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June 2, 2015

Making A Boat Of Plastic Bottles

Turning A Ball Of Fur Into A Dog

The Only Shop That Sells Stitched Products

Tiny Fish That Will Give You Nightmares For A Week

The deep-sea dragon fish is a member of the Stomiidae family. There are many genera and over two hundred different species altogether in this family. The most known about is the Barbeled dragon fish.

Deep-sea dragon fish lives in the deep parts of the Atlantic Ocean beyond where any plant life grows or light reaches, hence its name. This habitat has caused the dragon fish to adapt to the conditions at these depths by having light-producing organs called photophores and skeletons that better suit deep-sea life.

The deep-sea dragon fish, as its name states, lives in the deep-sea of the Pacific Ocean. The Dragon fish tends to live around 1000 to 3000 meters below the surface.

Some dragon fish have even been found at depths of 5000 meters. At these depths, the conditions are very extreme. The pressure can range from 200 to 600 atmospheres and the temperatures fall just below four degrees Celsius. The dragon fish lives below the Bathyal zone where no light reaches.

Going Too Far In Order To Cool Off

An apartment (in American English) or a flat (in British English) is a self-contained housing unit that only occupies a small part of a building. Such a building may be called an apartment building, apartment house), block of flats, tower block, high-rise or, occasionally mansion block, especially if it consists of many apartments for rent. In Scotland it is often called a tenement, which has a pejorative connotation elsewhere. Apartments may be owned by an owner/occupier by leasehold tenure or rented by tenants.

The term apartment is favored in North America and it is also the preferred term in Ireland. The term flat is commonly, but not exclusively, used in the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong and most Commonwealth nations.

In Australian English, the term flat was traditionally used, but the term apartment is also frequently used, as is “unit,” short for “home unit”.

Meet Pig: A Strange But Extremely Cute Dog

Dog is a usual term that refers to members of the subspecies Canis lupus familiaris (canis, “dog”; lupus, “wolf”; familiaris, “of a household” or “domestic”).

The term can also be used to refer to a wider range of related species, such as the members of the genus Canis, or “true dogs”, including the wolf, coyote, and jackals, or it can refer to the members of the tribe Canini, which would also include the African wild dog, or it can be used to refer to any member of the family Canidae, which would also include the foxes, bush dog, raccoon dog, and others. Some members of the family have dog in their common names, such as the raccoon dog and the African wild dog.

A few animals have dog in their common names but are not canids, the best example of this is the prairie dog.

The English word dog comes from Middle English dogge, from Old English docga, a “powerful dog breed”. The term may possibly derive from Proto-Germanic *dukkōn, represented in Old English finger-docce (“finger-muscle”).

The word also shows the familiar petname diminutive -ga also seen in frogga “frog”, picga “pig”, stagga “stag”, wicga “beetle, worm”, among others.

This Is The Clearest Body Of Water On Earth

Two Very Unusual Friends

In the typical sequence of an individual’s emotional development, friendships come after parental bonding and before pair bonding. In the intervening period between the end of early childhood and the onset of full adulthood, friendships are often the most important relationships in the emotional life of the adolescent, and are often more intense than relationships later in life. The absence of friends can be emotionally damaging.

The evolutionary psychology approach to human development has led to the theory of Dunbar’s number, proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. He theorized that there is a limit of approximately 150 people with whom a human can maintain stable social relationships.

Fitting An Entire Car In A Van

The original van was a huge covered wagon or the front of an army. Time has changed the definition to what it is now to only be a box vehicle.

A modern van is a kind of vehicle used for transporting goods or people.

In English usage, it can be either specially designed cargo vehicle or based on a saloon or sedan, the latter type often including derivatives with open backs (this variation is called a pickup trucks). Vans come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the classic van version of the tiny Mini to much larger vehicles such as cargo vans and other commercial transport vehicles. Vans run up to about 4 tons and are classified as Light or Medium Duty Trucks (in North America) or Light Commercial Vehicles (in Europe). Similar larger vehicles are Lorries (the word Lorrie is used in UK), and are not known as vans.

The modern word van is a shortened version of the word caravan.

Strange Things To Bring Home From Vacation

A vacation (also known as a holiday) is a specific trip or journey, usually for the purpose of recreation or tourism. People often take a vacation during specific holiday observances, or for specific festivals or celebrations. Vacations are usually spent with company of friends or family.

In the UK, vacation once specifically referred to the long summer break taken by the law courts and then later the term was applied to universities.

Copyright © Wacky Owl © · All Rights Reserved ·


Buying a Laptop Battery Charger

Most laptops come with a battery charger. An extra battery charger for your laptop is a worthwhile investment if you use your laptop in more than one location. Keeping one at home and one at the office, for example, might be preferable to having to remember to bring the charger brick and cable with you everywhere you go.

Universal battery chargers are becoming more common.  These are especially convenient for people with several laptops, smartphones, reading devices, etc.  Universal chargers generally have a plug or plugs for laptop tips and a USB port on one end and a wall socket plug on the other.  Most universal chargers you will find have up to nine laptop tips for different brands and often a USB adapter for many cell phones.  A universal charger typically costs between $50 and $100, depending on how many laptop brands and other devices it can support.  If you use a lot of devices, a universal charger can be a smart investment.

Of course, prevention matters, too: there are ways to make a battery last.  Always turn off the laptop when it is not in use.  Lower the screen brightness and close any programs you aren’t using to decrease the load on the battery.  Do not charge your battery unless it is needed, and consider using a lithium-ion battery if your laptop does not already have one.  By preserving the life of your battery, you help prolong the life of the charger as well.


Apartment rentals New York with East Village rental listings

Proposed East Village Historic District Could Raise Rents…Again

Manhattan Luxury Apartments - East Village Historic DistrictOnce a part of a larger, broader Lower East Side, the East Village is one of New York City’s trendiest neighborhoods. Adhering to Manhattan’s street grid unlike its former namesake, the East Village has a vibrant student, immigrant, and artist population, and demand in the area has skyrocketed as a result of being the place to be in Downtown Manhattan. Now, to the chagrin of basically everybody but landlords, rents might increase yet again, but for a completely different reason: the Landmarks Preservation Commission has its sights on the East Village.

In its conspiracy project to landmark all of Lower and Downtown Manhattan attempt to preserve historic architecture from the fate that belied much of the southeastern Lower East Side, the LPC has proposed a district centered on Second Avenue between East Second and Seventh Streets, comprising a wealth of 19th- and early 20th-century brownstones, walk ups, and federal architecture. The aim of this proposal is overwhelmingly positive, protecting a cherished neighborhood from even the smallest possibility of losing character. But what does it mean for rentals, specifically luxury rentals?

Go East: Lower Manhattan's East River Park Just About Finished


I like were this is heading.

Will It Knee?

Earlier today, we seemed to agree on a tag to attach to our "danger knee death ignition" response to Patrick's original Camaro video.

Earlier today, there were only two, now we have 14. Some posts were added since them, some were edited to include the tag.

While mine was silly (becuase pre-fob vehicles) others are proving that other cars are just likely to be affected by a rouge knee hit.

Does that mean that all cars are dangerous, or that we all need to pay more attention to our knees?

So, if you plan on submitting a video of danger knee, use the tag "Will it Knee," and if you have previously posted one, add the tag.


General C++ Programming (Page 2)

Why should 64 bit development ever be chosen over 32 bit?
Pardon me if this is a silly question, but I want to make sure I'm clear on this subject. 64 bit ge...
[5 replies] Last: 32-bit can be faster on 64-but architecture but it is more a question ... (by Ericool)
Reading from file to array issue
Hey, so I am working on an assignment and for part of it I need to read from a file and then put the...
[4 replies] Last: why i is out the loop scope ? (by Ericool)
want to return multiple values
can anyone help me, I AM A BEGINNER i want to return account number(num_acc) also with number of it...
[4 replies] Last: Whe can send more than just an integer, think of object created from s... (by Ericool)
Write your question here. //write an algorithm for this program and optimize the entire proced...
[2 replies] Last: Create a class or a struct called cheque , make a variable called cons... (by Ericool)
Hello guys, I have a question: how does it works and how it can be used as a condition ? ...
[3 replies] Last: [quote=amidaraxar]I'd like to control the input from the keyboard. Con... (by LB)
#include <> not needed in
Hello! I have a somewhat simple problem. In you only thing you need is... #include <iostre...
[2 replies] Last: Thanks, I just was curios. (by FireCoder)
Problems with file I/O
Write a simple C++ program called sum.cpp. The program will: 1. Read a file that contains several i...
[1 reply] : Please use code tags in future and explain specifically what your prob... (by James2250)
How to solve this run time error? thx.. SOURCE CODE: #include <iostream> #include <string> #inclu...
[5 replies] Last: Thanks guys ... Iappreciate it. (by omer123)
by medoo
error:particleName’ was not declared
Dear All I have tried to include the compton scattering in one of the examples in geant4.10.01.p0...
[8 replies] Last: my desired data (shown in terminal) but I want them in file There is... (by keskiverto)
by leourb
ifstream - Skip words
Hi, I have to import data from a .txt file formatted like this: Name: AAAAA BBBBBB; Address:...
[6 replies] Last: Thank you very much JLBorges! :D I was starting to get crazy! lol (by leourb)
Multiple Inheritance
Hello to everyone, I have a question: is it possible that a derived class, inherite the values of ...
[8 replies] Last: Perfect, i've tried and it works. You've been really kind and helpful (by amidaraxar)
compile for very long expression
Hi All, I am working on a project for modeling robotic dynamics. It requires to compile very very...
[3 replies] Last: Try making the variables volatile qualified with external linkage. ... (by JLBorges)
by piotr5
is there a simpler way to write an abs function?
first off the requirement is, my integer class has no copy-constructor, instead it's a child of: t...
[7 replies] Last: @nayonrony: I'm not sure why you copypasted JLBorges' post, but I did ... (by LB)
Now getting this error when compiling this macro: Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64: ...
[8 replies] Last: I'm also somewhat fearful of having to work within the limitations of ... (by shadowmouse)
move contructor and move assignment for a union-like class
Is there a better way to write a move constructor and move assignment for the class below. // g++...
[2 replies] Last: @JLBorges Thank you, hope I've done it right this time. Token::Toke... (by ChajusSaib)
expected class name error
Hello lads, I seem to be having an issue with a simple program. The error messages I am getting is ...
[8 replies] Last: @JLBorges Thanks again mate, totally flew over my head. (by ChajusSaib)
Key Reading
I know I just posted a newby post but I have another one. I have bought c++ books and searched the w...
[8 replies] Last: Oh, look, they're doing it to me now. Some people are easily amused, ... (by MikeyBoy)
by pfjf2
sfml - drawing text
Hello, I am having difficulty drawing text to a window using SFML. My code is below : #incl...
[3 replies] Last: More then likely it isn't loading because you don't have the font insi... (by Z e r e o)
by royeh
Not running well in writing data in a csv file in VS2013
I am trying to write data to a cvs file and is working great. There is only a problem that I have to...
[no replies]
by yj1214
Using OpenGL to make GUI
Instead of using libraries like Qt, wxWidgets, GTK+ etc. is it a good idea to make GUI using only pu...
[2 replies] Last: Something that should be mentioned is that writing a UI library from s... (by NT3)
Pages: 1234... 32
  Archived months: [jun2015]


Calendar conundrum

It's a question that, at first glance, appears inconsequential.

When should the Moffat County School District take winter break -- before or after ending the first semester?

Granted, the issue seems of little concern in the overall scheme of educating students. Certainly there are other pressing matters for the school district, the lowest funded in the state, to consider.

But, underneath it all lies an important question. And the answer could have ramifications on students' testing performances and final grades.

The school board, currently considering three options for the district's three-year calendar, is gauging public opinion on this question. Two of those options entail ending the semester in January after the two-week Christmas break, and a third proposes ending the semester in December, before the holiday leave.

The difference between options 1 and 2 and option 3 lies with the testing schedule students face.

Under options 1 and 2, students would take their final exams during the two-week gap between returning from break and semester's end, which fell on Friday this year.

Under option 3, students would take their final exams before leaving for winter break.

The editorial board believes the timing disparity could mean all the difference in the world to some students. For some, recalling a semester's worth of knowledge following a break might not be all that difficult.

For others, that two-week layoff is bound to be enough to wipe the slate, to forget, or at least have difficulty remembering course work leading up to final exams. This is particularly true considering many teachers opt to not assign homework during break.

So the real question is this: which option is better for education, the meat and potatoes of all school districts? Give credit to district officials for saying the crux of their decision will be based on what is deemed educationally advantageous to the student body.

Also credit them for seeking outside input before making the decision. The district has already taken comments from teachers and is now opening the line of dialogue up to parents.

Patrons may comment on the calendars by visiting the Web site, and clicking on "take the school calendar proposal survey" at the top of the page.

The editorial board encourages all district parents and faculty to take part in this process and give earnest thought and consideration before commenting.

The more feedback, the better a decision the board will make, which reverberates back to benefiting students.

Commenting has been disabled for this item.


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40 Cards in this Set

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- The region of the body that conatinsmuch of the diegestive tract and sometimes part of the reproductive system; in insects, the region behind the thorax
- Protein rich portion of the amniotes egg
- When broken down creates large amount of metabolic water
- Nutrient and water supply for embryo
- The place for waste products from the embryo inside the egg
- Nitrogenous wastes: urea, uric acid
- Fluid filled sack inside the amniote egg
- Where the embryo is located
- Amniote egg, which allows them to lay eggs on land instead of returning to the marine environment
- Embryo develops in fluid filled sack the amnion
- Anura, Urodela, Gynophonia
- Skin is the major site of gas exchange, most have moist skin restricting them to aquatic or humid terrestrial habitats
- Many include larval and adult life stages
- Gametangia that sperm is formed in
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi
- Fungi with symbiotic associations with plant roots
- Colonize the roots of plants and proliferate in the soil around the plants, hyphae penetrate through cell walls and branch repeatedly to form arbuscles (little trees)
- Fungus obtains sugars from the plant and in return provides the plant with a steady suppy of dissolved minerals that it has obtained from the surrounding soil
- Leaven bread and produce ethanol in alcoholic beverages
- Form mycorrhizas in lichens
- Gametangia that bryophyte eggs are formed in
- Flask shaped structure that shelters eggs
- A reproductive body of an ascomycota that contains asci
- Hyphal body type fungi
- Sexual spores produced in sacs called asci
- Very numerous more than 30 000 identified species
- Have a dikaryotic life cycle
- Saclike structures in which spores are formed in sexual reproduction, gives the name to the phylum Ascomycota
- Often enclosed in a fruiting body
Background extinction
- One of two types of extinctions that occur, the type of extinction where most types of extinctions occur
- Based on a rate of extinction for species for most species the average is about 10 million years
- Basidium is a small club shaped structure in which sexual spores of the basidiomycetes arise
- 24 000 species of fungi in this phylum, common name is club fungi
- Hyphal body type
- Sexual spores form in basidia of a prominent fruiting body e.g. mushrooms
- Some degrade woody plant debris, some of the same species are carnivorous
- Form mycorrhizas with roots of forest trees
- Some produce very deadly toxins
- Can be dikaryotic
Carboniferous period
- Dominated by large vascular seedless plants which were abundant in lignin
- Buried remains of these plants became compressed and fossilized forming much of the worlds coal reserves
- In an amniote egg, an extraembyronic membrane that surrounds the embryo and yolk sac completely and exchanges oxygen and carbon dioxide with the environment; becomes part of the placenta in mammals.
- Used in annelid reproduction
- Modification of a section of body wall consisting of glandular thickening near the gonopores
- During copulation secretes mucus that keeps worms paired while sperm are being exchanged
- Secretes a viscid sac in which the eggs are deposited
Coal forests
- Name used for large wetland carboniferous and Permian forests that later accumulated large deposits of peat and later changed into coal
Complete metamorphosis
- Most insects undergo this type of metamorphosis the larva that hatches from the egg differs greatly from the adult
- Larva and adults occupy different habitats and consume different food
- Larvae are often worm shaped with chewing mouthparts
- Larvae will grow and moult several times before transforming into the sexually mature morphology
- An outer waxy layer that prevents water loss from plant tissues
- Or the exoskeleton of insects that give strength stability and waterproofing
- The life stage in certain fungi in which a cell contains two genetically distinct haploid nuclei
Ectomycorrhiyzal fungi
- A mycorrhiza that grows between and around the young roots of trees and shrubs but does not enter the root cells
- Water proofing portion of the insect exoskeleton
- Made out of waxes (lipids)
- Lack insect
- A hard external covering of an animal’s body that blocks the passage of water and provides support and protection
- Made from a epi and procuticle
- Chitin and glycoproteins form procuticle and waxes form epicuticle
Flood basalts
- When continental plates drift over mantle plumes and the earth melts and basalt lava floods out
- E.g. Iceland lava flows out of the mantle and floods across the ocean floor or on land
- Lava floods can be the size of continents and result in dust and debris that enter the atmosphere and cloud the sun
- Causes a loss in primary productivity and an increase in carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide
- An individual of the haploid generation produced when a spore germinates and grows directly by mitotic divisions in organisms that undergo alternation of generations.
Gas hydrates
- Methane gas that is solidified due to water pressure and temperature return to a gas state and are released into the atmosphere
- Decreased pressure or falling ocean levels or increased water temperature could cause this release of methane
- Causes mass extinction
- A seed plant that produces naked seeds not enclosed in an ovary (fruit)
- First seen in the Devonian period
- Anterior most part of the body containing the brain, sensory structures, and feeding aparatus
- Organism that contains the mechanism in which both mature egg-producing and mature sperm-producing tissue are present in the same individual.
- Organisms that produce two types of spores
- Male microspores and female megaspores
- Producing only one type of spore
Hydrostatic skeleton
- A structure consisting of muscles and fluid that, by themselves, provide support for the animal or part of the animal; no rigid support, such as a bone, is involved.
- The threadlike filaments that form the mycelium of a fungus
- These fine filaments spread through whatever substrate the fungus is growing in forming a network (mycelium)
- Tubes of cytoplasm surrounded by cell walls of chitin
- Grow and exert mechanical force which allows them to push through their substrate, release enzymes and absorb nutrients as they go
- Nuclear fusion of recently combined haploid cells that are sexually compatible
- A sexually immature stage in the life cycle of many animals that is morphologically distinct from the adult
- A compound organism formed by an association between a fungus (ascomycete or basidiomycete called a mycobiont) and a green alga or cyanobacterium (photobiont).
- Secrete acids that eat away at rock breaking it down and converting it to soil
- 13500 different speices many reproduce asexually by fragmentations called soredia
- A tough intert polymer that strengthens the secondary walls of various plant cells and thus helps vascular plants grow taller and stay erect on land
- Enzyme produced by some bacidiomycetes fungi to decompose woody plant debris


In my column for the FT this week I write about a subject which is freshly topical in the US but which takes me back 25 years to the debate in Britain in the 1980s about the right operational target for macroeconomic policy.

Samuel Brittan made the case for this approach decades ago on this page. The crucial point - how an increase in nominal GDP breaks down between output and inflation - is not something the Fed can determine, or should have to explain. There are pros and cons to this approach, but that is the decisive political virtue of casting the target this way.


Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog2

“You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise. Because I stylize, I invent, there’s a lot of fantasy in it—not for creating a fraud, but exactly the contrary, to create a deeper form of truth, which is not fact-related. Facts hardly ever give you any truth, and that’s a mistake of cinéma vérité, because they always postulate it as if facts would constitute truth. In that case, my answer is that the phone directory of Manhattan is a book of books. Because it has 4 million entries, and they are all factually correct, but it doesn’t illuminate us. You see, I do things for creating moments that illuminate you as an audience, and the same thing happens with feature films as well.”

Werner Herzog (born September 5, 1942)

Documentary on Ingmar Bergman

As he approaches his 90s, Ingmar Bergman is the last survivor of a generation of great European directors who brought to the cinema a new psychological depth and formal daring. This BBC presentation of a documentary on Ingmar Bergman begins with an accurate statement on the Swedish filmmaker. Except for the fact that he passed away in 2007, Bergman was a great director—I’d say one of the greatest—and he brought with his vision and style a filmography that considered not only the human experience but also the cinematic experience. When one visits an Ingmar Bergman film, he or she is getting exactly that, and to add to the beauty of this is that he directed more than forty films in his lifetime. Persona. Wild Strawberries. The Seventh Seal. There is a library of Bergman films to choose from, to fill out days and weeks, and this documentary shows why filling up your time with Bergman cinema is more than just acceptable. Ingmar Bergman is an example of the filmmaker as an artist. He became a leading light in presenting film unselfconsciously as art. From Woody Allen to Andrei Tarkovsky, Bergman’s work has had a profound effect on many people. However, only a privileged few have met and talked at length with the man himself. This documentary represents in many ways that privilege—40 precious minutes with Ingmar Bergman.

Esteetilistel põhjustel (For Aesthetic Reasons, 1999)

»For purely aesthetic reasons«, as he claims.

He loves Danish post-war Modernism and would like to live in a house designed by one of its most prominent architects, Arne Jacobsen, surrounded by the designs of Bang&Oluffsen. While we are guided through some of the significant Modernist buildings by Kurg, we parallelly follow his attempts to get in touch with city officials and the proper authorities to find a solution. As Eastern Europe is still a no-man’s land, the migrant-aesthete from the Baltics tends to arouse suspicion on an ethical level. The only practical advice given, and the only remaining possibility, is what the Lutheran pastor suggests with an apologetic smile hiding his uneasiness, to marry a Danish girl, since families are not taken apart. The film which„bursts upon the stale and stuffy Estonian documentary film scene”(Andres Maimik) is influenced by the filmmaking experience of Dogma 95.

German portrait and documentary photographer August Sander (b 1876 – d 1964).

19 ASA3:2f17:2f7012.tif

Secretary at West German Radio, Cologne

sander sisters

In the photograph, “Country Girls,” 1925, two sturdy blond girls stand stiffly before the camera holding hands and wearing identical dark dresses and watches. It seems safe to assume they are sisters, so closely do they resemble each other in appearance, expression and manner. Indeed, their similarity and closeness is as disquieting as a Diane Arbus photograph, for their dark dresses visually give the impression of one large shape with two heads emerging from it.

The two girls in this photograph face the camera in a vague imitation of traditional posing principles. Their interlocking hands provide the emotional core of the image, compensating for their inability to make eye contact with the camera and with one another.
For the final section of People of the Twentieth Century, in which this portrait is found, Sander photographed “idiots, the sick, the insane, and the dying.” Whether single figures or groups, indoors or out, these “last people” are presented in the same uncompromising way that he approached his other subjects. Remarkably, Sander never let his work devolve into a clinical exercise, but instead imbued it with a sense of engagement with and respect for his subjects. Together the photographs illuminate the cyclical nature of Sander’s project, whereby in dying one returns to the earth and so the cycle begins anew.

August Sander

“Documentary photography isn’t so much about the fulfillment of aesthetic rules pertaining to outer form and composition as it is about the significance of that which is portrayed.”

“One can snap a shot or take a photograph; “to snap a shot” means reckoning with chance, and “to take a photograph” meaning working with contemplation – that is, to comprehend something, or to bring an idea from a complex to a consummate composition.”


Personal Chef

What is A Personal Chef?

Personal Chefs are trained professional people who prepare meals in the client’s home. The Chef will complete everything from planning the menus, grocery shopping, preparing meals and even the clean up! The meals are prepared in the client’s home to ensure industry regulations and proper food handling procedures are followed. The main distinction between Personal Chefs and Private Chefs is, Personal Chefs are employed by any number of clients and Private Chefs are exclusive to one client.

How does this Service work for “Me”?

We always say... “There are never enough hours in the day”! This is especially true if you have a busy life and/or family. Sometimes the last thing you want to do is cook! Spending money on restaurants, take-out or even convenience foods can add up, not to mention how they make you feel if they are not the healthiest choices. Through “Let’s Eat!” Personal Chef Services, you will enjoy a customized menu/meal plan with the foods you love with minimal time and waste!

Can I justify the cost of A Personal Chef?

Yes! Like any service offered, be it your Mechanic, Accountant, Lawyer, etc., we pay for good service by a professional and expect our money’s worth. I could bore you with the stats, but that’s no fun! When you look at your own budget and how much money you spend on food, compared to how much you actually consume, it is clear... It is affordable!

"Kerina, everyone was blown away by your food and your service. Totally!"
-- G.A. Jank Metal Scupture


Golden Globes red carpet arrivals

Heidi Klum, Jennifer Lopez and Kate Hudson are among Hollywood's hottest stars rocking the red carpet at the Golden Globe Awards.

Star snaps of the day

Rihanna avoids a wardrobe malfunction, Ryan Reynolds gets friendly with fans, 50 Cent does some good, Sarah Jessica Parker struts and more.

Star snaps of the day

15 celebs to ban from the red carpet

When did the red carpet become a free-for-all? What was once a hallowed stage for the towering and talented (or at least marginally interesting) has turned into a carnival of...

‘Girls’ star buys $1M home in Brooklyn

Six in 60: Zosia Mamet is Brooklyn bound, an unlikely ‘DWTS’ candidate, Bieber’s other legal troubles, Paradis on Depp’s engagement, Shia LaBeouf’s new art form, Broadway star’s advice for Carly Rae Jepsen.


Try the NEW!

Break Timr

by Alpine App Studio

Developer Notes

Break Timr is a simple to use digital 24 hour digital timer, with both count up and count down displays. It informs you of how long you have been on break and how long you have left.


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Unraveling Cancer Through Network Models

Sarah Webb, Ph.D.

Many cancer researchers have turned their attention to rare mutations. But how can they distinguish the mutations that lead to disease from random mutations with no effect? Find out...

In many ways, cancer is simply a devastating natural mutagenesis experiment. Alterations to genes and their products, as well as additional downstream modifications, lead to dangerous and deadly consequences. From recent studies, we know there are a few key cancer drivers, genes such as p53 and Ras that have central roles within the genetic pathways causing these devastating effects. But interestingly, these mutations don't show up in all cancers; in fact, they represent a small portion of the information that researchers and clinicians require to understand tumor biology and diagnose and treat disease.

The result is that cancer researchers are now focusing on the “long tail,” collecting and cataloging rare mutations occurring in 1% or fewer of cancer patients. These rarer mutations may underlie the critical functional changes within cells that characterize and define this collection of diseases. But there is a big challenge here, a double-edge sword for researchers: because of their rarity, it is actually much harder to distinguish these mutations from random mutations that don't affect disease.

Building network context

So how do researchers go about locating these important rare variants? The functional consequences of mutations in the genome often can be seen in the molecules, such as proteins, they encode. Over time, bioinformatics researchers have learned how these biomolecules interact with each other in the cell, curating protein and metabolite connections into wiring diagrams with nodes for proteins or other molecules and edges that indicate an interaction with another molecule. This has led to the development of a landscape of bioinformatics methods for understanding the misfires that cause cancer and control the disease process according to Trey Ideker a bioinformatician at the University of California at San Diego. Researchers gather systematic information on genetic interactions from genome sequencing that can then be combined with public data on protein-protein interactions, producing more comprehensive databases featuring millions of associations between molecules. The question then, Ideker says, is how researchers can take this grab bag of interactions and introduce context to build pathway models that can be used to understand and diagnose disease.

Even with millions of associations catalogued, these databases are far from complete. In many ways, our current understanding of interaction networks is like navigating through a major city with a general map, explains Andrea Califano of Columbia University. “It's like having a map of a city with Main St. and Broadway and not actually knowing whether the city is New York or Boston.”

Although understanding how proteins function together is critical for basic research, the real benefit could come from the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Here, cancer is the “killer app”—an important problem that motivates the need for networks.

“It's not just a good idea for solving these diseases, but required for solving these diseases,” says Ideker. So, as large data sets emerge from cancer genome sequencing projects such as the NIH/NHGRI's Cancer Genome Atlas project (TCGA), bioinformatic analysis that integrates that information into the context of protein networks is essential for helping researchers to make sense of the deluge of cancer data.

Using networks for analysis

A primary motivation for the TCGA project was to understand the similarities and differences among various types and subtypes of human cancers. Researchers involved in the TCGA are currently looking at hundreds of samples from each of more than 20 tumor types to identify rare mutations involved in cancer.

One bioinformatics approach to understanding the possible effects of specific rare mutations is to create a “heat map”—a graphical representation of mutations in context with nearby neighbors in a protein network. HotNet, an algorithm developed by Ben Raphael and his colleagues at Brown University, is one such algorithm. The idea is straightforward: mutations to a single gene confer a certain amount of “heat” to a pathway. If no nearby genes are mutated, only that single mutation is interesting to researchers. However, if 4 or 5 genes are only mutated occasionally but are closely linked in the network, those mutations propagate heat among them creating a “hot zone,” and implicating that area of the network. “The idea behind all these approaches is to implicate your neighborhood,” explains Ideker.

When Raphael and his colleagues used HotNet for their TGCA analysis of the ovarian cancer genome (1), they observed well-known signaling pathways such as p53 and Ras. But they also pulled out the Notch signaling pathway based on a combination of individual, infrequently mutated genes. While other experimental evidence had suggested that Notch might be involved in various cancers, Raphael emphasizes, it's a nice example of how computational tools can help point researchers toward a biologically relevant hypothesis.

Other findings have implicated genes that were not so well known to researchers. TCGA analysis of ovarian and kidney cancer samples (2) identified hotspot genes that don't line up with any current experimental hypotheses for cancer. “Are they real? Are they not? It requires some additional experimental work,” Raphael says. Even though the algorithm generates results that are consistent with experimental data, which lends credibility, “ultimately what we're doing is generating hypotheses.”

These algorithms based on molecular networks could allow researchers to classify tumors into subtypes based on overlapping hot zones. According to Ideker, patients might not have mutations in the same genes, but if they have mutations in genes that are closely connected within a network, that information might help researchers understand subtypes of the disease even if patients lack similar mutation profiles.

A core issue for this type of analysis is how best to simplify available biochemical data into a form that takes into account biological function, allowing researchers to model the effects. The sheer amount of information researchers have collected in curated networks (e.g., REACTOME, BioCarta, WikiPathways, KEGG, and NCI-PID) can be overwhelming, with data on gene expression, copy number, epigenetic state, neighbors in a pathway, transcription factors, and more, notes Josh Stuart of the University of California Santa Cruz. Collaborating with David Haussler, also at UC Santa Cruz, Stuart has developed an algorithm called PARADIGM which takes all that available data on a gene and transforms it into a single number to indicate whether the gene is active in the cell or not (3).

Computers can then use those single values in place of the original data to come up with predictions of how genes work within a cell. For a cancer data set, this means predictions can be made as to whether tumors with a particular genetic profile are likely to have better or worse outcomes or predict drug targets based on data from cell lines.

Stuart's algorithm is being used as part of the automated pipeline for TCGA data being funneled through Firehose, the computational pipeline used at the Broad Institute.

Biochemical identification of protein-protein interactions

Researchers use a variety of assays to establish if two proteins interact. Two high-throughput approaches to identifying interactions are yeast-2-hybrid screens and affinity purification-mass spectrometry. Researchers can also predict an interaction between two proteins if both proteins contain domains known to interact with one another. Researchers might also look at whether genes are co-expressed in a cell and whether they're localized to the same cellular compartment. While those last two aren't definitive evidence for an interaction, Stein says, they can provide support for an interaction predicted using another method.

Each method comes with advantages and limitations. For example, though widely used, yeast 2 hybrid screens have several downsides. These screens probe interactions in an in vitro milieu of reagents and antibodies and may miss transient interactions or ones that involve membrane proteins. Not to mention that since this is an in vitro assay, the screen might pick up an interaction that wouldn't normally occur in the cell. So, researchers are most confident in defining a protein-protein interaction when multiple lines of evidence from different experimental approaches support that it occurs.

Expanding networks

Although network analysis is improving, it is still hampered by the many protein-protein interactions within the cell that remain unmapped. (See “Biochemical identification of protein-protein interactions.”) Here, Califano says, the major challenge for the field is getting detailed reference maps for cells, particularly those of different lineages where different regulatory processes occur.

For the PARADIGM algorithm, Stuart and his colleagues are slowly adding new interactions to the networks they use. A quarter of human proteins so far have been noted to regulate another gene or gene product in the curated networks. Taking advantage of available high-throughput data, Stuart estimates that approximately 50% of proteins are included in the PARADIGM analysis networks.

Looming challenges


U.S. stocks closed higher Friday as investors were relieved by reports of easing tensions between Ukraine and Russia. The gain in the S&P 500 was the biggest since Mar. 4 and turned the index higher for the week.

On Friday:

For the week:

The Dow rose 60.56 points, or 0.4 percent.

The S&P 500 rose 6.44 points, or 0.3 percent.

The Nasdaq rose 18.26 points, or 0.4 percent.

For the year:

The Dow is down 22.73 points, or 0.1 percent.

The S&P 500 index is up 83.23 points, or 4.5 percent.

The Nasdaq is up 194.31 points, or 4.7 percent.


Advantages and disadvantages of circumcision

There are several potential advantages and disadvantages associated with circumcising boys shortly after they are born.

For example:

However, there are much more effective and less invasive ways of preventing these conditions. For example, practising good hygiene to prevent UTIs, or using a condom to prevent STIs.

Read about when circumcision may be necessary for more details.

Most healthcare professionals maintain that the potential benefits of circumcision are not strong enough to justify routine childhood circumcision. Critics of circumcision argue that it has disadvantages, such as:

  • Potential complications of circumcision – these include excessive bleeding, post-operative infection and, in rare cases, injury to the urethra. These complications are thought to outweigh any potential benefits.

Critics have also argued that routinely circumcising baby boys on medical grounds violates the principle of consent to treatment. They say that circumcision should only be performed when a boy is old enough to make an informed decision about whether he wishes to be circumcised.

Page last reviewed: 10/01/2014

Next review due: 10/01/2016


Several consumer markets are observing consumer demand to increasingly concentrate at the low and high ends of the price spectrum. We study two mechanisms through which income and wealth inequality can cause this increasing polarization of demand. More precisely, we advance that, aside from the conventional effect of income on budget constraints, different levels of consumer wealth determine whether different consumption motives are aroused or suppressed. Therefore, a heterogeneous distribution of consumer wealth elicits heterogeneous preferences for particular brands that satisfy different consumption motives. This theoretical model builds the foundation for a new economic model of non-homothetic preferences that allows marginal utility to depend on wealth. We test the proposed framework by estimating an econometric model of consumer choice with automobile data because high-end cars fulfill motives related to social status and self expression. The empirical study compares the proposed model against a more standard model of compensatory utility that is widely used in the empirical literature. The proposed model is able to predict the demand of a larger number of products and better predicts the sales of low-end and high-end products. A counterfactual analysis suggests that the polarization of demand is caused more by wealth inequality (through the saliency of consumption motives) than by income inequality (through budget constraints.) In particular, inequality weakens preferences for luxury and strengthens preferences for self-expression. The saliency of preferences for social status, in contrast, is less influenced by economic inequality. Finally, higher income inequality reduces demand concentration and dominates the opposing effect of higher wealth inequality.


Exit the A38 at the Lancaster Circus Queensway and take the James Watt Queensway. After 0.1 miles turn right onto Newton Street. Continue straight on, onto Dale Street. At the end of the road turn left onto Carrs Lane and then turn immediately left. The hotel is situated on the left side of the road.

Hotel Policies

Check-in time starts at 15:00:00

Check-out time is 12:00:00


Optional View

When a task needs to present some data for review, whose existence is optional, add a Siebel Query Option step before the optional view to check for the existence of data to be presented. Assign the query step's NumAffRows output argument to a task property of type Number. Follow the query step with a decision step with two outgoing branches: one of type Condition, and the other of type Default. In the conditional branch, test that this task property's value equals literal value of 0. Use that condition branch to by-pass the optional view, because it will be executed if no rows were found in the query step.

Field Activity may have instructions associated with it, but if there are no instructions to show, the view that presents them can be skipped.


TED: Comedy is Translation

TED: Shape-Shifting Dinosaurs

TED: Treating Cancer With Electric Fields

Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are the best-known methods for treating cancer. Bill Doyle presents a new approach, called Tumor Treating Fields, which uses electric fields to interrupt cancer cell division. Still in its infancy and approved for only certain types of cancer, the treatment comes with one big benefit: quality of life.

TED: The Happy Secret to Better Work

TED: Why I Chose a Gun

Peter van Uhm is the Netherlands’ Chief of Defense, but that does not mean he is pro-war. At TEDxAmsterdam he explains how his career is one shaped by a love of peace, not a desire for bloodshed, and why we need armies if we want peace.

TED: Doctors Can Make Mistakes

TED: Cut Your Food In Half

TED: Building a Park in the Sky

TED: Meet e-Patient Dave

TED: Computing a Rosetta Stone for the Indus Script

Rajesh Rao is fascinated by “the mother of all crossword puzzles”: How to decipher the 4,000 year old Indus script. He tells how he is enlisting modern computational techniques to read the Indus language, the key piece to understanding this ancient civilization.


Increasing number of cars on Indian roads

Find here our infographics on NHDP road construction pace!

increasing number carsJust as a child experiences growing pains as it goes through the various stages of development, so too it seems, does a country. At least that appears to be the case in India as it slowly comes to terms with some of the by-products of its status as a developing nation. As the economy has grown, so too has disposable income, which in turn has led to an increase in the number of cars on the Indian road network.

There were 1.5 million cars sold in India in 2007, a figure which represents more than double the number sold in 2003. And the apparently insatiable appetite of Indian for motor vehicles shows no signs of being sated. It is widely predicted that this year will see India overtake China as the world’s fastest growing car market. The introduction of the world’s cheapest car, the Tato Nano, has played a significant role in the increase in cars on Indian roads. Priced at a mere USD 3,000, the model has opened the way for a significant number of first time buyers to own a car, something which had previously been unthinkable for all but a tiny minority of India’s population.

Compounding the problem created by the increase in cars on India’s roads is how disproportionately the vehicles are distributed. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore are home to just five per cent of the country’s population. Yet the same four cities are also home to 14 per cent of India’s registered vehicles. What’s more, in six cities the amount of traffic is growing at a rate equivalent to four times faster than the population. It is clear that the current rate of growth in the number of cars on the Indian road network is unsustainable, but what is the most effective way of addressing the issue?

One solution which has been widely touted as the answer is the development of expanded, and more efficient, public transport systems. Existing networks such as those in London and New York are viewed as examples of how an effective public transport system can function, with officials in India are keen to introduce similar schemes to Indian cities. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pushed for a metro rail network in Mumbai and it is likely that similar schemes could be implemented elsewhere if it were to prove a success.

While these schemes would likely be a popular move among the population, the huge investment that would be required remains the elephant in the room. With the worldwide financial crisis likely to take some time to improve, it is more likely that the authorities will seek cheaper alternatives to the increased number of cars on India’s roads. One such alternative is to reduce traffic through the introduction of a congestion charging scheme or by providing incentives for car-pooling. The congestion charge in London has proved a very effective way of reducing congestion, with traffic falling by 21 per cent and traffic speeds increasing by around 10 per cent. The revenue raised through such a scheme could then be channeled into improving existing public transport networks. This could provide good food for thought for the government.


Depth of Field for Beginners

Ahh depth of field… aka DOF. This term strikes fear into the hearts of young aspiring photographers everywhere, both film and digital. They know it deals with optics and math - two things that most creative people are not really into. My first instinct is to say that depth of field is not that complicated… but then again I had to take an optics class in college which made me want to stab my eyes out with metal darkroom tongs… and then pour stop bath in them. I believe this class had a very deceptive name, along the lines of “Principles of Photography” or something like that. It was, in fact, all math. Ewww.

But as usual I digress, so let us get back to the task at hand - which is understanding the glorious principles of depth of field and how they apply to your film photography. Let me just say right now that I am about to do a basic overview “for dummies” style, so please do not write to me claiming that I did not explain such and such complicated principle. You can grab a copy of Ansel Adams’ “The Camera” for that. Here we go:

In über-simple laymen’s terms, depth of field refers to the part of your photograph that is in focus. If all or most of your photograph is in focus, you have a deep depth of field (also called deep focus.) If only a part of your photograph is in focus, you have a shallow depth of field (also called shallow focus and selective focus.) And that’s what depth of field is. Seriously.

The tricky part is figuring out how your aperture relates to your depth of field, and your beloved (or hated) exposure triangle. What is an exposure triangle, you say? You best be reading my Exposure 101, I answer. Several factors affect depth of field, including your distance to your subject, the focal length of your lens, your selected aperture (f-stop) and the format you are shooting. This means that a photo taken with a 50mm lens at f/1.8 from the same distance will not have the same depth of field when taken with a 35mm camera and 4x5 field camera.

A general rule to guide you: the smaller the f/stop number (so the larger the opening), the shallower the depth of field. F/1.2 has a shallower depth of field than f/1.8, which has a shallower depth of field than f/2.8 and so on. F/5.6 and F/8 tend to give medium focus, depending on your distance from the subject (and the format you shoot, of course.) If this confuses you, have a look at What is aperture/f-stop?.

Side-by-side examples:

{Selective Focus: F/2.8 - This is pretty shallow, but not to the point where it creates a complete bokeh effect and the background is indistinguishable. Both of these were shot at F/2.8 with a 50mm lens in 35mm.}

{Deep Focus: F/16. -These two, on the other hand, have deep focus - meaning that the foreground and background are in focus. Both were shot at F/16, but the left image is medium format and the right is 35mm.}

{Shallow and medium side-by-side: The background in the left shot is completely blurry with zero detail. It was shot at f/1.8, approximately 12 feet from the subject with an 80mm portrait lens on 35mm film. The right shot has a blurry background, but you can still tell what it is. It was shot at f/8, approximately three feet from the subject with a 50mm lens on medium format film.}

F/32 is most commonly the highest number on lenses that don’t cost a bajillion dollars, but you can definitely come across field cameras with an f/64. In fact, in the early 1930s, a bunch of photographers (including Ansel Adams) got together to form Group F/64. Their principal belief was that photographs should be  perfectly exposed, profoundly sharp and completely in focus (in contrast to the Pictorialist era, for the History of Photo buffs.) An aperture of f/64 was the best way to achieve this, as far as they were concerned.

Some of you may be saying, “Hey, but f/32 really doesn’t let a lot of light in….” No, it doesn’t. This is where mastering your exposure knowledge truly helps you create the photograph you want. If you absolutely have to shoot 100 ISO and need a very deep DOF, you’ll have to lower your shutter speed. If you want to use a specific shutter speed at f/32, you’ll have to pick a film with a high enough ISO.  For those who shoot digital, this doesn’t prove as much of a constraint, considering you can change the ISO. For my beloved kittens who shoot film, your ISO is your ISO and you can’t change it. Even if you decide to push or pull to fit the situation, you still have to shoot at that ISO for the entire roll. For more on that, please check out  What is ISO? in the Beginner’s Guide to Film Photography.

All of this information can seem confusing, but your lens actually tells you the depth of field if you really look at it:

See how it’s on F/2.8? And there’s a little white diamond on the middle ring? And more numbers on the third ring? Voila your DOF indicators. We can understand that the manufacturer says that this lens at F/2.8 has a DOF range of 1.5 to 2 meters, or 5 to 7 feet. Meaning that anything in between that range will be in focus. The manufacterer is most often, but not always, right. (Side Note: Mastery of using these numbers to focus without looking is known as “Zone Focusing” in fancy photographer talk.)

Many SLR film cameras have a depth of field preview button; it’s usually located on the front near the button to release the lens or the self-timer. When you hold the depth of field preview button and look through the viewfinder, you’ll notice it is significantly darker but accurately displays your complete depth of field. For a great explanation of this button, check out Ken Rockwell’s The Depth of Field Preview Button.

Let’s sum up the major points:

  • Depth of field refers to the areas of the photograph in focus.
  • Small f-stop numbers produce shallow depth of field, or selective focus. This is when the background is blurry. Great for portraits.
  • Medium f-stop numbers produce a medium depth of field, still with selective focus, but with significantly more definition in the out-of-focus areas. Good for portraits and specific landscapes.
  • Large f-stop numbers produce a deep depth of field, meaning the foreground and background are in focus. Ideal for landscapes.

If you want to get more in depth on depth of field (sorry, couldn’t resist), I highly recommend Understanding Depth of Field in Photography from Cambridge in Color. They’ve got loads of fancy diagrams to confuse you ;)


Disaster Assistance Programs

Disaster Assistance Programs: The Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE)

In the past decade, temporary ad hoc disaster assistance payments was the typical mechanism used to aid agricultural producers, including blackberry and raspberry growers, that had been adversely affected by natural disasters. However, given the ad hoc nature of this approach, these temporary disaster assistance payments have been difficult to manage fiscally. In the 2008 Farm Bill, officially known as the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, the SURE program was created as part of more permanent disaster legislation for agricultural producers. The SURE program is administered through the Farm Service Agency (FSA).

SURE is a new type of disaster assistance program. Most of the past disaster programs made payments based on individual crop losses and were often tied to base acres for either direct payments or countercyclical payments. SURE is a whole-farm disaster assistance program that is tied to crop insurance coverage and farm planted acreage. In a nutshell, if actual crop revenue from all crops (and all disaster and insurance payments) is less than the SURE guarantee, a SURE payment makes up 60 percent of the difference. SURE is tied to crop insurance because you need to have crop insurance coverage (i.e. NAP or AGR-Lite for brambles growers) to be eligible for the program.

For more information about the SURE program click here for a fact sheet and click here for a detailed paper.

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Trade Customers

Welcome to the section of our website dedicated to our Trade customers. We offer a number of unique services to help garages provide a better service to their customers and these will be introduced here in the coming months.

Webkat is the most comprehensive cataloguing system in the industry and it’s what our branch teams use to identify the parts you need. We are happy to provide our customers access to Webkat (which will also show the prices you’ll pay for our products) for a small fee. If you’re already registered, please click below for access. If not, please contact your local branch for more details.

Q.  How can I get access to Webkat?

A.  This catalogue is specifically designed for Garages & workshops.  You will have to register your interest with your local GSF branch and need a GSF Trade account. Log in details will then be sent to you by email when your account is activated. Your local branch will give you a call when access is completed and arrange a time for a demonstration if required.  Please remember to check your junk mail just in case.

Q.  I have received my user name and password, but I still can't log on!

A.  Use the user name and respective password sent to you. Please note that the user name and password are case sensitive. You can try copying the password from the confirmation email.  If you have just received the confirmation email and can’t log on immediately, try again in 5 minutes allowing time for the server to update you as a user.

Q.  I’ve forgotten my password and / or user name!

A.  No problem, just email, and we will email you the details again asap.

Q.  There are some blank areas on the screen when I load the page.

A.  It may be because you are not using the latest internet browser version, please update whichever browser you are using to the latest version.

Q.  What is the VRM Lookup.

A.  Type your registration number into the VRM Lookup box and we’ll search for your vehicle. Some information will appear in a popup box, if it’s correct, click accept and just double check the vehicle matches the description in the left hand margin. You can then start looking for parts.

Q.  My registration doesn’t link to the correct car?

A.  Sorry, you will have to select the car manually from the model list. You can find more detailed instructions on how to do this at:

Q.  My registration doesn’t link to any car?

A.  A few vehicles are not recorded in the same way at the DVLA so you will have to select the car manually from the model list. You can find more detailed instructions on how to do this at:

Q. How do I get more information about the car I’m looking at?

A.  If you click the little ‘I’ button next to the model description near the top of the catalogue, it will produce a pop up window with some further information about the car. You will also see a brief description of the car in the left hand margin.

Q.  How do I find the parts I’m looking for?

A.  You can either search for the parts by clicking through sections in the search tree, or type in a keyword into the search box. We have tried to use all the common terms used for parts to make them easy to find.

Q.  I can’t find what I’m looking for!

A.  We are adding to our product range all the time & our catalogue information. Please call our mail order hotline who will be happy to help you.

Q.  What is the difference between ‘Standard’ and ‘Premium’ quality?

A.  Standard Quality: Item will be of top aftermarket quality carefully selected from alternative suppliers that offer excellent value for money. Eg, Vetech, Erst Klassig, Franzen, NK, etc.
Premium Quality: Item will be of top quality sourced from leading suppliers that usually supply directly to manufacturers. Eg, ATE, Bosch, Brembo, GKN, Lesjofor, LUK, Mann Hummel, Remy, TRW, Valeo, etc.

Q.  Where can I find consumables and things that are not car specific.

A.  These items will all be found listed under the Universal tab just next to the shopping basket.

Q.  How do I change the quantity of what I want to order?

A.  Just select the ‘Quantity’ box and type in the required number and then click the ‘Update’ button.

Q.  How do I know if my order has been received?

A.  When we receive your order, an Order Acknowledgement screen will be generated. You'll also receive an email confirming that we have received your order details and containing details of your order and your order confirmation number.  The supplying Branch also get an email detailing the order,  In the event of any problems, they will give you a call.

Q.  Can I add to an existing order?

A.  You can add items to your order until you confirm your order. Once the order is confirmed, you can't add items to the same order. If you’d like to order additional items, you will need to place a new order or call the branch to get the new order on the same Van to you.


619 words • 3~5 min read

A major issue standing between well-managed elasmobranch fisheries and the mess we find ourselves in today is species identification. Many species look very similar (in some cases, DNA tests are required to tell them apart), which makes recording catch statistics extremely difficult. In fact, United States fishery management policy sometimes focuses on  species complexes (i.e. “Large Coastal Sharks”) of sharks rather than individual species. Species identification is a major issue for skates as well.

The common skate (Dipturus batis) is heavily exploited by the European seafood industry. While this species was once common, it is locally extinct throughout large parts of its historic territory. Many consider common skates to be the first example of modern industrial fishing technology bringing a fish to the brink of extinction. However, the story isn’t as clear as some textbooks would have us believe.

Some evidence (extremely variable morphological measurements, differences in time to reach reproductive maturity, etc) suggests that D. batis is actually two different species, prompting the authors to do a re-evaluation of the taxonomy. They present pretty convincing genetic and morphological evidence that D. batis is, in fact, two different species.  This has major consequences for the management of skates. As the paper’s authors say:

“This taxonomic confusion puts into question all previously accumulated data based on D. batis. Its endangered status highlights the need for an extensive reassessment of population collapses with accurately identified species.”

Since these animals have been extensively fished for nearly a century and have some of the most detailed fishery data around, having “all previously accumulated data” put into question is a big deal. To make matters worse, the authors found that European fishing markets often incorrectly label skate meat- apparently, one of the newly-identified species formerly known as D. batis looks very similar to yet another species of skate.

This research has enormous implications for one of the world’s largest elasmobranch fisheries (and possibly for numerous similar fisheries  worldwide ), and I’m very curious to see how regulations change as a result of it. In the meantime, in case you ever find yourself near one of these animals, here is a diagram of “the most significant morphological differences” between them. It’s no wonder that fishermen call them both the same animal.

Figure from Iglesias et al. 2010

Iglésias, S., Toulhoat, L., & Sellos, D. (2010). Taxonomic confusion and market mislabelling of threatened skates: important consequences for their conservation status Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, 20 (3), 319-333 DOI: 10.1002/aqc.1083


Staff Correspondent

MANGALORE: Two children reportedly died after they came under the wheels of a private bus at Polali Dwara on the outskirts of the city, under Bajpe police limits, on Wednesday.

This accident follows the accident on Monday in which a mother and her daughter were run over by a private city bus. The police gave the names of the children as Prajwal (5) and his one-and-a-half-year-old sister Bhavani.

Their mother, Lakshmi (25), who is expecting her third child, was injured in the accident. She is undergoing treatment at a private hospital in the city.

The accident occurred at about 5.45 a.m. when the person who was driving the bus tried to reverse it. The police are yet to ascertain whether it was the driver or the cleaner who was driving the bus.

The victims were children of migrant labourers, originally from Shimoga, but who had settled down at Trasi near Gangoli in Udupi district. They were staying in a tent at Polali Dwara. A group of around 150 people, who gathered at the scene of the accident, threw stones at the bus damaging it. They were angered by the apparent delay in ambulances reaching the spot. The police have seized the bus. Efforts are on to arrest the person responsible for the accident, police said.


The First State Celebrates Constitution Day 2006

Justice Randy J. Holland

photo   of Justice Randy J. Holland

Justice Randy J. Holland, Delaware Supreme Court

Delaware State Courts

Separation of powers is the defining principle of the American constitutional form of government. The foundation for both our national and state governments is a horizontal separation of sovereign powers between three independent branches - legislative, executive and judicial. The desirability of dividing the power of government into three main parts can be traced back to Aristotle. The drafters of America's constitutions were influenced by the 18th-century political philosopher Charles Montesquieu, who wrote: "There would be an end to everything, were the same [p]erson or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting the laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals."

In the United States, our federal constitutional system also divides the powers of sovereignty vertically between the national government and the government of each state. The powers of the national government are enumerated in the United States Constitution, and the Supremacy Clause makes those powers binding upon the states. The Tenth Amendment, however, reserves all residual sovereign powers to the states.

The primary function of the judicial branch at each level of government is to interpret the law and to apply its remedies or penalties with finality in specific cases and controversies involving both public and private parties. The United States Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of the United States Constitution and federal laws. The highest court in each state is the final interpreter of that state's constitution and laws. The opinion of each state's highest court is binding with respect to an interpretation of that state's law in all other state and federal courts.

State trial courts are presided over generally by single judges who interpret and apply the law in the context of a particular case, usually after hearing witnesses testify and considering other evidence presented by the litigants. In many trial courts, factual determinations are made by a jury. Appellate courts are comprised of multiple judges who, without taking additional evidence, hear appeals that allege legal errors were committed at the trial level. The highest appellate court in each state performs several functions: it corrects errors of law by a trial court in individual cases; it promotes uniformity in the law by reconciling conflicts in trial court decisions in different cases; it is the final interpreter of the state constitution and state statutes; and it develops the common law.

The Delaware judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court, the Court of Chancery, the Superior Court, the Family Court, the Court of Common Pleas, the Justice of the Peace Court and the Alderman's Courts.

The Delaware Court system looks like a triangle. The Justice of the Peace Court and the Alderman's Courts are the base of the triangle and the Supreme Court is the apex. As a case proceeds upward through the Delaware judicial system, the legal issues generally become more complex.

The Alderman's Courts are provided for in the statutory charters incorporating various municipalities throughout the state. They have very limited jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters. Litigants usually have the option of transferring their cases to another court.

For most citizens, the Justice of the Peace Court is the initial point of entry into the Delaware court system. That court has jurisdiction over civil cases in which the amount at issue does not exceed $15,000. In criminal cases, the Justice of the Peace Courts have jurisdiction over certain misdemeanors and most non-felony motor vehicle cases. The individual justices of the peace may act as committing magistrates for all crimes. Any appeals from the Justice of the Peace Court are taken to the Court of Common Pleas.

The Court of Common Pleas has jurisdiction in civil cases where the amount in controversy does not exceed $50,000. In criminal cases, the Court of Common Pleas has jurisdiction over all misdemeanors in the State except for certain drug-related offenses. It also hears motor vehicle offenses that are not felonies. In addition, the Court of Common Pleas holds preliminary hearings in felony cases. Any appeals are taken to the Superior Court.

The Family Court has exclusive jurisdiction over almost all family and juvenile matters. All civil appeals, including those relating to juvenile delinquency, go directly to the Supreme Court. Criminal cases are appealed to the Superior Court.

The Superior Court is a court of general jurisdiction. It has original jurisdiction over major criminal matters, including capital murder cases. It also hears major civil cases except for equity proceedings. The Superior Court has exclusive jurisdiction over felonies and almost all drug offenses. The Superior Court's authority to award damages in civil cases is not subject to a monetary maximum. The Superior Court also serves as an intermediate appellate court for appeals from the Court of Common Pleas, from the Family Court in criminal cases, and from several administrative agencies. Any appeals from the Superior Court are taken on the record to the Supreme Court.

The Court of Chancery has jurisdiction to hear all matters relating to equity. Its jurisdiction involves corporate matters, trusts, estates, fiduciary issues, disputes involving the purchase of land and questions of title to real estate. Any appeals from the Court of Chancery are taken on the record to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court is Delaware's highest court. It receives direct appeals from the Court of Chancery, the Superior Court, and the Family Court. The Supreme Court has original jurisdiction to issue writs of prohibition and mandamus to trial courts. The Supreme Court also has exclusive authority for licensing and disciplining persons admitted to practice law in Delaware. The Supreme Court consists of a chief justice and four justices. As administrative head of the courts, the chief justice, in consultation with the other justices, sets administrative policy for the court system.

For the past four years, the United States Chamber of Commerce has ranked Delaware's courts as the number one state judicial system in the United States.


Energy firms knowingly broke laws, Wetlands advocates say

The argument takes the form of a digital "timeline" that dates back to the 19th century. It is hosted by the website for the legal firm of Jones, Swanson, Huddell and Gerrison LLC, which represents the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East in its action against nearly 100 energy companies.


Scissor-making in China

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Spring Schedule of Workshops

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Freeform Power Hammer Forging with Jon Ledford – Saturday, April 20, 2013
Our power hammer tooling and dies were set up according to the specifications of innovative blacksmith and educator Uri Hofi. Instructor Jon Ledford will show you how to make a power hammer perform acts of beauty in steel. For advanced students only. $220 includes materials. 9:30 AM- 4:30 PM

New Tool for my Apprentice

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I now have an apprentice, a young woman of remarkable intelligence and determination.  Fearless, too. Laughing

my v block

my v block

antler chandelier

Delevery time for the big-un.

5' x 7' antler chandelier5' x 7' antler chandelier

Art metal

Professionally engaged in artistic metal forging. My site with articles. Intersnyh opinion of colleagues. 'm Designing with forged metal. Made of metal stairs, fences, canopies.

Fabrication | Jewelry | | | | |

New Forge Project

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Things have been a bit slow on the 'net for several days now so I thought I'd share with you all my latest shop project.   The propane forge I've been using for the past five years has just about run its course and I decided to make a new and better one.  The old one has been good, but it is a bit on the small side sometimes and isn't as adaptable as I would like.  I put a 2" square port in the rear of it, but too often that isn't big enough for what I need to put through it so I'm forced to build up firebricks at the front of the forge and use the exhaust heat to get something up to temperature.  Also, this little freon can forge can't accept the middle of a scroll, for instance. Such shapes are best done in a solid fuel forge, but most of the time I don't want to fire up the coal forge just to do one heat.  I've been thinking for some months now of a new design for a forge that would solve some of my issues and still not be a huge, gas-guzzling monster that would drive me out of the shop with the dragon's breath and the waste heat.  That waste heat is a significant factor in the tropics where I work, believe me!

Help with copper I am new!!!

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So I am BRAND NEW to metal smithing, as in just yesterday I pulled out my fathers anvil, got a good hot fire going and played around with some old scrap copper pipe. I was wondering, how do you get copper to fuse to itself when you fold it over? I know with iron they would sprinkle something like borax, but what about copper? (I realize my fire was probably no where near hot enough) Just looking for some advice, I had a blast playing around with it, made a neat cuff thats about 2 inches wide and heavy as hell lol.

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Indie Close-Up: Donnie Yen is a 'Dragon,' Diego Luna Talks Mexican Music in 'Hecho En Mexico'

Brad Pitt will be Killing Them Softly this weekend and a new batch of limited release indies look to get in on the weekend box office action. Let's see what's hitting theaters this weekend...

It may not seem like it, but it's been almost a year since a Donnie Yen movie was in American theaters. In January, he starred in the action biopic The Lost Bladesman which failed to impress and bid a quick exit onto home video. Dragon, however, has managed to win over critics and this weekend will get a limited release for action-drama fans to devour. The film centers on a martial arts expert who wants to start a new, tranquil life only to be hunted by a determined detective (House of Flying Daggers' Takeshi Kaneshiro) and his former master. Dragon has scored multiple wins at the Asian Film Awards and the Hong Kong Film Awards this year.

Originally slated for release back in 2010, Parked finally arrives in limited release this weekend. The film centers on a young man who returns to Ireland with nowhere to live but his car. He meets a dope-smoking 20-something, Cathal, who brightens his lonely world and through Cathal's encouragement, meets an attractive music teacher named Jules. Parked won the Audience Award at the Brussels European and Brussels International film festivals as well as nabbing multiple Irish Film and TV Award nominations.

Hecho En Mexico

Diego Luna returns to theaters in this documentary that showcases the richness of Mexican music, both young and old. Director Duncan Bridgeman examines the range of Mexican music from traditional styles to pop rock and rap, blending in interviews with leading personalities such as Luna, Lila Downs, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, Kinky and Alejandro Fernandez. A must-see for music fans!

California Solo

Robert Carlyle stars as a former British pop-rocker who now works on a farm and faces deportation after getting caught drunk driving. His efforts to stay in the U.S. force him to confront the past and current demons in his life, including an estranged ex-wife and daughter. Danny Masterson (That '70s Show) and Alexia Rasmussen (Chloe in Our Idiot Brother) co-star in this Woodstock Film Festival award-winner.

King Kelly

King Kelly is an aspiring internet star who performs webcam stripteases. When her car, which just happens to be filled with illegal narcotics waiting for delivery, gets stolen by a bitter ex-boyfriend, Kelly and her best friend embark on a whirlwind journey through drugs, sex and violence to reclaim what is hers. The film was made entirely from camera-phone footage.

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Carrie Underwood Nabs Lead Role in NBC Live Broadcast of 'The Sound of Music'

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Q. What will the oral examination be like?

A. The exam is two hours long. You and your partner will be asked a series of questions by a committee of three professors, including the Chair. The professors will take turns introducing lines of inquiry and will focus on works included on your list, though you may also be asked to go “off list” once or twice. Your professors might direct questions to you, to your partner, or to both of you. The best oral exams will evolve into true conversations among the faculty and students. However, sometimes questions will “stump” you or your partner; generally, when that happens, it is acceptable for the student who has an answer to respond and assist the struggling student. It is also usually appropriate to interject after your partner has had a chance to answer a question or questions if you want to share an answer of your own. Note that the exam is formal: professional self-presentation, including professional dress, is encouraged. You will not bring notes into the examination room, but you may bring a copy of your orals list.

Q. What kinds of questions will I be asked?

A. You will be asked an array of questions, falling mainly into two categories: interpretive and literary-historical. The former type of question will focus on your ability to recall and analyze details of plot, characterization, form, and style from the works on your list. You will be asked to close read from memory and “on your feet,” especially when the shorter works on your list come up. The latter type of question will assess your ability to connect works on your list with broader literary and historical phenomena, like genres, forms, intellectual and artistic movements, and eras/periods. (A common line of questioning is, “How does Work X exemplify Period Y [or the Y Movement],” or “I see that you classified Work X within Period Y, yet you could also have associated it with Period Z. Defend your decision,” or “Explain how Work X reflects a cultural change between Periods Y and Z by discussing it in relation to Literary Concept W.”)

Q. How should I make my list?

A. Consult the Core List and study it. Choose works that you want to read, re-read, and learn more about. Ensure that you understand the literary eras represented on the list and that you can define the terms associated with those periods before you even begin to draft a list. When you do start drafting, try to create a well-developed list: make sure you do not avoid literary periods, genres, or styles that you perceive as “hard” or with which you lack experience. On the contrary, challenge yourself to use your time studying for orals to strengthen yourself in areas you are less familiar with as well as to gain real mastery over areas with which you are already well-versed. Eschewing longer, denser, or less obvious works, or whole periods, genres, or styles of work, in favor of shorter, simpler, or better-known works, or periods, genres, and styles with which we know you to be very comfortable, will not go unnoticed: instead, such evasions will provoke questions that may uncover major deficiencies in your preparation.

Q. How are orals scored?

A. The three faculty members making up the exam committee confer after the exam to assess students’ performance in a number of key categories. Faculty then assign a score of “High Pass,” “Pass,” “Low Pass,” or “Fail.”

Q. What could cause a failing score, and what happens if a student fails?

A. If a student cannot recall textual details, cannot analyze details accurately, cannot define key terms associated with the works on his or her list, cannot speak knowledgeably about periods of literary history and their characteristics, or shows other major deficiencies in preparation or performance, he or she will not pass the exam. Depending on the area(s) of weakness, non-passing students will be given mandatory assignments intended both to help them remedy the weakness(es) and to demonstrate learning and growth in the problem area(s). Assignments might include close reading papers, thesis-based essays, short-answer essays, and other written or oral projects.

Q. How should I study?

A. You should approach studying for orals as a long-term research project. Endeavor to make a draft of your list early enough that it is possible to read and re-read the works you have chosen. We expect to see deep familiarity with key passages from longer works and with short lyrics, and we encourage students to commit to memory a great deal of literary material from the works on their lists. To ensure understanding of literary context, review class notes from courses in which you studied works on your list, but do not over-rely on your notes or use your class notes as your only study aid. Instead, also plan to conduct independent research and to make use of a range of study materials, like the bibliographies from your upper-level courses, books in the library, subject encyclopedias, scholarly articles, guides to literary history and literary terminology, and textbooks (e.g., the Norton Anthologies). (See also the list of recommended resources at the bottom of this page.) Use study techniques you know work for you (like note-cards or group studying) and try new ones, too. Finally, spend plenty of time thinking about and studying your list and ask yourself and your partner lots of different kinds of study questions. What connections can you make between and among specific, maybe even apparently unrelated, works on your list? Why (aside from personal preference) did you choose the works on your list instead of other works? How do literary works reflect or influence certain cultural contexts, or how do literary concepts develop over time? What changes do you observe in the English language throughout the works on your list, and how do different writers use language differently? These kinds of questions will come up during the exam, so you should think about them as you plan for it.

Q. I’m nervous. What if I’ve studied but during the exam I draw a blank?

A. It is natural to feel nervous, excited, and anxious before an oral exam. In fact, adrenaline can help you think faster; nervousness will not necessarily incapacitate you and may even give you a mental boost. If you have prepared well, you will be able to articulate answers even to challenging questions, but it can also help to have some “stalling strategies” in mind in the event that you do draw a blank. If you are asked a question you can’t immediately answer, it is usually fine to ask for a moment to think. It is also permissible to ask your professor to re-ask or re-phrase the question. Even simply saying, “That’s an interesting question. I hadn’t thought about it before, but …” can buy you a little time as you call up the information being asked for. Sometimes nerves begin to get in the way when you aren’t sure about a professor’s intention in asking a question, or when you receive a series of questions you haven’t prepared for. Try not to assume that any questions (especially simple ones) are “trick questions”: often, the question that’s stumping you really is as direct and basic as it seems, even if the “right” answer is concrete and complex. Finally, sometimes your professors will ask questions out of curiosity or interest, or to see you think creatively in the moment, and may not have a prefabricated or “right” answer in mind: try not to perceive this kind of questioning as sinister, and engage with it as best you can.

Q. When will my exam be, or when will my list be due?

A. You will be contacted in the spring of your senior year to schedule your comprehensive exams. You will be instructed at that time how and when to submit your list to the Department Chair.

Recommended resources

Consider reading the following books as you study for orals.

  • M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms
  • David H. Richter, The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends
  • Pat Rogers, The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature


Lessons Learned The Hard Way

Lapses in good practice, human error or lack of knowledge have resulted in serious injuries and deaths. A review of the root causes of these accidents reveals a worrying similarity.

In 1993, in Ankara, Turkey, three disused cobalt-60 teletherapy sources were packaged for re-export to the United States. The sources were not exported immediately, but were stored without the permission of the regulatory authority at the company’s premises. Over time, two of these packages were taken to Istanbul and eventually transferred to empty premises that were not secure. In November 1998, these premises were sold, and the new owners sold the packages as scrap metal to two brothers. By December 1998, the brothers had taken the packages to the family home and over a period of a few days began dismantling the protective containers, until they and others became ill with nausea and vomiting. At some point, pieces of the dismantled containers and at least one unshielded source were apparently left in a residential area before being taken to a local scrap yard.

By the time doctors suspected exposure to radiation, and not food poisoning, was the cause of the illnesses, a total of 18 persons were admitted to hospital. Ten of these persons had symptoms of severe radiation syndrome. Five of these had to be hospitalized for 45 days. Authorities recovered one source at the scrap yard before it was melted down. The second source, reported to be in one of the packages, has not been recovered to this day. Inadequate security over the sources and inadequate periodic inventory checks of the waste packages were the main contributing factors that allowed the unauthorized sale to take place.

Lack of recognition of the trefoil symbol on the source by those trying to dismantle the source was also an important factor in the number of persons affected by this accident. Improper waste management of the sources once they become disused was the root cause of the problem.

In February 2000, a serious accident in Samut Prakarn, Thailand resulted in death, injury, and widespread concern. A disused cobalt-60 teletherapy source was being stored, apparently without knowledge or permission of the regulatory authority, in insecure outdoor premises normally used for storing new cars. Two local scrap collectors allegedly bought some scrap including the source and took it home to dismantle and resell. They later took the partially dismantled teletherapy head to a junkyard where an employee cut open the protective shielding with an oxyacetylene torch. Those who had been nearby when the protective shielding was cut began to experience nausea and vomiting. Those who had touched some parts of the exposed metal began to suffer burn-like injuries. The symptoms worsened over a period of days.

It was not until about ten days later that some began to seek medical treatment for their symptoms. By the time medical authorities reported their suspicions about a radiation accident, approximately 17 days had passed. This accident resulted in radiation injuries to ten people of whom three died within the first two months despite medical treatment. Approximately 1,870 individuals living within 100 meters of the junkyard were exposed, with many seeking medical attention. The Ministry of Health is monitoring about 258 of these individuals who live within 50 meters of the junkyard for long-term health effects from the accident. An investigation revealed that the root cause of the accident was the failure of the party responsible for the disused source to keep it securely stored.

Had those who acquired the teletherapy head recognized the radiation symbol (trefoil), they might not have tried to dismantle it and would have not been exposed to radiation.


Hyperlink Reference Libraries

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Hairy Frog Trichobatrachus Robustus
2014-07-31 10:55:59

The Hairy Frog, Trichobatrachus robustus, is a Central African species of frog belonging to the Arthroleptidae family. It is a monotypic species within the genus Trichobatrachus. The common name refers to the somewhat hair-like structures found on the body and the thighs of the breeding male. This species is around 11 centimeters long. The head is large and is more broad than long, with a...

Brahman Cattle
2014-07-12 10:51:49

The Brahman or Brahma is a breed of cattle that originated in America during the early 1900s. It was developed from imported breeds during the years of 1854 to 1926 from India, the breeds included the Kankrej, Gujarat, Ongole and Gir. Approximately 266 different bulls and 22 different cows were used in the development of the Brahman. The American Brahman Breeders Association was established...

Boran Cattle
2014-07-12 10:36:21

Blue Grey Cattle
2014-07-12 10:27:38

Blonde dAquitaine Cattle
2014-07-12 10:17:57

The Blonde d’Aquitaine is a popular breed of beef cattle that originated in Aquitaine, France. It is found mainly in the Garonne valley and the Pyrenees. It was developed by crossing local breeds, the Garonnais, the Quercy and the Blonde des Pyrenees. In the late 1900s, the breed was imported to other parts of Europe as well as Canada, Australia and the United States where large...

Belmont Red Cattle
2014-07-09 15:13:20

The Belmont Red is a breed of beef Cattle produced in 1954 by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in the Australian tropics. It was developed at the Belmont Research Station from several different breeds including the Africander and Hereford-Shorthorn. The Belmont Red was released to breeders in 1969. The Belmont Red was bred to have a greater resistance...

Belgian Blue Cattle
2014-07-09 14:37:46

Ayrshire Cattle
2014-07-09 14:00:00

Australian Bradford Cattle
2014-07-06 14:56:54

The Australian Bradford is a breed of cattle that originated in Queensland, Australia between 1946 and 1952. It was developed from crossing Brahman bulls with the Hereford cattle in attempt to produce cattle to resist ticks and be resilient to drought. It is also resistant to pink eye, eye cancer and disease. The Bradford is raised mainly in NSW and Queensland, Australia. Semen from the...

Aubrac Cattle
2014-07-06 14:34:22

The Aubrac is a breed of cattle originating in France during the mid-1800s. The herd book was formed in 1893  by French monks. During the winter, the cows would give birth on the farms and when spring arrived they would go to the mountains to graze. Bulls were bred on the farms to become draft oxen. During the time, there were 300,000 Aubrac in existence, but by the end of World War II, a...

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