict.
Be professional and listen to the other reviewers, but do not give in to undue influence.
Read and (if appropriate) respond to all author responses. It is not fair to ignore any author response, even for submissions that you think should be rejected. Sometimes author responses contain clarifications that change reviewers’ minds.
Engage actively in the discussion phase for each of the submissions that you are assigned, even if you are not specifically prompted to do so by the corresponding AC.
It is not fair to dismiss any submission without having thoroughly read it. Think about the times when you received an unfair, unjustified, short, or dismissive review. Try not be that reviewer! Always be constructive and help the authors understand your viewpoint, without being dismissive or using inappropriate language. If you need to cite existing work to justify one of your comments, please be as precise as possible and give a complete citation.
If you would like the authors to clarify something during the author response phase, please articulate this clearly in your review (e.g., “I would like to see results of experiment X” or “Can you please include details about the parameter settings used for experiment Y”).
All reviews must be submitted via the NIPS 2018 CMT site. You may visit the site multiple times and revise your reviews as often as necessary. If you are both an author and a reviewer, please use the same email address for both roles in CMT. During the reviewing process, you will receive many emails from CMT (i.e., [email protected]). Such emails are sometimes accidentally marked as spam. Please check your spam folder regularly and if you find such an email in there, please whitelist the CMT email address so that you will receive future emails from CMT.
Please note that NIPS is using CMT3 for the first time this year.
You must keep everything relating to the review process confidential. Do not to use ideas and results from submissions in your own work until they become publicly available (e.g., via a technical report or a published paper). Do not to talk about or distribute submissions (or the ideas and results described in them) to anyone without prior approval from the program chairs.
The reviewing process will be double blind at the level of reviewers and ACs (i.e., reviewers and ACs cannot see author identities) but not at the level of SACs and program chairs. Authors are responsible for anonymizing their submissions. In particular, they should not include author names, author affiliations, or acknowledgements in their submissions and they should avoid providing any other identifying information (even in the supplementary material). If you are assigned a submission that is not adequately anonymized (e.g., includes author names, author affiliations, acknowledgements, or other identifying information) then please contact the corresponding AC. Under no circumstances should you attempt to find out the identities of the authors for any of your assigned submissions (e.g., by searching on Google or arXiv). If you accidentally find out, please do not divulge the identities to anyone, but do tell your AC that this has happened and make a note of this in the “Confidential Comments to Program Chairs” text field when you submit your review. You should not let the authors’ identities influence your decision in any way.
Authors may submit up to 100MB of supplementary material, such as proofs, derivations, data, or source code; all supplementary material must be in PDF or ZIP format. Your responsibility as a reviewer is to read and review the submission itself; looking at supplementary material as at your discretion. That said, NIPS submissions are short, so you may wish to look at supplementary material before complaining about insufficient details, proofs, or experimental results.
Submissions are limited to eight content pages, including all figures and tables, in the NIPS “submission” style; additional pages containing only references are allowed. Authors must use the NIPS 2018 LaTeX style file. If you are assigned any submissions that violate the NIPS style (e.g., by decreasing margins or font size) or page limits, please contact the program chairs.
Submissions that are identical or substantially similar to papers that are in submission to, have been accepted to, or have been published in other archival conferences, journals, workshops, etc. should be deemed dual submissions. Submissions that are identical or substantially similar to other NIPS submissions should also be deemed dual submissions; submissions should be distinct and sufficiently substantial. Slicing contributions too thinly may be sufficient for submissions to be deemed dual submissions. If you suspect that a submission that has been assigned to you is a dual submission or if you require further clarification, please contact the corresponding AC and program chairs. For more information about dual submissions, please see the author guidelines.
We know that serving as a reviewer for NIPS is time consuming, but the community needs outstanding people like yourself to uphold the scientific quality of NIPS. Review content is the primary means by which ACs, SACs, and program chairs make decisions about submissions. Please make your review as detailed and informative as possible; short, superficial reviews that venture uninformed opinions or guesses are worse than no review since they may result in the rejection of a high-quality submission. We ask that you pay particular attention to the question, “Does this submission add value to the NIPS community?” Solid, technical papers that explore new territory or point out new directions for research are preferable to papers that advance the state of the art, but only incrementally. Review content is also the primary means by which authors understand their submissions’ decisions. Reviews for rejected submissions help authors understand how to improve their work for other conferences or journals. Reviews for accepted submissions help authors understand how to improve their work for the camera-ready versions.
Quality: Is the submission technically sound? Are claims well supported by theoretical analysis or experimental results? Is this a complete piece of work or work in progress? Are the authors careful and honest about evaluating both the strengths and weaknesses of their work?
“The technical content of the paper appears to be correct albeit some small careless mistakes that I believe are typos instead of technical flaw (see #4 below).
“While the paper is pretty readable, there is certainly room for improvements in the clarity of the paper. I find paragraphs in section 1 and 2 to be repetitive. It is clear enough from the Introduction that the key advantages of CHIVI are the zero avoiding approximations and the sandwich bound. I don't find it necessary to be stressing that much more in section 2. Other than that, many equations in the paper do not have numbers. The references to the appendices are also wrong (There is no Appendix D or F). There is an extra period in line 188.
“The main contribution of this paper is to offer a convergence proof for minimizing sum fi(x) + g(x) where fi(x) is smooth, and g is nonsmooth, in an asynchronous setting. The problem is well-motivated; there is indeed no known proof for this, in my knowledge.
Significance: Are the results important? Are others (researchers or practitioners) likely to use the ideas or build on them? Does the submission address a difficult task in a better way than previous work? Does it advance the state of the art in a demonstrable way? Does it provide unique data, unique conclusions about existing data, or a unique theoretical or experimental approach?
Please comment on and take into account the strengths of the submission. It can be tempting to only comment on the weaknesses; however, ACs, SACs, and program chairs need to understand both the strengths and the weaknesses in order to make an informed decision. It is useful for the ACs, SACs, and program chairs if you include a list of arguments for and against acceptance. If you believe that a submission is out of scope for NIPS, then please justify this judgement appropriately, including, but not limited to, looking at subject areas and previous NIPS papers. If you need to cite existing work, please be as precise as possible and give a complete citation.
- The problem of safe RL is very important, of great interest to the community and without too much in the way of high quality solutions.
- The authors make good use of the developed tools in model-based control and provide some bridge between developments across sub-fields.
- The simulations support the insight from the main theoretical analysis, and the algorithm seems to outperform its baseline.
- I found the paper as a whole a little hard to follow and even poorly written as a whole. For a specific example of this see the paragraph beginning 197.
- The treatment of prior work and especially the "exploration/exploitation" problem is inadequate and seems to be treated as an afterthought: but of course it is totally central to the problem! Prior work such as deserve a much more detailed discussion and comparison so that the reader can understand how/why this method is different.
- Something is confusing (or perhaps even wrong) about the way that Figure 1 is presented. In an RL problem you cannot just "sample" state-actions, but instead you may need to plan ahead over multiple timesteps for efficient exploration.
- The main theorems are hard to really internalize in any practical way, would something like a "regret bound" be possible instead? I'm not sure that these types of guarantees are that useful.
1) Distributed variant of K-FAC that is efficient for optimizing deep neural networks. The authors mitigate the computational bottlenecks of the method (second order statistic computation and Fisher Block inverses) by asynchronous updating.
2) The authors propose a “doubly-factored” Kronecker approximation for layers whose inputs are too large to be handled by the standard Kronecker-factored approximation. They also present (Appendix A) a cheaper Kronecker factored approximation for convolutional layers.
- Paper presents interesting ideas on how to make computationally demanding aspects of K-FAC tractable.
- Experiments are well thought out and highlight the key advantages of the method over Synchronous SGD (with and without BN).
- “…it should be possible to scale our implementation to a larger distributed system with hundreds of workers.” The authors mention that this should be possible, but fail to mention the potential issues with respect to communication, load balancing and node (worker) failure. That being said, as a proof-of-concept, the method seems to perform well and this is a good starting point.
Your comments should be detailed, specific, and polite. Please avoid vague, subjective complaints. Think about the times when you received an unfair, unjustified, short, or dismissive review. Try not be that reviewer! Always be constructive and help the authors understand your viewpoint, without being dismissive or using inappropriate language. Remember that you are not reviewing your level of interest in the submission, but its scientific contribution to the field!
If you have comments that you wish to be kept confidential from the authors, you can use either the “Confidential Comments to Area Chair” text field or the “Confidential Comments to Program Chairs” text field. Such comments might include explicit comparisons of the submission to other submissions and criticisms that are more bluntly stated. If you accidentally find out the identities of the authors, please do not divulge the identities to anyone, but do tell your AC that this has happened and make a note of this in the “Confidential Comments to Program Chairs” text field.
You will be asked to provide a “Overall Score” between 1 and 10 for each submission. The ACs, SACs, and program chairs will interpret these scores via the following scale.
10: Top 5% of accepted NIPS papers. Truly groundbreaking work.
I will consider not reviewing for NIPS again if this submission is rejected.
9: Top 15% of accepted NIPS papers. An excellent submission; a strong accept.
I will fight for accepting this submission.
8: Top 50% of accepted NIPS papers. A very good submission; a clear accept.
I vote and argue for accepting this submission.
7: A good submission; an accept.
I vote for accepting this submission, although I would not be upset if it were rejected.
6: Marginally above the acceptance threshold.
I tend to vote for accepting this submission, but rejecting it would not be that bad.
5: Marginally below the acceptance threshold.
I tend to vote for rejecting this submission, but accepting it would not be that bad.
4: An okay submission, but not good enough; a reject.
I vote for rejecting this submission, although I would not be upset if it were accepted.
I vote and argue for rejecting this submission.
2: I'm surprised this work was submitted to NIPS; a strong reject.
I will fight for rejecting this submission.
1: Trivial or wrong or already known.
I will consider not reviewing for NIPS again if this submission is accepted.
You should NOT assume that you were assigned a representative sample of submissions, nor should you adjust your scores to match the overall conference acceptance rates. The “Overall Score” for each submission should reflect your assessment of the submission’s contributions.
You will be asked to provide a “Confidence Score” between 1 and 5 for each submission. The ACs, SACs, and program chairs will interpret these scores via the following scale.
5: You are absolutely certain about your assessment.
You are very familiar with the related work.
4: You are confident in your assessment, but not absolutely certain.
It is unlikely, but not impossible, that you did not understand some parts of the submission or that you are unfamiliar with some pieces of related work.
3: You are fairly confident in your assessment.
It is possible that you did not understand some parts of the submission or that you are unfamiliar with some pieces of related work. Math/other details were not carefully checked.
2: You are willing to defend your assessment, but it is quite likely that you did not understand central parts of the submission or that you are unfamiliar with some pieces of related work. Math/other details were not carefully checked.
1: Your assessment is an educated guess. The submission is not in your area or the submission was difficult to understand. Math/other details were not carefully checked.
Authors will be given the opportunity to respond to their reviews before decisions are made. This is to enable them to address misunderstandings, point out parts of their submissions that were overlooked, or disagree with the reviewers’ assessments. In previous years, some authors felt that their responses were ignored. As a reviewer, it is your responsibility to read and (if appropriate) respond to each author response. It is not fair to ignore any author response, even for submissions that you think should be rejected. Although it is possible that an author response will not change your assessment of a submission, you must convey to the authors that you have carefully considered their comments. As you read each author response, keep an open mind. Have you overlooked something? Please update each review to indicate that you have read the author response and whether you agree or disagree with it. You should be more specific than “I have read the author response and my opinion remains the same.” If that is the case, you should explain why it remains it remains the same, what the author response failed to address, etc.
After the author response phase, the AC for each submission will initiate a discussion via CMT to encourage the reviewers to come to a consensus. If the reviewers do come to a consensus, the program chairs will take it seriously; only rarely are unanimous assessments overruled. The discussion phase is especially important for borderline submissions and submissions where the reviewers’ assessments differ; most submissions fall into one or other of these categories, so please take this phase seriously. When discussing a submission, try to remember that different people have different backgrounds and different points of view. Ask yourself, “Do the other reviewers' comments make sense?" and do consider changing your mind in light of their comments, if appropriate. That said, if you think the other reviewers are not correct, you are not required to change your mind. Reviewer consensus is valuable, but it is not mandatory. | 2019-04-22T05:58:26Z | https://nips.cc/Conferences/2018/PaperInformation/ReviewerACSACGuidelines |
Much of the work you do when building Drupal sites revolves around enabling and configuring modules, clicking various admin forms and updating settings. These settings are stored in the database. You should make changes to Drupal sites locally first and not directly on the live site. But changes you make to your local Drupal site need to be replicated on your live site. This tutorial is a walk through of how to automate these changes by storing them in code in a Site Deployment module. No more clicking and configuring multiple times!
Before we carry on, what exactly do we mean by deployment and why do we need to worry about it?
In its simplest terms, deployment is when you release changes to your website from your local environment to your live site. In professional environments, you are likely to have multiple stages before live, such as QA and staging. Each of these stages require deployment for each release.
Manually making configuration changes is a serious waste of valuable time and increases the risk of human error. The goal should always be to automate the deployment process as much as possible.
The Features module can take care of a lot of it, such as custom Content Types, Views, Image Presets, Context and Variables (using Strongarm). However, there are always other changes that are stored in the database that either can’t be exported into a Feature, or Features is just not appropriate. You still need a way to deploy these. You also need a way to control Features. You need to enable, revert and update Features.
Not sure how to use Features? Check out how to create your first Feature.
The concept of a deployment module is pretty simple. You have one custom module for your site which handles all of the deployment needs. Most, if not all, of the real work takes place in the .install file. In that file, you implement hook_update_N. Typically you would write one hook_update_N function per release. In that function, you write code to make changes to your Drupal site.
To execute changes in the Site Deployment module, all you need to do is ask Drupal to run its update. This can be achieved by going to update.php for your site, or running a drush command (drush updb). Every time you do a deployment, you can run Drupal update again, and your site will be up to date. All changes will be automatically executed.
This hook is normally used for modules where a change to the database is required . When a user upgrades to a newer version of the module, updates should be run and every implementation of hook_update_N will be since the last one that was run.
Over time, you might end up adding more and more updates. In order for Drupal to know which updates have already been run, you need to add a number to the function name for each one. When each update is run, Drupal stores that number as the schema version in the system table for that module. Drupal runs updates in numerical order. Then when Drupal runs the next update, it will run the update(s) greater in number than the previous update that has run.
For the Site Deployment module, the number we will use is 7000. So the update function will be site_deployment_update_7000().
Why 7000? There is a pattern for the numbers. The first digit is the core version of Drupal. In this case, it is Drupal 7, so you need to use 7. The second digit is the major release version for the module. This module is still a dev version, so you can use 0. Eventually, it will become major release version 1, in which case use 1, making the updates 71xx. You may even have a second release, so in that case, the update numbers will be 72xx. The final two digits are for counting sequentially. You can start with 00. The next update will be 01 (7001) and then 02 (7002) and so on.
Using hook_update_N is a very convenient way to store and execute changes for deployment because each site knows which update was run last. When you run update again, each site will automatically run all new updates and therefore all of the required deployment code.
Let’s look at a simple example - you have two versions of a Drupal site, local and live. You need to make some changes, so you implement hook_update_N. Since this is the first time you have done this, the number you use is 7000. You then deploy your Site Deployment module, and any other code changes, to your live site. You then run the Drupal updates either by going to update.php or running drush updb. This will then execute the update function with 7000.
The next time you want to make a change, you create a new function with the number 7001. You deploy the code to your live site and run the Drupal updates again. Drupal looks at the schema version in the system table for your Site Deployment module and sees that 7000 has run but 7001 has not. So it goes ahead and executes 7001.
Because changes are in code and are not made manually in an admin form, it can be put under version control along with the rest of the code base.
Each site in your pipeline will “remember” the last deployment that was run on it by storing the last update increment in the system table. When you run Drupal Update on a each site, it will run all of the updates since the last one that was run.
By scripting all changes, you dramatically reduce the chances of human error. You do not need to replicate all that clicking and form saving. It also makes it much easier to test.
It will dramatically reduce the time it takes to make a deployment. Manually repeating all the manual changes on a production site on deployment day can take a substantial amount of time. Scripting all of it and running one command is insanely quick in comparison.
When working in a team environment, your fellow team members just need to do a git pull to get your code changes and then run the Drupal update. They will then get all of the database updates that you have made (and you will get theirs) without labour intensive manual updates or sharing databases locally.
Because this is a custom module, you can call it what ever you want. Common names are sitename_deployment or deploy_update. For this example, I am going to call it site_deployment.
The module file doesn’t need to contain any working code. We will simply include a comment.
In the install function, you can write an implementation of hook_update_N for each deployment. This is the heart of the site deployment module.
Let’s take a look at the code for the first function.
So what goes in each function? Let’s look at some examples of four different deployments.
Let’s say that with the first deployment, you want to enable the Contact and Blocks modules and disable the Devel and Coder modules.
The first calls the core module_enable function, which takes an array of modules that you want to enable. In this case, the modules to enable are Contact and Book. The second calls the core module_disable function, which takes an array of modules you want to disable. In this case, the modules to disable are Devel and Coder. And the third line calls the core theme_enable function, which takes a list of themes you want to enable. In this case, the theme to enable is Garland.
In the second deployment, you want to do two things: change the settings for a block and change the path for the site frontpage.
The first chunk of code is a db_update to change the navigation block that comes from the system module and set its region to sidebar_second.
The final line of code changes the path of the default frontpage. You would normally do this in the site information page. This then saves it to the variable table. You can bypass using the site information form and set the variable directly in code. To do this, use the variable_set() function. This takes two arguments, the name of the variable and the value you want to set for that variable.
The variable for the frontage is site_frontpage. This update sets the site_frontpage to node/1.
In the third deployment, we add a new link to the main menu.
This will add a new menu item with a title of Register. It will link to the detail user registration path and will be added to the Main Menu.
In the fourth deployment, we want to revert a feature that has become overridden. Features become overridden when one of the settings changes in the database and it the Feature code has not been updated. You will want to revert it when you want to remove the database change and revert it back to what is stored in code.
To revert a feature, you call the features_revert function. It takes a multidimensional array as its argument. This array contains the feature and components to revert. In this case, we are reverting the field component of the news feature.
Automating all changes for a Drupal site is an essential element in creating robust, risk free and testable deployments. In this introduction, we have looked how to set up your own site deployment module and some examples of this in action.
I have set up an example module on drupal.org. This contains the code outlined above. Over time, I will add more examples which you can use for inspiration.
If you would like more information on using the Features module, check out my book Master Drupal Module Development, which includes two chapters on using the Features module.
That was a great intro, many thanks for taking the time to write it up.
Many thanks! Your explanation is so simple and clear! I really appreciate that every detail/step is fully and simply explained, so as to leave no doubt.
I appreciate what you're doing here but I feel on a large site, the amount of config you'd be putting into this module would be significant and an incredible amount of work. At the moment, at the place I work, we're using a mixture of features and manually reproducing the config changes on the live server. It's not ideal either. I wonder if your deployment module example might be the basis of a simplified but code-based deployment module?
In the past I have worked in teams that also used a mixture of Features and manually reproducing config changes as well. Once you get used to doing all changes in code using a site deployment module, you won't want to go back (or at least I don't!). The sites I work on are large sites also. One of the biggest gains is reducing bugs with a team of devs. You can do a git pull and Drupal update to get other developers changes daily (or throughout the day) without having to run through the manual changes each time. If every developer has to run through manual changes that other developers are creating, they probably won't do it that often.
when or why is Features module in not appropriate? In what scenario Features could not finish the task?
It does depend on how you are using Features in the first place. In all of the large scale Drupal projects I have been involved with, Features is used to export and manage updates through the deployment pipeline. At each stage, Features are always reverted after the code deployed. Because the Feature code has the latest changes, reverting all Features will change the database settings to what is stored in code. The word "revert" is confusing and counter intuitive in this case. The problem starts when editors or site managers update settings on the live site. If those settings are stored in a Feature, when a new deployment happens, the Feature will be reverted and the changes will be reverted and lost. So a choice needs to be made at the start - should a setting be changeable in live itself or is it always controlled by developers? If it should be changeable on live, it is more appropriate to deploy the changing using a Site Deployment module. In this case, the settings is a one time change and site editors are free to change the setting. If it is always controlled by developers, it is more appropriate to export and deploy using Features.
There are also cases where a particular setting can't be exported in a Feature but that is less common scenario these days.
I support and actively advocate "site deployment" modules. I think this article is headed in the right direction, but there is enough flaws in it that I wouldn't recommend people follow this it. Below I've outlined the big problems, as I see them.
Calling the module site_deployment in every site suggests that it is the same module in each site. These deployment module are unique per site and should be named as such. If the client is called "Cheap and Nasty Pizza", then namespace the module with a prefix cnp_, just like you should for all client specific custom modules or features.
The hook_update docblocks should not contain "Implements hook_update_N()." as that is what drush will display when running "drush updatedb". Instead you should be using a short description of the change "Enabling the nose picker module." The "nth Deployment: " is just additional unnecessary clutter.
Friends don't let friends use core blocks. Blocks should be handled with the boxes module if you want them as config, or bean if you want them as entities - each approach has their pros and cons. Either way blocks should be placed using context or panels and be exported to features. That way your block config is always properly documented in code. With the approach implemented above you have no way of knowing if someone has moved a block.
Features reverts should be a normal part of your deployment process, not a step in a hook_update. You should always run "drush fra -y" before and after running "drush updatedb" to ensure all of your features are in a default state.
1. I actually said sitename_deployment is a common name (where sitename is replaced with the actual site name) and that site_deployment is used for this example. I’m not saying that the exact name “site_deployment" should be used in real life.
2. Fair point. I’m used to writing “Implements [hookname]” because that is the Drupal standard, but I realise hook_update_N is the exception to that rule. Have updated the post accordingly.
3. I always recommend using context or panels to place blocks and export in features. But what if you are on an existing project (you didn’t build the site) that actually has blocks placed “old school” and you have a task to move one of the blocks? You could suggest changing all of the blocks to use context, but what if the client/boss says no, just move the block? This is just an pragmatic example of the sort of thing you can do if you need to, not an article about the benefits of using context or panels etc.
4. In an ideal world, you should have drush fra -y scripted in a deployment/rebuild script so you be sure it is always run (along with drush updb etc). But this is an intro piece and people might not have that in place yet. This example is for where you want to revert a particular feature (there are projects where features revert all is not run for a variety of reasons).
Nice article Blair, I've just used the exact same approach on a large scale Drupal project hosted on AWS with a large team, and the process works perfectly.
We have a deployment script as part of a CI pipeline which runs drush fra, and drush updb after a code release.
Thanks for giving a great overview, helped me a lot to understand how my future deployment will work out better.
Is there some kind of documentation on the functions and array syntax to use for the various kinds of configuration one might want to change? E.g. how do I know, when/how to use db_update() or if there's a dedicated function for the desired functionality. (Am I right thinking that db_update could also be used to enable/disable modules?).
Further questions I have no idea (yet): how do I remove a field from a content type? How do I set a field formatter for a certain display of a content type?
db_update() is only used for a SQL query to update the database. There are often dedicated functions that you can use instead. E.g to enable a module, you can use module_enable(array('module_name')), so you don't need to query the database directly with db_update.
For removing content type fields and field formatters, it is best to use Features for that. You can add your content type and fields to a Feature and then remove them at a later date if you wish.
Hello! This was just what I needed!
I just started working on a startup company and I'm responsible of rebuilding the web service on Drupal. This time everything have to be rock solid. So this article really provides useful info for me.
Have you tried or now something about the 'deploy' module for Drupal?
Seem to be quite popular.
I've used Deploy on past projects, but that is for deploying and staging content rather than making the kind of changes outlined in this post.
I am trying to improve my Drupal DevOps and this is a huge help. But how to you handle dependencies? Do you use a make file or do you add them to your info file?
How do you sort out all the different updates that are different in each and every branch to merge to develop?
4 developers working on 4 separate areas of the site in 4 separate branches led to 4 different hook_update_7001's.
Having them use different numbers didn't work cause the guy using 7004 had his database set at 7004 so the updates 7001-3 never ran on his copy when that code was merged back into his site.
If you have different branches, then I don't think you have much choice but to stick to the normal numbering and then resolve the code conflicts when they arise and adjust the numbers accordingly.
So if two devs add hook_update_7001, then when the second merges there will be a conflict. At that time, he/she will need to resolve the conflict and change his/her update to hook_update_7002.
Very helpful / thanks, but could you say a little more about the relationship between the naming of the update function and the VERSION entry in the .info file? In your example, you've set VERSION to "7.x-1.x-dev", but are using a zero in the update function (e.g., "site_deployment_update_7000"). What does the first zero in 7000 correspond to? Not understanding this, it seems like it should be 7100, corresponding to "1.x", but, then, I don't understand this yet, so... Thanks again!
Because it the module is a dev version (7.x-1.x-dev), I'm leaving it as 7000. But if it wasn't a dev version, and the version was 7.x-1.x then it should be 7100. And if the module has a version 2 (7.x-2.x) then it would be 7200.
Awesome post. What's the method of reverting changes using the module you used.
Love this post and wish I had this when I was learning about module install files.
I have the same question as the last post about reverting changes. These functions are only run once and then you have to write a new function to rerun any functionality in the hooks. Either you can add another update function or go into the database and manually change the update version to before the one that you need to run. Both of these options are not ideal.
How can this be more aligned with the features style where you have configuration that can be reimplemented with a click? Perhaps we are stuck with this solution for now or have to create a custom module with functionality outside the install file.
Not sure if you mean reverting changes made by your update function or reapplying the changes made by the update function. If the former then it's hard to revert changes without storing the info somewhere. You'd have to integrate that into the update function and store the previous settings/data somewhere. Then you can grab that info when you wish to revert it. If the latter then you have the 2 options I mentioned above, making a new update function with the same code as your previous update function or reset the version of the update hook for the particular module in the database ('system' table 'schema_version' column) and then run update.php. Please know what you are doing if you want to reset the schema_version especially if there are update functions other update functions numbered after the one you want to run.
If I need to revert changes, then I go down the route of creating a new update function. There isn't really an easier way that I know of. Changing the update number is problematic and error prone.
Thanks for such a nice article, I have done my first deployment module using same example and it works perfectly.
I have one query, Can I use deployment module for the cross database connections too? If yes, can you provide an example code for that.
I have used db_set_active function to query with other DB but was not sure whether it works in Deployment Module, but it really works.
Great stuff, glad it works. Thanks for reporting back!
Hi Blair, Thanks for the all the examples and explanation.
This helper module for D7 takes your deploy strategy one step farther and provides both feedback and the possibility of failing an update if what was attempted, did not work. | 2019-04-26T04:19:31Z | http://befused.com/drupal/site-deployment-module |
In the 1730’s, there began a movement in the Colonies that was later called The Great Awakening. It came with convincing preachers, stirred spirits, changed morals, and huge revival meetings. It transformed the religious and moral landscape of the soon-to-be American colonies. Some even consider the religious fervor it ignited as one of the causes of the American Revolution. It had a huge impact, but the effects eventually wore off. By 1790, there was a Second Great Awakening, filled with a whole new round of hellfire and brimstone sermons, new converts, and more moral reform. This too, faded away until there was a Third Great Awakening in the 1850s.
This pattern of revival and indifference is nothing new to the church on earth. There is a tide that ebbs and flows of reform and unfaithfulness that washes through the generations of the fallen sons of men. So, on this Reformation Sunday, we will consider the wisdom the Lord Himself teaches about the success of His Word in the hearts of mankind.
The very first big reform for the Church happened in the Exodus. The descendants of Jacob were suffering under the yoke of slavery in Egypt. God sent them Moses to deliver them with mighty acts of judgment against Pharaoh and Egypt’s idols. In the very first Passover, all of Israel carefully obeyed the Lord’s instructions, and they were preserved from the final plague of death of the firstborn [Ex. 12:23]. Moses brought them through the Red Sea on dry ground, and the sons of Israel became a people for God’s treasured possession [Ex. 19:5]. The whole assembly took part in God’s rescue, as St. Paul much later wrote, “Our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink” But that ideal picture of God’s people didn’t last long. They soon succumbed to grumbling against God, rejecting His called servants [Ex. 16], and even outright pagan worship practices [Ex. 32].
This cycle of faithfulness and apostasy continued, generation after generation. There were glimpses of a perfect company of God’s people, and then hopes would be dashed. It even seemed that some final victory had come under the reigns of King David, and his son, Solomon. But even their reigns came to an end in division among God’s people.
When John the Baptist finally appeared in the wilderness, a reformation of a different kind erupted. It wasn’t different because of the participants, because they were just as sinful and stiff-necked. It was different because of what the Lord Himself was going to do.
It seemed even more like that was the case once John announced, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Great crowds flocked to Jesus and followed Him as He preached and healed, and countless people were forgiven of their sins, healed of their diseases, and cleansed of their leprosy.
Yes, there were great crowds who followed Jesus and believed in Him. But that isn’t reformation in the Lord’s sight. The kind of reform which God has always been after is those who listen to His Word, not those whose hearts are far from Him. The real reformations which cause joy before God’s throne take place every time a sinner repents. That’s when His Word accomplishes the purpose for which He sends it.
This kind of reformation is based on faith, and continues by the work of the Holy Spirit, when and where it pleases God (John 3:8). There may be a huge initial response, and the appearance of the whole world being converted, but those things will pass. What was visible for a time will become invisible. Yet, the reformation will continue in those who “have ears to hear” (v. 15).
Surely this is disappointing to witness, especially as we sit in naves (sanctuaries) that are far from filled to capacity. But this doesn’t mean the purpose of the Lord is not and has not been fulfilled. When I talk to people who haven’t been at church for a while, they ask me, how’s the attendance at church? Stupid me, I give them numbers. As if the attendance numbers really said anything about the Church, the creation of Holy Spirit.
The trouble is, we are so susceptible to thinking of the Church in terms of our work. After all, the devotion is ours, our hands did the work, and we’re the ones who have spent time in and among this congregation. I mean, I wrote this sermon. There’s a certain comfortability with measuring the success or failure of the Church in things that can be observed and quantified. So, if the attendance is down or the finances aren’t what we expect, it’s so easy to think that we’ve failed. Why won’t people come to our church? When it gets really bad, we start pointing fingers and assigning blame. As the Lord’s servant, it’s my duty to tell you that is a losing game. Losing not just in the sense that it might become a failed venture, but if that’s the aim of our hearts, then we are likely thinking of it as something besides Christ’s Church, a visible gathering of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Think about it this way: On the Last Day, what is the Lord going to say as He welcomes His own into glory? “Well done, you made the church grow threefold…you got 3/5 of your grandkids to come to church…” No, He will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matt. 25:21) He calls each of us to faithfulness as servants. God grant that our labors be done in service to Him, because He will give the increase as He sees fit. So, for us servants, we need to stop worrying about attendance numbers and quit fretting over sustainability for individual congregations. Because it’s His Church and His work, it might go in a direction we don’t expect—even down—and that’s fine, so long as we have been faithful servants.
What truly matters is God the Holy Spirit gathering the faithful around their Lord, and He will do that in spite of all earthly obstacles. He will do that when and where it pleases God. All of the praise and the success belongs not to us; it belongs to Him!
Twelve years ago, on Reformation Sunday, a revival and reformation happened in a man who grew up knowing nothing of God and His Son. Although several times the Word came to him, he was unmoved. But in God’s timing, that man came to know the Lord and he confessed his faith before Trinity Lutheran Church in Bellingham, Washington. Again, by God’s continued grace and the powerful working of His Spirit, that man stands before you as your pastor.
This Reformation Sunday, we are privileged to witness the Word of the Lord at work in the hearts of Jerimiah and Natasha, as they will soon publicly declare their allegiance to Christ their Lord and in His continued grace, pledge their ongoing faithfulness to Him. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
“12 From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. 13 For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, 14 and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. 15 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” The Kingdom of heaven will continue to advance in the hearts of those who receive it. Whether it is visible for a time, or hidden from our sight, God’s will is done in every generation until our hopes are fulfilled when He comes again and makes all things new. Amen.
God created His world good in six days. It was not just a snow globe to be kept on the shelf, but it was made to sustain and provide for life on earth. Our planet, placed in perfect distance from the sun, with an atmosphere and ecosystem that are self-sustaining and able to bounce back even from adverse conditions. What a wondrous place earth is, and what an amazing thing life is here. Our human observation can only scratch at the surface of God’s creation with the disciplines for studying the stars, makeup of the earth, animal life, and the human body.
But who is able to understand what has happened to God’s good creation since Genesis 1 and 2?
Why are there eyes that do not see, bodies that do not form right in the womb, wasting disease that overcomes internal organs, etc.? Why was this official’s son ill, and why when he says “ill” do we have an endless list of maladies that could have brought him to the point of death?
The Epistle reading from Ephesians 6:10-17 exposes what happened to God’s good creation. The Evil One, Satan happened to it. Within God’s beautifully-created world, and likely without delay, the devil tempted Eve and Adam and brought sin and death into this creation.
In a sense, we are collateral damage in Satan’s prideful war against God. The most potent way for Lucifer to get back at the God against whom he rebelled was to go after the crown of God’s creation—man.
But God is not bested by a fallen angel, either in the Garden of Eden or in Capernaum.
48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.
The war is now waged within human hearts. Satan attacks to destroy any true hope in God. He would rather hold our hearts in slavery, captive by the fear of death and an aversion toward the true God. Within the heart, he arouses demands that the Almighty bow down to our command: Unless you show me a sign, I refuse to believe. Unless you change to meet my criteria, I cannot have you as my Lord. Unless you make my life the way I want it, I won’t trust in you. Lord, if you don’t do this my way, all will be lost.
We are equipped by our Lord for the spiritual fight against the Devil, the world, and our own weak, sinful flesh. With temptations to lies, self-righteousness, guilt, and doubt Satan wages war against our souls. The Lord, therefore, arms us against these through His Word and the Sacraments, the Means of Grace.
See this at work in the official coming to Jesus about his son. He came in deep distress to be sure, but only a vague knowledge that Jesus might be able to heal his son. With His Word, Jesus exposed the lies that were at work within his heart—don’t rest your faith seeing a miracle or in circumstances turning in your favor. Jesus sends him away and simply says, “Your son lives.” Let your peace come from the Word of God, and the official left believing that Word.
51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son [lives].” And he himself believed, and all his household.
So by the end, the most important thing wasn’t that his son was healed, but that He believed the Word of Jesus in spite of the Evil One’s schemes. Whether his son was alive or dead, the official and his household were adorned with salvation.
So how can you be similarly equipped? By being immersed in the Means of Grace. Come to worship often and hear the Word spoken, preached, and sung. Make Bible study a priority over sleeping in or other things. Remembering your Baptism every morning and throughout the day as you are met with your own failings and lose sight of God’s calling to you.
Here in today’s service, you are being adorned with the Armor of God: In confessing your sins and receiving the absolution, you are fitted with the breastplate of Christ’s righteousness. In hearing the Word throughout the service—and believing it—you have the belt of truth. At the end of the Divine Service when you are sent out with the Benediction, you walk out readied by the Gospel of peace. But since this is only one hour out of the week, do not neglect the shield of faith, no matter what the circumstance, whether good or poor health, riches or poverty, ease or turmoil, because the Evil One has you in his sights and if your faith fails, any of circumstance can become a trap.
God’s creation has become a battlefield, but one where He has won the war against all the powers of darkness. He has purchased and won you from the devil and given you His Spirit so that you believe Him at His Word. Go from this place at His Word. You will live because He has said: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26) And it will surely be. Amen.
The English translations make a future out of it, but the Greek is present tense.
So, which is it? Which is easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven” or “Rise and walk”?
Jesus leaves us with this two-edged question, because if we say it’s easier to forgive sins, then we risk thinking too little of what that forgiveness cost. If we say it’s easier to say rise and walk, then we might wonder why God doesn’t seem more active in the world for good.
Which is easier? The answer to the question is “Both.” God is able to do all things, but the thing that scandalized the scribes and led them to accuse Jesus of blasphemy, is that God was doing His work the “wrong” way. How could God put His powerful Word on the lips of a man? How could God perform miracles through human touch?
But this is the mystery of our faith, that God does do these great wonders, and through a Man, Jesus, who is the Son of God. That fact is the difference between the Christian faith and all man-made religions: God brings salvation through human flesh, we come to know God and His will through His Son, and that the way to paradise and eternal life is a gift which is ours by faith in the merit and works of Jesus alone.
Now if we’ve been Christians long enough, we start to become familiar with these things. As the proverb goes, familiarity breeds contempt. What I mean is we believe the word of forgiveness, the words of institution easily enough. But, why do we struggle to believe that God is able to take care of the mundane things of life?
There is a tendency for the well-known Bible stories that we learn in Sunday School to become fairy tales when we grow up. Take for instance the Walls of Jericho: “So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they captured the city.” (Josh. 6:20) Our sophisticated adult minds think, how could blowing trumpets and shouting cause city walls to fall flat?! There must be some other explanation like an earthquake and sandstone.
This reveals what is still lacking in our faith. We find ourselves believing in God in theory, but not so much God in fact.
Where is God when the rubber hits the road in life? We just confessed that we believe in Him who created heaven and earth, visible and invisible. But He is right where He has always been. He continues to make Himself known and act for the good of His elect with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. To His children, He gives His Holy Spirit, Who brings us to lament our breaks of faith with God. It’s the Spirit who convinces us that the stories we read in the Bible are not just pious dreams about a fictional God. They are the story of our very same God at work in the world we live in today.
Believe His holy Word, believe that He does exactly what He says, and the right response is Amen. Rolled into that is the promise that nothing in all of life—on earth, in the body, even against spiritual evils—is greater than God who wills good for you.
It’s seemingly easier that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins, but if we believe that (and we do), then let us also believe the rest of our heavenly Father’s love and care by which He will bring us through the passing trials of this life to Paradise. | 2019-04-22T06:27:23Z | https://blclebanon.org/2018/10/ |
get worked up over minor things like movies, but it is soooo true.
This is a fun and wordy romp through one person's eyes of what it was like to grow up and live in a small town. It was very true to form to what I remember the way of life was like. It brought back a lot of memories for me. There were quite a few stories strung together to make up this book. It flowed nicely and was quite enjoyable. The author made good use of the assortment of old typewriters. I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars.
the story, but it turns out the selfish teenager actually experiences empathy.
this book to any teenager I know. I thank the author for sharing it with me. I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars.
concentrate on the cat family. Most of them are of the dog family.
exciting read for such a short little tale. I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars.
This is a nice little book on how to be a better person.
issues. It is full of little tales to illustrate her points.
My favorite tale was the one of the broken pot.
this book 5 out of 5 stars.
delightful little story book with adorable illustrations.
but I am an adult. The rest of the book was really cute.
druids and dragons. Who could ask for anything more.?
break out of his prison of many years.
supernatural. I give this book 5 out of 5 stars.
story where is does not pay to be a good guy, or even a bad guy.
the story, to keep the reader guessing.
for those glowing red eyes!
review and I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars.
confronts how uncomfortable a child is with her differences.
everyone finally sees why she is different.
need to respect differences in people. We can’t all be the same.
the audience of this book.
help of a new found friend.
knew where one of their stories were going to end up.
Mr. Richards has the same talent.
that has super powers and a personality.
perfect combination for late night entertainment.
connected by the fact that there are no connections in the stories.
They are all quite strange and off the wall.
This was a very refreshing read.
book many a little boy will love.
It has everything, aliens, food and explosions!
I thank the author for sharing it with me.
old west right after the civil war.
actually lives up to the title.
bloody and gory, can’t read the title and not know that.
book definitely delivered in the rough and gory department.
I did not however care for the very end of the book.
identity was kept from the reader until the very last.
I felt like that part was a little bit rushed.
indeed from the one of your average student.
girl spends a week fretting over her turn to host the sleepover.
She is so afraid that everyone will think she is weird.
expect to see in this day and age.
reading and I was glad that I did.
good stuff started to happen.
don’t want to spoil it for other readers.
was used throughout the book.
it is to be a series, but I did not like the way the book ended.
said other people may love it.
all set to give this book a 5 star rating until I hit the end.
and enjoyable book to read. I will be reading the next one in the series.
at the subject with a different approach.
available and did not go look for it.
I like to start cold and let the book lead me.
the napkin to the title of the book.
well written book that I think supernatural enthusiasts will enjoy.
trying hard and doing your best.
resources available to do a good job.
really relate to the kitty trying to write a script.
The picture looked just like me trying to write my own script.
The book is delightful and fun with a very good lesson instilled in it.
drinking iced coffee, to Christopher Columbus discovering America.
Mr. Ficklestein is quite an accomplished straight man.
with his checkerboard on drugs and his Mickey Mouse. Now I see why he stuck to poetry.
He even attempts to amaze us with his music that he still has to write.
All in all, quite an eclectic and entertaining read. I have not had that much fun reading a book in a long time.
I thank Mr. Ficklestein for sharing it with me.
I started reading this book expecting it to be realistically life like since it was based on a true story. It started out realistically enough with the explanation of how the whole situation started. After that it became a bit difficult to swallow. I don't know if it is because I have a background in Criminal Justice, but after the beginning of the story, the rest of it became a bit difficult to swallow.
The notion that she was being tracked and followed by Town Cars kicked it into the realm of difficult to believe for me. Government agencies use Suburban’s, Crown Vics, and Chargers. These are middle of the road, discreet vehicles. They use these to blend in while doing surveillance. They most assuredly do not have the budget to use Town Cars, or have fleets of them. Those would fall more into the politician's choice of vehicles, those and limos.
The next part was about her impending arrest and incarceration. She sure didn’t seem to take getting an attorney very seriously. I know there are expensive lawyers out there, but there are also decent ones. It seems to me she just gave up her search after the first interview. It really bothered me that she did so little on her on behalf.
Just when I was ready to believe in her innocence, she admits she was guilty. That kind of set me back a bit. The addition of the jail house law clerk seemed to offer some promise of some action, but became an anti-climatic addition, as did her decision not to pursue another appeal.
I feel like the story started out fine and stalled somewhere in the middle. It is a shame because it had lots of potential to go many different directions. It seemed to hodge-podge its way to the end. I kept hoping it would pick up, but alas it did not.
This book is very intense and contains many honest revelations. I was a little concerned that it would be a complete religious manuscript, but that was not the case. The author started out on a religious trend but went other ways through out the book. The author talked about his new holistic approach to life and how hard he tried to maintain it. When he began to rant, he lost his job and basically had to look to another way to control himself.
This is basically a person’s journey through the mysteries of his life and the complications of his illness. It is a very straightforward and honest look at the problems and struggles he went through. This book is a very intense read and not for the faint of heart. Many of the situations in this book would disturb many people. That being said, it is a great view into the life of person with this illness. I appreciate the honesty and the bravery it took to write this book.
When you read this book, be on the look out for his theories on Styrofoam and liver flukes. They are most entertaining and interesting.
At times this book tended to wander a bit and had trouble following it. Each time it did manage to get me back to the original thought. Due to this, I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars.
I was provided this book for an honest review. I found to be a fun little romp. It gives a whole new meaning to Ghoul’s night out. It was a light and fun read that I really enjoyed. It reminded me of a series of books I read by Mary Janice Davidson about a vampire queen that was as good at being a vampire as Ava was being a ghoul.
I must admit I have never read anything about ghouls, so I didn’t know what they were capable of doing. Wow, learning about them was interesting. They are like the buzzards of the supernatural world.
This apparently is the second in a series. I have not read the first one, but the second one provided enough background information that I was not completely lost. It did this without being boring or redundant.
This book will not win any Pulitzer prizes, but it is not meant to be that kind of literature. It is a fun, entertaining read that I would recommend to anyone looking for a break from the normal. I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars for sheer entertainment purposes.
I was provided this book for an honest review. I was thrilled to death to get it. I just love horse books and stories, especially true ones. Being a horse owner myself, I can relate to many of the issues and triumphs of owning and keeping horses.
In this book, Nancy shows her issues of not fitting into societal norms for women her age. It shows her struggles and trials to find her place in life. She already had a great husband and a fantastic job, but according to societal conventions, she was missing something to make her life complete. She bought into this for awhile, and struggled to find her place in life that society thought she should have. As she struggles to feel like she belongs, you get to know her and feel her pain. She is brutally honest about all the feelings she has pertaining to this situation.
Bless her husband’s heart; because just when you think she is going to throw in the towel and end up somewhere major depressed or has some kind of break down, he suggests she look into horses. I bet he didn’t have any idea what kind of impact this was gong to have on her when he did it. He was just looking to give her some kind of relief from her suffering. What a great guy!
Now enters Eli. Little did Nancy know that this bundle of trouble would be the one thing to make her feel whole? Eli came with his own baggage and issues. These were the very things that helped Nancy and Eli bond. Working through all of them really helped them get to know each other on a very personal level.
Horses are a huge responsibility and very difficult to take care of on a normal day. Eli came with previous injuries and tendencies towards future injuries. It is hard to imagine, but as big and magnificent as horses are they are prone to many health problems and injuries. Nancy had it right with her little quote “But for a nail…” Even something that small can cause life threatening injuries.
As Nancy and Eli traveled their road to harmony together, Nancy learned many of the serious issues involved in owning a horse. She bravely took them all on and as she gained more confidence took more control of Eli’s actual care.
I love the way Nancy was so honest about her feelings throughout the book. Many people who own horses will not own up to the fears that she did. She also took it on the chin when she was dumped by her own horse and didn’t have any problems expressing her anxious thoughts the next time she went to ride.
Nancy has spun a wonderful tale of self doubt, redemption and unconditional love leading to recovery and self esteem. Of course Eli was a major part of this story without his help, Nancy could not have learned all that she did about owning her own horse. Eli and Nancy were meant to be together and their story was meant to be shared. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone.
I was provided this book for an honest review. I was a little concerned when I first started reading this book that it would continue on the veins of prejudice. I was pleasantly surprised. This is a really good book with a lot of social commentaries in it. I really like it when the YA books approach and handle difficult social situations.
It is true enough that it is a human/different species romance like Twilight, but let’s admit it, that is what the kids want these days. This book was at least original enough to use androids instead of the usual vampires or werewolves. Anything that gets our younger generations to read without polluting their minds with propaganda is okay with me.
The more I read this book, about the prejudices against the androids; it reminded me of the societal prejudices of today against different races, and religions. I liked the way the reasons for the prejudices were questions by our young heroine. Admittedly, she did go to some serious extremes to find her information, but sometimes circumstances dictate our actions. The inclusion of her little rich friend with the powerful father was a nice touch.
About halfway through the book some information is withheld from the reader. It was driving me crazy to know that information. It was a very effective technique to keep you reading. When the information was finally revealed, it was certainly not what I was expecting. It actually turned out better than anything I could have imagined.
This is a great YA book that doesn’t spend all it’s time on sexual escapades. It is refreshing and the story is original and well written. I would recommend this book to any youngster looking for something to read.
I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars We need more YA books like this one.
This book was provided to me for an honest review and I must admit that after I read the book description, I was expecting a comedy. This book was anything but humorous. I felt like I was reading something else entirely than what was originally described. There were a few similarities, but, it was not what I was expecting.
The book opens with a scene that lets me know right off that this is not a humorous book. I don’t want to spoil the story for others, but the beginning was a very heavy way to begin any story.
Moving on from the original crisis, the story kind of lagged for me. It moved really slowly and I had to really concentrate to keep going with it.
I must admit that I was appalled that the residents of the house lived in such squalor and filth. I understand that this was part of the story, but the fact that it continued, and later was verified and excused, was a bit difficult for me to swallow. I just can’t wrap my brain around anyone thinking that was okay for any amount of time.
Another thing I found distressing, was the killing of an innocent animal with no repercussions or punishments by a child.
We have enough disturbed individuals in our society as it is without putting more ideas in their heads, thinking it is okay to do to get what you want.
The house, itself, sounded fascinating in the descriptions that were passed on in tiny nuggets in the story. The way the author doled out the details of the house and the way it was constructed, along with all the special features that had been added to the house made me think the author was going to do something special with this information later in the book. Sadly this was not the case.
The author did a great job of making the characters believable. There were some characters that I really did not like at all and some that were quite charming. The interactions that took place between some of the characters were at time quite maddening. There were high levels of usury and manipulation. This was of course all part of the story line I am sure.
The ending of the book I must admit, I did not get at all. I did read the book twice to make sure I didn’t miss anything. This particular story had two different endings. The first one, I felt was just thrown together and a bit ridiculous. The second ending I almost missed. I don’t know if it is just the way the kindle formatted it, but it came after all the author’s acknowledgements. I just happened to see it. That ending showed a little more thought and actually made sense. It looked to me like the author just threw the first choice in so they could say it was a book with two endings. I must admit I am not a fan of books with alternate endings.
As far as I am concerned this book has some issues that I didn’t particularly like, but I can’t hold my personal prejudices against it. The author did a really outstanding job of developing the characters to a believable level. They also pulled the story together after a rather sluggish start. The book was interesting and entertaining in a weird sort of way. Since I am not a fan of dual ending books, I can’t really hold that against it either.
Between the outstanding characters and the issues I had with the book, I ended up giving this book 4 out of 5 stars.
attract some of the younger set.
other one runs simultaneously during the days of kings and dragons.
story line and told in a most unique way.
been my problem, not the author’s.
all to end the way it did.
sub dragons before, but the author made the believable.
particular horses had suffered before they came home to be theirs.
both able to share that bond is amazing.
is totally worth the emotional journey to read it.
you whether you are an adult or a child.
reading if you have ever owned a rescue horse.
animals that defiantly shaped their lives.
Parents are notorious for keeping secrets from their children, but do they do it to protect the children or protect themselves? This is a question you must ask yourself as you read this story. The father figure in this story might have done well to remember the old saying, “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.” Since he was a world traveling minister with an ego the size of Montana, I don’t think he ever thought anyone would spill his secret, even though it was known by several high profile world leaders.
This secret was huge and continued to fester even after the assassination of the father. It destroyed the mother, causing her to final give in to the pressure and guilt and commit suicide.
The two boys knew nothing of this secret until both their parents died; even then they had to follow clues to figure it all out. The two estranged brothers ended up working closely together to figure it all out. They were motivated by the threat of their father’s replacement tarnishing the family name.
The characters in the story are all involved in one way or the other in a large religious organization. There is a lot of money involved in telling of this story. I guess one could say the story was about the corruption of large religious groups, but I don’t really see it that way. I see it as how as humans when we do something so wrong and try to hide it from our loved ones, it just makes matters so much worse than if we had just come clean. It seems it always comes out in the end, no matter how hard we try to hide it. The more time and more lies that are involved, the more damage is done.
This story had many twists and hints to the plot. It was really nice the way the clues were put out so the reader could follow them. I hate it when someone in a story solves a mystery by using clues that reader didn’t even know about. The characters were real and very believable. I like the way Sam kept saying he wasn’t prepared for any of this. The two brothers showed real trust and real fear in this story and that I think was what led to their redemption in the end. The horrors in this book are quite graphic and might offend the faint of heart, but unfortunately they are things that actually happen in this world of ours. It is to the author’s credit that he is bringing them to the light for everyone to see.
As you can tell, I really enjoyed this book. It brought out a plethora of emotions. I felt anger at the father, sympathy for the mother, and whole range of feelings with the brothers as they went through their plight. Notice I said “with” the brothers because the author had me right there with them in every situation. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone so I won’t go into any of the plot details, but this is a book you do not want to miss. It is the adventure of a lifetime; I did not want to put it down! I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars.
I was given this book in exchange for an honest review and I must honestly say, this is a pretty good little book. I am the mother of a daughter so I went through more than my share of sloppily written love stories involving supernatural elements. More than a few of those books involved things that young adults did not need to even think about, just to get readers. This book the eleventh Elementum is a nice book for a young adult. It still addresses attractions between the players but does not go into gory detail or become a how to manual on how to catch a guy. As a parent I must say, this is a nice surprise.
The book opens with a very gripping and surprising event from the past. It then fast forwards to the present day. It was very clever how the authors wove the two time frames together. In order to understand the rest of the book, the reader must have a grasp of the first event, but this is not apparent at first. The authors take their time and do not rush the connection. They let it slowly unfold through the pages of the book.
The young adult characters are believable. The guys are pretty typical teenage boys and the girls pretty much follow suit. The one girl, the fashionista, you would like to strangle at times, so she is one you can definitely buy into as real. I was a little distressed about the parents being so absent, but the extended family seemed to make up for them being gone. The details and appearance of the androgynous person was a little different, but was handled nicely.
The story flowed nicely. The clues were slowly unfolded so the reader had time to connect most of them and make sense of their appearance in the story. There were a few that I never did understand, but I am guessing the answers to those actually lie in the sequels to come.
The authors did a nice descriptive job on most of the encounters. The last scene to me seemed a bit rushed and was ended on an emotional plateau. We all know how it ended, but it seemed to be an apparent hook to get the readers to buy the next book in the series to see how it worked out. All in all, it was a good book and an entertaining read. I would definitely recommend it to any of my friends with children in the appropriate age range. I thank the authors for sharing it with me. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars.
This book is a clear case of “the eyes have it”. You are drawn in immediately by the cover image. The imagery of a young girl asleep with the mesmerizing eyes overlooking her bed instantly gets your brain working on numerous levels. Are the eyes evil or they good? These are just a few of the things that go through your head. It is always good if you can get someone’s brain working before they even open the cover of the book.
Once Su gets you inside the book, the fun really begins. The young sleeping girl becomes a tragic figure in her own life. So many horrible things happen to her in such a short amount of time she begins to think she cannot make it and looks to over means of comfort. The dream weaver, Nick is painfully aware of her plight and does all he can to end her pain.
I don’t want to ruin the story line, but as the story continues Nick and Emari must face many decisions that will affect both of them together an individually. There are many twists in this story that no one really sees coming until you are in the middle of them. The story is exciting and suspenseful.
Ms. Williams does an excellent job of handling some very delicate social issues that affect many of our young adults today. Her characters are developed well and the plight of the young Emari is most believable. Emari suffers from an actual condition well known among our young people and Ms. Williams works hard in her story line to let those young people know that there is more to life than pain. She gives them a choice and a way out of their misery.
This book was provided to me by the author, Sienna Rose for an honest book review. | 2019-04-20T12:35:20Z | http://www.kandykayscaramuzzo.com/book-reviews.html |
Quite recently, the five members of the East African Community (EAC) agreed to adopt a single currency, which should go into effect within the next 10 years. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi first came together in 2000 to create a common market and single customs union, modeled after the Eurozone. The aim is to make business a lot easier across East Africa. If their model is a success, then the entire African Union might follow suit.
When 50+ African countries are watching your every move, setting the example can be quite daunting. After all, success could contribute highly to the continued economic success of Africa (no pressure).
Of course, regional integration is a deeply political process and the implementation of a single customs territory has important political aspects.
However, East-Africans are already thinking of themselves as just that: East Africans. There are rumours that Burundi, like Rwanda, wants to adopt English as their common language in order to assure the Union’s success, and all reports following the numerous meetings between the five EAC leaders are very positive. Having spent a considerable time in all five countries myself, I am convinced that the Union will be a resounding success, even if there are quite a few reported delays at the moment.
Rome wasn’t built in a day after all. And neither was the Eurozone.
I was glad the team at Gong plucked this phrase from my book Success in Africa as the banner for their upcoming event in London. For in London, as in my native New York and my current home, Washington, I find many understand that Africa is succeeding. Few understand why. Almost none acknowledge it’s mostly because of Africans.
In March of last year, a general election campaign was underway in Kenya. Western leaders urged the people of Kenya to refrain from violence. It seemed reasonable, as Kenya experienced horrific violence in its 2007 elections. But no one knew that better than Kenyans. They didn’t need foreign heads of state to tell them about it.
At their best, successful managers of global capital and global businesses do much better in this regard. Their practices allow them to transfer skills, networks and corporate cultures that work in the African context, and are welcomed there by capable partners and stakeholders. I asked some of the CEOs who lead those global companies to participate in Success in Africa, and they shared their perspectives alongside mine.
Of course, no one knows better how to succeed in Africa than Africans. That may seem an obvious point, but consider how often, in any medium, you hear management wisdom from an African? I have worked with corporate leaders in the US, Europe, Asia and Africa. In my view, some of the most visionary and accomplished business men and women anywhere are the ones leading the current transformation of Africa. Emerging continents have been the wellspring of transformative business leaders before. Rockefeller. Carnegie. Tata. From the US in the 19th century to Africa today, frontier markets have given rise to business leaders uniquely capable of managing uncertainty, generating disruption, and leading breathtaking growth.
Those are skills in demand not just in Africa, but the world over.
Africa’s wind and solar power potential have been much in the news since President Obama’s “Power Africa” speech on June 29th in Cape Town. Investment into renewable energies has always been rather limited on the continent, but this is now changing rapidly. One example is the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) recent approval of a €115m loan to help fund the construction of the 300 MW Lake Turkana Wind Power Project in Kenya. The project is being developed by a conglomerate of investors, while the government of Spain has agreed to lend Kenya $178m in order to fund the construction of a transmission line which will connect the project to the country’s national grid. All electricity will be sold to the Kenya Power and Lighting Company under a 20-year power-purchase agreement.
Strong economies are highly dependent on good energy supplies and in order to achieve global competitiveness, Africa’s economic activity (and thus electricity use) must increase exponentially. It is no surprise therefore that in recent years the continent has seen an increasing number of young entrepreneurs keen to try out their much needed innovation. Many of these concentrate heavily on Solar Energy since Photovoltaic (PV) production costs have fallen dramatically worldwide. According to the U.N., the African renewable energy sector was valued at $750 million in 2004. By the time Obama was making his speech, it had reached more than $5 billion. The latest projection is that by 2020 the value of the African renewable energy sector will reach more than $55 billion (U.N.). While Africa’s wind resources are concentrated in just a few areas, the continent’s solar resources are spread across all of the continent and, for obvious reasons, rank among the world’s most successful.
There are of course many other forms of energy that could contribute in filling Africa’s massive power gap.
11 September 2013, London: Gong Communications today announces that it has been selected to provide full service PR, marketing and creative services to Garden City, a 32-acre mixed use real estate development in Nairobi.
Garden City will be built over the next four years and will be home to the largest shopping mall in East Africa, 420 apartments and houses, 20,000m2 of office space and a 3-acre central park. The contract is effective immediately with initial activity focused on creative aspects of the project – refreshing the logo and developing a new website for this $250m project.
Garden City is a $250m mixed-use development located on Nairobi’s newly expanded Thika Superhighway. Designed to be a city within a city, serving communities across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, the first phase of construction will be completed by the end of 2014 with subsequent phases to 2017. Garden City is backed by sub-Saharan Africa’s most experienced private equity real estate investor, Actis, working alongside project and development managers, Aspire and Mentor Management.
A growing number of African countries are rapidly joining the ranks of prominent investors across the continent.
According to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the rate of FDI projects from emerging markets has grown at a healthy compound rate of over 21% since 2008 (triple the amount from developed markets). The top investors were still India, the United Arab Emirates and China at the start of 2013, but intra-African investment has become very impressive since then. Nobody knows Africa better than Africans, and continued political stability across the continent is making them trust their own. The beauty is that increased economic stability and growth is allowing them to help accelerate the African success story through rapidly increasing cross-border investments.
SA has been at the forefront of the growth in intra-African trade but Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria are also investing heavily this year. From 2014, it is expected that countries like Angola and Mozambique will join their ranks.
The star performers, so far, in 2013, are Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Mauritius, Ethiopia, Namibia, Botswana, Angola and South Africa.
THE World Bank’s investment arm will increase lending to sub-Saharan Africa by up to a quarter in 2014 as private sector companies continue to flock to the region. The IFC is expected to make new investments of USD 5bn and Japan will provide USD 2bn worth of financial support over the next five years to back Japanese-owned development projects on the continent. Europe and the United States are also expected to increase their investments dramatically according to the World Bank, which sees Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP accelerating to almost 6% over three years, driven by investment and commodity prices.
Roughly half the IFC’s annual lending in the region goes to financial markets and institutions to help improve the flow of credit to smaller businesses, which employ most of Africa’s workers. Another third goes to infrastructure projects and natural resources investments. The expanding sets of SMEs is bringing real economic diversification and are giving rise to internationally competitive companies, thereby providing access to global markets, and consequently higher wages and salaries. This, in turn, leads to the rapid growth of the middle-class and further political stability.
Even the most cautious investors have to admit that all the excitement surrounding Africa is grounded on solid analytical soil. The evidence might be that within a decade Africa will be its own biggest investor. I honestly cannot wait.
Gong recently hosted a breakfast meeting chaired by The Economist’s Business Editor, Robert Guest.
One of the topics discussed was that too much “ignorant” money is going into Africa simply because there are not enough listed companies outside of Nigeria. The big question is therefore “where to invest?” Where are the various opportunities that tomorrow’s Africa presents, and what makes one country more attractive than another?
With 54 diverse markets offering unique prospects and challenges, most delegates had different opinions. What they didn’t have however, was conflicting opinions. Most agreed that there are still only a handful of good entry point to expand into Africa today.
1. With a population of 170 million people, a growing middle class, and a reputable stock exchange, Nigeria is a notable market for those looking to target a large consumer base in Africa. With reformed petroleum regulations, Nigeria has also become an appealing market for multinational companies.
2. Ghana is doing incredibly well and has proven to be politically stable. The fact that Ghana and Nigeria have space programmes is a measure of how much these two countries are ahead of the game. The difference between Ghana and other countries is that everything (power, institutions, infrastructure) works. With the discovery of offshore oil, the country now really has everything to soon be claiming the number 1 spot.
3. Kenya is more business friendly compared to other regions on the continent. In addition, there is access to good human capital, excellent IT infrastructure, and IT skills.
4. Tanzania has always been politically stable and is therefore emerging as the most effective gateway for trade into Eastern, Southern and Central Africa. It has lucrative investment opportunities in infrastructure, privatization and value-adding facilities, and oil has recently been discovered off-shore.
5. Mozambique is developing at a rapid pace, has much oil and is also politically stable.
I should add that Ethiopia received an honourable mention at the Gong breakfast meeting; It has become Africa’s fastest-growing non-energy economy and Diageo and Heineken recently paid nearly $400m combined to acquire state breweries in the country. Ethiopia is not for the faint-hearted, however. Its population of 85 million people still ranks among the world’s poorest.
The conclusion was to watch what the diaspora is doing – and they are returning first and foremost to our top 3.
It’s Saturday. Having listened all week to local radio stations talk about peace (in 2007 the press were taking sides, so having the media on board is very important this time round), and with all the peace rallies that have been held, (there’s another one happening today I think), and peace concerts, and deliberately-public shows of the two main candidates, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, shaking hands, and President Kibaki appealing for ‘the losers to accept defeat and winner to embrace rivals’, the general feeling here in Nairobi is that everyone is doing all they can for Monday to be a peaceful day.
Not that there aren’t queues at petrol stations today with people stocking up on fuel, and supermarkets full of local residents buying up supplies, but that’s just in case.
There might be skirmishes at polling stations people say, but the real danger comes once the results are announced on Wednesday or Thursday, and then no one knows what will happen. There has already been trouble in other parts of the country, and there are rumours of the intimidation gangs of 2007 regrouping.
Monday is a holiday. Polling stations will open at 6am and close at 5pm, but if you are already in the queue at 5, you will be allowed to vote, so I’m told that people will probably be casting their votes up until about 9pm. I’m relying on taxi drivers for the word on the street – perhaps not the most reliable source of information but then I’ve never claimed to be a journalist and I usually find I learn a lot of interesting things from taxi drivers.
For example, what I hadn’t realised until this week was that everyone will be voting for six different people, from the President as Head of State, to the Governor (there are 47 counties so will be 47 Governors elected on Monday), Senator (47 again), Member of Parliament representing every constituency (eg Nairobi has 17 constituencies), a woman representative (47 women will be elected as part of the new constitution, which says each county gets a woman representative), and then finally a County Ward Representative (initially called councillors) – so everyone is voting for 6 different people! Andrew, my favourite taxi driver with whom I regularly sit in Nairobi traffic having long conversations, is confident that most people understand the new system and know what they have to do. He patiently explained the whole thing to me, including percentages. 98% of the 14 million registered electorate will vote on Monday he says.
I think it’s very positive that Kenya has automated it’s voting system, so it’s all digital this time round and supposedly less likely to be rigged as a result. But this election has also apparently been one of the most expensive in the world to organise, and Kenyan politicians are some of the highest paid, which is not so great to hear.
Last year in August everyone voted for the new Constitution, a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote, and were given a booklet outlining all of the information they needed on how the new constitution would work. 90% voted yes. DJs on Royal Media radio stations in each of the different tribal languages worked hard to explain the details and make sure everyone knew what was what. 90% of Kenyans now understand what it’s about and how it all works (again, these numbers are from Andrew, and by no means official stats, but a cheering vote of confidence on the new system and your fellow Kenyan).
I tried to register two SIM cards this week and spent ages waiting for someone to do all the paperwork, and then once I’d left found that only one works because it isn’t registered. Admittedly that was Safaricom, but getting six votes accurately inputted into the new digital system, and counted up is going to be quite a feat in and of itself.
And who’s going to win? Uhuru is from the Kikuyu tribe and Raila is Luo, and Kikuyu vastly outnumber the Luo in Kenya (Barak Obama’s father was Luo). Andrew reckons Uhuru will win hands down and that lots of other tribes are voting for him as well, but someone pointed out to me that Andrew’s Kikuyu, so he would say that.
He also assures me it will be peaceful.
In the past couple of years, Africa has received an ever increasing amount of good press thanks to its unfaltering growing collective GDP.
One of the direct results of this positivism has been that the continent’s brain drain is slowly reversing, and turning into a brain gain instead.
In order for this return of the diaspora to last, stability is just as crucial as booming economies. This is why Ghana has been on top of the list for the past decade. Should Kenya have trouble-free elections in March, it is expected that many “diasporans” will return there too.
Understanding the importance of the upcoming elections, Kenya’s mobile operator, Safaricom, has partnered with Sisi Ni Amani, an NGO, and launched an SMS platform to promote the peace. This platform will allow community “peace” ambassadors to send out positive messages targeted at specific incidents at a micro level with the aim of preventing, reducing or stopping election violence.
With so much at stake, the Kenyan government has adopted a new constitution and made widespread modifications to its electoral system. A significant change is that the new laws enable diaspora voting. By giving diasporans the power to have their say, they might feel more inclined to return home and play a crucial part in the new Africa.
After all, this is history in the making, and who wouldn’t want to be a part of it?
This is what Peter Sands, CEO of Standard Chartered, told Reuters at the World Economic Forum last Friday.
Many African politicians attended the Forum, above all to present their nations in a positive light and thus attract more investors.
The heads of state and government from Guinea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya and Mauritius all debated the future of their continent over dinner. The event was called an “Interactive Dinner Session”, and journalists were not allowed in. Only entrepreneurs and investors were. South Africa and Nigeria, the biggest economic powers in Africa south of the Sahara, didn’t feel the need to attend the dinner, but instead focused on promoting agriculture in their respective countries. Feeding Africa seems high on their agenda, following the expected population explosion. Nigeria intends to modernize its agriculture via large-scale investment programmes, knowing that its Human Resources are more important to the country’s future than its oil. The aim is to become self-sufficient and eventually an exporter.
One point where everyone agreed was that if Africa were to invest heavily into infrastructure, it could uplift all people still living in poverty.
Some studies suggest that some $100 billion (74.2 billion euros) would have to be invested each year to achieve real improvement, and African representatives at the Davos forum hoped to raise awareness for the issue. They argued that whoever fails to invest in Africa today, will be sorry tomorrow. And almost all attendees seemed to agree with them.
Finally, the European Central Bank president Mario Draghi ended the Forum by stating that “positive contagion” on financial markets was not yet feeding into the economy at large, but that the eurozone should see recovery in the second half of the year. | 2019-04-24T05:04:21Z | https://gongcommunications.com/tag/kenya/ |
Home > “Jewish” and “Democratic”—Can They Co-exist?
The contradiction between a monotheistic, faith-based worldview and a democratic worldview seems almost irreconcilable. This inherent contradiction comes about for two reasons. The first is the question of authority. A theocentric worldview places God at the center, with God being the source of authority, whereas a democratic worldview places the people at the center. In a theocentric worldview, the majority may not adopt decisions that are contrary to Jewish law; indeed, the Torah commands us not to follow the majority when the majority is acting inappropriately (Ex. 23:2). If the issue were merely one of how decisions are made and the principle of majority rule, then this problem could be resolved, at least on a practical level. However, there is a more fundamental problem: Western liberal democracy today is characterized by values that the majority categorically cannot annul. This list of values is a statement of those areas in which—notwithstanding the wishes or desires of the majority—the individual cannot be denied basic rights. The majority may not limit freedom of speech, of association, of occupation, of religion, and so on. These principles are supposed to be protected by a constitution, and by the courts’ interpretation of that constitution. A theocentric worldview, on the other hand, requires that, at times, individual rights be infringed, or posits a different set of rights than those commonly accepted. God’s commandments sometimes require that an individual’s freedom be curtailed, particularly when those commandments are obligatory upon that individual as a member of the Jewish collective.
The definition of the State of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state thus suffers, ostensibly, from a fundamental contradiction. There are two sources of authority—Judaism and democracy, and two different lists of areas that cannot be reshaped, even by the majority. What makes this conflict more aggravating is the language that is used. Those who speak for “Judaism” often claim that they cannot use the mediating terminology of democracy, which involves compromise, concession, and agreement; they are not presenting their own views, but representing standpoints that derive from a divine source, and that cannot be subject to negotiated agreement or compromise. Those who speak for democracy claim that there can be no authority whatsoever that is entitled to infringe on the rights of the individual.
This issue has beset the State of Israel since its inception, and a number of different proposals have been suggested to resolve the contradiction. Some sought to resolve it by demonstrating that Judaism, too, recognizes the power of the majority as the principal tool for determining or resolving disputes. They based themselves on sources that discuss the power of the majority, and on Jewish history, particularly the patterns of Jewish communal life, in which disputes were decided by virtue of the power of the kahal (community), rather than by virtue of religious authority.
Along those lines, there were some who noted that the Torah itself commanded the establishment of a royal regime, “like all the nations around me.” That is to say, the Torah’s teachings do not intervene in decisions on the appropriate form of government; rather, the Torah recognizes that what is accepted by the enlightened nations of the world is something appropriate for emulation by the Jewish people. The role of the Torah is to shape, in certain areas, whatever governmental framework is chosen, but not to determine the character of that government. In effect, this approach claims that Judaism has no problem with adopting democracy.
As noted above, this attempt seems to indicate a misunderstanding on the part of both extremes—democracy and halakha. On the one hand, modern democracy, in its present form, is not merely a formal tool for ruling on disputes by means of the majority. Rather, it constitutes a broad worldview, one that touches on human autonomy and freedom, individual rights, liberalism, and egalitarianism. Democratic people are educated, open, and independent; they enjoy freedom of communication, freedom of association, and freedom of expression. All of these are an integral part of democracy, and thus it is insufficient to rely only on halakhic sources that discuss the power of the majority. On the other hand, it is also incorrect to say that halakha recognizes an individual’s absolute autonomy, and grants the majority an unfettered right to make determinations. It is precisely the expression that teaches us the power of the majority, aharei rabim lehatot, that says exactly the opposite: “and do not respond to a grievance by yielding to the majority to pervert [the law]” (Ex. 23:2)).
The strongest proof for my argument regarding the apologetic nature of claims that Judaism accepts democracy is to put the following question to anyone who makes such a claim: What would be the position of “Judaism,” should the social structure of the State of Israel change, so that there would be a religious majority and a secular minority? Would halakha recognize the right of the minority to desecrate the Sabbath by traveling in private vehicles in public? Would halakha recognize freedom of expression, allowing even the most severe statements against the Torah, against halakha, and against the rabbinate? It should be remembered that this question is not merely hypothetical. If current demographic trends continue, the possibility of a religious majority is quite realistic. It is interesting to note that, as far as I know, not one halakhic discussion has taken place on the issue of halakhic policy in a situation in which a majority loyal to halakha is in power in the State, alongside a minority that is not halakhically observant. This question is exacerbated in light of the ancient Jewish sources that call for criminal sanctions against, for example, those who transgress the Sabbath laws. Once such a discussion develops, we will see the extent to which halakha has adopted democracy in the fullest sense of the word.
Another possibility, this time coming from the opposite direction, is attributed to the former president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Justice Aharon Barak. This approach claims that the term “Jewish” is subordinate to “democratic,” that is to say, the State of Israel should adopt only those values from Judaism that are consistent with democratic criteria. This position is more like lip service, since in effect it omits “Judaism” from the fundamental definition of the State of Israel. If every conflict between democracy and Judaism is resolved in favor of democracy, the real outcome is that the State of Israel will become a state that operates solely by virtue of universal values, leaving “Judaism” as mere window dressing for democracy, by offering some appropriate quotes from Jewish sources.
I would argue that we should call a halt to these attempts to reconcile the contradiction, as such a reconciliation would be impossible. As I wrote in the introduction to this essay, the contradiction derives from a fundamental polarization, and thus cannot be resolved using customary methods for conflict resolution. There are those who would argue that, once the State of Israel has a constitution, this contradiction will disappear. In response, one would first have to examine the proposed constitution to see if it indeed resolves the contradiction. In my opinion, no potential constitution for the State of Israel would be able to resolve this contradiction. If it is a “minimalist” constitution—without the inclusion of lists of rights and without a formal definition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state—it will not be able to resolve the contradiction. Rather, it will leave the questions to be resolved outside the constitutional framework. If the constitution also includes a list of rights, but not a preamble to the constitution (for example, the Declaration of Independence)—it will thus come down in the “democratic” direction, but it will not be an expression of the will of the absolute majority in the State of Israel, which wants the state to also be defined as a “Jewish” state. And if the constitution includes both a list of rights and the Declaration of Independence as a preamble, then it will have brought the contradiction back inside itself.
Hence, it seems that we need to concentrate our efforts elsewhere. This ongoing conflict between Jewish law and democracy will accompany the State of Israel as long as there are communities within it that oppose each other and that choose one of the two extremes. However, it is within our power to mitigate this conflict. We need to exert our efforts in an attempt to bring the two extremes closer together; even if we know that absolute harmony is impossible, an ongoing mitigation of this tension will allow the State of Israel to continue to exist. Furthermore, it will change that tension from a fundamental problem to an empowering challenge.
I would argue that there are three methods that offer the possibility of significantly mitigating the tension.
The first approach is to reexamine some basic assumptions. Modern democracy does not in fact recognize the absolute sovereignty of the people; this leaves room for the acceptance of ideas from outside the human world. On the other hand, halakha offers room for human judicial autonomy in two ways—as a legislator and as an interpreter. Thus, the democratic point of view may accept some of religion’s positions, while religion itself will recognize just how great its own human component is, and thus not profess to speak in the name of an uncompromising divine standpoint.
The second approach is to examine the conflict between democracy and halakha in the area of their respective standpoints. There exists a mutual recognition of democratic values in Judaism, and of national values in democracy. The language of human rights is not foreign to Judaism, and the language of nationhood is not foreign in terms of democracy. These voices can thus be empowered to further mitigate the tension.
The third approach comes from the perspective of risk management. Even if we assume that the conflict we have described is a fundamental one, one that cannot be resolved through theology or political theory, halakha may still be willing to see democracy as a necessary evil to be accepted, simply because the alternative is worse, and vice versa. This third approach speaks in terms of practicality—the prevention of ongoing conflict by means of practical arrangements that, rather than solve the problem, simply find a way around it.
A reevaluation of the basic assumption underlying the religious position: The claim that halakha views the Master of the Universe as the source of authority is indeed the core of religious belief. At the same time, two key perspectives point to individual autonomy and importance. The first is in the area of interpretation. Although the Torah is perceived as a divine source, it is a principle of halakha that the Torah has been given to humanity, and therefore humans must interpret it. Hence, the claim that halakha represents God’s viewpoint inflates the status of the halakhic authorities. Individuals have enormous room to maneuver and freedom of thought; so those who speak for halakha thus have the ability to engage in negotiation and dialogue over the approach of halakha, rather than suggesting that it is not open to discussion.
The second perspective is in the realm of legislation. There are sources that point to the considerable autonomy given to halakhic authorities, when they function not only as interpreters of the divine texts, but also as legislators of the halakhic approach. Hence, one cannot argue that Judaism is merely a matter of obeying the divine commands alone. Halakhic interpreters and legislators also include their own inner worldviews, their cultural perspectives, and the social milieu in which they live. Recognition of the specifically human components existing within the world of halakha allows a softening of the uncompromising, segregationist position sometimes presented as fundamental to the world of halakha.
A reevaluation of the basic assumption underlying the democratic position: Democracy presents itself as stating that it is the people who are the ultimate sovereign, and that the majority determines democratic behavior. However, a deeper analysis of today’s democratic standpoints indicates that not all powers are in the hands of the people, and thus it is not the people who should be seen as sovereign. The democracies of today—both on the philosophical level and on the practical, organizational level, as in the European Union—argue that there are universal values of “humankind,” against which even the majority may not act. There is deep division over the source and validity of those values, as well as their scope, but the very recognition that not everything can be determined by the people, and that there are general, universal values that are also binding on the majority is indisputable.
This structure allows one to argue that democracy may also be capable of adopting additional values that are not subject to majority decision, even if it appears that they detract from the principle of majority rule. These values may include religious values, and democracy may view them as a basis for national existence, beyond the principles of democracy. I am not arguing that religion is universal to the same extent as the universal lists of rights that we have discussed. My argument is that, once democracy accepts principles that are not subject solely to majority rule, the way is open for the entry of additional values within this framework.
Narrowing the gap between democracy and Jewish law does not totally eliminate it, nor does it create a system of authority that everyone can live with. There are two reasons for this, stemming from the two perspectives discussed above.
The first comes from the religious direction. Even though there is a greater recognition of the individual’s authority as interpreter and legislator, this does not eliminate the fact that, at its core, it is divine revelation that is the source of authority. Moreover, people of faith do not see themselves as legislating against the will of God, but merely as uncovering that will. The intent of people of faith is to achieve the most faithful interpretation of those categorical imperatives whose source is external to humanity. Hence, the freedom that these individuals can take for themselves is limited; they must constantly aim to clarify the exact requirements of the divine commands.
From a democratic perspective, too, one cannot see the gap being eliminated. Although there are values that are outside the purview of majority decision, these are nevertheless still based on human determination as sovereign, or on other human determining factors, such as international agreements. It would be difficult to add a religious perspective into this framework.
The gap between Jewish law and democracy may also be narrowed if we reexamine the possibility that halakha indeed recognizes elements that are fundamental to democracy—the language of rights. This recognition by halakha may come from either of two directions. One direction is the recognition by halakha of the derekh erets that preceded halakha, while the other possibility is that the foundations of the list of rights can be found within the halakha itself.
The statement that derekh erets preceded the Torah requires explanation. In using the term derekh erets, I am not referring to the present-day meaning of good manners, etiquette, and so on. Rather, I am referring to the term’s original meaning. In the language of the sages, the term derekh erets means the accepted, normal mode of conduct in the world. Derekh erets is synonymous with earning a living, conjugal relations, and the normal conventions of human behavior. One who adopts a life of derekh erets is one who follows the way of the world. The sages often spoke in praise of derekh erets, and of humans’ obligation to conduct themselves according to those principles.
The statement of the sages, that derekh erets preceded the Torah, therefore adopts human interaction within a normal, ordered state as being the norm. When human beings adopt a set of rights, this need not necessarily derive from halakha, but from human determinations as to appropriate, normative behavior. It is this spirit that pervades the words of the prophets. They spoke constantly of the obligation to act justly and honestly, with fairness and social sensitivity. This is far beyond the strict realm of halakha, and imposes much higher standards than those imposed by the law. When the “Jewish” side of the “Jewish, democratic state” equation sees itself as obligated to the world’s universal values, we can see this as mitigating the enormous tension between the two worlds.
Furthermore, the list of rights is integral to the world of halakha itself. What needs to be emphasized is that halakha, in general, does not speak in terms of rights, but rather in terms of duties. Halakha does not say that a person has a right to a good reputation, but it does impose an obligation on others not to slander or embarrass him; it does not relate to the right of the poor to a decent living, but it obligates the community to care for the weaker members of society; it does not deal with the rights of parents over their children, but rather it addresses the obligations of children toward their parents; and so on.
Thus, one cannot simply transfer the language of halakha into the language of democracy. However, the very fact that halakha imposes numerous obligations toward the “other” is an indication of the way in which the Jewish aspect of the State can be shaped in this spirit. Furthermore, Judaism is not limited to halakha alone. The words of the prophets, who made the moral framework into the basis for society, and who argued that God measures society primarily through how it treats its weaker members, reinforce further the possibility of bringing the “Jewish” and “democratic” sides closer together.
This would be an opportunity to comment on an important aspect of this issue. In general, when we think of Israel as a “Jewish” state, we tend to look solely at those areas that are between man and God—marriage and divorce, kashruth, Shabbat, and so on. However, the Torah and Jewish tradition also deal at length with questions of social justice, and the prophets made these issues fundamental to the nation’s existence. What we need is a significant change in the public’s perception of what Judaism is about, with an emphasis on the State of Israel as a state in which justice and welfare are goals common to all parties to this debate. Such a conceptual shift could also play its part in reducing the tensions between the two sides.
Democracy, too, must play its part in bringing the two sides closer together. Although it is essential to ensure that individual rights are protected, it is also important to recognize the rights of the collective to define its own public domain. The democratic idea may thus also be consistent with the idea of the nation state, and with the desire of the broader community to choose its own road in the spirit of its unique communal nature.
As we have mentioned, there is an ongoing debate within the State of Israel in regard to the constitution that is taking shape. One of the issues being debated is whether such a constitution will also include a “preamble,” and whether Israel’s Declaration of Independence, or some similar document, will thus become an integral part of the constitution. If the State of Israel indeed rejects the radical, Western, liberal model, which denies the right of the national state to exist, and instead adopts a softer democratic approach, there is a good chance for reducing the tension between state and religion, since the State itself can encompass significant elements of religious, national identity.
These two approaches together do not totally eliminate the contradiction. They blur it, and allow the coexistence of various perceptions of the nature of the state. The State of Israel will nonetheless need to resolve the gap that remains between democratic life and Judaism through practical means. Most of the Jewish citizens of the State of Israel, who constitute the absolute majority within the state, have a deeply held connection with both democratic ideals and their desire that the State of Israel be a Jewish state, even if they have not defined exactly which Jewish foundations they wish the state to apply. Furthermore, both those who tend toward the “democratic” position and those who lean toward the “Jewish” position recognize that there are those who disagree with their own opinion, and understand that any resolution cannot be imposed coercively.
The recognition that it is not possible to determine the nature of the state merely by means of a chance majority vote in the Knesset, and that this internal debate is deep-seated and may last for many years to come, has led many to abandon any attempt to end the debate through political means. Moreover, that the State of Israel is the only state in the world that is constantly under threat from elements that negate its very existence, reinforces its citizens’ sense that they are in a life or death situation, and their understanding that national unity is more important than resolving questions of religion and state. Most of the state’s citizens understand the need to be practical. Too great a gap between fundamental conceptions or ideology, and any constitution that may be adopted, cannot continue to exist for long, and may even endanger the existence of the State of Israel.
Hence it is possible that the status quo may persist for a long time. I would hazard the opinion that the process of adopting a constitution for the State of Israel will be characterized by one of two possibilities. The more likely possibility is that the State of Israel will remain without a constitution, or, at least, without the inclusion of articles in the constitution to regulate the issues of religion and state.
The second possibility is that a constitution will be adopted without broad consent; in that case, it will, in effect, not have any real meaning, because of the enormous gap between reality and the text of the constitution. On the other hand, a continuation of the status quo, albeit with mutual restraint on the part of both sides, appears to be the most reasonable—and perhaps even the most correct—thing to do.
From the side of the supporters of “Judaism,” this restraint will come from two directions. The first is a recognition of the limitations of power, and a recognition that the ideas of man’s freedom and autonomy do not permit broad religious legislation, or allow the imposition of religious principles under the auspices of the law. This fact is beginning to be assimilated within religious society. Religious society has learned that, notwithstanding existing legislation (for example) in the area of family law, many secular couples choose not to establish their homes in the manner that the law attempts to impose on them; on the contrary, they find numerous ways around the law. This is also true of other laws, such as the laws relating to Shabbat rest. A second direction from which restraint will come is internal to the religious community. Religious thought will begin to recognize that too close a connection between the state and religion harms religion itself. This is for various reasons: religious authorities are less than free to rule, because, in effect, religious rulings are subject to the High Court and other state institutions; a religion that depends on the law makes itself distasteful to the community; it is particularly in those observances to which no legislation applies (for example, observance of the Passover Seder, Yom Kippur, circumcision) that the power of religion is greater; and, in general, it is not clear whether there is religious significance to keeping the commandments by virtue of secular legislation, and so religion itself might not be interested in coercive arrangements under the auspices of the law, except to a very limited extent.
From the other side, that of “democracy,” restraint will come from a recognition of the enormous significance that Israeli society attributes to Jewish values. The Supreme Court is ultimately a reflection of the society within which it operates, and it cannot continue making “Judaism” subject solely to democratic values. And if the Court does not do so of its own accord, Knesset legislation may force it to do so; indeed, we already see signs of this in other spheres, for better or for worse. A Supreme Court that restrains itself, while strictly protecting human rights and maintaining limitations on the collective, is a necessary condition for restraint.
I believe that the three approaches to mitigation proposed above will permit coexistence in the State of Israel, and may even be a blessing for the unique, almost untenable, path taken by the “Jewish, democratic state,” which is ultimately an expression of the cultural uniqueness of the State of Israel. I believe that if we give up our pretensions of being able to solve the problem in absolute terms, and accept the anomaly of “Jewish and democratic” as a special Israeli challenge, different from those faced by other countries, this tension may have an ongoing positive influence on both opposing sides, and we will all ultimately benefit.
Rabbi Yuval Cherlow is Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Hesder Petah Tikva, Israel. He is a graduate of Yeshivat Har Etzion, ordained by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, a retired major in the Israel Defense Forces, and a founding member of Tzohar, a rabbinical organization. Rabbi Cherlow has published many books and articles dealing with halakha, biblical exegesis, modern Jewish philosophy, and contemporary questions. This article is based on a presentation made at the IAJLJ Congress, Dead Sea, 2011, translated from the Hebrew by Perry Zamek. The article originally appeared in Justice, no. 49, fall 2011, and is reprinted in Conversations, issue 14, with the permission of IAJLJ. Justice is the magazine published by the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. | 2019-04-26T08:14:25Z | https://www.jewishideas.org/print/article/%E2%80%9Cjewish%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cdemocratic%E2%80%9D%E2%80%94can-they-co-exist-0 |
This translation is for information purposes only. Legal authenticity remains with the original Norwegian version, "Mandat for forvaltningen av Statens pensjonsfond utland", which can be found on lovdata.no.
Legal basis: Adopted by the Ministry of Finance on 8 November 2010 pursuant to section 2, second paragraph, and section 7 of Act no. 123 of 21 December 2005 relating to the Government Pension Fund.
Amendments: Amended by decision no. 1792 of 21 Dec. 2010, no. 901 of 5 Sept. 2011, no. 689 of 27 June 2012, no. 943 of 4 Oct. 2012, no. 1338 of 18 Dec. 2012, no. 383 of 15 April 2013, no. 401 of 25 March 2014, no. 1783 of 18 Dec. 2014, no. 15 of 7 Jan. 2015, no. 773 of 26 June 2015, no. 1367 of 30 Nov. 2015, no. 78 of 1 Feb. 2016, no. 1036 of 5 Sept. 2016, no. 1164 of 30 Sept. 2016, no. 1781 of 20 Dec. 2016, no. 1061 of 29 June 2017, no. 1341 of 31 August 2017, no. 776 of 14 May 2018.
The Ministry places the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) in the form of a Norwegian krone deposit with Norges Bank (the Bank) in accordance with Act no. 123 of 21 December 2005 on the Government Pension Fund, section 2, second paragraph. The Bank shall manage this deposit in accordance with the provisions of this mandate and provisions issued pursuant to sections 8-1 and 8-2, third paragraph.
(1) The Ministry’s krone deposit shall be placed in a separate account in the Bank. The Bank shall invest this krone deposit in its own name in a portfolio of financial instruments, real estate, cash deposits and other assets and financial liabilities that the Bank manages in accordance with this mandate (the investment portfolio), cf. chapter 3.
(2) The value of the krone account shall be equivalent to the net book value of the investment portfolio. The book return of the investment portfolio less the Bank’s management costs and adjusted in accordance with the prevailing accounting regulations for the Bank shall be added to the krone account.
(3) The Bank shall make investment decisions and exercise ownership rights independently of the Ministry.
(1) The Bank shall seek to achieve the highest possible return after costs measured in the investment portfolio’s currency basket, see section 4-2, first paragraph, and within the applicable management framework.
(2) The Fund shall not be invested in companies excluded pursuant to the provisions in the Guidelines for observation and exclusion from the GPFG.
(3) The Bank shall integrate its responsible management efforts into the management of the GPFG, cf. chapter 2. A good long-term return is considered dependent on sustainable development in economic, environmental and social terms, as well as well-functioning, legitimate and efficient markets.
(1) The Bank shall advise the Ministry on the investment strategy for the investment portfolio. Advice may be provided on the initiative of the Bank or on request from the Ministry.
(2) The Bank shall advise the Ministry on the need for changes in the mandate. Such advice may be provided on the initiative of the Bank or on request from the Ministry.
(3) The Bank shall have the opportunity to express its opinion before significant changes are introduced in the mandate and shall be given notice in reasonable time of the implementation of the changes.
(2) The benchmark index for the equity portfolio constitutes 62.5 per cent of the strategic benchmark index. The benchmark index for the bond portfolio constitutes 37.5 per cent of the strategic benchmark index.
3) The Ministry establishes a plan for increase of the equity share in the strategic benchmark to 70 percent.
(1) The share of equities and bonds in the actual benchmark index is calculated daily and fluctuates with the return on the benchmark indices for the equity and bond portfolios.
(2) The value of the actual benchmark index shall be equivalent to the total market value of the investment portfolio at each month-end.
(3) Transfers to and from the krone account, cf. section 1-2, first paragraph, will normally take place on the last trading day of each month. The Ministry shall specify the transfer amount in Norwegian kroner by the fourth-to-last trading day of the month. Transfers do not affect the ratio between equities and bonds in the actual benchmark index. The Bank shall inform the Ministry on the second trading day of the subsequent month as to the composition of the new actual benchmark index.
(4) If the equity share in the actual benchmark index exceeds 74 percent, or is more than four percentage points lower than the weight in the strategic benchmark index, rebalancing shall take place on the last trading day of the following month. The Ministry sets more detailed provisions on the rebalancing of the actual benchmark index.
(5) The Bank shall inform the Ministry immediately if the criteria for rebalancing in the fourth paragraph are met. The Bank shall report on the implementation of rebalancing, including estimated costs.
(1) The Executive Board shall have a strategic plan for the execution of its management assignment. This plan shall be updated regularly and in the event of significant changes in the management.
(2) The Executive Board shall regularly evaluate the extent to which the goals in the strategic plan have been achieved.
(1) The Bank may use external managers and outsource operational functions, cf. section 5 of regulation no. 1630 of 17 December 2009 on risk management and internal control in Norges Bank.
(2) The Bank shall have guidelines for when outsourcing may be used.
(3) The fee structure in agreements with external managers shall be designed to reflect the objectives for the management of the investment portfolio, taking into account the time horizon of the relevant investment strategies. The individual management agreements on performance-based fees shall be structured so that a major proportion of the positive excess return is retained, including provisions for caps on fees.
The Bank shall seek to establish a chain of measures as part of its responsible management activities.
(1) The Bank shall establish a broad set of principles for the responsible management of the investment portfolio.
(2) In designing the principles pursuant to the first paragraph, the Bank shall emphasise the long-term horizon for the management of the investment portfolio and that the investment portfolio shall be broadly diversified across the markets included in the investment universe.
(3) The principles shall be based on the considerations of good corporate governance and environmental and social conditions in the investment management, in accordance with internationally recognised principles and standards such as the UN Global Compact, the OECD’s Principles of Corporate Governance and the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
(4) The principles and the use of instruments to support them shall be published, cf. section 2-1 and section 6-2, third paragraph, letter h.
(5) In its management of the unlisted real estate portfolio, the Bank shall, within the environmental field, consider, among other matters, energy efficiency, water consumption and waste management.
(1) The Bank shall contribute to research within responsible management with the aim of developing greater knowledge of matters relevant to the investment portfolio’s risk and return in the long term.
(2) The Bank shall actively contribute to the development of relevant international standards in the area of responsible management.
The Bank shall establish environment-related mandates within the limits defined in section 3-4. The market value of the environment-related investments shall normally be in the range of NOK 30–60 billion.
The Bank shall make decisions on the observation or exclusion of companies, and on the revocation of such decisions, in accordance with the Guidelines for observation and exclusion from the GPFG. The Bank shall inform the Ministry about decisions on exclusion of companies and the revocation of such decisions, cf. section 3-1, third paragraph.
a) The equity portfolio may be invested in equities listed on a regulated and recognised market place, listed securities that are equivalent to listed equities, depository receipts for such equities, and unlisted companies where the board has expressed an intention to seek a listing on a regulated or recognised market place.
b) The bond portfolio may be invested in tradable bonds and other tradable debt instruments, and depository receipts for such bonds.
c) The unlisted real estate portfolio may be invested in real estate or in equity and interest-bearing instruments issued by non-listed companies, fund structures and other legal entities whose primary business is the acquisition, development and management or financing of real estate. These investments may be made through Norwegian or other legal entities. Real estate means rights to land and any buildings thereon.
d) Financial derivatives and fund units only when naturally linked to investments in the equity, bond and unlisted real estate portfolios.
e) Other financial instruments only when passed to the investment portfolio as a result of corporate actions.
a) Securities issued by Norwegian enterprises, securities denominated in Norwegian kroner, real estate located in Norway or in real estate companies, real estate funds or similar structures where the primary purpose is to invest in Norway. The same applies to covered bonds secured against assets in Norway. Norwegian enterprises mean enterprises whose head office is in Norway.
b) Securities that the Bank has excluded from the investment portfolio, cf. Guidelines on observation and exclusion from the GPFG section 2-5.
c) Fixed-income instruments issued by governments or government-linked entities in the exceptional cases where the Ministry has barred such investments based on particularly large-scale UN sanctions or other international initiatives of a particularly large scale that are aimed at a specific country and where Norway supports the initiatives.
d) Unlisted companies and fund structures in a country with which Norway does not have a tax treaty or in a country from which Norway cannot request information relating to tax matters in accordance with other international agreements.
e) Unlisted infrastructure such as roads, railways, harbours, airports and other basic infrastructure.
(3) The Bank shall adopt guidelines on the exclusion and reinclusion of companies in the investment universe and benchmark index in accordance with the Guidelines for observation and exclusion from the GPFG, cf. section 2-5. The Ministry sets dates for the exclusion and reinclusion of securities in the benchmark index.
c) all securities included in the supranational sub-segment (of the government-related segment) of the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index.
(3) Bonds issued by supranational organisations are allocated to countries in the government bond sub-index based on the underlying currency denomination. Bonds issued by supranational organisations in euros are allocated to the category “Supranationals (EUR)”.
c) Other countries shall be assigned a factor of 1.
All weights in the government bond sub-index shall be standardised (sum of all weights equals 1). In addition, special provisions apply to countries in the eurozone as described in the fifth paragraph.
b) Allocation to “Supranationals (EUR)” = X * total GDP weight for countries in the eurozone based on weights calculated using the method specified in the fourth paragraph.
c) For all countries in the eurozone: Country weight = (1-X)*GDP weight for the country based on weights calculated using the method specified in the fourth paragraph.
X is determined for a period of twelve months effective from the index provider’s annual reset of GDP weights as the relationship between the market value of “Supranationals (EUR)” and the market value of all euro-denominated bonds included in the government bond sub-index. The market values are calculated as at the end of October, one month prior to the index provider’s annual reset of GDP weights, based on index data published by Bloomberg L.P.
(6) Within each country in the government bond sub-index, the bonds included are weighted using the methodology for the Bloomberg Barclays Global Treasury GDP Weighted by Country Bond Index.
(7) The corporate bond sub-index of the benchmark index for the bond portfolio comprises all securities included in the corporate sub-sector and the covered bond sub-segment (of the securitised segment) of the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index. The corporate bond sub-index is restricted to the following approved currencies: USD, CAD, EUR, GBP, SEK, DKK and CHF.
(8) Within the corporate bond sub-index, the bonds are weighted using the methodology for the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index.
(9) Securities denominated in Norwegian kroner or classified by Bloomberg L.P. as issued in Norway shall be excluded from the benchmark index for the bond portfolio. The same applies to securities issued by companies excluded by the Bank pursuant to the Guidelines for observation and exclusion from the GPFG. When bonds are excluded from the benchmark index, the remaining bonds in the sub-index in question shall be weighted up. When a company is reincluded under the aforementioned guidelines, the securities shall be reincluded in the benchmark index, cf. section 3-1, third paragraph.
The allocation to countries and regions and the distinction between developed and emerging markets are based on the FTSE Global All Cap Index. Markets included in FTSE Global All Cap Index with effect from 1 January 2019 shall be assigned a factor of 0.
where i represents the countries with the factor in question, cf. section 3-3, second paragraph. The calculation of market capitalisation is based on the methodology for the FTSE Global All Cap Index and adjusted for free float.
(4) The benchmark index is adjusted for the Bank’s tax position.
(5) Securities issued by companies excluded by the Bank pursuant to the Guidelines for observation and exclusion from the GPFG shall not be included in the benchmark index for the equity portfolio. When a company is reincluded under the aforementioned guidelines, the securities shall be reincluded in the benchmark index, cf. section 3-1, third paragraph.
(1) The equity portfolio, cf. section 3-1, first paragraph, letter a, shall constitute between 50 and 80 per cent of the investment portfolio.
(2) The bond portfolio, cf. section 3-1, first paragraph, letter b, shall constitute between 20 and 50 per cent of the investment portfolio.
(3) The unlisted real estate portfolio, cf. section 3-1, first paragraph, letter c, may constitute up to 7 per cent of the investment portfolio.
(4) Net market value shall be used to calculate the respective shares in the first to third paragraphs. In such calculations, derivatives shall be depicted with the underlying economic exposure.
(5) The Bank shall organise the management with the aim that the expected annualised standard deviation for the relative return between the investment portfolio and the actual benchmark index (expected tracking error) does not exceed 1.25 percentage points, cf. section 4-3, second paragraph.
(6) The equity and bond portfolios shall be composed in such a way that the expected relative return is exposed to several systematic risk factors.
(7) The Bank shall seek to take account of differences in fiscal strength between countries in the composition of government bond investments.
(8) The Bank shall organise the management with the aim that high-yield bonds (credit rating lower than investment grade) do not exceed 5 per cent of the market value of the bond portfolio.
(9) A credit rating is required for investments in debt instruments. All internal credit rating assessments shall be documented.
(10) The equity portfolio may not be invested in more than 10 per cent of the voting shares in an individual company. Ownership in listed and unlisted real estate companies is exempt from this rule.
(11) The unlisted real estate portfolio shall be well diversified geographically, across sectors and individual properties.
(12) Leverage may be used with a view to performing the management assignment in an effective manner, but not with a view to increasing the investment portfolio’s exposure to risky assets in the equity and bond portfolios. Leverage may also be used in fund structures and by other legal entities with the aim of performing the management assignment in an effective manner, but such leverage may not be with a view to increasing the investment portfolio’s exposure to risky assets.
(13) Reinvestment of cash collateral shall not take place with a view to increasing the investment portfolio’s financial exposure to risky assets.
(14) Short selling is only permitted if the Bank has access to the securities through an established borrowing arrangement.
h) A limit for large expected negative deviations between the return on the investment portfolio and the actual benchmark index (expected extreme deviation risk).
(3) The Executive Board shall establish a limit for how large a part of the voting shares in a single, listed real estate company the Fund may own.
(4) The Executive Board shall establish a limit for how large a part of the investment portfolio a single external manager may manage.
(5) The limits stated in the first to fourth paragraphs and subsequent changes to these limits shall be presented to the Ministry at least four weeks prior to their planned implementation, unless special circumstances indicate a shorter time limit.
(1) The Bank shall establish principles for valuation, performance measurement, and risk management, measurement and control that, as a minimum, adhere to internationally recognised standards and methods. The Bank shall evaluate its work and competence related to risk management and internal control at least once a year, cf. section 3, subsection 7 of regulation no. 1630 of 17 December 2009 on risk management and internal control in Norges Bank.
(2) The Bank shall have routines for reporting risk and exposure in the areas covered in this chapter. The measurement methods shall be complementary.
(1) The return of the investment portfolio shall be measured in the currency composition of the actual benchmark index (the investment portfolio’s currency basket), cf. section 1-6. For the unlisted real estate portfolio, the return shall also be measured in the currency composition of the actual unlisted real estate portfolio.
(2) The net return of the unlisted real estate portfolio shall be calculated after deduction of all costs, such as operating, transaction, management and tax costs.
(3) The rate of return calculations shall be designed in compliance with the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) methodology.
(4) The Bank shall establish principles for valuation and return measurement for the financial instruments included in the portfolio.
(5) The method used to establish the value of financial instruments shall be verifiable and shall indicate with reasonable assurance the true value of the investment portfolio at the time of measurement.
(6) At least once a year the Bank shall obtain an external, independent valuation of the unlisted real estate investments, preferably as at 31 December.
(1) The Bank shall establish principles for the measurement and management of market risk, including relevant sources of systematic risk, cf. sections 3-4 and 3-5. The measurements shall strive to capture all relevant market risk associated with the financial instruments in use. The risk shall be estimated by means of several different methods. Stress tests shall be performed, based, for example, on historical events and scenarios for the future development of systematic risk factors.
(2) The Bank determines a method for the calculation of expected tracking error that must be approved by the Ministry.
(3) Analysis of extreme event risk shall be an integral part of the investment portfolio’s risk management.
The Bank shall establish principles for measurement and management of credit risk, cf. section 3-5. Measurements of credit risk shall strive to capture all relevant credit risk linked to the financial instruments in use.
(1) The Bank shall establish principles for measurement and management of counterparty exposure, cf. section 3-5.
(2) The Bank shall have satisfactory routines and systems for selecting and evaluating counterparties. The Bank shall establish upper limits for exposure, minimum requirements for credit rating, and standards for provision of collateral, collateral management and netting arrangements. Overall exposure to counterparties shall be measured using internationally recognised methods.
The Bank shall establish principles for measurement and management of leverage in the investment portfolio, cf. section 3-5. The principles shall cover implicit leverage achieved through the use of derivatives and reinvestment of cash provided as collateral in connection with securities lending or repurchase agreements.
The Bank shall establish guidelines for securities lending and borrowing, and for short selling of securities.
The Bank shall establish guidelines for reinvestment of cash collateral received, cf. section 3-5.
(1) The Bank shall define in more detail what is meant by the term operational risk.
(2) Operational risk factors shall be identified, assessed in terms of probability and impact, monitored and managed.
(1) Before investments are made, the Bank shall approve all the financial instruments that may be used in the management and all markets the Fund may be invested in. For sovereign debt the Executive Board shall approve all issuers.
(2) The Bank’s approval shall depend on whether an instrument contributes to effective execution of the management assignment and whether the Bank can ensure comprehensive management, control and monitoring of all the relevant investment and operational risks.
(3) The approval shall be documented.
(4) The Bank shall establish guidelines that ensure a thorough due diligence review ahead of each individual investment in the unlisted real estate portfolio. The review shall include assessments of the various risk aspects connected to the investment, including market risk, liquidity risk, credit risk, counterparty risk, operational risk, legal, tax and any technical and environmental risk. The review shall be documented.
(1) By 1 December each year, the Bank shall send the Ministry a substantiated proposal for a limit on the costs for the management of the investment portfolio based on estimates of the management costs for the following year.
(2) The Ministry will approve a limit for the management costs as a percentage of the assets under management. The Bank will be reimbursed for actual costs within the approved limit only. Costs in excess of the approved limit will not be covered. The part of external managers’ fees that is based on achieved excess return will be covered beyond the approved limit for management costs.
(3) The total actual costs may be drawn directly from the Ministry’s separate account before the net return is transferred to the krone account, cf. section 1-2, second paragraph. The Bank shall submit its calculation of the total management costs as early as possible, no later than one week prior to the approval of the statement of accounts.
(1) The Executive Board shall establish guidelines and limits for a remuneration system. The remuneration system shall include special provisions for executives, for other employees and employee representatives with assignments of significance for the Bank’s risk exposure and for other employees and employee representatives with corresponding remuneration, and for other employees and employee representatives with control tasks.
(2) The remuneration system shall contribute to the promotion of and create incentives for good management and control of the risks involved in management, counteract excessive risk exposure and help prevent conflicts of interest.
(3) Regulation no. 1467 of 21 December 2011 to the Securities fund Act applies, with necessary adaptations.
(1) There shall be the greatest possible transparency about the management within the limits defined by responsible execution of the management assignment.
(2) The public reporting shall provide a true and comprehensive overview of how the Bank executes the management assignment, including the choices and priorities the Bank makes, the results that are achieved, and how the limits provided in this mandate are utilised.
a) The overriding principles for the choice of strategies, the risk and return characteristics of the strategies, and how the strategies aim to exploit the Fund’s special characteristics and the Bank’s advantages in the investment management.
b) Different investment strategies within the respective management of equities and bonds that can affect market risk and extreme deviation risk in the investment portfolio as a whole, and for the equity and bond portfolios separately.
c) Framework for the management and control of risk.
d) The organisation of the investment management, including use of subsidiaries and external managers.
a) The change in value, results and risk in the investment portfolio as a whole, in the equity, bond and the unlisted real estate portfolios separately, and in the associated benchmark indices.
b) The composition of the excess return for the investment portfolio and within the equity portfolio and the bond portfolio respectively.
c) Utilisation of the limits provided in this mandate.
The quarterly reporting shall also contain extracts from the Bank’s accounts concerning the management of the investment portfolio, adopted in accordance with the current accounting regulations for the Bank.
a) The results of real estate management and the different investment strategies within the management of equities and bonds respectively, including the share of the excess return, utilisation of the limits for tracking error, extreme deviation risk and management costs. Different investment strategies mean investment strategies that are emphasised in the utilisation of the individual limits, such as the limits for tracking error, extreme deviation risk and management costs.
b) The Executive Board's assessment of the results.
c) The relationship between return and risk in the investment portfolio as a whole, in the equity and bond portfolios separately, and in the associated benchmark indices. The Bank shall use several methods and measures to report risk-adjusted return.
d) Revenue from securities lending, internal and external management costs, tax costs and estimated transaction costs for the investment portfolio as a whole and for the equity, bond and the unlisted real estate portfolios expressed as a share of the assets under management.
e) The management of the unlisted real estate portfolio, including an assessment of the performance compared with a broad set of return objectives.
f) Environment-related investments, cf. section 2-4. The account of the environmental investments shall among other things include the scope, strategy, asset type and a description and assessment of how the intentions for these investments are being met.
g) Investments in emerging markets and renewable energy.
h) The work on responsible management, cf. chapter 2, including use of instruments and the effect of the ownership work, and how the principles for responsible management are integrated into the management.
i) Routines and systems for the approval of issuers of sovereign debt, cf. section 4-10 first paragraph second sentence.
(4) In connection with the quarterly and annual reporting, the Bank shall provide an account of decisions pursuant to the Guidelines for observation and exclusion from the GPFG and update the public list of companies that have been excluded or placed under observation pursuant to the guidelines.
(5) The quarterly reporting shall be published no later than one month after the end of the quarter. The annual reporting shall be published no later than three months after the end of the year. The main content of the annual reporting shall be made available in print. Other data may be reported electronically.
(1) Data and methods used in the public reporting shall as far as possible, within the limits defined by responsible execution of the management assignment and statutory duties of confidentiality, be described and published in machine-readable form.
(2) If the calculation methods underlying the reporting of return and risk have changed since the last reporting, an account shall be given of why the methods have changed and information shall be provided on any effects of the changes. In addition, for the next two years pro-forma figures shall be provided in accordance with the previous calculation methods.
The principles, guidelines and limits laid down by the Executive Board as a result of this mandate shall be made public.
(1) The Bank shall communicate its strategic plan for the management of the investment portfolio to the Ministry, cf. section 1-7.
(2) The Bank shall inform the Ministry if the value of the investment portfolio changes significantly and about other significant changes with respect to its management. The Ministry shall be informed without undue delay of incidents that trigger the duty to inform.
(3) The Bank shall provide the Ministry with any information that the Ministry requests, including information to companies or persons that assist the Ministry in evaluating the Bank’s management of the investment portfolio. Data used as a basis for the public reporting, cf. section 6-2, including data the Bank does not publish in accordance with section 6-3, first paragraph, shall be systematised and available for delivery in machine-readable form.
(4) The Bank’s agreements with data suppliers shall ensure the Ministry, including any companies or persons that assist the Ministry in its assessments of the Bank’s management of the investment portfolio, access to data in machine-readable form.
(1) In the event that the limits and constraints defined in sections 3-4 and 3-5 are breached, the Bank shall without undue delay assess how its management can be brought back within the limits in an appropriate and cost-effective manner.
(2) The Ministry shall be informed of any material breaches of the limits in sections 3-4 and 3-5.
(1) The Ministry and the Bank shall meet at least once per quarter. The meetings shall be convened by the Ministry. The Ministry will specify in more detail which data shall be submitted to the Ministry as a basis for its preparations for the quarterly meetings and the format and deadline for submission.
The Ministry may, in case of amendments to this mandate, establish transitional provisions. The Ministry may, in other special circumstances, allow the Bank to deviate from the provisions in this mandate.
(1) Chapter 6 comes into force immediately. The other provisions come into force on 1 January 2011.
(2) Regulation no. 1725 of 22 December 2005 on the management of the Government Pension Fund Global, the guidelines for the management of the Government Pension Fund Global (supplementary provisions pursuant to the Government Pension Fund Act and the regulations on the management of the Government Pension Fund Global), regulation no. 242 of 24 February 2010 on the management of the real estate portfolio in the Government Pension Fund Global and the guidelines of 1 March 2010 for Norges Bank’s work on responsible management and active ownership of the Government Pension Fund Global will be repealed on 1 January 2011. The management agreement of 12 February 2001 and subsequent amendments between the Ministry and the Bank will be terminated from the same date.
(3) The Ministry may issue special transitional provisions. | 2019-04-21T00:51:45Z | https://www.nbim.no/en/organisation/governance-model/management-mandate/ |
These Terms and Conditions apply between the client ("you") and Great Atlantic Sports Travel or ("us") and relate to the sale of "Travel Packages", event ticket packages, and other travel amenities by us to you in connection with the Events ("The Event"). These booking conditions apply to any booking, which you make with us, so you should read them carefully. They contain some exclusions and limitations of liability.
Payment Arrangements: Your payments to us should be made to the bank account detailed on your invoice. Payments made by credit card will incur a service charge that will be added to each payment.
E Mail Confirmation: When you make a booking you guarantee that you have the authority to accept on behalf of your party the terms and conditions. An agreement will exist as soon as we issue our confirmation invoice, for the internet or email bookings a agreement will exist as soon as the booking is confirmed over the web, by email or verbally by telephone. The confirmation shall be raised against the Confirmed Travel and Event Packages and we will send this to you together with the Agreement that was signed by you and where relevant amended, subject to availability, in accordance with your instructions (the "Confirmation") requesting payment in accordance with the payment schedule offered. Confirmation will be sent within two business days. Please check your spam files in case you do not receive the confirmation.
Booking Form/Web Booking: In order to secure your place as part of the travel package, you must complete the booking form or complete your order via our web. Should you have any questions, please review the terms and conditions and call or email us for clarification. If submitting manually please complete, print and fax the booking form to (757) 425-8950 or mail to Great Atlantic Sports Travel, 1065 Laskin Road #101, Virginia Beach, VA 23451 or Email Us. Please return your completed booking form along with your applicable deposit or full payment.
Shipping: All orders are subject to secured shipping fee. Clients are responsible for this shipping fee unless otherwise noted.
Deposit: This should be forwarded to Great Atlantic at: Great Atlantic Sports Travel, 1065 Laskin Road, Suite 101, Virginia Beach, VA 23451.Once payment is made for the booking, it is deemed that you have read and understood the terms and conditions for the booking. Additional Payment: The payments and final balance of the ticket/travel package is due in accordance with the specific event policies indicated on our website. Please note that sales prices can change at any time. These tickets and/or packages are based on first come - first served and all prices are subject to fluctuation.
The Sales Price: Subject to any cancellations in accordance with these Terms and Conditions you agree to pay the total amount payable as set out in the Confirmation (The "Sales Rate"). We acknowledge that this amount shall include all applicable charges and taxes (except airport taxes and airline fuel surcharges and levies) at the prevailing rate. The person completing the booking (including web, telephone or email bookings) accepts responsibility for payment for all of the persons on the booking, and is responsible for informing all party members of the relevant booking details and conditions. On tickets and/or hospitality there may be a premium charged above face value, to sold out events, which reflect our costs of obtaining preferred seating. This premium is based on supply and demand along with seat location. If priced in foreign currency, all prices are based on current exchange rates and are subject to fluctuation.
Payment Arrangements: Your payments to us should be made to the bank account detailed on your invoice. Payments made by credit card may incur a service charge that will be added to each payment.Late Payment: If any amount due to us has not been received by the due date and we have still not received payment from you five (5) days after serving notice to you requesting such payment, we shall be entitled to; (a) charge you interest on all amounts outstanding at four percent (4%) above the prevailing base rate of Bank of America as it may vary from time to time from the date payment became due until actual payment is made, (b) refuse to supply any services, and (c) claim for all reasonable further losses and costs suffered by us as a result of nonpayment and/or late payment.
Accommodations: The accommodations used in these packages are based on the room share requested. Hotel categories used in these packages are based on the national standard in the country the event takes place. Items such as size, ambiance, facilities, location, distances from venue and airport are all taken into account based on availability. Hotels vary from property to property. Regardless of your arrival or departure times for the hotel, early check-in or late check-out cannot be offered. You or your guest may be required by the Hotel upon check-in (arrival) to guarantee payment of incidental charges with a major credit card or cash deposit. Accommodations are based on two people sharing a room. Requests for specific bedding arrangements must be made at the time of booking and this will be passed on to the accommodations provider. This is considered a special request and this cannot always be provided during international events. Requests for rollaway beds, connecting/adjoining rooms, and smoking/non-smoking preferences, as well as any requests noted are considered Special Requests. These Special Requests are not guaranteed by the hotels and will be honored depending upon availability at check in. Name List must be received no later than 45 days prior to the start of the tour. Any names received or changed after 30 days prior to tour will be assessed a $50 per occurrence administrative fee. Passengers must check into the hotel on the schedule arrival day of the package to avoid being considered a "no show" by the hotel. If a passenger is determined a "no show" by the hotel/vendor, Great Atlantic Sport Travel has no control over hotel/vendor policies and cannot provide refunds/adjustments. In the event, you will be late arriving, contact the hotel or vendor involved.
Ground Transportation: Transportation is only included when specifically mentioned in the package inclusions as indicated on your travel invoice.. Participants will be responsible for any-on board or hand carried baggage. Transportation providers are NOT obligated to wait for customers who do not comply with the schedule requirements. Minors under the age of (18) must be accompanied by an adult on all models of transportation.
Air Transportation: Under government deregulation of the airlines, airfares may be changed (increased) at anytime without notice. However, airfares are guaranteed at the time of ticketing. Full payment is required for ticketing. Any changes in flight itineraries after issuance of tickets may result in an increased airfare. Great Atlantic Sports Travel will not be responsible for any lost or stolen baggage. Participants will be responsible for any-on board or hand carried baggage. The departure schedule published in the program or quoted on request, is accurate at the time of printing or quoting, and no changes in dates, time, or equipment are anticipated. However, in the unlikely event that it should become necessary to alter any of the above, Great Atlantic Sports Travel cannot be held responsible for any changes which may occur and reserve the right to adjust the price of any travel arrangements at anytime due to airfare and land arrangement price increases, currency fluctuations, fuel surcharges, currency exchange rates or number of passengers travelling at the same time. Everything possible will be done to notify the passengers of accurate flight details. In the event that our agents are unable to contact you, we suggest that you reconfirm your flights directly with the airline at least twenty-four (24) hours in advance of your departure.
Airport taxes/Fuel Surcharges: (Departure, Arrival, Security and government taxes etc.) As a general rule, this would not occur unless you are travelling on a group agreement with the airline. These are not included in the tour cost as they are continually changing i.e. Due to exchange rate fluctuations, adding and deleting of taxes etc. Taxes will be advised and payable at the time of final payment. In the event, that you are scheduled to fly based on an Airfare group contract, you may be responsible to pay airline and government taxes. Should this occur, you will be notified on your invoice.
Inclusions: Each package includes only those items specifically mentioned on invoice and website.
Currency Conversion: All prices are per person and are based on USD. Great Atlantic Sports Travel reserves the right to increase prices based on international currency fluctuations. This stipulation is in effect until full payment of the package has been received by us. Prices may fluctuate based on dates of travel and matches selected.
Baggage: Each passenger is limited one (1) piece of check-in luggage in accordance with airline size and weight regulations and one (1) carry-on bag. Luggage space on motor coaches is not sufficient for any additional luggage. No single suitcase may exceed 62 linear inches. Baggage lost or damaged while property is in the custody of an airline, ship line, train, Bus Company, or Transfer Company cannot be the responsibility of Great Atlantic Sports Travel. Baggage insurance is strongly recommended and is available from our office.
Service Charge and Taxes: The cost of travel programs include all service charges, and local taxes normally payable on any service included, with the exception of possible Transportation Taxes and Customs Security Fees, local airport taxes, and departure taxes if and where applicable.
Passports and Visas: Please ensure that your passport and any necessary visas are valid for your complete trip and that the name on your passport matches the name on your airline ticket. Most countries require passengers to have at least six months validity remaining on a full 10-year passport. You should check details of passport and visa requirements for your chosen destination with the appropriate Embassy, Consulate or Home Country of your passport Office for exact requirements for your date of travel. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have the correct passport and visas to gain access to any country/region included in the travel arrangements which you purchase from us. If you fail to do so, we have no liability to you for any cost, loss of damage which you suffer, nor will we refund you the cost of any unused portion of your travel arrangements. In some cases, countries will refuse entry to clients that have criminal records. Should you be concerned about this, please check with the embassy or consulate of the countries to which you are travelling.
Health & Safety: For medical advice regarding your journey, including vaccinations, please contact the appropriate Embassy or your host Government.
International Travel: We may operate trips in regions where standards of accommodation, transport, safety, hygiene, medical facilities and other infrastructure may, at times, be lower than those you normally expect and your booking is accepted on the understanding that you realize the hazards involved in travelling to such regions, including injury, disease, loss of property, inconvenience and discomfort. The whole concept of this type of international travel is one that allows alternatives and a substantial degree of on-trip flexibility. Changes in itinerary may be caused by local political conditions, flight cancellations, mechanical breakdown, weather, border restrictions, sickness or other unforeseeable circumstances.
Lost Vouchers/Tickets: Great Atlantic Sports Travel assumes no liability for lost or stolen travel vouchers or tickets. However, our staff will assist whenever possible pertaining to lost documents.
Advisement by Travel Agents: Travel Agents cannot complete the Booking Form on behalf of their client. Individual travelers must be fully aware of all Terms and Conditions and that they fully understand that he/she is subject to Great Atlantic Sports Travel booking requirements and policies.
Travel Documents: International travel documents will be delivered to your mailing address at least 14 days prior to departure via Federal Express. Under no circumstances will Great Atlantic Sports Travel release documents without full payment.
Booking Amendments: Should you wish to change/amend your reservation after deposit has been received, Great Atlantic Sports Travel will do it's very best to accommodate your request. An amendment fee of $75 USD per amendment will be levied. In addition you will be liable for any increased cost for the new arrangements.
Cancellations, Refund Policy - International Events: All payments are non-refundable on International Ticket/Travel packages for special events. All cancellations must be in writing. Services included in this package and not used are non-refundable. No refunds will be made for unused hotel accommodations, transportation, meals not taken or any other services not used due to flight delays, schedule changes or any other reason. We are not liable for refunds under the following circumstances that are beyond our control: event postponement, rescheduling or time changes due to weather, illness, mechanical failure, construction, flight delays or for any other reason.
Our Liability to you: In order to supply you with Ticket/Travel Packages we have contracted with third party suppliers which we will take reasonable care and skill to ensure are reputable. Our role after that point is to secure your booking with the suppliers and although we will try to resolve matters where the suppliers has not complied with any of its obligations, we emphasize that we do not have control over the actual services provided to you by the suppliers. We shall not be liable for any costs, direct or indirect damage ("Damage") in connection with your use of the packages. We shall not be liable in the event of gross negligence of the suppliers. We shall not be liable for any damages that are untypical and unforeseeable under this Agreement.
Your Liability to us: Although we arrange your reservation with the suppliers, we cannot be held responsible for the acts and omissions of you and any of the clients who use the confirmed services reserved by you. In the event of any claim, cost or expense arising against us in respect of any such act or omission (if such claim, cost and expense is not without foundation), you confirm that you will bear the responsibility for this, either by settling and paying for such claims, costs or expenses or, if you dispute any such claim, cost or expense, that you will be responsible for the costs arising in defending such a claim including our own reasonable costs (if any).
Independent Contractors: For the avoidance of any doubt, you and ourselves shall each be and remain independent contractors with respect to each other and with respect to all rights obtained and services performed. Nothing herein shall be construed to: (a) Constitute you and ourselves as partners, joint ventures or co-owners; (b) Constitute you or us as the agent, employee or representative of the other; (c) Empower you or us to act for, bind or otherwise create or assume any obligations on behalf of the other.
Event Seating: International Event ticket Categories represent the ticket category that corresponds to the designated seating location for the particular area at each venue. Categories range from 1 or A through 4 or D. There are three different price categories depending on venue. Not all price categories are available at each venue. Category 1 or A is considered to be the best seating option, with Category 2 or B being next and then Category 3 or C. Tickets from any category guarantee you a seat within that category. This is determined by the venue and official authorities and we do not have any control over the exact positions in the Categories. The Cat 1 or Cat A tickets are the highest priced while the Cat 4 or Cat D tickets tend to be on the lower priced tickets. We will however always do our best to get you the best possible seats of your choice. But we cannot guarantee any particular rows or seat numbers. Seats are normally delivered in groups. For groups booking we will do our best to have all your tickets together, however, this is not guaranteed. In the event that your desired category/level that you purchased is not available based on allocations received, the next best seating category will be provided and you will be compensated for the difference in price. For additional information on Event seating for domestic and international events please visit our website page of the event you are interested in.
Ticket Responsibilities: We are not responsible for misplaced or stolen tickets. Tickets cannot be replaced if they are lost or damaged, so avoid exposing them to excessive sunlight or any other damaging agent. Upon receipt of tickets, you have 24 hours to contact us about any discrepancies about your tickets and/or seat locations. All times listed on our site are local for the event. But dates and times are subject to change and should be verified by the buyer on the week of the event. Great Atlantic Sports Travel does not own all of the tickets on our site. We work with a network of suppliers, so we can offer you the largest selection.
Ticket Pricing: Great Atlantic Sports Travel is not the official box office for any of the events for which we sell individual tickets. Our selling price and the original price on the ticket will vary due to premium costs associated with obtaining tickets in the high demand marketplace. Prices can often be many times that of the original face value listed on the ticket. Great Atlantic Sports Travel acts only as an intermediary arranging delivery for individual tickets. All tickets are confirmed by contracts.
Buying Tickets: All sales are final – there are no refunds, or exchanges. Orders are not confirmed until a Great Atlantic Sports Travel representative has reviewed the order. If there is a problem you will be contacted within two (2) business days. We accept all major credit cards. All prices for US events are in US Dollars. International events could vary depending on event. When your order is submitted, an email is sent to your email address. You should receive and email right away. Often times, our email confirmations are sent to Spam Filters. Please check your spam Filters for an email from greatatlanticsports.com.
Notices: All notices, demands, requests or other communications shall be in writing and shall be mailed first class or transmitted by hand delivery or fax addressed as follows: (a) If intended for us address to Great Atlantic Sports Travel at 1065 Laskin Road, Virginia Beach, VA 23451, USA. Fax number: 757-425-8950; (b) if intended for you, at the address provided by you and given on your invoice or to such other address as may be designated by you in writing to us. Such notices, demands or other communications shall be deemed given upon receipt. In the case of transmission by fax, confirmation of the transmission must be made by mailing the original notice demand or communication not later than the business day following the transmission.
Website Pricing: We strive to provide accurate information and pricing, but pricing or typographical errors may occur. In the event that an item is listed at an incorrect price or with incorrect information due to an error in pricing or product information, we shall have the right, at our sole discretion, to refuse or cancel any orders placed for that item. In the event that an item is mispriced, we may, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellations. Prices and availability are subject to change without notice. Package prices are subject to change at any time as supply and demand dictates. Family package rates will vary. The maximum number of guests per room is three, with a maximum of two beds. World Cup ticket prices cannot be discounted regardless of age.
Severability: If any provision or portion of any provision is held to be unenforceable or invalid by a court of competent jurisdiction, the validity and enforceability of the enforceable portion of any such provisions shall not be affected by this.
Binding Agreement: Both you and we intend to rely upon the written terms set out here in the Terms and Conditions and in the Confirmation. If either party requires any changes which are agreed by the other, both parties should make sure to ask that these be put in writing. Both parties acknowledge that this is a legally binding document.
Resolution of Complaints: If you encounter a problem in relation to the services being supplied you should immediately inform the Hotel or supplier and also our own local representative who will do what they can to resolve matters to your satisfaction. If your complaint is not resolved locally, please call our office at 800-888-8233 or 757-422-9001 for further assistance. Please raise your concerns immediately as this may impact the way your complaint will be handled by the vendor and our responsibility to resolve it.
Authority and Behavior: While being a participant of Great Atlantic Sports it is necessary that you abide by the authority of our staff and company representatives. If you commit any illegal act or if in our reasonable opinion or the reasonable opinion of our staff, Company representative or another person in authority indicates your behavior is disruptive, threatening or abusive, causes unnecessary inconvenience or is causing or likely to cause damage to property, distress or upset, disturbance or annoyance to others or puts any other person or staff in any risk, we may terminate our travel arrangements with any liability on our part.
Force Majeure: The performance of this Agreement by either party is subject to acts of God, war, government action or decree, disaster, strikes (other than strikes by our staff), riot or civil disorder, acts of terrorism, curtailment of transportation (to the extent such curtailment was beyond our reasonable control), inclement weather, the postponement or cancellation of the Event, or its being relocated to another venue or any other emergencies beyond the affected party's control making it illegal or impossible to provide services. In the event that performance of this Agreement is not possible by reason of Force Majeure, Neither party shall be deemed to be in breach of the terms of this Agreement and neither party shall then be obligated in any manner to the other with respect to such performance. Compensation will not be payable by either. To the extent we recover monies from the Hotels and other service providers we will refund such monies to you and we will use our reasonable efforts to obtain such recovery.
Cancellation, Refund Policy: All cancellations must be in writing. Services included in this package and not used are non-refundable. No refunds will made for unused hotel accommodations, transportation, meals not taken or any other services not used due to flights delays, schedule changes or any other reason.
Travel Insurance: Don't leave home without it. It is vital when traveling that you are properly insured.You can protect yourself against covered cancellation penalties if you cancel for a reason covered by the insurance policy you choose. All insurance policies are different. Please read all insurance policy documents very carefully to be sure you fully understand them.
Responsibility: Great Atlantic Sports Travel (hereinafter shall be called "the Company" is acting as an independent intermediary for suppliers in selling services, or in accepting reservations or booking for services which are not directly supplied by this company such as hotel accommodations, ground transportation, meals, tours, event tickets and air transportation. This company, therefore, shall not be responsible for breach of contract or any actions or omissions on the part of such suppliers, which result in any loss, damage, delay or injury to you or your travel companions or group members. The Company is not responsible for any personal injury, property damage, or other loss of services you may suffer or incur from the acts or failure to act on the part of any service provider. All ticket coupons and orders are furnished and issued subject in all respects to the forgoing and to any and all terms and conditions under which the transportation and other service and accommodation provided thereby are offered or supplied. The Company accepts no responsibility for losses or expenses due to delay or changes in schedules, sickness, weather, strikes, war, quarantine, or other causes. All such losses or expenses will be borne by the passengers. Baggage is "at owner's risk" throughout the tour unless insured. Small articles (coats, cameras, umbrellas, etc) are entirely in the care of the passengers. The right is reserved to decline to accept or to return any person as a member of any tour and to cancel or alter the tour. Schedules mentioned/published and rates quoted are in effect at time of printing and are subject to change without notice having regards to unforeseen circumstances, foreign exchange fluctuations and variations in airline operating costs including but not limited to say an escalation of fuel prices. Unused services cannot be refunded or exchanged. The Company reserves the right to cancel and/or modify the itineraries where circumstances require and may substitute hotels or other services where necessary. Airline liability for passenger's baggage is limited by tariffs. The Client, by engaging the company and making deposit and/or full payment for the package arrangement specified, acknowledges the position of the company as stipulated by the foregoing and agrees to hold the company blameless in making the arrangements on his behalf, and further agrees that restitution of damages, if any are claimed, shall be sought directly from the suppliers. In circumstances where liability of Great Atlantic cannot be excluded, such liability is limited to the value of the purchased item that is in dispute. As indicated above, rates are subject to changes without notice. Tours and event tickets are subject to availability. Payment of deposit or full payment shall constitute consent of all provisions stated herein, which are part of this offer. Great Atlantic Sports Travel is a Virginia Corporation. Protect your investment with Travel Insurance is highly recommended.
Passenger Travel Protection Program (Cancellation, Baggage, and Accident Insurance): We strongly recommend that you take insurance to cover your investment; in case of forced cancellation, loss, or damage of luggage, personal injury, accident, or illness, none of which Great Atlantic Sports Travel can be liable for. The Company offers a Passenger Travel Protection Program for you. The cost per person is based on the total price of your trip per person.
Applicable Law: The Agreement shall be governed by and interpreted in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States of America. All disputes arising out of The Agreement, including the validity thereof, shall be resolved by the ordinary courts in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States of America. | 2019-04-26T08:09:03Z | https://greatatlanticsports.com/terms-and-conditions-0 |
Cysteine, a sulfur-containing amino acid, is needed to produce the free radical fighter Glutathione. It is used by the liver and the lymphocytes to detoxify chemicals and other poisons. Cysteine is a powerful detoxifier of alcohol, tobacco smoke, and environmental pollutants, all of which are immune suppressors. Taking supplemental L-Cysteine can boost the levels of protective enzymes in the body, thus slowing some of the cellular damage that is characteristic of aging.
Cysteine is one of three sulfur-containing amino acids. It is a semi-essential amino acid, which means that it can be biosynthesized in humans. This amino acid acts as an antioxidant, and detoxifies many harmful chemicals including those from cigarette smoke, pollution and alcohol, as well as copper and heavy toxic metals. It has been shown to help protect the cells against the effects of x-ray and nuclear radiation. Cysteine has also been found to increase hair growth by increasing the diameter of hair shafts.
Cysteine is only incorporated into proteins at the rate of 2.8 percent relative to the other amino acids, but the unique thiol side chain of this amino acid is often heavily involved in the three-dimensional stability of proteins and enzymes. The side chain is also often involved in the chemistry occurring at the active sites of many enzymes. Cysteine is also critical to the metabolism of a number of essential biochemicals including coenzyme A, heparin, biotin, lipoic acid, and glutathione. When used as a food additive, it has the E number E920.
Although classified as a non-essential amino acid, in rare cases, Cysteine may be essential for infants, the elderly, and individuals with certain metabolic disease or who suffer from malabsorption syndromes. Cysteine can usually be synthesized by the human body under normal physiological conditions if a sufficient quantity of Methionine is available. Cysteine is catabolized in the gastrointestinal tract and blood plasma. In contrast, Cystine travels safely through the GI tract and blood plasma and is promptly reduced to the two Cysteine molecules upon cell entry.
Animal Sources: Pork, sausage meat, chicken, turkey, duck, luncheon meat, eggs, milk, whey protein, ricotta, cottage cheese, yogurt.
Plant Sources: Red peppers, garlic, onions, broccoli, brussels sprout, oats, granola, wheat germ, sprouted lentils.
Like other amino acids, Cysteine has an amphoteric character, meaning in chemistry that a molecule (or ion) can react as an acid as well as a base.
N-Acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) is a derivative of cysteine wherein an acetyl group is attached to the nitrogen atom. This compound is sold as a dietary supplement and used as an antidote in cases of acetaminophen overdose, and obsessive compulsive disorders such as trichotillomania. The body makes NAC into Cysteine and then into Glutathione, a powerful antioxidant. Antioxidants fight free radicals, harmful compounds in the body that damage cell membranes and DNA. Researchers think free radicals play a role in aging as well as the development of a number of health problems, including heart disease and cancer. NAC can help prevent side effects caused by drug reactions and toxic chemicals, and helps break down mucus in the body. It seems to have benefits in treating some respiratory conditions, such as bronchitis and COPD.
Cysteine can prevent hangovers, promote healing and boost the immune system. This amino acid has been used to treat liver disease, detoxify harmful toxins and protect the body from radiation damage. Cysteine reduces the accumulation of age spots and promotes healing after surgery, heals severe burns, and promotes fat burning and muscle building. Cysteine is often beneficial in the treatment of bronchitis, emphysema, and tuberculosis. People who take Cysteine have experienced amazing hair and nail growth.
NAC (N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine) is an antioxidant that helps increase Glutathione synthesis, and potentially has benefit during oxidative stress. NAC is the acetyl derivative of L-Cysteine. While L-Cysteine plays important metabolic roles as a key antioxidant, a Glutathione precursor, and a natural source of sulfur for metabolism, it is unstable and can become degraded during absorption. NAC on the other hand, is more stable than L-Cysteine. Taken orally, NAC converts into L-Cysteine after being absorbed, and raises blood and tissue cysteine levels. As a dietary supplement, NAC is a highly attractive alternative to L-Cysteine.
Acetaminophen Poisoning: Health care practitioners often give intravenous (IV) NAC to people who have taken an overdose of acetaminophen (Tylenol), to help prevent or reduce liver and kidney damage. Acetaminophen poisoning can also happen at lower doses if someone drinks alcohol or takes medications that may damage the liver on a regular basis. Acetaminophen poisoning is a medical emergency and can happen because of an accidental overdose. If you think someone has taken an overdose of acetaminophen, take them to the hospital.
Angina: In clinical studies of people with ongoing chest pain, taking NAC along with nitroglycerin, a drug that opens up blood vessels and improves blood flow, has been more effective than taking either one alone in reducing chest pain, heart attack, and the risk of death. However, the combination can also cause a severe headache. You should not try to treat chest pain on your own. Always see a health care practitioner.
Chronic Bronchitis, COPD: A review of clinical studies found that NAC may help relieve symptoms of chronic bronchitis, leading to fewer flare ups. But not all studies agree. One large and well-designed study did not find any reduction in flare ups. In another study of people with moderate-to-severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), taking NAC lowered the number of flare ups about 40-percent when used with other therapies.
Influenza: In one 6-month study, people who took 600 mg of NAC two times a day had fewer flu symptoms than those who took placebo.
Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS): Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) happens after an injury to the lungs and is life-threatening. Although not all studies agree, some research - laboratory and in people - suggests that intravenous NAC may boost levels of glutathione and help prevent and/or treat lung damage caused by ARDS. However, results of other studies have been conflicting. In one study, giving NAC or procysteine, a synthetic amino acid, to people with ARDS helped reduce the severity of their condition. But it did not reduce the number of overall deaths compared to placebo. ARDS is a medical emergency - you should not try to treat it at home.
HIV / AIDS: Some researchers have looked at whether cysteine can help boost levels of glutathione in people with HIV or AIDS. In one well-designed clinical study, people with HIV who took daily supplements including the amino acid Glutamine (40 grams per day), Vitamin C (800 mg), Vitamin E (500 IU), Beta-Carotene (27,000 IU), Selenium (280 mcg), and N-Acetyl-Cysteine (2400 mg) gained more weight after 12 weeks than those who took placebo. In a smaller-scale clinical study where HIV-positive patients took NAC, the supplement did boost Glutathione levels compared to placebo. But other studies have had negative results. More research is needed to see whether NAC has any benefit for people with HIV.
Reducing symptoms associated with Sjogren syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that causes dry mouth and dry eyes.
Adair JC, Knoefel JE, Morgan N. Controlled trial of N-acetylcysteine for patients with probable Alzheimer's disease. Neurology. 2001;57(8):1515-1517.
Ames BN. Micronutrient deficiencies: A major cause of DNA damage. Ann NY Acad Sci. 2000;889:87-106.
Badawy A, State O, Abdelgawad S. N-Acetyl cysteine and clomiphene citrate for induction of ovulation in polycystic ovary syndrome: a cross-over trial. Acta Obstet Gynecol Scand. 2007;86(2):218-22.
Cai J, Nelson KC, Wu M, Sternberg P Jr, Jones DP. Oxidative damage and protection of the RPE. Prog Retin Eye Res. 2000;19(2):205-221.
Chevez-Barrios P, Wiseman AL, Rojas E, Ou CN, Lieberman MW. Cataract develoment in gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase deficient mice. Exp Eye Res. 2000;71(6):575-582.
De Rosa SC, Zaretsky MD, Dubs JG, Roederer M, Anderson M, Green A, et al. N-acetylcysteine replenishes glutathione in HIV infection. Eur J Clin Invest. 2000;30:915-929.
El-Hamamsy I, Stevens LM, Carrier M, et al. Effect of intravenous N-acetylcysteine on outcomes after coronary artery bypass surgery: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial.J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2007 Jan;133(1):7-12.
Ghabril M, Chalasani N, Bj�rnsson E. Drug-induced liver injury: a clinical update. Curr Opin Gastroenterol. 2010 May;26(3):222-6. Review.
Goodman MT, McDuffie K, Hernandez B, Wilkens LR, Selhub J. Case-control study of plasma folate, homocysteine, vitamin B12, and cysteine as markers of cervical dysplasia. Cancer. 2000;89:376-382.
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Mardikian PN, LaRowe SD, Hedden S, Kalivas PW, Malcolm RJ. An open-label trial of N-acetylcysteine for the treatment of cocaine dependence: a pilot study. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2007;31(2):389-94.
Mazer M, Perrone J. Acetaminophen-induced nephrotoxicity: pathophysiology, clinical manifestations, and management. J Med Toxicol. 2008 Mar;4(1):2-6. Review.
Micke P, Beeh KM, Schlaak JF, Buhl R. Oral supplementation with whey proteins increases plasma glutathione levels of HIV-infected patients. Eur J Clin Invest. 2001;31(2):171-178.
Muller F, Svardal AM, Nordoy I, Berge RK, Aukrust P, Froland SS. Virological and immunological effects of antioxidant treatment in patients with HIV infection. Eur J Clin Invest. 2000;30(10):905-914.
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The recommended dose is 500 mg to 1,000 grams of Cysteine daily. Amino acid supplements prefaced by the letter L, such as L-cystenine, are more similar to the amino acids in the body than those that start with the letter D, with the exception of D-L phenylalanine, which treats chronic pain. Read product label directions before use.
Your body makes Cysteine from the essential amino acid Methionine. Cysteine is also found in most high-protein foods, including ricotta, cottage cheese, yogurt, pork, sausage meat, chicken, turkey, duck, lunch meat, wheat germ, granola, and oat flakes. NAC is not found in food.
PEDIATRIC: Do not give NAC to a child except under a health care practitioner' s supervision.
ADULT: Recommended adult doses of NAC vary depending on the health condition being treated. Below are some examples for illustration purposes only. Talk to your health care provider to find the safest, most effective dose for your condition.
NAC is given either by IV or mouth in the hospital to treat acetaminophen (Tylenol) poisoning in both children and adults. Acetaminophen poisoning is a medical emergency, and should receive immediate medical care.
For adults 18 years and older with respiratory illness: 200 mg, 2 times daily, for chronic bronchitis. For COPD, 600 mg, 2 times daily, has been used.
For antioxidant protection/general health: Take 500 mg daily to start. The dosage may be increased, with your health care provider's supervision. Adding a multivitamin will ensure that you are getting the B vitamins you need when taking NAC.
Cysteine can affect insulin effectiveness so diabetics should use caution if taking this amino acid. Safety in young children, pregnant or nursing women, or those with severe kidney disease is not known.
Because of the potential for side effects and interactions with medications, take dietary supplements should only under the supervision of a knowledgeable health care provider.
Avoid some forms of cysteine, as they are toxic: D-cysteine, D-cystine, and 5-methyl cysteine.
NAC may raise levels of homocysteine, an amino acid that is associated with heart disease. Be sure to have your health care provider check your homocysteine level if you are taking NAC.
Very high doses (more than 7 grams) of cysteine may be toxic to human cells and may even lead to death.
Taking NAC by mouth may cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Intravenous administration of NAC to treat acetaminophen poisoning may cause severe allergic reactions, including angioedema, swelling of the soft tissue just beneath the skin including the face, lips, and around the eyes; or anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergy.
People with cystinuria, a kidney condition in which too much cysteine is lost in the urine, should not take cysteine supplements.
When inhaled into the lungs, NAC may cause tightness in the chest, numbness of the mouth, runny nose, and drowsiness. It may make asthma symptoms worse. People with asthma who are taking NAC should be watched closely by their health care practitioner.
If you are currently being treated with any of the following medications, you should not use cysteine supplements without first talking to your health care provider.
Medications that suppress the immune system -- Treatment with NAC may strengthen the effects of some medications that suppress the immune system, such as azathioprine (Imuran), cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan), or prednisone (Deltasone). Do not take NAC with these medications without talking to your health care practitioner first.
Nitroglycerin and isosorbide -- NAC may strengthen the effect of nitroglycerin and isosorbide (Isordil), two medications commonly used to treat chest pain. But this combination may also raise the risk of side effects, such as severe headaches, and may lead to abnormally low blood pressure. Do not take NAC with these medications unless your health care provider tells you to do so.
Oxiconazole -- Using NAC on the skin strengthens the effect of oxiconazole (Oxistat), an antifungal medication used for athlete's foot.
Activated charcoal -- may make NAC less effective.
L-Cysteine is a non-essential amino acid that is an important component of hair, nails and the keratin of the skin. L-Cysteine stabilizes protein structure and aids in the formation of collagen, thereby promoting healthy skin, hair and nail texture and elasticity. Cysteine is a sulfur-containing amino acid that is converted in the body to N-acetyl cysteine, a potent antioxidant. Cysteine is also a part of the reduced glutathione molecule, which plays an important role in the livers detoxification pathways. Glutathione binds and conjugates toxins, promoting their excretion. N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC) is a stable form of the non-essential amino acid L-Cysteine. It is a sulfur-containing amino acid that acts as a stabilizer for the formation of protein structures, and is also necessary for the formation of glutathione. Molybdenum and Selenium are essential trace minerals that facilitate the production of several important enzymes. Studies have shown that NAC helps protect against respiratory ailments such as bronchitis, bronchial asthma, emphysema, chronic sinusitis, and even help defend against lung damage caused by cancer-causing chemicals in cigarette smoke. NAC has also been used effectively in treating inner ear infections. As a dietary supplement, take one or more capsules per day or as directed by your health care practitioner. | 2019-04-19T10:25:40Z | http://www.moondragon.org/health/nutritionbasics/antioxidants/cysteine.html |
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Genetic Denim a Los Angeles based brand has recently introduced Colorful Skinny jeans referred to as the “The Shane”. It is a super-skinny faux-front cigarette preferred among Hollywood sirens, in a brand-new and unique Silk Denim fabrication. The soft hand of the silk spandex mix provides to an unparalleled convenience, without compromising the look of denim. Offered colors of Colored Skinny Jeans include Bright Teal, Coral, Navy, Feather Grey, Black Chalk and a lot more. Women who want to highlight/ intensify their curves skinny jeans are perfect for them. These jeans make you look taller than your actual height as they are tapered from all-time low.
Try on the Capri PantsSo I’ve begun turning the pants inside out so I’m going to have Peyton try these on. We put a piece of elastic around her low waist which is where she wants to wear her pants and now we’ll make certain everything fits from the waist down. We’re simply going to tuck the whole thing under the elastic. So now that the folds are all hanging directly, I’m going to fold my casings that’s what’s going to hold the elastic from the within down. And draw the line with a chalk marker right at the top of the elastic. That’s still all right since I’ve made the change to make these healthy Peyton perfectly by pulling up so everything hangs directly. So I’m simply going to fold that down like I did all the way around. And after that we’re all set to stitch our housing.
There are many various sports out there that women do which could require putting on clothes that is a little tight fitting but likewise allows for complimentary motion. Capri pants are perfect, I think, for this type of clothes requirement. If you wish to buy a pair of these types of pants, they are simple to discover online. If you choose merchants in the high street, there are plenty to pick from there too. Many high street labels have some kind of capri pants throughout the year.
The more popular jeans and freight pants have also become popular as of current. These clothes are more oriented around fashion. While the product made use of for producing freight pants and jeans are more durable than standard women trousers. The benefit of utilizing jeans and freight pants is purely for fashion. While freight pants can be used quickly for outdoor activities. These pants have a variety of storage compartments and are made of product that is durable to water and tearing making it the ideal garment for travelling or mountain climbing. The jeans design can be used for casual wear and is widely accepted for more semi-important expert environments. The women pants go back a number of century. It has actually been made use of mainly to secure the legs. It is now an essential part of any woman’s wardrobe.
Where Can You Find The Best Cute Pants?
If you are trying to find a trendy basic pants, online shops can provide you with the most current releases of designs. The reason behind this is the advertisement promos online is a lot more affordable but covers a broad scope in the market. You flylow ski pants even try to customize your pants enabling you to request for your own style and includes more details to the pants you wish to buy. Due to the large collection of basic pants available online, you can likewise mix and match attire with stylish tops and shoes that you can click and instantly loads a page with your pants in it. Nevertheless, among the major failures of shopping online for basic pants is that you can not test or fit the clothes you wanted to purchase.
Thai fishermen pants are ideal to be worn on a casual note. You can get associated with a number of activities and more around anywhere with ease. Beach lovers and people who get associated with water activities near beaches likewise purchase these pants. While doing workouts and exercise likewise these clothes are just incredible. You have to choose the location where you are and think about the activity where you are getting involved, take the decision and go for it. This believed procedure will surely assist you in a much better method. You can make excellent perspective.
The 1960’s and 70s gave rise to extracurricular relations, women’s rights and peace. It was subsequently because time more women started putting on pants. They achieved it as they felt more comfortable in pants, not necessarily because they were going off to their work and definitely not in their hubby’s pants. The nineteen seventies is considered the most noteworthy time period for women to move from skirts and outfits to pants. Popular tv programs of the age produced programs especially centered on women sporting pants.
Being stressed runs down your body immune system, and when you get stressed your body tenses up, preparing for an injury, a cut, or a bite. This tension also restricts blood flow and energy causing you to be continuously tired. The worst stressors those terrible ones that seem beyond your control or seem like they’re never going to end result in every single area of your flylow ski pants being reduced and your body immune system function to drop substantially in all parts of your body.
We do not only think about the gamers, we likewise think about the installers. The bouncers are of extra inflatable tubes. It can fit the blowers by different directions. After connecting the inflation tubes to the blower system, you can blow up the bounce residence. And when you wish to pack it up, you can deflate the bounce residence by unzipping the deflation zippers. The jam-packed size is 90 × 80 × 80cm. It occupies little area. The advantage of the inflatable bounce residence is that it can move and storage. When you are not using the inflatable bounce residence, you can pack it up and make rooms for other events.
This has mishandled up until now. I needed to outmaneuver them on this. That is just a little sample of large size water resistant pants. I believe you’ll find a step by step prepare for that as much as I think this is a way to build interest in women’s long ski pants. Plus size snowboard pants gave me fairly an adrenaline rush. I just need to state this. There’s a limitation to what I’ll accept from them. If pros jumped off a bridge, would you? Have you ever wanted women ski pants to amaze everyone you know?
One basic step that you can take now, before you have to place on the very first pair of shorts of the season, is to move your main meal from dinner to lunch. If you go out every day for lunch then check the menu of your routine eating place for more salads and veggie dishes. If you pack your own lunch you have more control over what goes into it but the same guidelines apply, pack more fresh veggies and fruits and less processed foods and made products. You might be amazed to learn that fruits and green veggies in particular are actually more filling than processed foods. You probably will not get the midday blues either, but in any occasion no matter what you consume by making lunch your main meal you have more hours in the day to burn those calories.
These ideal essentials tiny drawstring boot cut pants are just remarkable. Created particularly with the tiny individual in mind, these boot cut medical pants are ideal for any occupation. The slender cut means you get a slender planning to your body, and the colorful designs are merely ideal for matching any blouse, top, or shirt. The drawstring waist equates to a quickly wearable and removable pair of pants. In addition, you will certainly discover you can really move due to the fact that of the extra flexibility.
Use knee pads: everyone knows that we must not let the scenario come due to which we have to suffer later. This sentence is likewise suitable in preventing knee injuries. Knee pads can be really valuable in safeguarding knees from injuries but the majority of the worker forget to do this so Bursonworkwear has the solution of this issue in the form of work pants that has actually inbuilt knee pads to secure knees without hindering your regular work of flexing or squatting. These pants are available in all sizes and in style at really cost effective prices. These pants are really resilient even in the hardest scenarios.
This brings me to the present topic-plastic pants for bed-wetting. There are a variety of brand names of plastic pants out there flylow ski pants handle bed-wetting. This article talks about some of the more popular ones. These brand names have a good track record with many individuals in the incontinence community. After rubber pants were phased out, the term rubber pants and plastic pants were used reciprocally. The term rubber pants is still used today by some individuals, however most people when they use the term rubber pants, actually indicate plastic pants. As far as I know there are no companies that make rubber pants for infants and there are just a number of companies that make rubber pants for adults. From exactly what I understand rubber pants fell out of favor in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Maybe they just weren’t as comfortable or as long-term as plastic pants.
When searching through flylow ski pants venders of the products you are searching for this ends up being a bit more difficult as managing the items prior to purchase just is not possible. This leads you to other options for finding the quality products you want at the best possible rate. There many review sites on the web that rate venders on lots of subjects varying from client service to truthfulness in marketing. By checking out at these review sites, you will certainly discover how other individuals’s experiences at a specific site have gone and this will certainly help you choose from the wide varieties readily available to you today.
Pockets are a must. These are the specifying parts of freight designs due to the fact that they will certainly not be exactly what they are without the pockets. Various freight pants for males and females nevertheless can have various pocket types. Those on baggy freight pants as an example typically have pleats or are wailed so they can expand when filled. More formal designs have smaller, flatter pockets. The conventional variety of pockets is 6, two at the front, two on the leg sides flylow ski pants two at the back.
The second Comco is called Comco Manufacturing, LLC Apparently a group of people from the initial Comco divided off and formed their own business called Comco Manufacturingpersonally I believe they must change their name so as to prevent confusion Comco Manufacturing is based out of Hinckley Minnesota. Their pull-on vinyl pant is known as the style 100 pant. The price for one pant is $10.50 and the price for a 3 pack is $25.50. These pants have broad elastic on both the waist and leg locations which must make these pants additional effective at preventing leaks. A while back ago a man on an incontinence forum stated that he attempted these pants and thought they were very good. As I discuss later on in this post it’s great to obtain opinions relating to incontinence products but bear in mind that your experience with the products in concern may be various. On the other hand the opinions of the individual relating to the item could be spot on. Like I have actually stated prior to in other short articles it’s great to be open minded and try various brands and types of diapers and plastic pants.
When you need something extra, the event will certainly often determine the design. For instance, a satiny silken thread on a pair of gown pants would be best for a wedding while a stronger nylon thread might be best for the workplace. Choosing the most appropriate options for the requirement is simple especially if you know where to look. Fortunately, with the variety of companies offered for this customization, you will certainly discover it is easier than ever to obtain the design and feel you are looking for the first time.
For a best surface, get shoes that will certainly flatter your body frame. Pants for short women complement heels as these assistance to increase your height in addition to make your legs appear longer. flylow ski pants is not a need to that you put on closed stilettos. Flatter yourself by wearing open-toed heels or those that are pointed. This does not mean that flat shoes can not be put on with pants. You can now have the ability to get flat footwear that can be appealing with whichever kind of pant you put on.
If you do occur to purchase your youngster’s costume, start taking a look at least a month before Halloween makes its appearance. As well as though youngsters have the tendency to change their minds a lot, you can impress upon your youngster the value that this is a decision he or she will certainly need to make for great when the costume is purchased. Regardless, the ideal costume will certainly make for the ideal day and make you a hero to your youngsters, even after they have actually taken off their own superhero outfits.
If, however, you wish to make a more powerful, edgier fashion statement then think about welcoming the period’s retro 70s look. Bonus wide-leg pants in flower prints are the way to go. Risks of Wearing Printed PantsPrinted pants can be a little less than flattering for women whose clothes sizes face double figures. Printed pants are well-known for producing the illusion of a larger bum, and broadening the thighs, so the size and color of the print is critical. Stay away from both large and tiny prints and choose a more figure-flattering medium-size pattern. A dark background will certainly be more slimming. Likewise, pick out a neutral shade from the print and putting on that shade on top, thereby offering your figure a sleeker, leaner look and producing a column effect, in regards to body shape.
Other countries with Muslim majorities have chosen otherwise. Turkey well-known declined the Caliphate in the consequences of World War I, and the majority of Turks still prefer a secular state. For that matter, nations that are extremely of other faiths have declined religious guideline. Italy declined Roman Catholicism as its state religion, despite being extremely Catholic in its populace and totally surrounding the Vatican. Israel, while its laws have some elements of Jewish Law included into them, was founded on a secular ideal that declined the majority of Jewish Law. You can drive on Saturdays and you can consume a cheeseburger.
If you are a fan of Pinstripe, you currently know that you can not miss this event. If you have never ever attempted it, think me when I say there will be no better time or event to obtain to know this beer and Blue Pants Brewery than the Pinstripe Fest. It is going to be nothing but excellent times with one remarkable beer in an unbelievably lively environment. If something keeps you from going to, bottles and kegs of Pinstripe Stout need to start turning up at your preferred craft beer friendly bars, restaurants and retailers on November 12. Prost!
StylishYou can acquire work wear because it is comfortable, budget-friendly, and offers security, but when you can be stylish in the same foot, you will certainly find you have work wear that exceeds your expectations. There is absolutely nothing quite as stylish as looking “typical” in your day-to-day working environment. However while you look typical you can likewise have the very best security offered on the marketplace today. Very few apparel designers can make that promise. You will certainly find Nomex AP t-shirts or pants in a range of sizes and styles finest fits for your needs.
In western culture, these baggy pants were introduced as a women’s post of clothing in the mid-1800’s, although at the time they quickly came to be called “bloomers” and “Turkish trousers”. These women’s pants were called bloomers because of early women’s rights advocate Amelia Bloomer’s fondness for putting on the trousers and for the truth the style of trouser comes from western Asia. They were marketed as a type of women’s gown that would allow for an active way of living without compromising a woman’s decency, but they failed to capture on and were declined by western society at large up until their reintroduction once more in the early 1900’s.
Knowing a little reality about these pants does not provide you the direct point of why this is trending. First, these pants, comprised of light materials, are airy and comfy to use particularly throughout summer. Second, it looks good on you even if you are fat. Because these pants do not provide a shape, some plus sized women can conceal their unwanted curves with this clothing. Third, you can buy this at a very low-cost cost, no have to buy the designers one since no one will certainly even understand the distinction. Bear in mind, if you have fats in your thighs that you wish to conceal away, buy the larger more baggy or loose hareem pants. Nevertheless, it is fairly flylow ski pants for you if you are going to use this in the winter. | 2019-04-20T12:20:50Z | http://www.kellyspants.com/flylow-ski-pants/ |
Marine environment is inestimable for their chemical and biological diversity and therefore is an extraordinary resource for the discovery of new anticancer drugs. Recent development in elucidation of the mechanism and therapeutic action of natural products helped to evaluate for their potential activity.
We evaluated Gracilaria edulis J. Ag (Brown algae), for its antitumor potential against the Ehrlich ascites tumor (EAT) in vivo and in vitro. Cytotoxicity evaluation of Ethanol Extract of Gracilaria edulis (EEGE) using EAT cells showed significant activity. In vitro studies indicated that EEGE cytotoxicity to EAT cells is mediated through its ability to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) and therefore decreasing intracellular glutathione (GSH) levels may be attributed to oxidative stress.
Apoptotic parameters including Annexin-V positive cells, increased levels of DNA fragmentation and increased caspase-2, caspase-3 and caspase-9 activities indicated the mechanism might be by inducing apoptosis. Intraperitoneally administration of EEGE to EAT-bearing mice helped to increase the lifespan of the animals significantly inhibited tumor growth and increased survival of mice. Extensive hematology, biochemistry and histopathological analysis of liver and kidney indicated that daily doses of EEGE up to 300 mg/kg for 35 days are well tolerated and did not cause hematotoxicity nor renal or hepatotoxicity.
Comprehensive antitumor analysis in animal model and in Ehrlich Ascites Tumor cells was done including biochemical, and pathological evaluations indicate antitumor activity of the extract and non toxic in vivo. It was evident that the mechanism explains the apoptotic activity of the algae extract.
All through the medical history, nature is the excellent and reliable source of new drugs, including anticancer agents. Natural sources like plants and marine products have always been useful sources of antitumor or cancer prevention compounds [1, 2]. From the currently used anticancer chemotherapeutic drugs, approximately 70% are derived in from natural sources including some drugs under clinical trials obtained from marine source [4, 5]. Evidence from recent publication indicates that marine natural products, especially the secondary metabolites from marine organisms, are potential source and give high yield anticancer drugs than terrestrial sources [6, 7]. In recent years compounds like Arc-C (Cytarabine, an antileukemic drug) and trabectedin (Yondelis, ET-743, an agent for treating soft tissue sarcoma) were developed from marine sources [8, 9]. Fungi obtained from marine source are source of structurally unique and biologically active secondary metabolites . Number of preclinical anticancer lead compounds obtained from marine-derived organism has been increasing rapidly in last few years [11–13]. In many cases the natural occurring compounds are more effective and do not have considerable undesired consequences compared with synthetic drugs . Compounds from natural source are studied extensively with respect to structural modification in order to explore their further use in pharmacy and medicine in the prevention and treatment of cancer .
Gracilaria edulis (S.G. Gmelin) P.C. Silva, a major Indian agarophyte and an edible marine alga is commonly found in Indian coast . In a previous study, we reported the role of G. edulis in improvement in survival and cancer treatment . We continued further to establish the role of G. edulis as anticancer drug and in this study we did an extensive evaluation of the activity to understand the mechanism. Increase in life span in the Ehrlich ascites tumour (EAT) cells bearing mice after treatment with ethanolic extract of Gracilaria edulis (EEGE) and results from the biochemical parameters encouraged us to perform the detailed study for this novel anticancer drug.
Culture medium RPMI 1640, fetal bovine serum (FBS), HEPES and L-glutamine were purchased from Life Technologies (Grand Island, NY, USA). Trypan blue, MTT were obtained from Sigma Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA). Annexin-V-fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) and propidium iodide (PI) were from BD Biosciences (San Jose, CA, USA), and 2,7-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (H2-DCFDA) was from Molecular Probes/Invitrogen (Eugene, OR, USA). Caspase-2, caspase-3 and caspase-9 activities were evaluated by using commercial available kits from R&D Systems (Minneapolis, MN, USA). For evaluation of hepatic enzymes such as aspartate amino transferase (AST), alanine amino transferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) commercial kits were used (Span Diagnostics Ltd., Vadodara, Gujarat, India).
Fresh algae of G. edulis were collected from the regional sea shore during the month of December in the Mandapam region, Tamil Nadu. Alcoholic extract of the algae was prepared as described earlier and the presence of biologically active components including alkaloids, flavonoids, sterols, terpenoids, proteins, saponins, phenols, coumarins, tannins and glycosides was documented using spectrophotometric analysis . No specific permission was required for the collection of these algae as these were collected from regional sea shore, not covered by any regulatory body and private land. This study does not involve any endangered or protected species. A voucher specimen of this algae was matched with the local herbarium authentic specimen (Herbarium no. AC.3.1.1.5) housed at Central Marine Fischeries Research Institute, Cochin, Kerala, India and was deposited in the herbarium.
Adult swiss albino mice weighing between 25–30 g were procured from Tamilnadu Veterinary and animal Science University, Chennai. The animals were kept in well-ventilated cages and fed with commercial food and water ad libitum and raised under specific pathogen-free conditions. The study was conducted with necessary ethical clearance from Institutional Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC) of Srimad Andavan Arts & Science College. EAT cells were provided as courtesy sample by Amala Cancer Research Center, Thrissur, India. Ascitic tumor cells were counted by trypan blue dye exclusion method and always found to be 95% or more viable. Cells were maintained in mice in ascites form by successive transplantation of 6×106 cells/mouse in a volume of 0.2 ml in PBS .
35 mM NaCl. Cells were cultured in RPMI 1640 supplemented with HEPES (25 mM), L-glutamine (2 mM), sodium bicarbonate (25 mM), 10% FBS, 2-mercaptoethanol (50 μM) and antibiotics (100 U/ml penicillin and 100 μg/ml streptomycin) at 37°C in 5% of CO2 incubator. Viability and cell density were determined by the trypan blue dye exclusion test.
In a 96 well plate, EAT cells (3×105/ml) in RPMI 1640 with 10% FBS were seeded in quadruplicate. EEGE was dissolved in PBS which final concentration was adjusted to less than 0.1% (v/v) of the solvent in culture medium. The cells were treated with EEGE while control samples were treated with the corresponding volume of culture medium containing PBS. All samples were incubated in 5% CO2 incubator for 72 hours at 37°C in a 100% humidity atmosphere. Cell proliferation was determined using the standard MTT assay and the phosphatase activity assay .
Peripheral human blood was obtained from healthy adult volunteer with prior ethical approval and diluted with an equal volume of RPMI 1640 medium. Mononuclear cell was isolated using Ficoll-Hypaque density gradient separation solution, washed twice in RPMI1640 medium. Cells were suspended in RPMI1640 medium supplemented with 2 mM glutamine, antibiotics and 10% FBS. Leukocytes at a density of 1 × 106 plating cells/ml were cultured with 5 μg/ml of phytohemagglutinin in 96-well microtiter plates. Cells were incubated with EEGE in a 5% CO2 incubator for 72 h at 37°C. Control samples were treated with the corresponding volume of culture medium containing less than 0.1% PBS. After treatment, cell proliferation was determined using the MTT reduction assay .
EAT cells (5 × 106) were treated with various concentrations of EEGE including 0, 25, 50 and 100 μg/ml for 72 hours were washed with PBS. Total and reduced glutathione concentration in the cells was estimated by Glutathione Assay Kit from Sigma. The cells were processed as per kit protocol. The sample is first deproteinized with the 5% 5-sulfosalicylic acid solution. Glutathione content of the sample is then assayed using a kinetic assay in which catalytic amounts of glutathione cause a continuous reduction of 5,5′-dithiobis-(2-nitrobenzoic) acid (DTNB) to TNB. The oxidized glutathione formed is recycled by glutathione reductase and NADPH. The product, TNB, is assayed colorimetrically at 412 nm.
EAT cells (5 × 106) were treated with EEGE (50 μg/ml) for 8, 12 and 24 hours in a 96-well plate followed by analysis of intracellular ROS using the oxidation-sensitive fluorescent probe 2,7-dichlorofluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA). DCFH-DA enters cells and is hydrolyzed to membrane-impermeant dichlorofluorescein, which reacts with ROS to form the highly fluorescent dichlorofluorescein. Briefly, EAT cells were loaded with 5 μM DCFH-DA for the last 30 min of EEGE and the fluorescence of the generated DCF was measured in a fluorimeter plate reader at 490 nm excitation and 538 nm emission. Corrected values according to the cell number estimated by the trypan blue assay and the amount of ROS formed was expressed relative to the control [21, 22].
DNA fragmentation was evaluated by using protocol described by McGahon et al. (1995) with modification. EAT cells (5 × 106) were incubated with the EEGE at different concentrions (0, 25, 50, 100 μg/ml) for 48 hours to estimate the DNA fragmentation at 37°C. After 48 hours, cell suspension containing 4-6×105 cells in a microcentrifuge tube was centrifuged for 5 min at 2000 × g, 4°C. The cell pellet was processed to isolate the DNA as per the protocol followed by addition of 10 pg/ml RNase (Boehringer Mannheim, Indianapolis, IN) and were incubated at 50°C for 1 hour. DNA was purified using DNA purification kit from Qiagen as per manufactures protocol. Extracted DNA was dissolved in 50 μL TE buffer, and electrophoresis was performed on a 1.8% agarose gel containing ethidium bromide and densitometric analysis of bands was done by ImageJ Software (NIH, USA).
EAT cells (5 × 106) were incubated with EEGE (0, 25, 50, 100 μg/ml) for 72 hours and followed by measurement of caspase-2, caspase-3 and caspase-9 activities using colorimetric protease kits as per the manufacturer’s protocol. To prepare total cellular protein, cells were pelleted by centrifugation and lysed on ice and total protein concentration in the lysate was measured. With each X-pNA substrate (200 μM final concentration) 200 μg of proteins were incubated at 37°C for 4 hours in a 96 well plate. The absorbance of the samples was measured at 405 nm and the increase in the caspase activity of treated cells was determined by comparing the results with the untreated cells and standard drug after background correction.
Detection of apoptosis was performed using the Annexin V-FITC/PI apoptosis detection kit according to manufacturer’s protocol. Briefly, both EEGE treated and untreated EAT cells were washed in 1× PBS and stained with annexin V-FITC conjugate and PI. Cells were then analyzed by flow cytometry (BD FACSCalibur, USA) using BD CellQuest acquisition and analysis software.
The antitumor activity of EEGE was evaluated by measuring survival time and tumor growth inhibition. Mice were inoculated with 6×106 EAT cells by i.p. route. After 24 h, EEGE was administered by i.p. injections of 0.2 ml per mouse. Endpoint of experiments was determined by spontaneous death of animals. The ascitic fluid from the peritoneal cavity of tumor bearing mice was quantitatively isolated by peritoneal lavage after death. The total number of tumor cells was counted by the trypan blue exclusion method. EEGE solutions were prepared in PBS containing 10% Tween 80. Control mice received the vehicle control as i.p. injection of 10% Tween 80 in PBS for the same time period.
An extended 35-day toxicity study of EEGE was conducted in adult swiss albino mice with daily doses of 300 mg/kg. Two groups of six animals each were used for toxicity study where animals had free access to water and food. The first group was served as vehicle control and second group was given 300 mg/kg of EEGE in PBS, containing 10% Tween 80, by i.p. injections of 0.2 ml per mouse, once daily. Every day morning clinical signs of gross toxicity, behavioral changes and mortality were observed. Body weight of individual animal was recorded before and at the end of experiment. After 24 hours of the administration of the last dose, the animals were euthanized by anesthetizing with ketamine hydrochloride and xylazine hydrochloride administered . Whole blood was then sampled from the retro-orbital sinus with suitable hematological tube. For hematology assays 150 μl was retained and the remaining volume was used for serum biochemistry. The blood for serum biochemistry was allowed to clot at room temperature and was centrifuged at 3000 rpm for 10 min for serum separation. After blood collection, all mice were killed by cervical dislocation and liver and kidneys were collected, washed in PBS, fixed with 10% formalin and stored for histopathological examination.
Whole blood was immediately analyzed for complete blood count with differential and platelet count using the fully automated analyzer (Hitachi, Tokyo, Japan). Serum samples were analyzed for AST, ALT activities, and also ALP and LDH levels by commercial kits as per manufacturer’s instruction.
Routine histological processes were employed for paraffin inclusion, sectioning and H/E staining of liver and kidney from mice treated with EEGE and vehicle control. A histopathologist performed a complete examination of the tissues.
All in vitro experiments were performed in triplicate and results are represented as means ± SD. Significant differences among groups was performed by ANOVA followed by Tukey test. The survival of mice was demonstrated using the Kaplan–Meier method and the logrank (Cox–Mantel) statistical test was applied to compare the curves for non-parametric procedures. Values where p < 0.05, differences were considered significant at representing two-sided test of statistical significance.
Cytotoxicity induced by EEGE in EAT cells was evaluated by using MTT reduction and phosphatase activity with different concentrations of EEGE after 72 hours of treatment (Figure 1). EAT cells were exposed to various concentrations of EEGE and it resulted in a significant negative effect in cell proliferation, with the IC50 of 45 μg/ml observed in MTT reduction and phosphatase activity assays. At low concentrations of EEGE, a non-significant acceleration of cell growth was observed (Figure 1). By using trypan blue dye exclusion method, the effect of EEGE in EAT cells in vitro assay we also confirmed the above observation. Cells exposed to EEGE for 72 hours decreased cell viability in a dose-dependent manner (Figure 2). At 50 μg/ml dose the EAT cells viability was close to 65% and the maximum decrease of 15% was observed at 100 μg/ml. From these results, we were convinced that the EEGE potently inhibits the proliferation and viability of EAT cells and we continued with further investigations. EEGE was able to inhibit proliferation of human lymphocytes also, however the potency was not comparable to EAT cells, presenting IC50 nearly 1.5 fold higher as 70 μg/ml than for EAT cells, as observed in the MTT assay after 72 hours of incubation with EEGE in the same range of concentrations (Figure 1). For further in vitro analysis EEGE was used at 25, 50 and 100 μg/ml for cellular assays.
Cytotoxicity of EEGE in EAT cells (3 × 10 5 cells/ml; solid line) and human lymphocytes (1 × 10 6 cells/ml; dashed line) after 72 hours of incubation. Effects of EEGE on MTT reduction (▲) and protein phosphatase activity (●) is expressed relative to control cell viability (100%) and each point represents the mean ± S.D.
Effect of EEGE on the viability of EAT cells (3 × 10 5 cells/ml) determined by trypan blue exclusion test after 72 hours of incubation. The results present the mean ± S.D. of three experiments run in quadruplicate.
ROS is known to be a key player in highly organized cellular functions such as pathways of signal transduction and apoptosis and a role for oxidative signaling in the cytotoxicity of marine product in cancer cells has been previously reported . In this context we investigated a potential role of oxidative stress in the alteration of cellular sensitivity to EEGE. EAT cells treated with EEGE for 30 min were used for estimation of ROS level after the addition of DCFH-DA. The time-course effect of EEGE on the EAT cell intracellular peroxide levels is presented in Figure 3. Intracellular ROS production was observed at 8–24 hours after incubation of tumor cells with 50 μg/ml of EEGE as compared to control cells, and found to be significantly increased (p < 0.01). Increase in peroxides amounts generated by EAT cells was also noted to be time-dependent, with significantly higher (p < 0.01) at the beginning of treatment such as 8 and 12 hours in comparison with the 24 hours time point and the peroxides levels reached to normal after 24 hours exposure in EAT cells.
Time-course effect of EEGE on ROS generation in EAT cells. The fluorescence intensity of DCF was monitored at 538 nm, with excitation wavelength set at 490 nm, and used to indicate the level of intracellular peroxides formation. Changes in DCF fluorescence in tumor cells were measured at 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24 hours after treatment with 50 μg/ml of EEGE, *p < 0.01 compared to control and 24 h-time points (ANOVA, Tukey test). The results express the mean ± S.D. of three independent experiments run in duplicate.
With observation of an oxidative cytotoxic mechanism, we further measured the level of glutathione (GSH), the major non-protein thiol in mammalian cells with chemoprotective action, particularly associated with antioxidant defense. EAT cells treated with EEGE were found reduced the GSH levels to half (Figure 4). And this pattern of decrease was seen statistically significant at all concentrations (25, 50, 100 μg/ml, p < 0.01) of EEGE when compared with the control cells.
Alteration on GSH levels of EAT cells (3 × 10 5 cells/ml) treated with EEGE for 72 h, *p < 0.01 compared to control cells (ANOVA, Tukey test). The results present the mean ± S.D. of three experiments run in duplicate.
To understand the mechanism of cytotoxicity of EEGE to EAT cells, we investigated the nuclear DNA fragmentation based apoptosis approach, a characteristic hallmark of apoptotic cells. As observed in Figure 5, DNA fragmentation in EAT cells was dose-dependently increased with EEGE treatment. The control untreated cells produced 10% of fragmentation, while EAT cells treated with 25, 50, and 100 μg/ml of EEGE for 72 hours produced 21, 27, and 43% of DNA fragmentation, respectively (p < 0.05). These DNA fragmentation observation suggests that EEGE induces EAT cells killing by the process of apoptosis. For detailed understanding of cell death and differentiation between cells undergoing necrosis or apoptosis in the EEGE-mediated cell death, EAT cells were treated with similar concentrations of EEGE as in DNA fragmentation experiment (25, 50 and 100 μg/ml) for 72 hours and analyzed by flow cytometry using PI and FITC conjugated Annexin-V labeling. Changes in membrane phospholipid bilayer, such as externalization of the phosphatidylserine, which can be stained with Annexin-V-FITC, are characteristic of cells undergoing apoptosis. In contrast, loss of membrane integrity, shown by PI staining, has been associated with necrosis. Analysis by flow cytometry of EEGE-treated cells stained with Annexin- V-FITC directed that apoptosis is major factor for cell death as there is significant increases in Annexin-V-FITC positive populations after 72 hours of exposure to 50 μg/ml (p < 0.05) and 100 μg/ml (p < 0.01) EEGE. A considerable increase in Annexin-V-FITC staining of 100 μg/ml over 50 μg/ml treated samples was observed (Figure 5). These results supported the higher DNA fragmentation levels determined in 100 μg/ml EEGE treated cells (Figure 6). In addition, small, but statistically significant (p < 0.05), populations of cells were Annexin-V-FITC/PI double stained after treatment with 50 and 100 μg/ml, while only at the highest dose of EEGE a significant (p < 0.05) PI-positive population could be determined (Figure 5), reflecting cell death by necrosis, which might be related to the longer period of incubation with the algae extract. Significance of caspases in apoptosis very well documented and the role of caspase-2, caspase-3 and caspase-9 in the EEGE induced EAT cell death was examined. After 72 hours of incubation with EEGE, cells treated with 25 μg/ml of the algae extract a significant increase (2 fold) for all caspases activities when compared to the control cells (p < 0.01) (Figure 7). Treatment of cells with 100 μg/ml EEGE resulted in 4.5, 5 and 6-fold increases of caspase-2, caspase-3 and caspase-9 activities, respectively (p < 0.01). These biochemical features, as high DNA fragmentation, low membrane rupture, high phosphatidylserine externalization and activation of effector caspases are most likely indicative of activation of an apoptotic death pathway by EEGE in EAT cells.
Effect of EEGE on apoptosis induction. EAT cells were treated for 72 hours with 25, 50 and 100 μg/ml EEGE for 72 hours and harvested for quantification of Annexin-V-positive, PI-positive, and Annexin-V/PI-positive cells by flow cytometry, a) graph indicating increase in the early apoptotic events in EEGE treated cells, b) representative dot plot from the flow cytometry data.
Percentage data of DNA fragmentation obtained by DPA method in EAT cells (3 × 10 5 cells/ml) treated with different concentrations of EEGE for 72 hours, *p < 0.01 compared to control cells. **p < 0.01 compared to control cells and to 25 and 50 μg/ml treatments (ANOVA, Tukey test). The results express the mean ± S.D. of three experiments run in duplicate.
Alterations on caspase-2, caspase-3 and caspase-9 activities after incubation of EAT cells (3 × 10 5 cells/ml) with different concentrations of EEGE for 72 hours, *p < 0.05 compared to control cells. **p < 0.01 compared to control cells and to 25 and 50 μg/ml treatment (ANOVA, Tukey test). The results express the mean ± S.D. of two experiments run in triplicate.
With evidence from the in vitro studies for the antitumor potential of this algae extract, we continued to investigate with in vivo model in this study. The effect of EEGE on the survival time of EAT cells bearing mice was evaluated and is presented in Figure 8. EAT cells were injected intraperitoneally to mice and these cells grew as ascites tumor with accumulation of large volume of ascitic fluid in the peritoneal cavity. Survival of the control group was found to be at 50% on the 32nd day after tumor inoculation and no animal survived beyond the 34th day. Whereas survival of EEGE (300 mg/kg) treated EAT cells bearing animals was 100% on the 38th day and 15% in the 45th day, with no animal alive beyond day 48. All the doses of the algae extract tested in this experiment (100, 200 and 300 mg/kg) significantly altered the rate of mice survival (p < 0.05). No significant statistical difference was observed between mice treated with 100 and 200 mg/kg of EEGE. The administration of 100, 200 and 300 mg/kg of EEGE after tumor inoculation resulted in a significant inhibition of tumor growth (p < 0.05), as evident from a 75% reduction in intraperitoneal tumor cell burden on the day of death. Mice treated with 100, 200 and 300 mg/kg EEGE presented 3.6 ± 2.3 × 107, 3.8 ± 2.1 × 107 and 3.9 ± 2.8 × 107 viable ascites cells, respectively, while the control group presented 12.1 ± 3.4 × 107.
Survival of EAT cells bearing animals treated with EEGE. Mice were inoculated i.p. with 6 × 106 cells and after 24 h, they were treated i.p. with daily 0.2 ml injections of 25 μg/ml (♦), 50 μg/ml (▲) and 100 μg/ml EEGE (●) throughout their lifespan. Mice from the control group were treated with 0.2 ml of vehicle, PBS containing 10% Tween 80 (▪). Curves were represented by the method described by Kaplan–Meier and differences among groups were analyzed by Log-rank (Cox–Mantel) test for non-parametric procedures (*p < 0.05 compared with vehicle-treated tumor group and n = 6/group).
After encouraging effect of EEGE in inhibiting cancer progression in vivo, we evaluated the undesired side effects of the i.p. administration of daily doses of 100, 200 and 300 mg/kg of EEGE for 35 days in healthy adult swiss albino mice. Drug toxicity was assessed by clinical signs of gross toxicity, behavioral changes and mortality, including hematological, biochemical and histopathological parameters. No animal death was observed in any of the groups during the experimental period of 35 days. No abnormal clinical signs or behavioral changes were observed in any of the groups, and changes in body weights of the EEGE-treated groups were not significantly different between any groups including the control group after 35-days of treatment period (Table 1). There were no significant changes in hematological parameters in the EEGE-treated groups (Table 2). Similarly, no significant differences were found between the EEGE-treated groups and the controls for the three blood chemical parameters evaluated (Figure 9), AST, ALT, ALP and LDH, which were within the physiological range of values expected for the method of blood collection . These data indicate that daily intraperitoneal injections of EEGE at doses up to 300 mg/kg for 35 days did not cause hematotoxicity nor poses risks of renal or hepatotoxicity. At necropsy, no visible pathological changes were noted in the livers and kidneys of mice administered EEGE at 100, 200 and 300 mg/kg doses. Histological analysis of formaldehyde-fixed, paraffin embedded liver and kidney sections stained with hematoxylin and eosin showed normal architecture in all experimental groups. Livers of animals treated with different doses of EEGE showed no sign of necrosis, fatty degeneration, or inflammation (Figure 10a). Similarly, glomerulus structures, and proximal and distal tubules in kidneys showed normal architecture (Figure 10b), pointing out that EEGE did not cause toxicity to these organs.
Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activities, Alkaline phosphatase, and LDH levels in serum from mice treated with different doses of EEGE. The results express the mean ± S.D. (n = 6/group). ANOVA was performed for statistical comparison among groups.
Histological findings (40×) in liver and kidney of mice treated with different doses of EEGE. Adult swiss albino mice were treated i.p. with daily 0.2 ml injections of 100, 200 and 300 mg/kg EEGE and on the next day after the last injections, liver and kidney were submitted to routine histological processes. Mice from the control group were treated with 0.2 ml of vehicle, PBS containing 10% Tween 80. (a) Normal liver histological findings and (b) normal kidney histological findings.
The nature has been constant source of inspiration and unsolved puzzle as source of medicinal compound ; especially the marine source has been a reliable source of novel medicinal molecules [29, 30]. The interplay of this source with advanced technologies can be extended towards enhancing the discovery process and it leads to the new hope of investigating new natural products will continue to turn up even useful drugs to treat cancer . In our earlier report we demonstrated an initial investigation of G. edulis as a potential candidate for cancer treatment and due its high toxicity in cancer cells. G. edulis is a rich source of combination of amino acids, tissue nutrients, and pigments , fatty acid, palmitic acid and high protein content . In view of these facts, this study was an attempt to evaluate the in vivo and in vitro antitumor activity of G. edulis against EAT cells and we used the ethanolic extract of the marine product as a known source of pathological activity . In addition, cultures of normal human peripheral blood lymphocytes and a 35-day toxicity study in mice were conducted to determine its possible toxic effects.
The cytotoxicity effect of EEGE was the primary considerations as the significant activity to induce cell death, and this was demonstrated by MTT cytotoxic assay in EAT cells and lymphocytes in addition to phosphatase activity. MTT is reduced to formazan in cells indicating cell redox activity and the reaction is an effect of mitochondrial enzymes and electron carriers . In natural compounds phosphatase activity determination is a successful tool to evaluate cytotoxicity and as a parameter to study the role of the natural compound induced adaptation to apoptosis and oxidative stress [37, 38]. The IC50 for the compound was similar in these two methods and this cytotoxicity probably reflects the cell response to particular kinds of damage, in this case, mitochondria insult and/or oxidative stress. Additionally the dye exclusion assay using trypan blue also confirmed that the reduction on cell viability and cell number was due to the cytotoxic action of G. edulis to EAT cells. In contrast to the activity against the EAT cells, EEGE showed lesser effectiveness in normal human peripheral blood lymphocytes in similar experimental conditions, where the IC50 value was about two fold higher than EAT cells. This is in agreement with results previously published for other marine natural products . This reinforces the lower EEGE toxicity for non-tumor cells than for tumor cells and suggesting G. edulis as a promising agent for cancer management.
When anticancer agents (whether in vivo or in vitro) are used for treatment in cancer cell population, large changes may occur in the cell, and in result of that many cells are killed by the treatment, while others remain unaffected, either because they are resistant or because of biochemical, cell cycle, or extra-cellular environmental sanctuaries. The major non-protein thiol of the cell, GSH has chemoprotective action and the ratio of reduced glutathione (GSH): oxidized glutathione (GSSG) is maintained at the optimum by the cell as the ratio is critical to survival; a deficiency of reduced form of glutathione is a risk of cell to oxidative damage since this ubiquitous cellular tripeptide plays a vital role in protecting cells against oxidative damage by free radicals . In many pathological conditions including cancer the ratio is observed as altered [41, 42], distinct responses to chemotherapeutic drugs have prompted cellular GSH modulation as target for cancer chemotherapy . Earlier studies have presented evidence of correlation of high GSH content and increased resistance to anticancer agents [44, 45]. This could be a cell- or cancer-specific response and would be especially important to find a drug, which can lower the GSH level and helps in sensitivity to certain drugs, radiation and oxygen. GSH level of a cell makes it more resistant to certain antitumor agents, radiation and oxidative effects. On the other hand, therapy that decreases cellular GSH levels usually promotes sensitivity to certain drugs, radiation and oxygen . It is also observed by other investigators GSH plays important roles in antioxidant defense, nutrient metabolism, and regulation of cellular events including gene expression, DNA and protein synthesis, cell proliferation, apoptosis, signal transduction, cytokine production and the immune response . Results obtained in this study indicate that G. edulis exhibits a dose-dependent cytotoxicity to EAT cells in parallel with reduced levels of GSH for all concentrations used. Cell death induced by oxidative stress by G. edulis may have impact on growth or death related factors and in reduction of intracellular GSH, and conferred altered antioxidant system. From earlier studies reported by numerous investigators it is understood that increase in intracellular ROS and depletion of intracellular GSH to occur with the onset of apoptosis [48–50]. Morphological alterations observed in the EAT cells treated with G. edulis such as ruffling, blebbing, condensation of the plasma membrane, and the aggregation of nuclear chromatin were in concurrent with the initial hypothesis. Involvement of ROS production in colon HT29 cells death induced by natural products derived from marine source demonstrated by individual investigators [51, 52] and the nuclear fragmentation investigated as proof of induced apoptosis in oral squamous cell carcinoma cells . Current drugs commonly used in anticancer therapy induce apoptosis in target cells, and it involves both receptor-mediated and mitochondrial-mediated pathways. Disruption of the mitochondrial membrane potential, cytochrome c release and activation of different caspases have already been described following treatment of EAT cells with different natural agents [54, 55]. DNA fragmentation is observed as an initial event in apoptosis and is considered to occur at an early stage of apoptosis . In this present study we observed that apoptosis was an associated event in EAT cells after incubation with G. edulis and increase in the percentage of fragmented DNA quantified by the diphenylamine method, which occurs concurrently with an increase in Annexin-V-FITC positive cells as an indicator of apoptosis. EAT cells incubated with G. edulis demonstrated increase in all caspase evaluated including caspase-2, caspase-3 and caspase-9. Caspases are important members in apoptosis mediated cell death and it is well-known that the ROS level may influence the membrane potential in mitochondria, and these caspases in mitochondria induce release of pro-apoptotic factors by caspase cascade activation . Upstream caspases in mitochondria are activated by pro-apoptotic signals from the cytoplasm leads to proteolytic activation of downstream caspases like caspase-3, followed by cleavage of set of vital proteins and apoptotic degradation phase is initiated in the cell including DNA degradation and the typical morphologic features . Cell death by apoptosis was also reported in glioma cell after treatment with marine sponge, which was correlated with the elevation of ROS and calcium levels, the impairment of mitochondrial function and the activation of caspases and DNA degradation . Depletion of glutathione is reported to be associated with apoptosis following enhanced cell death of tumor cells where the essential sulfhydryl group of glutathione is lost resulting in a changed calcium homeostasis and ultimately loss of cell viability. ROS generation by G. edulis treatment in the EAT cells leads to increase in reduced GSH contents and may contribute to the cell death.
The results from this study indicate G. edulis exhibited antiproliferative and apoptotic activities against EAT cells in vitro and is a promising candidate for extensive screening in animal model. To the best of our knowledge, we report the in vivo antitumoral activity of G. edulis for the first time. An expected rapid increase in ascites tumor volume was observed in EAT cells bearing mice. Ascitic fluid serves as direct nutritional source for tumor cells and is highly essential for tumor growth and a rapid increase in ascitic fluid meets the nutritional requirement of tumor cells . Animals treated with low doses of G. edulis inhibited the tumor volume, viable tumor cells count and increase survival rate of EAT cells bearing mice, opposed to the reports with high doses of compound from natural products from variety of sources including marine. Even though the mechanism of action by which G. edulis is able to produce these significant results is still not clear, observed properties like changes in ROS production, GSH level and activation of apoptosis followed by cell death may be the contributing factors towards its anticancer activity. Mice bearing EAT cells showed increase in survival time after treatment with G. edulis deserves further investigation. This is first kind of study exploring the pharmacological activities especially the anti-tumor activities of G. edulis and consistent toxicity study of G. edulis in vivo, where the complete hematology is described, and the liver and kidney functions were investigated by biochemical determination of AST, ALT, ALP and LDH levels and histopathological examination of these tissues in mice given daily i.p well tolerated doses of 100, 200, 300 mg/kg of EEGE. Animals treated with G. edulis showed no clinical signs of gross toxicity or change in behavior. And the treatment did not affect the body weight gain in comparison with the control group.
Results from this study from all experiments congregate to a noticeable observation of the antitumoral activity of G. edulis on EAT cells in vitro and in vivo, and there was no considerable toxicity to major organs in mouse model. It is important to mention that cautious observation of such natural products from marine source to be a significant candidate in antitumor and apoptosis inducing drug group and to combat human cancer where formation of peritoneal malignant ascites is a fundamental basis of morbidity and mortality.
The authors are thankful to Dr. Sridharan, Professor, Department of Botany, National College, Trichy, India, for identification and authentication of Gracilaria edulis.
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interests.
SP designed the experiments and wrote the manuscript; SP and MMS participated in the experiments; MMS provided algae material and contributed to the manuscript writing process. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript. | 2019-04-24T04:23:36Z | https://bmccomplementalternmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6882-13-331 |
Arguably one of the cutest series that aired last season, Gakuen Babysitters is an anime adaptation of a manga by Tokeino Hari with the same title, originally serialized in Hakusensha’s LaLa magazine since 2009. The slice-of-life series take its audience to see glimpses of the happenings in the life of the Kashima brothers—Ryuuichi and Kotarou—who had only recently lost their parents in an airplane accident. Taken in by an old lady whose family had also been in the same accident as their parents, Ryuuichi began attending the Morinomiya Academy while at the same time taking care of not only his baby brother Kotarou but also five other unbearably adorable toddlers at the Morinomiya Academy Babysitters Club.
Gakuen Babysitters is not only a comedic, slice-of-life story about a babysitter club run by teenagers. It is a story about two brothers who just lost their entire family, but managed to find another kind of warmth given by the people that surrounded them in life. Everyone in this series, from the toddlers and babies, to siblings, friends, and parents, are all very nice, kind-hearted people who care so much about one another. For an entire series whose story’s point is about caring and being cared for, we’re trying our hands in ranking the ten most caring characters. It’s going to be hard, but let’s see how we’ll do!
Considering Takuma and Kazuma barely ever go anywhere without their other half, we’re going to put the twins on the tenth place as one. Kazuma, the ever-smiling one, and Takuma, the ever-crying one, are almost inseparable. Of course, they care very much about one another, especially because they’ve always been together since birth. However, both twins are also very caring and considerate to the people around them .When Takuma caught a cold and Kazuma had to spend an entire day without Takuma in the daycare, for example, Kazuma tried to not make the adults worry and played happily with the rest of the kids—at least until nap time was over and Kazuma got so lonely he sat by himself by the school’s front gate to wait for Takuma and their mother to come pick him up.
On the other hand, the meek Takuma might be quieter, but he’s also very caring and considerate of his twin and friends. Despite being scared of playing in the inflatable pool and visibly upset because Kazuma preferred playing in the water rather than getting back to the daycare with him, Takuma still comforted Kazuma and his friends when all the kids were upset after the inflatable pool was rendered unusable by an unfortunate accident with a cat. Both twins were also notably very caring towards their parents—from bravely going together to the convenience store to help their mother buy milk to being patient with their father when he tried his best to make omurice for them. It’s a toddler’s brand of caring, yes, but it’s so adorable and heartwarming you can’t help but say “Aaww,” every time the twins do it!
When you’re born into a rather family with a lot of children that is struggling with finances, how do you show your family that you care about them? Nezu Chuukichi, best friend of one of the most popular guys in Morinomiya Academy Yagi Tomoya, was born as the second son in a five-sibling family whose financial situation was not great. As a scholarship student at Morinomiya Academy, Nezu had to always stay on top of his studies, but he also had a lot on his plate besides schoolwork. Not only did he have to work multiple part-time jobs to support his family’s finance, he still had to take care of his three younger siblings in his free time. And not once in the series have we ever seen him complain!
Nezu was a very caring person—not only to his family, especially to his siblings who idolized him—but also towards his friends and others around him. We’ve seen him helping out with the local festival committee, sparing a minute to try and help Taka find his toy sword. He invited Yagi to spend time around his family because he knew how lonely Yagi actually was. When Kichi, his younger brother, decided to run away from home because he couldn’t afford a game he wanted, Nezu picked him up without scolding him, instead bringing him said game and gently told him to thank their parents. All in all, not only Nezu is a caring person, he’s also the very figure of a role-model older brother!
Gakuen Babysitters is an expert in showing how different people showed that they care about others around them in so many different ways. Inomata Maria embodies this the most: despite famously known by other students as awkward, easily-angered, and quick to scold the people around her for doing things they are not supposed to do. As the series went on, we discovered how much Maria actually cared about others and what they think of her. As an awkward girl with no friends ever since she was a kid, Maria never really knew how to express herself and how she cared so much, and somehow ended up getting angry and yelling precisely because she cared. Ah, the charm of a tsundere.
Through the friendships she found, though, Maria slowly learned how to express how much she cared about others around her. Despite not knowing how to deal with children most of the time, Maria was always ready to help the daycare kids, no matter how silly a problem they brought her. Maria was the type to help others in need without thinking twice, but then fretted over whether or not she accidentally did something wrong, or if perhaps she offended anyone. The friendship she developed with Yuki and Kirin helped her become a more honest person in terms of expressing herself.
Kirin was a literal ray of sunshine not just for how cute she looked and the adorable the way she talked. She was like sunshine because she was such a good child—always eager to help anyone who needed help, and was almost always the first to extend a hand towards shy new friends, from Maria to Kyouko and even later, Tamako. She cared very much about her friends and parents, the way a toddler could innocently be, and while the things she did to help out didn’t always work out for good, such as that one time when she happily handed her present of bugs to Yuki, her intention was to be a good kid and to be nice to people!
Even at the daycare, Kirin was often shown to be helping Usaida with Midori. When Maria first came to the daycare, crying and frustrated for not being able to deal with the kids, it was Kirin who first came up and comforted her, making them good friends ever since. Kirin also took the role of a good older sister to the other daycare kids, especially to Kotarou and Midori, and always tried to do her best. She might still be an adorable toddler who fights a lot with Taka over the silliest reason, but the way she always tried to be helpful to others around her showed that Kirin is one of the most caring characters in the series!
Another character to prove to you that one could express how much they cared about others in so many different ways: Morinomiya Youko, the owner of Morinomiya Academy, or, if we go by Kotarou’s fond nickname: “Fluffy”, for her sheep-like hair. She was the one who took both Ryuuichi and Kotarou in after they all lost their family in the same airplane accident, and later enrolled Ryuuichi in the Morinomiya Academy, as well as the one who told Ryuuichi to keep taking care of Kotarou by joining the babysitters club.
While Youko always seemed to be very strict with Ryuuichi, Kotarou, and literally everyone around her, Youko was also undoubtedly one of the most caring characters in the entire series. Not only did she take in the Kashima brothers and give them financial security, she took the role of both a mother and grandmother when they were home: taking care of Ryuuichi when he was sick, taking care of Kotarou when Ryuuichi was busy with exams, and even replacing Ryuuichi at the daycare when he had to go solve the fight between Taka and Hayato. She was, by all means, Ryuuichi and Kotarou’s family now, and there was really nothing quite as heartwarming as Youko’s Christmas surprise for Ryuuichi and Kotarou, still strictly but gently, telling Ryuuichi that he should lean more on other people.
Ah, the mysterious Saikawa, whose first name we still haven’t found out. Despite technically being Youko’s secretary, Saikawa’s role seemed to be more of a butler instead of a secretary. The difference was that Saikawa didn’t do what he did because he was paid to—he did it because he cared very much about Ryuuichi, Kotarou, and the tiny daycare residents. It is kind of hard to leave Saikawa out of this list, because he was the Mother character in the series; of course, we have the babies’ actual mothers, but Saikawa’s prowess in literally everything really puts him on the top of mothers’ ranking, if such a thing existed!
Saikawa had never been a mere secretary; he was the one who took care of everything at home for Youko, from cooking to cleaning to assisting Youko in her work. Despite seemingly always being chill towards everything in life, Saikawa really cares about Youko, Ryuuichi and Kotarou, and he showed it mostly through the food he cooked for them. He’d brought feasts to the dining table, packed fancy obento for Ryuuichi and Kotarou’s picnics, and took up the challenge of making the kids enjoy eating things they don’t like eating. All of this is, frankly, outside of his salary. And yet, Saikawa was one of the people who was always ready to lend a hand to Ryuuichi and the daycare—when Usaida got sick, he took over the daycare and did his best with the children’s help despite not knowing much about taking care of babies before. It’s no wonder when Ryuuichi likened his effort to making Saikawa happy with the effort a daughter spends on Mother’s Day—in a lot of sense, Saikawa was part of the family he cared so much for now!
Being one of the main teenage boys in the series, it might sound weird to have Hayato on the fourth rank in this list. Just look at him: quiet, carelessly going through his days, seemingly not interested in anything except baseball. Or at least, that was probably the first impression we got of him in the first episode of the series, along with the amusing fact that he would just hit Taka on the head when he got exasperated with his brother. Well, that first impression obviously would get thrown out the window not even five minutes after his first appearance—Hayato showed himself to actually be a very caring person the moment he left everything to help accompany Ryuuichi to the closest pediatrician clinic despite only meeting him less than fifteen minutes ago.
Out of the many older brothers in the series, at the first glance, Hayato perhaps seemed like he was the one who mostly didn’t care about his brother. But as the series went, Hayato proved otherwise—he was resiliently patient against Taka’s numerous pranks and selfish demands, stayed an unexpectedly responsible member of babysitters club when he finally joined, and amazingly sensitive to his friends, and mostly Ryuuichi’s, various predicaments. He also proved to care very much about Taka even though he stayed pretty strict with his brother. Hayato didn’t always explicitly showed that he cared, being a boy with very few words, but he never left Ryuuichi alone in his times of need, always paid attention to the kids when he was with them, and one time even went as far to tell Youko about Ryuuichi needing a new phone when Ryuuichi was hesitant to do so. Not only was Hayato a good brother, he was definitely also a very caring friend!
Yes, it’s the forever-sleepy, seemingly lazy adult Usaida Yoshihito! Why, do you ask? Because while Usaida’s always shown lazing about the daycare and making fun of Ryuuichi and his friends, he was also the one person who had run the daycare for a long time before Ryuuichi and Kotarou even came to Morinomiya Academy. And considering how much of a handful the toddlers and babies were, it was clear that Usaida didn’t only help out at the daycare because it was a good part-time job for him; he did it because he loved the daycare kids and he cared about them.
It was really easy to miss all the little things Usaida did that showed how much he cared about the kids, the teenagers, and even the parents, especially because Usaida would always play it off like it was nothing. The easiest would be how Usaida always took pictures of the kids on events for their parents who couldn’t always be there (even if he played it off that he would sell the pictures to them instead). There was also that one time when he caught a bad cold, but still dragged himself to the daycare in worry after Saikawa’s emergency call. Usaida was actually a sensitive and caring person, which was why he was always able to guess what’s in Ryuuichi’s head when he’s worrying about something, and was always ready to offer advice and help. His love for the daycare children is really undoubtable.
Which of the daycare kids would you choose to have as a younger brother? A lot of Gakuen Babysitters fans would probably point to Kotarou as an answer without much hesitation. Not only was Kotarou ridiculously, unbelievably cute, he was literally the ideal baby brother—one who loved his older sibling and tried his best to always be helpful and not be a burden nor an inconvenience to his beloved older brother. Quiet, well-behaved, and very kind, even if sometimes he looked too expressionless to actually be Ryuuichi’s younger brother, Kotarou was probably the one in the series who cared the most about Ryuuichi.
As he was still a toddler, there were only so many ways Kotarou could show his older brother how much he cared, but perhaps nothing topped how much Kotarou cared for Ryuuichi more than the scene where he put his everything in squeezing a tangerine to make juice for Ryuuichi who had caught a cold. So much effort for one tiny drop! And yet Kotarou didn’t give up, exactly because he cared so much about Ryuuichi. Not just Ryuuichi, Kotarou was also a very good kid at the daycare who cared a lot about his fellow daycare kids. He’d comfort a crying Taka or Kirin every single time they got upset. He’d hold hands with Kazuma and Takuma when they went out for walks. Kotarou had always tried to help everyone in what little ways he could because he cared, and as we could see, those efforts paid back—even if Ryuuichi was his only family left, Kotarou’s life never lacked any warmth now with his daycare friends and their family.
The first place really should fall to our main character: the ideal older brother, the arguably kindest soul in the series, the bashful high school student who loved his younger brother more than anyone else. Kashima Ryuuichi was a person who cared for many and perhaps too much, to the point that everyone around her, and quite surely most of the audience, would want to protect him at whatever cost. Good with kids, always considerate to his friends, and tactful with the adults, Ryuuichi was the person who would always put others before him, always tried to help others around him, that he sometimes forgot about himself. Guess there is a drawback to have cared too much, huh?
Not that Ryuuichi ever regretted it, though. His love and care of Kotarou is unquestionable—we’d seen Ryuuichi reject girls’ confessions because he wanted to focus on raising Kotarou, and we’d seen him choose to half-drown in sea water in attempt to hold Kotarou up and out of it. No one should doubt how much he cared for the daycare kids, either—he’d chosen to stay in the babysitters club despite being lonely that he didn’t get to spend as much time with his friends like other high school students did, and he’d always prioritize the daycare kids no matter what. It was obvious that Ryuuichi was also a caring friend—he helped Maria to be more comfortable hanging out with kids and making friends, he helped Hayato mend his relationship with his father a little, and visited everyone who caught the flu to bring them cherry blossom petals after a hanami that got cancelled. Being considerate is literally what Ryuuichi was made of, and the fact that he was such a good caretaker put him on top of this list!
It is exactly because Gakuen Babysitters is filled with caring characters who treasure one another and would never hesitate to help each other that makes Gakuen Babysitters such a warm and emotionally fulfilling series. Yes, it is almost unbearably cute, and yes, it is a heartwarming story of siblings, but at its core, Gakuen Babysitters sends a simple message to the audience: be kind to others. Care for them, and be considerate. Just like Ryuuichi and Kotarou, who give so much because they care, but in turn receives even more because everyone cares about them as well.
What do you think about Gakuen Babysitters and their characters? Let us know in the comments! | 2019-04-24T14:16:15Z | https://honeysanime.com/top-10-most-caring-gakuen-babysitters-school-babysitters-characters/ |
DON'T BE DECEIVED by the silence. Things may have seemed quiet under the oaks since March, when the Santa Rosa Junior College faculty heatedly passed a resolution of censure and "no confidence" in the school's president and board of trustees, but that does not mean the hard feelings have abated.
The deep-seated and apparently mutual distrust between the college's workforce and its administration has smoldered for several years, and the passions that erupted last spring have now been channeled into grievances and lawsuits, cases that could ultimately resonate through institutions of higher education across the country.
The legal pivot point for many of the interlocking cases will come early next month, when a federal court in San Francisco is due to rule on a question that strikes to the heart of two years of campus controversy. This issue revolves around five letters and a flier--all critical of SRJC President Robert Agrella and the board of trustees, and all written and distributed anonymously between August 1995 and October 1996.
Although some of the letters--attributed by the administration to SRJC instructor Sylvia Wasson--claimed to have originated from such sources as "Eight Concerned Members of This College Community," "Concerned Faculty and Administrators of Santa Rosa Junior College," and "Students Against the President," no members of any of these groups have come forward or been otherwise identified. The administration has spent tens of thousands of dollars investigating faculty members in an attempt to confirm its suspicion and to hang the deed on Wasson, who has denied any connection to the letters.
The core issue, as framed by Santa Rosa attorney Martin Reilley, who is representing Wasson, is whether the letters are protected free speech under the First and 14th amendments. If they are, he argues, the SRJC administration had no legal grounds to investigate who wrote them.
"The administration took umbrage that someone would write these things and publish these things and then went on the attack to try and find out who did this," Reilley explains, as the late fall sunlight pours into his Fountain Grove office. "The only reason to find out who did it is to punish.
"Now, if it's constitutionally protected, which we believe it is, then there was no reason to expend any public funds to investigate or to seek out for purposes of punishment or retaliation. But they did, and they came to the conclusion that it was Sylvia Wasson."
Wasson, a languages instructor at the college for the past 22 years, has consistently and vehemently denied having any role in the creation or circulation of the letters. She is being scapegoated, Wasson says, because of a prior incident in which she ran afoul of the Agrella administration.
The administration's accusations against her are "false and slanderous," Wasson told the Independent shortly after she was summarily fired by the board of trustees last January. "All letters I have written to this administration I have proudly signed."
After an extensive internal inquiry--an effort that involved at least three attorneys, a private investigator, and a handwriting expert and "questioned-document examiner"--the administration branded Wasson the author of the mystery writings. Wasson was fired and never given a chance to rebut the accusations leveled against her. Her dismissal provoked a wave of protest from her colleagues, erupting into outrage when it was subsequently revealed that the investigation had also involved the clandestine removal of confidential personnel files of 10 SRJC employees, as well as searches of 49 computers in 13 campus offices.
"I think for many people, that was adding insult to injury," says instructor Johanna James, one of those whose files were rifled. "Why wasn't our permission asked? Why was the whole thing done in secret?"
Through the teachers' union, the All-Faculty Association, James has filed an invasion-of-privacy grievance, one of five such complaints working their way through the internal grievance process. Asked why she thinks she was included in the search, James remains perplexed. "Bob Agrella has looked me in the eye and told me to my face that I was just a name that popped into his mind," she replies, "and I find it hard to disbelieve someone when they look me in the face and tell me something.
"But I also find it hard to believe that this particular group of people was chosen at random. Although I have been told my office was not entered, I do believe my office was entered and some documents were removed. But when you can't find something in your office, it's hard to prove it was ever there."
Funding of new SRJC building raises budget questions.
IN AN ANGRY RESPONSE to the revelations about the extent of the investigation, the college's 22-member Academic Senate, which represents the 275 faculty members, voted overwhelmingly March 12 to censure and express no confidence in Agrella and the board of trustees. "That was a milestone in the history of the college," says history professor and Academic Senate member Dean Frazer, who has taught at SRJC for almost 30 years. "It suggests how general and how genuine the outrage was on campus."
In May, the senate conducted a campuswide survey to gauge faculty attitudes toward Agrella. In 12 of the survey's 13 questions, well over half the 125 respondents rated Agrella's performance as poor or unsatisfactory. Negative responses to the question "Overall, how would you rate your confidence in the leadership of the president?" totaled more than 80 percent. That was two months after Agrella's March 25 public apology to the campus community, in which he conceded, "Whether an investigation should ever have been initiated is now highly questionable."
In an effort to mollify the faculty, the board also reinstated Wasson, but did so "without prejudice," reserving the option to renew actions against her in the future.
But Wasson received no apology. "No one has ever said, 'We blew it, we're wrong,' that she is indeed a good professor. They don't admit they did wrong by firing her and calling her all these despicable things. In fact, they insist that they're right, and they reserve the right to fire her again at any time," says attorney Reilley.
"If the administration really wants to get past this, they should admit that they were wrong, that it was unconstitutional, that they have no basis to conclude she was the author, and that whoever the author is, [that person] is not, just because of authoring these letters, immoral, unbalanced, or unfit to serve--and then this case would probably be over."
EVEN NOW, the internal justification for the probe remains disputed. It is clear that Agrella and the trustees were angered by the charges raised in the unsigned letters, but there appears to have been no consideration that any of those documents might have contained even the slightest kernel of truth.
"Wasn't there anybody who said, wait a minute, what are we doing here?" wonders veteran economics professor Ron Schuelke. "A seven-member board, a college president, and two vice presidents--I find it almost incomprehensible that not one of them said, wait a minute, look at what we're doing with respect to the First Amendment, academic freedom, rights to due process and tenure, and rights to privacy."
Yet several of the recurring points in the letters seem to be easily verifiable. The earliest documents allege that Agrella carried on an adulterous affair with a junior member of his administration; he has since married the woman. Other letters charge that the Agrella administration has repeatedly mishandled personnel matters and routinely engaged in "intimidation, character assassination and threats of dismissal" against "employees who dared to oppose him," creating a climate in which dissent could not be expressed openly without fear of reprisals.
Another recurring theme, Reilley says, is the contention that the district has "squandered vast amounts of taxpayers' money, more than any other administration, in pursuing vendettas and defending lawsuits and claims filed by employees for violations of employee rights," and been sued more than any previous administration.
"Now, when you ask the question, which of those are true, they're all very easily determinable," Reilley continues. "Certainly the board of trustees ought to know [whether it's] true this administration has been sued more than any other. And the answer is yes. There've been 32 lawsuits filed in state court over the last nine years, when Agrella [has been] there. And let's get an accounting--how much money has been spent? Logic would tell you, if you've been sued more than any other administration, you've spent more money on lawyers.
"As to [whether] the Agrella administration created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, I think that was answered by the faculty survey that was conducted over the summer. Over 62 percent of the faculty gave him an F for ethics, caring about academic freedoms." A report by Michael O'Donnell, a Santa Rosa attorney hired by the district to review the investigation, offered some revealing insights into the previously confidential process when it was made public by the board last spring. Even before initiating any kind of inquiry, the trustees felt that "the nature of these anonymous writings . . . caused grave doubt as to the fitness of whoever was responsible in terms of moral character" and "seemed to the Board to indicate a lack of emotional stability so severe as to call into doubt the author's fitness to continue as an employee of SRJC," wrote O'Donnell.
Those were the precise reasons cited for Wasson's eventual dismissal, after the administration asserted that the anonymous writings were "false and defamatory," though their veracity has never been examined.
The O'Donnell report also laid bare the slim chain of analysis by which Wasson's supposed guilt was determined. The supposedly ultimate "evidence" was in the reports of Oakland document examiner Patricia Fisher, who was hired by the administration. She focused on two hand-addressed envelopes, one of which was directed to board of trustees president Rick Call and contained a copy of an anonymous letters. Fisher's analysis centered on the handwriting samples. She found no "unexplainable differences" between the writing on the two envelopes, and attributed any differences to "an attempt to disguise the writing," even though "several variations on letter configurations were not part of the known writing" of Wasson.
Using a computer to analyze both the anonymous letters and documents known to have been written by Wasson--including papers allegedly taken from her personnel file--Fisher reported finding general similarities.
"I think it's incredible that anyone would believe that Sylvia Wasson was the author of these letters, based on this analysis," scoffs Reilley. "We are certainly prepared to present evidence that these were not authored by the same person."
Meanwhile, the case has caught the attention of educators across the country. "It seems like a threat to tenure and academic freedom," says Cal State Hayward history professor Terry Jones, president of the California Teachers Association. "That's unconscionable in an educational setting. Stuff like that puts a chill on the whole academic environment.
"What goes on in an educational setting is the ability to think, argue, express ideas, even unpopular ideas. If you cut off that ability to freely express one's feelings and opinions, then you stifle creativity and the things that have made this country so great."
SAYS LAW PROFESSOR Robert O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia, "The question of how far a faculty member may go in conveying views of a certain administration, that is certainly of interest broadly."
But the aspect of the SRJC dispute that "may attract more attention than the pro and con is the invasion of the faculty member's privacy, electronic and otherwise. That will certainly be of great interest," he adds.
However, O'Neil does not expect the Wasson suit to establish any significant legal precedents. "It will have limited impact because the circumstances are so extraordinary."
Still, the unusual nature of the face-off has caught the attention of the New York Times and other media. On April 18, the Times described the "near open revolt" of the faculty that "left the administration fending off accusations that they approved a witch hunt."
Yet for all the furor that has surrounded the letters and Wasson's precarious status at the college over the past year, it is almost universally acknowledged that the fundamental problems within the campus community run much deeper.
"We're all very focused on this particular incident, but in a lot of ways it is part of what I see as a pattern, of an administrative approach at the college," says Johanna James. "In all fairness, I don't think it's just Bob Agrella as being some sort of master villain--his personality and behavior are just another piece in the puzzle. I think the board should be very accountable, too."
Critics say that the expansion of the college administration to include more deans and associate deans in recent years has narrowed the opportunities for direct communication between the top levels of the administration. When combined with the high-handed and unpopular actions of the president and his staff, those changes have fostered a widespread view that the administration disdains the faculty. "The organizational structure of this college has evolved to the point where there is clearly a dichotomy between the administration and the faculty and staff," agrees economics professor Schuelke. "Instead of being on the same team, it's like two teams playing against each other. The line seems to be drawn right at the department chair level."
Put another way, "There has been a great reduction in the spirit of mutuality, reciprocity, and collegiality" that was formerly present at the school, observes history professor Frazer. "I feel very much that the high reputation of the college has been sullied, that the growing ill will and adversary relationship seems almost on the verge of becoming permanent."
EVEN NOW, a committee of Academic Senate members is preparing a series of resolutions--some call them demands--calling on the administration to fully disclose what was taken from files and offices during the letter investigation.
Faculty members want administrators to return documents and any copies; to make public quarterly reports on the cumulative costs of the investigation and related lawsuits; and to meet regularly with a senate committee to review "substantiated" claims of "retribution by the administration against faculty who have been critical of the college."
These steps are necessary, social sciences instructor Marty Bennett told the senate Nov. 5, to counter "a continuing pattern of retribution against faculty who would speak out on this case and others. We really do have a climate of fear, a very chilly atmosphere. Morale has bottomed out."
But amidst all the conflict and controversy of recent months, a group of employees has been working to build a campuswide consensus around a new document intended to affirm the highest ideals of the institution. On Nov. 11, Agrella and the trustees officially adopted the SRJC "Magna Carta."
It now hangs where much of the recent animosity has been generated--the board of trustees' meeting room.
The college Magna Carta specifies four "values and principles" as imperatives for the campus community: freedom of speech, due process, human respect and dignity, and a condemnation of abuse of power.
SRJC staffer Carole Wolfe, one of the prime movers of the charter, recognizes that these are precisely the issues over which Agrella and the board have been repeatedly criticized, and has encountered considerable skepticism from others on campus who doubt that the administration will live up to the lofty ideas the Magna Carta spells out. Some even suggest that Agrella's endorsement is a cynical bit of face-saving to counter all the negative publicity that has surrounded the Wasson suit.
"This is a big fear of mine," Wolfe admits, "but I don't think this is a bad thing, even if they don't live up to it. It aims for change in the way the organization works. It aims for more shared governance and consensus.
"If we all live by the principles, change will occur."
From the Nov. 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent. | 2019-04-24T00:34:01Z | https://m.bohemian.com/northbay/santa-rosa-junior-college/Content?oid=2177547 |
On Thursday the 24th of November, 2014, Mr. Back lost its first ratings battle to Pinocchio who managed to climb on the top of the hill at the end of its 3rd airing week. I won’t search for the reasons, yet. A fight was lost, not the war and no-one can predict the audience’s preferences and mood swings. This week’s aftermath will make the horizon clearer and will point towards the winning direction, but still, when the difference is not that great you can never know what to expect. And that’s one of the most beautiful or most desolate aspects of the world of dramas, expecting the unexpected. A drama may not appeal to you in the beginning, but the more you watch the more you dive into it and such dramas are growers, they become better with time and in the end they reward you. However, a drama may take the control of your thoughts by storm during the first episodes, even until the last 15 minutes, until the scriptwriter decides that so far, so good, so what, let’s ruin everything and deliver an ending that will be remembered more than the previous 15 hours and 45 minutes, for example. There are many factors, but as they say, the pen is mightier than the sword, and a South Korean drama’s scriptwriter’s pen, or keyboard, totally lives up to this phrase! Ladies and gentlemen, let’s proceed to the 8th episode of Mr. Back!
Even though the main story is based on a novel, scriptwriter Choi Yoon Jung so far depicts pretty well the characters’ aspects and lets them grow naturally in front of the audience. It’s the second time i come across her this year and having already loved Emergency Couple the expectations were great; she hasn’t disappointed me so far and the script flows pretty well. As a scriptwriter, she seems to enjoy presenting overburdened stories and by saying that i mean that there are many things going on. The good part is, she can handle such stories and let every aspect of them breathe. I mean, take a look at Mr. Back, so many characters have their own background and we get to know them step by step whereas at the same time they progress as they learn from their mistakes and they welcome the future that lies ahead of them with open arms, no matter what it may hold for them. There’s always a sense of romance on the background that tries to make it to the surface, steadily, in fact, there are many love side-stories going on and they take their time.Should i leave aside the humor factor? Definitely not! How many times did you laugh while watching Mr. Back? Many i presume, at least for me it worked and i’m grateful for that!
There are conspiracies and plots and the changes in this vicious world come and go, there’s never a static hyper-plot going on until all hell breaks loose. It’s almost like guerilla tactics, attacks and counter attacks all the time. There are eight camps so far, it’s Young Dal with In Ja, but there’s no mutual trust between them and anyone can work solely. There’s Mi Hye and Yi Gun, i wouldn’t say though that they wouldn’t work on their own on side-plots even against their teammate’s back. There’s Ji Yoon who’s Dae Han’s right hand and it’s a 75%-25% teamwork and then it’s Go Bong with Gyung Bae who have the perfect teamwork and they’re always one step ahead. The first two camps can work together, the other two as well, it will be rather interesting to see how this whole thing will flow! And let’s not forget the health matters of Go Bong which is still a mystery to be revealed, both to Go Bong to find out how he will proceed, but also to the people surrounding him, whether they are friends or foes, it will definitely have an impact on them by the moment the truth is revealed.
Keeping a balance between all these factors without losing your coordinates isn’t easy. So far, so good, so let’s dive into the 8th episode of Mr. Back! As the episode opens its gates, a ray of light is cast upon the recent scandal of Dae Han. It was Yi Gun’s plan to entrap him by providing the key to Dae Han’s room to a girl that would sneak in and get some photos. The good things is Dae Han was so wasted from the overnight excursion on the pathways of alcohol that he’d keep his face hidden over the pillow. Shortly after the scandal’s all over the place and a crusade begins in order to protect Dae Han. It wasn’t the best timing for a scandal to take over Dae Han’s rising fame and Go Bong’s aware of it. His trembling confession towards Ha Soo reaches a rough ending before reaching completion, she didn’t deserve to become the recipient of Go Bong’s sudden anger. He leaves her on the spot and at the same time he rushes to find Dae Han. An inside communication with Ji Yoon and Gyung Bae is more than necessary and so it happens. A whole new background is being forged in order to protect Dae Han and Go Bong takes all the blame on him.
Under the prosecutor’s devious stare Go Bong tries to help Dae Han, but Dae Han’s ego won’t accept his help that easily, he tries to take responsibility and Go Bong is being imprisoned for the time being because he can’t support with full information his Shin Hyung profile. There are some parts that just doesn’t match in Dae Han’s mind, the comparisons between Shin Hyung and his father Choi Go Bong are omnipresent, but it just doesn’t make any sense. He really can’t comprehend who Go Bong really is and why does he put his life at stake to protect him. Ji Yoon’s unconditional love towards Dae Han’s face is all over the place, all she cares about is to protect Dae Han from any harm, she doesn’t want to know what really happened with the scandal, she just wants Dae Han to make it out of this stronger than ever. That’s the reason she cooperated with Go Bong, as soon as Go Bong’s plan helps Dae Han it’s more than welcome.
Yi Gun’s behind the scandal and he pays a visit to Go Bong wearing his friendly and caring mask. Go Bong’s thoughts point towards Yi Gun as the culprit and his experience over the years is correct. Gyung Bae’s lines add a humorous approach in the overburdened situation. The prosecutor is part of the plan as well, but his devious ways don’t seem to work, Yi Gun’s at the verge of exploding because nothing goes as expected. Well, it was a well-conceived plan, but not well-executed. It’s one of these rare times Dae Han’s alcoholic sleepy reactions would protect him, had the picture been clear Go Bong would be unable to help him.
Back at the Gold House, the wolves are not satisfied, it was a good chance for them to take the upper hand once again, each to his/her own aspirations. They can’t comprehend what’s going on, they can’t believe that Go Bong helped Dae Han since their relations weren’t the best since the very beginning. They ask the house personnel if they noticed something and their reply that they were on fire inflames their imagination. Inside their suggestive mind the option of a romance between them starts making its appearance and hopefully enough Dae Han appears to stop this nonsense.
It’s Ha Soo’s turn to pay a visit to Go Bong at his cell. On her way there, thoughts of moments they shared pass by her mind. Even though he wouldn’t like her to watch him like that and he tries to prevent her from staying, Ha Soo’s warm character understands how he feels. She wouldn’t leave him all alone and the fact that she’s worried about his health shows the first hints of her feelings. She cares more about Go Bong, it’s not her usual caring self towards anyone. She trusts him and that’s all that matters and Go Bong can’t help it but be truly thankful towards her, even though he sets aside his confession. Let’s be honest, it could be kind of fun and quite dramatic, but confessing behind bars would steal part of the magic of the moment!
The scandal doesn’t flow well for the prosecutor and Yi Gun. Ji Yoon’s personal investigation, facts and the CCTV footage prove that nothing could have happened in less than a minute’s time. The papers that prove Go Bong’s identity as Shin Hyung are being presented and both Dae Han and Go Bong can walk in the outside world free of charges. Gyung Bae’s invocation upon the prosecutor’s manhood is priceless!
The elevator scene is pretty intense. There are hints that Dae Han has realized who Shin Hyung really is, but his mind can’t comprehend it. So he’s trying to read between the lines. Go Bong’s attitude is more caring and rewarding in a way. He can finally understand Dae Han’s inner world, something he was unable to see through for the past decades. It’s not that Dae Han was wearing an armor, it’s that Go Bong’s eyes were selectively blind. His words hold deep paternal affection and they strike chords inside Dae Han. It’s not that Go Bong doesn’t want to hide his real identity, it’s one of these times he can’t suppress his feelings that have turned into a stream of emotion struggling to come to the foreground. He’s human after all and the realization of the harm he had caused to Dae Han all these years is ever-flowing.
It’s Dae Han’s turn to talk with Ha Soo and during the discussion he refers to Go Bong as his brother for the first time, he tries to cover it up with the resemblance of the word hyung (older brother) and Shin Hyung. Her trust towards Dae Han is strong as well, the bonds of trust she has forged with both Go Bong and Dae Han are more than apparent. And the pervert picture she had in her mind when it comes to Dae Han seems to fade away. Although when he gets closer to her with his playful smile i am pretty sure she still thinks of him as a pervert deep inside!
When Young Dal and Yi Gun are not around, the lair of wolves when it comes to In Ja and Mi Hye turns into a hyena power play over carcasses in the desert. Mi Hye’s got the advantage to be part of Choi Go Bong’s bloodline and she can always express her superiority complex towards In Ja who comes from the countryside. If they could they’d definitely take each other’s eyes out with their bare hands! But in the civilized world of rich ladies taking over one’s stylistic item is powerful enough to show off. And Mi Hye managed to be one step ahead of In Ja when it comes to a new coat!
Yi Gun’s moving towards the center of conspiracies and Young Dal alongside his wife, In Ja, want to work with him on a plan, he’s not quite sure though, but he’s not that negative. He’s got other things in his mind. He takes Ji Yoon out for dinner and proposes to her. I’m not sure whether he likes her or he wants to use this marriage in order to achieve some of his goals, but the facts so far indicate that he cares for her. If we take into consideration that he really loves her, then we have one side love triangle apart from the main one. The main love triangle holds Ha Soo as its center and Go Bong and Dae Han being the peripheral aspirant loves. The second one holds Ji Yoon as its center with her unconditional and one-sided interest towards Dae Han whereas Yi Gun has his own one-sided interest towards Yi Joon, as for unconditional on his behalf, i’m not quite sure yet. He lets her know that he’s aware of the Cruise Hotel, something only Go Bong and Ji Yoon knew about. Ji Yoon’s eyes are locked on Dae Han and the next morning she lets him know about the Cruise Hotel. Shortly after she goes to meet Go Bong to find out his true intentions. Ji Yoon tries her best to keep the Cruise Hotel to its rightful owner, after all it was built for Dae Han. Go Bong’s more than satisfied by realizing once again her deep loyalty to late Choi Go Bong’s words and the support she offers towards Dae Han.
Cruise Hotel was almost at Yi Gun and Mi Hye’s hands, but Go Bong was pointing towards Mi Hye’s ignorance and he was proven right! Mi Hye’s arrogance alongside her ignorance in terms of business matters made her blind and she didn’t notice that the papers Go Bong gave her were a fraud. At this point i wonder, could Yi Gun be working for Go Bong since the beginning and he’s on a plot confusing spree when it comes to Go Bong’s opponents? Could he be acting this way in front of Go Bong to make sure the lair of wolves will trust him? Could be the most well hidden card of Go Bong’s master plan or just another rival and conspirator? He still remains a mysterious figure, time shall tell his real intentions.
People are people and people talk, sometimes too much. That’s what Nan Hee’s doing and once Ha Soo’s name comes out of her lips Woo Young jumps in to support Ha Soo and secure her name out of false accusations and assumptions. The party to celebrate Go Bong’s release from jail is taking place at Ha Soo’s home. It won’t be easy to convince Ha Soo’s mother, even if the chicken tastes good! Before his big entrance at Ha Soo’s humble home, Go Bong had his first hyper self-stylistic moment, it wasn’t the easiest task for his 70 years old brain, but his enthusiasm was omnipresent!
The moment everyone’s been waiting for is here, even if Go Bong’s not sure whether he should do it or not, his confession not only lived up to any expectation, it went way beyond that. It’s one of the most heartfelt confessions this year in drama land (Kang Tae Ha’s confessions in Discovery of Romance have to be the most powerful and memorable for 2014). It’s the first time a man like Choi Go Bong opens his heart to a woman and the poetic air his words breathe is powerful and fragile at the same time, powerful in meaning, fragile in the way he represents them. Ha Soo’s definitely the milky way he’s been longing for in his lifetime, for the first time he could watch the sky and touch the universe in search for his own constellation.
Migratory birds follow the wind to fly home.
An ocean follows the waves to get to the horizon.
Stars follow the moon to get to dawn.
I was thinking of following the blue sky and go to the Milky Way.
Ha Soo’s left overwhelmed, it’s probably the first time someone talks this way to her, the beauty of Go Bong’s words is inconceivable and the inconvenience of the moment takes over, for both of them. And even though it felt a bit awkward in the end, they both cherished the beauty of the moment with their heart pulses rising for sure.
The suspicions around Shin Hyung’s real identity are not only part of Dae Han, Ji Yoon and Yi Gun’s daily lives, Young Dal, In Ja and Mi Hye start suspecting that something’s not right in the way Shin Hyung behaves, the Go Bong essence flowing in the way he talks, the way he walks, etc points towards only one direction, Choi Go Bong, but they don’t know how to put the pieces together. By the time Young Dal wants to say something and stops by saying that his stomach is hurting, i’m pretty sure he must have thought of something important, but he kept it to himself for reasons we’ll probably find out later. It could be that he’d want to discuss it with Go Bong himself.
It’s about time Go Bong cleans Dae Han’s office and Dae Han won’t miss the chance to make his working life more tormenting! He has to clean this and this and that and so it goes on! After all, he promised to start from the bottom! But the resemblance of Shin Hyung to Choi Go Bong trespasses his mind’s harmony.
Later on, Ha Soo invites Go Bong at her place to prepare dinner for him, let’s consider it their first unofficial date! The flour moustache on Ha Soo’s face owned, but what owned more than most is the eel invasion! Both of them got scared to death! The eel plan gets abandoned and our good old ramen appears and along with it almost a ramen kiss takes place! Go Bong moves forward like a hungry monkey until Ha Soo decides to cut the ramen-bridge of kiss! Afterwards they go on a walk and Ha Soo tries to grab a staffed dog. After failing her task she accompanies him to get a taxi, her enthusiasm as he’s leaving is omnipresent and the warmness in Go Bong’s eyes flows from within.
Go Bong returns back at the Gold house, he’s sitting on his armchair at the living room and he’s singing. The song wakes up Dae Han and sleepy as he is he follows the tune that reminds him of something, as he stares at the figure sitting on the armchair he sees his father and leaves the room in fear. Go Bong’s about to find the truth concerning his health.
Go Bong meets the living sleeping pill zen doctor Kim who returned from his mission to find out more information concerning Go Bong’s situation. The thing is, Go Bong must have consumed a piece of the meteor that played its own part in his rejuvenation. The black box proves it as well. The problem is that the African chief died after some time and his body turned back to his actual age. And Go Bong’s old mobile phone that receives messages with a count down is probably the countdown to his death’s date. A question that comes to mind is, who’s sending these messages? Go Bong realizes that his time is near, he doesn’t want to leave this world behind, not now. He finally found love and at the same time he got to understand his son up to an extent , he’s been finding lately all these things he’d been missing for years and he intends to do just anything to keep on living. In agony and fear of death, he pleads for help in front of doctor Kim, he has to find a way out of this journey towards the end. Gyung Bae’s expressions even at the thought of losing Go Bong are representative of the emotional charge of the moment.
Shin Hyung can’t get out of Dae Han’s mind. He wants Ji Yoon to proceed with another investigation to find out who he really is and if anyone knows him in Canada. He has to solve this mystery in order to find some peace of mind. Actually no, to deprive his mind of any peace once he finds out the actual truth! Ha Soo’s call to Dae Han disarms Ji Yoon’s tranquility as well. Dae Han and Ha Soo meet at the coffee shop her brother’s working, it’s about time Dae Han takes back his pendant. In the meantime, Go Bong managed to catch the staffed dog and he’s happy he’ll be able to give it to Ha Soo, but the cardiac arrest pain comes back. He can’t reach Ha Soo on the phone and he calls her brother, Byung Soo, who tells him that’s she’s at the cafe he’s working at. Well, the truth behind the pendant is that it’s a keepsake his mother had given him telling him that at some point in his life it will help him by making his deepest wish come true. It consists of a small meteor part and obviously there’s some interaction between Go Bong and the pendant. Also, it has a general positive effect to its owner. Every time Dae Han refers to his mother you can sense his deep affection towards her face. She’s the most loving figure he can bring back from his memory box.
In the meantime, another meeting between Ji Yoon and Yi Gun takes place. She’s aware that Yi Gun was hiding behind the scandal and he confirms it. He explains himself that he did it to find out how Shin Hyung would react to such a situation because he knows that he’s using someone else’s identity. As i’ve stated above, only time shall reveal his real intentions, for the time being he remains a mysterious figure leaning towards the dark side with some reflections of light. Ha, you have to love that room with the luxurious Christmas decoration!
By the time Go Bong reaches the cafe his pain stops, in that case he thinks that Ha Soo’s around, truth be told, it’s not actually Ha Soo, it’s the pendant, it just happened to be in Ha Soo’s possession every time the cardiac arrest was appearing and it seemed as if Ha Soo could ease his pain. He finds out Ha Soo and Dae Han are together over and goes out disappointed. Ha Soo notices it and follows him. After a small discussion Dae Han appears to tell Go Bong who he thinks he really is, earthquake incoming!
Yeah, if he ever told her he liked her i think she would die at that moment and she would be happy 😛 For some reason i want them to end together as well, it’s probably the way she stares at him.
But, but, but! Her stare is so beautiful! There’s almost a cave of honey in there!
You’re being so harsh on her >.> I know why, because you wanna steal Dae Han and do the Go Bong dance at the park xD Gomen-ne Dae Han!
Ahahahaha, you probably sounded like me then! ‘Cause aha yes! I am a bad bad baddie when it comes to my ‘precious’ so don’t you try to mess with me, mate! LIKE NO! OMCH..now I am threatening the Chinchaman! Gomen-points for Gomen-ne girl!
Bakaman ahahahhaha so he extracts the chincha powers and converts them into Baka-points! Not cool! Buck up! And “michoso” him!
You will only get chincha-points when you defeat Bakaman and I’ll get gomen-ne points for scaring you! Yay! These rules are so just and lineinet towards you. Be thankful. NAO!
Become Chinchaman, they said. It’s gonna be fun, they said -.- Fight Bakaman, they said. It’s gonna be easy, they said. RONG! Yush, he steals mah powaz and makes them bakapoints! It’s unfair! Michoso Bakaman?! Chugulle?
So i will never really have chincha-points 🙁 If i don’t defeat him, i lose chincha-points 🙁 if i defeat him, i get chincha-points x) but then you steal them >.> so no chincha-points, chincha-points is a utopia!
Well well, aren’t we seeing all moods of our mighty Sire Kwon today! Aha! About the Chincha points because of Liar Game’s lead’s name…okay okay I’ll give you some but no more, no more. You shall ask of no more!
Anyway i think Bakaman is the one who employed They to distract you, i will help you Chinchaman! Since we have a common enemy!
Yes indeed and now you know that Bakaman has Dae Han and he sent They to get him! He’s our common enemy indeed!
Suddenly i feel normal once again and i talk like a decent person, it must have been an immense trauma that left a huge impact upon myself. Now i feel secure, the darkness has surrendered and i can keep up with the tickle attack in full force with the new power move Triple Tickle!
I have stolen your Pokeballs! And i have imprisoned the Gomennenergy!
I have not lost! My internet is being erratic and goes ‘Sayonara’ on me every few minutes!!
Say goodbye to your Triple Tickle attack!
I told your Internet to sayoooona *the Aya Ueto way in Hirugao* you in order to get another Pokeball and drink the soju Gomennenergy! Sugoi!
You are evil, Chinchaman! Noooo, nothing about bidding farewell that too the Aya Ueto way is Sugoi! ALL of your Chinchapoints have from here on been deducted.
You’re never gonna get your chincha-points back! Muahahahahaha! Only if you you agree to wear lobster onsie? You’ll get some points then ^_^ Just because you brought my internet back. ALL HAIL MOI!
I know you would never be kind to me, only to geojis 😀 I am caracolillo!
EEEEEEEH? KANPAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 😀 SUGOI NE! KAWAII!
Come to think about it, in a Japarean bar everyone would think that we are nuts but funny and they would take is to their company xD And we’d talk with them Japareangrish!
On the first day there will be lines of people waiting outside!!
*drinks all cough syrup* Yeah, we have to survive! Yoshi! XD I knew you had evil intentions xD Yeah i cry and it’s your fault ;.; I’m the only male Geoji in Seoul! Chincha Geoji!
But beauties blossom through your poems even though it’s far away 😀 Wah-pah poh-ehm! | 2019-04-18T22:30:13Z | https://dramajjang.co/2014/12/03/episode-8-review-mr-back-2014/ |
I’m dedicating this blog to Gary who loves running statistics and end of year reviews.. this one’s for you. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture of all my medals to go with it.
I’ve just about managed to grind my way to the end of 2015 and it’s been a huge year mileage wise for me, this is the brief story of how it all went down..
The end of 2014 saw the typical Xmas slump and over-indulgences (food) so it was good to start the New Year with a few challenges.
I made a commitment to doing some upper body exercise aswell as running and had entered a small open water swim in the summer. My big running goal would be a return trip to Sparta which would be my ‘A’ race for the year.
Some banter with Messrs Chambers, Stout and Pinnington also saw the launch of a 2015 mileage challenge with Team Awesome (Ali/Chambers) vs Team Beard (Stout/Pinnington) although only one person really competed, Lindley was injured most of the year and not running and then grew a huge beard and defected; Stouty didn’t bother recording his stats and Pinnington made a half hearted effort by reporting everything in kilometres.
I’m totally claim victory here although I feel like I’m Ross or Monica in that scene from Friends when they are left clutching the ball and everyone else has gone home hours ago.
Running wise, I started off with a long run at the Enigma News Year Marathon and trotted around the lakes in 3.39 and ran every day in January notching up 363 miles.
I got my tactics all wrong by running the Thames Trot (48 miles) on Day 3 although despite a horribly muddy course this year managed to run my quickest time at the event (of an unaltered course) in 7.24. I ran the last few miles with Sally Ford who was stepping up to the 100 mile distances and aiming to complete the Centurion Grand Slam. I said she should try and finish quicker than my cumulative time in 2014, she said “maybe” and subsequently destroyed all of my times… absolutely destroyed all of my times with a great year of running.
I enjoyed a short weekend break on the South Coast, recceing The Oner route with Keith. It was a tale of two days with glorious weather on the Saturday followed by a horrible wet, windy day on the Sunday when we both got truly soaked and battered. Character building stuff as they say.
Week 4 was tough running 23 (Monday) up to 28 miles (Saturday) a day and was achieved by splitting this over morning, lunch and after work runs but I managed to complete challenge to earn the coveted Run Until You Drop T-Shirt and had banked 501 miles that month., my highest ever monthly total.
I had been swimming once a week since the start of the year and my swimming technique had improved from terrible to below average but I knew I could manage a 1 mile swim in the summer by now.
The only event I had lined up in March was the local Half Marathon. It was a fancy dress year for me (I alternate each year) and despite being really under the weather the few days before I had a half decent run finishing in 1.31.
March saw me run 330 miles that month.
I took part in the Oner in April which to be honest didn’t go that well. I started the event tired (early mornings, lack of sleep and having to move hotel room due to noisy neighbours all contributed) and really suffered trying to stay awake during the night. Staggering along a coastal path in the middle of the night metres from the edge of the cliff on the coastal path wasn’t a great idea and I had to have a little power nap at a Checkpoint (in a van) and then death marched the remaining third of the race. I managed to finish the event but it was slower than I had planned and was a bit disappointed with my efforts on that one.
The only other event I had that month was a return to the London Marathon. Having run the ‘perfect’ marathon in 2014 (felt comfortable, negative split, new PB) I didn’t think history would repeat itself and in a total act of cowardice decided to run in fancy dress so I wouldn’t be under any pressure to run for a ‘time’. I did feel a bit embarrassed at first getting changed into a fancy dress outfit amongst a lot of more serious looking athletes in the Good for Age pen and started right at the back of the group.. then proceeded to pass a few of them in the race and ran a new PB time of 3.06.
However, the real highlight was being captured running across Tower Bridge and having a slo-mo few seconds of fame on BBC TV. After years running in fancy dress at the local half just to try and get my photo in the paper, I had topped all those efforts at London making national TV, woo hoo!
You can see a brief clip here on the BBC Website.
With a few days taper and rest after the The Oner, the monthly mileage was 292.
May saw another run at the GUCR although it was another disappointing run finishing a couple of hours outside my previous best time with a 34.55 finish. There were no excuses here really, I really didn’t give that extra 10% of effort during the second half of the race and settled for the ‘power march’ far too early. However, the bonus was that I did spend a good few hours in the company of thoroughly nice chap Andy Horsely.
With Andy. Smiling through relief rather than pleasure.
Still feeling a bit sorry for myself a week later, I ran the Kent Road runner marathon a brilliantly organised event put on by marathon supremo Ian Berry and an event which boasts a huuuugggggeee medal if you’re into that sort of thing. I ran a 3.18 which hurt a bit towards the end as I certainly hadn’t recovered from the week before but I sort of felt I deserved a bit of discomfort for my lack of effort the week before.
The medal is the size of my head.
May saw 359 miles covered.
After the GUCR, June was a month spent doing lots of short runs. My stats show I only ran more than 20 miles once that month with a few other 10-12 mile runs thrown in.
I took part in the Endure 24 event as part of a 5 person relay team. The event involves running as many 5 mile trail laps as you can in 24 hours and camping out with hundreds of other people. Last year, our team had finished second and this year we were looking to better our result which would hopefully lead to another podium position.
Our team goal was to ensure we matched last year’s effort of 36 laps which would mean everyone averaging at least 8m/m for their laps for the entire 24 hours. The better ground conditions this year and strong running meant we were always ahead of schedule.
The team of Paul Radford, Amy McKechnie, Jim Seaton and Michael Sartorious bonded well and were fantastic, we eventually ended up coming first in our category covering 40 laps resulting in a rare win!
I was really happy with my own personal effort. Last year I did 7 laps and averaged 39.49 per lap (7.58 m/m per lap). Ground conditions were much better this year which helped but I thought I was still slightly quicker covering 8 laps and averaging 36.29 per lap. An average of 7.18m/m for 40 miles on a trail route with a bit of up and down and with 3 dark legs was pretty good for me. That weekend saw all of my speedwork completed in one weekend and I can honestly say I was running on empty those last few laps having made some effort.
Very few long runs in June saw only 307 miles completed.
With my “A” race a couple of months away and no form in long races as such this year t was time to knuckle down and do some training. In all honesty, my ‘hunger’ to complete Spartathlon was less than it had been two years ago but I knew I could not afford to be complacent and I set out to achieve my most consistent training of 100 mile running weeks for the next ten weeks before a couple of weeks taper. I had also planned a marathon every two weeks over the next couple of months in order to work on my speed endurance in a semi-competitive environment (i.e. a 90% effort so these weren’t A races but a race event would force me to run a little quicker than the usual Sunday morning plod).
I managed to complete my first ever open water swim. Nothing to really shout about here with the result but it was good to do something a little different.
This resulted in a 459 mile month, several long runs and a Personal Best at the local Endure 12 50k finishing in 3.53 in an evening/night trail run which I was quite pleased with.
August was another solid months training with another couple of marathons and a total of 481 miles for the month.
The month started well with a Marathon PB at the Phoenix Summer Marathon with a 3.05 finish despite solid high mileage weeks and no taper for the event and then a 3.18 at Leila’s Run another low-key marathon. I have to say, I quite enjoy the low-key marathon type events with the easy logistics (event numbers are 50-100), social aspects with a little bit of competitiveness to ensure it’s a good training run. I don’t think I have ever just trained specifically for a marathon, they have always been training runs for longer ultras. One day, I should really apply myself and aim for a sub 3 but the speedwork aspect doesn’t appeal to me that much (i.e. I’m probably a little put off by having to make some effort with the running).
The second Saturday Night Marathon took place in September and once again ran smoothly without issues and I hope the runners that took part enjoyed the event.
The ‘A’ race was approaching but there was time for one more build up marathon at the Farnham Pilgrims Marathon. This would be a good benchmark as I had run he event before Sparta in 2013 and has also treated it as a 90% effort race.
It’s not a fast course at all with a lot of up and down over the North Downs area. My time in 2013 was 3.55 but this time I finished in 3.25 (and into the Top 10) so a good improvement. Despite admitting to not having the same level of desire for the second Spartathlon run, a commitment to some solid training to ward off any thought of complacency meant my fitness was good and I was actually ½ stone lighter in weight than two years ago. I was probably the fittest I have been at that point.
I flew out to Greece with Stouty at the end of September and took part in Spartathlon. You can read the event report here or watch a few photos and highlights here.
I had a brilliant (if tiring) weekend with the British runners and crews and it was great to catch up and socialise with other like minded people. Despite not being an ‘official’ team, the whole British Spartathlon Team approach was a huge success (thanks to work by Rob Pinnington and others) and we were undoubtedly one of the most well regarded teams over the weekend.
I managed to finish the race in 32 ½ hours some 2 ½ hours quicker than I had done previously. There was an incident with “The Hat” when I managed to lose it somewhere after Corinth and it then poured Saturday night and Sunday by way of punishing me for my carelessness but amazingly it was found by the side of the road by Mimi Anderson and crew on her return leg to Athens and has now been reunited with me (thanks Becky Healy!).
Result wise, I achieved my goal but I had aimed for a slightly quicker time and was initially a bit disappointed when I crossed the line. However, for a race which is as challenging as this is nothing will ever be perfect so after a couple of days reflection was satisfied that I had achieved a good result in my ‘A’ race this year.
The (unofficial) British Team did well with a better than average finish rate and a fantastic run by Dan Lawson who came 2nd overall and of course Rob Pinnington (finally) getting a finish after 4 attempts. That was probably the most celebrated finish of the whole weekend, well done chap.
After a week of no running I carried on with some general training albeit with a slightly reduced mileage (70-85 mpw). It was a quiet month event wise although I did sweep the last leg of the Winter 100 which was good fun.
The total miles for the month was 342.
I use the Fetcheveryone website to log my training (with Strava as a backup) and I noticed I had been creeping up the league table. Since my mileage has been increasing year on year then I have been slowly moving up the table and there was now a fair chance I could top the table if I put some effort in.
This was probably, the main driver for a high volume finish to the year. Looking at some numbers, if I ran around 1000 miles for the last two months of the year I could finish on 4810 which would equate to a Half Marathon every day of the year. It was an arbitrary goal I admit but you’ve got to take your motivations where you can.
I ran a 100 mile week and then ran 3 x 120 mile weeks in November which included the Phoenix Marathon in November where I ran a 3.15.
I managed to cover 522 miles that month which was my highest ever monthly total.
The last month of the year and so the countdown to the end of began. It basically rained all of November and December and running started to become a real grind with tired legs, poor weather and rapidly diminishing motivation.
The first week in December saw a huge 135 mile week, followed by a 124 mile week and then 2 x 100 mile weeks. Participating in the Marcothon was a nice extra motivation to get myself out each and every day. By the end of the year I was on a 90 day run streak with my last rest day occurring on the 3rd October.
I also took part in 3 marathons in December and ran a 3.19 in the Engima Xmas Marathon, a 3.29 at the wet and miserable Portsmouth Marathon and another 3.19 at the Phoenix Year End marathon so pretty consistent runs.
With the last Marathon taking place on the 28th December, the last couple of days seemed to just taper off. My body was starting to feel a little sore and I’m looking forward to a nice rest week the first week in January before planning some training and events for 2016.
I did my final run early on New Years Eve so I could have a lazy day but then changed plans and went for a 11pm run for an hour to see in the New Year. I’m not massively into the New Years celebrations which all seem a little contrived but did enjoy an evening with the family before heading out for a last run of the year and watching some of the midnight fireworks.
The total mileage for December was 527 miles (my highest total ever) and the total for the year was a huge 4868 (93.6 miles per week or 13.3 miles per day).
Some other random running related observations from the year.
• I have transitioned to Hoka Shoes for some ultras and recovery runs (I ran Sparta in Hoka Conquest 2) and can feel the benefit from the enhanced cushioning on the feet and joints especially with a high mileage year. However, I don’t use Hoka’s exclusively and still swap daily runs with these and normal road shoes.
• I have really started to enjoy the low-key Marathon type events which act as good training runs. I’ve only ever run 24 marathons in total and 10 of these came this year!
• Topping the Fetch mileage league (assuming no-one retrospectively adds loads of miles of course). I’m sure there are a few people who have run more miles this year who don’t use Fetch but within this group it’s acted as a good bit of motivation to keep myself running. Admittedly, it has started to become a bit of a grind so it was nice to get to the end of the year.
• New PB at Sparta and enjoying a fabulous (and tiring) weekend with the British Runners & Crews (and being there the year Rob Pinnington finished).
• Top Team (in our category) at the Endure 24.
• Finding ‘The Hat’ (after losing it.. see below).
• Performance at The Oner & GUCR were below par.
• Seeing a few British runners not manage to complete Sparta.
So what’s planned for 2016 I hear you ask? Well here goes.
Resting, training , no events planned yet.
The annual pre-season fitness test at the Thames Trot takes place the first week in February. With all the mileage in November and December, I should be reasonably fit for this event. This probably means a flooded, muddy course, diversions and a miserable run.
The Run Until You Drop challenge will return in February, stay tuned for further details on this.
I have a few marathons lined up as training runs before a couple of ultras in the Summer. I am looking forward to Traviss’s “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” marathon (one of my favourite films) and working towards the huge Phoenix Firebird medal for completing the series.
The Thames Path 100 is my only timed target goal of the year so far. With some good training, I’m confident I can better my current PB of 18.57. I was looking at a sub 18 hour which would have meant an automatic qualifier for Sparta in 2017 but this has since gone down to 16.48 but I think the sub 18 goal and an hours improvement is a challenge enough for me so that’s my current target. There’s three things I need to do to achieve this, obviously train well, secondly no wasting time at Checkpoints and thirdly a bit more mental effort in the second half of the race to muster a run when I can. We will see how it goes in a few months time.
My big event for the year is the inaugural Monarchs Way event put on by Lindley at Challenge Running. It’s a 615 mile continuous race where competitors will have to camp out along the course and you have 14 days to complete it. I’m looking forward to seeing further logistics so I can plan my approach a bit more but I’m treating this as an adventure race with an aim ‘just to finish’ and will be working out an average amount of mileage each day to ensure I get some sleep each night.
Saturday Night Marathon is back and I have an offer from a reliable friend to act as guest Race Director (so have some assurance everything will be in safe hands) so I might even have a little jog and earn one of my own medals which will be pretty cool.
This sees the return of the T184, a 184 mile self supported run along the full length of the Thames Path and the source of my only defeat (DNF’d in 2014 after just simply not fancying another 74 miles of trudging and I quit). This is a must finish event, no time goals just get the job done.
The return of the Saturday Night Marathon but I will be Race Directing this time.
I will be participating in the Autumn 100 after helping out this year. No real goals, at the moment, I’m simply treating this one as an end of year fun run. ‘The Hat’ vs Griffin Part 2?
A couple of marathons (i.e. finishing off the Phoenix Series).
Ok, so what do the stats tell us this year. Here goes.
There has been a huge increase in mileage from last year. I have run less ultra race miles this year with only 3 long events compared to 5 last year which is a major contributor to a faster average pace (i.e. less slower miles during the second half of an ultra).
Notably, there have been more Medium and Long runs (the 8 miler has become a typical run) but less ‘effort’ runs. Race miles have been reduced with fewer longer ultras this year but more marathons.
I didn’t run a 5k or 10k race this year mainly because I focussed on mileage. I only ran 1 Half-Marathon (in fancy dress) all year so not a bad effort and the highlight has been an improvement in Marathon times despite no real focus on these events.
The GUCR and The Oner runs were a little disappointing, I didn’t run a 100 miler this year so it is difficult to compare how I would have fared here but Spartathlon was a 2 1/2 hour improvement so the one that really counted this year went ok.
Thanks to Fetcheveryone for the training tools (I do use Strava aswell though) which helped produce all these stats and my trusty Garmin of course.
My initial thoughts are to cut back on the mileage and work on a bit more shorter/sharper runs (i.e. the type of running I don’t usually fancy) and get back to doing some core strength work which was abandoned quite quickly after Sparta.
General observations, thoughts and opinions welcome on the training and events aswell as I’m always happy to consider feedback here. Despite considering myself a ‘hobby’ runner, it’s good to try and improve your performance each year and set yourself goals to keep you motivated throughout the year. | 2019-04-26T11:56:43Z | https://paulsrunningblog.com/2015/12/31/2015-confessions-of-a-garmin-owner/ |
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Tone is the host of CrytpoScam Podcast. Days was previously a well-known derivatives trader on Wall Street, later was a VP at JP Morgan, and is now a blockchain consultant. He is also a regular contributor to The World Crypto Network. He was recently featured on the Bitcoin documentary, “Magic Money”.
Lopp is presently an engineer at BitGo and the creator of Statoshi.info, which displays bitcoin node stats in real time. He is also the organizer of Bitcoin SIG, a group of MENSA members who discuss bitcoin matters. Lopp also posts regularly on the Coindesk blog and other notable bitcoin publications.
Jeff is the co-founder of Bloq, an enterprise-grade blockchain startup. Bloq recently announced its own cryptocurrency, Metronome, which it hopes will eventually be run on multiple types of blockchains. Prior to Bloq, Garzik was the founder of Dunvegan Space Systems, a startup focused on enabling space infrastructure.
Bobby is the CEO and co-founder of BTCC, China’s first bitcoin exchange. Lee has been involved with bitcoin since 2011, and envisioned BTCC as a full-stack solution for bitcoin in China – ranging from exchange functionality, to providing secure wallets to consumers. Prior to BTCC, Lee held a senior role at Walmart China.
He is a co-founder and managing partner at Union Square Ventures (a significant investor in Coinbase) and the founder of VC firm Flatiron Partners. As a vocal advocate for blockchain as a whole, Wilson writes regularly about cryptocurrencies, investing strategies, ICOs, and more at AVC.com.
The AngelList co-founder and CEO is also an investor in Bitwise Asset Management, one of the first cryptocurrency index funds. As a proponent of blockchain, Ravikant is also providing capital and advisory services to blockchain startup Blockstack, which recently released its first decentralized browser.
Michael is the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch. As a VC with a proven track record, Arrington is now the lead partner at Arrington XRP Capital, a $100M hedge fund based entirely on cryptocurrency. The fund will be denominated in XRP, the cryptocurrency that drives much of the startup Ripple’s software.
Matonis is a bitcoin researcher and economist. He is presently the Founding Director and co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation. He is also the chairman of Globitex, a bitcoin and derivatives exchange. He is also a Board Member at First Global Credit, a cryptocurrency investment and advisory firm based in Geneva.
Stephan is the co-founder of AtlasNeue and Slock.it, a blockchain infrastructure for the collaborative economy that’s built on the Ethereum platform. Formerly, Tual was the CCO of Ethereum, and is universally regarded as an expert in the crypto and blockchain community. He was previously Managing Director at Ursium.
Song is a prominent blockchain developer and entrepreneur. He is also an instructor at Programming Blockchain, which helps talented developers learn how to code for the blockchain platform. He is currently a developer at Paxos, a fintech blockchain startup focused on automating post-trade settlements.
Chris is now a partner at Placeholder VC. Burniske previously led ARK Invest’s cryptoasset and product development efforts, where he interfaced with press to ensure accurate reporting around cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets. He is also the author of “Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond”.
Derin is the co-founder of BlockchainAge, the global leader in blockchain research and consultancy. He is also the founder of online business magazine Richtopia, and the co-founder of Marketing Runners, a professional services firm. Additionally, Cag is a guest lecturer at the University of Monaco and the INSEEC Group.
Fred is previously co-founder of Coinbase, and is now working on building decentralized blockchain applications. Prior to his forays into the crypto world, Ehrsam was a trader at Goldman Sachs. He is an investor in crypto hedge fund Polychain Capital. He holds a BS in Computer Science and Economics from Duke University.
Luke is one of the most prolific and well-known cryptocurrency traders, and is best known for hosting Coin Chat, an informative YouTube series about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Martin also founded (and now runs) VentureCoinist, a crypto analysis and education website that is run on a membership basis.
Dinis is the CEO of IntelligentHQ, a social business network. He is also the CEO of blockchain startup Humaniq, which aims to become a secure, decentralized banking solution for the 2 billion+ people in the world that don’t yet have bank accounts. Guarda is a regular speaker at bitcoin-related conferences worldwide.
Michael is the publisher of the Nerd’s Eye View blog, which focuses on financial planning and has recently begun to delve into cryptocurrencies. Kitces is the Director of Research at Pinnacle Advisory Group, and is an advisor to a number of fintech startups. He holds master’s degrees in Taxation and Financial Services.
Josh started investing in Bitcoin in 2013, and is now an advisor to Experty.io and AltCoinExchange. He is well-known for broadcasting detailed crypto technical analysis on his YouTube channel. Olszewicz also writes regularly on bitcoin finance site BraveNewCoin.com, and is an adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University.
Joseph is the co-founder of Ethereum, and the founder of ConsenSys, a blockchain app development firm. Lubin also helped to set up the non-profit Ethereum Foundation and VC fund ConsenSys Ventures, which invests in decentralized blockchain applications. Lubin holds a B.S. in Engineering from Princeton University.
Ari is the CIO of cryptocurrency hedge fund BlockTower Capital. Prior to his time in the crypto space, Paul was a portfolio manager for the University of Chicago’s endowment, as well as a derivatives trader. He is interviewed about his views on crypto regularly by publications like BusinessInsider and Forbes.
Ryan was the Managing Director at CoinDesk, a site providing the latest news, analysis, and insights in the cryptocurrency and blockchain spaces. Prior to CoinDesk, Selkis was the Director of Growth for Digital Currency Group, an investment firm focused on the crypto space. He holds an MBA from MIT School of Business.
Joey wrote the first node implementation of Ethereum, and also made significant contributions to the development of the geth, go-ethereum, and cpp-ethereum protocols. He is a managing partner at consulting firm Cyborgenic, which focuses on fintech innovations. He is also an active angel investor and startup advisor.
Brock is the co-founder of Blockchain Capital, a venture capital company that invests in blockchain related startups (such as EOS and Tether). He is the Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, and also runs one of the top AngelList syndicates. He also speaks at numerous blockchain events and conferences around the world.
Spencer is currently the Head of Research at Blockchain Capital, one of the first funds focused solely on blockchain technologies. He formerly was the VP of Equity Research at Needham, where he led the firm’s research on blockchain technologies. He holds a BS in Economics from University of California, Santa Barbara.
Michael is presently an investor and the CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners, which makes investments in emerging blockchain startups. Novogratz was formerly a principal and member of the board of directors of Fortress Investment Group LLC, and was the Chief Investment Officer of the Fortress Macro Fund.
Da is the co-founder of blockchain group NEO, formerly known as AntShares. He is also the founder and CEO of OnChain, one of China’s most innovative blockchain technology firms. Through OnChain, Da is collaborating with the Chinese government on establishing blockchain technology standards that will apply across the country.
Willy is a data-driven cryptocurrency analyst and bitcoin investor, writing primarily for his blog, Woobull. He writes regularly about cryptocurrency as an investment for publications like Forbes, CoinDesk, and BraveNewCoin. Woo also speaks regularly about bitcoin at conferences and events around the world.
Gav is the founder of Parity Technologies, which develops cutting-edge blockchain applications. Most notably, Wood was one of the co-founders of Ethereum, having coded its first functional implementation. He is also the co-founder of Grid Singularity, which aims to develop a decentralized energy management platform.
As the President and Co-Founder of Blockchain.com, Cary travels the world to connect with the bitcoin community and be an evangelist for the story of Blockchain. As an active philanthropist, Cary executed the world’s first University donation in Bitcoin. Cary is also an active investor in cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
Lombrozo is the co-CEO and CTO of Ciphrex Corp, a provider of enterprise-grade software specialized in the cryptographic transaction processing (CTP) space. Before his time at Ciphrex, Lombrozo was the founder of cryptocurrency startups CoinSurge and RingCoin. Lombrozo is also an active contributor to Bitcoin Core.
Vlad is part of the Ethereum Development Team and is an analytics consultant at Burson-Marsteller. Zamfir is known for his active involvement in the Ethereum community, as well as his consistent research in the blockchain technology space.
Brad is currently the CEO at Ripple, an enterprise blockchain solution for global payments. He is also a board member for Animoto, a video creation service. Previously, Garlinghouse was the CEO of file-sharing startup Hightail and also held senior roles at both AOL and Yahoo. He also has a MBA from Harvard Business School.
Elizabeth is the founder of Lightning Labs, which develops Lightning, an open protocol layer for blockchain. She is also a fellow at Coin Center, a cryptocurrency policy institute. Stark is an advisor to numerous AI and blockchain startups, and previously taught at Stanford and Yale, and holds a law degree from Harvard.
Preethi is a blockchain engineer that formerly worked at Goldman Sachs and Andreessen Horowitz. She is the founder and CEO of Schelling, a blockchain startup currently in stealth mode. Kasireddy was an engineer on a number of blockchain and smart contract projects, and previously was a software engineer at Coinbase.
Kyle is a prolific freelance writer who focuses primarily on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. He regularly contributes to Forbes, Bitcoin Magazine, CoinJournal, and Crypto Insider, among others. His commentary and writing has also been featured on Motherboard, NASDAQ, and other publications.
Charles is the co-founder of Ethereum and is presently the CEO of Input Output, a Hong Kong-based blockchain research firm. He was also a founding member of the Cryptocurrency Research Group, which was established in 2013. Hoskison is a bitcoin evangelist, and writes about cryptocurrencies for numerous publications.
Vinay is presently the CEO of Mattereum. Gupta helped coordinate Ethereum’s 2015 release, while working as a project manager on strategy and communications. He is also the Designer of the United Arab Emirates’ National Blockchain strategy, which will enable Dubai to become the first blockchain-powered government.
Meltem is the Managing Director at Digital Currency Group, which invests in (and advises) 100+ bitcoin and blockchain startups. She is a member of the Global Future Council on Blockchain at the Davos World Economic Forum, and is also an advisor and teacher at MIT and the University of Oxford.
Andrew is an early investor in bitcoin who is now the co-founder of BTC Media, a leading provider of news and educational information about financial technology and cryptocurrency. DeSantis is also a software engineer at 21 Inc, which is focused on building out the full-stack infrastructure for Bitcoin.
Marek is the CEO and Head IT Architect at Satoshi Labs, which is responsible for building some of the most widely used Bitcoin products (such as TREZOR, Slush Pool, and Coinmap). He is one of the co-inventors of TREZOR, and founded Slush Pool, the world’s first bitcoin mining pool. He has been involved in crypto since 2010.
Michael was a former executive in the banking industry, and was an early evangelist for Bitcoin. Parsons is now a sought-after speaker and advisor on the subject, and currently serves as the Chairman and Executive Director of the Cardano Foundation, which promotes and supports the new Cardano blockchain protocol.
Ray is the co-founder of Unocoin, an India-based startup that aims to make it easy to securely buy, sell, and store bitcoin. He has been involved with cryptocurrencies since 2013, when he directed Business Development for Buttercoin, one of the earliest cryptocurrency trading firms.
Anondran is a cryptocurrency analyst and trader who is best-known for his Twitter-only commentary on the crypto world. Anondran covers Bitcoin and Ethereum on a regular basis, as well as other alt-coins (such as ZCash, XRB, and others).
Alexander is the co-author of “Blockchain Revolution” (along with his father, Don Tapscott) and is the CEO and founder of NextBock, a blockchain investment firm. Tapscott has advised multiple government agencies on blockchain (particularly in Canada) and has spoken at numerous conferences about the potential of the platform.
Author of the best-selling “The Business Blockchain”, the first detailed book on the blockchain ecosystem, and its future. He is the producer of Token Summit, which is an in-depth exploration of the Token-Based Economy. He is an advisory board member at the Ethereum Foundation, as well as Coin Center.
Craig is the Chief Scientist of nChain, a startup focused on transforming how the world conducts all transactions. nCash was recently acquired by a private equity fun. Controversially, he is rumored to be behind the psuedonym Satoshi Nakamoto. He is also the founder of Australian cryptocurrency company DeMorgan Inc.
Ryan has been active in the bitcoin community since 2011, and has been an active contributor to the Bitcoin open-source community. He is the creator and CEO of Yours.org, a bitcoin-centric social media startup. Previously, Charles was a cryptocurrency engineer at Reddit, and led development for Reddit’s cryptoequity project.
Kris is the CEO and co-founder of Monaco, the pioneering payments and cryptocurrency platform with a vision of Cryptocurrency in Every Wallet. Marszalek is active in the Asian crypto community contributing to industry events and engaging with media to discuss the implications of cryptocurrency and blockchain solutions.
Jackson is the creator of Dogecoin, which currently has a capitalization of $1B+ and is now a widely traded cryptocurrency. Palmer is presently a Group Product Manager for cloud products at Adobe, and also runs a popular YouTube channel that’s widely followed in the crypto community for its thoughtful analysis.
Chris works at Bitfinex, the world’s foremost cryptocurrency exchange, and is the founder of ProTip, a P2P tipping platform. He is also a presenter at the World Crypto Platform, an open-source media platform that covers the crypto ecosystem. He also runs Future.do, P2P recruiting and career coaching service.
Alan is the founder and CEO of BitPremier, a Bitcoin-only marketplace that specializes in real estate and luxury goods. In addition to founding BitPremier, he’s also a Senior VP at Capital One Healthcare. Prior to starting BitPremier, Silbert held senior management roles at GE Capital and Merill Lynch Capital.
Dan is the CEO of Pantera Capital, an investment firm focused exclusively on digital currency and blockchain technology. He also sits on the Board of Directors at Bitstamp, one of the world’s largest Bitcoin exchanges. Previously, Morehead held senior roles at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Tiger Management.
Muneeb is the co-founder of Blockstack, a full-stack solution for decentralized apps. He has given several talks on cryptocurrencies at forums like the TEDx conference, and has written numerous academic publications and whitepapers on the topic. He also has a PhD in Distributed Systems from Princeton University.
Nejc is the co-founder and CEO of Bitstamp, an online cryptocurrency exchange. Bitstamp was the first fully licensed cryptocurrency exchange in the EU, and has been growing rapidly since being founded in 2011. Kodrič has been involved with Bitcoin since 2011, and speaks at cryptocurrency conferences around the world.
Michel is the founder of the P2P Foundation, an organization studying the impact of peer to peer technology on society. He is a P2P researcher, and is a frequent speaker at bitcoin and crypto conferences around the world. He has also written for publications like Al Jazeera and Open Democracy, and was featured in the New York Times.
Francis is the Head of Research at Catallaxy and CEO of Satoshi Portal. Catallaxy combines the technical expertise of the best blockchain talent and the consulting power of the accounting firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton. Satoshi Portal works on a number of cryptocurrency projects, such as exchanges and payment solutions.
Peter is the co-founder and CEO of Blockchain, a company whose software powers hundreds of crypto applications around the world. Smith is widely regarded as an expert in the crypto space, having been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Fox Business News, and Bloomberg (among other media outlets).
Oleg is a protocol architect at blockchain startup Chain, and is a crypto-anarchy historian. He is the author of the Gitbox app, as well as the CoreBitcoin and BTCRuby libraries. Andreev also developed the Mycelium iOS crypto wallet. He is known for being the designer of Russian social network VK’s video sharing service.
Elaine is presently a blockchain engineer at Global Financial Access, a financial technology firm in the Bay Area. Previously, Ou was a lecturer in the electrical and information engineering department at the University of Sydney. She holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Based in Johannesburg, Ran is the host of CNBC Africa’s popular TV show, Cryptotrader. He is the founder of OnChain Capital, a bitcoin investment firm, and is the CEO of The Creative Counsel, one of South Africa’s largest marketing agencies. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from the University of Witwaterstrand.
Susanne is the CEO of FINTECH Circle, Europe’s 1st Angel Network focused exclusively on fintech opportunities. Through this role, she also founded the FINTECH Circle Institute, which is a P2P online learning platform. She is also the author of best-seller “The FINTECH Book”, the first globally crowdsourced book on fintech.
Jonas is a Bitcoin Core developer and maintainer. Schnelli is the co-founder of digitalbitbox, a Bitcoin hardware wallet that’s presently in development. Author of libbtc, a key Bitcoin library. He has been interviewed about his views on cryptocurrency by a number of publications, such as Bitcoin Magazine.
Rochard is a Software Engineer at Axial, an online deal network, and also is an expert in the cryptocurrency space. Rochard was formerly a Staff Accountant at BitPay, and also worked as a Senior Accountant at Hudson River Trading. He also cohosts the Noded Podcast, which covers cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
Linda is the co-founder of Scalar Capital, a cryptoasset fund. Xie is also an Advisor at 0x, a decentralized exchange run on Ethereum. Previously, Xie was a Product Manager at Coinbase. Prior to that, she was a financial analyst at AIG in New York. She holds a BS in Economics from University of California, San Diego.
Juan is the founder and CEO of Protocol Labs and inventor of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a new protocol to make the web faster, safer, and more open. Benet is also the founder of Filecoin, a cryptocurrency-incentivized storage network. He holds a MS in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Larsen is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Ripple, an enterprise blockchain solution for global payments. He is presently an advisor at Distilled Analytics, a data science firm. Prior to founding Ripple, Larsen was the CEO of Prosper, a P2P lending service, and was also the CEO of E-LOAN, an online lending service.
Stephen is the co-founder and CEO of Bitpay, a Bitcoin merchant service. Prior to founding Bitpay, Pair was a senior development engineer at IBM. Widely regarded as a cryptography expert, he also holds two patents related to streaming analytics.
Joseph is a financial analyst and journalist based in Hong Kong. Young is well-known in the crypto community for his regular contributions to Cointelegraph, Cryptocoinsnews, Hacked, Merkle and other publications. He’s also the Managing Director at NewsCrypto and B21M, focusing primarily on bitcoin and cryptocurrency news.
Preston is the founder and former COO of Monax,the makers of the first open-source permissioned blockchain client (now called the Hyperledger Burrow blockchain client). Byrne specializes in advising law firms and public sector organizations on how to best handle emerging technologies like cryptocurrency and blockchain.
Ben is the CTO at BitGo, a blockchain security company. Davenport has been an investor in bitcoin and actively involved in the crypto space since 2011. He is an investor in numerous blockchain startups (like BitPay, Coinsetter, itBit and Yoyocard), and runs SVBitcoin, a cryptocurrency and blockchain focus group.
Arianna is an early stage investor, with close to 40 investments in the crypto space to date. She was previously a product manager at BitGo, a Bitcoin security provider. She is also now a venture partner at Crystal Towers Capital, an investment firm focused on emerging technologies, enterprise SaaS, and healthcare.
Tai is a Senior Technical Analyst at Cryptocurrency.Market and the co-creator of the TaiFu™ 30 Cryptocurrency Market Index. Zen is a renowned authority on cryptocurrencies and frequently gives interviews on the topic to news outlets around the world. He is an active trader in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies.
Alex is a Founding Partner at Tetras Capital, a hedge fund focused on diversified cryptoasset exposure. Sunnarborg founded Lawnmower, a blockchain investment startup, which was later acquired by CoinDesk. Prior to joining Tetras Capital, Sunnarborg worked in banking and was a Research Analyst at CoinDesk.
Tony is the co-founder and chairman of the online crypto payments firm BitPay – the world’s largest bitcoin payment processor. Gallippi speaks regularly to the media about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and in 2013, also spoke before the US Senate about bitcoin as a means for preventing credit card fraud.
Diego is the CEO of RSK Labs, which is putting blockchain technology in the service of social transformation. He is widely regarded as one of the foremost Latin American thought leaders involved in cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Gutierrez is a frequent public speaker, and volunteer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Ned is the founder and CEO of SteemIT and the creator of Smart Media Tokens (SMT). Additionally, he founded SteemNetwork, a blockchain-based rewards platform for publishers to monetize content and grow their communities. Before his forays into the crypto space, Scott was an analyst at Gellert Global Group.
Wong is a reporter covering tech, cryptocurrencies, urban studies and blockchains at Quartz. Before his time at Quartz, Joon was also a reporter at CoinDesk, and spent some time as a freelance journalist as well. He holds a Masters in Arts from University of London, and a BA in Journalism and Philosophy from NYU.
Olaoluwa is the Chief Technology Officer at Lightning Labs, an open protocol that leverages blockchain to enable private transactions anywhere in the world. Prior to this, he spent time interning at Google in software engineering. He also holds a Master’s in Computer Science from University of California, Santa Barbara.
Oscar is a Senior Reporter at Business Insider UK, covering fintech, cryptocurrencies, and retail. Prior to joining BusinessInsider, Osuntokun worked for the London Evening Standard and Independent newspapers as their stock market reporter – and before that, covered London’s technology scene for the local newspapers.
Chris is a bitcoin evangelist, public speaker, podcaster, and journalist. He is the lead organizer of the South Florida Bitcoin group, and a prolific YouTuber at his channel, Bitcoin Uncensored. He is also the Community Director at the Counterparty Foundation, and writes regularly for publications such as Bitcoin Magazine. | 2019-04-24T05:31:12Z | https://icoscouts.com/2018/08/22/the-100-most-influential-people-in-crypto/ |
Unlocking IP 2009 Conference: "National and Global Dimensions of the Public Domain"
The UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre will be hosting the 3rd ‘Unlocking IP’ Conference at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, from 16-17 April 2009.
A registration form will be available here shortly.
The Conference will include both invited and submitted presentations. We invite proposals for papers relevant to the theme of the Conference. Please refer to the Conference Call for Papers page for details. The deadline for submission of full papers or extended abstracts is March 4, 2009.
So to explain a little further, there's copyright under Section 32 in all works by Australian authors, and all works by any authors that publish their works in Australia before publishing them elsewhere. There's also a definition of 'Australian' (actually 'qualified person'), but it's not particularly interesting. And there's some stuff about copyright in buildings, and people who died, and works that took a long time to produce.
Anyway, what good is this to me? Well, it makes for a reasonable definition of Australian copyrighted work. Which we can then use to define the Australian public domain or the Australian commons, assuming we have a good definition of public domain or commons.
It's a very functional definition, in the sense that you can decide for a given work whether or not to include it in the class of Australian commons.
Commons content that is either created by Australians, hosted in Australia, administered by Australians or Australian organisations, or pertains particularly to Australia.
Yuck! Maybe that's what we mean intuitively, but that's a rather useless definition when it comes to actually applying it. Section 32 will do much better.
This is one for any international readers...or, more, specifically, UK readers. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that a review will be conducted into the United Kingdom National Archives. The review will consider the appropriateness of the time when records become available (this is 30 years after 'an event', which is the same here in Australia) and whether this period should be decreased. More can be found at the National Archives news page here.
Archival research is sometimes overlooked in scholarship, but it's clear that there is a wealth of information in these vaults (I personally imagine them to look something like the Hall of Prophecies from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, although with books in place of orbs). I've been spending a lot of time on archival websites lately - the National Archives of Australia has a fantastic feature called RecordSearch that allows you to find archival documents and narrow down your search. The UK National Archives also has an excellent website - I started off planning to research Crown copyright in the UK and ended up reading perhaps a bit more than I should have about records concerning Jack the Ripper. Not for the faint-hearted researcher. Archival research is therefore a bit like spending a few hours of Wikipedia: you end up far, far away from where you started.
Benedict Atkinson's new book The True History of Copyright (review coming!) contains a lot of archival research and my own work will include this type of research. It's interesting that even though we have truly entered the age of 'digital copyright' there is still so much that we can learn from materials about history and policy from 100 years ago. Accessing and considering these types of materials can broaden both discussions about issues and the commons as well: yet another way for dwarves to stand on the shoulders of giants!
Housemates Abi and Catherine, and project chief investigator Graham Greenleaf have been published in the Journal of World Intellectual Property. They were too modest to post about it themselves, but something has to be said! I mean, if I was published in the Journal of World Artificial Intelligence, well I'd want to tell everyone :) (not that there's a journal called the Journal of World Artificial Intelligence, but that's not the point!).
So without further ado, here's the link: Advance Australia Fair? The Copyright Reform Process.
Ripple down rules (RDR) is a methodology for creating decision trees, in domains even experts have trouble mapping their knowledge in, by requiring the expert only to justify their correction of the system, in the context in which the particular error occurred. That's probably why the original article on ripple down rules was called Knowledge in context: a strategy for expert system maintenance.
Now, there's two possible approaches to making the RDR system probabilistic (i.e. making it predict the probability that it is wrong for a given input). First, we could try to predict the probabilities based on the structure of the RDR and which rules have fired. Alternatively, we could ask the expert explicitly for some knowledge of probabilities (in the specific context, of course).
What I'm talking about here is using RDR like normal, but trying to infer probabilities based on the way it reaches its conclusion. The most obvious situation where this will work is when all the rules that conclude positive (interesting) fire and none of the rules that conclude negative (uninteresting) fire. (This does, however, mean creating a more Multiple Classification RDR type of system.) Other possibilities include watching over time to see which rules are more likely to be wrong.
These possibilities may seem week, but they may turn out to provide just enough information. Remember, any indication that some examples are more likely to be useful is good, because it can cut down the pool of potential false negatives from the whole web to something much, much smaller.
The other possibility is to ask the expert in advance how likely the system is to be wrong. Now, as I discussed, this whole RDR methodology is based around the idea that experts are good at justifying themselves in context, so it doesn't make much sense to ask the expert to look at an RDR system and say in advance how likely a given analysis is to be wrong. On the other hand, it might be possible to ask the expert, when they are creating a new rule: what is the probability that the rule will be wrong (the conclusion is wrong), given that it fires (its condition is met)? And, to get a little bit more rigorous, we would ideally also like to know: what is the probability that the rule's condition will be met, given that the rule's parent fired (the rule's parent's condition was met)?
The obvious problem with this is that the expert might not be able to answer these questions, at least with any useful accuracy. On the other hand, as I said above, any little indication is useful. Also, it's worth pointing out that what we need is not primarily probabilities, but rather a ranking or ordering of the candidates for expert evaluation, so that we know which is the most likely to be useful (rather than exactly how likely it is to be useful).
Here's what I consider a minimal RDR tree for the purposes of calculating probabilities, with some hypothetical (imaginary) given probabilities.
Let me explain. Rule 0 is the default rule (the starting point for all RDR systems). It fires 100% of the time, and in this case it is presumed to be right 99% of the time (simulating the needle-in-a-haystack scenario). Rules 1 and 2 are exceptions to rule 0, and will be considered only when rule 0 fires (which is all the time because it is the default rule). Rule 3 is an exception to rule 2, and will be considered only when rule 2 fires.
The conclusions of rules 0 and 3 are (implicitly) 'hay' (uninteresting), while the conclusions of rules 1 and 2 are (implicitly) 'needle' (interesting). This is because the conclusion of every exception rule needs to be different from the conclusion of the parent rule.
The percentage for 'Fires' represents the expert's opinion of how likely the rule is to fire (have its condition met) given that the rule is reached (its parent is reached and fires). The percentage for 'Correct' represents the expert's opinion of how likely the rule's conclusion is to be correct, given that the rule is reached and fires.
With this setup, you can start to calculate some interesting probabilities, given knowledge of which rules fire for a given example. For example, what is the probability of 'needle' given that rules 1 and 2 both fire, but rule 3 doesn't? (This is assumedly the most positive indication of 'needle' we can get.) What difference would it make if rule 3 did fire? If you can answer either of these questions, leave a comment.
If no rules fire, for example, the probability of 'needle' is 0.89%, which is only very slightly less than the default probability of 'needle' before using the system, which was 1%. Strange, isn't it?
In a previous post, I talked about the problems of finding commons in the deep web; now I want to talk about some possible solutions to these problems.
Ripple down rules is a knowledge acquisition methodology developed at the University of New South Wales. It's really simple - it's about incrementally creating a kind of decision tree based on an expert identifying what's wrong with the current decision tree. It works because the expert only needs to justify their conclusion that the current system is wrong in a particular case, rather than identify a universal correction that needs to be made, and also the system is guaranteed to be consistent with the expert's evaluation of all previously seen data (though overfitting can obviously still be a problem).
The application of ripple down rules to deep web commons is simply this: once you have a general method for flattened web forms, you can use the flattened web form as input to the ripple down rules system and have the system decide if the web form hides commons.
But how do you create rules from a list of text strings without even a known size (for example, there could be any number of options in a select input (dropdown list), and any number of select inputs in a form). The old "IF weather = 'sunny' THEN play = 'tennis'" type of rule doesn't work. One solution is to make the rule conditions more like questions, with rules like "IF select-option contains-word 'license' THEN form = 'commons'" (this is a suitable rule for Advanced Google Code Search). Still, I'm not sure this is the best way to express conditions. To put it another way, I'm still not sure that extracting a list of strings, of indefinite length, is the right way to flatten the form (see this post). Contact me if you know of a better way.
As I have said, one of the most interesting issues I'm facing is the needle in a haystack problem, where we're searching for (probably) very few web forms that hide commons, in a very very big World Wide Web full of all kinds of web forms.
Of course computers are good at searching through lots of data, but here's the problem: while you're training your system, you need examples of the system being wrong, so you can correct it. But how do you know when it's wrong? Basically, you have to look at examples and see if you (or the expert) agree with the system. Now in this case we probably want to look through all the positives (interesting forms), so we can use any false positives (uninteresting forms) to train the system, but that will quickly train the system to be conservative, which has two drawbacks. Firstly, we'd rather it wasn't conservative because we'd be more likely to find more interesting forms. Secondly, because we'll be seeing less errors in the forms classified as interesting, we have less examples to use to train the system. And to find false negatives (interesting forms incorrectly classified as uninteresting), the expert has to search through all the examples the system doesn't currently think are interesting (and that's about as bad as having no system at all, and just browsing the web).
So the solution seems, to me, to be to change the system, so that it can identify the web form that it is most likely to be wrong about. Then we can get the most bang (corrections) for our buck (our expert's time). But how can anything like ripple down rules do that?
This is where I think the needle in a haystack problem can actually be an asset. I don't know how to make a system that can tell how close an example is to the boundary between interesting and uninteresting (the boundary doesn't really exist, even). But it will be a lot easier to make a system that predicts how likely an example is to be an interesting web form.
This way, if the most likely of the available examples is interesting, it will be worth looking at (of course), and if it's classified as not interesting, it's the most likely to have been incorrectly classified, and provide a useful training example.
I will talk about how it might be possible to extract probabilities from a ripple down rules system, but this post is long enough already, so I'll leave that for another post.
Today I just wanted to take a brief look at some of the problems I'm finding myself tackling with the deep web commons question. There's two main ones, from quite different perspectives, but for both I can briefly describe my current thoughts.
The first problem is that of how to represent a web form in such a way that it can be used as an input to an automated system that can evaluate it. Ideally, in machine learning, you have a set of attributes that form a vector, and then you use that as the input to your algorithm. Like in tic-tac-toe, you might represent a cross by -1, a naught by +1, and an empty space by 0, and then the game can be represented by 9 of these 'attributes'.
Form text. The actual text of the web form. E.g. "Advanced Code Search About Google Code Search Find results with the regular..."
Select options. Options in drop-down boxes. E.g. "any language", "Ada", "AppleScript", etc.
Field names. Underlying names of the various fields. E.g. "as_license_restrict", "as_license", "as_package".
Result text. The text of each search result. E.g. (if you search for "commons"): "shibboleth-1.3.2-install/.../WrappedLog.java - 8 identical 26: package..."
Result link name. Hyperlinks in the search results. E.g. "8 identical", "Apache"
Conditions can then be made up of these. For example, when (as in the case of Advanced Google Code Search) you see a select option like "GNU General Public License", it's an indication you've found an interesting web form.
But as far as I can tell, text makes for bad attributes. Numerical is much better. As far as I can tell. But I'll talk about that more when I talk about ripple down rules.
The other problem is more about what we're actually looking for. We're talking about web forms that hide commons content. Well the interesting this about that is that there's bound to be very few, compared to the rest of the web forms on the Internet. Heck, they're not even all for searching. Some are for buying things. Some are polls.
And so, if, as seems likely, most web forms are uninteresting, if we need to enlist an expert to train the system, the expert is going to be spending most of the time looking at uninteresting examples.
This makes it harder, but in an interesting way: if I can find some way to have the system, while it's in training, find the most likely candidate of all the possible candidates, it could solve this problem. And that would be pretty neat.
My previous two posts, last week, talked about my research, but didn't really talk about what I'm researching at the moment.
Okay, so here's what I'm looking at. It's called the deep web, and it refers to the web documents that the search engines don't know about.
Actually, when the search engines find these documents, they really become part of the surface web, in a process sometimes called surfacing. Now I'm sure you're wondering: what kinds of documents can't search engines find, if they're the kind of documents anyone can browse to? The simple answer is: documents that no other pages link to. But a more realistic answer is that it's documents hidden in databases, that you have to do searches on the site to find. They'll generally have URLs, and you can link to them, but unless someone does, they're part of the deep web.
Now this is just a definition, and not particularly interesting in itself. But it turns out (though I haven't counted, myself) that there are more accessible web pages in the deep web than in the surface web. And they're not beyond the reach of automated systems - the systems just have to know the right questions to ask and the right place to ask the question. Here's an example, close to Unlocking IP. Go to AEShareNet and do a search, for anything you like. The results you get (when you navigate to them) are documents that you can only find by searching like this, or if someone else has done this, found the URL, and then linked to it on the web.
So when you consider how many publicly licensed documents may be in the deep web, it becomes an interesting problem from both the law / Unlocking IP perspective and from the computer science, which I'm really happy about. What I'm saying here is that I'm investigating ways of making automated systems to discover deep web commons. And it's not simple.
I wanted to close with two web sites that I think are interesting in the context of deep web commons. First, there's SourceForge, which I'm sure the Planet Linux Australia readers will know (for the rest: it's a repository for open source software). It's interesting, because their advanced search feature really doesn't give many clues about it being a search for open source software.
And then there's the Advanced Google Code Search, which searches for publicly available source code, which generally means free or open source, but sometimes just means available, because Google can't figure out what the licence is. This is also interesting because it's not what you'd normally think of as deep web content. After all Google's just searching for stuff it found on the web, right? Actually, I class this as deep web content because Google is (mostly) looking inside zip files to find the source code, so it's not stuff you can find in regular search.
This search, as compared to SourceForge advanced search, makes it very clear you're searching for things that are likely to be commons content. In fact, I came up with 6 strong pieces of evidence that I can say leads me to believe Google Code Search is commons related.
(As a challenge to my readers, see how many pieces of evidence you can find that the Advanced Google Code Search is a search for commons (just from the search itself), and post a comment).
The reason I haven't been blogging much (apart from laziness, which can never be ruled out) is that The House of Commons has become something of an IP blog. Okay, it sounds obvious, I know. And, as it seems I say at every turn, I have no background in law, and my expertise is in computer science and software engineering. And one of the unfortunate aspects of the blog as a medium is that you don't really know who's reading it. The few technical posts I've done haven't generated much feedback, but then maybe that's my fault for posting so rarely that the tech folks have stopped reading.
So the upshot of this is a renewed effort by me to post more often, even if it means technical stuff that doesn't make sense to all our readers. It's not like I'm short of things to say.
Basically what I'm most interested in is the discovery of online documents that we might consider to be commons. (But remember, I'm not the law guy, so I'm trying not to concern myself with that definition.) I think it's really interesting, technically, because it's so difficult to say (in any automated, deterministic way, without the help of an expert - a law expert in this case).
And my my computer science supervisor, Associate Professor Achim Hoffman, has taught me that computer science research needs to be as broad in application as possible, so as I investigate these things, I'm sparing a thought for their applicability to areas other than commons and even law.
In upcoming posts, I'll talk about the specifics of my research focus, some of the specific problems that make it interesting, possible solutions, and some possible research papers that might come out of it in the medium term. | 2019-04-26T14:44:44Z | http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/labels/research.html |
Do you lead an average lifestyle or are you a professional bodybuilder? Whatever be the case, your body will need DHEA in order to stay strong and healthy. DHEA or Dehydroepiandrosterone is basically an endogenous steroid hormone. It also happens to be one of the most abundant steroids in your body produced by the gonads and adrenal glands. Your brain also produces DHEA to some extent. This vital steroid is also essential for testosterone and estrogen hormones in men and women respectively.
It is good for you to know that your body produces its peak production of DHEA in your mid-20s. However, for a majority of you, this production goes down as you begin to age steadily. Once this starts to happen, your body also produces estrogen or testosterone at a decreased level. As a result of this, you face several health ailments such as infertility problems, depression, low libido, acne, hair loss, and a weaker immune system. Low production of DHEA may also prevent your body from gaining muscle, which can pose a major problem for professional bodybuilders or any one of you interested in proper fitness.
The best way to prevent your health from getting effected by various problems due to low production of DHEA is by having one of the best DHEA supplement for bodybuilding. What is the best DHEA supplement, may be a common question haunting most of you. Well, first of all, a DHEA supplement can easily help your body boost its production levels of the hormone. There are various types of such supplements in the market. Which one is the best, is a tough question to answer.
Even before you consider the idea of having the best DHEA supplement brand for your own well-being, it is very vital for you to remember certain crucial things about the hormone and the supplement.
According to the best DHEA supplement reviews, such products are well-tolerated by most of you. However, it is still a potent hormone and it is best to be treated as one. Thus, it is always advisable to seek proper guidance from your doctor before you decide to start having such a supplement.
There are most of you who often get concerned about the actual sources of synthetic hormones used in supplements. It is good to know that such sources include soy or yam, which are not at all dangerous for your health.
As discussed above, DHEA can easily boost the testosterone levels in your body. Thus, if you are a professional athlete, you should know whether DHEA is included in the list of banned supplements for your sport.
Even the best DHEA supplement on the market may have certain side effects. These side effects may happen due to an increase in the size of your daily dosages. Thus, be aware when you feel even the slightest symptoms in your body that are unpleasant.
The Zhou Nutrition’s DHEA is mainly recommended for users due to the strict tests it has to go through. This is solely to confirm that their products contain proper quality, composition, strength, and identity of ingredients.
The EBYSY DHEA is made entirely in the USA and in a FDA and GMP registered facility. Every batch goes through a lab test to authenticate the safety, purity, and effectiveness of every pill.
BulkSupplements Pure DHEA Powder, which comes with a pure and clean formula. The BulkSupplements Pure DHEA Powder supplement can be mixed with your protein shake very easily.
DHEA supplement made by a reputed and reliable brand, then the Swanson Ultra DHEA will be a great choice for you. Swanson has been one of the most reputed names in the world of health and nutrition industry for many years.
Pure Encapsulations ensure that their product remains genuine, consistent, and safe for the users. Harmful and allergic ingredients are not found in this DHEA supplement.
Sheer Health DHEA Extra Strength is clinically dosed. This means that the makers of this supplements wants to ensure that you get positive and long-lasting results from this product.
The formula used in making Natrol DHEA is well-reviewed and best suited to help your body generate estrogen and testosterone normally.
The formula used in Havasu Nutrition Extra Strength DHEA helps to boost your energy levels and also enhance weight loss by balancing the hormones in your body.
Jarrow Formulas 7-Keto DHEA is made in such a way that it does not give rise to any of the typical side effects of DHEA. 7-keto is basically a metabolite of DHEA and it occurs naturally.
MRM Micronized DHEA supplement is for your bodybuilding goals. It comes with an affordable price tag which will not burn a hole in your pocket.
With growing age, the natural ability of your body to produce DHEA diminishes. This situation can get worse if you suffer from fatigue or stress. During such times, if you decide to have a child, then it may be difficult for you to fulfil your wishes. Thus, the idea of having the best DHEA supplement for fertility will be a good idea. The Zhou Nutrition’s DHEA will be a great option for you.
The Zhou Nutrition’s DHEA is mainly recommended for users due to the strict tests it has to go through. The ingredients used in this supplement have to go through several strict selection processes, procedures, and documentations. This is solely to confirm that their products contain proper quality, composition, strength, and identity of ingredients.
Although the size of their capsules is pretty large, these are quite simple to swallow. The dosage of the pills is also strong enough for an adult. Thus, a single pill a day is enough.
The Zhou Nutrition’s DHEA supplement is very simple to swallow.
This product has to go through several strict quality tests.
This supplement may easily cause water weight gain in some of you.
It is not suitable for vegans.
One of the facts stated by the manufacturer of the EBYSY DHEA supplement is that they will never compromise on safety, efficiency, and quality of their products. This is something users will always want from the makers of various health products. This is probably why people prefer to have thus DHEA supplement. The manufacturers also work with several medical partners to come up with proprietary formulation for their supplements. Thus, whether you wish to have the best DHEA supplement for men or the best DHEA supplement for women, the EBYSY DHEA will be a common choice for many.
The sources of the ingredients used in the making of the EBYSY DHEA are accountable and highly-reputed. The formula of this supplement is also very pure and free from any type of artificial ingredients, preservatives, GMOs, and chemicals. This product is absolutely vegan, which means that you can boost the natural production of the hormone in your body without compromising on your ethical diet.
The EBYSY DHEA supplement is absolutely vegan.
It is a GMO-free product.
The supplement is made entirely in the USA.
This supplement cannot be added to any protein shakes.
Have you been trying to gain lean and strong muscles for a long time without much of a success? Are you also having one of the best protein shakes every day? Probably there is a shortage of DHEA in your body due to which your body is unable to grown lean muscle mass. In such matters, you should try the best DHEA supplement as per your needs. You may opt for the BulkSupplements Pure DHEA Powder, which comes with a pure and clean formula.
The best way to take DHEA supplement is either by swallowing it with water or mixing it with your protein shake. The BulkSupplements Pure DHEA Powder supplement can be mixed with your protein shake very easily. However, you may also have it under your tongue on days when you do not feel like having your shake. Although this may make the supplement taste a bit bitter, it is the best way to have a DHEA supplement.
This product is available in a conveniently designed zip pouch that can be carried with you wherever you go. You may also store the pouch at a convenient location. Thus, no need to worry about spilling the supplement accidentally.
The BulkSupplements Pure DHEA Powder does not contain any fillers.
It goes through lab tests in the USA.
You may either take it with protein shakes or under your tongue.
This supplement is made in China.-It is rather expensive.
Measuring the dosages may prove to be difficult.
The importance of various hormones in your body and the proper nutrition to improve your overall health is comparatively new in the medical field. As a result of this, there are lots of health supplements on the market. However, some of them may not be beneficial for your health at all. If you wish to buy a DHEA supplement made by a reputed and reliable brand, then the Swanson Ultra DHEA will be a great choice for you.
Swanson has been one of the most reputed names in the world of health and nutrition industry for many years. This will help you understand the authenticity of their products and the surety of getting great results from having their DHEA supplements. The 100mg dosage of their supplement may prove to be slightly strong for some of you. However, if our body can tolerate DHEA then it should not be a major problem. You just have to take a single dosage each day, which is still bearable.
The price of the Swanson Ultra DHEA supplement is well within your budget.
The manufacturer is one of the most respected companies.
They also follow GMP guidelines while making their supplements.
The recommended dosage may not be healthy enough for all users.
It may need time to show you proper results.
If you are a professional athlete or a bodybuilder, you will consume nothing but the pure and safe foods and supplements. This is also true when you have DHEA supplements. Any ordinary supplement filled with fillers will not appeal to you. Thus, the Pure Encapsulations will be a better option. The makers of this supplement ensure that their product remains genuine, consistent, and safe for the users.
Even if you are sensitive to most of the health supplements on the market, you can easily tolerate this DHEA supplement. It is designed in a way to be hypoallergenic and suitable for users who are sensitive to other supplements. Harmful and allergic ingredients such as eggs, peanuts, GMOs, magnesium, wheat, artificial colors and sweeteners, and any other type of fillers are not found in this DHEA supplement. Although this is one of the best DHEA supplements at stores, there are users who have said that it causes heartburn for some of them.
The Pure Encapsulations is made in the USA.
It is absolutely free from GMOs.
It may cause heartburn for some users.
Insufficient DHEA may cause several types of health issues in both men and women. If you are looking for a suitable and affordable DHEA supplement that is suitable for both men and women, then the Sheer Health DHEA Extra Strength will be a great option for you. Whether you are suffering from wrinkles or weight gain or anxiety or depression or lack of fertility or low libido or even fatigue, this supplement has the formula to help you overcome such problems with ease.
Unlike several other DHEA supplement available on the market, the Sheer Health DHEA Extra Strength is clinically dosed. This means that the makers of this supplements wants to ensure that you get positive and long-lasting results from this product. The best part about this product is that it comes with a money-back guarantee. If you are not satisfied with the results or find new health issues popping up due to the supplement, you may easily apply for your money back.
Sheer Health DHEA Extra Strength supplement does not come with any types of fillers, binders, soy, dairy, preservatives, gluten, egg, peanut or GMOs that may easily cause allergies in most of you. It is also made entirely in the USA and in a GMP certified facility.
The price of the Sheer Health DHEA Extra Strength is pretty low.
It is one of those health supplements that is clinically dosed.
It comes with a money-back guarantee.
Some users have complained of acne problems after having this supplement.
It may even worsen depression problems.
For a vegetarian, finding a DHEA supplement that is 100% vegetarian is very difficult. This is simply because such supplements are usually packaged in capsules made of either bovine gelatin or pork, which are anything but vegetarian. However, with the Natrol DHEA supplement it is not the same. This product is made entirely for the vegetarians. It has nothing in it that will disrupt your normal diet.
The formula used in making this supplement is well-reviewed and best suited to help your body generate estrogen and testosterone normally. As a result of this, your mood will be much better and you will feel physically very strong indeed. However, it is important for you to note that these capsules should be consumed with a proper meal. In a way this will help you remember to have your supplement every day if you make it a habit of having it with the same meal of the day. Some of the ingredients found in the supplement include DHEA, calcium, cellulose, silica, magnesium stearate, acacia gum, stearic acid, and maltodextrin, to name a few.
The Natrol DHEA supplement is 100% vegetarian.
You have to take this supplement with a meal.
It may sometimes cause mental fogginess.
Do you feel tired and irritated most of the times? Have you tried all types of health supplements to boost your energy levels without much success? You may try the Havasu Nutrition Extra Strength DHEA. The formula used in this product helps to boost your energy levels and also enhance weight loss by balancing the hormones in your body.
There are no preservatives, sugars or chemicals in this supplement. It also undergoes a strict third-party testing process to make sure that each bottle is genuine and full of benefits. You also get a 100% 60-days money-back guarantee with this supplement. If you are not happy with the results or benefits, you may certainly ask for your money returned. It is made entirely in the United States of America and in a FDA registered facility.
The Havasu Nutrition Extra Strength DHEA supplement can help enhance the natural glow of your skin and make you more relaxed.
It can easily boost your physical energy levels and improve your mood.
May cause hair fall for some users.
May cause allergic reactions for some users.
Have you tried several other DHEA supplements in the past and have suffered from various typical side effects of the hormone? Are you afraid to try a new supplement altogether? Well, you may definitely try the Jarrow Formulas 7-Keto DHEA. It is made in such a way that it does not give rise to any of the typical side effects of DHEA. 7-keto is basically a metabolite of DHEA and it occurs naturally. This is why it offers most of the hormone-producing benefits of DHEA without the side effects.
The brand also happens to be a trusted brand and with no side effects that are associated with DHEA supplements, you can safely have it and enjoy good health. Usually a single pill is enough to help you get the benefits you want. However, if you wish to go overboard and opt for the maximum dose of the supplement, the package will finish within 15 days. This may increase your investment on the supplement as you will have to buy more than once a month.
Considered to be the best 7-keto DHEA supplement on the market, it does have the typical DHEA side effects.
It happens to be one of the trusted brands at the stores.
You may just need a single capsule a day.
If you opt for the maximum dosage, the package will last for just 15 days.
It has a tendency of increasing your body weight.
Bodybuilding requires several nutrients and perfect dedication. Including all the necessary nutrients in your daily diet will not be possible. Thus, choosing the right DHEA supplement becomes very crucial for you. You may consider the MRM Micronized DHEA supplement for your bodybuilding goals. It comes with an affordable price tag which will not burn a hole in your pocket.
This DHEA supplement is also HPCL tested, which ensures that it comes with the right level of potency and purity for you. The supplement is also micronized, so that it can easily get absorbed in your bloodstream. In other words, you will get more benefits at a small dose. The MRM Micronized DHEA is ideally suited for all of you who suffer from some sort of allergies. This supplement is free from all types of common allergens. It does not contain artificial colors and is a perfect choice for vegetarians. Finding such a DHEA supplement is quite tough since these are usually made from gelatin.
The MRM Micronized DHEA supplement is perfectly suited for vegetarians.
It is also a HPLC tested supplement.
This DHEA supplement does not come with any common allergens.
There have been complaints about the safety seal being broken upon arrival.
This supplement has a tendency of throwing off your menstrual cycle.
Whether you are a professional bodybuilder, athlete or someone who is just interested in leading a healthy lifestyle, it is essential that you have proper muscle mass in your body. With the right amount of muscles in your body you will naturally feel young and energetic. It is true that protein shakes are there to boost your muscles. However, if there is a shortage of DHEA hormone in your body, no matter how much proteins you have, your muscles will not increase properly. Thus having a good quality and reliable DHEA supplement is also essential.
DHEA supplements are also essential for those of you who suffer from frequent mood swings, hormonal misbalances, depression, and fatigue. There are quite a few of such supplements on the market. Which one to choose and which ones to avoid is a tough ask. The list above should help you to some extent in choosing the right one as per your needs, budget, and dietary requirements.
It is essential for you to remember that starting a DHEA supplement for the first time in your life may give rise to several medical implications. It is highly advisable that you consult with a doctor before you start such a supplement. This is especially important if you are pregnant, nursing or on a regular medication. Since it is a matter of your own health, being careful is very important rather than being careless. However, once your body starts to accept the DHEA supplements, you will be amazed at the various benefits you will enjoy. These will include a boost in your energy levels and a proper gain in your muscle mass with regular exercises. | 2019-04-18T23:26:17Z | https://www.curedisease.com/best-dhea-supplement/ |
top. A lavishly sized bedroom includes a 7’x7’ walk-in closet with front-loading washer & dryer and private deck. Large, private deeded basement storage as well. Just a short walk to Airport Station on the Blue Line, convenient to restaurants, shops, parks & all that East Boston has to offer!
Jamie has lived and worked in the Boston area for over 18 years. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Advertising from Boston University and a Master of Science in Nutrition from Simmons College. Her experience consists of 15+ years..
Live above it all! This gorgeous 2 bedroom, 2 bath penthouse offers panoramic views from atop red hot Eagle Hill! The 2018 renovation created a sunlit open concept floor plan with skyline views complete with full access to your private rooftop, 3 private staircases, a gorgeous kitchen featuring Fantasy Silver Marble countertops, beveled subway tile backsplash, white shaker cabinetry, stainless steel appliances with slide-in gas range & LED recessed lighting. An extra large master bedroom features a walk-in closet with custom closet system & master bath with a gorgeous Carrara marble tiled glass shower complimented by a marble vanity! The second bath is also timeless & rich with Carrara marble shower & vanity. Check the rest of the boxes with a front load washer/dryer, Central Heat & A/C via NEST, pet-friendly fenced yard plus private basement storage! Great location close to the Blue Line, parks, many great restaurants, shops, groceries, water taxis & all that East Boston has to offer!
65 MERIDIAN offers six exclusive condominiums in a newly constructed, five story brick building overlooking Maverick Square, restaurants, cafes and shops. This premier location provides easy access to miles of waterfront amenities, green space and a five-minute commute to downtown. Thoughtful design incorporates elevator access, private decks and oversized South West facing windows with ten-foot ceilings to create beautiful sunlit interiors within each home. Floor plans include spacious one-bedroom flats and duplex three-bedroom penthouses with stellar skyline views from private terraces. Hand-brushed oak flooring, quartz countertops, marble backsplash, marble herringbone and porcelain chevron tiled baths, recessed lighting and Bosch appliances convey urban appeal through timeless materials coupled with contemporary design. 65 MERIDIAN is sophisticated, urban living at its finest. Visit 65meridian.com.
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Elegant 2 bedroom, 2 bath w/large private deck located in a handsome triple decker atop Eagle Hill, which has been thoughtfully renovated to highlight timeless architectural detail while incorporating modern conveniences! Windows have been restored to their original size & color creating dramatic window lines from the interior & exterior. High ceilings embellished w/crown moulding compliment solid oak flooring while Central heat/cool via NEST, in-unit laundry, custom closet systems, recessed lighting, stainless steel appliances, private basement storage & pet-friendly fenced yard check the rest of the boxes. Kitchen & baths are rich w/ quartz countertops, herringbone backsplash, marble mosaic flooring & hand-finished French grey vanities. Spacious master bedroom features a sunlit bay window, large master bath & 5’x8’ walk-in closet. This property is not for buyers who are looking for cookie cutter condos, bright/trendy colors or vinyl siding! Located near Trenton & Brooks for easy access to the Blue Line.
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Live at the top of the hill! 2018 renovation combines original detail with timeless modern finishes. This 2 bedroom, 1 bath features soaring 9’6″ ceilings, 2 bay windows, LED recessed lighting, solid hardwood flooring plus a private deck off open concept floor plan, creating an inviting space to entertain. Bonus room for dining or home office! A bright kitchen boasts Fantasy Silver Marble countertops, beveled subway tile backsplash, recessed panel wood cabinetry, stainless steel appliances w/ slide-in gas range. Large master bedroom includes a custom closet system w/additional overhead storage. Upgrade to a modern bath with a Carrara marble vanity, linen closet & front load washer/dryer. Additional amenities include Central Heat & A/C, NEST thermostat, fenced yard & private basement storage. Great location close to the Blue Line, parks, many great restaurants & shops, groceries, water taxis & all that East Boston has to offer!
New construction 2 bedroom, 2 bath on a prime Jeffries Point block! Modern design pairs clean lines with walnut & marble finishes creating a unique home just 1.5 blocks from Maverick Square that urbane city dwellers are sure to adore. This spacious floor-through layout includes two generous 18’ bedrooms w/walk-in closets, study/home office, 2 full baths, open concept living room, dining, kitchen w/large island. LED recessed lighting, 9’10” ceilings and 5″ matte walnut flooring run throughout the condo. High-end finishes include Calacatta quartz countertops, 3” marble hexagon backsplash, Brizo & Grohe fixtures, Bosch appliances including slide-in gas range w/vented range hood. Master bath features walnut floating double vanity, Carrara marble herringbone flooring, marble & glass walk-in shower. Rental parking available nearby! Enjoy a private balcony plus common fenced yard for BBQs. Less than a 5 minute stroll to Maverick Station, restaurants, bars, groceries, water taxis, beautiful parks, Harborwalk, kayak launch, sailing center, yacht club, East Boston Shipyard, marina and all that East Boston has to offer!
This beautifully renovated 2 bedroom, 2 bath is set high atop Eagle Hill offering stunning skyline views and sunsets from a private deck! 9’5” ceilings, rear bay window in an open concept living room & kitchen w/walk-out deck creates the perfect space to entertain! Bonus room off living room for dining or home office! A bright kitchen boasts Fantasy Silver Marble countertops, beveled subway tile backsplash & stainless steel appliances including slide-in gas range. Large master bedroom features custom closet system with overhead storage, sunlit classic bay window & gorgeous marble tiled master bath with glass shower. Common bath w/Carrara marble vanity top, linen shelving & front load washer/dryer. Check the rest of the boxes with solid oak flooring, LED recessed lighting, Central Heat & A/C, NEST thermostat, fenced yard & private basement storage! Great location close to the Blue Line, parks, many of East Boston’s great restaurants & shops!
Sunlit and spacious floor-through three bedroom, one bath in Historic Eagle Hill! This freestanding triple decker boasts original fir hardwood flooring, crown moulding, in-unit laundry, private deck and private basement storage. New and spacious eat-in kitchen features white shaker cabinets, quartz countertops, beveled subway tile backsplash, stainless appliance package including gas range, 27″ front load washer and vented dryer. Large master bedroom with South facing classic bay window. Pet friendly HOA with grassy, enclosed yard. Ideal setup for BBQs and gatherings with yard access from the street and walk-out basement. Less than a half mile walk to Eagle Hill and Day Square restaurants, shops, the East Boston Greenway, Bremen Street Park and Wood Island Station on the Blue Line! Welcome to Eastie!
Sunlit three bedroom penthouse with private deck and roof rights overlooking Historic Eagle Hill! This floor through condo includes a private staircase with original mahogany banister & mudroom, fir hardwood flooring, crown moulding, in-unit laundry and private basement storage. New and spacious eat-in kitchen features white shaker cabinets, quartz countertops, beveled subway tile backsplash, stainless appliance package including gas range, 27″ front load washer and vented dryer. Large master bedroom with South facing classic bay window. Pet friendly HOA with grassy, enclosed yard. Ideal setup for BBQs and gatherings with yard access from the street and walk-out basement. Less than a half mile walk to Eagle Hill and Day Square restaurants, shops, the East Boston Greenway, Bremen Street Park and Wood Island Station on the Blue Line! Welcome to Eastie!
Newly renovated, 3 bedroom +study, 2 bath featuring 2 private decks plus a private roof deck with panoramic harbor & skyline views! This unique home encompasses the top two levels of a classic Jeffries Point row house on the first block of Webster Street. The first level includes a new kitchen featuring Bosch appliances, slide-in gas range, Pelican White quartz, recess lighting, tile backsplash, breakfast bar, open concept living and dining, full bath w/tub, large bedroom with walk-in closet or study. Exaggerated window trim highlights oversized windows throughout. Second level contains master bedroom w/walk-in closet & full bath, second large bedroom with walkout deck, charming study with access to roof deck. New central heating & cooling system, Bluetooth speaker bath fan, private basement storage in an incredible location just steps to Maverick Sq, restaurants, parks, coffee shops, sailing and all that East Boston has to offer!
Renovated floor-through condo with large private deck in a classic Jeffries Point row house on the first block of Webster Street. This open floor plan offers a great layout for entertaining. The bright new kitchen with Bosch appliances features a slide-in gas range, French door refrigerator, Pelican White quartz & recessed lighting. A counter height breakfast bar in the dining area adds additional seating options year round while warmer months can be spent dining on your deck or BBQing in your enclosed yard. Exaggerated window trim highlights oversized windows throughout. A home with this much character wouldn’t be complete without a penny & subway tiled bath. The spacious bedroom includes a closet wall w/custom shelving, lofted storage & Electrolux washer/dryer. New central heating & cooling system, Bluetooth speaker bath fan, private basement storage in an incredible location just steps to Maverick Sq, restaurants, parks, coffee shops, sailing and all that East Boston has to offer!
Large, bi-level, 3bedroom condo with 2 off street parking spaces, views of the Tobin, lush green space and roof deck! Note the original Eagle Hill charm that has been maintained through out the property. Extra large kitchen features Ben Moore Sea Salt maple cabinets, Fantasy Brown Marble, subway tile backsplash, recessed lighting, wood flooring, stainless appliance package with gas range & laundry room. Large master bedroom with bow windows, hardwood flooring & walk-in closet. Full bath includes a Duravit soaking tub, subway title surround & marble vanity top. Fenced yard is great for cookouts, gardening or just lounging. Bonus accessory/garden shed & private basement storage. Convenient to the Blue Line, local restaurant, shops, parks, zip car, water taxies, miles of harbor walk and many more of East Boston’s amenities! There is a Hubway Station located on Condor Street and multiple developments in pipeline. Take advantage of this great opportunity to invest the neighborhood!
counter tops with full backsplash, white shaker cabinets, Frigidaire Gallery and Samsung stainless appliances. The bath features a crisp, white subway tiled tub, pedestal sink and linen closet. Enjoy summer evenings on the oversized private deck, weekends grilling on the private brick patio and sizable, enclosed common yard! Brand new, full size Maytag washer & dryer plus deeded storage in the basement. A short walk to Airport Station, restaurants, shops, parks & all that East Bostonl has to offer!
Exceptional 3 bed, 2 bath on highly sought after Lamson Street. 2017 renovation highlighting a unique floor plan, which allows for floor-through sunlight, efficient use of space & 2 private decks.
East Boston has to offer!
Exceptional 3 bed, 2 bath located on highly sought after Lamson Street. 2017 complete renovation highlighting a unique floor plan, which allows for floor-through sunlight & efficient use of space.
Quartz countertop create a timeless kitchen enhanced by charcoal glass subway backsplash, GE stainless appliance package with slide-in gas range, Electrolux washer/dryer & walk out to enormous 10’x32’ private deck! The master is fully equipped with a 2 person, walk-in shower, quartz vanity top & built-in closet system. Additional features include Central A/C & heat, Navien tankless water heater & professional property management! Walk to Brophy & Piers Park, Bremen St Dog Park, yoga, Maverick Station, Logan Airport, restaurants, water taxis, Hubway and all that East Boston has to offer!
all that East Boston has to offer!
washer/dryer! Enjoy the warmer months on your private cobblestone patio w/garden. Deeded storage in basement. A short walk to Airport Station, convenient to restaurants, shops, parks & all that East Boston has to offer!
& many great existing and upcoming restaurants! Paris Street Pool & the newly renovated Paris Street Gym are located on the same block! Walk Score rates this location 95, a “Walker’s Paradise”.
First showings at open houses 11am-1pm Saturday, Nov 12th & Sunday, Nov 13th.
2016 FULL RENOVATION! Sophisticated & efficient one bedroom, one bath in Jeffries Point! This fourth level penthouse offers skyline views, deeded roof rights, an open concept kitchen, dining, living area featuring gorgeous white oak flooring, Fantasy Brown marble countertops, marble subway backsplash, white shaker cabinets, GE stainless appliance package featuring a slide-in gas range & french door EnergyStar refrigerator, recessed lighting & walk out to private deck with views to the East! West facing bedroom lined with three large windows, recessed lighting, white oak flooring & walk in closet, full bath with marble vanity top, deep soaking tub, subway tiled shower and Electrolux washer & dryer. Extremely efficient, multi zone Mitsubishi split heating & cooling system. Short walk to Maverick Station, restaurants, coffee shops, Piers Park, Maverick Sq, CrossFit, water taxis, and all that East Boston has to offer!
2016 COMPLETE RENOVATION! Floor through one bedroom, one bath in Jeffries Point! Open concept kitchen, dining, living area features beautiful white oak flooring, Fantasy Brown marble countertops, marble subway backsplash, white shaker cabinets lined with crown molding, a GE stainless appliance package featuring a slide-in gas range & french door EnergyStar refrigerator, recessed lighting & walk out to private deck! Sunny bedroom with recessed lighting, white oak flooring & walk in closet, full bath with marble vanity top, deep soaking tub, subway tiled shower and Electrolux washer & dryer. Extremely efficient, multi zone Mitsubishi split heating & cooling system. Short walk to Maverick Station, restaurants, coffee shops, Piers Park, Maverick Sq, CrossFit, water taxis, and all that East Boston has to offer!
2016 COMPLETE RENOVATION! Brick, bi-level, 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath in Jeffries Point! The reverse floor plan creates a bright open concept kitchen, dining, living area on the upper level featuring beautiful white oak flooring, Fantasy Brown marble countertops, marble subway backsplash, white shaker cabinets, a GE stainless appliance package featuring a slide-in gas range & french door EnergyStar refrigerator, recessed lighting, walk out to private deck, a half bath & front facing bedroom. The lower level offers two spacious bedrooms with oversized closets, white oak flooring, recessed lighting, a full bath with marble vanity top, deep soaking tub, subway tiled shower & flooring, laundry closet & walk out to your private, enclosed patio/yard! Central heat & A/C. Short walk to Maverick Station, restaurants, coffee shops, Piers Park, Maverick Sq, CrossFit, water taxis, and all that East Boston has to offer!
Sunny top floor two bedroom with deeded roof rights! Window-lined open concept dining room & living room create an ideal space for gathering. Spacious kitchen with large laundry closet, stainless appliances, tile backsplash, recessed lighting & abundant cabinet space. Generous master bedroom features an oversized walk-in closet/dressing room, sunshine filled bowed windows, French doors, & hardwood. Second bedroom has hardwood & a large folding door closet with built-ins. An enclosed common patio with lush greenery, a waterfall fishpond, grilling area and ample space for dining tables enhances city living in warm weather months. Construct a roof deck & enjoy city views! Short walk to Orient Heights T Station, restaurants, Constitution Beach. East Boston Residents pay 40¢ tunnel tolls. Take advantage of this opportunity to buy in Orient Heights while there are multiple developments in the pipeline!
Presenting this sunny 1 bed 1 bath with a view of the vibrant garden patio featuring a waterfall fishpond! This first floor walk-out offers an open concept layout for easy entertaining whether you’re gathered around the dining room table or grilling near the patio table. Custom features include marble flooring, lighting fixtures, built-in shelving, stainless backsplash and a spacious bathroom with a 2 person Jacuzzi tub, flat screen TV & speakers. Laundry hook-ups are located in the bonus room/storage area. Additional highlights: gas stove, dishwasher, common fenced in yard, storage shed w/ heat & electric, short walk to Orient Heights T Station, restaurants & Constitution Beach. East Boston Residents pay 40¢ tunnel tolls. Taxes about $144.05 with residential tax exemption in place. Take advantage of this opportunity to buy in Orient Heights while there are multiple developments in the pipeline!
Stunning luxury smart condo steps to the Blue is the perfect combination of convenience & contemporary design! This bi-level penthouse features 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, roof-deck, skyline view & laundry! Enjoy the floor-through entertainment level: open concept kitchen w/brilliant white quartz countertops, counter seating & Frigidaire stainless appliance package w/gas range, a sun-filled living room, crown moulding, recessed lighting, gleaming hardwood, home office/dining room, full tiled bath w/tub, laundry closet, & walk-out to private roof deck. Bedrooms are located on 2nd level along with a full bath featuring glass stall shower w/oversized subway tile, herringbone marble flooring & floating vanity. Smart home via iPad Air, Sonos audio system & Nest integrated heat & Central A/C. Less than 5 min walk to the T, restaurants/bars. Easy access to I-90 and I-93. East Boston Residents pay 40¢ at tunnel tolls. Off-street parking conveniently available next door for snow emergencies & guests!
This stunning luxury smart condo steps to the Blue line is the perfect combination of convenience and contemporary design! The open concept kitchen, dining, living area offers ideal space for entertaining or working from home. A bright & modern kitchen with brilliant white quartz countertops and Frigidaire stainless appliance package with gas range flows seamlessly into the living/dining room via sleek hardwood, recessed lighting and crown moulding. Both bedrooms have spacious closets and are just a few steps from the laundry closet. The gorgeous modern bath contains a glass stall shower with oversized subway tile, herringbone marble tile flooring & floating vanity. Smart home via iPad Air, Sonos audio system & Nest integrated heat & Central A/C. Less than a 5 minute walk to the T, restaurants & bars. Easy access to I-90 and I-93. East Boston Residents pay 40¢ at tunnel tolls. Off-street parking is conveniently available next door for snow emergencies or guests!
Floor-through sunlit one bedroom with gleaming hardwood flooring. Spacious open concept dining room and living room are ideal for entertaining. The adjoining kitchen with laundry offers a comfortable breakfast bar, newer stainless appliances, tile backsplash, gas cooking, recessed lighting, wood cabinetry plus a large closet and space for a desk or café table. The bedroom is complete with classic, sun-filled bowed windows, a ceiling fan and hardwood while the bath features tiled glass stall shower and flooring. An enclosed common patio with lush greenery, a waterfall fishpond, grilling area and ample space for dining enhances city living in warm weather months. A short walk to Orient Heights T Station, restaurants & Constitution Beach. East Boston Residents pay 40¢ tunnel tolls. Take advantage of this opportunity to buy in Orient Heights while there are multiple developments in the pipeline! | 2019-04-22T17:08:16Z | http://bostonhre.com/property/142-lexington-street-unit-3-east-boston-ma-02128/ |
The first Board of Regents of the University of California was organized in accordance with provisions of the Organic Act that created the University in 1868. There were 22 members. Six were ex officio: the governor (Henry H. Haight), the lieutenant governor, the speaker of the assembly, the state superintendent of public instruction, the president of the State Agricultural Society, and the president of the Mechanics Institute of the city and county of San Francisco. Eight members were appointed by the governor. The law provided that these first appointments could be made by the governor's "sole act" in the event the state senate had adjourned--as it did--before the appointments were made. Thereafter, until 1918, the governor's appointments of Regents would require the advice and consent of the senate. The ex officio and "appointed" Regents were required to elect eight "honorary" members to the Board. These Regents enjoyed full regental powers and privileges; the term "honorary" simply indicated the manner of their selection.
The terms of the first appointed and honorary Regents ranged from two to 16 years, as determined by lot. This established a pattern whereby two Regents, one in each category, completed their terms each even-numbered year. Thereafter, all but ex officio Regents served 16-year terms (unless appointed to serve out unexpired terms vacated by a death or resignation).
Among the first Regents were John W. Dwinelle, who introduced before the state assembly the act creating the University; Horatio Stebbins, pastor of the Unitarian Church of San Francisco and president of the Board of Trustees of the College of California; Frederick F. Low, former governor and former president of the board of directors of the Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College; Andrew J. Moulder, former state superintendent of public instruction; Edward Tompkins, who would endow one of the University's first chairs of learning; and 32-year-old Andrew S. Hallidie, president of the Mechanics Institute and inventor of the cable car. Hallidie died in office in 1900 after 32 active years as a Regent (25 years as chairman of the powerful Finance Committee). Stebbins served as a Regent for 26 years. Moulder resigned soon after the first Board was organized to become secretary of the Regents.
In 1872, the legislature enacted California's first Political Code, incorporating therein many provisions of the Organic Act. In the process, some changes were made that affected the composition of the Board. The "honorary" regency was abolished and all 16 of the non-ex officio Regents were made appointees of the governor with the advice and consent of the senate. The code was amended in 1873 to make the President of the University an ex officio Regent. Daniel Coit Gilman was the first President to serve in this capacity, effective July 1, 1874.
California's second constitution (1879) provided that the University's "organization and government shall be perpetually continued in the form and character prescribed by the Organic Act creating the same, passed March twenty-third, eighteen hundred and sixty-eight (and the several Acts amendatory thereof), subject only to such legislative control as may be necessary to insure compliance with the terms of its endowments, and the proper investment and security of its funds." One effect of this provision, which was warmly debated in the Constitutional Convention of 1878, was to "freeze" the composition of the Board of Regents. Thus, when an attempt was made through legislation in 1909 to add an alumni representative as an ex officio member of the Board, the representative was not seated on grounds that the legislature had no authority to make the addition. A more far-reaching effect of the 1879 constitution was to recognize the University as a constitutional entity and to confer upon the Board of Regents status as a constitutional corporation.
This new status is even more explicit in the present constitutional provision which was approved in 1918. Article IX, Section 9 of the constitution now makes no reference to earlier legislation. It begins: "The University of California shall constitute a public trust, to be administered by the existing corporation known as 'The Regents of the University of California,' with full powers of organization and government, subject only to such legislative control as may be necessary to insure compliance with the terms of the endowments of the University and the security of its funds." The 1918 provision also added two ex officio Regents to the Board: the President of the University (whose status as a Regent was not explicit in the Constitution of 1879), and the "president of the alumni association of the university."
The first alumni president to serve as a Regent was Wiggington E. Creed, president of the California Alumni Association (Berkeley). In 1948, Paul R. Hutchinson, president of the UCLA Alumni Association, became the first alumnus of a campus other than Berkeley to serve as a Regent. Since that date, the alumni representative on the Board has been the president of the UCLA Alumni Association in even years, and the president of the California Alumni Association in odd years. This system is provided for in the by-laws of an organization called "The Alumni Association of the University of California," formed in 1947 to represent the two largest University alumni associations.
Another change brought about by the 1918 amendment to the constitution eliminated the requirement that appointed Regents be confirmed by the state senate.
The system devised in 1868 to assure the staggering of Regents' terms of office worked out so that two Regents always completed their terms in even-numbered years. These years were often election years. They were also years during which the senate was not in regular session (the only time it could confirm governor's appointments). This situation caused no difficulties in the confirmation of Regents' appointments until 1883. In that year, however, the Democratic party assumed control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature. Even before the senate convened, a majority party caucus was held and announced that appointments made in previous months by the defeated Republican Governor George C. Perkins would not be confirmed. The appointments of N. Greene Curtis, Isaias W. Hellmann, and Leland Stanford as Regents of the University were thus challenged. As the ensuing debate on the matter grew more heated, Curtis and Hellman resigned from the Board. The new Democratic governor, George Stoneman, withdrew the nomination of Stanford from consideration. The senate subsequently confirmed Stoneman's reappointment of Hellman, but the services of Curtis and Stanford as Regents were lost to the University. After changes of party control in Sacramento between 1883 and 1918, other Regents lost their positions when newly elected governors would withdraw unconfirmed nominations made by their predecessors from senate consideration. After 1918, this was no longer possible and every appointed Regent was assured of his position until he completed his term, resigned, or died.
The constitutional provision of 1918 gave the Regents "full powers of organization and government..." of the University. More specifically, it vested with them "the legal title and the management and disposition of the property of the University and of property held for its benefit" and provided that they "shall have the power to take and hold, either by purchase or by donation, or gift, testamentary or otherwise, or in any other manner, without restriction, all real and personal property for the benefit of the University or incidentally to its conduct." The Regents also have "all the powers necessary or convenient for the effective administration of its trust, including the power to sue and to be sued, to use a seal, and to delegate to its committees or to the faculty of the University, or to others, such authority or functions as it may deem wise. . . ."
When the Regents first organized in 1868, they created ten standing committees on: finance and accounts; grounds and buildings; library; building; supplies; instruction; agricultural college lands; endowments; degrees; and annual reports. In addition, there was a special Advisory Committee with "standing committee" status. Its members were elected by the Board and it advised the President of the University. It was superseded by a Committee on Instruction and Visitation in 1880 and absorbed in a Committee on Internal Administration created in January, 1890. The latter committee was created "to consider and report on questions affecting appointments, promotions, transfers, and the compensation of professors and others on the educational staff of the University, and to confer with the President of the University on matters affecting the government of the various departments of the University." This committee was abolished on September 21, 1897 by a vote which found President Kellogg voting with the minority.
The roster of standing committees changed from time to as the University grew and became involved in new endeavors. Committees were sometimes established to deliberate on matters related to new installations or programs, such as the Lick Observatory or the United States Agricultural Experiment Stations. At other times, committees were created with responsibilities for the University's work and interests in certain geographic areas of the state. During the 1950's, committees of the Regents were concerned with such broad assignments as research, faculty-staff relations, University relations, and student affairs. Now (1965) there are six standing committees. The Finance Committee, the Grounds and Buildings Committee, and the, Agriculture Committee all have very early origins (though their responsibilities have been redefined from time to time). The Audit and Investment Committees are off-shoots of the original Finance Committee. The sixth committee, on educational policy, was first included on the roster of standing committees in 1929-30, did not exist between 1944 and 1953, but was reestablished in the latter year.
The first officers of the corporation designated as The Regents of the University of California were a president, treasurer, and secretary. The president was and continues to be the governor of the state. When he is present, he presides over the meetings of the Board. For many years, his signature was required on all legal documents executed on behalf of the Regents. This procedure became so burdensome for the governor of a growing state that all of his paperwork concerning the University is now delegated to other officers of the Board and to administrative officers of the University.
For the first 52 years, the Board selected one of its number to preside at meetings. By tradition, this honor usually fell to the senior member. In 1920, the by-laws of the Regents were amended to make the chairman a permanent officer of the Board and Guy C. Earl was the first Regent elected to the new position. Under the provision of the amended by-laws, the chairman, elected for a one-year term, is empowered to act in all matters with authority equivalent to that of the president of the Regents. The first elected chairmen were residents of the Bay Area. In 1948, Regent Edward Dickson, who had led efforts to establish the Los Angeles campus, became the first southern Californian elected chairman of the Board. He held the office for eight years (Dickson also holds the record of total length of service on the Board--43 years). Since 1956, the number of succeeding terms a chairman may be elected to has been set at two.
The treasurer was, until 1933, always a banker and on three occasions was a banker who was also a Regent (William C. Ralston [1868-751]; Darius O. Mills [1875-83]; and Mortimer Fleishhacker, Sr. [1916-30]). In 1933, Robert M. Underhill became the first treasurer permanently employed by the Regents. Within the first year of Underhill's service, the Regents embarked upon new investment programs that have resulted in greatly increased earnings. (See Endowment Funds.) After his retirement in 1964, he was succeeded by Owsley B. Hammond.
The Organic Act gave the secretary of the Regents heavy responsibilities. He not only was responsible for keeping the records of the Regents' transactions, but also was the official University correspondent with learned, professional, and technical societies; a one-man agricultural extension division, responsible for collecting, from all parts of the world, plants and seeds that might be tested in California climate and soil; and the chief accounting officer and business manager of the University.
The Secretary of the Regents acquired still further influence in University affairs by assuming additional titles and responsibilities. Thus the second secretary, Robert E. C. Stearns (1874-81), was also superintendent of the grounds. His successor, J. Harmon C. Bont� (1881-96), held the same two titles and the additional one of secretary of the Academic Senate. Ralph P. Merritt (1918-20), Robert G. Sproul (1920-30), and Luther Nichols (July, 1930-Nov., 1930) all held the combined titles of secretary and comptroller and land agent. Robert M. Underhill (Dec., 1930-June, 1960) served not only as secretary, but also (after 1933) as treasurer and land agent. Over the years, the secretary's responsibilities changed considerably. His responsibility for collecting seeds and dispensing information on agricultural matters to farmers was soon assumed by the College of Agriculture faculty and, later, by Agricultural Extension. He was no longer secretary of the Academic Senate after 1904, and no longer superintendent of grounds and buildings after 1909. In 1911, the accounting and business affairs of the University were made the responsibility of a new officer. In 1960, the positions of treasurer and secretary were again divided. Miss Marjorie Woolman became the secretary of the Regents and Underhill continued to serve as treasurer and as a vice-president of the University (so appointed in 1959).
The state delegated to the University the responsibility for locating and disposing of the lands provided for the support of the University by the Morrill Land Grant Act. The office of land agent was created in 1869 to handle these matters. By 1918, all but a few parcels of the original 150,000 acres had been located and patented, and the office was combined with that of the comptroller. In 1931, the responsibilities of the land agent were assigned to the treasurer.
A counsel of the Regents was employed in March, 1877, the first incumbent being the same Henry H. Haight who, as governor, signed the bill creating the University in 1868. The 1966 incumbent is Thomas J. Cunningham.
In 1911, the office of comptroller was established, but was discontinued in 1949 and its accounting and controller duties were assigned to a chief accounting officer of the Regents. in July, 1950, the title was changed to controller. In 1959, administrative reorganization of the University placed the office of controller under the jurisdiction of a newly established office of vice-president--finance.
It was not until the 1880's that the Regents began to delegate authority to the President of the University and the faculty. Special amendments to the Regents' By-Laws were passed in 1890 and 1891 to authorize the President of the University to dismiss and regulate the duties of the watchman, and to employ, dismiss, and regulate the duties of janitors. Even in the exercise of this authority, however, the President was required to report his actions promptly to the Board. The President of the University was given a contingency fund of $200 a year in 1886, but it could be disbursed only under the directions of the Regents' Finance Committee. Until 1901, the Regents gave individual attention to each request from alumni for replacement of a defective, lost, stolen, or burned diploma. Although the President was designated head of the faculty in the Organic Act, it was not until the 1880's that the Regents declared that communications from the faculty to the Board must be presented by the President. The first significant delegation of authority to the President of the University was made in 1899 as a condition of Benjamin Ide Wheeler's acceptance of the Presidency. Wheeler demanded and was granted authority to initiate all appointments, promotions, and dismissals of faculty members. He was also given further assurances that earlier policies controlling faculty communication with the Regents would not be violated. Beginning in the 1930's, more responsibility for the business and accounting procedures within the University was delegated to the President and other administrative officers.
Between 1920 and 1923, the Regents gave the faculty a stronger role in the organization of the Academic Senate; in the budget-making processes of the University; in academic personnel matters; and in the formulation of educational policy, including initiation and modification of academic programs.
As the University's activities became more diverse, as new campuses were opened, and as enrollment increased, it became less feasible for the Regents to attend to the considerable detail that engrossed them in earlier years. A series of studies, begun in 1948 and intensified after 1958, have streamlined the University's administrative procedures and have led to further delegation of authority by the Regents to the President, the chancellors, and other officers.
The Regents originally agreed to hold four regular meetings a year with special meetings as might be required. In practice, they met no less than ten times a year before 1885-86, when a fifth regular meeting was officially added. In addition to the meetings of the full Board, there were frequent committee meetings. In 1881-82, the secretary reported, "About 80 committee meetings have been held, all of them occupying at least the greater part of an afternoon, and some of them an entire day."
In May, 1890, the Regents voted to hold regular meetings "each and every month." They now meet regularly at least 11 times a year.
Until the 1950's, most of the Regents' meetings were held in San Francisco---in the Mechanics Institute, at the Hopkins Institute of Art, in the governor's office, or in offices maintained for the attorney for the Regents. At least once a year, the Regents would meet at Berkeley. In 1920, the Regents met on the Los Angeles campus for the first time, and met there at least once a year thereafter. After World War II, the Regents began to meet on each of the several campuses at least once during the year.
The Regents now meet regularly on the third or fourth Friday of the month. On the Friday preceding a meeting, each Regent receives thick packets of documents and reports concerning matters on the forthcoming agenda. Committee meetings begin on Thursday morning and continue until after lunch on Friday when the full Board meets. All meetings of the Board and its committees, except for executive sessions, are open to the public. Executive sessions are convened only for discussions involving national security; the conferring of honorary degrees and other honors and commemorations; gifts, devises, and bequests; the purchase or sale of real property prior to final decision thereon by the Board in open session; litigation when discussion in open session concerning such matters might adversely affect or be detrimental to the public interest; personnel matters relating to the appointment, employment, compensation, or dismissal of officers and employees of the University; or matters relating to complaints or charges brought against officers or employees of the University unless such officer or employee requests a public hearing.
The Regents of the University were instrumental in the development of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California in 1960 and are now represented on the Coordinating Council for Higher Education.
REFERENCES: "The Organic Act," Stats., 1867-68, 248; Newmarker vs. Regents, Dist. Ct. of Appeal, California, 1st Dist., Div. 2; Respondent's Brief, Appendix. Secretary's Reports to the Regents, 1868-1964; By-Laws of the Board of Regents of the University of California, June 19, 1868, UC Archives; Regents' Manual, Berkeley, 1884; Regents' Manual of the University of California, 1938, UC Archives; By-Laws and Standing Orders of the Regents of the University of California, including amendments to 1965; Calif. Constitution, Art. IX, Sec. 9, 1879; Calif. Constitution, Art. IX, See. 9, 1918; San Francisco Evening Bulletin, February 24, 1883, 4; "Regents Muddle Settled," San Francisco Evening Bulletin, February 27, 1883, 1; Senate Journal, 1869-1917. | 2019-04-24T10:59:33Z | http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/general_history/overview/regents/index.html |
Updated Elliott wave and Technical analysis of Nasdaq.
Elliott wave charts of bear wave count.
Charts only today for members only.
Last Nasdaq analysis expected upwards movement to end at resistance at the bear market trend line. Price has turned short of the line.
Summary: Nasdaq has had a trend change. The target for a third wave down is 3,227. It may be met in about another ten weeks.
Grand Super Cycle wave II may be an incomplete flat, combination or double flat.
A new low below 2,861.51 would invalidate the bull wave count and confirm a huge market crash.
All subdivisions are seen in exactly the same way, only the degree of labelling is different.
If Grand Super Cycle wave II is a combination, then super cycle wave (y) would be a zigzag or triangle.
If Grand Super Cycle wave II is a double flat, then super cycle wave (y) would be a flat correction ending about the same level as super cycle wave (w) at 1,160.
If Grand Super Cycle wave II is a regular flat, then super cycle wave (c) would be a five wave structure to end below super cycle wave (a) at 1,160 to avoid a truncation.
The degree of labelling within downwards movement from the all time high only has been moved up one degree this week.
Downwards movement from the all time high may be a first wave for primary wave 1, a deep second wave correction for primary wave 2, and now an incomplete third wave for primary wave 3.
Primary wave 1 may have ended with a truncation. This is possible after the prior move of minor wave 3 moved “too far too fast”.
Primary wave 3 must move far enough below the price extreme of primary wave 1 to allow for room for the following correction of primary wave 4 to unfold and not move back into primary wave 1 price territory.
So far within primary wave 3 intermediates (1) and (2) are complete. A third wave at two large degrees may be just beginning.
The prior bull market trend line was breached by a close (on a daily basis) by more than 3% of market value on 24th August 2015. This indicated the market had changed from bull to bear. The same technique will be used again, in the opposite direction.
A bear market trend line is drawn from the all time high to the first major swing high within the bear market labelled intermediate wave (2). The bear market should be expected to remain intact while price remains below this trend line. When this trend line is breached by a close (on a daily basis) of 3% or more of market value, then it would be indicating a trend change from bear to bull.
The channel about intermediate wave (2) has been clearly breached by downwards movement. Price fell short of the bear market trend line.
Minor wave 1 may be incomplete. When it is done, a bounce for minor wave 2 may last a few days and would still most likely correct to the 0.618 Fibonacci ratio of minor wave 1. The small cyan trend channel is a best fit about this downwards movement. When it is clearly breached by upwards movement, then minor wave 2 would most likely have started.
Minor wave 2 may not move beyond the start of minor wave 1 above 4,969.32.
Grand Super Cycle wave II is seen here as over in just 31 months. This is possible, but it is more likely it would last longer than this.
This wave count sees Nasdaq in a Grand Super Cycle wave III upwards.
There is no Fibonacci ratio between cycle waves I and III.
Super Cycle wave (I) is an incomplete impulse. Within Super Cycle wave (I), cycle wave IV may be complete.
Cycle wave II was a very deep 0.91 zigzag lasting 17 months. Cycle wave IV may have exhibited alternation as a shallow flat lasting just 7 months. This is possible, but what is equally as possible is cycle wave IV may continue sideways as a double flat or double combination. Only a clear five up on the daily chart would eliminate these possibilities. A trend change at cycle degree requires confirmation with a new high above 5,176.77 (to invalidate the bear count) and a five wave structure upwards on the daily chart.
Cycle wave IV may not move into cycle wave I price territory below 2,861.51.
Cycle wave IV is most likely to be a flat, combination or triangle to exhibit structural alternation with the zigzag of cycle wave II.
Regular flats fit well within trend channels. Their C waves normally are about even in length with their A waves. Primary wave C is just 35.97 points longer than equality in length with primary wave A.
The degree of labelling within cycle wave IV may be moved down one degree. This flat correction may be only primary wave A of a larger flat, or a triangle, or primary wave W of a double flat or double combination. A clear five wave structure upwards on the daily chart is absolutely required before any confidence may be had in this wave count.
Unfortunately, the upwards wave which has recently ended is not clear. It would subdivide both as a zigzag and an impulse. As it is impossible to determine with certainty which one it is, both possibilities must be considered. This wave count is still technically valid.
A more conservatively drawn trend line from the end of March 2009 is drawn here (blue line). It was reasonably shallow, repeatedly tested, and is highly technically significant. It has been breached and provided resistance.
Since May 2010, overall, as price rose to all time highs volume declined. The bull market was not well supported by volume and is suspicious.
There was slight negative technical divergence with price and MACD at the all time high.
As price has fallen four out of five months from the all time high it comes with overall declining volume. The fall in price is not being supported by volume for Nasdaq. This is not necessarily suspicious as the market can fall of its own weight.
On Balance Volume has breached a trend line held since May 2012, (green line) which is bearish. OBV turned up and tested the green line which held. The strength of that line is reinforced. This is further bearish indication. The blue line is redrawn this week. OBV should find support at the blue line, which may initiate a bounce.
There is negative divergence between price and RSI going back to December 2013, as price made all time highs. This is a strong bearish indicator. This was also seen up to March 2000, and was followed by a 78% drop in market value to the low of 1,108 in October 2012. It does not mean that the market must make a similar fall at this time, but it is a strong bearish indicator.
Nasdaq is in a bear market until proven otherwise.
1. The 200 day moving average is flat to declining.
2. Price has breached a bull market trend line.
3. Price remains below a bear market trend line.
4. From the all time high, price has made a series of lower lows and lower highs.
5. Bear market rallies from the all time high have been very deep and fully retraced.
Even if one of these five conditions is broken, that would not alone be enough to confirm an end to the bear market and a new bull market. The one thing which would fully and finally confirm a new bull market would be a new all time high. Prior to that a balance of these conditions being broken would strongly indicate a new bull market.
It should always be assumed that the trend remains the same, until proven otherwise.
The bear market rally came with declining volume. The rise in price was not supported by volume and so was suspicious. Now price is falling on increasing volume. This supports a trend change and more downwards movement.
ADX indicates there is currently a new downwards trend. It is increasing and the +DX line is above the -DX line.
ATR is now beginning to increase after a long period of declining. ATR agrees with ADX; the market is trending downwards.
On Balance Volume is moving lower with price. There is no support line that has been found at the daily chart level for OBV.
RSI is not yet extreme. There is room for price to fall.
Stochastics is now entering oversold, but this oscillator may remain extreme for reasonable periods of time during a trending market. Its best use is for divergence to indicate trend weakness.
While I have found a Fibonacci 13 day moving average useful for support during recent upwards waves, a shorter Fibonacci 5 day moving average better shows support for the faster downwards waves. It may be useful here again.
This analysis is published @ 04:48 a.m. EST.
Last Nasdaq analysis expected upwards movement to end about 4,784. This has not happened. Price continues to move upwards.
Summary: Nasdaq is still in a bear market, until proven otherwise. A big third wave down is close. If this current bounce continues, it may end when price finds resistance at the bear market trend line.
Downwards movement from the all time high may be a first wave for intermediate wave (1), a deep second wave correction for intermediate wave (2), and now an incomplete third wave for intermediate wave (3).
Intermediate wave (1) may have ended with a truncation. This is possible after the prior move of minor wave 3 moved “too far too fast”.
With intermediate wave (1) seen as over with a truncation, the structure of intermediate wave (2) now fits as a zigzag. It looks like a three.
Intermediate wave (3) must move far enough below the price extreme of intermediate wave (1) to allow for room for the following correction of intermediate wave (4) to unfold and not move back into intermediate wave (1) price territory.
This technique is outlined by Magee in the classic “Technical Analysis of Stock Trends”. It is simple and simple is best.
Within intermediate wave (3), an impulse is complete for minor wave 1.
Minor wave 2 may be a zigzag. It may end when price finds resistance at the bear market trend line.
The pink channel is a best fit about this upwards movement. When it is clearly breached by downwards movement, that shall be early indication of a trend change.
Within minor wave 2, the correction for subminuette wave iv may not move into subminuette wave i price territory below 4,747.65.
A third wave within a third wave down would be expected for this wave count when minor wave 2 is over. At 3,227 intermediate wave (3) would reach 2.618 the length of intermediate wave (1).
Minor wave 2 may not move beyond the start of minor wave 1 above 5,176.77.
The degree of labelling within cycle wave IV may be moved down one degree. This flat correction may be only primary wave A of a larger flat, or a triangle, or primary wave W of a double flat or double combination. A clear five wave structure upwards on the daily chart is absolutely required before any confidence may be had in this wave count. A new cycle degree bull market should last one to several years. Waiting for confirmation is a wise idea.
On Balance Volume has breached a trend line held since May 2012, (green line) which is bearish. OBV turned up and tested the green line which held. The strength of that line is reinforced. This is further bearish indication. OBV has found support at the blue line. A breach of this blue line would be very strong bearish indication. This line is highly technically significant because it is long held and tested three times at the monthly chart level.
As price moves higher for several weeks now in a bear market rally, it comes on overall declining volume. The rise in price is not supported by volume and is unsustainable.
ADX indicates there is currently an upwards trend.
ATR disagrees. ATR declining is more normal for a consolidating market than a trending market. This upwards trend is not normal; it comes with a decline in range. This indicates weakness in the trend.
On Balance Volume is currently constrained within two trend lines. A break above the pink trend line would be a short term bullish signal. A break below the yellow line would be a short term bearish signal.
RSI exhibits divergence between price at the current high and the highs a few days ago of 1st April. This indicates that upwards movement from price is weak.
Stochastics exhibits divergence between price at the current high and the high of 3rd March. This also indicates upwards movement from price is weak.
On balance, there is enough weakness from price to judge that this upwards movement is more likely a bear market rally than a new bull market. This upwards movement should be expected to be fully retraced.
This analysis is published @ 05:07 a.m. EST on 20th April, 2016.
Last Nasdaq analysis was invalidated by upwards movement.
Summary: Nasdaq is still in a bear market. A big third wave down is very close. If this current bounce continues, it may end about 4,784.
Super Cycle wave (I) is an incomplete impulse. Within Super Cycle wave (I), cycle wave IV is just now complete.
Cycle wave II was a very deep 0.91 zigzag lasting 17 months. Cycle wave IV may have exhibited alternation as a shallow flat lasting just 7 months. This is possible, but what is equally as possible is cycle wave IV may continue sideways as a double flat or double combination. Only a clear five up on the daily chart would eliminate these possibilities. A trend change at cycle degree requires confirmation with a new high above 5,176.77 (to invalidate the bear count below) and a clear five wave structure upwards on the daily chart.
The bull market trend line is drawn from the end of cycle wave II in March 2009, to the end of minuette wave (ii) in November 2012. This trend line has been breached by a close of more than 3% of market value indicating a market change from bull to bear.
Regular flats fit well within trend channels. Their C waves normally are about even in length with their A waves. At 4,246 primary wave C would reach equality in length with primary wave A. Primary wave C may find support at the lower edge of the channel. Primary wave C is just 35.97 points longer than equality in length with primary wave A.
The bear wave count just moves everything from the all time high at 5,132.52 all down one degree. Grand Super Cycle wave II may be an incomplete flat, combination or double flat.
The labelling of this upwards impulse is exactly the same as the bull wave count at the weekly chart level because 1-2-3 of an impulse subdivides 5-3-5, exactly the same as a zigzag. Here the bull market from March 2009 is seen as a zigzag for a super cycle wave (b). Super cycle wave (b) was a 101% length of super cycle wave (a).
Downwards movement for both bull and bear wave counts is seen in the same way as a five wave impulse. C waves and third waves will both subdivide as impulses. Third waves may only subdivide as impulses.
Within intermediate wave (3), an impulse is complete for minor wave 1. This cannot be the entirety of intermediate wave (3) because it has not moved far enough below the price territory of intermediate wave (1).
Minor wave 2 may be a complete or almost complete double zigzag. If it continues higher, it may end about the .618 Fibonacci ratio at 4,784. Minor wave 2 fits neatly into a small channel. When this channel is clearly breached by a full daily candlestick below and not touching the lower edge, that shall provide trend channel confirmation that the bounce of minor wave 2 is over and the next wave down is underway.
At 3,972 intermediate wave (3) would reach 1.618 the length of intermediate wave (1). If this target is wrong, it may not be low enough. The next target would be at 3,227 where intermediate wave (3) would reach 2.618 the length of intermediate wave (1).
On Balance Volume has breached a trend line held since May 2012, (green line) which is bearish. OBV turned up and tested the green line which held. The strength of that line is reinforced. This is further bearish indication.
For three days in a row now, as price rises there is declining volume. The upwards move in price is weak and not supported by volume, so is suspicious. This looks like a typical bear market rally and not the start of a new bull market.
ADX is declining which indicates the market is not trending; it is consolidating. ATR agrees as it too is declining.
Price is finding resistance just below the red horizontal trend line at 4,120.
This bounce has returned RSI from almost oversold to above neutral. There is again plenty of room for this bear market to fall.
On Balance Volume is finding resistance at three trend lines (almost). Any further upwards movement from OBV should be stopped by these three lines. A new yellow line is drawn for support. If that line is breached by OBV, it would be a bearish indication.
Stochastics is overbought. With price finding resistance and Stochastics overbought, an end to the upwards swing should be expected about here.
This analysis is published @ 04:32 p.m. EST.
Last Nasdaq analysis expected some upwards movement to about 4,604, then more downwards movement.
So far that is somewhat close to what has happened. Price moved up to reach 4,636.93 and has turned down from there.
Summary: Nasdaq should continue lower. The target for the preferred bear wave count is 4,205 for a short term interruption to the trend, and at 3,972 for the mid term. Look out for surprises to the downside. Momentum should increase.
Super Cycle wave (I) is an incomplete impulse. Within Super Cycle wave (I), cycle wave IV is underway.
Cycle wave II was a very deep 0.91 zigzag lasting 17 months. Cycle wave IV should exhibit alternation, so is most likely to be a flat, combination or triangle. These are more time consuming structures than zigzags, so cycle wave IV should last at least 18 months and may last a total Fibonacci 21 or more likely 34 months. So far it is in just its seventh month. The degree of labelling within it at the weekly and daily chart level may need to be moved down one degree.
Cycle wave IV may end about either the 0.236 or 0.382 Fibonacci ratios of cycle wave III at 3,748 or 3,042.
Cycle wave IV is most likely to be a flat, combination or triangle to exhibit structural alternation with the zigzag of cycle wave II. So far the first wave down may be a zigzag for primary wave A. This may also be a zigzag for primary wave W of a combination.
Primary wave B is over 90% the length of primary wave A. This may be a regular flat correction.
Regular flats fit well within trend channels. Their C waves normally are about even in length with their A waves. At 4,246 primary wave C would reach equality in length with primary wave A. Primary wave C may find support at the lower edge of the channel.
When a possible regular flat is complete, depending on the complete duration of the structure, then the degree of labelling within cycle wave IV may be moved down one degree. This flat correction may be only primary wave A of a larger flat, or a triangle, or primary wave W of a double flat or double combination. A judgement based upon the overall look at the monthly chart level would be made at that stage. For now I will leave the labelling as it is.
Cycle wave IV would most likely be a flat correction, or at least the first structure within it would most likely be a flat.
Primary wave C must complete as a five wave structure. Intermediate wave (4) now looks to be complete. It lasted a Fibonacci 8 days.
Within intermediate wave (5), no second wave correction may move beyond its start above 4,636.93.
At 3,972 intermediate wave (3) would reach 1.618 the length of intermediate wave (1). This target expects that minor wave 5 will be extended.
Minor wave 4 should now be complete. Within minor wave 5 minute, wave ii shows up on the daily chart, and this indicates that minor wave 5 is unfolding as an extended impulse.
At 4,205 minute wave iii would reach 1.618 the length of minute wave i.
Within minor wave 5, minute wave ii may not move beyond the start of minute wave i above 4,545.52.
Apart from strong volume for the upwards day of 29th January the volume profile continues to be bearish.
Last week as price fell volume increased and as price moved higher volume declined. Friday’s strong downwards movement in price was supported by an increase in volume.
ADX indicates there is a clear trend and it is down. At the end of the week, ATR may be beginning to agree. It is starting to increase.
RSI is not yet oversold. There is room for price to fall.
On Balance Volume looks like it may be breaking below another trend line, a further bearish indication. The next support line I can find so far for OBV is some distance away (green line).
Stochastics is neutral, so it does not indicate an end to this downwards movement. It can remain extreme for some time during a trend, I will look for divergence between price and Stochastics to indicate a correction.
Last Nasdaq analysis expected downwards movement which is exactly what has happened.
Cycle wave II was a very deep 0.91 zigzag lasting 17 months. Cycle wave IV should exhibit alternation, so is most likely to be a flat, combination or triangle. These are more time consuming structures than zigzags, so cycle wave IV should last at least 18 months and may last a total Fibonacci 21 or more likely 34 months. So far it is in just its sixth month. The degree of labelling within it at the weekly and daily chart level may need to be moved down one degree.
Primary wave C must complete as a five wave structure. So far intermediate wave (4) is probably incomplete. It may end close to the 0.382 Fibonacci ratio at 4,604. It may find resistance at the upper edge of the channel drawn about primary wave C.
Intermediate wave (2) was a deep 0.8 zigzag lasting 10 days. Intermediate wave (4) would most likely be a shallow flat, combination or triangle. It may last a little longer than 10 days as these kind of structures tend to be more time consuming than quicker zigzags.
Intermediate wave (4) may not move into intermediate wave (1) price territory above 4,871.49.
With intermediate wave (1) seen as over with a truncation, the structure of intermediate wave (2) now fits better as a zigzag. It looks like a three.
Minor wave 4 may not move into minor wave 1 price territory above 4,871.59. If this invalidation point is breached, then upwards movement may be another second wave correction within minor wave 3. The invalidation point for that idea is at 5,116.99.
Price came with increasing volume as it fell to the last low. The fall in price is supported by volume. The volume profile is bearish.
Price comes with declining volume as it has overall moved higher over the last four days.
ADX is delayed. It is still indicating price is trending and the trend is down. ATR today disagrees as it is declining indicating the market is consolidating.
Importantly, ADX has not indicated a trend change from down to up: the -DX line remains above the +DX line.
The correction is resolving RSI oversold. It is returning towards neutral.
On Balance Volume may find resistance at the blue trend lines.
The correction in price may end when price finds resistance and Stochastics reaches overbought at the same time. The first line of resistance for price is about 4,613. Thereafter, the next line of resistance is about 4,720.
This analysis is published @ 02:35 a.m. EST on 26th January, 2016.
Last Nasdaq analysis expected upwards movement to either 5,142 or 5,156. Price moved higher to reach 5,163 and has since turned down.
To see monthly and weekly charts for bull and bear click here.
The bull market trend line was breached by a close more than 3% of value below it on 20th August.
There is a 5-3-5 complete thus far to the downside. This may be a three wave structure for a primary degree A or W wave for this more bullish wave count (more bullish than the very bearish wave count below). Cycle wave IV is most likely to be a flat, combination or triangle to exhibit alternation with the zigzag of cycle wave II.
If cycle wave IV is a flat correction, then primary wave A may be a complete three. Primary wave B is 0.93 the length of primary wave A, more than the minimum requirement for a flat at 0.9. This may be a regular flat. Primary wave C would reach equality in length with primary wave A at 4,224.
If cycle wave IV is a combination, then the first structure is a completed zigzag which would be labelled primary wave W. The double would now be joined by a complete three in the opposite direction, a zigzag labelled primary wave X. Primary wave Y may be a flat which needs to begin with a clear five down for a movement at primary degree. The second structure in a double combination for primary wave Y would be expected to end about the same level as the first, about 4,292 so that the whole thing moves sideways.
If cycle wave IV is a triangle, then primary wave A would be a complete zigzag. Primary wave B would now also be a complete zigzag. Primary wave C for a triangle may not move beyond the end of primary wave A at 4,292.14. A triangle could take several months to unfold as price moves sideways in an ever decreasing range.
At this stage, a short term upper invalidation point would be at 5,163.47. If primary wave C or Y has begun, then within the first five down no second wave correction may move beyond its start.
There may now be either a complete five down with a severely truncated fifth wave as labelled, or there may be a complete three down for a first wave of a leading diagonal.
The structure of the next wave down and then the depth of the following upwards correction would indicate if an impulse or a leading diagonal is unfolding. If the next wave down is a zigzag, then a leading diagonal would be unfolding. If the next wave down is an impulse, then it would be more likely a larger impulse would be unfolding. If the following correction moves above 4,292.14, then it would overlap back into a first wave of a leading diagonal, and a leading diagonal would be indicated. If it remains below 4,292.14, then an impulse would be indicated.
Primary wave 2 should now be over as a deep zigzag. At 3,958 primary wave 3 would reach 1.618 the length of primary wave 1. No second wave correction may move beyond its start above 5,163.47 within primary wave 3.
The bear market trend line was breached by a close of more than 3% of market value. This is a warning that this bear wave count may be wrong. While none of the indices (S&P500, DJIA, DJT or Nasdaq) have made new all time highs though a bear market should be expected to remain intact.
On Balance Volume has breached a trend line held since May 2012, (green line) which is bearish. OBV is turning up. If it finds resistance at the green line and does not break through, that would be further bearishness and the strength of that line would be reinforced. If OBV breaches the longer held blue line, that would be further and stronger bearish indication.
Volume declined slightly while price has been rising overall for 25 days. The rise in price was not supported by volume and is suspicious.
ADX is turning downwards indicating no trend currently. The -DX and +DX lines may be coming to cross. If they do, it would indicate a trend change.
So far the fall in price of the last seven days comes on overall a decline in volume. Volume is not supporting price movement either way.
Price may find some support here at the breakaway gap. If the gap is closed and price closes below the horizontal trend line, that would be a bearish indicator. If price bounces up from here to new highs, then it would be a strong bullish indicator.
On Balance Volume is a good leading indicator and works well with trend lines. It has breached the upwards sloping blue line, a bearish indicator, three days before price found the last high. OBV has come to touch a short held downwards sloping line. If this is breached, it would be further bearishness. If OBV bounces up from here, it would reinforce the strength of that line. OBV needs to break above the dark blue line for it to provide a bullish indication.
Nasdaq has breached its bull market trend line by a close of more than 3% of market value.
I have two Elliott wave counts today. The first is bullish, still at super cycle degree. The second expects Nasdaq is in the early stages of a huge market crash.
To see detail of weekly charts which shows subdivisions of cycle wave III (bull) or cycle wave c (bear) see last analysis here.
There is no Fibonacci ratios between cycle waves I and III.
Cycle wave II was a very deep 0.91 zigzag lasting 17 months. Cycle wave IV should exhibit alternation, so is most likely to be a flat, combination or triangle. These are more time consuming structures than zigzags, so cycle wave IV should last at least 18 months and may last a total Fibonacci 21 or more likely 34 months.
If cycle wave IV is a flat correction, then primary wave A may be a complete three. Primary wave B must retrace a minimum 90% of primary wave A at 5,138. Primary wave B may make a new all time high above the start of primary wave A as in an expanded flat. Primary wave B must subdivide as a three.
If cycle wave IV is a combination, then the first structure is a completed zigzag which would be labelled primary wave W. The double should be joined by a three in the opposite correction labelled primary wave X. Primary wave X may be any corrective structure, has no minimum requirement, and may make a new high above the start of primary wave W.
If cycle wave IV is a triangle, then primary wave A would be a complete zigzag. Primary wave B must be a three wave structure and may make a new high above the start of primary wave A as in a running triangle.
If a zigzag is unfolding upwards for primary wave B or W, then at 5,156 intermediate wave (C) would reach equality in length with intermediate wave (A).
There is no upper invalidation point for any of these three most likely structures. At this stage, it is impossible to know which structure cycle wave IV may unfold as.
There may now be either a complete five down with a severely truncated fifth wave as labelled, or there may be a complete three down for a first wave of a leading diagonal. For both ideas the second wave may not move beyond the start of the first above 5,231.94.
At 5,142 intermediate wave (C) would reach equality in length with intermediate wave (A).
On Balance Volume has breached a trend line held since May 2012 (green line) which is bearish. If OBV breaches the longer held blue line that would be further and stronger bearish indication.
The break above the upper horizontal trend line which previously provided resistance came with a breakaway gap and on an increase in upwards volume. This looks like Nasdaq has broken out of a consolidation zone to the upside.
MACD shows an increase in upwards momentum.
ADX is above 15 and rising, the +DX line is above the -DX line. This indicates potentially the start of a new upwards trend.
On Balance Volume remains above the short blue trend line.
So far all these indicators at the daily chart level are bullish. However, the picture at the monthly chart level remains very bearish.
When Nasdaq breached its long held bull market trend line on 20th August that indicated a market switch from bull to bear. For confidence in a switch back to a bull market the same approach should be used. The bear market trend line drawn here (and on the bear daily chart) is drawn using the approach outlined by Magee in “Technical Analysis of Stock Trends”. When that line is breached by a close of 3% or more of market value then a market change from bear to bull would be indicated. So far that has not happened.
Price needs to close at or above 5,075 to confirm a change back to a bull market. While that has not happened it should be assumed the trend remains the same, downwards.
Stochastics shows some divergence as price made new highs Stochastics failed to confirm. This is a weak bearish signal. | 2019-04-24T20:01:23Z | https://elliottwavestockmarket.com/tag/elliott-wave-nasdaq-analisys/ |
Below are summaries of Professor Moura's work in research in image and video processing. Additional related research is available in the curriculum vitae.
Shapes provide a rich set of clues on the identity and topological properties of an object. In many imaging environments, however, the same object appears to have different shapes due to such distortions as translation, rotation, reflection, anisotropic scaling, skewing, or shearing. These distortions are generally captured by affine transformations. Further, the order by which the object's feature points are scanned changes. we refer to these as permutation distortions. We show below on the left two images of the same airplane that are affine distorted. When scanned, say lexicographically (top to bottom, left to right), the pixels are not in correspondence.
To relate shapes like these, i.e., of the same object and that are distorted by different affine and permutation transformations is a challenge. Overcoming the permutation distortions, i.e., the unknown scanning order, is combinatorialthe correspondence problem. Our work is concerned with developing algorithms that are invariant to these affine-permutation distortions. We have introduced the concept of intrinsic shape of an object. It is a uniquely defined representative of the equivalence class of all affine-permuted distortions of the same object. The shape of the object is essentially the shape that results after we factor out the distortions. The figure of the airplane above on the right is the intrinsic shape of the two distorted images on the left as obtained by the BLAISER, a blind algorithm described in the references below by Ha and Moura. The distortions are interpreted as actions of the group of distortions (affine-permutation group as a subgroup of the general linear group) on the space of configurations (distorted shapes). We developed a blind algorithm that recovers the intrinsic shape from any arbitrarily unknown affine-permutation distorted image of the object. We are pursuing the definition of shape space and studying the geometry of this shape space, for example, the notions of distance and geodesics in shape space.
Victor Ha (September 2002), Hyeong-Seok Viktor Ha, formerly with Mobile Solution Lab., Digital Media R&D Center Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, now with Genesis Microchip, a video display company in Toronto, Canada.
Victor Ha and José M. F. Moura, “Affine-permutation Invariance of 2D Shapes,” IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 14(11), pp. 1687-1700, 2005.
Victor Ha and José M. F. Moura, "Robust Reorientation of 2D Shapes Using the Orientation Indicator Index," ICASSP'05, IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Philadelphia, PA, March 18-23, 2005.
Victor Ha and José M. F. Moura, "Three-dimensional Intrinsic Shapes," ICIP'04, IEEE International Symposium on Image Processing, Singapore, October 24-27, 2004.
David Sepaishvili, José M. F. Moura, and Vitor Ha, "Affine Permutation Symmetry: Invariance and Shape Space," IEEE Workshop on Statistical Signal Processing, St. Louis, MI, Spetmber 2003.
Victor Ha and José M. F. Moura, "Efficient 2D Shape Orientation," ICIP03, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Barcelona, Spain, September 2003.
Victor Ha and José M. F. Moura, "Intrinsic Shape," 36th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Communications, vol.2: 993-997, Monterey, CA, November 2002. Invited paper, Special Session on Statistical Image Processing.
Victor H. Ha and José M. F. Moura, "Affine Invariant Wavelet Transform," ICASSP01, IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, vol. 3, 1937-1940, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 2001.
Three dimensional video representations: We developed algorithms that process monocular video sequences and extract 3D models of rigid objects present in the scene. The shape of the object is described by patches, e.g., planar patches, or, more generaly, polynomial patches. Our algorithms factor a rank one matrix to obtain the rigid 3D shape and the rigid 3D motions of the objects. Besides several papers describing this work, see for example Aguiar and Moura [2001,2003], part of this work was patented, see "System and Method for Generating a Three-dimensional Model from a Two-Dimensional Image Sequence," (allowed by the the United States patent Office in February 2004). Earlier work fused texture information from a monocular video sequence with range laser measurements to build textured 3D models of objects, see Martins and Moura.
Modeling human motion: We extended generative video (see below) to capturing and modeling video sequences with human walkers, see our papers Cheng and Moura [1999,1998].
Generative video: Our work is concerned with developing representations for video sequences based on their content. These representations differ from those developed for MPEG/H.26X coding standards in that sequences are described in terms of extended images instead of collections of frames. We describe how these extended images, e.g., mosaics, are generated by basically the same principle: the incremental composition of visual photometric, geometric, and multi-view information into one or more extended images. Different outputs, e.g., from single 2-D mosaics to full 3-D mosaics, are obtained depending on the quality and quantity of photometric, geometric, and multi-view information. In particular, we developed a frameworkgenerative videothat is well suited to the representation of scenes with independently moving objects. Content-based video representations can potentially provide compression ratios that are in the range of 1000:1 with acceptable quality. This work is the subject of several papers, in particular a comprehensive description is in the CRC Chapter , and in the papers [1996,1995a,1995b]. Part of the work is patented, see "Generative Video: Very Low Bit Rate Video Compression."
Video over wireless: We demonstrated the high compression at good quality provided by generative video with a very early (in 1995) demonstration of transmitting video over wireless. The wireless network interfaced two highly heterogeneous wireless networks - a 'fast' 2 Mbps local area network (CMU's wireless andrew) and a slow metropolitan area 'slow' 19.6 Kbps wireless network. The results were reported in , in an invited paper published by the IEEE Personal Communications Magazine.
Predictive lossy compression: Our work developed noncausal random field models to describe the image texture and then developed novel predictive coding algorithms that compared very favorably with transform based coders, see for example the patent "Noncausal Predictive Image Codec," or the papers Balram and Moura [1996, 1993], Moura and Balram , and Asif and Moura .
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar, Radu Jasinschi, José M. F. Moura, and Charnchai Pluempitiwiriyawej, "Content-based Image Sequence Representation," ed. Todd Reed, in Digital Image Sequence Processing: Compression and Analysis, CRC Press Handbook, in press, 2004 (61 pages). Invited Chapter.
José M. F. Moura and Nikhil Balram, "Statistical Algorithms for Noncausal Markov Random Fields," in Handbook of Statistics, edts. N. K. Bose and C. R. Rao, Chapter 15, North Holland, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 1993. Invited Chapter.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Figure-Ground Segmentation from Occlusion," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, volume 14, number 8, pp. , August 2005.
Amir Asif and José M. F. Moura, "Inversion of Block matrices with L-Block Banded Inverse," IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 53:2, pp. 630-642, February 2005.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Rank 1 Weighted Factorization for 3D Structure Recovery: Algorithms and Performance Analysis", IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), vol. 25 (9), pp. 1134-1149, September 2003.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "3D Modeling from 2D Video," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Volume: 10 (10), pp. 1541-1551, 2001.
Amir Asif and José M. F. Moura, "Data Assimilation in Large Time Varying MultiDimensional Fields," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Volume: 8 (11), pp.1593 1607, November 1999.
Jia-Ching Cheng and José M. F. Moura, "Capture and Representation of Human Motion in Live Video Sequences." IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Volume: 1 (2), pp. 144 156, June 1999.
Jia-Ching Cheng and José M. F. Moura, "Automatic Recognition of Human Walking in Real Video Sequences." Journal of VLSI Signal Processing, vol. 20:(1/2), pp.107-120, October 1998. Special Issue on Multimedia Signal Processing. Invited paper.
Fernando C. M. Martins and José M. F. Moura, "Video Representation With 3D Entities," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 16(1), pp. 71-85, January 1998. Special Issue on Very Low Bit Rate Video Coding.
Nikhil Balram and José M. F. Moura, "Noncausal Predictive Image Codec." IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 5(8): pp. 1229-1242, August 1996.
Amir Asif and José M. F. Moura, "Image Codec With Noncausal Prediction, Residual Mean Removal, and Cascaded VQ." IEEE Transactions on VideoTechnology, 6(1):1-14, February 1996.
José M. F. Moura, R. S. Jasinschi, H. Shiojiri, and J-C. Lin. "Video Over Wireless." IEEE Personal Communications, 6(1):44-54, February 1996. Invited paper.
Nikhil Balram and José M. F. Moura, "Noncausal Gauss Markov Random Fields: Parameter Structure and Estimation." IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, IT-39(4):1333-1355.July 1993.
H. Tokuda, Yoshito Tobe, Stephen T.-C. Chen, José M. F. Moura, "Continuous Media Communications with Dynamic QOS Control using ARTS with an FDDI Network." ACM Computer Communications Review, 22(4):88-98, October 1992.
José M. F. Moura and Nikhil Balram, "Recursive Structure of Noncausal Gauss Markov Random Fields," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, IT-38(2):334-354, March 1992.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "3D Rigid Structure from Video: What Are "Easy" Shapes and "Good" Motions?," 5th IEEE Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, September 2002.
Amir Asif and José M. F. Moura, "Fast Inversion of L-Block Banded Matrices and their Inverses," ICASSP02, IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, vol. 2, pp. 1369-1372, Orlando, FL, 12-17 May 2002.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Image Motion Estimation Convergence and Error Analysis," ICIP 01, IEEE Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing, vol. 2, pp. 937-940, Greece, 7-10 October, 2001.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Maximum Likelihood Estimation of the Template of a Rigid Moving Object," EMMCVPR01, Energy Minimization Methods in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, July 2001.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Weighted Factorization," ICIP 00, IEEE Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing, Vancouver, British Columbia Canada, October 2000.
Amir Asif and José M. F. Moura, "Block Banded Matrix Approximations: Application to Kalman-Bucy filter," ICASSP00, IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Istanbul, Turkey, June 2000.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Fast 3D Modeling from Video," 3th IEEE Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 1999.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "A Fast Algorithm for Rigid Structure from Image Sequences," ICIP 99, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Yokoama, Japan, October 1999.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Maximum Likelihood Inference of 3D Structure from Image Sequences," EMMCVPR99, Energy Minimization Methods in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, July 1999.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Factorization as a Rank 1 Problem," CVPR99, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference, June 1999.
Jia-Ching Cheng and José M. F. Moura, "Capture and Synthesis of Human Motion in Video Sequences," 2nd IEEE Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, Santa Monica, CA, December 7-9, 1998.
Pedro. M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Video Representation via 3D Shaped Mosaics." ICIP 98, IEEE Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing, Chicago, Illinois, October 1998.
Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Robust 3D Structure From Motion Under Orthography," IEEE Image and Multidimensional Digital Signal Processing Workshop98, Vienna, Austria, July 1998.
Pedro Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Detecting and Solving Template Ambiguities in Motion Segmentation," ICIP’97,IEEE Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing, Santa Barbara, CA, October 1997.
Jia-Ching Cheng and José M. F. Moura, "Tracking Human Walking in Dynamic Scenes." ICIP’97, IEEE Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing, Vol. I, pp. 137-140, Santa Barbara, CA, October 1997.
Jia-Ching Cheng and José M. F. Moura, "Model Based Recognition of Human Walking in Dynamic Scenes." 1 st IEEE Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, pp. 268-273, Princeton, NJ, June 1997.
Amir Asif and José M. F. Moura, "Fast Recursive Reconstruction of Large Time Varying Multidimensional Fields," ICASSP ‘97, IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Volume IV, pages 3037-3039, Munich, Germany, April 1997.
Fernando Martins, Hirohisa Shiojiri and José M. F. Moura, "3D-3D Registration of Free Formed Objects Using Shape and Texture," VCIP ‘97, Conference on Visual Communications and Image Processing, SPIE Symposium on Electronic Imaging, Science and Technology, San Jose, CA, February 1997.
Pedro Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, "Incremental Motion Segmentation in Low Texture," ICIP’96, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Lausanne, Switzerland, September 1996.
Radu S. Jasinschi and José M. F. Moura, "Nonlinear Editing by Generative Video," in ICASSP’96, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Vol. II, pp. 1220-1223, Atlanta, GA, May 1996. Special Session on Video Processing by Contents.
José M. F. Moura, R. S. Jasinschi, H. Shiojiri, and J-C. Lin, "Video Over Heterogeneous Networks," in Proceedings of SPIE "Wireless Personal Communications Technologies and Services," vol. SPIE-2603, Invited paper in Session "PCS Data and Multimedia Applications." Philadelphia, PA, October 1995.
F. Martins and José M. F. Moura, "3-D Video Compositing: Towards a Compact Representation for Video Sequences," in ICIP’95, Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing, vol. 1, pp. 550-553. IEEE, October 1995.
R. S. Jasinschi and José M. F. Moura, "Content-Based Video Sequence Representation," in ICIP’95, Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing, vol. 2, pp. 229-232. IEEE, October 1995.
R. S. Jasinschi, J. M. F. Moura, J-C. Cheng, and A. Asif, "Video Compression Via Constructs," in ICASSP '95, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, vol. IV, pp. IV-2165-2168, Detroit, MI, May 8-12, 1995.
A. Asif and José M. F. Moura, "Assimilation of Satellite Data in Beta-PlaneOcean Circulation Models," ICASSP '95, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, vol. V, pp. V-2789-2792, Detroit, MI, May 1995. Special Session on Signal Processing in the Ocean Environment.
Nikhil Balram and Jose´ M. F. Moura, "Predictive Coding Using Noncausal Models," ICASSP ‘93, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, April 1993.
José M. F. Moura and Nikhil Balram, "2D Linear Optimal Statistical Signal Processing on Finite Lattices," in Acoustic Signal Processing for Ocean Exploration, edts. José M. F. Moura and Isabel M. G. Lourtie, pp. 413-432, D. Reidel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 1993.
José M. F. Moura and Nikhil Balram, "Optimal Prdecitive Coding of 2D Fields," in ISIT’93, IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, San Antonio, TX, January 1993.
H. Tokuda, Y. Tobe, S. T.-C Chou, and J. M. F Moura. "Continuous media communication with dynamic QOS control using artss with an FDDI network." In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Communications Architectures and Protocols (ACM SIGCOM/ 92 ), pages 88-98, Baltimore, October 1992.
Nikhil Balram and José M. F. Moura, "Parameter Estimation in 2D Fields," ICASSP ‘92, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, vol. 3, pp. 345-348, March 1992.
Nikhil Balram and José M. F. Moura, "Rapid Enhancement and Compression of Image Data," SPIE VCIP ’91, Boston, MA, November 1991.
Nikhil Balram and José M. F. Moura, "Recursive Enhancement of Noncausal Images," ICASSP ’91, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, vol. 4, pp. 2997-3000, May 1991.
Nikhil Balram and José M. F. Moura, "Parameter Estimation for Noncausal Gauss Markov Random Fields," CISS’91, 25 th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, pp. 365-370, Baltimore, MD, March 1991.
"Generative Video: Very Low Bit Rate Video Compression," José M. F. Moura and Radu S. Jasinschi, US Patent and Trademark Office, S.N. 5,854,856, issued December 29, 1998.
"Noncausal Predictive Image Codec," Nikhil Balram and José M. F. Moura, US Patent and Trademark Office, S.N. 5,689,591, issued November 18, 1997.
"System and Method for Generating a Three-dimensional Model from a Two-Dimensional Image Sequence," Pedro M. Q. Aguiar and José M. F. Moura, provisional patent filed July 1999; patent filed with US Patent and Trademark Office, Serial Number 09/614,841, July 12, 2000. Notice of allowance 2/23/2004.
Last updated 02 April 2004. | 2019-04-20T02:39:56Z | https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~moura/imagevid.html |
Centuries go by, Rome grows and the site of the Colosseum is improved. Drains are built and the lake, where the Colosseum now stands, disappears. The place is full of houses and temples, since the site is the meeting point of four of Rome's regiones.
After the famous fire in 64 b.C. Nero occupies most of the centre of the city. He clears the area and builds a magnificent residence, the Domus Aurea: with palaces, parks, pavilions and all sorts of wonders (size debated between 40 and 120 acres). See the whole story in this documentary with a 3D reconstruction of Nero's palace. At the bottom of the valley Nero has a great rectangular pond built, surrounded by a portico. After Nero's death, the new emperor Vespasian gives back to the Romans much of Nero's Domus Aurea, and starts the construction of a public building - an amphitheatre - right in the spot where Nero's lake was.
The place is now packed with monuments, palaces, statues, public buildings etc. These tables 1 2 3 4 5 are taken from the famous map by Rodolfo Lanciani in which the ancient and modern city are depicted in different colours. It was called Forma Urbis as a homage to the Roman original marble map, the Forma Urbis. The last map below was printed at the end of the 18th century by Franz Anton Schraembl (1751-1803), who was a Vienna based cartographer. The map of ancient Rome probably is not accurate, but it is beautifully drawn and printed.
The Forma Urbis Romae was a large marble plan of Rome carved at the beginning of the III century in scale 1:240. The map measured ca. 18.10 x 13 meters or ca. 60 x 43 feet and depicted in detail the ground plan of all architectural features in the ancient city. It hung on a wall of the Templum Pacis in Rome. Today, we only have 1,186 pieces, or 10-15%, of the map. The Forma Urbis is also remarkable as it is extremely precise, and was drawn - obviously after a careful survey - by using modern criteria . Nothing of this kind will reappear until the 15th century! The image represents the few fragments left that show the Amphitheatre.
During the middle ages the arena became a crossroad, probably a marketplace: many streets met there. The map below shows the paths that had been made to cross the amphitheatre.
This print is a reconstruction of the state of the city around year 1000. The view is from the East and shows how the Colosseum was practically still intact, as were many ancient temples and monuments (e.g. Hadrian's mausoleum). Within the walls of the city empty spaces are predominant.
The neighbourhood was very lively in those days: the Colosseum was inhabited and the area was crossed by many streets. The building, whose function was by now forgotten, became a house and fortress, and it was on the main path between the centre of the city and the Lateran, where the Popes resided in those times.
The beautiful miniature at the left comes from a famous illuminated manuscript, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. It is possibly the best example of French Gothic manuscript illumination surviving to present day. It was created for John, Duke of Berry, by the Limbourg brothers between 1412 and 1416. The view is from the North; the circular representation of the city is rather fantastic, but it is typical of that age and there are all the most important elements: aqueducts, walls, churches etc., and - of course - the amphitheatre.
The image at the right is a fresco of Taddeo di Bartolo in the Siena Townhall, painted in exactly the same period (1412-1415). The similarities are striking!
The plan at the bottom comes from the "Geography," a best-seller of fifteenth-century Europe by Pietro del Massaio. In this plan the circular representation is abandoned in favour of a "scientific" system devised by Leon Battista Alberti (read the story here). The Castel Sant'Angelo, the Borgo and Saint Peter's appear at bottom right, separated from the city by the Tiber. Within the city we see that the Pantheon, the Forum, the Capitoline and Palatine hills and the Colosseum dominate the central space, though a few churches appear beside them. Other monuments, like the Pyramid (top right), can readily be identified.
This map by Alessandro Strozzi is rather interesting, because it maintains the circular "medieval" view from the North, but at the same time it is rather complete and precise in the representation of the city and buildings. Apparently this map too was drawn according to Alberti's system.
This image comes from the Nuremberg Chronicle, which is an illustrated biblical paraphrase and a world history that includes the histories of a number of important Western cities. Written in Latin by Hartmann Schedel, with a version in German translated by Georg Alt, it appeared in 1493. It is one of the best-documented early printed books � an incunabulum � and one of the first to successfully integrate illustrations and text. The "Coloseus" appears on the left.
This map by Erhard Etzlaub does not show Rome, but it is extremely interesting because it shows the roads to Rome - from all over Europe - with the distances between the cities. In those times many travelers were pilgrims directed to holy places all over Europe. A bigger version of this map can be found here.
Sebastian Münster was a German cartographer, cosmographer, and a Christian Hebraist scholar. His work, the Cosmographia from 1544, was the earliest German description of the world. His portrait ended on the old 100 Mark banknote. In his picture the amphitheatre is ... missing! If you look carefully, you'll see it mentioned in a footnote under the letter G: " Templum Pacis, ubi quoque stare debuerat Colosseum ingens aedifìcium, sed loci angustia exclusit", that means: "Temple of Peace, where the great building of the Colosseum should also have been, but it was omitted due to lack of space".
The Bufalini plan-map of the city of Rome (1551) was the first printed map of the Eternal City and a landmark in the history of city plans. It is the first orthogonal plan of the city since the early third century Forma Urbis. All earlier 14th and 15th century images of the city were view-maps. It is surprising that no plan-map of the city appears until this late in the Renaissance, since the technique was known and used since about 1500. We can see that the Colosseum is still in open countryside.
Engraver Nicolas Beatrizet worked with no less than Michelangelo. He was one of many artists who came to Rome in the XVI century because there was a good market for prints, engravings and artworks in general. He published his works as part of Antoine Lafrery's Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (The Mirror of Roman Magnificence). It is likely that individuals who purchased the prints from Lafrery made their own selections and had them bound. This view is taken from the west; the detail shows very clearly the network of country roads around the Colosseum in 1557.
This curious engraving dated 1557, that I found here, shows the city with the fortifications made outside the gates by Pope Paul IV.
Pirro Ligorio was an Italian architect, painter, antiquarian and garden designer, also famous for making fake latin inscriptions. this map is focused on the ancient monuments.
Mario Cartaro published this map in 1576, in a period of great activity by map makers and printers. The houses of the city are still beyond the Forums, and the Colosseum stands among vineyards and orchards. The whole map can be downloaded here.
Etienne Du Perac arrived in Rome in 1559 and published a plan of Rome in collaboration with Antoine Lafrery. This famous map shows the state of the city before the big changes brought about by Pope Sixtus V. The Colosseum stands in the middle of gardens, orchards, villas and ruins. The whole map can be downloaded here.
Georg Braun from Cologne edited between 1572 and 1617 the Civitates orbis terrarum, which contains 546 prospects, bird's-eye views and maps of cities from all around the world. His six-volume work was inspired by Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia. Frans Hogenberg (1535–1590, from Munich) created the tables for volumes I through IV. In this image we see that the Colosseum is still surrounded by fields and orchards, outside the city centre. Do not mistake the Colosseum with the Theatre of Marcellus, closer to the river.
Sixtus had no appreciation of antiquities, which were employed as raw material to serve his urbanisation and Christianising programs: Trajan's Column and the Column of Marcus Aurelius (at the time misidentified as the Column of Antoninus Pius) were made to serve as pedestals for the statues of SS Peter and Paul; the Minerva of the Capitol was converted into an emblem of Christian Rome; the Septizonium of Septimius Severus was demolished for its building materials. The map shows the streets he opened and that are still the heart of the city: after all Via Sistina is called after him!
This beautiful aerial view of Rome was first printed in 1593 by painter and engraver Antonio Tempesta, who inaugurated a fashion of eastward oriented views of the city. This edition with changes dates to 1645; it shows Rome in its late sixteenth-century condition, with some of the changes brought about by Sixtus. Near the Colosseum there is the new road that leads to St. John's Lateran. See the whole map here or here.
In this map by Mathaeus Greuter we can see that the projects of Sixtus have been accomplished: the streets around the Colosseum are beginning to look like they are today: Via di San Giovanni in Laterano, the long straight road between the Colosseum and the Lateran, is opened, and so are other streets planned from St. Mary Major: Via di Santa Croce leads to the church of the Holy Cross and Via Gregoriana (now Via Merulana), that leads to the Lateran, is widened.
In this view dated 1625 we see many houses along the streets between the Colosseum and the Lateran. The area is full of churches and convents, but the main buildings on the Lateran square belong to the hospital of Arciconfraternita del Salvatore (still there, still a hospital). The Arciconfraternita in 1604 had made an agreement with the Senate of Rome, undertaking to provide all the stone (quarried at the Colosseum) necessary to finish the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitol. In exchange, it got permission to demolish the Arch of Basile, that was placed at the eastern end of Via dei Santi Quattro (it can be seen on the previous maps) and use its materials to build the hospital. In 1606 the concession to use the stones from the Colosseum was renewed to the Arciconfraternita.
Giovanni Maggi was born around 1566 and was active in Rome from the beginning of the XVII century. We don't know much of him, but in 1625 he engraved on woodcut the biggest ever (cm 224 x 428) map of Rome. The use of wood is rather unusual, as most artists used to engrave on copper. Probably the explanation is that the wood technique is cheaper and faster. It seems that only few copies were made of the original print, so that soon the memory of this map was lost. That is probably why in 1774 Carlo Losi reprinted the Maggi map and attempted to sell it as an original publication. The whole map can be downloaded here or here.
Matthaus Merian (1593 - 1650) was an important Swiss engraver and cartographer. In Frankfurt, he associated with Johann Theodor de Bry and together they produced a number of important joint works. Merian is best known for his finely engraved and highly detailed town plans and city views; he is considered one of the grand masters of the city view and a pioneer of the axonometric projection. After his death in 1650 his two sons, Matthaus and Caspar published his great works, the Topographia Germaniae and Theatrum Europaeum, under the designation Merian Erben. This view follows the eastward oriented model established in 1593 by Antonio Tempesta. The axonometric projection that Merian utilizes lends this map a special significance to historians and architects who can thus visualize many buildings that were demolished or fell into ruin during the subsequent era. This map also includes some of the only surviving visual representations of Rome's early churches, many of which were replaced with grander structures in the 18th century.
French cartographer Nicolas de Fer (1646 – 1720) was also geographer, engraver and publisher. In this map we see that the area of the Colosseum is becoming part of the city. The houses have now reached the valley of the Colosseum and link the amphitheatre to the Lateran.
This map of the city looks a bit like modern maps for tourists. The main attractions, St. Peter's, the Colosseum, the Trajan Column and the Pyramid, are highlighted at the corners, and many important places are numbered and explained in the columns. The map doesn't really want to be realistic, as it shows the ancient and present "scituation" of the city. It is very pleasant to look at, though. The other picture, by Canaletto, shows the state of the monument around 1720.
Giambattista Nolli was an architect and surveyor who devoted his life to documenting the architectural and urban foundations of the city. He is best known for his Pianta Grande di Roma which he began surveying in 1736 and engraved in 1748. Nolli achieved an extraordinary technical feat that represents a milestone in the art and science of cartography. Modern surveys and sophisticated satellite images have confirmed the accuracy of Nolli's map within the smallest margin of error.
The map is composed of 12 copper plate engravings that together measure 176 centimetres (69 in) by 208 centimetres (82 in). It was by far the most accurate description of Rome produced to date. The Nolli map reflects Bufalini's map of 1551, however Nolli reorients the city from east to magnetic north, reflecting his reliance on the compass for surveying, and represents enclosed public spaces, such as the colonnades in St. Peter's Square and the Pantheon, as open civic spaces.
The map was a significant improvement in accuracy and it was used as a base map for all Roman mapping and planning up to the 1970s. This great website of the University of Oregon is dedicated to the Nolli map. Explore and learn! The map can also be downloaded at the UC Berkeley website. Nolli collaborated with famous engraver Piranesi in producing a smaller version of this map, the Piccola Pianta, begun in 1747, but published with the larger map in 1748. It can be explored here.
The map drawn by T. Ettling and published by Day & Son shows a row of houses between the Colosseum and the Lateran, but the area is still rather empty. Practically the same map appears published by John Dower in 1852.
Many repairs are made to the old amphitheatre; see here for the details. The area around the monument is finally cleaned and reordered, the monumental portico on the northern side (the one that appears on the coins) is again brought to light and the boundary stones towards via Labicana are unearthed.
The fascist regime wanted to bring back the memories of imperial Rome to support the concept of the newborn Italian Empire, so Mussolini ordered the opening of Via dell'Impero to link Piazza Venezia with the Colosseum (that was used for fascist rallies) and have military parades in that spectacular place. The works lasted from 1924 to 1932. Rightly, Wikipedia writes: "Although the road was touted as a celebration of the glories of ancient Rome, its construction entailed the systematic demolition of over 40,000 square yards of one of the most densely populated areas of Rome, obliterating ancient, medieval and Renaissance structures, including five churches and popular tenements that housed 746 of Rome's poorest families. .... The Via del Fori Imperiali completely changed the landscape and character of the heart of Rome and sliced the Fora area in two. General outrage is often the reaction of modern archaeologists and scholars when discussing it. Perhaps the biggest issue of all is that the now four-lane, heavily trafficked road carries an extremely heavy load of motor vehicle traffic straight through the Roman Forum area, whose exhaust fumes and vibrations continue to do immeasurable damage to the surrounding ancient Roman monuments. However, numerous efforts by academics and citizen’s groups have thus far failed to convince the Roman city government to attempt to undo what Mussolini government created by removing the road, other than the creation of a pedestrian zone on Sundays and national holidays."
Read here for more details. The maps below show the changes.
What lies under Via dei Fori Imperiali? | 2019-04-25T12:16:38Z | http://the-colosseum.net/history/maps.htm |
York is a leading centre for research and teaching in phonetics and phonology, in first and second language acquisition.
Our team specialises in the study of phonological development. Our research focuses on infants and toddlers, including observational studies of production and experimental studies of word recognition and word learning. We study the relationship between babble and early words, and the shaping of a child's knowledge of the sound system of the language they are learning. We also study how the speech of the adults around them affects infants' learning.
In the York BabyLab we study many different aspects of this question. We want to know how much parents’ different ways of talking to their children help the children to learn. We are also interested in how babies’ own babbling, and later, their different ways of forming words affect the way they listen to speech and learn more words.
We study children who are slow to begin speaking, to try to explain why some children catch up quickly while others go on to have long-term language problems. And we are interested in how children remember language, and how this is affected by what they already know and the words they are already using.
We use different methods to study these questions: In some cases we visit babies’ homes to record them, in others the family comes to the lab to perform different tasks. We are learning a lot from these activities – and we think the families enjoy them too, not least the babies, for whom everything is new!
It has been well established that infants develop knowledge of the patterns of the native language over the course of the first year of life. At the same time, in parallel, vocal development is marked by a critical milestone at about 6-8 months, with the emergence of canonical babbling (e.g., bababa, dadada – the first adult-like syllable production). One of our major interests is the question of when and how these two strands – advances in infants’ perception and production – come together and influence one another.
Although a baby’s first words are often relatively accurate, in the period that follows we typically find a ‘regression’ in accuracy, with the baby’s words tending to become more similar due to the emergence of one or more production routines or ‘word templates’. We are interested in the ways in which these phonological templates first appear and later fade, in how they differ by ambient language and by individual child within a single language group. Another important question is the extent to which these production templates affect the way children process the speech they hear and the way they remember it – a critical part of new word learning. We are also interested in possible clinical applications of the concept.
Infants have been shown to be attracted to the variable melodic patterns of ‘infant-directed’ input speech, or ‘baby talk’. Although this speech register is thought to be nearly universal, the style of speech used with babies varies from one culture to another and also between families within a single culture. We are interested in learning more about how these differences affect children’s word learning.
This study, run in collaboration with Rory DePaolis at James Madison University, aimed to find out at what age British and American infants begin to be able to recognise words embedded within a sentence. We had observed in the past that American babies seemed to be able to do this earlier than British babies and we obtained a year’s worth of research funding from the ESRC to try and work out why.
Studies have shown that infants in the first months of life can distinguish most of the speech sounds used in different languages, whereas adults have a great deal of trouble learning to hear differences between sounds that don’t occur in their language. The shift away from the ‘universal listening’ of infants seems to occur already toward the end of the first year of life.
Collaboration among c. 60 baby labs worldwide.
In this study, multiple labs across the world all run the same experiment: contrasting infants' responses to different styles of adult speech. Comparing results from those different labs will allow us to understand how different cultures and languages affect infant language learning. It will also allow a review of different research methods used by different labs to understand their strengths and weaknesses and improve standards.
This study is funded by the Association for Psychological Science (APS).
We are interested in piloting a new app we have developed, the BabblePlay app, with young babies aged 6-8 months. The app responds to sounds the babies make with moving colourful shapes. We hope that once babies see this interesting moving display every time that they vocalise, they will understand that if they vocalise again more shapes will appear. This should, hopefully, encourage them to vocalise more. The ultimate aim of this project is to use this app as a way of encouraging babies to vocalise more, which we believe might help them to start saying words a little earlier. At this stage we are simply trying to find out whether babies can learn to interact with the app, or in other words, whether they seem to understand that the shapes appear because they are vocalising. For this we will measure whether the babies vocalise more when playing with the app than when interacting (or playing) with objects that do not respond to their vocalisations.
This cross-linguistic study ran in 2010, jointly with Rory DePaolis, Ghada Khattab and Sophie Wauquier, and was funded by the ESRC. We worked with colleagues elsewhere in the UK and in France and studied children learning English (in and around York), French (in Paris) and Arabic (in the Lebanon) and looked at the sorts of patterns that toddlers use in each language when listening to and producing words. We followed a small group of children in all three countries over the course of a year, recording and transcribing their speech.
Late talkers are defined as children who have produced few words and no combinations by age two. Many of these children are ‘late bloomers’, who catch up with their peers within a few months. Children who fail to show rapid advance before age 3 may be at risk for either Specific Language Impairment or Dyslexia. We have conducted a study funded by the ESRC to establish the role of phonetic and phonological difficulties in predicting later lexical and grammatical advance.
This is a study we ran a few years ago in Wales (see DePaolis, Vihman and Keren-Portnoy, 2011. For a recent replication in Italian see Majorano, Vihman and DePaolis, 2013). It investigates the way in which what an infant can say affects the way they listen to the speech they hear. What we find is that early on infants are mostly drawn to the sounds in the surrounding speech that they can already produce. Later they begin to be more attracted to sounds they are not yet producing, but that are within their reach.
Marilyn Vihman is a developmental linguist with a primary interest in phonological development. She is best known for her book, Phonological Development: The origins of language in the child, published in 1996. This provides surveys of research on both infant speech perception and early vocal and phonological development. A revised edition, with several new chapters and the new subtitle The first two years, was published in 2014.
Since coming to the UK in 1996 Marilyn has carried out funded research studies that include observational recordings of children learning British English and Welsh, acoustic analyses of English, Finnish, French, Japanese and Welsh babbling and early words, and experiments using the perceptual Head Turn paradigm. Her current research is primarily focused on the formation and later fading of phonological templates in the first years of life. Marilyn is also known for her work on bilingual language development.
Tamar Keren-Portnoy is a developmental psychologist, specialising in the study of first language acquisition. Her main interests are in child phonology and very early syntax. What interests her most is understanding how what a child already knows and is able to do directs their further learning and development. She therefore focuses on investigating mutual effects of production and perception and the way linguistic knowledge develops out of the motoric act of speaking.
Tamar uses naturalistic observation data as well as experimental methods with both infants and toddlers (and a little with adults too).
Chris Cox is an MA-student in Phonetics & Phonology and works as a research assistant in the BabyLab. He runs central fixation studies and studies on babble with infants aged 6-12 months.
His main research interests involve studying infants’ categorisation of speech sounds in probabilistic frameworks as well as first and second language acquisition of intonation, rhythm and stress patterns.
He is especially interested in studying the nature of the mechanisms that support the emergence of phonological knowledge in language acquisition.
Florence Oxley is a first year PhD student within the Department of Language & Linguistic Science and has worked as a Research Assistant for the York BabyLab on two projects: Effects of Input and BabblePlay app pilot. She has also been involved in a smaller way in conducting word learning studies with infants using eye-tracking and central fixation.
Her own research interests are infant phonological development, neurolinguistics and the evolution of human communication and language. In particular, she is interested in the evolution of the parts of the brain that support language and communication. Her PhD research examines how babble contributes to brain development and vice versa.
She is also interested in what infants’ perception of emotional state information in pitch can tell us about the evolutionary origins of human communication, language and social culture.
We have been running the York BabyLab since 2007. This has given us the chance to meet hundreds of families from York and the surrounding areas – and we have learned a lot! However, each research study not only teaches us something about how babies learn to talk but raises many new questions as well. So we always have new studies going on – and we would love to have you and your baby come take part in one!
For some of our studies we invite you to visit the York BabyLab for a short session. In other cases we would like to come visit you at home, to record you and your child playing together. And in a third type of study we give you the ‘LENA device’, for you to record your child and all the speech the child hears over a set period of time (without any of us being present). And then again we sometimes combine two of these study-types in one – depending on what questions we are asking.
To find out what studies we are currently carrying out in the York BabyLab, visit our 'Current Projects’ tab.
To take part in one of our studies, please complete our online ‘Sign up for a Study’ form.
For information about the LENA device, visit ‘LENA device’ page.
For contact details and information on getting to the York BabyLab, go to the 'Your Visit' tab.
More information about your visit to the York BabyLab is available on our 'FAQ' tab. This is a collection of questions that parents often ask.
To register your child, complete the online 'Sign up for a study in the York BabyLab' registration form or call the Infant and Toddler Language Studies lab on (01904) 323619. Leave a message if we are unable to answer the phone: we will get back to you as soon as we can.
You can also send an e-mail to [email protected].
What will happen if we agree to take part and what do we need to do?
If you do decide to sign up, your details will be entered into our database. Often we advertise for babies younger than we need them as we have quite a narrow testing window in terms of age for some studies. When your child reaches the right age, if we are still seeing babies at that point someone will call you to arrange an appointment: either for you to visit the University or for us to visit you at home, depending on the study. We will arrange a time that is the most convenient for you and for your baby’s daily routine. After the phone call, you will be sent an information sheet by email or by post with a letter confirming your appointment. At the start of your initial visit, you will be asked to sign some consent forms.
Many of our baby language studies involve one visit to our lab at the University for a speech perception experiment. You will be in a large soundproof booth. Your child will be seated on your lap while different types of speech are played through loudspeakers, and your child’s response to this speech will be observed and video-recorded. We flash little lights or show some visual display to make your baby look in certain directions, and the speakers are positioned near the lights or display. You will be asked to use earplugs and wear headphones playing jumbled speech, so that you will not be able to hear the speech your child is hearing. This ensures that your response will not influence your child’s response in any way.
Some of our baby and toddler language studies involve us making some recordings in your home or in the lab. Sometimes this is just a half-hour filming session of you simply playing with your child. Your child will wear a special vest containing a microphone. You will also wear a microphone.
In other studies your baby will be recorded either in your home or in the lab playing on their own with toys and interacting with an iPad app.
Yet other studies involve your baby wearing a digital recording device made especially for babies throughout an entire weekend. The device is known as LENA and enables us to record for a much longer period of time and without an observer present.
Taking part in our research is always entirely voluntary. If you give us your details but then decide you no longer want to or cannot take part when we call you to offer a place in a study, this is absolutely fine. Even if you have started to participate but then change your mind during the session or between sessions, you are free to withdraw at any time before the end of the final session and without giving a reason.
The speech perception experiments in the lab only last for a few minutes, but you should allow about half an hour in total for the visit to the University as some babies are asleep when they arrive or need a quick feed before we begin. There are also some consent forms for you to sign. Some studies also involve us filming you in the baby lab, which means your visit may last up to an hour. Home visits usually last around 45 minutes. The toddler tasks at the University will take about 30-45 minutes.
Will my child’s participation in the research be kept confidential?
Any publication of the data or the findings of our studies will maintain strict confidentiality as to your identity and that of your child. You can choose whether or not to allow your child’s video and audio footage to be used (under a pseudonym) as part of any teaching or research material. All video material is kept in a locked room.
You will be with your baby at all times and children will never be left with an unsupervised adult.
You will be paid for each visit (to either the home or the University) to thank you for your time. There is a free short-stay car park near our department that you can use during University visits. If your visit is going to last longer than 60 minutes, we will provide you with a parking permit.
How can I find the lab at the University?
Follow the ‘Where To Find Us’ link on our webpage for a map showing the location of the Department of Language and Linguistic Science. The baby lab is on the second floor of B Block in Vanbrugh College. (There is a lift.) Full directions will be sent in an email or letter when an appointment has been made for your visit.
It is a chance for some one-on-one time with your child. We hope you will find it interesting and fun to take part in our studies. You will also be contributing to our understanding of the very early stages of language development. We will tell you about our results as the studies progress in regular newsletters.
Can a caregiver bring a child for the session instead of me?
It’s absolutely fine for another caregiver (grandparent, aunt, nanny etc.) to bring the baby to the University, as long as the child’s parents have signed our consent forms. It is also fine to conduct home sessions with another caregiver.
What happens when the research stops?
We will be happy to send you a summary of our findings when a study is complete, some time in the future. We will also keep you updated with regular newsletters as the studies progress.
Is it safe for my child to take part?
Our studies have been reviewed by the departmental ethics committee who are satisfied that there is absolutely no risk of harm to either you or your child. All studies are completely non-invasive. Our baby experiments at the University only involve measuring the length of time your child turns their head in a particular direction in response to a sound. Our toddler experiments involve looking at a book or moving some toys between compartments in a set of boxes.
We are a bilingual family. Can we still take part?
This will depend on the study. Unfortunately, most of our studies at the moment are for babies and toddlers from English-speaking families. This is because we are looking at sound patterns and need to make comparisons across a large group of children, so we need the language they hear around them to be consistent.
We don’t expect you to go ahead with visits if your child is poorly. Just ring either the lab on (01904) 323619 or the mobile number of the person who has been in contact with you, and we’ll reschedule as soon as your child is feeling better.
I haven't heard from you for ages since I signed up for a study. Why?
We want to include as many babies as possible in our studies. Please note that some of our baby studies are for infants as old as 12 months so it may be a little while before you hear from us. Unfortunately we may not be able to include everyone who has registered so far due to our funding running out, or the study ending. We do apologise for any disappointment caused.
What if my baby is hungry or needs changing during a visit to the lab?
We realise that despite your best efforts to make sure a baby is fed and changed before a visit, things may not go to plan. We are happy for you to feed your baby in the lab and we have a changing mat for you to use if required.
Any complaint about the way in which you or your child have been dealt with during the study will be addressed. In the event of any complaints arising concerning this research, please address them to Professor D. Brown, Head of Department, Department of Language and Linguistic Science, Vanbrugh College, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD or to Dr Márton Sóskuthy, Chair of the Language and Linguistic Science Ethics Committee, Vanbrugh College, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, email: [email protected]. | 2019-04-26T06:13:55Z | https://www.york.ac.uk/language/research/projects/babylab/ |
Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.
Laboratory of Health and Environment Education, Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Brazil.
Analysing Swedish population register data, the aim of the present study is to investigate differences in acute cardiovascular disease (CVD) in terms of stroke and myocardial infarction incidence between selfemployed individuals and paid employees and to study whether the associations vary by gender or across industrial sectors. A cohort of nearly 4.8 million employed individuals (6.7% self-employed in 2003) is followed-up for hospitalization due to stroke and myocardial infarction (2004–2008). Self-employed individuals are defined as sole proprietors and limited liability company owners according to legal type of their enterprise. Negative binomial regression models are applied to compare hospitalization rates between the self-employed and paid employees, adjusted for socioeconomic and demographic confounders. Two- and three-way interaction are tested between occupational group, industrial sector, and gender. Limited liability company owners have significantly lower hospitalization for myocardial infarction than paid employees. Regarding two-way interaction,sole proprietors have higher myocardial infarction hospitalization in trade, transport and communication, and lower in agriculture, forestry, and fishing than paid employees. Limited liability company owners have lower hospitalization rate for myocardial infarction than employees in several industries. The results highlight the importance of enterprise legal type and industrial sector for CVD among self-employed individuals.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Is the gap between experienced working conditions and the perceived importance of these conditions related to subjective health?
Vinberg, S., Hagqvist, E., Toivanen, S. & Nordenmark, M. (2018). Sickness Presence Among Self-Employed In Western Europe – The Importance Of Psychosocial Working Conditions. In: : . Paper presented at EAWOP Small Group Meeting,"To work, or not to work (when sick), that is the question", Klagenfurt, Austria, July 27-28, 2018.
Department of Public Health Sciences Stockholm University.
Self-employed is an interesting category when it comes to the phenomenon of sickness presence. To our knowledge, there are few studies of sickness presence among self-employed. In addition, earlier studies have indicated that self-employed have a high working pace and work many and irregular ours (Gunnarsson, Vingård, & Josephson, 2007; Nordenmark, Vinberg & Strandh, 2012; Parasuraman & Simmers, 2001), indicating that it can be problematic and frustrating to stay at home because of illness. Also, self-employed can be seen as a group with low replace ability, which can contribute to high sickness presence (Aronsson & Gustafsson, 2005). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study the occurrence of sickness presence among self-employed in relation to employees, and to analyse if possible differences between the groups can be explained by different psychosocial working conditions related to work demands and time pressure.
European policymakers encourage individuals to become self-employed because it is a way to promote innovation and job-creation (Eurofound, 2017). The proportion of self-employed individuals in the employed labour force in Europe is around 15 percent. Most of the self-employed choose to become self-employed and have good working conditions and job quality. However, around one of five of the self-employed report that they have no alternative for work and they have lower levels of job quality and worse well-being compared to the former group of self-employed (ibid.). Several studies show that the self-employed have very high decision authority and control how work is organised (Hundley, 2001; Stephan & Roesler, 2010). Conversely, most research on the characteristics of the self-employed finds that they report higher job demands and a higher workload than employees do (Nordenmark et al., 2012; Stephan & Roesler, 2010). In general, research show that self-employment is associated with a higher degree of job satisfaction than regular employment (Benz & Frey, 2004; Blanchflower, 2004: Lange, 2012). Research show that high adjustment latitude can contribute to fewer days of health complaints associated with lower rates of sick leave and sickness presence (Gerich, 2014). However, according to a recent review research concerning other health outcomes among self-employed show contradictory results (Stephan, 2017). Although, research about sickness presence has increased during the last decade relatively few organizational scholars are familiar with the concept (Aronsson & Gustafsson, 2005; Johns, 2010). Sickness presence can cause productivity loss and higher organizational costs than sickness absence (Cooper & Dewe, 2008) and increase the risk for illness among individuals (Bergström et al., 2009). It can be assumed that sickness presence and health among self-employed are particularly crucial in this enterprise group due to that the smallness make them vulnerable.
This present study is based on the fifth European survey on working conditions (EWCS) 2015, which has become an established source of information on working conditions and employment in EU Member States. The independent variable – employment type consists of the categories self-employed (with and without employees) and employees. The main independent variable is sickness presence and is measured by the following question: Over the past 12 months did you work when you were sick (1=Yes, 0=No). Several indicators of work demands, time pressure and background variables are used in the analysis.
Preliminary study results show that self-employed report a higher level of sickness presence than employed; 52.4 verses 43.6 percent. The mean number of working hours is 43.5 among self-employed and 35.4 among employed. Self-employed have worked in the evenings on average nearly 7 days a month, which is more than twice as many times as for employees. It is also twice as usual that self-employed have worked on a Sunday compared to employees. Self-employed have on average worked in the free time once or twice a month and employees have on average worked on their free time less often. All the differences between self-employed and employed are clearly significant and indicate a higher level of sickness presence and time pressure among self-employed. In a bivariate analysis, self-employed have a significant higher risk for reporting sickness presence. When controlling for the indicators of time pressure this relationship becomes insignificant. This means when holding the indicators of time pressure on a constant level there is no significant difference between self-employed and employed regarding the risk for reporting sickness presence. The indicator that explains the most of the difference in sickness presence between self-employed and employed is work in free time. All indicators of time pressure are significant related to the risk for sickness presence; the more hours worked and the more often worked in evenings, on Sundays and in the free time, the higher the risk for reporting sickness presence. All these variables are also significant associated to the risk for sickness presence when controlling for background characteristics. Age is significantly associated to sickness presence in the way that a higher age reduces the risk for reporting sickness presence. Women more often report sickness presence than men do. Civil status is not significantly associated to sickness presence. Having children increases the risk for sickness presence and having household economic difficulties increases the risk for reporting sickness presence. The indicators of time pressure contribute most to the level of explained variance in all performed regression models.
The results show that self-employed have a significant higher risk for reporting sickness presence than employed have. This difference is explained by the variables measuring time pressure, which indicates that the self-employed have a higher risk of reporting sickness presence because they experience more time pressure. In the extended paper, we will include other psychosocial working conditions as e.g. job control and consider different clusters of self-employed. The contribution to the small group meeting will be knowledge about sickness presence among different groups of self-employed and implications for researchers and practitioners.
The family and the work place are two arenas of central importance for most adult people. Consequently, one can assume that the level of satisfaction with one’s family life and job may be critical to one’s level of happiness in general. However, there are reasons to believe that there are variations according to gender and gender regime. The general aim of this study is to analyse the relative importance of job satisfaction and satisfaction with family life for happiness among women and men in different gender regimes. Analyses are based on comparative data from the International Social Survey Program 2012. Results show that the level of satisfaction with family life appears more important to the general level of happiness than the level of job satisfaction. This is true for both women and men and in different gender regimes. However, the level of satisfaction with family life appears less important to men’s level of happiness in countries representing a conservative gender regime. Another interesting related result is that the level of happiness appears generally lower among women living in a conservative gender regime.
Hagqvist, E., Nordenmark, M., Pérez, G., Trujillo Alemán, S. & Gillander Gådin, K. (2017). Parental leave policies and time use for mothers and fathers: A case study of Spain and Sweden. Society, health and vulnerability, 8(1), 2-12, Article ID 1374103.
Barcelona Agency of Public Health.
States play an important role in gender equality through policy structuring. In this case study, the aim is to explore whether changes in parental leave policies over two decades trickle down to changes in gendered time use in two polarised countries: Sweden and Spain, represented by the Basque Country. Sweden represents dual-earner countries with high relative gender equality, whereas Spain represents a south European policy model supporting a breadwinning/homemaker ideal. The results show that changes in the gendered time use among mothers and fathers in both countries are associated with changes in parental leave policies. Changes in policies directed towards increasing gender equality reduce the gender gap in time use among mothers and fathers and seem to increase gender equality within a country. From these results, the conclusion is that parental leave policies that are structured to promote or enable gender equality could reduce the gender time gap in work among mothers and fathers.
This study analysed whether gender context is important to differences in therelationship between work–family conflict (WFC) and well-being across Europe. Wehypothesised that in countries that support equality in work life and where norms supportwomen’s employment, the relationship between WFC and low well-being is weaker than incountries with less support for gender equality. Cohabiting men and women aged18–65 years from 25 European countries were selected from the European Social Survey.A multilevel analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between well-being andWFC, and two measurements were used to represent gender context: gender equality inwork life and norms regarding women’s employment. Contrary to the hypothesis, theresults showed that the negative relationship was stronger in countries with high levels ofgender equality in work life and support for women’s employment than in countries with arelatively low level of gender equality in work life and support for traditional genderrelations. The context in which gender is constructed may be important when studying therelationship between WFC and well-being. In addition, emphasis should be placed onpolicies that equalise both the labour market and the work performed at home.
Toivanen, S., Harter Griep, R., Mellner, C., Nordenmark, M., Vinberg, S. & Eloranta, S. (2016). Hospitalization due to stroke or myocardial infarction – are there any differences between self-employed individuals and employees?. In: : . Paper presented at Health of small business owners & entrepreneurs - 1st international workshop, Montpellier, France, September 29 and 30, 2016.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Hospitalization due to stroke or myocardial infarction – are there any differences between self-employed individuals and employees?
The aim was to examine hospitalization due to stroke and acute myocardial infarction, respectively, and to analyze differences between the self-employed and paid employees in the same industries. Data and methods: Data from Statistics Sweden's population register (2003) was linked to National Board of Health and Welfare’s hospital admission register and cause of death register (2004-2008). More than 4.7 million people (7% self-employed) were included in the analyses. Individuals were classified on the basis of their occupational status as self-employed persons or employees. The self-employed were further classified as sole proprietors or limited liability company owners according to the legal form of self-employment. Based on the Swedish Standard Industrial Classification (SNI 2002) eight industries were distinguished. Diagnoses of hospitalization were classified as stroke (intracerebral hemorrhage I61, cerebral infarction I63, and unspecified acute cerebrovascular disease I64) and acute myocardial infarction (I21) based on the international classification of diseases (ICD-10). Stroke and Myocardial Infarction (MI) hospitalization incidence rate ratios (IRR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using negative binomial regression models adjusted for pre-specified potential confounding covariates. Effect modification by occupational status, industrial sector, and gender was investigated with two and three-way interaction terms.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Sjukhusinläggningar till följd av akuta hjärt-kärlsjukdomar: finns det skillnader mellan egenföretagare och anställda inom samma bransch?
Bakgrund: Både bättre och sämre hälsa har tidigare rapporterats hos egenföretagare jämfört med anställda. Egenföretagare rapporterar oftast bättre livs- och arbetstillfredsställelse trots att de arbetar mer, tar kortare semester, är mer sällan sjukskrivna och oftare sjuknärvarande än anställda. Företagsform och bransch påverkar egenföretagares dödsrisk, även i jämförelse med anställda. Vad gäller sjukhusinläggningar till följd av akuta hjärt- kärlsjukdomar är kunskapen om skillnader mellan egenföretagare och anställda begränsad. Syftet var att undersöka sjukhusinläggningar till följd av akut hjärtinfarkt och stroke, var för sig, och analysera skillnader mellan egenföretagare och anställda inom samma branscher. Data och metod: Data från Statistiska centralbyråns befolkningsregister (2003) länkades till Socialstyrelsens patientregister och dödsorsaksregister (2004-2008). Drygt 4,7 miljoner individer (7 % egenföretagare) ingick i studien. Individer klassificerades utifrån yrkesställning som anställda, egenföretagare eller egenföretagare med aktiebolag. Utifrån Standard för svensk näringsgrensindelning (SNI 2002) klassificerades åtta branscher.
Diagnos för sjukhusinläggning klassificerades som akut hjärtinfarkt (I21) och stroke (I61 intracerebral blödning; I63 cerebral infarkt; I64 ospecificerad akut cerebrovaskulär sjukdom) utifrån internationell klassificering av diagnoser (ICD-10). Sjukhusinläggningstal (incidens rate ratio, IRR med 95 % konfidensintervall, KI) estimerades med multipel Negative Binomial regressionsanalys. Två- och trevägsinteraktioner testades mellan yrkesställning, bransch och kön. Resultat: Risken för sjukhusinläggning till följd av akut hjärtinfarkt (IRR 0,92; KI 0,85-0,99) var signifikant lägre bland egenföretagare med aktiebolag jämfört med anställda, och högre i de flesta branscher (IRR 1,15 – 1,25) jämfört med jordbruk, skogsbruk och fiske (JSF). Förhöjd risk för sjukhusinläggning till följd av stroke fanns i samtliga branscher (IRR 1,19 – 1,48) jämfört med JSF, däremot fanns inga skillnader utifrån yrkesställning. Tvåvägsinteraktionen mellan yrkesställning och bransch var signifikant för hjärtinfarkt (p=0,0019). Jämfört med anställda hade egenföretagare förhöjd risk för sjukhusinläggning inom handel, restaurang och transport (IRR 1,22; KI 1,09-1,38) samt lägre risk inom JSF (IRR 0,81; KI 0,68-0,97) och i icke specificerade branscher (IRR 0,79; KI 0,67- 0,93). | 2019-04-20T01:20:06Z | http://miun.diva-portal.org/smash/person.jsf?pid=authority-person%3A53895 |
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However, in order to avoid any kind of fraud, eTickets can not be refunded or exchanged if the event is postponed or rescheduled. Unless stated otherwise, they will be valid for the new date.
Can I return tickets if unable to attend?
Answer: Yes. If you cannot attend the event, we offer a full refund (minus the shipping fees) for any purchase up to 30 days before the event. The tickets must be in our possession 30 days before the said date.
Can eTickets be refunded or exchanged?
Answer: In order to avoid any kind of fraud, the eTickets cannot be refunded, nor exchanged. All eTickets sales are final, without any exception.
Furthermore, TicketRoute.com is not responsible for lost or stolen tickets. Once the transaction is done, you are fully responsible of your tickets. The venue is not responsible either for lost or stolen tickets.
Why aren't there any seat numbers indicated?
Answer: Keeping the confidentiality of our customers and resellers is fundamental to us. This is why we do not provide the seat numbers of your tickets until the purchase is complete.
However, we are on some occasions able to contact our resellers in order to confirm the exact seat numbers for our customers wishing to obtain this information before completing their purchase.
Are the seats side by side?
Answer: Since tickets are only sold in pairs, all seats are generally next to one another (unless indicated differently on the ticket description). Keep in mind that most venues use seating arrangements working with even or uneven number sequence.
If the tickets are not seated next to one another, a note will always be enclosed in the ticket description saying so.
Answer: If the ticket description indicates “leapfrog” seat, it means tickets are seated one in front of the other in different aisles and not next to one another in the same aisle.
It rarely happens that the tickets we offer are leapfrog seats, although a note specifying this is always included in the ticket description.
Why are tickets only sold in pairs?
Answer: Sellers don’t usually allow tickets to be sold by the unit by fear of ending-up with a single ticket they are unable to sell. As well, rare are the people who attend events alone.
Answer: TicketRoute.com is not responsible for lost or stolen tickets. We recommend to our customers to keep their tickets safe as if it was money or any other valuable personal item.
Our terms and conditions stipulate that any stolen or lost ticket will not be reimbursed or replaced. It is possible to try and get them reprinted although we do not guarantee anything in this regard. Once the tickets are bought and delivered, they become the entire responsibility of the buyer.
Starting when do tickets get announced?
Answer: Tickets are up for sale on our website as soon as one of our resellers can confirm they are available for purchase.
Generally, we can pre-order tickets before they go on sale. In this case, the option “pre-order your tickets” will be made available on the event notice. After which, you are invited to fill-out a form with your contact information in order for us to send you an email notification before the tickets go on sale.
You will therefore benefit from buyer priority on the best tickets available.
Answer: The most common reason for this usually is that the tickets you had seen have been sold.
Nonetheless, it is possible we have pulled the tickets from the website because game time is nearing the present date.
Because of our 100% guarantee, we cannot offer tickets on our website if we cannot guarantee delivery will be made on-time for the game.
In this case, we invite you to contact us to see if tickets are still available for the game you wish to see and if you are able to come and pick them up at our offices in Montreal.
Answer: If you are using the search bar to find tickets for a specific event, please make sure your spelling is correct.
It can happen that demand for the tickets you are looking to purchase is not sufficient, therefore they are not made available on our website. If this should be the case, please contact us and we will see what we can do for you.
Answer: When you purchase eTickets, you will receive one or many PDF documents by email. Those contain barcodes and all the information concerning the event (title of the event, date, time and seat numbers).
You have to print the PDF documents and bring them with you on the day of the event. They will be scanned at the door, just like regular tickets.
In order to avoid any fraud, there is no refund or exchange on eTickets whatsoever. All eTickets sales are final.
How is the price of tickets determined?
Answer: TicketRoute.com operates in the tickets resale market.
Therefore, the price of tickets is often higher than the original asking price. In the total price of tickets, the asking price for the tickets by the reseller is included.
TicketRoute.com acts as an intermediate between the customer and the reseller. This is why we want to remind our customers that it is the resellers who set the price of tickets and not TicketRoute.com. The resale market of tickets implies that tickets are sold at a different price then the original one.
It is possible to see similar tickets priced diffrently.
Is the price indicated for one ticket or total amount?
Answer: All prices on TicketRoute.com represent the cost of one ticket. For example, if you are purchasing 4 tickets priced at $50, the total amount of your purchase will be $200 (taxes and shipping fees will be added at checkout).
Are there service fees in the sale?
Answer: Yes. Service fees (10%) are included in the prices listed on TicketRoute.com. Please note that shipping charges and taxes are not included in the price.
These fees are used to cover the costs associated with infrastructure development, to guarantee the safety of our customers at 100%, to maintain the quality of our customer service and of our web platform.
Has my credit card been charged once purchase is confirmed?
Answer: As soon as we received your order, we authorize the credit card to be charged. At that moment, your tickets are officially reserved and a purchase confirmation is sent to you by email. Once the purchase has been confirmed, we bill the credit card and make sure you get your tickets before the event. Keep in mind that your purchase is covered by our 100% guarantee.
Will the price of tickets go down?
Answer: Is some case, the price of tickets goes up and in others it goes down. In the ticket resale business, one can never predict price fluctuations.
We recommend our customers to buy their tickets as soon as they can. When buying your tickets early you actually assure yourself to attend the event, independently of how the market flows.
If I buy many at once, will it be cheaper per ticket?
Answer: Unfortunately, no. Prices are determined by individual sellers and cannot be negotiated, no matter how many tickets you buy in one transaction.
Answer: It is impossible to buy tickets from TicketRoute.com without a credit card.
However, if you are able to pick up the tickets in person at our Montreal office, please contact us at 1-800-560-9789 to make arrangements with us. It will then be possible to pay cash.
Answer: All purchases on TicketRoute.com are sent via ExpressPost or FedEx with signature proof of delivery required for all shipping.
Please keep in mind we do not deliver to P.O. boxes and that a signature proof is required on delivery.
Also, keep in mind the delivery date is determined by the moment tickets are made available by our resellers.
However, our customer can always count on the TicketRoute.com 100% Guarantee to receive their purchase on time for the event. Delivery will only be made at the address given for the credit card and no other place.
Answer: At TicketRoute.com, we guarantee you will receive your tickets on time for the event.
TicketRoute.com offers its customers the choice in the delivery mode. These choices are determined by the date the tickets are made available for delivery and not the date of purchase.
It can happen that our resellers do not currently have possession of the tickets as it is often the case with season tickets waiting to be printed by the team or the ticket office.
Once the tickets are ready for shipping, we will send you a shipment tracking number for FedEx or ExpressPost (depending on the delivery mode you will have chosen).
This will allow you to follow your purchase step by step as it makes its way over to you. If time allowed for the delivery is too short before the event, customers can make arrangements to come and pick up their tickets at our offices in Montreal.
The time allowed for delivery by FedEx depends on the level of service offered in the region.
Please take note that some ticket orders can take up to 1 or 2 business days before being treated. Clients can login to their TicketRoute.com account at all time to verify the status of their order.
Answer: To avoid credit card fraud, we will only deliver the tickets at the billing address given for the credit card used.
If you are not present at the time ExpressPost comes to deliver your tickets they will leave a notification card in your mailbox.
From that moment on, you will have 5 to 7 days to go to the indicated post office on the notification card and pickup your package.
You can always use the tracking number, we have provided you with, to locate your package if you have lost the notification card left by ExpressPost.
When picking up your package at the post office you will be asked to provide a photo identification card.
If you do not pick-up your package at the post office within the allowed time, it will be resent to TicketRoute.com. An additional fee of $20 will be charged if we have to re-send the tickets to the customer.
FedEx will make two delivery attempts.
In each case, a signature proof of delivery by an adult will be requested by TicketRoute.com to insure tickets are in the right hands.
FedEx will not complete the delivery of the package if an adult is not present to signature proof the delivery. If you or another adult are not able to be present at the time of delivery, please contact FedEx by dialling 1-800-GO-FEDEX (1-800-463-3339) to make arrangements directly with them. Please have your tracking number at hand.
After two failed delivery attempts by FedEx, a notification card will be left in your mailbox. You will then have to go to the FedEx office written on the notification card holding your package in order to pick it up.
When picking up your package you will be asked to provide a photo identification card.
After a certain laps of time, if the package is not picked-up, FedEx will return it to TicketRoute.com. An additional fee of $25 will be charged if we have to re-send the tickets to the customer.
Answer: You need to update your contact information in the "Address" section. If you have bought tickets but haven't received them yet, you must contact our customer service department to let us know about it.
What is the purpose of defining my favorites?
Answer: By setting your preferences and favorite artists in the section "My favorites", you help us to better target your interests. This way, we will show you, or send you, offers that concern artists that interest you the most. You will be notified first if one of your favorite artists comes in your area!
Answer: Alerts allow us to send you notifications to alert you in the event where one of your favorite artists comes to your area, so you can get the tickets you want before anyone else! You can opt to receive these alerts via email or SMS sent to your mobile, your choice!
In addition you can also subscribe to our newsletter, sent by email only, and be aware of artists and events to watch. Sign up now! | 2019-04-22T04:40:14Z | https://www.ticketroute.com/faq/ |
SAVING IS KEY TO FINANCIAL HEALTH.
Whether you’re saving towards a goal like a new car or a home remodel, or you’re building a nest egg or an emergency fund, our personal savings accounts will help you achieve your goals. We know everyone’s needs are different, so we’ll work with you to help pick the account type that suits yours.
Manage your money anytime with free access to your accounts and online statements.
With higher interest rates, our money market accounts combine the reliability of a savings account with the higher yields of a market investment.
Lock your money in for a set time period, and get the certainty of a fixed interest rate for the full term of the CD.
We can help you easily transition from your previous financial institution to your new account at Prospect Bank. All you will need to do is provide information about your previous bank account, any automatic debits and direct deposits. We have forms and checklists to help you with this process!
This Account Is Best For You If: You’re opening your child’s first account to teach them the basics of personal finance and help build a lifelong habit of saving.
This Account Is Best For You If: You’re just starting out working towards your savings goals, and want an account with all the basics and a low starting balance.
This Account Is Best For You If: You are serious about building cash reserves, and want to earn higher interest as your savings grows to meet your long-term goals.
This Account Is Best For You If: You want to see your savings grow based on tiered interest rates and smart investments.
© 2017 Prospect Bank All Rights Reserved.
Before you sign up for Online Banking you must read and accept the following agreement. To accept, read the agreement and then click the Accept button.
This Agreement is entered into between Prospect Bank (the "Bank") and any customer of the Bank who subscribes to retail Internet Banking (“Online Banking”). The customer is referred to in this Agreement as "you" or "your." The Bank is referred to in this Agreement as "Bank," "us," and/or "our." The internet banking service is referred to as “Online Banking”. You should carefully read this Agreement, the Bank's instructions on the use of Online Banking and Bill Pay, as they may exist and as may be amended from time to time ("Instructions). If you use Online Banking or permit another to use Online Banking on your behalf, you agree to the terms and conditions stated in this Agreement. You must follow all of our instructions and procedures applicable to the services covered by this Agreement.
1. Other Accounts, Loan Agreements and Services These terms and conditions are in addition to those that apply to any accounts you may have with us, loan or credit agreements, or any other services you obtain from us, including your signature card, the account and depositing disclosures, agreements, and fee schedules, the terms and conditions of any loan or credit agreements, the accompanying schedules and disclosures, and any change of terms notices. If you have more than one account or other relationship with us, you may "link" the relationships together as we permit. Accounts that are linked under Online Banking must have one common owner and signer. Any signer, acting alone, must be authorized to access a linked account (see section 16).
2. Electronic Fund Transfer Act and Regulation E The Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) and its implementing regulation, Regulation E (“REG E”), govern some of the transactions permitted through Online Banking. Some of the terms and conditions of this Agreement are disclosures required by REG E.
You will be required to assure any computer and browser software used for accessing Online Banking meets the minimum requirements. (In this Agreement, your computer and the related equipment are referred to together as your "Computer"). You must have a computer and an internet browser that will support 128 bit encryption. You will also need internet access through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and access to a printer and/or other storage medium such as a hard drive for downloading information or printing disclosures and statements. You are responsible for the installation, maintenance, and operation of your Computer and your software. The risk of error, failure, or nonperformance is your risk and includes the risk that you do not operate your Computer or your software correctly. The Bank is not responsible for any errors or failures from any malfunction of your Computer or your software. The Bank is not responsible for any Computer virus related problems that may be associated with the use of the Online Banking system. The Bank shall have no liability to you for any damage or other loss, direct or consequential, which you may suffer or incur by reason of your use of your Computer or your software. THE BANK MAKES NO WARRANTY TO YOU REGARDING YOUR COMPUTER OR YOUR SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
4. Access Code When you enroll in Online Banking you will create a User ID and a Password (the User ID and Password collectively are referred to as the "Access Codes"). You will need the Access Codes to gain access to Online Banking. Use of the Access Codes is the agreed security procedure between you and the Bank. Keep your Access Codes confidential in order to prevent unauthorized use and possible loss to your accounts. Anyone to whom you give or disclose your Access Codes will have full access to your accounts, even if you attempt to limit that person's authority. There is no charge if you change your Access Codes for security reasons. If you forget your Access Codes you must contact the Bank to have new temporary Access Codes issued to you. It may take several days before you receive these Access Codes. Under no circumstances should a Bank employee request your Access Codes (including your Password) through Online Banking, over the Internet, or through other contact. Do not respond to any such request, even if the person claims to represent the Bank.
5. Security The Bank is committed to the security of its customers' accounts and account information. Similarly, you must take every precaution to ensure the safety, security, and integrity of your accounts and transactions with Online Banking. The Access Codes are the Access Devices to your accounts and other services provided herein; providing the Access Devices to another person effectively constitutes a grant of authority to access your accounts under REG E. The following guidelines should assist you in these efforts: Do not give or disclose any part of your Access Codes to anyone, including any Bank employee, particularly while on the telephone or online or while using the Internet. Do not leave your account information out in an open area accessible by others, including your Computer screen. Do not send your Access Codes or privileged account information over any public or general e-mail system. Do not leave your Computer unattended while you are connected to Online Banking. Please observe these guidelines. Remember, you may be held liable for the unauthorized use of your Access Codes (see section 15.1).
6. Online Banking Services To subscribe to Online Banking, you must have at least one account with the Bank. Your Online Banking subscription includes a Basic Service Package free of charge, and additional Products and Services, for which service fees may be charged.
These lists are not exhaustive and the Bank may offer additional services in the future. This Agreement is intended to cover all services offered by Online Banking, including future services. In most cases you may use Online Banking to gain access to deposit accounts in which you have an unrestricted right to withdraw funds and line of credit accounts in which you have an unrestricted right to borrow money. However, the Bank, as it may determine at any time and from time to time in its sole discretion, may deny Online Banking account access, restrict Online Banking account transactions, or place limits on the specific dollar amount of funds that may be withdrawn or transferred from any account.
7. Description of Online Banking Functions/Services Depending on your particular Online Banking subscription, you may perform some or all of the following transactions: 7.1 Banking Functions If you subscribe to this service, you, or someone you have authorized by giving them your Access Codes, may use Online Banking to: (a) transfer funds between your accounts, (b) obtain account balances and transaction information for your accounts, (c) review the history of transactions, and (d) send electronic mail (e-mail) to Customer Service Representatives at the Bank. These features of Online Banking are limited by and subject to the terms and conditions described below: Your ability to transfer funds between certain accounts is limited by federal law, as stated in the Deposit Agreements. For example, you can make no more than six (6) transfers from a savings or money market savings account during any one (1) calendar month or statement cycle (the period from one statement to the next) or similar period of at least four weeks, to another of your accounts with us or to a third party by means of a preauthorized or automatic transfer, or telephonic (including data transmission) agreement, order or instruction or by check, draft, debit card, or similar order made by you and payable to third parties. A “preauthorized transfer” includes any arrangements by us to pay a third party from your account upon written or oral instruction (including an order received through an automated clearing house (ACH) or any arrangement by us to pay a third party from your account at a predetermined time or on a fixed schedule). Transfers made using both Online Banking and other transfer methods described in the Deposit Agreements are counted against the permissible number of transfers. Instructions to transfer funds between deposit accounts must be sent by 4:00 p.m. Central Time to be processed the SAME business day. Transfers received after 4:00 p.m. Central Time will be processed ONE business day later. Each transfer made from a loan account (e.g., an overdraft checking account) is treated as a cash advance from that account and is subject to terms of any loan or other applicable agreement you may have with the Bank. The Bank will not immediately receive e-mail that you send. Therefore, you should not rely on e-mail if you need to communicate to the Bank immediately. For example, if you need to stop payment on a check, to report a lost or stolen card, or to report an unauthorized transaction from one of your accounts, you should contact the Bank immediately by calling our Online CSR (see section 12). The Bank will not take actions based on your e-mail requests until the Bank actually receives your message and has a reasonable opportunity to act. Transaction information for your accounts will be available from Online Banking for a period of no more than 60 days prior to the date of the inquiry. The Bank reserves the right to limit the frequency and dollar amount of transactions from your accounts for security or credit reasons, as the Bank may determine at any time and from time to time in its sole discretion. 7.2 Bill Payment Service The Bill Payment service is an electronic payment system that permits you to initiate and authorize payments from your accounts to payees that you have selected in advance to receive payments by means of this service. (A "payee" is a person or business you are paying.) You have the option of setting up a payee as one of two bill payment types: (1) scheduled payments, which are payments of a fixed amount that are paid at a regular time interval, such as monthly (e.g., rent, mortgage, etc.); and (2) on demand payments, which are payments that vary in amount and/or date (e.g., utility, credit card, etc.). After you have established a scheduled or on demand payment authorization, the Bank will automatically execute bill payments according to your instructions until you have properly notified the Bank, in accordance with the Bank's procedures in effect at that time, of any cancellation of or change to your instructions. To subscribe to Bill Payment ("ePay"), you must have at least one checking account with the Bank. If you subscribe to this service, you may use ePay to make payments from one checking account, designated by you as your Primary Account. An account that requires two or more signatures to make withdrawals may not be designated as a Primary Account. To pay bills using ePay, you must use your Computer and the software to authorize a payment from your Primary Account. After your instruction is received, payment will be made electronically or by preparing a paper check to the payee via first class mail. You must set the payment date to at least ten (10) business days for checks and three (3) days for electronic prior to the date you wish the payment to reach the merchant. Our cut-off for payments is 8 pm CST; but, this cut-off time is not universal since some companies have their own cut-off. You may use ePay to authorize automated recurring payments in order to pay recurring bills. These payments must be for the same amount each month and they will be sent on the same calendar day of each month, or on the following business day if the regular payment day falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or Federal Banking Holiday. When you have entered and transmitted a payment instruction, you authorize the Bank to reduce the Primary Account accordingly. Funds for payments are deducted from your account on the day specified by you for electronic payments. If paid by check, the funds will come out of your account on the day that the check clears the bank. If there are insufficient funds in the Primary Account to make payments you have authorized, The Bank may either refuse to pay the item or it may make the payment and thereby overdraw the Primary Account. In either event, you are responsible for any non-sufficient funds ("NSF") or overdraft charges the Bank may impose, as stated in the Deposit Agreements. Your ePay account may be suspended if payments are returned for any reason. The Bank reserves the right to refuse to honor payment requests that reasonably appear to the Bank to be fraudulent, incomplete, erroneous, or if you do not follow the Bank's instructions for ePay. In addition, the Bank will not be able to execute any bill payment if the payee cannot or will not accept such payment. Using ePay, you can only pay payees with United States addresses. While most payments can be made using ePay, the Bank reserves the right to refuse to pay certain payees. The Bank also reserves the right to terminate your use of the Bill Payment service (see section 15 for additional Customer Responsibilities). Enrollment in this service is optional. You will also be bound by the additional Terms and Conditions of ePay that will be provided upon enrollment.
eMessenger – This service allows you to set up a variety of account balance or transaction alerts that will be sent to your email or via text message when they occur.
eMobile – This service allows you to view and receive account alerts, view account activity, transmit mobile deposits, and transfer funds between your bank accounts from your mobile device. Enrollment in this service is optional. You will also be bound by the additional Terms and Conditions of eMobile that will be provided upon enrollment.
eStatements – This service allows you to receive your account statements through Online Banking instead of receiving paper statements by mail. You will receive an email to your primary e-mail address whenever your eStatement is ready. Enrollment in this service is optional. You will also be bound by the additional Terms and Conditions of eStatements that will be provided upon enrollment.
The Bank offers External Transfer services by means of electronic transfers. These services include both one-time and recurring transfers. A one-time external transfer transaction is an electronic transfer request that is a single transaction without instructions to repeat at a future date. Recurring transfers are for transfers arranged in advance to be paid on two or more future dates. The External Transfer service allows for both inbound and outbound transfers. Inbound transfers are initiated through this service and deposited to an account held at the Bank from an account at another institution. Outbound transfers are initiated through this service to send funds from an account held at the Bank to an account at another institution. You must be the owner of the account at the Bank and the account at the other institution. You agree that you will only attempt to register accounts for which you have the authority to transfer funds. You will be required to complete the verification process for each account held outside the Bank that will be utilized with the External Transfer service. There is no fee to initiate inbound external funds transfers. There is a $.50 per transfer charge for outbound external funds transfers. The minimum transfer amount is $10.00.
Standard Transfers – Standard transfers require a minimum of 3 business days for the transfer to be completed. The cut off time for standard transfers is 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Any transfer made after the cut-off time will be initiated the next business day.
Next Day Transfers - Next Day transfers require a minimum of one business day for the transfer to be completed. In order to complete a next day transfer you must have no history of negative activity or NSF items related to External Transfer. For inbound next day transfers, you must have successfully completed an inbound transfer of $500.00 or greater and it must be 5 days since the last qualified transfer. The cut off time for next day transfers is 3:00 p.m. Central Time. Any transfer made after the cut-off time will be initiated the next business day.
You will periodically receive messages to your primary e-mail address during the external funds transfer process. These messages will provide information pertaining to the trial deposit process, confirm account linkages, and contain status updates for transfers in progress. Your primary e-mail address is defined in Online Banking and you are responsible for updating the address should it change.
The Bank reserves the right to refuse to complete transfer requests using External Transfer. The Bank also reserves the right to terminate the use of the External Transfer service. You must have sufficient funds in the designated account for the requested External Transfer at the time of the withdrawal. If sufficient funds are not available to complete the External Transfer, the transfer request will not be fulfilled and the External Transfer service may be suspended or terminated.
8. Third Party Software; Virus Protection The Bank makes no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy, functionality, or performance of any third party software that may be used in connection with Online Banking (e.g., Quicken, Microsoft Money). The Bank is not responsible for any electronic virus or viruses that you may encounter. We encourage you to routinely scan your Computer, diskettes, and software using a reliable virus product to detect and remove any viruses found. Undetected or unrepaired viruses may alter, corrupt, damage, or destroy your programs, files, and even your Computer. Additionally, you may unintentionally transmit the virus to other computers, diskettes, and software.
9. Fees Access to Online Banking is provided at no charge. Depending on which services within Online Banking you subscribe to, you may be charged the applicable fee. The Online Banking Fee Schedule is provided below. The Bank may change or add any fees for Online Banking by the following procedures outlined in Section 26 for amending this Agreement. In addition to the fees noted here, the service charges and fees provided for in the Deposit and Line of Credit agreements, if applicable, will continue to apply. You authorize the Bank to deduct all applicable Fees from the Primary Account you have specified. The Bank is not responsible for any telephone and Internet Service fees you incur in connection with your use of Online Banking.
10. Right to Stop Payment Under the EFTA you have certain stop-payment rights and obligations for "preauthorized electronic fund transfers". A PEFT is an electronic fund transfer that is authorized in advance and is scheduled to recur on a periodic basis. One-time transfers authorized in advance, however, are not PEFTs and are instead governed by section 10.2. 10.1 Preauthorized Electronic Fund Transfer. You can stop any PEFT by calling or writing to us (see Section 12 for telephone number and address) at least three (3) business days before the payment is scheduled to be made. If you stop payment by telephone, we may also require you to send us your request in writing within fourteen (14) days after you call. 10.2 Electronic Fund Transfer Authorized in Advance. You may have an opportunity to stop a one-time transfer authorized in advance by calling or writing to us (see Section 12 for telephone number and address) at least three (3) business days before the payment is scheduled to be made. The EFTA, however, does not obligate us to honor this request, and we do not guarantee that such a stop-payment will be made on time. Furthermore, you should realize that a one-time electronic fund transfer is irrevocable and cannot be stopped if it is scheduled to be made within three business days of our receiving of the note. 10.3 Fees for Stop-Payment. We will charge you $25.00 for each stop-payment order you give.
11. Overdrafts: Order of Payments, Transfers, and Other Withdrawals If funds are withdrawn from any of your accounts by means of electronic funds transfers, other than through Online Banking on the same business day as an Online Banking transaction, and if the account contains insufficient funds to enable both the electronic funds transfer and the Online Banking transfer or bill payment to be made, then the electronic funds transfer will have priority and the Online Banking transfer or bill payment will be refused or will result in an overdraft on your account. This is at the Bank's discretion.
12. Reporting Unauthorized Transactions or Theft or Loss of Access Codes If you believe that an unauthorized transaction has been made from your account, or if your Access Device has been lost or stolen, alert the Bank immediately by calling Online Support at: 877-465-4154 or write the Bank at: Electronic Banking Department Address: PO BOX 400 Paris, IL 61944 Hours: Monday-Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (holidays excluded) Telephone: 877-465-4154 Fax: 217-463-9014 Quickly telephoning us is the best way of reducing your potential losses, or you can e-mail the Bank contact at [email protected]. Please do not include or send any personal or confindential information in an email.
13. Periodic Statements Your Online Banking payments and transfers will be indicated on monthly statements we provide or make accessible by mail or delivery service. We may also provide or make accessible to you statement information electronically or by some other means. You agree to notify us promptly if you change your address or if you believe there are errors or unauthorized transactions in any statement, or statement information.
14. Business Days and Hours of Operation The Online Banking service is generally available twenty-four (24) hours a day, seven (7) days a week. However, we only process transactions and update information on business days. Our business days are Monday through Friday. Saturday, Sunday, and Federal Banking Holidays are not included. Any transaction(s), including scheduled payments, to be made on a day that is not a business day will be credited, completed, or made on the next business day.
15. Customer's Responsibility You must have enough available money or credit in any account from which you instruct us to make a payment or transfer, or for you to engage in any other transaction involving the payment or transfer of funds. You are responsible for all transactions and bill payments you authorize or make using Online Banking, including any transactions or bill payments that you may unintentionally or inadvertently authorize or make, and any losses, charges, or penalties incurred as a result. If you permit other persons to use Online Banking or your Access Device, you are responsible for any transactions they authorize from your deposit and credit accounts, including any losses, charges, or penalties incurred as a result. In regard to ePay, you are responsible for providing us with the proper payee (i.e., merchant) identification information, including the payee's address, telephone number, and your identification or account number with the payee. If you instruct us to make an electronic fund transfer to a particular payee and fail to give us the correct identification information, we are not responsible or liable for such a transfer. You should take the matter up with the payee receiving the funds in correcting such a transaction. It is your responsibility to authorize your bill payments in such a manner that your bills may be paid on time. You are responsible for any late payment or finance charges that may be imposed as a result of your failure to do this. 15.1 Customer Liability. You should notify the Bank immediately if you believe any of your accounts have been accessed or your Access Codes have been used without your permission. Contacting the bank immediately, especially by telephone, will help you reduce your potential losses. If someone used your Access Device without your permission, you can lose no more than $50.00 if you notify the Bank within two (2) business days of discovering any unauthorized use of your Access Device. However, you can lose as much as $500.00 if you do not notify the Bank within two (2) business days of discovering the unauthorized use and the Bank can prove that it could have prevented the unauthorized use had it been notified. If you do not report unauthorized transactions that appear on any of your periodic statements within sixty (60) days after such statements are mailed to you, you risk unlimited losses on transactions made after the (60) day period has past if the Bank can show that it could have prevented the unauthorized use had it been notified within this sixty (60) day period. At the Bank's sole discretion, we may extend the time periods. You are fully obligated to us to provide sufficient funds for any payments or transfers you make or authorize to be made. If we complete a payment or transfer that you make or authorize and we subsequently learn that you have insufficient funds for the transaction, you agree that we may reverse the transaction or offset the shortage with funds from any other deposit account(s) you have with us to the extent permissible by the applicable law and the terms of any other relevant agreements.
16. Joint Accounts The provisions of this section apply if any of your accounts with us is a joint account. As a holder of a joint account, you are jointly and severally liable under this Agreement. Each of you acting alone may perform transactions, obtain information, stop or change payments or transfers, terminate this Agreement or otherwise transact business, take actions or perform under this Agreement. We are not required to obtain the consent of, or notify any other of you. However, each of you will only be permitted to access accounts for which you are an owner or authorized user; therefore you must each have an individual sign on. Each of you individually releases us from any liability and agrees not to make a claim or bring any action against us for honoring or allowing any actions or transactions where the person performing the action or transaction is one of you or is otherwise authorized to use your Online Banking account. Each of you agrees to indemnify us and hold us harmless from any and all liability (including, but not limited to, reasonable attorney's fees) arising from any such claims or actions.
17. Bank's Responsibility The Bank is responsible for completing transfers and bill payments on time according to your properly entered and transmitted instructions. However, the Bank will not be liable for completing transfers and bill payments: If, through no fault of ours, you do not have enough available money in the account from which a payment or transfer is to be made, if the account has been closed, frozen, or is not in good standing, or if we reverse payment or transfer because of insufficient funds; If any payment or transfer exceeds the credit limit of any account or under the Instructions of this Agreement; If you have not properly followed software or Online Banking instructions on how to make a transfer, bill payment, or other transaction; If you have not given the Bank complete, correct, and current instructions, account numbers, Access Codes, or other identifying information so that the Bank can properly credit your account or otherwise complete the transaction; If you do not authorize a bill payment soon enough for your payment to be made to the payee by the time it is due; If the Bank makes a timely bill payment but the merchant nevertheless does not credit your payment promptly after receipt; If you receive notice from a merchant or other institution that any payment or transfer you have made remains unpaid or has not been completed, and you fail to notify us promptly of that fact; If withdrawals from any of your linked accounts have been prohibited by a court order such as a garnishment or other legal process; If your Computer, your software, or Online Banking was not working properly and this problem should have been apparent to you when you attempted to authorize a transfer or bill payment; If you, or anyone you allow, commits fraud or violates any law or regulation; If circumstances beyond the Bank's control prevent making a transfer or payment, despite reasonable precautions that the Bank has taken. Such circumstances include telecommunications outages, postal strikes, delays caused by payees, fires, and floods. There may be other exceptions to the Bank's liability as stated in the deposit, line of credit, credit card, and other Bank agreements. In addition, the Bank will not be liable for indirect, special, consequential, economic, or other damages arising out of the installation, use or maintenance of Online Banking and/or its related equipment, software, or online services.
18. Disclosure of Account Information To Others To the extent necessary to carry out the Online Banking functions, the Bank may disclose information about your accounts to third parties in the following instances: Where it is necessary for completing transfers and bill payments; In order to verify the existence and condition of a Payment Account, such as a credit bureau, merchant, or for a payee or holder of a check issued by Online Banking; In order to comply with laws, government agency rules or orders, court orders, subpoenas or other legal process, or in order to give information to any government agency or official having legal authority to request such information; To protect and enforce our rights; If, in the Bank's judgment, a third party, including affiliates of the Bank, has a legitimate business purpose for obtaining such information, including offering you products or services; and if you give us your written permission (which may be by electronic or telecommunications transmission as well as on paper).
19. Notices and Communications Except as otherwise provided in this Agreement, all notices required to be sent to you will be effective when we mail or deliver them to the last known address that we have for you in our records or when we make such notices available to you through our Online Banking service or at the last known e-mail address that we have for you in our records. Notices from you will be effective when received by mail at the address specified in the Agreement.
20. E-mail Communications You should realize that e-mail transmissions are not secure. Therefore, do not send us or ask us for confidential or sensitive information, such as your Access Codes (including your PIN), account numbers, or financial information over any general or public e-mail system.
21. Error Resolution This section applies only to electronic funds transfers governed by the EFTA and REG E. In case of errors or questions about your Online Banking transactions, please telephone Online Support (see Section 12). If you think your statement is wrong or if you need more information about a transaction listed on the statement, the Bank must hear from you no later than sixty (60) days after it sends or delivers to you the FIRST statement on which the problem or error appeared. If you requested more information about a problem or error, the Bank must hear from you within sixty (60) days after it sends or delivers that information to you. Tell us your name and account number(s). Tell us the type, time, and date of the transaction and the dollar amount of the suspected error. Describe the error or the transfer you are unsure about, and explain as clearly as you can why you believe it is an error or why you need more information. For a bill payment, tell us the checking account number used to pay the bill, payee name, date the payment was sent, payment amount, check number, and payee account number for the payment in question. If you tell the Bank orally, it may require that you send in your complaint or question in writing within ten (10) business days after we hear from you and will then in good faith attempt to correct any error promptly. If the Bank needs more time, however, it may take up to forty-five (45) days to investigate your complaint or question, in which case, the Bank will re-credit your account within ten (10) business days for the amount you think is in error, so that you will have the use of the money during the time it takes the Bank to complete its investigation. If the Bank asks you to put your complaint or question in writing and does not receive it within ten (10) business days, the Bank may not re-credit your account. If the Bank decides that there was no error, it will send you a written explanation within three (3) business days after it finishes its investigation. You may ask for copies of the documents that the Bank used in its investigation.
22. Information Authorization You agree that the Bank reserves the right to request a review of your credit rating at its own expense through an authorized bureau. In addition, you agree that the Bank reserves the right to obtain financial information regarding your account(s) from a merchant or other institution to resolve payment posting problems.
23. Data Recording When you contact Online Banking to conduct transactions, the information and e-mail messages you enter will be recorded. By using Online Banking, you consent to such recording.
24. Tape Recording You agree that we may tape record any telephone conversations you have with us regarding the services covered by the Agreement. However, we are not obligated to do so and may choose not to in our sole discretion.
25. No Signature Required When using Online Banking to pay bills, you agree that the Bank, without prior notice to you, may debit any payment account(s) to pay checks that you have not signed by hand or by legally acceptable form of electronic signature (e.g., digital signature). When using Online Banking to make transfers from credit accounts, you agree that the Bank, without prior notice to you, may take any action required to obtain cash advances on your behalf, including charging your linked credit account at the Bank without your handwritten or legally acceptable electronic signature.
Stricter limitations on the frequency of dollar amount of transfers. If the EFTA and REG E apply, we are not required to give notice if an immediate change in terms or conditions is necessary to maintain or restore the security of an account or an electronic fund transfer system. However, if such a change is permanent, and disclosure would not jeopardize security, we will notify you in writing on or with the next regularly scheduled periodic statement or within thirty (30) days of making the change permanent. If the EFTA and REG E do not apply to a particular transaction, and other state or federal laws do not specify any notice or other requirements for an amendment, we will decide what kind of notice (if any) we will give you and the method of providing any such notice. Your continued use of Online Banking is your agreement to any amendment(s) of the Agreement, including the Instructions as may be amended from time to time.
27. Assignment The Bank may assign its rights and delegate its duties under this Agreement to a company affiliated with the Bank or to any other party.
28. Termination Either you or the Bank may terminate this Agreement and your Online Banking subscription at any time upon giving written notice of the termination to the other party. If you terminate Online Banking, you authorize the Bank to continue making transfers and bill payments you have previously authorized and continue to charge monthly fees until such time as the Bank has had a reasonable opportunity to act upon your termination notice. Once the Bank has acted upon your termination notice, the Bank will make no further transfers or payments from your accounts, including any transfers or payments you have previously authorized. If the Bank terminates your use of Online Banking, the Bank reserves the right to make no further transfers or payments from your accounts, including any transactions you have previously authorized.
29. No Waiver The Bank shall not be deemed to have waived any of its rights or remedies unless such waiver is in writing and signed by the Bank. No delay or omission on the part of the Bank in exercising its rights or remedies shall operate as a waiver of such rights or remedies or any other rights or remedies. A waiver on any one occasion shall not be construed as a bar or waiver of any rights or remedies on future occasions.
30. Captions The captions of sections hereof are for convenience only and shall not control or affect the meaning or construction of any of the provisions of this Agreement.
32. Enforcement In the event either party brings legal action to enforce the Agreement or collect overdrawn funds on accounts accessed under the Agreement, the prevailing party shall be entitled, subject to applicable law, to payment by the other party of it's reasonable attorney's fees and costs, including fees on any appeal, bankruptcy proceedings, and any post-judgment collection actions, if applicable. If there is a lawsuit, you agree that it may be filed and heard in the State of Illinois, if allowed by applicable law.
33. Severability Should any part of this Agreement be held invalid or unenforceable, that portion shall be construed consistent with applicable law as nearly as possible to reflect the original intent of the Agreement, and the remaining portions shall remain in full force and effect.
IF YOU WISH TO ESTABLISH ONLINE BANKING SERVICES WITH THE BANK AND IF ALL OF THE FOREGOING IS ACCEPTABLE TO YOU, YOU MAY PROCEED TO COMPLETION OF THE ENROLLMENT PROCESS BY CLICKING THE ACCEPT BUTTON BELOW.
WHEN YOU CLICK ACCEPT TO CONTINUE, YOU WILL BE SAYING THAT YOU ARE THE AUTHORIZED PERSON ON THESE ACCOUNTS AND YOU WILL BE ACKNOWLEDGING AND AGREEING THAT THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OUTLINED IN THIS AGREEMENT WILL APPLY TO AND GOVERN YOUR USE OF ONLINE BANKING. | 2019-04-22T08:04:27Z | https://www.bankprospect.com/personal-banking/savings-accounts/ |
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A San Francisco, CA-based organization, Deis, Inc is just one of the many Lead411 profiles that you can find contact information, like phone numbers and emails. Their profile includes @deis.com email addresses, as well as details on Jason Dumars's email, the organization's Sr Solutions Architect . Their profile can be found in Saas category. If you also need twitter, facebook, linkedin, wiki, and biography details for Jason Dumars, you can also find them in Lead411. Some possible email formats for Jason Dumars are [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. If you sign up for our free trial you will see our [email protected] addresses.
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A Sr. Project Manager at RLH Construction, LLC based in Oviedo, FL, Bill Dumas has a comprehensive profile on Lead411. You can find the entry on Rlh Construction, Llc in our Construction services category. The company CEO is . There are email addresses on their profile and may include Bill Dumas' email format too. You can also find other contact information like facebook, phone numbers, biography, wiki, and linkedin for Bill Dumas. Some possible email formats for Bill Dumas are [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. If you sign up for our free trial you will see our [email protected] addresses.
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Heather Dumas is the current SVP, Human Resources. You can find Heather Dumas's linkedin profile, phone numbers, wiki, twitter, and biography on AirLife's Lead411 profile, as well as AirLife email addresses with the @txairlife.com domain format. Heather Dumas's email may or may not be inside the profile. AirLife is situated in Cherry Creek, CO. You can find their contact information on Lead411 categorized under Hospitals/clinics. Some possible email formats for Heather Dumas are [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. If you sign up for our free trial you will see our [email protected] addresses.
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ctt-journal > Chernyk et al.
Following injury to the central nervous system (CNS), immune-mediated inflammation profoundly affects the ability of neural cells to survive and to regenerate. The role of inflammation, comprises mostly of macrophages, is controversial, since macrophages can both induce neuronal and glial toxicity and promote tissue repair. The opposite effects of macrophages may be conditioned by their functional heterogeneity. Thus, classical pro-inflammatory macrophages (M1) are tissue-destructive, while anti-inflammatory (M2) macrophages mediate tissue repair. In addition, M2 macrophages predominantly induce the Th2 response, which is particularly beneficial in CNS repair. Using growth factor deficiency conditions we have generated M2-like macrophages and evaluated the safety and clinical efficacy of endolumbar introduction of these cells in treatment of children with cerebral palsy (CP). Sixteen children from 2.0 to 8.0 years old with severe forms of CP were enrolled in this trial. Endolumbar administration of M2-like cells was accompanied by cytokine reactions in 10 (62.5%) persons. There was no evidence of local and systemic immediate hypersensitivity reactions, hematoma or infection complications related to cell transplantation. At 3 months after therapy the average Ashworth score decreased from 3.9 ± 0.2 to 3.1 ± 0.2 in the lower extremities (p<0.01). Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM) test improved from 12.1 ± 9.0 to 60 ± 19 points (p<0.01). Three of six children experienced seizures arrest, and four children improved mental functions (improvement of speech and understanding). M2-like macrophage introduction was not accompanied by an increase of serum levels of interferon-gamma and interleukin-17, but resulted in significant enhancement of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (from 695 ± 60 to 1183 ± 153 pg/ml; pU=0.015) and a strong tendency to enlargement of vascular endothelial growth factor (from 190 ± 41 to 240 ± 40 pg/ml; pU=0.07). Our data indicate that transplantation of M2-like macrophages via lumbar puncture is safe and improves neurological status in children with CP. However, to better define the therapeutic effect of these cells in CP, randomized controlled prospective trials and long-term follow-up are required.
With damage to the nervous system, the activation of immune system and immune-mediated inflammatory reactions profoundly affect the ability of neurons to survive and to regenerate damaged axons. The role of inflammation, comprised mostly of macrophages, is controversial. Macrophages can cause neuronal and glial toxicity through the proinflammatory cytokines, free radicals, eicosanoids and proteases [9,23]. However, recent studies have demonstrated that macrophages can enhance neuroprotection and promote long-distance axon growth, sprouting, and remyelination [20,33]. The positive effects of macrophages in CNS repair are considered to be mediated through the several mechanisms including phagocytosis and clearance of cell debris and inhibitory molecules [3,8]; limiting of glutamate-mediated excitotoxicity ; production of cytokines and growth factors with neuroprotective and regenerative activity [10,14,19,26]; attraction and activation of stem cells and neural precursors [21,38,1], and recruitment of T-cells capable of local production of neurotrophic factors and regulating glial cells [17,24]. The opposite effects of macrophages on CNS repair may be conditioned by the macrophage functional type. Thus, classical pro-inflammatory macrophages (M1) are tissue destructive, while anti-inflammatory (M2) macrophages mediate tissue repair [25,15,22,20]. In addition, M2 macrophages predominantly induce the Th2 response, which is particularly beneficial in the CNS repair . Therefore, M2-like macrophages may be prospective candidates for cell therapy of brain injuries .
Cerebral palsy (CP) is defined as a chronic non-progressive motor impairment syndrome due to a problem in the developing brain . CP is manifested with spastic paralysis often in combination with epileptic seizures and/or mental impairment, caused by damage to the frontal cortical (mainly motor) area of the developing brain, mostly during pregnancy . Sigmund Freud was the first who hypothesized that cerebral palsy may be closely associated with natal development. However, brain development continues during the first two years of life, so CP can result from brain injury occurring during the prenatal, perinatal, or postnatal periods. CP affects at least 2 in 1000 children, leading to more than 1 million chronic patients under the age of 21 . Since this disease does not substantially reduce the lifespan, cerebral palsy is an important social and economic problem.
No evidence exists that the brain damage can be reversed; however, maturational and adaptive processes may change the clinical picture of the child over time. Treatment for cerebral palsy, therefore, has the goal not to cure or to achieve healthy subject states but to increase functionality, improve capabilities, and sustain health in terms of locomotion, cognitive functions, social interaction, and independence. Most children with cerebral palsy require lifelong medical and physical care, including physical, occupational, and speech/swallowing therapy.
At the moment there is no cure for CP, so currently available treatments for patients suffering from CP are only supportive, not curative . This forces the search for new therapeutic approaches in the field of brain pathology. In this context cell transplantation has become a promising therapeutic option for CP treatment, and macrophages are considered to be prospective candidates for cell therapy.
Using growth factor deficiency conditions we have generated M2-like macrophages that had low antigen-presenting and proinflammatory activity and possessed considerable regenerative potential (in particular, produced high amounts of IGF-1 and VEGF) . We hypothesized such macrophages may be useful in CNS repair, so evaluated the safety and therapeutic efficacy of endolumbar introduction of autological macrophages in treatment of children with cerebral palsy.
This was a phase I/II non-randomized open-labeled clinical study of chronic children who had severe cerebral palsy and received transplantation of autologous M2-like macrophage. Treatment of CP children using autologous M2-like macrophages transplantation and all studies were performed in accordance with study protocols after obtaining written informed consent from patients’ parents. The clinical trial protocols and consent form were approved by the Institutional Academic Board and Institutional Review Board (Local Ethics Committee). The purpose of this study was to assess the safety and therapeutic efficacy of M2-like macrophages for treatment of CP patients. The families of all eligible patients were properly informed about the nature of the study.
Sixteen severely brain-injured, cerebral palsy children (n=16, 10 boys and 6 girls) were examined and subjected to cell transplantation therapy. Cerebral palsy was diagnosed in these children at 12 months. The age of the patients varied from 2 to 8 years (median 4.5 years). The time from diagnosis of CP to cell therapy ranged from 1 to 7 years. According to the developed protocol, generated macrophages were injected via lumbar puncture. All patients were followed up for the following 9 months after cell therapy. The inclusion criteria were: 1) age ≥ 12 months and ≤ 8 years; 2) diagnosis: spastic cerebral palsy with quadriplegia; 3) performance status: Gross Motor Function Classification System at level IV–V; and 4) parental consent. The exclusion criteria were: 1) autism and autistic spectrum disorders without motor disability; 2) progressive neurologic disease; 3) HIV or uncontrolled bacterial, fungal, or viral infections; 4) impaired renal or liver function (as determined by serum creatinine >1.5mg/dL and/or total bilirubin >1.3mg/dL); 5) genetic disease or phenotypic evidence of a genetic disease on physical examination; 6) requires ventilatory support; 7) unable to obtain parental consent.
Human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were obtained through density gradient centrifugation (Ficoll-Paque, Sigma-Aldrich, Germany) of heparinized whole blood samples. For monocyte separation PBMCs were plated at 3–5 x106/ml in tissue culture dishes (TPP, Switzerland) in RPMI-1640 (Sigma-Aldrich, Germany) with 5% FCS (Biolot, Russia) for 18 h and then washed to remove non-adherent residual lymphocytes. The percentage of CD14-positive cells was demonstrated by flow cytometry to be greater than 90–93% of the total cells recovered. The generation of macrophages from plastic-adherent cells was performed according previously developed protocol . In brief, adherent cells were cultured in RPMI-1640 with supplements at 37°C with 5% CO2. To receive M2-like macrophages we used recombinant human GM-CSF (rhGM-CSF, 50 ng/ml, R&D Systems, USA) and serum deprivation conditions (low percent of autologous plasma). In 7 days the macrophages were harvested by using EDTA in Hanks' balanced salt solution, washed and counted. Then the generated M2-like macrophages were resuspended in 2 ml sodium chloride 0.9 % and infused into the spinal cord fluid of the patient.
For evaluation of the phenotype, cell suspensions were incubated for 20 min at 4°C with FITC- or PE-conjugated antibodies specific for human CD14, CD86, and HLA-DR or isotype controls (all from BD Biosciences, USA). Then cells were washed with PBS/ 0.1% sodium azide/ 0.1% bovine serum albumin, and analyzed with a FACSCalibur using CellQuest software (BD Biosciences).
The antigen-presenting/allostimulatory activity of the macrophages was determined by measuring macrophage capacity to induce T -cell proliferation in the mixed lymphocyte culture (MLC). Briefly, 1x104 macrophages were plated in complete RPMI-1640 with 1x105 allogeneic responder PBMCs for 5 days. Cell proliferation was measured by [3H]thymidine incorporation (1 μCi/well for 18 h). The stimulatory capacity of macrophages in MLC was expressed by the stimulation index (SI) = cpm in MLC (PBMCs+macrophages) / cpm in control culture (PBMCs alone). Th1, Th17 and Th2 - stimulatory activity was assessed by measuring of IFN-γ, IL-17 and IL-4/IL-10 in supernatants of MLC induced by macrophages. The stimulation index (SI) was calculated as ratio of cytokine level in MLC to spontaneous cytokine production in PBMCs alone.
The CP children’s serum samples obtained before and after macrophage introduction were collected and frozen at –80°C until the measurement. The concentration of secreted cytokines and growth factors was determined using ELISA following the instructions of manufacturers: IFN-γ, IL-17, IL-4 (all from Protein Contour, St-Petersburg, Russia), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF; R&D Systems, USA) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF; Invitrogen Corp., USA).
All patients were evaluated according to a protocol by 3 independent experts including a neurologist, a neurosurgeon and one child's parents. Study evaluations consisted of thorough physical and neurological examinations and evaluations of adverse effects. The time from macrophage introduction to response was 3 months. The primary measure of efficacy was the improvement of motor functions of CP patients. To assess patients’ motor abilities we used the Gross Motor Function Measure (an 88-item GMFM test), a criterion-referenced observational measure that was developed and validated to assess children with cerebral palsy . The GMFM test includes evaluation of 88 items divided into 5 sections: 1, lying and rolling; 2, sitting; 3, crawling and kneeling; 4, standing; and 5, walking, running, and jumping. It evaluates the skills of the child in the individual items by using a 4-point scale on a quantitative basis. A secondary objective was to determine the effects on spasticity and muscle strength as well as mental faculties in these children. The five-point Ashworth scale was used for evaluating the degree of spasticity, and the six-point Medical Research Council Weakness Scale (MRC) served for muscle strength estimation.
In addition, we monitored the immediate reactions possibly related to the endolumbar introduction of autologous M2-like macrophages, which included allergic reactions (tachycardia, fever, skin eruption, leukocytosis) and local complications (hematoma or local infection).
The data were expressed as means ± SE. Statistica 6.0 software for Windows, StatSoft Inc. USA was used for analysis of data. Mean differences between groups were compared by a sign test. Additionally, the Mann–Whitney U test was used to compare nonparametric values.
As shown in Table 1, the majority of children were diagnosed with severe spastic cerebral palsy, which can be considered the hallmark of our investigation. We did not have even a single child with a mild form of CP (when the use of both hands and/or gait is clumsy) and only one patient was diagnosed with a moderate degree of disease (characterized by the ability to use the affected hand in bimanual activities and/or impaired gait) . It is evident from Table 1 that the examined children formed quite a homogenous group presumably with spastic forms of cerebral palsy (spastic quadriplegia was revealed in 14/16 children). The GMFM-88 score at entry was 12.1 ± 9.0. The majority of CP children had the fifth level of movement abnormalities, wher the child did not hold ,his head and back, all motor functions were limited, and these movement defects were not compensated by additional means.
Evaluating the degree of spasticity based on the Ashworth scale evidenced a considerable (4–5 point) increase in muscle tone in 14 out of 16 (87.5%) of CP children with an average Ashworth score of 3.9 ± 0.2. In two children even passive movements were hampered, and spasticity achieved 5 points. The MRC weakness score reflecting muscle strength in forearms was 1.8 ± 0.15, which indicated a marked reduction in muscle strength in all children at baseline. More than one third of CP children (6/16) had epileptic seizures. Mental faculties were impaired in virtually all patients. In fact, 14 out of 16 children had no capacity to speak, and 9 out of 16 did not understand addressed speech.
Each of sixteen trial patients received one grafting of autologous macrophages generated from their own peripheral blood according to our protocol (see Patients and methods). The motor and mental faculties of these CP children were evaluated at 3 months after the cell transplantation by 3 independent experts including a neurologist, a neurosurgeon and one child's parents. It is of great importance that their opinions practically coincided and the difference in their assessments was minimal.
First, we proved the principle possibility of generating M2-like macrophages in children with CP. Mean cell yield of macrophages was 77.1 ± 13.4x103 from 1x106 peripheral blood mononuclear cells. On average 0.8 ± 0.15 x 106/kg M2-like macrophages (0.18–2.58 x 106/kg) were used for the introduction (Table 2). The viability of the obtained cells in all cases was more than 90%.
Moreover, evaluation of these M2-like cells to stimulate various T–helper cells revealed that M2-like cells similar to M1 macrophages induce T lymphocytes to produce IL-4 and presumably IL-10, but in contrast to M1 did not induce secretion of Th1 (IFN-γ) and Th17 (IL-17) cytokines. In M1-stimulated cultures, a pronounced stimulation of IFN-γ and IL-17 was observed: 344 ± 104 pg/ml (SI 32.6 ± 11.1) and 402 ± 167 pg/ml (SI 80 ± 33), respectively. In marked contrast, M2-like macrophages did not induce nor IFN-γ (32 ± 21 pg/ml; SI 3.2 ± 2.1), or IL-17 (11 ± 4 pg/ml; SI 2.2 ± 0.76). At the same time both M1 and M2-like macrophages stimulated an equal production of Th2 cytokines (IL-4 and IL-10) in MLC: 115 ± 39 and 78 ± 38 pg/ml for IL-10 as well as 109 ± 24 and 97 ± 15 pg/ml for IL-4.
Endolumbar administration of M2-like cells was accompanied by fever and 1–2 fold vomiting in 10 out of 16 children (63%). These cell-therapy-related reactions never lasted longer than one or two days and were easily abrogated by the use of Dexasone and Cerucal. We did not observe any local or systemic immediate hypersensitivity reactions, local hematoma, or infection complications due to cell transplantation. However, one child demonstrated the exacerbation of atopic dermatitis.
As shown in Table 3, three months after cell therapy a significant decrease in spasticity was revealed. In the lower extremities of the CP children Ashworth scores decreased from 3.9 ± 0.2 to 3.1 ± 0.2 (p<0.01) while the muscle strength in the forearms was enhanced from 1.8 ± 0.15 to 2.9 ± 0.22 (p<0.05). The Gross Motor Function Measure test improved significantly from 12.1 ± 9.0 to 60 ± 19 points (p <0.01).
Apparent clinical improvements were noted in 11 out of sixteen cell-grafted CP children (68.8%; responding group). With the cell-based therapy, two-thirds of CP children (11/16) initially unable to retain their head in the vertical position independently became able to consistently execute this function. Among 15 children who initially failed to sit, after cell therapy 9 could sit without assistance. The majority of CP children involved in our investigation had no capacity to crawl. Only one boy could crawl on his abdomen, and two from 16 children could crawl/move on their backs by pushing their feet. With M2-therapy, eight children (43%) became able to crawl/move on their backs. Three of six children with seizure syndrome experienced seizures arrest, which persisted after the discontinuation of anticonvulsants.
Cell therapy significantly influenced mental functions. We observed a decrease in aggression (63%) and improvement of contact with outsiders (69%). Four children improved mental functions; they became able to understand or understand better the addressed speech (2/9) and showed the appearance of a meaning-bearing speech (2/14).
It should be noted that improvement of motor functions and mental abilities once registered at 3 months following cell administration persisted without reversion during the whole period of observation (until one year in some children).
Comparing children responding and not responding to cell therapy, we found some trends. First, the CP children with improved motor and/or mental functions were younger (4.6 ± 0.6 vs 6.4 ± 0.8 years; pU >0.05). Second, they received higher number of input cells (0.74 ± 0.15 vs 0.59 ± 0.17 х 106/kg; pU >0.05). And, finally, the development of cytokine reactions in children who responded to cell therapy was observed twice as often (in 82% vs. 40%) as in the non-responsived group.
Analysis of some cytokines and growth factor levels in the serum of CP children showed that the macrophage introduction was not accompanied by an increase of IFN- γ, IL-17, and IL-4. At the same time, such a therapy resulted in significant enhancement of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF; from 695 ± 60 to 1183 ± 153 pg/ml; pU =0.015) and strong tendency to an increase of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF; from 190 ± 41 to 240 ± 40 pg/ml; pU =0.07). It is of great importance that these changes were the most pronounced in the responder group.
Some examples of applying the cell transplantation therapy for cerebral palsy are described below.
The 2-year-old boy N. was evaluated for developmental delay at the age of 2 years. He was born as a result of premature delivery at 28 weeks, weighing 1200 g. The boy was from the second pregnancy (the first childbirth) with danger of fetus wastage. He stayed in the Intensive Care Unit for 16 days and in the Department of Newborn Pathology for 1 month.
On admission all motor and mental functions were profoundly defective. The patient demonstrated global developmental delay. The boy was incapable of turning from abdomen to back, holding a toy in his hand, sitting, standing, and walking. He kept his head in an upright position with great difficulty. He was incapable of tracking a toy with his eyes, speaking, and understanding addressed speech. Epileptic seizures occurred up to 6 times a day. The GMFM-88 score was 0, degree of spasticity according to the Ashworth scale was 4, and muscle strength in the forearms was reduced, at only 2 points.
The treatment included endolumbar administration of generated autologous M2-like macrophages (total dose 3.1x106; 0.22x x106/kg). Cell introduction was accompanied by subfebrile fever and one episode of vomiting. Three months later the patient could turn from abdomen to back, hold a toy in his hands, sit, stand with support and retain his head in a vertical position. His epileptic seizures have completely stopped. The GMFM-88 score increased up to 164 and muscle strength in the forearms enhanced up to 4, while spasticity decreased to 2 points.
At 6 months after therapy the boy could understand addressed speech. The child gained weight. He is without anticonvulsant therapy for 1 year.
The 5-year-old boy G. with cerebral palsy was from the fourth pregnancy with danger of fetus wastage. The childbirth was the second, premature at 32 weeks, as a result of Cesarean section. The newborn child had a weight of 2025 g. Prematurity II. He stayed in the Department of Newborn Pathology for 1 month. At one year, following a detailed assessment, the child was assigned a diagnosis of moderately severe spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy.
On admission the patient could crawl, sit, stand with assistance, understood addressed speech and spoke. At the same time the boy was unable to walk without assistance and could not retain his head in a vertical position. Intelligence was unaffected. The GMFM-88 score was 158, degree of spasticity according to the Ashworth scale was 4, and muscle strength in the forearms was reduced, at 2 points. The treatment included endolumbar administration of generated autologous M2-like macrophages (5.2x106; 0.31x x106/kg). Three months later the patient could walk without support and retain his head in a vertical position. The boy could make attempts to run with wide-set legs and walk up the stairs without support. The GMFM-88 score increased to 217 and muscle strength in the forearms was enhanced to 4, while spasticity decreased to 2 points.
The brain possesses a limited capacity for endogenous regeneration after various insults, including perinatal hypoxia/ischemia. Therefore, the treatment of cerebral palsy as neurologic sequelae of hypoxia/ischemia-induced damage demands regenerative strategies. Recent studies have demonstrated that macrophages can enhance neuroprotection and promote axon growth, sprouting and remyelination . Moreover, promotion of neuroregeneration was shown to be mediated predominantly by M2 anti-inflammatory macrophages [33,20]. The present study provides the first evidence for the possible application of M2-like macrophages for the treatment of cerebral palsy.
The evaluation of macrophage capacity to activate various types of T-helper cells as the first step of the present study revealed that generated M2-like macrophages did not stimulate T cells to produce IFN-γ and IL-17. This can be considered as the basic difference between the two types of macrophages investigated in our study, since classical M1 macrophages did induce substantial Th1 and Th17 cytokine production. With regard to Th2-stimulatory activity, M2-like macrophages did not differ from the M1 analogue as both stimulate detectable levels of IL-4 and IL-10. The last data are of great importance since Th2 cells are known to support neuron survival better than Th1 cells and in contrast to Th1 significantly stimulate axonal outgrowth. Namely, Th2 cells stimulate glial cells to produce neurotrophic factors without inducing inflammation. Therefore, Th2-stimulatory activity of M2-like macrophages constituted an additional reason for the application of these cells for CNS repair.
In our study, we have shown that M2-like macrophages may be successfully generated in children with CP, and macrophage yields and functions in these cases are compared with that of adult healthy individuals . Moreover, we first demonstrated that the introduction of M2-like macrophages via lumbar puncture in children with CP was safe, well tolerated and did not induce serious adverse reactions. Fever following macrophage administration observed in more than half of the patients was simply stopped with medication. There was no evidence of local immediate hypersensitivity reactions, hematoma, or infection at the site of the cell injection, and any serious infection complications related to the cell transplantation. Aggravation of atopic dermatitis registered in one person suggested the capacity of generated macrophages to activate Th2 response in vivo. This fact calls for a careful examination of patients for allergic diseases and may be exclusion criteria for M2 macrophage application in children with severe and diffuse forms of atopic pathology. On the other hand, exacerbation of atopic dermatitis in only one out of 16 cases evidenced that endolumbar application of macrophages obviously did not induce systemic activation of the Th2 response. This suggestion is confirmed by the results of IL-4 measurements of the serum of treated children. Indeed, we did not observe any enhancement of IL-4 serum levels after the introduction of M2-like macrophages.
Despite our clinical trial enrolling children with severe impairment of motor functions (predominantly V level of Gross Motor Function Classification System), cell therapy was accompanied by significant decreases in spasticity, increased muscle strength and enhancement of GMFM scores. Along with the increase in motor functions, more than half of the children displayed a decrease in aggressiveness and an improvement in communication with strangers. Enhancement of mental functions was also confirmed by appearance of the capacity to understand in two children and to speak in another two participants. In addition, three of six persons experienced full arrest of their seizure syndrome. Current therapeutic strategies of CP management are aimed at preventing brain damage, but at present there are no effective means to repair the brain once damage has occurred. From this point of view, our data are of significant importance. Similar results have been described recently by Chen L. et al. after introduction of olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs). These authors showed that OECs derived from aborted fetal tissue and injected into the bilateral corona radiata in the frontal lobes resulted in a significant increase of GMFM-88 score and improvement of mental functions in CP, according to the Caregiver Questionnaire Scale score .
The mechanisms underlying the clinical effects of M2-like macrophages in CP patients are not quite clear. We would like to point out some of them. As we have shown previously, М2-like macrophages are capable of spontaneous production of BDNF, IFG-1, EGF, bFGF, G-CSF, erythropoietin and VEGF, which possess neuroprotective activity and stimulate CNS regeneration . Stimulation of CNS repair in ischemic brain damage may also be the result of increased angiogenesis and vasculogenesis [2,37]. In this connection an increase in serum levels of BDNF and VEGF following cell therapy indicate that clinical effects may be mediated by growth factors produced by macrophages or other paracrine-activated cells. Finally, recent findings showed that monocytes/macrophages are able to differentiate into endothelium-like cells and function as precursors of endothelial cells and thus participate in the repair of the vascular barrier after brain injury .
At the same time it should be emphasized that macrophage injection via lumbar puncture was not accompanied by an increase of serum IFN-γ or IL-17. Proinflammatory cytokines IFN-γ and IL-17 are known to have marked destructive effects on the nervous system [34,35]. From this point of view, the data that M2-like macrophages lack Th1- and Th17-stimulatory activity in vitro and in vivo are additional arguments evidencing the safety of their application. However, to better define the therapeutic effects of these cells in CP, randomized, controlled prospective trials and long-term follow-up are required.
We are grateful to the parents of the CP children for their courage, perseverance, and faith in us.
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spinal cord injury. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2006;103:13174-13179. doi:10.1073/pnas.0603747103. | 2019-04-26T00:55:24Z | http://www.ctt-journal.com/3-11-en-chernyk-et-al-2011mar22.html?amp;L=1 |
Returning hero and private investigator Roland Ford is on the trail of a mysterious killer who is beheading CIA drone operators and leaving puzzling clues at each crime scene. His troubled friend Lindsay Rakes is afraid for her own life and the life of her son after a fellow flight crew member is killed in brutal fashion. Even more terrifying is the odd note the killer left behind: "Welcome to Caliphornia. This is not the last." Ford strikes an uneasy alliance with San Diego-based FBI agent Joan Taucher, who is tough as nails but haunted by what sees as the Bureau's failure to catch the 9/11 terrorists, many of whom spent their last days in her city. As the killer strikes again, Ford and Taucher dash into the fray, each desperate for their own reasonseach ready to risk it all to stop the killer from doing far more damage.
The first time I saw Lindsey Rakes she was burning down the high-stakes room in the Pala Casino north of San Diego. Roulette, and she could do no wrong. Big woman, big attitude. Daughter of a Fort Worth-area Ford dealer-"Hit Your Brakes for Rakes!"-and a high school chemistry teacher, I found out later.
Lindsey had drawn a crowd that night. Not difficult, in her lacy dress and leather ankle boots. And all that sleek, dark hair. She looked like some exotic life form, dropped from above into the chain-smoking slot-jockeys and the glum blackjack casualties. When the wheel stopped on another winner, her throaty roar blasted through the room: Baby, baby, BABY! Towers of chips rising from the table in front of her. Mostly hundreds and fifties. Just enough twenties to tip the cocktail waitresses, who kept the drinks coming. I had work to do, so I didn't witness her crash.
Now, almost two and a half years later, Lindsey sat at a long wooden picnic table under a palapa behind my house. She looked not very much like that booze-fueled gambler who had moved onto my property the day after we'd met in the casino. Now she looked defeated and afraid. She wore a faded denim blouse and her hair was lumped into a ponytail that rode side-saddle on her shoulder.
I held the sheet of paper flush against the tabletop, a fingertip at diagonal corners, and read it out loud for a second time.
I want to decapitate you with my knife, but I will use anything necessary to cause you death.
Until then, fear everything you see and everything you hear and dream. This terror is personal, as you are beginning to understand. Vengeance is justice. The thunder is coming for you.
One short moment ago, when I'd first read this note, I'd felt a tingle in the scar above my left eye. I earned that scar in my first and last pro fight. Its moods have become a kind of early-warning system for danger ahead: use caution. Now it tingled again.
The death threat was handwritten in graceful cursive script that looked like a combination of English longhand and Arabic calligraphy. The letters slanted neither forward nor back but stood up straight. A calligraphic pen had been used to vary the thicknesses of line and curve. The loops were large and symmetrical. The lead-ins and tails of each word were thick, straight, and perfectly horizontal, as if traced over invisible guidelines. They began and ended in pointed, up-curved flourishes, like candle flames. The letter had arrived one day ago, on Saturday, December 8, in Lindsey's post office box in Las Vegas.
She set the envelope beside the letter. On the envelope were printed her name and her Las Vegas PO Box number. It was postmarked Wednesday, December 5, in San Diego, California. It had a Batman stamp and a return address that Lindsey had found to be World Pizza in Ocean Beach.
"Lindsey, this letter should be on an FBI light table, not on a PI's picnic table."
"Is it real? Do you believe it?"
"It's real and I believe it. You've got to take this to the FBI. The agents are trained to deal with this kind of thing."
"You know any of them?"
A failed smile. "I'd sure appreciate it if you'd take this letter to them. I can't face law enforcement right now."
I tried to make sense of this request. It was strange and irrational that I was sitting here with a rattled young woman who had been threatened with death by a murderer-terrorist-psychopath-crackpot calling himself/herself Caliphornia, and who was now refusing to talk with the law. Strange and irrational that Lindsey would come to me first.
"Because of your son," I said.
Lindsey pulled off her sunglasses and tried to stare me down. Her temper is rarely distant. "Of course, my son. I've filed another request with the court for a custody amendment. You can only do that every eighteen months. I've been living clean as a Girl Scout, Roland. I'm teaching math at a private school, hitting the gym, no booze or dice. But Johnny's growing up without me. He's the whole reason I left here and moved back to Las Vegas. And if the court gets wind of this death threat, my custody petition gets red-flagged. The Bureau would poke around, right, talk to my employers. Investigate me. Right? Say good-bye to shared custody."
She was correct on those counts. I wondered about her Girl Scout claim because I'm suspicious by nature and profession.
"You saved me once, Roland, and I'm hoping you can do it again."
She slid her sunglasses back on.
Three years ago, Lindsey Rakes-then Lindsey Goff-had been flying Reaper drones out of Creech Air Force Base north of Las Vegas. She was the sensor operator. Or, as the drone flyers call them, simply a "sensor." Her missions as a sensor were often top secret and CIA-directed. Some were surveillance, some were kill-list strikes. Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan. Her flight crew called themselves the Headhunters. We flagged some bad guys, she had told me more than once.
Then, at the end of her contract in 2015, she quit the USAF against the wishes of her superiors. Experienced drone operators were in high demand at that time; the Air Force couldn't train them fast enough to keep up.
After six months as a civilian she'd fled to California, landed in the Pala Casino, and ended up renting a place here on my property. Back then, as we began to know and trust each other, she'd told me about her life at Creech: the six-day work weeks, the twelve-hour days, the strange psychosis brought on by sitting in an air-conditioned trailer in the desert and flying combat missions 7,500 miles away. Then heading off-base at sunrise to pick up something for breakfast and maybe some vodka, too, on her way home to husband, Brandon, and their young son, John. Little John. The light and anchor of her life. But not quite enough of an anchor.
Because some days, Lindsey had confessed, she'd get off work too nerve-shot and sickened to even look at her own son. And Brandon was always angry at her anyway. So instead of going home she'd blast off in her black Mustang GT, a wedding gift from her father, Lewis-"Hit Your Brakes for Rakes"-and race downtown to gamble hard, drink harder, and forget the things she'd seen and done in that cramped little trailer.
Until Brandon took Little John to a new home across town and filed divorce papers and a complaint of child neglect against her.
"How bitter was it?" I asked.
Behind the dark lenses, Lindsey studied me. "Very."
"And how is Brandon Goff's anger level these days, with your new move for joint custody?"
"No," she said. "Brandon wouldn't threaten me like this. He would do it clearly. Not hide behind a cryptic name and a threat."
Lindsey would know her ex well enough to judge his capacity for murder. Or would she? I'd seen enough people fooled by their spouses to always leave a door ajar.
I looked out at the gray December sky, the breeze-burred surface of the pond, the cattails wavering. Fall, I thought. The big hush. The time to exhale. Always makes me feel the speed of life. I tried to warm up to the idea of cutting off the head of a living human being with a knife. Thought of videos of fear-blanched men in orange jumpsuits forced to kneel in the dirt. Told myself that Christmas was coming soon, birth of Jesus and forgiveness of sin, peace on earth, joy to the world.
"Roland? I'm afraid. I've been to war but my life was never at stake. Weird, isn't it? But this has gotten to me. I have that Smith nine and know how to use it. I'd feel safe if I could land here for a while. This Caliphornia won't know where I am."
Lindsey and I had shot cans off rocks way out on the property here a few times, against a hillock, so the bullets wouldn't fly. She was pretty good against a can. When the target is human, of course, nerves change everything.
More important, I couldn't be sure that this so-called Caliphornia wouldn't find her here.
"You're in the public record of having lived here once," I said.
"But the Union-Tribune named you as a tenant."
"One time was all. My name in the paper, once. And I never gave out this address when I was living here. Nobody. This was my secret hideout. Where you helped me put myself back together. Sort of back together." She wrung her thick ponytail, looking down at the table.
I remembered that night in the Pala Casino, later, when Lindsey crashed onto the stool next to me in one of those thinly peopled, regret-reeking bars found in casinos around the world. She looked like something the devil would eat for breakfast. Or had eaten.
"Welp," she'd said, curling a long finger at the bartender. "Lost it all."
"Maybe you should have stopped."
She had looked at me, eyes skeptical and held steady by force of will. "I'm Lindsey Rakes. You're obviously Saint Somebody. So the least you could say to someone who's just lost her last dollar is, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' Or 'I go.' Or however you saints say it."
After Lindsey Rakes had finished her drink I paid for it, got up, and offered to get her a casino hotel room, a taxi, or a ride home. House security was circling. She took option C. Out Highway 76 she told me she didn't have a home at precisely this minute, except for her Mustang, which, after a night in the backseat, made a woman her size feel like she'd been sawed in half by a bad magician.
"I didn't just lose the money," she had told me. "I've lost my son, my husband, my home, too. I can do without any of it except my son. John. Six years, seven months, and one day old. Not being able to see him is like living in a world where the sun won't rise. What did y'all say your name was?"
I hadn't, so I did.
"And how did you do at the tables tonight, Rolando?"
In fact, I hadn't gambled much at all. I'd come to the casino to observe a man suspected of embezzlement by his friend and business partner. They were a two-partner practice specializing in family law. I came to discover that the man who had hired me was in fact the embezzler, and the friend/partner he had "suspected" of the crime-and who had lost about five thousand dollars that night by my loose count-was an addicted gambler but a reasonably honest law partner.
I wasn't thrilled being stuck with a drunk hard-luck case who had nowhere to go, but I did what I thought was right. I usually do. It's a blessing and a curse.
"I can take you back to the casino hotel or put you up for the night," I had told her. "There's an empty casita on my property and it locks."
"Furnished. I rent them out."
She was leaning back against the door of my pickup truck. The hills around us were dark. In the faint moon-and-dashboard glow I could see the pale shape of her face and the glint in her eyes as she deliberated. "Kinda Norman Batesy."
"You're big and not real pretty, but you don't look mean enough to worry about."
"It's the little pretty ones you have to watch."
"I was Air Force. Lieutenant Lindsey Rakes. I hate being this drunk."
I didn't have anything useful to say about Lieutenant Lindsey Rakes's drunkenness or hatred thereof. As a man who has overdone certain things in his life, I know that the world won't change, but you can. Over the six months she lived in my casita, I saw her battle the booze and the gambling and the Clark County Superior Court, which refused to allow Lindsey to visit her son more than one Saturday per month in a county facility adjacent to the jail. Lindsey had done okay with all that. Just barely okay.
Now, almost two years since I'd first met her, it felt right but also surreal to be making her the same offer again. You could say full circle, but nothing in life is round. "Your old casita is taken, but three and four are vacant."
"I've missed the Irregulars," she said.
I call my tenants the Irregulars because they tend to be non-regulation human beings. And a changing cast.
"And I remember casita three was always vacant," she said.
"I can't pay you for protection, Roland. But I can make the rent."
"Don't worry about my time until we put a stop to this."
A picture of Governor Jerry Brown, wearing a mocked-up jeweled turban, "declaring himself caliph and establishing Sharia law in California." He was actually signing AB 2845, designed to shield students from bullying in public schools.
Caliphornia, a self-published futuristic suspense novel about an Arab Caliphate and runaway global warming.
"Caliphornia," a song by Box O'Clox.
Barenakedislam.com, a website whose motto is "It isn't Islamaphobia when they really ARE trying to kill you."
Counter-Jihad T-Shirts with various anti-Muslim messages and images.
Such as Koran-Wipes toilet paper made from 100 percent recycled Korans.
Such as Hillary in a hijab.
A fools' parade on the Internet.
Rage and volume turned up high.
Made me wonder how America was going to make it through the next week.
I shook my head, closed it all down. Looked up to find Lindsey watching me. "You still have Hall Pass Two?"
"You bet I do." My Cessna 182, to be more accurate. One of the older ones with the Lycoming engine and the bass roar of a beast when you punch it down the runway. I fly it for business and pleasure. There is a story behind it.
"And have you been really busy-privately investigating?"
"Just one open case right now," I said.
"Oxley," I said, pointing to the poster that was stapled to one of the thick palm trunks that support the palapa. The poster featured a color photo of a hefty gray-striped cat. He looked peaceful. The photo was cropped so the cat seemed to sprawl in the middle of the flyer, as if lying on a cushion. MISSING CAT was the headline. The surrounding text explained that Oxley was missing from his Fallbrook home as of a week ago, that he was much loved, and that his owner-Tammy Bellamy-was heartbroken. Oxley had "hypnotic green eyes" and weighed twenty-two pounds. Tammy had given me a stack of the posters, all professionally printed on very heavy and expensive card-stock, to aid my search and post on my travels. Cats could go far, she'd explained. By the time I got my wanted posters, there were already scores of them put up in and around Fallbrook-on power poles, roadside oak trees, stop signs and traffic light stanchions, storefronts, shop windows, walls and fences. I'd stapled this one to the palapa so the Irregulars could keep their eyes out.
Copyright © 2019 T. Jefferson Parker.
A private eye seeking to help a military friend matches wits with a devious, deviant killer.U.S. Air Force vet Lindsey Rakes flew drones until the stress of the job led to her abrupt resignation. Her struggles to get her head together since then include going on a date with Rasha Samara, a landscape architect originally from Saudi Arabia, even though she's still in the middle of a divorce from Brandon Goff. When she receives an elegantly written death threat, "Vengeance is justice," signed "Caliphornia," and the handwriting resembles the signature on a note she got from Rasha, she brings the evidence to her old friend Roland Ford, who now works as a private investigator. Ford, who narrates in a curt and gritty first person, takes the case to FBI specialist Joan Taucher. Taucher, convinced that danger is imminent, demands to see Lindsey, who's been in hiding. As Ford negotiates with Taucher, and Taucher probes the Rasha and Caliphornia connections, Ford tries to convince Lindsey of the danger she's in, maybe even from Brandon. Both probes unearth valuable leads that widen rather than narrow the list of suspects. Caliphornia claims a tangible victim in Kenny Bryce, a former Air Force colleague of Lindsey's who, like her, received a threatening note. After Bryce is beheaded, Ford moves to put Lindsey under his personal protection. Digging into Bryce's history puts Ford on the road to finding Caliphornia, and when he does, the tale morphs from a whodunit into a nail-biting cat-and-mouse thriller.Prolific Parker's impressive prose and skill in sketching concise character portraits make his complex follow-up to The Room of White Fire (2017) an all-too-believable page-turner.
Three-time Edgar Award winner Parker brings back PI Roland Ford, who's working (if uncomfortably) with San Diego-based FBI agent Joan Taucher to track a killer beheading CIA drone operators. It's both personal (a friend is in danger) and political; this is domestic terrorism, with notes left behind proclaiming, "Welcome to Caliphornia. This is not the last."
Swift Vengeance 5 out of 5 based on 0 ratings. 5 reviews.
I loved the characters and the action had me enthralled. This is one of the best of T Jefferson Parker's that I have enjoyed. The descriptions are clear and the personality of Roland is strong and interesting. With a good book, I learn something new, and I learned a lot from this book as I enjoyed it. One problem, is that it ended. I could have kept reading. I am now a true fan. Thank you for this book.
Genius story teller who's story environment is welcoming, and this reader found himself being fully immersed. Parker has always been somewhat poetic; he excelled in this one. Parker is one of a half dozen authors we can hope that he will write forever.
Swift Vengeance by T. Jefferson Parker is an exciting pulse-pounding thriller. This is my first time reading Parker, who is a three times Edgar award winning author. Roland Ford, our hero, is a private investigator and former marine. Roland finds himself in the middle of helping a friend in danger. His friend Lindsay, a former CIA drone operator, has received a note threatening to behead her. When two former members of the drone team were brutally murdered and beheaded, Roland must try to discover who the culprit (Caliphornia) is, in order to save Lindsay from a sure death. Roland will team up with FBI agent, Joan Taucher, a tough, no nonsense, high ranking agent based in San Diego, and together they will look for all the clues that will narrow down the search for a terrorist who is avenging the death of someone killed in one of those drone attacks that Lindsay’s team was involved in years before. This was a very exciting, fast paced, non-stop action packed adventure to find the person behind these terrorist attacks before he kills again. As they get closer to finding the murderer, there a few surprise violent encounters that were brutal and escalated the search. I will not say too much more, as I do not want to spoil it for those reading this book. Swift Vengeance was a very well done edge of your seat suspenseful thriller, and Parker had us on the edge of our seat, especially in the last ¼ of the book. As we raced to this exciting explosive climax, we had no idea who would survive. I suggest you read Swift Vengeance, which was excellently written by T. Jefferson Parker.
I just finished reading a wonderful book by one of my favorite mystery authors, Jefferson Parker. Swift Vengeance has everything. Roland Ford is a P. I. in San Diego, California. Lindsay Rakes is a retired Air Force drone operator whose team killed a suspected terrorist along with nine civilians. The civilians killed were not terrorists and therein lies the problem and the plot of this tremendously exciting and well written novel. Along the way our hero Roland Ford teams up with a truly dedicated FBI agent and has conflicts with another private investigator who may or may not be working for the suspected terrorist. The reader follows all this with rapt attention as time runs out before a terrorist attack plagues San Diego. T Jefferson Parker is one of the world’s best crime and thriller writers. Swift Vengeance will be on sale 21 August. Rush to wherever you buy books and purchase this the second you do. | 2019-04-21T09:55:10Z | https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/swift-vengeance-t-jefferson-parker/1127541243 |
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On-line business directory sites are a very popular place to advertise a business. An on the internet business directory is an internet site in which links to info are organized right into a categorical, alphabetical position to offer the most effective outcomes to a search query. A lot of services upload their web links to a business directory in order boost internet search engine position and get more website traffic to their site. By producing your very own business directory online, you can create a good revenue, improve your online search engine ranking, and get web links back to your website. Getting links back to your site from other internet site will increase your position and as a result boost web traffic to your own website.
It is simple to start your own online business directory. To get companies to add their link, you need to initially provide it as a free solution. This will certainly assist you accumulate your business web links, acquire website traffic, and improve your online search engine position. It is necessary that a back link is published. If you do not have the technological ‘know just how’ to develop a data source style or the money get the services of internet designer to develop one, you can simply make use of some standard html static web pages. Internet search engine such as Google will enable visitors to search your directory. There are online business that supplies manuscript for creating a totally included and multi use online business directory. These business directory designers support a wide range of products, solutions, banners, and logos. They Assortlist Classifieds appropriate for both huge and local business directories. One has the capability to include it within their existing website or have it as a standalone site. It only takes a few minutes to install the manuscript and develop the directory.
These directory scripts can do a variety of features such as adding a firm’s get in touch with information, its services and products with thumbnail photos, logos, banners, maps and secure on-line user/administrator interface to update details whenever they desire. Site visitors have the ability to browse the business data source in their targeted area. When installed and the directory is up and running, every little thing will certainly be done instantly.
These script setup directory sites allow customers to have accessibility to an easy to make use of business registration procedure, update or customize their info any time, and they will be offered a password to enter their account. The login is safe and encrypted. There is likewise a method of obtaining a lost password with email.
Business directory production companies permit one to operate a paid membership directory. If you want to supply paid membership, you will certainly have to configure several settlement entrances. A business directory can ultimately become an income-producer. As your business directory grows in appeal with visitors and services, you can ultimately begin charging for a particular setting in the directory.
Developing and running a successful business directory is very easy. It takes persistence and time to start to make a profit. In the mean time, you will be generating traffic to your site, boosting your search engine ranking, and improving sales of your product or service from your existing website.
So you would certainly such as the general public to understand of your firm as well as solutions and/or items? A publication promotion is an exceptional method to obtain observed, yet it is not so simple. This advertising method takes some initiative and also preparation on your component in order to totally benefit from the tool. Publications can be a superb resource of advertising and marketing, yet you need to understand which one. Besides picking a publication with viewers that will certainly be interested by your items and/or solutions, you probably intend to pick a publication with a big audience. Establishing the degree of audience for the publication must be just one of the very first elements explored, yet occasionally the records of audience can be deceptive.
A publication might inform you that over 100,000 individuals will certainly be revealed to your advertisement. That seems terrific however the publication just publishes regarding 60,000 duplicates. You need to think about that a suitable percentage of the publications they create are misting likely to suppliers and also newsstands suggesting that an excellent variety of publications might never ever be opened up in all. Additionally, authors might perform studies to get a feeling of audience that can be misdirecting to the marketer. As an example, an author might ask a workplace customer the number of individuals operates in the workplace, so the author will certainly count every one of individuals operating in that workplace as viewers though they might not be so. Publishers do the exact same with solitary memberships provided to a collection.
There is a massive distinction in between audience numbers as well as circulation numbers, and also to their very own advantage, magazine advertising singapore and authors will certainly do their finest to obscure the distinction to marketers. A marketer needs to obtain a feeling of exactly how usually a prospective visitor will certainly create a prospective sale. You wish to obtain a variety of paid clients rather than circulation numbers since paid customers are more than likely misting likely to be your target audience as well as the ones that are most likely to check out the publication completely via considering the marketer’s spread.
When getting in touch with a publication regarding feasible advertising and marketing, inquire to send you a media set. The media package will certainly consist of beneficial info as well as will certainly supply you with a much better expectation regarding the firm. The sets consist of: The media package will certainly provide you a much better sight of the audience as well as the advantage of positioning your advertisements with the publication. Some info might reveal elaborate numbers right into demographics and also the socioeconomic condition of visitors.
For a long period of time, basketball has been considered as one of the widely played sporting activities in various countries. It is one of the reasons that several property owners opt to have their very own basketball system within their residential property in order to play the game without having to stress over the moment to utilize it. Selecting the appropriate basketball equipment should be highly regarded to fully delight in a safe and secure and safe game every time. It is now extremely possible to find throughout a wide range of basketball systems which supply you several alternatives to select from. The portable basketball hoops have become a preferred choice with a lot of people since they use much convenience.
Several home owners install a basketball hoop outside the house, either in the driveway or in the yard. The portable type of objective system is seen to have actually created a considerable effect on the market considered that it can be easily delivered anywhere. In case the family members transfer to an additional place, the system can be swiftly disassembled and set up once more. The best aspect of having this hoop is that it does not call for to be sealed on the ground or to be permanently affixed onto the structure. This system can be set up on basically any kind of surface area and can be detached anytime you desire.
The portable basketball hoops are available in nearly the very same rate with the long-term systems. When you buy the tools, it would usually include a plastic base full of water or sand, a steel pole, an edge with a net, and a backboard. There are several options for the backboard, which may be constructed out of plastic, fiberglass, glass or some other parts. Furthermore, the boards can be available in a rectangle-shaped form or probably in the form of a follower in various dimensions. The 42-inch backboards are frequently made use of in residential areas, while the 72-inch boards are suitable for use in college courts. There are also hoops with wheels at their bases, which are developed for simple portability.
Acquiring the portable basketball hoops offer for sale uses you much less inconvenience in seeking a location to install them. There are various alternatives as to where to establish the basketball system, much like in driveways, which are one of the most usual locations, parking areas and in streets. Prior to installing the hoop, it is essential to take into consideration significant things to make certain excellent placement in pro-sport-expert. You have to select a ground with an ordinary surface in order to avoid the possibility of entering an accident throughout a game. In instance the area has splits; it is a good idea to repair them first before positioning the hoop.
How to find low cost Mazda CX 5 price?
Doing the search to find vehicles to get is a difficult job. This is considering that the readily available selections are significant because numerous automobile manufacturers generate costly and also budget-friendly new autos and truck versions with the very best attributes in order to generate a lot more car finders to acquire their Lorries. Due to this, you need to be exceptionally mindful in doing the search considered that you may be baffled by the wealth of choices. In order to avoid this, try to follow your spending plan along with your vehicle needs and also take into consideration the adhering to concepts.
Among the really first points that you should certainly carry out in order to find autos available for sale in is to see a few of the neighborhood suppliers in your location. By doing this, you will have the ability to identify the type of Lorries, the expenses, and the new car quotes that they use. Attempt to do this as a hunting treatment and additionally prevent dedicating to any deal that sales agents of these dealers would provide you. Always remember that dealerships may have better bargains for you. All you need to do is make note of the cars and trucks, the rates, and the Mazda CX 5 price supplies that they agree to supply. Try to see as many area car dealerships as you can to extend your search. If you desire, you can create the details that each auto dealer take care of the purpose of contrast.
You can similarly discover vehicles and trucks readily available for sale by examining a few of the car-buying or autos and vehicle finder websites. These websites typically offer details worrying the kinds, rates, and additionally areas of the automobiles that are marketed. Along with this, the internet site can likewise permit you to discover the absolute best vehicle financing offers for some Lorries thinking about that they are generally connected to a great deal of cars and truck car dealerships. As a result of this, you have the opportunity to examine even more auto makers and versions without going anywhere. All you require to do is check each net website’s cars available Western Cape Resources area and remember of the conveniently available bargains. Nevertheless, cars available furthermore require selecting the websites that you use since there are great deals of websites that supply outdated and not so accurate information and likewise this might put you in difficulty. In order to make sure that the vehicles and vehicle purchasing internet site that you are using offers dependable details. Try to examine the ratings that individuals that have actually used this website have actually provided. | 2019-04-22T06:41:52Z | http://midamericaoffroad.com/category/business |
76 out of 91 (84%) customers would recommend this product to a friend.
First, I would like to say that the resort is beautiful. People are friendly, but the food was okay at best. The mixed drinks had a weird aftertaste and not all alcohol is included. Went to several restaurants at the resort and was given drink list which of I would have choose one of those drinks, I would have gotten charged extra. FYI Don’t fall for the free dinner or 2 for 1 massage! They are trying to get you to sign up for the loyalty program.
Beaches are rocky, need another bar in the seaside suit area. Too disconnected. Should be able to walk from one side to the other via beach. Spa is amazing!!
We had a blast here! Food was delicious and service is second to none. Had a poolside swim out room and loved it only thing is the beach is very limited which didn’t bother me I like the pool.
This was my husband and my first time in Mexico, and we loved it! Everything was perfect! The food was delicious, the staff were welcoming & always helpful! I would definitely recommend to Everyone! It’s a luxcuous, relaxing resort!
Ask a question about El Dorado Seaside Suites a Gourmet Inclusive Resort by Karisma or help someone else answer theirs.
which hotel in riveria maya has swim up rooms?
To find a vacation that best suits you please proceed to tool bar where it states "hotels". This search feature will help you find resorts that meet your needs. If you need further assistances please call 1.800.915.2322.
Although all beaches in Mexico are public, access to the beach fronting this resort is usually limited to guests. One 546-yard (500-m) stretch is rocky and separated from the resort grounds by a low rock wall, but another 0.5-mile (one km) section is white sand and swimmable. The resort's rock pier allows guests to walk out over the clear green water. Palm trees, cabanas and palapas dot the beach, creating a romantic atmosphere. Beach butlers see to your every need. The Vida Garden Grill was a winner of 2008, 2009 and 2010 Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence.
The beach was beautiful, there can be issues of people "reserving" chairs early in morning via putting a towel on them and walking away. Water was very clean, many fish in the water. House wines are decent and free, extensive selections available at a cost.
Beach and wine selection are both terrible.
Just curious what the dress code is for breakfast at the restaurants, is it different than evening or the same?
The dress code at the restaurants is casual elegance. Ladies can wear capri pants, dresses, skirts or long pants and shoes or dress sandals. Gentlemen can wear bermuda shorts or long pants, collared shirts and dress sandals or casual shoes.
Breakfast doesn't really seem to have a dress code. You will see plenty of people in sandals and swimsuits. In general, the staff is very friendly and they would certainly (on the side) let you know if your dress was in any way inappropriate.
Usually, the cabana beds are first come first serve. However, the resort reserves the right to make modifications to this policy at any time.
Totally Free! Just be sure to reserve one early in the morning with a towel before they are all gone... Even if there are none when you first look, they tend to open up through the day.
All cabana beds are free, first come first serve. Great feature of this resort.
They are feee. A few are reserved for members. But there are plenty for everyone. They are all over the resort. We never had a problem getting one.
Cabana beds are free, but go quickly.
Hidden Beach guests can use Seaside. Does it apply to Seaside guests?
Although all beaches in Mexico are public, access to the beach fronting the resort is usually limited to guests.
Yes! You are welcome to use the beach every day.
El Dorado Seaside Suites does not have exchange privilages with any of the other resorts. You may contact the resort directly to see if they offer day passes and the pricing.
The walk to the beach is determined by your location on the property at any given time, but it is not a hidden beach. Although all beaches in Mexico are public, access to the beach fronting this resort is usually limited to guests.
You're not allowed to enter Hidden Beach unless you're staying there. It's private, just for them.
1. In terms of liquor: what brands of vodka are offered? What brands of beer? (Domestic and international) 2. I have celiac disease (gluten allergy). Will this resort cater to my dietary needs?
Please contact the resort directly at www.karismahotels.com for information on liquor and dietary needs.
They have an extensive variety of liquor and beers. They ask you about allergies at every restaurant.
Not sure about the vodka brands but I do remember Titos being offered. My husband is a celiac and the only vacation we have found better is Disney. Menus are well marked and staff is very attentive to food allergies.
There are 6 different restaurants on site, with one being a buffet.
At a couple of restaurants.
Yes, some of the restaurants are buffet, some are sit down.
I don't want my relaxing to be interrupted by a reservation.
The Gourmet Pub restaurant requires reservations, all the other restaurants, it is suggested.
There are 2 restaraunts that require reservations, Klay Talay and The Gourmet Pub.
Is there anyone with 2014 reviews ? Is there seaweed in the ocean (swimming area) pics of resort. Any suggestions ?
We do have several reviews on our site from guests who traveled in 2014. You can also visit TripAdvisor for other reviews on this property.
Not a pool bar but a swim up bar??? It is the only thing keeping me from booking it!
The resort offers the following swim up bars: Arrecifes Swim-up Bar Swim-up pool bar offering a variety of drinks. Daily, 10am-6pm. Colibri Swim-up Bar Swim-up pool bar offering a variety of drinks located next to Villa 35. Daily, 10am-6pm. Gaviota Swim-up Bar and Lounge This swim up bar and relaxation area is located in the heart of the hotel, where one can enjoy the sounds of the waterfall as well as singing birds. Daily, 10am-6pm.
Not sure what you mean. There are several pools with swim up bars. We had a ground floor room. We stepped out of our room to a small private patio with chairs and a bed. A glass wall with a sliding gate led to a private patio in the pool (6" of water) with two lounge chairs. Three steps down and you were in the only pool with a swim up bar in the middle.
Yes, I saw at least two.
Yes and great bar tenders.
All tips would be at your discretion. If you choose to tip them for their service it is completely up to you!
Yes. We tipped everyone. They deserve it.
In will be there during the NCAA basketball tournament in the US and want to be bake to watch the games. Will that be possible??
The television channels offered by the resort will be local; any international or English-speaking programming will be at the discretion of the broadcasting company that is stationed in the destination. For further information, please call one of our Beach Experts at 1.800.915.2322.
Yes. However, most sports channels here are Futbol (soccer) or the sports channels are in Spanish.
Yes, there are some US sports on TV. There was NFL and NBA. You also can go to Playa de Carmen bars for random sports matches.
No, the resort does not offer a free shuttle to the airport. We do however, offer a shared round trip transfer for an additional cost. For pricing, please contact our office at 800-915-2322.
No we had to arrange transportation & resort is about 11/2hrs from airport if you don't stop.
Yes, especially the live music!
Some music and a Mexican review with the Mexican dinner. They are not known for their shows.
They tend to have short 30-60 min bands, singers, trivia, casino nights, but nothing spectacular.
Yes they do! Through their 3rd party affiliate "AmStar". And the shuttle is clean, comfortable, and just a short ride from the airport.
We do offer transportation service from the airport to the resort and back for an additional cost. To add it to your package, call us at 1.800.915.2322 for pricing and further assistance.
We are always working to have the most up to date information available. Updated photos should be posted soon.
I attached some photos for you. This was our room (we actually leave tomorrow). It’s amaizing. Everything is so clean and pretty. I also wrote a review on the place, check it out. We were in sea side building 6.
Yes, there will be a mini bar and liquor dispenser in the rooms.
No minibar but they restock the fridge daily with beer, cokes, and water.
Yes, there is a minifridge in the room, but it does not have much liquor. It has some sodas, water, chips, and beer. It is stocked daily if you let them clean your room.
These are the restaurants policies. If you have any further questions, you may contact the resort directly or call and speak to one of our Beachologists at 1-800-915-2322.
The infinity pools are for individual rooms. When you book the Ocean Front Infinity Pool Jacuzzi Suite, you have your own private infinity pool.
I only see one bar open to 2am. Is it a dance club atmosphere?
No, the bar open until 2 am is Las Guacamayas and it is an outdoor bar, it does not particularly have a dance club feel. However, there may be dance clubs nearby at other resorts or this resort is just 25 minutes south of the nightlife at Playa del Carmen.
It is a dance club atmosphere and had shows and singers every night.
If you hang out at your swim up suite, will you get wait service during the day? If not, is a just a short float away to get to a swim up bar? Lastly, are the swim up suites closer to the action or secluded? TYIA!
Please check with the resort directly as that may depend on where your room is located. If you have any further questions, you may contact the resort directly or call and speak to one of our Beachologists at 1-800-915-2322.
No service at the swim up suites but it's a very short and refreshing walk to the pool bar (maybe 100 ft at most from the farthest swim up room). Action is everywhere and no where. If you want to be part of the festivities, you walk a small distance and you are there. Want a quiet night, stay in your room and get room service (no extra fee) or go to the sit down restaurants. The resort is small enough that you can be as active and involved as you want to be.
Please call and speak to one of our Beachologists at 1-800-915-2322.
What are the name of the rooms that you step out the sliding class door into a private patio with about 6" of water and then step down into the pool where there is a swip up bar?
The Ocean Front Swim Up Jacuzzi Suite rooms are the swim up room categories. With this suite, you also get the convenience of the lazy river that flows in front of your terrace and connects with the resort's main pool. The main pool is where the swim up bars would be.
The 192 luxurious suites are elegant and bright, which offers all comforts and amenities needed for a pleasant and intimate haven. The contemporary suites feature oversized balconies or terraces, a king sized bed, two-person Jacuzzi, smart TV, air conditioning, ceiling fan and an iPod docking station.
Additional features include marble bathrooms with double sinks, separate glass-enclosed shower, bathroom essentials, safety deposit box, iron and ironing board, coffee maker, telephone and ample closet space. Each suite comes with a fully stocked and customized mini fridge with your choice of beverages and savory snacks.
The cabanas are sprinkled throughout the entire property, so you can lounge on the crisp, white beds along the beach, poolside or in the garden.
The crystal-clear water of one of the most breathtaking beaches in the world.
The gorgeous, expansive open-air Sky Terrace to host weddings and private events.
It's about an hour and a half from Cancun Airport to El Dorado Seaside Suites on the Riviera Maya, but the drive gives you time to unwind and enjoy the beautiful scenery.
The resort offers endless opportunities for both relaxation and adventure.
Enjoy 10 restaurants serving a variety of delicious cuisine, and 11 bars for daily entertainment in paradise.
Get pampered in one of the largest spas in the Riviera Maya.
El Dorado Seaside Suites by Karisma is expanding to a new adults-only world surrounded by crystal blue water with a taste of luxury modern styling, romantic settings and full relaxation in paradise--perfect for an intimate escape. The resort retains that calming hideaway feel, with its whitewashed buildings tucked amid swaying palm trees and facing a sugary-sand beach.
Just minutes away, there are endless opportunities to discover one of the largest reefs in the Riviera Maya, archeological destinations, Eco parks, natural cenotes, sandy beaches and Mayan culture. The resort is only about a 90-minute drive from Cancun International Airport, and only a short drive away from Playa del Carmen and Tulum.
The 192 luxurious suites are elegant and bright, which offers all comforts and amenities required for a pleasant and intimate haven. Suites feature an oversized balcony or terrace, king sized bed, Jacuzzi for two, smart TV, air conditioning, ceiling fan and an iPod docking station. Additional room comforts include marble bathrooms with double sinks, separate glass-enclosed shower, bathroom essentials, safety deposit box, iron and ironing board, coffee maker, telephone, and ample closet space. Enjoy a fully-stocked mini fridge, customize-able with beverage choices and savory snacks.
Lounge in your beach cabana along the pearly sands knowing you don't have to move until you are good and ready. And when the grumble of your belly starts to drown out the lapping of the waves, have no fear. Your friendly beach butler is soon to arrive bearing a picnic basket of goodies, including afternoon champagne. If poolside luxury is more your thing, stake your claim on one of the two-story, slat-roof cabanas and spend the afternoon gazing at the shimmering waters of the resort's three sparkling freshwater pools--each with its own swim-up bar.
Don't worry if the tequila sunrises keep you partying until dawn, just retreat to your plush bed to catch 40 winks. If you make it to bed earlier, you can relax beneath the stars on your patio or balcony hammock. Honeymooners, grab your loved one for a signature beachfront sky massage in a traditional Mayan palapa overlooking the silvery Caribbean Sea. El Dorado Seaside Suites also offers yoga classes, if that's more your style. Afterward, retreat back to the suite for a luxurious soak in your personal Jacuzzi.
Description: International cuisine served a la carte. With a great chef's menu, Arrecifes offers something for everyone in an elegant, air-conditioned atmosphere.
Description: Guests will instantly love the impressive variety of Asian cuisine accompanied by house specialties, entirely unique to this part of the world. Here, you'll find a passion for creative, fresh and unique tastes made specially by the chefs.
Description: Gourmet Mexican cuisine and tequila tasting, featuring a menu with a grand variety of 20 tequilas, some made in-house.
Description: Specializing in creative interpretations of traditional Italian cuisine and featuring a vast wine list, Mia Casa offers five-star service in either an indoor or outdoor setting.
Hours: Continental breakfast - daily, 6am-7am; Breakfast, 7am-10am; Snacks - daily, 11am-5:30pm.
Description: Wood-fired oven pizzas served to order, plus a selection of Angus burgers and gourmet bites among other Mexican "botana" preparations.
Description: Enjoy a perfect blend of international tastes, sights and smells from an extensive a la carte menu. Guests can arrive early for pre-dinner drinks with the wide selection of shaken margaritas.
Description: Located underneath the main pool, this restaurant offers a tasty variety of fresh menu options. Guests will enjoy fabulous views overlooking the ocean.
Description: Choose from a delicious array of buffet-style, international cuisine featuring creative salads, delicious main entrees, and irresistible home-baked bread and pastries. Explore food options from different parts of the world, brilliantly reflected by the chef.
Description: Created in the spirit of sharing, sample a wide selection of international fare, beautifully prepared and served in a relaxed, rustic setting.
Hours: Daily breakfast, 8am-11am; Lunch, 12:30pm-3pm.
Description: Enjoy a rotating menu of your favorite foods served with a gourmet flair and spectacular ocean views. The menu features paella, hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken and shrimp skewers fresh off the grill. Adults can also enjoy a tasty selection of international cocktails from the bar.
Come enjoy cold Mexican beers, cheladas, exotic cocktails and aged tequila while listening to tropical music under a traditional palapa. Daily, 9am-2am.
Bar with swings located at the relaxing pool. Daily, 9am-11pm.
Swim-up pool bar offering a variety of drinks. Daily, 10am-6pm.
Swim-up pool bar offering a variety of drinks located next to Villa 35. Daily, 10am-6pm.
This swim up bar and relaxation area is located in the heart of the hotel, where one can enjoy the sounds of the waterfall as well as singing birds. Daily, 10am-6pm.
This tequila bar features a wide selection of tequilas and is located inside of La Carreta Restaurant. Daily, 5:30pm-10pm.
Located in the main lobby, this bar features the traditional Mexican liquor, Mezcal. Open daily, 3pm-11pm.
This full Gourmet Inclusive premium bar serves a wide variety of cocktails (virgin available), fresh fruit-infused water and ice-cold beer. Located in the Infinity Section. Open daily, 10am-8pm.
Choose between a tasty selection of flavored margaritas and other cocktails in a relaxing garden setting inside the Culinarium Restaurant. Open daily, 5:30pm-10pm.
This full Gourmet Inclusive premium swim-up bar features a tasty variety of cocktails (virgin available) and ice-cold beer. Located at the main pool in the Infinity Section. Open daily, 10am-6pm.
Enjoy a laid-back atmosphere, while gazing into the twinkling stars and sparkling Caribbean Sea and sipping on a variety of cocktails. Open daily, 8pm-2am.
Although all beaches in Mexico are public, access to the beach fronting this resort is usually limited to guests. One stretch is rocky and separate from the resort, but another section is white sand and swimmable. The resort's rock pier allows guests to walk out over the clear green water. Palm trees, cabanas and palapas dot the beach, creating a romantic atmosphere. Beach butlers see to your every need in addition to complimentary towels.
The resort features five freshwater pools, some with a swim-up bar and a lazy river winding around the resort. Pool butlers see to your every need and for those craving a little adventure, complimentary scuba lessons are also provided.
Enjoy complimentary Wi-Fi access throughout the resort.
The resort offers a wide range of spa treatments and services for an additional charge. Please contact the resort directly for hours and information.
Named by Forbes.com as one of the most romantic resorts in the world, El Dorado Seaside Suites features many beautiful locations for your ceremony. If you've been dreaming to tie the knot in paradise, Karisma's "Always and Forever" wedding package is a great way to say "I do" in bliss. Package includes ceremony decor, services, reception, personal wedding planner and more. Please contact the resort directly for more information.
El Dorado Seaside Suites is located one hour south of Cancun International Airport (CUN), 25 minutes south of the nightlife at Playa del Carmen and 25 minutes north of the ancient ruins at Tulum. | 2019-04-23T13:54:53Z | https://www.cheapcaribbean.com/resorts/Mexico-Riviera-Maya/El-Dorado-Seaside-Suites-a-Gourmet-Inclusive-Resort-by-Karisma/3293.html?tab=reviews&target=_blank&searchParameters.bookingType=P&priceAndBook.packageId=4377&icid=mm_tab_5&placementId=SaleLP_Deals_List_12 |
You searched for subject:( Pella). Showing records 1 – 16 of 16 total matches.
1. Silva, Uiran Gebara da. O som e a fúria: o Eucharisticos de Paulino de Pella e o problema do fim da antiguidade.
Esta dissertação apresenta uma investigação cujo objetivo é examinar o problema do confronto de paradigmas explicativos a respeito do fim da Antiguidade: a ascensão da Antiguidade Tardia, uma nova Forma da História, e o Declínio do Império Romano. Busca realizar isso através da compreensão do relato feito por um monge cristão, na forma de poema, sobre sua vida como aristocrata e proprietário de terras na Gália do século V d.C., o Eucharisticos de Paulino de Pella. A pesquisa teve como preocupações teórica e metodológica entender as diferentes mediações necessárias para a composição do poema, principalmente o instrumental literário disponível ao autor, como os gêneros literários clássicos. Estas também buscaram lidar com a relação indivíduo e sociedade na Antiguidade, propondo os limites e potencialidades que a compreensão do poema como expressão ideológica de seu autor e consequentemente de sua consciência de suas posições de classe e de status como critério da parcialidade de sua visão sobre a realidade na qual viveu.
This work consists of an investigation which aims to examine the issue of the opposing explanatory paradigm used to explain the end of Antiquity: the rise of Late Antiquity, a new Form of History, and the Fall of Roman Empire, through the understanding of a narrative poem written by a christian monk about his life as an aristocracy member and landowner in Gaul during the V century AD, Paulinus PaelleusÉucharisticus. The research methodological concerns aimed at the understanding of the poem composition through different mediations, mainly the literary background available to the author as, for instance, the classical genres of literature. Methodological and theoretical concerns also aimed to deal with the relation between individual and society in Antiquity, proposing the limits and potentialities that the poem understanding as its author\'s ideological expression - and consequently his consciousness about his class and status within it - as criteria for his biased view about the reality he lived in.
Advisors/Committee Members: Guarinello, Norberto Luiz.
Silva, Uiran Gebara da. “O som e a fúria: o Eucharisticos de Paulino de Pella e o problema do fim da antiguidade.” 2008. Masters Thesis, University of São Paulo. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8138/tde-02022011-094818/ ;.
Silva, Uiran Gebara da. “O som e a fúria: o Eucharisticos de Paulino de Pella e o problema do fim da antiguidade.” 2008. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Silva UGd. O som e a fúria: o Eucharisticos de Paulino de Pella e o problema do fim da antiguidade. [Internet] [Masters thesis]. University of São Paulo; 2008. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8138/tde-02022011-094818/ ;.
2. Dieleman, Barbara V. Development Of A Guidebook Of Community Resources For The Pella Community Schools .
Dieleman, Barbara V. “Development Of A Guidebook Of Community Resources For The Pella Community Schools .” 1961. Thesis, Drake U. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2092/1775.
Dieleman, Barbara V. “Development Of A Guidebook Of Community Resources For The Pella Community Schools .” 1961. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Dieleman BV. Development Of A Guidebook Of Community Resources For The Pella Community Schools . [Internet] [Thesis]. Drake U; 1961. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2092/1775.
3. Vander Leest, Merlyn E. Influence Of The Holland Background On Education In The Pella Community Schools, 1847-1966 .
Vander Leest, Merlyn E. “Influence Of The Holland Background On Education In The Pella Community Schools, 1847-1966 .” 1966. Thesis, Drake U. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2092/1780.
Vander Leest, Merlyn E. “Influence Of The Holland Background On Education In The Pella Community Schools, 1847-1966 .” 1966. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Vander Leest ME. Influence Of The Holland Background On Education In The Pella Community Schools, 1847-1966 . [Internet] [Thesis]. Drake U; 1966. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2092/1780.
4. Koliadimou, Agni. Πρόσφυγες στο νομό Πέλλας: 1912-1967.
The aim of the present thesis was the study of refugee flows that arrived in the district of Pella from 1912, the efforts for their resettlement and the influence they have had on population composition, economic, social and political life of the county from 1912 to 1967. After a brief introduction to the course of the refugee problem in the Balkans, we presented the population composition of cities and villages of the county, labor relations and living conditions that prevailed, and the economic and social organization of Pella in the last years of Ottoman rule. Then we recorded systematically the consecutive waves of refugees that flood to the district of Pella from 1912 to the late 40s, the efforts of settlement services to coordinate their placement in the towns and villages of Pella according to the place of origin and their profession and, at the same time, the departure of Muslims, Slav-speaking and Vlach-speaking from the area. Furthermore we studied urban and rural resettlement of refugees and the complex problems they face, many of which have been resolved in '50s and '60s, when were taken additional steps to resolve them. We investigated also the social life of refugees, with the presentation of the educational policy of the state by establishing schools and also cooperatives, while the refugees themselves mainly in the cities founded refugee associations. Additionally, we examined the political orientation of refugees, the influence of refugee vote during the inter-war period and the reasons that contributed some of them to change political preferences after the Second World War. Finally, we investigated the relationships developed refugees with the natives, specially the Slav-speaking people, whose presence is strong in Pella, and the reasons for the conflict between them, as well as the difficulties of harmonious coexistence between refugees of different origin.
Koliadimou, Agni. “Πρόσφυγες στο νομό Πέλλας: 1912-1967.” 2014. Thesis, Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ). Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/36154.
Koliadimou, Agni. “Πρόσφυγες στο νομό Πέλλας: 1912-1967.” 2014. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Koliadimou A. Πρόσφυγες στο νομό Πέλλας: 1912-1967. [Internet] [Thesis]. Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ); 2014. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/36154.
5. Ward, Ruth Alison. Pits in Context: The Symmetrical Temples in the Southern Levant during the Second Millennium B.C.E.
Ward, Ruth Alison. “Pits in Context: The Symmetrical Temples in the Southern Levant during the Second Millennium B.C.E. ” 2016. Thesis, University of Sydney. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/14421.
Ward, Ruth Alison. “Pits in Context: The Symmetrical Temples in the Southern Levant during the Second Millennium B.C.E. ” 2016. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Ward RA. Pits in Context: The Symmetrical Temples in the Southern Levant during the Second Millennium B.C.E. [Internet] [Thesis]. University of Sydney; 2016. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/14421.
6. Naoum, Elpiniki. Το δυτικό νεκροταφείο της Πέλλας.
This thesis deals with the West Cemetery of Pella that was discovered during the construction of the south By-pass of the archaeological site of Pella. The aim of this study is the examination of 421 burials and the detailed description of the excavation data and funerary offerings that were included in the tombs as well as tο shed light to the burial customs of this cemetery. Equally important is the typological and chronological classification of the material and the attempt of comparison with other cemeteries of the same era. It concerns the presentation of a primary excavation material that was organized and recorded so that someone can approach the objects and understand the ideas and beliefs of the inhabitants of ancient Pella towards the inevitable fact of death. 47 tombs of the late classical-hellenistic period, which were part of the West cemetery of Pella, were analyzed, as well as 374 tombs of the roman period that are dated from the 1st century A.D. till the first quarter of the 4th century A.D.
Αντικείμενο έρευνας της παρούσας εργασίας είναι το δυτικό νεκροταφείο της Πέλλας που αποκαλύφθηκε κατά την κατασκευή της νότιας παρακαμπήριας οδού του κεντρικού αρχαιολογικού χώρου της Πέλλας. Σκοπός της μελέτης ορίστηκε η εξέταση των 421 τάφων και η λεπτομερής καταγραφή των ανασκαφικών δεδομένων τους, όπως και η αναλυτική παράθεση των κτερισμάτων που περιείχαν αλλά και των ταφικών εθίμων και η προσπάθεια ερμηνείας τους. Εξίσου σημαντική είναι και η τυπολογική και χρονολογική κατάταξη του κινητού υλικού και των ταφικών μνημείων, όπως προέκυψε από τη συγκριτική μελέτη με άλλα γνωστά σύνολα της ίδιας χρονικής περιόδου, παρόμοιας σύνθεσης. Πρόκειται για την παρουσίαση ενός πρωτογενούς ανασκαφικού υλικού που οργανώθηκε και καταγράφηκε ώστε να μπορεί κανείς να έρθει σε επαφή με τα αντικείμενα και να κατανοήσει τις ιδέες και τις αντιλήψεις που είχαν οι κάτοικοι της Πέλλας για το αναπόφευκτο γεγονός του θανάτου. Συγκεκριμένα, αναλύθηκαν 47 ταφές που χρονολογούνται στην υστεροκλασική-ελληνιστική περίοδο και αποτελούν τμήμα του δυτικού νεκροταφείου της Πέλλας και 374 ρωμαϊκές ταφές που χρονολογούνται από τον 1ο αι. μ.Χ. ως το α΄ τέταρτο του 4ου αι. μ.Χ.
Naoum, Elpiniki. “Το δυτικό νεκροταφείο της Πέλλας.” 2017. Thesis, Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ). Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/42122.
Naoum, Elpiniki. “Το δυτικό νεκροταφείο της Πέλλας.” 2017. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Naoum E. Το δυτικό νεκροταφείο της Πέλλας. [Internet] [Thesis]. Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ); 2017. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/42122.
7. Vander Hart, Robert Jay. A history of the Conservatory of Music at Central College (Pella, Iowa), 1900-1930.
Vander Hart, Robert Jay. “A history of the Conservatory of Music at Central College (Pella, Iowa), 1900-1930.” 1998. Masters Thesis, University of Iowa. Accessed April 25, 2019. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/5384.
Vander Hart, Robert Jay. “A history of the Conservatory of Music at Central College (Pella, Iowa), 1900-1930.” 1998. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Vander Hart RJ. A history of the Conservatory of Music at Central College (Pella, Iowa), 1900-1930. [Internet] [Masters thesis]. University of Iowa; 1998. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/5384.
8. Van Tuyl, John W. A Proposed Curriculum in The Social Studies for Culturally-Deprived Students Attending the Upward Bound Program at Central College, Pella, Iowa during The Summer of 1967 .
Van Tuyl, John W. “A Proposed Curriculum in The Social Studies for Culturally-Deprived Students Attending the Upward Bound Program at Central College, Pella, Iowa during The Summer of 1967 .” 1967. Thesis, Drake U. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2092/1405.
Van Tuyl, John W. “A Proposed Curriculum in The Social Studies for Culturally-Deprived Students Attending the Upward Bound Program at Central College, Pella, Iowa during The Summer of 1967 .” 1967. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Van Tuyl JW. A Proposed Curriculum in The Social Studies for Culturally-Deprived Students Attending the Upward Bound Program at Central College, Pella, Iowa during The Summer of 1967 . [Internet] [Thesis]. Drake U; 1967. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2092/1405.
9. Hummel, Patrick B. Wall / Frame.
Resolving the conditions presented by rammed earth walls and a timber frame coexisting in a residence. Advisors/Committee Members: Ermann, Michael G. (committeechair).
Hummel, Patrick B. “Wall / Frame.” 2008. Thesis, Virginia Tech. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/46536.
Hummel, Patrick B. “Wall / Frame.” 2008. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Hummel PB. Wall / Frame. [Internet] [Thesis]. Virginia Tech; 2008. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/46536.
10. Arvaniti, Theodora. Διερεύνηση με μη - επεμβατικές ή ελάχιστα επεμβατικές τεχνικές, υλικών και αντικειμένων που βρίσκονται μαζί με τα οστά σε ταφές επιφανών προσώπων της αρχαίας Μακεδονικής κοινωνίας: συμβολή στη κατανόηση των ταφικών εθίμων.
The aim of this study is the investigation of materials found adhered on cremated bones in Royal and other high-status Macedonian burials of the 4th-2nd century BC. This research was limited to non invasive or minimum invasive techniques. Materials of various colors and characteristics coming from the main chamber and the antechamber of Royal Tomb II at Vergina, from tomb A and B at Derveni, from tomb II and III at Aineia, from an unlooted tomb at Aghios Athanasios and from the Macedonian tomb at Pella were scientifically examined in order to identify their nature and manner of deposition on the bones. Theoretical part presents the historical evidence for each tomb as well as the basic principles of the techniques applied. Experimental part begins with the proposed methodology. Then there are the results of the investigation of the materials from each tomb and the laboratory simulations aiming to answer specific questions relating to origin and presence of these materials. Third and last part of this study is the discussion of the results. Among the most important findings is the identification of the usage of huntite mineral at Classical times at Macedonia. Another material identified on bones of most of the tombs studied is gypsum. The presence of gypsum in such extend must be related with an ancient burial custom. The proposed methodology corresponded well to the questions raised.
Σκοπός της διατριβής ήταν η μελέτη υλικών τα οποία βρίσκονται μαζί με οστά προερχόμενα από καύση σε ταφές επιφανών Μακεδόνων του 4ου-2ου αιώνα πΧ. Στην μελέτη αυτή χρησιμοποιήθηκαν μη επεμβατικές ή ελάχιστα επεμβατικές τεχνικές. Τα δείγματα που μελετήθηκαν προέρχονται από τον κυρίως θάλαμο και τον προθάλαμο του “βασιλικού” τάφου ΙΙ στην Μεγάλη Τούμπα της Βεργίνας, από τους τάφους Α και Β του Δερβενίου, από τους τάφους ΙΙ και ΙΙΙ της αρχαίας Αίνειας, από τον τάφο του Αγίου Αθανασίου καθώς και από τον μακεδονικό τάφο Β της Πέλλας. Στην Θεωρητική Εισαγωγή παρουσιάζονται ιστορικά στοιχεία για την κάθε ταφή καθώς και οι βασικές αρχές της κάθε τεχνικής που χρησιμοποιείται στο Πειραματικό Μέρος. Το Πειραματικό Μέρος ξεκινά με την περιγραφή της προτεινόμενης ερευνητικής μεθοδολογίας. Εν συνεχεία παρουσιάζονται τα ευρήματα για κάθε ταφή ξεχωριστά καθώς και οι πειραματικές προσομοιώσεις που εκτελέστηκαν για να απαντηθούν συγκεκριμένα ερωτήματα και να αποκωδικοποιηθούν τα ευρήματα. Το τρίτο και τελευταίο μέρος της διατριβής περιλαμβάνει την σύνθεση των αποτελεσμάτων. Ανάμεσα στα σημαντικότερα ευρήματα της διατριβής είναι η τεκμηρίωση της χρήσης του ορυκτού χουντίτης κατά τους κλασικούς χρόνους στην περιοχή της Μακεδονίας. Σημαντικό επίσης εύρημα αποτελεί και η τεκμηρίωση της παρουσίας γύψου πάνω στα οστά των περισσοτέρων ταφών, γεγονός που πρέπει να συνδέεται με κάποιο ταφικό έθιμο. Η προτεινόμενη ερευνητική μεθοδολογία ανταποκρίθηκε σε μεγάλο βαθμό στα ερωτήματα που τέθηκαν.
Arvaniti, Theodora. “Διερεύνηση με μη - επεμβατικές ή ελάχιστα επεμβατικές τεχνικές, υλικών και αντικειμένων που βρίσκονται μαζί με τα οστά σε ταφές επιφανών προσώπων της αρχαίας Μακεδονικής κοινωνίας: συμβολή στη κατανόηση των ταφικών εθίμων.” 2019. Thesis, Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ). Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/45334.
Arvaniti, Theodora. “Διερεύνηση με μη - επεμβατικές ή ελάχιστα επεμβατικές τεχνικές, υλικών και αντικειμένων που βρίσκονται μαζί με τα οστά σε ταφές επιφανών προσώπων της αρχαίας Μακεδονικής κοινωνίας: συμβολή στη κατανόηση των ταφικών εθίμων.” 2019. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Arvaniti T. Διερεύνηση με μη - επεμβατικές ή ελάχιστα επεμβατικές τεχνικές, υλικών και αντικειμένων που βρίσκονται μαζί με τα οστά σε ταφές επιφανών προσώπων της αρχαίας Μακεδονικής κοινωνίας: συμβολή στη κατανόηση των ταφικών εθίμων. [Internet] [Thesis]. Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ); 2019. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/45334.
11. Ακαμάτης, Νικόλαος. Ερυθρόμορφη κεραμική από την Πέλλα: το τοπικό εργαστήριο.
Ακαμάτης, Νικόλαος. “Ερυθρόμορφη κεραμική από την Πέλλα: το τοπικό εργαστήριο.” 2011. Thesis, Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ). Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/30363.
Ακαμάτης, Νικόλαος. “Ερυθρόμορφη κεραμική από την Πέλλα: το τοπικό εργαστήριο.” 2011. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Ακαμάτης �. Ερυθρόμορφη κεραμική από την Πέλλα: το τοπικό εργαστήριο. [Internet] [Thesis]. Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ); 2011. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/30363.
12. De Jong, Judith Ann. A Survey of Types of Materials Used in Teaching Reading Skills in Grades One through Six in the Schools of Pella, Iowa .
De Jong, Judith Ann. “A Survey of Types of Materials Used in Teaching Reading Skills in Grades One through Six in the Schools of Pella, Iowa .” 1970. Thesis, Drake U. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2092/1160.
De Jong, Judith Ann. “A Survey of Types of Materials Used in Teaching Reading Skills in Grades One through Six in the Schools of Pella, Iowa .” 1970. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
De Jong JA. A Survey of Types of Materials Used in Teaching Reading Skills in Grades One through Six in the Schools of Pella, Iowa . [Internet] [Thesis]. Drake U; 1970. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2092/1160.
13. Stright, Jeana Marie. Architecture as a Unifying Thread.
▼ Buildings exist because humans have a natural desire for shelter and safety, but what sets one building apart from another? Expression. Whether it is a conversation about place, material, program, or a fanciful idea- architecture offers an interpretation of the ordinary, inviting questions, appreciation, or controversy. With the introduction of a position, a conversation begins, yielding a discussion. Ideas continue to grow and form, creating and reinforcing the continuously evolving world of the built environment. This project offers an interpretation of a way to blend the disparate elements of walls, program, and experience. This project achieves unity through a series of architectural gestures that reinforce the program of the building and strengthen the architectural thought of connecting unlike elements. Great spatial opportunity can be found in both the building of barriers and the destruction of them. Tension between opposite conditions has great power to set the static in motion. The age, texture and weight of the existing walls are contrasted by the lightness of the new structure that breaks through the old, revealing its nature and opening it up for appreciation. The constructed nature of the new structure is contrasted by the fluidity of the poured concrete wall that ends the building and holds the project above the old. The old then becomes a tool for appreciation, while the new represents a tangible journey through the design process. The stair is the mediator between creation and display providing a sense of rest and a new perspective. An architecture of stitches is created, forming a fabric that speaks to the past, the program, and the stated intention to maximize the coexistence of each. Advisors/Committee Members: Dunay, Donna W. (committeechair), Braaten, Ellen B. (committee member), Ermann, Michael G. (committee member).
Stright, Jeana Marie. “Architecture as a Unifying Thread.” 2008. Thesis, Virginia Tech. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/46534.
Stright, Jeana Marie. “Architecture as a Unifying Thread.” 2008. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Stright JM. Architecture as a Unifying Thread. [Internet] [Thesis]. Virginia Tech; 2008. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/46534.
14. ΑΚΑΜΑΤΗΣ, ΙΩΑΝΝΗΣ. ΠΗΛΙΝΕΣ ΜΗΤΡΕΣ ΑΓΓΕΙΩΝ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΕΛΛΑ. ΣΥΜΒΟΛΗ ΣΤΗ ΜΕΛΕΤΗ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΤΙΚΗΣ ΚΕΡΑΜΙΚΗΣ.
ΣΤΗ ΜΕΛΕΤΗ ΕΞΕΤΑΖΟΝΤΑΙ 330 ΜΗΤΡΕΣ, ΤΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΘΡΑΥΣΜΑΤΑ ΜΗΤΡΩΝ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥΗ ΑΝΑΓΛΥΦΩΝ ΑΓΓΕΙΩΝ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΤΙΚΗΣ ΕΠΟΧΗΣ. ΒΡΕΘΗΚΑΝ ΣΕ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙΟ ΚΕΡΑΜΙΚΗΣ ΣΤΟ ΕΜΠΟΡΙΚΟ ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΤΗΣ ΠΕΛΛΑΣ. ΟΛΕΣ ΣΧΕΔΟΝ ΟΙ ΜΗΤΡΕΣ ΠΡΟΕΡΧΟΝΤΑΙ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΣΤΡΩΜΑ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΡΟΦΗΣ ΔΥΟ ΣΥΝΕΧΟΜΕΝΩΝ ΔΩΜΑΤΙΩΝ ΤΟΥ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΥ. ΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥΑΖΟΝΤΑΝ ΣΤΟ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙΟ, ΠΑΝΩ ΣΤΟΝ ΤΡΟΧΟ, ΜΕ ΝΤΟΠΙΟ ΠΗΛΟ ΚΑΙ ΔΙΑΚΟΣΜΟΥΝΤΑΝ ΜΕ ΙΔΙΑΙΤΕΡΕΣ ΣΦΡΑΓΙΔΕΣ, ΑΛΛΑ ΚΑΙ ΜΕ ΤΟ ΧΕΡΙ. ΟΙ ΠΕΡΙΣΣΟΤΕΡΕΣ ΕΧΟΥΝ ΦΥΤΙΚΟ ΔΙΑΚΟΣΜΟ, ΕΝΩ ΑΡΚΕΤΕΣ ΚΟΣΜΟΥΝΤΑΙ ΜΕ ΔΙΗΓΗΜΑΤΙΚΕΣ ΠΑΡΑΣΤΑΣΕΙΣ. ΕΧΟΥΝ ΑΠΟΜΟΝΩΘΕΙ 108 ΣΦΡΑΓΙΔΕΣ ΜΕ ΦΥΤΙΚΑ ΚΟΣΜΗΜΑΤΑ, 90 ΜΕ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΙΝΕΣ ΜΟΡΦΕΣ, 16 ΜΕ ΖΩΙΚΕΣ ΚΑΙ 8 ΜΕ ΑΝΤΙΚΕΙΜΕΝΑ. ΜΕ ΒΑΣΗ ΤΙΣ ΣΦΡΑΓΙΔΕΣ ΑΥΤΕΣ ΕΧΕΙ ΑΝΑΓΝΩΡΙΣΤΕΙ ΜΙΑ ΣΕΙΡΑ ΑΠΟ ΑΠΟΣΠΑΣΜΑΤΙΚΑ ΣΩΖΟΜΕΝΑ ΑΓΓΕΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΥ ΣΤΟΝ ΕΥΡΥΤΕΡΟ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΚΟ ΧΩΡΟ. ΟΙ ΜΗΤΡΕΣ ΜΕ ΦΥΤΙΚΑΚΟΣΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΚΑΛΥΠΤΟΝΤΑΙ ΣΥΝΗΘΩΣ ΜΕ ΦΥΛΛΑ, ΕΛΙΚΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΑΝΘΕΜΙΑ 'Η ΡΟΔΑΚΕΣ, ΕΝΩ ΟΙΜΗΤΡΕΣ ΜΕ ΔΙΗΓΗΜΑΤΙΚΕΣ ΠΑΡΑΣΤΑΣΕΙΣ ΕΧΟΥΝ ΜΙΑ ΖΩΝΗ ΜΕ ΜΙΑ ΣΥΓΚΕΚΡΙΜΕΝΗ ΠΑΡΑΣΤΑΣΗ, ΠΟΥ ΕΜΠΝΕΕΕΤΑΙ ΑΠΟ ΦΙΛΟΛΟΓΙΚΑ ΚΕΙΜΕΝΑ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΤΗΤΑΣ. ΣΤΕΝΕΣ ΣΧΕΣΕΙΣ ΑΝΑΓΝΩΡΙΖΟΝΤΑΙ ΜΕ "ΕΠΙΤΟΜΕΣ" ΤΩΝ ΕΡΓΩΝ ΤΟΥ ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΗ, ΣΟΦΟΚΛΗ Κ.Α. ΤΟ ΙΔΙΟ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙ ΗΛΕΓΧΕ ΟΛΟΚΛΗΡΟ ΤΟ ΦΑΣΜΑ ΤΗΣ ΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥΗΣ ΤΩΝ ΣΦΡΑΓΙΔΩΝ, ΤΗΣ ΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΔΙΑΚΟΣΜΗΣΗΣ ΤΩΝ ΜΗΤΡΩΝ, ΤΟ ΨΗΣΙΜΟ ΤΟΥ ΑΓΓΕΙΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΤΗ ΔΙΑΘΕΣΗ ΤΩΝ ΠΡΟΙΟΝΤΩΝ. ΟΙ ΜΗΤΡΕΣ ΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥΑΣΤΗΚΑΝ ΑΠΟ ΤΕΣΣΕΡΙΣ ΤΕΧΝΙΤΕΣ. ΟΙ ΙΔΙΟΙ ΚΑΙ ΤΙΣ ΔΙΑΚΟΣΜΗΣΑΝ. Η ΠΑΡΑΓΩΓΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΥ ΔΕΝ ΠΕΡΙΟΡΙΖΕΤΑΙ ΣΤΗΝ ΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥΗ ΚΑΙ ΔΙΑΘΕΣΗ ΠΡΟΙΟΝΤΩΝΤΗΣ ΑΝΑΓΛΥΦΗΣ ΚΕΡΑΜΙΚΗΣ. ΤΟ ΙΔΙΟ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙ ΠΑΡΗΓΑΓΕ ΚΑΙ ΔΙΕΘΕΤΕ ΜΕΓΑΛΗ ΠΟΙΚΙΛΙΑ ΑΓΓΕΙΩΝ, ΑΛΛΑ ΚΑΙ ΑΛΛΩΝ ΠΡΟΙΟΝΤΩΝ. Η ΜΟΡΦΗ ΤΟΥ ΣΤΡΩΜΑΤΟΣ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΡΟΦΗΣ ΤΩΝ ΔΩΜΑΤΙΩΝ ΤΟΥ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΥ, ΚΑΘΩΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΟΛΛΩΝ ΑΛΛΩΝ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΗΜΑΤΩΝ, ΜΑΣ ΥΠΟΧΡΕΩΝΕΙ ΝΑ ΔΕΧΤΟΥΜΕ ΕΝΑ ΒΙΑΙΟ ΦΥΣΙΚΟ ΦΑΙΝΟΜΕΝΟ, ΕΝΑ ΣΕΙΣΜΟ, ΣΑΝ ΑΙΤΙΑ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΡΟΦΗΣ ΤΟΥ ΣΥΓΚΡΟΤΗΜΑΤΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΑΓΟΡΑΣ ΤΗΣ ΠΕΛΛΑΣ. ΑΝΑΛΟΓΕΣ ΣΥΝΘΗΚΕΣ ΕΧΟΥΝ ΠΑΡΑΤΗΡΗΘΕΙ ΚΑΙ ΣΕΑΛΛΑ ΤΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΤΗΣ ΠΟΛΗΣ. Η ΧΡΗΣΙΜΟΠΟΙΗΣΗ ΤΩΝ ΤΕΛΕΥΤΑΙΩΝ ΧΡΟΝΟΛΟΓΙΚΩΝ ΕΥΡΗΜΑΤΩΝΤΟΥ ΣΤΡΩΜΑΤΟΣ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΡΟΦΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΩΝ ΧΩΡΩΝ ΑΠΟΡΡΙΨΗΣ ΑΧΡΗΣΤΩΝ ΑΝΤΙΚΕΙΜΕΝΩΝ ΕΞΩ ΑΠΟ ΤΑ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙΑ ΤΟΠΟΘΕΤΟΥΝ ΤΗΝ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΡΟΦΗ ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟ ΤΕΛΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΠΡΩΤΗΣ ΔΕΚΑΕΤΙΑΣΤΟΥ 1ΟΥ Π.Χ. ΑΙ.
ΑΚΑΜΑΤΗΣ, ΙΩΑΝΝΗΣ. “ΠΗΛΙΝΕΣ ΜΗΤΡΕΣ ΑΓΓΕΙΩΝ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΕΛΛΑ. ΣΥΜΒΟΛΗ ΣΤΗ ΜΕΛΕΤΗ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΤΙΚΗΣ ΚΕΡΑΜΙΚΗΣ.” 1986. Thesis, Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ); Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH). Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/0270.
ΑΚΑΜΑΤΗΣ, ΙΩΑΝΝΗΣ. “ΠΗΛΙΝΕΣ ΜΗΤΡΕΣ ΑΓΓΕΙΩΝ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΕΛΛΑ. ΣΥΜΒΟΛΗ ΣΤΗ ΜΕΛΕΤΗ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΤΙΚΗΣ ΚΕΡΑΜΙΚΗΣ.” 1986. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
ΑΚΑΜΑΤΗΣ �. ΠΗΛΙΝΕΣ ΜΗΤΡΕΣ ΑΓΓΕΙΩΝ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΕΛΛΑ. ΣΥΜΒΟΛΗ ΣΤΗ ΜΕΛΕΤΗ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΤΙΚΗΣ ΚΕΡΑΜΙΚΗΣ. [Internet] [Thesis]. Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ); Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); 1986. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/0270.
15. Γεωργιάδου, Σοφία. Η ταυτότητα των σλαβόφωνων του δήμου Πέλλας της Μακεδονίας.
Γεωργιάδου, Σοφία. “Η ταυτότητα των σλαβόφωνων του δήμου Πέλλας της Μακεδονίας.” 2009. Thesis, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences; Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο Κοινωνικών και Πολιτικών Επιστημών. Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/17464.
Γεωργιάδου, Σοφία. “Η ταυτότητα των σλαβόφωνων του δήμου Πέλλας της Μακεδονίας.” 2009. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Γεωργιάδου �. Η ταυτότητα των σλαβόφωνων του δήμου Πέλλας της Μακεδονίας. [Internet] [Thesis]. Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences; Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο Κοινωνικών και Πολιτικών Επιστημών; 2009. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/17464.
16. Αραμπατζής, Γαρύφαλλος. Ανάλυση επενδύσεων στη δασοπονία σε εθνικό επίπεδο: η περίπτωση των δασικών φυτειών του νομού Πέλλας.
Αραμπατζής, Γαρύφαλλος. “Ανάλυση επενδύσεων στη δασοπονία σε εθνικό επίπεδο: η περίπτωση των δασικών φυτειών του νομού Πέλλας.” 2000. Thesis, Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ). Accessed April 25, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/23591.
Αραμπατζής, Γαρύφαλλος. “Ανάλυση επενδύσεων στη δασοπονία σε εθνικό επίπεδο: η περίπτωση των δασικών φυτειών του νομού Πέλλας.” 2000. Web. 25 Apr 2019.
Αραμπατζής �. Ανάλυση επενδύσεων στη δασοπονία σε εθνικό επίπεδο: η περίπτωση των δασικών φυτειών του νομού Πέλλας. [Internet] [Thesis]. Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki (AUTH); Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ); 2000. [cited 2019 Apr 25]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/23591. | 2019-04-25T20:49:00Z | https://oatd.org/oatd/search?q=subject%3A%28%20Pella%29&pagesize=30 |
YC: Wang Dan, sitting down to do an interview with you I’m feeling nostalgic, because as soon as I close my eyes the name Wang Dan brings back the image of that skinny college student with large glasses holding a megaphone in a sea of protesters on Tiananmen Square. That was 1989. Now you have turned 50. So having this interview with you outside a cafe in Washington, D.C., in the din of traffic, I feel is a bit like traversing history. You recently moved to the Washington, D.C. area. I suspect many of our readers are like me –– the Wang Dan they know is still that student on the Square. Perhaps I can first ask you to talk a bit about where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to since 1989?
Wang Dan: When you speak like that, I feel that I have become a political terracotta warrior in other people’s eyes; when they look at me, they see only history. For me, 1989 is indeed a label I can’t undo. I’m conflicted about this label. On the one hand, I feel that I can’t rest on history. I don’t want people to see me and think of 1989 only, because if that were the case, it would seem that my 50 years has been lived doing nothing else. On the other hand, I am also willing to bear this label, and the sense of responsibility that comes with it. As a witness, survivor, and one of the organizers, this is a responsibility I cannot shirk. Everyone lives bearing many contradictions; this is my conflict, and all I can do is carry it.
After 1989, my life experience has been pretty straightforward. From 1989 to 1998, for a period of almost 10 years, I basically was in prison. From 1989 to 1993, I was in Qincheng Prison (秦城監獄) and Beijing No. 2 Prison (北京第二監獄); I was released in 1993. Then I was detained for the second time in 1995 on the charge of “conspiring to subvert the government.” During the period from 1993 to 1995, I was in Beijing starting to get in touch with friends who had participated in the student movement, and I also traveled all over the country. Deng Xiaoping went on a “Southern Tour,” I also took a southern tour. I started to assemble some of the June 4 student protesters. We issued some open letters, and started a fund to support political prisoners. We found more than 100 people to contribute, each person contributed ¥10-20 each month. The government said our activities were that of a counter-revolutionary group. This criminal charge was the same as Liu Xiaobo’s –– inciting subversion: writing essays, accepting interviews, criticizing the government. Because of these activities, I was detained again in 1995, but in 1998 I was sent into exile to the United States. Although I was out of prison for more than two years from 1993 to 1995, I had absolutely no freedom. Wherever I went, there were agents following me. The big prison.
YC: When you were released from prison in 1998, you hadn’t finished serving your sentence, right?
Wang Dan: I was sentenced to 11 years in prison, but I only stayed in prison for 3 years. I was released on medical parole as a result of international pressure.
YC: At the time China needed acceptance from the international community, and it wanted to join the World Trade Organization. Now this kind of international pressure is impossible.
Wang Dan: After I came to the U.S. in 1998, in my second month here, I entered Harvard University. First, I attended summer school for a month, and then took preparatory classes for a year. I then studied for my Master’s degree and Ph.D. I graduated from Harvard in 2008. This was another 10 years, and this 10-year period was for the most part study. Of course, I also engaged in some democracy movement activities in my spare time. After graduating from Harvard, I went to England where I lived for a time, and then in 2009 I went to Taiwan to teach, which is where I have been living until this year, 2017. That’s eight years. So in the 28 years since 1989, I have either been in prison, studying, or teaching. During this whole time, regardless of what I was doing, I remained engaged in opposition activities.
YC: You were a history student at Peking University, and you studied history at Harvard. What would you most like to share about your 10 years at Harvard?
Wang Dan: Harvard has had a great impact on my life. I think with respect to China’s future, I have political aspirations, or a political ideal. I believe that China’s political future requires people who have specialized knowledge. So I feel a strong sense of accomplishment about getting my degree from Harvard. I achieved a goal I had set for myself. I think it is necessary preparation for my political future. This is the first point.
Second, at Harvard I was able to broaden my horizons. It gave me an international perspective. But obviously the most important thing, I believe, is my third point: the ten years at Harvard enabled me to just be an ordinary person. The students around me didn’t know who I was, only the Chinese students knew, but at that time there weren’t that many Chinese students. I was completely anonymous, just an ordinary international student. This was a very fortunate thing. If I were always only just a 1989 figure, active in the media, talking about politics every day, I’d feel really awful. During my time at Harvard, besides going to class, I also became friends with some people who had nothing to do with politics. It was just a very ordinary situation.
YC: Why did you go to Taiwan?
Wang Dan: Soon after I got to Harvard, I started to frequent the library. I saw a magazine called The Journalist (《新新聞》) –– a Taiwan magazine founded in 1987 focusing on social and political commentary. The Journalist covered the process of political transition in Taiwan after martial law was lifted in 1987. I was really excited reading it and began to be very interested in Taiwan. Later, I wrote my dissertation on Taiwan’s White Terror.
YC: Please tell us a bit more about your dissertation.
Wang Dan: This morning I was just talking with my editor, and we’re hoping that Harvard University Press will soon publish the English version. I compared state violence in the 1950s on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. At that time, Taiwan had White Terror, and China had Land Reform, the Campaign to Suppress Counter-revolutionaries, and the Anti-Rightist Movement, which was Red Terror. These are two forms of state violence, but each with different characteristics. What I was interested in was the different mechanisms, the specific methods by which it was carried out. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used the method of mass campaigns. I analyzed how they were launched and executed. Taiwan’s White Terror was basically accomplished through political spying, with agents infiltrating society. When the National Security Bureau investigated so-called “communist spy cases,” they were mostly targeting individuals. The Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party) used agents to monitor society, whereas the CCP used the people to monitor each other. They turned everyone into a spy, including some of China’s famous intellectuals, who were also informants.
Back to your question of why I went to Taiwan. I went to Taiwan to teach –– there were no positions in the U.S. to teach Taiwanese history. Second, since my dissertation is a comparison of Taiwan and the mainland and Taiwan had started to democratize, I was interested in living there for a period of time so that I could experience it first-hand. Third, I really like Taiwan –– the scenery, the people, and the relationships between people.
YC: Please tell us more about your time teaching in Taiwan.
Wang Dan: I taught at pretty much all of the top universities in Taiwan, with the exception of National Taiwan University. I taught at Tsing Hua, Cheng Chi, Cheng Kung, and Dongwu –– mainly at Tsing Hua University, but also taught classes at other universities. After I arrived in Taiwan, I discovered a big problem –– they really didn’t understand mainland China. There were basically no courses at universities on contemporary Chinese history covering the period from 1949 to the present. So I decided to teach Chinese contemporary history, which is essentially what I taught during my eight years in Taiwan, in the hope that people in Taiwan would gain a better understanding of mainland China.
Of course, not all of the 90-hou are like this, but I never really care about the makeup of the majority of any group. I believe that as long as a group has a few leaders, this country has hope. The students I came into contact with in Taiwan were inspiring, and gave me a morale boost. Previously I was pessimistic, and felt that even in 30 or 40 years it was unlikely that China would move towards democracy, but after engaging with the 90s generation, I became an optimist. I believe that I will see China change in the hands of this generation in my lifetime. And do you know just how fearless this generation of students is? They know who I am. There were some students who audited my class, but each semester there are quite a few students who directly selected and registered for my class. My name will appear on their transcript; they’ll take this back to China, and they just don’t care, they still choose my class. As of yet, there hasn’t been any instance of a mainland student being punished for taking one of my classes.
YC: Are you still in touch with them?
Wang Dan: I do stay in touch with some of them. There are a few who are studying for their Ph.Ds. in the U.S. And we have a Facebook group, and have become good friends. But I want to emphasize, it’s not all of the mainland students, but the mindset of at least 10% of the 90s-generation students whom I came into contact with in Taiwan is very forward looking. They’re more enthusiastic than us, and more eager for change. We thought these people supported the Communist Party, but it’s really not like that at all. I can say that 90% of them don’t support the CCP. I also think that this group of students is more resourceful than our 1989 generation of college students. I strongly believe that China will change in their hands. This is one of the reasons why I came back to the U.S., because I think there are more Chinese students like this in the U.S., students who are even more outstanding.
YC: What are some of the other reasons that prompted you to come back to the U.S.?
Wang Dan: Another reason is that I have been thinking about what I can do now. What’s my next step? I think that influencing the younger generation is one of the main things I can do. Of course, if history gives me the opportunity, I will throw myself into the democracy movement, run for office, even become president of China if possible. Why not? But I prefer to be the President of Peking University. But these things are unpredictable, and influencing the younger generation is something I can do right now. So whether I’m in Taiwan, or in America, I give talks wherever I can, to let the younger generation understand history; to let them know that we, as the opponents of the regime, are constructive and not just shouting slogans; and to let them know why China needs democratization to make the country stronger. I want the patriotic younger generation to know that if you are truly patriotic, you must oppose the CCP, and I tell them the logical connection between these two positions. During those years in Taiwan, in my spare time, on weekends, and in the evenings, I would hold “China salons.” I probably organized several hundred of these. The topic was very simple: get to know China. About half of the audience were mainland students, most listened without saying a word, nor asking questions. I felt it was OK, as long as they were listening. My responsibility is to pass the torch on to the next generation.
YC: I read your Tiananmen memoir, in 1989 you became a student leader, but before that, you got your start organizing democracy salons on campus.
Wang Dan: If you look at history, revolutions all start with salons. For example, the French Revolution got its start from salons.
YC: Let’s digress a little here. Can you talk a bit about the democracy salons you organized at Peking University?
Wang Dan: At that time, I was only a freshman; I didn’t have much experience. Liu Gang (劉剛) and those older guys were the first to hold salons. I followed after them. Each time we invited an intellectual, a so-called “counter-revolutionary,” to come. I hoped to use this platform to connect the ivory tower of the university with society.
YC: What kind of scale did you have? How many people attended each democracy salon?
Wang Dan: It could be as few as 20 or so people, but as June 4 approached, and the atmosphere was very tense, sometimes more than a thousand people came.
YC: Where were the salons held?
Wang Dan: Outdoors. We held one salon each week, on an area of grass in front of the statue of Cervantes, next to the foreign students’ dorm.
YC: Cervantes statue…. I like these details. It tickles the imagination.
Wang Dan: It’s a place where young students discussed politics and expressed their political views.
YC: I read that since you returned to the U.S., you’ve already held a few salons: in Boston, New York, Vancouver, and Toronto. How did these events go?
Wang Dan: Generally speaking, I feel that this generation is dissatisfied with China’s current situation. The fact that they left China to go abroad to study demonstrates that they are not that content, particularly those that applied on their own to go abroad. They are seeking new knowledge, but they are also quite confused. First, they don’t know what they can do. Second, they are disappointed in those around them; they feel that most Chinese they know are disappointing. Third, they don’t see any alternatives: who can take the place of the CCP? Because of these three issues, they are not able to express much enthusiasm. But in the process of chatting with them, I feel that there is a flame burning in their hearts. They really want to do something, to change things. When we talk about China, every person is critical. From the things they’ve said, it’s clear that they look at problems deeply; no less deeply than us. All of them have Ph.D.s or Master degrees. They are knowledgeable.
YC: Among the Chinese students studying abroad, many are the children of quangui (權貴), the powerful and the rich. They are beneficiaries of the system and tend to defend it.
Wang Dan: Not necessarily. In the early period of the Chinese Communist Party, many of the leaders were children of wealthy families. For example, Peng Pai was the son of a wealthy man in Shantou. The wealthier the family, the more likely they are to be inclined towards revolution, because they don’t need to worry about their livelihood, and they have more time to read and think. This is a possibility. Children from poor families have to think more about their livelihood, and have more to worry about.
YC: I feel I must disagree here: the powerful and rich families in China today are fundamentally different from the genteel class of traditional Chinese society.
Wang Dan: The parents of these families might be tainted, but the children are just a blank page. I’ve been in touch with some of these 20-year-old kids studying abroad, for example, children of mayors, and also chairs of the Chinese Student Associations who are in direct contact with the Chinese embassies and consulates. I don’t think the latter are spies. I’ve had quite deep conversations with them privately. They all know what’s going on. It doesn’t matter what family they’re born into, youth are youth, and young people have passion.
YC: I wish I could, and I desperately want to, share your enthusiasm. I admit that I have next to no interactions with children from quangui families. If there are rebels in their midst, it’s not showing. You look at today’s human rights lawyers, dissidents, and human rights defenders, people who are making efforts and sacrifices for a free and just China, you will see that the absolute majority of them come from the impoverished countryside.
Wang Dan: To the extent possible, I befriend young people from all different backgrounds born in the 90s. They are very smart, and they grew up in the Internet age. It’s not so easy for them to accept us as friends. But it’s very important to become friends with them. Some colleagues in the democracy movement are divorced from the young generation.
YC: So you believe one of your most important missions is to influence the young generation?
Wang Dan: Yes, one of them. In addition to salons, in the future I may organize summer camps and trainings. I’ve been involved in the opposition movement for so many years — what sort of look does the opposition movement take on in order to integrate with this era –– that is an important question. Starting from the time I was 20 until now, 30 years have passed, and what I have been doing politically is politics. For example, we have critiqued the totalitarian system, exposed abuses, rescued political prisoners, organized political parties, established several human rights awards, etc. I will continue to do these things, but now I feel that I’ve reached a time when I need to adjust what I’m doing; I want to somewhat remove myself from current, immediate events to think about what China will be like after the communist regime is gone. A lot of people are thinking about how to overthrow the CCP; I won’t be missed. The issue is this: if there comes a day when the CCP is toppled, regardless if it’s caused by other people or itself internally, what sort of situation will China find itself in afterwards? We need to have sand-table rehearsals. I’m interested in policies and technicalities for a democratic, post-communist China. Between politics and policies, I hope to devote some time and energy on the latter.
YC: That’s interesting and certainly forward-thinking. In the west, people are getting used to the idea that communist China is so stable that it will never fall. In any case, their plans are made based on such assumptions. But I keep thinking that the CCP hasn’t even stabilized something as basic as power succession.
Wang Dan: We need to have something like a shadow cabinet. We need to come out with a political white paper: how to conduct privatization of land; how to define a new university self-governance law. Obviously, this is a big ambition; it’s not something that can be done in a short amount of time. But this is the second big goal I set for myself after returning to the U.S.: I’m planning on establishing a small think tank to research and advance a set of specific governance policies.
YC: You didn’t leave China until the end of the 1990s, so you know the 90s well. Since the early 2000s, the rights defense movement has emerged, NGOs have burgeoned, and faith communities have expanded rapidly in both urban and rural areas, the entire social strata has changed as a result of the economy opening up. Previously, everyone belonged to a work unit, a “danwei.” Now a significant part of China’s population doesn’t rely on state-owned work units. They might work for a foreign enterprise or a private enterprise, or they might run their own small business or be engaged in other relatively independent professions such as being a lawyer. The rights consciousness of these people is totally different than before. I personally think they have been and will be the force for change because they are less subservient to the system. One may even say that they hate it, or they have every reason to detest it. What sort of observations do you have regarding the past 20 years in China?
Wang Dan: Profound changes occurred in China after 1989. First, never in the thousands of years of Chinese history has there been an era like today’s China in which everything is centered on making money—the economy takes precedence above all else. The second profound change is that in the entire country—from the elite strata to the general population—few have any sense of responsibility for the country or society. They’ve totally given up. From those in power to intellectuals to college students to average citizens, most people do not think that this country is theirs, they believe that China’s affairs are someone else’s business and that it has nothing to do with them. This is a first in China. I believe that these are two important reasons why China has not yet democratized. Therefore speaking from the perspective of the opposition, the most important task is the work of enlightenment. Those people who advocate violent revolution probably will oppose what I say, but I think Chinese people still need to be enlightened.
YC: I want to interject here that the fact that the elite class, whether it’s intellectuals or the moneyed class, have given up responsibility for the country is an indication of the rigor of communist totalitarianism. Isn’t that so? Hasn’t the Party worked methodically, meticulously, and cruelly to diminish individuals, including the elite class, into powerless atoms, preventing them from becoming a force, making sure they are beholden to the state, and depriving them even of a free-speaking Weibo (Chinese Twitter-like microblog) account? Having a citizenry that takes the country’s future into its own hand is at variance with the totalitarian system. It’s against the system’s requirement. On a personal level, acting out of a sense of duty for the country’s future is suicidal, it goes against one’s instinct for survival. Look at what happened to Liu Xiaobo and Ilham Tohti. Look at those lawyers who are tortured, disbarred, or harassed for defending human rights. Look at the professors who were expelled from teaching for uttering a bit of dissent. The Communist Party has a monopoly on China’s future as long as it’s in power, just as it does on the past and the present. Now please explain to us what you mean by enlightenment.
Wang Dan: For example, the majority of ordinary citizens sincerely believe that if China becomes a democracy, there will be chaos. Even if they have not been brainwashed by the CCP, even if they loathe Communist Party members, they still feel this way. Why do they think this? We need to reason with them. For example, just because the 1989 movement failed, it does not mean that it wasn’t the right thing to do. If you don’t talk about issues like these, the majority of people won’t think about them, therefore we must reason with them. This ability to inspire people through reason has a great potential to mobilize society.
YC: It was probably around the time of 2007 or 2008 when I first started looking at China’s Internet. There was also censorship, but comparing the Internet expression at that time to today, it was like a paradise back then, and there was a lot of what you call enlightenment, many public intellectuals or writers had many fans, and they could say and did say a lot. It was also around that time the CCP sensed a crisis, believing that if they continued to have lax control over speech on the Internet, their political power would be in imminent danger. Thus the censorship regime during the past decade has become stricter and more absurd. So now you are facing a very practical problem, even someone like Peking University law professor He Weifang can no longer keep a Weibo microblog account. People’s throats are being strangled, there’s no way for them to speak.
Wang Dan: Now it is very difficult, we must admit. But we shouldn’t give up just because some difficulties exist and sink into despair. Nietzsche said the disadvantaged don’t have the right to be pessimistic. You’re already underprivileged, if you’re then also pessimistic, your only option is to give up. I believe now is the darkness before the dawn. It truly is the most difficult time, but it is also the time when we have to persist the most. Like me, traveling around giving talks, oftentimes there aren’t many people at each talk, maybe 20 or so, but I feel it’s worth it.
YC: Liu Xiaobo died in a prison hospital. Even as someone who doesn’t know his work in any depth, I feel hit hard by it and it is difficult to grapple with. It’s like, for all these years, everyone sort of expected him to come out of prison rested and ready to go in 2020 after he served out his prison term. That’s not too far from now. When he died, it dawned on a lot of us that the CCP would never have let him walk out of jail alive. You were together with Liu Xiaobo in Tiananmen Square, and you worked with him during the 1990s, how does his death affect you?
Wang Dan: I grieve Xiaobo’s death as many others do. But I know that he would want us the living to do more. We need to do things that he can’t do anymore. And the best remembrance of Liu Xiaobo is to get more done and to see that his ideals for China become true.
YC: Many people won’t have the opportunity that I have to sit down with you. They know who you are, but they don’t know what you have been doing. They will say, “Those people who’ve been abroad all these years, what have they done? We haven’t seen anything!” How would you respond?
Wang Dan: First, I don’t really care about the various criticisms of me that others may make. I actually welcome it. It’s a form of encouragement, and at the very least, it’s a reminder. I personally feel I’ve done some things as I’ve told you. In addition, I’ve also come out with quite a few books that have made an impact.
YC: Could you tell us about your books?
Wang Dan: The book that’s sold the best is Wang Dan’s Memoir (《王丹回憶錄：六四到流亡》). And then there’s Fifteen Lectures on The History of the People’s Republic of China (《中華人民共和国史十五講》). Both were published in Taiwan, and both have sold well. The third book, titled 80 Questions About China (《關於中國的80個問題》), is the most recent. These 80 questions were all questions I encountered at the salons, so I packaged them together.
YC: What are a few examples of these questions?
Wang Dan: For example: Was Deng Xiaoping really the “chief engineer” of China’s reform and opening up? Why should we not place hope on a Gorbachev emerging from the CCP? Why hasn’t China’s middle class become promoters of democracy? In China, how does the CCP suppress opposition forces? Will democracy lead to social instability? Why don’t Chinese people speak up? Who are the people who might be able to change China? Why do we say “reform is dead”?
YC: While in Taiwan, you also founded the New School for Democracy (華人民主書院). What does it do?
Wang Dan: The New School for Democracy was founded on October 1, 2012. At the time, I wanted to advance the idea of a “global Chinese civil society” spanning Hong Kong, Taiwan, the mainland, Macao, Malaysia, Singapore, and overseas Chinese communities. Our Board of Directors are people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. What we all face is the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP not only impacts the people of China, but also Taiwan and Hong Kong, and it influences the interests of Chinese all over the world, so I felt that we should all unite and combine efforts. We had an online course, and invited some scholars to give lectures. We later realized that there were not many people interested in a very specialized online course. A Salon was a major project of the school, and it is my contribution as chair of the Board of Directors. We also published a magazine, “Public Intellectual,” which we issued eight times before we had to stop due to lack of funding. Now that I have come back to the U.S., I hope to bring some of the school’s activities here, such as online classes, salons, trainings, and a summer camp.
YC: Your summer camp idea is really interesting. What would it look like?
Wang Dan: A summer camp that brings together students from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China who are studying in the U.S. They spend a week together, everyone becomes friends, exchanges views, and they have a better understanding of each other. They learn how to rationally discuss issues. No matter how controversial or sensitive our topic is, they must learn how to speak civilly. You can’t just curse another person because you don’t agree with something he or she said.
YC: On social media, I’ve seen so many people who lack the most basic democratic qualities although they ardently oppose dictatorship and champion democracy. They launch ad hominem attacks without making efforts to get the basic facts straight, and use the foulest language to hurl insults at people.
Wang Dan: So I think that one of the fundamental trainings is how to listen attentively to what the other person is saying, and to take care in how one says things –– to speak civilly and mindfully. There’s also some basic etiquette when speaking, such as not to interrupt others, etc.
YC: I think that’s about it. I hope you settle in smoothly, and that you’re able to start doing the things you want to do as soon as possible.
Wang Dan: It’s been eight years since I left the U.S. I can’t do the things I want to do all by myself. I’m looking forward to connecting with people in certain groups. First, Chinese students studying in the U.S.; second, Chinese living in the U. S. who are not engaged in the democracy movement but are concerned about democracy and politics; third, Americans who study China.
YC: Thank you. I wish you success in your work and life.
Liu Xiaobo: Walking the Path of Kang Youwei, Spilling His Blood Like Tan Sitong, Wang Dan, July 20, 2017.
Tiananmen’s Most Wanted, the New York Times, June 4, 2014. | 2019-04-20T18:23:43Z | https://chinachange.org/tag/wang-dan/ |
Senior quarterback Bo Wallace, like his head coach, stepped into a program that had won just two games in 2011 and had lost 14 straight games.
Three years later, Wallace helped lead the ninth-ranked Rebels to their first nine-win regular season since 2003 and a berth in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, one of the "New Year's Six Bowls."
"I was just trying to come in and play and compete," Wallace said. "I came here because it was probably my best chance to play. For us to kind of turn it around, it's special."
Already the school's all-time leader in total offense and the first quarterback to defeat two top-five teams since Archie Manning in 1969, Wallace has a chance to make some more history with a win over No. 6 TCU in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl on Dec. 31 in Atlanta's Georgia Dome.
With a win, which would be his 25th as the team's starting quarterback, Wallace would pass Eli Manning as the winningest quarterback in modern Ole Miss history, and he would also become the first Ole Miss quarterback in school history to start and win three bowl games.
"I'm really kind of looking forward to practice and all that just because I know I'm not going to get to do it much longer," Wallace said. "I'm just taking advantage of every day. We're excited about going to Atlanta, to be going to a New Year's Six bowl and have a chance to get 10 wins and elevate this program to another level."
Wallace said he's planning to train and pursue a potential professional career after the bowl game. Asked about his legacy, when his Ole Miss career is over, Wallace said it's not for him to decide but getting that milestone win is important to him.
"I don't know," Wallace said. "I really don't care. I mean, I do care, but everybody's going to have a different opinion. It is what it is."
The Ole Miss defense has faced the likes of Alabama's Blake Sims, Auburn's Nick Marshall and Mississippi State's Dak Prescott, and now the nation's top scoring defense prepares for another unique challenge in TCU's Trevone Boykin, who finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting.
The Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year and an AP second team All-American selection, Boykin leads the league and ranks third nationally in total offense (363.0). He is also on pace to become just the third quarterback since 2009 to average over 300 yards passing (309.5) and 50 yards rushing (53.5), joining a pair of Heisman Trophy winners Robert Griffin III and Johnny Manziel.
"You can be in the right spot and have everything covered, and there's a 20-yard gain because of the ability of Trevone Boykin," head coach Hugh Freeze said. "It makes them difficult to defend. Schematically, it isn't something you are just wowed by, but they have really good players. And then they have a dual threat quarterback that's very difficult to contain, and they do it at tempo."
Ole Miss coaches and players alike have compared Boykin to Manziel, who led Texas A&M to wins over Ole Miss in 2012 and 2013. Senior cornerback Senquez Golson, a unanimous first team All-American selection, said this will probably be the most athletes they have played on one side of the ball this season.
"He's a very good athlete, and he improved his throwing as the season progressed," defensive coordinator Dave Wommack said. "They take a lot of shots deep, so I can see a lot of similarities. Their passing game is very similar to Texas A&M as well. All of those guys came from the same background."
"Johnny would sit in the pocket a little bit more," junior defensive end C.J. Johnson said. "Trevone Boykin, he likes to get out of the pocket a little bit. And they do a lot more with him in the run game than A&M did with Johnny. They use a lot of empty personnel, so the way they run the football is kind of the same, but the way they use him in the offense is a little bit different."
Boykin has completed 60.5 percent of his passes for 3,714 yards with 30 touchdowns and seven interceptions, and he's also a threat on the ground with 642 yards rushing and eight touchdowns.
"Going into this game, you have to have really good pocket awareness," Johnson said. "It all comes down to the fundamentals of football. Spread offenses, they like to get you out in space and make you tackle. We're a good tackling defense. We don't give up many yards after the catch. We don't give up many big plays. We rush the quarterback. We stop the run. It's going to be a good challenge for us with all the stuff they present on offense. If everybody stays locked in on defense and we do what we have to do, I think we'll be fine."
When asked about underclassmen who requested an evaluation from the NFL's College Advisory Committee, head coach Hugh Freeze said junior defensive end C.J. Johnson may have but he's confident he will return for his senior season. Johnson said the same earlier in the week.
"Not really," said Johnson, when asked if he had thought about submitting paperwork to the NFL. "I'm planning to be back."
Senior cornerback Senquez Golson, once an eight round draft pick of the Boston Red Sox, and now consensus and unanimous first team All-American, said he remains undecided on whether to play baseball for Ole Miss in the spring or focus 100 percent on preparing for the NFL Draft.
"I haven't really decided, probably going to decide more after the bowl game," Golson said. "I still don't know. It's definitely 50-50 right now."
A finalist for the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, which goes to the national defensive player of the year, Golson leads the SEC and ranks second nationally with nine interceptions and has been a key cog in the nation's top-ranked scoring defense.
"With my success this season, football is definitely more attractive now," Golson said. "Three or four months ago, I was definitely going to play baseball, but it's a different situation now. I'm not sure exactly how it will play out, but I'm still thinking about it."
Head coach Freeze had good news to report on the status of Tee Shepard (toe), Denzel Nkemdiche (ankle) and Laqon Treadwell (leg, ankle), who all suffered season-ending injuries earlier in the season.
"Tee (Shepard) started running this week," Freeze said. "The injured area remains tender, but started his running, so when he gets back after Christmas, we will really pick up his rehab. Denzel (Nkemdiche) and Laquon (Treadwell) are off the scooters. Laquon is on one crutch, and Denzel is in just a boot. They're much more active, so things are progressing nicely.
"We definitely expect Tee and Denzel to be back with us in the spring. Laquon is going to be right at that time, so we expect him to be in some of spring practice."
- A slow start (17-0 first-quarter deficit), a stalled running game (33 carries for 37 yards) and six turnovers (two in the red zone) all had a hand in a 30-0 loss at Arkansas, ending the Rebels' SEC West title hopes. There's not much else to say.
- It's clear Ole Miss misses Laquon Treadwell, not just his production, but also his leadership and playmaking abilities. Playing without the sophomore star for the first time in SEC play, Ole Miss was shut out for the first time this season. The Rebels managed just three plays of 20 or more yards, and their active leading receiver, Vince Sanders, was held without a catch in the contest.
- Give the defense credit for keeping as close as they did for as long as they did. Facing a short field for much of the game, the Ole Miss defense allowed just one touchdown in five trips to the red zone for Arkansas. The Razorbacks started on average from their own 43-yard line and they had scoring drives of 52, 24, 49, 41, 0 and 0 yards, respectively.
- Ole Miss also found itself on the wrong side of history, as Arkansas became the first unranked team to ever shut out two ranked opponents in back-to-back games.
- With Arkansas becoming bowl eligible, an entire division will advance to the postseason for the first time in Southeastern Conference history. What's more impressive, the SEC West is a combined a 38-3 against non-SEC West opponents, including a combined 28-0 against non-conference opponents.
- For the second straight season, both SEC divisions will be determined on the final weekend. Alabama and Missouri each control their destiny, while Georgia needs an Arkansas win over Missouri, and Mississippi State needs a win over Ole Miss and an Auburn win over Alabama. Ole Miss, like Arkansas and Auburn, will play a spoiler role, looking to eliminate Mississippi State from SEC West title contention.
- Ole Miss volleyball's Nakeyta Clair set the school single-season kills record in the rally scoring era, putting down nine kills in a four-set loss to No. 6 Florida this past Friday. The Rebels bounced back with a five-set win over Alabama on Sunday, the second match in a four-match homestand to close out the regular season. Ole Miss will host Texas A&M on Friday for Senior Day, where the Rebels will honor the senior trio Marie-Pierre Bakima, Cara Fisher and Rachael Weathersby.
- Father, Rick, and Middle Tennessee State got the best of son, Matt, and Ole Miss, in the first-ever meeting between father and son head coach in NCAA Division I women's basketball history. The result was not what Matt and the Rebels wanted, but the matchup provided a tough test for a young team learning every game and created some buzz and excitement surrounding the program.
- Here's a nice story on Rick and Matt Insell from Will Borthick from the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Check it out.
- The Ole Miss men's basketball team rebounded nicely from a heartbreaking overtime loss to Charleston Southern, rattling off three straight wins over Troy, Southern and Northern Arizona, going into this weekend's game in Niceville, Florida. The Rebels will face Creighton and then either Cincinnati or Middle Tennessee State. The Blue Jays, which return one starter from last year's 27-8 team, is off to a 4-0 start, including a win over No. 18 Oklahoma.
- Head coach Andy Kennedy said he has been surprised by how much he has learned a lot about his team, one that includes five newcomers, and he spoke very honestly about what he has learned through four games: "We're not as tough physically as I would have hoped," said Kennedy after an 80-74 win over Northern Arizona. "We make excuses. I didn't know this group would do that. I know some of it is a defense mechanism. I get that. I have done this a long time. Sometimes, that's the easy way out. It's the default mode. I get it, but we have to get tougher. We have to play to our abilities. I don't think we have played to our ability yet."
Metz Camfield - First of all, everyone in Rebel Nation and beyond is thinking about Laquon Treadwell and hoping for a speedy and full recovery. He's a remarkable talent, but the way he carries himself both in games and out of games is also something to admire and makes him an easy guy to root for. The injury occurred because Treadwell was working so hard, dragging a defender and doing everything he could to get into the end zone, all qualities that Ole Miss fans admire about him, and opposing fans respect about him.
"Not everything in life is set out to be easy, & not every plan we have for ourselves work out in our favor. Even the greatest & most powerful people we praise or look up to have huge downfalls, but it takes a strong person & an even stronger mindset to prepare for that major come back. It didn't kill me, so watch as I become stronger. Thanks for the prayers everyone, God bless."
"Played my last down with one of the best to ever put on an Ole Miss uniform and one of the best leaders I have been around. It was a great ride @successfulquon the best is yet to come for you!"
MC - While you can never "replace" a talent like Treadwell, the Rebels have a very talented receiving corps, including senior Vince Sanders and sophomore tight end Evan Engram, who each topped the 100-yard mark against Auburn. Sanders, Engram, Quincy Adeboyejo, et al will have to step up for the final three games of the regular season in order to fill the void caused by Treadwell's absence. They are capable of doing that.
AM - A lot has been said and written about Treadwell's injury and the impact going forward. Here's an all-encompassing look from the Clarion-Ledger's Hugh Kellenberger.
MC - Bo Wallace once again showed his resolve Saturday night by bouncing back from the LSU game in a big way. Wallace threw for 341 yards and two touchdowns, completed 70 percent of his passes (that percentage could have been higher if not for some desperation throws on the final drive), and also ran for a team-high 61 yards and one touchdown.
AM - Bo Wallace might not have had his winning moment Saturday, but he bounced back from one of the worst games of his career with one of the best games of his career to give his team a chance, as he has done time and time again during his Ole Miss career.
"He played well," co-offensive coordinator Dan Werner said. "Guys made plays for him. I haven't seen the stats but I feel like he threw the ball pretty well. He played well enough to win, but he just didn't get the breaks."
AM - It may have gone largely unnoticed, but Ben Still deserves a lot of credit for playing through a sprained MCL in his knee. When starting left tackle Laremy Tunsil was unable to go due to a bicep and shoulder injury, Fahn Cooper moved from right tackle to left tackle, Robert Conyers moved from center to right tackle, and Still stepped into the center spot.
"Man, he just gutted it out," head coach Hugh Freeze said. "He'll be so sore. He'll be hurting the rest of the week for sure, and I'm just proud of him. I told him that at halftime. I'm just crazy proud of him."
MC - There's no use in getting upset about the injuries Ole Miss has endured in the past two weeks. Being upset about the injuries won't cause the student-athletes to get healthy faster, they'll simply cloud your ability to fully enjoy the ones who are healthy and the season that remains. Injuries are a part of sports, especially one as physical as football.
Engram, who suffered a season-ending injury last year as a freshman, said it well after the game yesterday: "It's part of the game, and it stinks to see how much work we put in. Especially guys like Laquon (Treadwell) and Denzel (Nkemdiche), but we love each other and will fight for each other the rest of the season. In one play it could be gone. Last year I experienced that and now guys will have to step up."
AM - With the loss to Auburn, Ole Miss lost control of its destiny to the SEC Western Division title and the College Football Playoff. It's a long shot at this point, but there's a path. It starts with winning out against Presbyterian, Arkansas and Mississippi State and then getting a lot of help.
At No. 12 in the latest AP poll and No. 13 in the latest coaches poll, Ole Miss is the highest-ranked two-loss team. The Rebels debuted at No. 4 in the first College Football Playoff rankings, and it will be interesting to see how far they drop in the second edition of the rankings Tuesday.
"When you watch the game, if they're really watching games, we can't drop far," Wallace said. "We lost a game by that much. I just watched the replay of Laquon (Treadwell). We lost it by that much. I don't see how far they can drop us. Our season is still alive, we feel like. We'll find out Tuesday how far we fall, but we're going to keep fighting, and crazy things can happen."
AM - To that point, CBS Sports bracketology/bowls expert Jerry Palm projects Ole Miss to play in the Peach Bowl, one of the new selection committee bowl games, against Marshall. There's still a lot to play for, as the Rebels close out the regular season.
AM - The ending to the game likely evoked two painful memories for Ole Miss fans: Billy Cannon's 1959 Halloween night punt return and Eli Manning tripping over his lineman's foot on a fourth down against LSU in 2003.
The Rebels went on to win a share of the national title in 1959, 1960 and 1962, while 2003 seemed to mark the end of an era. Parity reigns today, and runs like those of John Vaught's don't happen in modern college football, but like those teams, Ole Miss is back on the national football map, and there's hope and optimism surrounding a new normal for the football program.
AM - The football team was not alone in heartbreak this weekend. Needing only a draw against Tennessee to secure its place in the SEC Tournament, the Ole Miss soccer team conceded a golden goal with less than three minutes left in the second overtime and was eliminated from contention as the Lady Vols advanced in the final spot.
Proud of our team. This sport can be so cruel. I hurt for our players. They deserved better!
AM - The Ole Miss volleyball team avenged an earlier 3-2 loss to South Carolina, as the Rebels shut out the Gamecocks 3-0. With the win, Ole Miss improved to 19-5 overall and moved into sole possession of sixth place in the SEC standings.
AM - This time, a week from now, we'll have observations on the men's and women's basketball teams from a preseason press conference Tuesday and an exhibition doubleheader Friday. So stayed tuned for those. | 2019-04-19T22:46:07Z | http://cstv.collegesports.com/mt5.2/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=95&tag=Laquon%20Treadwell&limit=20 |
I’ve been a busy bee recently, preparing for 2015 to be uh-mazing, so I’m kicking off 2015 on the blog with a post aimed to achieving great, healthy skin. As we all know, and I’ve been repeating this mantra over, and over, and over again in all my previous blog-posts, which is the fact that I believe hydration is the key to achieving perfect skin. I’ve been constantly hydrating internally (drinking more water yo!) & externally, via treatments, masks, moisturizers, etc, so I’m trying my best here.
Product Pack Description: Treat your skin to a moisture boost with our Hydro Quench Duo! This awesome duo consists of the richly formulated Hyaluronic Acid serum and our perfectly pre-soaked Japan Silk Masks, Immerse Me. With this, your skin will be filled with highly thirst-quenching ingredients that will bring back a healthy and dewy look to your skin!
If you haven’t heard about the benefits of Hyaluronic Acid yet, have a quick read on what magic it can do for your skin.
Personally, I’ve already been incorporating Hyaluronic Acid into my skin care for a while now with Hydraluron, and the b.liv skincare set is another additional step in my skin-care routine to enhance moisture retention.
Lets start off with the b.liv Hyaluronic Original Hydration Essence.
Product Description: b.liv’s hyaluronic original – a 100% pure Hyaluronic Acid powder in solubilized solution acts as a super sponge to hold 1000 times its weight in moisture. It provides intensive moisturization and soothes all skin types, including the excessively dry. It’ll revive your complexion and make it the focus of everyone’s attention!
The essence is made of 100% pure of Hyaluronic Acid powder. The ultra-lightweight serum, water-smooth texture melts into the skin after application, so gentle, it is ideal for use after a chemical peel or microdermabrasion. It can be applied anytime throughout the day or night to add extra moisture to the skin. Suitable for all skin types, inclusive excessively dry, acne prone and sensitive skin.
Can be used alone for oily skin or layered with moisturizer if you have dry skin.
Usage Instructions: After cleansing and toning, apply 4-6 drops of Hyaluronic Original evenly over the face in the morning and night. Follow up with your skin moisturizer of choice.
Personal Thoughts: I’ve been using the essence for exactly 28 days now (morning & night) , though I skipped a day or two when I was feeling too ill to get out of bed.(boo, fever!) My normal routine is to start of with the Kiehls Calendula Cleanser, following up with the Kiehls Ultra Facial Oil Free Toner, Melvita Rose Mist, Alpha H Liquid Gold (at night), Hydraluron, the Cremorlab Fresh Water Gel Moisturizer, and the Shiseido Perfect UV Sunscreen to finish off. At night I sometimes add-on the Kiehls Midnight Recovery Concentrate into the mix as well if I feel extra dehydrated.
For all intents and purposes of this trial, I stopped using Hydraluron & used the b.liv’s Hyaluronic Original (BHO) instead to replace it. After 30 days of use, I’ve noticed a couple of things. The BHO definitely works the same way as Hydraluron, but absorbs much faster into the skin that Hydraluron would. If Hydraluron would take a minute to dry off, the BHO takes half the time. Also the BHO is less tackier that Hydraluron, and has no scent. Hydraluron sometimes has a strange gluey scent to it, lol! The texture of BHO itself is slightly thicker than water, much like any other serums really.
The glass bottle itself is quite small, only 25 ml, but I reckon with 4-5 drops daily, it can last you at least 2 months. Also, may I just add here that the glass bottle with the pipette screams luxe to me!
Effects wise, the BHO definitely made my skin feel more hydrated, (I feel more boing!) and it made my skin feel much smoother and softer. I only noticed the extra plumpness during the few days I stopped using the BHO because of my fever, and my skin felt less hydrated and less soft. It didn’t break me out, no adverse effects whatsoever. It didn’t make a world of a difference to my skin, considering the fact that I’ve been on the Hyaluronic Acid bandwagon for a while now, but for someone just starting to incorporate it into their skincare, I’m quite sure it will do wonders for your skin.
The next item in the set is the b.liv Repair & Rescue – Sensitive Salvation Original Japan Silk Mask (7pcs) though you’re only seeing 6 pcs because I went ahead and used one first while taking pics for this post haha.
Product Description: This moisturizing mask covers your skin with a generous boost of hydration! Immerse Me acts like a balm for parched and dry complexion as it gets absorbed in a blink of an eye and makes sure your skin’s longing hydration will never turn tail. Its nourishing essences shoo away the dryness and replenish moisture into the deeper layers of your skin. It improves skin water retaining ability and provides long-lasting hydration. So, why not make it an everyday affair?
Personal Thoughts: I’ve actually raved plenty about the b.liv’s Silk Masks which you can read here, so I was really glad this mask lived up to the standards I was expecting. I basically slap on this mask once a week, watch some TV for 20 mins, and voila, extra hydrated skin in an instant! I swear, these masks are the bomb. My skin feels softer, plumper and just a teeny bit lighter after using the mask.
To sum the review up, if you’re one who needs extra hydration, you’d do well to pick this set up. No harm in adding more moisture to ones life, no?And take into the account that this set is on sale at RM 99 only, I’d call it a steal. Yeap, from 149.80 to only RM99!
I’ve been missing for a while, yes I know. Sorry, been busy moving houses, shifting my stuff (I have too much stuff I tell you) and now I can finally catch a moment to sit down and type a proper blog post. Anyway, I digress from my intent which is to review the RA8 Cleanser. What’s that you ask? Sit yourself down and I’ll tell you all about it.
The RA8 cleanser is actually a relatively unknown brand to me as I’ve never tried any of their products from their range, but I was rather eager to give it a go. The bottle you see above is the 50 ml bottle, however the 50 ml one is only sold in the Starter Kit. If you’re looking to purchase the cleanser separately, you would have to get the bigger 100 ml sized one.
A little about RA8 first. From my research, RA8 seems to be a locally cultivated Malaysian brand based in Kuala Lumpur itself. I usually stay away from local skin care brands because I’m just a skin care snob that way, and I highly doubt I’ll ever change, LOL! However, for the sake of the review, I thought why not just bend the rules one slight time?
The cleanser is a runny clear gel, which as you can see is running down my hands as I attempt to photograph it.
When lathered with water, it brings a very soft bubbly lather, and doesn’t foam up immensely. Usually really foamy cleanser indicate a a high presence of SLS (Sodium Laureth Sulphate) which is very bad for your skin. Good on you RA8.
Product Description: RA8 Cosmeceutical is a simple & effective skin care regime that produces noticeable improvement in skin tone, texture and overall appearance of the skin. The cleanser is a soft foaming liquid that gently cleanses your face. It contains aquamarine extract to brighten, clarify facial skin tone and to restore the skin’s hydrolipidic film.
Personal Thoughts: I have been using the cleanser for about 3-4 weeks now, which I the normal timescale I use to gauge the effectiveness of a skin care product. The cleanser does indeed brighten my skin tone, but the other thing I noticed was that my skin felt super bouncy! It felt super soft and plump, not the bad plump, but the good one 😀 Other than the softness, the cleanser is just a cleanser. It didn’t break me out, which is a great thing, but like I mentioned, I only could see some brightness and feel the softness.
Now here comes my gripe with the cleanser. I dislike the scent. The smell of the cleanser is enough to turn me off RA8 products forever. Maybe its just me being extra PMS-y, because I haven’t noticed anyone else complaining about the scent, but to me, it smells rather awful. If it wasn’t for the smell, I’d definitely give this cleanser a repurchase!
Final thoughts? Thumbs up for the brightness & softness, a big thumbs down for the scent. If you are the kind of person who doesn’t mind scents that much, you might wanna give this cleanser a go.
The ingredient list for those interested: EDTA, Glycerin, PEG-120 Methyl Glucose Dioleate, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Coco-Glucoside Tartrate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Polyquathernium-44, Polysorbate 20, Citrus Limon (lemon) Fruit Extract, Fragrance, Benzyl Alcohol, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone, Aqua, Aquamarine Extract .
Thank you HiShop for sending the product over to me, and if you are tempted to purchase this cleanser, useful links below!
The RA8 Refreshing Cleanser 100ml retails for RM88.00.
That’s all from me for now, I still have loads of unpacking to do! Have a great week ahead!
I’ve Lost My Head Thank You Very Much.
Yes, I have finally lost my head and my marbles along with it. Jokes aside, it’s been a really stressful week and I’m super glad that it’s finally hump day. For now, I’m back again with another skin care review with the b.liv Off with Those Heads Blackhead Sebum Gel. Now to be perfectly honest, during the whole time I was drafting up this post, I was thinking of the Queen of Hearts (from Alice in Wonderland for the unitiated).
If you’re familiar with the b.liv by Cellnique range you’d realize that all b.liv products come with a 14 day 100% money back guarantee with no questions asked. So, if you’ve used it for 2 weeks and see no results, you can always send it back to the manufacturer and you get your money back! This is actually pretty cool, I mean, Cellnique must be really confident in their product to offer such a guarantee!
Product Description: Say goodbye to painful squeezing! b.liv Off With Those Heads Blackheads Sebum Gel is a light cooling gel that promises to easily remove stubborn blackheads and whiteheads in just 14 days of daily application. It keeps excessive oil secretion under control while preventing future irritation and breakouts. Best for oily skin with blackheads and whiteheads. Removes blackheads and whiteheads, keeps acne under control, controls oil, unclogs pores, provides a gentle exfoliation & has soothing and hydrating properties.
The instructions on the box will tell you to use the Off With Those Heads daily on cleansed, towel-dried face, to pump 2-3 pea-sized drops onto your palm and proceed to apply it onto your problem areas, but what I do is I use them on my dried cleansed face, twice a day, morning and night, and I only use only one pea sized drop for my whole nose and chin area. The gel is very light and easy to spread, so you only need a little bit to cover your whole face in fact. I use it before applying any of my skin care, so it’s the first thing to go on my face each day.
The gel actually comes out clear & thick, but is very spreadable. Upon application, you will feel a minty, cool, tingly sensation which to be perfectly honest, is a very nice feeling. However those with more sensitive skin than mine (I have thick cow hide skin which is insensitive to everything lol) might experience a stinging sensation. It dries off in a minute leaving skin feeling slightly tacky. The rest of your skin care can go on right after that!
On the product box, and on the bottle too actually, there is a precaution bit listed which tells you that it is very common for more oil to be secreted during the period you’re using the gel. I didn’t see any more oil secreted than usual, so those with oily skin, take note.
If you have really congested skin, I would assume the process takes a whole lot longer.
An awesomesauce product as a whole! ❤ I will make sure this goes into my everyday skincare routine from now onwards!
The ingredient list for your perusal. It seems to contain Witch Hazel, Tea Tree and Peppermint as active ingredients, which I know helps to get rid of spots and so on.
I also received the don’t get mad, get matte masks together with the gel, and I had a go with thm! The mask actually is supposed to remove excess sebum to leave skin feeling matte, which is great for those with oily skin, but considering my skin is as dry as the Sahara Desert, I think I’ll take keep all the oil I can get my hands on!
For review purposes, lets see if they make me feel a little less.. oily?
The mask is a black charcoal mask that apparently acts like a magnet to draw out deep dwelling pore cloggers. The mask contains a really thick, gooey liquid which feels really nice to me. I left the mask on 15 minutes, massaged whatever mask juice that was left in the packet onto my face and neck, & after 15 minutes, skin feels taut & tight, much much smoother , which means they actually do dry out the skin for you, leaving it feeling less oily.
One thing I didn’t expect to see was the fairer/brighter complexion I had. I literally looked like I had been scrubbed clean! I was amazed to see my skin looking so fresh and fair. I had gone one shade lighter! I need more of these masks, stat!
The masks have a strong minty scent, and while I had the mask on, the minty feeling was so strong I had like a mild stinging sensation. Sensitive skinned people, proceed with caution.
The active ingredients in the mask is Retinyl Palmitate (regulates sebum secretion) , Zinc Sulphate (clarifies the complexion) , & Willow Bark Extract (used to lift away impurities).
The mask comes in a set of 7 for only RM49.90 which I’m gonna pick up!
I personally feel that the b.liv Off with Those Heads Blackhead Sebum Gel works wonders my blackheads, and if you’re someone who needs to get rid of yours, you might wanna try this out! You can purchase it by clicking here, or you can have a peek at their whole range of products at http://www.hishop.my/b-liv-by-cellnique. They actually have quite a bit of items with catchy names, like Spots Got Shot or No Spots Bye Dots, LOL!
Do you have blackheads that you need to get rid off? Will this be something you would love to try?
Since HiShop were the ones to send these amazing product to me, have a peek at them okay!
The b.liv Off with Those Heads Blackhead Sebum Gel retails for RM139/30 ml & RM 179.90/45 ml.
PS: If you’re reading this, and you’ve stuck with me till the end of this long post, here’s something for ya! Key in BLIV2014 while you’re shopping at HiShop, and you will get RM20 off your purchases,with a minimum purchase of RM99. The code is valid till 30 April 2014, so go crazy!!
A big thanks to the people from HiShop and Novexpert, because I have something new for you lot to explore today!
Allow me to introduce the Novexpert Paris The Repulp Mask Express Anti Aging Care!
I was quite excited to receive this as it promises baby soft skin in just 10 minutes!
As usual HiShop style, this item came in a bright red box a la Dorothy.
If you have never shopped at HiShop before, they promise free delivery for purchases over Rm50, secure payment systems and even COD!
The mask box comes in a very simple, clean and crisp white packaging, and looks like something you would find on a pharmacy shelf since it looks quite clinical to me, which makes a lot of sense since the mask was formulated in collaboration with Dr Colletta, a Doctor of Science and member of the Novexpert Scientific Committee.
Novexpert was founded by researches and doctors specializing in skin aging to create formulas & discover the fountain of youth, and most of their products focus on anti aging, anti wrinkles and etc, so if anti aging is one of your main missions in life, do have a peep at the products at Novexpert.
You can watch this 30 second video I found on Youtube which shows you how the Novexperts’ Hyaluronic acid works on the skin.
The mask comes in a 50 ml tube, which makes dispensing a breeze. Don’t you just hate jar/tub packagings?
Anyone can use this mask, men, women, sensitive skin (since its hypoallergenic), and even you young 20 somethings out there!
Directions of use: I apply a thick layer of the mask to my cleansed and dry face and décolleté and avoiding the eye area. If you have normal skin, leave the mask on for 10 minutes, and if you have very dry skin, do it for 15 instead. The mask is to be used twice a week for best results. You need a small amount for the whole face, like the new 50 cent coin size.
The mask has a thick, creamy, paste consistency, and even smells a little clinical to me.It has a very pleasant scent but very medicinal at the same time. As a mask, it doesn’t contain those granules you normally see, but its just a standard cream mask.
On top of that, you know how most masks always make your skin feel super tight, and you cant move for fear of your mask cracking? This doesn’t do that! I could pull faces like Cara Delevigne with this mask on!
I walked around my apartment while it was drying, watched a bit of Modern Family, drank some yogurt juice and 15 minutes later, here are my results!
I know you cant feel my skin (I’m still waiting for that technology) , but my skin feels so much softer and I feel so radiant!! I couldn’t stop touching my skin after using the mask!
Personal thoughts: I love the scent of the mask even though it smells very clinical. If you have sensitivity to scents, then you may not like the scent, but the mask does what it says. Plump, soft skin in 10 minutes! The mask comes of easily with water and leaves a very soft silky feeling on the skin, and I follow up with my Murad cleanser just to remove any traces of the mask, and skin is visibly softer and brighter. The price is a little turn off since a tiny 50 ml tube is Rm120, but if it works, why not? 🙂 On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate this an 8 just for delivering what it promised!
If you’re just as convinced as I am on this mask, have a look at http://www.hishop.my/Novexpert for their complete range of anti aging skin care products, and who knows, your Holy Grail product may just be this mask!
HiShop was kind enough to send me some vouchers for my next shopping trip with them, so thank you again HiShop!
And yes, and HiShop has something for my readers as well! If you’re shopping at HiShop.my later today , here’s a rebate code for you!
Do have a look at what HiShop has to offer apart from Novexpert .I used the Carol Priest skin care range from them before this, and I loved it so much!
Meanwhile, I’m going to keep touching my soft skin and continue to be amazed at how soft it is!!
I’m back with a spanking, sparkling new blog post, and today, I’m taking you to Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya Uptown, to experience the magic of Murad Skincare! I’m sure most of you have heard of Murad Skincare before since its been around for a very long time. Personally, I’ve never tried any of their products, but I’ve heard good things about them.
A little intro about Murad Skincare, it was started up by Dr Howard Murad himself in 1989, who is a board-certified dermatologist, pharmacist and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine (Dermatology). His philosophy of beauty is that a healthy complexion is a reflection of total wellness both inside and out. which, in turn, creates a healthy environment for the skin.
Murad Damansara Utama is conveniently located right beside the Sprint Highway and is not too far from the Taman Bahagia LRT train station as well. Parking may be an issue here since it is PJ, so be forewarned.
You’ll be greeted with a clean fresh scent and a wide array of products from Murad Skincare the moment you step into the salon, and the ambiance is very cool, calm and inviting.
This review is the second and final part of my Carol Priest Review. In part one, I reviewed the Orangeflower Cleansing Milk and Damask Rose Toner. And they scored pretty well in my opinion.
For part two, I’ll be reviewing 3 products, The Rose Damascena Facial Lotion, the Green Clay Mask with Herbal Oils,and the Damask Rose Hand & Body Cream.
To read about my un-boxing the Carol Priest goodies sent to me by HiShop, and also to learn more about CP as a brand, do read my first post here!
Now I know I don’t have mature skin, so I passed this to my mum to use and let me know how it is for her.
The lotion contains a high percentage of nourishing 100% certified organic oils like macadamia nut oil and rosehip seed oil, apricot kernal oil and naturally occuring vitamins such as B5, A and E.
Macadamia nut oil is incorporated to support moisturisation and to protect cell lipids from rancidity and peroxidation.
Apricot kernal oil is used for its high content of vitamin A and for its light texture.
Genuine Damascena Rose Oil has been incorporated to stimulate the cell activity which brings new vitality and energy to our skin.
The pure plant oils in this intensive treatment day lotion have been protected from oxidation and rancidity by adding non genetically modified naturally occurring vitamin E oil.
It also protects your skin from harmful ozone damage and damage from the sun by neutralizing free radicals.
Aqua, Prunus Armeniaca (Apricot) Kernal Oil, Rosa Canina Fruit Oil, Macadamia Ternifolia Seed Oil, Rosa Damascena Flower Oil, Tocopherol, Xanthan Gum, Daucus Carota Sativa, Commiphora Myrrha Resin.
It comes in the lovely glass bottle as the Cleansing Milk, and smells very nutty, and earthy to me.
Apply to cleansed skin, pat pat pat, and you’re done!
PS: This product is not suitable for pregnant women.
So what does my mum think?
Scent: A very earthy smell, very natural smelling, it doesn’t bother her much.
Spreadability: It absorbs very easily, doesn’t take long for it to actually sink in. It spreads very nicely and softly.
End result: She thinks it leaves her skin smelling nice, smooth, and after using it for a few days now, she wants to continue using it. A keeper then!
She rates this product an 8 out of 10 points.
Pros: Not much to complain about, She didn’t have any adverse effects, and she likes the subtle fairness it imparts on the skin.
Cons: Pricey. For a small bottle, which lasts maybe 2 months, she thinks its pretty pricey!
This product retails at HiSHop for RM220.00 for 50 ml.
Mask time! I love masks, since they always leave my skin looking like a million bucks!
The green clay mask is a deeply purifying and stimulating mask made from freshly cut organic herbs such as chamomile flowers and peppermint leaf which have been blended with herbal oils and manuka honey to refresh and tone the pores.
Active green clay (from France) which is rich in minerals from was chosen to cleanse, exfoliate, smooth and condition the skin.
What I do is this instead.
I apply a small quantity of the mask to my cleansed face and neck using my fingers, leave it on for 15-20 minutes, maybe go and watch one episode of Big Bang Theory, wash my face with warm water, and pat dry. Voila!
Scent: Since it contains so much herbal oils, it does smell very herbally to me. It has a weird scent, I think it smells a little like paint, I dont know why.
Application: Simple and easy, and it dries pretty quickly and leaves your face tighter, and smoother.
Spreadability: It is a thick cream, very thick okay, and it takes some time to spread it, but if you;re using your fingers, its easier cause the warmth will melt the mask a little.
End result: I think it leaves my skin feeling much smoother, and tighter, and it seems my pores are smaller too!
I rate this product an 7 out of 10 points. Less points cause of the scent.
Pros: Smoother & tighter skin even after one use.
Cons: The scent may put you off a little, but otherwise its good!
This product retails at HISHop for RM90.00 for 15g.
The cream is a luxury pure plant based hand and body conditioning cream, rich in shea butter and jojoba oil which leaves the skin feeling soft and silky.
It also contains pure Rosa Damascena essential oil for its exquisite fragrance, healing and soothing qualities.
Simply massage the cream onto hands and cuticles as a conditioning hand care treatment. Also, moisturize the rest of your body with cream!
Scent: A very strong rosy smell, which is so nice! I keep smelling my hands for no reason!
Spreadability: It is a thick cream, so you need to take some time to let it absorb, and your skin will feel like velvet.
End result: I think it leaves my skin feeling very smooth, moisturized, and smells ‘mazing too.
I rate this product an 10 out of 10 points. Full points in the house yo!
Pros: An awesome product as a whole. Nothing to complain about.
Cons: It takes a while, but hey, if its worth t, why not?
This product retails at HISHop for RM75.00 for 50 g .
Carol Priest is running a 20% discount for the month of November! Check it out here!
And guess what, for all my readers you get the below!
RM20 rebate for all my awesomesauce readers.
Check em out here okay!
I haven’t been updating as much as I want to, thanks to a super busy time at work, but YAY NEW POST!
I received this from HiShop a few days ago, and imma happy girl! They sent it out and I received it the next day, awesome service I must say! Lets un-box my box of goodies shall we?
I LOVE BUBBLE WRAP! ITS SO FUN!!!!
The star brand of the day?
Now I have never used this brand before, so I’m pretty excited to write about it; I mean the best part about a brand is discovering something totally new and different.
A little introductions are in order, so say hello to Carol Priest!
They started out as a small brand in New Zealand, *think fresh green lush surroundings*, and they specialized in making herbal skin care products. And they started wayy back in 1991, that makes them about 20 years old.
The interesting thing about CP is that they hand make and prepare the products to ensure freshness and so that the goodness in the products are retained. Very similar to theSkintopic I notice, I guess New Zealand brands practice this religiously.
Each product they make contains special mixes of proven botanicals with absolutely no mineral oils to act as carriers. So say no to clogged pores.
Their light product colours and scents come from ALL natural sources. Instead of chemicals/synthetic fragrances, they use essential oils, in its unadulterated form.( meaning not mixed or diluted with any different or extra elements; complete and absolute).
Combine all of the above, and you get an amazing line of natural, fresh, & quality products!
It contains cold pressed essential oils of lemon, bitter orange and sweet orange included for their astringent tonifying (is that a word?) and cleansing properties.
And it contains sweet almond oil and cold pressed jojoba oil that helps to nourish skin!
Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter) , Citrus Medica Limonum (Lemon) Peel Oil, Citrus Aurantium Amara (Bitter Orange ) Oil, Citrus Aurantium Dulcis (Orange)Flower Oil, Rosmarinus Officinalis (Rosemary ) Leaf Extract.
It comes in a very beautiful glass bottle and upon first smelling it, I think it smells very citrusy!
How to use? Its actually quite similar to an oil cleanse .
First, skin has to be super clean and free from any dirt, bacteria and oils. Apply a small amount, or you can also use a lot! I used a penny sized dollop.
Make a warm compress using a clean wash cloth and apply firmly to the face and neck areas for a few minutes.This helps to open pores and dissolve any oils on your skin.
The soaking of clean skin helps the aromatic essential oils and plant oils dissolve and soften skin.
Massage the cleansing milk into the skin and neck, let it slowly absorb into your skin, and do avoid the eye area. I did this massage for like 5 minutes. Use small circular motions and create a light lather.
Remove the milk using a warm wash cloth. Rinse any traces of the milk by splashing warm water over your face and neck.
Optional* finish with a cold compress and rinse.
Scent: A very nice light citrus smell, I like it, my skin smells fresh. Smells a lot like herbs and fresh forests comes to mind.
Lather: It lathers really well, you only need a small amount to get the whole face, and its really creamy, like massaging milk on your skin!
End result: I think it leaves my skin feeling very smooth, and it is very moisturizing. After a few days using this milk, my skin feels more supple and it kind of glows!
I rate this product an 8 out of 10 points.
Pros: An awesome product as a whole. Not much to complain about, I didnt have any breakouts from the milk, and no adverse effects. Plus I have glowy skin now, so YES!
Cons: Just like the Oil Cleanse, this takes patience and time, and I think its worth it, since great skin takes effort and some time.
An mild and hydrating toner to help restore moisture and improve skin texture.
Apply morning and night. Use it alone or after cleansing.
Distilled Water (Aqua), Rosa Damascena Flower Oil.
Gently apply it to my cleansed face and neck.
Scent: A very strong rose scent, so if you’re a fan of roses, you’re in luck! Your skin smells like roses for at least an hour after application. I smell like a rose garden now!
Application: Simple and easy, and it dries pretty quickly too, within 2-3 minutes, and leaves a nice tingly feeling afterwards.
End result: I think it leaves my skin feeling very nice smelling, and I like the smell, makes me smell all girly and feminine.
I rate this product an 9 out of 10 points.
Pros: Love the toner, it removes any traces of dirt on my face, and I smell awesome.
I’m pretty impressed with Carol Priest so far, and do follow my updates for Part 2 of my Carol Priest Journey!
My happy face after using Carol Priest!! | 2019-04-24T04:57:39Z | https://shashasekharan.wordpress.com/tag/hishop/ |
Article about how Italian politics, of both left and right, came to influence 'ultras' groups in football teams across the country and how it affected the development of these supporters' groups to the present day.
"Here in Italy the situation is becoming very hard. I am fed up with hearing insults from our rivals every Sunday and, as time goes by, the situation worsens"
Facing the problem of racism in Italian stadiums means going over the history of curve support (the "ultra" support based on the terraces), to understand both the dynamics that enabled racism and right-wing extremism to spread and the intervention strategies necessary to combat it.
The Italian term "ultra" is commonly translated by the English term "hooligan" and this is a platitude that many Italian journalists, together with many foreign observers, like.
However, if we check the meaning of the two terms we will soon realize that they do not correspond. The term "hooligan" comes from the name of a gang which was active in the late 1800's in England, famous because of its aggressiveness. This term connotes these supporters directly as thugs, while the term "ultra" is more all-embracing and it will be kept throughout this report. It comes directly from the world of politics (the supporters of the French kings, the post '68 left-wing groups), and denotes political extremism. This difference is the necessary starting point for our study of the history of "ultra" support in Italy.
English football hooliganism contributed to the formation of groups of young people expressing support in new and more aggressive ways than in the European context. Yet, in the different national situations, this phenomenon has interacted with some local cultural, social and political elements. These elements determined a different form of development for the ultras compared to the English model.
In particular, in Italy the "ultra" phenomenon demonstrated such a degree of autonomy compared to the original English hooligan, that, during the 1980s, it has become its own example for other European countries (in particular Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Greece, the Ex-Yugoslavia Republics, Southern France and some of the Baltic States).
In Italy the birth of "ultra" groups took place in an anomalous political context that we should outline roughly.
Italy shows a special feature which reached its highest peak between the end of the Second World War and the end of the 1970's. Political conflict involved all social fields; public life. Sports and cultural events were seen as an expression of support or otherwise for a clerical-conservative vision of the world (that in some particular cases could be considered almost pro-fascism) and a vision linked to the Communist left.
This opposition was also evident in football, to such an extent that it is possible to outline differences in the teams on the basis of the social status of their supporters and of the geographical areas where the different political ideas were more or less strong. In Milan "Milan" represented the team of the working class (the railway workers in particular), therefore it was considered left-wing, whereas "Inter ' was the team of the middle class of Milan and its suburbs and was considered closer to conservative ideas. Also the political tendency of a region used to have an automatic influence on the most important teams, therefore in Communist Emilia the "Bologna" team inevitably had left-wing supporters. While the "Verona" team was the emblem of conservative Veneto.
This rule applied even to the first supporters groups organized by the team managers in the early 1960s in order to let them deal with the sale of the tickets and the organization of support and away matches. Therefore several "Inter" supporters clubs organized by Servello, representative of the Italian Social Movement [Italian far-right organisation - libcom ed.] and in charge of the team management, were closer to conservative ideas to such an extent that the first "ultra" group of Inter, the "Boys", was born from the splitting up of a group of young supporters belonging to Italian Social Movement. Some "Torino" supporters clubs did not conceal their left-wing sympathies, sometimes exhibiting banners bearing political slogans and often starting fights when coming across fascist meetings. In 1964 the 'Fedelissimi Club" supporting the Torino team attacked a fascist rally in Bergamo.
In a strongly politicized context, the advent of the young rebels of the l960s and the consequent birth of the "ultra" groups are not only an expression of social and cultural behavior, but they are also heavily influenced by the political situation.
In England, the street subcultures connected to rock music contributed to the birth and development of the rule system which is the basis of organized hooliganism (the strong tie to the territory, very tight access rules, defense against intruders, aggressive behavior and so on). These rules then spread to other European countries through different channels. In Italy, some of these young juvenile styles gained importance and strength precisely during the years of the students' protest (1968-1969) and of the great factory workers' fights and were strongly influenced by them. In Italy the protest movement was not linked exclusively to students, but included large numbers of young blue-collar workers. On the basis of the movement experience, a lot of young people met in groups, sometimes also in small parties, organized according to Leninist ideas. These groups occupied the Italian squares and streets. Facing opposition from the police and by organized right-wing groups. These groups controlled exactly the meeting places where the street subcultures were flourishing. Therefore, the new streets styles and the political reasons started to mix among these groups. It also happened that on the sidelines of these groups, the new young subcultures imported from England combined the rebelliousness typical of the young and the antiestablishment ideas. This was the case for "ultra" groups. The first of these groups was called "La Fossa dei Leoni" (i.e. The Lions' Den) and was formed in 1968 in Milan. Subsequently, the Inter Boys and the Red and Blue Commandos of Bologna were born, together with other groups which borrowed their names directly from the political language (starting from "ultras" in 1971 by Sampdoria supporters and going on to Tupamaros, Fedayn but also Folgore and Vigilantes, etc...).
All these groups were clearly fascinated by the English hooligan model, and when English and Italian supporters met for a match, they had the chance of making comparisons: The first Italian Ultras began to identify themselves with a certain kind of clothes and a specific area of the stadium which consequently became off-limits for the other supporters. They also supported their team with endless choruses during the whole match and behaved violently towards the rival supporters. However, Italian "ultra" members could look up to another social model, namely the small political extremist groups, occupying the streets and the squares and representing a well visible model of militancy, clannishness and toughness.
It is clear that the "ultra" groups tended to conform to the style of these political groups, adopting also their organizational and structural characteristics, together with some counter-cultural features. The influence can be seen in terms of spontaneous adherence of some "ultras" to extreme left-wing groups, although the latter never carried out systematic recruitment campaigns in the stadiums. The case of the "ultra" groups formed by extreme right groups was different. This happened at the following teams: Inter, Lazio and Verona. In these cases it seems that the Italian Social Movement, banned from the streets and squares, tried to take advantage of the antisocial rebelliousness in young football supporters, who gathered in the stadium curves, to influence their behavior. Thus in Milan, key members of the Italian Social Movement were the founders of the Boys Inter and in Rome there was a very high number of extreme right-wing militants among the Lazio "ultras"
It was a combination between a football culture which was less dependent on the working class supporters linking up with the political groups that determined the peculiar feature of the "ultra" movement. It was not exclusively based on a working class community (as the hooligans in England were), but represented different social classes. The "ultra" movement was made up both by "people having experimented with mass violence in the political field" (not only working class but also lower middle class and middle class people, not only left-wing but also right-wing) and by "people having experimented with violence in the fulfillment of everyday needs" (local gangs).
Let's now examine more in detail some specific features differentiating the Italian groups from the European ones in this period. We will see that the mixture between football support and political activity was absorbed by the "ultra" groups, and was evident in their behavior patterns and in their organizational structures.
Although the "ultra" groups were prone to violence (just like their English cousins) and they were friends or rivals of other teams following the traditional alliances or rivalries between the various teams, the political tendency of a team soon influenced these alliances or rivalries. For example: the Bologna leftist "ultra" group became hostile to the Verona rightist "ultra" group, while becoming twinned to the Milan "ultra" group who shared their left-wing tendency. Moreover, "ultra" members directly adopted the same clothes of political street groups: green parkas, camouflage combat jackets bearing team badges, blue jeans and balaclava caps or neckerchief on the face, all of which made the "ultra" look like an urban guerilla. Furthermore, in Italian stadiums supporters started to play tin-plate drums borrowed from trade union demonstrations, using them to accompany choruses. The slogans that football supporters endlessly chanted were also borrowed from politics. Banners and enormous flags typical of political demonstrations and marches started to appear in stadiums as well.
The "ultra" group was also much more open towards the outside world than the hooligan groups; because of the counterculture tendency, the "ultra" group accepted a fairly remarkable number of women (absent in European groups) and carried out direct membership activities, like in political recruitment, aimed at increasing the number of members (beside self-financing activities). All these characteristics highlight a substantial organizational difference between these groups in Italy as compared to the English model. While English and other European curve (terrace) supporters mainly performed spontaneous activities (such as choruses, choreographies using scarves and all those acts that were carried out on the day of the game), Italian supporters felt that the collateral activities borrowed from politics and aimed at socializing and increasing curve support participation were a real priority. These activities entailed an organization that went beyond the Sunday match and involved midweek meetings where supporters worked at the creation and staging of spectacular flag waving, aimed at involving all the other curve supporters and at the production of various material to self-finance the group.
In order to have an overall picture, some other features need to be underlined. The "ultra" members were similar to the first English hooligans in that they felt themselves deeply tied to the colors of their team and were strongly connected to the popular support culture. Therefore, they occupied the cheap seats, watched the match without ever sitting down, constantly drew inspiration from tradition. Thus, they revitalized the Naples custom to use petards, smoke bombs, and firecrackers when the teams entered the stadium, which became a spectacular element among their choreographies. They also brought back the tradition of staging the rivals' funeral, marching as in a funeral procession and following a coffin covered by the rival team flag.
The retrieval of some popular support traditions, together with the other characteristics of the "ultra" support represented a strong attraction potential and a powerful identification instrument for the youngest supporters and made it easier to achieve an aim which was constantly pursued by these groups and which has also been borrowed from the political sphere, namely the continuous attempt to control, in an hegemonic way, the whole curve.
These are the features that characterized the "ultra" movement which was born in the 1970s. As time went by, the development of this movement was constant and went hand in hand with a considerable increase in the clashes between rival supporters.
However, it was only in 1975 and more precisely on 21st December 1975, that the "ultra" phenomenon demonstrated its deep roots among the main body of team support, to such an extent that the Italian Soccer Federation decided to call for a "friendship day" against the violent commandos, in the wake of violent clashes that had taken place during the 74/75 National League Championship.
We are therefore approaching the period that can be defined as the second phase of the "ultra" movement and that goes from 1977 to 1983. During this period in the other European countries it is possible to notice an increase in violence due to the increasingly military style organization of the hooligan groups. Different factors contributed to this development, among them a greater need to plan clashes due to increased safety measures and tighter control by police, and last but not least, the growth of youth subcultures in the second half of the 1970s. Above all, the skinhead style became predominant in North European stadiums and, because of an increasing tendency towards xenophobia and racism [within the skinhead movement], this style made the most violent hooligan groups turn to more extreme right-wing positions. This at a time when right-wing groups were looking to influence and manipulate hooligan groups inside English and German stadiums as well.
In Italy the dynamics were partially different from those that developed in other European countries. It is true that the "ultra" groups traditionally controlled by the right strengthened their position, however, the social scene and radical thinking was still completely controlled by the left. The groups that were strongly controlled by left wing leadership were not threatened by any kind of penetration from extreme right-wing groups. Even the advent of the skinhead style did not take off for some years and was confined to certain areas. Yet, even in Italy, violence increased but this can be put down to the decline of the political movements of the 70's, which had grown through people's anger and feelings of isolation and led to a fierce and violent explosion in 1977 culminating in bitter clashes with the police, right-wing groups and also between leftist movements themselves. Thus, as it happened in the squares during demonstrations, the stadiums saw an increase in the use of illegitimate weapons, knives, iron bars and rocket launchers.
The names of the new groups were still influenced by the political situation of those years: many groups defined themselves as "Brigades". referring to the terrorist groups active in that period and several symbols belonging to left-wing terrorism appeared (for example the five-pointed star of the Red Brigades) and to right-wing terrorism (the two-edged ax which was the emblem of "Ordine Nuovo", i.e. New Order). It became more and more common for the ultra groups to stage clashes outside the stadiums, in order to avoid police control. The increase in violence was highlighted by the death of a Lazio supporter in 1979 before the beginning of the Roma-Lazio derby. That very day other violent clashes occurred causing several injuries in Ascoli, Milan and Brescia. However, in this period, the large ultra groups had practically gained complete control of the whole curve.
Although the bellicose character was stronger and the level of the clashes was higher, the behavioral pattern activating violence followed the rule of "violence as an instrument" borrowed from politics. Before gaining entry to the elite or core elements of the group, through the larger peripheral support of the group, the inexperienced members had to pass a series of tests and to demonstrate their reliability not only from a military point of view, but also in terms of organization and general behavior. The exertion of violence occurred only during matches between teams whose supporters were historically hostile to each other and with large "ultra" groups. Therefore, recourse to violence was somehow controlled. If someone demonstrated themselves unable to move effectively, ignored the senior members, thereby endangering the safety of the group, he was left out and sent away. In the same period, the "ultra" membership increased, and these movements strengthened their organizational structures. These years saw the birth of the "Directorates", modeled on the lines of extreme left wing political parties. The function of the Directorates was to coordinate the ever increasing activities carried out by the "ultra" groups. At this stage, these activities corresponded to those typical of any organized club and were particularly devoted to organizing away matches and managing a certain number of tickets.
"...'The leaders are eight including me... each one of us has their own tasks. Women mainly deal with the financial aspects and they are almost totally responsible for assembling of flags and drums. We deal more with relationships with the Team Management... There are specific tasks: organizing away matches, asking for prices, timetables and renting of buses, dealing with materials, for example mending flags and so on, buying stationery, stickers or T-shirts organizing support and being responsible for confetti and torches, going to the Team Management for the tickets and keeping in touch with the Team and also keeping relationships with other clubs. ....Concerning the funds, once we used to take general collections not just amongst ourselves and to sell our materials: T-shirts, stickers and scarves bearing ''ultra" on them. But then the Torino Team Management decided that this was not very elegant, told us to document our expenses and then refunded us."
Between 1983-1989, the "ultra" movement reached even the stadiums of provincial towns and the teams playing in the lower Divisions, involving young people coming from all social classes. Conditions of social deprivation were not necessarily a prerequisite for ultra participation: on the contrary, in these groups there were people with good jobs and often with a high school level (degree, diploma) and also boys coming from well-to-do families, married men with a stable life. Often it was precisely in the small rich provincial towns that the toughest and most radical groups could be found, for example Ascoli, Cesena, Verona and Udine. In these towns the interaction between the "ultra" culture, logic and the traditional rivalries between towns and regions emerged clearly and in its most original way. During this period the "ultra" world became largely dominated by local and parochial pride, an element granting a strong identity. Before it had always been possible to connect the use of violence against intruders (such as rival supporters or the police) to the defense of the "ultra" territory (the curve, the town and the team colors), yet it was also connected to an atmosphere, a political tension that could supply a surplus of identity, cohesion and aggregation, based not only on the friend-foe logic. On the other hand, in the 1980's, with the decline of political movements, the situation was no longer the same. Thus, in these years, the main trend inside the "ultra" movements was the following: more importance attached to the regional or local identity and parochialism, to regional and local rivalries and historical hostilities, and detecting the "ultra" groups to be considered enemies. Their logic of the end as a freed space is replaced by that of the end as a small mother country. Therefore clannishness, toughness cult and paramilitary organization, together with the morbid link to the small mother country, all of which is very close to extreme right values, opened the way for an easy advent of racist and xenophobic behavioral patterns inside the stadiums.
At the same time, the traditional large groups are faced with a crisis period. They had to face the strengthening of safety measures inside the stadiums. Controls on groups following away matches increased as well, together with control on places to be reached by "ultra" movements. Moreover, the first generation change took place among the "ultra" hierarchies. Some charismatic leaders, active also in the political world, left the curve, often because of the numerous repressive measures against them because of events occurring both in the stadiums and in politics. Some other members left the groups or lost their influence there because of drug addiction problems. In the meantime, the curves saw the birth of other groups, made up by very young boys (from 14 to 16 years), often disliked by the official groups. These new groups, however, succeeded in occupying their own area in the curve behind their banner. Their very names highlighted their different inspiration as compared to the groups which had formed during the 70's: in this period the new groups chose names such as "Wild Kaos". "The Sconvolts" (rough translation: "Upset People"), "Verona Alcohol", "Nuclei Sconvolti" (rough translation: "Upset Nuclei"). These groups were mainly interested in chances to fight and belonged to the excess and freak-out culture. Their model was not the metropolitan street guerrillerio, but Alex, the young super-thug in "Clockwork Orange", whose effigy started to appear in various curves, replacing the ''Che Guevara" portrait. The new groups were the result of a period in which civil society was dominated by hedonism, exhibitionism, disaffection for political and social commitment.
The stylistic paradigm adopted by many new "ultra" members, often chauvinist, violent and intolerant, is that of the "paninaro" (similar in style to the casual). All these groups were formed between 1983 and 1985 and proved to be more skillful in escaping police clampdowns. They could easily baffle controls by changing their appearances and identities. They did not care about the existing alliances, breaking them or creating crises because of their uncontrolled behavior and they regularly used knives. Having these characteristics, a lot of these groups attacked the principle of "violence monopoly", that is to say, up to that moment, violence had been resorted to only in specific cases and according to precise rules, whereas these new groups' philosophy was pure violence, forceful action for its own sake, to be carried out always and anyway. Therefore, they became an alternative attraction for anyone giving priority to military actions inside the "ultra" group. However, while in other European countries the increasing trend towards specialization of the toughest and most aggressive groups led them to a degree of separation from the other supporters, in Italy this did not happen.
Cut down the hours of work! | 2019-04-23T12:06:40Z | https://libcom.org/library/ultra-movement-political-influences |
Previous Parts of This Series.
Note, the contents of the post covers non-ASP.NET applications. ASP.NET uses its own approach to configuration inheritance, and this article already contains more than enough information.
Also note, I call this configuration inheritance because it expresses the idea of one thing overriding another. Given the limited conceptual documentation about .NET’s configuration system I don’t think there is an official term. Until there is I will stick with “inheritance”.
When one uses the .NET configuration APIs to load settings into an application there is a rich structure supporting not just the kind of data that can be held, but also the scope of that data. Different applications can share data at the machine level, different AppDomains in the same process can have different configuration, and users can have their own settings either in the roaming part of their profile or purely local, or both.
Where this data is stored, and what influences where is the subject of this posting, but on the way there is a little coverage of how to get it and manage it but mostly that will be for the future.
This is the global file, normally stored in %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\‹Version›\Config\machine.config for 64bit .NET or %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\‹Version›\Config\machine.config for 32bit. Where ‹Version› is the full version, e.g. v4.0.30319 for .NET 4.
As this file is read, by the configuration system, first any of the other levels can override it, unless the section is defined with allowDefinition or allowExeDefinition attribute is set to “MachineOnly” to ensure it can only be used at the machine level.
This is the most familiar level, creating a file called “app.config” in a Visual Studio project will create a file “‹assembly-name›.config” in the project output directory.
If you set things up correctly, per user files can also be used. The roaming file will be part of the user’s roaming profile, shared across machines if roaming is enabled. The local file will stay local. But you can override the filenames (see below) and as the content of a user’s roaming profile is based on a set of configurable folders, these names are strictly speaking indicative rather than absolute.
User levels are most useful when the ability to save configuration content is enabled. Rather than storing user settings and options in the registry use these configuration files.
The only problem with these files is the default naming, it is designed to ensure different versions of the same thing running side by side have separate configuration. If the location, assembly version or signing key changes then the filenames will be changed and any previous content (e.g. from before an upgrade) will be lost. This is bad news. The good news is that it is easy to specify your own filenames—and I would suggest doing that in most cases.
If you just use the static properties of ConfigurationManager (or one of the other configuration entry points) then machine and application configuration files are included, but user files are not.
To access either user-roaming, or user-roaming and user-local levels (you cannot use the local level without the roaming level—the roaming level could be left empty) one just uses one of the static ConfigurationManager methods that take a ConfigurationUserLevel parameter. The ConfigurationUserLevel enumeration allows selection of no user levels: ConfigurationUserLevel.None, just roaming: ConfigurationUserLevel.PerUserRaoming, or all levels: ConfigurationUserLevel.PerUserRaomingAndLocal.
If the configuration is opened with the ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration method then the default filenames, created by the configuration system, are used. Alternately using ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration allows the filenames to be specified (more on this below, after covering the default filenames).
What Are The Default Filenames?
Disclaimer: none of this, as far as I can determine, is formally documented. Treat this information as subject to change in a future .NET version.
folder: Is either “Roaming” or “Local” depending on the level.
companyName: Is the value of the AssemblyCompanyAttribute if set. If not then the value of the AssemblyProductAttribute. If neither is set then this path fragment is not included (one less directory in the path).
AssemblyBase: is the first part of the assembly’s filename (including the first period and two further characters).
hash: is an alphanumeric string created by hashing the full path of the assembly in some implementation determined way.
version: is the value of the AssemblyVersionAttrinbute.
If the assembly is signed then there is a small change. Rather than ‹AssemblyBase›_Url_‹hash› we have ‹AssemblyBase›_StrongName_‹hash› with the hash being based on the signing key (the rest of the path is the same). This means by signing the assembly the location of the user configuration files becomes independent of the location of the assembly. If you want xcopy deployment then signing would seem to be a good idea to allow the user to relocate the application while preserving their configuration.
If the configuration is loaded from a different AppDomain the machine and application configuration files remain the same. However the user levels file names change. In the above path AssemblyBase is replaced by the AppDomain name. Another case of trying to ensure uniqueness.
In this case replacing the AssemblyName.config with AppDomain.config. This results in the assembly level configuration file being the filename specified, but no other levels are changed. Specifically the user level filenames remain the same whatever application level configuration is specified.
Note, if you don’t give an AppDomain a name on creation, .NET will: there are no unnamed AppDomains.
As noted above the default naming is not ideal (if you want to be able to revise the application) except in being confident of its uniqueness. You can however define all the filenames, except at machine level, yourself.
To specify your own filenames you need to specify all the levels you are going to use, except the machine level. This includes the application level (to use the default just use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ConfigurationFile (this seems to be always populated whether not specified on AppDomain creation or in the default AppDomain) or Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location + ".config".
This can be called with each of Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData and Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData to get the current users roaming and local profile root folders (respectively). (The GetAttribute<T>() method is a helper extension method over Assembly I have which gets the single instance of attribute T from the assembly.) Normally this would be passed the entry assembly, but for an extension could be passed the extension‘s assembly to keep configuration separate (and thus avoid conflicts) from the containing application.
Once you have the filenames you want to use, populate an instance of ExeConfigurationFileMap and pass to ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration to get a Configuration instance, which is used in exactly the same way as an instance obtained any other way.
There are two approaches: defined and laborious, or using reflection to peer inside the Configuration instance. The safe method is based on Configuration.FilePath being the path of the lowest level of configuration in use. So open with different ConfigurationUserLevel values and get each path in turn.
The reflection method relies on Configuration having private member _configRecord of private type System.Configuration.MgmtConfigurationRecord. This is a linked list of MgmtConfigurationRecord instances, one per level. Each has a _configName field which gives the level as a string (“MACHINE”, “EXE”, …) giving the level, and a ConfigurationFilePath property with the path. Given an instance of Configuration and a few helpers a populated ExeConfigurationFileMap can be returned.
In the posting: “Client Settings FAQ” Raghavendra Prabhu covers some details of the user-roaming and user-local configuration levels. Including that the hash following the _Url_ or _StrongName_ is based on the evidence—i.e. of the URL or signing key.
Updated 2010-06-22: Added link to part 5.
There are two remaining approaches to providing structure that I have not yet covered: collections of elements and section groups. Element collections will be a topic for several future posts as there are a number of different approaches to creating element collections, and two of them make little sense without first covering configuration inheritance (see part 5).
Section groups are much simpler, and mostly a matter of declaring them.
When custom sections are declared using the <configSections> element of a configuration file, one can declare both sections (with the <sections> element, using attributes to define the associated custom type and its name) and section groups.
To define a section group use the—unsurprisingly—<sectionsGroup> element. This needs a name and a type. Often the type will be System.Configuration.ConfigurationSectionGroup which adds no behaviour (but one can customise this, more below) and just allows programmatic access to its child sections and section groups (there is no specified limit to the depth of structure you can define—but don’t go overboard with deep structures which will become increasingly hard to understand and maintain).
Which defines a userSettings element to act as a container for (presumably) multiple sections describing many aspects of user behaviour.
Note, replace the strong name for System.Configuration with “System.Configuration.ConfigurationSectionGroup, System.Configuration, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a” for .NET versions 2, 3 and 3.5.
In previous parts of this series the application code used Configuration.GetSection(‹name›) to get to its custom section (and the instance of Configuration was obtained with ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration). This works for configuration sections that are immediate children of the root <configuration> node.
GetSectionGroup returns a ConfigurationSectionGroup instance which has GetSection and GetSectionGroup methods as Configuration has.
It is also possible to create your own custom configuration section group by deriving from ConfigurationSectionGroup, and a number of .NET Framework types do this. E.g. System.Xml.Serialization.Configuration.SerializationSectionGroup defined in the System.Xml assembly, which adds properties to type safely access contained sections (i.e. the properties contain the access into the Sections collection and cast the results to the correct type).
Parts 1 and 2 added structure and data, but this is often not enough, one needs valid data—the domain of the data for your configuration being narrower than the domain of the underlying type of the parsed values. Hence the need to extend the custom types representing the structure with more types and attributes to limit the ranges of those values.
Checking single values is the easiest part, albeit needing two custom types to be defined for each distinct kind of validation, but at least each case can be parameterised (i.e. if you need to check a date range, you only need two types, not four).
Overriding CanValidate to confirm that the type can be validated. Return true to indicate you can, otherwise validation will fail. This override is usually used to confirm the type of the value matches the expectations of the next method.
Override Validate to perform the validation. To indicate failure throw an exception (which will be wrapped by the configuration runtime, into a ConfigurationErrorsException.
The second type is derived from ConfigurationValidatorAttribute (which itself derives from System.Attribute). This is used to (1) annotate the configuration property in the ConfigurationElement (or ConfigurationSection) type, and (2) be an object factory for the first, validation, type. Additional parameters can be passed from this attribute to the validator.
The key override is ValidatorInstance which needs to return an initialised instance of the validator class.
What Happens on Validation Failure?
Validation is performed when the configuration section is read, i.e. when Configuration.GetSection(‹name›) is called. Importantly this means that if configuration sections are not used, validation will not be performed, and no errors will be reported, however many invalid, missing or extra values there are. Also note that extra attributes and elements will be reported as errors, this behaviour can be modified by overriding ConfigurationElement’s OnDeserializeUnrecognizedAttribute or OnDeserializeUnrecognizedElement.
When an error, validation or otherwise (including malformed XML) occurs a ConfigurationErrorsException is thrown. If this is based on another exception being thrown internally (e.g. on malformed XML, a XmlException) then that original exception may be the ConfigurationErrorsException’s InnerException (sometimes this seems to be the base, other times not—I don’t see much consistency).
Any reporting of this to the user or logging is up to the application, this is not trivial as while the text of the message does include key information (like where the error was in the configuration file) it is not exactly in a user friendly format. But then configuration files are not targeted at (typical) end user direct editing.
There is no direct support for further validation after each individual value has been loaded and (given suitable attributes) validated. But ConfigurationElement does have the PostDeserialize method, which is called at the right time.
But the error message is not ideal, starting with the text: “An error occurred creating the configuration section handler for ‹section-name›”. But it does work.
Part 1 kept things really simple. But for non-trivial custom configuration just having XML attributes to work with starts to get very hard to edit in the file. Rather one wants to employ the richer hierarchical structures that XML allows: child elements. This turns out to be very easy.
All this takes is deriving a new class from System.Configuration.ConfigurationElement with code attributes for the two configuration attributes, and then using this new type as the type of the code property in the ConfigurationSection derived class. See the source code below: DataConfigurationElement is the new custom element, and AppConfigSection is the updated custom section, now with just a single code property.
One limitation of this use of attributes is that text content is not supported (<element>text content</element>), custom elements still just use attributes, or child custom elements (there does not seem to be any depth limit). Unless one completely overrides the de-serialisation code that makes custom elements easy (by overriding the ConfigurationElement.DeserializeElement method), but then all the work—including parsing the attributes—would have to be manually coded using the passed XmlReader instance.
The <appSettings> element of a .NET .config with the ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings static collection to read them make adding a few simple string configuration settings to an application easy. But, limited to simple name-value pairs, this is (to put it nicely) limited. And then one compares it to the richness of structure (for example) the CLR and ASP.NET support. However all that capability to create rich hierarchical structures, including multiple types of collections with all values validated is also open to the developer.
It is just not obvious where to start (at least the documentation for .NET 4, e.g. here, is a big improvement over .NET 2's).
Hence this series of posts which aim to be an aide-mémoire of various scenarios for different types of .config structures.
to the application (or ASP.NET) configuration file?
Note: both XML and C# code have attributes, so I’ll write configuration attribute for XML attributes on the config file, and code attribute for those in the source code.
Any kind of .NET project can be used, I’m using C# in a console project here (so I can just focus on configuration). This will also work against a .NET 2, 3, 3.5 or 4 target. The sample here is a console application called ConfigurationDemoPart1, so that will also be the namespace.
Start by adding a reference to the System.Configuration assembly.
Then add a new public class, for this sample called AppConfigSection. Derive from System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection. This base is needed for any custom type that is referenced by the <configSections> to define the configuration file section being created.
To create each configuration attribute to appear on the custom element add a property to the section class.
Each property needs a System.Configuration.ConfigurationPropertyAttribute code attribute with the name of the configuration attribute, and must use the default dictionary inherited from ConfigurationSection as a backing store: do not use automatic properties or a local field. The key name used in the dictionary must match the name in the ConfigurationProperty.
Without this the whole effort would be pointless, why write configuration file content if you are not going to use it?
Create an instance of System.Configuration.Configuration by using the OpenExeConfiguration method of System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager. Pass System.Configuration.ConfigurationUserLevel.None to just access the application configuration file (or web.config). Per-user configuration files, and directly loading a specific file (i.e. not the default name) is also possible, but that’s something for later.
Get to the custom configuration with GetSection(name) and casting to the custom configuration type. The properties will have the values from the configuration file.
You can also set the value of the properties. While this will change the value subsequent reads of the properties returns it will not change the configuration file. It is possible to save changes, but that’s a topic for a later post.
Visual Studio will convert this to ConfigurationDemoPart1.exe.config when the project is built. | 2019-04-20T20:30:56Z | http://blog.rjcox.co.uk/category/dev/net-core/ |
In June 2017, we announced that Yahoo and AOL had joined to become Oath, a digital and mobile media company and part of Verizon. We’re now bringing Oath and Yahoo together under these Terms of Service. If you have a Yahoo or AOL account, you will need to agree to these Terms. If you have not yet agreed to these Terms, the legacy Yahoo Terms of Service or legacy Oath Terms of Service (for AOL) still apply to your account. For Oath products or services that are accessed without signing into an account, the Terms below apply to those products and services starting May 25, 2018. If you are creating a new account, the Terms below apply starting today.
Oath and all of its brands listed in Section 13 (including Yahoo and AOL brands) and the corporate entities listed in Sections 13 and Section 14 (collectively, “Oath,” “us,” “we” or “our”) are part of the Verizon family of companies. Our brands, websites, apps, products, services and technologies (“Services”) are provided by the entities listed in Section 13 below. Please carefully read Sections 1 through 13, 14.1, and 14.2, which are the sections that apply to you.
By using the Services, you agree to these terms, the policies in Oath’s Privacy Center, and any community guidelines and supplemental terms provided to you for the Services that you use (collectively, “Terms”). Please read the Terms carefully, as they form the entire agreement between you and Oath.
THESE TERMS CONTAIN LIMITATIONS OF OATH'S LIABILITY IN SECTION 9.
Authority. You agree that you are permitted to use the Services under applicable law. If you are using the Services on behalf of a company, business or other entity, you represent that you have the legal authority to accept these Terms on behalf of that entity, in which case that entity accepts these Terms, and "you" means that entity. If you are accessing an account(s) on behalf of the account owner (e.g., as an administrator, consultant, analyst, etc.), the Terms apply to your activities on behalf of the account owner.
Age. If you are under the Minimum Age (as defined for your region in Section 14) you may not register for an account. Unless you are the holder of an existing account in the United States that is a Yahoo Family Account, you must be at least the Minimum Age to use the Services. Certain portions of the Services contain adult and/or mature content. Please do not access that content unless you are an adult (i.e., at least the age of majority in your country) or unless otherwise expressly indicated.
Ownership and Reuse. Using the Services does not give you ownership of any intellectual or other property rights or interests in the Services or the content you access. You must not use any branding or logos used in the Services unless Oath has given you separate explicit written permission. You may not remove, obscure, or alter any legal notices displayed in or along with the Services. Unless you have explicit written permission, you must not reproduce, modify, rent, lease, sell, trade, distribute, transmit, broadcast, publicly perform, create derivative works based on, or exploit for any commercial purposes, any portion or use of, or access to, the Services (including content, advertisements, APIs, and software).
Software License. Subject to your continuing compliance with these Terms, Oath grants you a personal, royalty-free, non-transferable, non-assignable, revocable, and non-exclusive license to use the software and APIs provided to you by Oath as part of the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the Services as provided by Oath, in the manner permitted by these Terms and any additional terms or guidelines. You may not reverse engineer or attempt to extract the source code of our software, unless applicable laws prohibit those restrictions or you have our explicit written permission. Oath software may automatically download and install security or other updates without prior notification to you.
Support. Unless otherwise expressly stated, Oath does not promise to provide you with any support for the Services. If Oath does provide you with support, it is at Oath's sole discretion and does not mean that we will continue to provide you with support in the future.
Fees. Oath reserves the right to charge fees for use of or access to the Services (and any associated support), whether currently in existence or not, in Oath's sole discretion. If Oath decides to charge fees, Oath’s payment terms will apply and Oath will provide you with prior notice.
Payment Methods. You authorize and direct us to charge your designated payment method for these charges or, if it fails, to charge any other payment method you have on file with us, even if we received it in association with other fee-based services. You are responsible for all charges even if your payment method fails or is denied. You authorize and direct us to retain all information about any payment method(s) associated with your account. We may import payment information you entered during a prior purchase and provide you the option to use that payment information during purchase of a new product. You permit us to obtain and use updated information from the issuer of your payment method in accordance with the policies and procedures of any applicable card brands. We may in some instances continue charging a payment method past its expiration date at our discretion and subject to the payment processors' or issuing bank's approval. Surcharges may apply if you use certain payment methods, such as payment from your checking or savings account.
Free Trials. We may offer you free trials, so that you may try a fee-based Service subscription without charge or obligation ("Free Trial"). Unless otherwise stated and unless you cancel your subscription prior to the expiration of the Free Trial, periodic subscription fees will be charged at the then-applicable rate upon expiration of the Free Trial period and will continue to be charged until the subscription is canceled. If you are not satisfied with a particular fee-based Service, you must cancel the subscription before the Free Trial ends to avoid charges. We reserve the right to limit you to one free trial or promotion of a fee-based Service and to prohibit the combining of free trials or other promotional offers.
The Services are provided by the company that offers the Services in your region as set out in Section 14.2 (the “Applicable Oath Company”), except for the Services set out below in Section 13(b). Not all Services or features may be available in your country or region. Different features may be available in different versions of the Services.
For the services in this Section 13(b)(i), the provisions of Section 14.2 (United States) apply.
Other Fantasy Sports services are provided by Oath Inc.
Style Me Pretty is provided by Style Me Pretty, LLC.
Ryot Studio is provided by TheHuffingtonPost.com Inc.
Flurry is provided by Flurry, Inc.
Yahoo Cricket is provided by Yahoo India Private Limited.
In Section 13 above, find the provider of the Services you are using. That is the provider that you are contracting with for the Services. The choice of law, the location for resolving disputes, certain defined terms (including the Applicable Oath Company), and other important region specific provisions are in this Section 14. If you have any questions, please contact customer care using the contact information in the region that applies to you below.
For Yahoo Search, the Applicable Oath Company is Oath Holdings Inc. (Address: 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089).
For all other Services, the Applicable Oath Company is Oath Inc. (Address: 22000 AOL Way, Dulles, VA 20166).
Notice of Dispute. If either you or Oath intends to arbitrate under these Terms, the party seeking arbitration must first notify the other party of the Dispute in writing at least 30 days in advance of initiating the arbitration. Notice to Oath should be sent to Oath either by mail to Oath, Attn: Disputes, 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089; or [email protected]. Notice to you will be to your email address(es) and street address(es), if any, that Oath has in its records at the time the notice is sent. The notice must describe the nature of the claim and the relief being sought. If we are unable to resolve the Dispute within 30 days, either party may then proceed to file a claim for arbitration.
Arbitration Procedure. The Federal Arbitration Act applies to these Terms. Except for small claims court cases, any and all Disputes will be resolved by arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association ("AAA"). The AAA will apply the Commercial Arbitration Rules to the arbitration of any Dispute pursuant to these Terms, unless you are an individual and use the Services for personal or household use, in which case the AAA's Consumer Arbitration Rules will apply (excluding any rules or procedures governing or permitting class actions). You can get procedures (including the process for beginning an arbitration), rules and fee information from the AAA (www.adr.org). These Terms govern to the extent they conflict with the AAA’s Commercial Arbitration Rules or Consumer Arbitration Rules.
Arbitration Location. Unless you and Oath agree otherwise, the arbitration must take place, or the small claims action must be filed, in the county of your primary residence or Santa Clara County, California.
CLASS ACTION WAIVER FOR U.S. USERS. THESE TERMS DO NOT ALLOW CLASS OR COLLECTIVE ARBITRATIONS, EVEN IF THE AAA PROCEDURES OR RULES WOULD. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER PROVISION OF THESE TERMS, THE ARBITRATOR MAY AWARD MONEY OR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF ONLY IN FAVOR OF THE INDIVIDUAL PARTY SEEKING RELIEF AND ONLY TO THE EXTENT NECESSARY TO PROVIDE THE RELIEF WARRANTED BY THAT PARTY'S INDIVIDUAL CLAIM. ARBITRATION OR COURT PROCEEDINGS HELD UNDER THESE TERMS CANNOT BE BROUGHT, MAINTAINED OR RESOLVED ON BEHALF OF OR BY A CLASS, AS A PRIVATE ATTORNEY-GENERAL, OR IN ANY OTHER REPRESENTATIVE CAPACITY. IN ADDITION, INDIVIDUAL PROCEEDINGS CANNOT BE COMBINED WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF ALL OF THE PARTIES. ANY QUESTION REGARDING THE ENFORCEABILITY OR INTERPRETATION OF THIS PARAGRAPH WILL BE DECIDED BY A COURT AND NOT THE ARBITRATOR.
JURY TRIAL WAIVER FOR U.S. USERS. IF FOR ANY REASON A DISPUTE PROCEEDS IN COURT RATHER THAN THROUGH ARBITRATION, YOU AND OATH AGREE THAT THERE WILL NOT BE A JURY TRIAL. YOU AND OATH UNCONDITIONALLY WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY IN ANY ACTION, PROCEEDING OR COUNTERCLAIM IN ANY WAY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS. IN THE EVENT OF LITIGATION, THIS PARAGRAPH MAY BE FILED TO SHOW A WRITTEN CONSENT TO A TRIAL BY THE COURT.
Forum. If for any reason a Dispute proceeds in court rather than through arbitration, all such Disputes (regardless of theory) arising out of or relating to these Terms, or the relationship between you and Oath, will be brought exclusively in the courts located in the county of New York, New York or the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In such cases, you and Oath agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of the courts located within the county of New York, New York or the Southern District of New York, and agree to waive any and all objections to the exercise of jurisdiction over the parties by such courts and to venue in such courts.
Customer Support. Below are links for customer support.
Closed Captioning. Oath complies with applicable Federal Communications Commission rules and regulations regarding the closed captioning of video content. Please visit https://policies.yahoo.com/us/en/yahoo/cc/index.htm for more information or to register any concerns or complaints regarding video content accessible on the Yahoo network of properties.
Severability. If any part of this agreement to arbitrate is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be unenforceable, the court will reform the agreement to the extent necessary to cure the unenforceable part(s), and the parties will arbitrate their Dispute(s) without reference to or reliance upon the unenforceable part(s). However, if for any reason the Class Action Waiver set forth below in subsection 14.3.c cannot be enforced as to some or all of the Dispute, then the agreement to arbitrate will not apply to that Dispute or portion thereof. Any Disputes covered by any deemed unenforceable Class Action Waiver provision may only be litigated in a court of competent jurisdiction, but the remainder of the agreement to arbitrate will be binding and enforceable. To avoid any doubt or uncertainty, the parties do not agree to class arbitration or to the arbitration of any claims brought on behalf of others.
JURY TRIAL WAIVER. IF FOR ANY REASON A DISPUTE PROCEEDS IN COURT RATHER THAN THROUGH ARBITRATION, YOU AND OATH AGREE THAT THERE WILL NOT BE A JURY TRIAL. YOU AND OATH UNCONDITIONALLY WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY IN ANY ACTION, PROCEEDING OR COUNTERCLAIM IN ANY WAY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS. IN THE EVENT OF LITIGATION, THIS PARAGRAPH MAY BE FILED TO SHOW A WRITTEN CONSENT TO A TRIAL BY THE COURT.
Community Guidelines. The Oath Community Guidelines can be found here.
Closed Captioning. Oath complies with applicable Federal Communications Commission rules and regulations regarding the closed captioning of video content. Please visit https://policies.yahoo.com/us/es/yahoo/cc/index.htm for more information or to register any concerns or complaints regarding video content accessible on the Yahoo network of properties.
Minimum Age: 13 years old (however, if you are between 13 and 18 years old, you must have parental or legal guardian permission in order to agree with our Terms and to use the Service).
Services Provided: Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Search, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo LifeStyle and Yahoo Together.
The Services above are only provided by Oath do Brasil Internet Ltda. (i) if the Terms were served to you in Portuguese when signing up for the Service; and (ii) when not necessary to sign up for the Service, the Terms are made available to you in Portuguese when using the Service.
The Services are not provided by Oath do Brasil Internet Ltda. (i) if the Terms were not served to you in Portuguese when signing up for the Service, (ii) when not necessary to sign up for the Service, the Terms are not made available to you in Portuguese when using the Service or (iii) if the Service is not mentioned in Section 14.4.b above. In these cases, Oath do Brasil Internet Ltda. is not responsible for the Service and has no powers or capabilities to take any measures in relation to the Service, including accessing or disclosing user data and/or removing user generated content.
Choice of Law. The Terms and the relationship between you and Oath, in regards to Services Provided in Brazil, will be governed by the laws of Federative Republic of Brazil without regard to its conflict of law provisions.
Customer Support. For customer support, see this page.
Protecting our systems and our users' information is paramount to ensuring Oath users enjoy a secure user experience and maintaining our users' trust. To learn more about security, including the steps we have taken and steps you can take, please read Security at Oath.
Applicable Oath Company: Oath (Canada) Corp. (Address: 99 Spadina Avenue, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3P8).
Minimum Age: Legal Age to form a binding contract in your province or territory of residence.
Choice of Law. These Terms and the relationship between the parties, including any claim or dispute that might arise between the parties, whether sounding in contract, tort, or otherwise, shall be governed by the laws of the province of Ontario without regard to its conflict of law provisions. In no event shall the parties bring claims against one another under the laws of another jurisdiction.
Forum. Any claim against Oath shall be brought exclusively in the courts located within the province of Ontario, Canada. In such cases, you and Oath agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of the courts located within the province of Ontario, and agree to waive any and all objections to the exercise of jurisdiction over the parties by such courts and to a venue in such courts.
Updates. Oath may automatically download and install the latest version of the Services on your device once a new version or feature is available.
Some provinces and territories do not provide exclusion of limitation of liability for all types of damages (including the province of Quebec). In these provinces, Oath will only be liable to you for damages that we are expressly required to be liable to you under applicable law.
For Yahoo7 Answers, Yahoo7 Be, Yahoo7 Finance, Yahoo7 Groups, Yahoo7 Mail, Yahoo7 News, Yahoo7 Search, Yahoo7 Sports, Yahoo Together, Yahoo7 TV and Yahoo7 Weather the Applicable Oath Company is Yahoo!7 Pty Ltd (Address: Level 4 West, 8 Central Avenue, Eveleigh NSW 2015, Australia) and the following terms apply: (a) the Terms and the relationship between you and Yahoo!7 Pty Ltd will be governed by the laws of the state of New South Wales without regard to its conflict of law provisions, and (b) you and Yahoo!7 Pty Ltd agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the state of New South Wales.
For other services, the Applicable Oath Company is Oath Inc. (Address: 22000 AOL Way, Dulles, VA 20166), and for such Services the terms of Section 14.2 (United States) apply.
For Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Auctions, Yahoo Celebrity, Yahoo Charity, Yahoo Deals, Yahoo Dictionary, Yahoo Education, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Food, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Movie, Yahoo News, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Store, Yahoo Style, Yahoo Stylemen, Yahoo Together, Yahoo Travel, Yahoo TV, Yahoo Weather, and Aviate the Applicable Oath Company is Yahoo! Hong Kong Limited (Address: 15/F Lee Garden Two, 28 Yun Ping Road, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong) and the following terms apply: (a) the Terms and the relationship between you and Yahoo! Hong Kong Limited will be governed by the laws of Hong Kong without regard to its conflict of law provisions, and (b) you and Yahoo! Hong Kong Limited agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Hong Kong.
if no Oath company is specified to be the provider in respect of a specific Service, the Applicable Oath Company is Oath Inc. (Address: 22000 AOL Way, Dulles, VA 20166), and for such Services the terms of Section 14.2 (United States) apply.
For Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Celebrity, Yahoo Cricket, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Movies, Yahoo News, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Travel, and Yahoo Weather the Applicable Oath Company is Yahoo India Private Limited (CIN: U72900MH2000PTC138698) (Address: Unit No. 304, 3rd Floor, Satellite Gazebo, East Wing, Guru Hargovindji Marg, (A G Link Road), Andheri (East), Mumbai – 400093, India) and the following terms apply: (a) “Minimum Age” means 15 years old, provided that if you are between 15 and 18 years of age, you must have parental or legal guardian permission to use the Services or register for an account, (b) you must be at least 15 years old in order to agree with our Terms, provided that if you are between 15 and 18 years of age, you must have parental or legal guardian permission to do so, (c) the Terms and the relationship between you and Yahoo India Private Limited will be governed by the laws of India without regard to its conflict of law provisions, and (d) you and Yahoo India Private Limited agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located at Mumbai, India.
Yahoo India Grievance Officer. For the Yahoo India Grievance Officer, see this page.
Click here for an important Supreme Court Order passed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India relating to a prohibition on advertisement under the PCPNDT Act, 1994.
For AutoBlog Japan, TechCrunch Japan, Engadget Japan, Aol.jp, and AOL Mail, the Applicable Oath Company is Oath Japan KK (Address: 2-27-25 Minamiaoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo 10 7-0062 Japan).
For Yahoo Japan-branded products that are accessible in Japan: these products are provided by a third-party.
Choice of Law. The Terms and relationship between you and Oath will be governed by the laws of Japan without regard to its conflict of law provision.
Forum. You and Oath submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Tokyo District Court, Japan.
When we modify the Services as outlined in Section 7(a), or we modify these Term pursuant to Section 12(b), we will notify you a reasonable amount of time in advance of any modifications that will be of material disadvantage to you or materially limit your access to or usage of the Services.
For modifications to these Terms or the Services that we need to make in order to meet security, safety, legal or regulatory requirements, we may not be able to notify you in advance, but we will let you know as soon as practicable after such modification is made.
Limitation of Liability. Nothing in these Terms affects any legal rights that you are entitled to as a consumer under Japanese law which cannot be contractually altered or waived. Accordingly, if the contract regarding the use of the Services pursuant to these Terms is deemed a consumer contract under the Consumer Contract Act of Japan, some of the exclusions and limitations in Section 9 of these Terms will not apply to you for liability resulting from Oath’s willful misconduct or gross negligence.
Customer Support. For customer service, please see this page.
For Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Entertainment, Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Sport and Yahoo Together the Applicable Oath Company is Yahoo! New Zealand Limited (Address: Level 2, Heards Building, 2 Ruskin Street Parnell Auckland 1052 New Zealand) and the following terms apply: (a) the Terms and the relationship between you and Yahoo! New Zealand Limited will be governed by the laws of New Zealand without regard to its conflict of law provisions, and (b) you and Yahoo! New Zealand Limited agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New Zealand.
For Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Calendar, Yahoo Celebrity, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Style, Yahoo Together, Yahoo Travel, Yahoo TV, Yahoo Weather, and Aviate the Applicable Oath Company is Yahoo! Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. (Address: 60 Anson Road, #12-01 Mapletree Anson, Singapore 079914) and the following terms apply: (a) the Terms and the relationship between you and Yahoo! Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. will be governed by the laws of Singapore without regard to its conflict of law provisions, and (b) you and Yahoo! Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Singapore.
For Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Auctions, Yahoo Autos, Yahoo Charity, Yahoo Dictionary, Yahoo Esports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Games, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo House, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Money, Yahoo Movies, Yahoo News, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Stock, Yahoo Store Marketplace, Yahoo Style, Yahoo Together, Yahoo Travel, Yahoo TV, Yahoo Weather, and Aviate the Applicable Oath Company is Yahoo! Taiwan Holdings Limited, Taiwan Branch (Address: 14F, No.66 Sanchong Rd, Nangang District, Taipei, 115, Taiwan) and the following terms apply: (a) the Terms and the relationship between you and Yahoo! Taiwan Holdings Limited, Taiwan Branch will be governed by the laws of the Republic of China (R.O.C.) without regard to its conflict of law provisions, and (b) you and Yahoo! Taiwan Holdings Limited, Taiwan Branch agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Taipei District Court located in Taiwan, R.O.C.
Minimum Age: For EU Member States, the Minimum Age is 16 or the lower age that a Member State has provided for you to consent to the processing of your personal data. For countries outside the EU the Minimum Age is 13.
Choice of Law. These Terms and their operation, interpretation or formation, and the relationship between the parties, including any claim or dispute that might arise between the parties (including non-contractual claims or disputes) will be governed by the laws of Ireland without regard to its conflict of law provisions.
Forum. Except to the extent set out in paragraph (d) below, you and Oath agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Irish courts in respect of any dispute or claim that arises out of or in connection with these Terms or their operation, interpretation or formation (including non-contractual claims or disputes). In such cases, you and Oath agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of the courts located within Ireland, and agree to waive any and all objections to the exercise of jurisdiction over the parties by such courts and to the venue of such courts.
If you reside in a European Union country, nothing in these Terms, including paragraphs (b) and (c) above, affects your right to rely on any applicable mandatory local law or choice of jurisdiction provision that cannot be varied by contract. The European Commission provides for an online dispute resolution platform, which you can access at https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/.
Where we modify the Services as outlined in Section 7(a), or we modify these Terms pursuant to Section 12(b), we will tell you a reasonable amount of time in advance of any modifications that will materially disadvantage our users or materially limit the access or usage of Services. Your continued use of the Services after the effective date of any such modifications means that you agree to the Services or the Terms as modified.
For modifications to the Terms or to the Services that we need to make to meet security, safety, legal or regulatory requirements, we may not be able to notify you in advance but we will let you know as soon as practicable.
Notice of cancellation, suspension or limitation of the Services or your account.
if your account shows extended periods of inactivity in accordance with our account deletion policy.
If we permanently suspend or terminate your account, we will notify you in advance and allow you reasonable time to access and save information, files, and content associated with your account unless we have reason to believe that continued access to your account will violate applicable legal provisions, requests by law enforcement or other government agencies, or cause damage to us or to third parties.
Cooling off period for EU consumers. The following provisions supplement Section 11 (Fee-Based Services and Billing).
If you are a consumer living in the EU, you can cancel your fee-based Service without giving a reason within 14 days from the day of the conclusion of the contract. You can notify us by completing and submitting this form or if you have no other option, by returning this form to us by post. You must send your notification to us before expiry of the 14-day cancellation period.
Exceptions. If you purchase digital content not supplied in a tangible medium from us you agree that the cancellation period expires immediately once you begin to download or stream the digital content.
Auto-Renewal. In addition to Section 11(b)(v), the following shall apply: If your subscription is auto-renewed and the price has increased, you will be notified of the applicable new price and you will be allowed to terminate your subscription within a period of 14 days upon receipt of the notice. In such case the new price will not become effective and your subscription will end at the end of the term.
Exclusions and Limitations of Liability. Nothing in the Terms affects any legal rights that you are entitled to as a consumer under Irish and EU law which cannot be contractually altered or waived. Accordingly, some of the exclusions and limitations in Sections 8 and 9 of the Terms will not apply to you if you are a consumer living in a European Union country.
Our Liability. Despite Section 9, we accept responsibility for fraudulent representations made by us or if you are injured or die as a direct result of our negligence in connection with the Services.
Additional terms for Italian users can be found here.
Additional terms for German users can be found here. | 2019-04-21T08:07:41Z | https://policies.oath.com/xw/en/oath/terms/otos/index.html |
Not all insurance policies are created equal. In this article, I will discuss the key attributes of a quality Landlord Home Insurance Policy.
Standard property insurance policies assume that the homeowner lives in the property.
Landlords, on the other hand, rarely ever live in their rentals and therefore need a different type of policy – a Landlord Insurance Policy.
In fact, most landlords don’t realize that if they file an insurance claim on a rental, but the policy is NOT listed as a Landlord Policy, the insurer can deny the claim – no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
If your home insurance is not recorded as a Landlord Policy, the insurer can deny the claim.
Did you catch that? They don’t have to pay!
It’s simple really… because there are different risks involved with rentals vs. homeowner occupied properties.
Landlord policies account for typical issues that a landlord might have – such as “loss of rent”.
It also fits under a different pricing structure with the insurance company – and thus the main reason they want to know about your rental.
When people are forced to move, but don’t want to sell their house, the logical solution is to rent it out and become a landlord.
The fact is, that in order for your existing home insurance policy to fully cover the property, you need to inform your insurance carrier that the property is being converted to a rental, and you are not occupying it as your primary residence.
Your insurance company will then label it as a “Landlord Policy”, and ask you a few questions about the amount of coverage that you might need.
Being a landlord can be a great way to make a living, but it is so very important that you make sure you’re completely covered if something goes wrong – even if the chances are remote.
It’s essential to have the proper insurance policy in order to keep you from unnecessarily losing money or assets that may be impossible to recoup.
Listed below are the most important clauses that you need to consider when creating/converting your Landlord policy.
Dwelling coverage is most basic type of home insurance, and if you don’t own your property outright, your lender will probably force you to have this type of coverage.
Dwelling coverage insures just that, the dwelling. It will protect you against financial costs related to structural damage of your property.
This typically covers structural issues, plumbing and gas systems, fixed appliances, cables and piping, internal fixtures and fittings, and outdoor items like exterior blinds and awnings.
However, you should also consider getting “Guaranteed Replacement Cost” coverage – which will pay to replace/rebuild the property, even if the cost of building materials exceed the amount you were originally insured for.
You just have to shop around. Without guaranteed replacement insurance, you will only be covered for the value of your home at the time you took out the policy – which doesn’t always cover the cost to replace it.
Hurricane Katrina caused some of the worst flooding in US history.
Water and/or Flood Insurance is typically an extra policy which is added to your base policy.
It covers water damage to the building or anything inside is the property. Most basic dwelling policies will cover broken pipes or water heaters, but the extra flood policy is needed in order to cover floods, rains, sewer backups, water issues from natural disasters, etc.
Prices and rates are regulated by the U.S. Government’s National Flood Insurance Program, therefore the cost will be the same no matter who the insurer is.
It’s also a great policy to have if your tenant decides to put a hot tub in the living room.
Personal property coverage is essential if you’re renting a furnished apartment, but many landlords prefer to have it even if they rent empty units. Contents coverage typically protects you against damage to carpets, curtains, furniture, domestic appliances, household goods, and light fixtures.
While some landlords choose to have contents coverage, not all do. You’ll need to weigh the potential benefit of having the insurance against the monthly cost of the added coverage to know if it’s right for you.
Acts of nature include tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and even riots.
Although some types of insurance may not include all types of coverage – tornado insurance is not something you need in California, but it is absolutely necessary in Kansas.
In some cases, this clause is not included by default and you have to ask for it.
Again, you really have to weigh the pros and cons of each add-on, for example, hurricane insurance is so expensive in Florida, sometimes it’s cheaper to rebuild your house out of pocket than carry an hurricane insurance policy.
Rental default insurance, sometimes known as loss of income, is a type of insurance that allows you to collect the rental amount of the property for a certain length of time if you are unable to do so because of repairs or a catastrophe.
However, most standard Landlord policies won’t cover the lost rent due to an eviction or dead-beat tenants. The coverage works in conjunction with a damage claim that makes the property uninhabitable.
If your rental property becomes uninhabitable due to a covered loss, Allstate Fair Rental Income Coverage can help pay you the rental income you would otherwise lose. In other words, if your tenants have to move out, Fair Rental Income could keep the rental income flowing in for up to 12 months, while the unit is being repaired or rebuilt.
Loss of income insurance might seem like a great deal at first, but it’s important to determine how much your premium will go up for this coverage, and that you weigh the benefits.
If you can self-insure, and can live without rental income for a month or two, paying for years of loss of income coverage may not be a wise financial decision.
If a tenant or employee – even a contractor working on a part-time basis – sues you for damages, legal and liability coverage can keep you from having to go out-of-pocket. This is generally coverage that every landlord should have, as it’s easy to build up huge legal fees or be forced to pay large settlements for things that are largely out of your control.
As with any policy, this coverage has its limits. If you have multiple rental properties, then you might want to consider getting an Umbrella Policy to cover you and your personal assets if a liability claim goes beyond the limits of your landlord policy.
Most of the time, lenders will require that you have liability coverage, in order to protect their investment/loan.
Naomi is a freelance writer in Southern California. Real estate is something she is passionate about and she loves guiding others through an often confusing subject through her writing. She helps others find great houses to rent out or purchase for themselves.
The options listed above will effect the cost of your landlord policy. Which ones should be must haves and which ones are more dependent on the location of the property.
For example: I wouldn’t buy flood insurance if I had a rental property on the side of a mountain or well above a flood plain.
You are absolutely right. Every aspect of the policy effects the cost.
It does seem silly to buy flood insurance if you live on a mountain side. On the east coast, even in the mountains, it’s not uncommon to get hurricanes which cause massive flooding and thus damage to basements. Also, many rentals are in major cities, and subject to the city’s sewer system. I know in Washington DC, the old parts of the city sewer back up every so often, and cause damage basements to flood.
As a landlord I have been seeking advice about putting cameras up around my rental property. Now they apartment is on the same property as my actual home and I have been wanting to put caneras up around the property because I was just notified my tenant has a very long record of berglary. Do I have the right to put cameras up with out notifying the tenant?
I can’t comment on the legality of it, since I’m not a lawyer, but I believe that you wouldn’t have to ask permission from your tenant as long as you’re not putting them inside his house.
Most locations outside the house don’t have a “reasonable assumption of privacy”, so he can’t claim you are invading his privacy (unless the camera is pointed into his windows).
I own a home that I can no longer afford but it is paid off. I will be moving in with my mom and would like to rent out my home. Can I get landlord insurance if I don’t have a primary residence?
Hi Jan, yes, you can. You just need a mailing address.
A landlord insurance policy is simply a regular home insurance policy except they know it is being rented out and it has some other clauses that are specific for a rental prop. If you already have home insurance on the property, just call them when your tenants move in and let them know of the change. The insurer will simply modify the policy.
Thank you Lucas… I appreciate your quick response!
Is landlord insurance more expensive than homeowner’s insurance?
In many cases, it’s the same price. For many large insurance companies, like Allstate, they just change a few fields and clauses on your current policy and you’re all set.
There’s only minor differences, albeit, they are important differences. Even if your landlord policy is more expensive, its’ worth it. It’s SOOOOO critical that your insurance knows that you are renting out the home – otherwise they can deny a claim.
Fell and hurt myself. Landlord is he responsible for my medical bills. I’m really hurt. Fell in front of duplex.
Hi Diana. It’s not a simple yes or no answer. There are a lot of factors that go into determining if the landlord is liable. You should contact a lawyer to explain the situation in detail and he/she will decide if you have a case.
Generally speaking, a landlord can enter the premise at any reasonable time as long as they give you proper notice. Whether he is changing a water heater, or simply inspecting the unit for safety, it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s a valid business reason, and it’s not so frequent that it’s disturbing your right to quiet enjoyment. Each state has different rules on the amount of notice that must be given. Check out http://www.landlordology.com/state-laws to learn more about your state’s requirements.
Does a landlord policy usually cover damage done by a tenant? Does there need to be an additional clause to cover damaged caused by a tenant?
Its my understanding that your landlord home insurance policy will cover damage done to the property structure – such as if the house burns down. If you’ve opted for personal property coverage, it will also cover damage to belongings and appliances by tenants. However, be cautious about filing a claim, and you should only do so if the damage is severe enough. If you file too many claims, you might find yourself uninsurable.
I suggest calling your insurance company and inquiring about the fine print in your specific policy.
A better idea is to increase the security deposit amount, which acts as a great buffer for having to file an insurance claim.
Liability is mentioned but a reasonable value is not. What advice can you offer about choosing an amount of Liability insurance for a rented single family home. I have seen values from $100,000 to 1mil with costs ranging from $10 to $100.
Unless your insurance provider or mortgage company requires a specific amount of liability coverage, then it’s completely up to you.
When I applied for an Umbrella policy to cover excess liability for all my properties and estate, my insurer required that all my rental properties have at least 300,000 in liability before they would issue me an umbrella policy.
I think a better way to look at it is, what kind of liability are you trying to insure?
Most of the time, it’s lawsuits and injuries. Physical injuries and medical expenses can easily go above $100,000, as well can lawsuits. Unless the cost for the insurance is so incredibly high, I suggest getting $300k in liability. And if it is too expensive, maybe you should look at getting a different provider. Also, you might want to check with your mortgage company to make sure they don’t require a specific amount.
As a landlord of a two story building, is it common for a landlord policy to exclude plumbing backups? I do not have a rider on my policy and have learned a rider is not even available…. I worry about the possibility of a renter not taking caution of what they flush as I would in my own home? If there was a major problem would I as the owner be responsible for damages?
Yes, this is very common. The best thing to do would be to require your tenants to have “renter’s insurance”, which would cover any damage they cause through negligence or stupidity.
Even if they didn’t have renter’s insurance, and you were left to foot 100% of the bill, you could still force the tenant to pay for the damage because of his/her negligence.
I recently had to evict my tenants shortly after terminating my property management agreement. The tenants trashed the place. The insurance company has me filing separate claims (carpet, linoleum, appliances, etc.). To me it should be 1 claim with multiple items and 1 deductible, not several claims with each neededing to meet the deductible. Which way is correct or common?
I would push back harder because this really should be a single claim (in my non-legal opinion). I can see why they would want to you to file separate claims, because then you have to pay out the deductible each time.
If there was a fire in your house, you wouldn’t have to file a separate claim for each room that was damaged, or each piece of furniture that you lost. Your damaged was caused by a single event, and therefore I think it should be a single claim.
If your insurance company continues to fight you on this, I suggest hire a lawyer and getting a legal opinion. Then, after you settle with this company, you should find a new insurance provider who doesn’t treat it’s customers like this.
I want to know which coverage will cover my restaurant if I’m renting it out and the plumbing got broken somehow? Do I need a rental policy or Is the landlord’s coverage the one that is gonna cover the plumbing?
You should probably talk to an insurance agent. Coverage for a restaurant would be a commercial policy, not a residential landlord’s policy. The rules are different.
Generally speaking, no insurance covers plumbing. They only cover damage caused by the broken pipe, but not the pipe itself.
I have the same question as Josh… if it is a commercial policy, who is going to pay for any issue with the plumbing, the owner or the restaurant’s renter?
Further, in a residential situation, if the pipe was damaged due to abuse, then the tenant should pay for it. If the damage was caused due to normal wear and tear, then the landlord should cover it.
I have a situation where my renters passed away in the home. It was a murder suicide situation. They have a renters policy and I have a landlord policy. Can I file a claim on their renters policy for damages and reduced property value? I was planning on selling the home at the end of their lease. According to the laws in my state, I have to disclose that a murder took place which means I’m going to take a big hit on my property value.
Im sorry about your situation. What a horrible incident.
If were in your shoes, I would try their renters policy first. If my requuest got denied, I would then go to my insurer. However I dont think either will pay you for reduced property value.
My insurance company insists that my 4 unit is covered at nearly 500k. I only owe the bank 75k why is it that they can tell me how much to insure for? I just want yo make sure bank is paid and expenses are cover and rebuild at slower cost if I want. Why I’d this frowned upon by the insurance co. They rate it’s so high I will not be able to stay in the black.
Each insurance company has a calculation that they use to determine the cost to rebuild. I agree with you that many of the companies often inflate this number as to get higher premiums – but they will never admit to that.
You can also use a recent appraisal or tax assessment to try and convince them that the value is less than what they are projecting.
At the end of the day, if you don’t like their quote, you are free to take your business elsewhere. It’s a hassle, but it might save you hundreds of dollars a year.
I already have homeowners insurance on my house which is included in my mortgage with my taxes too. My question is I’m moving and going to rent out entire house to a family that’s going to buy it next year. Till then and before they move in ..what insurance changes will I need to do and how will it affect me cost wise.
I suggest calling your insurance agent and be honest with him/her. It really shouldn’t affect your cost at all (except for normal annual increases). It’s just a matter of how the policy is classified – and adding in a few extra perks, like Fair Rental Income protection – which is a nice benefit.
If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t change it over until the new renters are about to move-in.
I sold a house to one of my renters and she asked me to keep the insurance policy effective until she could get a policy of her own. Will my policy be effective even though I have already transferred the title?
No, if the new owner is not listed on your insurance policy, i dont think she will have any right to make a claim. The insurance company has no obligation to pay someone whom they dont have a policy with.
You are paying on a policy for a house you dont own, and the new owner can never use.
Insurance companies are well aware of the flood plains and might force you to get flood insurance before offering you a policy. But it’s not something that should stop you from being a landlord.
You and your main insurance company would be responsible for cleaning up and repairing any property damage from a flood, however, you would not be responsible for a tenant’s personal belongings.
The best way to mitigate risk from this is to mandate that all your tenants get renter’s insurance before moving in. It’s really cheap ($120/year) and will cover all their personal belongings (including things in the yard, like toys and bikes), should anything ever happened.
Their cars should be covered by their car insurance.
The bottom line is that you should make it a lease requirement to have renter’s and car insurance, and then ask for proof of coverage once a year. You can make it a screening requirement so if they decline to get this coverage, then you could decline their application.
As far as I can tell renters insurance does not cover flood damage. They could get a special flood insurance policy on low risk homes but since my home is a high risk zone it is not an option per http://www.floodsmart.gov website. Flood insurance actually does not cover anything in the yard anyway. So if it flooded would I be liable to replace any damaged property outside of the home even though flood insurance wouldn’t cover it if I lived there?
I have a single family home, in a nice neighborhood with an HOA. The management company put in a family that is really trashing the place, and insist that tires, debris, trash, etc, in the backyard is perfectly normal! After all, it’s behind a fence! They have violated many other terms of the lease, but for some reason, (likely to avoid admitting their own extremely poor judgement, lack of oversight, etc) the management company is championing them.
They are also running a business. A landscape business, ironically. And using the address to advertise. I was told they could also do this. I signed a residential lease, not a business one. I doubt if my insurance will cover??? Help! I’m thousands of miles away!
I have a house my sister lives in and barely ever pays the mortgage…I just found out from a claim I made on the home that I have to change the insurance to rental property..the house I live in with my husband is not mine nor do I have a stake in the property upon his death..my insurance co is saying I have to have insurance with them on his house and my rental property is that true..Maryland is the state were in.
The answer is: It depends on your state (and even county) laws. Also, if you have a mortgage on the property, most mortgagors require insurance as part of the loan.
Actually I know I have to have insurance on the property. I was just wondering is it a state law in Maryland that as a Landlord to the property and living somewhere else am I required to have insurance on the property I live in and the property I own. My insurance company is saying I have to or they won’t insure the rental property.
That sounds like a internal rule with your insurance company. Most providers use the “primary residence” as the backbone for other policies on rental properties and other things. For example, with Allstate, I know I can’t buy an umbrella policy unless I also insure my primary home with them. You might want to shop around, and see who will insure your rental without also having your primary home insured with them too. I think Traveller’s will do it, maybe Allstate too.
i have an insurance policy that has only me as the named insured. I am only a tenant , but have invested tremendous amounts of money into improvements & betterment .Floors,bathrooms, ceilings, electrical,roof, etc. my intention was always to buy property, & verbally had mutual understanding of purchase agreement with landlord. Now there has been a fire, and I’ve worked everything out with the adjuster myself, and agreeable on numbers, but now the landlord wants my building claim check for repair of his building. I offered to buy him out with our agreed verbal number of 50K, for the deed transfer in my name. but he refused, and now is greedy hoping to get my $200,000 bldg claim instead. the insurance company has decided they want to pay the money to the landlord, because of a clause in my policy that talks about their right to pay for owners of property and this will satisfy obligation to me , the sole named insured. this isn’t where a deed holder should rely on protection.
To be honest, I’ve never seen this situation before. Is your policy a renter’s policy, or a primary property insurance policy? If it’s the primary insurance policy, how the heck were you allowed to put that in your name?
If it’s a renter’s policy, then the fact that they are paying out tells me that they think you were liable for the fire. And, though you put improvements into the property, the property and the improvements belong to the landlord. That’s why I never recommend that a tenant spend a significant amount of money on improvements until the property is officially in his/her name.
I think you should probably talk to an attorney who regularly deals with insurance companies. If the insurance company is taking advantage of you, then the attorney will be able to set them straight.
I rent out a single family house in Miami, FL.
After 14 years of renting from me, my renters have just asked to see my insurance policy.
They claim that they are trying to figure out if they need any of their own insurance.
I have told them that my policy doesn’t cover any contents other than the appliances and that they should have renter’s insurance if they want their contents to be covered.
Even after that, they still want to see the policy because they say they want to take it to their insurance agent to see what insurance they need to buy.
Does this sound legit ? Am I required to provide the policy to them ? Any downside if I decide to give it to them.
Any chance they might just want to see how much liability insurance I am carrying ?
They’ve been trouble free tenants for the most part.
If I were you, I would not show them my master insurance policy. The entire reason that “renter’s insurance” exists is because a standard homeowner’s insurance policy doesn’t cover their personal belongings. Further, if your lease requires a renter’s policy, it shouldn’t be up for debate (assuming your lease does).
All they have to do is call ANY insurance agent and ask about personal property coverage under a landlord’s policy. They’ll get the same answer – NO!
I would definitely not show it to them. They may be trying to sue you, and want to file a claim on your policy. Scammers know how to do this, so don’t give them the opportunity.
Besides, the amount of coverage they need depends on the amount of stuff they have. If they are asking about liability insurance. When my tenant asks, I usually recommend that they call their car insurance company and ask to get a renter’s policy for $300,000 public liability and $50,000 property damage. That’s just my recommendation.
If there is a liability claim, then you’ll deal with it, but until then, I wouldn’t give them access to your policy.
I am refinancing the apartment but must have insurance in order to do so. A broker shopped around and found no one that would cover the apartment. Then… another big name insurance co agent said he would. Said the prior HAZMAT did not show up. My current agent told me to be careful and that in time it would and that I would then be dropped by this 2nd co and back to square one. This 2nd co is also telling me Ill get better rates if I transfer my home and all autos over. Is this too good to be true? Is it possible that the tools the 2nd co uses for background checks on properties don’t see the HAZMAT incident? Desperate for coverage in order to push through this refinance. Any advice?
It’s common for big name insurance companies to give you an overall discount if you have multiple policies with them – especially your primary residence.
They know that a customer typically sticks with whichever insurance company has their primary residence. Further, if they drop your 4-plex in a month, they will still have your business through the other policies.
I’m not really sure what to say about the fact that no one wants to insure the 4-plex. If I were you, and I was in the middle of trying to get a refi, I’d take whatever insurance I could get. But I wouldn’t be so quick to move my other policies over until they proved their worthiness by not dropping my 4-plex. I’d probably wait a year or so.
I’m surprised that NO ONE wants the policy. Usually, they will just quote you some very very very high premium, but they will still take it.
Property insurance is regulated by the Dept of Insurance for your state. I suggest checking with them. Just google “YOUR STATE department of insurance”.
But generally speaking, having insurance on the property is usually a mortgage requirement – so that if the house burns down, the mortgage company still gets their money back. Many states allow insurance to be optional for paid-off properties.
As one landlord to another, PLEASE get insurance on this property. Because it’s a rental, you want to make sure you have liability coverage (at a minimum). If the tenant slips down the stairs and breaks their back, you’ll need this insurance to cover the liability lawsuit.
You certainly could have a tenant sign an acknowledgement of no insurance, and a waiver, but that doesn’t mean it will hold up in court. I’ve noticed that Judges don’t seem to like any lease clauses that force a tenant to waive his/her rights.
Good luck with this property. I hope this helps. Please know that I am not a lawyer nor is this legal advice.
I would like to ask about an issue that all properties face at some point and that is appliance repair or replacement.
1- What is a normal time frame for the repair or replacement of say a refrigerator?
2- Can the tenant take the position that any time without full use of an appliance allows for some reimbursement and if so how would one price it?
3- Say a refrigerator can not be repaired and a new one is order but it takes 2 weeks to get delivered. If the reason for it taking 2 weeks is the store and not the action of the property owner isn’t that reasonable?
Those are really great questions.
1. Like most appliances, the life expectancy depends on the quality and use. A Sub-zero will generally last longer than a Kenmore, but if a tenant abuses it, then it’s lifespan might get cut in half. My general rule of thumb for fridges is 8-10 years under normal use.
3. I think think a 2 week delivery time is a little extreme. Home Depot can have a fridge delivered within a day or two. It may not be the exact fridge you want, but you can get it. Personally, I think a week is totally acceptable, but 2 weeks is pushing it. Is there anything else you can do to speed up that delivery? Alternatively, could you provide a rental fridge in the mean time? Rent-a-Center will give you a nice fridge for about $30/week.
I hope that helps. Please keep in mind that I’m not a lawyer nor is this legal advice.
Thanks, Mr. Hall for your insights on this common yet sticky issue regarding an appliance failure.
Do you know of any accepted or reasonable guidelines for reimbursement to a tenant when the repair or delivery time is too long ( you suggested maybe 2 weeks is a stretch). I am assuming you thought about the time to get a repair company to look at the unit and decide if it can be repaired and if not then a new one has to be found, bought, and delivered/installed. All in 2 weeks.
The real key is to keep the tenant updated along the way. They can’t really complain if you are moving as fast as they would. I think 2 weeks is too long for a fridge because it’s a major appliance. But I can understand how it would take 2 weeks if you first try to fix it and then have to order a replacement. But like I said earlier, both Sears and best buy have next day delivery if you are really concerned about it.
Without a fridge, it is difficult to make meals for more than a few days. However a freezer is not as critical (in my opinion). I wouldn’t feel bad about taking 2 weeks if they still had a working fridge but no freezer.
I also “might” give them some compensation if they lost any food due to a freezer failure, but wouldn’t necessarily feel obligated too. That’s what renter’s insurance is for and generally speaking, the landlord is not responsible for the loss of the tenants personal property unless there was negligence.
I’ve seen other landlords give a daily per diem to go out to eat once a day, but that’s a slippery slope, and only used when you could have shortened the wait by taking a different course of action (IMO).
If you really did your best and responded in a timely fashion, and they still have a freezer, then I don’t think you have to be sorry for anything or compensate them at all. Appliances break all the time, and everyone suffers a little for it. If they push harder or threaten to sue you, then you might want to throw them a bone. Or if they’ve been great tenants and you want them to renew, you could always offer to pay for 50% of their damages. A good tenant is worth keeping.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on it. I don’t know what is legally acceptable (not a lawyer) and it would be up to a local judge to decide and would depend on lots of factors.
Umbrella insurance: can it replace an LLC? | 2019-04-21T10:48:09Z | https://www.landlordology.com/6-clauses-in-landlord-insurance-policy/comment-page-1/?utm_source=feedburner |
Invites the Secretary General of the Council of Europe and the Director-General of UNESCO, as appropriate, to transmit this Recommendation to the governments of those States which have been invited to the Diplomatic Conference entrusted with the adoption of the Lisbon Recognition Convention but which have not become parties to that Convention.
1. The present Recommendation is adopted within the framework of the Lisbon Recognition Convention and applies to the Parties of this Convention. The principles and practices described in this Recommendation can, however, also be equally well applied to the recognition of qualifications issued in other countries or under transnational education arrangements, to the recognition of joint degrees and to the recognition of qualifications in countries other than those party to the Lisbon Recognition Convention.
2. The Recommendation codifies established best practice among competent recognition authorities and builds on this practice in suggesting further improvements. The provisions of the Recommendation are in particular directed at recognition cases where a complex assessment is required. It is realised that some cases may be treated in a simpler way.
3. Terms defined in the Lisbon Recognition Convention are used in the same sense in the present Recommendation, and reference is made to the definition of these terms in Section I of the Convention. The provisions pertaining to the competent recognition authorities shall also be applied, mutatis mutandis, to authorities and individuals responsible for the assessment of foreign qualifications and for the provision of information on qualifications and their recognition. Terms that specifically refer to the provision of transnational education are defined in the UNESCO/Council of Europe Code of Good Practice in the Provision of Transnational Education. Terms that specifically refer to joint degrees are defined in the Recommendation on the Recognition of Joint Degrees.
4. Holders of foreign qualifications shall have adequate access, upon request, to an assessment of their qualifications.
5. The provisions referring to the assessment of foreign qualifications shall apply, mutatis mutandis, to the assessment of periods of study.
6. Procedures and criteria for the assessment of foreign qualifications should be transparent, coherent and reliable, and they should periodically be reviewed with a view to increasing transparency, taking account of developments in the education field and eliminating requirements leading to undue complications in the procedure.
7. In the assessment of foreign qualifications concerning higher education, the international and national legal frameworks should be applied in a flexible way with a view to making recognition possible. In cases where existing national laws conflict with the present Recommendation, States are encouraged carefully to consider whether national laws may be amended.
8. Where, after thorough consideration of the case, the competent recognition authority reaches the conclusion that recognition cannot be granted in accordance with the applicant's request, alternative or partial recognition should be considered, where possible.
9. In all cases where the decision is different from the recognition requested by the applicant, including in cases where no form of recognition is possible, the competent recognition authority should inform the applicant of the reasons for the decision reached and his or her possibilities for appealing against it.
10. The assessment criteria contained in this Recommendation have been drawn up with a view to increasing the consistency of the procedures and use of criteria for the assessment of foreign qualifications, thus assuring that similar recognition cases will be considered in reasonably similar ways by all parties to the Convention. It is nevertheless realised that a margin of flexibility in making recognition decisions is essential, and that decisions will to some extent vary according to national systems of education.
(iii) a statement addressed to individual(s), institution(s), potential employer(s) or others.
It is recommended that applicants have access to an assessment relevant to the case.
12. While the aim of assessments should be to assess applicants' foreign qualifications in qualitative terms, it is realised that quantitative criteria will have to be used to a certain extent. Their use should, however, be limited to cases where quantitative criteria are relevant to quality and may supplement qualitative criteria.
13. Where learning outcomes are clearly documented, for example in a the European Commission/Council of Europe/UNESCO Diploma Supplement, or comparable documents, assessment should take these into consideration.
14. The competent recognition authorities should give all applicants an acknowledgement of the receipt of their application.
15. The competent recognition authorities should publish standardised information on the procedures and criteria for the assessment of foreign qualifications concerning higher education. This information should automatically be given to all applicants as well as to persons making preliminary inquiries about the assessment of their foreign qualifications.
16. The time normally required to process recognition applications, counted from such time as all relevant information has been provided by applicants and/or higher education institutions has to be specified to applicants. In the event that the recognition process is delayed, the applicant should be informed of the delay, the reason for it and notified of a date when a decision can be expected. Applications should be processed as promptly as possible, and the time of processing should not exceed four months.
17. Competent recognition authorities should provide advice to individuals enquiring about the possibilities and procedures for submitting formal applications for the recognition or assessment of their foreign qualifications. As appropriate, in the best interests of the individual, advice should also be provided in the course of, as well as after, the formal assessment of the applicants' qualifications, if required.
18. Competent recognition authorities should draw up an inventory of typical recognition cases and/or a comparative overview of other education systems or qualifications in relation to that of their own country as an aid in making recognition decisions consistent. They should consider whether this information could be made available to applicants with the proviso that this information serve only as an indicative guide, and that each application will be assessed on an individual basis.
19. The responsibility for providing information on the qualification for which recognition is sought is shared by applicants, higher education institutions at which the qualifications in question were awarded and the competent recognition authority undertaking the assessment as specified in the Lisbon Recognition Convention, in particular in its Articles III.3 and III.4. Higher education institutions are strongly encouraged to issue a diploma supplement in order to facilitate the assessment of the qualifications concerned.
20. In cases where refugees, persons in a refugee-like situation or others for good reason cannot document the qualifications they claim, competent recognition authorities are encouraged to create and use a “background paper” giving an overview of the qualifications or periods of study claimed with all available documents and supporting evidence.
21. The competent recognition authorities should consider whether it is possible to provide for assessment of foreign qualifications as a public service free of charge. Where this is not feasible, fees should be kept as low as possible and should not be so high as to constitute a barrier to the assessment of foreign qualifications.
22. In deciding the size of any fees charged, due account should be taken of the cost of living and the level of salaries and student support in the country concerned. Special measures aimed at low income groups, refugees and displaced persons and other disadvantaged groups should be considered in order to ensure that no applicant is prevented from seeking recognition of his or her foreign qualifications because of the costs involved.
23. Requirements for the translation of documents should be carefully weighed and clearly specified, especially as concerns the need for authorised translations by sworn translators. It should be considered whether requirements for translation could be limited to key documents, and whether documents in certain foreign languages, to be specified by the competent recognition authorities, could be accepted without translation. The countries concerned are encouraged to revise any current laws preventing the acceptance of documents in non-national languages without translation. The use of the Diploma Supplement (where available) should reduce the need for translation of other key documents.
24. As a rule, titles of foreign qualifications should be provided in the original language, without translation.
(ii) whether the documents in question have in fact been rightfully issued to the applicant.
26. While the need to establish the authenticity of documents as a part of the assessment procedure is therefore very real, this need should nonetheless be balanced against the burdens placed upon applicants. The basic rules of procedure should assume that most applicants are honest, but they should give the competent recognition authorities the opportunity to require stronger evidence of authenticity whenever they suspect that documents may be forged. While certified photocopies of official documents will be sufficient in most cases, the competent recognition authorities should be in a position to require original documents where this is considered necessary for the purpose of detecting or preventing the use of forged documents.
27. States are encouraged to review any national laws requiring overly complicated and costly authentification procedures, such as full legalisation of all documents. Modern communications tools make it easier to verify the authenticity of documents in less cumbersome ways and competent recognition authorities and education institutions of home countries are encouraged to react swiftly and positively to requests for direct information on documents claimed to have been issued by them.
28. In the case of refugees, displaced persons and others who for good reasons, and in spite of their best persistent efforts, are unable to document their claimed qualifications, it should be considered whether alternative ways of recognising these qualifications may be found, for example, by measuring the learning outcomes which could reasonably be expected from the undocumented qualification. Such measures should be adapted to the circumstances of their recognition application and could include ordinary or specially arranged examinations, interviews with staff of higher education institutions and/or the competent recognition authorities and sworn statements before a legally competent authority.
29. In view of the wide diversity of higher education institutions and of the developments in transnational education, the status of a qualification cannot be established without taking into account the status of the institution and/or programme through which the qualification was awarded.
30. The competent recognition authorities should seek to establish whether the higher education institution belongs to the higher education system of a State party to the Lisbon Recognition Convention and/or belonging to the European Region. In the case of qualifications awarded by higher education institutions established through transnational arrangements, the competent recognition authorities should analyze these arrangements on the basis of the principles stipulated in the UNESCO/Council of Europe Code of Good Practice in the Provision of Transnational Education and in the Recommendation on the Recognition of Joint Degrees.
31. Where countries have established a quality assurance system including a system of formal assessment of their higher education institutions and programmes, the competent recognition authorities should take due account of the results of the process when evaluating qualifications from such systems.
32. Recognition of foreign qualifications may be sought for a variety of purposes. The assessment should take due account of the purpose(s) for which recognition is sought, and the recognition statement should make clear the purpose(s) for which the statement is valid.
33. Before undertaking the assessment, the competent recognition authorities should establish which national and international legal texts are relevant to the case, and whether these require any specific decision to be reached or procedure to be followed.
34. The assessment should also take into account past practice in similar recognition cases, in order to ensure consistency in recognition practice. Past practice should be a guide, and any substantial change of practice should be justified.
35. The assessment of a foreign qualification should identify the qualification in the system of the country in which recognition is sought which is most comparable to the foreign qualification, taking into account the purpose for which recognition is sought. In the case of a qualification belonging to a foreign system of education, the assessment should take into account its relative position and function compared to other qualifications in the same system. Where available, the competent recognition authorities should also refer to the National Qualifications Framework, European Qualifications Frameworks and other similar Qualification Frameworks as part of the assessment process.
36. Qualifications of approximately equal level may show differences in terms of content, profile, workload, quality and learning outcomes. In the assessment of foreign qualifications, these differences should be considered in a flexible way, and only substantial differences in view of the purpose for which recognition is sought (e.g academic or de facto professional recognition) should lead to partial recognition or non-recognition of the foreign qualifications.
(d) competent recognition authorities can document that the differences in the quality of the programme and/or institution at which the qualification was awarded in relation to the quality of the programmes and/or institutions granting the similar qualification in terms of which recognition is sought are too substantial to allow the recognition of the foreign qualification as requested by the applicant. If so, the assessment should seek to establish whether alternative, partial and/or conditional recognition may be granted.
38. Where formal rights attach to a certain foreign qualification in the home country, the qualification should be evaluated with a view to giving the holder comparable formal rights in the host country, in so far as these exist and they arise from the learning outcomes certified by the qualification.
(c) In general, older qualifications should be recognised along the same lines as similar qualifications issued in the country in which recognition is sought, and taking into account the purpose for which recognition is sought. It may be considered whether relevant work experience may compensate for dated qualifications.
40. Competent recognition authorities should be encouraged to focus on the learning outcomes, as well as the quality of the programme and to consider its duration as merely one indication of the level of achievement reached at the end of the programme. The assessment process should acknowledge that recognition of prior learning, credit transfer, different forms of access to higher education, joint degrees and life-long learning will all shorten the duration of some academic qualifications without diminishing the learning outcomes and a decision not to grant recognition should not be motivated by duration alone.
41. The assessment of a foreign qualification should focus on the qualification for which recognition is sought. Previous levels of education should be considered only where these levels have a serious bearing on the outcome of the assessment and should, as far as possible, be limited to qualifications of a level immediately preceding the qualification for which recognition is sought.
42. In undertaking the assessment, the competent recognition authorities should apply their know-how and best professional skills and take note of all relevant published information. Where adequate information on the learning outcomes is available, this should take precedence in the assessment over consideration of the education programme which has led to the qualification.
(d) any other advice given to the applicant.
The applicant should be informed of the status of the assessment he/she receives.
44. Where recognition cannot be granted according to an applicant's request, the competent recognition authority should assist the applicant in identifying remedial measures the applicants may undertake in order to obtain recognition at a later stage.
The Preamble builds on the existing legal framework for the recognition of qualifications concerning higher education, as elaborated within the frameworks of the Council of Europe and of UNESCO (as far as the latter applies to the Europe Region). Specific attention is drawn to the Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region, elaborated jointly by both Organisations and adopted on 11 April 1997. This Convention entered into force on 1 February 1999. The Preamble also builds on the most important developments in the international recognition of qualifications over the past years, including in particular the work undertaken by the ENIC/NARIC Working Group on Substantial Differences and the Report to the Bologna Follow-up Group on the Analysis of the 2007 National Actions Plans for Recognition (2008). In the case of qualifications issued through transnational arrangements, the Preamble builds on the provisions of the UNESCO/Council of Europe Code of Good Practice in the Provision of Transnational Education, as well as the Recommendation on the Recognition of Joint Degrees.
The Recommendation clearly underlines the right of applicants to having their foreign qualifications assessed according to transparent, coherent and reliable procedures and criteria.
(iv) full or partial recognition of the foreign qualification at the end of a probationary period, possibly subject to specified conditions.
The grant of partial recognition or recognition subject to the fulfilment of specific conditions does not, however, imply an automatic right to admission to any courses designed to help applicants remedy deficiencies with a view to obtaining recognition.
Only when the competent recognition authorities find it impossible to grant even an alternative form of recognition should an application be rejected outright. It should be kept in mind that in some cases, the absence of recognition may be "fair recognition" on the evidence of the case.
The conclusions reached by the ENIC/NARIC Working Group on Substantial Differences, and expressed in its subsequent publication on the issue, stressed that substantial differences cannot be normatively defined, but rather that competent recognition authorities should strive wherever possible, in the spirit of the Lisbon Recognition Convention, to identify rationale for the granting of recognition, as opposed to searching for reasons that could be construed as substantial differences.
Where the recognition decision is different from the decision requested by the applicant, the competent recognition authority has a special obligation to stating the reasons for its decision and to inform applicants of their possibilities for making an appeal against the decision. This is important both to allow applicants to make an appeal against the decisions and to enable applicants to undertake remedial measures with a view to obtaining recognition at a later stage. This should in no way prevent competent recognition authorities from stating their reasons for granting recognition.
have a direct impact on other citizens, and since there is no guarantee that the qualifications will be improved in the course of the exercise of this activity in the labour market. For the latter form of recognition, the duration and content of practice periods may also be of importance.
In no case should a recognition decision be based on only quantitative criteria, such as length of study, without some attempt being made to assess the quality of applicants' learning outcomes and qualifications. Learning outcomes emphasise the results of learning rather than focusing on inputs such as length of study. The time required for the average learner or typical student to achieve the learning outcomes is decided not only by the volume of knowledge and skills to be taught and learned but also by the context in which the process of learning takes place. To an extent, substantial differences according to quantitative criteria may, however, be taken as an indication element of a difference in quality.
(viii) the conditions and procedures for appealing against a recognition decision, according to national legislation.
In principle, recognition decisions should be open to appeal, and it is the duty of the competent recognition authority to inform applicants of the modalities of such appeals, including its formal aspects, such as deadlines. It is recommended that information on appeals processes be provided already at the receipt of the application. The competent recognition authorities may consider whether to require applicants to sign an acknowledgement confirming that the information has been received, and that the applicant has acquainted himself or herself with the possibilities and procedures of appeal.
The duty of the competent recognition authorities is to specify its normal time limits for processing recognition applications, keeping to these limits and informing applicants in case of delay. It also specifies the "starting point" for counting the time limits; i.e. from the time all relevant information has been received by the competent recognition authority. While all assessment should be undertaken and completed as promptly as possible, it should be pointed out that any assessment taking more than four months could seriously delay applicants' further study, or their gainful employment, or oblige them to undertake additional studies to meet requirements which the assessment may subsequently find that they have already satisfied through their foreign qualifications. Four months should therefore be considered as the maximum time limit for processing recognition applications; uncomplicated cases should, as a rule, be evaluated faster.
The consistency of recognition decisions is an important element in assuring transparent and coherent treatment of applications for the recognition of foreign qualifications. It would be unfortunate if similar recognition cases were handled in substantially different ways and substantially different decisions were reached. An overview of typical recognition cases may help in assuring the required consistency.
The question of whether to make information available to applicants is somewhat complicated. On the one hand, such information may give applicants an indication of what they can realistically expect and help them formulate their application. It may also be of help to applicants in considering whether to make an appeal against a decision. On the other hand, applicants may wrongly understand the typical cases to provide a legal precedent for "automatic" recognition of their own qualifications. It is therefore essential that information on typical recognition cases provided to applicants be accompanied by a clear explanation of the function of this information, underlining that in all cases an individual assessment of the application is undertaken.
(c) the competent recognition authorities are responsible for maintaining a system of information on foreign education systems and qualifications in the area of its competence.
It should be underlined that the competent recognition authorities should provide applicants with a complete overview of the information and documents needed to undertake the assessment. Only in exceptional cases should the competent recognition authority ask for information in addition to what is specified in this overview, and in no case should requests for additional information be used as a means of prolonging or delaying the assessment concerned. Applicants as well as higher education institutions have a duty to provide all information requested within a reasonable deadline specified by the competent recognition authority.
- for the refugee to affirm his or her academic achievements towards other evaluating bodies, like universities and employers, in order to gain access to further studies or appropriate employment.
Applications from persons in a refugee-like situation or others who for good reason cannot document their qualifications should be treated in the same way.
The “background paper” itself is not an assessment, but an authoritative description or reconstruction of the academic achievements linked to the available documents and supporting evidence.
Fees may constitute an impediment to recognition. If the assessment of foreign qualifications cannot be provided free of charge, fees should therefore be kept as low as possible. It is recalled that any fees charged by the competent recognition authorities will be additional to any costs of translating and/or certifying documents. The provisions of the present Recommendation are especially important in view of the increasing tendency for public bodies to charge user fees.
Fee practices vary considerably throughout the European region. It is hardly possible to give precise indication of acceptable fee levels, as local conditions such as the cost of living and the level of salaries and student support must be taken into account. Nevertheless, in some cases the fees charged must be considered as excessive. It is, for example, unreasonable that the assessment of a foreign qualification should cost a substantial part of an average monthly salary in the public sector.
The requirements for complete information should be carefully weighed against the burdens the fulfilment of this need places upon applicants, specifically as concerns requirements for authentication and translation of documents, which tend to be time-consuming and costly. A consideration of requirements for authentification should weigh the necessity of minimising the risk of fraud against the need to reduce the burden on honest applicants. It is suggested that it may, in most cases, be sufficient to require authentification of key documents, such as qualifications, transcripts and birth certificates. It should also be considered whether certified photocopies, rather than originals, may be required. It is important that all requirements be clearly specified to applicants.
In the case of translation requirements, it should also be considered whether these may be limited to key documents. It may, for example, not be necessary for the applicant to provide detailed translation of curricula or academic papers. It should also be considered whether it is strictly necessary to require translations to be carried out by certified translators. Where this requirement is maintained, the competent recognition authorities should provide applicants with lists of accepted translators. It should further be considered whether certain documents could be accepted without translation. This could apply to documents issued in widely spoken languages, in languages which are linguistically close to the language(s) of the host country, languages widely understood in the host country, and/or languages in which staff members of the competent recognition authorities have sufficient competence.
The reason why titles of foreign qualifications should not be translated is that a translation in this case implies an assessment, and this assessment should only be undertaken by competent recognition authorities. The Diploma Supplement as well as credit accumulation and transfer systems have been devised to explain the content of qualifications without translating or evaluating them. Attention is drawn to the fact that transliteration is distinct from translation. Transliteration implies reproducing the sounds rendered by one alphabet or writing system in another alphabet or writing system, such as rendering a word written in the Cyrillic alphabet or in Japanese characters in the Latin alphabet. Transliteration enables readers unfamiliar with the alphabet or writing system of the original language to identify words or expressions from that language and should be undertaken using standard systems of transliteration where they exist.
The problem of falsified documents is becoming increasingly serious. It is therefore necessary to underline the need to verify the authenticity of documents submitted by applicants, as well as the identity of the applicants themselves. At the same time, however, it is necessary to maintain a balance between the need for verification and the need to avoid placing undue burdens on the majority of applicants, who submit authentic documents, and who should be treated according to the basic judicial rule of being "innocent until proven guilty". It is therefore necessary to give competent recognition authorities the possibility to require particularly severe proofs of authenticity, such as the submission of original documents, in cases where forgery is suspected. Another possibility in such cases is to require copies certified by an original signature and/or stamp of the institution having issued the qualifications. Higher education institutions should reply promptly to requests for such certification, which should be issued without fees, if possible, or at any rate at moderate fees.
At the same time, some laws on the verification of documents, such as those which require full legalisation of all documents, date from a time when international communication and verification was difficult. While they may have been justified at the time, today there are better and more efficient ways of verifying the authenticity of documents through direct contact with competent recognition authorities and education institutions from which the documents are claimed to originate. States are therefore encouraged to review their national laws and/or existing practice with a view to simplifying and modernising their rules on the verification of the authenticity of documents.
Qualifications cannot be properly evaluated without taking into account the institution which has issued the qualifications. At the same time, national laws and practices for the assessment and quality assurance of higher education institutions vary. Consequently, the kind of information which may be obtained on higher education institutions also varies. Section VIII of the Lisbon Recognition Convention outlines the kind of information which should be provided by Parties which have established a system of formal assessment of higher education institutions and programmes, as well as the kind of information which should be provided by Parties which have not established such a system. Where countries have established national quality assurance agencies, or cross-national quality assurance bodies, these should be seen as a valuable information resource.
The UNESCO/Council of Europe Code of Good Practice in the Provision of Transnational Education outlines the principles which should be respected by institutions and organizations involved in the provision of educational services through transnational arrangements and they should be applied in the assessment of qualifications. Similarly the principles described in the Recommendation on the Recognition of Joint Degrees should be applied in the assessment of joint degrees.
There is a direct connection between the assessment of foreign qualifications and the purpose(s) for which recognition is sought. For example, a given qualification may be adequate for the purpose of further study, but not for the purpose of employment at a given level. Conversely, a given qualification may be adequate for the purpose of employment, but not for further study, e.g. at doctoral level. This could, for example, be the case if a research component, the writing of an independent thesis or another form of substantial independent work were totally lacking in the foreign qualification and such a component were a requirement for access to doctoral studies in the home country. This implies that a recognition statement should make it clear for which purpose(s) it is valid, and a renewed assessment should be undertaken if recognition is sought for other purpose(s) than those (that) covered by a previous statement.
(h) access to a regulated profession.
(i) bilateral or multilateral agreements between higher education institutions.
Not all such texts have the same legal value; their relative legal status must therefore also be taken into account.
Differences in the content, learning outcomes and profile of qualifications may concern e.g. the degree of specialisation or general education, requirements for independent written work (such as papers, dissertations, thesis), the inclusion of practice periods, laboratory experience or similar requirements (e.g. in medical or natural sciences), or the inclusion of non-academic elements (such as sports or vocational training) in the qualification.
What may be defined as "substantial differences", which may lead to partial recognition or to non-recognition, will to a large extent depend on the purpose(s) for which recognition is sought, for example recognition for the purpose of pursuing further studies or for access to a non-regulated professional activity. In some contexts, a broadly based education may be desirable, whereas, in other contexts, a considerable degree of specialisation may be required.
(i) ability to pursue a specific occupation or profession at operational, management or technology development level.
Generic descriptors for learning outcomes for the first, second and third cycle qualifications can be found in the Overarching Framework for the Qualifications in the European Higher Education Area.
The paragraph underlines that if a competent recognition authority wishes to withhold recognition - entirely or partially - of a foreign qualification, it is the duty of the competent recognition authority to demonstrate that this decision is justified. This is in accordance with the principles of the Lisbon Recognition Convention as well as the European Union Directives on professional recognition. The "relevant qualification of the country in which recognition is sought" may be indicated by the applicant requesting recognition or, if the applicant has given no indication, by the competent recognition authority, taking into account the purpose for which recognition is sought.
Formal rights are not totally distinct from, but also not totally identical to, the purpose for which recognition is sought. Formal rights obtained through a qualification may, for example, be the right to access to higher education (i.e. the right to be considered for participation in higher education), the right to access to doctoral studies, the right to use a given title or the right to apply for professional recognition. The latter will in many, perhaps most, cases also be subject to non-educational requirements, such as practice periods (where these are considered as distinct from, rather than as a part of, the education programme leading to the qualification) or nationality, residence or language requirements.
The assessment of foreign qualifications for professional purposes is covered by this recommendation only in so far as the assessment concerns the knowledge and skills certified by the qualification concerned for the purpose of professional recognition for non-regulated professions and the labour market.
In the spirit of mutual trust, the Recommendation suggests that where a qualification gives its holder certain formal rights in the home country, the assessment should seek to assess whether the qualification can give the holder comparable formal rights in the host country. It is, however, realised that national practices with regard to granting formal rights through educational qualifications may vary. This provision is applicable only to the extent that these formal rights may be obtained through a qualification issued in the home country.
A qualification certifies a certain competence obtained at a certain time. The value of a qualification may diminish over time, or be entirely lost, either because the holder of the qualification has not kept up the competence acquired by undertaking activities relevant to the field, or because significant new knowledge has been gained in the field, and the holder is not adequately acquainted with these developments. To what extent a qualification becomes outdated may depend on the field of knowledge concerned.
The recognition of older qualifications can therefore be problematic, and there is no standard solution to the problem. However, the problem is not limited to foreign qualifications. If older qualifications from the country in which recognition is sought are still recognised, similar foreign qualifications of similar age should also be recognised for the same purpose. If, however, qualifications from the country in which recognition is sought are considered outdated and are no longer recognised, similar foreign qualifications should be considered in the same way.
Length of study is one of the most frequently used assessment criteria, and experience shows that it is also among the criteria most easily accepted by applicants whose qualifications are recognised only partially or not at all. The concept of "length of study" is somewhat problematical because, while generally expressed in terms of years or semesters of study, there may be differences, between countries and between individual institutions, in the number of weeks which make up a semester or a year of study and in the number of working hours in a week of study as well as in the distribution of those of hours in terms of teaching, self study and other learning activities (practice periods, laboratory work, etc.). Substantial differences in this respect could reduce the difference between two qualifications of seemingly different "length", or they could increase the difference between qualifications of seemingly similar "length". "Length of study" should therefore not be considered a uniform concept, and it should not be used as the sole criterion in the assessment of foreign qualifications.
In general terms, however, length of study may be taken to give an indication of the level of a qualification. The wider the difference in the length of study normally required to obtain various qualifications, the more likely it would seem that these qualifications are not of the same level. The question of what constitutes a substantial difference in the length of study must also be seen in relation to the learning outcomes. It should also be underlined that while the length of study may be different this must not necessarily be considered a substantial difference, nor should other factors necessarily be excluded from the assessment.
The paragraph underlines the need to focus any assessment of a foreign qualification on that qualification. Taking account of previous levels of education should be an exception rather than a rule. For example, in the case of someone applying for recognition of a doctoral degree, the applicant's school leaving qualifications should not be a part of the assessment. Previous levels of qualifications should only be considered in exceptional cases, and the assessment should as far as possible be limited to the level immediately preceding the qualification for which recognition is sought.
The paragraph concerns the efforts which competent recognition authorities and other assessment agencies can reasonably be expected to undertake in the assessment of individual cases. They should apply all their professional skills and take account of the relevant literature including information on national qualifications frameworks. In evaluating a foreign qualification, more emphasis should be given to the learning outcomes than to the process itself (i.e. the education programme through which the qualification was earned).
The indications referred to in this paragraph concern additional education applicants may take in order to improve their chances of obtaining recognition at a later stage. The competent recognition authorities should assist these applicants by obtaining as precise indications as possible on measures to be taken or, as appropriate, refer applicants to relevant written information or contact persons at higher education institutions or other relevant bodies.
In the following, a schematic outline will be given of the recommended procedure for the assessment of foreign qualifications or periods of study. This is intended as a summary checklist. In practice, the sequence of the steps outlined may vary, or several steps may be taken simultaneously.
Information to the applicant about procedures and criteria.
Verification of whether all necessary information and documents are supplied.
Verification of whether the applicant's qualification is authentic, and whether the documents submitted have in fact been rightfully issued to the applicant. [In this the competent authority may seek the assistance of the national information centre].
If no: (i.e. the qualification is false): recognition refused.
If yes: proceed to step 4.
Verification of whether the institution and/or programme having issued the qualification is recognized as belonging to a system of higher education. In the case of transnational education, verification of whether the awarding institution and/or programme is recognized in its home system and/or complies with the principles stipulated in the UNESCO/Council of Europe Code of Good Practice in the Provision of Transnational Education.
If no: recognition would normally not be granted.
If yes: proceed to step 5.
(b) international Conventions, Directives, Recommendations, good practice, etc.
(v) information and advice from other ENICs, higher education institutions or other sources.
(a) are the differences in learning outcomes so substantial that the foreign qualification cannot be fully recognised? If so, is it possible to grant alternative or partial recognition?
(b) are the differences in the further activities for which the foreign and the home country qualifications prepare so substantial that full recognition is not possible? If so, is alternative or partial recognition possible?
(c) are the differences in key elements of the programme leading to the qualification so substantial in relation to similar programmes in the host country that full recognition cannot be granted in view of the purpose for which recognition is sought? If so, is alternative or partial recognition possible?
(d) is the quality of the programme or the institution at which the qualification was earned so different from similar programmes or institutions in the host country that full recognition is not possible? If so, is alternative or partial recognition possible?
(iii) a statement to the applicant or to whom it may concern (e.g. current or prospective employers, higher education institutions, etc.).
If positive decision by (i) or (ii): recognition granted, applicant satisfied.
If negative decision: the reason(s) for the decision should be clearly stated and the applicant informed of his or her possibilities for appeal.
1 In this Recommendation, this Convention will be referred to as "the Lisbon Recognition Convention". | 2019-04-21T17:04:06Z | https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/highereducation/recognition/criteria%20and%20procedures_EN.asp |
Beth Marcus has worked as a consultant providing patent strategy, litigation support and other strategic technology related consulting services. Dr. Marcus is an acknowledged expert in the hand-device interface space and has been an expert for several of the major players in the industry in support of prior patents litigations. She has raised equity numerous times and has also done angel investments herself. Several of these ventures have been acquired by public companies.
Dr. Marcus was Founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Technical Officer of EXOS, Inc. Her activities included setting strategic direction for the corporation and managing the R & D and Product development activities. In April 1996, EXOS was sold to Microsoft, Inc. In 2005 Dr. Marcus founded Zeemote Inc., where she developed a wireless handheld remote for mobile gaming and other applications. She also was founding CEO of Playsmrt, Playsmrt allows parents to create a safe, interactive environment in which children 1 to 8 years old can play media, communicate with family members, and learn.
Dr. Marcus has SB and SM degrees in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and a PhD in Biomechanics from the Imperial College, London, where she was a Marshall Scholar. She has more than twenty patents to her name and numerous publications and public speaking engagements. She has served on the faculty of MIT in the department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Marcus has been member of the Board of the MIT Enterprise Forum and the MIT Corporation Visiting Committee in Mechanical Engineering. She is also a current member of the Council for the Arts at MIT. She has also been a Judge for the FIRST Robotics League, teaching children about technology through robotics.
Larry Nelson: Boy, I'll say.
Lucy: ...that have started IT companies. With me Larry Nelson from W3W3.com. Hi Larry.
Larry: Hi, I'm really happy to be here. This is going to be an exciting interview.
Lucy: Well, and these interviews have been very well received at W3W3. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that.
Larry: Well we host a special channel, "Heroes for NC WIT, " and we get a tremendous amount of traffic from, everything from small business owners to C level, high level executives from enterprise size companies and it's very interesting and the thing that we like about it so much it's really helping support a push for more young girls to get into IT.
Lucy: Well, very good. Well, you know this interview is going to be no exception to our great interview series. Today we're talking with Beth Marcus, who is the CEO, the founding CEO of Playsmart, a new venture for her, she's a serial entrepreneur. She's founded a number of companies including Exos which she sold to Microsoft on the middle of nineteen nineties. And she is, I think easily one of the most technical people we've spoken to in this interview series with a history at MIT, and a PhD and patents and very, very impressive technical entrepreneur. Welcome Beth.
Beth Marcus: Thank you. Lovely to be here chatting with you.
Lucy: Well we are really interested first to find out a little bit about Playsmart, your new venture. And we understand it is really geared towards having safe environments for children on the Internet. Can you tell us more about it?
Beth: Sure. It's a complete media solution for kids, ages one to eight. It allows them to be entertained, educated, connected to other family members around the world and allows the parents to control what's happening with the kids' interaction with those environments and make it totally safe. No commercials are passed to the kids. Once they get into the Playsmart system which can run on any PC or netbook they can't get out of it accidentally or otherwise and they can't get to any content or interaction that their parents don't pre-approve.
Larry: Boy I'll say. I've got seven grandchildren, I'm happy to hear that.
Beth: In fact, one of the features that some of our investors are interested in is Skyping to grandchildren that you can do through Playsmart. All you do is click on a picture of your grandparent and it makes the call for you.
Lucy: Oh, that is really cool, you know. My mother's on Skype too and you know she, I mean I actually think the other end could use some help with that, you know?
Lucy: I mean she loves Skype.
Beth: My daughter is how I got involved in this. I do a lot of advising of other start up CEO's and I thought I was going to be taking a break from being a CEO and just help a bunch of other people, and an entrepreneur came to me and said, you know, "Let me show you what I've got, " and it was for kids and I have a five year old. So I said, "Susie, let's play with this thing, " and she said, "Oh, this is so cool." You know and her interaction with it is what convinced me to get involved with the company and become a CEO.
Lucy: You know, we've had a couple of people we've interviewed whose children have helped them form the idea for their next venture or at least encouraged them to get involved. That's really interesting. So Beth give our listeners a sense of how you first got into technology. I mean you have a very extensive technical background as I mentioned before. What first interested you in technology?
Beth: A million years ago when I was in school I liked science and math and I played around with computers. And I'm probably going to give away my age, but wrote programs in Basic that ran on paper tape into a terminal.
Lucy: I did that too. So don't feel bad.
Beth: And then, I ended up going to MIT because they had a lot of interesting science and math. And what got me into more core technology was freshman year at MIT they have a seminar series that you do, typically in January and I took aluminum bicycle frame building because I loved bikes and I thought that would be cool. I had never seen a machine shop, I didn't know what welding was. I had never done any of the stuff and through that seminar I got fascinated by making stuff and ended up being in mechanical engineering.
Beth: Ten years, which is a lot of fun.
Lucy: Yeah, you're love of making things. Larry and I both judge as well with First, so it's a great program. So what technologies do you look out there today across the technical space? What technologies do you find really cool and interesting today?
Beth: Of course the last company I was in was the mobile space so I think the evolution of mobile devices into computers that you carry around with you is very interesting. I mean, when I started Zeemote in 2005, when I said, "These are the computers you're going to carry with you 24/7" the potential investors looked at me like I was from Mars.
Beth: And now people do.
Lucy: They certainly do and in fact the number of people are looking at mobile devices as a real tool to help third world developing countries as well.
Beth: Well, they don't have land lines.
Beth: And even though we have them, a lot of people don't use them anymore.
Larry: Yeah, let me kind of switch gears here for a second. Two part related questions. One is, why are you an entrepreneur? And what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick?
Beth: Well, I think it's a challenge. The first company I started, I remember we had built some high end controllers, exoskeleton controllers for robots in space for NASA and other people. And I got this idea that we ought to be able to take this technology and make it into a consumer product. And I was giving a talk at a Virtual Reality Conference and somebody from a not to be named defunct computer company said, "Well if you can't spend two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on a reality engine you shouldn't be doing VR." And I said, "We're going to do it on PC's and we're going to make a hundred dollar joystick and everyone's going to use them but they're not going to know that it's VR." And that sort of a challenge where somebody says, "Oh you can't do that." [laughter] Or even sometimes why would somebody want that. And then you put it in front of them and they go, "Oh wow. That makes my life easier"or "That makes my health better." You know. That exciting to me.
Beth: That's why I advise all the companies that I get involved with to get those prototypes built as quickly as possible with as little money as possible and get it into the hands of the end users. Because there's where you're going to find out are you smoking something and convincing yourself there's a market or does somebody really care about this.
Beth: And you learn so much that most entrepreneurs will tell you that the thing that they thought they were starting their company on is not the one they made money on. And it's the ones who iterate and spend time with the consumer whether they're a consumer or a corporate customer or whatever kind of customer, the ones that spend the time and listen to the customer are the ones that figure it out and succeed.
Lucy: That is a really important point and I think, looking forward, we may have to ask you again a month from now but you know we do a Toolbox series as well and I think that it would be great to hear your advice for entrepreneurs because that advice around prototyping is excellent.
Beth: I was going to be writing a book this year.
Lucy: [laughs] Now you are running a company.
Beth: Company...My God. I spent some time on it this summer capturing things like that and interviewing other entrepreneurs and then I said, "OK, I got to put this aside until I do this center and I'll come back again."
Lucy: I think it will be fabulous because of your technical background. I'm sure you'd have some really valuable insights there.
Beth: And I am a published poet. So... Right in the way that is intelligible to the rest of the world.
Larry: So now there is a third interview.
Lucy: Yeah. You are really digging yourself into a hole. So, along the lines of entrepreneurship, we found that many entrepreneurs can point to a particular person or a group of people who influence them or help them along their way as an entrepreneur. Who are your role models and how do they influence you? Beth: I think the first person who got me the sort of excitement at making stuff work was this professor in MIT Woody Flowers who was involved in the First Robotics Company.
Lucy: Absolutely, I have seen him. I have never met him.
Beth: But he was an early mentor of mine and I became a judge for this mechanical engineering design contest while I was still a student. And then that's sort of got me excited about the excitement of innovating and trying new things and testing your ideas. And then when I went to start my first company, I joined the MIT enterprise forum and there were a number of people there who I had no idea even what a business plan was. And I was going to write one to raise money. So I listened to other people talk about their businesses and I got some of those people to help me write my first business plan. And then later on, a man named Don Spero started a company called Fusion Systems down in the DC area that successfully flowed against the Japanese and the patent area. Kind of taught me about intellectual property and the value of it and also mentored me generally because of his long experience in running companies. And then when I was running Exos and I realized that I was out of my debts from a management point of view. I hired a guy named [indecipherable 10:03] to come in and run my company. And he became a mentor of mine and he is still to this day a friend. So all along the way, I think the lesson for an entrepreneur is to talk to anybody you can everywhere about what you are doing and try and connect with them because you never know when you are going to stand next to the person who is going to get you a deal like I did when I was in a party in MIT. And I stand next to Bob Metcalf who introduced me to the Logitech guys that told me what product to build for an Exos to get an exit. Or whether I am going to hire somebody who turns out to be my mentor and teach me about business that leaves the exit in the company.
Larry: Wow. Beth, let me ask this question. First of all, you just mentioned about you are going to write a book this year but now you are running a company instead. It took me three years to write a book that I just had published called Mastering Change. So I just want to let you know that you can do that too.
Beth: Yeah but I have a five year old and a puppy.
Beth: So I said my daughter is most important, my business is second most important and the rest will just have to wait.
Larry: There you go. I agree with that.
Beth: Anything about relationship in any of that. So?
Larry: I have been married for 40 years. What are you going to do?
Beth: Adolescence. I am not married so... If any of your listeners want to apply for the job, I take resumes.
Larry: Yeah. Speaking of all that stuff, what is the toughest thing that you ever had to do in your career?
Beth: I think the first time I had to fire people was probably the worst moment because at Exos we started out as a medical company and we grew to a million and a half in revenues selling orthopedic rehab devices using our technology. And we realized we probably sold all the units that whatever be sold because we were teaching people how to turn on the computer not have a measure motions and force in patients. They didn't care about that. They use a plastic protractor and so we figured that out and we had to restart the company, went from 32 people down to about eight in one day.
Beth: And I believe that I had helped outplace...anybody who wanted to be outplaced in great jobs elsewhere, and I am friends with some of the people who left the company at that point for years. And some of my hired again into other companies. I feel good about it. I remember at the end I closed my door and I just cried because these were my friends.
Lucy: We hear that a lot from entrepreneurs. I think that is a very tough thing to...not just let people go but it is theirs loss and also downsizing the company and restarting it. That is all tough stuff.
Beth: Yeah. Perhaps to tell you that I learned in that experience that if I had done it sooner, everybody would have been happier. Both the people who did not fit the business we are getting into and the investors and everybody would have done better. So, my advice to entrepreneurs is don't be afraid to hire but don't be afraid to fire the person who is the wrong person for the job. You are not doing them or you any favors by keeping them around if they are not working.
Lucy: It is the truth. We have learned that lesson unfortunately in the Telecom downsizing. Well that's great advice and it gets us to our next question about advice for young people about entrepreneurship and you have given us some perils already. And I wander around online and I found some presentation you made about naming your company. What I found was pretty interesting.
Beth: That is a new one. [laughs] I give that to an MIT class because I am still on the faculty there. So occasionally faculty members will call me up and ask me to come, give lecture to their class and the senior mechanical engineering design class didn't have a clue how to name their product. So I came and I gave a lecture.
Lucy: That's good. I can't wait for your book. And so, what kind of advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs that you haven't already told us?
Beth: I think the most important thing that I talk to any entrepreneur that I coached from day one is why are you doing this? What are your personal goals? What are your financial goals? How does that fit with your family? And if you evaluate that first and write it down and keep it in front of you and then say, is what I am doing today serving my goals, the company's goals and my family's goals? And when those things start to not match, that is when you get into trouble. And if you don't bother to figure it out first, then you don't have a road map because I made this mistake. I ran a company called Glow Dog which was a failure. It was a failure because we were just about break even and about a million plus in revenue and our Christmas shipments were on the water on 911. We had just grown to the size where we need to manufacture in China instead of the United States in order to compete and they were in the container on the ocean and they could not get in the United States so there was no Christmas. And we had to sell the assets and fold the company because I didn't feel like there was going to be a return on investment if I brought in more capital. But what I didn't think about when I started that company was what was the right size for this business and did that kind of a business match what I personally wanted to do? It was just interesting. People loved the product. They were reflective coating for people and pets. And you walking your dog at night, you don't get run over, right? Well, it turned out our customers were fashion stores in Tokyo who liked the logo I designed. I didn't even know it was reflective and it was a 33% margin business in an industry that is not very protectable and that I had no expertise in. What was I doing, doing this business? So, I raised a bunch of money to make a big play, before I realized that this really was a brand company, not a technology company. I raised the right amount of money for a technology company to get launched, but it turned out technology didn't matter, and to make a brand like Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren, you need tens of millions of dollars.
Beth: ... and you need expertise, which I didn't have. So, if I had understood my own personal goals and what kind of a work environment I wanted, and what the end game looked like at the beginning, I probably wouldn't have made those mistakes. Because Glow Dog could have been a very profitable, between $2 and $10 million dollar clothing company and pet product company, if that was its goal. It wouldn't have raised as much money. It wouldn't have spent as much money, and it might still be around today.
Beth: I thought I was going to be an academic.
Lucy: Well, you're that too, so there you go.
Beth: I actually have on one occasion taken money from MIT to teach a class, and I realized that it was not for me. Because along with taking the money, comes a lot of faculty meetings and policies and procedures, and entrepreneurs don't really love those things. What's good about a company that's under 25 people is you don't need a huge amount of that stuff to be successful.
Beth: Some people are really good at structure and organization and detail, and that's not me.
Larry: Not you, no. Well, then, what were the characteristics that made you really become a successful entrepreneur? We want to reach out this way, because we have many young people and employers and parents, who want to know what secrets they should look at when it comes to entrepreneurism.
Beth: You know, "You can't do that! You can't do that!" "Sure I can! Sure I can!" You know there is a limit, you beat your head against the wall a few times and you walk away, but hammering on and being tenacious at getting your objective. If it doesn't happen the way you think, you think of a second way. If it doesn't happen that way, you think of a third way. Maybe you don't end up accomplishing what you set out to do, but in the course of trying to accomplish it, you figure out where the real value is. So, it's a combination of being tenacious, and also being aware and being willing to change, and willing to take advantage of what God, the world, whatever, has presented to you in terms of opportunity. So, if you're trying to build widget A, and nobody wants widget A, but in order to make widget A, you had to make a fixture. And it turns out loads of people want that fixture, well go sell a fixture. Don't keep trying to sell a widget that nobody wants.
Lucy: Exactly. I like that, 'unbridled optimism on the verge of stupidity.' I am just going to have to remember that one.
Larry: I was looking in a mirror when you said that, yes.
Beth: Also, you have to be able to learn from everybody around you.
Lucy: That's totally right. Beth: Willing to talk about what you do in a pleasant way, not obnoxious, but to anyone who will listen. Because you never know where you're going to learn something, or who's going to have, "Gee. I know the guy who started that company that you want to have buy your company" or "Gee. I had a company like that, and we made this mistake" and so you can learn to avoid that mistake.
Beth: Or somebody you want to hire. And don't be afraid to hire people who know a lot more than you do.
Beth: It's a matter of risk right. If you're an investor, and I've done some investing as well, you look at what's the total risk package for this business. And anything, absolutely anything you can do to reduce the risk is a good thing. And so the more experience you have that's relative to the business you're in, even if you don't know it yourself or understand it. It's going to reduce that risk.
Lucy: Well and that's great advice I think. It's all pointing towards another interview I think Larry.
Beth: You could have me talking for days. Lucy: I know. No, no ...I've got all kinds of plans for you know now. So you've already mentioned to us that you are a published poet and we know you're a judge for many years with First Robotics. What else are you doing to bring balance into your professional and personal lives?
Beth: Well, I mean it's a struggle. I mean I'm a single mom, so there is no such thing as balance in my life. But, I do things like, I've got a calendar I just printed out this morning because I wasn't sticking to my exercise routine. And just like my daughter gets stars for reading books and she turns it in at school every month. I'm going to have her help me put stars on my calendar for my exercise.
Beth: And I have family dinner night, where I cut off work early usually on Fridays, so that I can cook a meal. And we can sit down and eat together because it doesn't happen that often. And when I was growing up that was something that was somewhat absent and I wanted my daughter to have that, and I wanted me to have that too. Because, there is this idea that, when I was in the beginning of my entrepreneurial career, I obsessed about the business 24/7 and drove myself nuts. You know, I hardly slept, and that's not the best way to be productive. As I've gotten older, I work smarter. And so I do everything that I can do to make every minute of my time incredibly effective. If I'm having a bad day and I'm not productive. I'm not going to hammer my head against the computer or the telephone, which is where most of my work happens. I'll go and do something nice for myself for an hour. You know, call a friend, go have a coffee, or do an errand I need for my home. Go do some food shopping and come back. And then I'm refreshed and renewed. I listen to books on tape at night as I'm falling asleep so that I can't think about business at night. I love novels and I love fiction. So that for me blocks out my ability to think business.
Lucy: That's a great idea.
Larry: Yeah, it really is, wow. You know Beth, you have achieved so much in so many different ways. Going back to your first company that you ended up selling to Microsoft and all the other Wins and that challenges along the way. You've achieved a lot what's up for you next?
Beth: I would like to have a huge exit in Playsmart. So if anybody is listening who wants to buy a company like that, that's the goal. To build this to where there is enormous excitement about the product and many, many families are using it. And then get a bigger company with huge resources behind it. And then I'll be happy to step back, finish my book and invest and advise in others.
Lucy: Wow, and we would love to see you write that book.
Lucy: That would be I mean great, great advice here and we thank you for taking time to talk to us. I want to remind those who are listening to this interview that they can find it at W3W3.com.
Larry: That's right and we'll have it up also on our blog as well as our podcast directory so you can download it 24/7.
Beth: And if there are there any moms of kids interested in Playsmart. That's at Playsmart send me an email, I'll make sure you find out about a product when it's out this summer.
Lucy: Absolutely, and we'll have that as well in the bio up on the site. So everybody can find it when they come to download the podcast. Very good, well thank you very much. | 2019-04-21T09:38:26Z | https://www.ncwit.org/audio/interview-beth-marcus |
The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) is a comprehensive legislative scheme by which the United States has waived its sovereign immunity to allow civil suits for actions arising out of negligent acts of agents of the United States. The United States cannot be sued in a tort action unless it is clear that Congress has waived the government’s sovereign immunity and authorized suit under the FTCA. Dalehite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15, 30-31 (1953). Therefore, a litigant wishing to sue the United States in tort must do so under the FTCA alone.
Only the United States may be sued under the FTCA. Other parties whom the claimant wishes to bring into the action may be sued as pendent parties under 28 U.S.C. § 1367, if the claims are related to the primary suit against the United States.
The provisions of the FTCA are found in Title 28 of the United States Code. 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b), § 1402(b), § 2401(b), and §§ 2671-2680. Except for maritime torts, the FTCA, as amended, sets forth the terms and limitations on tort suits against the United States.
This presentation is not intended to be a complete statement of the law relating to the FTCA nor is it intended to be a guide to trying an aviation case against the United States. Rather, this presentation is an elementary statement of the important procedural and substantive provisions of the FTCA, with the emphasis on avoiding traps for the unwary.
Before an action may be filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, an administrative claim must be presented to the federal agency employing the person whose act or omission caused the injury. Presentation of an administrative claim to the appropriate agency is a jurisdictional prerequisite to suit. McNeil v. United States, 508 U.S. 106, 113 S.Ct. 1980 (1993); Meridian Intern. Logistics, Inc. v. United States, 939 F.2d 740 (9th Cir. 1991). 28 U.S.C. § 2675. The claim must include a sum certain amount of damages sought and must include sufficient information to allow the agency to investigate the merits of the claim. 28 C.F.R., Part 14.
Normally, an administrative claim should be presented on a government form called the Standard Form 95 (SF 95). Filling out the form according to the instructions on the form should assure that all necessary information is provided. The staff attorneys for the applicable agencies or the United States Attorney’s Office will provide SF 95’s for the presentation of administrative claims.
After an administrative claim is presented to the appropriate agency, the agency has six months to either admit or deny the claim. A complaint cannot be filed until the administrative claim has been denied or until six months has passed without the agency acting on the administrative claim. (Filing early is a wasted effort since the court will dismiss for lack of jurisdiction and will not retain jurisdiction over the case, even if the six-month waiting period has expired in the interim.) McNeil v. United States, supra; Jerves v. United States, 966 F.2d 517 (9th Cir. 1992). Failure to act on an administrative claim within six months of presentment can, at the option of the claimant, be treated as a denial of the administrative claim after the six months has passed. 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a). A claimant may also choose not to file suit after six months has passed. Unless the administrative claim is denied, the six-month statute of limitations does not begin to run and a claimant has an indefinite time within which to file suit. 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a); Douglas v. United States, 658 F.2d 445, 449-450 (6th Cir. 1981).
An action may not be brought for damages greater than the amount of the claim presented to the federal agency. An exception is made when the increased amount is based on newly discovered evidence that was not reasonably discoverable at the time the claim was presented or when there are intervening facts relating to the amount of the claim. 28 U.S.C. § 2675 (b); Allgeier v. United States, 909 F.2d 869 (6th Cir. 1990); Low v. United States, 795 F.2d 466 (5th Cir. 1986); O’Rourke v. Eastern Airlines, 730 F.2d 842 (2d Cir. 1984); Kielwein v. United States, 540 F.2d 676 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 979 (1976).
Administrative claims are not required before filing counterclaims and cross-claims under Rule 13 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure nor when filing third-party actions under Rule 14 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a). Third-party claims must be true third-party claims. Spawr v. United States, 796 F.2d 279 (9th Cir. 1986); West v. United States, 592 F.2d 487 (8th Cir. 1979) (fourth-party claim). Suit must be pending in federal court in order for this provision to be applicable. See, A.L. T. Corp. v. Small Business Admin., 801 F.2d 1451,1454-62 (5th Cir. 1986).
Although the administrative claim requirement is inapplicable to true third-party actions, 28 U.S.C. § 2675, the administrative claim requirement applies with full force to free-standing suits seeking indemnity or contribution. Keene Corp. v. United States, 700 F.2d 836 (2nd Cir. 1983); Johns-Manville Sales Corp. v. United States, 690 F.2d 7211 (9th Cir. 1982).
The requirement that a claimant must present an administrative claim and receive a denial or wait for six months to pass before filing suit only applies when suit is filed against the United States. The administrative claim requirements of 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a) and the time limitations of 28 U.S.C. § 2401 (b) do not apply if a suit is commenced directly against a government employee for actions taken while in the scope of his (or her) office or employment. The Westfall legislation, passed in 1988, amended 28 U.S.C. § 2679 to allow for the substitution of the United States as a defendant in place of an individual employee sued for actions within the scope of his (or her) employment. Once the United States is substituted for the individual employee, if the suit is dismissed for failure to file an administrative claim, the claimant will have 60 days after dismissal of the action to present an administrative claim. Thereafter, the claim will be considered timely if it had been presented on the date the underlying civil action was commenced. 28 U.S.C. § 2679(d)(5).
Generally, a hyper-technical interpretation of the administrative claim requirements is not required, but the reported decisions have consistently recognized that the government agency is entitled to notice of the negligent act giving rise to the claim and to a sum certain statement of damages alleged. See, Wardsworth v. United States, 721 F.2d 503 (5th Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 818 (1984). But see, Adams v. United States, 615 F.2d 284 (5th Cir.), clarified, 622 F.2d 197 (1980) (notice of claim sufficient to permit an agency to investigate it along with a sum certain suffices to comply with the administrative claim presentation requirement); Tidd v. United States, 786 F .2d 1565 (11 th Cir. 1986) (if a “claim” does not supply sufficient information to permit a reasonable investigation, it is not adequate to meet jurisdictional requirements); Bembenesta v. United States, 866 F.2d 493 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (prolix submission held to give insufficient notice to amount to presentment of medical malpractice claim). Not surprisingly, the Ninth Circuit has gone farther than the other circuits in permitting vague allegations to cover a broad variety of claims. See, Avila v. Immigration & Naturalization Service, 731 F.2d 616 (9th Cir. 1984); Broudy v. United States, 722 F.2d 566 (9th Cir. 1983).
If a derivative claim is intended to be presented, a separate, signed claim must be received. Manko v. United States, 830 F.2d 831 (8th Cir. 1987); Rucker v. United States Department of Labor, 798 F.2d 891 (6th Cir. 1986). Similarly, reference in a claim to injuries suffered by other persons does not suffice to amount to a claim on behalf of any person other than the signatory. Montoya v. United States, 841 F.2d 102 (5th Cir. 1988).
By its terms, the FTCA grants jurisdiction for actions on monetary claims for injury, property loss or death “caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the Government.” 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b). This language, broad as it is, is limited to negligence actions and does not grant jurisdiction for suits seeking to hold the United States liable on strict or absolute liability theories. Laird v. Nelms, 406 U.S. 797 (1972); Borquez v. United States, 773 F.2d 1050 (9th Cir. 1985). Nor may the United States be held liable unless the cause of action is predicated on the negligence of an employee of the government, rather than a contractor or other person who receives funds and guidance from the United States but over whom the United States does not exercise physical, day-to-day control. United States v. Orleans, 425 U.S. 807 (1976); Logue v. United States, 412 U.S. 521 (1973).
Even if government property is utilized, the United States is not liable for acts or omissions of its contractors. Borquez v. United States, 773 F.2d 1050 (9th Cir. 1985); Watson v. Marsh, 689 F.2d 604 (5th Cir. 1982). Moreover, retention of contractual rights to inspect and control contractor activities does not warrant a different conclusion. Brooks v. AR&S Enterprises, 622 F.2d 8 (1 st Cir. 1980). See also, Gober v. United States, 778 F.2d 1552 (11th Cir. 1986) (rejecting failure to warn theory of liability). See also, Letnes v. United States, 820 F.2d 1517 (9th Cir. 1987) (contrasting “contractor” with “employee”) and Brandes v. United States, 783 F .2d 895 (9th Cir. 1986) (defining “employee”); Leone v. United States, 910 F.2d 46, 49-50 (2nd Cir. 1990); cert. denied, 111 S.Ct. 1103 (1991).
The FTCA applies only to create liability for acts or omissions of an employee of the government “while acting within the scope of his office or employment.” The United States may be held liable “under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred.” 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b). While the United States may not be visited with novel or unprecedented forms of liability, so long as neutral principles of tort law would impose liability upon a private individual undertaking the same activity, the United States may be held liable for its otherwise actionable negligence, even if the activity for which the United States is sued is not one commonly undertaken by a private individual. Indian Towing Co. v. United States, 350 U.S. 61 (1955); Thomas v. Calavar Corp., 679 F.2d 416 (5th Cir. 1982); Pendley v. United States, 856 F.2d 699 (4th Cir. 1988). However, agency regulations do not create a gratuitous undertaking when the regulations are written for the purpose of protecting agency interests and disclaim an intention to assist others. Moody v. United States, 774 F.2d 150 (6th Cir. 1985), cert. denied, 107 S.Ct. 65 (1986).
The duty of the United States in a tort action is defined in accordance with the law of the state where the negligence occurred. Richards v. United States, 369 U.S. 1 (1962) (negligence occurred in Oklahoma, aircraft crashed in Missouri). Neither federal statutes nor the Constitution create a cause of action under the FTCA. Thus, plaintiffs attempting to assert constitutionally based claims do not state a claim within the jurisdiction of the court under the FTCA unless they can point to an actionable tort duty recognized under the law of the state where the act or omission occurred. Jaffee v. United States, 592 F.2d 712 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 441 U.S. 961 (1979); Lombard v. United States, 690 F.2d 215 (D.C. Cir. 1982), cert., denied, 462 U.S. 1118 (1983); Clemente v. United States, 766 F.2d 1358, 1363 (9th Cir. 1985); Pereira v. United States Postal Service, 964 F.2d 873, 876 (9th Cir. 1992).
The FTCA covers acts or omissions of employees of the Executive departments, Legislative Branch employees for non-legislative acts of the Congress, McNamara v. United States, 199 F.Supp. 879 (D.D.C. 1961), and Judicial Branch officers for non-judicial acts. United States v. Le Patourel, 571 F.2d 405 (8th Cir. 1978); 28 U.S.C. § 2671.
Employees of non-appropriated fund activities, such as armed forces flying clubs (aero clubs) and officers’ clubs, have been held to have been employees of the government and, therefore, covered by the provisions of the FTCA. Walls v. United States, 832 F.2d 93, 94 n.2 (7th Cir. 1987); Woodside v. United States, 606 F .2d 134, 136 (6th Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 904 (1980); United States v. Holcombe, 277 F.2d 143 (4th Cir. 1960). As previously mentioned, contractors are not within the definition of federal employee. 28 U.S.C. § 2671.
The provisions of the FTCA are exclusive. Even special “sue and be sued” jurisdiction enacted to cover specific agency activities does not permit suits sounding in tort (28 U.S.C. § 2679(a)). If a tort suit does not lie under the FTCA, the action is barred altogether. F.D.I.C. v. Meyer, _ U.S. _, 114 S.Ct. 996 (1994); Colonial Bank & Trust Co. v. American Bankshares Corp., 439 F.Supp. 797, 803 (E.D. Wisc. 1977); Safeway Portland Employees’ Federal Credit Union v. FDIC, 506 F.2d 1213 (9th Cir. 1974). See also, FDIC v. Shinnick, 635 F.Supp. 983 (D. Minn. 1986) (FTCA applied to counterclaim).
The FTCA includes specific, enumerated exceptions in 28 U.S.C. § 2680. If an exception applies, the United States may not be sued and litigation based upon an exempt claim is at an end. Griffin v. United States, 500 F.2d 1059 (3d Cir. 1974); Smith v. United States, _U.S._, 113 S.Ct. 1178, 1182 (1993); Kosak v. United States, 465 U.S. 848,104 S.Ct. 1519 (1984); United States v. Orleans, 425 U.S. 807, 813, 96 S.Ct. 1971,1975 (1976); Dalehite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15, 31, 73 S.Ct. 956, 965 (1953).
Among the exceptions to the FTCA most frequently applied are the “discretionary function” exception, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a), and the exceptions for several specific kinds of torts, including intentional torts such as libel, slander, misrepresentation, deceit, and interference with contract rights. 28 U.S.C. § 2680(h).
The discretionary function exception precludes suit “based upon an act or omission of an employee of the Government, exercising due care in the execution of a statute or regulation” or “based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty.” This exception has probably been grist for the Judicial mill in more reported decisions than any other exception, especially since the VarigUnited States v. SA Empresa Viacao Aerea Rio Grandense (Varig Airlines), 467 U.S. 797 (1984) decision in 1984. It bars suits against the United States based on the discretionary actions of federal employees. The discretionary function exception is grounded in the constitutional principal of separation of powers. Tiffany v. United States, 931 F.2d 271, 276-279 (4th Cir. 1991); Canadian Transport Co. v. United States, 663 F.2d 1081 (D.C. Cir. 1980). It applies without regard to the kind of employee or official charged with the breach of duty, so long as the employee or official is performing, or failing to perform, a discretionary function. Moreover, the exception applies despite allegations of abuse of discretion, by the terms of the exception itself. Dalehite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15 (1953).
The Supreme Court reaffirmed the vitality of the discretionary function exception in Varig, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the discretionary function exception barred an FTCA suit for negligent certification of an aircraft.
In Berkovitz v. United States, 486 U.S. 531,108 S.Ct. 1959 (1988), the Supreme Court refined the Varig test’s focus on “the nature of the conduct” and the Dalehite focus on policy. The Berkovitz Court outlined a two-prong test: (1) whether the challenged conduct involved an element of judgment or choice and (2) whether the decision involved was the kind the discretionary function exception was designed to shield.
The first prong of the test will be satisfied if the agency decisions are “grounded in social, economic and political policy …. ” 108 S.Ct. at 1959, quoting Varig, 467 U.S. at 814. Once it is established that the decision is of the kind that brings in the discretionary function exception, the second prong will only be satisfied “if the action challenged in the case involves the permissible exercise of policy judgment.” 108 S.Ct. at 1959. The “permissible exercise of policy judgment” is likely to include any action or decision based on “considerations of public policy.” 108 S.Ct. at 1959.
In Boyle v. United Technologies Corp., 487 U.S. 500, 108 S.Ct. 2510 (1988), the Supreme Court reaffirmed its earlier holdings in both Dalehite and Varig Airlines concerning the broad scope of the discretionary function exception. Boyle, at 517, expansively construed the discretionary function exception to bar a tort suit against a government contractor (Sikorsky Division of United Technologies) for negligent design of a helicopter escape hatch. The court held “selection of the appropriate design for military equipment to be used by our Armed Forces is assuredly a discretionary function since [i]t often involves … judgment as to the balancing of many technical, military, and even social considerations, including specifically the trade-off between greater safety and greater combat effectiveness.” Boyle v. United Technologies Corp., 487 U.S. at 511. Boyle illustrates the broad range of policy considerations which may be used to justify the application of the discretionary function exception.
In Boyle, as in Berkovitz, the Court pointed out that if an agency fails “to act in accord with a specific mandatory directive, the discretionary function exception does not apply.” Berkovitz, 108 S.Ct. at 1963. The necessary corollary to this statement is that if there is no federal statute, agency regulation, or policy directive which imposes mandatory duties upon the federal agency or employee, then the agency or employee will have to exercise discretion, and the discretionary function exception may (and probably will) preclude jurisdiction under the FTCA.
Suits arising from all kinds of misrepresentations are barred, whether grounded on intentional or negligent misrepresentations. This exception probably was enacted in recognition, at least in part, that disputes over what was said, or not said, by a government official are legion. In the circumstances, it is considered better to protect the public fisc than to subject the government to liability for representations allegedly made by employees, but not amounting to contracts on behalf of the government. United States v. Neustadt, 366 U.S. 696 (1961).
The Supreme Court has permitted pleadings seeking to evade the misrepresentation exception included in 28 U.S.C. § 2680(h) to stand where the pleadings allege an independent tort. Block v. Neal, 460 U.S. 289 (1983). Cf., Baroni v. United States, 662 F.2d 287 (5th Cir. 1981), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1036 (1983); Krejci v. U.S. Army Materiel Development Readiness Command, 733 F.2d 1278 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 918 (1984). Block does not countenance an unlimited range of artful pleading. Where a misrepresentation is critical to the claim, it is barred. See, e.g., Carolinas Cotton Growers Assn. v. United States, 785 F.2d 1195 (4th Cir. 1986); Chen v. United States, 674 F.Supp. 1078 (S.D.N.Y. 1987), affirmed without reaching this issue, 854 F.2d 622 (2d Cir. 1988). Despite the exclusion of libel, slander, misrepresentation, and deceit from the provisions of the FTCA, some courts have found that certain claims for invasion of privacy are not subsumed within the scope of these exemptions. See, e.g. Quinones v. United States, 492 F.2d 1269 (3d Cir. 1974); O’Donnell v. United States, 891 F.2d 1079 (3rd Cir. 1989) (holding that Privacy Act remedy was not exclusive); Black v. Sheraton Corp. of America, 564 F.2d 531 (D.C. Cir. 1977). For example, in Birnbaum v. United States, 588 F.2d 319 (2d Cir. 1978), a claim that protected rights were invaded by a mail-opening program was held not actionable under the FTCA to the extent that it was based on a constitutional theory, but viable as to the extent that it was grounded upon state tort principles.
A number of other exceptions to the FTCA are included in Section 2680, including exceptions for matters arising out of the assessment or collection of any tax or customs duty or the detention of goods or merchandise (2680(c)), — construed broadly in Kosak v. United States, 465 U.S. 848 (1984) — admiralty claims (2680(d)), claims for damages caused by the fiscal operations of the Treasury or by regulation of the monetary system, any claim arising out of combatant activities of the military or naval forces during time of war (2680(j)), any claim arising in a foreign country (2680(k)), and, among other matters, any claim arising from the activities of a federal land or cooperative bank (2680(n)).
Although not barred by a legislative exception to the FTCA, suits by members of the military or naval service arising out of acts incident to service are barred, whether the suits be brought directly by the injured individuals or by their heirs. Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950); United States v. Johnson, 107 S.Ct. 2063 (1987); United States v. Stanley, 107 S. Ct. 3054 (1984); United States v. Shearer, 473 U.S. 52 (1985). Nor may such suits be brought indirectly in the form of third-party claims. Lockheed Aircraft Corp. v. United States, 460 U.S. 190 (1983)5 U.S.C. §§ 8101., et seq. Stencel Aero Engineering Corp. v. United States, 431 U.S. 666 (1977). An exhaustive exposition on the Feres doctrine is beyond the scope of this paper. However, within the context of this presentation, you should be aware that no claim on behalf of an individual who was injured while on a military aircraft and on current (not retired) military status has ever succeeded.
Since the complaint is filed in federal court, notice pleading is the rule. See, Rule 8(a), F.R.Civ.P. However, adequate allegations of jurisdiction are required. An attorney filing suit under the FTCA is well advised to allege the basis upon which the court’s jurisdiction is predicated, 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b), and to allege that an administrative claim has been presented and either denied or has been left without action by the agency for six months, permitting suit to be instituted without final action on the claim. 28 U.S.C. § 2675. Venue lies only in the district where the plaintiff resides or where the act or omission at issue occurred. 28 U.S.C. § 1402(b).
While private litigants must answer complaints within 20 days, the government is allowed 60 days within which to answer a complaint. Rule 12 (a), F.R.Civ.P. Service of the summons and complaint upon the United States is governed by Rule 4(i).
Practice under the FTCA is much the same as practice in any other federal civil case. It should be kept in mind that there is no right to a jury trial. Therefore, unless a magistrate judge is assigned the pretrial task of handling discovery disputes, the judge who hears the motions and discovery disputes will also be the trier of fact.
Discovery from the government can be more limited than that from other parties. There are a number of well-recognized privileges incorporated in Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Among these are the privileges normally encompassed under the rubric of “executive privilege” but now more commonly specifically referred to as national security, deliberative process, etc., privileges. Similarly, depositions of high-level government officials are not normally permitted.
Rule 803(8) of the Federal Rules of Evidence is an exception to the hearsay rule for records, including data compilations, of agencies setting forth the activities of the office or agency or matters observed pursuant to duty imposed by law as to which matters it has a duty to report. In civil cases, this includes factual findings resulting from an investigation made pursuant to authority granted by law, absent evidence of lack of trustworthiness. Beech Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey, 488 U.S. 153, 109 S.Ct. 439 (1988). This exception to the “hearsay rule” is separate and in addition to the exception for records of regularly conducted activity, commonly known as the business records exception. See, Rule 803(6), F.R.E.
Amendments to the FTCA, commonly known as the “Westfall” legislation, create an exclusive remedy under the FTCA for the common law, but not constitutionally based, torts of federal employees. If the employee was acting within the scope of his employment, upon proper certification, the United States is to be substituted as defendant. 28 U.S.C. § 2679(d)(2). Thereafter, the suit shall proceed against the United States “subject to the limitations and exceptions applicable to those [FTCA] actions.” 28 U.S.C. § 267~(d)(4).
A tort claim against the United States shall be forever barred unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate Federal agency within two years after such claim accrues or unless action is begun six months after the date of mailing, by certified or registered mail, of notice of final denial of the claim by the agency to which it was presented.
This statute of limitations was authoritatively construed in United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111 (1979). In Kubrick, plaintiff sued for damages allegedly resulting from medical malpractice on the part of government personnel. He recovered a judgment from the district court, which was affirmed on appeal by the Third Circuit, after he established that the injury caused by government medical treatment was not known to have resulted from lack of due care during treatment until shortly before the claim was presented.
Some courts have shown more than a little reluctance to apply Kubrick. See, e.g., Hohri v. United States, 782 F.2d 227 (D.C. Cir. 1986), rehearing en banc denied, 793 F.2d 304 (D.C. Cir. 1986), vacated, 107 S.Ct. 2246 (1987), on remand, 847 F.2d 279 (Fed. Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 109 S.Ct. 307 (1988); Waits v. United States, 611 F.2d 550 (5th Cir. 1980). Other courts have adhered to Kubrick’s holdings both in form and in substance. See, e.g., Herrera-Diaz v. United States, 845 F.2d 1534 (9th Cir. 1988); Sexton v. United States, 832 F.2d 629 (D.C. Cir. 1987); Barren v. United States, 839 F.2d 987 (3rd Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 109 S.Ct. 79 (1988), Gustavson v. United States, 655 F .2d 1034 (10th Cir. 1981); Dyniewicz v. United States, 742 F.2d 484 (9th Cir. 1984); Fernandez v. United States, 673 F.2d 269 (9th Cir. 1982); Zeleznik v. United States, 770 F.2d 20 (3d Cir. 1985), cert. denied, 1065 S.Ct. 1513 (1986).
Certain kinds of tolling allegations appear with predictable frequency. Most courts have, however, rejected arguments for tolling the FTCA’s statute of limitations. Mann v. United States, 399 F.2d 672 (9th Cir. 1968) (FTCA action filed by minor Indian was not tolled); Casias v. United States, 532 F.2d 1339, 1342 (10th Cir. 1976) (insanity does not toll the statute of limitations); Smith v. United States, 588 F.2d 1209 (8th Cir. 1978) (minority does not toll limitations). Cf., Clifford by Clifford v. United States, 738 F.2d 977 (8th Cir. 1984) (a claim does not accrue until guardian appointed for adult incompetent); Washington v. United States, 769 F.2d 1436 (9th Cir. 1985) (similar) [distinguished from minors, Landreth v. United States, 850 F.2d 532 (8th Cir. 1988)]; McDonald v. United States, 843 F.2d 247 (6th Cir. 1988) (continuing treatment rule applied).
Generally, there is no right to a jury trial in an FTCA action. 28 U.S.C. § 2402. If the plaintiff prevails, damages are measured by the law of the place where the negligent act or omission occurred, determined by applying the whole law of that jurisdiction. Richards v. United States, 369 U.S. 1,6-7 (1962). Generally, damages under the FTCA are governed by state law. Since FTCA cases are tried to the court and not to a jury, the standard for appellate review of damage awards entered by district courts is the “clearly erroneous” standard. Rule 52(a), F.R.Civ.P.
The Federal Tort Claims Act, however, prohibits award of punitive damages. 28 U.S.C. § 2674. The punitive damages prohibition has been construed to mean that income taxes must be subtracted from gross income and future economic losses must be reduced to present value. Trevino v. United States, 804 F.2d 1512 (9th Cir. 1986); Shaw v. United States, 741 F.2d 1202 (9th Cir. 1984).
A discount factor must be applied in FTCA litigation as a matter of federal law. See, e.g., Colleen v. United States, 843 F.2d 329 (9th Cir. 1987); Hollinger v. United States, 651 F.2d 636, 641 (9th Cir. 1981); United States v. English, 521 F.2d 63,70 (9th Cir. 1975); O’Connor v. United States, 269 F.2d 578,585 (2d Cir. 1959). But see, Barnes v. United States, 685 F.2d 66 (3d Cir. 1982) (“total offset” method not punitive); DeLucca v. United States, 670 F.2d 843 (9th Cir. 1982) (addition to award to compensate for taxes on income that would be earned by investing the award).
Failure to deduct income taxes from the income calculation permits an excessive, punitive recovery in some cases. Felder v. United States, 543 F.2d 657, 670 (9th Cir. 1976); Cf., Kalavity v. United States, 584 F.2d 809 (6th Cir. 1978) (income tax need not be taken into account for persons whose incomes are in the lower range); Harden v. United States, 688 F.2d 1025 (5th Cir. 1982); Kalavity-style limitation of income tax deduction rejected). Contra, Manko v. United States, 830 F.2d 831 (8th Cir. 1987).
The FTCA bars punitive damages from being awarded against the government. 28 U.S.C.§ 2674. At one time, this bar was interpreted expansively in favor of the government and was held to bar any form of damages that was not truly compensatory in nature. See, e.g. D’Ambra v. United States, 481 F.2d 14 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 1075 (1973); (Rhode Island Wrongful Death Statute); Massachusetts Bonding & Ins. Co. v. United States, 352 U.S. 128 (1956); (plaintiff obtained compensatory damages notwithstanding whether state wrongful-death statute utilized punitive standard). Flannery by Flannery v. United States, 718 F.2d 108 (4th Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1226 (1984).
In Molzof v. United States, 502 U.S. 301, 112 S.Ct. 711 (1992), the Supreme Court liberalized FTCA damage law relating to punitive damages. In Molzof, the Supreme Court took a narrower view of punitive damages and held that punitive damages should be interpreted according to the traditional, common law meaning and not to mean damages that were not purely compensatory. In Molzof, the question was whether or not damages for future medical expenses could be awarded when the injured party was receiving medical care from the Veteran’s Administration and whether or not the court could award damages for “loss of enjoyment of life.” The District Court and the Court of Appeals held that damages for future medical expenses, when the plaintiff was not paying future medical expenses, and for “loss of enjoyment of life” were not compensatory in nature and, therefore, punitive within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 2674. The Supreme Court did not agree with this interpretation and held that the punitive damages prohibition of Section 2674 barred only damages that are punitive in nature and intended to punish the defendant and not damages that were not, strictly speaking, not compensatory.
[w]e now see no indication that Congress meant the United States to pay twice for the same injury. Certain elements of tort damages may be the equivalent of elements taken into account in providing disability payments. It would seem incongruous, at first glance, if the United States should have to pay in tort for hospital expenses it had already paid, for example.
Brooks v. United States, 337 U.S. 49, 53-54 (1949).
The collateral source rule as articulated in Brooks has not been consistently followed by the lower courts. The district and circuit courts have sometimes ignored the limits on double recoveries enacted in the FTCA and commented upon by the Supreme Court in Brooks and have allowed what amounts to a double recovery against the United States. A long line of cases in which the United States was the defendant have held that Social Security insurance benefits [United States v. Hayashi, 282 F.2d 599 (9th Cir. 1960); Smith v. United States, 587 F.2d 1013 (3d Cir. 1978)], Civil Service retirement benefits [United States v. Price, 288 F.2d 448 (4th Cir. 1961 )], and Medicare payments for the cost of medical expenses, [Siverson v. United States, 710 F.2d 557 (9th Cir. 1983); Titchnell v. United States, 681 F.2d 165 (3d Cir. 1982) (cf., Overton v. United States, 619 F.2d 1299 (8th Cir. 1980)], even though they are paid by the United States, are each payments from a so-called “collateral source.” Therefore, tort judgments against the United States may not be reduced by the amount of these payments from the United States to the plaintiff. But see, Steckler v. United States, 549 F.2d 1372 (10th Cir. 1977); (the proportion of Social Security disability payments attributable to payments from federal revenues should be offset against an FTCA award for economic loss due to the disability); Berg v. United States, 806 F.2d 978 (10th Cir. 1986) (applying collateral source rule to Medicare payments and questioning Steckler).
[t]o the extent that the defendant is required to pay the total amount there may be a double compensation for a part of the plaintiff’s injury. But it is the position of the law that a benefit that is directed to the injured party should not be shifted so as to become a windfall for the tortfeasor …. The law does not differentiate between the nature of the benefits, so long as they did not come from the defendant or a person acting for him.
Restatement (2d) Torts, § 920A (comment b). Thus, it must be recognized that the collateral source rule sanctions a double recovery under certain circumstances. Invocation of the collateral source rule permits “the plaintiff to exceed compensatory limits in the interest of ensuring an impact upon the defendant. “Note v. Unreason In The Law Of Damages: The Collateral Source Rule,” 77 Harvard L.Rev. 741, 742 (1964). Automatic incantation of the collateral source rule has been deemed “the most dubious of practices” (Id., at 753). Similarly, at least one appellate court has stated that it perceives “no compelling reason for providing the injured party with double recovery … and we are not in the business of redistributing the wealth beyond the goal of making the victim … whole.” EEOC v. Enterprise Assn. Steamfitters, 542 F.2d 579, 592 (2d Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 430 U.S. 911 (1977). In general, when litigating against the government, expect the government to take the position that the claimant is not entitled to double payment for benefits provided from public funds.
Unlike most other benefits paid to injured FTCA claimants, veterans’ disability benefits paid pursuant to 38 U.S.C. § 310 may be deducted from damages prior to entry of judgment. Both past and future non-service-connected disability payments, paid on account of the same injury involved in an FTCA action, may be deductible from any award made against the United States. United States v. Gray, 199 F.2d 239 (10th Cir. 1952); United States v. Brooks, 176 F.2d 482 (4th Cir. 1949) (on remand from the Supreme Court). See also, Swanson v. United States, 557 F.Supp. 1041 (D.lda. 1983). In contrast, future benefits to be paid under 38 U.S.C. § 351, applicable to injuries received as a result of medical treatment, cannot be deducted. By the terms of the statute, the benefits are suspended until the judgment is recouped. If the benefits have been paid, the judgment should be reduced by past payments. Kubrick v. United States, 581 F.2d 1092 (3d Cir. 1978), reversed on other grounds, 444 U.S. 111 (1979).
A growing number of states have enacted statutes limiting liability (e.g., the California recreational use statute, Civil Code § 846) or imposing caps on the amount of non-economic damages that may be awarded. These statutes apply to bar or limit recoveries against the United States, since liability under the FTCA is analogous to private person liability. Proud v. United States, 723 F.2d 705 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1252 (1984); Hoffman v. United States, 767 F.2d 1431 (8th Cir. 1985) (California cap on non-economic damage awards applied to United States); Taylor v. United States, 821 F.2d 1428 (9th Cir. 1987) (California cap on non-economic damage awards applied to United States); Lucas v. United States, 811 F.2d 270 (5th Cir. 1987) (Texas cap on non-economic damages applied to United States upheld against federal constitutional challenge and state constitutional issues certified to state court); Scheib v. Florida San. and Ben. Assn., 759 F.2d 859′ (11th Cir. 1985) (Florida statute abrogating collateral source rule applied to United States ).
If a plaintiff prevails, he is entitled to seek taxation of costs pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1920 and Rule 54(d), F.R.Civ.P. Similarly, if the United States prevails, it is entitled to seek costs under these provisions.
Prejudgment interest may not be awarded against the United States. 28 U.S.C. § 2674. Post-judgment interest may be awarded against the United States only when the United States appeals and the preconditions set forth in 31 U.S.C. § 1304 are strictly met. Reminga v. United States, 695 F.2d 1000 (6th Cir. 1982), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1086 (1983); Rooney v. United States, 694 F .2d 582 (9th Cir. 1982).
Attorneys’ fees are limited to no more than twenty percent of any administrative settlement prior to litigation and to no more than twenty-five percent of any judgment or settlement after suit is filed. 28 U.S.C. § 2678.
After a settlement or judgment is final, the Justice Department must submit the settlement or judgment to the General Accounting Office (in Washington, D.C.) for payment. It typically takes from six to eight weeks from the date the settlement or judgment is sent to the General Accounting Office until checks are received by the United States Attorney’s Office or the Department of Justice Attorney handling a matter.
If you have been injured as a result of medical negligence, you may feel that you should adopt a “wait-and-see” approach with respect to your injury, or perhaps you don’t “feel up to” deciding whether you want to pursue your legal remedies. You should, however, bear in mind that the law requires you to pursue legal remedies sooner rather than later. This requirement is generally known as the “statute of limitations.” If you fail to file your claim within the statute of limitations you may be forever barred from bringing your claim, regardless of the merit of your claim. Therefore, even if you do not think you will be bringing a lawsuit, consulting with an experienced medical malpractice attorney is essential to determine if any action should be taken to preserve your potential claim.
The most common mistake made by military families is their failure to contact an attorney or file a claim because they are concerned that their military career or subsequent health care may be affected in some way. THE FILING OF A CLAIM WILL NOT DAMAGE YOUR MILITARY CAREER OR JEOPARDIZE SUBSEQUENT HEALTH CARE. The second most common mistake made by military families is the assumption that if the injured person is an infant or a minor that they can wait until the child attains the age of majority (18) before filing a claim. THIS IS NOT TRUE. THE TWO (2) YEAR STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS APPLIES TO EVERYONE, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THEY ARE A CHILD OR INCOMPETENT FOR ANY REASON. A THIRD MISTAKE IS BELIEVING AN ACTIVE DUTY MEMBER CANNOT SUE THE MILITARY. THIS IS TRUE ONLY IF THE ACTIVE DUTY PERSON IS ALSO THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL. AN ACTIVE DUTY PERSON CAN ALWAYS FILE A CLAIM IF HIS/HER SPOUSE OR CHILD IS THE INJURED INDIVIDUAL.
If an injury and/or negligent medical care occurs at a military hospital in the United States, the Federal Tort Claims Act provides that a claim must be filed within two (2) years of the injury or when the claimant knew or should have known/suspected the injury and its cause. Once a claim is filed, the United States has six (6) months in which to investigate the claim. After the six-month period, the claimant can file suit in United States District Court or the claimant can continue to work with the United States in an effort to resolve the claim. If a claim is denied by the United States, and the claimant wishes to pursue the matter, suit must be filed in the appropriate United States District Court within six (6) months from the date of the denial letter or the claim is forever barred.
If an injury and/or negligent medical care occurs at a military hospital outside the United States, the Military Claims Act provides that the claim must be filed within two (2) years of the injury or when the claimant knew or should have known/suspected the injury and its cause. Unlike the Federal Tort Claims Act, claimants do not have a right to file suit against the United States if they are dissatisfied with the determination of the claim.
The statute of limitations cuts off a plaintiff’s right to seek a remedy for an injury. Many of the triggering events for the statute of limitations are tied to what a plaintiff knew or should have known about his injury and its cause. It is, therefore, important to consult an attorney experienced in medical malpractice claims involving the United States military health care system. An experienced attorney can analyze the facts surrounding your case to determine the following: when the malpractice occurred, when you would have been reasonably expected to know you were injured, whether the time for filing a claim can be lengthened due to the circumstances of your case, and what recourse you may have for your injury. | 2019-04-21T06:54:39Z | https://www.rmlawcall.com/practice-areas/federal-tort-claims-act |
Today, I’m working on how to cool air, move air for cooling and condition air without using traditional expensive air conditioning systems or how to use the traditional systems with non-traditional alternative energy systems to power them.
Scientists have discovered that New York City is a “prime location for exploiting high-altitude winds.” In fact, a recent study by the Carnegie Institution and California State University found that globally, high-altitude winds like those over New York City could together meet the current energy needs of the world “100 times over”. After studying 28 years of data, the scientists found the “highest wind power densities over Japan and eastern China, the eastern coast of the United States, southern Australia, and north-eastern Africa,” according to Cristina Archer, of the California State University, Chico.
Well, it actually returned the same website with something about Cairo and the use of recycled elements to act as solar water heaters and stuff, then I clicked on a link for the above entry. That was last night, the very last thing I did before getting off the computer and going to bed, after speaking with my daughter in New York taking care of herself and my grandbaby without any fan or air conditioner in the middle of a heat alert weather thing.
Alternative energy power systems can be designed to fulfill a great number of functions, from interior and exterior lighting or dedicated water pumping to whole-house power systems. However, there are some household power needs that are simply not well suited to alternative energy power. The largest electric power loads in most households are the hot water heater, refrigerators and freezers, electric clothing dryers and ovens, and air conditioning. In general, anything that heats or freezes using electric power is not an efficient addition to an alternative energy system.
While air conditioning isn’t as common in Alaska as it is in many southern climates, some homes and many RVs use traditional air conditioning systems. One energy efficient alternative to traditional air conditioning is an evaporative cooling system, often called a “swamp cooler.” Evaporative coolers are an excellent option for interior cooling in dry climates.
A swamp cooler works by drawing air in through a vented surface of the cooler box, where it flows through a water saturated pad and is blown into the household or RV ventilation system. The heat in the air is used to evaporate water in the cooling pad, leaving the air much cooler and slightly more humid than when it entered the cooler. Swamp coolers are so much more efficient than traditional air conditioning because the only electrical draw in the cooling system is the circulating fan and a small circulating pump. They also avoid the environmental hazards of freon.
Swamp coolers are available not only in household sizes, but also in portable 12 volt DC models ideal for cooling an RV cab while driving, or a sleeping area at night. However, a swamp cooler will be completely ineffective in a humid climate. If the incoming air is already saturated with humidity, no evaporation will occur, and warm wet air will be blown into the living area. Also, if the moisture in the cooling pads cannot evaporate, the pads themselves will begin to develop an unpleasant odor, which will also be blown into the living area.
Of course the simplest way to cool without using an air conditioning system is to use window fans during hot summer months. When combined with exterior window shades, simply maintaining good air circulation through the house or RV can make a major difference in comfort level.
It continues with a discussion of each high-energy-draw appliance including heating, refrigerators/freezers, clothes dryers, gas stoves and energy efficient appliances generally.
Wait, I saw something else last night before I went to bed and closed up my computer about when and how air conditioners were created and invented in the first place. Let me find that. I thought that every city had programs to make fans and small air conditioners available to people who could not afford them, but maybe New York doesn’t do that, especially with the trillions of dollars in real estate there and Wall Street financial services. With that much money floating through the city, there probably is nothing but attitude, rather than kindness and mercy for people not eating $500 meals.
An air conditioner (often referred to as AC) is a home appliance, system, or mechanism designed to dehumidify and extract heat from an area. The cooling is done using a simple refrigeration cycle. In construction, a complete system of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning is referred to as “HVAC“. Its purpose, in a building or an automobile, is to provide comfort during either hot or cold weather.
In 1758, Benjamin Franklin and John Hadley, professor of chemistry at Cambridge University, conducted an experiment to explore the principle of evaporation as a means to rapidly cool an object.
Franklin and Hadley confirmed that evaporation of highly volatile liquids such as alcohol and ether could be used to drive down the temperature of an object past the freezing point of water. They conducted their experiment with the bulb of a mercury thermometer as their object and with a bellows used to “quicken” the evaporation; they lowered the temperature of the thermometer bulb to 7&_160;°F (-14&_160;°C) while the ambient temperature was 65&_160;°F (18&_160;°C). Franklin noted that soon after they passed the freezing point of water (32°F) a thin film of ice formed on the surface of the thermometer’s bulb and that the ice mass was about a quarter inch thick when they stopped the experiment upon reaching 7&_160;°F (-14&_160;°C). Franklin concluded, “From this experiment, one may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day”.
In 1820, British scientist and inventor Michael Faraday discovered that compressing and liquefying ammonia could chill air when the liquefied ammonia was allowed to evaporate.
In 1842, Florida physician John Gorrie used compressor technology to create ice, which he used to cool air for his patients in his hospital in Apalachicola, Florida.
He hoped eventually to use his ice-making machine to regulate the temperature of buildings. He even envisioned centralized air conditioning that could cool entire cities. Though his prototype leaked and performed irregularly, Gorrie was granted a patent in 1851 for his ice-making machine.
His hopes for its success vanished soon afterward when his chief financial backer died; Gorrie did not get the money he needed to develop the machine. According to his biographer Vivian M. Sherlock, he blamed the “Ice King”, Frederic Tudor, for his failure, suspecting that Tudor had launched a smear campaign against his invention.
Dr. Gorrie died impoverished in 1855 and the idea of air conditioning faded away for 50 years.
Early commercial applications of air conditioning were manufactured to cool air for industrial processing rather than personal comfort. In 1902 the first modern electrical air conditioning was invented by Willis Haviland Carrier in Syracuse, New York. Designed to improve manufacturing process control in a printing plant, his invention controlled not only temperature but also humidity.
The low heat and humidity were to help maintain consistent paper dimensions and ink alignment. Later Carrier’s technology was applied to increase productivity in the workplace, and The Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America was formed to meet rising demand.
Over time air conditioning came to be used to improve comfort in homes and automobiles. Residential sales expanded dramatically in the 1950s.
The inverter tag found on some air conditioners signifies the ability of the unit to continuously regulate its thermal transfer flow by altering the speed of the compressor in response to cooling demand.
Traditional reverse-cycle air conditioners use a Compressor that is either working at maximum capacity or switched off in order to regulate the temperature of the room. A thermostat is used to measure the ambient air temperature and switch the compressor on when the ambient air temperature is too far from the desired temperature.
An alternate way to meet the varying cooling demand is to have the ability to vary the capacity of the compressor or as its technically called “Modulate” the capacity. An air conditioner compressor has two components, a mechanical part – the actual compressor and the electrical part – the motor to drive the compressor. Either of the components can be used to “modulate” the capacity. In Digital Scroll compressors – the mechanical Scrolls of the compression mechanism is controlled to “modulate” and the electric motor runs at constant speed. The other method is to control the speed of the compressors by various means.
Air conditioners bearing the inverter tag use a variable-frequency drive to control the speed of the motor and thus the compressor. The variable-frequency drive uses a rectifier to convert the incoming AC current to DC and then uses pulse-width modulation of the DC current within an inverter to produce AC current of a desired frequency. The AC current is used to drive a brushless motor or an induction motor. As the speed of a brushless motor is synchronized to the frequency of the AC current, it is thus possible to build a compressor that can be run at different speeds. Similarly, the voltage and frequency can be varied as needed to run an induction motor at different speeds. A microcontroller can then sample the current ambient air temperature and adjust the speed of the compressor appropriately. All this electronics of course does add to the complexity and comes at a cost, significant being the conversion losses from AC to DC and then back to AC which can be as high as 4 – 6 % for each conversion step.
I’ve noticed that there are heat waves and the problems associated with high temperatures across the country, not only in New York, but Atlanta as well and certainly out in the Gulf Coast areas where cleanup is being done and in the overseas war theaters of Afghanistan and elsewhere. There seems to be a need for personal cooling systems that could be used on a person outdoors and inside cooling systems that are less expensive and could use alternative energy choices.
There was an Australian neck bandana that provided cooling – what was that called? And, there are some clothing options which protect from the heat that I’ve seen used in desert races and for people who are allergic to the sunshine.
But that still doesn’t answer the basic question about home and sleeping environments, especially those who can’t afford hundreds of dollars to buy a traditional air conditioner – nor have the money to fund running it once they have it.
Back a few hundred years ago, there were systems built into homes and rooms that supported cooling which are no longer in use. These included high ceilings that took the hot air upside into the room, leaving the cooler air near the floor living areas and tall windows commonly across several walls where a cross-flow of air could be constructed simply by opening the right windows.
Because I live on a top floor apartment/condo, and have an attic access – in the summertime, not only do I have the sun coming in to heat the living space – I can also open the attic stairs and allow the heat to move upside into the attic space, leaving the cool air down place in the living areas.
I haven’t seen my daughter’s living space, but I’m guessing she has one or two front windows on one side and nothing else to remedy the air temperature. The other thing I’ve noted is that we all have severe air pollution coming from our cities and cars that infiltrate every system including air conditioning filters that are used in the systems now.
To put hepa filters and finer filters on these systems, forces the compressor to struggle and hinders the air flow while still allowing much of the very fine material and submicron materials to move through the system and nearly all chemicals coming from the outside or inside environment to move freely through the system unabated.
The same thing is happening with many of the face mask respirator systems in use out in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere for protection from chemicals and chemical fumes. These hinder the air flow and force the heart and lungs to pump harder to receive the air that is available going through the filters.
It needs a group of very serious solutions that work. And homes, businesses, community facilities and commercial buildings no longer built to passively cool the occupants, not made for air flow, not built for comfort in and of themselves to help the systems added for air cooling, heating and safe high quality breathable air – need to be updated to accommodate these things.
Yes, that is the real deal – I don’t know what the others are . . .
This page offers choices based on activity – but I didn’t see the cooling bandana – the other things are right, though – especially those for extreme heat.
Designed for extreme sport or heat, each garment works like a non-stop fan—scooping in air through carefully engineered mesh panels.
Designed for improved comfort in summer heat and humidity and during sport or strenuous activity.
okay so – which one?
A coolant is a fluid which flows through a device to prevent its overheating, transferring the heat produced by the device to other devices that use or dissipate it. An ideal coolant has high thermal capacity, low viscosity, is low-cost, non-toxic, and chemically inert, neither causing nor promoting corrosion of the cooling system. Some applications also require the coolant to be an electrical insulator.
While the term coolant is commonly used in automotive, residential and commercial temperature-control applications, in industrial processing, heat transfer fluid is one technical term more often used, in high temperature as well as low temperature manufacturing applications.
The coolant can either keep its phase and stay liquid or gaseous, or can undergo a phase change, with the latent heat adding to the cooling efficiency. The latter, when used to achieve low temperatures, is more commonly known as refrigerant.
Air is a common form of a coolant. Air cooling uses either convective airflow (passive cooling), or a forced circulation using fans.
Hydrogen is used as a high-performance gaseous coolant. Its thermal conductivity is higher than of all gases, it has high specific heat capacity, and low density and therefore low viscosity, which is an advantage for rotary machines susceptible to windage losses. Hydrogen-cooled turbogenerators are currently the most common electrical generators in large power plants.
Inert gases are frequently used as coolants in gas-cooled nuclear reactors. Helium is the most favored coolant due to its low tendency to absorb neutrons and become radioactive. Nitrogen and carbon dioxide are frequently used as well.
Sulfur hexafluoride is used for cooling and insulating of some high-voltage power systems (circuit breakers, switches, some transformers, etc.).
Steam can be used where high specific heat capacity is required in gaseous form and the corrosive properties of hot water are accounted for.
The most common coolant is water. Its high heat capacity and low cost makes it a suitable heat-transfer medium. It is usually used with additives, like corrosion inhibitors and antifreezes. Antifreeze, a solution of a suitable organic chemical (most often ethylene glycol, diethylene glycol, or propylene glycol) in water, is used when the water-based coolant has to withstand temperatures below 0 °C, or when its boiling point has to be raised. Betaine is a similar coolant, with the exception that it is made from pure plant juice, and is therefore not toxic or difficult to dispose of ecologically.
Very pure deionized water, due to its relatively low electrical conductivity, is used to cool some electrical equipment, often high-power transmitters and high-power vacuum tubes.
Heavy water is used in some nuclear reactors; it also serves as a neutron moderator.
Polyalkylene Glycol or PAG’s are used as high temperature, thermally stable heat transfer fluids exhibiting strong resistance to oxidation. Modern PAG’s can also be non-toxic and non-hazardous.
Cutting fluid is a coolant that also serves as a lubricant for metal-shaping machine tools.
Oils are used for applications where water is unsuitable. With higher boiling points than water, oils can be raised to considerably higher temperatures (above 100 degrees Celsius) without introducing high pressures within the container or loop system in question.
Mineral oils serve as both coolants and lubricants in many mechanical gears. Castor oil is also used. Due to their high boiling points, mineral oils are used in portable electric radiator-style space heaters in residential applications, and in closed-loop systems for industrial process heating and cooling.
Silicone oils are favored for their wide range of operating temperatures. However their high cost limits their applications.
Fluorocarbon oils are used for the same reasons.
Transformer oil is used for cooling and additional electric insulation of high-power electric transformers.
Fuels are frequently used as coolants for engines. A cold fuel flows over some parts of the engine, absorbing its waste heat and being preheated before combustion. Kerosene and other jet fuels frequently serve in this role in aviation engines.
Freons were frequently used for immersive cooling of e.g. electronics.
Refrigerants are coolants used for reaching low temperatures by undergoing phase change between liquid and gas. Halomethanes were frequently used, most often R-12 and R-22, but due to environmental concerns are being phased out, often with liquified propane or other haloalkanes like R-134a. Anhydrous ammonia is frequently used in large commercial systems, and sulfur dioxide was used in early mechanical refrigerators. Carbon dioxide (R-744) is used as a working fluid in climate control systems for cars, residential air conditioning, commercial refrigeration, and vending machines.
Heat pipes are a special application of refrigerants.
Liquid fusible alloys can be used as coolants in applications where high temperature stability is required, e.g. some fast breeder nuclear reactors. Sodium or sodium-potassium alloy NaK are frequently used; in special cases lithium can be employed. Another liquid metal used as a coolant is lead, in e.g. lead cooled fast reactors, or a lead-bismuth alloy. Some early fast neutron reactors used mercury.
For very high temperature applications, e.g. molten salt reactors or very high temperature reactors, molten salts can be used as coolants. One of the possible combinations is the mix of sodium fluoride and sodium tetrafluoroborate (NaF-NaBF4). Other choices are FLiBe and FLiNaK.
Liquified gases are used as coolants for cryogenic applications, including cryo-electron microscopy, overclocking of computer processors, applications using superconductors, or extremely sensitive sensors and very low-noise amplifiers.
Liquid nitrogen, which boils at about -196 °C (77K), is the most common and least expensive coolant in use. Liquid air is used to a lesser extent, due to its liquid oxygen content which makes it prone to cause fire or explosions when in contact with combustible materials (see oxyliquits).
Lower temperatures can be reached using liquified neon which boils at about -246 °C. The lowest temperatures, used for the most powerful superconducting magnets, are reached using liquid helium.
Liquid hydrogen at -250 to -265 °C can also be used as a coolant. In the Reaction Engines Scimitar and the Reaction Engines SABRE hypersonic aircraft engines liquid hydrogen is used as a coolant in the precooler to cool down the air in the intake. At Mach 5, the intake can reach as high as 1000 °C so a precooler is needed to avoid melting of the engine parts. Liquid hydrogen is also used both as a fuel and as a coolant to cool nozzles and combustion chambers of rocket engines.
An emerging and new class of coolants are nanofluids which comprise of a carrier liquid, such as water, dispersed with tiny nano-scale particles known as nanoparticles. Purpose-designed nanoparticles of e.g. CuO, alumina, titanium dioxide, carbon nanotubes, silica, or metals (e.g. copper, or silver nanorods) dispersed into the carrier liquid the enhances the heat transfer capabilities of the resulting coolant compared to the carrier liquid alone. The enhancement can be theoretically as high as 350%. The experiments however did not prove so high thermal conductivity improvements, but found significant increase of the critical heat flux of the coolants.
Some significant improvements are achievable; e.g. silver nanorods of 55±12 nm diameter and 12.8 µm average length at 0.5 vol.% increased the thermal conductivity of water by 68%, and 0.5 vol.% of silver nanorods increased thermal conductivity of ethylene glycol based coolant by 98%.
Alumina nanoparticles at 0.1% can increase the critical heat flux of water by as much as 70%; the particles form rough porous surface on the cooled object, which encourages formation of new bubbles, and their hydrophilic nature then helps pushing them away, hindering the formation of the steam layer.
In some applications, solid materials are used as coolants. The materials require high energy to vaporize; this energy is then carried away by the vaporized gases. This approach is common in spaceflight, for ablative atmospheric reentry shields and for cooling of rocket engine nozzles. The same approach is also used for fire protection of structures, where ablative coating is applied.
Dry ice and water ice can be also used as coolants, when in direct contact with the structure being cooled.
Sublimation of water ice was used for cooling the space suits of astronauts in the Project Apollo.
There are 105 components in the system.
Stopped a little while to hear President Obama and President Medvedev speak which was historic and absolutely wonderful. Now, let’s see how that goes at the G-20 this weekend as finalizing touches are added with the other participants.
A number of fabrics and textiles in common use today need no further UV-blocking enhancement based on their inherent fiber structure, density of weave, and dye components – especially darker colors and indigo dyes. Good examples of these fabrics contain full percentages and/or blends of heavy weight natural fibers like cotton, linen and hemp or light-weight synthetics such as polyester, nylon, lycra and polypropylene. Natural or synthetic indigo dyed denim, twill weaves and canvas are also good examples. However, a significant disadvantage is the heat retention caused by heavier weight and darker colored fabrics.
Sun protective clothing was originally popularized (but not exclusively used) in Australia as an option or adjunct to sunscreen lotions and sunblock creams. Sun protective clothing and UV protective fabrics in Australia now follow a lab-testing procedure regulated by a federal agency: ARPANSA. This standard was established in 1996 after work by Australian swimwear companies. The British standard was established in 1998. The NRPB (National Radiological Protection Board) forms the basis of the British Standards Institute standard. Using the Australian method as a model, the USA standard was formally established in 2001, and now employs a more stringent testing protocol: This method includes fabric longevity, abrasion/wear and washability. (To date, the focus for sun protection is swimwear, appropriate hats, shade devices and sunglasses for children.) UPF testing is now very widely used on clothing used for outdoor activities.
The original UPF rating system was enhanced in the United States by the ASTM (American Standards and Testing Methods) Committee D13:65 at the behest of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to qualify and standardize the emerging sun protective clothing and textile industry. The UPF rating system may eventually be adopted by interested apparel and domestic textile/fabric manufacturers in the industry at large as a “value added” program strategic to complement consumer safety and consumer awareness.
Stay cool on those hot summer days with Miracool heat relief products. Miracool products are ideal for construction workers or for anyone out in the heat. Whether your in the sun or working indoors, MiraCool helps you keep your cool.
What is all the hype about MiraCool products? Find out at our Construction Gear Guru Blog.
How do you keep cool at work during the warm months? Carry water, take a few breaks, or keep a hand held fan around? Those are great ideas, but there is an additional method of staying cool at work. Personal cooling products by MiraCool.
What are MiraCool products? They are a line of water-activated cooling accessories that can be worn anywhere – work, play, indoors or out. Encased within each stay cool product are super-absorbent polymer crystals. The crystals work by soaking them in water then remaining plump and hydrated for up two full days. MiraCool products work by the crystals retain the coolness of the water and work in combination with the evaporation process against the skin to keep you cool and comfortable.
I am telling all of you MiraCool products are amazing! The selection of products offered includes cooling bandanas, hats, cooling vests, hard hat pads. All stay cool gear contains super-absorbent polymer crystals for fast cooling. MiraCool products are so easy to use without the need for refrigeration or ice. To make the product cold, simply place it in cold water for 10-20 minutes and off you go.
Not only are MiraCool products are perfect for work, but for every activity in your life. They go everywhere you go that is hot including hanging out at the beach, playing sports, and doing yard work. Check out the complete selection of MiraCool products. Beat the heat and stay cool!
When heat stress takes its toll on workers it not only affects their overall productivity, it affects their overall safety as well. This bandana incorporates MiraCool crystals which are securely encased inside the bandana. The crystals can hold up to 1000 times their weight in cool refreshing water. Simply soak in cold water for 10-20 minutes and these neck/body refreshing items will provide relief from the heat. Will stay hydrated for several days.
The Techniche Phase Change Cooling Military Helmet Insert provides simple and effective heat stress relief. The reusable attachment affixes directly to underside of helmet. The Phase Change Cooling Insert maintains a comfortable 58 degress Farenheit.
This uniquely designed cooling vest uses a combination of evaporative cooling material with our specially designed Military Phase Change Cooling Inserts for maximum cooling time. Designed to work with the Interceptor Outer Tactical Vest (OTV), the unique “Buddy Swap” design provides for easy changing of inserts in the field. The hybrid cooling solution offers ultimate relief: Evaporative Cooling fabric provides 5 – 10 hours of cooling relief per soaking and the Phase Change Cooling Inserts maintain a comfortable 58 degree Farenheit (14 degree C) for up to three hours. With 10,000’s of units in operational use it is a proven tool of the US Military. Available in M, L, XL, 2XL and includes one set of Phase Change Cooling Military Vest Inserts. Military Vest Insert Sets Product code HS3047.
Originally designed for Black Hawk Helicopter Pilots, Cool Zones amazing controlled temperature technology keeps you cool and outperforms the competition in fit, form and function.
Cool Zone is The original and patented controlled – temperature phase change technology.
Tested and used by Law Enforcement, the Military, Fire and Rescue and Indutrial Work Sites all over the world.
okey dokey – maybe better than frozen peas stuck under a shirt – but hmmmm…..
there must be some other choices besides clothing and heavy vests with little pouches in them of polymer crystals – although 58 degrees for three hours, not bad. Doesn’t look like anyone could sleep in it though and not very appropriate for little bitty kids under a year old. Maybe as a seat liner for a car chair possibly.
Our patented Air Cooling Vest may be connected to any clean compressed air source and worn under protective clothing. It weighs only 11/2 lbs. Is durable and breathable. One size fits 130-225 lbs. Air Consumption: 5-15 cfm at 100 psi.
The air vest is designed to afford cooling to personnel in circumstances where air conditioning is not feasible. The vest connects to any existing clean compressed air source. The patented engineered jets cool the air, keeping the wearer continuously doused with refrigerated air. The airflow enhances the body’s natural evaporative cooling. The airflow additionally keeps the grit, dust and fibers out, while keeping the wearer dry.
• Nylon belt keeps vest secure.
• Standard ¼” Snap Tite quick-disconnect coupler.
• Standard size can fit body weight 130-250 lbs.
This one (above) is nifty – but it is a “bring your own air compressor” system. Still, it is pretty nifty and rated for environments up to 120 degrees. And, its pricey too. Might as well buy an air conditioner and carry it around, although that wouldn’t look like a beige vest with its little black belt. hmmm…….
A heat exchanger is a device built for efficient heat transfer from one medium to another. The media may be separated by a solid wall, so that they never mix, or they may be in direct contact. They are widely used in space heating, refrigeration, air conditioning, power plants, chemical plants, petrochemical plants, petroleum refineries, natural gas processing, and sewage treatment. One common example of a heat exchanger is the radiator in a car, in which the heat source, being a hot engine-cooling fluid, water, transfers heat to air flowing through the radiator (i.e. the heat transfer medium).
There are two primary classifications of heat exchangers according to their flow arrangement. In parallel-flow heat exchangers, the two fluids enter the exchanger at the same end, and travel in parallel to one another to the other side. In counter-flow heat exchangers the fluids enter the exchanger from opposite ends. The counter current design is most efficient, in that it can transfer the most heat from the heat (transfer) medium. See countercurrent exchange. In a cross-flow heat exchanger, the fluids travel roughly perpendicular to one another through the exchanger.
For efficiency, heat exchangers are designed to maximize the surface area of the wall between the two fluids, while minimizing resistance to fluid flow through the exchanger. The exchanger’s performance can also be affected by the addition of fins or corrugations in one or both directions, which increase surface area and may channel fluid flow or induce turbulence.
The driving temperature across the heat transfer surface varies with position, but an appropriate mean temperature can be defined. In most simple systems this is the log mean temperature difference (LMTD). Sometimes direct knowledge of the LMTD is not available and the NTU method is used.
Shell and tube heat exchangers consist of a series of tubes. One set of these tubes contains the fluid that must be either heated or cooled. The second fluid runs over the tubes that are being heated or cooled so that it can either provide the heat or absorb the heat required. A set of tubes is called the tube bundle and can be made up of several types of tubes: plain, longitudinally finned, etc. Shell and Tube heat exchangers are typically used for high pressure applications (with pressures greater than 30 bar and temperatures greater than 260°C). This is because the shell and tube heat exchangers are robust due to their shape.
Tube diameter: Using a small tube diameter makes the heat exchanger both economical and compact. However, it is more likely for the heat exchanger to foul up faster and the small size makes mechanical cleaning of the fouling difficult. To prevail over the fouling and cleaning problems, larger tube diameters can be used. Thus to determine the tube diameter, the available space, cost and the fouling nature of the fluids must be considered.
Tube length: heat exchangers are usually cheaper when they have a smaller shell diameter and a long tube length. Thus, typically there is an aim to make the heat exchanger as long as physically possible whilst not exceeding production capabilities. However, there are many limitations for this, including the space available at the site where it is going to be used and the need to ensure that there are tubes available in lengths that are twice the required length (so that the tubes can be withdrawn and replaced). Also, it has to be remembered that long, thin tubes are difficult to take out and replace.
Tube pitch: when designing the tubes, it is practical to ensure that the tube pitch (i.e., the centre-centre distance of adjoining tubes) is not less than 1.25 times the tubes’ outside diameter. A larger tube pitch leads to a larger overall shell diameter which leads to a more expensive heat exchanger.
Baffle Design: baffles are used in shell and tube heat exchangers to direct fluid across the tube bundle. They run perpendicularly to the shell and hold the bundle, preventing the tubes from sagging over a long length. They can also prevent the tubes from vibrating. The most common type of baffle is the segmental baffle. The semicircular segmental baffles are oriented at 180 degrees to the adjacent baffles forcing the fluid to flow upward and downwards between the tube bundle. Baffle spacing is of large thermodynamic concern when designing shell and tube heat exchangers. Baffles must be spaced with consideration for the conversion of pressure drop and heat transfer. For thermo economic optimization it is suggested that the baffles be spaced no closer than 20% of the shell’s inner diameter. Having baffles spaced too closely causes a greater pressure drop because of flow redirection. Consequently having the baffles spaced too far apart means that there may be cooler spots in the corners between baffles. It is also important to ensure the baffles are spaced close enough that the tubes do not sag. The other main type of baffle is the disc and donut baffle which consists of two concentric baffles, the outer wider baffle looks like a donut, whilst the inner baffle is shaped as a disk. This type of baffle forces the fluid to pass around each side of the disk then through the donut baffle generating a different type of fluid flow.
Conceptual diagram of a plate and frame heat exchanger.
Another type of heat exchanger is the plate heat exchanger. One is composed of multiple, thin, slightly-separated plates that have very large surface areas and fluid flow passages for heat transfer. This stacked-plate arrangement can be more effective, in a given space, than the shell and tube heat exchanger. Advances in gasket and brazing technology have made the plate-type heat exchanger increasingly practical. In HVAC applications, large heat exchangers of this type are called plate-and-frame; when used in open loops, these heat exchangers are normally of the gasketed type to allow periodic disassembly, cleaning, and inspection. There are many types of permanently-bonded plate heat exchangers, such as dip-brazed and vacuum-brazed plate varieties, and they are often specified for closed-loop applications such as refrigeration. Plate heat exchangers also differ in the types of plates that are used, and in the configurations of those plates. Some plates may be stamped with “chevron” or other patterns, where others may have machined fins and/or grooves.
This type of heat exchanger uses “sandwiched” passages containing fins to increase the effectivity of the unit. The designs include crossflow and counterflow coupled with various fin configurations such as straight fins, offset fins and wavy fins.
Plate and fin heat exchangers are usually made of aluminium alloys which provide higher heat transfer efficiency. The material enables the system to operate at a lower temperature and reduce the weight of the equipment. Plate and fin heat exchangers are mostly used for low temperature services such as natural gas, helium and oxygen liquefaction plants, air separation plants and transport industries such as motor and aircraft engines.
This is a heat exchanger with a gas passing upwards through a shower of fluid (often water), and the fluid is then taken elsewhere before being cooled. This is commonly used for cooling gases whilst also removing certain impurities, thus solving two problems at once. It is widely used in espresso machines as an energy-saving method of cooling super-heated water to be used in the extraction of espresso.
Another type of heat exchanger is called “(dynamic) scraped surface heat exchanger“. This is mainly used for heating or cooling with high-viscosity products, crystallization processes, evaporation and high-fouling applications. Long running times are achieved due to the continuous scraping of the surface, thus avoiding fouling and achieving a sustainable heat transfer rate during the process.
The formula used for this will be Q=A*U*LMTD, whereby Q= heat transfer rate.
Power plants which have steam-driven turbines commonly use heat exchangers to boil water into steam. Heat exchangers or similar units for producing steam from water are often called boilers or steam generators.
In the nuclear power plants called pressurized water reactors, special large heat exchangers which pass heat from the primary (reactor plant) system to the secondary (steam plant) system, producing steam from water in the process, are called steam generators. All fossil-fueled and nuclear power plants using steam-driven turbines have surface condensers to convert the exhaust steam from the turbines into condensate (water) for re-use.
To conserve energy and cooling capacity in chemical and other plants, regenerative heat exchangers can be used to transfer heat from one stream that needs to be cooled to another stream that needs to be heated, such as distillate cooling and reboiler feed pre-heating.
Such types of heat exchangers are used predominantly in air conditioning, humidification, water cooling and condensing plants.
How does the shirt/poncho work?
Cool Shirt® contains more than 45 feet of medical grade capillary tubing securely stitched on the front and back of the shirt. The Resposable Poncho is made from material containing a network of channels that the cooled water flows through. They are both connected to a compact cooling unit via insulated hose with quick, dry disconnects. The cooling unit contains ice, water and an internal pump that supplies cool water to the Cool Shirt® as it covers up to 40% of the body.
How long will it keep the user cool?
It depends on what type of ice is used (block, crushed or cubed). All of the systems will cool for a longer period of time if BLOCK ice is used rather than crushed or cubed ice. Using block ice, the systems will cool for about 6-7 hours.
The system connects to any standard outlet via a UL-approved 110V Adaptor or can be connected to a 12V battery.
How do you assemble the system for use?
Attach the hoses to the cooling unit and the shirt to the hoses. Be sure the quick, dry disconnect fittings are fully seated by listening for an audible “click”. Add a gallon of water to the cooling unit. Add ice to the top of the cooler. The Cool Shirt® system is now ready for use. The system connects to any standard outlet via a UL-approved 110V Adaptor or to a 12V battery.
How do you adjust the temperature of the shirt or poncho?
The Temperature Controller is located on the insulated hose near the shirt/poncho. Simply adjust the roller on the controller to control flow and temperature on the shirt/poncho.
How can I tell that the shirt is working?
The shirt is designed to cool the user, not make them cold. The system is designed to maintain a comfortable temperature. As it is worn, the user can become very comfortable with the shirt or poncho and become unaware of the cooling it is actually providing. If unsure, the easiest way to see that it is working properly is to shut the system off. In less than two minutes, you will have the answer.
The Cool Shirt® can be hand or machine-washed and hung to quickly drip-dry or can be dried in a dryer using a laundry bag.
The Resposable Poncho can be washed in the same manner and hung to drip dry. It can withstand several washings before requiring replacement. However, it is not necessary to wash the poncho unless desired.
Interior: With each use, add 2 ounces of Maintenance Additive (MA-16) in the cooling unit with the ice and water while the unit is being used. This will keep the pump, hoses and shirt lines clear of the buildup that occurs naturally in water-circulation systems. Wipe out cooling unit after each use.
Exterior: When deemed necessary, wipe cooling unit, cart and hoses down with warm soapy water (preferably antibacterial). Maintain the outside of these parts just as you would maintain any other equipment used in your environment.
How long does the cooling last?
This depends on the size of users, the number of users connected to the system and the temperature settings. Expect many hours of use before adding ice.
How are the Cool Shirt® and the Resposable Poncho stored?
Hang the shirt or poncho on a large hanger. Coil the insulated hoses and store in the cooling unit or lay flat. Do not hang the hoses as this may damage them.
Yes. The pump is double-insulated and is available as a 12 Volt system or with a UL-approved 110 adaptor. See specifications on adaptor.
Made of 100% durable cotton with over 45 feet of soft resilient tubing, the shirt is machine washable…just put it with the rest of the uniforms.
Our Cool Shirt (Cool Suit) Cool Air Systems are a favorite among those drivers that do not use a Cool Shirt®. Air from the car’s external intake is enhanced via a 135 or 235CFM blower and pushed thru the cooling unit, sending cooled, clean HEPA-4 filtered air to the driver’s helmet. The cooling unit is available in two sizes, depending on your needs: 24qt and a more compact 12qt fit smaller spaces. Helmet not included.
Tripp Lite’s SRCOOL12K is a next-generation air conditioner designed for supplemental area cooling, emergency cooling and off-hour cooling applications. The SRCOOL12K uses environmentally friendly R410a refridgerant, which complies with EPA standards for 2010 and beyond, and is accepted worldwide. It contains zero, ozone depleting R22 refridgerant that has been banned by the EPS for new equipment manufactured after January 1, 2010. Depending on the humidity level in the room, collection tanks could require emptying several times per day.
The SRCOOL12K has a built-in evaporator that expels the condensed water through the exhaust duct, so there is no need for a drain tube, drain pan or water collection tank. Efficient, compact, self-contained and portable, the 120V, 60 Hz SRCOOL12K is ideal for use in data centers, server and wiring closets, IT environments, home and small business offices, conference rooms, warehouses, entertainment centers or other venues with heat-sensitive equipment, particularly in areas that facility air conditioning can’t reach. The SRCOOL12K not only adjusts ambient room temperatures, but can also dehumidify and filter the air, providing better air quality for enhanced equipment performance with minimal noise and power consumption.
Designed for quick, simple installation, the SRCOOL12K plugs into a standard 5-15R outlet with no adapter required. Both a standard louvered vent (for general room cooling) and a directional ducted cooling vent (to direct cold air where most needed) are provided. A directional exhaust duct safely removes hot air from the room.
The SRCOOL12K meets the needs of the most demanding applications with 12,000 BTU of cooling power. A built-in timer enables the unit to be programmed for unattended startup and shutdown. Controls and displays are conveniently mounted on the top panel. An included window/drop ceiling kit provides multiple installation options.
Supplemental cooling for confined areas where the facility HVAC is inadequate or doesn’t reach at all.
Dropped ceiling or window heat ventilation kit.
I really, really like this one. Too expensive but very nifty – need to get about five of them.
This one looks pretty good but it is another $399.00 thing.
The Chili Pad™ is a revolutionary heating and cooling system designed to regulate the surface temperature of your mattress so that you can achieve a perfect night’s sleep. Utilizing advanced semi-conductor technology, the Chili Pad™ allows you to control the temperature of your sleeping surface at the touch of a button. Designed to fit all standard and extra thick mattresses, this unique 200 thread count, poly/cotton mattress pad uses soft, medical grade silicon tubing filled with water to heat or cool the surface of the bed to your desired temperature of between 46 -118 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Chili Pad™ is a versatile system that allows you to cool or heat your bed according to your individual preference. Unlike an electric blanket, which produces a magnetic field during usage, the ChiliPad™ system creates a safe, balanced temperature below, instead of above the body, without the use of electric coils. Instead of raising and lowering your thermostat and/or air conditioner throughout the night, the Chili Pad’s wireless remote can be instantly adjusted from your bed to save you money on your energy costs. Available in both single and dual climate zone models, the ChiliPad™ allows couples to adjust each side of the bed to their individual temperature preference.
The technology utilized by the ChiliPad™ is similar to that of semiconductor technology designed to cool computers. Water constantly flowing in and out of a single connection point in the control system can be cooled or warmed in one degree increments to create a stable surface temperature. The ChiliPad™ fits all standard mattresses, just like an ordinary mattress pad, and the silicon tubes are removable for easy laundering and maintenance. The control unit, operates under 45 decibels, and conveniently fits under the bed. The ChiliPad’s wireless remote is easy to operate and initial set up is simple. The revolutionary, innovative Chili Pad™ is the ideal way to reduce your energy costs while increasing the quality of your sleep.
Functions as a Personal Radiator to Absorb and Dissipate Body Heat Back Into the Air.
Slip a cooling Chillow Plus® insert into your pillowcase to sleep soundly and comfortably all night long. Designed with SoothSoft technology, this versatile cooling device requires no refrigeration and functions as a personal radiator to absorb and dissipate your body heat back into the air while you sleep. This safe, non-toxic product is activated by water to produce a dry and natural cooling effect that can be applied to a number of ailments, from headaches, to sunburns, hot flashes and night sweats . No more flipping your pillow on hot nights. The Chillow Plus® will keep working for hours, so you can sleep soundly without interruption.
This one does say it offers cooling to bring the pillow to room temperature, so if the room temperature is 95 degrees or maybe even higher in the summer time without any air conditioning or fans, then probably that wouldn’t help very much, but I don’t know. These are interesting designs however.
Micro heat exchangers, Micro-scale heat exchangers, or microstructured heat exchangers are heat exchangers in which (at least one) fluid flows in lateral confinements with typical dimensions below 1 mm. The most typical such confinement are microchannels, channels with a hydraulic diameter below 1 mm.
Just like “conventional” or “macro scale” heat exchangers, micro heat exchangers have either one or two fluidic passages. In the case of one passage, heat is transferred to the fluid from electrically powered heater cartridges, or removed from the fluid by electrically powered elements like Peltier chillers. In the case of two fluidic passages, micro heat exchangers are usually classified by the orientation of the fluid passages to another as “cross flow” or “counter flow” devices. If a chemical reaction is conducted inside a micro heat exchanger, the latter is also called a microreactor.
This page is about the thermoelectric effect as a physical phenomenon. For applications of the thermoelectric effect, see thermoelectric materials, thermoelectric generator, and thermoelectric cooling.
The thermoelectric effect is the direct conversion of temperature differences to electric voltage and vice versa. A thermoelectric device creates a voltage when there is a different temperature on each side. Conversely when a voltage is applied to it, it creates a temperature difference (known as the Peltier effect). At atomic scale (specifically, charge carriers), an applied temperature gradient causes charged carriers in the material, whether they are electrons or electron holes, to diffuse from the hot side to the cold side, similar to a classical gas that expands when heated; hence, the thermally induced current.
Traditionally, the term thermoelectric effect or thermoelectricity encompasses three separately identified effects, the Seebeck effect, the Peltier effect, and the Thomson effect. In many textbooks, thermoelectric effect may also be called the Peltier–Seebeck effect. This separation derives from the independent discoveries of French physicist Jean Charles Athanase Peltier and Estonian-German physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck. Joule heating, the heat that is generated whenever a voltage is applied across a resistive material, is somewhat related, though it is not generally termed a thermoelectric effect (and it is usually regarded as being a loss mechanism due to non-ideality in thermoelectric devices). The Peltier–Seebeck and Thomson effects can in principle be thermodynamically reversible, whereas Joule heating is not.
So, okay – the icepacks are frozen, a fan is stuck in front of them, blows across them and then its all better. How about that? With a boxfan – that would be about $35.00. Hmmmmm………….
Okay – I’ll keep looking a bit.
Personal Air ConditionerNever fight over the thermostat again. When you’re hot, just turn on this personal air cooling unit and cool your personal space. This portable air conditioner will be the only room air conditioner you need! Your Personal Air Conditioner points 1,000 BTUs directly at you while you work, sleep, watch TV, read, or relax. No need to vent. Just plug in and chill out. 23″H x 14″W x 9″D.
Versatile, lightweight, and super efficient, this portable evaporative air cooler uses endothermic reaction to evaporate heat from the air. Lowers surrounding air up to 15-25°. Like a cool breeze off of a body of water, natural evaporation cools without chemicals to harm the environment. This 60 watt cooler is economical, consuming hot air, not energy. Features three speed options, a timer, and sleep mode. Remote control and casters let you operate anywhere. 32″ tall.
Don’t let its slim good looks fool you. This Remote Control Triple Cooling Zone Fan packs plenty of power. You can use one, two, or all three built-in fans, plus choose from three wind speeds and three wind modes. Features a built-in timer, oscillation option, and touch controls. 44″ tall.
Well, those are from Sharper Image and range from $299 for the first one, $189 for the middle one and $99 for the third one. Hmmmm…….
Well, keep looking – but I’m thinking of waterfalls and the way it is so cool wherever they are (standing at the bottom of the falls) – no matter what the air temperature in general, those places are so cool. And usually after it rains, the air is cooler – but not always. And hot, wet air is definitely not a good thing, unless it is intentional for a short period of time in a sauna specifically for that purpose.
When it’s hot out, there’s nothing like getting squirted with some water or walking into a place with the AC on full blast. Whenever those sources of cooling aren’t available, you’re pretty much sore out of luck; well, unless you’ve got your Personal Cooling System handy!
It looks a bit strange, and you’ll certainly get a few stares when wearing this thing out in public, but the benefits definitely outweigh the cons: a few hours of coolness.
The cooler goes around your neck, almost like a necklace. The actual cooling is done by a patented miniature evaporation based cooling system. The quiet motor inside drives the tiny fan which, in turn, produces the end product, the coolness.
After pouring a bit of water into the reservoir, the cooler provides you with up to four hours of relief. In case you need more time out of the cooler, a mini 2-oz water bottle is included for filling up on the go.
The motor needs to get power from somewhere, and it’s not solar, so you’ll need one AA battery in the cooler in addition to the water.
There are two styles of the Personal Cooling System, sleek silver and bizarrely blue which is see through!
Living in a climate where the weather is constantly hot and humid can get pretty tiring, and having something like the Personal Cooling System around for hikes or other outdoor activities would be a good idea. The Personal Cooling System, version 3.0 at that, can be yours for only $30.
I would look silly walking to Kroger a mile from here with a drum kit traipsing along so I could have a fan. I don’t know how daughter and granddaughter would feel about it. They’d probably like it just fine. It is very nifty.
Cool Sport’s line of body cooling vests are designed to keep your body’s core temperature within safe levels during physical exertion within high-heat environments. We have four primary designs; the Cool Vest Lite, the Cool Vest Classic, the Cool Vest Deluxe and the Motor Sport Cool Vest. Each of these vest models have their own design for comfortable wear without any restriction of movement. With our new (phase change material technology) cooling packs, our vests maintain a comfortable, safe and constant 62º F temperature against the body.
The Cooling Vests have been proven effective for up to 2.5 hours. Keep in mind that effectiveness is a variable of ambient temperatures, workload and physiology, so yours may vary.
Unlike conventional ice and gel packs which take hours to freeze in a freezer, one of the most exciting features of the 62º F. phase change material technology Cool Packs are their ability to recharge in ice water within 20 minutes! The Cool Packs may also be recharged within a refrigerator or freezer and may be stored there without damage to the packs, until ready for use. You can keep a spare set of charged, individual Cool Packs on hand, in a portable cooler for quick and easy changeovers, with minimal downtime!
CoolPacks are nontoxic as well as non-flammable. NOTE: Discontinue using cool pack and garment if the packs leak or are ruptured (call for replacements). Do not use the cool vest near sparks, hot objects or open flame without approved protective clothing over top.
CoolSport is now capable (on a case-by-case basis) of offering (for all commercial, personal, medical and sports) customizing options for our line of cooling garments, including a wide assortment of colors, patterns (such as camouflage patterns) as well as flame and electrical arc resistant fabrics! Customized options may carry an additional charge. E-mail or fax CoolSport for more details and information. NEW!: See CoolSport’s newest additions to our line of cooling products — The Cooling Accessories page with the Head/Neck Band, Cool Pad and the Wheel Chair Cool Pad! | 2019-04-25T04:49:30Z | https://cricketdiane.wordpress.com/tag/air-conditioning/ |
Ulloa, Sergio A. was born 22 December 1929, is male, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 2723 Fillmore St, Hollywood, Florida 33020. Florida voter ID number 102006919. The voter lists a mailing address and probably prefers you use it: 1508 Oderzo Lane Las Vegas NV 89117. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 July 2016.
Ulloa, Sergio I. was born 26 May 1959, is male, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 15307 Sw 53Rd Ter, Miami, Florida 33185. Florida voter ID number 119425828. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Sharon Anne was born 14 November 1976, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 2419 Ridgeview Dr, Lakeland, Florida 33810-2124. Florida voter ID number 113751748. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 December 2018.
31 March 2015 voter list: SHARON ANNE ULLOA, 2419 RIDGEVIEW DR, LAKELAND, FL 33810 Republican Party of Florida.
Ulloa, Sherri Lorene was born 15 June 1974, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 5210 Kirk Rd, Bartow, Florida 33830. Florida voter ID number 117982807. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 December 2018.
31 May 2017 voter list: Sherri Lorene Ulloa, 1892 Crossroads Blvd, Winter Haven, FL 33881 Republican Party of Florida.
Ulloa, Silvia Elena was born 5 April 1991, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 6934 Arbor Oaks Cir, Bradenton, Florida 34209. Florida voter ID number 117311121. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Silvia P. was born 2 June 1977, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 460 Alabama Ave, Ft Lauderdale, Florida 33312-1956. Florida voter ID number 119443774. Her telephone number is 1-954-224-5830. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 June 2015 voter list: Silvia P. Ulloa, 460 Alabama Ave, Ft Lauderdale, FL 33312 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Sofia was born 18 July 1951, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 5901 Sw 82Nd St, South Miami, Florida 33143. Florida voter ID number 110104782. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Sonia Eliviet was born 18 March 1944, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 6247 Sw 131St Pl, 103, Miami, Florida 33183. Florida voter ID number 117109482. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 May 2012 voter list: Sonia Eliviet Ulloa, 6241 SW 131St PL, 103, Miami, FL 33183 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Sonia Elizabeth was born 12 January 1957, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 9133 Rockrose Dr, Tampa, Florida 33647. Florida voter ID number 111038701. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Sonia M. was born 5 February 1950, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 4365 Nw 5Th St, Miami, Florida 33126. Florida voter ID number 116184576. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 September 2018 voter list: Sonia M. Ulloa, 58 NW 65Th Ave, Miami, FL 33126 Republican Party of Florida.
31 May 2016 voter list: Sonia M. Ulloa, 4365 NW 5Th St, Miami, FL 33126 Republican Party of Florida.
31 October 2015 voter list: Sonia M. Ulloa, 4365 NW 5th St, #1114, Miami, FL 33126 Republican Party of Florida.
ULLOA, SONIA MARIA born 9 September 1983, Florida voter ID number 124529313 See MONTIJO, SONIA MARIA. CLICK HERE.
Ulloa, Sonia Maria was born 13 April 1974, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 9481 Highland Oak Dr, #812, Tampa, Florida 33647. Florida voter ID number 120394562. Her telephone number is 1-813-507-2077. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
28 February 2018 voter list: Sonia Maria Ulloa-Elshater, 9481 HIGHLAND OAK DR, #812, Tampa, FL 336472520 Republican Party of Florida.
30 April 2016 voter list: Sonia M. Ulloa, 20119 HERITAGE POINT DR, Tampa, FL 33647 Republican Party of Florida.
Ulloa, Sophia R. was born 26 August 1995, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 1221 Parkside Dr, Ormond Beach, Florida 32174. Florida voter ID number 120958811. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA, STACEY VANESSA born 27 August 1988, Florida voter ID number 123173169 See Agostini Medina, Stacey Vanessa. CLICK HERE.
ULLOA, STANLEES MIGUEL was born 11 October 1984, is male, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 2807 Youngford St, Orlando, Florida 32824. Florida voter ID number 121937454. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 July 2018 voter list: STANLEES MIGUEL ULLOA, 1113 COURTNEY CHASE CIR, APT 418, ORLANDO, FL 32837 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Stephanie was born 18 July 1991, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 3115 Sw 103Rd Ave, Miami, Florida 33165. Florida voter ID number 117557905. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 November 2018 voter list: Stephanie Pastor, 6326 SW 15th St, West Miami, FL 33144 No Party Affiliation.
ULLOA, STEPHANIE ANNE born 31 March 1989, Florida voter ID number 119718852 See Vanlandingham, Stephanie Ulloa. CLICK HERE.
ULLOA, STEPHANIE CORIN was born 9 December 1992, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 1317 Barnwood Pl, Apopka, Florida 32712. Florida voter ID number 126145923. Her telephone number is 1-203-501-4103. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Stephany was born 2 November 1998, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 10064 Nw 126Th Ter, Hialeah Gardens, Florida 33018. Florida voter ID number 123186420. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA, STEVEN ERIN was born 2 March 1994, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 13845 Se 25Th Ave, Summerfield, Florida 34491. Florida voter ID number 120550217. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Steven T. was born 13 August 1986, is male, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 18223 Cypress Haven Dr, Tampa, Florida 33647. Florida voter ID number 110831986. The voter lists a mailing address and probably prefers you use it: Apt 632 18 Park St Jersey City NJ 07304. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA, SUE WEBSTER was born 27 February 1944, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 1681 Saracen Ln, North Port, Florida 34286. Florida voter ID number 119429263. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
28 February 2018 voter list: Sue Webster Ulloa, 4158 Tamiami Trl, APT K5, Port Charlotte, FL 33952 Republican Party of Florida.
31 October 2015 voter list: SUE WEBSTER ULLOA, 2463 GULF TO BAY BLVD, #227, CLEARWATER, FL 33765 Republican Party of Florida.
Ulloa, Susana was born 21 November 1971, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 11109 Nw 18Th Rd, Gainesville, Florida 32606. Florida voter ID number 120749891. Her telephone number is 1-352-281-9939. Her email address is [email protected]. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 June 2016 voter list: Susana Ulloa, 3315 NW 108Th BLVD, Gainesville, FL 32606 Florida Democratic Party.
ULLOA, SUSAN ELLEN was born 10 August 1950, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 2118 Foxford St, Cantonment, Florida 32533. Florida voter ID number 104072324. Her telephone number is 1-850-291-9199. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Suzanne Desiree was born 6 November 1968, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 419 John King Rd, Crestview, Florida 32539-6359. Florida voter ID number 126405658. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Sylvia Susanna was born 21 October 1956, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 3715 43Rd Ave W, Bradenton, Florida 34205. Florida voter ID number 120764695. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA, TALIANNA S. was born 22 February 2001, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 1380 Waterway Cove Dr, Wellington, Florida 33414. Florida voter ID number 125466595. Her telephone number is 1-561-270-9881. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Teresa was born 13 November 1996, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 14342 Sw 43Rd Ter, Miami, Florida 33175. Florida voter ID number 124235080. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Teresita was born 16 September 1951, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 1861 Sw 5Th St, #11, Miami, Florida 33135. Florida voter ID number 109602730. Her telephone number is 1-305-443-4285. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Teresita was born 25 December 1934, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 335 E 41St St, Hialeah, Florida 33013. Florida voter ID number 106250349. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Thelma B. was born 9 June 1950, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 7725 Sw 99Th Ave, Miami, Florida 33173. Florida voter ID number 116044485. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Thomas William was born 22 January 1980, is male, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 14225 River Run Ct, Clermont, Florida 34711. Florida voter ID number 126541178. His telephone number is 1-954-543-3117. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA, TIFFANY A. was born 9 February 1976, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 715 Sunny Pine Way, #F-2, Greenacres, Florida 33415. Florida voter ID number 120535337. Her telephone number is 1-303-502-4990. The voter lists a mailing address and probably prefers you use it: UNIT 3030 BOX 5141 DPO AA 34004. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA, TONY MICHAEL was born 16 January 1973, is male, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 7064 Raburn Rd, Pensacola, Florida 32526-8057. Florida voter ID number 116496649. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 May 2015 voter list: TONY MICHAEL ULLOA, 1400 LEMHURST RD, PENSACOLA, FL 325073539 Florida Democratic Party.
28 February 2015 voter list: TONY MICHAEL ULLOA, 124 SE GILLILAND RD, PENSACOLA, FL 32507 Florida Democratic Party.
31 May 2012 voter list: TONY MICHAEL ULLOA, 7064 RABURN RD, PENSACOLA, FL 32526 Florida Democratic Party.
ULLOA, VALERIA was born 25 January 2000, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 612 Sea Pine Way, Apt B, Greenacres, Florida 33415. Florida voter ID number 124972728. Her telephone number is 1-561-420-3194. Her email address is [email protected]. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Vanessa was born 8 September 1988, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 8620 Banyan Way, Tamarac, Florida 33321. Florida voter ID number 115153999. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 August 2017 voter list: Vanessa Ulloa, 6344 Ocean Dr, Margate, FL 330637023 Republican Party of Florida.
30 June 2015 voter list: Vanessa Ulloa, 6344 Ocean Dr, Margate, FL 33063 Republican Party of Florida.
Ulloa, Vanessa Andrea was born 27 February 1982, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 1635 W 44Th Pl, Apt 412, Hialeah, Florida 33012. Florida voter ID number 109950912. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 May 2018 voter list: Vannessa Andrea Ulloa, 1635 W 44Th PL, APT #412, Hialeah, FL 33012 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Vannessa Andrea born 27 February 1982, Florida voter ID number 109950912 See Ulloa, Vanessa Andrea. CLICK HERE.
Ulloa, Vera was born 15 October 1938, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 12259 Sw 24Th Ter, Miami, Florida 33175. Florida voter ID number 109259291. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Veralucia Milagros born 4 November 1986, Florida voter ID number 115856684 See Hill, Veralucia M. CLICK HERE.
Ulloa, Veronica was born 5 March 1976, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 7120 Sw 144Th Ct, Miami, Florida 33183. Florida voter ID number 109807430. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 30 April 2018.
31 May 2012 voter list: Veronica Rodriguez, 7120 SW 144Th Ct, Miami, FL 33183 Republican Party of Florida.
Ulloa, Veronica Amalia was born 10 July 1960, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 6801 Sw 29Th St, Miami, Florida 33155. Florida voter ID number 122629643. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Vicky Leticia was born 24 November 1999, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 14310 Sw 289Th St, Homestead, Florida 33033. Florida voter ID number 125197128. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 April 2018 voter list: Vicky Leticia Ulloa, 19215 SW 378Th ST, Homestead, FL 33034 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Victor A. was born 5 May 1921, is male, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 353 Nw 152Nd Ave, Pembroke Pines, Florida 33028-1813. Florida voter ID number 101788070. His telephone number is 1-954-437-5861. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 May 2015 voter list: Victor A. Ulloa, 353 NW 152nd Ave, Pembroke Pines, FL 33028 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Victor Daneil was born 28 July 1999, is male, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 10371 Sw 88Th St, Apt G5, Miami, Florida 33176. Florida voter ID number 124805853. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Victoria was born 27 January 1936, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 7036 W 14Th Ct, Hialeah, Florida 33014. Florida voter ID number 109606368. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 May 2013.
ULLOA, VICTOR M. was born 8 June 1944, is male, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 2040 N Keene Rd, Clearwater, Florida 33755. Florida voter ID number 107086119. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Victor Osvaldo was born 13 February 1959, is male, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 16100 Sw 81St Ave, Palmetto Bay, Florida 33157. Florida voter ID number 109223011. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Victor R. was born 9 June 1971, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 15422 Sw 11Th Ter, Miami, Florida 33194. Florida voter ID number 117032867. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 September 2015 voter list: Victor Ulloa, 15422 SW 11Th TER, Miami, FL 33194 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Victor W. was born 2 June 1957, is male, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 9917 Nw 20Th St, Pembroke Pines, Florida 33024-1443. Florida voter ID number 101788073. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 May 2015 voter list: Victor W. Ulloa, 9917 NW 20th ST, Pembroke Pines, FL 33024 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Vincent Noel was born 31 December 1978, is male, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 9 Bayview Dr, Shalimar, Florida 32579. Florida voter ID number 106102467. His telephone number is 1-972-513-5512. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 October 2016 voter list: Vincent Noel Ulloa, 114 Gail La Rue, Ft Walton Bch, FL 32547 Republican Party of Florida.
Ulloa, Virginia was born 3 February 1957, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 12323 Sw 91St Ter, Miami, Florida 33186. Florida voter ID number 119959073. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 October 2016 voter list: Virginia Ulloa, 9131 SW 122Nd Ave, APT 208, Miami, FL 33186 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Virginia Amanda was born 3 October 1987, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 15842 Sw 105Th St, Miami, Florida 33196. Florida voter ID number 126239171. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Viviana Gisela was born 16 May 1960, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 7420 Sw 132Nd St, Pinecrest, Florida 33156. Florida voter ID number 110057467. The voter lists a mailing address and probably prefers you use it: 775 Jr. Acapulco Casa #3 Sol De La M PERU. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA, VIVIANA LUISA was born 8 December 1982, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 1727 Split Fork Dr, Oldsmar, Florida 34677. Florida voter ID number 114338703. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 September 2014 voter list: VIVIANA LUISA ULLOA, 1508 SEAGULL DR, #304, PALM HARBOR, FL 346853488 No Party Affiliation.
31 March 2014 voter list: VIVIANA LUISA ULLOA, 4240 EAGLE WATCH BLVD, PALM HARBOR, FL 34685 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Walter P. was born 8 October 1962, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 8620 Banyan Way, Tamarac, Florida 33321. Florida voter ID number 101490133. Her telephone number is 1-954-682-4916. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 October 2015 voter list: Walter P. Ulloa, 6344 Ocean Dr, Margate, FL 330637023 Florida Democratic Party.
31 May 2015 voter list: Walter P. Ulloa, 6344 Ocean Dr, Margate, FL 330630000 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Wesley J. was born 22 February 1986, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 415 Aledo Ave, Coral Gables, Florida 33134. Florida voter ID number 110211145. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Wilfredo Alejandro was born 3 December 1962, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 6983 W 5Th Ave, Hialeah, Florida 33014. Florida voter ID number 121847717. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Wilfredo D. was born 24 January 1989, is male, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 2320 Andrews Valley Dr, Kissimmee, Florida 34758. Florida voter ID number 114812988. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 May 2012.
Ulloa, William was born 26 January 1991, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 1076 Nw 31St St, Miami, Florida 33127. Florida voter ID number 118096315. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, William G. was born 26 March 1955, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 10209 Oasis Palm Dr, Tampa, Florida 33615. Florida voter ID number 115944876. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Wilson Oswaldo was born 13 February 1984, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 4429 Widgeon Way, Tallahassee, Florida 32303. Florida voter ID number 119263205. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Ximena Maria was born 18 August 1997, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 360 Ocean Dr, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149. Florida voter ID number 123016985. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 September 2018 voter list: Ximena Ulloa, 341 Palmwood Ln, Key Biscayne, FL 33149 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Yadeylis was born 24 May 1988, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 670 E 45Th St, Hialeah, Florida 33013. Florida voter ID number 124051562. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Yadira was born 2 August 1987, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 9541 Nw 32Nd Ct, Sunrise, Florida 33351-7162. Florida voter ID number 116384863. Her telephone number is 1-954-651-0304. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 June 2015 voter list: Yadira Ulloa, 160 COMMODORE DR, APT 827, Plantation, FL 33325 Florida Democratic Party.
31 May 2012 voter list: Yadira Ulloa, 4873 SW 44th TER, Dania Beach, FL 33314 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Yago Enrique was born 7 June 1999, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 360 Ocean Dr, Apt Lph5-S, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149. Florida voter ID number 124805081. His email address is [email protected]. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 June 2018 voter list: Yago Enrique Ulloa, 341 Palmwood LN, Key Biscayne, FL 33149 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Yamilke was born 14 May 1978, is male, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 4050 Sw 137Th Ave, Miramar, Florida 33027. Florida voter ID number 110207894. His telephone number is 1-305-685-1115. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 September 2018 voter list: Yamilke Ulloa, 4050 SW 137Th AVE, Miramar, FL 330273083 Republican Party of Florida.
30 June 2017 voter list: Yamilke Ulloa, 675 W 73Rd PL, Hialeah, FL 33014 Republican Party of Florida.
Ulloa, Yany A. was born 1 November 1972, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 6115 Nw 186Th St, #103, Hialeah, Florida 33015. Florida voter ID number 116072091. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 January 2017.
Ulloa, Yasmany was born 6 September 1989, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 101 Nw 29Th St, Cape Coral, Florida 33993. Florida voter ID number 124486601. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 April 2018 voter list: Yasmany Ulloa, , , FL No Party Affiliation.
28 February 2018 voter list: Yasmany Ulloa, 101 NW 29th ST, Cape Coral, FL 33993 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Yesenia was born 8 April 1990, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 11511 Nw 88Th Ave, Hialeah Gardens, Florida 33018. Florida voter ID number 116305612. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Yoanna was born 13 April 1982, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 1375 W 41St St, #A-6, Hialeah, Florida 33012. Florida voter ID number 117324074. Her telephone number is 1-305-818-5631. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Yolanda was born 21 September 1945, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 1330 W 26Th Pl, Apt 9, Hialeah, Florida 33010. Florida voter ID number 121992784. Her email address is [email protected]. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 May 2018 voter list: Yolanda Ulloa, 6759 SW 14Th ST, Miami, FL 33144 No Party Affiliation.
31 August 2015 voter list: Yolanda Ulloa, 428 SW 2Nd ST, APT 2, Miami, FL 33130 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Yolasis was born 16 March 1976, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 6890 W 10Th Ave, Hialeah, Florida 33014. Florida voter ID number 123705674. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA, YORLLANA was born 1 August 1987, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 3331 Gardenia Dr, Hernando Beach, Florida 34607-3508. Florida voter ID number 118749121. Her telephone number is 1-352-345-1851. Her email address is [email protected]. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 June 2018 voter list: YORLLANA ULLOA, 10250 TRUDY LYNN DR, BROOKSVILLE, FL 34601 Florida Democratic Party.
29 February 2016 voter list: YORLLANA ULLOA, 8169 CESSNA DR, SPRING HILL, FL 34606 Florida Democratic Party.
31 May 2013 voter list: YORLLANA ULLOA, 7029 EASTBROOK DR, SPRING HILL, FL 34606 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Yoseline Carolina was born 25 June 1992, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 13000 Nw Miami Ct, Miami, Florida 33168. Florida voter ID number 118109740. Her email address is [email protected]. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 August 2016 voter list: Yoseline C. Ulloa, 920 SW 9Th St, Miami, FL 33130 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Yudalemys was born 14 November 1985, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 17240 Nw 42Nd Ct, Miami Gardens, Florida 33055. Florida voter ID number 122603448. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 April 2018 voter list: Yudalemys Ulloa, 11201 SW 55Th ST, APT 16, Miramar, FL 33025 Florida Democratic Party.
Ulloa, Yuleidys was born 30 August 1982, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 15594 128Th Pl, Live Oak, Florida 32060. Florida voter ID number 120372710. Her telephone number is 1-786-393-1853. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 August 2016 voter list: Yuleidys Ulloa, 20305 SW 180Th St, Miami, FL 33187 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Yuniet was born 30 May 1982, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 8270 Sw 149Th Ct, Apt 104, Miami, Florida 33193. Florida voter ID number 121019402. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA, YVONNE DIANA was born 1 October 1985, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 28515 Channel View Dr, Summerland /Lit.T, Florida 33042. Florida voter ID number 123210694. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 30 November 2018.
Ulloa, Zenaida was born 6 January 1954, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 3131 Sw 20Th St, Miami, Florida 33145. Florida voter ID number 123356152. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Zenaida was born 19 August 1921, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 110 Royal Palm Rd, #115, Hialeah Gardens, Florida 33016. Florida voter ID number 109296332. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 30 November 2016.
Ulloa, Zenaida Rosario was born 21 August 1964, is female, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 14342 Sw 43Rd Ter, Miami, Florida 33175. Florida voter ID number 109193207. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa, Zenaida Yadell was born 26 September 1989, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 10045 Sw 200Th St, Cutler Bay, Florida 33157. Florida voter ID number 117786779. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 April 2018 voter list: Zenaida Y. Ulloa, 2735 W 61St Pl, APT 105, Hialeah, FL 33016 No Party Affiliation.
31 May 2012 voter list: Zenaida Y. Ulloa, 2730 W 61St PL, APT 203, Hialeah, FL 33016 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Zoila Janeth was born 15 November 1981, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 4535 Ross Lanier Ln, Kissimmee, Florida 34758. Florida voter ID number 115975736. Her telephone number is 1-407-704-0017. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 April 2018 voter list: Zoila J. Ulloa, 1420 Henry ST, Kissimmee, FL 34741 No Party Affiliation.
31 May 2012 voter list: Zoila J. Ulloa, 4535 Ross Lanier Ln, Kissimmee, FL 34758 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa, Zoila Margarita was born 18 September 1960, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 9917 Nw 20Th St, Pembroke Pines, Florida 33024-1443. Florida voter ID number 116436678. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 June 2015 voter list: Zoila Margarita Ulloa, 9917 NW 20Th ST, Pembroke Pines, FL 33024 Florida Democratic Party.
ULLOA ALMONTE, NOEMI was born 18 August 1942, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 241 Briar Bay Cir, Orlando, Florida 32825. Florida voter ID number 119545682. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
ULLOA ALVAREZ, JOSE LUIS was born 21 December 1987, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 1108 S Missouri Ave, #203, Clearwater, Florida 33756. Florida voter ID number 119373165. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 22 October 2014.
Ulloa-Arena, Alejandro C. was born 29 July 1981, is male, residing at 7344 Cinnamon Lakes Dr, Jacksonville, Florida 32244. Florida voter ID number 103374460. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 October 2016.
Ulloa Balnco, Grabiel was born 23 September 1996, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 863 Sw 4Th St, Apt 5, Miami, Florida 33130. Florida voter ID number 122527434. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa Bell, Antonio Esteban was born 1 September 1986, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 340 W Flagler St, Apt 1608, Miami, Florida 33130. Florida voter ID number 118832120. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
30 September 2016 voter list: Antonio Esteban Ulloa Bell, 350 S Miami Ave, APT 2013, Miami, FL 33130 No Party Affiliation.
31 May 2012 voter list: Antonio Esteban Ulloa Bell, 10341 SW 141St ST, Miami, FL 33176 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa Blanco, Gabriel was born 17 February 1993, is male, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 863 Sw 4Th St, Apt 5, Miami, Florida 33130. Florida voter ID number 122806744. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa-Cabrera, Cesar A. born 22 February 1965, Florida voter ID number 116018249 See Ulloa, Cesar A. CLICK HERE.
Ulloa Caceres, Carlos Alfredo was born 9 October 1989, is male, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 1110 Nw 24Th Ct, Miami, Florida 33125. Florida voter ID number 116160822. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 January 2017.
ULLOA CARABALLO, VALERIA CORAL was born 26 March 1997, is female, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 4783 Walden Cir, Apt D, Orlando, Florida 32811. Florida voter ID number 125413540. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
31 July 2018 voter list: Valeria Coral Ulloa-Caraballo, 244 Intrepid WAY, Indialantic, FL 32903 No Party Affiliation.
Ulloa-Caraballo, Valeria Coral born 26 March 1997, Florida voter ID number 125413540 See ULLOA CARABALLO, VALERIA CORAL. CLICK HERE.
Ulloa Casanova, Gisela was born 17 August 1954, registered as No Party Affiliation, residing at 3206 W Grove St, Tampa, Florida 33614. Florida voter ID number 125528635. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa-Castellanos, Ricardo was born 10 February 1955, is male, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 8100 Sw 63Rd Pl, Miami, Florida 33143. Florida voter ID number 118162658. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa Castillo, Renier Rolando was born 23 August 1973, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 15231 Sw 80Th St, 306, Miami, Florida 33193. Florida voter ID number 123964069. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 28 February 2018.
Ulloa Cedeno, Yasell was born 24 July 1982, is male, registered as Republican Party of Florida, residing at 298 E 3Rd St, #103, Hialeah, Florida 33010. Florida voter ID number 126517643. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019.
Ulloa Chavez, Lazara was born 15 December 1966, is female, registered as Florida Democratic Party, residing at 9635 Sw 24Th St, Apt F 201, Miami, Florida 33165. Florida voter ID number 125337646. This is the most recent information, from the Florida voter list as of 31 March 2019. | 2019-04-20T14:15:57Z | https://flvoters.com/pages/u100095.html |
When Mentone station was built, a strip of land on the ‘upside’, adjacent to the station, was left vacant. Eventually, after the new building was erected in 1914, trees, shrubs and other plants were put in place throughout what then became the ‘station gardens’.
Mentone Railway Station from Kilbreda Tower.
This small park was altered in content a few times over the last ninety years or so, the biggest change being the building of several shops at the southern end in the mid-thirties, each having a frontage on Como Parade West. This reduced the size of the station gardens. For many decades the remaining gardens offered a space for passive recreation, and the tall Norfolk Island pine tree with the palm trees alongside became quite a picturesque backdrop to the shopping centre. It came as quite a shock when all this was threatened with extinction in 2002.
In the early months of 2002, rumours and then definitive statements began to circulate in Mentone that the railway station gardens were to be re-developed into a Transport Interchange facility that would take buses off Como Parade West into a large terminal with covered waiting areas. The justification for this plan concerned making the area in front of shops more open for car parking, and free of noise from the many coaches that stopped there for passengers. It soon became obvious that the Bracks State Government had allocated money for this project as part of its scheme to get people off the roads and on to public transport.
Back in March 2000, Peter Batchelor, as Transport Minister, had issued plans for bus/rail interchanges at several stations including one at Mentone. Kingston Council, in 2001, set up a Transport Interchange Advisory Committee to discuss details of the projected structure. State Government had allocated $200,000 (later raised to $300,000) for the scheme to go ahead with an equal amount to be spent by Kingston Council. The advisory committee included Council officers, Councillors, the Mentone Chamber of Commerce and other shopkeepers directly affected by the new Interchange.
By October 2001, the Mentone Transport Advisory Committee was fully developed and its members included: Trevor Clarke, Brad Garfield, Julian Harding, Mark Pearman, Barry Squire, Richard Atkinson and Geoff Russell (all traders), and Topsey Petchey, Cameron Bragg, Robert Stainforth, Warren Ashdown and Tony Rijs (Councillors and Council staff). Nigel Lawson, a traffic consultant, was co-opted as well.
Discussions went on throughout 2001 and 2002 with six detailed plans for the Interchange being considered. There was no agreement on the best option. One plan had only the southbound buses entering the new facility on what is the station gardens site. Other options involved all of the buses using the Interchange. All of the schemes were complicated by the need to change traffic light operation and allow for pedestrian safety around the terminal. The plans were submitted to bus companies, Ventura and Grenda, for their perusal, as well as being looked at by the bus drivers’ union representatives.
It should be said that many of the Mentone traders supported the proposal. The Mentone Chamber of Commerce fully backed the Interchange construction, its president, Ian Shiell, saying that it would improve pedestrian safety, stop bus exhaust fumes from wafting into the nearby shops, and improve lighting near the station, as well as adding beautification to the area. He said that only one tree would be lost as the palms would be replanted at one end of the facility together with extra trees. However, the Council’s advisory committee had one or two dissenters who opposed the plan. Foremost was Julian Harding, the owner of Alfred Moore Hairdressing, who opposed the whole idea of altering the gardens, saying the trees added character to Mentone with their picturesque backdrop to the shopping centre.
By mid-2002, the plans for the changes at Mentone Station became more widely known and people outside the domain of the shopkeepers and the Council became concerned about what was being planned. Julian Harding was a key part of this and he attracted the support of the Mordialloc and District Historical Society whose members unanimously opposed the terminal construction. One member, Sheila Johnston, a Mentone resident since 1930, rallied other older Mentone people to fight against the destruction of the gardens. As the latter half of 2002 began, in Mentone there was an undercurrent of uncertainty, disappointment and even distrust over the prospect of this huge change to the hub of the town.
The Transport Interchange dispute became a hot political issue during the latter half of the year. Sensing community disapproval of the plan, Geoff Leigh, the Shadow Transport Minister, began to make strong condemnations of what the government, and Peter Batchelor in particular, had put forward. In July, a Leader article quoted Leigh using very strong language to condemn the plan, saying that the Bracks Government was committed to the construction come what may. He attacked Batchelor, the Transport Minister, for not considering a terminal on the other side of the station that would leave the gardens untouched. During the next few months the issue was discussed in many forums and formal opposition increased through petitions and letters to local papers. Mentone-Parkdale Village Committee and the historical society were quoted in the Mordialloc-Chelsea Leader voicing strong opposition. Dorothy Booth, as chairperson of the Mentone-Parkdale Village Committee, contacted Topsey Petchey, the Mayor, and the Council administrators asking them to inform the public about what was planned for the Mentone Station development. She was expressing the concern that many others felt, an awareness that planning was going on involving only a few insiders, possibly leading to a fait accompli. The gardens and the stately trees would be bulldozed and no one would have had a chance to do anything about it.
Kingston Council debated the issue throughout this period, trying to produce a solution that would suit those who wanted a new terminal as well as those who wanted the trees kept safe. In September and October the plans were modified, but the Mayor, Topsey Petsey, remained uncertain whether they satisfied those who had objected to the scheme and the council still did not give its approval, despite some councillors being in favour of the development. A complicating factor was the creation by Council at that time of a Significant Trees and Vegetation Register. People argued that the station trees were highly significant and could not be sacrificed when others, less significant, were being protected. It was pointed out that the Canary Island palm and the Norfolk Island pines had been planted at least 80 years ago and were significant to Mentone’s environment.
Up until November, Peter Batchelor’s department seemed determined to go ahead with the terminal despite opposition to the latest plans by a local member of the ALP government, Janice Munt. She wanted a terminal, but not at the expense of the trees, and sought assurances from Peter Batchelor that the Interchange would not be built at the expense of the valuable trees near the station. Murray Thompson, a local Liberal member of State Parliament, expressed disapproval of the scheme, supporting his colleague, Geoff Leigh.
By the end of October, there was still no certainty over the building of the Transport Terminal. There was a feeling abroad that the Government would push the scheme through, regardless of public opinion. Yet there were also rumours that it could be scrapped. Opponents of the proposal wanted a straight-out removal of the scheme from the Government’s works program: they wanted certainty. A group that included Julian Harding, Sheila Johnston, Betty Rodstead and ex-Mayor, Reg Marlow, had worked solidly throughout 2002 to organise the opposition to any destruction of the station gardens. Letters to the press, personal contacts and a petition that ended up containing 1000 signatures all raised the profile of the dispute over the Interchange plan. One of the people brought into the campaign was Garry Spencer, an ex-military man who applied his organising skills to the struggle over the protection of the gardens. During October-November, he organised a large letterbox-drop in the Mentone area to publicise a rally planned for the 23rd November. He contacted a range of people to make them aware of the imminent loss of the station gardens. People were informed that the gardens were still at risk as neither Kingston Council nor the State Government had made a firm decision on the project and were procrastinating, seemingly watching what each other was doing and noting the growing angry community response to the scheme. On the Saturday morning of the rally, Julian Harding and others erected big banners in the station gardens, while the trees were bedecked with yellow ribbons. Garry Spencer arranged for helpers to hand out rally leaflets in Mentone supermarkets and on street corners. A crowd of 300 gathered in the station gardens from 10am onwards. No one from the State Government department that planned the Interchange accepted the invitation to speak in support of it, nor did the leaders of the Mentone Chamber of Commerce or any of its trader members. Janice Munt, local ALP member, stated the project would not go ahead without wide community support, while both Geoff Leigh and Murray Thompson, Opposition members, spoke to condemn the whole project. Elizabeth Larking, for Kingston Council, stated that the council had not committed itself to the development and called for it to be reviewed. Garry Spencer called the proposal an act of vandalism on the station gardens and appealed to people to keep up the opposition to the plan while there was still time.
Shortly after this November rally the Kingston Council informed Dorothy Booth, Chairperson of the Mentone/Parkdale Village Committee, that in view of the shortage of open space in Mentone, and the opposition to possible removal of parts of the century-old station gardens, the Council had abandoned plans for the Transport Interchange and would be informing the State Government of this decision. This effectively killed the Interchange plan, despite some vague statements early in 2003 that the Government was still intent on upgrading the station facilities. The group led by Garry Spencer had won its fight to save the open garden space. Loosely, it had been known as the ‘Committee for the preservation of the trees and gardens at Mentone Station’, a rather unwieldy title. Already at the rally someone had called the group the ‘Friends of Mentone Station Gardens’ and this title caught on. Key members of the group continued to meet informally and to do clean-up work at the station, particularly the removal of litter and the weeding of garden sections. After the holiday break, in the early months of 2003, several of the ‘Friends’ met for meals at Mentone RSL to discuss action that could help maintain the station’s profile. Out of these discussions came the decision to create an official incorporated entity that would seek new members and design a coherent plan for the protection and upkeep of the Mentone Station and its garden surroundings.
On April 29th 2003, a meeting took place at the Old Bakery Museum to officially form ‘The Friends of Mentone Station and Gardens’. At that meeting, aims and possible procedures were discussed and the committee officially formed. It consisted of: Garry Spencer (Chairman), Dorothy Booth (Vice Chairman), Penny McGuire-White (Secretary), Reg Marlow (Treasurer) and committee members, Shirley Straker, Betty Rodstead, Sheila Johnston and Jeff Pickerd.
This foundation meeting was attended by two Kingston councillors, Bill Nixon and Rosemary West. Two other council officers came, as did a representative from Keep Australia Beautiful, Brian Klemm. That organisation showed great interest in the Mentone project, because at that very time they were campaigning to have local groups adopt railway stations and beautify them in any way they could. The ‘Friends’ joined this Stationeers campaign.
Developing a master plan with the cooperation of the Victorian Government and Kingston Council for ongoing maintenance and improvement of the station and gardens.
As if to underline the importance of a ‘Friends’ group being formed, just prior to Christmas in 2002, several gum trees on the down side of the station had been cut down by the state government authority that ran railway infrastructure. Dorothy Booth’s letter of complaint over this was answered with the information that the trees had been damaged by storms several weeks earlier and could not be preserved. People disputed whether the trees really were dangerous or not viable; the need for a group to protect the station environs seemed more vital.
Once the Friends of Mentone Station and Gardens became a group with a committee and an agenda, several other actions followed. The ‘Friends’ became incorporated, a bank account was established, and new stakeholders were brought into the membership that grew to over fifty. Led by Garry Spencer, and with Dorothy Booth pushing the ‘Friends’ cause at every opportunity, progress was fast and very effective. Monthly working bees began whereby group members cleaned up litter, pruned plants, weeded garden beds and treated the station and its gardens as a special public asset. There were contacts with the Kingston Council’s garden staff in relation to the care of the lawns, trees and garden beds that had been saved. Dorothy Booth also talked to many people in authority to gain support. M Train, the station owners, provided a small room on the upside for tools and other items to be stored. She procured $850 from a Federal Government Grants program that allowed many tools to be purchased for the Friends to use in their maintenance work. This allowed the working bee activity to include painting and other minor repair work. Graffiti was effaced as quickly as possible to discourage the sprayers, while taped classical music began to be broadcast over the station speakers on a continuous basis. Apart from its calming effect on commuters, it was thought that the loutish element might not appreciate it and go elsewhere for whatever questionable activities they had in mind. (Somewhere in the USA, owners of a shopping complex had discovered that playing Bing Crosby records over the PA had reduced the number of young troublemakers in the malls.) A local business provided afternoon tea for the working bee volunteers and this was just one example of how Dorothy Booth and Garry Spencer sought to gain the interest and support of local businesses and citizens.
During 2003, the committee arranged for insurance for all of its members, especially those on working bee activity, and also applied for the status of an incorporated body. The Certificate of Incorporation was issued on 4th December of the foundation year.
Station groups from other suburbs contacted the ‘Friends’ to be informed about what was happening at Mentone and how to implement changes. Dorothy Booth visited other groups to give advice on what actions could help make their stations better. The ‘Friends’ committee also secured an agreement with the railway authorities to staff Mentone station from 5am until 5pm on all weekdays. It should be remembered that during the 1990s the State Government had removed staff from many stations, and reduced hours of staffing on others.
In September 2003, a gathering in the Mentone Station gardens heard the mayor, Arthur Athanasopoulos, introduce State Minister, Mary Delahunty, who announced a Pride of Place grant of $30,000 for a major upgrade of the station and its surrounds. This was to be supplemented with $40,000 from Kingston Council. A wide range of community leaders heard speeches praising the work of the ‘Friends’ as a fine example of community involvement for the benefit of a local environment. Councillors, traders, police, railway executives and many others were solidly behind what the ‘Friends’ had worked for. The Transport Interchange was forgotten, seemingly by some of its erstwhile strongest supporters.
To apply for heritage listing of the Mentone Station and Gardens.
Some of these objectives have been achieved in the last decade, but some, notably the regular involvement of the schools, have not. The ‘Friends’ moved on to 2004 very confident that they had brought welcome changes to the way citizens regarded the town’s transport hub. There was an optimistic view for future improvements.
Very early in 2004, ‘Friends’ adopted a distinctive logo for use in all notices and correspondence. There had been a debate for some time over this issue, but the logo that was chosen looked so appropriate and appealing that it soon became an asset for the work of the group. Dorothy Booth had enlisted help from an ex-colleague, Pam Barrett, a Graphics teacher at Aquinas College. She produced several designs, but the one chosen, featuring a train and a tree, was a winning one in all respects.
As the ‘Friends’ moved into their second year of activity, their work began to be noticed in the appearance of the green space at Mentone’s station hub. Gardens on the upside looked great, a result of liaison with the Kingston parks and gardens staff. Graffiti was removed very quickly and litter as well. During 2004, the Pride of Place funding allowed new paving, seating and steps up to the walkway entrance. Paths were improved and more vegetation was planted. The ‘Friends’ had input with the planners of this whole upgrade. By the end of the year the work was almost done, and despite some disagreements on minor parts of the renovation, the upside gardens and amenities looked better than ever. The Garryowen horse trough was planted with annual flowers that added a splash of colour, while working bees each month continued to achieve a neat and tidy appearance around the station environs.
During 2004, thanks to the ability of Dorothy Booth and Garry Spencer to persuade other people and organisations to join the ‘Friends’ campaign, there was an established coterie of willing supporters. Bunnings had supplied many tools for working bee activity, Safeway donated afternoon teas, Connex staff were cooperative, Kingston Council Outdoor staff helped, Cheltenham Police appreciated the ‘Friends’ fight against graffiti and vandalism, while local politicians of both major parties were eager to be seen as supporters of this community effort. Murray Thompson, Janice Munt, Ann Corcoran and Mitch Fifield together represented State and Federal government levels, and all praised the ‘Friends’. With all these people onside, the ‘Friends’ gained confidence and great work went on. The bags of litter, after working bee activity, were taken away promptly, Council provided mulch for garden beds, Connex staff alerted Dorothy Booth quickly about graffiti which was removed that same day, and police increased their surveillance of the station.
On Australia Day of 2004, Shirley Straker, an enthusiastic member of ‘Friends’, was named as Kingston’s Citizen of the Year. The Mordialloc-Chelsea Leader, announcing this, pictured her weeding garden beds with Pat Mutimer in the foreground of a working bee group. Just after this, in March, the ‘Friends’ and the Mordialloc Historical Society hosted a function, held next to the horse trough, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the tragic fire that killed Violet and Bill Murrell who were trying to save their horse, Garryowen, from the flames. Then, in October, the Mayor, a Connex executive and Garry Spencer introduced students from four local colleges who had agreed to paint murals that would decorate the shop wall in the station subway entrance. Kilbreda, Mentone Grammar, Mentone Girls’ Secondary College and St Bede’s student artists would later devise artistic local illustrative panels that gave tasteful colour to the station entrance. Depicting local features such as the pier and the hotel, the artwork was in place before October ended. The four panels are still there, having largely resisted graffiti disfigurement.
The third year of the ‘Friends’ work began with plans for enhancing the appearance of the downside areas, mostly carparks in the old railway siding site. With advice from Jill Orr-Young, Kingston’s landscape architect, the working bees in mid-year planted hardy tussock grass in the dividing spaces between the car parking bays, and two peppercorn trees were placed in larger end spots. Thorough weeding and litter removal, plus lashings of mulch, smartened up the strip along the platform fence.
Towards the end of 2005, Dorothy Booth was able to achieve a creative solution to a distasteful problem that had gone on sporadically for years. Visible from the downside platforms, a line of back fences belonging to the residences in Station Street had often been covered in ugly graffiti, mainly senseless ‘tagging’. It often remained for long periods. Dorothy, with the approval and support of Kingston Council, approached the owners of adjacent properties with a plan. What if a tasteful series of ‘artistic’ panels could be sprayed on the fences? The sprayers would then be enlisted on the side of those who wanted a pleasant station precinct. After much negotiation, four ‘aerosol artists’ came on board and agreed to paint the long brick fence near the car park after the owner gave the approval. The result has been a series of colourful paintings showing old and new trains, the old signal box and other station scenes. It remains today and has been defaced only once, showing the respect that less reputable taggers have for it.
Early in 2005, the ‘Friends’ contacted Metlink, the controllers of railway signage, and asked that a special signboard be installed at Mentone Station. It was very soon a reality. The prominent sign above the main entrance informed people of the station and gardens’ foundation date and the fact that the whole facility had been placed on Kingston’s heritage register. For a while the wrong date was shown, but the ‘1882’ was soon changed to ‘1881’, signifying the arrival of the railway in the town just prior to Christmas that year.
Other matters that came under notice during the latter half of 2005 were repairs to some sections of the station buildings, the continual littering by people who ditched the free MX newspapers all over the station area, and the vast ugly graffiti on the back walls of shops that were adjacent to the upside platform. ‘Friends’ volunteers painted the shop walls late in the year so that travellers now had a brighter vista as they waited for the train. Mainco, station owners, also provided bins for the MX papers around this time and allowed ‘Friends’ members to fix small items of damage around the station. Two enthusiastic recruits to the committee, Neil Blacklaw and his wife, were examples of working bee members who wanted to become permanently involved.
The year ended with a pleasant Saturday morning session of singing by a select group of songstresses from Mentone Girls’ Secondary College, just before Christmas.
After the New Year festivities and holidays of summer 2006, the ‘Friends’ had another reason for celebration. The notification arrived that Mentone Station and Gardens had been given State Heritage listing. Several months earlier a deputation that included Dorothy Booth, Sheila Johnston, Pat Mutimer and Leo Gamble had presented the case for heritage recognition to a panel appointed by Heritage Victoria. Dorothy Booth and Leo Gamble spoke in detail about the station’s historical significance from the 1880s till the present time. Its role in Mentone’s creation, as well as its focal function in the town’s beach resort attractiveness, horseracing past, and ongoing educational community, place it at the centre of life in this district. These points were forcibly stated. The panel eventually agreed and now a plaque is displayed to inform station users of this status.
Dorothy Booth, who provided the main energy source for ‘Friends’ activity, was re-invigorated by the heritage news and work went on with eagerness as the year elapsed. Dorothy began appearing on Southern FM 88.3 to spread news of work at the station. In March, Dorothy organised entertainment in the gardens. The Mordialloc Jazz Orchestra played on a Saturday morning, providing a free concert with big band era music and vocals for the shoppers and others who wished to linger around the pleasant garden setting. Many attended and enjoyed the show. Dorothy had two things in mind with this program: to publicise the ‘Friends’ work and to establish in the public mind that the gardens were for community activities and were being used that way.
Mordialloc Historical Society at this time began to provide posters that illustrated stories from Mentone’s past and these went up in the waiting room for train patrons to read. This began a series of beautiful productions created by Tara Proussard at Parkdale Library, the number of editions, changed regularly, now over thirty. It seems that many people can be observed reading these stories, so the idea to create them was sound.
There was much more going on in 2006 as a result of ‘Friends’ work. The Garryowen Horse Trough was re-surfaced and painted, the ugly waste skip at the end of the car park was removed because it attracted dumped litter of all types, and the station received a welcome coat of paint. The Annual General Meeting for the ‘Friends’ was held in the Oakleigh Room, high up in the Council’s Cheltenham office building, the result of negotiations with the mayor, Cr Bill Nixon, who was a strong supporter of the group. Graham Whitehead, the City Historian, was guest speaker. The Oakleigh Room was also venue for the AGM in 2007 when a police officer, experienced in the control of graffiti vandals, spoke on many aspects of this problem.
As the ‘Friends’ worked through their fifth year, many more improvements to the station facilities occurred. The downside platform’s southern extremity, where disabled people had to board trains with driver assistance, was narrow and difficult for wheelchair users. After lobbying by ‘Friends’ members, the platform, which earlier had given a narrow extension for the longer new trains, was widened so that wheelchairs could be put on the trains more safely.
It became known during 2007 that Mentone was to be upgraded to ‘Premium Station’ status. This meant that there would be staff on duty from first to last trains each day and facilities put in place for extended booking of country and interstate train services. Illuminated signs on both platforms, with train times and destinations shown and updated as the day elapsed, informed travellers more satisfactorily. This ‘Premium’ upgrade was in place by Christmas 2007. So also was the bud lighting that went into the Norfolk Island pine and this has given a festive appearance to the gardens every night since.
The year ended with a disappointment; the customary free sausage sizzle had to be cancelled because of rain. Nevertheless, despite this minor hiccup, the ‘Friends’ looked back on a very productive twelve months of valuable activity. | 2019-04-23T00:22:02Z | https://localhistory.kingston.vic.gov.au/articles/674 |
The Probate department handles court records of estate cases, guardianships of minors and incapacitated persons, Baker Act cases involving mental health disorders and Marchman Act cases involving drug and alcohol abuse; and accepts deposit wills for filing.
Probate is a legal process through which the assets of a deceased person are properly distributed to the heirs or beneficiaries under a will, or if there is no will, according to Florida law. The Court oversees the estate to make sure debts are paid and proper distribution is made.
A will is a document executed by a person which disposes of his/her property after his/her death. It generally names a personal representative to administer the estate.
The custodian of the original Last Will and Testament of a deceased person must deposit the will with the Clerk of the Circuit Court in the county where the decedent resided, within ten (10) days after receiving information that the person is deceased.
The custodian must supply the person's date of death or the last four digits of the person’s social security number to the Clerk upon deposit of the will.
You do not need an attorney to file the will with the Clerk of the Circuit Court. However, you may want to consult with an attorney before filing the will, so that he or she may determine whether Probate proceedings will be necessary.
If there is no will, and there are assets to be probated, the estate of the deceased person must be distributed in accordance with Florida Probate law.
It may be necessary for an attorney to petition the Court on behalf of heirs or beneficiaries, or other interested parties, to appoint a personal representative to administer the estate.
There are 3 types of estate proceedings. You may wish to seek legal advice before deciding which type of proceeding is appropriate.
May be filed when there are assets exceeding $75,000, and/or when it is necessary to appoint a representative to act on behalf of the estate. At the time of appointment, Letters of Administration are issued to the personal representative by the Court giving him or her the authority to complete the administration of the estate. The Court oversees the administration of the estate to ensure the decedent’s debts are paid and that correct distribution to the heirs and/or beneficiaries.
The appointed personal representative may be required to file a bond. Please refer to the Estate Bond Schedule section.
May be filed when the value of the entire estate subject to administration does not exceed $75,000.
Florida Statute 735.301 allows for an informal application to the court for transfer of assets when the decedent has only left personal property (no real estate can be transferred through this process). If you are a surviving spouse, or if no spouse, the surviving child of the decedent; or you paid the funeral expenses for the decedent, you may be eligible for this process. This procedure may be accomplished with the filing of an informal petition. Disposition Packets (which include a checklist, instructions and forms) are available from the Clerk of the Circuit Court in Probate Court Records and here. The Disposition Packet will help you determine if you are eligible for such a process – which is based on the nature of the assets and your relationship to the decedent-- and if so, provide the forms needed and detail other documents you may need to submit to the court.
After all the required documents have been filed, the court will review what you have provided and generate an order. If everything meets the statutory guidelines, the order will state that the asset(s) now belong to you. The prepaid certified copy of the original order will be mailed to you for submission to the asset holder. Agencies, such as the Dept. of Motor Vehicles and banks, require a certified copy of this order to release assets.
There is a fee for this process. Before you begin, you may want to inquire with the holder of the asset (for example, if the asset is a bank account, contact the bank) to see what may be required for transfer. Depending on the asset and your relationship to the decedent, you may only need a death certificate and certified copy of the will.
Refer to the current Schedule of Service Charges, available in any Clerk's office or online, for the current filing fee.
At this time, there is no internet access available to the public for viewing imaged documents unless you are a registered user. To become a registered user, click here.
Images of probate court documents are also available for viewing at any of the Clerk’s locations on the public view terminals. Our staff will be happy to demonstrate if you should need assistance.
You may also order, online or by mail, copies of any document not sealed by Florida Statute, Probate Rule, Administrative Order or Court Order. The copies will be mailed to you upon receipt of the service fee of $1.00 per page. Please include a self-addressed, postage paid envelope with your payment, or to pay by credit card, use our online copy request service.
Florida law gives the Court full latitude and discretion to set the estate bonds and delineates in Section 733.403(1) many factors that must be considered when setting these bonds. The following chart is prepared as an aid for the Court in setting bonds based upon an estate's gross value and other factors of that statute.
*Every wrongful death estate will have a minimum bond of $18,000.
**Do multipliers of $100,000 for each $500,000 of estate (i.e. $1,100,000 estate calls for bond of $225,000).
A Guardianship is a legal arrangement under which a person (the guardian) has the legal right and duty to care for another (the ward) and his or her property. A guardian must be represented by an attorney.
A guardianship is established when a person is unable to legally act on his/her own behalf. This may be due to *minority, (he or she is not of age), or due to mental and/or physical *incapacity. A competent adult may also petition the court to appoint a *voluntary guardian for himself or herself. A developmentally disabled person may be eligible for a *Guardian Advocate to be appointed.
*Guardian Advocate: A developmentally disabled person may be eligible for a less restrictive type of guardianship, known as a guardian advocate. For more information about this, please click here.
A developmentally disabled person may be eligible for a *guardian advocate to be appointed.
*Minority: A guardianship must be established for the property of a minor child when an amount over $15,000 is to be paid to the minor. This may occur through an inheritance or through a settlement of a legal action. Guardianship of the person of a minor child may need to be established if both natural parents are deceased, incapacitated or unavailable. Guardianship is not the same as custody. For information on custody of a minor, please see Family Law Rules and Forms.
*Incapacity: A guardianship for an alleged incapacitated person can be initiated by filing a “Petition to Determine Capacity” and a “Petition to Appoint Guardian” with the Clerk of the Circuit Court, Probate Court Records department. (The proposed guardian must be represented by an attorney).
The alleged incapacitated person and next of kin will be served with a notice and a copy of the court order appointing an examining committee and setting a hearing. An attorney will be appointed to represent the alleged incapacitated at the hearing. Each member of the examining committee submits his/her report to the court after examining the alleged incapacitated person. At the hearing, the court will make a determination regarding the capacity of the alleged, and if necessary, appoint a guardian.
*Voluntary: A person may voluntarily petition the court for appointment of a guardian for his/her property when, though mentally competent, he or she is incapable of the care, custody, and management of his estate by reason of age or physical infirmity. A certificate of a licensed physician is required, stating that he has examined the person and that the person is competent to understand the nature of the guardianship and his delegation of authority.
A person 18 years of age or older who has an interest in the protection of the personal or property rights of the incapacitated person may qualify to serve as a court appointed guardian. A completed Application for Appointment of Guardian form must be submitted by the proposed guardian at the time a guardianship case is opened. The Court will review the application to ensure the guardian will best serve the needs of the ward.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) no longer accepts or processes hard copy guardian applicant fingerprint cards. Fingerprints are to be submitted electronically via a live scan device.
Locations providing this service can be found at: www.identogo.com/services/live-scan-fingerprinting. Select Florida for the state. Scroll down to "Enrollment Services" and click on "Digital Fingerprinting." Then click on "Schedule a New Appointment."
Non-Professional/Family guardian applicants should select "All Other."
Professional guardian applicants should select "Professional Guardians."
The applicant will need the Originating Agency Identification Number (ORI) in order to schedule an appointment.
The applicant should arrive at their appointment with any necessary paperwork and their photo ID. Please note: a photo ID is required before any applicant can be fingerprinted (acceptable forms of photo ID are either state or federally issued, i.e. driver’s license, state ID, passport, military ID, or alien registration card with picture).
Once the applicant has been fingerprinted, the fingerprint technician will transmit the fingerprint records electronically to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). The fingerprint technician also issues a signed receipt for the fingerprinting service to the applicant. The applicant needs to keep this receipt for future reference.
FDLE processes the background check for the State of Florida. Florida Department of Law Enforcement forwards the fingerprint record to the FBI for federal background check processing. When the background check(s) is completed, the results are returned to the Clerk’s office.
Professional guardians must also submit a clerk’s fee of $7.50 per Florida Statute 744.3135 (1) annually, due by January 31st each year.
A guardian of the property is required to file an Initial Inventory of the ward’s assets within 60 days of his appointment. Subsequently, an annual accounting of the assets will be required.
A guardian of the person is required to file an Initial Plan for the care of the ward within 60 days of his appointment. Subsequently, an annual plan is required to provide information to the court about the health and physical well being of the ward.
Pinellas County Administrative Order No. 2009-36 PA/PI-CIR mandates the use of specific forms for the filing of these required reports. The forms and a copy of the Administrative Order are available at http://www.jud6.org.
The law assigns the responsibility for auditing the reports to The Clerk of the Circuit Court. The Court then reviews the Clerk’s audit.
Audit fees are set by Florida Statute and based on the value of the ward’s estate. Refer to the Schedule of Service Charges for current audit fees.
More details are available on the Court’s website: www.jud6.org.
Please refer to the Schedule of Service Charges for current fees.
After hours means after 4:00 p.m. or before 8:00 a.m. on a regular work day, or at anytime during a holiday or weekend day.
Baker Act petitions for involuntary examination or for involuntary placement and Marchman Act petitions for involuntary assessment and stabilization will be received for filing and date/time stamping by the Clerk of Court but will not be processed after hours. After hours filings will be processed on the next working day.
a.) Their petition will be processed the following work day.
b.) Petitioner may contact law enforcement or call 911 in the event of an emergency relating to the respondent.
A Baker Act is a means of providing individuals with emergency services and temporary detention for mental health evaluation and treatment when required. An Ex Parte Petition for Involuntary Examination is also called Ex Parte Baker Act.
The person has refused voluntary examination and/or is unable to determine whether an examination is necessary.
The person is likely to suffer from neglect and the refusal could threaten his or her well being.
If there is a substantial likelihood that without care or treatment, the person will cause serious bodily harm to himself or herself or others in the near future as evidenced by recent behavior.
The person’s whereabouts must be known and in Pinellas County and the person cannot be in jail.
Anyone who has observed the behavior may complete a petition describing the actions of the person that cause them to think that there is a substantial likelihood that he or she will cause bodily harm to himself or herself or to others, or will suffer from neglect or refuse to care for himself or herself, posing a threat to his or her well being.
You must provide the court with sworn written testimony that meets the criteria set forth by Florida law. By completing the petition, you are requesting the court for an order for the person to be involuntarily transported and examined at a designated mental health facility.
There is no filing fee required to file a Petition for Involuntary Examination.
You may download and print the Petition for Involuntary Examination and file it at the listed Clerk's office locations, Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Please note printed forms are also available at these locations. If another person also witnessed the behavior, and would like to submit their testimony, they may complete the Affidavit in Support of the Petition to be filed with the petition.
The court will review the petition. If the criteria required for involuntary examination has been met, a court order is issued, authorizing the Sheriff to pick up the person at the address provided in the petition. The Sheriff will transport the person to the nearest designated mental health facility. The facility must examine the person within 72 hours to determine the necessity of placement. If the examination by a psychiatrist determines that the person will need to be involuntarily placed for treatment, the facility will petition the court for a hearing within the 72 hours.
A Marchman Act is a means of providing individuals with services at a facility for substance abuse when required.
He or she has either inflicted, attempted or threatened to inflict, or unless admitted, is likely to inflict, physical harm on himself or herself or another.
The person’s spouse or guardian, any relative of the person, a director of a licensed service provider, a private practitioner, or any adult who has personal knowledge of the person’s substance abuse impairment.
You may download and print the Petition for Involuntary Assessment and Stabilization and file it at the listed Clerk's office locations, Monday - Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Please note printed forms are also available at these locations.
Before filing a petition with the court, you must reserve a bed in a designated facility for the person you are filing against.
The person must be in Pinellas and their whereabouts known.
The petitioner will need to bring the following information with them: name of the facility with the bed, the name and phone number of the contact person at that facility, and the day and time the bed will be available.
If the court grants the petition, the petitioner must provide a check or money order (no cash or credit cards) to the Clerk, but payable to the Sheriff for $40.00, to either serve a summons on, or pick up and transport the person to the facility.
Should the court set a hearing, the petitioner has the burden of proof, is NOT entitled to a court-appointed attorney, and must prove that the patient is impaired and is in need of professional evaluation.
If the Court finds that the criteria have been met, an Order for Involuntary Assessment and Stabilization will be issued by the Court. The Court may set the case for a hearing, or the Sheriff may ordered to transport the person to the designated facility. The facility then has 5 days to do an assessment. After the assessment has been completed at the facility, the petitioner may file a Petition for Involuntary Services of Substance Abuse for the patient and file it at the listed Clerk's office locations, Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Please note printed forms are also available at these locations.
A hearing date is set for the determination of the need for treatment. The assessment results are subpoenaed as evidence for the hearing, and a summons to appear at the hearing is issued and served on the patient.
At the hearing the court will hear all the evidence and determine if the Order for Involuntary Services for Substance Abuse is warranted.
If the petitioner wants to drop their Marchman Act case, the petitioner may file a Withdrawal of Petition for Hearing on Involuntary Substance Abuse Assessment and Stabilization.
The Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller offers the legal community an opportunity to tour the Probate operations at the Clearwater and St. Petersburg courthouses. The tours include an overview of document imaging, processing of new cases and, at the Clearwater location, the audit of estates and guardianship cases.
For further information or to set up an appointment, please email us.
You may also review our Probate FAQ for some more helpful information. | 2019-04-18T16:55:52Z | https://www.mypinellasclerk.org/Home/Probate-Mental-Health |
They say “The surest way to make your dreams come true is to live them”. I finally knew what that meant. We all know that travel gives you the best experience in life but to actually be there and do something unimaginable is another story. I want to share a similar experience, a moment that was so magical and unreal. Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort is everyones dream transmuted to reality, it was mine too. If you have been even partly active on social media you must have come across the image below and thought to yourself, this looks so good wonder if its real!? Who goes there anyway! Well that’s exactly the same thought I had a few years ago and now I can’t believe that a place like this exists and I have actually stayed in one of these glass igloos. I need to repeatedly pinch myself to believe this.
Imagine a place where there are a zillion stars over your head, as if some constellations have just been born to grace your crown, where there is just the richness of forest and the mystical hum of the night falling quietly over the land of glass igloos. Where sleep eavesdrops on your dreams and where jaws drop when the northern lights pierce the sky like shards of heaven. In simple words this peace of paradise is just where the simple becomes surreal.
They say Jussi found this arctic paradise during one of his fishing trips in Finland when he ran out of fuel and was stuck in Kakslauttanen. What started as a little chalet and then a café is now one of the most exotic locations in the world. For those don’t know this is the best igloo hotel in the world.
This stunning property is tucked away in the north of Finland. Located 10 kilometres away from Saariselka, about three hours away from Rovaniemi (the heart of Lapland) and 250km north of the Arctic Circle is this Arctic Resort this is right in the middle of the wilderness along the road of the Arctic Sea.
To get here you have to first fly into Helsinki, the largest city and capital of Finland.
-If you’re coming from Helsinki : Take a flight or an overnight train to Ivalo. The flight is easier and the quickest way to reach (1hr 30mins). The resort is 50 mins away from Ivalo and the hotel offers a pick up from the airport.
– If you’re coming from Ivalo then you can either take a bus to Saariselka, a cab to the hotel or request the hotel for a pick up. A cab is the best option.
– If you are driving, just type this address in your navigator: Kiilopääntie 9, Saariselkä, Finland. Once you are there, you can’t miss it. They offer free parking places next to all the cabins and there is plenty space for cars also in front of their restaurant building.
After spending three nights in Rovaniemi, we opted for the picturesque bus journey and it was definitely the most beautiful drive ever!
Every time I think of this property I envision snowy landscapes, cozy heated igloos, an arctic forest, dreamy panoramas and a sky flashing with the lights. Kakslauttanen is divided into two villages, the East and the West. Both these villages have their exceptional set of glass igloos, wooden cabins, restaurants and a reception. We stayed in the West Village and loved it.
Once the bus dropped us at the gate of the East Village my heart started racing and so did my feet. I entered the property and tried looking for igloos, but of course good things take a while. We headed towards the main reception area and were told to wait as the car from the West Village would come to pick us up. In ten minutes we were dropped off at the reception of our village.
Both the villages have the glass igloos and cabins but are a little different from each other. For example the queen suites are in the east village while the west has an igloo bar and kelo glass igloos but of course you can tour the entire property and even go for a meal in the other village restaurant. The West Village had a reception area and a restaurant, an igloo bar, traditional log cabins, a spa and shower reception, glass igloos, kelo igloos( glass igloos attached to a log cabin) and smoke saunas. The property also has a set of snow igloos, something that I would love to try next time. Also if you’re looking at an intimate romantic wedding then you could also get married in the Ice Chapel here. I honestly preferred the West over the East, the restaurant was better and that igloo bar was so stunning.
After the check in along with our room key we were given a map with our igloo marked on it and were told to go find it. It was like an adventure from the moment we stepped in. Thrilled as I could be I pushed my luggage on a sleigh while the husband looked for the igloo on the map. The igloos are arranged in 4 to 5 rows with each row having about eight igloos. Luckily our igloo was in the first of the many rows. We started walking towards igloo number 8 and on the way I was happily peeking into the others. My heart couldn’t stop racing as my dream was finally coming true. I can’t explain that moment in words when we were standing outside our very own glass igloo, I almost did my own version of a happy dance.
Once you open the tiny door you step into an unreal world. What would you exchange to fall asleep to a view of the dazed forest standing tall and the sky hanging so low, like maybe it was your own personal garden to pluck magic from? Well, I would give away the world. Under the glass igloo is a recliner bed, an area to keep your luggage a washroom and a snowy landscape outside, well isn’t that all you need! The bed reclines perfectly well to ensure that you enjoy natures most beautiful show in the best form. The igloo was way more comfortable than I thought, its temperature controlled so you never have to worry about freezing inside.We could see the hustle and bustle outside clearly.
So those who are worried about their privacy you can totally relax as nobody can even come around your igloo and peep inside. The igloos are partly covered in snow except for the entrance so there is no way one can climb up and enter the area. There are curtains inside the igloo that are only a few inches long, which is enough to cover up when you’re lying down. But you definitely might want to keep in mind that you shouldn’t change your clothes with the lights on.
The igloo is built out of thermal glass and designed to stay frost free, so even if it snows nothing will block your view. There is a common shower area very close to the reception. Since the resort was running full we were lucky enough to get a booking for a night in the glass igloo. If we could, we would have definitely spent two nights here.
While planning the trip we ensured that we keep all the activities like husky rides, reindeer rides, snowmobile etc for the other towns like Ivalo and Rovaniemi as we really did not want to step out of this exotic property. So we spent our day taking long walks in the snow laden landscape, exploring the other side of the village, sliding down slopes, dancing around the igloo and playing in the snow.
All the rooms come with a half board option which include breakfast and dinner. You definitely cannot expect a great variety or five star quality food. The breakfast options were limited to cereal, fruits, bread and boiled eggs. For lunch they only had a veg and chicken soup along with bread which could be purchased for 12 Euros. For dinner it was a three course set menu. We were lucky that all the three courses were suitable to our tastebuds and we found it quite delicious. That night they served us a lip smacking cheese soup, a steak and a delicious dessert of fruits and cream. The last table reservation is at 7pm and by 9pm the place is dark and silent. So if you’re a night bird like me and love munching make sure to stock up your room with chips, chocolates and cup noodles. Since I stayed in the west village I had access to the glass igloo bar which was a great place to sip a drink at night and watch the lights in action.
At night they turn of the lights to reduce the glare and give people the best view of the arctic sky. With Vodka in one hand we used our sleighs as chairs and sat in the dark with our sight stuck to the sky. It was like camping under the stars.
It’s the country of Northern Lights but the lights are always playing around. Even the sight of an orange cloud which was a reflection of the city lights would excite me. I started taking pictures with my camera hoping that the lights would show up on the screen first. Even the slightest colour would make my heart race.
After waiting for an hour we started to freeze and decided to lie down and watch the lights from the igloo. I can’t explain that feeling of lying under the stars in the middle of the Arctic Wilderness in a cozy warm igloo. Since our room was the last one in the row, on one side we could see the beautiful forest and on the other side tons of igloos and a bright sky above us. It was so surreal, I’ve never felt so alive and thrilled. We spent two hours talking and gazing at the sky and hoping for the magical show to start. We spent the night counting stars and just fell asleep. Alas! The lights didn’t show up that night but it was the most peaceful sleep I got in a while. I woke up at 7am when it started to get bright outside. With a heart full of gratitude and the biggest smile on the face I cuddled up in my blanket and slept again.
The resort had tons of activities like northern light safaris, reindeer safaris, husky rides, snowmobile, icefishing, skiing, a trip to the santa village etc. Like I mentioned above, since we were spending only one night I preferred staying the resort exploring the place and waiting for the enchanting Northern Lights to burst open the sky with their beauty and magic. I would recommend doing the same as this experience is a once in a lifetime. You can always do these activities in Rovaniemi and Ivalo just like I did. Infact its way cheaper and much better there. The resort is also home to one of the largest smoke sauna, make sure to try it out.
– The unique wilderness experience.
– The whole journey was so smooth and easy. The resort is very easy to locate.
– Being disconnected from the outside world was the best thing ever.
-Do not expect it to be a luxury resort. You are paying a price for a unique resort in the wilderness and it’s best if this experience is not compared to a five star hotel.
-There is no supermarket or any store around. You have to drive down to Ivalo to avail of these services so make sure you are fully stocked up.
-There is no wifi or phone in the igloo but you do get complimentary wifi at the main reception. I was very happy to disconnect from the outside world.
-The igloos do not have showers. There is a separate spa and shower reception which open for 24 hours.
-Definitely not suitable for guests with disabilities.
-It seemed child friendly ( I wouldn’t know much) but I saw a few kids and they seemed to have fun rolling in the snow.
-The check in is at 3pm and check out at 10am. The timings are way too odd compared to other hotels but there’s nothing you can do. We arrived at 12 noon and had to wait for three hours to get our room, the staff will not give the room even a minute before 3pm. So we explored the property and had lunch in the meanwhile.
-Get a local SIM card for contacting in case of emergency. There is no phone in the igloo.
-Make sure to pack appropriate clothing so that you enjoy the weather. Read my article for more details..
-If you’re staying in the West Village you can always try the restaurant in the East Village too.
-Make sure to walk around the property and explore every corner but leave the activities for other towns. Avoid leaving the resort.
-I suggest you carry a torch as it gets very dark post 7pm.
-Make sure to carry food items like chips, nuts, dates, cup noodles, bread, cheese etc. There is no supermarket around and the restaurant shuts at 9pm. So if you’re going to stay up for the Northern Lights make arrangements accordingly. There is no kettle in the room but there is one in the spa and shower reception which is open 24 hours. So you can always carry ready to eat food, cup noodles, tea bags, coffee sachets. There is no minibar or late night rooms service.
– Carry extra batteries as the cold drains out the battery too fast.
-There is no better way to beat the cold than sip on brandy or vodka. The miniatures are easy to carry and are such a life saver.
– If you are flying from Dubai I would recommend you to take Finnair as it flies direct to Helsinki and is quite cheap. There is no entertainment on board so make sure you carry books, music or movies on your laptop.
The whole purpose to stay in an igloo is to have snow around. So I would suggest the best time to visit is between October to April, with February and March being the best in terms of Northern Light sightings and weather conditions. December and January are -30 degrees and it can get a little too cold where as February and March is around -15degrees which is perfect.
To say I was dissapointed with the service would mean that I expected a lot which was not the case. I had read reviews and was quite prepared for the cold service but it wasn’t so bad. The staff just sticks to the rules and they won’t budge nor will they go out of their way to do things for you. So its best you don’t expect anything. Honestly, the place just makes up for all of this.
-Is it worth the money? How much does it cost?
Yes it totally is worth every penny spent. I visited this place in March 2016 and the price at that time was 500 Euros inclusive of breakfast and dinner, which I think was totally worth it!
It is absolutely safe. Overall Finland is extremely safe, people are very nice and helpful.
-Can you see the lights from the igloo?
Yes you can see the lights from the igloo if the weather conditions are favourable. The sighting of the Aurora Borealis totally depends on the activity level and the visibility that day. There are various ways to track it, you can check the article here Northern Lights. . Incase you don’t get to see it do not get disappointed you can always go further north to Inari where the chances of the sighting are higher.
-Is there privacy? Can someone peep inside?
Yes the igloos are made of glass but are quite private. Nobody can stand around the igloo as its in a pile of snow. But you definitely don’t want to get undressed with the lights on.
Well NO! You can never get bored here. You’re in the middle of nature and there’s so much to do.
No not as much as you think it would be. The entire trip to Finland would cost you lesser than a trip to New York.
No its very difficult to find good vegetarian options in the Igloo Hotel. In Finland you do get it but here it’s a little hard because they have a fixed menu. I suggest carrying ready-to-eat food and cup noodles.
-How many nights are ideal?
I would recommend minimum 2 nights out of which you spend 1 in the igloo and the other in the log cabin. If you are comfortable the igloo then you can spend both the nights here as well.
-What month did I visit in?
I was in Finland in the month of March, I think the weather was just perfect (-5 to -15 degrees) and the daylight was good too.
After travelling to so many countries I’ve always been asked which is my favorite place in the world? Well I love a lot of places but nothing stole my heart like this one. I always say collect moments not things and this is exactly what I mean. This was the most dreamy trip of my life. I learnt to let go, to embrace what is, what was and what will be. I realised there’s so much outside in the world only if I had the time to catch up with the miracle that had been trying to catch up with me. But we finally met, this miracle and I, and in a nonchalant blink of an eye the world stood still. There was a sensation, a spark, a feeling of being alive and experiencing the real Finland. When I left this place I was smiling ear to ear, it felt like that night was a dream.
For a true Finnish experience a trip to Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort is a must! Make sure to watch the video below..
I am so jealous of your trip! Thanks for sharing!!!! Great article!
I want to know about this trip.pls wright about whole things about the trip.
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One of the most important places to begin an examination of how to become an effective parent is to first determine what your goals are for your children. Do you have biblical or more humanistic goals? All parents have goals for their children, but are these goals biblically correct? Your parental goals are what you are trying to accomplish and achieve in your children’s lives.
Now you may be wondering if setting a goal is in itself biblical. Absolutely! Paul commanded us as believers to pursue the highest goal. What is this highest and most important goal? He declared, “Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14). In the context of this passage, Paul reveals what his goals are and then what our goals should be. He wanted to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and to become conformed into Christ’s likeness so that he might attain the resurrection from the dead (Phil. 3:10-11). These are truly worthy goals for every believer to pursue! Therefore, if you set personal goals for your Christian life, then you must also determine biblical goals for your parenting.
In setting these goals, it is very important that both husbands and wives agree. Mutual goals will produce success and help you to avoid working at cross purposes. There may be goals that are good, but these may not necessarily be primary goals. What do I mean by this? Is your goal to have happy and financially successful children when they grow up, or is your goal that they have a specific occupation? These goals in themselves are not wrong, but they are not the highest biblical goals that God reveals in His Word. Therefore, consider what your highest biblical goals should be.
What are the biblical goals for parenting?
1. Your primary goal should be to lead your children to Christ. The most fundamental goal of parenting is that your child should come into a personal relationship with Christ. God's desire is that everyone would be saved. The Apostle Peter explained that this was and is God’s highest goal. Peter explained that, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Therefore, leading your child to repentance is the primary parenting goal, which enables all the other goals to be accomplished.
Consequently, when your children are old enough to understand the truth of the gospel, will you lead them in a prayer of repentance? Or will you leave this responsibility to the church Sunday school ministry, or some other family member? Personally leading my children to Christ was more important to me than all the rest of my ministry. I remember praying as a young parent and told the Lord I considered the greatest success of my life and ministry to see my children in heaven one day. Do you see your life and ministry to your children this way?
2. Your goal must be to disciple them. The Bible teaches that as His disciples we are all called to make disciples. Jesus said to His disciples just before His ascension, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20). Therefore, the first disciples you want to make should be your children.
In our church when children come of age and the fathers are believers, we ask these dads to publically baptize their own children at our local beach. This enables these fathers to take their place as the spiritual leader in their home. This is also an important spiritual example to the children that their father believes the commands of Christ and is willing to demonstrate his faith in public.
3. Disciple your children in such a way as to encourage them to put their hope in the Lord. Hope in God is what draws your children to Him, and what enables them to obey and follow Him all of the days of their lives. Note what the divine author stated as the responsibility of fathers in Psalm 78. He declares, “For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments; and may not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God” (Ps. 78:5-8). Notice that the ultimate end of the father’s instruction to his children is that they might set their hope in God, so they would not be a stubborn and rebellious individual. But, you will naturally ask how does a father achieve this outcome? That brings me to your next goal.
4. Train your children in the faith. Teaching and training your children is one of your primary jobs as a parent. This is also clearly indicated in Psalm 78:5, which I quoted above. The New Testament makes this responsibility equally clear. Paul said, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). The word training in this verse means to educate or instruct. The word admonition means to discipline, warn or reprove.
Therefore, what is your plan to educate and train your children? When and how will you train them in the ways of the Lord? Will you fulfill your responsibility or will you relinquish your calling to the church Sunday school? If training your children is truly your goal, then you must have a plan.
5. Teach them discipline. True discipline begins with a respect for your authority as you teach, warn, and reprove your children. This submission to authority is clearly taught by Paul the apostle when He declared, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Eph. 6:1). The word obey in this verse means to heed authority. If your children do not learn to respect authority, they will struggle with submitting to all authority and especially to the authority of God. Note that Jesus was both submitted to the Father and to His parents (Luke 2:51).
As you teach and discipline your children, they ultimately will become self-controlled and self-disciplined. This is one of the fundamental goals for all discipleship. The Apostle Peter said, “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness” (2 Peter 1:5-6).
The final goal of discipline is that your children learn to make independent decisions without direction from you. This was the reason that Solomon wrote the proverbs to his son (Prov. 1:1-10). Solomon wanted to instruct his son that he might learn the fear of the Lord and not be enticed by sinners.
6. Lead your children into the fear of God. How do you lead your children into the fear of the Lord? The fear of the God is primarily accomplished by teaching your children the word of God. Moses explained to the people of God exactly how this should be done. He said, “Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren, especially concerning the day you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb, when the Lord said to me, 'Gather the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.’ ” (Deut. 4:9-10).
There are two very important principles in this passage. First, teaching the Scriptures is what allows your children to hear God's Word directly from Him, just as the children of Israel heard. The second principle is that you must share your personal experience with your children, just as the Jews explained the moment that they stood before God at Mount Horeb and saw His great power manifested before them. Have you ever shared your personal conversion experience with your children? Explain to them how you were saved from your sin and how He has changed your life.
7. Your ultimate goal must be to see your children’s hearts changed. If you follow all of the above principles, this will give you the best opportunity to see their hearts changed. What do you want for your children - behavior modification, or a changed heart? You can pressure, manipulate, and force your children to do what you want, but this will not bring a changed heart. Notice the goal that is clearly stated in Psalm 78:8. God wants your children to set their hearts aright, not just have behavior modification or external change. Jesus clearly recognized that the Pharisees had behavior modification, but their hearts were far from Him (Mark 7:6). He understood that the heart of man must be changed if God was ever to be enthroned in their hearts. The heart is the source of all that is good or evil (Matt. 15:19). This is why you are commanded in Scripture: “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it spring the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23).
How can you reach these biblical goals?
It is one thing to have the correct biblical goals, but how are you going to reach these goals? What steps do you need to take so you can implement your plan to reach these goals? Application of the truth is just as important as the truth itself.
1. Pray with and for your children continually. Prayer is the first step to take to introduce your child to fellowship with God. When your children see and hear you pray you are displaying an understanding that God exists, that there is someone higher than you as the parent, and that you are accountable to God. Prayer with your children is usually the first way they recognize that there is an unseen and mighty God. You are a powerful example in this regard. Note what the psalmist declared concerning his son: “Prayer also will be made for Him continually, and daily He shall be praised” (Ps. 72:15). As you pray for your children, God will give you wisdom and insight into their heart, and how to best minister to them. Remember, “The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16).
2. Disciple your children in the Word. Teaching your children the Word of God is another way that you introduce them to your heavenly Father. As you teach them the Scriptures, you are planting the seed of the Word of God in their hearts. Therefore, you need a plan for when you are going to teach your children and what you will teach them. God had a plan for disciplining the kings of Israel and the people. God determined that He wanted all the Kings of Israel to have a copy of the Law so that, “It shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes” (Deut. 17:19).
The Lord had a similar plan to disciple the people of the land. God commanded Moses to gather the people at the Feast of Tabernacles, and every seven years the Law would be read in the hearing of all of the men, women, and children. God's purpose in taking this action was to firmly plant in the people an understanding of who God is and what He requires (Deut. 31:9-13).
One of the most effective ways to do formal teaching with children is to open the Scriptures at the breakfast or dinner table. I found this was the only time we were all together and had gathered for one purpose - to eat together. I realized that when I had to stop my children from whatever they were doing in order to come to devotions, it seemed I was always getting someone irritated with me. However, at breakfast or dinner, I had a captive audience. They didn't want to be any other place and they were eager to listen. I would simply share what God was speaking to me from my personal devotional time. Many times this would open a discussion with the entire family about spiritual things. Try it, it works!
3. Give consistent discipline. Disciplining your children in a consistent manner communicates several things: (1) there is an authority that is over them (Luke 7:8), (2) there is a right and wrong way of living that you believe is true (Prov. 4:11), (3) there is a consequence for sinful disobedience (Col. 3:25). Remember that you are to, “bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). The Bible is also clear that both mom and dad are to participate equally in this task (Prov. 1:8).
The discipline you give out to your children must be in accordance with biblical methods and with true love. Have you ever made a study of Scripture as to how God disciplines you? This would be very worthwhile to do. Remembering always, that “whom the Lord loves He chastens” (Heb. 12:6).
4. Seek a change of heart through honest repentance, confession, and forgiveness. If you truly desire to reach your children's heart and see their attitude change, then you must teach them a biblical method of reconciliation with both God and others. You must consistently train them in this regard if you desire your children to have a successful relationship with God and other people.
What are some of these biblical principles that enable reconciliation? (1) You must teach them honest self-evaluation (Matt. 7:5). (2) They must learn to be specific in their confession of fault (James 5:16). (3) They must learn to forgive anyone for anything (Mark 11:25). (4) You must train them to control their anger (Prov. 16:32). (5) They must learn to communicate truthfully and lovingly (Eph. 4:15). (6) You must teach them to find agreement through compromise (Matt. 5:25). (7) They must learn how to take the correct biblical action even if others will not (Rom. 5:8).
5. Consistent praise. I have found throughout my counseling ministry that there is a lack of verbal praise and approval in most homes. It is so easy to only focus on what your children are doing wrong, and forget to give them a “well done.” But, without a "well done" from you, your children will begin to think that everything they do is wrong. There is a critical balance between correction and praise. If you want to reach your biblical goals in parenting, you must find this balance. The Psalmist encouraged this balance when he said, “Prayer also will be made for Him continually, and daily He shall be praised” (Ps. 72:15).
6. Be a Godly example. Are you an example to your children of all you are teaching them? Paul remarked to Timothy that he saw a “genuine faith” in him that was first exemplified in his mother and grandmother (2 Tim. 1:5). Do your children see the genuine reflection of Christ in you? To be this example, you must avoid any double standard in your life. You cannot say “do as I say, not as I do.” Remember, your children are watching what you do more than what you say. They will only consider your lifestyle as hypocrisy. Paul said, “The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you” (Phil. 4:9).
7. Spend time with them. The Bible teaches nothing about "quality" vs. "quantity" of time. It is impossible to fulfill these goals without spending considerable time with your children. Time together is where your informal teaching and example will rub off on them. Note the instruction by Moses to the parents of his day. “These words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” (Deut. 6:6-7). Notice that God declares when you are to communicate your goals and values. God says when you sit together in your home, or when you walk together, or at bed time, or when you rise in the morning, communicate God’s truth and encourage one another. This requires time together. Are you truly spending the necessary time together to accomplish your biblical goals for your children?
8. You must be growing and maturing just as your children. True biblical parenting requires mature and loving decisions from a parent that is listening to the Holy Spirit. However, you cannot give something to your children that you do not personally possess. Paul declared, “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received” (1 Cor. 15:3). Each child brings new and different questions and challenges that will push you to the limit of your patience and understanding. Therefore, you must be willing to allow God to transform you into the person He wants you to be. Only as you grow in your personal relationship with Christ will He enable you to become an effective parent. If you will seek the Lord with all your heart, He will be found by you. Christ will empower you to fulfill this important task of biblical parenting. Jesus said, “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (Matt. 7:8). | 2019-04-24T05:48:34Z | https://calvaryag.org/media-section/media-archive/23-counseling-helps/marriage-and-family-issues/86-parenting-principles-1-what-are-the-biblical-goals-for-parenting |
It considered the Community to be the institutional framework within which stability could be brought into its democratic political system and institutions.
It sought to enforce its independence and position within the regional and international system as well as its “power to negotiate,” particularly in relation to Turkey, which, after the invasion and occupation of Cyprus (July 1974), appeared as a major threat to Greece. Within this context, Greece also sought to loosen its strong post-war dependence upon the U.S.A.
Furthermore, accession into the Community was regarded as a powerful factor that would contribute to the development and modernization of the Greek economy and Greek society.
Finally, it was giving the country “presence” in, and an impact on, the process towards European integration and the European model (http://www.mfa.gr/brussels/en/permanent-representation-eu/, accessed February 13, 2016).
It was not an easy matter. Greece’s move was not greeted with open arms. Each member State had second thoughts about the country’s “readiness” to become a full member. It took them six years to decide. And when they finally did (strategic concerns won out), it was indeed a crucial moment for the future of the country for it opened the way for the formation of a sociocultural reality with distinct demarcation lines between the old and the new, the modern and the postmodern.
At the beginning there were reservations on the part of the general public regarding the benefits of further integration in the departments of institutions, politics, and defense. Very few really understood the implications of this decision.
Very few understood that joining this alliance also meant departing from the nation-state of modernity and embracing a cultural space that wanted to operate as the counter-image of the static state order, an institutionalized “more and further.” However, the gradual adoption of stronger pro-integration positions by the government had, by the late 1980s, lessened the reservations of the public.
So, when the economic slump hit their door (2009) it caught everybody by surprise. It was like a thunderbolt that dramatically changed the morale as well as the psychology of the people. Overnight a whole nation entered the “real world” via a shocking crisis which created a rupture between the individual and the collective perception of the nation and its ideologies. What people thought was “there” and “theirs,” all of a sudden disappeared behind a vaporous wall of clouds. From the comforting “certainties” of modernism people passed to the discomforting openness (and dystopian uncertainties) of postmodernism that called for painful redefinitions and new poetics of representation. Long forgotten identity politics came back hand in hand with an identity crisis: Who am I? Who are they? Why me? People wanted to know whom to blame: the politicians, the malfunctioning system, the State, the Bankers (or Banksters), the International Monetary Fund, Europeanization, Globalization or themselves for their unconfessed Wrongdoings —their over-borrowing and overspending?
We know that the more societies are confronted with situations which threaten their customs, values, beliefs, and standards, the more fearfully people cling to what is old, tested, or deceptively optimistic. That explains phenomena like the rise of populist nationalism. It happened in Bavaria in the 1920s with Hitler taking advantage of the economic situation in order to gain power; and it is happening now in Greece, in the years of crisis. For the first time in the country’s history, a fascist political party (Golden Dawn) has seats in the Parliament. This is something to worry about, for it shows that the depression is not just economic but spiritual as well. People have lost faith not only in their own government but also in Europe’s search for new forms of democracy. This loss has brought back with force the idea of national boundaries and national identity.
Since 2009 contemporary Greek society lives in an intimidating rupture zone struggling to capture the diversity of the nation as it shifts and changes through the impact of migration, deep recession, global antagonism, nationalism, and the threat of GRexit (from the eurozone). It is quite clear that the meltdown of local economy calls for radical redefinitions on all fronts, individual and communal. It happens in all tragic (national) traumas: the moment of recognition opens the way (painful as it is) to knowledge and repositioning.
The Theatre As for the theatre, all the changes taking place in the 1980s and the years that followed were as promising as they were perplexing. It was quite obvious that the rapid commodification and inevitable kitschification of a large part of Greek culture not only blunted the vision of many artists but also threatened to wipe out any potential radicalism intrinsic in the art of theatre. Theatre artists, especially those who began their career in the 1960s and 1970s and used their stage realism to dramatize various forms of oppression (mainly ideological and economic) and individual isolation, had problems accepting the idea that Greek society, like most western societies, had reached a turning point where the “motor of history” (class struggle/consciousness) no longer played the role it used to.
This is not to say, of course, that post-1981 Greece had reached the end of ideology; nor is it to say that class struggle or class awareness all of a sudden ceased to exist. Rather, it simply suggests those concepts were in severe crisis, which called for a different dramatic treatment (for more on that, see Docherty 206; also, Mouffe 31-45).
While in the years of Greek modernism (roughly from 1930 to 1980) there was a recognizable center of power (usually the State, the military or an elite economic class) and thus recognizable binary structures of “sameness” and “otherness,” now, in the years of postmodernism, one of the most serious consequences was the new facility of the established culture (commercial or otherwise) to recuperate or neutralize (in a non violent way) the oppositional power of any ideology, of any individual behavior or art form. Within this developing context, the margins of Greek society that hosted the most memorable and likeable figures of modern Greek theatre (the “Other”) either began disappearing or no longer drew the unquestioned sympathy of the viewer. The inside and the outside were becoming more and more indistinguishable and fluid. Iakovos Kambanellis’ slums and backyards, for example, were rapidly transformed into chic and expensive suburbs. Everything “Other” was becoming the “Same.” It was all the more obvious that the mere opposition advanced by local Marxism was not enough for a radical criticism, let alone for a convincing dramatization of contemporary/ postmodern Greek reality and history. The various forms of earlier local realism (good as they were in the 1950s and 1960s, even 1970s) were not in a position to understand that the postmodern self does not possess the depth, substantiality, and coherence that was the ideal and, sometimes, the achievement of the modern self (Baudrillard 1983; Jameson 1983 and 1991); that now we live in the world of the “simulacrum” and no absolute, totalizing claims can be made upon any fundamental ontological reality; that “we have reached the end of the social,” where there is no “absolute text,” as Giorgos Veltsos boldly claims in his first play, Camera Degli Sposi (1993). In short, what was required was a drastic change of course which would open the subject to the availability of his or her “own historicity and mutability” (for more see Docherty 213).
The coming of the economic crisis in 2009 has changed a lot of things, structural as well as ideological. The scarcity of money in the business sector, in combination with the absence of state funding have led to huge debts, deeper cuts, unpaid rent, difficulty to meet staff payroll. Full-time positions and overall seasonal positions have been slashed. Production in materials and support services are cut. Shorter employment contracts introduced. Most actors work with no pay. Many shows are announced but equally many do not see the light of day.
They are postponed, which means they drift permanently off the map. Even companies which for many years managed to maintain impressive standards have ran out of steam (i.e. Aplo Theatro [Απλό θέατρο], Theatro tes Anixis [Θέατρο της Άνοιξης], Amphitheatro [Αμφι-Θέατρο], Piramatiki Skini [Πειραματική Σκηνή], among others).
Regardless of size, all playhouses announce a series of preemptive measures to save off a total financial meltdown. They offer special prices for the unemployed, the students, and those hit the hardest by the economic situation. In many cases spectators are asked to give what they want or can afford. Even so, very few shows run long enough to recoup their initial investment and hope for profit afterwards. There are too many shows competing for the entertainment family budget and that makes the repertory choices very risky business.
Yet, what is most interesting is that at the periphery of local theatre activity, about a hundred smaller and younger companies, although hit the hardest by the economic downturn and the absence of state subsidies, still soldier on in an increasingly disheartening environment. It suffices to say that a record high of close to one thousand productions saw the light of day in Athens alone between September 2014 and August 2015, that is, in the heart of the depression, most of them by young artists who insist on searching for the dark, the advanced, the violent, the difficult. Something similar, but not of the same output, took place in Thessaloniki over the same period of time (about two hundred productions). It is quite obvious that depression Greece has provided a rich field for an analysis of the relation of art to the events of the day. The experience of the devastation of the economy and the growing threat of an even lower quality of life, is producing a new sense of things, of people, of human relations. This shift of perspective is finding voice in theatrical signs and productions as diverse as the narrative style of news reports (a kind of revived “Living Newspaper”), the return of political stage discourse, the return to community projects. Within this particular cultural climate, these options achieve a popularity that is historically unusual.
Among the two thousand Theatre Equity members, the young seem to be now the most restless and at the same time the most reliable chroniclers of the depression. They are the ones who set out to represent “reality” in a way that seems true (accurately descriptive) to them. They feel that their must-do-job is to keep theatre central to the public discourse and communal interaction; not as a commodity but as a necessary thing. Which is not easy to do, for that means to change people’s general attitude towards theatre and towards life and its “realities.” It is impossible to categorize, let alone adequately present, everything that is happening in Greek theatre in a single paper, let alone a short introduction like this, for they do not form a coherent entity. It is not only the volume that makes categorization problematic but also the fact that needs and focus vary. Some are more politically oriented (ODC, Kanigunda, Blitz, Prodromos Tsinikoris, Anestis Azas, Georgia Mavragani), others are more aesthetically oriented (Bijoux de Kant, Simio Miden, Choros, Vasistas, Nova Melancholia, Noiti Grammi, etc.).
Some are more professional, which means they care more about the correct outcome and others more ad hoc, messier and undisciplined. Yet despite the difficulty to provide a coherent map of what is going on certain patterns do emerge and offer ways of understanding better how contemporary Greek theatre/drama has developed in the last couple of decades and how this development relates to cultural matters as well. What links together most of the people involved in Greek theatre/drama today and somehow makes their en bloc study possible is their desire to capture the diversity of the country as it shifts and changes through the impact of illegal immigration, recession, impoverishment, disappearing state funding, collapse of the welfare system, corruption. A good part of Greek theatre practitioners and writers take advantage of the civic awakening and engagement. They do not turn their backs on politics. They are gradually getting more society aware; they betray more freedom to experiment, to flirt with other disciplines. They are more sensitive towards the notion of theatre as an educational tool, more sarcastic towards established notions and values. They understand that the situation of theatre in an economically and culturally threatened world requires radical rethinking. The old methods and the old mentalities cannot help; they proved lacking. New strategies are needed if one wants a future for theatre as an ethically and politically alert art. That does not mean that the past (and whatever that entails) is rejected or sacrificed to the altar of the new. Whether in the form of an “alteration” or an “imitation,” “spinoff,” “appropriation,” “abridgement,” “transformation,” “version,” “offshoot” or “tradaptation,” the past, ancient and more recent, is constantly reshuffled, reterritorialized, and rehistoricized in order to suit better the situation created by the economic crash. And the most telling example of this is the repertory of both the National Theatre in Athens and the National Theatre of Northern Greece in Thessaloniki for the period 2010-2013.
The two biggest theatre organizations of the country, shortly after the crisis broke out, abandoned their earlier plans and turned the question “What is a motherland?” into the governing principle of their repertory policy. What they were seeking was mainly grassroots plays that touched upon issues which had to do with the component parts of the nation, its national character, its historical process, its folk traditions and current problems.1 By emphasizing the centrality of the nation they wanted to show to people that they had a mission not only to represent the nation and its pressing concerns, but also to be an inspiring force of nation rebuilding and reshuffling.2 At no time in their recent history were the two National theatres so overwhelmingly visible and dominating as they have been in the period between 2010-2013.
Most plays chosen for production came from 19th and early 20th century Greek drama. Other plays, such as Yiannis Tsiros’s Invisible Olga [Αόρατη Όλγα] and Lena Kitsopoulou’s Aoustras or Couch Grass [Άουστρας ή Η αγριάδα], among others, were chosen to emphasize current problems like racism, immigration, violence, discrimination.
Justifying his selections, Yiannis Houvardas, the artistic director of the National Theatre (Athens), said in his Press Conference (2010) that at a difficult moment like this, we should go back and re-examine the notion of coherence, continuity and national identity. “We open the chapter ‘Greece’ with a triple query: how we see ourselves, how the others see us, and what is the meaning of Greece today? We would like to look again into Greece’s essences and dynamics as they register on its culture. We want to draw on the wide spectrum of Greece’s history. . . . We want to cross centuries of creativity . . . looking for a convincing answer to the question ‘What is a motherland?’ Our goal is a panorama of the nation’s evolution . . . how the others have seen and still see us. . . . Now, more than ever, we have to see what’s been left from the ancient world, the Byzantine, the post-independence war, and how all these converse with our contemporary culture.” Sotiris Hatzakis, the artistic director of the National Theatre of Northern Greece, on his part, justifying his own choices claimed that “the country needs exemplary models and high moral standards. . . . Love for the country, self sacrifice, heroism, social camaraderie, and unselfish struggle are virtues that belong to all of us and claiming them we keep our country’s history alive and we offer our children a better future” (Aggelioforos 18 Nov. 2012).
The aim of this collection of essays is to provide a multifaceted overview of the geographies of contemporary Greek drama and theatre from 1981 to the present. They are arranged in three sections according to their main focus. The first four essays form the first section which focuses on the playwright.
Not far from Papazoglou’s essay is the contribution of Eleftheria Ioannidou and Natasha Souziouli which focuses on the Hellenic Festival and the Introduction 13 question of identity. The writers of the essay claim that the years from 2010 to the present marked a rupture with previous discourses and politics, turning the Hellenic Festival into a topos of transformation and fluidity which seems to elude certain conditions of production and reception pertaining to its past history. The article presents an inquiry into the official policies as much as the artistic practices which constitute this topos, while also mapping out the emergent trends that produce its particular dynamic.
“Directors’ theatre” in Greece came into full bloom in the early 1990s, Avra Sidiropoulou writes, “when a combination of social, economical, and cultural factors rendered possible the establishment of a new sensibility in the arts scene of the country.” Together with a variety of corroborative phenomena, such as the proliferation of alternative theatre spaces, the country’s intense festivalization and the infiltration of drama schools by acting and staging methods brought back home by artists who had spent several years studying in Western Europe, new paths and techniques developed in the performing arts, mostly with regards to the introduction and systematic application of a non-realistic, decidedly postmodern aesthetic onto the stage.
Ioulia Pipinia and Andreas Dimitriadis use the production of Golfo, the nineteenth century (1894) tragic pastoral of Spyridon Peresiades, by the National Theatre in order a) to explore the ways the recent production rewrites the original text and negotiates its role in stage history, by disrupting its performative boundaries and refashioning its dramatic code; and b) to discuss the haunting image of a society in mourning that the performance fosters, at a time when economic crisis and political instability incite feelings of despair and acts of violence, in response to what is often described, concerning the recent situation in Greece, as a process of modern colonization.
The last four essays are grouped together in section three because they all tackle the issue and the problematics of space (and by extension, identity). Each in its own way discusses “the endless possibilities that performance brings to the formation of unsuspected modes of attention” (Banes and Lepecki 4); how theatre can operate as a cultural force mediating change; what it means being in the world and its variable ecosystems (Kelleher 2009).
In the last few years, Katia Arfara maintains in her paper, we have seen many Greek artists concentrating more and more on the re-enactment of sociohistorical events, hoping to deflect people’s gaze from the habitual voyeuristic consumption of representations, and turn it on the politics of viewing and the politics of the performance. To support her argument she focuses on devised theatre, which, according to her view, is the dominant trend in the independent Greek theatre scene for more than a decade now. Her example is the Blitz Theatre Group, formed in October 2004 by Angeliki Papoulia, Christos Passalis, and Giorgos Valais in Athens. Since their first work, Motherland (2006), Arfara writes, Blitz have been constantly engaged with hybrid modes of narration which blur the boundaries between dialectical forms and monologues, literary sources and documentary materials. More specifically, her paper analyzes the group’s latest productions, Cinemascope (2010) and Late Night (2012), because they exemplify the Blitz dramaturgy of Time.
The aim of the paper signed by Marina Kotzamani, is to flesh out the significance of space and performance to Iannis Xenakis’ approach to history and national identity (in Polytropon, 1978) and to relate it to earlier and later environmentally sensitive art work in Greece, including the Delphic Festivals of the inter-war period, the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympics, as well as contemporary experimental performance. Her reading of Xenakis’ work is in accord with recent scholarly attention on the impact of space and performance to the conception of national identity in modern Greece.
Giorgos Pefanis’ essay is also inspired by street theatrics. According to the writer, the very public nature of the street makes it more “hospitable” to the unpredictable and the unexpected; it carries a hidden dynamic that surfaced very strongly during the occupation of public spaces by Greek people in the years of the economic crisis. While people gathered without any clear objectives, the International Street Theatre Festival (Istfest) of Athens (2009-2014) organized at that time, provided them with a significant “role”: to participate in a multi-faceted theatrical celebration, with strong political connotations. In more ways than one, the street, (in the broader sense of the public domain, of the open, collectively shared urban and planned city space), “returned through the Festival (and theatre) to the people, the original owners,” Pefanis claims.
It is still too early to know whether those cultural shifts, which most papers in this volume discuss, can produce lasting art. Considering the hardships local people experience, what is certainly required is a forward looking energy, a jump into a new age, a vision of a new political, institutional, ethical, and economic system, new mores, and an art suitable to the needs of the people and the potential of the nation. But most importantly, what Greek theatre is in need of is a clearer idea of who it is and what it really wants from this world. Of course, many things have changed for the better. There has been a widening of the artists’ understanding of theatre, in the sense that it is now more porous and receptive, mostly situated on the boundary of what we know and do not know, of what we think is theatre or not theatre, of what is out there on stage and what out here in the auditorium.
Yet, there are still many questions that it has to confront; questions that have to do with changing local and international conditions, ranging from globalization to migration and identity politics, to name a few. And depression Greece, with whatever evils it has brought along, provides a rich field for selfreflection and also a terrain for the production of a new sense of things, of people, of human relations, of companionship, of goals and aspirations and, of course, drama/theatre.
Banes, Sally, and Andre Lepecki, eds. The Senses in Performance. New York: Routledge, 2007. Print.
Baudrillard, Jean. “The Ecstacy of Communication.” The Anti-Aesthetic. Ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay Press, 1983. Print.
Docherty, Thomas. After Theory: Postmodernism/Postmarxism. London: Routledge, 1990. Print.
Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and the Consumer Society.” The Anti-Aesthetic. Ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay Press, 1983. Print.
—. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, i1991. Print.
Kelleher, Joe. Theatre and Politics. London: Palgrave, 2009. Print.
Mouffe, Charles. “Radical Democracy: Modern or Postmodern.” Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism. Ed. A. Ross. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988. 31-45. Print.
Veltsos, Giorgos. Camera Degli Sposi. Athens: Plethron, 1993. Print.
Savas Patsalidis and Anna Stavrakopoulou.
Associate Editors Sue-Ellen Case, University of California at L.A.
Thessaloniki, in collaboration with the Publications Department of the university.
© Copyright: Publications Department and School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
without the written consent of the Publications Department and the School of English.
Back Cover: Photo: From the performance of Dying as a Country, Athens Festival,ιdir. Michael Marmarinos, 2012. Courtesy of Eleni Petasi.
Angelaki, Vicky, ed. Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp 192. ISBN: 978-1-137-01012-4.
Twenty-First Century. Sarah Ruhl and her Contemporaries.
New York: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013. Pp 215. ISBN: 978-1-137-28710-6.
McConachie, Bruce. Theatre and Mind. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
on his Plays, Poetry and Production Work. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2013. Pp 238.
Rapti, Vassiliki. Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. (Series: Ashgate Studies in Surrealism.) Pp 210. ISBN 978-1-4094-2906-7. | 2019-04-24T00:58:23Z | http://theodoregrammatas.com/en/from-the-years-of-utopia-to-the-years-of-dystopia/ |
Let's make EWB-Maties projects happen!
The Kayamandi High School Computer Literacy Project serves to educate Grade 8 learners fundamentals of computer literacy.We are conduction this program for two months. The learners will be awarded a certificate upon successful completion of the course.
EWB-Maties and EWB-UCT joined forces to bring an event that aimed at developing and empowering EWB members. From one-on-one mentorship with Professional Corporate and Executive life coaches to exposure to an Expert on human centered design.
EWB-Maties has grown leaps and bounds over the 2018 year. As Chairperson, I couldn’t be prouder of the amazing executive team of 2018 and what they have managed to achieve. EWB-Maties, being one of the smallest chapters; have managed to grow its active membership base by nearly 300%. (39 ->112 members) As a result, the chapter was not only able to add new and exciting projects to the year plan, but also affect more sustainable change within our community. Such projects included the Human Centred Design & Personal Development Course, The Animal Welfare Centre Revamp, The Computer Literacy Program, The Solar Generator Project, as well as being a part of the Stellenbosch University Giving Day #Move4Food Campaign.
Over the last few years, EWB-Maties have conducted a one-hour HCD course in which members were encouraged to not only find ways to better identify problems in our community, but also correctly design solutions that are tailored to mitigating the root cause of the problem by considering all factors of the design process. We believed that one hour just simply wasn’t long enough to truly understand the importance of design thinking. As a result, we embarked on a collaborative 3 hour program with EWB-UCT in which Phd Lecturers from Cape Towns well established d-school presented a fun, and engaging program on design thinking. This was incredibly well received by all members involved.
Furthermore, EWB-Maties became aware that many of the programs/projects the chapter run are focused on community outreach, and social upliftment; with very little focus on personal development of the engineer themselves. This begged the question as to how do we expect to become influential engineers, if we are unaware of the strengths and weaknesses, dreams and goals that we have or aspire to attain. We thus decided to incorporate a Personal Development aspect of the HCD course. We were lucky enough to establish a 5 hour personal development program in which 6 of SA’s most established executive and life coaches coached and mentored our very own members on Personal Mastery, and leadership. This program was not only well received by our members, but so successful that many members requested the project to be rolled over to 2019.
When we think of community outreach/social upliftment projects, we often forget to consider those who have no voice. EWB-Maties thus decided to embark on a project aimed to uplift the lives of the animals at the Stellenbosch Animal Welfare Centre. Seeing as the Welfare Centre is an NPO; most of the funding received goes directly towards food, medication/ veterinary procedures as opposed to facility upkeep. As a result, many of the kennels – especially for the puppies – are cold and dark, leading to many of the puppies dying purely due to living conditions. EWB-Maties thus helped raise funding and install Wall heaters into the new puppy center (prior to the winter season) to help give the puppies a fighting chance during the cold winter months. We are excited to help revamp the larger dog kennels fencing and water filtration systems next year.
Unfortunately, due to protests and riots in the area; the school with the agreement of EWB-Maties had to suspend the project due to unsafe conditions. We are hoping to run this project again next year if all goes well.
EWB aims to not only utilize and mobilise young engineers’ skills to uplift society, but also aims to encourage and instil the love of math and science into young South African’s – to help potentially grow the number of students willing to pursue a career in science, maths or engineering.
This project aims to do just this. With the help of Khayamandi High School Staff, we were able to identify 10 of their grade 10 learners performing well in these respective subjects who were then mentored by our members about; the importance of renewable energy, how to use basic scientific equipment (ie: soldering guns, ammeters etc) and to physically build their very own portable solar generator that they could take home. Such a generator could power a study light/ charger a cell phone. This project was incredibly successful, with 9 of the students deciding to pursue core mathematics and science as subjects for matric, subsequent to the completion of the project.
Despite the recent announcement of fee-free education, large funding gaps still exist. (especially with regards to food security) This became evident with the announcement that 30% of all South African students attending tertiary education are in fact suffering from a lack of food security; resulting in many of such students not completing their studies. Stellenbosch University identified that not only was this a prevalent issue on campus, but was resulting in more that 13% of current students dropping out yearly. The university thus embarked on a massive student-led campaign, Giving Day #Move4Food, which aimed to raise R10 million in 100 days to create food banks on campus that would help provide daily meals to such students for a period of 3 years.
EWB-Maties was called upon to design, and install a container (“lunch box”) that would be housed in the university cafeteria to help encourage the university students, and community to try get behind the cause and help end student hunger. EWB, however, took the brief one step further; and decided that the box should not just be a platform for donations of non-perishable food items, but should create awareness into the food insecurity issue, as well as create a sense of student solidarity. The 120 cubic meter box was implemented in the cafeteria for one week only, and aimed to meet a target of 10 000 donated items.
EWB-Maties not only exceeded this target, achieving over 15 000 donations (monetary value of ~R38 000 ) but also managed to create the largest donations box ever constructed in the world. The entire initiative, along with the box, helped raise awareness and attract donations across the Western Cape; being recognised on Cape Talk, various local news stations, as well as received a personal visit and acknowledgement by Thuli Madonsela herself.
EWB-Maties members have made the Executive committee and the entire Stellenbosch Community incredibly proud over the course of the year. It is incredibly humbling to know that South Africa is in the hands of such hard working, dedicated, and passionate young people. We hope EWB-Matie’s continues to strive towards even greater heights in the 2019 year.
Renewable energy is often named the future of energy production, and the need for people to be educated on this issue increases. Kayamandi is a township on the outskirts of Stellenbosch Central. For many Kayamandi High School students studying a Stellenbosch University seems to be an impossible goal to reach. Our objective with the project was to impact the lives of these learners by sparking an interest in their engineering and technological curiosity. Our hope is that one day these learners would become our peers on campus and contribute to the upliftment of our society with engineering.
The project’s goal was to build individual portable solar power generators to provide the learners with a safe and portable power source in their homes. The system housed two USB ports to charge mobile devices and bright LED lights to be used for studying.
It is very important to make our members feel part of our project and personally have an impact in our programs. Our volunteers were split into four groups of no more than five volunteers and each group had to plan their lesson. Lessons took place over a period of four with one lesson per week. The first lesson was theory based where the learners were taught about what solar power is, how it works, a safety lesson and practising with the soldering iron. The learners were eager to learn and had many questions. The following week, the lessons started with the battery circuit by first explaining how a battery stores energy and how far it can be discharged. The students preceded to build their own battery circuits. Next, lessons moved onto the solar panel, voltage regulator, and peripheral modules like lights, USB ports and voltmeters. The final lesson was the finishing touches with a small certificate ceremony.
We would like to thank our volunteers and sponsors for this project. With great feedback and success of this project, EWB Maties will look to this project as a template for other projects in the future.
2016 is said to be the most successful year of EWB-Maties. Our welcoming event started on the 9th of February. With a great turnout, we introduced our new members to what EWB-Maties represents and what they can achieve with us. The marshmallow and spaghetti challenge was used as an ice-breaker. The aim was to build the tallest structure from spaghetti, a bit of string and cello tape within 15 minutes. The structure had to be topped off with a marshmallow. It required on-the-spot thinking, quick planning and clear communication between the groups.
On the 16th of February we hosted our annual Human Centred Design Course(HCD). This year we hosted the HCD as a one-day event filled with thought-driven students. We proposed new projects and discussed on ways to achieve them. We also announced our new 2017 Executive Committee: Yusuf Dohoda: Secretary, Julian Daniels: Chairperson, Catherine Anderson: Project Coordinator, Vuyo Ndayi: Treasurer and Cailin Perrie: Vice-Chairperson.
On the 22nd of March, we hosted our teaching workshop, presented by Amy Daniels, a lecturer at Stellenbosch University. The event was used to prepare our volunteers for the Computer Literacy Course where EWB-Maties will be tutoring the grade 8 learners of Makupula High on various computer literacy skills. The workshop included discussions of the Z-generation’s characteristics and personalities and how we teach accordingly. We delved into lesson planning as well as teaching practice. The lessons will start on the 24th of April.
We are in the currently in the planning phase of other projects. On the 28th of March, we will be presenting our Solar Generator Project to the grade 10 and 11 learners of Kayamandi High to see if there is a need for solar generators in the community. On the 31st of March, the executive committee will be giving a talk to potential engineering students from Khayelitsha about life as an engineering student at Stellenbosch University as well as the EWB-Maties society. With our vision and goals set, 2017 has big shoes to fill. Let’s hope our dreams come true.
EWB- Maties! The 2016 Success Story.
2016 has been the defining year for EWB at Stellenbosch. Being the new born child amongst other chapters, we have managed to develop from crawling to walking, and the coming years will definitely be an opportunity to run to greater heights. We had our most successful projects thus year, from the tutoring sessions, to the application run and the adopt-a-school painting projects. The Application by far serves as our most successful project. It aimed at helping matriculants with tertiary applications and introducing them to various career options through a career expo. The painting project was also a success, we managed to paint a room (leadership room) for a school we work closely with; Makapula High School in Kayamandi. The room was painted, and redesigned to give it a leadership feel for the young leaders at the school as their creative and meeting space.
So many things happened between our success projects, small and big, failures and successes, but none of it would have happened without the collaborative efforts of our executive committee and our committed members. We have seen a huge growth in our membership statistics, and are more than thankful to each and every individual who chooses to be part of EWB and adheres to what we stand for and contributes to the vision we have. Come 2017, we will be bigger and better, and most importantly, we will continue being the change we want to see in our communities.
We Finally Got Our EWB-Maties T-shirts.
The "Adopt A School" idea is a way of trying to keep focus with a specific project on continuous basis. Thus by adopting a school, we are indirectly declaring collaboration with a school to be of assistance in anyway that is possible. From painting the school, restructuring the library, to academics. Makapula High School, situated in Kayamandi, is the school we are having effective communication with, it is more than willing to have us at their school to be sources of change, and inspiration to the learners, to show that change can only come when you take the initiative and dedicate the time in making it sustainable.
For those interested in creating an even stronger bond with the school and learners, the school had indicated that they would like to get the learners involved in the forever evolving tech-world through computer lessons and tutoring. The above pictures were taken on one of our tutoring sessions, which we have on weekly basis, Saturdays.
EWB-Maties members and the school learners have shown great interest and enthusiasm for the sessions.
Creating a reading culture, have a 'book donation day' for the library the school has.
Repaint or furniture the school (from the school fence, classroom walls, desks, chairs or the playground or sport field) through the assistance of external organisations and companies paint and furniture donations.
Repainting the school is one of our key projects for next semester, as from July. We are in great need on any form of assistance, from paint brushes to the paint. The help from anyone who is able to would be greatly appreciated, both by EWB-Maties and the school.
A flashback to the awesome 3D Printing event.
EWB-Maties hosted a design session in collaboration with Autodesk. The insightful, knowledgeable and creative team from Autodesk in North America spent time in Kayamandi township over the course of their stay in South Africa, doing outreach, and took time to have us host them for 3D design workshop in Fusion 360, an innovative new software of Autodesk. The event took place on 14 April 2016, at the university’s library auditorium.
The focus of the workshop was: Rain Water Collection, Storage and Purification: Build on techniques from design thinking, agile problem-solving, and 3D design to create realistic solutions to help with rain water collection. The event created an incredible space for ideas and practical solutions, an insight on the technological approach of problem solving, specifically with the Rain Water Collection, Storage and Purification!
20 February 2016, the day in which EWB-Maties HCD (human centred design) course took place. The HCD course plays a very vital role into the start of the year, especially when we brainstorm ideas on how to come up with solutions and implement them after identifying a need or problem. The course also acted as a bridge for those who were unable to come to the welcoming event, it gave a broader understanding of EWB, and the approach in which we would like to take in empowering our nearest community in need, Kayamandi.
The point of course was to come up with effective ways to engage with the community and how to improve collaborations. It gave an idea of how to observe the experiences of the community, and analyse the challenges and opportunities and envisioning future possibilities. Most of the ideas for the year were brought up in the 3 hours long course, it paved a path with our plans for the year, precisely our projects.
The course is made of the four pillars; discover, ideate, prototype and moving forward. Overall, the course for EWB-Maties is a mindset that equips with creativity to create positive impact, that is human centred; forming collaborations that keeps us unstuck on the ‘engineering bubble’ or our comfort zones, and allow us to be optimistic while experimenting with ideas. | 2019-04-26T12:06:59Z | https://ewbsa.org/ewb-maties/ |
Somehow January is already over, even though 2017 still feels like yesterday. We had a busy month, trying to catch up on everything we didn’t get to in December, family obligations, and trying to finish all our Christmas chocolate before we start (non-religiously) participating in Lent. We also went to see a live production of Jesus Christ Superstar, our favorite musical. Nothing beats Funky Disco Judas, but we enjoyed this modernized interpretation as well.
While we did like this book more than the first, it has the same problem as the first book. The characters just don’t do it for us. We don’t care about their lives, and there was a lot side story going on that didn’t add a single thing to the plot. Still, the mystery itself kept us hooked to the very end.
Finally, a Robin Hobb book that didn’t bore Sebastian to tears! Maraia loved it even more than the first time, and Sebastian thought it was much better than the previous series. Not that that’s saying a whole lot. ? The multiple POVs range from interesting to flawed to f*cking obnoxious, and they really help to move the story along.
We started this with no expectations, we just wanted a standalone thriller. We ended up really enjoying the book, although it turns out it’s actually part of a series. Fortunately, we definitely want to read on and are glad the story isn’t over. We just hope a certain obnoxious character won’t make a reappearance.
While this wasn’t a terrible book, it definitely didn’t live up to our expectations. The idea and the setting were both great, but the pacing was off. Part of it was heavy and part of it dragged along while nothing much happened.
We loved Memory Man, the first book in the Amos Decker series, and this one is just as good, if not better. The case is thrilling and full of surprises, we enjoyed the developing friendships between certain characters, and the narration is absolutely fantastic.
This was recommended by several bookstagram friends, and we were excited to read it both for the gorgeous cover and the unique narration style – the book is written as a series of podcast interviews. Six Stories kept us on the edge of our seats from the get go. The crime itself isn’t anything special, but the way Wesolowski slowly builds the case through six different perspectives makes for a thrilling read.
Die Wahrheit is fairly unique as far as thrillers go. The writing is more lyrical than gritty, and the story is surprisingly sentimental. We enjoyed the first 380 or so pages, but the we couldn’t help feeling a bit let down by the ending.
Neither of us had heard of this book before Mooni gave it to Maraia for Christmas, but apparently it’s a cult classic in Estonia. The Man Who Spoke Snakish is one of the most unique (read: bizarre) books we’ve ever read. There’s no plot to speak of, although the last third is quite action packed. We were never bored, despite the lack of direction in the story, but did we enjoy it? We’re still not sure. We are glad we read it, though. And if there’s one thing to be said about the book, it’s that it has one of the nicest, softest covers ever!
I had read the first book in this series a few years ago and only remembered that I really enjoyed it thanks to the thrilling story and the interesting protagonists and for the second book I decided to switch to the audiobook version which eventually made the reading experience even better. The plot was at least just as good as in book 1 but the narrator (which had been unknown to me before) made it even more fantastic – especially because he spoke the grumpy Dutch profiler with a very convincing Dutch accent! ?
I merely picked this book from my TBR on a whim and didn’t have any expectations at all but it turned out to be a good decision: I really liked the idea that all that crazy the-world-is-going-to-end stuff was just a footnote to the actual story, it was easy to sympathize with the characters and overall I enjoyed this much more than I had expected.
The historical crime novels I usually read are mostly set in the Victorian era but I also appreciate John Maddox Robbert’s series about an investigator that solves cases in ancient Rome. This fourth book of the SPQR series however was set in Egypt which I found almost even more interesting and while the first two hours of the audiobook were still a bit slow the rest was pretty good and I just like how these books combine suspense and historical information.
This was recommended to me by Kelsea, and I’m glad I listened to her. Aside from the heavy focus on the romance, this was a great audiobook and an important #ownvoices story. My only questions about the book were answered by the author in the afterword. I definitely recommend the audiobook format if you’re thinking of reading this.
This is another romance-heavy book, but it was so sweet, I couldn’t help but love it. Both of the main character and his love interests were adorable, and I also appreciated the strong emphasis on family and friendship. What I loved most, though, is the message of the book: be yourself, and don’t let anyone tell you you’re not good enough the way you are.
I enjoyed this much more than book one, which was too similar to another novella I had just read. Taste of Morrow has the same great cast of characters but I thought the mission was sweeter.
This was one of my most-anticipated sequels of the year, and it did not disappoint. I love the diverse characters and I love the idea behind the world. These books are all about the importance of finding the place you belong. I’m so glad we have more books ahead of us!
I highly recommend You Bring the Distant Near. This may be a short novel, but it has a lot to say. It deals with race, religion, immigration, multiculturalism, multiple generations, and fitting in somewhere new. These are the kind of stories we need!
I could listen to this narrator forever. This was a great book in and of itself, but the narration takes it to the next level. I enjoyed book two even more than the first. I loved getting to know the characters better, watching them grow, and seeing their relationships develop.
SING: This was so cute! It delivered exactly what it promised: a feel-good movie that left us smiling and dancing in our seats.
NOW YOU SEE ME 2: We both fell asleep during the movie. Make of that what you will. ?
THE GOOD PLACE: Season 2 is so weird. We definitely weren’t expecting things to go where they did, but we still couldn’t stop watching this bizarre and hilarious show. We wish we didn’t have to wait so long for the season to continue.
DARK: We ended the season the way we started – hating all the characters but somehow 100% addicted. We can’t wait for season 2!
CRIMINAL MINDS: Season 7 is definitely not our favorite, and we really hope season 8 is back to normal so we can actually guess who the killer is while watching.
LIFE IN PIECES: We’re still loving this, despite the fact that we’d forgotten how obnoxious most of the characters are. That’s all part of the show’s charm, though.
STROMBERG: The thing that Maraia has been waiting for since the very first season has finally happened! ?
FRESH OFF THE BOAT: It’s so nice to be back with these characters!
ONE DAY AT A TIME: Season one was great, but this season is on a whole new level. We love that the show doesn’t sugarcoat anything, directly addressing so many issues that are important and relevant right now. If you’re not watching this show yet, you really should be.
PASTEWKA: This new season has gotten off to a rough start, with a season premiere that was sneakily almost an hour long (instead of 20 minutes) and a second episode that was almost too absurd to be funny (but still pretty entertaining). We’re curious how the rest of the season will go.
ZOO: This is a rewatch for Sebastian so Maraia can catch up to where he left off. She can see why he loves this show! The scenario it explores is absolutely terrifying.
Did you discover any new favorites?
Looks like you mostly read some great books this month.
What is Dark about. The season one poster looks interesting.
We watched the first few episodes of Zoo when they aired it here two years ago i think but then it changed channels and we los track of it. Last year we bought it on dvd and we are hoping to finally finish the season this year. 😀 It really is terrifying.
It’s basically the German version of Stranger Things, haha. It’s about time travel, though, instead of a parallel wordl.
Yay, hopefully you find time to watch it. It’s one of those shows where it freaks me out but I also can’t look away. ?
„Dark“ was really good! At first it made me a bit uncomfortable because the first two or three episodes were SO similar to „Stranger Things“ that it felt like a poor attempt to copy it but when the time travel aspect became clear it was really fascinating on it’s own, even though it was a bit confusing at times.
I really really like „Zoo“. One of the reasons is for sure that I’m a big fan of zoos and wild animals in general but I’m still always surprised by how thrilling I find this show. Especially the animals scenes are really convincing in my opinion and never feel like cheap special effects and I’m always wondering how they are shooting those scenes to make them look so real 😀 And it gets even better in season 2 (as far as I can tell yet)!
„Bizarre“ is the best way to describe The Good Place haha. We binged it recently and season two has gotten soooo weird. I’m still loving it though.
I’ve never heard of Zoo but I want to check it out COMPLETELY based on the poster.
I definitely don’t want to stop watching. I have no idea where they’re going to take the show next, haha.
We paused in the middle of season 2 of „The Good Place“ so that we can binge the rest of the season and I’m really excited about the next episodes!
I have no idea why I love The Good Place so much but yet here we are.? I’m really annoyed though that the finale is up and my sister and I were watching them together, but now she’s back at her place and I’M NOT AND NOW I HAVE TO WAIT. (Why do I even care about this show ah ahah?.) Ahem.
Anyway, super glad to see appreciation for The Rest Of Us Just Live Here! I totally adored that one but have also totally forgotten most of it…reread time this year I hope. But I love Patrick Ness‘ twists on books so so much.
And yessss, Maraia! I’m so glad you liked Autoboyography after all!! ? I loved it too much but yes that was EXACTLY the message and I think that’s what resonated with me so much. I also definitely want to try If I Was Your Girl sometime.
Right?! I kind of feel like I should hate it, but I don’t at all. Why do you have to wait for her? That seems cruel. Or you could buddy watch.
How could I not love it? ? I definitely recommend the audiobook for you.
I’m glad February will be a better month. ?
I had no idea what „The Good Place“ was about when we started it but it definitely helped that Kristen Bell is in it since I like her from „Veronica Mars“ and that makes it much easier to live through the scenes where she is really annoying XD I also really like that it has an ongoing story and all those cliffhangers at the episodes make it really hard to stop watching!
Thanks, Sarah! I love a good candid photo. I guess this one was half candid. ? Hahaha, right? I’m really curious to know what new twist they’ll think up next. I haven’t heard of Switched at Birth. I definitely recommend One Day at a Time, though!
I am definitely going to pick up You Bring the Distant Near. I entered a giveaway for it not too long ago and was really disappointed I didn’t win it. Hope you have a wonderful February!
That’s too bad. I hope you don’t have to wait too long for your library copy!
So glad you enjoyed Die Wahrheit so much. I hope it encourages you to jump into your next German book soon 😉 Also, I love how many books you 2 read together. How do you go about that? Do you read out loud to each other? Do you get multiple copies?
I was pretty disappointed by If I Was Your Girl, to be honest. I get why it was the way it is and I’m glad it exists as such but I was pretty bored because it was such a generic high school experience story.
I need to figure out what to read next! I don’t have any German books planned for February, oops. Hahaha, I always ask Sebastian to read out loud to me when I’m tired, and he always says no. 😛 Sometimes I have a library ebook and he has a physical copy. Sometimes I have an English copy and he has an German copy. And sometimes we only have one copy, and then we have to buddy read two books (one in English, one in German) and pass them back and forth.
Well, I certainly wouldn’t have read it if it hadn’t been an #ownvoices story. I think it was the great narration that kept my interest! And I’m glad it exists, because it really is an important story.
It’s a lot of fun! And haha, yeah, I wouldn’t rush to see it. ?
You seem to have had a really nice month!
I remember loving The Rest of Us Just Live Here, that was such a cool idea and I loved the ending.
Don’t worry, you’ll have time to catch up when we take a break in April. But I’m so excited for your reread. These books are amazing.
Let us know what you think of One Day at a Time. ?
You guys had a great month! I’m glad Sebastian liked Ship of magic, better. Is he reading The mad ship?
About the movies, I’ve only watched Sing but I agree it was a cute movie. And I can’t believe how many shows you watched! I’m not specially interested in any of them but I think I will end up watching Dark at some point if only to find out what’s all the buzz around it.
I hope you have a great February, too!
Yep, we’re reading it now, over halfway done.
Haha, how did that happen? I guess audiobooks make it easier. And the third one just came in for the library, so I need to start it ASAP.
Now I’m embarrassed at the number of shows we watch. ? We watch a short show during dinner every night and then one or two long episodes or a long and a short episode before bed. It doesn’t seem like that much until we write it all out, lol.
I think you might like One Day at a Time as well!
Thanks for commenting, Mercy. ?
Haha, I really can’t imagine what else they can do with that show, but I can’t wait to find out.
I have Sing on my to-watch list thanks to Maraia’s recommendation. You can’t go wrong with a movie that makes you want to dance and sing. And I haven’t watched any of those TV shows, though I did plan on checking Dark out. My biggest issue I think is I mainly like to watch shows while drawing and Dark seemed like one of those shows I would need to give my full attentnion to to actually enjoy it so I kept pushing it off.
Not a whole lot to report on my end for January. Still haven’t finished Crooked Kingdom, but that’s by no fault of the book. I just devoted most of my time to drawing instead of reading. And show-wise I enjoyed watching some documentaries on Netflix this past month because I found they were nice background shows while I drew. I think my favorites were Abstract and The Toys That Made Us, both were quite interesting and fun to follow as a creative person. Oh, and I watched The End of the F**king World which was quite different.
I didn’t like The Rest of Us Just Live Here, either! I thought the message was good but I didn’t actually like the book itself.
Like Sebastian said, you definitely have to pay attention when watching Dark. It was hard for me, too, but I did it. ? I recommend checking out One Day at a Time, though!
I saw on GR that you’ve finished now and gave it 5 stars? Woohoo! We’ll have to give The End of F**cking World a try.
Oh, I was excited about Change Agent. I so need to read Taste of Morrow and If I Was Your Girl soon. Autoboyography sounds great!
I hope you and C like it more than we did! Maybe if you lower your expectations. Yeah, Autoboyography was surprisingly good, since it’s a romance and has a lot of religion in it. ?
I would maybe just skip it and leave the first movie as a standalone, haha.
I cry during pretty much every episode! We have three left.
The amount of crying you’ll do when watching the last episode will be unmatched. They got me good ?
I’m not ready! We’ll finish tomorrow. | 2019-04-19T21:11:17Z | https://buecher-monster.de/2018/02/01/roundup-january-2018/ |
I called them after a minor fender bender in a shopping parking lot to ask for advice. If I make a claim, will my insurance go up since I wasn't at fault? The agent wouldn't answer and would just repeatedly say: Do you want to make a claim? The only way to get advice was only if I made a claim first!!! So I ended up making a claim, I took photos of the parking lot and drew sketches of how the accident happened. A year later, when I got the renewal letter, the insurance was sky high! When I called to complain about this, they blamed me for not talking to the right person. How was I supposed to know who is answering the phone at CAA insurance wasn't qualified to answer car accident questions? I changed insurance companies. They still send me letters to join them.
One month so far, was told they were purolating it as soon as my paperwork came back, I even went to an office so I could expedite the process! I am so frustrated...they sent a check on the 30th of Jan...never received it. It wasn't Purolator. They won't take my old car, which I haven't driven since Dec 30, off my policy till I get my check!!! I don't have 200.00 to pay on the 25?? Also when you call and choose "talk about your existing policy", they make you sit on hold...but if you want a quote, they give you the callback option!! Nice... if they have your money already, sit on hold for 40mins!!!
I have been waiting 3 days for my car to be towed. Then finally I had to hire another tow company to take care of my car.
My tire blew out on the highway in Toronto and after calling CAA I was told there were no calls available until the plan renewed the next day. Opting to renew the plan and pay an additional $30 I agreed so that I could get the tow truck but instead of calling the tow truck, they made me speak to another representative who took my credit card details BEFORE calling a tow. At the time, I was parked on the side of a ramp barely avoiding cars driving past me swerving into the side lane. I asked them to just call the tow truck before I wasted time giving them my credit card information but they refused to place the call until I first upgraded to the premium account. The priority here was not my safety but CAA's profit margin.
I had a bad claim experience very lengthy. It is very difficult to reach adjusters, especially around lunchtime. I waited for 40 minutes one day and another day after 45 minutes on hold I had to hang up as nobody answered. However, you can get insurance staff in the evening quite quickly to enroll in the insurance. Also, I feel we were not really looked after. The first adjuster never returned phone calls or emails but we were put onto another adjuster who was very good. I think it's a bit like NO FRILLS insurance. I don't think I would renew but it was $100 a month cheaper than the insurance I was with before. Also, with me, I was getting a lot of different information. Adjusters tell you one thing, body shops tell you something else and nobody seems to be on the same page. This can cause a lot of stress.
Extremely difficult to simply cancel Moms auto policy after her death. The car is sold. New owner, new policy copy of death cert. Copy of will...letter of direction etc. All submitted yet still unable to cancel...sometimes we lose sight of effectiveness in our search for correctness. Not at all positive for our family.
I cannot comment on their other services but I made a claim on my auto insurance and it has been an absolute nightmare dealing with them. I have never dealt with a company and have been treated with such disrespect in all areas and aspects when dealing with my claim. They have tried to bully me, lied to me, and tried to make me take responsibility for an accident that was not my fault. After 2 weeks of chasing them down, I am suddenly told the accident was not my fault, something they knew all along and they have offered me a sum much less than my car was worth. Even if they were half the price of other companies, I would never deal with them again.
Did online quote before and after I got insurance. First online quote was $2300. Went to office in person and got a quote of 2900. I was told the premiums went up. I got it down to $2500 over the phone the next day due to some errors that were made, wrong truck model, wrong address, and incorrect discounts. I did a second online quote just to see if the premiums had gone up like they said. They did not, it was less than the first quote $2200. I'm not sure what happened but they could not match the online quote and could provide no reasons why and could not fix it. I was going to get home insurance with them as well next time I renewed, but most likely I will go with somebody else. I may even cancel it altogether. The customer service tried their best to be helpful and did their best I think.
CAA customer for many years.
I've tried to get the free quote from CAA representative.After a few questions about my answers, she gave me a satisfactory premium.I only have a car and I told her my son had a driver's licence 18 months ago, but he didn't drive.Now he is a second year of university student.He told me he would like to drive after university graduation.I told that representative also.And sometimes he would sit beside me for shopping occasionally.Then she persuaded me my son had to buy insurance with me.And she gave my son premium over$3300 a year plus my premium $135/monthly total price about 5 GRAND a year.That is ridiculous.She has got to be nuts.I have never heard that before in my life.In my opinion better to stop buying CAA insurance anymore.
6 H d attente à -35!
Such a bad service, long wait times, CAA members do a guessing game and do not care about your car. One of the two boosts I received burnt my car radio. Went to the dealership for them to tell me it was because of a recent boost and it would cost me $1000 to get a new one + replacement. Waited for two hours for a call and 8 hours for the CAA member to get to my house. First CAA member told me it wasn't my battery, it was something with my car so when I requested a tow the second CAA member boosts me again and my car starts working. He told me it was the battery and that I needed a new one. After 3 calls to CAA to get a new battery as the second CAA member suggested. A CAA member brings a battery and asks me if I called for a boost... Then he finally comes to my house and tells me my battery is fine.
Waited 2 hours for the driver to call. When he did call all I heard was swearing in the background and I kept saying "hello, hello" with no answer so I hung up. Apparently, it was the driver and he left. Spent over an hour calling dispatch to find out the driver had taken off and I had to start all over again. Got a text saying the driver will be here shortly. Went on the website to track his progress only to find out there is no service requested. Spent another hour on the phone to get through another dispatcher only to be told to find my way home and they will tow my vehicle home and after the tow, they will try to boost my car. I am very disappointed with CAA and would not recommend them to anyone. Especially those with kids. I am now told that they will arrive sometime around 3:38 in the morning and I have to go to work in a few hours from then. Terrible, terrible service. If you can find another service provider, do it.
I had a really bad experience with this insurer. After 25 years as a platinum CAA member for their roadside assistance, I opted to get their insurance coverage. It was inexpensive compared to others but I had to go through so much stress every time I needed to make a change. On two separate occasions due to their failure to do their job on a timely basis customer service almost got my policies cancelled. This was due to changing bank accounts after a divorce and then after a family member I lived with and had a joint account with could no longer manage their own financial affairs. They never changed the information so kept trying to draft a non-existent bank account. The first time this happened I let it go and gave them another chance. Sure enough, in another two years I needed to open another new bank account and remove someone from my policy and gave them all the information immediately yet once again they failed to change it over and I received a second registered letter informing me of cancellation. Then ironically, they switched sides and claimed I wasn`t allowed to cancel my policy without the other party`s signature....they were represented by a public guardian so I had to go to the Ministry and get them to fax a letter. Even then CAA continued to draft my account and took weeks to pay me back. I have a disability and am on a fixed income. Too many sleepless nights because of these people, not worth it. I don`t recommend them to anyone because you do get what you pay for. Now I pay roughly 40$ a month more but the new company is a lot more professional and I always get a call back the same day within a couple of hours when I call my local office. Now you tell me, is all this aggravation worth saving $40 a month? My health and well-being is worth way more than that!! I am not satisfied that they would competently handle a claim either because they don`t seem to care how long they delay handling matters, it`s a chronic and long term problem for their customer service department and I doubt it changed since last year when I finally cancelled all my policies with them and went elsewhere. Bottom line, caveat emptor!
Been with CAA auto and home insurance for 30+ years. Started a new side business and called CAA to change policy from personal to commercial on my pickup truck. They don't do commercial, so told me I had to look elsewhere. Then the agent said she had to review my home policy. She asked if I was going to use any part of my home as an office. I said I have a small office set up in the basement for my personal use and intended on using it for business as well. No customers coming and going, just phone calls, emails and invoicing. BIG MISTAKE !!! The agent put me on hold for a couple of minutes and informed me that both my home insurance and personal insurance on my pickup truck are being cancelled. Case closed. No explanation, just cancelled. Be forewarned !!!
We switched to CAA insurance for auto and home last year. We have the gizmos in our cars that monitor how we use the cars. These gizmos are totally unreliable, yet our renewal discount will apparently be determined from them. For example, we drove to a place that is 30km from our condo. On the way there, CAA Connect broke into 5 separate trips totalling about 15km. REturning the same way, it recorded 2 trips totalling 30km. So 15km there and 30km back on same route. This is in a semi-urban setting where gps signal should be good. Same thing happens if we do a return trip from our home to Toronto on 401 highway. The gps gizmo loses signal and we end up having multiple short trips that don't match teh total distance. On the webpage, CAA Connect says we have not had unit connected long enough to obtain the full discount. It has been connected for 9 months but has not recorded the full distance travelled. CAA Connect is just a bad joke. If they don't give us teh full discount, we wil just have to find someone else to insure through. I sent an email to CAA about this about 10 days ago - They did not answer.
Our car was rear ended at a high rate of speed at a light in May and even with ample following distance due to the speed we hit the car in front of us. CAA rated 50% at fault for the collision because that is what the book says without taking in to account the entire situation. They are very black and white. The told us to pay 50% of the deductible but the collision would not effect our premiums or policy at all. We renewed in October with no issues and went through a whole year when we received a letter this October telling us we are not being renewed because of an at fault collision and they quoted the May collision as the reason. I asked why we were renewed the first October but not this year and they said no one looked at our file. I however found out that if we wanted to fight the claim it had to be within 1 year of the collision, so CAA basically ran out the clock so we couldn't fight it. I then had to shop around for insurance and called CAA 4 times now for an experience letter, I'm told every time I will receive one by the end of business day and to date have not received it. So I can't stay with CAA and they wont let me leave, do yourself a favor and find someone else to insure you.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you?
I got in a car accident a month ago in which I was not at fault (lady ran a red and t-boned me, car was a write-off). We contacted insurance and 3 days later they called me so I could get a rental. They proceeded to take a week to examine my car before providing me with a settlement. I should note that I had bought this car, brand new, for $25 000 less than 10 months previously. They were prepared to offer me $15 000. I said no and the customer service rep said he would listen to my original tapes when setting up my insurance to see if I had signed up for "New Car Protection". It then took a week of me calling their terrible customer service line and waiting on hold for countless work breaks to inquire about any updates. Finally, I received a call telling me that I had not been offered "New Car Protection" on my original call and they were willing to apply it retroactively for a fee. Also, note how ridiculous it is that I should need to pay more to be properly reimbursed, how many people do they try to pull this trick on thinking they won't argue with the original offer? The following day, a Friday, I was informed I needed to provide the car proof of sale via fax. I paid to use a fax machine to send it then waited until Tuesday when I finally called to ask what was taking so long. They said they did not receive the fax, although I had a confirmation of transmittal. I paid to resend it the next day, and the day after that I received a call saying that their fax machine had malfunctioned and the image was too dark. The next morning, I sent them 2 pictures of my Proof of Sale via email and they accepted that, then waited several days to give me an updated appraisal, $21 000, and that my cheque would be sent out when they received a signed proof of loss form. This was a Wednesday. They did not give me this form until later in the day on Thursday so I could not send it by the 2:00pm deadline for next day delivery. I sent it Thursday afternoon and was told that I also needed to provide images of the ownership. I sent them first thing Friday morning but, apparently, there was an issue with my email, which they did not let me know to fix it until 3:30pm, thus my cheque would not be sent that week. Meanwhile, I settled on a new car and I contacted CAA to transfer my insurance to the new vehicle. The customer service rep forgot to email my proof of insurance to the car dealership so we had to call and wait for them to send it before I could drive my car off the lot. It is now Tuesday and I just received an email that my cheque has not yet been sent because my car has not been released from the salvage lot. I was holding back on releasing it so that CAA might have some incentive to move faster with my claim. I was never informed that they would withhold my payment. I have as of yet been unable to pay off my balance on my previous vehicle and will have to wait 2 more days at the very least. This has been a 5-week ordeal that was literally worse than being in the actual accident. This company takes advantage of people who are already struggling and provides terrible customer service. I just got a letter in the mail inviting me to also use CAA Home Insurance and actually laughed. I’d go with TD.
I chose CAA after comparing costs online - it was the lowest cost. I had a claim experience, and everything went perfect: the agent handling the claim was very curteous, I had a rental at a location of my choosing - they even picked me up. The repair was done at the body shop I chose. The after claim experience was great. No regrets, by far the best company. I had a number of policies before, including Intact, and Bel-air, none compares.
Got a tow from Richard. There was quicker than quoted time by roadside assistance and he was very friendly and down to earth guy. Even took the courtesy to make sure my tower hitch didn't scrape the ground when loading/unloading even when I said I didn't care if it did. Very professional.
Got into a small accident and was stuck in a snow bank. After calling roadside assistance, Colin promptly attended the scene and had me pulled out in 15 minutes. He was a very nice guy and I am very thankful for his help. I've had nothing but great and quick service from CAA. Definitely worth the investment.
I called to update info on auto & property. I was told my rate would go down for auto but up for property. I got my revised & increased property bill within a few days. The new auto insurance bill didn't come so after a week, I called and was told not to worry, it was in the mail. Waited another week before calling again and was assured it was in the mail. Called again after a couple of days and was told that I would not be getting a new bill. That I would pay the original higher bill and CAA would reimburse me at a later date. This was because the auto insurance didn't take effect for a couple of weeks. Get it? No. Me, neither. Remember that I had received the revised property insurance bill within days, for property insurance that did not take effect until a later date. I kept asking questions and was told a few more stories before customer service finally agreed to send me the revised bill. sigh I asked how much it would be and paid it on the spot, just in case I never get it. I felt like the people that I talked to didn't care and didn't really know how to investigate or how to resolve or explain an issue. It seemed like they didn't know their jobs at all.
I joined CAA roadside assistance this year and after a month or so, I got a call from representative and I can save up to 15% on my next auto insurance so now it is time to renew my insurance, I called CAA Connect customer care after finding their number online and before I started anything, he asked me about the year when I got my "G" driving licence. I answered, "In 2010". The customer service guy immediately said, "Sir, you know that we are in business for just 20 years so we can't deal with this year's insurance and he hanged up the phone". Then I tried to do an online quote, (I have 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan SE), I selected year and make and when I see the options for model, I am unable to find "Grand Caravan" in the models mentioned, which I simply assume they are not interested in giving auto insurance to a passanger minivan. So, I am giving up trying getting quote from CAA.
For a solid week I tried to get auto insurance through them. I had to call with the broker end because apparently I'm not pristine enough for caa's own insurance. Average wait time on hold: 40 minutes. Agents don't know what they're taking about half the time. They ask a question, then immediately forget the answer and ask it again. Then carry on as if you told them the exact opposite. Promise to send documents via email and never do. Agents don't identify themselves. Now I'm worried about the CAA membership i bought. I'm going to wait forty minutes on hold if I need a tow??? To put the cherry on top? CAA broker quoted me $303 a month. Cooperators quote me $163 with the precise same information.
We drove from Toronto to Montreal and on a main road another driver ran a red light and hit our vehicle. This was on a Saturday afternoon. We were OK but my passenger needed to be checked out at the hospital. I called the 1 800 number for the claim but they said they weren't able to look at my file because they aren't authorized to do so after hours. So no arrangements were offered for hotel or transportation back to Ontario. Luckily a friend of a friend offered their place for us to stay until a family member came to pick us up. They would not tow the car further than Ottawa for it to be fixed. I had to take a bus to Ottawa a month later to pick up the car and drive it back. A year later after multiple phone calls and reassurances, I was never given a copy or statement of the accident report. They reassured me that the accident was not at fault and my premium cost from ~3500 to ~2900 went down the following year. I still had a valid "forgive and forget" product on my policy. This year, after no claims or tickets my premium went back up to ~3500. Poor tact on the phone when I cancelled the policy. I received the same coverage with another company for half the cost $1800.
The Tow truck driver tried to put my car on the flat bed in park. He damaged my Transmission. For Three weeksr the CAA did not have it assed, they we supposed to but did not. They told Mr Transmission they would not pay, and so did the tow truck company, so the Mr Transmission in North bay Ontario gave it back damaged, and are claiming the transmission is not related to the tow. The Statement of Claim is being drafted now!!! I hate CAA! | 2019-04-18T12:18:06Z | https://insureye.com/Reviews/Auto-Insurance-Reviews/63-CAA-Insurance |
Bing’s Search Plus Your World?
When Google introduced their Search Plus Your World social search results this past January, they were to a degree following in the footsteps of Bing, who announced last May that they would deliver Facebook based social search results when you’re logged into Facebook and searching at Bing, in their blog post Facebook Friends Now Fueling Faster Decisions on Bing.
People often share a fair amount of information about themselves on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook including what they are presently doing, how they feel and more. An interview by Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting, Paul Yiu, who runs Bing Social Search, uncovers some aspects of how Bing’s personalized social search works.
The post, titled Author Authority and Social Media with Bing’s Paul Yiu uncovers some aspects of Bing’s approach to social search that you might not have been aware of if you haven’t been paying attention. The post provides a convenient overview before the start of the interview on how Bing might be calculating things like authorship authority from Twitter (and likely Facebook as well).
A patent application filed by Microsoft published this past week describes how they might look at social activity, including indications of your mood and the topics you and your connections write about, to help deliver personalized results to searchers at Bing.
Those inferences might then be used to customize search results.
Systems and methods are disclosed for customizing a user’s experience with an application such as a search engine. The user’s experience is customized based on inferring a mood and/or interests of the user at least in part from an analysis of the user’s posts on one or more social media sites.
The search engine is configured to include a user-following engine which follows a user’s activities on social media websites. By tracking a user’s posts and other activity on social media websites, and possibly those of his or her friends, the user-following engine is able to draw inferences about a user, including for example the user’s emotional state, current trending interests, future plans, likes/dislikes and aspirations.
The user-following engine may then customize the user’s search experience based on these drawn inferences.
The user-following engine might follow a person to social media sites and copy their posts and other activities to a data store at the search engine though an alternative approach might not include copying of that information. Whether copied or not, that activity might be analyzed to infer both a mood and interests of the user based upon posts made. In addition to looking at that person’s activities, the activities of their connections might also be tracked and analyzed.
Customization might be done in a couple of ways. One would be to personalize the search interface, by doing things like showing you which of your connections might have “liked” a particular results. The other would be to personalize the results you see by including documents that you might otherwise not have seen based upon your social activities, and those of your friends.
In addition to tracking activities on social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, it’s possible that activities on blogs might also be included as well. The patent filing includes an example list of social networking sites that might be included in a system like this, including: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Linkedin, Ning, Tagged, Classmates, Hi5, MyYearbook, Meetup, Bebo, Mylife, Friendster, MyHeritage, Multiply, Orkut, Foursquare, Digg, Match, and the Xbox Live gaming service.
Some specific blogs are also mentioned as examples as well, such as TMZ, Huffington Post, Engadget, Gizmodo, Mashable, TechCrunch, Gawker, and FanHouse. Facebook comments aren’t mentioned specifically within the patent filing, but that would be something that would make it easier for Bing to track activities on blogs that use them.
The patent filing also notes that while some social activity might be public, other social interactions might only be available to people whom have been granted permission to see that information. Presumably, since you only see personalized and customized results if you’re logged into Facebook, you may be able to see both public and private social information from those social services.
For a system like this to work for you, you would need to give Bing explicit permission to access information from different social networking sites. The patent filing describes a couple of possible ways that might be done.
The first method of delegating authority to Bing to access social media sites and act on behalf of the user would be through authentication and authorization protocols, such as OAuth WRAP or OAuth 2.0, allowing a user “to set up the user-following engine to act on behalf of the user on the social media sites.” If you’ve signed into a service like Klout, or a site like inbound.org, or signed on to leave a comment through your Twitter or Facebook log-in, you’ve used an authentication service like that.
Once on the site, the user-following engine may track posts of the user, and may have access to posts of the user’s friends. In particular, where a friend posts and sets privileges for the user (and for example none others) to view that post, the user-following engine would have access to that confidential friend post when connected via delegated authority.
Alternatively, a user of this system could set up the user-following engine with permissions so it becomes a connection, and have access to what they post, and possibly also to the posts of the user’s connections.
All users of under this approach might have a user profile service which would store information relating to that user.
There could also be a setup and user preferences module within the search engine that would allow someone to opt into this service, and indicate which social media sites the system would track for that user. The user might provide their name and/or ID on the different social media sites. Upon doing that, a friend request might be sent out from Bing’s system to social media sites that have private user profiles, so that the user can allow access to those profiles if they choose to do so. As I noted above, instead of this friend approach, a user might use a delegation approach to allow access to that kind of information.
Bing might receive a notification when a user of one of the social media site makes a post, or it might monitor the stream of all data from a site.
In addition to tracking the kinds of content presented on these social media sites, this system might also gather collateral data, or meta data, about those activities, such as the time and date of the activity, the type of device used to connect to the social media site, and the location of the user when the connection was made via GPS or some other means for indicating location.
Information about activities conducted by friends or connections on different social media sites, where available, may also be tracked.
The information collected could then be used to draw different inferences about the user, and the user’s connections, based upon their activities. A person using this system might have the option to look at all of the inferences made about their actitives, and could modify or delete them. They could also possibly set up preference rules to prevent the re-occurrence of inferences that they’ve removed.
Other user settings might include rules like “what social media sites, posts or topics the gathering engine is to ignore.” A person could also set preferences regarding friends, so that posts from certain friends might be weighted higher or lower, or posts from some connections might be ignored completely.
One approach that might be followed is to look at the words used in posts. Different words might indicate different emotions being experienced by someone. The patent filing cites the technical report Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW): Instruction Manual and Affective Ratings, which contains emotional ratings for a number of words. Those types of rankings might be used to get a sense of a mood behind social activities.
Another approach could be to look for posts that contain emoticons.
A third step could be to look for changes in status indicators, and changes in status, such as “whether the user is in a relationship or single, employed or unemployed, etc.” and if there is a change in that status.
We are also told that a number of other rules, or heuristic tests, might be used to determine emotional states.
The moods of others might be looked at as well, from people who are connected to the a searcher, to people who might be unrelated. For instance, if an event of some type has happened that a large percentage of people using a social network might post about, such as “the death of a popular figure, or the winning of a big game by a team,” that might be considered as well.
This system might find little to support influencing search results based upon moods, or it might find some information that would cause it to look at more posts from the searcher or from others to get a sense of how strongly that emotional state might be. A certain confidence level might need to be reached before search results would be influenced.
The patent application also notes that moods tend to be time dependent, and often transitory, so the influence of different emotional signals might be limited.
Reading through the patent filing, I’m not sure at this point how search results might be modified based upon mood. How would they differ if you seemed to be happy or sad or bored?
In addition to looking at social activity to try to gauge moods, they might also be analyzed to try to detect trending interests of searchers. These could include things like new songs or albums or artists or current events, or many other topics.
A keyword search of the searcher’s posts, with information about frequencies about terms appearing within their posts might indicate trending topics. If the searcher has performed queries at sites, such as a Facebook or Twitter search, those queries might also be analyzed as well to see if they are part of a trend.
Other similar heuristics, or rules, might be looked at to identify trends from an individual and possibly from their connections as well.
The posts from the user’s friends may also be analyzed in the same manner in an attempt to discern or confirm a geographic place of interest of the user. It may happen that a user asks for help in finding a vacation spot or other place of interest. The replies from the user’s friends may then help in determining if the user has found a particular place of interest.
In addition to moods, trends, and locations of interest, this system could look for other things to personalize search results based upon social activities, looking at their social activities and searches at social media sites.
These could include “events of interest” to a user, such as the celebration of a birthday, or attendance at a concert, or an upcoming test at school.
This system could also look for specific likes and dislikes of a searcher, such as “an affinity or aversion to certain topics, people, brands, stores, organizations, places and/or things.” In addition to looking at specific topics, this approach could also look at terms included within a post that might distinguish whether there’s a positive or negative feeling associated with those topics. Other signals, such as becoming a “fan” of something on a social network could also indicate a positive feeling about it.
Another aspect of social activities to be tracked might be goals or aspirations of a user. Signals that might be looked for could include statements like “‘I want . . . ‘ or ‘I wish . . . ‘ or ‘I hope . . . ‘ or ‘It would be great if . . . ‘”.
The patent filing also describes a number of ways that the interests of groups of users might be monitored, and some additional ways that information could be used.
These could be used to learn about public opinions on different topics or entities, and could be broken down into different geographic regions.
As one example of the prolific fan identification application, a music recording artist may release a new album. The artist wants to tap into his most prolific fans, though he does not know who they are, and reward them for promoting his album. The user-following engine would identify the users who repeatedly post about the artist, which information would be stored in the all users index of the service. An intelligent processing module may be provided which scores the selected users’ posts for positive opinions of the artist.
The number of readers who see, and possibly repeat, the users’ posts may also be factored into the score. The highest scoring users could be given the opportunity to participate in a promotion. The artist would buy a promotion campaign, through the search processing environment or elsewhere, giving each prolific fan a unique purchase URL for his album. The artist asks the fans to include their unique URL in their postings about the new album. The fan with the highest performing URL (measured via sales) would get a cash prize and the opportunity to meet the artist. It is understood that the prolific fan identification application may have a wide variety of other uses in further embodiments.
Another application described might be enabling people to perform “people like you”-type searches.
One thing made very clear by this patent filing is how much information Bing might be collecting from the social activities of people who enable the search engine to gather that information.
What isn’t as clear is how they might customize search results based upon things like identified moods, or how they might use trend information or some of the other types of information they describe as creating from their different kinds of analysis.
We do have a screenshot that shows a couple of interesting additions. In addition to showing custom results at the top of search results (no guarantee that Bing will separate results that way), there’s also two links at the bottom left of the browser window. One enables you to access your individual preferences, and the other allows you to search for “like inferences,” presumably for “people like you” results.
The patent does provide some indications of commercial uses for this kind of information, such as helping advertisers identify people who might be influential and interested in specific topics.
What impact will the approach described in the patent have on individuals or businesses using social media sites? That’s hard to gauge at this stage in the development of Bing’s social and personalized search. The same could be said of Google’s Search Plus Your World.
Good article Bill. There is no doubt the Microsoft needs to take social signals into account in their SERPs as they are too important to ignore. But given Google with 90% market share (at least here down under) can’t seem to get penetration with Google+ it remains to be seen whether Microsoft, with even less market control, can make inroads. But they need to do something, or they risk falling behind like they have so many other times.
With Bing’s relationship with Facebook it would seem they’d have more data on users then anyone. The information related to moods, however, almost seems too farfetched. Would they be giving us a better search experience just because they anticipate our mood. Good luck trying to do that with teenagers. Interesting post Bill and look forward to seeing how this plays out.
Great data, Bill. I’m still skeptical about the relevance of a searcher’s mood as it relates to SERP’s, but maybe they know best. Seems like they’re trying to put too fine a point on it to me.
I don’t like the intuitive searches that are being instituted. I turn off the Google one. I would rather see things for myself, step outside the box I know and see what else is there. It’s so easy to only view what you already know, but it’s better to get a variety of things that make you think and expand your horizons.
That being said, I’m as guilty as anyone of choosing Google searches by default. I often wonder what Bing is like, what they are up to, yet I never use them… I should make myself get used to them and see what they have to offer me.
I hope all this data harvesting will lead to better search, although am a bit skeptical. When I search for cat pictures I don’t want to see pictures that my friends posted on FB, I want to see the best cat pictures.
I don’t think that social search is an area that Bing can afford to ignore at this point either. Their partnership with Facebook seems to be fairly strong, and is definitely an asset that they should be taking advantage of as much as possible.
I’m not quite sure that it’s a good idea to think of Google Plus only as a social network, since Google is also tying it in so closely to things like authorship markup and social search. There have also been rumors of Google comments coming out to be used on other sites, which will be most definitely tied into Google Plus as well.
Thanks. Facebook does have a lot of information about many of its users. Google does have a lot of information about the searching and browsing and page level interactions of people who use it while signed into their Google Accounts, as well as the connections and interactions they may have had with others. I’m not sure that I’d take a bet at this point on which side had more data about their users.
Many of the other signals or factors in the patent other than moods seem like things that might provide better search results. It will be interesting to see how much of Bing’s social search is unique and how much of it ends up looking like what Google has done.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around mood as well, and how it could be used to influence or filter the results that someone might be served in some manner. I’s possible maybe that when there are lots of social signals that show some type of very strong sentiment that might also be relevant to a query performed that those might show up as social results in a search. The patent really just doesn’t spell that out well, which makes me wonder if there’s a companion patent filing that hasn’t been published yet that might.
The asteroid thing was interesting. Don’t know if it was Google that was backing it as much as the founders of Google as individuals along with James Cameron and others.
I agree with you though. I’d rather see things in search results because they belong there rather than because one of my friends liked them or shared them.
Right now when I log into Facebook then search at Bing, I see a few results that have some annotations under them that someone I’m connected to at Facebook has liked them. I don’t know what kind of impact it might have.
Not sure at this point what kind of influence social results might have upon percentages of clicks based upon positions within search results. I’d love it if Google came out with some figures on the topic though, since they have both authorship profile badges and social sharing images appearing in search results now.
This is some interesting stuff. I dont know if I would want Bing to customize my search results like this.
At present we have got personalized google ads already, but didn’t expect them to go even further. This is definitely something to do with cookies, so I hope that clearing the Cache and Cookies history will solve the problem or am I wrong and they will use different aproaches to gain the data?
I’m a little wary about customization from the search engines, too. I’d rather be the one calling the shots as to what gets included, and possibly excluded from the search results that I see.
The post is about Bing, and not Google.
The reason why I mentioned about Google is because these two companies (Google and Bing) compete in a race to create a better search engine and the winning company will score bigger clientele – daily users who in order to find something on the internet normally use search engines. Many people do not know how their search results work/how they are calculated and perhaps because of personalized search a typical user would be able to find something faster – we don’t know yet. If Bing wants to win the race it must introduce a new technology. I think it’s only a matter of time when personalized search will knock to our computers. I will do as much as I can to prevent from being categorized and tracked – cleaning cache and cookies is a sort of way, but not only one.
Thanks for providing more details on your question.
Providing social results may customize those results for us, but it really isn’t “personalization” in the way that both Google and Bing are trying to provide personalized results.
If you want to try to keep personalized ads and search results from showing up on your computer, it does help to clean your cache and cookies, as well as to not log into your Google Account when searching Google, and to not log into Facebook when searching Bing, and so on. You could even turn on the Incognito mode in Google Chrome if you use it to try to avoid personalized results.
The social results that both Google and Bing present to us are personalized in that they are based upon our social activities and social connections, but they aren’t “personalized” in the ways that both search engines consider how personalized search works. Those personalized results are based upon our past search and browsing activities, and other possible interactions with services from the search engines. | 2019-04-19T06:15:42Z | http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/04/bing-version-search-plus-your-world/ |
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Changing locks on city apartments should only be done by a trade qualified licensed locksmith. Apartment door locks in Brisbane need to comply with the building codes and fire codes, which can be complicated to understand. Fitting the wrong lock to an apartment in the city can cost a lot of money in repairs and even replacement of doors worth thousands of dollars.
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Locks usually are found everywhere at your house, workplace, car together with other types of buildings. The increase with building construction also has generated a rise in lock and security devices. When you are constructing a new house, you need locks and keys to make your house safe. A locksmith is usually qualified and experienced enough at changing locks in just minutes. There are not many things which a professional locksmith cannot do with regards to locks and security. The locksmith can perform the safety review to ascertain the highest quality and protected keys and locks. Should you experience any kind of difficulty using keys and locks, a Locksmith may be the person which you get in touch with. Their job is definitely extremely essential with regard to the security.
Have you already been through a situation in which you wind up losing all the keys that will open an important deadlock? Would you contact your locksmith? You come across a variety of door locks everywhere you live but a locksmith professional can be around to help. A reliable locksmith is incredibly required to alter the door lock. You should never be satisfied with bad service with regards to your safety and security. Only an experienced professional locksmith will be used.
Your initial form of security from break-ins will be your secured entrance door. If you want to be more secure and safe, get our locksmith professionals to perform a home security review for your security. Your loved ones are our company’s first priority. You may relax with the knowledge that each of our professional locksmiths are accredited as well as trade qualified.
In Brisbane City there are many doors that are made of steel construction. Locks on steel gates do need servicing and replacing quite often as they get old and worn. Often a steel door needs a specific type of lock to be fitted. The door can not easily be changed to suit a new style of door lock, so replacing the lock with the same model is usually the best option.
Steel security doors can have the locks changed to a new key when required. They can also be changed to a high security lock or registered key lock.
If you have a steel security door in Brisbane have it serviced before it fails. Our Brisbane locksmiths carry locks for steel security doors and grill doors. Contact a Brisbane City locksmith for all lock replacement and repair.
Brisbane locksmiths are available to help you with your locksmith issues. We can adjust deadlocks really fast. Our company’s locksmith professionals really are skilled professionals. In case you’re locked outside in Brisbane, there’s a lock tech basically around the corner. our lock technicians originate keys for a lot of exterior door door locks and various other locks in the home. Our company is your local area lock technician corporation and also at your disposal if you’ve been broken into or any kind of unexpected situation.
Keys and locks usually are found on all exterior doors at your house, workplace, family car as well as other constructions. Just about every lock on a house or inside all other building accompanies a key.. If you are building a new house, you must have security locks in order to make your place safe. There are different different types of security locks and door latches by which you can select those that match your doors. Have you ever wondered precisely how your professional locksmith has the ability to supply such good security and safety information? Locksmiths examine locks and safety in order to make clients safe and secure. If you discover any of your security locks are not operating, it is best to contact a locksmith professional for assistance as well as repair. All your lock and security should be the most effective it is able to and the locksmith can assist you in whatever way they’re able to.
Real security just like your doors and locks and deadbolts are really a fundamental concern in regards to your personal well being and safety. When you’d like to be more secure, you’ve got to have one of our locksmith professionals to conduct a security evaluation for your family security and safety. Protecting customers and property to protect against damage is simply a locksmiths business. Should you prefer a dependable lock technician always use a registered and trained locksmith technician.
There may be lots of people having the main keys that work all of your house and security locks. Repinning door locks will include replacement of your whole lock or deadlock or possibly replacing the lock pins of your existing house and gate locks. When you need a door lock cylinder altered, the primary component which often is modified would be the lock and key code. There are occasions when the actual lock or deadlock can not be changed. Another brand new door lock or deadlock barrel assembly could be used instead. House and gate locks can even be keyed to be able to make use of a registered security lock or deadlock cylinder assembly to optimize safety. Our locksmiths are actually there for re-keying door locks twenty-four hours a day.
You don’t want to simply wait for your locksmith professional. You do not want to hang around to have a lock tech. Are you presently locked outside? Telephone a Around the clock locksmith professional immediately to assist you to unlock your house. Replacing your locks is another task we are able to assist you with. Intruders who have your keys could come back. Without exception have the exterior locks replaced. Each of our locksmiths can be at your disposal Twenty four hours to help you out.
Vault doors require service like any mechanical device. The heavy nature of a vault door can cause problems you do not see often in smaller safes. Worn hinges are a common problem with vault doors that need to be maintained. A worn hinge will cause the vault door to stick closed and make it unable to open.
Vault door locks and locking bolts need servicing on a regular basis. The lock needs to be kept in very good working condition and any worn parts replaces or repaired as required. A lock that is sticky or doesnt open easily will not get better on its own. Often little problems with vault doors that are not fixed will turn into much bigger problems. A lock out situation is quite common if locks and bolt work are not kept maintained.
Changing the combination of a vault key lock or combination lock is something that often requires a locksmith. Our Brisbane locksmiths can help you with the combination changing and rekeying of a vault door.
Regardless of whether you desire a deadlock repaired or simply door locks altered our locksmith professionals are able to help you. Our Brisbane locksmith professionals can help you adjust the locks and deadbolts and key all of them exactly the same. It is possible to have a door opened up if you have locked your house keys on the inside. When you need security keys made to your entrance door or simply gate, call your Brisbane professional locksmith services at any time. Please don’t entrust your personal home security to chance, always employ the neighborhood professional locksmith you can depend on.
High-quality security locks will be really necessary to make sure that your family home remains secured all of the time. You observe different kinds of keys and locks just about everywhere you go to.. If you have relocated to a new house, it is recommended to try to find those locks and keys which will match with the interior of your property. Now there are different styles of security locks or door hardware from which you can select those which satisfy your scenario. Ever thought about how a locksmith professional is capable of supply this sort of great security information? Locksmiths research locks and keys as well as security to help make clients secure and safe. Whenever you run into any difficulty using security locks, your Locksmith will be the person that you phone. All your physical security has to be the most effective it possibly can and a professional locksmith can help you in any manner they’re able.
Entrance doors and locks and deadbolts help you stay secure whenever you are at home and keep your family valuable items safe and sound if you are out of the house. Defending to prevent robbers is always our company’s goal. Deadlatches and basic safety locks are fitted for your main safety and security. We will keep you and all your family secure and safe at your own home as well as when you’re out of the house. You may rest easy knowing each of our lock and key professionals will be accredited as well as industry qualified.
You should not hesitate. rekey your primary commercial locks straight away.
Are you conscious who possesses all of the security keys for your house or work. It doesn’t matter if you swap the door lock or deadlatch or re-key your door lock or deadlock, the key combination cuts must be adjusted. When only the door or deadlock cylinder will need to be replaced, you can save dollars simply by not needing to replace your door or deadlock. If the door or deadlock cannot be changed, another lock cylinder is used. If you prefer increased security, a very high security deadlock or door lock barrel will be put in. To know more about rekeying your home and garage locks, simply call a qualified locksmith who will help.
How old are the batteries in your safe?
Batteries in safe locks are a major cause of problems for many safes. The main problems with batteries is that they are not replaced regularly. Replacing safe batteries on a safe that has a lot of heavy use should be a routine procedure. If the safe is not used on a regular basis, make sure the batteries are kept in good condition. Batteries left for a long period can corrode and cause excessive rust in the safe lock.
It is possible to recharge safe lock batteries, depending on the type of batteries you use. Even alkaline batteries can be recharged under certain circumstances. Most safes use alkaline batteries although check with your particular safe manufacturer for the correct battery types to use.
Annerley locksmith professionals will always be available to aid you with all your lock and key issues. Your Annerley lock and key professionals will help you to adjust the door locks or perhaps key them all identical. unlocking doors to help you get back in your home is an important locksmith service carried out by our locksmith professionals. If you want keys cut for a exterior door or garage door, call up your Annerley professional locksmith services any time. Annerley is a fantastic home and we’re continually readily available to help out for those who have deadlock or security key concerns.
Aquiring a high-quality door lock and a durable entrance door is the most beneficial security features you will have. We are going to help you keep thieves under control by using good value security door locks, deadlatches, electronic locks and a lot of other safety and security devices. Do not leave the safety and security at risk. Our lock and key professionals can help with your home security needs. Knowing that our company’s locksmiths will most certainly be industry certified along with registered provides an assurance and excellent quality.
No need to hold on until finally some thing terrible develops to get all keys and locks repinned. Reking home and garage locks might include swapping out your whole door or deadlock or possibly repinning your current home and garage locks. When you have had a deadlock or lock cylinder changed, the main item which usually is modified will be the lock and key combination. Whenever the deadlock or door lock cannot be changed, a whole new deadlock or door lock cylinder assembly is needed. If you’ve got a retail outlet or office building then a high security door lock barrel could possibly be more ideal. For details on altering locks and keys, phone a specialized locksmith to help.
Our company’s Brisbane locksmiths work day and night. All of our locksmiths work Night and day. Anytime you become shut from your own home we are able to open your exterior door locking mechanism without delay. Each of our Twenty four hour tradespemen locksmiths are also able to change locks. Lost house keys should really be given serious attention and your security locks need to be replaced without delay. Please don’t hold out for too long. Speak to us anytime through the day as well as the night.
When you need a heavy duty deadlock for a wooden or steel door, the Lockwood 355 deadlock is a great choice. The Lockwood 355 deadlock is a rim lock style lock with a flat cylinder on the outside to resist hammer attacks that could knock other types of locks off the door. The outside and inside cylinder use Lockwood Kinetic defence lock cylinders to resist lock bumping, an easy opening technique used by criminals.
The Lockwood 355 deadlock can be deadlocked from the inside with a turn of the key. When not deadlocked, the inside knob can be opened freely at any time, making it easy to open when the building is occupied.
The Lockwood 355 deadlock is suitable for gates as well as wooden doors. Positive locking between the lock and the lock strike ensure the lock can not be forced apart and the bolt slipped open. For maximum security of your doors, consider a Lockwood 355 deadlock fitted by a Brisbane City locksmith.
Regardless of whether you want a door lock installed or door locks altered each of our professional locksmiths are able to help . Your Brisbane locksmith professionals will assist you to alter your external door locks or key all of them exactly the same. You shouldn’t stay locked out of your apartment. Your Brisbane locksmith professionals really are really fast professionals. If you would like house keys made for your exterior door or simply roller door, ring our Annerley locksmith services at any time. Our lock technician in Brisbane is working 24 / 7 for your urgent issues.
Locks and keys should be present everywhere at your house, workplace, motor vehicle as well as other buildings in the area. The increase around construction has now led to a rise in lock and security devices. The locksmith professional can be trained and talented enough to modify keys and locks in just a few minutes or so. Having said that, have you ever wondered exactly how is he able to perform that so fast? A locksmith professional is usually trained and proficient enough at modifying keys and locks in a matter of minutes. Your locksmith professional is the specialist that you go to help whenever you need to guarantee your apartment or business is safe against attack. Actually do you realize precisely how safe against attack your property or business office really is? A locksmith can help you with the security and safety requirements. Locksmiths are definitely the industry experts who will assist in the event you discover a problem with the keys and locks or security and safety. The security has to be the best that it is able to and your professional locksmith can assist you any way they’re able to.
You shouldn’t delay. Swap out all your home and business locks without delay.
There could possibly be lots of people having the door keys that work your main house locks. You no longer need to get the complete lock or deadlock replaced. More often than not only when the particular lock or deadlock is damaged does it need to be changed. A key’s combination is changed if your door lock cylinder is recoded. Should the cylinder is damaged, a new lock cylinder assembly is needed in its place. Keys and locks can also be changed to use a restricted security door lock cylinder assembly to improve safety. Unexpected emergency situations really are our company’s specialty. Our locksmiths can deal with all your lock barrel repinning.
Locks and deadbolts are generally present just about everywhere at your residence, workplace, vehicle and also other property. Fortunately a good lock tech is never far away to help you with just about all door lock trouble. You will run into various types of locks just about everywhere you live but your professional locksmith may be there to help you. Making secure a home from thieves is definitely the job of the lock tech who’s an experienced professional in his industry. Theres a Brisbane lock technician on hand 24-hours for unexpected repair services of locking mechanisms and entrance doors.
The first type of security from robbery is your secured exterior door. Locks as well as entry door hardware should be fitted for you to keep away the robbers, bad guys and criminals. Having your loved ones secure is definitely our number one concern. You are able to rest easy knowing that all professional locksmiths will be professional as well as industry qualified.
You no longer need to wait to have a lock tech. Each of our locksmiths are available 7 days a week. When you become locked out of your home we’ll open up your home locks extremely fast. Our Twenty-four hour locksmith professionals also can rekey your locks. If the keys are lost, please don’t take the associated risk regarding your basic safety. Get a qualified professional professional locksmith if you want to solve all of your lock and key situations. | 2019-04-21T12:09:31Z | http://www.brisbanecitylocksmiths.com.au/tag/locksmith-brisbane/ |
Your daughter will spend most of her time thinking about herself at 15, the age where she’s going to enter adulthood. Of course, she will be finding ways to have tons of fun and at the same time undergo what it takes to acquire the skills that would help her to become successful when she enters adulthood stage. As parents, there’s nothing better than helping your child prepare before she lives by herself. When it comes to giving best gift for 15 year old girl, it would be best the item actually would help her to develop emotionally and socially mature. Your daughter will sometimes fell she’s not mature enough to live on her own, just note that almost all 15-year-old teens feel the same way. So, it’s normal.
15-18 will be the perfect instrumental age span that you can guide and help your teen mature and possibly gain all the skills that she needs to become a responsible adult. Of course, you do not have to put too much pressure on her to learn everything. She will take time, so just bear and continue helping her. There are also teens who are excited to take life on their own, not because they are tired of their parents dictating them what to do and learn, but they wanted to do things independently or by themselves. If your 15-year-old teen falls into this category, then there’s nothing to worry about- that’s completely normal.
What can I expect from my 15-year-old daughter?
Your teen would give importance to their friends, and this is because of ‘peer pressure.’ They are influenced by the people they used to hang out with. They will start to have that know-it-all attitude, so you will also have to make time where you and your family members could talk about particular problems. Your daughter will also be interested to enter in a romantic relationship. You’ve been a 15 year old once; you know how it feels when you fancy someone and that someone fancies you in return.
Although your 15-year-old teen will ask for privacy, we do suggest that you make extra efforts to know exactly what’s going on with your teen. You can’t just guess when there are times that you feel that your daughter is so distant, something is going on about her that you need to talk about. Buying her gift item that would help her cope with stress or improve her overall emotional well-being would be a great idea. Talking about your daughter’s emotional development, she would have thoughts about living out on her own. She will be thinking about herself in college, what course is she going to pursue? What kind of apartment would she like to get?
As you can tell, your daughter has a lot on her mind. She will be stressed thinking about how can she improve or maintain her grades; she will also face several teenage issues. Your daughter would be extremely concerned with her appearance; she will hear a lot of feedback from people commenting on how she looks. As the tech age continues to arise, she will do a lot of posting on social media networks where her friends and followers can comment on the way she looks, and the even she is posting about.
Your daughter would either fall into the group of teens who lacks self-confidence or to the group who have high expectation of herself. There are times when your daughter feels the struggle to have faith in herself that she can do it. Other teens who are trained to be ‘goal-getters’ by their parents will always find a way to get their goals no matter how stiff the road is going to be like. There are many changes that you are going to notice once your daughter hits 15; she will be fancying beautiful clothes and jewelry, which is completely normal.
If your 15-year-old child struggles with her confidence, you can simply let her do things that would help her gain it like letting her drive the car (of course, you have to let her take a driving course and have her take the test). Giving her duties that she can accomplish will help her realize that believing in herself wasn’t difficult at all.
Teens develop; differently, some of them will be able to manage both easy and challenging assignments on their own and some, well, they still need to learn it again. If your 15-year-old child falls in the latter, there’s nothing to worry about; you can continue helping your child relearn the skills until she gains it or even become a master of it.
Teens who can’t even remember cleaning their rooms and struggle to pass their school works on time has a lot ‘time management’ lessons to learn. Smartwatches would be a great gift item that would constantly help your teen to reminded of the things and activities they should do.
Tell your 15-year-old teen that she will be able to gain more freedom if she could show you that she would handle more independent tasks. You could assign a consequence that would help him to get his chores done; a later curfew would be a good idea. If your daughter tells you where she’s heading and who she’s with and she comes home on time, then it’s a good sign that you could lend her more responsibility. Just a quick parenting tip, most 15 years old will think that they can handle more freedom they can. So, be careful in giving them the freedom that they are demanding from you. Always set healthy and reasonable limits and when it not met, the consequences must meet. Here some of the gift ideas for 15 year old girls.
Listening to music is one of the ways that teens use to trigger imaginations and ease stress. If your daughter is a music lover? Then, he will love this wired cat ear headphones. You bet, they look super cute when your daughter wears them on top of their head, this would also be a great gift item if your daughter is cat pet lover. She will be able to listen to her music privately, and she can simply turn on the cat ear speakers where she can share her music with friends or when she just feel like listening to loud music.
The music is high-quality, you know how hatable it is when the sound waves sound like deep bass all the time. This pair of the headset can use for 5 hours of nonstop music play which your daughter could take with her when she is traveling. There are lights and speakers that your 15-year-old daughter can control independently. This is cool stuff, and we’re quite sure, It will be a perfect gift for 15 year old girls and your daughter would be more than grateful to have this item on her big day.
Your daughter is going to love this item; she can listen to music even if she’s in the shower. This product is certified waterproof, which means that there’s nothing to be terrified of getting electrified. It comes from the reputable brand a d the white filled buttons are amazing to make it super easy to get access to the item while in the shower. This item is super stylish and fully waterproof, it comes with a Bluetooth feature, which makes it easier for your daughter to listen to music listed on her phone while she’s taking her bath.
This item can generate amazing sounds that are perfect to place in your daughter’s shower room. If your daughter is into music stuff, she would be thankful to have this item with her. Just a quick buying tip, do check for certifications and refuse to buy imitations of this product. We also love the fact that this item would last for longer period of use. It can last for 10 hours of use. The battery’s life simply built to last long, so you don’t have to recharge your speaker over and over again.
Your girl will fall in love with this backpack bag item. It comes with a padded and fleece laptop sleeve, which is a good feature. Teens, girls in particular love bags that have cute designs, especially if it fits fairly with their clothing or uniform. This made from polyester. It comes with a striped fabric liner which looks cool on your daughter. Herschel has always been one of the leading brands when it comes to creating backpacks for ‘hers.’ Their bags are known to last for years of use. In other words, Herschel bags are extremely durable.
You know how much you hated it when you arrived at your destination and you just found it that you’ve left something important? Pretty daunting and irritating, right? Your 15-year-old daughter has probably experienced that and wanted a backpack where she could store all of her essentials and school items. This would be a perfect gift idea for every 15-year-old girl. It’s quite pricey, but the durability of the material will be worth it. We also love the fact that it beautifully designed, we know how much 15 years old would like to have pretty set of bags. This could be a perfect add-on her bag collection.
Do you feel like your daughter needs a lot of ‘time management’ lessons to learn? Then, this steel smartwatch gift for 15 year old girls will not only look fancy on your daughter’s wrist but lets her be 24/7 time guided. There will be built-in microphone where she could leave voice notes. With the help of this watch, your 15-year-old daughter would be reminded of thing things she needs to do. This item works with iPhone 4s and comes with LED backlight that your daughter can use during night time.
Overall, the item looks pretty. And your 15-year-old girl would love everything that looks pretty on them. This item has an amazing battery life that lasts for ten days, so your 15-year-old daughter does not have to recharge it from time to time. There will be thousands of watch faces that she can customize until she finds something that really would amaze her. Another thing that we love about it is that it comes with sleep tracker which your daughter can receive daily reports about her sleep patterns. Your daughter will be able to see and check notifications at first glance which is super cool.
Another item that would make your 15-year-old daughter feel stylish and pretty is this bucket hat. Believe it or not, your daughter will start experimenting with clothes and fits what’s good for her or not. She will be matching clothes, and one of the accessories that we’re quite sure that she’s going to ask you to buy will be a hat. Hats are trendy nowadays, and it adds height to the wearer. There are various prints and colors that you can choose from, and this hat made from New York. If you love how New Yorkers work on their style, then this bucket hat is something that your 15-year-old daughter would love.
There are other gift ideas for 15 year old girls though there’s a galaxy design which is quite cool. The fabric of this material is purposely made to be looking neat, so the wearer will feel comfortable while this hat sits on top of their head. It fits well in the head and makes the wearer in entering into a romantic relationship. This will make a great gift item that would heighten your 15-year-old fashion sense and will also protect her from the heat of the sun. Trust us; the very 15-year-old daughter would love this item as their gift on their big day.
Teens do like to go out at night. They are very active and won’t run out of energy very easily. That’s why most teens like to visit their neighbor or go to a party at night. If they are only walking to their destination, they are prone to a lot of risks. As a parent, you should discourage this habit just for their safety. Don’t let them go out at night too often. You can also drive them to their destination. Drive them on their way home too, if you can. Keeping them away from harm is every parent’s responsibility. However, there are times where you can’t drive them to their destination at night. So, getting an armband for them is also a good thing to do, at least.
Yes, if your teens like to go out at night, like what we have said, they are prone to a lot of danger. Some reckless and distracted drivers might probably not see them walking at night. You can give them this armband will improve visibility to the drivers along the road. They would become more aware that someone is walking by the road. Also, if your teens like to go jogging during the morning, they can use this armband. It can make them more visible to the people driving their cars.
Even though it is not something that is expensive or special, it can help your teens stay safer when walking at night. Some drivers are reckless and don’t give much attention to the road they are driving on. At least, with this armband, they will notice that someone is walking along the road. Whatever the size of your teen’s arm, this armband will surely fit. This glow bracelet can also be attached to other parts of the body, like on the ankle or the wrist. It just depends on user wherever it is more comfortable to wear.
Are you thinking of the best ways to surprise your teens on their birthdays? Well, this gift might be the one that will make them truly happy. Yes, it is hard to surprise teens nowadays. They have high objectives and not easily touched by the usual things that they see every day. If they are walking from the house to the school, this electric scooter is perfect for them. They won’t be putting a lot of stress physically now that they have a scooter to use on their way to school. Although walking is a good exercise, it can also affect their ability to stay focused once they arrived at the school. They will feel tired and may not listen to the discussion very attentively. So, yes, getting this scooter will help your teen in their daily activities.
As expected, this electric scooter has its limitations. It won’t be able to run as fast as scooters that are powered by gasoline. This electric scooter can only run at up to 10 MPH. It is perfect when used at small distances, though. The slow speed can also help keep your teens safe while riding it to their school. They will be able to react fast whenever they encounter obstacles along the road. The scooter can also for 40 minutes, so it is essential to have it fully-charged before using.
There are some good reasons why you should get this scooter for your teens. First off, it will help your teens whenever they want to travel to near distances. They won’t have to tie themselves down by walking persistently to a certain destination. Also, the idea alone of riding a scooter will surely excite your teens. They will find it cool and might brag the scooter to their friends. Anyway, it is one sure way of surprising your daughters. Give them this amazing electric scooter on their birthday.
A simple bag pack could be the one that you’ve been looking for. At this age, your daughters are surely going to school every weekday. If you’ve noticed that their bags are already old or damaged, you can give this bag as a surprise will make them feel that you care for them. Yes, it makes for a lovely gift. Your daughter will surely appreciate this gift even though it is only a bag pack. The fact that you notice there worn out bag pack and give the new bag pack as a gift will surely touch their heart.
Anyway, the quality of this backpack is also superb. Your daughter won’t be buying a new bag pack anytime soon. It made of quality materials which make for a quality bag pack. The design looks very simple. However, the simple appearance makes it natural and elegant. Backpacks don’t need to have a lot of designs and ornaments to look good.
Now, let us talk about the build and quality of this bag pack more. Yes, you can rest assured that it is made of high-class materials so the money that you will be spending on it will be worth it. First off, it made of Vinyl F fabric. Now, if you have heard this material before, you will think that it is one of the best materials to be made into a bag. It is lightweight, water-resistant, and durable, all of the qualities that you’ve been looking for in a bag. Also, if your daughter doesn’t like to carry a backpack anymore. They can use the convertible straps and turn it into a bag. It works well especially if they are not putting too many things or materials into the bag.
Sure, it is a simple-looking bag. You might be thinking that your daughter is expecting something more stylish and luxurious. But, make no mistake, once they open the gift, they will surely like this bag pack. It is simple and doesn’t feature many ornaments or graphic designs, but, that is something that is very comfortable to bring around. The main attraction of this bag pack is its quality. As what we’ve said, it made of Vinyl F fabric. This makes the bag pack durable and water resistant. The things inside the bag won’t get wet even if the bag soaked in the rain. There is no need to worry about the materials or gadgets you have put inside the bag. Another feature that makes this bag pack cool is the convertible straps. It can be carried as a bag pack or as a regular bag.
Teens nowadays like to takes selfies. They like to take a photo of themselves very often. Almost every minute, you will see them getting a picture of almost everything. Even a simple lunch break can make for a fun picture-taking activity together with their friends. A high-quality camera can bring a lot of joy to them. It would allow them to collect wonderful memories of every event. That’s why giving a camera that can capture quality pictures and videos will surely make them happy. It works great as a gift to them on their birthdays. Also, with the popularity of social media nowadays, people are more enticed to take more pictures of almost everything. They like to capture moments that will allow them to have a lot of fun commenting on it on the social media.
Anyway, if you are looking for a good camera for your daughter, GoPro HERO4 Silver is highly recommended. It is one of the best gift ideas for 15 year old girl for the price. If you are serious about giving your daughter a powerful camera that can capture quality images and videos, this one is for yours. Yes, it does cost some money. You may need to save up before you can buy this camera for your daughter. However, it will be worth it. GoPro HERO4 Silver does its job flawlessly. It can take professional 1080p60 video and 12MP photos. The results are truly life-like. .GoPro HERO4 Silver is awesome at recording memorable field trips and vacations. You can easily relieve every moment with its ability to capture high-quality images and videos. It comes with a built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi which allows to user to connect to the GoPro App.
Getting a gift for your teenage daughter is surely a hard task. Since they are teens already, impressing them with your gift is quite a challenge. They are probably more focused on browsing their social media or eating at a restaurant with their friends. That’s why a camera that can capture high-quality images and videos is one of the gifts that will impress them. Using this camera, it allows them to capture those memories that are important to them. They can also share them on the social media if they want to. Overall, GoPro HERO4 Silver is a perfect for your teenage daughter.
Gifts shouldn’t be expensive or classy to make an impact. This cute neon sculpture will surely mesmerize your teenage daughter. It is a cute gift which looks very likable. They can decorate this neon sculpture on their bedrooms or study table. Once the lights are turned off, they will be surprised at how beautiful the neon sculpture will look like. It is a simple gift but is also quite magical Girls likes everything that looks romantic and magical. That’s why this neon sculpture will give joy to them. If they don’t want to put on their table, they can also hang it on the wall. That would be more amazing since the sculpture will become more visible. It is easy to use, and there is no need to follow complex instructions when using it. Everything can be done nice and smooth.
Now, let us talk about the design of this neon sculpture. This sculpture takes the form of a flamingo. It is nicely formed and has a good build. The beak is color blue, and the rest is colored pink. Once it glows, it looks awesome. This neon sculpture will make a great decoration in your daughter’s room. It adds more shine and liveliness to the area. Every teenage daughter will love to have this as a gift to them. Overall, a viable gift item that will surely surprise anyone who likes any decoration that glows.
We like that this neon sculpture is very simple yet it looks very likable. It is certainly a great gift idea for 15 year old girl. The pink glow fits every feminine young girl. They will love to put it on their tables or hang it on their walls. It is easy to set up. All they need to do is plug the power, and the neon sculpture will start doing its work. The flamingo design also looks cute. Get this as a gift now and surprise your daughter on their birthday. | 2019-04-20T11:13:24Z | https://babyishcare.com/gifts-15-year-olds-girls/ |
It is a widely known fact that we Indians have close attachment to our families. We have close bonds with our loved ones and don't hesitate to invest for their well-being. Now, a new study has revealed that more and more Indians are buying health insurance for their entire family. Not only this trend has witnessed a sharp increase but also the buyers (average age 32 years) are starting young. The findings were published in the Max Bupa Health Insurance Pulse 2015.
This first of its kind multi city study was conducted to understand how health insurance is perceived, bought and utilized in India. The study conducted among 1500 plus respondents in leading metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and tier 1 and 2 centres like Hyderabad, Punjab and Rajasthan states that 6 out of 10 Indians prefer family health cover as against 4 out of 10 for individual cover.
40 per cent people buy Health Insurance due to rising healthcare costs and over 30 per cent feel that their employer provided health cover is insufficient. Further, comprehensive coverage for multiple diseases and protection against lifestyle and critical illnesses are the key reasons for purchase, affordability is the least important. 32 per cent of the respondents admitted they have not read their policy documents; trust on agent cited as the key reason for not reading terms and conditions.
Among the metros, Mumbai demonstrates better understanding of Health Insurance with 66 per cent Mumbaikars aware of the distinction between life and Health Insurance, as against 36 per cent Delhiites and 39 per cent people in Chennai. Doctor's advice triggers Health Insurance purchase for 46 per cent respondents in metros as well as tier 1 and 2 cities.
"Health Insurance consumers are evolving from being price conscious to being value conscious with majority of them preferring family health plans over individual coverage and opting for a sum insured of is Rs 6-7 lakh. Also the average age of Health Insurance owners has reduced to 32 years across metros and non-metros. Most of the owners still feel inadequately protected as cost of hospitalization and incidence of illnesses across age groups is on the rise," said Anika Agarwal, Head, Marketing, Max Bupa.
In terms of gender related findings, an increasing number of women are becoming the sole decision makers in buying Health Insurance (55 per cent), however almost two third of them are not aware that new born and in-laws can be covered under Health Insurance.
The study conducted among 1500+ respondents in leading metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and tier 1 and 2 centres like Hyderabad, Punjab and Rajasthan states that 6 out of 10 Indians prefer family health cover as against 4 out of 10 for individual cover.
Indians are more concerned about insuring the health of their loved ones than their own, reveals Max Bupa Health Insurance Pulse 2015. The first of its kind multi city study was conducted to understand how Health Insurance is perceived, bought and utilized in India. The study conducted among 1500+ respondents in leading metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and tier 1 and 2 centres like Hyderabad, Punjab and Rajasthan states that 6 out of 10 Indians prefer family health cover as against 4 out of 10 for individual cover. More than two third of those planning to buy Health Insurance wish to cover their children (70%), followed by the spouse (66%). Nearly 30% of respondents who are planning a family also think of buying Health Insurance. The decision regarding Health Insurance purchase is driven by the family with the spouse as the strongest influencer, which shows that Health Insurance is no more just the bread winner’s call.
More than half of the owners (54%) self-initiate the purchase process. However, only 40% Health Insurance policy renewals were self-initiated by the owner, which shows that people don’t understand the long term benefits of Health Insurance. The study also brings into focus the shift in age groups of Health Insurance buyers, with 32 years emerging as average age of Health Insurance purchasers across cities. Contrary to popular belief, tax planning and age are not the only triggers for the purchase of Health Insurance in India. Doctors’ advice (50%) is a key reason for Health Insurance purchase, followed by rise of lifestyle diseases (33%), tax planning (31%) and age (31%). Furthermore, in addition to hospitalization, consumers also seek day care treatment (41%), loyalty or renewal benefits (40%) and new benefits like maternity (34%) as significant features in their Health Insurance cover. Amongst purchase channels, more than half of the people purchase or intend to purchase Health Insurance from an Agent 58% which clearly shows the dependency and trust on agents. Banks also emerged as a preferred channel of purchase in the metros.
The consumers with evolving expectations are now looking at holistic health benefits and comprehensive coverage, rather than just the Health Insurance premium that they pay. 70% respondents across metros and non-metros agree Health Insurance is more important than life insurance which shows the increasing awareness about the need for adequate health coverage. Increase in awareness is leading to rise in expectations from the health insurers, with 69% of the people expecting their health plans to cater to all their health care expenses. Medical inflation and growing incidence of lifestyle diseases has triggered an increase in the sum assured with a realization that a health cover of Rs. 2-3 lakh will prove insufficient in the future. The study reveals that amongst all 6 cities, the average sum insured is Rs 6, 25,000 and the average annual premium paid is Rs12,000.
“Health Insurance consumers are evolving from being price conscious to being value conscious with majority of them preferring family health plans over individual coverage and opting for a sum insured of is Rs. 6-7 lakh. Also the average age of Health Insurance owners has reduced to 32 years across metros and non-metros. Most of the owners still feel inadequately protected as cost of hospitalization and incidence of illnesses across age groups is on the rise. We at Max Bupa, have also observed that the most common sum insured individuals opt for is Rs5 lakh and Rs10 lakh in case of a family cover. In fact, there has been a two-fold increase in the claims from the segment with a ticket size of over Rs 10 lakh since last year. Although there has been a significant increase in awareness amongst people, category understanding remains low with a significant section of the country still plagued with misconceptions such as Health Insurance only being relevant for the elderly or that it is too complicated with several hidden clauses,” said Anika Agarwal, Head-Marketing, Max Bupa.
However, 40% lacked clarity on the process of increasing their sum insured through top ups and 40% are not aware of the difference between cashless and reimbursement claims. Over one third of Health Insurance owners admit that they have not read their policy documents. 60% attribute trust on their agent as the most important reason for not going through the documents.
While 64% of Delhiites and 61% of the respondents from Chennai confuse life insurance for Health Insurance, only 34% Mumbaikars are well aware about the difference. This clearly states the lack of category awareness and understanding amongst leading metros. While 95% people in Mumbai give preference to Health Insurance over life insurance, 90%, people in Punjab and 75% people in Hyderabad, prefer Health Insurance to Life Insurance as compared to only 53% in Delhi. This shows that more importance is attributed to Health Insurance in non-metros as compared to some leading metros. The study shows an increasing demand from people living in tier I and II cities to be optimally insured, where Hyderabad recorded the highest average sum insured of Rs 8,70,000, with Rajasthan and Punjab at Rs.4,50,820 and Rs.6,80,270 respectively. Among the metro cities, Delhi feel the most dissatisfied with their current health coverage with 72% of Health Insurance owners in city saying that their health policy is not enough for their future health needs. 80% of the Health Insurance owners in Mumbai and 54% in Chennai consider themselves to be adequately protected.
In terms of gender related findings, an increasing number of women are becoming the sole decision makers in buying Health Insurance (55%), however almost two third of them are not aware that new born and in-laws can be covered under Health Insurance.
Generally, most of the world’s population hesitates to buy health insurances due to some misconceptions. These misconceptions gives rise to confusions over what to buy or how to use a product and thus, it ends up being costly.
But the Finance Minister in his recent budget session has announced many reforms related to health insurance to encourage insurance seekers to choose the best possible insurance that would suit them. The deduction for claiming health insurance premium has been increased up to Rs. 25000 for individuals and Rs. 30000 for senior citizens.
Myths1: The first myth is about certain misconceptions regarding employer mediclaim. If you have already been a beneficiary of corporate group health insurance, then you should never to claim for another individual insurance. In order to avoid excessive premium rates and decrease the burden, employers often choose to remain confine to their specific and small cover.
Planning to seek cover at the time of retirement will prove to be very expensive. It might not also be helpful at the worst health situations. Even it is wise to be aware of the fact that when your employer medic aim will be available to you.
Myth 2: Smokers and AlcoholicsThere was a dilemma among the smokers and alcoholics that they might be exempted from seeking out health insurance policy for themselves. But this is not true. As they are most vulnerable to health hazards, insurance companies have put their steps forward to offer health insurance to such set of people.
They have to undergo through a stringent health examination in order to qualify the benefits of the insurance and even they are imposed with higher premium as they are prone to high risk in health disorders.
Myth 3: Some people think that they don’t need to seek a health insurance if they are fit. But this is a misconception. Though you may be healthy but health hazards always never come with providing prior symptoms, they can arise all of a sudden.
Unforeseen health hazards like seasonal disorders (dengue, malaria, swine flu) or accidents may attack at any time. Even with the exponentially growing medical costs, it is very difficult to cope up with your finances. So, it is wise to take necessary steps before time.
Myth 4: Another misconception about insurances is that often people feel that they will be offered with the insurance facility only if they get hospitalized, which is a wrong concept. With the adverse effect of technology, there have been vast improvements in the health sector.
Earlier patients used to be hospitalized after a surgery but now days with the advance technology and medical treatments patients with minor operations are discharged within few minutes. Health insurance companies cover such hospitalizations also and even they cover doctor consultation charges too.
Myth 5: Some people think that they can get their work done as soon as they get a health cover, but it is not true. There are certain strict rules under insurance policy which prohibit insurance claims during the first 1 to 6 month.
You should be careful and honest in providing your details while filling up the form because if you are found to mislead any information or hide any health details to your issuer then, your application may get rejected at that moment.
Myth 6: Be aware of the promotional advertisements presented by these insurance companies. They may highlight their policy by claiming best medical facilities by co operating with 5000 hospitals.
There are chances getting drowned if you weigh the merits of policy by just considering the procedures covered by the company. Instead you should read the terms and conditions carefully to understand the depth of their publicity.
As a parent, we are getting more and more ambitious with each passing year. Everyone wants his and her kids to excel in whatever field they choose their career. However, to pursue higher education and to expend on other related activities one needs to have funds. If you consider inflation, what you save today, may not be sufficient to fulfil even the half of the requirements after 10 years.
So you need to be thoughtful and plan effectively. Your capability to earn may not remain the same at a later stage of your life. Finding out the instruments that can compound your accumulated savings is the only way out to finance your child’s education in later years of your life. Moreover, your planning should take unknown unfortunate events into account as well, so that there is nothing which can obstruct your child to pursue his/her dreams. Another important point to note is to start investing as much early as you can. It gives more time to your investments to multiply and to give better returns.
Without waiting anymore, decide the best course of action right now. You can find one of the best options to invest your funds below and move forward with planning your child’s precious future.
Insurance: There are many options to consider when you are planning to have an insurance plan. Many say, you should have a child insurance plan, when you are saving for your child. This may prove to be right for some of you, when you need funds at a defined phase of life. However, you can look for other insurance options as well, like term life insurance plan and investment insurance plan.
Your requirements hold much importance when you are choosing an investment option. Therefore, go through various kinds of insurance plans and choose that is suitable in your individual case. For instance, if your budget is on the lower side, you can go for term plan. It lets you secure your family’s future at an affordable price. Many choose the term plan as they do not want to mix investment with insurance, so they prefer to invest the difference in the scheme they find lucrative. If you have a longer horizon, you can go for an investment insurance plan with aggressive mix of funds and adjust your risk accordingly.
The hike in the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in Indian insurance companies to 49% from 26% is the most talked-about aspect of the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill 2015, passed by the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, but it has several implications for the policyholders, too.
For one, higher participation from foreign partners could translate into innovative products, better services and technology and improved customer service standards. "With more capital and domain knowledge flowing in, you could see more competitive products in the market. We could also see product innovations and better use of technology," said Vighnesh Shahane, CEO and whole-time director, IDBI Federal Life.
The new law also makes provisions for levying stiffer penalties, ranging from Rs 1 crore to Rs 25 crore for various violations, including mis-selling and misrepresentation. This could act as a deterrent against the rampant mis-selling menace which has resulted in many policyholders being duped into buying unsuitable products.
"The Insurance Bill says that insurers will be held responsible for mis-selling by agents. We have asked for clarification on this matter. It remains to be seen whether penalties will be levied even after the insurer has taken appropriate action against the erring distributors," said Arijit Basu, managing director and CEO, SBI Life.
Another clause that directly impacts policyholders relates to information provided by them at policy inception. Insurers will not be able to call a life policy into question after three years, on any grounds. Within three years, doubts can be raised in case of frauds. In such cases, the insurance company will have to give in writing the grounds on which it has based the decision.
A policyholder can prevent the repudiation if she is able to prove that she did not knowingly make a wrong statement, suppress material important facts or that necessary disclosures were made to the insurer. In case of a death claim, the onus of disproving the charge of fraud will fall on the nominee.
"It works in favour of honest policyholders as their claim settlement will become smoother," said Basu. However, many insurers also fear that fraud syndicate rings could exploit this clause to their advantage.
The new law has also paved the way for easier nomination process. At present, the nominees are not beneficiaries, but mere receivers of the proceeds. The insurance company is discharged of its legal liabilities once the payment was made to the nominee.
A. While indemnity plans cover hospitalisation expenses such as room rent, doctor's fee, etc, benefit plans pay a lump sum on diagnosis of the disease.
Politics, work places, education or manufacturing units, women are breaking the glass ceiling and seeking equality in all walks of life. But differences exist, especially with regards to the health issues that women wrestle with. Illnesses such as cervical cancer, breast cancer, arthritis, burns and fallopian tube cancer are far different from what men face.
With the finance minister announcing enhancement of the medical insurance exemption limit to Rs 25,000 for general and Rs 30,000 for senior citizens, we decided to take a sneak peek at the health insurance options available for women in India.
Fewer women opt for health insurance in India as per the Irda Insurance Awareness Survey Report released in 2012, which states, "The male female ratio among those having health insurance are 70:30 for government, and 67:33 for private."
But the chances of women being hospitalised vis-à-vis men aren't too different. Somesh Chandra, chief operations officer & chief quality officer, Max Bupa, says, "We have registered a competitive number of claims filed by women and men… Changing lifestyle and increasing stress levels among other factors have exposed women to growing health issues including critical illnesses."
Going by the claims history witnessed by general insurers in the country women are prone to heart diseases, bone disorders, cancer of varying kinds and diabetes. If the Insurance Bureau numbers are to be believed medical inflation stands at 15-18%. Hence, getting a health cover is essential.
Though not many different women-specific health insurance plans are available, critical illness offerings catering to women are being offered by select players.
The good news is that insurers are no longer dreaded by the pregnancy related disorders, which come solely in women's share. Today certain general insurers are covering maternity-related medical expenses, which were hitherto excluded under health policies. Health plans such as ICICI Lombard's Health Advantage Plus, Royal Sundaram's Total Health Plus, Max Bupa's Heartbeat and Health Companion plan, Apollo Munich's Easy Health and Star Allied and Health Insurance's Star Wedding Gift Health accept maternity claims.
Apart from these plans, there are critical illness plans offered by Tata AIG General Insurance and Bajaj Allianz General Insurance and a critical illness rider offered with life insurance policies of Aegon Religare Life Insurance. These offer benefits upon detection of 8-11 women-specific diseases.
Unlike a hospitalisation or mediclaim cover, under a critical illness cover the insurer makes a lumpsum cash payment on diagnosis of any of the critical illnesses listed in the insurance policy. You do not have to get hospitalised or show medical bills to claim under this policy. The claim is payable the moment any critical illness is diagnosed and none of the exclusions under the policy apply.
Bajaj Allianz's Critical Illness Cover for Women pays a lumpsum benefit when a policyholder is detected with breast cancer, ovarian cancer, vaginal cancer, cervical cancer, burns, uterine/endometrial cancer, fallopian tube cancer, and paralysis/multitrauma.
There are other implications of a health problem such as loss of job, which too are covered under the plan. But there is a restrictive period of three months for availing this benefit. Additionally, congenital disability benefit and children's education bonus are provided under the policy. An amount equal to 50% of the sum assured will be payable under the plan on the birth of the child with any one or more of the congenital disabilities -- Down's syndrome, Congenital cyanotic heart disease, Tracheo-esophageal fistula, Cleft Palate with or without cleft lip, Spina bifida.
The benefit is paid only if the child survives 30 days after being diagnosed with the disorder. This benefit will be available for first two children only and will not be available if the birth of the child occurs after the proposer attains the age of 40 years.
The Tata AIG Wellsurance offers a higher benefit when it comes to cancer detections. The benefit offered for cancer is double of that offered for the other 10 illness. Apart from cancers, the Tata AIG Wellsurance Women policy covers total blindness, major organ transplant, major burns and even cosmetic reconstructive surgery recommended after accidents and burns.
The diseases common to men and women such as paralysis, first heart attack, kidney failure, multiple sclerosis, stroke, coronary artery bypass grafting are covered under the Tata AIG plan, but not under the Bajaj Allianz plan (except paralysis).
One must note the conditions under which the policy benefits would be nullified. For instance, Bajaj Allianz says that the "Loss of Job" benefit would not be paid if the policyholder opts for voluntary resignation from service.
Also, all the critical illness policies have a survival clause, wherein the policyholder is paid the benefit upon detection of a disease only if she survives for 30 days after discovery of the illness. The company excludes diseases detected during the first 90 days of the policy period. This three-month waiting period is not applicable when it comes to accident cases.
If you have a family history of the diseases covered by women-centric plans, be ready to pay a higher premium of 20-25% and serve a longer waiting period.
Chandra suggests, "To protect and guard against rising medical inflation, women should buy a health insurance policy early in life, preferably before they turn 30. This is beneficial as they can serve the waiting period at a much younger age and utilize their health cover when they need it." He adds that women should review the coverage needed every 3-4 years especially after events such as marriage, children increasing dependency of aging parents and the likes.
Women opting for these covers also gain access to value added benefits such as free health helpline, discounts at health and wellness centers and health check-ups.
So this Women's Day stop ignoring your health and get an optimum health cover to be ready if the need arises. | 2019-04-25T00:22:38Z | http://futuriskinsurance.blogspot.com/2015/03/ |
A stent-graft prosthesis includes a generally tubular outer PTFE layer, a generally tubular helical stent, a generally tubular inner PTFE layer, and a suture or fabric support strip. The outer PTFE layer defines an outer layer lumen. The helical stent is disposed within the outer layer lumen and defines a stent lumen. The inner PTFE layer is disposed within the stent lumen and defines an inner layer lumen. The suture includes a suture first end coupled to a stent first end and a suture second end coupled to a stent second end, with the suture disposed between the outer PTFE layer and the inner PTFE layer. Alternatively, the fabric support strip is disposed between the outer and inner PTFE layers. The suture or fabric support strip may include a plurality of sutures or fabric support strips and may be spaced equally around a circumference of the inner PTFE layer.
4969890 November 1990 Sugita et al.
5425710 June 1995 Khair et al.
5700258 December 1997 Mirigian et al.
6537201 March 2003 Kasic, II et al.
6547814 April 2003 Edwin et al.
6673103 January 2004 Golds et al.
2001/0039446 November 2001 Edwin et al.
2014/0130965 May 2014 Banks et al.
PCT/US2017/026958 "The International Search Report and the Written Opinion of the International Searching Authority" dated Jun. 21, 2017. cited by applicant.
1. A stent-graft prosthesis comprising: a generally tubular outer PTFE layer, the outer PTFE layer defining an outer layer lumen therein; a generally tubular helical stent formed from a continuous wire wrapped in a helical pattern, the helical stent disposed within the outer layer lumen, the helical stent including a stent first end and a stent second end, and defining a stent lumen therein; a generally tubular inner PTFE layer disposed within the stent lumen defining an inner layer, therein; and a suture having a suture first end coupled to the stent first end and a suture second end coupled to the stent second end, wherein the suture is disposed between the outer PTFE layer and the inner PTFE layer, wherein the helical stent includes a plurality of bands, wherein adjacent bands of the helical stent are coupled to each other only through the continuous wire, the inner and outer PTFE layers, and the suture.
2. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 1, wherein the suture comprises a plurality of sutures.
3. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 2, where in the plurality of sutures are spaced equally around a circumference of the inner PTFE layer.
4. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 1, wherein the suture is disposed between the inner PTFE layer and the helical stent.
5. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 1, wherein the suture is disposed between the outer PTFE layer and the helical stent.
6. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 1, wherein the suture is woven over and under the helical stent and is disposed between the inner PTFE layer and the outer PTFE layer.
7. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 1, wherein the suture extends generally longitudinally.
8. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 1, wherein the continuous wire of the helical stent includes a plurality of struts separated by apices, wherein the suture wraps entirely around a plurality of the apices as the suture extends from the stent first end to the stent second end.
9. A stent-graft prosthesis comprising: a generally tubular outer PTFE layer, the outer PTFE layer defining an outer layer lumen therein; a generally tubular helical stent formed from a continuous wire formed into a waveform having struts separated by apices and the waveform wrapped in a helical pattern, the helical stent disposed within the outer layer lumen, the helical stent including a stent first end and a stent second end, and defining a stent lumen therein; a generally tubular inner PTFE layer disposed within the stent lumen defining an inner layer, therein; and a suture having a suture first end coupled to the stent first end and a suture second end coupled to the stent second end, wherein the suture is disposed between the outer PTFE layer and the inner PTFE layer, and wherein the suture wraps entirely around a plurality of the apices as the suture extends from the stent first end to the stent second end.
10. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 9, wherein the suture comprises a plurality of sutures.
11. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 10, where in the plurality of sutures are spaced equally around a circumference of the inner PTFE layer.
12. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 9, wherein the suture is disposed between the inner PTFE layer and the helical stent.
13. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 9, wherein the suture is disposed between the outer PTFE layer and the helical stent.
14. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 9, wherein the suture extends generally longitudinally.
15. The stent-graft prosthesis of claim 9, wherein the helical stent includes a plurality of bands, wherein adjacent bands of the helical stent are coupled to each other only through the continuous wire, the inner and outer PTFE layers, and the suture.
The present invention relates to an implantable prosthesis used to repair or replace a body lumen. More particularly, the present invention relates to an endoluminal prosthesis including a stent, inner and outer PTFE layers, and a support structure maintaining flexibility of the endoluminal prosthesis while providing increased tensile strength.
Endoluminal prostheses, also known as stent-graft prostheses, are medical devices commonly known to be used in the treatment of diseased blood vessels. A stent-graft prosthesis is typically used to repair, replace, or otherwise correct a damaged blood vessel. An artery or vein may be disease or damaged in a variety of different ways. The stent-graft prosthesis may therefore be used to prevent or treat a wide variety of defects such as stenosis of the vessel, thrombosis, occlusion, or an aneurysm.
Stents are generally tubular open-ended structures providing support for damaged, collapsing, or occluded blood vessels. They are radially expandable from a radially compressed configuration for delivery to the affected vessel site to a radially expanded configuration when deployed at the affected vessel treatment site, with the radially expanded configuration having a larger diameter than the radially compressed configuration. Stents are flexible, which allows them to be inserted through, and conform to, tortuous pathways in the blood vessels. Stents are generally inserted in the radially compressed configuration and expanded to the radially expanded configuration either through a self-expanding mechanism, or through the use of a balloon catheter. Helical stents are formed of a continuous, helically wound wire typically having a series of struts and apices, also known as crowns or bends. In some helical stents, connectors are disposed between adjacent bands of the helically formed wire.
A graft is another type of the endoluminal prosthesis, which is used to repair and replace various body vessels. Whereas the stent provides structural support to hold a damaged vessel open, a graft provides an artificial lumen through which blood may flow. Grafts are tubular devices that may be formed of a variety of materials, including textile, and non-textile materials. One type of non-textile material particularly suitable for use as an implantable prosthesis is polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). PTFE exhibits superior biocompatibility and has a low thrombogenicity, which makes it particularly useful as vascular graft material in the repair or replacement of blood vessels. In vascular applications, the grafts are manufactured from expanded PTFE tubes. These tubes have a microporous structure that allows natural tissue ingrowth and cell endothelization once implanted in the vascular system. This contributes to long-term healing and patency of the graft.
Stents and graft may be combined to form a stent-graft prosthesis, providing both structural support and an artificial lumen through which blood may flow. A stent-graft prosthesis is particularly useful to isolate aneurysms or other blood vessel abnormalities from normal blood pressure, reducing pressure on the weakened vessel wall, thereby reducing the chance of vessel rupture while maintaining blood flow. A stent-graft prosthesis is placed within the aneurysmal blood vessel to create a new flow path and an artificial flow conduit through the aneurysm, thereby reducing the exertion of blood pressure on the aneurysm. The stent-graft prosthesis incorporates one or more radially expandable stent(s) to be radially expanded in situ to anchor the tubular graft to the wall of the blood vessel at sites upstream and downstream of the aneurysm. Thus, endovascular stent-graft prostheses are typically held in place by mechanical engagement and friction by the outward radial force imparted on the wall of the blood vessel by the self-expanding or balloon expandable stent.
As previously described, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a polymeric material that is well suited for use as the graft material of a stent-graft prosthesis. It is known in the art to form a stent-graft prosthesis that includes an outer PTFE layer which covers or lines at least one stent, as described in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,285 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,735,892 to Myers. It is also known in the art to form a stent-graft prosthesis that includes an inner PTFE layer, an outer PTFE layer positioned about the inner PTFE layer and at least one stent interposed or encapsulated between the inner and outer PTFE layers, as described in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,673,103 to Golds et al. and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2014/0130965 to Banks et al.
The design of a stent-graft prosthesis must balance strength and flexibility. Generally, increasing the strength a stent-graft prosthesis reduces its flexibility. Conversely, increasing the flexibility of stent-graft prosthesis generally decreases its strength. A stent-graft prosthesis formed with a helical stent without connectors and a PTFE graft material is generally highly flexible, but generally provides little support from either the helical stent or the fused PTFE layers when the stent-graft prosthesis is in tension. As the stent-graft prosthesis encounters tension during use or insertion within a delivery system, durability issues of the PTFE layers can occur. During the periods of tension, the stent-graft prosthesis elongates and the PTFE layers can tear. Pull-loading of a stent-graft prosthesis of this kind into a delivery system is therefore difficult and potentially damaging to the stent-graft prosthesis. Thus, the surgical team will often resort to push-loading of the stent-graft prosthesis into the delivery system. However, push-loading of the stent-graft prosthesis can result in train-wrecking issues causing damage to the stent-graft prosthesis.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved stent-graft prosthesis design providing additional strength when the stent-graft prosthesis is under tension while maintaining flexibility, and methods for manufacturing such a stent-graft prosthesis.
Embodiments hereof relate to a stent-graft prosthesis for implantation within a blood vessel. The stent-graft prosthesis includes a generally tubular outer PTFE layer, a generally tubular helical stent, a generally tubular inner PTFE layer, and a suture. The outer PTFE layer defines an outer layer lumen. The helical stent is disposed within the outer layer lumen, includes a stent first end and a stent second end, and defines a stent lumen. The inner PTFE layer is disposed within the stent lumen and defines an inner layer lumen. The suture includes a suture first end coupled to the stent first end and a suture second end coupled to the stent second end. The suture is disposed between the outer PTFE layer and the inner PTFE layer.
Embodiments hereof also relate to a stent-graft prosthesis for implantation within a blood vessel. The stent-graft prosthesis includes a generally tubular outer PTFE layer, a generally tubular helical stent, a generally tubular inner PTFE layer, and a fabric support strip. The outer PTFE layer defines an outer layer lumen. The helical stent is disposed within the outer layer lumen and defines a stent lumen. The inner PTFE layer is disposed within the stent lumen and includes a first end and a second end, and defines a central passage and a central axis. The fabric support strip is encapsulated between the outer PTFE layer and the inner PTFE layer, and extends generally longitudinally from a first end of the stent-graft prosthesis to a second end of the stent-graft prosthesis.
Embodiments hereof also relate to a method of manufacturing a stent-graft prosthesis for implantation within a blood vessel. An inner PTFE layer is positioned over a mandrel. A first end of a suture is coupled to a first end of a helical stent and a second end of the suture is coupled to a second end of the helical stent such that the suture extends from the stent first end to the stent second end of a helical stent. The helical stent is positioned onto the inner PTFE layer. An outer PTFE layer is positioned over the helical stent and the inner PTFE layer. A heat shrink material is positioned over the outer PTFE layer, with the heat shrink material fully covering the inner and outer PTFE layers. The inner and outer PTFE layers are heated to couple together the inner and outer PTFE layers such that the inner PTFE layer, the helical stent, the suture, and the outer PTFE layer to form the stent-graft prosthesis. The heat shrink material is removed from the stent-graft prosthesis. The stent-graft prosthesis is removed from the mandrel.
Embodiments hereof also relate to a method of manufacturing a stent-graft prosthesis for implantation within a blood vessel. An inner PTFE layer is positioned over a mandrel. A helical stent is positioned onto the inner PTFE layer. A fabric support strip is positioned over the inner PTFE layer. An outer PTFE layer is positioned over the fabric support strip, helical stent, and inner PTFE layer. A heat shrink material is positioned over the outer PTFE layer, with the heat shrink material fully covering the inner and outer PTFE layers. The inner and outer PTFE layers are heated to couple together the inner and outer PTFE layers such that the inner PTFE layer, the helical stent, the fabric support strip, and the outer PTFE layer to form the stent-graft prosthesis. The heat shrink material is removed from the stent-graft prosthesis. The stent-graft prosthesis is removed from the mandrel.
FIG. 1 is a perspective illustration with partial cutaway of an embodiment of a stent-graft prosthesis according to an embodiment hereof.
FIG. 2 is an exploded perspective illustration of the stent-graft prosthesis of FIG. 1.
FIG. 3 is a partial cutaway perspective illustration of the stent-graft prosthesis of FIG. 1.
FIG. 4 is a perspective illustration of a suture wrapped around an apex of a helical stent of the stent-graft prosthesis of FIG. 1.
FIG. 5 is a perspective illustration with partial cutaway of a stent-graft prosthesis according to another embodiment hereof.
FIG. 6 is an exploded perspective illustration of the stent-graft prosthesis of FIG. 5.
FIG. 7 is a partial cutaway perspective illustration of the stent-graft prosthesis of FIG. 5.
FIG. 8 is a side illustration of an embodiment of the fabric support strip of the stent-graft prosthesis of FIG. 5.
FIGS. 9-14 are simplified illustrations of the steps in an embodiment of a method of manufacturing the stent-graft prosthesis of FIG. 1.
Specific embodiments of the present invention are now described with reference to the figures, wherein like reference numbers indicate identical or functionally similar elements. The following detailed description is merely exemplary in nature and is not intended to limit the invention or the application and uses of the invention. Although the description of the invention is in the context of a stent-graft prosthesis and a method of manufacturing a stent-graft prosthesis for the treatment of blood vessels, the invention may also be used and manufactured for use in any body passageways where it is deemed useful. Furthermore, there is no intention to be bound by any expressed or implied theory presented in the preceding technical field, background, brief summary, or the following detailed description.
A stent-graft prosthesis according to an embodiment of the present invention. Is shown in FIGS. 1-3. Stent-graft prosthesis 100 includes an outer PTFE layer 110, a helical stent 120, an inner PTFE layer 140, and a suture 130, as shown in FIG. 1. Components in accordance with the embodiment of stent-graft prosthesis 100 of FIG. 1 are presented in greater detail in FIGS. 2-3. The present disclosure is in no way limited to outer PTFE layer 110, helical stent 120, inner PTFE layer 140, and suture 130, shown and described below. Components of stent-graft prosthesis 100 may assume different forms and construction based upon application needs as described in greater detail in for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,285 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,735,892 to Myers, U.S. Pat. No. 6,673,103 to Golds et al., and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2014-0130965 to Banks et al., previously incorporated herein. Therefore, the following detailed description is not meant to be limiting. Further, the systems and functions described below can be implemented in many different embodiments of hardware. Any actual hardware described is not meant to be limiting. The operation and behavior of the systems and methods presented are described with the understanding that modifications and variations of the embodiments are possible given the level of detail presented.
Stent-graft prosthesis 100 is of a generally tubular configuration and includes a first end 102 and a second end 104, as shown in FIG. 1. Stent-graft prosthesis 100 includes a radially compressed configuration (not shown) for delivery to the affected site of a blood vessel and a radially expanded configuration, as shown in FIG. 1. Stent-graft prosthesis 100 may be self-expanding or balloon expandable.
Outer PTFE layer 110 is of a generally tubular configuration, includes a first end 112 and a second end 114, and defines an outer layer lumen 116 therein, as shown in FIG. 2. Outer PTFE layer 110 forms an exterior surface of stent-graft prosthesis 100. More particularly, outer PTFE layer 110 is configured to maintain helical stent 120, suture 130, and inner PTFE layer 140 therein, as shown in FIGS. 2-3 and described in greater detail below. While outer PTFE layer 110 is shown with a tubular shape, it is not meant to limit the design, and other shapes and sizes may be utilized. The length of outer PTFE layer 110 is approximately equal to the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 100. Outer PTFE layer 110 can assume a variety of configurations described in greater detail in for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,285 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,735,892 to Myers, U.S. Pat. No. 6,673,103 to Golds et al., and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2014/0130965 to Banks et al., and previously incorporated herein. Outer PTFE layer 110 may be formed, for example, and not by way of limitation, of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), expandable polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE), or any other material suitable for purposes of the present disclosure.
Helical stent 120 is of a generally tubular, open-ended structure and is disposed within outer layer lumen 116, as shown in FIGS. 2-3. Helical stent 120 includes a stent first end 122 and a stent second end 124, and defines a stent lumen 126 therein, as shown in FIG. 2. Helical stent 120 is radially expandable from a radially compressed configuration (not shown) for delivery to a radially expanded configuration when deployed, as shown in FIGS. 2-3. In some embodiments, helical stent 120 is formed of a continuous, helically wound wire 121 bent into a waveform having struts 127 and apices 128, also known as crowns or bends, as shown in FIG. 2. The waveform is then helically wrapped into a tubular form, as known in the art. The helically wrapped waveform forms bands 129 of helical stent 120. In the embodiment shown in FIGS. 2-3, adjacent bands 129 are not coupled to each other except through the continuation of wire 121, sutures 120 described below, and inner and outer PTFE layers 140, 110. In other words, additional stent structures do not couple together adjacent bands 129. However, as shown in FIG. 3, free ends of wire 121 (only one shown in FIG. 3) may be coupled to a strut 127, for example, using a crimp connector 123. Helical stent 120 yields a flexible, conformable helical stent, which expands uniformly and provides good radial strength, scaffolding, and fatigue characteristics when expanded. Helical stent 120 may be formed, for example, and not by way of limitation, of nickel titanium, Nitinol, nickel-cobalt-chromium-molybdenum (MP35N), stainless steel, high spring temper steel, or any other metal or composite having elastic properties to permit extension and recoil suitable for purposes of the present disclosure.
Inner PTFE layer 140 is of a generally tubular configuration, includes a first end 142 and a second end 144, and defines an inner layer lumen 146 and a central axis CL.sub.1 therein, as shown in FIG. 2. Inner PTFE layer 140 forms an interior surface of stent-graft prosthesis 100. More particularly, inner PTFE layer 140 is configured to provide unrestricted blood flow through stent-graft prosthesis 100 when stent-graft prosthesis 100 is in the radially expanded configuration and deployed at a treatment site of a blood vessel. In some embodiments, the length of inner PTFE layer 140 may be greater than the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 100. In such embodiments, inner PTFE layer 140 includes first and second ends 142, 144, which are folded over or cuffed during the manufacturing process, as will be explained in more detail herein. Thus, in some embodiments, the length of inner PTFE layer 140 is equal to the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 100 plus first and second ends 142, 144. While inner PTFE layer 140 is shown with a generally tubular shape, it is not meant to limit the design, and other shapes and sizes are contemplated based on the application requirements. Inner PTFE layer 140 can assume a variety of configurations described in greater detail in for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,285 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,735,892 to Myers, U.S. Pat. No. 6,673,103 to Golds et al., and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2014/0130965 to Banks et al., previously incorporated herein. Inner PTFE layer 140 may be formed, for example, and not by way of limitation, of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), expandable polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE), or any other material suitable for purposes of the present disclosure.
Suture 130 is an elongated member and includes a suture first end 132 coupled to stent first end 122 and a suture second end 134 coupled to stent second end 124, as shown in FIGS. 2-3. Suture 130 provides additional tension strength to stent-graft prosthesis 100 as described in greater detail below. Suture 130 may be formed, for example, and not by way of limitation, of nylon, polybutester, polypropylene, silk, polyester or other materials suitable for the purposes described herein. Suture 130 may be coupled to helical stent 120, for example, and not by way of limitation, by tying, fusing, welding, or other methods suitable for the purposes described herein.
According to embodiments hereof, helical stent 120 is configured to be disposed within outer layer lumen 116 of outer PTFE layer 110, and inner PTFE layer 140 is configured to be disposed within stent lumen 126 of helical stent 120, as shown in FIGS. 2-3. Outer PTFE layer 110 is bonded to inner PTFE layer 140 for example, and not by way of limitation, by fusing, welding, adhesives, or other methods suitable for the purposes described herein.
Suture 130 is coupled to helical stent 120 as previously described and configured to extend generally longitudinally with respect to stent-graft prosthesis 100, as shown in FIGS. 2-3. Suture 130 is further configured to provide additional tensile strength to stent-graft prosthesis 100 by limiting the elongation of stent-graft prosthesis 100 when under tension. More particularly, suture 130, attached to helical stent 120 as previously described, limits elongation/stretching of helical stent 120, thereby limiting elongation/stretching of stent-graft prosthesis 100 and reducing the potential for damage to outer and inner PTFE layers 110/140 when stent-graft prosthesis 100 is under tension during use or insertion into a delivery device insertion, for example.
In the embodiment shown in FIGS. 2-3, two sutures 130 are shown spaced 180 degrees apart around the circumference of inner PTFE layer 140. However, this is not meant to limit the design, and more or fewer sutures 130 may be utilized. Further, sutures 130 need not be spaced equally about a circumference of inner PTFE layer 140.
In the embodiment shown in FIGS. 2-3, sutures 130 are disposed between helical stent 120 and outer PTFE layer 110. However, this is not meant to limit the design and other configurations may be utilized. For example, and not by way of limitation, sutures 130 may be disposed between helical stent 120 and inner PTFE layer 140. Alternatively, sutures 130 may be woven over some portions of helical stent 120 (between helical stent 120 and outer PTFE layer 110) and under other portions of helical stent 120 (between helical stent 120 and inner PTFE layer 140. In another non-limiting example, shown in FIG. 4, sutures 130 may be wrapped around some of the apices 128 of helical stent 120 as sutures 130 extend along the length of helical stent 120.
In the embodiment shown in FIGS. 2-3, sutures 130 are coupled to first and second ends 122, 124 of helical stent 120 at stent apices 128. However, this is not meant to limit the design, and sutures may be coupled to other portions of helical stent, such as, but not limited to, struts 127.
FIGS. 5-8 show a stent-graft prosthesis 200 according to another embodiment of the present disclosure. Stent-graft prosthesis 200 includes an outer PTFE layer 210, a helical stent 220, an inner PTFE layer 240, and a fabric support strip 230. Components in accordance with the embodiment of stent-graft prosthesis 200 of FIG. 5 are presented in greater detail in FIGS. 6-8. The present disclosure is in no way limited to outer PTFE layer 210, helical stent 220, inner PTFE layer 240, and fabric support strip 230, shown and described below. Components of stent-graft prosthesis 200 may assume different forms and construction based upon application needs as described in greater detail in for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,285 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,735,892 to Myers, U.S. Pat. No. 6,673,103 to Golds et al., and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2014/0130965 to Banks et al., previously incorporated herein. Therefore, the following detailed description is not meant to be limiting. Further, the systems and functions described below can be implemented in many different embodiments of hardware. Any actual hardware described is not meant to be limiting. The operation and behavior of the systems and methods presented are described with the understanding that modifications and variations of the embodiments are possible given the level of detail presented.
Stent-graft prosthesis 200 is of a generally tubular configuration and includes a first end 202 and a second end 204, as shown in FIG. 5. Stent-graft prosthesis 200 includes a radially compressed configuration (not shown) for delivery to the affected site of a blood vessel and a radially expanded configuration, as shown in FIG. 5. Stent-graft prosthesis 200 may be self-expanding or balloon expandable.
Outer PTFE layer 210 is of a generally tubular configuration, includes a first end 212 and a second end 214, and defines an outer layer lumen 216 therein, as shown in FIG. 6. Outer PTFE layer 210 forms an exterior surface of stent-graft prosthesis 200, More particularly, outer PTFE layer 210 is configured to maintain helical stent 220, fabric support strip 230, and inner PTFE layer 240 therein, as shown in FIGS. 6-7 and described in greater detail below. The length of outer PTFE layer 210 may be approximately equal to the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 200. While outer PTFE layer 210 is shown with a tubular shape, it is not meant to limit the design, and other shapes and sizes may be utilized. Outer PTFE layer 210 can assume a variety of configurations described in greater detail in for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,285 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,735,892 to Myers, U.S. Pat. No. 6,673,103 to Golds et al., and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2014/0130965 to Banks et al., previously incorporated herein. Outer PTFE layer 210 may be formed, for example, and not by way of limitation, of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), expandable polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE), or any other material suitable for purposes of the present disclosure.
Helical stent 220 is of a generally tubular, open-ended structure and is disposed within outer PTFE layer lumen 216, as shown in FIGS. 6-7. Helical stent 220 includes a stent first end 222 and a stent second end 224, and defines a stent lumen 226 therein, as shown in FIG. 6. Helical stent 220 is radially expandable from a radially compressed configuration (not shown) for delivery to a radially expanded configuration when deployed, as shown in FIGS. 6-7. In some embodiments, helical stent 220 is formed of a continuous helically wound wire 221 bent into a waveform having struts 227 and apices 228, also known as crowns or bends, as shown in FIG. 6. The waveform is then helically wrapped into a tubular form, as known in the art. The helically wrapped waveform forms bands 229 of helical stent 220. In the embodiment shown in FIGS. 6-7, adjacent bands 229 are not coupled to each other except through the continuation of wire 221, fabric support strip 230 described below, and inner and outer PTFE layers 240, 210. In other words, additional stent structures do not couple together adjacent bands 229. However, as shown in FIG. 7, free ends of wire 221 (only one shown in FIG. 7) may be coupled to a strut 227, for example, using a crimp connector 223. Helical stent 220 yields a flexible, conformable stent, which expands uniformly and provides good radial strength, scaffolding, and fatigue characteristics when expanded. Helical stent 220 may be formed, for example, and not by way of limitation, of nickel titanium, Nitinol, nickel-cobalt-chromium-molybdenum (MP35N), stainless steel, high spring temper steel, or any other metal or composite having elastic properties to permit extension and recoil suitable for purposes of the present disclosure.
Inner PTFE layer 240 is of a generally tubular configuration, includes a first end 242 and a second end 244, and defines an inner layer lumen 246 and a central axis CL.sub.2, therein, as shown in FIG. 6. Inner PTFE layer 240 forms an interior surface of stent-graft prosthesis 200. More particularly, inner PTFE layer 240 is configured to provide unrestricted blood flow through graft-stent prosthesis 200 when stent-graft prosthesis 200 is in the radially expanded configuration and deployed at a treatment site of a blood vessel. In some embodiments, the length of inner PTFE layer 240 may be greater than the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 200. In such embodiments, inner PTFE layer 240 includes first and second ends 242, 244, which are folded over or cuffed during the manufacturing process as will be explained in more detail herein. Thus, in such embodiments, the length of inner PTFE layer 240 is equal to the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 200 plus first and second ends 242, 244. While inner PTFE layer 240 is shown with a generally tubular shape, it is not meant to limit the design, and other shapes and sizes may be utilized. Inner PTFE layer 240 can assume a variety of configurations described in greater detail in for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,285 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,735,892 to Myers, U.S. Pat. No. 6,673,103 to Golds et al., and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2014/0130965 to Banks et al., previously incorporated herein. Inner PTFE layer 240 may be formed, for example, and not by way of limitation, of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), expandable polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE), or any other material suitable for purposes of the present disclosure.
Fabric support strip 230 is an elongated member that provides additional tension strength to stent-graft 200 as described in greater detail below and shown in FIGS. 6-8. Fabric support strip 230 includes a strip first end 232 and a strip second end 234. In an embodiment, the length of fabric support strip 230 is approximately equal to the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 200. Fabric support strip has a width W in the range of 0.5-8 mm, although other widths may also be used. As shown in FIG. 8, fabric support strip 230 may be a mesh fabric 235 including a plurality of openings 236 to improve bonding of outer PTFE layer 210 to inner PTFE layer 240 through fabric support strip 230. Fabric support strip 230 may be formed, for example, and not by way of limitation, of nylon, polybutester, polypropylene, silk, polyester or other materials suitable for the purposes described herein. Fabric support strip 230 may further include a biologically or pharmacologically active substance for example, and not by way of limitation, an antithrombogenic substance, a substance configured to increase endothelialization, an antineoplastic, an antimitotic, an anti-inflammatory, an antiplatelet, an anticoagulant, an anti-fibrin, an antithrombin, an antiproliferative, an antibiotic, an antioxidant, an antiallergic, or other substances or combinations of substances suitable for the purposes described herein.
According to embodiments hereof, helical stent 220 is configured to be disposed within outer layer lumen 216 of outer PTFE layer 210, and inner PTFE layer 240 is configured to be disposed within stent lumen 226 of helical stent 220, as shown in FIGS. 6-7. Outer PTFE layer 210 is bonded to inner PTFE layer 240 for example, and not by way of limitation, by fusing, welding, adhesives, or other methods suitable for the purposes described herein.
Fabric support strip 230 is configured to extend generally longitudinally with respect to stent-graft prosthesis 200, as shown in FIGS. 6-7. Fabric Support strip 230 is further configured to provide additional strength to stent-graft prosthesis 200 by limiting the elongation of stent-graft prosthesis 200 when under tension. More particularly, fabric support strip 230, bonded between outer PTFE layer 210 and inner PTFE layer 240, limits elongation/stretching of outer and inner PTFE layers 210/240 and helical stent 220, thereby limiting elongation/stretching of stent-graft prosthesis 200 and reducing the potential for damage to outer and inner PTFE layers 210/240 when stent-graft prosthesis 200 is under tension during use or insertion into a delivery device insertion, for example.
In the embodiment shown in FIGS. 6-7, two fabric support strips 230 are shown spaced 180 degrees apart around the circumference of inner PTFE layer 240. However, this is not meant to limit the design, and more for fewer fabric support strips 230 may be utilized. However, the number of fabric support strips 230 should be limited such as not to increase the profile (e.g. diameter) of stent-graft prosthesis 200 an undesired amount. Thus, in preferred embodiments, 2 to 8 fabric supports strips 230 are utilized. In other preferred embodiments, 2 to 4 fabric support strips are utilized. Further, fabric support strips 230 need not be spaced equally about a circumference of inner PTFE layer 240. In preferred embodiments, a fabric support strip 230 does not extend around the entire circumference of inner PTFE layer 240.
In the embodiment shown in FIGS. 6-7, fabric support strips 230 are disposed between helical stent 220 and outer PTFE layer 210. However, this is not meant to limit the design and other configurations may be utilized. For example, and not by way of limitation, fabric support strips 230 may be disposed between helical stent 220 and inner PTFE layer 240.
FIGS. 9-14 show schematically some steps in an embodiment of a method of manufacturing or forming a stent-graft prosthesis, such as stent-graft prosthesis 100. Although described herein with stent-graft prosthesis 100, it will be apparent to one of ordinary skill that methods described herein may be utilized to form a stent-graft prosthesis according to any embodiment described herein, such as, for example, stent-graft prosthesis 200.
In the method, inner PTFE layer 140 is positioned over a mandrel 300, as shown in FIG. 9. As previously described, the length of inner PTFE layer 140 may be greater than the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 100, because inner PTFE layer 140 includes first and second ends 142, 144 which may folded over or cuffed during the manufacturing process as will be explained in more detail herein. Thus, the length of inner PTFE layer 140 may be equal to the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 100 plus the length of first and second ends 142, 144. In order to place inner PTFE layer 140 onto mandrel 300, as well as additional layers of material slid over mandrel 300, mandrel 300 may include a tapered expansion tip (not shown) to ease or assist in positioning of tubing over the mandrel. Inner PTFE layer 140 is slid over mandrel 300 until it is approximately centered thereon, as shown in FIG. 9.
In another step of the method, each suture first end 132 of each suture 130 is coupled to stent first end 122, and each suture second end 134 of each suture 130 is coupled to stent second end 124 such that each suture 130 extends generally longitudinally from stent first end 122 to stent second end 124 of helical stent 120, as shown in FIG. 10.
Once inner PTFE layer 140 is in place and sutures 130 have been coupled to helical stent 120 as described above, helical stent 120 is positioned over inner PTFE layer 140, as shown in FIG. 11. Helical stent 120 is not positioned on first and second ends 142, 144 of inner PTFE layer 140 because the ends are folded over or cuffed in a later processing step as described in more detail with respect to FIG. 13. Although the method is described with sutures 130 being coupled to helical stent 120 prior to placement of helical stent 120 over inner PTFE layer 140, this disclosure is not so limited. For example, and not by way of limitation, the sutures 130 may be coupled to helical stent 120 after helical stent 120 is position over inner PTFE layer 140.
Similarly, if the method is used to form stent-graft prosthesis 200, fabric support strips 230 may be placed over inner PTFE layer 240, and then helical stent 220 may be placed over fabric support strips 230. Alternatively, helical stent 220 may be placed over inner PTFE layer 240, and then fabric supports strips 230 may be placed over helical stent 220. In another non-limiting example, some fabric support strips 230 may be placed over inner PTFE layer 240 before helical stent 220, and other may be placed over helical stent 220.
Once helical stent 120 is in place, outer PTFE layer 110 is then positioned directly over inner PTFE layer 140 and helical stent 120, as shown in FIG. 12. In an embodiment, the length of outer PTFE layer 110 is approximately equal to the desired length of stent-graft prosthesis 100. Outer PTFE layer 110 is slid over inner PTFE layer 140 until it is approximately centered thereon, as shown in FIG. 12, such that outer PTFE layer 110 is not positioned on first and second ends 142, 144 of inner PTFE layer 140. As shown in FIG. 13, first and second ends 142, 144 are then folded over or cuffed. More particularly, first and second ends 142, 144 are folded or rolled over such that an outer surface of first and second ends 142, 144 lays against or overlaps onto a portion of an outer surface of outer PTFE layer 110, thereby forming cuffs having three layers of ePTFE on the ends of the assembled components or layers. In one embodiment, first and second ends 142, 144 may each be approximately 5 mm in length.
Once outer PTFE layer 110 is in place, a heat shrink tubing 310 is slid over outer PTFE layer 110 until it is approximately centered thereon, as shown in FIG. 14. As will be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, heat shrink tubing 310 is expanded tubing that will shrink when heat is applied thereto in an effort to return or recover to the relaxed diameter it originally had when extruded. When heat shrink tubing 310 shrinks or recovers, it radially compresses the assembled components or layers during the heating step described herein to form stent-graft prosthesis 100 in a radially compressed or delivery configuration suitable for delivery into the vasculature. The length of heat shrink tubing 310 may be greater than the length of outer PTFE layer 110 such that heat shrink tubing 310 completely/fully covers or extends over the assembled components or layers on mandrel 300. Heat shrink tubing 310 may include one or more slits or cuts 320, formed or made transverse to a longitudinal axis of heat shrink tubing 310, at a first and/or second end or edge 312, 314 thereof, to facilitate the step of removing the heat shrink material as will be described in more detail herein. Heat shrink tubing 310 may be formed of a polymeric material such as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and may include a coating coupled to or on an inner surface thereof. In one embodiment, the coating is high temperature resistant parylene HT (high temperature), commercially available from Specialty Coatings Systems of Indianapolis, Ind., which prevents bonding/adhesion between outer PTFE layer 110 (not shown in FIG. 14) and heat shrink tubing 310 during the heating step described herein. The parylene HT coating has a thickness not greater than five microns or micrometers in order to conform to the inner surface of heat shrink tubing 310, and in one embodiment, the parylene HT coating has a thickness not greater than one micron or micrometer.
With inner and outer PTFE layers 140, 110, helical stent 120, and heat shrink tubing 310 assembled onto mandrel 300, the assembly is heated such that the nodes and fibrils of inner and outer PTFE layers 140, 110 entangle, intertwine, interweave, or otherwise mesh together, thereby coupling inner and outer PTFE layers 140, 110 together. The heating step may be performed in any manner known to those skilled in the art. For example, and not by way of limitation, the assembled layers on mandrel 300 may be heated in an oven or similar device. In another non-limiting example, direct heating elements may be placed within a lumen (not shown) of mandrel 300, or surrounding mandrel 300 in close proximately thereto. Other heating methods and devices may also be used.
Once inner and outer PTFE layers 140, 110 are entangled or coupled together, stent-graft prosthesis 100 is thereby formed. Heat shrink tubing 310 may then be removed. In one embodiment, heat shrink tubing 310 may be ripped or torn off stent-graft prosthesis 100 by pulling at slits 320 formed therein. When heat shrink tubing 310 includes a parylene HT coating on the inner surface thereof as described above, heat shrink tubing 310 advantageously cracks or snaps apart during removal thereof. After heat shrink tubing 310 is removed, stent-graft prosthesis 100 may also be removed from mandrel 300 by pulling or sliding it off.
In addition, although the embodiment described above with respect to FIGS. 9-14 illustrates each of inner and outer PTFE layers 140, 110 as tubular components, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that inner and outer PTFE layers 140, 110 may be formed via PTFE material which is not originally formed as a tubular component.
Further, although the embodiment described above with respect to FIGS. 9-14 illustrates each of inner and outer PTFE layers 140, 110 as single tubular components, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that inner PTFE layer 140 may include one or more tubular PTFE layers or components and/or outer PTFE layer 110 may include one or more tubular ePTFE layers or components. If more than two layers of PTFE are included, the heating step as described herein operates to entangle all layers of PTFE together within the above-described waiting periods such that all of the PTFE layers, helical stent 120, and sutures 130 form stent-graft prosthesis 100.
While only some embodiments have been described herein, it should be understood that it has been presented by way of illustration and example only, and not limitation. Various changes in form and detail can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, and each feature of the embodiments discussed herein, and of each reference cited herein, can be used in combination with the features of any other embodiment. All patents and publications discussed herein are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. | 2019-04-24T18:18:04Z | http://patents.com/us-10010403.html |
Starting a project and landing between a rock and a hard place.
on May 06, 2001 at 03:51 UTC ( #78300=perlmeditation: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??
I'm in the middle of a large freelance project. Everything was going well until I had realised that I painted myself into a corner. I had thought that the way that I had organised my modules was pretty good. Now that I took a step back and looked at it again, I found it to be a complete mess. If any other programmer were to look at it I'm sure that they would run away and seek mental help immediately from the trauma of looking at it.
My first thought of what to do would be to go through all the modules and clean it up as good as I could. My second thought as to what to do is to ask myself "Am I doing this the right way?".
When you start a large project where you are the only individual programming it from start to finish. How do you prepare for it? How do you organise your modules? And if you find yourself between a rock and a hard place. What do you do?
Comment on Starting a project and landing between a rock and a hard place.
Re: Starting a project and landing between a rock and a hard place.
tilly mentions XP in passing. I've learned quite a bit from that approach.
The second thing is to keep your design as simple as it needs to be. That doesn't mean you design everything at the start and stick with that until the bitter end. It doesn't mean that you find yourself in a corner and rewrite everything. It means that you add features only when absolutely necessary. After you add a feature and its tests pass, go back over the code and see if you can simplify it further. The tests will tell you if you break something.
This all presupposes that you're a competent enough programmer to have good habits from the start -- you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't have recognized this and you wouldn't be asking for advice. Trust your instincts, but cultivate good habits to keep you from false Laziness.
Finally, when you're stuck, look at the project and ask yourself, "What needs to be done?" Organize that list according to importance. Then break the most important thing into individual units that can be added, tested, and debugged in a single sitting. Then do it.
If you can follow this half of the time, you'll be twice the programmer in short order. The tests are the key.
Assuming that you are approaching your software design in a sorta object oriented approach (that is, grouping common functions into one module), it's not uncommon that the structure is rewritten once during a project. I've read some OOP philosphies that the best way to start a project is to write out your object structure, let everyone look at it, then throw it away and design a new one. Nearly the first design is always bad because you don't seen the connections that you need later in the programming.
I've done the same with some of my projects. I write enough to see what my mistakes are with my code, then dump it and start again. It's by no means perfect, but that initial "oops" phase can strongly help any software project by ironing out the potental bumps in programming.
Now, if you backing against a deadline and in this situation, it's a bit hard to do that, but I would at least try to find the ones that need dire rewriting and do that, such that other programmers at least see where you are headed.
Re (tilly) 1: Starting a project and landing between a rock and a hard place.
An interesting looking idea that I have not tried which the extreme programming folks mention is to have a group of people stand in a circle with a ball. Each person is an object, and as they make method calls they pass the ball (to represent passing a message).
Even if you are working by yourself, you might try to get a few friends to help you with this exercise just for fun.
Apparently this gives a lot of insight into what the bottlenecks will be in real life and how it will work.
It also plays well into a tidbit I learned a long time ago about memory. People who study memory techniques claim that the bigger you make a visualization, and the more senses you get involved, the better your brain is at working with the image, and the better you will be able to remember it later. For instance imagining walking into a room and looking around is far better than imagining holding a model of the room and peering in.
BMaximus, you have a high sense of self-integrity to question your own design so well. The skill (art) of organizing a project is unique to each person. What I have found is that regardless of OO vs. structured approaches the program is a state machine.
I once had to write a text restructuring program that had three variables with two states each for a word processor ruler function. It wouldn't translate ceratin content right. Then I realized that the scanner had eight states (two to the third power) but I had only coded for six. Me dumb. Twenty minutes of new code and she shebanged. So.. are all of the states accounted for in YOUR code.
Also on the advice from above, use the simplest means you can employ to get it done.
Also, I usually prepare by writing psuedo code-like comments. The stunning wonder of Perl is the move from the psuedo code to the Real Thing is so short. Sometimes I draw state diagram pictures, especially if I have to explain it to others.
Normally I start by making empty subroutines, with comments and print statements on what each piece should do. I don't worry about how it looks or how goofy my naming is, but I do try to put it into the flow and order I am looking for.
At the same time, in another file (like a table of contents or a master record), I put the name of the routine and a list of all the places I call it. I ignore certain super common pieces (like my own rolled cgi parser). And usually because I am working against databases, I work on the schemas for the data.
All along I am preparing a list of questions for the client.
Then I'll go through and make scripts, again empty, that are the framework of the real scripts with ridiculous comments. Usually while I am doing this I am adding and modifying the database schema and the subroutines.
Once I have all this schtuff sort of laid out, I go through and format indentation, making the scripts and bits legal (but not necessarily functional). Again, relooking at things means I am modifying again.
So I print the code. And save off a copy. Send the questions to the client.
And go and do something completely different for at least a day.
I have found if I concentrate on something like this, I cannot comprehend the overall flow, but instead focus on the little details, so a day away gives my addled brain a chance to work it through. The printout is nice cause I can make notes on it, without actually sitting down and trying to work out code bits.
Then I go back through it, make whatever changes make sense and print it again.
At this point I start actually adding working code, parts at a time, testing along the way, right on top of all the faux schtuff I have already written out.
Usually I'll spend 10 to 30 percent of my time in the working out the flow phase and sometimes what I end up actually resembles what I started with.
As far as what I do when my code is ummm....disorganized...I deliver something mostly - partially - somewhat - working schtuff usually before schedule, ask for changes, and rewrite using the above method a second time. The second time through goes a lot faster, and I have lots of code to put into place, usually with mostly minor self induced changes.
Usually the before schedule version buys me enough time to make it nice if I have to go over schedule. If not, I apologize and bite the bullet. Fortunately, I get better all the time so these things happen less frequently.
I am sort of in the same place you are, but I'm not sure I could have done it any differently, in my case.
I usually try to do a process of constant refinement. I program the first working part of the program, then the next. Any time I feel the urge to cut and paste from the first program I pop the routine into a shared module. So my modules are built from routines that absolutely have to be shared, and nothing else.
The trouble with this approach is I am practically garanteed to paint myself into a corner at least once. So at some point I have to take some time off and redo functions in the modules (combine some, separate others, etc). I then have no choice but to take some time to reprogram stuff I've already done. To aid this process I usually document every variable and function using Lyx, and constantly update the docs as I move functions around. The upside of this is I can tidy up the notes and give them to the client as part of the documentation.
When you're at the point where you look at the project and see a mess, it's best to distance yourself from it and work on a new design. You'll be able to design it better given the experience you've had so far. There will be the temptation to keep building on top of the mess in the interest in time, but unless you absolutely cannot afford to spend the extra time it's often wiser to rebuild. In a lot of cases, you'll find that it won't take as much time to rewrite as you thought.
If it's really the mess you say, you'll find that the cost of maintenance escalates. It'll be harder to find bugs, and that won't make you or your client happy. And 6 months later, when you client asks for some additions, it could be a headache wading through that mess again--especially since it's not fresh on your mind anymore. I've had this experience before, and it's not fun at all.
What I do is think of the project as if I was not the only one working on it. Strip down the application down to several individual pieces, each one performing a single function, then make each one of those a module.
Then, create a standard way of communicating between modules (inputs/outputs). Most important: document all this.
Now I am ready to start the actual coding. Start with the basics, the very core functionality of the application, and work from there. If you're lucky and you're given other people to help you, you just hand them the documentation you wrote, and have them write some of the little pieces/functionalities you specified. Those pieces will automatically "talk" to yours, since you have created your standard I/Os.
I see there are many replies to your question, and all of them have their merits. I'm here to give you the bad news as well as the good.
The bad news is that architecting skills are acquired only with time and experience. You can read a score of books on the subject, but you really only know what you're doing after years of doing it.
To properly architect a project, begin with use cases. Buy several books on the subject. (Hint: O'Reilly's UML book is a great reference, but not good for learning.) They seem silly at first, but they are a great way to formally organize your thoughts and the thoughts of those who are providing your specifications. This will also be the time at which you will identify specifications that will cost the client more in development time and money than they will see in return; i.e., this is the time at which you should feel free to say, "No."
Next, diagram your objects using class, object, sequence, and activity diagrams. If you don't have a high-powered diagramming software (I recommend Dia if you don't have a big budget to work with, and have found Object Domain quite useful, significantly cheaper, and much friendlier to Linux and *nix users than Rational Rose's software), draw your ideas on a sheet of paper.
Next, create a prototype. Figure out what you did wrong. Repeat the above steps until you're comfortable, however you define that.
Putting together all of the above involves a learning curve if you haven't done it already, but you need to buckle down and learn it even if you're the only Mohican on staff. In the words of your mother, "It's for your own good." Trust me.
In lieu of having the time to learn and implement the above (e.g., if you work at a dot-com), do as much as you can, making sure that you take the time to learn, and look up "refactoring." This is the process of taking existing code and making it better. Knowing nothing more about your situation, this may very well be what you need to do for pragmatism's and expediancy's sake.
If you arrive at the conclusion that you need to rewrite most of what you've done, you will merely be in the same boat as most coders with years of experience have been at at some point in their careers. Don't beat yourself up about it. Simply go forward as best as you can, knowing that you did as good of a job as your experience and knowledge base would allow, and make sure you educate yourself in the process.
Now for the good news: While your employer doesn't care how much you learn as long as you get it done, if you take the time to educate yourself on the above concepts and simply force yourself to adhere to good coding practices, you will over time acquire an intuitive feel for how to address the questions that you ask.
You will rarely feel like you know exactly how to architect anything perfectly, but you will see yourself get better and better over time until you are clearly head and shoulders above less experienced coders on staff.
Wow, some really thoughtful responses.
There are a number of philosophies to choose from as you can see. It depends on your own personal style, and your goals.
For example, if you are trying to model some busines process that is already being conducted in an office, you want to spend time talking to people to find out how they do what they do, and techniques like those taught in OO modelling books (you could look at ambysoft) like CRC cards and tossing a ball around (well it's really a lot more involved and there's an art to it) is a good idea. Those cards and the ball are ways to distill logic. Other related tools are use cases, which are little scenarios of what happens when a user of type X tries to do Y, basically a model of what happens across the human-machine interface. This type of diagram doesn't care what happens solely in the machine. It is most concerned with getting the I/O straight.
In the end if you are doing object oriented programming, you want to break it up into objects. The modern school looks for the most important nouns around, say passenger, ticket, and airplane, for one simple example. An older school looks for verbs or server processes, which is really a lot harder to get into your head. If you use nouns (I would) you can say, okay, I'm a passenger, what do I do next. Or I'm an airplane, what kind of information do I know? If you have a lot of information and don't know where to start, you can look for organizing principles so for example if you are doing a business logic project you might want to ask "Where does the money go?" and follow the flow of money, or maybe a purchase order, through an organization. These are the kinds of things that get into those CRC cards too, like What other classes (objects/nouns) do I need to know? and so on.
Me, on a simple project I often just write pseudo code, whether in the browser (commented out, then fill in between the comments if it's really simple), or on paper. Maybe make some little mockups of the screens I want to see. Whatever it is, you probably want to think about what is going to have to get used or maybe extended the most, and see if that could become an object. Some people from the Xerox Parc (Palo Alto Research Center) school like to draw little sketches of people's heads and diagram how they interact with each other, to model a communications system. Something visual and dynamic that keeps your hand moving and head working is good. even stream of consciousness typing is fine if you clean it up later. Give yourself a day or so to leave and come back and look at it again.
The most important thing I think is to document it to yourself as you are going, saying what you are going to do. If once you dive in it starts to get hairy, then you have somewhere to retreat and take a breath, and update your worldview.
By the way, the XP stuff is neat too, I'm talking about the idea of making peace with yourself in the knowledge that this software may never be done. Just find a small part of the cosmic all in your head and make it work. You can create a series of goals and successes when you solve each one and then tear things up if you don't like them.
One nice thing about perl is that it can be lots of things to lots of people. You don't have to recreate structures as if it was Java or C++ or something else that has lots of rules. Though I didn't believe it, it seems to be helpful if you have that perl programmer trait of laziness (well, let's say you want to get something done quickly and easily) for you can then focus your energy on rigorous consideration of what you are trying to do.
Maybe other people will have Perl-specific suggestions. To my mind anyway, it will save you lots of time if you stick with pen and paper for a while. You also will be less disappointed if your thought models reflect the problem you are trying to solve, because a good model of the world is going to give you ahah! synergies, and continue to open doors to realizing things about your problem which you did not see at first.
Finally, if you are already into the project like you said, maybe the most important decision is to ask what simple tasks have I already solved and are definitely working okay. Don't change those. Then be willing to tear out chunks and leave the rest of the monolith standing there, just because if you are doing it on a deadline it has to work, not be pretty. If it is too scary, just tear it all down, it's not worth tweaking a monstrosity because it will just keep throwing you off balance (I know from recent experience). You can then try to step back, break the problem up into black box components which you just have to talk to, not know intimately, and then you can start thinking about how they interact together.
So first step, clear off the desk. Get a big liter bottle of ice coffee or something like it. get a pen and start attacking it anywhere, even on the edges, trying to figure out what you want to have happen and not how you get it done, and while you are at it keep alert for lines of cleavage where the problem seems to fall apart into one or more pieces. These may give you a clue about how to organize your efforts. | 2019-04-24T13:55:03Z | https://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=78300&lastnode_id=63535 |
If field goals were suddenly worth four points and touchdowns were worth five, football coaches would change their strategies. This type of scoring change has occurred in the estate planning field, but many people keep using their old playbooks.
Recent income and estate tax updates have adjusted how the planning game should be played. If your estate plan was drafted before they came into effect, reconsidering how you structure your estate could save you tens of thousands, or even millions, of dollars.
To understand these rule changes, we should rewind to the year 2000. The federal estate tax only applied to estates exceeding $675,000 and was charged at rates up to 55 percent. Long-term capital gains were taxed at 20 percent. Since then, the amount that can pass free of estate tax has drifted higher, to $5.43 million in 2015, and the top estate tax rate has dropped to 40 percent. On the other hand, the top ordinary income tax rate of 39.6 percent when coupled with the 3.8 percent Net Investment Income tax is now higher than the federal estate tax rate.
Although the top capital gains tax rate of 23.8 percent (when including the 3.8 percent Net Investment Income tax), remains less than the estate tax rate, these changes in tax rate differentials can significantly modify the best financial moves in planning an estate. While estate tax used to be the dangerous player to guard, now income taxes can be an equal or greater opponent.
Besides the tax rate changes, the biggest development that most people’s estate plans don’t address is a relatively new rule known as the portability election. Before the rule was enacted in 2011, if a spouse died without using his or her full exemption, the unused exemption was lost. This was a primary reason so many estate plans created a trust upon the first spouse’s death. Portability allows the unused portion of one spouse’s $5.43 million personal exemption to carry over to the survivor. A married couple now effectively has a joint exemption worth twice the individual exemption, which they can use in whatever way provides the best tax benefit. Portability is only available if an estate tax return is filed timely for the first spouse who dies.
From a federal tax standpoint, if a married couple expects the first spouse to die with less than $5.43 million of assets, relying on portability is a viable strategy for minimizing taxes and maximizing wealth going to the couple’s heirs. Estate planning for families with less than $10.86 million in assets is now much more about ensuring that property is distributed in accordance with the couple’s wishes and with the degree of control that they wish to maintain than it is about saving taxes. However, state estate taxes can complicate the picture because they may apply to smaller estates.
Below are a number of plays that families who will be subject to the estate tax should consider to optimize their taxes in today’s environment. Although many of the techniques are familiar, the way they are being used has changed.
A successful quarterback has a solid group of coaches providing him with guidance, but is also allowed to think on his feet. Similarly, the quarterback of an estate, the executor or a trustee, needs to be given a framework in which to make his or her decisions but also flexibility regarding which play to run. Today’s estate planning documents should acknowledge that the rules or the individual’s situation may change between the time documents are signed and the death or other event that brings them into effect. Flexibility can be accomplished by expressly providing executors and trustees with the authority to make certain tax elections and the right to disclaim assets, which may allow the fiduciaries to settle the estate in a more tax-efficient manner. Empowering an executor has its risks, but building a solid support team of advisers will help ensure he or she takes the necessary steps to properly administer the estate.
It’s a common misconception that lifetime gifts automatically reduce your estate tax liability. Since the two transfer tax systems are unified, lifetime gifts actually just reduce the amount that can pass tax-free at death. Lifetime gifts accomplish marginal wealth transfer only when a taxpayer makes a gift and that gift appreciates outside of the donor’s estate. In the past, people generally wanted to make gifts as early as possible, but that is no longer always the most effective strategy due to income tax benefits of bequeathing assets.
One big difference between lifetime giving and transfers upon death is the way in which capital gains are calculated when the recipient sells the assets. With gifts of appreciated assets, recipients are taxed on the difference between the transferor’s cost basis, typically the amount the donor paid for the asset, and the sales price. The cost basis of inherited assets is adjusted to the fair market value of the assets on the date of the owner’s death (or, in a few cases, six months later).
When choosing which assets to give to heirs, it is especially important to make lifetime gifts of assets with very low appreciation and to hold onto highly appreciated assets until death. If a beneficiary inherits an asset that had $100,000 of appreciation at the donor’s death, the basis adjustment can save $23,800 in federal income taxes compared to if the beneficiary had received the same property as a lifetime gift. Unfortunately, the basis adjustment upon death works both ways. If the bequeathed asset had lost $100,000 between the time it was purchased and the owner’s death, the recipient’s cost basis would be reduced to the current fair market value of the property. Therefore, it is advantageous to realize any capital losses before death if possible.
Holding onto appreciated assets until death is appealing for income tax purposes, but might not be advisable if the asset is a concentrated position or no longer fits with your overall portfolio objectives. For these types of assets, it’s worth analyzing whether the capital gains tax cost is worth incurring right away or if you should pursue another strategy, such as hedging, donating the asset to charity or contributing the property to an exchange fund.
Choosing not to fund a credit shelter trust upon the first spouse’s death is a perfect example of maximizing the value of the basis adjustment. These trusts were typically funded upon the first spouse’s death to ensure that none of the first spouse’s exemption went to waste. Since the portability rules allow the surviving spouse to use the deceased spouse’s unused exemption amount, it is no longer essential to fund a credit shelter trust. Instead, allowing all of the assets to pass to the surviving spouse directly allows you to capture a step-up in basis for assets upon the first spouse’s death, and then another after that of the second spouse. Depending on the amount of appreciation and the time between the two spouses’ deaths, the savings can be substantial.
Making annual gifts is a traditional strategy that remains attractive today. In addition to the $10.86 million that a couple can give away during their lifetime or at death, there are also some “freebie” situations where gifts don’t count towards this total. You can make gifts up to the annual exclusion amount, currently $14,000, to an unlimited number of individuals, and you can double this amount by electing to gift split on a gift tax return or by having your spouse make separate gifts to the same recipients.
Transferring $14,000 may not seem like a meaningful estate tax planning strategy for someone with more than $11 million, but the numbers can add up quickly. For example, if a married couple has three married adult children, each of whom has two children of their own, the couple could transfer $336,000 to these relatives each year using just their annual exemptions. If the recipients invest these funds, the future appreciation also accrues outside of the donors’ estates, and the income may be taxed at lower rates.
Contributing the annual exclusion gifts to 529 Plan education savings accounts for the six grandchildren can accelerate the gifting process and increase the income tax benefits. A special election allows you to front-load five years’ worth of annual exclusion gifts into a 529 Plan, which would currently allow $840,000 in total gifts to the six grandchildren. In this scenario, the grandparents would not be allowed to make any tax-free gifts to the grandchildren during the following four tax years. Since assets in a 529 Plan grow tax-deferred and withdrawals for qualified educational expenses are tax-free, you can realize substantial income tax savings here. If you assume the only growth in the accounts is 4 percent capital gains, which are realized each year, that results in about $8,000 in annual income federal tax savings per year, assuming the donor is in the top tax bracket.
You can also pay a student’s tuition directly to the college or university, since these payments are exempt from gift tax. This exception applies to medical expenses and health insurance premiums as well, as long as payments are made directly to the provider.
Given that annual exclusion gifts don’t impact the $5.43 million lifetime exemption, I recommend making these gifts early and often, but remember to give away cash or assets that have very little realized appreciation. The earlier you make a gift, the more time the assets have to appreciate and pay income to the recipient.
Earlier I mentioned that you want to avoid giving away appreciated securities during your lifetime. The exception to that rule is a gift to charity. By donating appreciated securities that you have held for more than one year, you can get a charitable deduction for the market value of the security and also avoid paying the capital gains tax you would incur if you were to sell the asset.
If you know you have charitable intentions, it is more effective to donate appreciated securities earlier in life, rather than at death, since doing so removes future appreciation of the assets from your estate.
Lifetime transfers to standard irrevocable trusts are no longer as appealing as they used to be, now that the estate tax rate is closer to the capital gains rate. Assets transferred to irrevocable trusts during the grantor’s lifetime typically do not receive a basis step-up upon the grantor’s death. Therefore, determining whether it is more appealing to make lifetime transfers or bequests in a specific circumstance requires making assumptions and analyzing probable outcomes.
Nonetheless, funding certain trusts in conjunction with other planning techniques can increase the planning’s effectiveness. An intentionally defective grantor trust (IDGT) is one of the most appealing types of trusts for wealth transfer purposes, because the donor is treated as owner of the trust assets for income tax purposes but not for estate and gift tax purposes. A defective grantor trust is a disregarded entity for tax purposes, so any income that the trust earns is taxable to the grantor. By paying the tax on trust income, the grantor effectively transfers additional wealth to the beneficiary.
Another popular strategy is for a grantor to make a low interest rate loan to a defective grantor trust. The trust then invests the funds. So long as the trust’s portfolio outperforms the interest rate charged on the loan, the excess growth is shifted to the trust with no transfer tax consequence.
One of the common ways to cause a trust to be intentionally defective is for the trust document to allow the grantor to retain the power to substitute assets held by the trust for other assets. Assuming a trust has this provision, it is very powerful to routinely swap highly appreciated assets held by the trust that would not be eligible for a basis step-up with assets of equal value held by the grantor that have little to no appreciation, such as cash.
Rather than funding a credit shelter trust upon the first spouse’s death, a surviving spouse might choose to receive all of the assets outright and then immediately fund an IDGT that includes the power to substitute assets. The trust’s income would be taxed to the surviving spouse, allowing for additional wealth transfer, and the grantor could use the swapping power to minimize the income tax cost of the lost basis adjustment.
Any transfer technique, such as a grantor retained annuity trust (GRAT), that allows a donor to transfer assets without generating a gift is also valuable, since it helps preserve the lifetime exemption amount as long as possible, thus maximizing the assets that can benefit from adjusted basis.
Finally, trusts can be useful for keeping assets out of your estate that never should have been included in it. For example, wealthy individuals should generally purchase life insurance through an irrevocable trust, rather than directly in the insured individual’s name. Life insurance owned by decedents is includible in their taxable estates. By creating a trust funded through annual exclusion gifts and having the trust purchase the policy, you can ensure that the estate tax does not take 40 percent of the policy’s proceeds.
While the term “income in respect of a decedent” (IRD) might be obscure, it’s important to understand it, since it’s one of the worst deals in town. IRD is income that a decedent was entitled to but did not receive prior to death. While unpaid salary and accrued interest are common examples, the biggest risks lie with retirement accounts and annuities.
Retirement accounts, such as 401(k)s and traditional IRAs, are typically funded with pretax money and taxed on the decedent’s estate tax return at their market value on the decedent’s date of death. However, because these are pretax assets, the beneficiary ultimately has to pay tax on the income before receiving it. In a simple example, if a decedent has a $1 million IRA that is being taxed on the estate tax return at 40 percent in 2014, the recipient would also need to pay additional tax on withdrawals from the IRA when he receives it. Assuming no growth in the assets and that the beneficiary is in the top income tax bracket, taxed at a rate of 39.6 percent, the recipient would need to pay $396,000 income tax as a result of the bequest and the estate would pay $400,000 of estate tax. This results in a total tax of $796,000 from the $1 million of assets. Compare this with a taxable account, in which assets would have their cost basis adjusted to the fair market value on the date of death, so the recipient typically needn’t pay much, if any, income tax to access the assets. Therefore, the tax would only be $400,000 – about half of the amount applied to the IRA.
The additional tax is a bit overstated in the example above, because the estate tax paid on the IRD can be an itemized deduction that is not subject to the 2 percent floor. Nonetheless, it illustrates the point that it is better to minimize IRD and the resulting double taxation if possible.
It may make sense to take distributions from your own pretax accounts in certain situations, because paying the income tax during your life allows you to reduce your ultimate estate tax exposure. Converting traditional retirement accounts to Roth accounts can also help maximize the value of your estate. Most people will want to avoid annuities too, not only because of their typically high fees, but because they are treated as IRD and do not receive a basis adjustment upon the owner’s death.
The right play for your estate plan has become even more specific to your situation: where you live, how you invest, your life expectancy, your goals and priorities, and your future life plans. With no one-size-fits-all answer, it’s important to run financial projections to understand both the income and transfer tax consequences of your choices, so you can determine the best moves for your situation. Make sure you have someone on your team that can accurately analyze what’s best for your situation and, above all, keep your game plan flexible.
Tax diversification is integral to a well-structured retirement plan. By holding assets in accounts with different tax treatments, such as traditional IRAs, Roth accounts and taxable investments, you can balance current and future tax benefits and gain flexibility to deal with unexpected circumstances.
Many investors look down on taxable investment accounts because of the taxes they must pay each year on interest and dividends, as well as any gains resulting from sales. However, such accounts do offer several benefits. First, they are incredibly flexible. There is no restriction on the types of investments you can make on a taxable basis. And while both traditional and Roth-type retirement accounts are subject to annual contribution limits and to penalties for early withdrawal, there is no limit on contributions to a taxable account, and there are no penalties when you need access to the funds before your retirement.
Qualified dividends and capital gains are taxed at favorable rates in taxable accounts (zero for lower-income taxpayers, 15 percent for most taxpayers and 23.8 percent for high-income taxpayers). Also, investments sold at a loss can be used to reduce one’s tax liability. Since you can generally control when you sell an investment, you can control when you pay much of the tax liability that such accounts generate. The government again favors taxable investments upon the owner’s death. At that time, the cost basis is adjusted to the fair market value, and no capital gains tax is due if the estate immediately sells the holdings.
At first glance, tax-deferred retirement accounts, such as traditional 401(k)s, traditional IRAs and similar plans, may seem to be the most appealing savings options because, by reducing your current tax bills, they give you the biggest upfront benefit. Since none of the income is taxable until withdrawals are made, you may be able to save more overall as the benefits continue to compound.
Regrettably, savers can wind up paying for this upfront tax benefit later in life. Distributions from tax-deferred accounts are treated as ordinary income, even if the growth in the account was generated from investments that would have been taxed at lower capital gains rates in a taxable account. So you would effectively split any profits in tax deferred accounts with the government. If an account grows by 10 percent per year and your tax rate stays the same, the eventual tax liability grows by that same 10 percent. In addition, the Internal Revenue Service generally requires retirees to begin taking certain minimum distributions from tax-deferred accounts at age 70 1/2, which can force you to generate taxable income at inopportune times. Furthermore, investments in a tax-deferred account do not receive a basis adjustment when the account holder dies. Beneficiaries will need to pay income tax when they withdraw assets from these accounts.
Tax-free or Roth accounts can be hard to beat. Although there is no immediate tax deduction for contributions to these accounts, all of the profits go to the investor. The government receives its share at the outset, then current account income and qualified distributions are never taxable. As a result, $1 million in a Roth account is worth significantly more than $1 million in a tax-deferred account, because the balance in a Roth account can be spent during retirement without having to pay any taxes. Another benefit of Roth IRAs in particular is that the IRS does not require distributions from them the way it does from traditional retirement accounts (though such distributions are required from Roth 401(k)s).
Of course, there are drawbacks to tax-free accounts, too. For one, funding a Roth account is more difficult. It takes $15,385 of pre-tax earnings to contribute $10,000 to a Roth account, assuming a 35 percent tax rate. In addition, there’s always the possibility that future legislation could decrease or eliminate the benefits of Roth accounts. If, for example, the federal government or individual states lowered tax rates or shifted to a consumption-based tax system, a Roth IRA would have been a poor choice compared with a traditional IRA, since there is no upfront tax benefit.
Some rules of thumb can help you determine which types of retirement accounts to use. First, you should have sufficient safe, easily accessible assets in a taxable account as an emergency fund. Six months of living expenses is a good starting point, but the actual amount varies based on your expenses, the security of your current job and how quickly you could get a new job. Funds that you will need access to before retirement should also be kept in a taxable account.
If an employer matches contributions to a retirement plan, you should, when possible, contribute enough to get the full match. Any employer match will automatically be allocated to a tax-deferred account, but you should determine whether the plan will provide a match even if you contribute to a Roth account.
The common wisdom says that you should contribute to a traditional IRA or 401(k), rather than a Roth IRA or 401(k), if your current tax bracket is higher than the tax bracket you expect to occupy in retirement. If the reverse is true, a Roth IRA is the default choice. Although these guidelines are good starting points, savers are generally best served by keeping some assets in each type of account – which is the idea of tax diversification.
People’s lives and future tax legislation are inherently uncertain. Even if you expect your federal tax bracket to remain the same in retirement, it might go up if tax rates go up overall or if you move to a higher-tax state. There is no way to know exactly what your situation will look like in any given year of your retirement. You should have some assets in each type of account, but the particulars of your circumstances will dictate their relative size. As with other sorts of diversification, there is not a one-size-fits-all plan.
Selecting the best retirement plans for your situation is beyond the scope of this article, but some planning can allow you to funnel much more money into tax-advantaged accounts than you might have otherwise expected.
Some employers offer defined contribution plans with higher limits than a 401(k), and it is very easy for self-employed individuals to set up SEP IRAs. For high-earning small-business owners, it may be worthwhile to set up a defined benefit (pension) plan, which can allow for much higher contributions. Certain employers also offer nonqualified savings accounts that allow you to defer income in excess of the limits for the qualified plans listed here, but they add different risks.
Besides employer-sponsored plans, annuities and life insurance can also offer tax advantages, but most savers should proceed cautiously. Annuities provide tax deferral, but lack the upfront tax benefit that makes other tax-deferred accounts so appealing. Also, distributions from annuities are taxed at ordinary income tax rates, so if your tax rate is expected to remain high through retirement, you effectively allow the government to take a higher share of your profits than would be the case in a taxable account. If your income tax rate is expected to drop substantially in retirement, certain annuities can be effective savings vehicles once you have exhausted your other options. In many cases, the higher costs of life insurance products outweigh their tax benefits.
If you want to funnel more money into a tax-free account, you might consider converting a portion of your tax-deferred retirement accounts to a Roth IRA. You will have to pay tax on the income at the time of the conversion, but if you expect your tax rate to remain the same or increase in the future, it may be profitable to shift some funds to a Roth. Finally, if you plan to use any of your savings to fund education expenses for a child or grandchild, you might consider funding a Section 529 college savings account. The investments in such accounts grow tax-deferred, and any distributions used for qualified education expenses are tax-free.
The order in which you withdraw assets during retirement is just as important as the choice of which accounts to fund. By mindfully selecting which account you withdraw from each year, you can lower what you pay in taxes.
The first assets you spend should typically come from your taxable accounts. However, in a low-income year, when your income tax rate may be lower, it may make sense to pull some funds from a tax-deferred account. In some cases, you can take taxable distributions without generating any tax liability at all. Spending from tax-deferred accounts may also make sense if your taxable accounts have highly appreciated securities that you plan to hold until death. Run tax projections each year to weigh the benefits of withdrawing from a taxable or a tax-deferred account.
Aim to keep assets in your Roth accounts for as long as you can, allowing the investments to continue to grow tax-free while you deplete other assets that generate tax liability.
For most retirees, no two years will look alike. More important, there is no way to know decades in advance what a given person’s tax situation will be throughout retirement. As with any long-term investment plan, it is essential to create a strategy that is flexible and can work even when circumstances change. By taking care to diversify the tax character of your accounts, you build in choices that will allow you to adapt to a variety of financial situations much more easily and, ultimately, to preserve more of your diligently saved retirement funds.
Bonds are available in both taxable and tax-exempt formats and there are tax concepts to consider when a person is investing in bonds. Each type of bond, whether tax-exempt or not, has different tax aspects. Tax-exempt municipal bonds and taxable bonds are discussed, explaining how some of the tax rules work for these investments and their investment yields.
When purchasing tax-exempt municipal bonds at face value or par, there are no instant tax consequences. When the bond is acquired between interest payment dates, the buyer pays the seller interest that has accrued since the last payment date. The interest paid in advance to the seller is treated as the cost of the investment and is treated basically as a return of some the initial investment when the interest is paid.
When tax-exempt municipal bonds are purchased at a premium, the premium is amortized for the duration of the bond term. The effect of this is to decrease the cost of the investment in the bond on a pro rata basis. Thus, holding the bond to maturity means no loss recognized when the bond is paid off.
Normally, tax-exempt municipal bond interest is not added to income for tax purposes (although, the interest may be taxable under alternative minimum tax rules). Also note, municipal bonds usually pay lower interest rates as compared to similar bonds that are taxable.
When comparing taxable investments to tax-free investments, the amount of interest included in income is not the most important issue. What is important is the after-tax yield. For tax-exempt municipal bonds, the after-tax yield is usually equivalent to the pre-tax yield. On the other hand, a taxable bond’s after-tax yield will be based on the amount of interest remaining after deducting the corresponding amount of income tax expense associated with the interest earned on a taxable bond.
The after tax return of a taxable bond depends on a person’s effective tax bracket. In general, tax-free bonds are more appealing to taxpayers in higher brackets; the benefit of not including interest earned in their taxable income is greater. In contrast for taxpayers in lower brackets, the tax benefit is less substantial. Even though municipal bond interest is not taxable, the amount of tax-exempt interest is reported on the return. Tax-free interest is used to calculate the amount social security benefits that are taxable. Tax-free interest also affects the computation of alternative minimum tax and the earned income credit.
· $200,000 filing status Single and Head of Household.
Purchasing municipal bonds in your regular IRA, SEP, or §401(k) is a no-no. These accounts grow tax free and when withdrawals are made, the amount withdrawn is taxable. Thus, if you desire fixed income obligations in a tax advantaged account consider taxable bonds or similar income securities.
Interest on municipal bonds is usually not included in income for regular federal income taxes. Interest earned on certain municipal bonds called “private activity bonds” is included in the calculation of alternative minimum tax (AMT). The AMT is a parallel tax system established to make sure that taxpayers pay a minimum amount of taxes. The intention of creating AMT was to prevent people from getting to many tax breaks, for example tax-free interest. The tax breaks are added back into income and cause some people lose tax breaks and pay taxes.
A percentage of social security benefits are taxable when other income besides social security benefits surpasses certain amounts. For this purpose, the amount of taxable social security benefits adds tax-exempt interest into the amount of other income received besides social security benefits to determine the amount of taxable social security benefits. Consequently, if you receive social security benefits, tax-free interest could increase the amount of tax paid on social security benefits.
When a taxpayer is otherwise qualified to receive the earned income tax credit, the credit is lost completely when the taxpayer has more than $3,400 (2015) of “disqualified income.” Disqualified Income generally is investment income like dividends, interest -income, and tax-exempt income. Thus, having municipal bond interest in excess of $3,400 causes a taxpayer to lose the credit. However, an individual qualified for the earned income tax credit is in a lower tax bracket and an investment in municipal bonds would yield a lower after tax return as compared to taxable bonds.
Selling a bond before maturity or redemption has the same tax consequences as a taxable bond. Gains from sale are taxable. Losses are deducted from other gains; and losses in excess of gains are allowed up to $3,000, the remaining losses are carried over to future years.
Bonds acquired with “market discount”, have special calculations then they are sold. The discount that accrued during the period maybe treated as ordinary income.
Some investors want professionals to manage a diversified portfolio of municipal bonds, to lower the default risk on any particular bond issue. There are certain mutual funds that invest in tax-free municipals and manage them.
We hope this article was helpful. This article is an example for purposes of illustration only and is intended as a general resource, not a recommendation.
Need assistance with above rules? Have any other questions.
As Toronto tax lawyers we deal with CRA audits and auditors on a daily basis. So what is a tax audit? This article will explain what you can expect to happen if you are audited for taxes.
The Canadian income tax system is based on self assessment. In other words it is up to every Canadian taxpayer to fully and properly report their total income from all sources on their annual T1 or T2 income tax return. The Canada Revenue Agency performs tax audits and issues income tax assessments to ensure that the self-assessment income tax system continues to work properly. While most Canadians are truthful on their tax returns, there are some who are not. CRA is looking for errors or disputable positions or deliberate misstatements on tax returns that have been filed.
What is a Tax Audit?
An income tax audit is an examination of a taxpayer’s returns and supporting records to make sure that income and expenses have been properly reported and are supported by accounting records and receipts. The CRA tax auditor will ask to see the individual or corporate books and records and bank account and receipts for expenses. A corporation will normally have to provide its minute book to support any dividends or bonuses. There may be questionnaires to be filled out. Any information that is wrong, even if due to an error, will be used against the taxpayer.
Most audits are done to ensure compliance with the Income Tax Act for income or payroll deductions or under the Excise Tax Act for GST/HST.
CRA auditors will often search for relevant information on the Internet, and a taxpayer’s web site or other sources located on Google might contradict information the taxpayer provides to the auditor. This information will then be used for further enquiries possibly including 3rd party requests for information. Furthermore open social media accounts are publicly accessible, and CRA auditors will gather this data from taxpayer social media accounts to build a case against a taxpayer. CRA officials have publicly discussed using taxpayer’s social media accounts in this way. If taxpayer lifestyle and reported income don’t match up the CRA tax auditor may decide to look into the taxpayer’s situation to see what’s actually going on.
CRA’s practice on income tax audits is to do a GST (and HST) compliance review; if problems are found, the matter is normally forwarded to a GST/HST auditor for a full GST/HST audit. Similarly, an income tax compliance review is often done during GST/HST audits. Combined income tax and GST/HST audits were discontinued in July 2010. These compliance reviews are not always carried out and sometimes income tax audits may miss large GST/HST problems and vice versa.
CRA issues an annual report to Parliament. The latest one was released in January 2016. The audit statistics from CRA Annual Report 2014-2015 provide less detailed information than for the previous year.
For small & medium enterprises no statistics were given. CRA reports that they reviewed 12,981 international and large business files and 9,440 aggressive tax planning files that resulted in identifying $1.4 billion in fiscal impact. For international and large business files CRA audited 6,540 income tax and GST/HST underground economy files and identified over $448 million in fiscal impact. In all cases there were fewer audits in 2014/15 that the previous year. Presumably this reflects the results of budget changes.
Since 2011 CRA has been auditing high net worth individuals and families, sending questionnaires asking for information about all companies, trusts, etc. that they control.
CRA has also been concentrating additional audit resources on the underground economy in an attempt to deter unreported cash sales.
What is the Tax Auditor Looking For?
Section 231.1 of the Income Tax Act gives CRA the statutory ability to carry out audits. In particular it entitles auditors to request and examine documents including computer records. Section 231.2 is a more formal provision whereby a “demand” or “requirement” is issued, but it need not be used by a tax auditor in the normal course where s.231.1 suffices.
The CRA can choose to audit anyone, but case law has held that such discretion does not permit a vexatious audit made for capricious reasons.
The Canada Revenue Agency has an internal policy in CRA Audit Manual §9.12.3 that audits should normally be limited to “one plus one” years that is to say the most recent year for which a return has been filed and assessed, plus one year back, with limited exceptions. This policy can be pointed out to a tax auditor to try to limit the scope of audit requests, but it has no legal effect and cannot be used in court to challenge a tax assessment that has been issued. Of course this rule of one plus one years does not apply in the case where CRA suspects unreported income. They will typically look at three years, and in some cases even more than 3 years.
In theory, the CRA has no discretion in applying the Act and must “follow it absolutely” by issuing a tax assessment for all otaxes wing. The reality is that in practice tax auditors have wide discretion not to assess an amount, however once it is correctly assessed; a Tax Appeals Officer or Tax Court judge will have no power to cancel it on grounds of equity, fairness or compassion.
Our top Toronto tax lawyers fight CRA tax auditors every day. A taxpayer has the right to professional representation at all times. This is specifically provided for in right 15 of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights which says “You can choose a person to represent you and to get advice about your tax and benefit affairs. Once you authorize us to deal with this person, we can discuss your situation with your representative.” A taxpayer should never meet with a CRA auditor without a professional Canadian tax lawyer present. Any information that is wrong, even if due to an error, will be used against the taxpayer. The auditor will also take notes and may misunderstand what the taxpayer has said or may wrongly record responses. An Ontario tax lawyer will have his or her own notes to contradict any auditor errors. Contact our Toronto tax law firm for tax help as soon as a CRA tax auditor contacts you.
Founding lawyer, David Rotfleisch is an expert in the realm of income tax law.You might say that income tax is David’s passion for David is not only a lawyer, he is a chartered professional accountant. He has helped start-up businesses, resident and non-resident business owners and corporations with their tax affairs, and over the years, he has assisted numerous corporations and individuals with simple and complex tax and estate planning matters as well as tax amnesty and tax litigation issues.
We are Toronto based tax lawyers with more than 25 years of experience. We deal with all tax problems of the Canadian citizens and find out the perfect solution for them in a quick,responsive and efficient way. We fight CRA daily. Share your income tax problems with us and sleep at night.
The siren call of boat ownership is easy to understand, here in South Florida. On a hot summer day, or even a crisp winter afternoon, getting out on the water for some sailing, fishing, snorkeling or water skiing can seem like the perfect reason to take the plunge.
Florida, and in particular the Greater Fort Lauderdale area where I live and work, is a major center for the motor yacht and boating industry. In South Florida, about 136,000 people currently work in the industry. According to industry figures for 2014, 19 percent of the over 30,000 boats sold in the U.S. that year were sold in Florida.
If you are ready to invest in a boat of your own, whether a modest fishing boat or a high-end yacht, it is worthwhile to pause and consider the tax implications, wherever you may live. Depending on the ways in which you intend to use your new watercraft, that impact could be minimal, or it could significantly change your overall financial picture.
As with any big-ticket purchase, you should keep sales tax in mind when you are ready to buy your vessel of choice. There is no federal vessel tax, and federal luxury tax was repealed in the 1990s, so Uncle Sam does not take any particular interest in whether or not you choose to buy a boat. The states, however, want their cut. Every state is different, so be sure to take the time to understand any particular quirks in state law before you buy.
In Florida, for instance, boats are subject to the state sales tax rate of 6 percent, in addition to any local taxes. However, as of 2010 Florida has capped this tax, limiting it to the first $300,000 of a boat’s purchase price. Thus, under current law, Florida will not collect more than $18,000 in sales tax on your new vessel. In addition, many Florida counties impose a discretionary sales surtax, which can apply to the first $5,000 of the purchase price. These sales tax caps make buying a high-end boat more attractive in Florida.
The Florida Legislature’s revenue estimating committee projected in 2010 that the tax cap would cost the state as much as $1.4 million in the first year. Instead, tax collections on yacht sales in the state rose more than $13 million in that time. Buyers who previously spent large sums to form offshore companies in order to skirt the state tax found it cheaper and easier to simply pay the Florida tax outright. So before you buy a boat, consider whether you can get a better deal by buying and berthing it in another state.
The cap on boat sales tax was so powerful that other states are competing by passing caps of their own. Recently, Maryland, New Jersey and New York all passed or are considering passing laws to cap the tax on boat sales. Depending on your politics, you may consider this an unnecessary tax break for the wealthy boat-buying class, but based on the increase in tax revenue after Florida’s cap went into effect, you can also see how lowering taxes and state competition can sometimes lead to long-term economic benefits. More boat sales in Florida lead to more employment and growth in marine-related industries in the region.
For whatever sales tax you do pay on your boat purchase, you may be able to realize some benefit when filing your federal income taxes. Assuming you itemize your deductions, you can deduct local sales tax in lieu of claiming state and local income taxes. Especially in states – like Florida – that do not levy a personal income tax, this can represent a significant deduction. The main calculation of the general sales tax deduction is based on your adjusted gross income, but you can add sales tax paid specifically on a car or boat purchase to that amount.
Make sure you also understand how a state’s use tax may impact you. For the typical recreational vessel, use tax will not matter, because sales and use tax are mutually exclusive – if you pay sales tax on a transaction, you cannot also owe use tax. That said, if you plan to use a watercraft primarily in a different state than the one where it was purchased, it is worth taking the time to make sure you understand your home state’s rules and that your documentation is in order so you do not end up a target for overzealous state tax authorities.
You should also educate yourself on state and local taxes related to a watercraft which may apply on an annual or ongoing basis. Certain states and local authorities levy personal property taxes annually on boats docked within their jurisdictions.
On the other hand, some states offer particular tax breaks to boat owners. For example, last year Florida passed a law limiting the sales tax on boat repairs to no more than $60,000, or the first $1 million of repair costs. Like the sales tax cap on boat purchases, the law is intended to allow Florida to maintain its status as a leader in the marine industry. The hope is that the cap on boat repair sales tax will attract and retain repair and refit business for luxury yachts and other high-end boats in the state, thereby increasing revenue and employment, bolstering the local economy. If you own a yacht in a high-tax state, it could make sense to cruise it down to Florida for major repair work to save on taxes. Some states even offer a tax credit on fuel used for recreational boating. Yes, even the boating industry has a strong lobby group to push state legislators for tax breaks.
While it makes sense to think of your vessel in the same way you might think of a car or recreational vehicle, there is another way to characterize it. In some cases, a boat can plausibly serve as a second home, meaning it can offer deductible home loan interest. In order to qualify, the vessel must include cooking, sleeping and toilet facilities; do not try to convince the Internal Revenue Service that you live on your jet ski.
There are a few other caveats. The deduction is on mortgage interest secured by the residence, so the deduction will not affect you if you bought your boat outright or used some personal line of credit, such as a credit card. Also, if you are already deducting interest on a second home, you cannot deduct both it and the boat loan interest in the same year, though you may switch between them from year to year if you wish.
A boat may even be your primary residence. Technically, as long as it meets the bed, bathroom and kitchen (or rather galley) test, you can declare your boat to be your main home. Note that if you use your boat for business, as I’ll discuss in the next section, you must divide your home between the part that is your primary residence and the part that is used to generate income. If your boat is your primary residence and it does not dock in the same port regularly, you may face a tricky tax domicile situation too.
Many boat owners use their boats to earn income, either on the side or as their main business. Depending on your situation, you may decide to use your vessel as a fishing charter, to run scuba or snorkeling tours, or to serve as a private ferry. As with a land-bound venture, you will need to take care to steer clear of the IRS’ hobby-loss rules by proving your genuine intention to make a profit, rather than just cover the costs of your time out on the water.
The benefit of establishing your activities as a genuine business is the ability to write off the boat’s depreciation, maintenance, equipment and fuel costs. You may not want to devote your boat exclusively to chartering; if not, you will need to keep track of the time and costs spent on private and business pursuits. Either way, you should always keep good business records and institute an accounting system to track your business activity.
As with other forms of self-employment, you will be responsible for income taxes and self-employment taxes. Remember that you may be subject to estimated income tax, which is due quarterly. Many boat owners choose to transfer their boat ownership to a limited liability company (LLC) for liability protection, but since this is a pass-through entity for tax purposes, it will not generally make much difference to your personal tax situation. If you are not used to running your own business, it may make sense to consult a tax professional or a Certified Financial Planner™ to make certain you keep up with your personal and business tax responsibilities.
If your boat business involves crossing state lines, you may need to be particularly careful about documenting the way income is sourced. Many people run up against the complications of conducting business in multiple states, and the water adds another complication. However, under a specific federal law (Chapter 46, U.S.C. Sec 11108(b)), working on navigable waters in the jurisdiction of more than one state is not sufficient to subject you to the states’ income tax rules. For example, if you live in Florida but work as a crewman on a vessel that operates in or passes through waterways of other states, only Florida – your state of residency – can impose its income tax laws (or lack thereof, since Florida has no state personal income tax). This law is particularly important for crewmembers on dredging vessels, which may operate in multiple states’ waterways (up the Mississippi river, for instance).
If you intend to find yourself operating in more than one state regularly, it may be best to consult a tax professional at the outset to understand what factors could affect your taxes. Where and how often a vessel docks and how much work is conducted on or connected to land can make a difference.
Some boat owners have no interest in running a small business, but would still like to offset the cost of owning a watercraft. An alternative strategy is to place the boat in charter with a reputable charter company. In such an arrangement, you typically retain ownership of the vessel, while the company assists you in managing what is essentially a rental business. Before you go this route, you will want to perform thorough due diligence and make sure your state’s business laws support such an arrangement, and you should understand your potential liability exposure.
What if your boat is also your office? The rules will be the same as for a home office ashore. The IRS primarily will consider whether you use your boat office exclusively and regularly for business purposes. For a boat-based office, the tricky requirement is usually the exclusive use test, because boats often have multi-purpose rooms. The IRS wants to see that you maintain a separate room or dedicated workspace that you use exclusively for business purposes.
If you are an employee and you use a part of your boat for business purposes, you may qualify for a deduction for its business use, but in addition to the exclusive and regular use tests, the boat office must also be for the convenience of your employer. You also must not rent any part of your boat to your employer and use the rented portion to perform services as an employee for that employer. If the use of the boat office is merely appropriate and helpful, you cannot deduct expenses for the business use of your boat office.
In many geographic regions it is only practical to use boats seasonally; note that an office aboard a vessel qualifies only for deductions during the time of use. IRS rules prohibit deducting office expenses aboard the boat during the period when you are not using the boat office for business purposes, or when the boat is in dry dock or storage.
A boat of your own can serve as a fun way to enjoy time on the water, a secondary or primary source of income, or even an unconventional place to call home. But besides the high costs of buying and maintaining a vessel, don’t overlook the tax considerations when deciding whether to answer the call of the open water.
Are Your Prepared for These Year End Income Tax Issues?
There is a chance that the lame duck Congressional session may act on some tax regulations, but given that these folks work about 1 day a week- and then complain how many lazy folks are out across the US not entering the workforce (that is the pot calling the kettle black)- I am not sanguine they will. So, unless they do- this will be the last year that mortgage insurance will be deductible and foreclosed home debt will not be a taxable situation, among a few other items that expire this calendar year.
Students got a permanent change for deductibility of tuition via the American Opportunity Tax Credit. This provides up to $ 2500 of tax credit for lower-income filers for the first four years of higher education (with a possibility of 40% of the unused credit being received as a refund- if no other taxes are owed). As long as the students are enrolled at least half time for one term of the year and not convicted of drug violations. The real change is that filers must include the EIN of the college or university involved- and demonstrate that they paid the tuition and fees they claim- not what the institutions may list on the 1098-T form.
Folks older than 70.5 years of age no longer have to rush to transfer their IRA (or portions thereof) to charity, because that provision is permanent. (PATH) Please note that the IRS demands that these transfers not be rollovers. One must employ a trustee to transfer the funds; and that trustee cannot hand you the funds to deliver to the charity. If they do, you lose the exemption. No surprises I am sure when I remind you that there must be a contemporaneous acknowledgement (that means a timely receipt) from the charity for that deductible donation or transfer.
To keep this rule in place, executors are now required to stipulate (i.e., file for 8971 and Schedule A of the 706) said value to all heirs and to the IRS. Which means anyone who inherits property- and thought they didn’t need to file Form 706 because the value of the estate was below the threshold for Estate Tax better reconsider. Otherwise, the heirs may be hit with a penalty for using the wrong basis for that inherited asset when they dispose of same.
Oh, yeah. Another really big kicker for this little item. Under IRC 6501, the IRS has three years to catch cheaters who misstate certain items (like income taxes [except for continuing fraud], employment taxes, excise taxes, and for this provision- estate taxes and the results therefrom). No more. If an asset from an estate is misstated so that it can affect more than 25% of the gross income on a tax return will now have a SIX year statute of limitation.
Not surprisingly, the mileage rates for 2016 are lower than they were last year. Business mileage is now deducted as 54 cents a mile; driving for reasons that are medical or moving are only worth 19 cents each. When we drive to help a charity, we only get 14 cents a mile.
As is normally true, we have no clue what those rates will be for 2017. The IRS normally prepares those well into the calendar year.
The PATH ACT made permanent the ability of taxpayers to contribute real property to qualified conservation charities.
The Highway Bill (yup) came up with a bouquet of flowers for our veterans and folks currently serving in the military. No longer will they be unable to contribute or use HSA (Health Savings Accounts) should they receive VA or armed service benefits.
Along that same vein, the Highway Bill enabled all those who purchase- or are provided by their employers- high deductible insurances (about $ 1500 for a single person) to use HSAs, too.
There were more than a few changes for employers. More than the exemption for the VA and armed service personnel from inclusion in Obamacare provisions mentioned above.
Like ALL 1099s and W-2 are now due by 31 January. That’s a big change for many folks who barely get their stuff together to file 1099’s. It means that companies need to contact their tax professionals really early- to let them verify that all relevant contractors and consultants receive those 1099s on time. Because the penalties have also increased.
The Work Opportunity Credit has been extended through 2019. This applies to Veterans (which is why you keep hearing Comcast advertising its commitment to hire some 10,000 veterans over the next few years- they’re no dummies). Other targeted groups include what are termed those receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), SNAP (what used to be termed Food Stamp) recipients, ex-felons, and some of those living in “empowerment zones”.
The PATH ACt made the enhanced child tax credit (up to $ 1000, income dependent) a permanent provision of the code. As well as the Earned Income Tax Credit provisions that were to expire.
Social Security taxes are not going up per se- but the income basis upon which one pays them is. For the last two years, there was a tax holiday for all wage income (or self-employed income) that exceeded $ 118,500. Next year (2017), the taxes will be collected for totals of up to $ 127,200.
If an employee is working overseas and has income and/or a housing allowance, the exclusion provisions have also changed. For 2016, foreign income of $ 101,300 could be excluded from taxation, as could housing benefits that were $ 16,208 or less. Starting 2017, those exclusions become $ 102,100 and $ 16,336, respectively.
There also is further clarification of these foreign exclusions. In particular, these will affect those in the merchant marine or working aboard cruise lines. Because the IRS now holds that when one is in a foreign port, then one is able to claim foreign income. But… when someone operates in international waters, that is NOT a foreign country. That income must be computed (by the number of days one is on said waters) and is not excludable!
Some big changes affect those who must file those FBARs (Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts). It used to be you had to report any holdings in a bank, stock account, commodities or future accounts, mutual funds, or [pay attention to this one] poker, gambling or gaming site account that was not a US domicile by 30 June. (This also means a foreign insurance policy that has a cash value or foreign retirement accounts [including inheritances] is a foreign account.) It also covers recent immigrants to the US! These filings are due at the same time as your income tax return. But, while there never was an extension possible for these forms, now there is – for the same six months that obtains for your personal tax filings.
A foreign account does not mean that using the Royal Bank of Scotland to house funds in New York City; but having a Citicorp account that is based in Jerusalem or London does. The critical consideration is where the local branch is situated, where the account was opened. By the way, accessing foreign funds via PayPal means you have a foreign account.
The FBAR filing uses Form 114 and must be now filed electronically. The requirement to file applies to all taxable entities (individuals and businesses) that have $ 10,000 or more of value on any given day during the tax year. And, the conversion rate for said value is no longer allowed to be daily- but determined by the value on the last day of the tax year.
There is a new interpretation, too. The requirement to file applies not just to the account owner(s), but to anyone with signature authority. So, that means people like me that maintain client accounts overseas will now have to file these forms, because I can issue checks on those accounts. (I am not responsible for about 100 of them where I write the checks for the clients- but have no signature authority.) It also means employees of corporations or businesses or estates that have foreign funds and have signature authority must also file Form 114.
All business entities (and trusts and non-profits) should recognize that all entities – and individuals who work for or at those entities- that have signature authority for a foreign bank account, stock account, gaming or gambling account are subject to these provisions. In other words, all foreign money holdings may subject employees, not just officers of the institutions, to these provisions.
The PATH Act changed the 179 (the capital purchases write-off provisions) Election. For good. The maximum Section 179 write-off is now permanent. (It had been extended for a year or two each time Congress had made a change for a while.) That maximum is also to be adjusted for inflation starting this year, which is why it is now $ 510,000. Moreover, there is a phaseout when the amount of new capitalized property exceeds $ 2.03 million, but not to zero.
For real estate purchases, the maximum Section 179 exclusion is now also $ 500K. (Last year, it was capped at $ 250K.) This includes HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), which is a new change. Any recapture of this credit (due to an early sale) is now considered subject to ordinary income taxes.
The time to depreciate real estate is now 15 years for qualified leasehold improvements, restaurants, and retail improvements. Bonus depreciation is also allowed for the first half of said improvement value (through 2017), decreasing in 2018 to only 40%, 30% in 2019 and removed completely by 2020. The PATH Act also let bonus depreciation apply to 39 year property (for improvements that were already in service by the entity).
The depreciation limits for vehicles is limited to $ 3160 or 20% of the basis in 2016. However, this year one can write off up to $ 8000 in bonus deprecation (which is reduced to $ 6400 in 2018, $ 4800 in 2019 and then removed forever by 2020) for new (not used) automobiles. Of course, these numbers apply only to vehicles that are used completely for business. There is a reduction for vehicle use that is not fully attributed to business usage.
The Bipartisan Budget Act (the one that taxes would normally be addressed) has brought a sea change to the way partnerships will be treated, should the IRS find problems with their tax submissions. The changes do not take effect for a few years- but the time to address the changes is really now.
Basically, the Act stipulates that any change that comes about by an audit are to be collected directly from the partnership- unless the partnership elects out of TEFRA (Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982). So, it means that partnership formation, operations, new partner admissions, etc. will all have to be reconsidered.
What changed is this- the partnership can decide to accept an IRS decision that the underpayment is due from the partnership itself or it can elect to have that decision divided up among the partners, according to their percentage ownership or liability percentage. Most advisors are telling partnerships to elect the latter process. If the partnership does not so choose, then the IRS will assess the partnership at the highest tax rate allowed- 39.6%. Of course, if the partnership can prove (to the satisfaction of the IRS) that a lower rate is appropriate, based upon the individual tax rates of the partners, then a lower rate may be allowed. (Don’t bank on the IRS doing so.) However, this underpayment will not be allowed to change the basis of each of the partner’s interests, if the partnership is taxes for the liability.
If the partnership pushes the issues down to the partner level, then each partner is assessed for the tax at its own rate. And, the partnership can issue an adjusted (amended) K-1 for the IRS revisions that will change the basis and avoid the double taxation possibility. The partnership has 45 days from the date of the IRS notice of change to make this election.
There is another change that affects partnerships- the PAL (passive active loss) issue. Why? Because most partners and partnerships do not maintain pristine time records. (This also affects real estate rentals that are reported on Schedule E, page 1.) There are various definitions that set the PAL issues- for real estate professionals it is a minimum of 750 hours of work a year. The IRS has allowed other partnerships to use different designations, such as 500 hours, or the fact that a particular partner does all the work (even if less than 500 hours), or even when a partner spends 100 hours or more on the partnership and no one else does more.
But, the rules to prove how much participation are gelling. One can use a record of cell phone call records, eMails, or credit card charges. Travel itineraries and receipts can prove how much participation was involved. Even affidavits from customers and clients can be used to prove the time one participated in the venture.
Many clients fall short of having sufficient funds to pay their taxes when due. This entails the taxpayer submitting a form 9465 (Installment Agreement Request). These must be automatically approved if the taxpayer [individual] owes (or will owe) the IRS $ 50,000 or less, with the addition of this request- and all tax forms have been timely submitted. (Businesses are limited to a $ 25,000 maximum, with the same provisos.) However, the fees involved to have the IRS process the request have been increased to $ 120, unless the taxpayer agrees to have the IRS zap their bank account automatically each month. Then, the fees are reduced to $ 52. (The IRS has way too many taxpayers “forgetting” to make timely payments. This is a way to incur fewer manpower issues for the service.) However, no matter how the payment is to be processed by the IRS, all low-income taxpayers (a family of 4, with $60K or less in income) won’t have to pay more than $ 43 to institute a payment plan.
There has been no change in the due date for 1040 filing, in that it is still due on 15 April (or the next business day, should the 15th fall on a weekend or legal holiday). Unless you can prove you were out of the country on 15 April- then you have the right to extend the filing date to 15 June. Or, you filed an extension request- that gives you until 15 October (with the same proviso for when it falls on a weekend or legal holiday).
Here’s where the big changes arrive. And, it is about time. Because too many pass-through entities have been screwing over their partners, their stockholders by delaying their filing. Oh, sure, they may pay a penalty, but that doesn’t help the multitudes who can’t file their taxes in a timely fashion due to the lassitude of these entities.
There is one more change for C corporations. Their extension is no longer 6 months long- but 5 months. In other words, before when they had to file by 15 March, but could extend the due date until 15 September… still have that same final extended due date, regardless that the original filing date is now 15 April.
Partnerships and S entities still have a 6 month extension- which also falls (for those who use a natural year) on 15 September.
Trusts and Estates of the Deceased file form 1041. The only extension request provided 5 months beyond the due date. Now, the due date is 5.5 months. That means the due date for filing is 15 April, but an extension means the due date can be 30 September.
Non-Profit entities file form 990 on 15 May- or the 15th day of the 5th month after the end of their fiscal year. Extensions used to be provided for 3 months; they now have more time- six month extensions are the new rules.
Employee Benefit Plans (Pension Plans, 401(k), welfare plans) must file their tax returns with the IRS by the last day of the 7th month after their year end. (For natural year plans, that means 31 July). Before the plans could extend that deadline by 2.5 months; now the rule provides for an additional month to 3.5 months.
There are more penalties, too. These were included in the Trade Package Legislation. The act included late filing of 1099 forms, W-2s, and 1095 (Health Care Reporting). You will note that the deadlines for some of these forms have been moved up- so pay attention and file them on time. Because the penalties can be $ 1060 for each delinquent 1099 form- because you have intentionally filed late to the government AND to the payee!
Of course, if you file the 1099 only 30 days late, the penalty is $ 50 (again- for each – the payee and the government). If you get your act together by 1 August, the penalty is $ 100 (again, for each). And, if you miss that date, the penalty is $ 250 each- unless the IRS feels it was intentional (and you know that number is $ 530).
There you have the big changes for the year. Now, you should be ready to file your taxes comes the 1rst of the year. But, don’t expect really fast refunds (as one would have expected before). Because the IRS is going to be checking to make sure the taxpayer is legit- they don’t want all those identity theft and tax fraud situations to obtain.
Increasing Tax Planning: A Case of a Wolf in a Sheep Skin?
The effects of tax avoidance and tax planning on the society has been a controversial issue for a long time yet governments the world over still have difficulty addressing it. It is believed that all these started from the beginning when business agreements were written by the government or associates of government to favour their family, friends or associates that are in business. Unfortunately, tax planning schemes are a legally accepted business practices for which tax professionals are paid huge sums of money to offer tax planning advisory services for both personal and corporate decision making.
According to Investopedia, tax planning is the analysis of a financial situation or plan from a tax perspective. It is an exercise undertaken to minimize tax liability through the best use of all available resources, deductions, exclusions, exemptions, etc. to reduce income and/or capital gains (businessdirectory.com). Tax planning therefore encompasses many different considerations, including the timing of income, purchases and other expenditures, the selection of investments and type of retirement plans etc. However, tax fraud or evasion unlike tax avoidance is not tax planning scheme and hence considered illegal in the tax professional.
Firms, both domestic and international employ numerous tax planning strategies to reduce their tax burden. An exhaustive review is impossible because known strategies are numerous and many strategies are likely unknown to tax analysts. Some forms of tax planning include (a) reclassifying business income as non-business income (b) using transfer pricing to shift income from high tax to low tax jurisdictions (c) employing passive investment companies (d) exploiting tax credits, exemptions and/or concessions in Tax Laws (e) treaty shopping (f) use of hybrids etc.
“Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs so as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere can’t”.
Indeed, tax planning has invariably become an integral part of a financial plan, as reducing tax liability and maximizing eligibility to contribute to retirement plans are both crucial for business success as it has gained prominence in today’s business planning strategies, all because Tax Laws have different provisions relating to entities based on location, type of activity or time period, thus invariably, every difference offers a planning opportunity to a taxpayer.
Then the question that arises is, does tax planning comes with any benefits?
(a) Offers the opportunity to lower the amount of taxable income i.e. where a taxpayer’s financial and tax planning strategies are targeted at structuring expenditures to fit into the category of allowable expenses.
(b) Serves as a catalyst to reduce the tax rate at which you are taxed i.e. siting business operations at locations or business to take advantage of the little or no tax rate prevailing in that jurisdictions e.g. tax havens.
(c) It ensures you get all the credits available to you i.e. taking advantage of the tax credits, exemptions and/or concessions available in a tax jurisdiction e.g. the stability agreement provision for a holder of a mining lease in Ghana.
(d) It allows a cashflow forecast to be more effective while minimizing tax liability. A company looking to embark on massive capital or productive investment or re-investment will plan financial transactions with taxes in mind so to avoid making impulsive maneuvers. With a resultant good cashflow, entities positioned to embark on more capital and productive investments. Effective tax and financial planning maximize shareholders’ wealth, and improves cashflow for capital and productive re-investment among others.
(e) For the government, the granting of tax reliefs, exemptions and/or concessions is targeted at increasing private sector productivity, create employment and attract investors and improve cross-border trading.
Considering these benefits, won’t you recommend for more tax planning practices? Just consider these.
Governments efforts to improve national economy has always been limited due to inadequate tax revenue, which forms a larger percentage of government revenue. This could be attributed to the several tax planning schemes as well as tax evasions. In 2005, the average tax revenue to GDP ratio in the developed countries was approximately 35%. In the developing countries, it was equal to 15% and in the poorest of these countries, the group of low income countries tax revenue was just 12% of GDP and tax planning via tax avoidance are widely believed to be important factors limiting revenue mobilization.
The ActionAid and Tax Justice Network-Africa (TJN-A) in its West African Giveaway report published in August 2005 indicated that West African countries are losing an estimated US$9.6 billion of revenue each year by granting tax incentives to foreign companies and that three countries – Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal – are losing an estimated $5.8 billion a year through the granting of corporate tax incentives with Ghana’s portion being around $2.27.
Tax planning approaches like tax avoidance affect the extent to which the government can provide basic need of the population i.e. it results in inadequate supply of basic amenities such as poor infrastructure, poor educational and health systems, inadequate water and power supply as well as poor road networks. This could be one of the reasons why deficit budget financing has become the order of the day in most developing countries.
Income inequality is another adverse effect resulting from increasing tax planning. Taxation has an objective to redistribute income but the accumulation of wealth through tax avoidance schemes for instance has further widened the gap between the low-income earners and the high-income earners.
During an international conference jointly organised by OXFAM International and the International Tax Justice Network, Africa in Accra in February 2014 for instance, the Deputy Campaign Manager of OXFAM, Mr. Stephen Hale, indicated among other things that many developing countries faced challenges in their efforts at mobilizing domestic resources due to factors such as regressive tax regimes, wide range of corporate tax incentives etc.
But the question remains that, if the major source of revenue to every government is tax revenue whiles government revenue and capital expenditures are highly dependent on these tax revenue, can we then conclude that Governments efforts to reduce budget deficits and over reliance on development partners to finance national budget is a dead on arrival discussion, as most of the tax revenue loss is attributable to tax planning schemes such as tax avoidance, tax incentives and poor tax education and awareness?
Probably tax planning is not that beneficial to government as we are made to believe but instead a wolf in a sheep skin which is gradually ripping off government of billions of dollars in tax revenue to meet its huge public expenditures and to make reasonable economic policy. But who is to be blamed, the taxpayer, the government or both? I leave you to judge!
Tax planning has indeed come to stay, however, I suggest that (a) accountability on the part of governments and effective use of tax revenue will instill faith in the government thereby encouraging payment of taxes, (b) anti-avoidance provision should be of general application or refer to specific tax havens or tax avoidance devices (c) the concept of ethical and responsible investing should not be limited to companies products/services but also to their impact on society as well as (d) unification of tax rates and (e)The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations which are famous in their models for international taxation should consider paying more attention to the increasing domestic and international tax planning schemes.
Desmond is a Consultant at Danisa Consult (Accounting, Audit & Tax) and a Facilitator for accounting, tax and audit at Global Institute of Resource Development (GiRD), a Capacity Development and Training Institution. A member of the Institute of Chartered Accountant, Ghana; Chartered Institute of Taxation, Ghana; Association of International Accountants, UK; International Association of Accounting Professionals, UK; Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, US; Southern African Institute of Business Accountants, SA.
One tax reform issue that requires addressing is the amount of revenue that needs to be raised by the federal tax system. When there is a disproportion between revenue and spending, debts and federal deficits will increase and reach unsustainable limits. Policy makers need to assess tax policies and come up with ways of alleviating fiscal pressures. Implement a flat tax on income at a rate of 18% for all Americans. Having a flat tax for all Americans will ensure that all citizens are taxed equally and there is no bias. However, a rate of 18% is too high for the citizens taking into account the citizens have different incomes. Implementing this policy will not be beneficial to the government, as it would benefit high-income earners only.
The working class in America pays too much in taxes compared to cooperation’s and millionaires. Most big and profitable corporations pay little on taxes as compared to the middle class citizens. If corporations and the rich pay their fair share, the nation will afford to cut taxes for most of its middle and common citizens. This can also be boosted by cutting on wasteful spending on weapons, military and war. On the contrary, taxing more on high-income earners will result to the government having more money to waste. It also acts as a deterrent for business and individuals to make money. This might lead to a reduction in investment by investors. In the past, high taxation slowed down the economy and resulted in stagnation. Cutting taxes on businesses promoted the revenue. However, increasing taxes led to a reduction in business spending and investments as they tried to cut their tax expenditure resulting to a decrease in revenue for the government.
There is an unbalanced proportion of Individual wealth in the US. Aggressive steps needs to be taken for a restoration of fair income distribution. The middle class and the poor pay a lot in terms of federal tax which is due to the unfairness of state taxes. System wide tax reform should be implemented to simplify the tax system. A tax policy should be implemented to eliminate loopholes. Democrats hold the idea that taxes should be increased for the upper class and reduced for the middle class. The tax code and system needs an overhaul. The United States needs a code that creates wealth for people and rewards work and not a code, which generates wealth for those who have it. 200000 dollars should be set at the income level where Americans should be taxed more heavily. This will pave way for cutting taxes for the rest of the citizens. Increasing taxes for wealthy Americans will lead to a 98% cut in taxes where most families will be able to meet their daily economic challenges.
A proposal by the house GOP blueprint proposed that the corporate income tax should be replaced with a Destination Based Cash Flow Tax (DBCFT). This would help the cooperate income tax and the US worldwide tax system eliminate the distortions it caused. The worldwide system will be replaced with a territorial tax system where companies will be taxed based on their locations of profits and not according to their corporate residence. Companies in the US that earn profits overseas would not be taxed again on their profits when they are brought back to the United States. This tax system would also allow a free flow of capital back to the US by eliminating the lock out effect. This would encourage companies to expand and invest operations throughout the world.
The plan is to cut taxes at all income levels, but the taxpayers earning high incomes will receive the biggest cuts. The average tax bill will then be cut by 1810 dollars, which would increase the income by 2.5% after tax. The top 1% taxpayers would then benefit by 3/4 of the tax cuts while highest taxpayers would see a decrease in 16.9% tax cut after tax income. The middle class households will receive an estimated 0.5% tax cut after tax income while the poorest American would see a downfall in their tax cut 0.4% after tax income. The plan would see a reduction of 33% by the top individual tax income rate, 20% by the corporate, and 25% for partnership and sole proprietorship. This would reduce the child tax credit and standard deductions.
A cash flow consumption tax would replace the corporate income tax, which would apply for all businesses whereby interests in business would not be deductible and investments would be immediately deducted. This would result in a border adjustable cash flow tax with exclusion of exports receipts and imports purchased would not be deducted. This marginal tax rate cuts would reduce tax rates on new investments, incentives on US investments would be increased, and tax distortions would be reduced on allocation of capital. However, interest rates would increase in the event of increasing government borrowing and lead to a crowd out on private investment. This would offset the positive effects of the plans on private investment. In order to counteract the ramification of the tax cuts on the deficit the federal spending needs to be reduced.
National consumption tax (VAT). This is a levy on the difference between the purchase of goods and its sales. Generally, the tax is calculated on a business according to its sales, a credit for taxes that is paid on its purchase is subtracted and the difference is forwarded to the government. The incomes of multinational corporations that are resident in the United States should also be taxed. Discretionary and mandatory spending should also be reduced which will lead to a reduction in deficits and debts. Lowering federal spending on healthcare and reducing revenues below baseline amounts would offset deficit reduction. This would lead to an increase in domestic investment, national saving and the capital stock would be increased.
The majority of taxpayers in EU countries use tax professionals in some shape or form, and for this obvious reason the EU tax administration recognises that they play a very important role in their tax system. As well as helping to make the system run smoothly, they play a key role in influencing and shaping the tax compliance behaviour of their clients. This influence may be positive or negative, because of their professional knowledge of our tax system and its nuances.
Through their representative bodies, tax professionals also have an important role in developing our tax system. They are influential in forming public opinion and general attitudes as to the fairness and equity of the tax system and our administration thereof.
Because of their influential role and the unique position they have in influencing taxpayer behaviour, we recognise that they are one of the primary ingredients in our pursuit of our main corporate goal: “To ensure that everyone complies with their tax and customs responsibilities”.
We therefore spend a lot of time engaging with them using a combination of methods and through many different forums in our efforts to achieve improved taxpayer compliance.
WHAT CAN BE TAX STRATEGY ?
Our strategy in relation to dealing with tax professionals can be laid out in our recent Operational Strategic Programme 2007-2010. Because of the fact that the phrase “tax professional” encompasses persons with a variety of roles and responsibilities, the tax administration must prepare a response to ensure that strategy works.
I would like to give you some background on how the building relationships and partnerships strategy will come about. The relationship between taxpayers and tax administration, I must confirm that is very much an adversarial one characterised by mutual distrust and suspicion. Tax administration recognises that albanian tax professionals have a key role and that is why we have developed sophisticated consultative mechanisms to help administration engage with this wide community.
Let me give you some relevant facts about the Albanian tax system.
Our tax system is concerned with direct and indirect taxes, customs and duties. Albania has taxes on incomes, as well as taxes on goods and services.
Businesses (limited companies and individuals) pay tax on a self-assessment basis. There are approximately 49,000 self employed individuals and 13,000 limited companies on our register.
The General Taxation Directorate is the sole central tax authority in the Republic of Albania. The General Directorate of Taxes (HQ) and its Branch Offices in the districts possess authority to implement and administer taxes. The General Directorate of Taxes is located in Tirana. The General Taxation Directorate establishes its Local Tax Offices in 36 districts and since 1998 is established in Tirana the Large Taxpayer Office. Local Tax Office Heads are appointed and discharged by the General Director of Taxes. The Local Tax Offices provide taxpayers with tax certificates, prepare draft program of tax revenues for the district, supervise and are accountable for accomplishment of the tax revenues and the program, process tax declarations, assess tax liabilities, preserve and organise documents, audit taxpayers and collect taxes as well as implement special executive decisions.
General Taxation Directorate has recently undergone a major organisational restructuring. Essentially, this agency has rebuilt the organisation around different groups of taxpayers. These groups consist of taxpayers in each of four geographic regions and a national large taxpayer group. Apart from collection and debt management functions which remain centralised every other small taxpayer is managed from 2007 from tax offices of local power, as effect of fiscal decentralization in Albania.
WHO AND WHAT ARE ALBANIAN TAX PROFESSIONALS ?
In aLBANIA, a wide range of tax professionals such as accountants, lawyers, tax consultants, businesses and freight forwarders acting on behalf of their clients, the taxpayers, interacting with tax offices. These tax professionals perform a wide variety of functions.
The variety of professionals providing a great deal of tax advice or engaging in compliance activities is generated on the activities of such professionals. For example, accountants, advising on business transactions and internal audit; lawyers such as solicitors and barristers advising on business transactions, conveyancing, estate administration and litigation; auctioneers and real estate agents advising on capital transactions, and customs agents advising on customs matters. Each of these activities in its own right involves some form of tax advice and each professional can be regarded as a “tax professional”, each of which, play a very important part in ensuring that our tax administration and systems work.
Traditionally most VAT businesses and a little number of self-employed persons, i.e., businesses, professions, companies and their directors, use the accountant as tax professional, or “agent”, to engage with tax officials. This high level of representation, even for small business, is because we don’t operate an imputed income system. All businesses have to prepare business accounts on an “accruals” basis, and this generally requires the services of an accountant.
In Ireland we refer to our mainstream tax professionals as “tax practitioners” or “agents” and there are approximately 2,000 such “agents” registered in tax offices when they act as tax return preparers. As a result of this high level of agent representation, taxpayers in Albania tend not to be inhibited about challenging tax administration, and engage in more sophisticated business transactions and use tax professionals to this end.
Another reason for taxpayer challenges is the recent phenomenon of taxation departments being created in legal firms. Also, many corporations are employing lawyers who specialise in mainstream taxation matters and now lawyers are not just engaged in the traditional legal bastions of capital taxation and inheritance tax matters. Primarily, as a result of our Tax Investigation Department a dedicated part of tax administration which pursues the proceeds of crime, our barrister profession, who traditionally did not advocate in taxation matters, are now representing more and more taxpayers in tax matters in the civil and criminal courts.
This increasing competition from the legal profession has raised some issues as regards a level playing field between the different professions. Accountants see the prospect that lawyers might be able to claim legal professional privilege on behalf of clients against Revenue enquiries in certain circumstances as an unfair competitive advantage.
One of the obvious benefits for tax administration from the engagements with tax professionals is the extent to which they can get them to influence good compliance behaviour. As already mentioned, tax offices regard tax professionals as being hugely influential in terms of promoting good compliance behaviour; indeed, because they may be the only point of contact that a taxpayer has in his/her interactions with tax administration.
However, it is important that tax professionals also see it as in their interest to do so. Not alone does ‘non-compliance’ cost money in lost taxes for tax administration, but it also puts the taxpayer, the client, at serious risk of severe consequences if caught. Being able to deal with taxpayers through their agents substantially reduces the cost of tax administration. Think of what life would be like for a tax administration if there were no tax professionals. Some people who work for tax administrations might say that life would be much easier without them. Yes, there might not be so much tax planning, or challenges to taxation, and taxpayers might be more willing to accept tax administration’s view. This might make life easier for the tax officials. But given the complexity of tax system for enyone that it’s no part of tax administration, despite all the efforts at simplification, think of what the disadvantages might be?
Instead of funnelling the interaction with businesses and corporations through 2,000 tax professionals, it would be necessary to interact directly with an additional 49,000 business and over 13,000 corporate taxpayers. This would have huge cost implications for tax administration, as more employees would be needed to service the substantial additional contacts and queries that would ensue.
It would also be immeasurably harder for tax administration to ensure that all taxpayers understood their obligations and this would adversely affect voluntary compliance.
For these reasons, tax structures try to make it as easy as possible for tax professionals to meet their client’s compliance obligations and we provide a variety of support services and measures to support and achieving client’s compliance.
Tax professionals have a big interest in customer service efforts and are rightly critical when the tax services falls below standard. After all, the tax professional is in business to make a profit. Poor service on the tax offices costs money and the taxpayer does not always understand either.
Here are some examples of how tax administration can support and try to try to make life as easy as possible for tax professionals.
In the albanian tax structure, all taxes pertaining to a taxpayer are handled by one office. Prior to that, a taxpayer (or tax professional) could have to deal with a number of offices depending on the tax.
This tax structure makes it much easier for the tax professional to deal with their client’s compliance obligations. However there are problems following the reallocation of all our taxpayer cases in the restructuring period. For some time, tax professionals are unsure which office dealt with their clients. As a result of good contacts with the various professional bodies and in a spirit of openness and co-operation, which is part of taxation strategy of building partnerships, is the possibility for tax officials to engage proactively and positively with a view to implementing practical measures to remedy difficulties.
There are special contact points in each of the regions for tax professionals who are experiencing service difficulties in dealing with tax administration. These contact persons are empowered to sort out the difficulty.
There is a tool known as ‘Contact Locator’ ,that in albania is not a function used, but in EU countries he can be used to find out which office deals with a taxpayer.
By exploiting technology opportunities as much as possible such as electronic e-filing service, tax structures are able to provide better service while at the same time reducing compliance and their administrative costs. This makes it easier and cheaper for tax professionals to file and pay.
Through mechanisms such as tax procedures and Tax Audit Practice Guidelines and other papers and circulars that help the conduct of tax strutures in confront of taxpayers and tax proffesionals.
While, everyone recognises that albanian tax administration has responsibility for the tax system and makes the final decisions, we know that we can do things more effectively, if there is a spirit of cooperation and mutual understanding with tax professionals.
Both tax structures and tax professionals have a mutual self-interest in bringing common sense and clarity to what is a complex area of business and personal life of taxpayers. The consultation is very important – our strategy is that we listen, we exchange views and ideas, and we generate ideas. On the other hand it is important to get the professional’s practical business perspectives and learn from their experiences. Sometimes a more informative practical viewpoint, e.g. learning practical insights and difficulties in operating legislation, is a more valuable insight than discussions about proposals or the difficulties in implementation of current legislation in an internal vacuum.
As well as the invaluable role, played by practitioners in promoting and fostering a pro-compliance culture in Albania, they have also been a significant catalyst and facilitator of some of the major changes in tax administration here.
All of the changes have occurred while resources have remained static. With the support (and sometimes the forbearance) of tax professionals, tax administration has managed to transform itself from an organisation that was focused on process and procedure, structurally frozen, averse to change and largely indifferent to its customers’ needs to one which is trying now to customer focused, more effective in its core businesses, structurally flexible, risk driven and looking forward with enthusiasm to the challenges ahead.
The near future tax declaration-on-line filing service in Albania, it’s aspected to be a phenomenal success. In industrialised countries of EU, even though e-filing is not mandatory, over 53% of self employed taxpayers filed on-line last year, in order to be increased to over 60%. This is because so many of the returns are filed by tax professionals who have been active partners in our e-filing success. As a result, there have been huge benefits for both Revenue and practitioners in terms of service and cost. Tax professionals have been the most enthusiastic supporters of our on-line filing system and we are continuing to work closely with them in developing it to ensure that it continues to meet their needs and concerns re service, security and confidentiality.
It would be wrong to give the impression that tax structures accept everything that the tax professional engages in. One of the main areas of contention is ‘avoidance’ or aggressive tax planning. While professionals have a key role to play in relation to promoting compliance, there are problems sometimes when tax planning steps over the line. Of course tax offices understands the motive for tax planning. Naturally, all taxpayers want to pay less tax and if there are ways of avoiding tax, and some are willing to pay a lot of money for it. The problem is when such schemes have the potential to undermine the integrity and legitimacy of the tax system in the wider community.
There is an ongoing debate with tax professionals as to where that line is – what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable. The tax administration’s objective is to move tax professionals and their clients away from getting involved in unacceptable tax planning schemes. On the other hand, albanian tax administration are closely monitoring new developments in other countries to establish the best approach to take to change behaviour in this regard.
The tax administration approach to tackling risk, in tax structures, is to analyse risks for a taxpayer across all taxes. This makes it more difficult for the general tax professional who may act in relation to some of the taxes only. It may present particular problems when preparing for a revenue audit when the full range of taxes and duties, from income tax to excise duties, could be reviewed.
It’s not just tax administration that tax professionals have to deal with. They have to contend with more and more statutory reporting requirements from other bodies such as the Prosecutor, money laundering department, Customs, and many other public agencies regarding company law offences, to illustrate just a few regulatory bodies. The whole compliance environment is becoming more difficult for the practitioner and this is not being made easier by duplication of requirements from the various public bodies. However, we are working with other agencies to try and streamline matters where possible.
In the last four years, tax investigation units have carried out a number of large investigation projects aimed at dealing with tax evaded on funds hidden by way of various means, such as money laundering in the registered businesses, under reporting or missing declarations of incomes etc .
As mentioned earlier, there is a new investigation scheme underway into undeclared funds hidden. Because of the numbers of taxpayers involved, approximately 1, 000 over the last 2 years, tax professionals are complaining about the strain that all this extra work is placing on them which is in addition to their normal advisory and returns preparation work. The timing and management of some of these special investigations has been a bone of contention with them and this has caused some difficulties in their relationship with tax administration.
Tax professionals sometimes ask hard questions which tax officials may not have asked themselves and, which tax administration has to answer. This ultimately is of benefit to tax administration as it focuses them on dealing with and addressing difficult issues, which may have been overlooked.
As key stakeholders they want tax professionals to have a sense of ownership in the tax system. This partnership approach with them also helps to counter relationships of distrust and enables tax administration to create real relationships. To this end, the good relationship with tax professionals can help in building public confidence in the tax administration. In terms of our objectives, we have benefited from our approach with them. However, tax officials should not get carried away. While they have a long engagement, the marriage has been more one of convenience than of love for each other. Paying tax will never be popular and there will no doubt be serious difficulties ahead. This relationship overall is on a sound footing and capable of withstanding whatever troubles lie ahead. In this conclusion I can pronounce the sentence that I’m carrying in my mind always “Tax administration need tax professionals and they need tax administration”.
One of my favorite movies is The Matrix. The reason why I like it so much is because it is actually based on truth (like a lot of fiction movies are). While doing research on the things of this world, I have come to realize that a lot of things that we have been told, and things that we believe to be true, are not.
Microwaved food is safe for human consumption.
There is a law requiring citizens to have a social security number.
Fluoride is good for your teeth.
Michael Moore exposed the REAL truth behind 9/11.
The cost of living goes up every year.
Vaccines are effective, necessary and safe!
High cholesterol causes strokes and heart disease.
The house you live in is a good investment.
The Federal Reserve Bank is federal and has reserves.
There are no known cures for HIV/Aids.
Now, all of the above statements are “known” facts. But if you would do your own research…. Wait, let me state that again. IF YOU WERE TO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, you would find that not only are the above statements false, but in most cases, they are the complete opposite of the truth.
Now, I don’t have time to go through all this, so right now I will focus on the tax controversy.
There are two basic types of tax. There is indirect tax and direct tax. The term indirect is in reference to a person’s labor. For example, gas tax, tobacco tax or sales taxes are all indirect taxes. Social security, Medicare and Federal income taxes are direct taxes on your labor. Generally speaking indirect taxes are avoidable, whereas direct taxes are not.
By the way, if you are a federal employee, you are considered by the government to be privileged as opposed to a private sector worker. Since your income is derived from gains (tax of citizens), it is constitutional to lay tax on your wages. That is “considered” an indirect tax.
Congress on the other hand has the right to tax gains or profits. Examples would be dividends, royalties, alimony, pensions and things of that nature.
So doesn’t this mean that the Federal Income tax that we pay nowadays is unconstitutional? No it doesn’t!!! Let’s start at the beginning.
In 1862, America was in the midst of a civil war. Abe Lincoln thought that this would be a quick and painless war, but it turned out to be long and bloody. President Lincoln had left the gold standard and started printing money (greenbacks) out of thin air to finance northern government. This caused inflation in the dollar supply. So on July 1st 1862, they passed the Internal Revenue Act of 1862 (which was a revision of an earlier flat rate income tax passed in 1861) to combat inflation and finance the war.
This was the first income tax and it was put on the pay of government workers and it was withheld. Luxury taxes (remember the monopoly board?) were imposed on a long list of commodities, including alcohol, tobacco, jewelry, yachts, playing cards etc. The act taxed licenses (on almost all professions) and also gains and profits (receipts from corporations, interest and dividends) as well as stamp tax and inheritance tax.
This Act established that income is ‘gains’ or ‘profits’. This is the reason why only government workers paid it. If income meant anybody’s wages that had a job, then obviously everyone would have been taxed, and of course, that would have been unconstitutional. A person’s labor is his own personal property and cannot be taxed.
In 1894 Congress enacted another federal income tax. This tax would allow for not only salaries but ANY OTHER compensation that was paid to anyone who was in the privileged sector. The Supreme Court declared that this was unconstitutional because if you tax gains from personal property, then that is just like taxing the property itself, and is therefore a direct tax.
But this created a loophole. Someone who had otherwise “taxable income” could attempt to get out of paying taxes by assigning that income to his/her personal property which would take it out of the category of indirect and make it a direct tax. To make a long story short, this is what led to the 16th amendment.
So, did this amendment authorize everyone to be taxed, or did it just close the loophole? If you notice, it doesn’t say that congress has the power to lay and collect direct taxes. So in order for this amendment to be compliant with Article 1, section 9 of the constitution, it would seem that it could only mean the same indirect tax that it had always meant. What did the Supreme Court have to say about it?
“The 16th Amendment does not extend the power of taxation to new or excepted subjects, but merely removes the occasion for apportioning taxes on income among the states. Neither can the tax be sustained as a tax on the person, measured by income. Such a tax would be by nature a capitation rather than an excise.” PECK v. LOWE, 247 U.S. 165(1918).
“The 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged.” STANTON v. BALTIC MINING CO., 240 U.S. 103 (1916).
“The 16th Amendment must be construed in connection with the taxing clauses of the original Constitution and the effect attributed to them before the amendment was adopted.” EISNER v. MACOMBER, 252 U.S. 189 (1920).
So, it looks like the fact that it is said that international bankers (J.P. Morgan, Paul Warburg, and John D. Rockefeller) bribed Secretary of State Philander Knox into fraudulently declaring that the 16th amendment had been properly ratified when it had not, really didn’t matter. Even after the 16th amendment, only a small percentage of Americans paid “income” tax.
So why are we ALL paying it today?
This was a direct tax on everyone’s labor and would have been unconstitutional if it was enforced, so it had to be voluntary (even though they didn’t tell the public about the voluntary part). Now the IRS says the 16th amendment authorizes them to tax everyone’s labor. But since the sixteenth amendment was already signed, it would appear that this Victory Tax would have been unnecessary. Maybe the government didn’t realize this at that time. There had to be a way that they could get everyone to pay this voluntary tax so the wicked ones unleashed one of their greatest weapons (Hollywood) to do what it was made to do, program the minds of the people!
Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury at the time, ordered John J. Sullivan, a Treasury Department official, to contact none other than Walt Disney! Walt flew in to D.C. to have a meeting with Morgenthau and Internal Revenue Commissioner Guy Helvering. Morgenthau told Walt that the U.S. wanted him to help sell people on paying the income tax. Walt wondered why this was even needed. Couldn’t you just throw people in jail if there was a law saying you must pay? Mr. Helvering told Walt that he wanted people to be enthusiastic about paying taxes.
So Walt went back to California and put a short movie together called “The New Spirit”. The objective was to make people feel it was their “patriotic” duty to pay the income tax. It starred Donald Duck (Walt’s biggest star at the time). Along with this movie, “Inflation” and “Spirit of 43” all played instrumental roles in the tax propaganda.
Donald cashes his paycheck and is unsure how to best spend his money. Two aspects of his personality materialize: ‘Thrift’ and ‘Spendthrift’. Thrift tells Donald he should save to pay his taxes, but spendthrift tells Donald that it is his money and he should spend it how he pleases. In the end, Donald realizes that it is his duty to serve his country and pay taxes.
According to tax historian John Witte, “In 1939, about 15% of the people paid income tax. That’s all, period. At the end of the war, we had 80% of our families paying income tax.” Just entertainment huh?
In 1944, the Victory Tax was repealed by section 6 of the Income Tax Act of 1944 after it had been renewed. But, for some strange and unknown reason, Congress decided to keep it on the down low. Because most people didn’t know about it, they just kept paying taxes.
So I guess we are all here today, still paying the Victory Tax voluntarily. Tell me, do you feel victorious?
The IRS would like you to believe that everyone must pay tax. They would like you to believe that the 16th amendment gives them that right and that the law is the IRS code. But according to the Supreme Court, the code is not the law, it is just the regulation and assessment of the law. The law is the Constitution.
Maybe this is why the 16th amendment does matter. Because the 16th amendment’s language is what enables the general public to believe they have to pay. Maybe the wicked ones knew this when it was declared ratified. It seems that this bribe would be a good investment. Without this amendment, very few of us would believe we have to pay tax today.
According to the Supreme Court, when you fill out your W-4, you are voluntarily entering into an agreement with the federal government, and claiming that the money you receive is taxable “income”. And since you sign this under penalty of perjury, you are also voluntarily waving your 5th amendment right! You just don’t realize it.
So when the IRS, comes and knocks your door down, seizes your property and throws you in jail, don’t say that it is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court says it’s not unconstitutional, for you told them that you worked for the government and that you made “income”. Since the lower courts are not in compliance with the Supreme Court, the judges don’t care about Supreme Court rulings, and since the government has already stated that they don’t have to show a law that requires citizens to pay tax, your complaints could very well go unanswered.
Is this the dirty little secret that the IRS doesn’t want you to know? Is this why the IRS chooses to audit certain people when they know millions don’t pay and they could just go after them?
I am not an accountant or a lawyer! This article is not intended to incite you to take any action. THIS ARTICLE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY! Do your own research, and make an informed decision. | 2019-04-23T16:41:47Z | http://pinkthe.info/ |
We’re going to be talking about the art of listening. Go-getters, if you want to be a great consultant, listening is your secret weapon. I’m excited that we’re going to get a chance to connect with Kit Pang. He’s the Founder of BostonSpeaks. He’s a communications expert. He calls himself a people whisperer. He’s also a keynote speaker as well as a TEDx speaker. We’ll be talking to him, deep diving on a number of different techniques that you can use to enhance your listening skills as well as hear a little bit about his journey. We’re super excited to have Kit on the show and let’s get started. Kit, how are you doing? Welcome to the show.
Christie, thank you so much for having me on. I’m excited. Let’s do it.
I would love for you to introduce yourself to the go-getters of the show.
I’m the owner of three cats. That’s what the audience should know. I’m having all these cat issues. I’m not sure if your audience ever heard of the guy named Cesar Millan. He’s known as The Dog Whisperer. He has a TV show. He takes a bad dog and at the end of the show, he turns the bad dog into a good dog. We all know it’s a TV show, but it’s a skill that he has that he knows what to do with these animals. Even if the bad dog goes back to the owner that day, that bad dog can turn bad again. This person knows what he is doing with the animal to relate to the animal and make that animal change.
I had all these cat issues. They can never be in the same room, so I had to call a cat consultant myself. What about people? There’s no such thing as a people whisperer. It’s the same exact thing they are doing with animals, but there’s no such thing as a people whisperer. If you understand it, it’s still mammals at the same time. Do you know how to listen to people’s body language? Do you know how to listen to their tone of voice? Do you know how to listen to their emotions? Basically, that’s what I do for a living. I help people understand people a little bit more. They can be like people whisperers and that’s a little bit of what I do.
It would be great if we can take a step back and you could maybe share a little bit about yourself. How did you get started in terms of the work you do with BostonSpeaks and being that people whisperer?
In the more official pitch, I’m the Founder of BostonSpeaks. It is a leading professional development company in Boston. We help individuals improve their communication skills from public speaking to executive presence, mainly focusing on professional development. I used to be a hip-hop street performer. I used to break dance. I used to dance hip-hop. I used to be a choreographer for several years. I loved it, but my passion for dance was going down. When it was going down, at the back of my mind I was saying, “How are people getting booked and paid to speak? I wanted to do something like that.” When my passion was dying down, I wanted to investigate this public speaking thing. I would find a room and then I would do something called BIS, put butts in seats. I would teach a communication or public speaking skill. I would do around four to five workshops a month.
When I first started in 2016, I probably taught more than 150 workshops. I would find a space, put butts in seats. I had to learn along the way of something called CTS, convert to sales. You can be a great artist. You can be a great entrepreneur. That’s why they call artists starving artists. If you don’t know how to market or sell yourself, then you can’t make it in the business game. I always wanted to become a better communicator myself. I’m not sure if you have ever seen those people when they speak, they sound eloquent. It seems everything flows from their body language, their presence to the way they speak. I always wanted to become someone like that. I’m still on a mission to becoming an exceptional communicator. I’m telling everyone, I’m sharing everything that I’m learning with people along the way so they can be the best leaders, influencers and impact makers that they can be. That’s how I basically got my starts of what I’m doing.
You gave me two new acronyms. As a consultant, I thought I knew a lot of different acronyms, but you taught me two. It shows that I’m also still on my journey as well. Thank you for the butts in seats and convert to sales. You have a background in hip-hop dancing and that you loved that. Over time you lost that passion. What are some commonalities between the passions that first ignited you into hip-hop dancing? How that same type of passion translated to the work you’re doing in terms of the workshops and helping people with their communication skills? Have you seen any key themes in that?
There’s a key theme in everything that we do. Even the things that you love to do or the things that your audience loves to do. When you are in the zone of what you do, you feel like you are yourself. You’re obsessed with that topic. You fall into a zone. It could even be a conversation with a good friend or a stranger and sometimes time fly by. You don’t know why, but it’s like five hours went by because you guys were synced together. Whether you’re dancing, whether you’re on a podcast, whether you’re an artist, you dive down into this topic or this thing that you’re doing and you feel you’re in the zone. That’s the way I feel. I used to be scared of public speaking, but in college I went into this public speaking competition. I practiced day in and day out for a week until 2:00 AM. When I got on stage, I felt I was able to close my eyes and put my arms out because I practiced so much the words were coming out. I felt that I was able to share who I am on stage. That’s what the link is. No matter if I was dancing or I’m teaching about communication skills, I can feel like I’m offering my best to the people. That’s the best feeling that anyone can get. When you can be yourself and you can share your creativity, you can share your thoughts. That’s the link that’s powerful.
Art Of Listening: If you don’t know how to market or sell yourself, then you can’t make it in the business game.
When I first started my career, it was primarily methodologies and all those business technical things that they taught me. I always loved consulting. Over the years as I tried to delve deeper into why I love consulting as much as I do, it’s because I feel I can be creative in my problem-solving. It feels it’s an endless opportunity to create and help build new things, new ideas, and new solutions. You’re right in that anything we do, even if at the surface it may come off as one way to people. If you have a true passion, it’s because you can unleash your creativity into it. That’s what creates that passion.
Your passion might be consulting now. It might change later. It changes, it develops and then you have to follow your passion. Sometimes it’s hard to stick to one thing. You have to let something drive you, so you can still stay passionate about it.
What would be one of the guidance advice when you see how you made that transition? That was a significant reinvention to go from hip-hop dancing to then becoming a public speaking consultant and professional. What advice would you give to individuals that they’re seeking their passion? I had been having a lot of conversations with people that are yearning for that but they feel lost, they feel stuck. They’re trying to figure out what is that for them. What advice would you give them?
They asked Warren Buffett when he decides to choose new CEOs or hire new people, they said, “How do you find these great people that work for you?” He always asked this one question to his potential hires. He asked them, “What are you obsessed about with what we do or what you do?” That’s my number one tip. I’m going to ask your audience, “What are you obsessed with?” When you are obsessed with something, you go into more than learning about it. It becomes a lifestyle for you. If I was a dancer, I made it as a dancer because it was a lifestyle for me. If you want to investigate and if you want to dive into a new field, it won’t be a job for you unless it’s a lifestyle for you because a lifestyle is something that you’re passionate about.
The tip is what are you obsessed about? If your obsession becomes big, it will become a lifestyle. My number two tip is I’m going to ask you and your audience this. We can go right through it. Ask yourself why at least five times. If you are in the middle of a career transition or maybe you love what you do right now, I’m going to say, “Why do you want to make a career move? Why do you love the thing you do now?” Try this with me. Why do you like what you do?
I like what I do because I feel I can make an impact.
Here’s the thing, it’s up to you to see the next question. You can use what or why. Why is it important that you make this impact?
It’s important for me because I didn’t have the resources that I do now. I feel it’s my way of giving back because I want people to get the help and support that they need, that I didn’t get when I was younger in my career.
Are you saying that you feel it’s crucial for you to give back because you felt like you didn’t get that support when you were growing up?
Earlier in my career, I didn’t get it. Now that I have this knowledge, I want to be the change I wish to see in the world. That was what started me being a mentor and helping others.
It’s always asking why because sometimes these are the most important things. We go from meeting to meeting or sometimes we’re walking or we’re running. We forget the reason why we’re doing it in the first place. This reason why people will get attracted to you because if you told this other person, if you have clients, you might not even tell them. If you do tell them, they might get a bigger sense. You’re doing it because you want to be a change agent. You want to make this impact because it affected you and your own personal life in a way. People can feel that and that’s what they want to see, not because you want to do it for money. It’s this bigger reason that they’ll get attracted to you. Those are two tips.
As you were talking through your tips, you’ve mentioned about you speaking for a living and people seeing you speak. I’m going to pivot and discuss our topic, which would still relate to that around listening. I feel there are a lot of resources on speaking and communication, but there’s not as much emphasis on the art of listening. As consultants, that’s your secret weapon to success is your ability to listen to what’s said and also listen to what’s not said and to listen three-dimensionally. You did a TEDx Talk on listening. To kick off this conversation, maybe you can talk about why you chose listening as your TED Talk and share with us what are some of the ways that you viewed listening and use it as a success for your career.
I told you a little bit about when I went from a hip-hop dancer to a speaker. I was doing all these workshops. I did learn that TED Talk along the way. I was doing workshops in the evening time and lunchtime, sometimes in the morning. One day my wife came up to me and she said, “Kit, I want a divorce. You’re not listening to me.” I was a listening guy, a communication guy. My wife came up to me and said that. Imagine how I felt. I’m teaching communication skills and my life at home was going down the drain. I knew that she felt lonely. I was saying to her all of the time, “I’m going to stop doing all my nighttime events so I can spend more time with you.” My actions weren’t matching what I was saying. The issue was I was not able to listen to myself and to her because I was going from meeting to meeting.
Art Of Listening: The first step to knowing how to listen is you have to know how to listen to yourself.
How often in the day do you ask people, “How are you doing? How’s it going?” How often do you ask yourself that question? How am I doing? Would you hire a fitness instructor if that fitness instructor was not fit? Probably not. The first step to knowing how to listen is you have to know how to listen to yourself. Many people think about listening skills or how can I be a better listener to other people? If you don’t know how to listen to yourself, how can you even teach others how to listen? If you can’t be fit yourself, how can you teach other people how to be fit? If you can’t cook yourself, how can you teach anyone how to cook? There’s one thing my wife said to me that sparked my mind. She said, “Kit, would you rather spend time with people that you barely know at networking events than spend time with someone who loves you at home?” That turned my life around 360. What do you think about listening?
It’s the key to being able to have meaningful conversations, but also to read people better.
What does that mean to you, read people?
To me read people because what I’ve found in my interactions is I feel when I speak with people, sometimes what people say and what they do are two different things. For me, I listen but I also watch. I put the two together to interpret what is happening. I also listen to what’s not said. For me, that’s important. I’m an introvert and for me, that comes more naturally to do those things. I’ve learned over the years and it’s become even more increasingly important in my day-to-day.
Listening, you do that more than anything else, talking, writing, speaking and reading. What you said exactly was that’s why I opened the dog whisperer and the cat whisperer. That’s what they do. They have to know how to read the other animal’s body language, what they are saying without talking to us. If people were people whisperers, there won’t be any issues in the world if we all knew how to listen to each other. There’s this one great speaker and he said, “People don’t care about how much you know until they know about how much you care.” Oftentimes, we jump in and we give advice. We constructed a whole paragraph and we want to speak before the other person has even finished talking. In 2000, they did the human attention span study. How many seconds do you think in 2000 are our human attention span?
It’s less than five seconds.
In 2000, it was around twelve seconds and thirteen seconds. They did the study again in 2012. What do you think it was it came up to?
I would say five seconds again.
It was eight. A goldfish they say have an attention span of nine seconds. That means we can talk to a goldfish longer than you can talk to a human being. This opens up a good discussion about listening and why it’s important. The fact that we talked about now is many people don’t know how to read or listen to the other person’s body language or how they’re feeling. Many people don’t even know how to listen to themselves because we’re in such a fast-paced community. What do you think is the most honest part of your body?
It matters but FBI agents and scientists have been studying this. They say it’s your feet along with your legs are the most honest part of your body. For example, have you ever had a chat with someone and one of their feet is facing the door? That probably means he or she wants to go. Why does this matter with listening? One is also paying attention to the body language, but we’re not going to look down at people’s feet all the time. If you want to trick yourself into becoming a better listener, the best thing that you can do is tell yourself, “I’m going to turn my feet to the person that’s talking.” If you do, you’re literally making the decision because action creates emotion first. Action creates more motivation. You are deciding to give your time and attention to someone else.
If you’re talking to someone and you can see the whole body is turning towards you, first, you know that person wants to listen to you. Second, where’s your attention when someone is talking to you? Is it on your smartphone or is it on them or is it on a computer? This is little, but it’s the little things that add up that matters. For example, if you brush your teeth every single day, would you notice a difference on that day? Probably not. If you do pushups even 100 now, will you notice a difference now? Probably not. If you do 100 pushups a week, you’ll notice a difference. If you brush your teeth every single day, nothing will happen to your teeth. It’s the same thing with listening skills. Can you do it and get better at it over time? Not just listening to others but to yourself. That can also go into emotional intelligence and everything that we do, so a little tip on listening.
In the TED Talk you did on listening, you talked about empathetic listening. It was called true listening was the other one. Share with the readers what you meant by the different ways of listening.
There are three. The first one is listening to the actions, listening to the words that the other person is using like listening to the facts. The second one is empathetic listening. The first one is called active listening. You’re actively listening to what’s out there, the words that they are using. The second one is empathetic listening. You’re listening to how they’re feeling. For example, one of my good friend’s grandfather said, “When someone talks to you for the first time and tells you a story, listen to them.” What if that person comes back again and tells you that exact same story, same character, the same thing, what should you do now? You have to listen to them with more intent. What if the person comes back again and tells you the same exact story, same sentence, same story, what should you do now? You have to listen to them even with more focus and more intent. It’s because every single time they tell you, they tell you with different emotions.
Art Of Listening: Listening to a person is not just about the words that they’re using, but it’s the feeling that they’re sharing.
It’s not the words that they’re using, but it’s the feeling that they’re sharing. They might be happy and they want to share that happy story with you or maybe they’re frustrated and want to share something with you. That’s empathetic listening. Are you listening to them with how they are sharing? Do you know what they feel? Usually, in one day we go through around 400 emotions. Let me think about it when you go through emotions. We get on a call, you feel one way. You leave this call, you feel another way. We go through 400 emotions like that. Do you know how to pick up the cues of what people are saying?
The third level is something called true listening. When you are talking with a good friend or a stranger, sometimes you guys sync up and that’s when your brain syncs up. I ask people this, “How do you know when there’s good public speaking? It’s when the speaker is able to sync up their brainwaves with the audience so everyone is in sync.” It’s the same thing with listening. When you are both listening to each other, you are syncing at the same level. You are reacting on the same level. That’s why you go into the zone because it’s very similar with the way you move your body, with the way you guys are thinking. If you guys are talking at the same pace, maybe you are both quiet, maybe you are both super happy. You are synced up. That’s what is true listening because it’s magical moments where it might be you and your audience. Even them watching you perform, it syncs up. You and your conversational partner, you’re magically connected. That’s a big explanation.
I like how you said being in the zone. Are there any techniques that you’ve seen people use to get into the zone of any of the three listening you mentioned? Anything you can share?
This is an exercise that I usually do with people. I ask them to face each other and have a partner, Partner A and Partner B. Partner A is the leader. Partner B is the follower. They have to mirror each other. The leader moves whatever body part and Person B has to follow. This is what usually happens. Sometimes Partner A goes fast, Partner B can’t catch up. If you’re moving a hand and then you move another hand and then you move your body. It’s like you’re going too fast. Whose fault is it? It’s Person A because Person A has to tune in to Person B because he or she is going too fast.
Usually, in real life, Person A does not know how to tune in to Person B. How can you get into the zone? I ask them one more time switch. I say this to them, “Person A nor Person B is the leader,” but they have to be moving at the same time with the same body movements in sync, without a leader and without a follower. That means they both have to pay attention to each other. They have to keep eye contact. It’s like a sixth sense thing. No one is leading. No one is following, but they get into the same rhythmic movements. They usually look at each other. They can’t predict it, but they move the same body parts on the next move. That’s one way to get into the zone. You have to pay attention to the other person.
When we look at anything else with regards to listening, do you have any stories? I’d love to hear if you have any interesting or funny stories about people that listen that you were surprised or that maybe didn’t listen and something happened.
It’s funny because people usually don’t listen every single day. There could be a story every single second. It’s not a story, but sometimes I’m speaking so much. I’ve learned that the way you speak might impress people, but the people that matter in your life care about how well you listen.
If people want to get ahold of you or learn more about BostonSpeaks, can you share how they can reach out to you online?
I’m not going to say online. I dare them to send me a text at 857-753-8211 and say, “Hi.” I’m not going to give them anything else.
You’re my first interview that’s giving your phone number. This show is read across the world, so FYI start getting random text messages from different places.
I dare them to. No one usually does it.
Go-getters, you heard the challenge that Kit put out there. I’m going to put the #KitPangChallenge for this episode. I cannot wait to hear some of the stories that are going to unfold as a result of this. This is such a great conversation. I don’t know if you have any last thoughts or parting remarks for the go-getters.
I have to say, know to listen to yourself. That’s the first step if you want to become a better listener. If you can’t take care of yourself, it’s hard to take care of others. Take care of yourself first. It’s like you’re going on an airplane, there’s a disaster, put the mask on yourself first.
Thank you so much for making time to connect with us, Kit.
Thank you, go-getters, for reading.
Kit Pang is a Communication Expert, Professional Speaker and the Founder of BostonSpeaks, one of Boston’s leading professional development organizations providing training in communication and public speaking. | 2019-04-24T00:36:27Z | https://www.mecemuse.com/2018/06/15/the-art-of-listening-and-why-it-matters-with-kit-pang/ |
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Summary:Full day to visit the highlights of Guangzhou City.
Summary:3.5 hours cycling through Yangshuo's most idyllic part. Immerse yourself in the pleasant scenery and keep far away city hustles and bustles.
Summary:Soak yourself in your private hot spring pool in Yulin Tangquan Spa Resort. Relax yourself with other recreation facilities in the hotel.
Summary:Li River, one of China's most famous scenic areas, was listed as one of the world’s top ten watery wonders by America National Geographic Magazine.
Summary:Hiking on the essence of Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai, enjoy the magnificence of the Great Wall.
Summary:Full day tour to explore the classic Shanghai by visiting the Shanghai Museum, Jade Buddha Temple, Old Town, Bund, Yu Garden and Nanjing Road.
Summary:Zhujiajiao water village which has a history of more than 900 years, still retains the style and pattern of its ancient village.You will feel the simple and original beauty of Zhujiajiao.
Summary:Car transfer to Tongli which is characterized by stone bridges and well preserved ancient architecture including private gardens, temples and houses.
Summary:Half day Beijing city tour to the Temple of Heaven, where the Ming and Qing Dynasty emperors perform ceremonial rites.
Summary:Full day tour to explore Zhouzhuang, Town Temple, Chen Garden. Lunch is included.
Summary:Explore Shanghai's rich history in depth on this full day tour.
Summary:Full day tour to Longsheng Minority Area including family visit and Minority dance show and lunch.
Summary:Shanghai excursion tour to Suzhou by high speed train. You will enjoy day tour to the beautiful Garden City which is called the Venice of East.
Summary:Day tour to visit the City Wall, Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Shaanxi Provincial Museum.
Summary:Half day to explore the Mutianyu Section, enjoy the beautiful scenery of the Great Wall.
Summary:Explore one of the Wonders of the World - Great Wall. It is the greatness of ancient Chinese architecture and also the symbol of the Chinese nation.
Summary:Enjoy the relaxing massage tour in Beijing!
Summary:Daxu ancient town retains in its antique style from the Ming Dynasty.It also offers many interesting sites to be explored. From ancient temples to stone streets to a historic market, Daxu is a paradise for lovers of history and antiquities.
Summary:See the Giant Panda and Wuyou Temple in one day. Start and end the tour at your hotel in Chengdu.
Summary:Gondola cruise through the beautiful waterways of Zhouzhuang and the great example of a typical Ming Dynasty garden-Suzhou Lion Forest Garden.
Summary:Take a one day visa free tour to enjoy yourself and visit the Tenple of Heaven, Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.
Summary:A good trip to Yunnan to have a surprising tour in Kunming.
Summary:One day classic Beijing city tour to Forbidden City, Summer Palace and cute Pandas.
Summary:Have a one day visa-free tour in Beijing to visit Forbidden City, Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven.
Summary:Chenjiabao Great Wall is one of the most beautiful section of the wild Great Walls around Beijing which is never restored and less tourists.Have the night of your life camping overnight in a watchtower on the Great Wall! Enjoy both the sunrise and sunset from the best seat in the house!
Summary:The diaolou (watchtowers) are fortified multi-storied towers, generally made of reinforced concrete. Diaolou is a special style of Chinese countryside architectures; it combines defence, living together with art. Located mainly in Kaiping County, Guangdong province, Kaiping Diaolou was awarded as a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007.
Summary:Different view in Moganshan will give your cool and enjoyable feelings.
Summary:Take a relaxing one day visa free tour in Beijing to visit Badaling Great Wall, Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.
Summary:Enjoy a half fay tour of Mutianyu Great Wall and amazing scenery without visa troubles in Beijing.
Summary:The mural paintings are considered exquisite and representative of daily life as it was in ancient times. Murals dating from the Sui, Tang, Yuan and Ming Dynasties are all well-preserved.
Summary:Learn about one of China's most popular exports on a trip to the Longjing Tea Plantation and experience the rich culture of Hangzhou on a visit to the bustling Qinghefang Ancient Street.
Summary:Full day tour visit the essence of Xian City. Terracotta Warriors Museum, Huaqing Hot Spring, Great Mosque and Market. Also enjoy the fantastic show in the evening.
Summary:You will explore the old town to see the famous porcelain in China.
Summary:Chengjiang Biota Museum is the most varieties assemblage of Early Cambrian marine fossils known.
Summary:Tian Yi Mu is not for everyone, but it is an adventure for some.Fahai Temple and Tian Yi Mu are unconventional tourist sites, they are well worth a day trip.
Summary:Enjoying your leisure day in picturesque Hangzhou.
Summary:Fantastic day trip to Garden City Suzhou.
Summary:See the entire stone forest and experience the Nationalities Village culture.
Summary:Chengdu Cuisine,One of China's best-loved cuisines, Sichuan food is renowned for its diverse and bold flavors and deliciously mouth-numbing spices.
Summary:Enjoy the beautiful scenery of the great city, Chengde, which has the world's largest imperial garden, the world's largest imperial temples, the world's largest royal hunting grounds etc.
Summary:Take a 2 days break to enjoy the gorgeous Longmen Grottoes and amazing Shanglin Temple and Martial Art in Luoyang and Xian.
Summary:One day tour to visit one of China's five sacred mountains - Huashan. As the old Chinese saying goes, "there is only one path leading up Mt. Huashan since ancient times," so you can imagine how steep it is.
Summary:if you are interested in history or archeology, you can pay a visit to Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian.
Summary:Luoyang will hold the 31st International Peony Festival this year. Take a two day trip to the colorful historical city to enjoy the beautiful flowers and rich history.
Summary:You will have one day excursion to the west part of Xian to visit the Famen Temple and Qianling Tomb.
Summary:Car transfer from Suzhou to Tongli, visit the Tuisi Garden and Jiayin Hall, then moving on to visit Zhouzhuang, visit the Town Temple and Shen Family and Garden. Transfer back to the hotel in Suzhou.
Summary:4 days Hangzhou tour package to see the essence of Hangzhou: West Lake and Lingyin Temple. High quality service and reasonable price.
Summary:Half day city tour with visiting to Longxi Golf Course which is a 18-hole British system golf course.
Summary:Enjoy yourself in Beijing without visa and visit Summer Palace, Forbidden City and Badaling Great Wall.
Summary:Take a two day tour without visa in Beijing to visit the Temple of Heaven, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Badaling Great Wall and Ming Tombs.
Summary:Enjoy one day Guilin Golf Tour at Shanshui Golf Club with visiting to the Fubo Hill and the Reed Flute Cave.
Summary:Take a three-day trip from Chengdu to Emeishan Mountain and Leshan, where the Giant Buddha locates.
Summary:Traditional ceremony of worshipping the God of Land! A Taichi class by Master Han Xinmin, holding of Yang Style Taichi the Living Heritage! Stepping on 1400 years stone bridge!
Summary:An enjoyable private day tour to Hangzhou, take the cruise on West Lake, explore Linyin Temple, Six Harmony Pagoda and a local Tea Farm.
Summary:72 Hours Visa Free Tour would lead you to enjoy the most exciting moment of your life, more organized and truly memorable!
Summary:As UNESCO world heritage, Pingyao is a perfect place for you to understand the life of Ancient Chinese and to experience a real ancient city in Ming and Qing dynasties.
Summary:Have a wondeful one day tour in Beijing without visa, visit Badaling Great Wall and Ming Tombs to enjoy the history and culture of China.
Summary:Have 4 days Torch Festival tour of Ethnic Groups in Dali and Lijiang and fully enjoy the exciting atmosphere and wonder natural beauty!
Summary:Take a 4-day Lhasa Tibet tours to explore the religious appeals, grand Buddhist monasteries, highland scenery, special Tibetan culture and unique things with us!
Summary:Xian is home to many ancient relics,some of the most famous being the Terracotta Warriors and Horses,one of China's most celebrated archeological finds.
Summary:Travel in Beijing with the big coach tour!
Summary:4 days excursion to Lanzhou to visit must-see attractions of Liujiaxia Gorge Reservoir and Binglingsi Thousand Caves for Buddhist grottoes and statues.
Summary:Dongchuan Red Land refers to a large area of red land,Every year from September to December, part of the red land is ploughed for planting, while another part of the red land has already been planted with crops.The whole multi-colored land with the blue sky, white clouds and changing hues create a magnificent view.
Summary:Xian one day golf tour in Yajian International Golf Club with Visit to the City Wall and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.
Summary:Xian weekend trip by train from Beijing. Departing Beijing on Friday evening and back on Monday morning.
Summary:To learn world heritage-Yungang Cave.The peculiar wood-structured-Hanging Monastery on the cliff at the foot of Mt. Hengshan gives a breath-taking view of Chinese architecture.
Summary:Beijing is the capital of China, is known for its cultural and historical remains throughout the world.
Summary:Indulge in the mountain for a weekend trip from Shanghai. Stay your night in mountain top hotel for this fascinating Yellow Mountain - Huangshan tour.
Summary:ZhangJiaJie National Forest Park is the first established National Forest Park in China. It is famous for its large area of quartz sandstone physiognomy. It is of great natural aesthetic value and therefore selected as World Natural Heritage and World Geological Park by UNESCO.
Summary:Harbin International Snow and Ice Festival, winter pleasure for adults and children.
Summary:Explore in Chengdu with an experience of holding the most endangered animal the giant panda.
Summary:Guilin is one of China's most beautiful and culturally significant areas. The world's heritage listed Li River, Elephant Trunk Hill, and the spectacular Reed Flute Cave.
Summary:2 days Chengde tour from Beijing to see the highlights of Chengde. Chengde weekend tour from Beijing.
Summary:Lanzhou is an important city on the Silk Road, Here you can see the grand beauty of the northern cities with their harmonious combination of the ancient and modern.
Summary:Have a pleasant tour with Giant Panda, Face Changing show and Kuanzhai Alleys!
Summary:The Longmen Grottoes were listed as a World Heritage Site and the grand Longmen Grottoes are the must-see for anyone who are interested in Buddhistm and the sculptures.
Summary:Enjoy the visa- free tour in Beijing th caplital city of PRC!
Summary:Visit the Panda Base to see the cute panda, as well as the classic attractions of Sichuan, including Leshan Giant Buddha.
Summary:Wutaishan tour offers you the splendid religious culture, the beauty of rising and falling ridges of mountains,crystalline waters and towering green forests.
Summary:The Yangtze is the largest and longest river in China. A long picture scroll with stunning sceneries along its banks.It will be a good chance to experience the 5-thousand-year's cultural history.
Summary:Fantastic trip to the Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve and Huanglong Park to enjoy the miles of attached lakes with brilliant blue and green colors and accompanying waterfalls.
Summary:Combining your Guilin trip with a Chinese-cooking learning experience in Yangshuo, the most picturesque part of Guilin.
Summary:Start from Chongqing Airport for a 72 hours visa-free tour in picturesque mountain city of Chongqing.
Summary:Have an unforgetable trip on the Menggu Hancheng Grassland and learn more about China in Xanadu.
Summary:Beijing Inner Mongolia weekend tour to have a grasslands and desert tour. Visit Xilamuren Grassland in Hohhot and Kubuqi Desert in Ordos.Romantic night in Mongolian yurt.
Summary:Explore the local culture and special atmosphere of Chengdu city.
Summary:Yellow Mountain(Huangshan)is one of the most beautiful mountain areas in China and a UNESCO World Heritage listed site. Huizhou culture can be experienced in the nearby ancient villages of Xidi and Hongcun.
Summary:Take a 4 days break to enjoy beautiful peony in Luoyang, the gorgeous Longmen Grottoes and the amazing Shanglin Temple and Martial Art.
Summary:Have a unforgettable Visa-Free Tour in Chongqing!
Summary:This China rural tour will take you to enjoy the colorful cultures and unique local life styles of different ethnic groups. This package will be a wonderful experience.
Summary:This tour offers you with dense forests, colorful mountains and snow activities. You can even spend your Chinese new year here!
Summary:4 days Shanghai holiday to see the highlights of Shanghai and the neighboring Suzhou: Nanjing Road, Jade Buddha Temple, Yuyuan Garden.
Summary:3 days Mt. Wutaishan tour to see the essence of the mountain, visit the major temples of Wutaishan Scenic Area.
Summary:The tour show you ethnic custom and less-known lifestyle of the locals and featured handicrafts.The Impression Liu Sanjie show in Yangshuo was so amazing.
Summary:4 Days Package Tour for Giant Panda, Dujiangyan Irrigation System, Face changing Show and Kuanzhai Alleys.
Summary:Enjoy a 4 days round Shanghai-Beijing tour package offered by trustworthy Beijing travel agency. See the most important interest of places in Beijing.
Summary:Stay overnight in Mongolian Yurt for better understanding of Mongolian culture and traditions.
Summary:This tour will focus on Zhangjiajie nature discovery, which will give you a different feeling. Besides the mountains and cliffs, you will explore the caves and lakes in the forest park.
Summary:Get close to the cute pandas in Bifeng Panda Base and taste the classic Sichuan cuisine.
Summary:Short holiday to Qingdao from Beijing with private tour guide and driver. Tour designed for Ching Ming Festival, May Festival, Mid-autumn Festival.
Summary:Combining the best of north central China, This is a great tour for those who would like to see some of China's most famous sights (in Beijing) and also have a chance to get off the beaten track. | 2019-04-25T18:13:51Z | http://www.chinaholidays.com/tours/search.php?get=d9HJJ%2B1GqXCzZVuz8XMSUnkTJ8pQARYyNNKA2IGlUf8KcKd1DPlVsZA3B610wd9mrkbB4 |
Hockey players have feelings, but in this exercise, they better bring the tissues. Through careful research and analysis (jk we just went on whims), RMNB brings you who we think are each team’s very worst player.
Anaheim Ducks: Sometimes a guy never even has a chance to live up to the weight of his contract. That’s the case with Ryan Kesler, who as a reigning 20-goal scorer and fringe Selke candidate, is actually still a productive player. But he’s a diver and kind of a jerk, and at 32-years old he is signed for another SIX years at $6.875 million on the cap. He’s not even worth that now.
Arizona Coyotes: Ah, Mike Smith – the Cam Ward of the West. Smith is a walking outlier – the goaltender who causes GM’s to lurch awake at 3am from a nightmare about the number “.904.” If you call a .915 save percentage about “average” in the NHL, then Mike Smith has been firmly average or below for the last four seasons. Smith’s current save percentage of .926 has made his mediocre goaltending now only the second biggest problem in desert hockey currently (with the Vegas trademark issues being the first). But at 34-years old and signed for almost Holtby money for the next three seasons, Smith’s consistent underperformance is not a good thing for a Coyotes team that would love to eventually compete for something someday.
Boston Bruins: We are going to cheat a bit here, because even though he’s currently playing in the AHL it’s impossible not to give Zac Rinaldo this honor. And it’s not just because he may well be clinically insane – he scored all of one goal in 52 games for the Bruins last year. And managed to get himself suspended from both the NHL and AHL simultaneously. Even $850k is a bad deal for Rinaldo.
Buffalo Sabres: Sadly this is a no-brainer, the worst player on the Sabers is Evander Kane. Yeah, we know – he can be a solid two-way presence on the ice, and the undertones of the criticism he received in Winnipeg were unpleasant, to say the least. He also knocked out Matt Cook in spectacular fashion. But he is one of two Kanes on this list (spoiler alert) to have exhibited unacceptable public behavior, run-ins with the law, and misogynistic tendencies. He’s also hurt all the time and his team is not-so-secretly trying to unload him not so long after trading for him.
Calgary Flames: Remember when a major debate among Caps fans was over whether Troy Brouwer was overpaid at $3.67 million? Well, one decent postseason run later and the 31-year-old forward is making $4.5 million with the Calgary Flames for the next four years. There are a few things about this that bother us. The general consensus by the media was that this was a “good deal,” but Caps fans know better. Brouwer scored a grand total of three goals in thirty-five playoff games with the Caps before potting eight goals in one twenty-game run with the Blues. That said, we’re pretty sure Troy blew through his entire stash of good luck last year. With minus-four percent possession and three five-on-five goals in 31 games, the Flames are quickly going to learn who TFB is.
Carolina Hurricanes: Ah, Cam Ward – the Mike Smith of the East. The Carolina Hurricanes were praised for their strong systems play last year and were a top-ten possession team. They looked poised to take a much-needed step forward, not only for the sake of their fanbase but for the club’s pocketbooks as well. And then they chose to torpedo their own boat, re-signing Cam Ward to two full years at $3.3 million (despite a glut of solid goaltending options on the market). To be fair, Ward hasn’t been that bad this year – his .920 five-on-five save percentage is currently higher than Henrik Lundqvist, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Cory Schneider. But with Ward not having put up above a .915 save percentage since 2011, does anyone think this is going to last?
Chicago Blackhawks: Part two of the evil Kanes goes to the one named Patrick in Chicago. We will never know exactly what happened last summer, but allegations of sexual assault and other bad behavior have followed “Kaner”, and it’s probably not a coincidence. Even without that debacle, he has been arrested for fighting a cab driver and accounts of his party persona are… not good. It’s a shame because he’s undeniably electric on the ice, but some things are more important than sports.
Colorado Avalanche: There’s not much analysis needed here. Rene Bourque was the reason why Nicklas Backstrom missed the majority of the 2011-12 season with a concussion. His reckless, cheap, stupid elbow to Nicklas’ head is the reason why we will never respect him as a hockey player (and why our staff spent 50 man hours on special projects promoting Caps players to punch his face).
Columbus Blue Jackets: The answer can only be one John Tortorella. Are the Blue Jackets actually doing well this year? Yes. Do they currently sit in a playoff spot? Yes. Are they scoring a decent number of goals? Yes. It doesn’t matter. John Tortorella hates Corsi and we hate him.
Dallas Stars: Our pick for Dallas is not one player but rather the two-headed goaltending monstrosity that is inexplicably allowed to live there. The starter combo of Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi is such a fundamentally inept idea that it almost single-handedly undermines every other bit of good work GM Jim Nill has done in Dallas. The only thing crazier than going with that tandem in the first place is that they didn’t blow it up last summer, by any means necessary. Sporting .902 and .894 save percentages so far this year (doesn’t matter who has which), the Stars are like a brand new Ferrari with three wheels and no gas tank. Looks nice from certain angles, won’t even get you out of the driveway. And for the $10.4 million that this self-inflicted goalie monster consumes they could literally afford a Vezina Trophy winner, with more than enough room for a typical backup salary to boot.
Detroit Red Wings: Let’s revisit the halcyon days of the NHL, when a player’s intangibles alone were reason enough to dole out a contract. Enter Steve Ott, the classic fourth-liner who purportedly possesses the mythical skill of grit–the type of player who is too often signed by a desperate, misguided GM. A quick once-over of Ott’s offensive numbers confirms that he isn’t a scoring stalwart–okay, sure–but his possession numbers are dismal. These are good reasons to name him Detroit’s worst player, but that’s not good enough. Ott is notorious for his dangerous transgressions on the ice, and at the ripe old age of 34, he’s not trying to change his style of play. Justin Abdelkader and Niklas Kronwall may be aging and tied to hefty contracts, but they provide some tangible value to the team and aren’t menaces on the ice. Even this little kid gets it.
Edmonton Oilers: This designation is going to the first body parts on our list: Milan Lucic’s fists. Signed to $6 million for six more years there is no doubt that a big part of why Looch was brought to Edmonton was so that he could punch people when they pester Connor McDavid. But there is hockey to be played, and while he’s still a decent player, Lucic wouldn’t seem to be the ideal linemate for a speedy young McDavid. He will certainly be left in the dust as he ticks past 30 and McDavid hits his stride. This old-school protectionist philosophy is on its way out, but the Oilers took the bait and as cap space gets tighter they may well regret it. P.S. – Milan, Karl has something he wanted to tell you.
Florida Panthers: If Dustin Brown were still captain of the LA Kings, he’d have competition for the title of Worst Captain in the NHL. The Panthers named Derek Mackenzie the team’s captain in early October–an unconventional choice, given his age and lack of flashy stats. While Mackenzie may be an excellent locker-room presence, his offensive contributions are minimal and his possession numbers are dreadful. The Panthers are a top-ten possession team this season, but Mackenzie — who has the third-most minutes among forwards on the team — has posted a team-low 42.7 CF% (minus-nine percent relative). He comes fairly cheap at under $1.4 million a season, but he’s signed through 2019–when he’ll be 38. Sorry, Cap.
Los Angeles Kings: We mentioned Dustin Brown above, and he really is the obvious choice for the Kings. The list of reasons why is long. Even team management isn’t fond of him, as they unceremoniously and begrudgingly stripped him of his captaincy. Without a 30 point season in four years and with an outrageous $5.875 million cap hit for eternity, Dustin Brown is a ball and chain dragging down a franchise in a tenuous position. But he’s not our choice for “worst player” on the Kings – that goes to Mike Richards’ cap recapture penalty, the most useless asset on the Kings’ books and a lingering reminder of a contract nullified for shady reasons by their shady GM, Dean Lombardi.
Minnesota Wild: Hot take alert – we are giving this to 31-year old Ryan Suter. It’s really not that he’s a bad player – he is a big guy and a sturdy defenseman who can chip in a moderate amount of offense. But when Sportsnet did an intriguing analysis of the top-20 defensemen in the NHL (based on a wide variety of stats), Suter was nowhere to be found. To be clear, even top-40 or top-50 is pretty good – but then there’s that contract. My god, that contract. Looking at those numbers you can almost see a benefit to the lockout. It’s not that Ryan Suter is a bad player by any means, it’s the knowledge that he’s a $7.54 million AAV time-bomb that will keep ticking until he’s 39-years-old.
Montreal Canadiens: Sometimes a player hits free agency that everyone seems to know is going to be a horrendous overpay. And somehow teams still take the bait. Andrew Shaw fits that bill, with a lone 20 goal season and no seasons over 40 points, even on the high-flying Blackhawks. This glorified third-liner and noted jerk is paid only $600k less than superstar Max Pacioretty and $150k more than Brendan Gallagher for the next six years. Let that sink in.
Nashville Predators: Another likable team that somehow has a lot of options here. Filip Forsberg is a tempting pick, if anything just because hearing that name makes me want to reenact the final scene of the movie Pi. James Neal would also be appropriate, given his long history of flagrant disregard for the safety of other hockey players (partially redeemed by the hilarity of #AskNeil). But those things are petty compared to Mike Ribeiro, who just isn’t a good human being. He seemed pretty lame when he was with the Caps, and one of McPhee’s biggest triumphs was not re-signing him. We won’t even go into what has come out about his off-ice persona since then, but it’s hard to believe this guy is still playing in the NHL.
New Jersey Devils: Four words, one piece of useless bronze: The Martin Brodeur statue.
New York Islanders: Our next worst player might be not only the worst on his team but one of the worst on this list. That distinction goes to Cal Clutterbuck. Part of the now-defunct and always stupid “best fourth line in hockey,” Clutterbuck isn’t bad for a grinder. But he IS a fourth-liner, and with a newly minted contract giving him a cap hit of $3.5 million for the next five years he is beyond overpaid. And from chirping Ovi in the dying days of the Coliseum to maybe-accidental collisions, Clutterbuck is the opposite of a “good character guy” for the Isles’ room. After ditching a freshly-signed PA Parenteau and then signing this disaster of a deal, one has to feel that the Islanders wholly deserve to miss the playoffs as punishment for their insanity.
New York Rangers: The low-hanging fruit… this one is too easy. For such a good team there sure are a lot of potential picks here. You have the colossal postseason disappearing act that is Rick Nash (yes, I know he is trying really hard), the $5.7 million dollars of mediocrity that is Marc Staal, and the bizarre teacher’s pet that is Tanner Glass. But we have to go with the perennial whipping boy, Dan Girardi. To take a step back and be fair for a second: it’s not Girardi’s fault that he gets the ice time he does, and he has given a lot to the Rangers, sacrificing his body and putting in maximum effort. But his anchor-like effects on the team’s numbers (and Ryan McDonough in particular) are impossible to overlook. On second thought, maybe this award should go to Alain Vigneault?
Ottawa Senators: With the ability to send booming slapshots 15 feet wide and 20 rows deep into the stands and for the bargain-bin price of only $7 million AAV, we’ll give this to Dion Phaneuf. The former whipping boy of the Toronto media will soon be the same in Ottawa when the gravity sets in of him making half a million more than Erik Karlsson while dragging down the possession of all his partners.
Philadelphia Flyers: We aren’t going to get tricked into picking Radko Gudas here. Yes, many of his hits are borderline as hell and some even are over the line. Yes, he clearly has very little regard for the safety of those around him (including our precious Burra). But he’s too useful to write off just yet. No, we’ll give this honor jointly to Brayden Schenn (and his very punchable face) for headhunting the Capitals during last year’s playoff series and Andy MacDonald for being a criminally overpaid possession black hole.
Pittsburgh Penguins: We hate their banners, their stupid Twitter account, their fans, their owner, their mascot, and Sidney Crosby. So let’s just say the entire Penguins franchise minus Phil Kessel.
San Jose Sharks: To be honest, I know next to nothing about Tommy Wingels. But the Sharks are a likable team and someone has to get stuck with the “worst player” honors. On paper, Wingels doesn’t look very good: Minimal production, an expensive deal for a depth player, and horrendous possession effects on his teammates. That’ll do. Sorry, Tommy.
Tampa Bay Lighting: The ultimate referendum on “will over skill,” Ryan Callahan was paid $5.8 million dollars to put up 28 points in 73 games last year. The former captain of the Torts-era shot-blocking grind-it-out New York Rangers hasn’t put up better than Mojo level points in his entire career and contributed just two goals in 25 playoff games during their run to the finals in 2015. This year he is one of the worst possession players on the Lightning and has dragged down the numbers of all his main linemates. Well, at least he’s the perfect pick for a Las Vegas expansion club looking for a leader and fan favorite… oh wait, he has a no-move clause and must be protected at the expense of a younger, faster, cheaper, scorier player. Whoops.
Toronto Maple Leafs: With a staggeringly awful minus 10.2 percent relative score-adjusted possession, this designation goes to Matt Hunwick. He plays the fewest minutes at five-on-five of any Leaf’s defenseman – but that still comes in at 14 minutes per game. That’s 14 minutes of Hunwick and all of his linemates getting absolutely caved in. Honorable mention goes to veteran Roman Polak, who is right there with him in the muck. Leafs expert Steve Dangle would be the first to tell you – if Toronto wants to take a big step forward they’ll need to do something about this pairing.
Vancouver Canucks: You guessed it – wrapping up the list in spectacular fashion is Alex Burrows. Overpaid and mediocre, Burrows has a list of incidents that could fill a novel. Biting in the playoffs, feuds with referees, using personal tragedies as fodder for chirping, family insults, punching players from the bench, head shots and blindside hits – this is only a sample.
Washington Capitals: The worst player on the Caps is N/A because this team is flawless.
Winnipeg Jets: The Winnipeg Jets are an up-and-coming team, but for at least one more year they’ll be shelling out $3 million to keep Ondrej Pavelec buried in the minors. It feels kind of harsh to pick on someone who is already on his way out the door in the NHL, but call it one final nod to the guy who the Jets franchise has been riding through all the lows… and well, lows, since 2007 (!!!).
Our criteria explained: Basically there were no rules. Maybe this player was an 800-ton nautical anchor dragging everyone’s stats into the abyss and funneling pucks into their own net. Or maybe they’re just a jerk. Maybe they’re both. We did not pick on fourth liners and plugs (unless they really deserved it) because that’s too easy and a little cruel. Everyone else was fair game. | 2019-04-20T10:18:57Z | https://russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2016/12/13/the-worst-player-on-all-thirty-nhl-teams/ |
have you tried it & didn't like it?
have you tried it & are still doing it?
Counseling is a "must do" part of dealing with mental health issues, trauma or crises issues, abuse issues, addictions recovery & recovery from eating disorders, natural disasters, criminal assault... well I could go on forever. Counseling is a "must do" if you're living and breathing on our dear Mother Earth today.
Just educate yourself enough to know what to look for in your journey to find "the perfect therapist/counselor" for you!
More than 1 in 10 adults in the US use services in the mental health system. Psychotherapy & medications are among your treatment options.
After earning their medical degree (M.D.) or osteopathic degree (D.O.), they must complete 4 years of residency training at a teaching hospital.
The 1st year of residency is an internship to sharpen skills in general medicine & neurology. The last 3 years focus on psychiatry.
A psychiatrist can be certified by the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology after passing oral & written exams. That certification process can occur 1 to 2 years after completion of training. Those who are then board certified are referred to as diplomats of the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology.
Some psychiatrists might have only a board eligible designation. That means they've completed the required psychiatry training at an accredited program but haven't yet completed the certification process.
Doctors don't have to be board certified in psychiatry to use the title of psychiatrist. However, certification is evidence of advanced training & experience.
Some limit their practice to one area, such as mood disorders or schizophrenia.
Because they're medical doctors, psychiatrists can prescribe medications as part of mental health treatment. They can also order laboratory tests, X-rays or other studies as part of your treatment. They're trained to provide psychotherapy of various kinds to individuals, couples, families & groups.
They're trained to provide evaluation, assessment, testing & treatment of mental disorders.
Education, training & state licensing criteria can vary widely. In some states, psychologists must hold a doctoral degree. That degree may be a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) in psychology, a doctor of education (Ed.D.) in psychology or a doctor of psychology (Psy.D.).
Unlike psychiatrists, psychologists aren't medical doctors.
Some states require that psychologists have a period of supervised training after earning a doctorate, such as a supervised clinical internship in a hospital or other facility. They may also have to complete a year or more of postdoctoral supervised practice before practicing independently.
In some states, a master's degree (M.A. or M.S.) is sufficient to allow practice as a psychologist. But they may only be allowed to provide therapy under the supervision of a physician or a psychologist w/ a doctorate.
Traditionally, psychologists have been unable to prescribe medications because they're not medical doctors. However, in some cases, psychologists are now able to write prescriptions for certain medications.
There are different types of psychologists.
Social workers help individuals, families & communities overcome a variety of social & health problems.
There are many types of social workers & the term can be broadly used. Their training & education can vary widely. Most, but not all, have a master's degree in social work.
Not all social workers can be licensed to provide mental health services. They must be clinical social workers w/advanced training in psychotherapy. They must have a master of social work (M.S.W.) degree & meet certain training requirements as set by their state, including experience working under supervision to provide mental health & psychotherapy services.
But training alone isn't enough. In order to actually offer psychotherapy, clinical social workers must be licensed by their state, as w/psychiatrists, psychologists & nurses. Once licensed, they're designated as a licensed clinical social worker (L.C.S.W.) or licensed independent clinical social worker (L.I.C.S.W). Licensing requirements vary by state.
Clinical social workers may provide therapy in private practice in psychiatric facilities, hospitals, community agencies or other places that offer mental health services. Others may work as case managers & coordinate psychiatric, medical & other services on your behalf.
They often work w/psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses & vocational therapists, job counselors, to help manage your overall care. Social workers can't prescribe medications or order medical tests as part of your treatment.
A psychiatric nurse is a licensed registered nurse (R.N.) who has additional training in mental health. They work w/individuals, families or communities to evaluate mental health needs & assist other mental health professionals in treatment & referral.
A psychiatric nurse may have an associate arts, bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree. Much of a psychiatric nurse's specialty training takes place in a hospital. Their level of training & experience determines what services & care they can offer.
Advanced practice registered nurses (A.P.R.Ns.) have a master's degree in psychiatric-mental health nursing. There are 2 types of A.P.R.Ns.: clinical nurse specialists & nurse practitioners. In general, they can diagnose & treat mental illnesses & in many states they're authorized to prescribe medications.
They also may be qualified to practice independently, without the supervision of a doctor.
Finding a therapist who best suits your needs can take some legwork. If it seems like more time & energy than you can muster, especially if you're facing depression or another serious mental illness, consider enlisting help from your primary care doctor, family or friends.
Don't hesitate to ask a lot of questions of a potential therapist, either during an initial phone call or at your first visit.
Get a referral or recommendation from others, such as a trusted doctor, friends, family, clergy, your insurance provider, a professional association, your company's employee assistance program, community hot lines, your school district or local social services agencies.
Consider whether you have preferences regarding gender, age, religion or other personal issues.
Ask potential therapists about their education, training, licensure & years in practice. Licensing requirements can vary widely by state.
Find out office hours, fees & accepted insurance providers.
Double-check credentials by contacting your states licensing boards.
Discuss on the phone before your first visit, if possible their treatment approach & philosophy to make sure it agrees with your style & needs.
Find out if they specialize. Therapists often specialize in certain disorders or age groups. Some, i.e., work only with adolescents. Others specialize in eating disorders or divorce issues.
If you don't feel comfortable after the first visit, or even several visits, talk about your concerns at your next session & consider changing therapists.
Yes this is rather exaggerated, however it demonstrates the idea that as professionals in the field of therapy, we often seek complex theories, techniques & strategies to more effectively treat our consumers. A large amount of our precious time is spent seeking new theories & techniques to treat clients; evidence for this statement is shown by the thousands of theories & techniques that have been created to treat clients seeking therapy.
The fact that theories are being created & the field is growing is absolutely magnificent; however we may be searching for something that's always been right under our nose.
Clinicians often enjoy analyzing & making things more intricate that they actually are; when in reality what works is rather simple. This basic & uncomplicated ingredient for successful therapy is what will be explored in this article.
This ingredient is termed the therapeutic relationship. Some readers may agree & some may disagree, however the challenge is to be open minded & remember the consequences of “contempt prior to investigation”.
Any successful therapy is grounded in a continuous strong, genuine therapeutic relationship or more simply put by Rogers, the “Helping Relationship”.
Without being skilled in this relationship, no techniques are likely to be effective. You're free to learn, study, research & labor over CBT, DBT, EMDR, RET & ECT as well as attending infinite trainings on these & many other techniques, although without mastering the art & science of building a therapeutic relationship with your client, therapy will not be effective.
You can even choose to spend thousands of dollars on a PhD, PsyD, Ed.D & other advanced degrees, which aren't being put down, however if you deny the vital importance of the helping relationship you'll again be unsuccessful.
This author will attempt to articulate what the therapeutic relationship involves; questions clinicians can ask themselves concerning the therapeutic relationship, as well as some empirical literature that supports the importance of the therapeutic relationship.
Please note that therapeutic relationship, therapeutic alliance & helping relationship will be used interchangeably throughout this article.
The therapeutic relationship has several characteristics; however the most vital will be presented in this article. The characteristics may appear to be simple & basic knowledge, although the constant practice & integration of these characteristic need to be the focus of every client that enters therapy.
The therapeutic relationship forms the foundation for treatment as well as large part of successful outcome. Without the helping relationship being the number one priority in the treatment process, clinicians are doing a great disservice to clients as well as to the field of therapy as a whole.
The following discussion will be based on the incredible work of Carl Rogers concerning the helping relationship. There's no other psychologist to turn to when discussing this subject, than Dr. Rogers himself. His extensive work gave us a foundation for successful therapy, no matter what theory or theories a clinician practices. Without Dr. Rogers outstanding work, successful therapy wouldn't be possible.
There are 3 characteristics that will be presented that Rogers states are essential & sufficient for therapeutic change as well as being vital aspects of the therapeutic relationship (1957).
In addition to these 3 characteristics, this author has added 2 final characteristic that appear to be effective in a helping relationship.
1. Therapist’s genuineness within the helping relationship. Rogers discussed the vital importance of the clinician to “freely & deeply” be himself.
The clinician needs to be a “real” human being. Not an all knowing, all powerful, rigid & controlling figure. A real human being with real thoughts, real feelings & real problems (1957).
All facades should be left out of the therapeutic environment. The clinician must be aware & have insight into him or herself. It's important to seek out help from colleagues & appropriate supervision to develop this awareness & insight. This specific characteristic fosters trust in the helping relationship.
One of the easiest ways to develop conflict in the relationship is to have a “better than” attitude when working with a particular client.
2. Unconditional positive regard. This aspect of the relationship involves experiencing a warm acceptance of each aspect of the clients experience as being a part of the client.
There are no conditions put on accepting the client as who they are. The clinician needs to care for the client as who they are as a unique individual.
One thing often seen in therapy is the treatment of the diagnosis or a specific problem. Clinicians need to treat the individual not a diagnostic label. It's imperative to accept the client for who they are & where they are at in their life.
Remember diagnoses aren't real entities, however individual human beings are.
3. Empathy. This is a basic therapeutic aspect that has been taught to clinicians over & over again, however it's vital to be able to practice & understand this concept.
An accurate empathetic understanding of the client’s awareness of his own experience is crucial to the helping relationship. It's essential to have the ability to enter the clients “private world” & understand their thoughts & feelings without judging these (Rogers, 1957).
In therapy clinicians must develop goals that the client would like to work on rather than dictate or impose goals on the client. When clinicians have their own agenda & don't cooperate with the client, this can cause resistance & a separation in the helping relationship (Roes, 2002).
The fact is that a client that is forced or mandated to work on something he has no interest in changing, may be compliant for the present time; however these changes will not be internalized.
Just think of yourself in your personal life. If you're forced or coerced to work on something you have no interest in, how much passion or energy will you put into it & how much respect will you have for the person doing the coercing. You may complete the goal; however you'll not remember or internalize much involved in the process.
5. Integrate humor in the relationship. In this authors own clinical experience throughout the years, one thing that's helped to establish a strong therapeutic relationship with clients is the integration of humor in the therapy process.
It appears to teach clients to laugh at themselves without taking life & themselves too serious. It also allows them to see the therapist as a down to earth human being with a sense of humor. Humor is an excellent coping skill & is extremely healthy to the mind, body & spirit.
Try laughing with your clients. It'll have a profound effect on the relationship as well as in your own personal life.
Before delving into the empirical literature concerning this topic, it's important to present some questions that Rogers recommends (1961) asking yourself as a clinician concerning the development of a helping relationship.
These questions should be explored often & reflected upon as a normal routine in your clinical practice. They'll help the clinician grow & continue to work at developing the expertise needed to create a strong therapeutic relationship & in turn the successful practice of therapy.
2. Can I be real? This involves being aware of thoughts & feelings & being honest with yourself concerning these thoughts & feelings. Can I be who I am? Clinicians must accept themselves before they can be real & accepted by clients.
3. Can I let myself experience positive attitudes toward my client – (i.e., warmth, caring, respect) without fearing these? Often times clinicians distance themselves & write it off as a “professional” attitude; however this creates an impersonal relationship. Can I remember that I'm treating a human being, just like myself?
5. Can I be separate from the client & not foster a dependent relationship?
7. Can I receive this client as he is? Can I accept him or her completely & communicate this acceptance?
There are obviously too many empirical studies in this area to discuss in this or any brief article, however this author would like to present a summary of the studies throughout the years & what has been concluded.
Horvath & Symonds (1991) conducted a Meta analysis of 24 studies which maintained high design standards, experienced therapists & clinically valid settings. They found an effect size of .26 & concluded that the working alliance was a relatively robust variable linking therapy process to outcomes.
The relationship & outcomes didn't appear to be a function of type of therapy practiced or length of treatment.
30% of variance was predicted by the therapeutic relationship/common factors.
One more important addition to these studies is a review of over 2000 process-outcomes studies conducted by Orlinsky, Grave & Parks (1994), which identified several therapist variables & behaviors that consistently demonstrated to have a positive impact on treatment outcome.
These variables included therapist credibility, skill, empathic understanding, affirmation of the client, as well as the ability to engage the client & focus on the client’s issues & emotions.
This suggestion is a topic for a whole other article, however what this suggests is that the therapeutic relationship may create or recreate the ability for clients to bond or develop attachments in future relationships.
To this author, this is profound & thought provoking. Much more discussion & research is needed in this area, however briefly mentioning it sheds some light on another important reason that the therapeutic relationship is vital to therapy.
Throughout this article the therapeutic relationship has been discussed in detail, questions to explore as a clinician have been articulated & empirical support for the importance of the therapeutic relationship have been summarized.
You may question the validity of this article or research, however please take an honest look at this area of the therapy process & begin to practice & develop strong therapeutic relationships.
You'll see the difference in the therapy process as well as client outcome. This author experiences the gift of the therapeutic relationship each & every day I work with clients.
In fact, a client recently told me that I was “the first therapist he has seen since 9-11 that he trusted & acted like a real person. He continued on to say, “that’s why I have the hope that I can get better & actually trust another human being.” That’s quite a reward of the therapeutic relationship & process. What a gift!
Ask yourself, how you would like to be treated if you were a client? Always remember we're all part of the human race & each human being is unique & important, thus they should be treated that way in therapy.
Our purpose as clinicians is to help other human beings enjoy this journey of life & if this field isn’t the most important field on earth I don’t know what is. We help determine & create the future of human beings.
Despite some perceptions, electroconvulsive therapy is a safe & effective treatment for some types of mental disorders. Here's a closer look at how it works.
Electroconvulsive therapy: Effective for borderline personality disorder?
acting out. Expressing emotional conflict or stress thru behavior & actions rather than reflections or feelings.
addiction. Physical or emotional dependence, or both, on a substance, such as alcohol or drugs, usually resulting in the need for increasing amounts of the substance to achieve the same desired effect or continued use despite adverse consequences.
adjustment disorder. A psychological response to an identifiable stressor that results in the development of emotional symptoms, such as anxiety, depression or certain conducts that are greater than would be expected by the stressor or that cause significant impairment in functioning.
adrenaline. A naturally occurring hormone that increases heart rate & blood pressure & affects other body functions. Also called epinephrine.
adverse reaction. Negative or unwanted effects caused by a medication. Also called side effects.
affect (AF-ekt). Current, observable state of feeling or emotion, such as sadness, anger or elation.
affective disorder. A type of mental disorder that primarily affects mood & interferes with the ability to function, such as major depressive disorder & bipolar disorder.
agnosia (ag-NO-zhuh). Loss of the ability to interpret stimuli. Usually classified according to the sense or senses affected, such as the inability to identify certain sounds or to recognize familiar objects by sight.
agoraphobia. A type of anxiety disorder involving fear of public places or situations in which it seems escape might be difficult or embarrassing, such as a mall or crowded room, or in which help might not be available in the event of a panic attack or related symptoms.
akathisia (ak-uh-THIH-zhuh). A condition of excessive restlessness that causes one to move about constantly, fidget or pace. Can be a side effect of certain medications.
anhedonia (an-he-DO-ne-uh). Reduced or complete inability to feel pleasure from activities that usually produce happiness.
anticonvulsants. Medications used to prevent seizures; sometimes prescribed as mood stabilizers to treat depression or other mood disorders, or for other conditions, such as pain.
antidepressants. Medications that improve or relieve symptoms of depression by affecting brain chemistry.
from the article: " Relationships offer a source of support and comfort. But they can also be a frequent source of stress and conflict.
When health issues, behavioral problems or mental illnesses disrupt relationships between you and your spouse, partner, children or parents, marriage and family therapy might help." | 2019-04-23T16:54:03Z | http://changes21.tripod.com/id27.html |
The Intel i5 processor laptops are one of the most popular and efficient systems in the market. Providing coherency and power at an affordable price, they cater to the likes of everyone ranging from staunch gamers to artificial intelligence developers. If you are planning to buy the best i5 laptop and don't want to squander your precious time, then don't worry. We have prepared a list of top 10 best i5 processor laptops which you can buy at an affordable price range.
Having started off with Intel’s Lynnfield core series, the i5 processors have evolved over time to include more advanced and versatile micro architectures, thereby expanding the bounds of the capabilities of i5 laptops. Currently in their 8th generation, they come with either 2 or 4 cores, with processing speeds up to 4.6 GHz. This enables them to undertake even highly processor intensive tasks like that of creating and editing 4K videos with utter ease.
The widespread popularity of the embedded i5 chip set has resulted in fierce competition amongst laptop manufacturers. Every now and then, another promise of reliability and performance is rolled out with the latest generation of the chipset installed. But, not many of them are true to their word. Here, we list a few of the best i5 laptops out there to quench all your computing needs.
One of the thinnest and portable laptops you will come across, this laptop is powered by Intel 8th generation Intel i5 processor. With a good build quality and great battery life, it is one ultrabook that does not empty your pockets.
The surface of the ASUS is quite shiny and reflective to the extent of even serving as a mirror. The full HD display is sharp and crisp. The embedded touchscreen itself is prompt and responsive, giving a premium experience. The ASUS pen can be used for jotting down notes and make drawings on the touchscreen.
Finally, an ultrabook that has no dearth of ports. The laptop comes with 2 USB 3.0 ports, a USB Type C, a microSD card reader, an HDMI port. ASUS also included the beloved headphone jack in this brilliant device. The backlit keyboard is laid out in a chiclet style and is very comfortable to type on. The fingerprint sensor below the arrow keys is conveniently placed and works quite well.
The ASUS can breeze through most of the work that you throw at it. Packed with the 2GB Nvidia GeForce graphics card, it can also handle some mild gaming and makes video and photo editing relatively easy. The battery life of laptop is one of its strongest points. Although ASUS claims for it to last over 11 hours, it actually goes on for about 7 hours with mild to heavy usage. This might not be best battery backup amongst Ultrabooks but is long enough to keep you going through most of your long meetings.
The speakers, on the other hand, do not offer a great quality of audio, and the sound often appears muffled. Their size itself is pretty small, and the ASUS would not necessarily give you enough pump unless you plug in your headphones.
Overall, this is one of the most preferred laptop powered by Intel i5 processor and is very competitively priced. Although the reflective lid captures a lot of finger impressions, and can sometimes be annoying, the overall build quality is pretty solid and appealing. This laptop suits basic gaming needs and can soothe your workaholic soul.
ASUS VivoBook F510UA can be the best choice if you are looking to replace your desktop or need a budget alternative. The laptop comes in with a good build quality and can easily rival laptops that sit on the more premium segments. Although it comes in with fewer ports and add-ons, it is a great budget alternative for work or college. The lightweight and thin laptop weigh only about 3.7 pounds. The entire body is made out of plastic apart from the lid that features the iconic ASUS spun star to finish. It also gets a shiny finish that makes it look more premium.
The laptop comes in with a full HD IPS display and is vibrant and sharp. The screen itself has good viewing angles, making it a peach for watching movies. The screen bezel is pretty thin with an 80 percent body to screen ratio, thereby reducing the bulkiness of the entire device. The keyboard feels light and usable even though it is built out of the same material as the outer body. In spite of the compact size of this laptop, the keyboard’s got enough space in between the keys and allows for genuinely fast typing. The speakers are pretty loud and offer decent quality. They can easily fill in a small room at the maximum volume without falling back on sound quality substantially.
Powered with the 8th Gen Intel Core i5 processor, the laptop also offers an appreciable amount of ports like USB-C port, a couple of USB 3.0 ports, a microSD card reader and an HDMI port. The Ethernet port is missing as with most Ultrabooks these days. However, the headphone jack is promptly included, and this can be a sigh of relief for audiophiles. This laptop can easily handle most of your day-to-day work with about 8GB of on board RAM. However, it only comes in with Intel’s integrated graphics, and this might be a slight disappointment to the occasional gamer. The device does not come in with SSD as well.
This ASUS laptop is a great buy if you want a valuable device without shelling out too much. We would have expected an additional SSD and longer battery life than the 4 hours it offers, but for the kind of utility it offers at the price point, we really can’t complain.
Powered by the latest 8th generation Intel Core i5 processor, Dell Inspiron 15 laptop is a great laptop for daily usage. However, with its affordability comes several perks which you might or might not want to un-notice. The laptop comes in with a good build quality even though it may be considered too bland by some. Although the laptop is made out of plastic on the outside, it does not look cheap or unrefined. The bezel itself is pretty thick adding to the bulkiness of the entire machine.
With a full HD 1080p display, the laptop can easily soothe your eyes while playing movies or helping you do away with day-to-day work. However, it might appear slightly blurred and dim to some over the previous versions of the Inspiron 5000.
The keyboard is well spread out and is pretty comfortable once you get used to it. The 4.1 x 3.1 touch pad is pretty large and responsive and most of the gestures work pretty well. The speakers on the device load up good audio output and can easily fill up a small conference room.
The laptop is absolutely suave to multitasking with 8 GB of on board RAM. Even without an SSD, it does a decent job and is quite usable with the 1TB HDD. The laptop is also equipped with Intel Integrated graphics and this can be a blow to gamers for an otherwise excellent laptop. Battery life of the laptop is good enough if you want just enough power to see through that conference. Although it cannot beat premium ultrabooks at about 5 hours of backup, it definitely a bang for the buck. Overall, the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 is a great laptop with i5 processor.
When it comes to productivity and a long battery life, the 13.3 inch MacBook Air is the best in class. The laptop comes with Intel Core i5 processor which gives you smooth computing and work experience. It comes with a great build quality and amazing specifications, all of it at an affordable price. The laptop is incredibly thin, lightweight and has a great battery life. It is perhaps one of the best i5 processor laptops if you are constantly on the go. Over the years, the MacBook has seen little improvement in design, yet it is one of the cleanest and suave looking laptops out in the market.
The MacBook Air features a 1440x900 pixel display. Although not full HD, it packs in enough to soothe your eyes and help you work and watch movies without any strain. The bezel is somewhat thick and does not look out of the ordinary. The Intel HD graphics are good enough for most of your office and college needs and do a fair bit of video editing.
The laptop comes in with 8 GB of RAM, and the macOS is subtly able to handle most of the multitasking you throw at it. It also has two storage options of 128 GB and 256 GB SSD to be chosen from. The high-end variant although slightly expensive improves upon the Apple’s performance by a marginal lot.
One of the last Apple laptops to come in with a large a variety of ports and hubs, the MacBook Air has 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 Thunderbolt USB-C, an SDXC card slot, and a MagSafe 2 power port. With this device, you can easily connect most of your peripherals without having to depend on adapters most of the times. Even the trackpad is large, responsive and very usable.
Overall, it is a budget Intel core i5 processor laptop which packs in enough battery to keep you running for about 15 hours without plugging in. Over the years, the MacBook Air laptops have become increasingly faster and better performing even though the base design has remained the same.
The ASUS VivoBook S15 is one of the most well rounded and usable i5 laptops out there. Combining a good display with excellent specifications, the laptop does deliver what it promises, an outstanding value-packed performance machine. The aluminum-clad body of the ASUS is significantly smaller and lighter coupled with the trimmed bezels that promote an enhanced look to it. It is also quite light for the large screen size it offers.
The laptop comes in with a full HD display and has good viewing angles for easy view ability while watching movies with friends and family. It also packs in in an anti-reflective finish enabling you to work efficiently in brightly lit conditions without straining your eyes from reflection. The keyboard is backlit and offers plenty of key space allowing for fast and accurate typing. The precision trackpad is also smooth and accurate with gestures being responsive on most occasions. The fingerprint reader on the upper right corner works well under most circumstances.
The laptop also has a good amount of ports and hubs to keep you connected. There are 2 USB 2.0 ports, a USB 3.1 port, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, an HDMI and an SD card slot. It also comes with a headphone jack. The laptop packs in 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 256 GB SSD to complement its high performing 8th generation i5 processor. Although it comes with the Intel Integrated Graphics as standard, video editing tasks are not beyond its reach. You can get by with relentless multitasking and a bit of gaming as well which makes it the best thin and light i5 laptop.
The laptop packs in everything that you would need for your day-to-day college use. Its light weight and good battery life of about 8 hours would allow you to be constantly on the go without losing focus on your work.
The Surface laptop is one of the best touchscreen laptops with i5 processor. The laptop comes in with an amazing display and excellent build quality and offers enough battery power to last for most of the day. The laptop build is simply gorgeous. The lid is made out of aluminum, and the inner body has a tiled appearance and feels really premium. The laptop itself is pretty slim, and thin and this allows it to be very portable.
With a 13.5-inch Pixel Sense touchscreen display and HD+ resolution of 2256x1504 pixels, the visuals are a treat to the eye. However, the screen aspect ratio is 3:2 which is somewhat uncommon, as most of the laptop screens come with an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10 these days. In order to be able to withstand the rigors of daily life, Microsoft has also included Gorilla Glass 3 protection into the display. Italian Alcantara fabric – That’s what the plastic keyboard is covered with, giving it a premium look and feel. The trackpad is also very large and responsive allowing for easy gesture controls.
The laptop contains a good number of ports which include a USB 3.0 port, a display port, and Microsoft’s proprietary power and docking ports. However, the absence of the fast USB-C port can be disappointing for some.The base i5 model comes in with 4GB of RAM, and 128 GB of SSD storage. This itself is enough for most purposes and would enable you to multitask effortlessly in the Windows 10 S operating system.
Overall, it is the best i5 laptop with great performance capabilities. A battery life of over 10 hours with heavy usage makes sure that you see through most of the day without having to juice it up again. The laptop remains one of the most desirous systems at its price range.
The Lenovo Flex 5 combines the much popular 2-in-1 laptop-tablet combination and a 15-inch screen. With a bright display, good keyboard, and powerful performance, it’s an excellent entry level premium laptop. The well-built design of the laptop is catchy and looks flamboyant. The lid has an Aluminum finish in the Onyx Black shade which is quite shiny and gives it a sharp look.
The 15.6 inches full HD display is simply gorgeous and captures intricate details and colors, some of which are quaintly detected by your senses. With a maximum brightness of 270 nits, the display is bright enough in most outdoor and well-lit conditions. The touchscreen is also highly responsive and easily registers gestures. The keyboard on the Lenovo Flex 5 is quite good as well. There is ample space between the keys and this allows for fast and accurate typing. The trackpad although not very large at 4.1x2.8 inches is quite smooth and responsive.
The laptop is equipped with Intel Core i5-8250U and 8GB of RAM which is often good enough for even the most resource-intensive multitasking. It also packs in an SSD storage of about 256 GB allowing for fast boot up and application control. The laptop performs extremely well under most circumstances which makes it fall under the title of best i5 laptops. The laptop also packs in a good number of ports for easy accessibility. There are a couple of USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port, an HDMI port, and an SD card reader in addition to the power adapter dock.
Overall, the laptop is a performance beast offering a battery life of about 6 hours. If you are searching for a decent touchscreen laptop with Intel i5 processor, this might just be the right option to choose from.
With good performance, a great display, and excellent audio, LG Gram sits right amongst the top laptops powered by Intel Core i5 processor in the premium segment. The laptop is incredibly light and weighs around just 2 pounds, making it ultra portable. It also has a thickness, or should we say, the thinness of about 0.6 inches. The body of the laptop is made out of a magnesium alloy and promotes great rigidity and durability.
It comes with a gorgeous full HD IPS display. Although the bezels at first glance might look reflective, they do not hit off much glare. The screen displays a good combination of colors and delivers crisp visuals. At a maximum brightness of about 307 nits, the laptop is quite usable under the most brightly lit conditions. The keyboard is pretty roomy and allows you to type with speed and accuracy. The 4.0x2.6 inch trackpad is pretty large for the laptop’s size and is highly responsive to clicks and gestures. The audio from the LG Gram is one of the most striking plus points. It can easily fill a large room with clear and crisp audio.
The laptop is also equipped with 8GB of RAM to facilitate multitasking. Further, the device also comes in with 256 GB of SSD storage to allow for fast booting and loading of applications. The powerful i5 processor delivers good performance even when multitasking with resource-intensive tasks like photo editing. In spite of the thin design, the LG Gram packs in several ports. This includes 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB-C port, an HDMI port, and a microSD card slot. In addition, it also comes in with a headphone jack and the regular power adapter port.
The LG Gram is a great device offering battery life of about 12 hours, which will allow you to see through most of your day without connecting the adapter. A power packed device with a strong performance, usability, and portability makes LG gram one of the best laptops with i5 processors.
The ASUS Tuff laptop is one of the most fully rounded laptops that can serve almost all of your gaming needs. However, not just that, it is also a deal to steal at its affordable price point. Although the laptop is made out of plastic, the red strapped designs and the faux-aluminum tints give it the looks of a good gaming laptop. The small cut out in the lid also allows you to see the status lights when the laptop lid is closed. The display in the ASUS Tuff is a 15.6 inch full HD one, although with a thick bezel.
The laptop, however, is not very thin despite being only mildly heavy. The screen is not the brightest or the crispest, but it gives you decent visuals to enjoy your games and watch movies. The backlit keyboard on the ASUS is well laid out and allows you to type fast and quite accurately even though some might consider them too bouncy. The 4.1x2.8 touchpad is good enough for most clicks and responds well to gestures. However, it might be somewhat slippery at times. The speakers are pretty good and can deliver crisp and clear audio to fill a small room.
Being a gaming laptop, it features a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Graphics Processing Unit with 2GB of VRAM in addition to the Intel Core i5 processor onboard. It also comes in with 8GB of RAM allowing you to seamlessly load and play your games. The laptop also features a 1 TB FireCuda SSHD allowing you to store most of your games. The laptop has a pair of USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 port, an ethernet port, headphone jack, a lock slot, and a microSD card reader slot. All of these provide ample connectivity and allows to seamless load your games from flash drives.
Even though the laptop belongs to the entry level gaming segment, it can be used for most day-to-day tasks without any flaws. The power graphics unit and the latest generation of i5 processor allows it to be used as a good video editing tool as well. So if you are looking to buy a gaming laptop under a price range of $700, then this laptop can be your best choice.
This HP brings in power and performance to an affordable price range. A decent display and battery life coupled with SSD storage allows for good usability and makes it well rounded for small businesses and college students. The built quality is good, even though it’s not very catchy. The laptop is made out of black plastic, and thus not look cheap. It features a 1366x768 HD SVA WLED-backlit touchscreen display that captures the bright colors and the stringent of details even though it’s not full HD. The touchscreen is quite responsive and easily registers screen touches and gestures. The laptop does not sway back and forth while accessing the touchscreen.
In addition to the Intel i5 processor that comes as standard, the laptop also has 8GB of DDR4 RAM. This allows for intense multitasking without any sort of system lag whatsoever. The laptop also comes in with 128 GB of SSD in addition to a 2TB hard disk drive. However, it only has the Intel Integrated Graphics for graphics processing. The device packs in a good number of ports for all functionalities. There are 2 USB 3.1 ports, a USB 2.0 port, a headphone jack, and a media reader in addition to the power adapter port. It also comes in with an optical drive in the form of a DVD writer, thereby allowing you to load and store content from and to optical storage media.
The laptop runs on battery for about 4 hours before you need to juice it up again. It's not a great battery life, but is sufficient enough if you want to continue working in small commutes and through power cuts. Overall, the laptop has all the goods that you would need for your day-to-day life. And the price point it comes at definitely opens up a lot of perspectives given the powerful performance it offers. | 2019-04-20T08:24:03Z | https://theconsumerbasket.com/best-i5-laptops/ |
Rabash, the article, “Purpose of Society (1984, 1.2)”: Since man is created with a Kli called “self-love,” where one does not see that an act will yield self-benefit, one has no motivation to make even a tiny movement. And without annulling self-love, it is impossible to achieve Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator, meaning equivalence of form.
So they give us a society, for if its influence on me is stronger than the personal demands of my ego, I am ready to change under the influence of my environment. Suppose I want to rest, to travel, to have a good time; yet on the other hand I am in a society that pressures me and compels me to be involved with something else. Under its pressure I will certainly carry out what it requires from me, but unwillingly.
Can the society influence me so that I will want to carry out its requirements, and further that this will be from my own pressure and with great internal readiness? Suppose that it shows me that if I work according to its instructions, it will respect and elevate me, show respect and the like.
In this case I begin to leave my desire for fun, for rest, for sleep, and I run to work just to earn the right attitude of the society towards me. This means that the society can play with a person.
In human nature is inherently such a condition that society can bring a person to suicide or can elevate him to the pinnacle of glory. Everything depends upon the environment. A person has no weight himself. The attitude of the environment towards him is his sole and only determinant.
So we can take advantage of the possibility that an individual can be influenced by society and we can gather a group that will influence us so that we will carry out every action for the benefit of others. And with its help, we can bring ourselves to a state in which an external force, the Light that Reforms, will also influence us. Yet it works only through the environment. Since the right society can awaken us to the right actions, it is possible to awaken Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light) on ourselves through that society.
I adhere naturally to a society with the right desires for bestowal, love of others, etc. My ego says: “Do you want them to respect you? You must yearn for this.” I begin to yearn, and simultaneously through this I also attract some kind of natural force found in the society called Ohr Makif. Under its influence I begin to be changed. So everything depends upon how I situate myself regarding my environment.
If my environment is capable of awakening me correctly and acts subtly regarding my ego, it can really play with me. I am ready for this, I want it! This is because my ego is my enemy and I want to do something about it.
The society starts to play with my ego and awakens great desires for altruistic actions in me. And simultaneously it lowers the Ohr Makif onto me through them. That is how my mutual connection with the right group solves all of the problems of my correction through “equivalence of form” with the higher power.
So that the right attitudes will be created between me and society, it is necessary to stand under defined conditions that have been determined by the Kabbalists, like maintaining attitudes of equality between friends, integration with one another, greater preference for the desires of a friend over my personal desires, etc.
If I act according to these conditions, I gradually enter into its system of connection and am found in it like a small node within its network, and all the rest of the right nodes around me are my society. That is how we help each other and complement everyone’s problems, learning to cooperate correctly with the general system until we begin to feel like a whole group.
The group suddenly begins to feel that it is found in a general system of connection that is acting on it. The discovery of the power of the general system is the discovery of the Creator within us, within the group. A person is not capable of feeling this alone. He lacks the appropriate senses for this.
When I find myself like a small spider in a large web, then through connection with others, I feel the space that surrounds me, I feel the Creator. This is only on condition that I have the right connection with the friends.
Question: There can be these states where we are so integrated into the group, come to lessons, and keep the connection with the friends, as if everything was within us and there was no external force, no Creator. The question arises, whether this force exists on the outside or do we build it on our own?
Answer: The Creator plays with us. He gives you, like small children, the opportunity to be shown to what extent you are, as if, independent, understanding, clever, and brave.
You need to stop yourselves in time. There can’t be any forward advancement, only if He pulls you, carries you on His wings, pulls you forward, or pushes you from behind.
We have no motor! The motor isn’t within us, and the fuel is from Him. We don’t have any! It is done on purpose to later show us how far we have come.
We need to balance everything and not complain that we have nothing. We are nobody and have nothing, i.e., we are like a rag underfoot or a pile of broken mechanisms. No. It needs to be in the middle, somewhere in between the two.
At each moment of our existence we need to feel the necessity for the upper force: the need to recognize good and evil, the need to differentiate between them, the need for the correct choice for the direction of forward movement.
As Baal HaSulam explained, one needs to go forward correctly exactly in the middle line. This means that without any connection to the next level, to the upper line, to a higher category, you are not able to do anything.
We cannot even imagine how we, the people of the planet Earth, are close to each other.
Do you know how many people are between, for example, a technologist from India and archivist of Estonia? It turns out only six.
In 2002, the American sociologist Duncan Watts and his colleagues conducted an impressive experiment.
A task was given to more than 98,000 volunteers. Through their acquaintances, scattered around the world, they had to send an email message to an unknown addressee, arbitrarily chosen for this purpose.
The list of recipients contained a university professor, an archivist from Estonia, an engineer from India, an Australian policeman, a Norwegian army vet, and others. There were eighteen people altogether.
The experiment showed that, on average, it was necessary to forward the message six times so that it reached its destination.
We are connected through one network. We influence each other directly or indirectly. For example, coffee harvested in Brazil, just like vodka, produced in Russia, people drink everywhere, with all the ensuing positive and negative consequences. It can be said this a direct link between the countries.
Indirect relations include all that relates to the waste associated with the production of the same coffee and vodka, as well as the production of energy needed for this. All this has been known for a long time.
In 1972, US investments in the Chinese economy were zero, and now they are up $60 billion USD.” (Global Affairs).
Interconnections are a good thing. It is difficult to argue. However, a direct consequence of such deep relationships is interdependence. And it is fraught with consequences, and not always pleasant. It is because of this relationship and this interdependence that the financial crisis broke out in 2008.
What can we do, how can we connect what seemingly cannot be connected? We need some special methodology to solve this apparently unsolvable problem. But this methodology has been around for a long time. With its help, Abraham connected completely different people into a single nation with a unique destiny.
The difference between a person and a cat is that a cat doesn’t make mistakes because it is connected to nature, with the force that moves it called nature or the Creator. This is the power of the overall system that manages the cat and shows it how to behave at each and every moment.
So a cat never makes a mistake. It doesn’t even think about what it is doing; it only acts and that’s it. It is constantly managed by the system, and so every one of its jumps are precisely calculated. A cat acts like a perfect machine.
A person, unlike a cat, is not a perfect machine. On the contrary, he doesn’t know how to act and constantly makes mistakes. Even though he has received additional senses and intelligence in comparison to other animals, he is not managed by nature.
This is called his freedom of choice, which determines how he uses his human emotion and intelligence. And if he doesn’t take the entire general system into account, he always activates his intelligence incorrectly and harms himself. After all, his ego causes him to err.
If we intentionally don’t learn how to use our intelligence correctly, we always harm ourselves. The proof for this is in the entire history of the human race that has gone on for thousands of years, yet development isn’t good and beautiful anywhere. It is accompanied by wars and problems, searches and disappointments, and failure is followed by failure. We try to do things for the best, but things only become worse.
The time has come to say, “Enough!, We are tired of all of these failures, the hatred, the problems in the family.” One by one, families fall apart, since in our development, we have reached the recognition of evil.
This is no longer just the miserable life that we lived before when nature pushed us to development through blows. In our time we have reached a level of intelligence and feelings by which we can see we have been developing by suffering that is only increasing. We are talking about a third world war. So, are we unable to stop it?
Modern man no longer wants anything from life except drugs or antidepressants. He doesn’t want to start a family and bring children into the world. He doesn’t want to take any responsibility. In this situation, we come to the month of Elul, to repentance. But this means that the solution to this bad situation is already illuminating us and redemption is near. We are ready to stop this flawed development, this negative trend. We have had enough suffering!
This is the sum total of the month of Elul, our decision to develop in a new form from now on. It means that we decide to reach balance with nature, to approach the higher power through establishing new rules of behavior based upon, “and you shall love your friend as yourself.” In this way, we reach balance with nature and become like the higher power.
Human society must reach full mutual support so that by itself, it will control that additional intelligence and feeling that has raised us above the level of the animal, prevented us from balance with nature and took us outside of the realm of its control. This means that we must arrange our reason and feeling through connection, unity, and love between us.
In this way we complete ourselves on the level of Adam (man) and make the entire system homogeneous, integral, connected, united, and completely mutually dependent, like everything else in nature. This is called love.
We don’t understand what love is. Love is to be in partnership, in the right connection with all the rest of the parts of nature. You feel them and do what they need and they feel you and do what you need, like a healthy body in which all of the organs are in a mutual connection such as this.
The understanding that we must reach such a connection is called the month of Elul, repentance.
Question: So what is it necessary to think in a time like the month of Elul, in order to change life into a better life?
Answer: In our world, only the good connection between people is missing. There is full abundance, but everyone suffers because of their intolerable character. We must correct this, and we have the opportunity to do so.
If we direct ourselves towards correction, it would be a wonderful result of the self-criticism that we do in the month of Elul. So we truly advance according to its name: Elul, meaning, “Ani LeDodi VeDodi Li” – “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine,”(“Song of Songs” 6:3).
Question: Theater is a well-known phenomenon from antiquity. Performances on stage began in ancient Greece, but in the more primitive tribes it was customary to gather around a fire, dress in animal skins, and depict the mammoth hunt.
With the passage of time, theater went through a multitude of changes, but the unusual sensation of wonder that came to life on the stage that was connected to it was preserved. A person who comes to the theater feels himself so much a part of this marvel that already when he buys tickets, he begins to look forward to it, to sense and experience it like a child.
He comes to the theater, sits in his seat, and feels the crowd filling the hall. The light gradually dims, and in the hall a pleasant tension grows in expectation of the raising of the curtain and the appearance of the actors on the stage.
Thus a unique feeling appears as if, at this moment, you are detached from all of the daily problems and concerns, and are immersed in another life. What is this particular wonderful experience that occurs in people in the theater?
Answer: There is such a thing as the influence of the environment on a person. To a particular degree, it is also typical of animals, and, whereas a person feels the influence of the environment very much, it could consist of only one person or it could consist of thousands of people.
Everything depends only upon how strongly the person perceives the influence of the environment. If a person important to him, then one person is enough. This means that the quality is important here. However, if there are millions of people, then they are influential through their quantity. In any case, a person enters under the influence of the environment.
We are not very susceptible to the influence of children, but adults are able to affect us, and the higher they are in our eyes, the more influential. Fear, ambition, envy and a craving for dominance also are mixed in here.
As we come to a theater, we are already prepared to enter the influence of the artificial environment that will present some unique event to us. It could be that it is not completely realistic, but it somehow is connected to the life of man.
This often is presented ecstatically as very strong love, hatred, fear, and despair, or some kind of bright, historical event. All of this is inflated intentionally by external means of influence and brought to the viewer.
Music is even added that greatly enhances the experience. For anyone who knows opera, it is the most powerful, influential tool.
A person loves to enter under the influence of the presentation because it connects with his life. Even though he hasn’t experienced events of this type himself, he still can imagine them for himself.
We love theater because it is ready to remind us about experiences that we have gone through, and they can even be tragic events, but the deeper you go into the past, the more they are mollified, so we like to look at them. We identify with the experiences of the actors and even cry with them with emotion.
We even are ready to pay money for this! This is very strange. We experience fear, excitement, and even cry and all of this we pay for. However, the idea is that the person perceives these concerns and experiences when they are mollified. He understands that these are not realistic concerns from his life, but only impressions from the show, and so he likes them.
The theater makes it possible to experience sensations like these again and again that today seem pleasant and sweet. This indicates that everything that we went through in life, even the most tragic events, are ultimately sweetened. They are mollified such that that we agree that we had to go through all of these situations, for this was our life, and, in life, there is a place for everything.
This suggests that nothing in life is accidental; every event that happens is a part of the fate that is given to us intentionally from above, and we must go through it. Ultimately, we agree that everything that we experienced in our lives was justly and necessarily sent to us. So, we justify every step of our way because we understand its benefit.
Adam was the first to attain the system of creation and he discovered that the ultimate goal of human evolution is the attainment of the upper state, the ascent to the level of the Creator, which all the future generations should reach.
Thus, he immediately began to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah by establishing three groups of students called his sons.
They were not corporeal sons, but spiritual ones who were on a lower level than their teacher and who learned from him how to ascend to the next level. Therefore, the terms, “father” and “son,” in the Torah refer to two levels. There are no blood relations between them, but only a spiritual continuation.
After Adam, there were three lines that stemmed from his students: Shem, Ham and Japheth. The line that stemmed from Shem developed, and the two other lines turned out to be dead ends. But they too were necessary in order to express, highlight, and stabilize the middle line.
Thus, a glorious chain of Kabbalists and their schools developed for many years from Adam until the time of ancient Babylon: ten generations of Kabbalists until Noah and ten generations following him.
Every generation symbolizes its certain phase in the revelation of an increasingly stronger connection with the Creator and the recognition of the network of forces that manage our world.
In Noah’s times, the clarification and the purification of the system of knowing the Creator and getting closer to Him continued, and it is described in the story of Noah’s Ark.
After all of Noah’s students ascended to the level of unity in the attribute of bestowal and equivalence to the Creator by managing to connect the parts of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking nature inside them in one capsule (the ark), they managed to overcome the level called the “flood.” Instead of drowning, they absorbed all the attributes of the water, the attributes of life, the attribute of bestowal.
The shattering that occurred in them was the beginning of a new world. Noah symbolizes this turning point when people who study Kabbalah acquire the attribute of bestowal, which is metaphorically presented by the water. Having experienced an internal revolution, they begin to use this point correctly and continue its development.
Question: Millions of people read and study the Torah, but what are they looking for if the Creator can only be found in the connection between people?
Answer: Their study is not in vain. Any study of the Torah helps a person advance and enables him to clarify things. Millions of people both religious and nonreligious have studied the Torah in many ways: the Bible, the New Testament, Islam and Christianity. Any form of studying that is somehow connected to the Torah, whether directly or indirectly, helps people advance and prepares humanity for the right connection, for correction, for the revelation of the Creator to all the created beings.
Everything that happens leads to certain outcomes. All the religious struggles and wars in the past and those that are going on today were meant to clarify the right spiritual vessel. It isn’t clear why our desire to receive has to suffer, but it is a fact that the afflictions a person undergoes develop him.
How many people die each day and what terrible diseases are revealed! New viruses will appear in the world to which modern medicine will have no answers and it is all in order to clarify the right desire.
After all, it is impossible to advance towards revealing the right desire unless you are totally disappointed of the previous desires. You are disappointed not because you cannot fulfill these desires but because you want something more meaningful.
If I suffer now, the pain doesn’t enable me to sin because I have no desire, no power, no time left, or the opportunity to do so. The afflictions force me to feel disappointed of the state I am in and to start clarifying the taste of life and of my existence.
I cannot reach the question of “what is the point of my life?” without sufferings. All the extremist streams that existed in Christianity in the past and which are rising in Islam now are meant only for this purpose: to clarify the taste of life. By demanding that the whole world accept their religion and putting their flag in every continent they are fighting for the purpose of human existence.
It is all the subconscious clarification of the thought of creation. At the moment they are clarifying it this way, but we who study Kabbalah must allow them to advance by the Light that Reforms.
This Light is revealed in our desires. If we draw the Light and begin to reveal it sufficiently, it will begin to flow from us to the rest of humanity since all the souls are connected, like connected vessels. Then they will begin to clarify these questions on a totally different level.
Then the extremist Muslims will not have to fight the corporeal bodies and will try to understand more deeply the meaning of life. In the meantime they are looking for the answer to this question by killing one another, but we can raise them to another level of clarification, to the next level.
Then they will understand that the issue isn’t bodies but desires. This clarification will be by the connection to the source of life, to a state that the Light comes from, that we all have to attain. We have to illuminate this way for them and show them that it exists, that it is open for everyone, and that the clarification is actually by the connection between different people, actually between those who are most distant and different.
Thanks to their connection above all the differences and covering all the sins by love, they will discover the upper force, which means that they will attain a deeper meaning of life.
It all depends on us. We only have to teach humanity how to connect in order to discover the Creator in the connection among us. This is the goal we are fulfilling when we organize conversation circles for the public all over the country. Thus we will be able to express the power of unity rather easily since the Israeli nation has been in this state in the past. Later this force will spread from us to the other nations.
Then we will suddenly discover that the moment we manage to connect the nation to the wisdom of truth, which means to connect thanks to the Light that Reforms, the world will suddenly calm down: the wars in Iraq, the Ukraine, and in other places will stop and so will phenomena like the Ebola virus, etc.
Our whole life will work out since we will bring people to a state in which the Upper Light will begin to clarify their desires and they will not need to clarify them by killing each other. Those who can draw the Light are only those who study the wisdom of Kabbalah. | 2019-04-24T20:06:53Z | https://laitman.com/2014/10/26/ |
The highly anticipated Kohina at Ho'opili phase has officially release it's first 10 homes! The Ho'opili Master Plan was devised and developed by D.R. Horton Hawaii, the same developer that brought us the Mehana project in Kapolei and a Highlands at Kehalani in Wailuku, Maui.
These new homes in Kapolei will be the first of the Kohina, but represent only a small portion of the nearly 12,000 homes planned for the entire Ho'opili project. D.R. Horton Hawaii aims to offer a dynamic product with this phase, providing 7 different home types spread over 40 different floor plans in hopes to appeal to nearly every family dynamic and size.
This specific release will feature 10 homes total; (5) 2- bedroom 2- bathroom townhomes and (5) FLEX Homes; a unique and widely popular home style that allows for a storefront below the living quarters of the home. If you're familiar with the Mehana project in Kapolei, you may have seen a number of these FLEX Homes anchored by dentist and eye care offices, as well as Shave Ice & Acai Bowl venues. We expect the majority of floor plans to offer 1- and 2- car garage options, but not all. It's always recommended to verify this with your Ho'opili Sales Team member.
One of the key features of Kohina at Ho'opili homes is the premier convenience of the phase, relative to the rest of the neighborhood. Kohina will be the closest to phase to the H-1 Freeway, the Ho'opili planned future rail station, University of Hawaii West Oahu, and since it features 3 different access points to Ho'opili, the developer is coining this phase as the "Gateway" to Ho'opili.
Lottery Applications will be due at 5:00PM on February 22nd, with the Lottery Drawing taking place at 10:00AM on February 23rd.
CLICK HERE to learn more about this unique project, to schedule a private tour of the Kohina at Ho'opili Sales Office, How to Apply, or to see Official Pricing & Specific Unit Specs!
Kailua's Pali Lanes bowling alley has been deemed a "Historical Place" by the Hawaii Historic Places review board. For some, the designation is a victory as it may stall redevelopment plans proposed by landowner Alexander & Baldwin.
In December 2017, A&B vocalized its plans to end the lease of Pali Lanes in 2019 and was immediately met with community opposition. The bowling alley has been a staple in Kailua for nearly 58 years and rumblings of redevelopment have left the community torn.
Pali Lanes' Hekili Street location represents key real estate in the heart of Kailua Town; a redevelopment hotspot that's seen a swath of new retail and dining venues emerge in the last decade. Lau Hala Shops, formerly Liberty House and Macy's, is right across the street and will soon see Down To Earth and Maui Brewing Company added to the tenant list of UFC Gym and the Roy Yamaguchi inspired, "Goen" restaurant.
A&B recently sent out surveys to nearly 16,000 homes, asking for the community's input and ideas on what to do with the 1.7 acre site. Many Kailua residents would like to green, gathering spaces added to an area that's dense with brick, mortar, and parking lots. The vision would provide a new home for the Kailua Farmer's market, concert spaces, and other community spaces.
Opposition to A&B would prefer to see Pali Lanes preserved as the iconic, inexpensive entertainment venue that's its been for nearly 60 years. Community group, Our Kailua, leveraged social media to rally it's voice in support of keeping the bowling alley in place, including petitioning the state for the Historical Place designation and subsequently receiving it.
A&B asked the Historical Places Review Board not to make a decision until the developer had more time to continue efforts with the community to find common ground. The company had been put all development plans on hold since initial community opposition to its plans, even extending Pali Lane's lease until 2020 while they work to provide more options for the site.
Alexander & Baldwin will now face a stringent review process by the state's Historic Preservation division, should they decide to move forward with redevelopment.
The UFC Gym franchise officially opened its Kailua location on November 17th. Located on the second floor of the newly developed Lau Hala Shops(formerly the Macy's building at 573 Kailua Road), UFC Kailua marks the 4th location in Hawaii for the rapidly growing franchise. The facility is touted by UFC staff as being the largest and most innovative to date, and as a member myself, I was impressed upon my first visit on opening day.
While fitness has always been an inherent part of the Kailua lifestyle, comprehensive fitness options have been limited to date. A small boutique gym here, a Crossfit box there, but definitely no premium full-service facilities to serve the masses. Up until opening day, many Waimanalo and Kailua residents found themselves traversing over the hill to 24 hour Fitness in Kaneohe to get fit.
Me personally, I hate driving. I drive for a living(sort of). So tell me I have to drive more than 5 minutes to a gym and you've isolated my biggest excuse NOT to workout. That being said, my workouts often consisted of running Kainalu and Kalaheo Drive like everyone else, or running, pushups, and pull-ups on my favorite tree branch at Kailua Beach. Now I don't take the scenery for granted for a second and there are definitely worse places to find your fitness. However, monotony is de-motivating nonetheless and it only takes one passing rains shower to drown my workout aspirations for the day.
What I like most about this facility is the WINDOWS. If you've been to the Honolulu or Waikele locations you'll know that these are red and black caves. I'm as much a meathead as the next guy but for God's sake, let there be light! UFC Kailua put the red to bed did it right with light.
Prospective members can also call (808) 800-2958 or visit UFCGYM.com/Kailua.
Sky Ala Moana, one of 8 new condominium projects being proposed for the Ala Moana neighborhood has received final approval from the Honolulu City Counsel. The approval provides a clear path for constructing the project on-site of the current Kenrock complex on Kapiolani Boulevard. Sky Ala Moana will be a Condo-Hotel, or "condo-tel" for short, and plans to bring two towers to market. The "Hotel" tower will permit owners to operate their homes as legal vacation rentals when they are not occupying the home for their own leisure. The second tower will provide for traditional, residential ownership.
With an earmarked budget of $510 Million, Sky Ala Moana expects to deliver 474 total units, 300 of which will be condo-tel units, as well as 84 units set aside for Affordable Housing pricing(Read up on Affordable Housing FAQ's here). Owners and vacation tenants alike will enjoy the vibrant Ala Moana neighborhood, with retail, dining, and entertainment opportunities abound. Only steps from the mega-mall of Ala Moana Center and mere blocks from Ala Moana Beach Park, residents will provided exceptional convenience to some of Honolulu's most iconic venues.
Since the project will be constructed in a Transient Oriented Development zone, the city will permit the developer to build Sky Ala Moana up to 400 feet tall. The typical ordinance only allows for building heights of 250 feet in the area but the exception is made due to the project's proximity to future Honolulu rail transit stations. The developer is targeting 2023 for delivery of its first units to market.
For more information on the project including but not limited to artist renderings, estimated pricing, and sales CLICK HERE.
AVAILABLE: Estimated delivery of units is March 2019.
*Features vary per plan. Confirm with sales agent.
Interested in learning more about the project and the upcoming lottery? Register on the INTEREST LIST below to schedule a tour of the Model Home and/or for information on how to REGISTER FOR THE LOTTERY.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR - As we tell all of our clients, our goals are purely to facilitate yours. We're here to address any and all questions, ideas, or fears you may have about our unique real estate market and/or the homeownership process so that you can make well informed decisions. While we understand you have 5,000 real estate agents to choose from on Oahu, we encourage you to Meet The Homeboys to get an idea of the level of service and guidance we aim to provide, when you need it.
***All Information and photographs are courtesy of D.R. Horton. Photographs and drawings are representational only. Home and community information, including pricing, included features, terms, availability and amenities, are subject to change at any time without notice or obligation. Drawings, renderings, square footages, or plans, elevations, features, colors and sizes are approximate and for illustration purposes only and will vary from the homes as built. Not all features available in all plans. Options and upgrades are available at an additional cost and are subject to construction cut-off dates. See any Ho‘opili sales agent for complete details including warranty.
Your Guide to What, Where, Why, & Do You Qualify?
Honolulu Affordable Housing in the Oahu real estate market is a hot, and often misunderstood topic in a state with short housing supply, and some of the highest home prices in the nation. Most are aware of the new residential condo towers popping up in the Kakaako and Ala Moana Skylines, however, most aren’t aware that developers are actually required by state law to offer a certain number of units for sale under Affordable Housing guidelines.
With a few hundred affordable units offered for sale and sometimes thousands of applicants, the supply never meets the demand. The Ala Moana neighborhood is seeing the greatest influx in new condo projects and may offer as many as 5 residential towers, a condo-tel, and rentals. Affordable Housing will be offered by each project in some capacity; but whether it’s for sale or for rent is to be determined.
Considering affordable housing? See some of the common FAQ’s and guidelines below to help you determine if you might be eligible.
The Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation(HHFDC) operates as the overseeing agency of all affordable housing in Hawaii. The development and financing of the affordable housing units is operated by the agency as well.
What advantages does HHFDC's Affordable Housing provide?
Qualified and eligible applicants of the program are given an opportunity to purchase below market prices.
Opportunity to live and own in a new construction project in Metro Honolulu.
With the height of Oahu home prices today, a common theme amongst many of my clients is the scenario by which buying a home equates to a downgrade in preferred location or quality of home, relative to their rental. Putting aside the many benefits of homeownership vs. renting, this can be true. The Affordable Housing Program can offer opportunities for a more lateral move -- providing homeownership options to a prospective buyer in locations or of a quality that wouldn't normally be in the budget. But again, with restrictions.
Are you eligible for Affordable Housing?
Eligibility for the program is ultimately determined by HHFDC’s review of the information provided on buyers’ applications.
Resident of the State of Hawaii; currently resides in the State of Hawaii. State ID or Drivers License is typically requested as proof.
Applicant must not own a majority interest (more than 50%) anywhere. Yes, anywhere.
On top of being eligible for Affordable Housing, buyers must also qualify by showing they have gross income(s) that satisfy a mortgage lender’s guidelines to purchasing a home.
Are there income limits for Affordable Housing?
Yes. Buyers’ eligibility is determined by their household income being no greater than a specified area median income(AMI) determined by HHFDC(Usually 120-140%). Take a look at the chart below for the 2018 AMI; note your household size at the top of the chart.
Buyers wishing to purchase Affordable Housing unit must know that they are required to own and occupy their unit for 10 years. Should they look to sell, rent, or transfer ownership of the home prior to the 10 year buyback period, HHFDC is given first right of refusal to purchase the unit. Once the 10 years buyback period expires, the restriction no longer applies.
I do my best to have my clients "crystal ball" their futures for the next 10 years as a decade is a long time, and a lot can change in terms of family dynamics and income. Make sure you consult your Realtor to gain full perspective on what you can and can't do as an Affordable Housing owner, and how that may affect your real estate future going forward. For some, Affordable Housing is a perfect fit. For others, it may handcuff them from their accomplishing their long term Oahu real estate goals.
Yes. Buyers are required to make a $500 good faith deposit upon signing a contract for a unit. A total deposit of 5% of the purchase price, less the $500 good faith deposit is due after 30 days.
Shared Equity Program — What is it?
One of the caveats to the HHFDC allowing buyers to purchase at below market prices, is the Shared Appreciation. In turn when you sell your unit you will share some of the net appreciation back with the HHFDC to help fund future projects. The SAE is determined prior to closing and once determined, will never change.
What’s the next Affordable Housing opportunity if I’m curious about buying?
Those looking to purchase the Metro Honolulu area should look to the Ililani condo project (coming soon) near SALT at Kakaako, Sky Ala Moana condos( now selling Market Units, Affordable coming soon), The Central Ala Moana condos (now selling, current availability may be limited) and. These are exciting projects in highly desired Honolulu neighborhoods that are quickly transforming into thriving urban epicenters.
Those looking at homeownership in West Oahu should look to the Ho'opili project; more specifically the Kohina at Ho'opili project that is currently selling Market Priced units, but estimated to bring Affordable Housing units later this year. Ho'opili is centered between Ewa and Kapolei, anchored right next to the future planned Honolulu Rail, and just north of the new Ka Makana Alii mall. We expect Ho'opili to consistently offer affordable housing opportunities as new phases are released.
Last not but not least, the highly anticipated Koa Ridge (coming soon - I know..we've been saying that forever) project in Central Oahu will also be offering affordable housing units with estimated sales to commence in 2020.
If you would like to be the first to know about future New Condo and/or Affordable Housing opportunities, register on the Interest List below!
Koula, the next planned mixed-use residential condo tower at Ward Village in Kakaako, received approval last week from the Hawaii Community Development Authority. Now that the project is approved, the Howard Hughes team will start trekking towards planning the project and toward their target sales launch date of late 2018, or beginning of 2019. Howard Hughes hopes to break ground late 2019.
Koula will be the first project ever designed in Hawaii by Studio Gang, architect and design firm led by decorated architect, Jeanne Gang. The interiors of Koula will be reflect the design of Yabu Pushelberg, a highly-acclaimed international design firm with offices in Toronto and Soho. Located adjacent to the Central Plaza, Koula's location within Ward Village makes it one of the most convenient towers to the Central Plaza; Ward Village's sweeping, open air gathering place that aims to connect the community with a wide array of restaurants, retail, and parks. The Central Plaza will be a hub to outdoor community events ranging from yoga to outdoor movie viewings, and live local music and hula.
Over an acre of amenities will be available on the 8th floor amenity deck and will including an astonishing swimming pool, a swim and play area for the kids as well as poolside cabanas, sunset lounge area, an expansive lawn, and multiple dining terraces surrounded by a sea of lush, meticulously manicured landscaping, native to Hawaii. Rest assured gym rats, the amenity deck will feature a spa and fitness club.
For more information, artist renderings of the project, and to sign up on our INTEREST LIST to receive the most accurate, real-time updates from the developer, click HERE.
Kapolei has long been known as Oahu's "Second City". As Kapolei, located on the Ewa Plain of Oahu, matures into the vision that the City and County of Honolulu set forth many years ago, a mix of older communities and new developments combined give it the character that you see today.
Real Estate in Kapolei continues to thrive as Oahu's limited inventory of homes cannot keep up with the growing population and demand for housing. The silver lining in all of this is that Kapolei still has some of the lower priced real estate for buyers looking to own a piece of Hawaii real estate.
There are a lot of home buying options in the new 2nd city of Kapolei from townhouses to estate homes. If you are looking to get your foot in the door to homeownership on the island of Oahu, then Kapolei will truly give you a newer home with good space to grow a family at an affordable price. Would you like to know FIRST when properties like these hit the market? Our database is updated every 5 minutes and all you have to do is SIGN UP HERE to receive updates on all new listings just like these!
Honolulu's Ala Moana Center will soon be home to a two level, 17,300 square foot UNIQLO store set to open in the fall of 2018. The official store launch will be preceded by a pop up store that's planned for June this year. Further details on the pop-up store are yet to come but we foresee this joint to be wild son.
I know a gang of people on a personal level who flock to various cities in Japan on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis; strategically packing their suit cases to insure a little room for some "ultra light down" outerwear and other UNIQLO gear. And that's the best part -- this compact, water repelling, feathery little gem of jacket fits compactly into an included carrying case, requiring literally just a little room in your carry on bag. Not familiar with the product? I bet you are... Just wait for the Honolulu temperature to drop to 60 degrees and watch the Michelin-Man shaped millennials start to pop out. But if that doesn't ring any bells, head to Pike's Market in Seattle and lookout for the usually black, ribbed, outer-shell that's wicking rain while you're walking wet. OR, spot the jackets on a local family wandering aimlessly through a Portland Ikea while visiting their college kids on winter break. You get the picture, and if you don't, then here's the picture.
The most obvious reason being that Hawaii is heavily influenced by Japanese culture, and more predominately, Asian culture. UNIQLO's brand awareness and market share is naturally strongest in the Asian markets closest to it's origin. The apparel has an inherent set of Japanese values with focus on simplicity, quality, and longevity. The company also puts a lot of stock into sustainability, a value that's also reflected in Hawaii's desire to protect its delicate ecosystem. It only makes sense that it would catch fire in Hawaii, a state comprised of over 500,000 Asians and only a stone's throw from its largest markets. This isn't taking into account the droves of Japanese visitors shedding their UNIQLO jackets for an Aloha shirt after touching down at Honolulu's Daniel K. Inouye Airport, and then putting them back on before reaching 10,000ft on the flight home.
Which makes for the perfect segue into the next theory. TRAVEL. We've got family to see, mountains to ski, and for some of you, gambling needs. So with baggage fees dependent on quantity of bags, size, and weight, Hawaii people can't afford NOT to have a slim, convenient way to stay warm and conserve space when headed to a different climate. Regardless of the destination's climate, the airplane can feel like a nippy fall night in it's own right. Leave it packed in its carrying case and you've got a pillow. Bust it out inflight and you've just saved $10 on a branket. If they're smart, they'll sell them on the duty free cart. If they're fair, they'll provide a lifetime 50% discount to the guy who told them to.
I've mentioned it already but they save space! Relative to mainland homes, most Hawaii people are accustomed to living in SMALL houses with SMALL closets. The last thing we have space for is bulky winter clothes that we only get to use when we get a buddy pass off the rock. Hawaii Homes are getting SMALLER too. A new Ward Village condo project named Aalii in Kakaako is currently selling units as small as 300sqft. A new single family home project in Ewa & Kapolei named Hoopili is currently selling homes with an option for a 400sqft Accessory Dwelling Unit(ADU). UNIQLO's tiny coat translates perfectly to the Oahu's emerging tiny home movement.
I've talked a lot about one piece of UNIQLO's apparel but frankly they're a clothing line that very much appeals to all walks of life. Hence their mantra, "LifeWear." The company understands its consumer base is spread amongst a vast landscape of different climates and environments. Take mainland China for example; the 4th largest country in the world with as much or more climate variety as the United States. UNIQLO'S Central Ala Moana store in Honolulu is sure to be a hit amongst Hawaii residents, especially in offering their latest concept AIRism, which promotes cool, moisture wicking, active wear. With Honolulu being one of the fittest cities in the nation, its only fitting that the company's first store be right across the street from the hundreds of health conscious Honolulu residents getting their heart rate up at Ala Moana Beach Park everyday. Another popular concept is UNIQLO'S UT Graphic Tees that carefully collects authentic cultural content, promoting the individual to "Wear Your World," as they put it. With no shortage of culture, we would love to see UNIQLO bring some Hawaii inspired tees to market. From the natural landscapes of land, air, and sea; to the hip, urban, art and architecture inspired streets of Kakaako, we see a ton of opportuniTEES.
Stay tuned for more updates as the store launch approaches and FOLLOW US @hawaiihomeboys! | 2019-04-22T19:08:52Z | https://www.hawaiihomeboys.com/blog/ |
Substantial recent research examines the efficacy of many types of complementary and alternative (CAM) therapies. However, outcomes associated with the "real-world" use of CAM has been largely overlooked, despite calls for CAM therapies to be studied in the manner in which they are practiced. Americans seek CAM treatments far more often for chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) than for any other condition. Among CAM treatments for CMP, acupuncture and chiropractic (A/C) care are among those with the highest acceptance by physician groups and the best evidence to support their use. Further, recent alarming increases in delivery of opioid treatment and surgical interventions for chronic pain--despite their high costs, potential adverse effects, and modest efficacy--suggests the need to evaluate real world outcomes associated with promising non-pharmacological/non-surgical CAM treatments for CMP, which are often well accepted by patients and increasingly used in the community.
This multi-phase, mixed methods study will: (1) conduct a retrospective study using information from electronic medical records (EMRs) of a large HMO to identify unique clusters of patients with CMP (e.g., those with differing demographics, histories of pain condition, use of allopathic and CAM health services, and comorbidity profiles) that may be associated with different propensities for A/C utilization and/or differential outcomes associated with such care; (2) use qualitative interviews to explore allopathic providers' recommendations for A/C and patients' decisions to pursue and retain CAM care; and (3) prospectively evaluate health services/costs and broader clinical and functional outcomes associated with the receipt of A/C relative to carefully matched comparison participants receiving traditional CMP services. Sensitivity analyses will compare methods relying solely on EMR-derived data versus analyses supplementing EMR data with conventionally collected patient and clinician data.
Successful completion of these aggregate aims will provide an evaluation of outcomes associated with the real-world use of A/C services. The trio of retrospective, qualitative, and prospective study will also provide a clearer understanding of the decision-making processes behind the use of A/C for CMP and a transportable methodology that can be applied to other health care settings, CAM treatments, and clinical populations.
We describe here our study designed to understand clinically meaningful outcomes (from both patient and provider perspectives) of acupuncture and chiropractic (A/C) care as delivered in routine practice settings for the treatment of chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP). The centerpiece of the study is a prospective cohort study. However, before we undertake this phase of work, we will conduct an analysis of electronic medical record (EMR) data and qualitative data collection to provide the foundation for identifying a more meaningful comparison of outcomes between those receiving and not receiving A/C care. Our goal is to test an exportable methodological approach that can be used to understand critical outcomes associated with the receipt of an array of treatment services in everyday practice settings for a realistically diverse set of patients.
Chronic pain is a highly prevalent condition, often resulting in large decrements in health-related quality of life (QOL) and functional status, with substantial associated medical care costs, disability, and productivity loss [1–3]. CMP in particular is both prevalent and costly [4–7], affecting 60-80% of American adults at some point during their lives; CMP symptoms are among the top five reasons that patients visit clinics and emergency departments [6, 8]. Recent alarming increases in delivery of opioid treatment and surgical interventions for chronic pain--despite their high costs, potential adverse effects, and modest efficacy [9–12]--suggest the need to evaluate outcomes associated with promising non-pharmacological/non-surgical approaches for CMP management and treatment, including complementary and alterative medicine (CAM). Americans seek CAM treatments far more often for CMP than for any other condition .
Substantial recent research has examined the biological basis and efficacy of many types of CAM therapies but, despite calls for effectiveness-oriented research, "real-world" use of CAM remains understudied [14, 15]. Use of CAM for CMP appears to be increasing. A national survey found that 38% of U.S. adults used some form of CAM, most commonly for relief of back and neck pain, joint pain and stiffness, arthritis, and other musculoskeletal conditions. Among CAM treatments for CMP, acupuncture and chiropractic care are considered the most highly accepted by physician groups [16, 17] with the best evidence to support their use [18–21]. Nearly 90% of states mandate insurance reimbursement for chiropractic care and approximately 25% do so for acupuncture . Further, a survey of acupuncturists and chiropractors in Massachusetts, Arizona, and Washington found that back pain was the most common reason given by patients for seeking treatments; overall, 40-76% of patients included CMP among their reasons for seeking such treatment .
Patients also report high levels of satisfaction with acupuncture and chiropractic care . A Consumer Reports survey found that while more than half of the respondents reported being highly satisfied with care from acupuncturists (53%) and chiropractors (59%) for back pain, only 44% reported similar satisfaction with care from specialist physicians and 34% with care from primary care physicians . Despite some positive findings among observational studies and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) regarding the impact of acupuncture [18, 26, 27] and chiropractic care [18, 28–30] on CMP, highly controlled trials have suggested that expectation and non-specific effects may be substantial contributors to observed treatment effects [31–33]. These findings highlight the importance of examining patient expectations and treatment decision-making factors when evaluating such outcomes. Given both the popularity of A/C for CMP treatment and outcome findings, an important next step is to examine the use of these CAM therapies for CMP as they are delivered by providers in routine practice settings.
Multiple recent reports [14, 15, 34, 35] suggest the importance for health services research to explore models of organized health delivery that integrate CAM with conventional medicine. Until recently, patients were likely to make decisions about whether to use CAM services without input from allopathic providers [36, 37], but today's patients are increasingly "co-managed" by conventional and CAM clinicians. Most patients report using CAM and conventional medicine together and want the opportunity to discuss CAM use with their primary care providers, be respected for their beliefs, and be guided on their use of such treatments [38–40]. Many CAM therapies are used to complement, rather than replace, conventional medicine; therefore, it is important to identify a model that can serve as a unified framework for the decision to use A/C within this context. Thus, we chose a framework to guide our exploration of patients' decisions to use A/C based on a well-accepted model for general health care decision-making and use [41, 42], that has been expanded to consider integration of CAM services (see Figure 1). This model for CAM use includes commonly used self-directed practices and products as well as provider services that are the central focus of this study. Further, the model includes indicators that may "pull" a person toward A/C use (e.g., responsibility for preventive self-care) or "push" patients (e.g., dissatisfaction with conventional medicine)[44, 45]. Research on conventional medicine use suggests that enabling factors (e.g., access, information about forms of care) and need (e.g., type and level of impairment) are the primary drivers of health care decisions [46–48], but their relative importance has not been explored for A/C service use.
Patient Factors Influencing the Decision to Use Acupuncture and/or Chiropractic Care (A/C) for Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain.
This project will use data collected from a prepaid group practice model health maintenance organization (HMO) that offers A/C coverage for CMP treatment; in this setting, enabling factors of access (insurance coverage, co-pays, lower out-of-pocket costs) will likely mitigate the influence of economic factors [47, 49, 50]. Consequently, we will be able to explore more fully those non-financial predisposing and need factors that affect A/C decision making. This framework also helps guide us toward the most important domains for measurement.
Finally, there is increased demand for innovative study designs using data from routine practice settings to compare strengths and weaknesses of various medical interventions. Ideal settings are health care systems that use EMRs, provide insurance coverage, and document the use of provider-delivered CAM services, such as A/C care. Innovative research designs in these settings can provide information for health care providers and patients about which CAM and conventional treatments are likely to provide the best clinical, functional, and quality-of-life outcomes for everyday users in routine practice settings [51–53]. These designs will include a more diverse range of study subjects than would RCTs and allow longer follow-up, facilitating identification of groups that may uniquely benefit or encounter complications. These settings permit study designs that can examine the full array of treatments and associated outcomes that patients may encounter.
Despite these advantages, making causal inferences in observational studies is more challenging than in RCTs because of confounding by indication. That is, patients (and/or doctors) choose treatments using information that may not be evident to researchers. Patients who receive a given treatment in everyday practice may be dissimilar from their counterparts who do not, in which case treatment outcomes may be at least partially related to unmeasured pre-treatment differences rather than the treatment received. For pre-treatment differences where we have valid information, recent analytic techniques offer the promise of identifying patients with similar probability of receiving a particular treatment [54–58]. In the event that one of these patients receives the treatment and the other does not, clinical outcomes may be validly compared for such individuals. Using such approaches can complement what can be achieved with RCTs relatively quickly and efficiently. Such observational studies can highlight important domains for subsequent confirmatory RCTs or point to patterns of utilization and outcomes that are not predicted by existing RCTs.
The aims of the present study are two-fold. The first goal is to examine who (i.e., CMP patients with what characteristics and history of clinical care) will have improved outcomes from A/C care, and to identify the specific characteristics of such care (e.g., duration, comprehensiveness of employed A/C modalities). The second goal is to test an exportable methodological approach that can be used to examine clinically meaningful outcomes for patients: (1) in different settings, (2) using different types of CAM or conventional medical services, with (3) different health care conditions and characteristics.
The overarching goal of this multi-phase, mixed methods study is to understand the real world implications for patient care and patient satisfaction of acupuncture and/or chiropractic treatment for CMP. Our study setting is a closed patient population HMO in which insurance coverage has been available for A/C treatments. In order to accomplish our goal, we divided our work into three complementary but distinct phases as summarized in Figure 2. Phase 1 involves assembling and exploring a research database with 5 years (2006-2010) of prospectively collected elements available within the HMO. We will identify HMO members who satisfy our study definition of CMP (see Table 1). The database will include members with evidence of using A/C services and a matched comparison group without such evidence. We will then compare these groups on clinical care outcomes and costs derived using EMR data. These analyses will be augmented with patient-reported out-of-plan A/C utilization. Phase 2 includes qualitative methods to describe the characteristics of A/C services received by HMO-based CMP patients and the decision-making processes of allopathic providers and patients in choosing such services; this will allow us to design the appropriate data collection tools and strategies for Phase 3. During Phase 3, we will conduct a longitudinal prospective cohort study of carefully matched samples of A/C and non-A/C patients. Participant selection will rely upon clustering/matching methods identified during Phase 1, refined by Phase 2 qualitative findings, and augmented by additional, direct-assessed patient-report baseline data. Outcomes will include EMR-derived utilization information and patient-reported outcomes. The patient-reported outcomes will cover clinical, psychosocial, quality of life, service utilization, and health care costs over 12 months. We will develop and/or refine these outcomes in the process of Phase 1 data exploration and Phase 2 qualitative research that explores outcomes that are clinically meaningful to conventional and CAM providers and are associated with high levels of patient satisfaction. Finally, we will compare outcomes from this augmented data set to those found during the Phase 1 EMR-only analyses, conducting sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of our findings and transportability of methodology. While phases 1 and 2 can stand alone, in this project they are preparatory to Phase 3, the longitudinal prospective cohort study.
Study Phases, Procedures, and Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain (CMP) Participant Flow.
Only one CMP/nCP diagnosis can be counted in any given 7-day window to minimize the possibility that qualifying diagnoses reflect multiple visits/services for the same acute pain condition.
This study is being conducted at Kaiser Permanente Northwest (KPNW), a large HMO in the Pacific Northwest with several features that create a uniquely favorable environment for this research. First, KPNW has an extensive history of CAM integration. Due to Washington State's 1998 law mandating insurance coverage for a broad array of licensed providers (including chiropractors and acupuncturists), KPNW began to offer CAM coverage for all health plan members. Administration of this coverage is provided by a managed complementary care network that maintains electronic data from HCFA-1500 forms (including information on diagnoses, procedures, and dates of service) and these data are available to the project. Second, any health plan member can be referred by a KPNW clinician for A/C care for qualifying conditions, including acupuncture for CMP and chiropractic care for acute exacerbations of CMP conditions. Although some patients pay out-of-pocket for A/C care, our out-of-plan CAM use survey will help us discern this prevalence. Third, in 1995, KPNW implemented a comprehensive EMR system (HealthConnect) that has since captured A/C services and documented all outpatient provider encounters, diagnoses, referrals, laboratory and imaging studies, and prescriptions. The HMO provides most services in its own hospitals and clinics, yet data are compiled and available on reimbursable external services received by health plan patients. Together these provide an all-inclusive picture of members' covered health care utilization.
Study participants are health plan members aged 18 or older with evidence of CMP. To identify such patients from the EMR, we use ICD-9 codes consistent with CMP-related diagnoses, as outlined in Table 1. Musculoskeletal pain is thought to contribute to tension headaches, carpal tunnel syndrome, and temporomandibular disorders (TMD). Accordingly, and because A/C care is sometimes sought for the treatment of such conditions, we include participants with these diagnoses. To ensure chronicity of the pain disorder, visits must indicate such diagnoses or receipt of commensurate health services spanning at least 180 days. Exclusion criteria include history of cancer or cancer-related pain, hospice or other end-of-life palliative care, cognitive impairment (dementia, developmental delay, and psychosis) that would make it unlikely that the patient would receive A/C and/or could participate in study assessments. In later sections, we describe additional inclusion and exclusion criteria specific to the qualitative (Phase 2) and prospective cohort (Phase 3) portions of the study.
Preliminary analyses indicate that during a recent calendar year (2010), almost 24% (N = 71,584) of our 304, 034 current health plan members ≥ 18 years of age met criteria for current or recent CMP;, a high prevalence in the study setting even when using a stringent definition of chronic pain (at least six months' duration of symptoms). Further, 36% of these CMP patients met criteria for more than one type of chronic pain (see Table 2), suggesting the importance of including participants with more complex conditions (i.e., multiple simultaneous CMP ICD-9 diagnoses) to adequately examine care in routine settings.
*2224 chiropractic only, 2314 acupuncture only, 278 both.
The first phase of the project involves constructing a sample of HMO members with CMP over a five-year period (1/01/2006-12/31/2010). One difference between EMR-based and RCT-based research is the importance of the occurrence of medical events over time, in the absence of any research intervention. Each patient in the sample will have a virtual enrollment date, at which they first satisfied the CMP-eligibility criteria. All EMR data prior to that date correspond roughly to "baseline" data in an RCT, the primary difference being that the amount and duration of EMR-based events will almost certainly vary widely from patient to patient. As one moves forward from the virtual enrollment date, a given patient can be considered to be someone who uses A/C during that time period if they initiate A/C visits, or not if they rely solely on conventional care. Consequently, whether a patient is considered as treated (with A/C) or "control" (without A/C) depends on the time period over which outcome events are accumulated. This feature substantially complicates the analysis, above and beyond the absence of a formal intervention. Those who receive A/C treatment or are identified as "control" subjects can then be compared on clinical care outcomes and costs derived from EMR data.
Phase 1 includes a focus on analytic innovations that capitalize on our very large data set (122, 896 health plan members with EMR-identified CMP from 2006 to 2010) to describe pain-related services. We will also explore and compare outcomes found through multiple methods for identifying suitable comparable groups of patients (those who did and did not receive A/C services) and best controlling for potential confounders between the groups. This approach is consistent with recommendations for observational studies to employ multiple analytic strategies to ensure consistency of findings . Reviewed below are our methods for organizing our data and creating descriptions of trajectories of pain care services (event-stream methods) followed by the three principal analytic approaches to be employed to match participants receiving A/C to suitable controls - selection models, propensity score analysis, and the analysis of matched comparison groups. These analytic methods will be oriented toward reduction of indication bias.
Management of longitudinal patient records is difficult because patients receive services in diverse ways. Unlike clinical trials in which all measures are collected in the same time frame, clinical records include patients who visit the health plan at different times for different services, each displaying a unique, idiographic "trajectory of care." For CMP patients, for example, this might include use of patient education, physical therapy, and opiate medications over a particular period of time. The event-stream method allows a richer description of patient care over time, more consistent with how patients receive services in routine care. The method defines an efficient data interface between the clinical/administrative databases and the analysis datasets [61, 62]. Event-stream methods can be used to construct the types of variables that can then be used in a conventional analysis. This approach simplifies both the data extraction and statistical analysis and allows a richer array of variables for identifying matches or clusters of patients.
To compare CMP patients who are users and non-users of A/C care on their health care utilization, we will need to adjust for features that might be associated with both the use of CAM (A/C care) and health care utilization overall. One of the challenges the project will address will be to determine the potential confounding factors from the EMR data alone. The chief threat to the validity of clinical observational studies is indication bias, in which factors that predict clinical outcomes are associated with treatment choices. This problem is not unique to biomedical research, and in fact the foundational development of selection models was carried out in economics . Therefore, Heckman's selection models will be used to produce analyses based on joint estimation in a regression model (for the outcome) and a logistic regression model (for the treatment selection), which permits these two processes to be linked. Of all the approaches to be used in this project, this is the one that most closely mirrors statistical analysis in a conventional clinical trial.
Another method we will use to model the probability of being referred for and obtaining CAM treatment is propensity score analysis [56, 59, 64–66]. Propensity scoring is an increasingly accepted collection of techniques to adjust for non-random selection among groups within observational studies. This approach is designed to remove most of the imbalance associated with the measured characteristics of cases allowing less biased estimates of treatment effect and other quantities linked with treatment (e.g., cost, quality of life). Propensity scores are designed to extract all of the relevant information from potential confounding variables. A consequence of this method is that two people in the same propensity stratum would be equally likely to receive the (CAM) treatment, after conditioning on all their known pre-treatment characteristics, which justifies an entirely conventional analysis. We will follow the modern literature on propensity scoring to use multiple models with different forms and assumptions, as this is the only way known to probe the validity of the resulting analyses. Table 3 includes a list of EMR variables available to us for this purpose.
The third and primary approach we anticipate using to matching participants receiving A/C to suitable controls is the analysis of matched comparison groups. This approach is based on the notion that if, at a particular time, one can form a group of patients who are well-matched on prognostic factors, then within such a group decisions whether to use A/C cannot be based on the matching factors and must be weakly associated with unmeasured factors that are correlated with measured matching factors, thus tending to remove indication bias. If this type of matching were perfectly successful, then the absence of formal randomization would become irrelevant. In the analysis, one would compute treatment effects at the MCG level. Subsequent analysis would search for consistent results across similar MCGs, and in the presence of such similarity, accumulation of results would be applied to patient subpopulations. Formation of MCGs will be aided by the affinity clustering technique [54, 67], which can be employed in large samples and has the advantage of identifying an "exemplar" patient whose variables represent those of the MCG members, thus making it possible to characterize MCGs at the analysis stage. Variables from the EMR include the patient characteristics and care variables delineated in Table 3. Available variables include many of those posited to be important factors in patients' decisions to use CAM therapies, as delineated in Figure 1 (Boxes A-C). Our large study patient pool study makes it possible to find MCGs of relatively closely matched CMP patients. We anticipate finding a large number of MCGs, each small and highly homogeneous. Outcomes will consist of various utilization measures, both generally and specific to CMP (see Table 4). We do not anticipate statistical significance at the MCG level due to their small size; rather, we intend to aggregate results across MCGs to investigate homogeneity of A/C effects and to relate the magnitude of A/C effects to MCG exemplar characteristics.
In identifying MCGs, we will use all CMP patient EMR data collected over a 5-year span (2006-2010). Patients must have a long enough duration of consecutive health plan membership to establish CMP eligibility and evaluate outcomes over the following year. To ensure maximum comparability, eligible patients must have clinical data available over a period when the A/C referral patterns were highly comparable. For each analytic approach, for each outcome measure, an A/C effect (comparing A/C and non-A/C patients) will be computed for each informative MCG. Table 4 shows the EMR-derived clinical outcomes that we plan to examine. We will employ conventional between-group estimates of the A/C effect measures. We anticipate, however, that there may be substantial heterogeneity of A/C effects across MCGs, so that it will be important to characterize where A/C has a beneficial effect, no effect, or an adverse effect. We will use both graphical methods as well as clustering of MCGs. We will also use explanatory linear models, usually ordinary regression, but potentially variants, depending on the specific type of outcome.
In clinical trials, it is appropriate to pre-specify the main analyses; however, in clinical non-intervention research, the reverse is the case. As emphasized in Guo and Fraser , because each analytic approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, it is essential to carry out a multiplicity of different analyses and assess their potentially conflicting results in the context of broad knowledge about clinical processes and patient behaviors. This virtually guarantees that reports of research results from non-intervention studies will be more lengthy and complex than their clinical trial counterparts.
Unlike an RCT, at this stage of EMR-based research we do not have simple, prespecified hypotheses to test. Furthermore, in the light of the desirability of carrying out multiple types of analyses with different endpoints and analysis variants, it is not feasible to make standard sample size computations. Instead, study justification rests on the very large pool of eligible patients (122, 896 health plan members with EMR-identified CMP from 2006 to 2010) and analysis relies on precise estimation of potential effects, rather than on statistical decision-making. Moreover, part of the purpose of an EMR-based study is to portray the variability of response patterns at the individual patient level (as opposed to an average result for the entire sample) to the extent that this is observable. Here again, statistical decision-making does not seem to be an optimal approach.
Our first-step Phase 1 analyses are confined to variables available in the EMR, which we will use to develop a broadly replicable and efficient approach to evaluating A/C impact. However, patients may be using A/C and other CAM therapies in ways not visible within the EMR. Similarly, there may be patient characteristics contributing to the decision to use A/C therapies that are also not readily visible in the EMR. To address these issues, we will identify patients whose EMR records suggest the presence of CMP within the past two years; we will then invite them to complete a survey identifying current and prior out-of-plan A/C use and use of related treatments/practices. A copy of the survey is available from the first author. We will then replicate the Phase 1 procedures (described above) with the enhanced data set including only those individuals who responded to the survey. This will allow us to evaluate the robustness of our findings by comparing the MCG characteristics identified using only EMR data with those identified in this augmented data set. Additional insights and characteristics predictive of out-of-plan use will help guide sampling of CMP participants for the focus groups in Phase 2, as well as the MCG design for matching participants in Phase 3. Data on out-of-plan use will be most accurate for current use patterns, which are most important for Phases 2 and 3. There will still be "noise" in this data for two reasons: first, not all CMP patients will respond to the survey; second, retrospective self-reporting may not allow us to determine with certainty whether self-care practices or out-of-plan CAM use preceded receipt of covered A/C care. Nonetheless, reporting such practices indicates a patient's general proclivity to seek CAM services or engage in self-care practices to address health concerns. Information on this tendency may enhance our interpretation of patient decision-making and outcomes.
The second phase of the project will use qualitative research methods to achieve three goals: first, to identify characteristics of A/C received by CMP patients through A/C provider interviews; second, to explore patients' and allopathic providers' decision-making processes in choosing to use/recommend A/C; and third, to identify important outcomes and factors associated with patient and provider satisfaction. Each of these components will inform the construction of instruments for Phase 3.
For this study phase, we will use qualitative methods because they can elicit the participants' perspectives in defining the range and variability of beliefs, behaviors, and experiences, all within the context of the natural language people use to discuss these issues. Qualitative methods will also allow us to discover themes not anticipated by study investigators. Standardized approaches [68–70] will guide research activities. Our data collection methods will include focus group interviews [71–74] and in-depth interviews [68, 75, 76], analyzed using a content analysis approach .
Through a descriptive case-study approach, we will investigate the full range of details of A/C use, including processes by which allopathic providers decide to make A/C referrals, how CMP patients decide to use such services, and how A/C providers decide the components of care to deliver. The primary questions that guide this case-study research are: (1) What are the barriers and facilitators to seeking/referring A/C for CMP patients? (2) What are the nature and extent of the services received from acupuncturists and chiropractors (i.e., services broader than needling for acupuncture and spinal manipulation for chiropractic care)? and (3) What are the clinical, functional, and quality-of-life outcomes patients and providers associate with receipt of A/C, and which processes or outcomes are most closely associated with patient and/or provider satisfaction?
Phase 2 qualitative data will be collected in two waves: we will use information from the first wave to refine the questions asked during the second wave interviews and focus groups and, ultimately, to collect data on potential confounders (i.e., patient factors related to decisions to use A/C services not reflected in EMR data) for use in Phase 4 analyses.
The following types of patients will be represented among those we interview: (1) patients who were clinician-referred and received A/C services; (2) patients who received A/C without a clinician referral; and (3) comparable CMP patients who have not received A/C (including those referred who did not follow through). We will use data collected through Phase 1 EMR analyses and out-of-plan surveys to identify these types of patients for sampling. We anticipate holding multiple focus groups for each category of participants. Those who received acupuncture and chiropractic care will be recruited for separate focus groups.
Focus groups are an efficient mechanism for investigating how people conceptualize, experience, and talk about issues, for examining a range or consensus of experiences, and for collecting qualitative data from many individuals in a short time. Focus groups will be audio-recorded and consist of 6-12 participants, an optimal size range for discussing behaviors and experiences . Each patient focus group will address the three main topics described above. As part of that process, we will explore two additional issues related to the decision-making process as shown in the model in Figure 1: factors that prompt individuals to seek and, once initiated, continue or discontinue A/C care, and reasons for deciding to seek care with or without primary care provider concurrence. The first wave focus group results will be used to refine the draft Phase 3 questionnaires. Second wave focus groups of prior A/C users will be asked to complete the draft questionnaires prior to focus group attendance and be prepared to advise researchers on domains or questions relevant to their use of A/C services not covered in the questionnaire, as well as to comment on their understanding of the questions we designed. We will not alter questions that are part of validated instruments, but we will use the feedback to refine our overall assessment battery and to adjust items that we have created based on first-wave focus groups.
In in-depth interviews, researchers will introduce a series of prepared, open-ended questions designed to elicit factual information on treatment (A/C providers) and referral (allopathic providers) practices, as well as providers' knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and experiences relating to A/C for CMP conditions, including what they would perceive to be clinically meaningful improvement. An interview guide, ongoing QA meetings, and transcript reviews will assure uniformity of approach and coverage in the interviews. We will conduct in-depth interviews with acupuncturists and chiropractors who see a high volume of CMP patients from the health plan to learn about their treatment styles and decision-making processes for CMP patients as well as their experiences with KPNW members who are physician-referred or self-referred. We will also interview health plan providers, sampling from among those with high numbers of A/C referrals, those with some A/C referral history, and those who never or almost never refer CMP patients for acupuncture or chiropractic services.
Audio recordings of all focus groups and interviews will be transcribed verbatim using standardized transcription protocols. Using content analysis techniques, we will analyze transcripts and field notes [68, 77, 78] in two stages. First, we will use topical indexing to identify text pertaining to each interview question and prompt, followed by development of a more detailed coding scheme to capture content, themes, and sentiments. Data management and reduction will be supported by use of ATLAS text analysis software (Sage-Scolari, Thousand Oaks, CA). We will compare participant responses within and across categories to identify beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and experiences important to understanding decisions to seek and continue A/C care and outcomes associated with A/C care for CMP. We will analyze response frequency and content and the vocabulary describing concepts and experiences. This will allow identification of key issues by exploring areas of consensus and contradiction within and across focus group participants and provider respondents [68, 79]. Potential bias will be minimized and data credibility enhanced through comprehensive training of interviewers and coders, and multiple members of the research team will complete each type of task. Coder reliability will be determined through check-coding of 1 out of every 6 interviews and focus groups. Because ATLAS can interface with statistical programs, participant characteristics and responses to quantitative questions (e.g., questionnaire draft) can be included in the database and will enable us to retrieve text specific to respondent subgroups.
Set up a weekly surveillance tracking system to identify CMP patients referred for A/C care to allow timely recruitment of these (index) patients and two carefully matched CMP control patients.
Coordinate telephone or online assessments for index and comparison patients upon recruitment (baseline; prior to A/C care) and at 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups.
Compare outcomes (clinical and psychosocial/QOL/satisfaction outcomes and health care utilization) and explore health care costs between those receiving A/C and comparison patients not receiving such services, examining relationships between patient characteristics and decisions to use A/C.
Conduct comparative and sensitivity analyses between results using methods that rely solely on EMR-derived data (Phase 1) with those supplemented by patient and provider data (Phase 3).
Index participants (i.e., those with an incident A/C referral, n = 200 acupuncture and 200 chiropractic) and matched comparison participants in this prospective portion of the study must meet the overall CMP eligibility criteria listed in Table 1 and be able to read and respond to assessment questionnaires. Both index and comparison patients must have had no A/C treatment over the previous six months to ensure that we are prospectively following a new episode of A/C care. We purposefully minimized exclusion criteria to ensure that study findings are as broadly representative of the CMP population as possible.
Health plan members will be recruited over a two-year period through a weekly EMR review to identify CMP patients referred for A/C. Those referred for A/C will be mailed an invitation to the study, including a brochure and letter describing the study, and indicating that a staff member will call soon to tell them more about the study. There will also be a study website where prospective participants can log on to learn more about the study and eligibility or opt out if they so choose. Eligible participants will be guided through the consent process and baseline assessments by an interviewer or online, according to their preferences.
To recruit comparison cases for each participant in our cohort of A/C users, we will identify CMP-patient matches using the clustering/matching approach determined from Phase 1 and refined based on Phase 2 findings. As with Phase 1, participants must have a primary care visit within one month of the index patients' A/C referral so that we know that an opportunity for A/C referral existed. When an index patient enrolls online, the matching process is triggered: those matches will be located, mailed the same informational materials, and invited to enroll online. We will recruit two or more comparison participants for every index participant. A greater number of comparison participants allows a buffer of comparison participants in the event that some report A/C use during the assessment window.
The assessment schedule for standardized questionnaires and delineation of EMR-collected outcomes are shown in Table 5. Patient-reported outcomes are measured in a time frame (1-12 months) consistent with many RCTs and other outcome studies of A/C [19, 80, 81]. Assessment instruments and domains are consistent with the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT) recommendations [82, 83]. In addition, we include variables representing patient factors influencing the decision to use CAM (Figure 1 plus others identified in Phase 2) to help refine matches of those who do and do not seek A/C.
Two subscales--the 4-item pain severity and the 7-item pain interference subscales--from the short form of the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI-SF)[84, 85] will be used to assess pain and related disability. The BPI has sound psychometrics and has been widely adopted for clinical pain assessment, epidemiological studies, and studies of treatment efficacy. We will also include a measure of how bothered participants are by their pain. This instrument uses a 0 to 10 scale of "symptom bothersomeness, " where 0 represents "not at all bothersome" and 10 is "extremely bothersome." This question has been frequently used in studies of back pain [18, 19, 86] and shown to have adequate construct validity .
Global assessment of change. The Patient Global Impression of Change scale (PGIC ) will be used to evaluate participants' overall evaluation of the impact of their A/C treatment.
Work-related impairment. Three questions about work/disability status and missed work due to CMP will be adapted from the National Health Information Survey (NHIS) .
Depression severity. Using the Personal Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8) [90, 91], we will measure depression severity. The PHQ-8 is established as a valid screener and severity measure for depressive disorders in large clinical studies [90, 92–94]. Baseline depression will also be examined as a possible moderator of outcome.
Anxiety. The 2-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-2) [95, 96] will be used to screen for anxiety disorders. The GAD-2 has been used to detect anxiety disorders in primary care and has well established psychometric properties. Baseline GAD-2 scores will also be examined as another possible moderator of outcome.
Quality of life/health utility. The SF Health Survey (SF-12v2) will be used to measure quality of life. The SF12 is a widely used and well-validated generic measure of functioning that is a recommended IMMPACT measure for examining functioning (this will also be used as a health utility measure) .
Patient satisfaction. Finally, participant satisfaction with services provided by the health plan (allopathic providers) (0 = worst health care possible, 10 = best health care possible) will be assessed as well as satisfaction with A/C provider when pertinent . We will also use the practitioner skill subscale from a self-report outcome measure designed for assessing CAM treatments [99, 100].
These EMR-based outcome measures were listed in Table 4 as they also form the basis for our Phase 1 outcome analyses.
Patient characteristics and potential moderators include factors that may influence decisions to use CAM (see Figure 1) or that have been found to moderate pain-related outcomes [102–104]. These factors might then be used as additional baseline matching variables or covariates to maximize comparability between index- and matched comparison-participants included in the analyses. Demographics include age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, marital status, employment status, income, and income source. Administrative records will identify participants seeking or receiving worker's compensation or other disability payments for their CMP. This will be augmented by a single-item question about disability status of participants on the questionnaire. We will assess general preventive behavior [105, 106] by collecting data on self-management behaviors including physical activity practices. In addition, we will assess participants' general expectations of CMP improvement, improvements with A/C treatment [27, 31], and how helpful a variety of CAM services and practices (provider- and self-directed) may be . We will measure other characteristics of the participant's pain condition, including age of onset, perceived etiology of CMP, and type(s) of current CMP. Finally, we will collect data on use of other CAM services/products, including any CAM treatment visits not referred through the health plan (e.g., chiropractic and acupuncture, massage therapists, naturopaths) as well as CAM-related self-care practices (e.g., yoga, meditation, tai chi) and products (e.g., dietary supplements).
Allopathic provider characteristics and factors associated with A/C referrals including questions describing general provider characteristics (i.e., gender, specialty type, professional degree, years in practice, and training/expertise in CMP) and A/C referral attitudes, as well as an EMR-based variable reflecting the inclination for a given provider to refer for A/C services (referral rate per CMP patients on panel).
A/C provider characteristics and treatment patterns include questions adapted from the A/C-visit data forms developed by Sherman and colleagues and refined during our Phase 2 interviews with the CAM providers. We also have access to data collected by the health plan on CAM-referred services patients receive (e.g., number of sessions; assigned diagnostic, procedure, and treatment [CPT] codes.
For the patient-reported outcomes in Phase 3, we will examine differences in baseline measures between participants with and without data at the 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups. Variables related to missingness will be included in the main analyses as covariates to reduce bias in the estimates [109, 110].
We will use multilevel modeling to examine differences across time in primary (pain intensity/interference/bothersomeness) and secondary patient-reported outcomes between A/C users and matched comparison participants. Two parameters (linear and quadratic slope) will characterize change across time, with linear slope capturing initial rate of change and quadratic slope reflecting the degree to which the change slowed (or increased) over time. Thus, the quadratic model for time (baseline and 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups) captures nonlinear change across time. Unlike repeated measures analysis of variance, multilevel modeling does not require data at all time points from each subject, so data from all subjects will be included in analyses. Depending upon the distribution, normal, logistic, or Poisson models will be used. Importantly, these analyses can be adjusted using additional information collected from participants during the baseline assessment that we may identify in Phase 2 as influencing A/C decision-making. This will better control for factors not available during comparison patient identification when only EMR data will be available for matching/clustering.
To examine total health care utilization across 12 months, the analysis issues laid out for Phase 1 continue to apply. Using the MCG as the unit of analysis, the conventional statistical methods from Phase 1 continuous measures will be assessed by one-sample location tests and discrete outcomes will be assessed by binomial methods or by ordinal multinomial methods in the case of multiple outcomes. Like Phase 1, MCG characteristics in the Phase 3 sample will be related to A/C effects using the models described above. Implementing the same analytic strategy here as in Phase 1 (i.e., using EMR data alone), we will be able to test directly for the contribution provided by the additional prospective information on patient-and-provider characteristics (e.g., pain severity, self-care behaviors, provider attitudes to A/C referral). We will do so by including patient-supplied variables at the patient level in the analytic model and then introducing random-effects terms for the MCGs to account for within-MCG correlation.
Health plan costs are one of our secondary outcomes, as we are interested in how total health plan costs differed between A/C users and nonusers. Costs will be estimated by applying internal unit costs developed and tested in previous studies [111, 112] to the HMO patient-level utilization measures, with the final cost variables acting as proxies for HMO resource cost. We are interested in the effect of patient-level factors--in particular, patients' use (or not) of A/C services on health care costs. Admittedly, the challenges of analyzing typical cost data are well known and significant; these include 1) having a large proportion of non-users (i.e., zero costs); 2) the fact that non-zero costs are usually right-skewed; and 3) heteroscedasticity. Assuming these challenges exist in our study cost data, we will tackle them by exploring transformation models and generalized linear models (GLM). Transformation models convert skewed cost data using a transformation (e.g., log-normal) to a better-behaved distribution (i.e., one more normal and symmetric, homoscedastic, less skewed, promoting more efficient estimation). A complication of transformations is possible re-transformation bias in switching from the transformed scale to the original dollar-based scale. GLM avoids re-transformation bias but can be highly imprecise if the residual pattern is misspecified. We will explore both model forms to determine the most accurate and descriptive approach for our study data. Cost analyses will be performed in STATA version 11.
We based our Phase 3 sample size determination on the BPI short form severity (BPI-S) and interference (BPI-I) subscales. Although these outcome measures are highly recommended for pain studies , it is difficult to find the appropriate statistics reported in the literature, that are required for design purposes. We have relied on the findings from the SCAMP intervention [113, 114] and Tan's and colleagues' validation study of the use of the BPI for chronic nonmalignant pain , who reported SD = 2 (approximately) for both the severity and interference subscales of the BPI in large samples of patients with nonmalignant pain. Changes on the order of 1-3 points have been cited as being relatively common and within the range of change found in the SCAMP intervention [113, 114]. Collectively, these sources suggest that an attainable and clinically meaningful effect size would be 0.50, which translates into a difference between mean changes of 1 unit (absolute). For 100 patients in each of two groups, assuming a 0.5 correlation between pre- and post-measurements, using a conventional two-sample t-test with a two-sided significance level of 0.025 (to allow for two tests), the power would be slightly over 90% to detect a 1 unit treatment effect. The analysis we intend to use would be more efficient, because it would adjust for baseline BPI values, but we might also want to include explanatory factors into the analysis, which might decrease efficiency. Consequently, we propose group sizes of 200, for a total of 1, 200 - that is a total of 200 participants each for those receiving acupuncture and chiropractic services as well as two matched comparison CMP participants for each of these index participants for a total sample size of 1, 200. Table 6 shows sample and effect sizes for a number of recent studies of related pain conditions utilizing related measures as well as anticipated effect size estimates for the current study. While these comparative clinical trials may have possibly produced greater effect sizes than we will observe in this observational study, our proposed group size is substantially larger than those reported for each of these studies.
To estimate available numbers of CMP patients who may receive A/C care for the Phase 3 prospective cohort study, we examined the number of health plan referrals for A/C care during a recent three-year period. Referral patterns for A/C among health plan members with CMP (see Figure 3) are fairly stable, with an average of 330 acupuncture and 303 chiropractic referrals monthly; therefore, we should have an adequate recruitment pool (estimate of 15, 192 A/C referrals with CMP over the two-year recruitment period) to meet the target enrollment for this phase of the study.
Health Plan Patients with Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain (CMP) Receiving New* Acupuncture and or Chiropractic Care (A/C) Referral.
Written consent will be obtained from each participant in Phases 2 and 3 and from those completing the out-of-plan A/C survey in Phase 1. For the data-only portion of Phase 1, health plan members' contracts with the HMO provide consent for use of their data in HMO-sponsored research studies. This study protocol was approved by the institutional review boards (IRB) of Kaiser Permanente Northwest, University of Arizona, and Oregon Health and Science University. This study protocol is registered with http://www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01345409).
We expect that successful completion of this study will provide an evaluation of the outcomes--from the perspectives of patients, providers, and health services utilization--associated with the real-world use of A/C services. By comparing the results of the EMR-only analyses with the more comprehensive results available in Phase 3, we will be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of EMR-alone analyses and potentially identify the most critical additional data needed. We further anticipate that the trio of EMR-based analyses, qualitative assessment, and prospective cohort studies will provide a clearer understanding of the decision-making processes behind the use of A/C for CMP; these will also provide a transportable methodology that can be applied to other health care settings, CAM treatments, and clinical populations.
With regard to advancing our understanding of patients' use of CAM in everyday practice settings, much CAM research to date has focused narrowly on "early adopters" (those likely to use CAM services regardless of barriers ). Yet within our cohort, cost and access barriers are substantially reduced, allowing us to study other factors (see Figure 1) influencing A/C care receipt and outcomes and to develop a comprehensive characterization of A/C use patterns and outcomes in patients with increasing access to such CAM services. An important goal of this study is to clarify how CMP patients use A/C compared to conventional care (to augment or replace it), when and why patients disclose A/C use to allopathic providers, and how such practices may vary by patient characteristics. Our mixed methods approach will help us develop a better understanding of the process behind the decision to initiate (patients), recommend (allopathic providers), and continue (patients and providers) A/C care for the treatment of CMP. Finally, studying this in everyday treatment settings allows us to consider the range of services received in A/C care (e.g., needling or spinal manipulation vs. whole systems-based care) and variation by characteristics of the CMP patient and/or A/C provider.
In addition to advancing our understanding of real world A/C practices and their impact on CMP, this study affords us the opportunity to build upon the increasingly available EMR systems to conduct research that may be more broadly adopted to better understand the real world interplay of conventional medicine and A/C services. Using EMRs exclusively may limit information on important variables (covariates) on which to match or cluster like patients. However, by augmenting data sets through direct reports by providers and patients regarding important decision-making factors suggested by qualitative findings, we may substantially reduce potential confounding in comparing those who do and do not receive A/C treatment. Thus, we can identify whether widely available data in EMR and administrative systems can be used to adequately forecast patients' outcomes and evaluate the extent to which supplementation from additional patient- and provider-collected information is a necessary adjunct to EMR-based data analysis.
Finally, our MCG-focused methodology gives us a unique opportunity to conduct patient-centered research; that is, to identify like groups based upon actual individual patient care characteristics rather than hypothetical group averages. A typical RCT may not include enough participants to form homogeneous clusters for separate evaluation, yet an EMR database of a large clinical population like the CMP sample described here does include sufficient numbers of patients with similar characteristics and disease severity to form clinically meaningful clusters as the basis of the analyses. Accordingly, this research may allow us to address the clinical question as follows: for whom does supplementary CAM care result in clinically significant improvements in pain severity and overall functioning? Our planned MCG methodology will allow us to identify the characteristics of CMP patients for whom A/C may have the greatest impact on satisfaction, functioning, clinical, and QOL outcomes; it will also clarify whether the timing of services relative to conventional care and the course of the CMP affects such outcomes.
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding support for this study from the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Grant (R01 AT005896). In addition at the time this article was prepared, co-author, John Dickerson, was funded in part from a training grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (T32HS013853). We thank Dana Foley for her helpful comments on previous versions of this article. Richard Hammerschlag and Mitch Haas provided important feedback on study design. In addition, Chris Catlin, Stephanie Hertert, Gail Morgan, Matt Hornbrook, Maureen O'Keefe-Rosetti, Lin Neighbors, and Lisa Fox have all contributed invaluable support for the early phases of the study.
All authors contributed to the design of this study protocol. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. | 2019-04-22T02:05:27Z | https://bmccomplementalternmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6882-11-118 |
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Tomasen Shen, CTO – X.D. Network Inc.
ZipRecruiter, the fastest-growing online employment marketplace, has connected over 1 million businesses and 100 million job seekers through AI-driven matching technology.
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Amazon.com is the world’s leading online retailer. The Amazon Transaction Risk Management Services (TRMS) team migrated more than 100 on-premises Oracle databases to Amazon Aurora.
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Nielsen is a global data management company providing a comprehensive understanding of consumer behaviors.
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"In our performance testing of Amazon Aurora’s PostgreSQL compatibility, we found that the performance was three times better than standard PostgreSQL. Our testing also showed that Amazon Aurora is fully compatible with PostgreSQL 9.6, and we believe customers will be able to move large enterprise workloads from on-premises commercial databases to Amazon Aurora because of its high performance, high availability, and PostgreSQL compatibility. SRA OSS will add support for Amazon Aurora to the next version of pgpool-II, which provides clustering management middleware for PostgreSQL."
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Wappa is the pioneer and market leader in taxi expense management, headquartered in Brazil and available in 22 countries. | 2019-04-22T20:11:42Z | https://aws.amazon.com/it/rds/aurora/customers/ |
In contrast to Ag-specific αβ T cells, γδ T cells can kill malignantly transformed cells in a manner that does not require the recognition of tumor-specific Ags. Although such observations have contributed to the emerging view that γδ T cells provide protective innate immunosurveillance against certain malignancies, particularly those of epithelial origin, they also provide a rationale for developing novel clinical approaches to exploit the innate antitumor properties of γδ T cells for the treatment of cancer. Using TRAMP, a transgenic mouse model of prostate cancer, proof-of-concept studies were performed to first establish that γδ T cells can indeed provide protective immunosurveillance against spontaneously arising mouse prostate cancer. TRAMP mice, which predictably develop prostate adenocarcinoma, were backcrossed with γδ T cell-deficient mice (TCRδ−/− mice) yielding TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice, a proportion of which developed more extensive disease compared with control TRAMP mice. By extension, these findings were then used as a rationale for developing an adoptive immunotherapy model for treating prostate cancer. Using TRAMP-C2 cells derived from TRAMP mice (C57BL/6 genetic background), disease was first established in otherwise healthy wild-type C57BL/6 mice. In models of localized and disseminated disease, tumor-bearing mice treated i.v. with supraphysiological numbers of syngeneic γδ T cells (C57BL/6-derived) developed measurably less disease compared with untreated mice. Disease-bearing mice treated i.v. with γδ T cells also displayed superior survival compared with untreated mice. These findings provide a biological rationale for clinical trials designed to adoptively transfer ex vivo expanded autologous γδ T cells for the treatment of prostate cancer.
The view that cellular immune responses might be exploited for the treatment of cancer is not new. Interestingly, to date, the majority of studies in this regard have focused primarily upon adaptive cellular immune responses mediated primarily by tumor Ag-specific αβ CTL. However, despite major advances in the field, clinical approaches that rely upon the generation of highly specific adaptive cellular immune responses directed against tumor-associated or tumor-specific Ags have only been modestly successful. With this result in mind, particularly in the context of developing and testing new cell-based cancer therapies, it becomes important to consider and explore tumor Ag-independent (innate) cellular immune responses mediated by such cells as NK cells and γδ T cells.
Unlike αβ T cells, which recognize specific peptide Ags presented by MHC molecules, γδ T cells in contrast can recognize generic Ags, which are physiologically expressed by stressed cells, including cells that have undergone malignant transformation. Indeed, cancerous cells are now known to display a number of stress-induced Ags (e.g., MICA/MICB in humans; Rae-1 in mice) that although neither tumor-specific nor tumor-derived per se, can nonetheless serve as recognition determinants for human and mouse γδ T cells (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Although a functional homology between mouse and human γδ T cells has yet to be firmly established in this specific regard, the complementary study of both mouse and human γδ T cells has yielded important insight into how γδ T cells recognize and kill malignantly transformed cells in vitro and in vivo. For example, as expertly reviewed by Girardi (5) and Kabelitz et al. (6), it is now evident that both mouse and human γδ T cells use various pairings of specific TCRγδ chains, often in combination with key coreceptors such as NKG2D, to interact with determinants commonly expressed on tumor cells that are susceptible to γδ T cell-mediated killing. Indeed, it is this ability of both mouse and human γδ T cells to recognize and kill cancer cells of various histological subtypes in a tumor Ag-independent manner that has contributed to the emerging view that γδ T cells provide protective immunosurveillance against cancer. This view is supported by the findings that mice lacking γδ T cells are more susceptible to the development of chemically induced cutaneous tumors and are likewise less able to resist challenges with tumorigenic melanoma or squamous cell carcinoma cell lines (7, 8, 9).
In this report, we begin with proof-of-concept studies that both confirm and extend these important initial findings of others (7, 8, 9). In this study, we demonstrate for the first time that γδ T cells are indeed capable of providing protective immunosurveillance against a spontaneously arising noncutaneous solid tumor of epithelial origin, in this instance, mouse prostate cancer. For these studies, transgenic mice that spontaneously develop prostate cancer were bred with γδ T cell-deficient mice, which allowed for observation of tumor development occurring in the absence of γδ T cells. Findings from these initial proof-of-concept studies were then used as the rationale for performing subsequent studies to conversely examine how the adoptive transfer of supraphysiological numbers of syngeneic γδ T cells might be used to treat tumors established in otherwise healthy mice.
The model of transgenic adenocarcinoma of the mouse prostate (TRAMP) was chosen for these studies because it is a model of spontaneously arising mouse prostate cancer that mimics human disease (10, 11, 12, 13). As disease that develops in TRAMP mice histologically resembles human disease with pathology ranging from noncancerous prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia to aggressive adenocarcinoma of the prostate (10, 11, 12, 13), the TRAMP model has been widely adopted for use in a variety of studies designed to assess novel therapies directed against prostate cancer (14, 15, 16, 17). Accordingly, we have adopted this model to first assess the extent to which the absence of γδ T cells might be permissive for the development or progression of spontaneously arising mouse prostate cancer. Extending from these studies, immunotherapy studies were then performed by first establishing disease in healthy wild-type C57BL/6 mice using TRAMP-C2 cells, a syngeneic mouse prostate cancer cell line originally derived from TRAMP mice (C57BL/6 genetic background) (18). Disease-bearing mice were then treated with supraphysiological numbers of ex vivo expanded syngeneic (C57BL/6-derived) γδ T cells, thus approximating a clinical situation in which a tumor-bearing patient might be treated with supraphysiological numbers of ex vivo expanded autologous γδ T cells.
Given the recognized capacity of γδ T cells to innately kill malignant cells, efforts are now actively underway to develop the means to exploit the antitumor properties of γδ T cells for clinical purposes (6, 19). Although it remains to be determined specifically how this exploitation might best be accomplished, two general approaches are currently being taken in this regard. One approach includes strategies primarily designed to activate or expand endogenous γδ T cells in vivo, for example through the clinical administration of pharmacological agents such as the aminobisphosphonates pamidronate (Aredia) or zoledronate (Zometa). Though commonly used to prevent skeletal fractures in cancer patients, these drugs have recently been found to cause the in vivo activation or expansion of human γδ T cells, particularly when administered in conjunction with IL-2 (20, 21). Importantly, recently published results from a phase I clinical trial strongly support the view that such activated γδ T cells found in zoledronate-treated patients contribute either directly or indirectly to the clinical responses observed in patients with hormone-refractory prostate cancer (22).
Alternatively, the innate antitumor properties of human γδ T cells might also be exploited through the adoptive transfer of γδ T cells first expanded ex vivo, then subsequently reinfused into tumor-bearing patients. Though such approaches are far less well developed given the difficulty in generating a sufficient number of γδ T cells, recent advances by our group and other researchers have now made possible the efficient large-scale ex vivo expansion of human γδ T cells that importantly retain potent innate antitumor activity against a variety of human cancer cell lines in vitro (23, 24, 25, 26, 27). Thus, irrespective of the methods used for the ex vivo expansion or activation of γδ T cells, it is now feasible to propose clinical trials designed explicitly to assess the therapeutic effectiveness of administering a large number of γδ T cells to patients with cancer. With this reasoning in mind, our specific findings derived using the TRAMP model of mouse prostate cancer are presented in this study to be considered in the broader context of developing new strategies for treating human prostate cancer, or other common human cancers of epithelial origin, through the adoptive transfer of ex vivo expanded autologous γδ T cells.
C57BL/6 wild-type mice; C57BL/6 TRAMP mice (C57BL/6-Tg(TRAMP) 8247Ng/J); C57BL/6 TCRδ-deficient (TCRδ−/−) mice (B6.129P2-Tcrdtm1Mom/J); C57BL/6 TCRβ-deficient (TCRβ−/−) mice (B6.129P2-Tcrbtm1Mom/J); and C57BL/6 GFP mice (C57BL/6-Tg(UBC-GFP)30Scha/J) were purchased from The Jackson Laboratory. All mice were maintained in pathogen-free facilities in accordance with guidelines of the Animal Care and Use Committee at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (Birmingham, AL).
To obtain TRAMP mice on a TCRδ−/− background, TRAMP mice and TCRδ−/− mice were first interbred. Tail DNA isolated by standard procedures was used for genotyping of mice by PCR using the following specific primers: TCRδ 5′-CAA ATg TTg CTT gTC Tgg Tg-3′ and 5′-gTC AgT CgA gTg CAC AgT TT-3′; and TRAMP 5′-CAg AgC AgA ATT gTg gAg Tgg-3′ and 5′-ggA CAA ACC ACA ACT AgA ATg CAg Tg-3′. Offspring carrying the TRAMP transgene that were found to be heterozygous for TCRδ (TCRδ−/+) were then backcrossed with homozygous TCRδ−/− mice. Male offspring expressing the TRAMP transgene but lacking γδ T cells were then identified for further study. Absence of γδ T cells in male TRAMP × TCRδ−/− was further confirmed by FACS of peripheral blood.
Upon sacrifice, GU tracts were removed en bloc, weighed, then fixed in formalin. Digital photographs of gross specimens were taken using a Nikon CoolPix 5700 digital camera. Formalin-fixed specimens were subsequently embedded in paraffin and stained with H&E as previously described (16). Prostate lesions were then scored blindly by an experienced pathologist using a 1–6 scale established for TRAMP mice (16).
TRAMP-C2 cells were provided by Dr. N. Greenberg (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA) and were also purchased from American Type Culture Collection. Cells were maintained as described (18).
γδ T cells used for adoptive transfer studies were obtained from spleen cells derived from C57BL/6 mice lacking αβ T cells (TCRβ−/− mice) as described (28). Spleen mononuclear cells were isolated by density gradient centrifugation (800 × g, 15 min) using Ficoll-Paque Plus (Amersham Biosciences). Cells were cultured in a manner similar to methods developed for expanding human γδ T cells (23), but using mouse cytokines and reagents as indicated. Spleen cell cultures were initiated at a density of 5 × 106 cells/ml in RPMI 1640 with 10% FBS, 2 mmol/L l-glutamine, 100 U/ml penicillin, 100 U/ml streptomycin, and 50 μM 2-ME. On the day of culture initiation (day 0), cells were transferred to tissue culture wells first coated with rat anti-mouse CD2 mAb clone RM2-5 (BD Biosciences). Recombinant mouse IFN-γ (1000 U/ml; R&D Systems) and recombinant mouse IL-12 (10 U/ml; R&D Systems) were then added. After 24 h (day 1), three volumes of fresh culture medium was added. Cultures were then stimulated with 10 ng/ml anti-CD3 mAb clone 145-2C11 (BD Biosciences) and 300 U/ml mouse recombinant IL-2 (R&D Systems). Fresh medium with 10 U/ml human IL-2 (Roche Diagnostics) was added every 3 days. At day 8, cells were harvested. Purity of γδ T cells was assessed using a FACSCalibur flow cytometer (BD Biosciences) employing directly conjugated hamster anti-mouse Abs CD3-allophycocyanin, 145-2C11, TCRγδ-FITC, or GL3 (all BD Biosciences). Cell viability was determined by FACS or by fluorescent microscopy as described (23).
γδ T cells derived from C57BL/6 mice lacking αβ T cells (TCRβ−/− mice) as well as control αβ T cells (derived from TCRδ−/− mice) were prepared identically, as described. These cells were then used as effector cells against 51Cr-labeled mouse TRAMP-C2 target cells in standard 4-h in vitro 51Cr release cytotoxicity assays, as described (23). As previously described (24), the calcium dependency of γδ T cell-mediated cytotoxicity was assessed by adding EGTA and MgCl2 to cell cocultures at 1 and 1.5 mM, respectively. To restore killing, 3 mM CaCl2 was added in culture with EGTA.
Mice lacking αβ T cells (TCRβ−/− mice) and mice transgenic for GFP were first interbred. After backcrossing, offspring expressing GFP but lacking αβ T cells were identified by FACS analysis of peripheral blood. Spleen mononuclear cell preparations derived from these mice were then cultured as described, yielding GFP+ γδ T cells that were used for subsequent adoptive transfer studies. FACS analysis and fluorescence microscopy were used to confirm that resulting cultured cells were GFP+ γδ T cells.
TRAMP-C2 cells were used to establish tumors in healthy syngeneic C57BL/6 male mice. On experimental day 0, tumor cells (3 × 106 cells suspended in 200 μl of DMEM) were injected s.c. into a flank of each mouse. On experimental days 14, 19, 21, 26, and 28, ex vivo expanded syngeneic (C57BL/6) γδ T cells (20 × 106 cells suspended in 400 μl of RPMI 1640) were administered i.v. by tail vein injection into tumor-bearing animals. Control animals received only RPMI 1640. As described (29), tumor measurements were converted to a calculated tumor weight (in milligrams) using the formula (width (mm2) × length (mm))/2.
TRAMP-C2 cells were used to establish tumors in wild-type male C57BL/6 mice. Five weeks after tumor establishment, syngeneic GFP+ γδ T cells (100 × 106 cells suspended in 400 μl of RPMI 1640) were introduced by tail vein injection. After 8 days, mice were sacrificed. Upon sacrifice, tumors were excised then rinsed with PBS. Normal muscle tissue was excised from the opposite hind leg of the same treated animal. Whole fresh tumor specimens or whole muscle sections were examined directly using a Nikon Eclipse TE 2000-U inverted fluorescence microscope fit with a CoolSNAPES digital camera (Photometrics). Digital photos shown are at a magnification of ×100 and are presented as pseudocolor images derived using IPLab image processing software (version 3.9.2/Mac OS X; Scanalytics).
Tumors were removed at necropsy from mice that had previously received i.v. GFP+ γδ T cells. Whole fresh tumors were mechanically disaggregated using a HandiChopper Plus food chopper (Black & Decker). Dead cells and debris were removed by density centrifugation (800 × g, 15 min) using Ficoll-Paque Plus. Interface cells were resuspended in Hanks’ buffer (containing 3% FBS) then incubated with Abs to mouse CD3 and TCRγδ. Using multicolor FACS, GFP+ cells were electronically gated then analyzed with respect to CD3 and TCRγδ surface staining. Peripheral blood samples taken from animals before sacrifice were treated with ACK lysis buffer before staining and analysis.
Disseminated pulmonary metastatic disease was established in mice as has been described (30). On experimental day 0, TRAMP-C2 cells (6 × 105 cells suspended in 400 μl of DMEM) were introduced by tail vein injection into healthy male C57BL/6 mice. Treated mice received 20 × 106 γδ T cells (suspended in RPMI 1640) by tail vein injection on experimental days 4, 8, and 11, whereas control mice received RPMI 1640 only. Assessment of pulmonary metastases in treated and untreated mice was performed, as described (30) with the following modifications. At necropsy, lungs from each animal were removed en bloc, weighed then fixed in formalin for subsequent analysis. Photographs of gross specimens were taken using a Nikon Coolpix 5700 digital camera. Formalin-fixed lungs were sectioned sagittally (superior to inferior) then embedded in paraffin for H&E staining. Digital images of lung sections were produced using a Nikon Coolscan V ED scanner using Nikon Scan 4.0 software. Morphometric analysis of lung section photomicrographs was performed using ImageJ software (version 1.37v) from W. Rasband (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD) (http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/). Tumor involvement of lung sections was determined by expressing the area of lung parenchyma involved with tumor (dark blue) as a percentage of total lung parenchyma.
The median GU tract to body weight ratio of TRAMP mice and TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice was compared using the Kruskal-Wallis test, whereas mean ratio was compared by t test. Pathological scores of prostate lesions occurring in TRAMP mice and TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice were compared using Fisher’s one-sided exact test. The relationship between GU tract to body weight ratio and pathological score in TRAMP mice was examined using a one-way ANOVA. The analysis of GU tract to body weight ratio by pathological score in TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice was examined using ANOVA with Duncan’s Multiple Range Test (tested at 5% level) used to control for pairwise comparisons. In immunotherapy studies, mean tumor size in treated and untreated mice was compared using the Student’s t test. Median lung weight of treated and untreated mice and tumor involvement of lung parenchyma in treated and untreated mice were compared using the Kruskal-Wallis test. Kaplan-Meier survival curves of treated and untreated mice were compared according to the Mantel-Haenszel log-rank test.
As reported, male TRAMP mice spontaneously develop prostate adenocarcinomas in a predictable manner with disease developing in 100% of male mice with a relatively short latency period (10, 11, 12, 13). Accordingly, these mice were used in initial proof-of-concept studies designed to establish the extent to which mouse γδ T cells are involved in providing protective immunosurveillance against spontaneously arising mouse prostate cancer. To accomplish this study, TRAMP mice were backcrossed with mice lacking γδ T cells. Images of the GU tracts obtained from mice sacrificed during performance of one of our earliest pilot studies are shown in Fig. 1⇓A. The GU tracts of a male wild-type mouse, a TRAMP mouse, and a TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mouse are grossly compared. Given that these initial pilot studies were performed using only a small number of mice, subsequent more extensive studies were then performed to follow up and confirm these highly suggestive findings. Results from these larger studies are shown in Fig. 1⇓B. In this experiment, in accordance with convention, assessment of tumor burden in each mouse is presented graphically as the GU tract weight normalized to body weight (i.e., GU tract weight to body weight ratio). In comparing tumor burdens of TRAMP mice vs TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice, the mean tumor burden (6.8 vs 10.5, respectively; p = 0.06, strong trend) as well as median tumor burden (7.0 vs 7.6, respectively; p = 0.11) were found to differ, though these differences did not reach statistical significance. Nevertheless, descriptive comparison of these data importantly reveals that only TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice developed very large tumor burdens, arbitrarily defined as a tumor burden at least double the median tumor burden of the group. Thus, whereas four TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice developed large tumor burdens (2-, 3.4-, 3.7-, and 5-fold greater than the median tumor burden of all TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice), in contrast no TRAMP mice developed correspondingly large tumor burdens. Indeed, the largest tumor burden observed in any TRAMP mouse measured only 1.5-fold greater than the median tumor burden of the TRAMP mice group. In addition to the normalized GU tract weight to body weight ratio shown in Fig. 1⇓B, tumor burdens are also presented in this experiment as actual GU tract weights (mean ± SD) of all groups of mice: BL/6 wild-type mice (1.1 ± 0.3 g); BL/6 TCRδ−/− mice (0.9 ± 0.2 g); TRAMP mice (2.3 ± 0.7 g); and TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice (3.9 ± 3.7 g). In comparing GU tract weights of TRAMP mice and TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice, the value of p = 0.06 is indicating a strong trend. Importantly, at the time of sacrifice, no significant differences were observed in whole body weights when comparing control TRAMP mice (mean body weight, 36 ± 5 g) and experimental TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice (mean body weight, 36 ± 4 g). This latter point indicates that differences in the normalized GU tract weight to body weight ratio shown in Fig. 1⇓B are reflections of differences in tumor burden (GU tract weight) and not simply reflections of variations in whole body weight between mice.
Gross comparison of the GU tracts of wild-type mice, TRAMP mice, and TRAMP mice lacking γδ T cells (TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice). A, GU tracts from male mice were removed at necropsy and photographed. A representative initial experiment shows the en bloc resected GU tracts (bladder, seminal vesicles, epididymis, prostate, and testes, excluding the kidney and ureter) removed from a 7-mo-old wild-type mouse (BL/6 wild-type) (left), a 7-mo-old TRAMP mouse (center), and a 5-mo-old TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mouse (TRAMP δ−/−) (right). B, As a measure of tumor burden, GU tract weight was determined at necropsy and expressed as a percentage of total body weight for each mouse. Data are shown for control wild-type mice (BL/6 wild type) (n = 12), control TCRδ−/− mice on the C57BL/6 background (BL/6 δ−/−) (n = 11), TRAMP mice (n = 20), and TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice (TRAMP δ−/−) (n = 22) with the mean ± SD and median (with range) for each genotype shown. Animals in this representative experiment were pooled from cohorts of mice sacrificed at 6.5 or 7 mo of age. In accordance with our Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee guidelines, animals were sacrificed when grossly massive tumors began to become evident. Thus, to allow for meaningful comparison between experimental and control animals within a cohort, all mice within a given cohort were sacrificed when it became necessary to sacrifice any mouse within the same cohort. Importantly, mice that developed large bulky tumors requiring euthanization of a cohort were invariably TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice and never TRAMP mice.
Histological sections of the GU tracts resected from TRAMP mice and TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice were analyzed and scored using an established grading system (16). As shown in Fig. 2⇓A, whereas 5 of 22 TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice (23%) developed high-grade disease (adenocarcinoma, grade 6), in comparison, only 1 of 20 TRAMP mice (5%) developed high-grade disease. Revealingly, by plotting tumor size (GU tract weight to body weight ratio) against the corresponding tumor grade (pathological score) for each individual mouse, TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice (Fig. 2⇓B, right) appear not only more likely to develop high-grade (grade 6) tumors, but that when high-grade tumors do develop, tumor growth is less well contained (larger tumor burden). In contrast, TRAMP mice (Fig. 2⇓B, left) appear not only less likely to develop high-grade tumors, but that when high-grade tumors do develop, tumor growth is relatively contained (smaller tumor burden). For these studies, a score of 6 was used as the cutoff for statistical analysis based upon accepted conventions in the TRAMP model literature in which this score is the highest grade lesion developing in TRAMP mice. In numerous chemoprevention studies, the ability of compounds to inhibit prostate cancer progression is assessed by the capacity of such compounds to retard the development lesions of score 6 in TRAMP mice. Accordingly, for these current studies, we reasoned that if an experimental condition (in this case, the absence of γδ T cells) is statistically shown to enhance the development of large, high-grade (score 6) tumors, then we would be justified in concluding that γδ T cells play a role in inhibiting either the development or progression of prostate cancer in TRAMP mice. Collectively, we thus interpret the data from Figs. 1⇑ and 2⇓ to indicate that γδ T cells do indeed play a role in providing protective immunosurveillance against spontaneously arising mouse prostate cancer.
Tumors developing in TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice are more likely to be high-grade and larger when compared with tumors developing in TRAMP mice. A, After weighing, GU tracts were fixed in formalin then embedded in paraffin. Sections of prostate glands were cut from paraffin blocks and stained with H&E for examination by microscopy. Prostate lesions were scored blindly by an experienced pathologist using a 1–6 scale that has been established for TRAMP mice. Noncancerous lesions were graded as 1 (normal tissue); 2 (low prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia); or 3 (high prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia). Cancerous lesions (adenocarcinomas) were graded as 4 (well-differentiated); 5 (moderately differentiated); or 6 (poorly differentiated). Representative photomicrographs are shown at the same magnification. No animal in either group was scored grade 2. The number (and percentage) of TRAMP mice and TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice with the corresponding grade is shown. †, p = 0.057 (suggesting a trend) by Fisher’s one-sided exact test comparing the number of TRAMP and TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice with grade 6 scores. B, GU tract weight to body weight ratio plotted against the corresponding pathological score for each TRAMP mouse and each TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mouse. In TRAMP mice (left), the GU tract weight to body weight ratio shows no relationship to pathological score by one-way ANOVA (p = 0.15). In TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice (right), the GU tract weight to body weight ratio in animals with a grade 6 pathological score is significantly greater than the GU tract weight to body weight ratio of mice with less than grade 6 pathological scores (p = 0.0006 by ANOVA with Duncan’s Multiple Range Test comparing all pairwise differences, at 5% level).
With the described proof-of-concept findings in mind, we conversely designed the following series of experiments to determine whether the adoptive transfer of supraphysiological numbers of γδ T cells might result in enhanced innate antitumor immune responses directed against established disease in tumor-bearing mice (adoptive cellular immunotherapy model). For these studies, disease was first established by the s.c. injection of TRAMP-C2 cells into the flanks of otherwise healthy wild-type male C57BL/6 mice, as previously described (18). Tumor-bearing mice were then treated i.v. with highly purified (Fig. 3⇓A) syngeneic (C57BL/6 origin) γδ T cells that were shown to be cytolytic in vitro against TRAMP-C2 cells (Fig. 3⇓B). In addition, Fig. 3⇓C shows that the lysis of TRAMP-C2 cells by purified ex vivo expanded γδ T cells is calcium-dependent, indicating that the perforin-granzyme pathway and not the Fas-Fas ligand pathway is primarily involved.
In vitro cytolytic activity of expanded spleen-derived γδ T cells demonstrated against TRAMP-C2 cells. A, γδ T cells used for adoptive transfer studies were obtained by in vitro expansion of spleen cells derived from C57BL/6 mice lacking αβ T cells (TCRβ−/− mice) using a modified version of a previously published method (28 ). FACS analysis performed on cultures after 1 wk shows that >95% of viable cells in these cultures are γδ T cells. B, γδ T cells used for adoptive transfer studies were routinely found to be cytolytic in vitro against TRAMP-C2 cells, whereas control αβ T cells expanded in an identical manner were not. TRAMP-C2 cells were labeled with 51Cr then cocultured in vitro with effector γδ T cells (•) or control αβ T cells (○) at the indicated E:T ratios. The percentage of specific target cell lysis as mean ± SD of triplicate determinations is shown in a representative in vitro cytotoxicity assay. C, The in vitro lysis of TRAMP-C2 cells by highly purified ex vivo expanded γδ T cells is calcium-dependent, indicating that the perforin-granzyme pathway and not the Fas-Fas ligand pathway is primarily involved. 51Cr-labeled TRAMP-C2 cells were cocultured with effector γδ T cells in the presence (+) or absence (−) of EGTA. Specific lysis of TRAMP-C2 cells occurring when cocultured with effector γδ T cells under standard control conditions (a); when cocultured with effector γδ T cells under conditions in which Ca2+ is depleted by the addition of EGTA (b); and when cocultured with effector γδ T cells in the presence of EGTA but after the addition (replacement) of Ca2+ (c). Addition of EGTA has no effect on target cell 51Cr release (d). The percentage of specific target cell lysis is expressed as a mean ± SD of triplicate determinations. All E:T ratios are 10:1.
A representative immunotherapy study is shown in Fig. 4⇓A in which tumor size measured serially in each individual treated and control mouse is shown. Fig. 4⇓B compares the mean tumor size of both groups. These results indicate that the growth of tumors established using mouse prostate cancer cells can be moderated by the i.v. introduction of supraphysiological numbers of ex vivo expanded syngeneic γδ T cells. Importantly, during the course of these adoptive immunotherapy studies, no untoward side effects were observed in mice receiving repeated i.v. infusions of ex vivo expanded syngeneic γδ T cells.
Adoptively transferred syngeneic γδ T cells moderate the growth of established mouse prostate cancer cells in vivo. A, Serial measurement of tumor size in treated and untreated mice. TRAMP-C2 cells previously derived from tumors arising in TRAMP mice (C57BL/6 origin) were used to establish s.c. tumors in healthy syngeneic wild-type C57BL/6 mice. Fourteen days after tumorigenic cells were implanted, animals were randomly assigned to either the control group (untreated, left) or to the treatment group (treated, right). Animals in the treated group received syngeneic C57BL/6 γδ T cells (20 × 106 cells per treatment) administered i.v. by tail vein injection on experimental days 14, 19, 21, 26, and 28. Tumor size was serially determined and is shown for each individual mouse in both groups. B, Mean tumor size ± SD (in milligrams) is shown on corresponding experimental days 14, 21, 26, 33, 40, and 47 for both the treated group (n = 7) (▪) and the untreated group (n = 7) (□). Values for p were calculated using Student’s t test comparing the mean tumor size of the treated and untreated groups on the indicated days. NS, Not significant.
To demonstrate that adoptively transferred γδ T cells can subsequently be detected within the tumors of host mice, the following studies were performed. As discussed, TRAMP-C2 cells were used to establish s.c. tumors in healthy male C57BL/6 mice. However in these adoptive transfer studies, syngeneic γδ T cells expressing GFP were introduced i.v. into tumor-bearing mice. Subsequently, samples of tumor, normal tissue, and blood were obtained and analyzed by fluorescence microscopy or FACS. As shown in Fig. 5⇓A, GFP+ γδ T cells are readily detectable within tumor tissues removed from treated animals, but are not readily detectable in nontumor tissues from the same animal. These findings suggest that adoptively transferred γδ T cells are preferentially localizing to tumors. FACS analysis (Fig. 5⇓B) confirms that the majority of GFP+ cells found in tumor tissue resected from treated mice are indeed γδ T cells.
The i.v. administered GFP+ γδ T cells localize to established s.c. tumors as demonstrated by direct imaging and by FACS. A, TRAMP-C2 s.c. tumors were first established in wild-type C57BL/6 mice. After 35 days, 100 × 106 GFP+ γδ T cells were administered i.v. by tail vein injection into tumor-bearing mice that were subsequently sacrificed 8 days later. Immediately upon sacrifice, tumors were excised then rinsed with PBS. Freshly excised tumors were then imaged using an inverted fluorescence microscope using the appropriate filters for the visualization of GFP. Representative digital images show a tumor resected from an animal treated i.v. with GFP+ γδ T cells (left), normal muscle resected from the same animal (center), and a tumor resected from a mouse that received no GFP+ γδ T cells (right), included as a control for nonspecific autofluorescence. Images are shown at ×100 magnification. In addition (data not shown), in normal healthy mice (i.e., mice without tumors) receiving GFP+ γδ T cells, although occasional GFP+ events could be directly observed, we failed to detect by microscopy the gross accumulation of GFP+ γδ T cells within various normal tissues including muscle, skin, brain, GU tract, intestine, and lungs. Although some GFP+ γδ T cells were also evident in spleen and lymph nodes, no gross accumulations were noted in these tissues as well. B, TRAMP-C2 tumors were removed at necropsy from mice that had received GFP+ γδ T cells i.v. 8 days before. After mechanical disaggregation followed by density centrifugation to remove debris, cell suspensions were stained with Abs specific for mouse CD3 and TCRγδ, then analyzed by FACS. GFP+ cells were first identified (left) then analyzed with respect to CD3 and TCRγδ surface staining (right) where the percentage of GFP+ cells that are γδ T cells is shown (upper right quadrant). C, TRAMP-C2 tumors (top) were removed at necropsy from mice that had received GFP+ γδ T cells i.v. 8 days before. After disaggregation and centrifugation, cell suspensions were stained with Abs allowing for the identification of γδ T cells (left). These cells were then analyzed for the expression of GFP (right) where the percentage of tumor-infiltrating γδ T cells of donor origin (GFP+) is shown. Peripheral blood (bottom) taken from the same animal at necropsy was similarly analyzed for the percentage of peripheral blood γδ T cells of donor origin (GFP+). As shown in the FACS analysis strategy used in both the blood and the tumor cell preparations, acquired data were first plotted as TCRγδ PE-positive events by side scatter (left). This analysis was performed to allow the identical electronic amorphous gate to be used to identify γδ T cells in both tumor tissues (top) and blood (bottom), thus assuring consistency in subsequent comparative analysis of γδ T cells. When represented as forward scatter by side scatter plots, blood cell preparations demonstrated the characteristic forward scatter by side scatter profile of ACK-lysed blood (data not shown).
In addition, the proportion of γδ T cells of donor origin (GFP+) was determined in both tumor tissue and blood obtained simultaneously from treated tumor-bearing mice. In this representative study (Fig. 5⇑C), over 70% of γδ T cells within tumor tissue were found to be of donor origin (GFP+), compared with only 17% in peripheral blood. These data suggest that the GFP+ γδ T cells detected within tumor tissues are not simply contaminating peripheral blood-derived cells, but rather that these GFP+ cells are adoptively transferred γδ T cells, which have localized to tumor tissues. Although these studies (Fig. 5⇑) establish neither the mechanisms involved in homing nor the mechanisms by which adoptively transferred γδ T cells actually moderate tumor growth, these findings nevertheless demonstrate that adoptively transferred γδ T cells can infiltrate established tumors and that this infiltration may be important for these cells to subsequently exert their therapeutic antitumor effects in vivo.
The immunotherapeutic potential of γδ T cells was additionally demonstrated using a model of metastatic disease. In this experiment, the ability of adoptively transferred γδ T cells to moderate the growth or progression of widespread disease was assessed by first introducing TRAMP-C2 cells i.v. into healthy male C57BL/6 mice, as has been previously described (30). Mice were then treated i.v. with syngeneic γδ T cells. Upon sacrifice, both by gross appearance (Fig. 6⇓A) and by assessment of lung weight (Fig. 6⇓B), treated mice were found to have lower tumor burdens compared with control, untreated mice. Histological analysis of formalin-fixed lung sections (Fig. 6⇓C) as well as morphometric analysis of these sections (Fig. 6⇓D) confirm that lungs removed from untreated mice were more heavily infiltrated with tumor cells compared with treated mice. Finally, although these particular studies were not designed as survival studies, Kaplan-Meier analysis of pooled cohorts of treated and untreated mice reveals that mice receiving γδ T cells displayed superior survival compared with untreated controls (Fig. 6⇓E).
Mice treated with adoptively transferred syngeneic γδ T cells develop less extensive disseminated pulmonary disease and also appear to display superior survival compared with untreated animals. Widespread systemic disease was first established in healthy male C57BL/6 mice by the i.v. injection of 6 × 105 TRAMP-C2 cells on experimental day 0. Mice were then randomly assigned to a treatment group or a control group. On days 4, 8, and 11, treated mice received γδ T cells by tail vein injection, whereas control mice received medium alone. Mice were monitored for systemic signs of progressive disease and were all sacrificed on day 66. At necropsy, lungs from each animal were removed en bloc, weighed, and fixed in formalin for subsequent analysis. A, Representative photographic images comparing gross lung size and visible tumor nodules of formalin-fixed lungs removed from treated mice (left) and untreated mice (right). Scale size is shown in centimeters. B, For this experiment, the weight of freshly resected lungs was used as a quantitative measure of tumor burden. In this representative cohort, four mice in the untreated group died before the termination of the study and could not be included for pathologic or histologic analysis. Median lung weight (in milligrams) and range are shown for treated mice (n = 13) and untreated mice (n = 11). p = 0.0005 using the Kruskal-Wallis test. C, Formalin-fixed lungs were sectioned sagittally (superior to inferior) then embedded in paraffin for routine H&E staining. Representative low-power photomicrographic images of lung sections from treated mice (left) and untreated mice (right) are shown. D, Fixed and stained lung sections were analyzed using ImageJ morphometric software. Tumor involvement of lung sections was determined by expressing the area of lung parenchyma involved with tumor (dark blue) as a percentage of total lung parenchyma. Median tumor involvement (percentage) and range are shown for treated mice (n = 13) and untreated mice (n = 11). p = 0.0004 using the Kruskal-Wallis test. E, Comparison of survival of treated and untreated animals used in the experimental model of metastatic disease. Life tables (left) and Kaplan-Meier survival curves (right) of the pooled cohorts of mice collectively comparing treated mice (n = 26) to untreated control mice (n = 29). Data are censored at day 66. p = 0.002 according to the Mantel-Haenszel log-rank test comparing treated to untreated mice.
The studies undertaken in this report were performed with two distinct yet logically related objectives in mind. Our first objective was to directly test the hypothesis that γδ T cells play a role in limiting the development or progression of spontaneously arising mouse prostate cancer (proof-of-concept studies) (Figs. 1⇑ and 2⇑). Our second objective was to test a specific prediction of this hypothesis, a prediction that asserts that if γδ T cells do indeed provide protective immunosurveillance against mouse prostate cancer, then introducing supraphysiological numbers of syngeneic γδ T cells into tumor-bearing mice would result in measurable control of established disease (adoptive immunotherapy studies) (Figs. 3–6⇑⇑⇑⇑).
By breeding TRAMP mice with mice lacking γδ T cells, the opportunity is afforded to observe the development or progression of prostate cancer as it occurs in the specific absence of γδ T cells. Although potentially an important approach to directly assess whether γδ T cells play a role in limiting tumor development or progression, we nonetheless remained mindful of some of the limitations of this study or any study designed to assess immune responses directed against tumors arising in transgenic animals. First, in a general sense, it should be noted that even in fully immunocompetent TRAMP mice, disease development and progression can vary substantially between individual animals (10, 11, 12, 13). Second, in a more specific sense, it should be noted that in the TRAMP model, spontaneously arising tumors that develop in male TRAMP mice are known to express simian virus SV40 oncoproteins, which in this model are authentic tumor Ags that in theory could elicit strong protective adaptive antitumor responses by Ag-specific αβ T cells (10, 11, 12, 13). Importantly, however, it is now recognized that strong tolerance to SV40 Ags commonly develops in otherwise immunocompetent TRAMP mice. This development appears to occur through a variety of mechanisms, including possibly the clonal deletion of SV40-specific αβ T cells (31, 32). Accordingly, we believe that it is the fortuitous absence of a strong, protective adaptive SV40-specific immune response that ultimately permits us to detect the subtly enhanced tumor development occurring in some TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice, as evidenced by our ability to observe a strong statistical trend (p = 0.06) for larger tumor burdens in TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice (Fig. 1⇑B) as well as the strong statistical trend (p = 0.057) for greater numbers of TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice developing high-grade disease as compared with immunocompetent TRAMP mice (Fig. 2⇑A).
The observation that large, high-grade tumors develop in only some but not all TRAMP × TCRδ−/− mice strongly suggests that γδ T cells are providing protective immunosurveillance in a partially redundant, or possibly cooperative manner with other discrete elements of the innate or adaptive immune response. We surmise that γδ T cells may be cooperating with NK cells or with αβ T cells, including possibly SV40-specific αβ T cells that have remained functional. In the final analysis though, protective antitumor immunosurveillance that γδ T cells might provide in TRAMP mice is not absolute, given that eventually 100% of male TRAMP mice develop prostate cancer (10, 11, 12, 13). For this reason, as well as the limitations discussed, we feel that our proof-of-concept studies though important, ultimately serve best as logical support for the subsequent adoptive immunotherapy research presented in the balance of this study.
Although current standard treatments for prostate cancer are usually effective at achieving initial disease control, prostate cancer often recurs. Moreover, salvage therapy for recurrent disease, or therapy for prostate cancer presenting initially as widespread metastatic disease, is often only modestly effective. Clearly, entirely new forms of therapy for recurrent or metastatic prostate cancer are needed. Although cell-based immunotherapies have been developed in this regard, the vast majority of studies have relied upon the generation of tumor Ag-specific adaptive immune responses (33, 34, 35, 36). These approaches, however, have been largely unsuccessful owing primarily to 1) the difficulties encountered in identifying tumor Ags that are truly prostate cancer-specific, and 2) the well-documented ability of prostate cancer cells to specifically evade adaptive immune responses through a variety of mechanisms, including the down-regulation of MHC class I molecules (33, 37, 38, 39). The ability of innately functioning γδ T cells to provide an alternative or complementary means to recognize and kill tumor cells, particularly those that have escaped Ag-specific, MHC-restricted adaptive immune responses, makes the development of γδ T cell-based cellular therapies particularly attractive in this regard (5, 40).
By injecting otherwise healthy mice with a predetermined number of tumorigenic TRAMP-C2 prostate cancer cells, we have developed a model to quantitatively determine the extent to which the i.v. introduction of syngeneic γδ T cells can subsequently moderate the growth of disease (Figs. 4⇑ and 6⇑). The use of TRAMP-C2 cells in this model is important for several reasons. First, by specifically using the syngeneic TRAMP-C2 prostate cancer cell line to establish disease in otherwise healthy wild-type C57BL/6 mice, this process has allowed us by extension to approximate a clinical situation whereby a patient with prostate cancer is treated with a supraphysiological number of autologous γδ T cells. With this particular point in mind, it is important to note that in all studies, disease-bearing animals that received ex vivo expanded syngeneic γδ T cells tolerated repeated injections very well without any observed untoward side effects. Second, unlike primary tumors cells that develop in TRAMP mice, TRAMP-C2 cells do not express SV40 oncoproteins either in vitro, or subsequently in vivo upon transfer into otherwise healthy mice (18). Consequently, we believe that the confounding effects of adaptive immune responses directed against TRAMP-C2-derived tumors are potentially minimized, which is supported in part by our finding that in vitro, TRAMP-C2 cells are readily killed by γδ T cells but not by control αβ T cells (Fig. 3⇑B).
As shown in Fig. 4⇑, i.v. administered syngeneic γδ T cells are capable of moderating the growth of palpable, established s.c. TRAMP-C2-derived tumors. That antitumor efficacy is so clearly evident against grossly palpable disease would strongly suggest that adoptively transferred γδ T cells would also be effective against minimal residual disease, such as microscopic disease that might persist after surgical resection or radiation therapy. Related to this point is the observation that adoptively transferred syngeneic γδ T cells are also effective against nonbulky but nevertheless, widespread disseminated disease (Fig. 6⇑). Thus, we would argue that the adjuvant delivery of γδ T cells would be a logical strategy to develop as a means to prevent local treatment failure or to prevent the development of widespread metastatic disease, particularly if given at a time when metastatic disease is only microscopically present.
Biologically, it is likely that s.c. implanted tumors derived using TRAMP-C2 cells may not necessarily be comparable to tumors that develop spontaneously in TRAMP mice. Indeed, we originally wished to examine the ability of adoptively transferred γδ T cells to prevent the development of spontaneous disease in TRAMP mice. However, this approach was rejected on account that in TRAMP mice, both the latency period for disease development and the natural history of disease progression once disease develops can be quite variable from mouse to mouse (10, 11, 12, 13), thus making the interpretation of any immunotherapy studies extremely difficult. In contrast, by using the s.c. disease model, we were able to establish predetermined tumor burdens in otherwise healthy mice and then initiate therapy after a predetermined interval, allowing for more accurate measure of the immunotherapeutic effects of adoptively transferred γδ T cells against tumor cells (Fig. 4⇑). Although choosing to use the s.c. model represents somewhat of a compromise, importantly the robust immunotherapy data generated using the metastatic disease model (Fig. 6⇑) strongly corroborate the findings generated using the s.c. disease model. Interestingly in some respects, the metastatic model can be thought of as mimicking the advanced stages of disease found in TRAMP mice in which the development of widespread metastatic disease is not uncommon. Ultimately, we take these findings (Figs. 4⇑ and 6⇑) to support the view that adoptively transferred γδ T cells can mediate potent antitumor activity against mouse prostate cancer cells, irrespective of where or how disease might be established.
Despite the strong theoretical promise and growing interest in γδ T cell-based immunotherapies, it still remains to be determined how best to exploit γδ T cells for the treatment of prostate cancer or any human malignant disease. Two distinct approaches are currently being developed in this regard (6, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 41). One approach is based upon the in vivo activation or expansion of endogenous γδ T cells present within patients through the clinical administration of pharmacologic agents capable of stimulating γδ T cells. The second approach is based upon the adoptive transfer of γδ T cells first expanded ex vivo, then infused into tumor-bearing patients, as approximated in our current studies undertaken using the TRAMP mouse model. Clearly, although both approaches are rational and will likely lead to important advances in cancer treatment, from a conjectural point of view, we believe that the latter approach has several advantages that merit discussion.
First, in adopting the latter approach it becomes possible to prospectively identify and consequently, selectively administer, specific γδ T cell subsets deemed more likely to be clinically effective against tumor cells. For example, using state-of-the-art cell separation technologies, γδ T cell subsets within ex vivo expanded cultures could be selectively enriched on the basis of specific phenotypic features found, or postulated, to be associated with more potent antitumor activity. Specific γδ T cell subsets could in theory be selected on the basis of defined criteria, including activation profile (determined by surface markers such as CD45 and CD27), unique patterns of cytokine production, expression of specific homing receptors, and other criteria. Studies in mice specifically addressing this point are ongoing in our laboratory.
Second, in adopting the latter approach it becomes possible to experimentally track γδ T cells after administration, an important correlative tool for use in future clinical trials. Thus, in a manner analogous to our animal studies using GFP-marked γδ T cells for tracking (Fig. 5⇑), in human clinical trials it will be possible to first radiolabel ex vivo expanded γδ T cells with isotopes such as 111In or 99mTc, then track these γδ T cells to sites of disease using various clinical imaging techniques.
Third, the latter approach makes possible the ex vivo expansion of γδ T cells derived from healthy donors and not just patients. Though beyond the scope of this discussion, the introduction of tumor-reactive allogeneic (donor-derived) γδ T cells might become feasible in the setting of newer, nonmyeloablative allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplants (42) in which donor-derived γδ T cells could be delivered as a posttransplant donor lymphocyte infusion as is commonly done after immunological tolerance is established. This option may become especially important given our observation (manuscripts in preparation) and the observation of others (43) that numeric and functional deficits appear to exist within the γδ T cell compartment of patients newly diagnosed with even the earliest-stage malignancies.
In conclusion, it is important to acknowledge that our adoptive immunotherapy results presented in this study were not designed to establish the mechanisms involved in the homing of adoptively transferred γδ T cells to sites of disease. Indeed, as these studies were performed using unfractionated, ex vivo expanded spleen-derived γδ T cells, they do not address the possibility that distinct subsets of γδ T cells might be relatively more (or less) efficient at homing to specific tissues where disease is established. In addition, these studies were not designed to directly establish the mechanisms by which adoptively transferred γδ T cells recognize and kill tumor cells in vivo, though it is unlikely that in this model, adoptively transferred γδ T cells are recognizing and killing tumor cells through mechanisms other than those already known (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Nevertheless, despite these shortcomings, these studies are important demonstrations that the adoptive transfer of unfractionated, ex vivo expanded syngeneic γδ T cells is an effective and well-tolerated form of treatment for murine prostate cancer. Accordingly, these findings provide a strong biological rationale for the design of the corresponding studies in human disease, particularly now that the means exist to generate the larger numbers of γδ T cells required for such studies (23, 27).
We thank Dr. Larry Lamb for thoughtful review of this manuscript.
↵1 This work is supported in part by a Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs Award DAMD17-03-1-0265 from the U.S. Department of Defense.
↵3 Abbreviation used in this paper: GU, genitourinary.
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