2016 Political Quiz

Answer the following questions to see how your beliefs match each political party.

Where do you side on social issues?

What is your stance on abortion? Learn more?

Should the government continue to fund Planned Parenthood? Learn more?

Do you support the death penalty? Learn more?

Where do you side on environmental issues?

Should the U.S. expand offshore oil drilling? Learn more?

Where do you side on economic issues?

Should the government raise the federal minimum wage? Learn more?

Should all welfare recipients be tested for drugs? Learn more?

Wisconsin Governor and potential 2016 Presidential candidate Scott Walker recently proposed drug testing everyone in Wisconsin who applies for state benefits including unemployment checks and food stamps. The applicants would be tested on a “suspicionless” basis, meaning all applicants would be tested – not just those with criminal backgrounds. Opponents of the proposal include civil libertarians and advocates of the poor who believe the government does not have the right to test people for drugs based on their economic status. Proponents argue that drug use often leads to economic plight and testing applicants for drugs will improve their livelihood by serving as a deterrent for narcotic abuse.  See public opinion

Should physically and mentally capable adults on welfare be required to work? Learn more?

In 1996, President Bill Clinton and Congressman John Kasich co-sponsored a welfare reform law which included work-for-food requirements for welfare recipients. The provision applies to able-bodied adults ages 18 through 49 who have no children or other dependents in their home. It requires them to work, volunteer or attend education or job-training courses at least 80 hours a month to receive food aid. If they don't, their benefits are cut off after three months.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. reduce corporate income tax rates? Learn more?

Currently, federal corporate income tax rates vary from 15% to 35%. Due to loopholes and offshore headquarters, many companies pay significantly less with several major corporations paying no taxes at all. Some economists argue that the tax should be abolished in place of higher taxes on certain high earning individuals and stock market transactions.  See public opinion

Should the government subsidize farmers? Learn more?

Should the U.S. government bailout Puerto Rico? Learn more?

On May 2nd 2016, the government of Puerto Rico failed to make $422 Million debt payment to the U.S. government. In response, the U.S. House of Representatives is considering providing funding for a bailout or to allow a default and impose strict austerity measures. President Obama and House Democrats argue that the U.S. should bailout Puerto Rico and a failure to do so will cause an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. House Republicans oppose a bailout and have proposed creating a federal oversight board which would have the power to manage Puerto Rico’s budget and make cuts to public spending. Puerto Rico’s second payment to the U.S. of $1 Billion is due on July 1st 2016.  See public opinion

Where do you side on domestic policy issues?

Are you in favor of decriminalizing drug use? Learn more?

Do you support affirmative action programs? Learn more?

Should the Senate hold hearings and a vote on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee? Learn more?

On March 16, President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland as his choice to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that the Senate would not hold hearings or a vote on Justice Garland. Senator McConnell stated that the next Supreme Court justice should be nominated by the next President in 2017. Senate Republicans can block the any hearings or votes on the current nominee due to their majority in the Senate. Senate Democrats argue that the Constitution specifies that the Senate should at least hold a vote on any Justices nominated by a sitting President.  See public opinion

Should Apple unlock the iPhones of suspected terrorists for the FBI? Learn more?

Apple recently challenged a court order which would force it to cooperate with the FBI and unlock an iPhone used by one of the two attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, CA in December 2015. The Judge in the case ordered Apple to build a software key which would unlock the phone. The FBI claimed its agents had been unable to access information in the phone without the key. Opponents argue that technology companies should protect the privacy of their customers and creating a special key for law enforcement will open the door to hackers. Proponents argue that law enforcement authorities should have the ability to break encryption technologies in order to prevent and solve crimes.  See public opinion

Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers should treat all data on the internet equally.  See public opinion

Do you support the Patriot Act? Learn more?

Eminent domain is the power of a state or a national government to take private property for public use. However, it can be legislatively delegated by the state to municipalities, government subdivisions, or even to private persons or corporations, when they are authorized to exercise the functions of public character. Opponents, including Conservatives and Libertarians in New Hampshire, oppose giving the government the power to seize property for private projects, like casinos, that was made possible to a 2005 Supreme Court decision, Kelo v. New London. Proponents, including advocates of oil pipelines and national parks, argue that the construction of roads and schools would not be possible if the government could not seize land under eminent domain.  See public opinion

Where do you side on healthcare issues?

Do you support the legalization of Marijuana? Learn more?

Where do you side on electoral issues?

Should a photo ID be required to vote? Learn more?

Should the presidential debates include candidates with less than 15% of support in national polls? Learn more?

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is a private non-profit firm which has sponsored and produced nationally televised Presidential debates since 1987. Currently, the CPD only invites candidates to debate if they have a 15% support level across five national polls.  See public opinion

Where do you side on education issues?

Do you support Common Core national standards? Learn more?

Where do you side on foreign policy issues?

Should the U.S. accept refugees from Syria? Learn more?

President Obama recently declared that the U.S. will accept 10,000 refugees from Syria. The U.S. has been under pressure from its Syrian allies to help out with the crisis in which 3 Million refugees have fled Syria in the past year. Those in favor of accepting refugees believe that the U.S. has a duty to join its allies in Europe and accept at least 10,000 refugees. Opponents argue that the U.S. should stay out of this crisis and accepting refugees from the Middle East leads to a risk of letting terrorists into our borders.  See public opinion

Should the government decrease military spending? Learn more?

Should foreign terrorism suspects be given constitutional rights? Learn more?

Should the military be allowed to use enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, to gain information from suspected terrorists? Learn more?

After the September 11, 2001 terror attacks the George W. Bush administration authorized the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” at secret detention facilities around the world run by the defense department and CIA. The authorization approved the use of many techniques including beatings, binding in stress positions, hooding, sleep deprivation and waterboarding. In 2008 President Obama signed an executive order banning the use torture by the U.S. military and CIA. In 2016 the use of torture became a topic during the Presidential race when candidate Donald Trump suggested it should be used against the Islamic State. Opponents of torture argue that the U.S. should never practice torture since it is inhumane and illegal under international law. Proponents argue that the military should not be prevented from using torture if they believe it will keep the country safe.  See public opinion

Should every 18 year old citizen be required to provide at least one year of military service? Learn more?

Military service is not required in the U.S. Proponents of required service argue that it isn’t fair that a small percentage of Americans serve in the military to protect the rest of the population. Opponents argue that the requirement is unnecessary because modern warfare is fought less and less with ground troops and more with unmanned technology including drones.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. formally declare war on ISIS? Learn more?

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) recently proposed declaring war against the Islamic State (ISIS). The declaration would give the President more authority to carry out broader attacks on the militant group without Congressional approval. Opponents argue that the order would give the President too much power by eliminating Congressional oversight. Proponents argue that fighting an organization like ISIS requires an unconventional war plan that requires the President to make quick decisions without Congressional oversight.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. continue to support Israel? Learn more?

The U.S. currently gives $3.3 billion to Israel every year, which is 1/3rd of the U.S.’s foreign aid budget. Most of the aid is used by Israel to buy American military hardware, such as jets and components for missile defense.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. remain in the United Nations? Learn more?

The United Nations was formed in 1945 by the U.S., Soviet Union, U.K. and China as an Intergovernmental organization that would international co-operation after World War II. Recent U.N. interventions include the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009 and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. send ground troops into Syria to fight ISIS? Learn more?

After the November 13th attacks in Paris several Presidential candidates gave new positions on how the U.S. should combat ISIS in the Syria. The U.S. is currently involved in a coalition of 19 countries that has launched 8,000 airstrikes against ISIS. None of the countries currently have ground troops in Syria.  See public opinion

Should the military fly drones over foreign countries to gain intelligence and kill suspected terrorists? Learn more?

Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles deployed by U.S. defense and intelligence agencies to collect data and strike suspected enemy targets.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba? Learn more?

In February 2016, President Obama sent Congress a plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The U.S. took over control of Guantanamo Bay after the Spanish American war in 1903 under the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations. The treaty specifies that the U.S. controls the territory while Cuba retains sovereignty. In January 2002, the U.S. military set up a detention center to hold terrorist suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The U.S. chose the location due to the fact that terrorist suspects held at the center would not be protected under the Geneva Convention since it was located outside of the U.S. The detention center has held up to 779 inmates, many of whom have described being subject to abuse and torture including waterboarding. President Obama’s plan to close the prison would send 30 to 60 prisoners to prisons in the U.S. and transfer the remaining prisoners to other countries. Proponents of closing the base argue that indefinitely holding prisoners in Guantanamo is unconstitutional since none of the prisoners have been tried and convicted in a court of law. Opponents argue that closing the base would put the U.S. at risk of another terrorist attack since prisoners would be transferred to prisons in the U.S.  See public opinion

Should the US increase or decrease foreign aid spending? Learn more?

Currently, the United States gives $31.55B, or .19% of GDP, development assistance to other countries. The top 10 recipient countries include Afghanistan, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, West Bank/Gaza, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Malawi, Uganda, and South Africa.  See public opinion

Do you support President Obama’s move to lift the trade and travel embargo on Cuba? Learn more?

In December 2014 President Obama ordered the restoration of full democratic relations with Cuba. The order lifted a 54 year old trade embargo and eased restrictions on banking and American’s travel to the country. Proponents of relations with Cuba argue that U.S. influence through tourism and trade will promote capitalism and weaken its communist regime. Opponents argue that trade and diplomatic relations will only strengthen the communist regime’s grip on the Cuban government.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. conduct military strikes against North Korea in order to destroy their long-range missile and nuclear weapons capabilities? Learn more?

In January of 2016, North Korea announced that it detonated its first hydrogen bomb. CBS News reported that the U.S. intelligence community is skeptical that North Korea used a thermonuclear device. The blast was in single-digit kilotons, and a thermonuclear device is measured in megatons. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has been more ambitious than his father in the pursuit of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, even in the face of warnings from China. Proponents of military strikes argue that North Korea crossed a line with its latest test and must be stopped at all costs. Opponents argue that North Korea repeatedly lies about its missile capabilities and that the we should let other countries in the region, such as China and South Korea, address this issue.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. overthrow President Assad of Syria? Learn more?

The Syrian Civil war began in the spring of 2011 after nationwide protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad resulted in armed conflict. After rebels seized control of several major cities, ISIS forces moved in and took over control of many regions of northern Syria. The government of Assad responded by carrying out airstrikes resulting in over 70,000 civilian deaths. Proponents of overthrowing Assad argue that he is a brutal dictator who must be removed from power before he carries out any more atrocities on innocent Syrian civilians. Opponents of regime change, including President Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, argue that removing Assad will result in a power vacuum that will destabilize the Middle East.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. continue NSA surveillance of its allies? Learn more?

The cache of documents revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed that the U.S. used surveillance methods to monitor the emails and phone calls of its closest foreign allies including Germany, France and Brazil. The revelations have severely damaged the U.S.'s relationship with these countries even though State Department officials have insisted that these surveillance programs have thwarted many terrorist threats worldwide.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. prevent Russia from conducting airstrikes in Syria? Learn more?

Should the U.S. defend other NATO countries that maintain low military defense budgets relative to their GDP? Learn more?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an intergovernmental military alliance formed by 28 countries in 1949 after the Second World War. To join NATO each member country pledged to spend at least 2% of their GDP on military spending and defense and defend each other against threats from any non-member country. In a July 2016 interview with the New York Times Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested that the United States would not defend NATO member countries who had failed to increase their military budgets to above 2% of Gross Domestic Product. The suggestion defies a pact made by NATO members when it was formed in WWII that they would defend each other against any attack by a non-member nation. France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, and Italy are countries that are currently spending less than 2% of their GDP on military defense.  See public opinion

Where do you side on criminal issues?

Should convicted felons have the right to vote? Learn more?

Where do you side on immigration issues?

Should Muslim immigrants be banned from entering the country until the government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists? Learn more?

Should illegal immigrants have access to government-subsidized healthcare? Learn more?

Illegal immigrants, as well as legal immigrants in the country less than five years, are not eligible for free healthcare through Medicaid. A 2007 study estimated that less than 1 percent of Medicaid spending went to healthcare for illegal immigrants. Proponents of subsidized healthcare for immigrants argue that increased access to basic preventive care will lower the demand for costly emergency care. Opponents argue that immigrants in the healthcare system run the risk of becoming "permanent patients," because they have no relatives, insurance or an established address where they can go once released.  See public opinion

Should illegal immigrants be offered in-state tuition rates at public colleges within their residing state? Learn more?

Currently sixteen states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington) allow illegal immigrants to pay the same in-state tuition rates as other residents of the state. To qualify, students must have attended a school in the state for a certain number of years, have graduated high school in the state, have confirmed they are applying for legal citizenship.  See public opinion

Should children of illegal immigrants be granted legal citizenship? Learn more?

The 14th amendment of the U.S. constitution states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Opponents of birth right citizenship argue that the 14th amendment is not clear since it does not specifically state that babies born to parents who were in the United States unlawfully were automatically citizens. Proponents argue that overturning the 14th amendment would increase the number of undocumented immigrants with each child born here, cost the U.S. taxpayers billions, and reduce the tax base.  See public opinion

Should the U.S. increase restrictions on its current border security policy? Learn more?

Congress has passed at least four laws since 1986 authorizing increases in Border Patrol personnel. The number of border patrol agents on the southwest border has grown from 2,268 in 1980 to 21,730 in 2015. Border fencing has increased from 14 miles in 1990 to 651 miles today. Proponents argue that too many immigrants cross our border every year and anyone entering the U.S. from a foreign country should pass through customs and have a valid visa. Opponents of stronger border controls argue the majority of illegal entrants are Mexicans seeking temporary work and pose no threat to national security.  See public opinion

Should immigrants be required to learn English? Learn more?

The U.S. nationality law requires applicants to have a working knowledge of the English language in order achieve citizenship. In 1990 the government passed exceptions to this requirement for older applicants and those with mental or physical disabilities.  See public opinion

Should local law enforcement be allowed to detain illegal immigrants for minor crimes and transfer them to federal immigration authorities? Learn more?

On October 7, 2013 California Governor Jerry Brown signed a state bill prohibiting law-enforcement officials from detaining an individual on the basis of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold after that person becomes eligible for release, unless he or she has been charged with or convicted of certain crimes, including violent felonies.  See public opinion

Should working illegal immigrants be given temporary amnesty? Learn more?

Amnesty is an act by passed by the federal government which grants immunity from immigration laws to undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. Various levels of criteria have been proposed for immigrants to be granted amnesty including proof of employment and willingness to pay taxes.  See public opinion

Should the US increase or decrease the amount of temporary work visas given to high-skilled immigrant workers? Learn more?

Skilled temporary work visas are usually given to foreign scientists, engineers, programmers, architects, executives, and other positions or fields where demand outpaces supply. Most businesses argue that hiring skilled foreign workers allows them to competitively fill positions which are in high demand. Opponents argue that skilled immigrants decrease middle class wages and job tenure.  See public opinion

Where do you side on science issues?

Should the federal government require children to be vaccinated for preventable diseases? Learn more?

In January 2014, 102 measles cases linked to an outbreak at Disneyland were reported in 14 states. The outbreak alarmed the CDC, which declared the disease eliminated in the U.S. in the year 2000. Many health officials have tied the outbreak to the rising number of unvaccinated children under the age of 12. Proponents of a mandate argue that vaccines are necessary in order to insure herd immunity against preventable diseases. Herd immunity protects people who are unable to get vaccines due to their age or health condition. Opponents of a mandate believe the government should not be able to decide which vaccines their children should receive. Some opponents also believe there is a link between vaccinations and autism and vaccinating their children will have destructive consequences on their early childhood development.  See public opinion

Should producers be required to label genetically engineered foods (GMOs)? Learn more?

Currently, GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) foods in the United States are not classified differently by the FDA and do not require labeling. Although no reports of ill effects from GMO foods have been documented, advocacy groups such as Greenpeace and the Organic Consumers Association argue that past studies cannot be trusted because they were sponsored by pro-GMO companies and do not measure the long-term effects on humans, the environment, and nature. Opponents argue that labeling adds an unfounded stigma over organic foods and that if a nutritional or allergenic difference were found, current FDA regulations would already require a label.  See public opinion

Should the government fund space travel? Learn more?

In 2014 NASA received $17.6 Billion in funding from the U.S. government. This represented .5% of the of the $3.4 Trillion budget last year and 35% of total spending on academic scientific research in the United States.  See public opinion

Do you support the use of nuclear energy? Learn more?

Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions that release energy to generate heat, which most frequently is then used in steam turbines to produce electricity in a nuclear power station. Since plans for a nuclear power plant at Carnsore Point in County Wexford were dropped in the 1970s, nuclear power in Ireland has been off the agenda. Ireland gets about 60% of its energy from gas, 15% from renewable and the remainder from coal and peat. Proponents argue that nuclear energy is now safe and emits much less carbon emissions than coal plants. Opponents argue that recent nuclear disasters in Japan prove that nuclear power is far from safe.  See public opinion

Today’s trending question

If the Presidential election were held today, which candidate would you vote for?


A hard-to-detect piece of malware that doesn't create any files on the affected systems was dropped onto the computers of visitors to popular news sites in Russia in a drive-by download attack, according to security researchers from antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab.

Drive-by download attacks are one of the primary methods of distributing malware over the Web. They usually exploit vulnerabilities in outdated software products to infect computers without requiring user interaction.

Kaspersky Lab researchers recently investigated such an attack on visitors to www.ria.ru, a website that belongs to the Russian RIA Novosti news agency, and www.gazeta.ru, a popular Russian-language online newspaper.

The attack code loaded an exploit for a known Java vulnerability (CVE-2011-3544), but it wasn't hosted on the affected websites themselves. Instead, it was served to their visitors through banners displayed by a third-party advertising service called AdFox.

What's interesting about this particular attack is the type of malware that was installed in cases of successful exploitation: one that only lives in the computer's memory.

"The operation of such an exploit involves saving a malicious file, usually a dropper or downloader, on the hard drive," said Kaspersky Lab expert Sergey Golovanov, in a blog post on Friday. "However, in this case we were in for a surprise: No new files appeared on the hard drive."

The Java exploit's payload consisted of a rogue DLL (dynamic-link library) that was loaded and attached on the fly to the legitimate Java process. This type of malware is rare, because it dies when the system is rebooted and the memory is cleared.

However, this wasn't a problem for the cybercriminals behind this particular attack, because of the very high probability that most victims would revisit the infected news websites, Golovanov said.

The malicious DLL loaded into memory acted as a bot, sending data to and receiving instructions from a command and control server over HTTP. In some cases, the instructions given out by attackers were to install an online banking Trojan horse on the compromised computers.

"This attack targeted Russian users. However, we cannot rule out that the same exploit and the same fileless bot will be used against people in other parts of the world: They can be distributed via similar banner or teaser networks in other countries," Golovanov said.

The best protection against this type of attack is to keep the installed software on computers up to date, especially browsers and their plug-ins. In case exploits that target previously unknown vulnerabilities are used, it's best to have an antivirus product running that is capable of scanning Web traffic and detecting attack code generically.

It's ideal to stop the infection in its early stages, because once this type of "fileless" malware gets loaded into memory and attaches itself to a trusted process, it's much harder to detect by antivirus programs, Golovanov said.


When it comes to pay, women must push equality issue

New research by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) has found that the gender pay gap for female executives has grown this year and that on current figures it will take almost 100 years for women executives to catch up with the pay of their male peers – 50 years longer than reported a year ago.

Emma Hawksworth
Emma Hawksworth

On average, male managers are paid £10,500-plus a year more than women in the same jobs. The report compared salaries on a like-for-like basis. It found that women executives currently earn an average of £31,895, compared with £42,441 for male executives.  The gap has widened since last year, increasing from £10,031 to £10,546.  These figures put the pay gap for female executives at about 25 per cent this year, even higher than the full-time gender pay gap as a whole, which is currently 15.5 per cent.

So why do gender pay gaps still exist, more than 40 years after the enactment of equal pay legislation? There are a number of key factors, many of which overlap and reinforce each other.

There are often appreciable differences in starting salaries between men and women. It has been suggested that women may be less likely than men to negotiate
in response to an employer’s opening offer, whether on joining or on promotion. Inequalities in starting salary can then become entrenched or even made worse by discrimination, conscious or subconscious, in pay review processes.

Length of service is thought to be a key cause of gender pay gaps, as pay schemes based wholly or partly on length of employment are common. Women tend
to change employers more frequently than men, to accommodate childcare responsibilities. Using length of service to decide pay can mean that those men who are able to stay with an employer for long periods can ’build’ better salaries then women, often simply by virtue of staying power.

The recession is playing its part too. The CMI research found that senior women are almost twice as likely as men to have been made redundant in the past year. Female directors fared even worse, with almost five times as many women directors losing their jobs compared with men. Even where women are able to keep their jobs, financial constraints restrict pay rises, and this means pay differentials can remain unchecked. Where employers want to narrow pay gaps by giving higher pay rises to those paid less than their counterparts, they may find themselves unable to do so because of the overall economic position.

In a working culture where people shy away from discussing pay, many women may never know if they are being paid less than their male colleagues. To address this, there are legal procedures to enable the disclosure of pay information. If a woman believes she is being paid less than a male colleague doing the same or a broadly similar job, she has the right to request pay information from her employer. The Equality Act allows an individual to serve a questionnaire on their employer to enable the individual to see whether they are being paid fairly. This can include information about the pay histories of colleagues, which makes this a highly sensitive area. Partners and members of LLPs, as well as employees, are protected against gender discrimination in relation to their terms and benefits.

On a collective level, women can encourage employers to be more open generally about pay, and to adopt transparent pay schemes, as these reduce the scope for inequalities to creep in. Provision for mandatory equal pay audits was included in the Equality Act but will not now be brought into force. However, employers who really want to address pay equality issues should monitor pay regularly and publish the results.


Human travel to Mars has long been the unachievable dangling carrot for space programs. Now, astronauts could be a step closer to our nearest planetary neighbor through a unique manipulation of nuclear fusion, the same energy that powers the sun and stars.

The project is funded through NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program. Last month at a symposium, Slough and his team from MSNW, of which he is president, presented their mission analysis for a trip to Mars, along with detailed computer modeling and initial experimental results. Theirs was one of a handful of projects awarded a second round of funding last fall after already receiving phase-one money in a field of 15 projects chosen from more than 700 proposals.

NASA estimates a round-trip human expedition to Mars would take more than four years using current technology. The sheer amount of chemical rocket fuel needed in space would be extremely expensive – the launch costs alone would be more than $12 billion.

Slough and his team have published papers calculating the potential for 30- and 90-day expeditions to Mars using a rocket powered by fusion, which would make the trip more practical and less costly.

But is this really feasible?

Slough and his colleagues at MSNW think so. They have demonstrated successful lab tests of all portions of the process. Now, the key will be combining each isolated test into a final experiment that produces fusion using this technology, Slough said.

To power a rocket, the team has devised a system in which a powerful magnetic field causes large metal rings to implode around this plasma, compressing it to a fusion state. The converging rings merge to form a shell that ignites the fusion, but only for a few microseconds. Even though the compression time is very short, enough energy is released from the fusion reactions to quickly heat and ionize the shell. This super-heated, ionized metal is ejected out of the rocket nozzle at a high velocity. This process is repeated every minute or so, propelling the spacecraft.

The UW-MSNW team has successfully demonstrated the metal-crushing process in the UW Plasma Dynamics Laboratory in Redmond. The team had a sample of the collapsed, fist-sized aluminum ring resulting from one of those tests on hand for people to see and touch at the recent NASA symposium.

"I think everybody was pleased to see confirmation of the principal mechanism that we're using to compress the plasma," Slough said. "We hope we can interest the world with the fact that fusion isn't always 40 years away and doesn't always cost $2 billion."

Now, the team is working to bring it all together by using the technology to compress the plasma and create nuclear fusion. Slough hopes to have everything ready for a first test at the end of the summer.

The Plasma Dynamics Lab – where Slough and colleagues, including UW graduate students, build and conduct experiments – is filled wall-to-wall with blue capacitors that hold energy, each functioning like a high-voltage battery. The capacitors are hooked up to a giant magnet that houses the chamber where the fusion reaction will take place. With the flip of a switch, the capacitors are simultaneously triggered to deliver 1 million amps of electricity for a fraction of a second to the magnet, which quickly compresses the metal ring.

The mechanical process and equipment used are reasonably straightforward, which Slough said supports their design working in space.

"Anything you put in space has to function in a fairly simple manner," he said. "You can extrapolate this technology to something usable in space."

In actual space travel, scientists would use lithium metal as the crushing rings to power the rocket. Lithium is very reactive, and for lab-testing purposes, aluminum works just as well, Slough said.

Nuclear fusion may draw concern because of its application in nuclear bombs, but its use in this scenario is very different, Slough said. The fusion energy for powering a rocket would be reduced by a factor of 1 billion from a hydrogen bomb, too little to create a significant explosion. Also, Slough's concept uses a strong magnetic field to contain the fusion fuel and guide it safely away from the spacecraft and any passengers within.

Research partners are Anthony Pancotti, David Kirtley and George Votroubek, all of MSNW; Christopher Pihl, engineering technician lead in aeronautics and astronautics at UW; and Michael Pfaff, a UW doctoral student in aeronautics and astronautics.

Original release:


Teleportation? Very Possible. Next Up: Time Travel.

Some of the most far-out sci-fi is eminently do-able.

By Michio Kaku|Thursday, February 28, 2008

Any science fiction aficionado has seen it all before: beaming through walls, riding in starships that move faster than light, or traveling instantly to distant places in space and time. These ideas aren’t just creative fantasies, though; they emerge from theoretical physics, especially the work of Albert Einstein, whose vision included a universe that curves back on itself in three dimensions of space and a fourth, invisible dimension of time. If Einstein’s version of the universe is correct—and experiments done over the last century suggest that essentially it is—then the fictionalized feats based on his theories might be possible as well. The potential has become so tantalizing that serious physicists now regularly comment on Einstein-based technologies in the most august journals of their field.

One of the most insightful of such speculators is Michio Kaku, a physicist at the City University of New York. Einstein’s scientific legacy, Kaku points out, has already formed the basis of many incredible inventions, including the laser and the global positioning system. But what would it take to reach the next level, developing such extrapolations of Einstein’s genius as the means to journey through wormholes, teleport through space, or travel back and forth in time? Scientists have already begun the work, and Kaku reports on their progress here.

In science fiction movies like Stargate and Contact, wormholes connect distant points in the universe, allowing people to travel from one spot to another in far less time than the hundreds or millions of years required to make the trip at the speed of light, the greatest conventional velocity. Einstein’s general theory of relativity suggests the possibility of wormholes—literal shortcuts through space-time caused by the curvature of the universe itself. But do wormholes really exist, or are they figments of mathematics?

There are several major problems to face. Many solutions result in “nontraversable wormholes.” As with a black hole, once you pass the event horizon of such a wormhole, you can never leave it. In 1988, Kip Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech found a possible way out: a traversable wormhole, one through which you could pass freely back and forth. In fact, for one solution, the trip through a wormhole would be no worse than riding in a plane.

There was a catch, though, that made such a wormhole impractical. Gravity would crush the throat of the wormhole, destroying any travelers trying to reach the other side. To stabilize the throat of the wormhole, scientists would need the repulsive force of perhaps the most exotic and speculative entities in the universe: negative mass and negative energy. Conceivably, using either could keep the throat open sufficiently long to allow astronauts a clear passage.

Scientists have looked for negative matter in nature, so far without success. One should note here that antimatter and negative matter are two entirely different things. The first exists and has positive energy but reversed charge. Negative matter has not been proved to exist. Negative matter is quite peculiar because it is lighter than nothing. In fact, it floats. Unlike meteors that come crashing into planets, drawn by the planets’ gravity, negative matter would shun large bodies like stars and planets. It would be repelled, not attracted. Hence, although negative matter might exist, we’d expect to find it only in deep space, certainly not on Earth.

Even if we could locate or create negative energy or matter, there is still a big problem: getting and manipulating enough of the stuff. Matthew Visser of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, estimates that the amount of negative energy needed to open up a one-meter-wide wormhole would be comparable to the mass of Jupiter, except that it would be negative. He says, “You need about minus-one Jupiter mass to do the job. Just manipulating a positive Jupiter mass of energy is already pretty freaky, well beyond our capabilities into the foreseeable future.” It might be millennia before we can even think about harnessing power on this scale.

Yet, if we ever do create them, wormholes could open the door to traveling not just in space but in time as well.

From the perspective of science, time travel was impossible in Newton’s universe, where time was seen as an arrow. Once released, it could never deviate from its past. One second on Earth was one second throughout the universe. This concept was overthrown by Einstein, who showed that time is more like a river that meanders across the universe, speeding up and slowing down as it snakes across stars and galaxies. So one second is not absolute; it varies as we move around the universe.

Physicists hope to teleport complex molecules in the coming years. After that, a DNA molecule or virus could be teleported within decades.

Once considered to be fringe science, time travel has suddenly become a playground for theoretical physicists. As Thorne has written: “Time travel was once solely the province of science fiction writers. How times have changed! One now finds scholarly analyses of time travel in serious scientific journals, written by eminent theoretical physicists…. Why the change? Because we physicists have realized that the nature of time is too important an issue to be left solely in the hands of science fiction writers.”

The reason for all the excitement is that Einstein’s equations allow for many kinds of time machines. The most promising design is based on a traversable wormhole. This wormhole is constructed with both of its ends initially located close together. Two clocks, one at each end, tick in synchronization. Now take one end of the wormhole and its clock and send them into space at near-light speed. Time slows at that end due to an effect in Einstein’s theory of special relativity known as time dilation: Relative to a stationary observer on the ground, time aboard a spacecraft appears to slow down; relative to the spacecraft, time for the observer on the ground seems to speed up.

Since the two clocks at the ends of the wormhole are no longer in sync, a wormhole traveler passing from one end to the other can move back and forth in time. There is a limit to how much time traveling he can do, though—he is able to go back in time only to the point at which the time machine was built.

When it comes to the potential for time travel, there is still fierce debate. In 1997 Bernard Kay and Marek Radzikowski of the University of York in England and Robert Wald of the University of Chicago showed that time travel was consistent with all the known laws of physics, except in one place—near the wormhole entrance. This is just where we would expect Einstein’s theory to break down and quantum effects, which work at the subatomic level, to take over. The problem is that when we try to calculate radiation effects as we enter a time machine, we have to come up with a theory that combines Einstein’s general relativity with the quantum theory of radiation. Yet when we naively try to do so, the resulting theory makes no sense. It yields a series of infinite answers, which are meaningless.

This is where a theory of everything takes over. All the problems of traveling through a wormhole that have bedeviled physicists (the stability of the wormhole, the radiation that might kill you, the closing of the wormhole as you enter it) are concentrated at the horizon, precisely where Einstein’s theory makes no sense.

Thus the key to understanding time travel is to understand the physics of the horizon, and only a theory of everything that unites Einstein’s relativity and the quantum realm can explain this. So the final resolution to whether all these science fiction devices are possible will have to wait until physicists can finally develop a theory of the universe that transcends even Einstein’s.

Perhaps the most tangible of the far-out technologies suggested by Einstein’s theories is teleportation. The key lies in a celebrated 1935 paper by Einstein and his colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. Ironically, in their paper they proposed an experiment—the so-called EPR experiment, named for the three authors—to kill off, once and for all, quantum theory’s introduction of probability into physics. Quantum theory requires probability because its formulas do not directly describe things like the precise position of particles. Instead, the formulas describe waves, known as Schrödinger waves. The amplitude of the waves at a particular location translates to the probability that a particle will be found at that point.

As the EPR experiment pointed out, according to quantum theory, if two particles—electrons, for example—are initially vibrating in unison (a state called coherence), they can remain in wavelike synchronization even if they are separated by a large distance. Two electrons may be trillions of miles apart, but there is still an invisible Schrödinger wave connecting them, like an umbilical cord. If something happens to one electron, some of that information is immediately transmitted to the other, faster than the speed of light. This concept—that particles vibrating in coherence have some kind of deep connection—is called quantum entanglement. Einstein derisively called this “spooky action at a distance,” and he took it to “prove” that quantum theory was wrong, since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

But in the 1980s, Alain Aspect and his colleagues in France performed the EPR experiment using entangled photons emitted from calcium atoms and two detectors placed 13 meters (40 feet) apart. The results agreed precisely with quantum theory. Was Einstein wrong, then, about the speed of light’s being the speed limit of the universe? Not really. In Aspect’s experiment, information did travel faster than the speed of light, but the information was random, hence useless.

Yet it is entanglement that opens the door to teleportation. In 1993 scientists at IBM, led by Charles Bennett, showed that it was physically possible to teleport objects, at least at the atomic level, using the EPR experiment. Precisely speaking, they showed that you could teleport all the information contained within a particle. Two particles with the same information are identical, so teleporting the information is essentially the same as teleporting the particle itself. Since then, physicists have been able to teleport photons and entire cesium atoms. Within a few decades, scientists may be able to teleport a DNA molecule or even a virus.

In these teleportation experiments, physicists start with, say, two atoms, A and C. Suppose we wish to teleport information from atom A to atom C. We begin by having a third atom, B, that starts out entangled with C. Now atom A comes in contact with atom B, so that the information content of atom A is transferred to atom B. Because B and C were originally entangled, A’s information has now been transferred to atom C; someone examining atom C would be unable to tell any difference between it and the original atom A.

The entanglement destroys the information within atom A (so we don’t have two copies after teleportation). This means that anyone being teleported in this way would die in the process. But the information content of his body would instantly appear somewhere else. In other words, he would die in one place but be reborn in another.

In 2007 Ashton Bradley of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics in Brisbane proposed another teleportation method, tapping another Einstein insight, a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate, or BEC, which is one of the coldest substances in the entire universe. A BEC is one-millionth to one-billionth of a degree above absolute zero, a temperature found only in the laboratory. When certain forms of matter are cooled to near absolute zero, their atoms all tumble down to the lowest energy state, so all of them vibrate in unison. The quantum waves of all the atoms overlap so that, in some sense, a BEC is like a gigantic superatom. Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose predicted this bizarre state of matter in 1925, but not until 1995 was it finally created in the lab.

Here’s how the Australian teleportation device works. Start with a collection of supercold rubidium atoms in a BEC state. Apply a beam of matter, also made of rubidium atoms, to the BEC. These atoms also want to tumble down to the lowest energy state, shedding their excess energy in the form of a pulse of light. This light beam is then sent down a fiber-optic cable. Remarkably, it contains all the quantum information necessary to describe the original matter beam (for instance, the location and velocity of all its atoms). The light beam hits another BEC, which converts it into the original matter beam.

Given this progress, when might we be able to teleport ourselves? Physicists hope to teleport complex molecules in the coming years. After that, perhaps a DNA molecule or even a virus could be teleported within decades. There is nothing in principle to prevent us from teleporting an actual person (assuming we accept the risks), but the technical problems are staggering. It takes some of the finest physics laboratories in the world to create coherence between tiny photons of light and individual atoms. In fact, it could be centuries or longer before everyday objects are teleported, if it’s possible at all.

Adapted from the book Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration Into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku, available later this month in bookstores. Copyright © 2008 by Michio Kaku.
Next Page
1 of 3
Comment on this article


OPERA / Marriage on the rocks: Stephen Johnson on the current revival of Le nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

The cast list looked like a recipe for success. As Figaro we had Bryn Terfel, who seems to be incapable of turning in a dull performance at the moment. The tone was as robust and richly colourful, the musicianship as sensitive, and the characterisation as lively as one could have hoped. His Susanna was Sylvia McNair, fresh from her Vienna Opera triumph in this role. Like Terfel, she became the character in every dimension, the musical strength and subtlety deepening as the performance progressed.

Jeffrey Black's Count Almaviva was another fine performance, vocally secure and appealing, and unusually sexy. His Almaviva was volatile, dangerous, charming and even capable of suffering from the strength of his urges. Against him was Christine Brewer's Countess, a little tense and inclined to sharp intonation in her first aria, 'Porgi amor', but gaining security and opening out in time for the Act 3 hit number, 'Dove sono'. Alongside these went Della Jones's delightful Marcellina, beautifully sung, with a touch of Angela Lansbury in her appearance and acting, and a very winning Cherubino, Monica Bacelli, a pleasure to watch and - especially in the set piece 'Voi che sapete' - to hear.

So why wasn't it more compelling? And why were there so few laughs? A performance like this is a good reminder of how much depends on pacing. The conductor Hartmut Haenchen was never particularly slow in arias and ensembles, but recitatives dragged, the interpolated Pinter-pauses sapping tension still further. When the recitatives don't sparkle, then the arias emerge like unthreaded pearls, lacking a sense of larger significance.

Ensembles, too, often disappointed. One could see, and hear, the singers working hard, and yet technical togetherness could be surprisingly sloppy. Not only did voices and orchestra sometimes disagree as to the beat, there were moments of poor cohesion in the orchestra itself. For the bassoons and strings to go their separate ways at one point in the overture was bad enough; for them to repeat the lapse at the same point in the recapitulation was startling. And from where I was sitting, the orchestral sound tended to dominate, in the first two acts at least, obscuring some of the low-lying soprano and mezzo lines.

Johannes Schaaf's staging left a mixed impression. The background scenes, especially the gorgeously painted ceilings, were striking, the foreground walls of Figaro's apartment rather less so - a metaphor? If so, it didn't really tell. Most of the movement was good in itself, and yet it and the music sometimes seemed to exist on two different levels. The extra charge that comes when musical and human gestures enrich one another was also rare. And while the Countess waking up with a hangover in the introduction to 'Porgi amor' was funny enough, for a moment at least, what exactly did it have to do with Mozart's poignant woodwind phrases?

It was only in Act 4 that everything at last came together: set, action, voices, orchestra - and Mozart's message. But it still didn't feel quite like the climax of a good evening's entertainment - more a late compensation.

In rep at the Royal Opera, WC2 (071-240 1911) to 25 May


1 Stars
 E2 5b

Adjacent Routes

The right wall of Valkyrie's first pitch, has open face climbing on mostly solid rock. The upper pitch is looser and airy but easy.
1) 5b, 25m. Climb a crack in a bulge to a horizontal break and traverse right to below a yellow face. Climb the bold wall past a peg to moves slightly rightward that gain a groove. Follow the groove to a belay.
2) 4c, 17m. Move left and follow a small corner to where moves right, around the arete, gain a slab. Climb the slab to the top.
P.Jarvis, Chris Flewitt 6.12.1983
P.Jarvis, Chris Flewitt 6.12.1983


More titles to consider

Shopping Cart

You're getting the VIP treatment!

Written by today's best researchers of semiconductor nanostructures, this cutting-edge resource provides a snapshot of this exciting and fast-changing field. The book covers the latest advances in nanotechnology and discusses the applications of nanostructures to optoelectronics, photonics, and electronics. You learn how to grow, characterize and design optoelectronic devices using semiconductor nanostrucutres, and how to incorporate semiconductor nanostructures materials into conventional quantum well devices. Moreover, the book reviews optical, electronic, and structural characterization techniques to help you determine the properties of nanostructures and explore novel nanostructured materials. This unique reference describes revolutionary devices that have been enabled by the growth of quantum dots, including quantum dot lasers and quantum dot detectors. You find detailed discussions on some of the more promising semiconductor material systems that have demonstrated nanostructuring, such as III-Nitrides, antimony-based, Silicon germanium, and Zinc Oxide. The book also provides a solid understanding of ordered carbon nanotubes and related structures, along with explanations of their novel uses as infrared detectors and solar cells.


Geometry Jobs

show all
Fixed-Price - Entry Level ($) - Est. Budget: $65 - Posted
I'm looking for an engineer to develop a set of piecewise equations for computing the stress field around a shaped hole in an infinite plate. The hole shall take the form of compound ellipses, which intersect at a points of equal slope (see attachment). The analyst will assume that the stress field of each of the compound ellipses will behave independently from one another. Verification of equal stress state at the intersection of the ellipses is required. The assumption will be further validated with finite element modeling in future work. The stress field around the perimeter of the ellipse will be a function of theta and will include the following parameters: R = Ratio of A-to-B (0<R<inf) M = curvature at intersection, squareness (-inf<M<0) The stress field around an elliptical feature can be found from a reference such as Peterson's Stress Concentration Factors, or other locations on the internet (e.g. The developed equations will be used to optimize the length-to-width ratio and squareness of such a hole in a known biaxial stress field, using stress superposition in a fatigue-critical application. Applicants should provide proposal with: 1. Estimated cost 2. Estimated number of hours to perform work 3. Soonest possible start date and associated finishing date >>>DELIVERABLE<<< The deliverable will be a PDF document with the derivation of a piecewise equation for the stress field around the perimeter of a shaped hole, as described in the attachment.
Skills: Geometry Calculus Mechanical Engineering Physics
Because the highway has a wider right of way than the country road, the corner of the field is closer to the country road than it is to the highway. In the attached paper, Geometry-Do:  Geometry without Multiplication, I present a heuristic method on pages 63-64.
Skills: Geometry
Skills: Geometry Caricature Drawing Drawing
I need artists talented enough to help me complete an adult themed coloring book to be sold on my website. These coloring books will be limited edition, of very high quality, and are aimed at a niche audience. I will need to see samples of artist's work to see if they're the right fit. I aim to pay a $250 advance if beginning criteria are met and will pay 1/4 royalty for each unit sold off of work.
Skills: Geometry Caricature Drawing Concept Artistry Drawing


Measles outbreaks have potential to spread farther, and through more people, than we thought

People fully vaccinated against measles could lose some of that protection as they get older. That means teenagers, college students, and adults could, potentially, contract and pass along measles in outbreaks that begin with younger, unvaccinated children.


Map of Romania

This application can be used as a GPS navigator!
You do not need internet connection to view the map!
Can be used as a car GPS voice giving you directions to the destination during the trip.
It contains a detailed list of points of interest for tourists, accommodation options, car parks, restaurants, bars, clubs, cinemas, theaters, service centers, service stations, shops, parks, schools, hospitals or areas dedicated to sport.
You may add favorite points on the map so you can find easily.
It includes detailed maps of major cities in Romania: Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Constanta, Craiova, Galati, Brasov, Ploiesti, Braila, Oradea, Bacau, Arad, Pitesti, Sibiu, Targu Mures, Baia Mare, Buzau, Satu Mare, Botosani, Ramnicu Valcea and others.

Tags: map of romania , harta romaniei offline , harta romaniei , harta romaniei pentru , harta romaniei detaliata offline , harta romaniei free 4 , descarca gratis harta romania , harta iasi offline , harta romaniei top apps

Users review

from 52.304 reviews


Talk:Emanuel Swedenborg

To the person contributing the Swedenborg quotations today: These are only suggestions, but if there are works that you are quoting from extensively, they can be given their own sub-section within the sourced section. as I did with Arcana Coelestia. Also a date of publication is helpful for arranging works and quotes chronologically. ~ Achilles 21:37, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC).

Return to "Emanuel Swedenborg" page.


she keeps the dolls she never played with atop her bookcase
and her makeup in the bottom righthand cabinet
of the bathroom (but it's not like she'd ever tell you that);
her socks in one drawer and her jeans in another,
and her closet's color-coordinated except for the
shoes on the floor and all that luggage
on the shelf waiting to fall on her shoulders.

life is making
her realize that everything isn't quite relatable
and more disorganized than she'd like them to
be, but she thinks that if she keeps it all
in reach, then all she has won't get lost - considering
she's already lost so much (when she didn't really have
a lot to start with, anyways.)


Debian logoDebian Screenshots >

multicasts all channels of a DVB transponder on a network

Mumudvb is a program that redistributes streams from DVB on a network using multicast. It is able to multicast a whole DVB transponder by assigning each channel a different multicast IP. It can operate Conditional Access Modules (CAM), and therefore works with encrypted streams. It has very low CPU and memory usage.

Upload more screenshots


Weighing religious emotion, scientific fact | Wally's World

Well, class, it's time for a little anthropology, a subject that's always been close to my heart.

Roughly 30 miles north of the Syrian border lays the Turkish city of Urfa, otherwise known as the "City of Prophets." In the Bible, it's simply known as Ur, alleged to be the birthplace of Abraham – considered a holy man by Muslims, Christians and Jews alike – and, within Urfa's city limits, there's a celebrated cave where Muslims claim Abraham's birth occurred. Urfa is also believed to have been the home of another prophet, Job.

A few miles into the countryside surrounding Urfa, nestled comfortably between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, there's an anthropological dig known as Gobekidi Tepe (Turkish for "Hill with a Potbelly" or "Fat Hill"). It's a vast complex of Stonehenge-type, T-shaped, multi-ton, limestone megaliths that are decorated with carvings of rather dangerous animals like lions, scorpions, snakes and vultures. Many of the animals have erect penises. Some of the pillars are almost certainly human figures with tall, narrow bodies and large heads.

The structures were discovered in the early 1990s, buried beneath several feet of soil. Excavation begin in 1994 and the site is still being uncovered today by German and Turkish anthropology graduate students. The project is expected to continue for several more years.

Both Biblical scholars and anthropologists speculate that Gobakidi Tepe might be the historic site of the Garden of Eden. (That two such diverse schools should speculate about the same thing is, in and of itself, quite remarkable.) The site is approximately 10,000 years old. That predates Abraham and the Walls of Jericho by 800 to 1,000 years.  This is late in the Neolithic Age, about the time mankind was making the transition from hunting and gathering to more settled agricultural societies with domesticated farm animals.

No one knows for sure how Neolithic man managed to hew such huge blocks of limestone from regional quarries using nothing but hammers and chisels. And even more baffling, how did they move and mount such gigantic pieces of stone?    But, in any case, such large stone megaliths couldn't have been mined and erected solely by Adam and Eve. This would have required hundreds of people.

Of course, science indicates that modern man – that is, Cro-Magnon – was plentiful 10,000 years ago.  For that matter, so was Neanderthal. Perhaps even more plentiful. And there's ample genetic evidence to prove that both types interbred.

But perhaps you're one of those who believe ancient stone-age civilizations were visited by an advanced race of aliens from outer space and these visitors constructed the megaliths. Or maybe you believe evolution is just a theory and the entire world was created a mere 6,500 years ago. Or maybe Adam and Eve had special, super-human powers.

Well, I don't know how to respond to any of that. I mean, anything is possible. But not very likely.

Faith and reason certainly aren't mutually exclusive, but let's not confuse our religious emotions with scientific fact.

Read the Jul 27
Green Edition

Browse the archives.

Friends to Follow

View All Updates


Risen From Fallen Angels

We would like to raise money to enable recovering addicts/alcoholics to access transformative dance theatre workshops.

New stretch target

If we raised more funds the money would be used for extra professional development workshops and travel expenses.

Fallen Angels Dance Theatre (FADT) support “Risen” who are a group of adults in recovery from addiction, they are advocates for recovery.

Risen meet, create and perform dance theatre, based in Liverpool they explore their recovery journeys, and inspire others to recover from addiction. Members access Risen having demonstrated a passion, commitment and interest in developing their dance theatre skills through FADT projects and workshops.

The main purpose of the Risen group is to provide a platform for people in recovery from addiction to express their experiences and feelings and develop their artistic skills. For some this is the only social group outside recovery service and bridges the gap into reconnecting with the wider community.

Last year Risen with the support of FADT performed to 1710 people. Here are a few of our recent performances:

UK recovery walk www.ukrw.org

The Lowry

Wirral Recovery Event

West Yorkshire Playhouse:

We are invited to perform to inspire marginalised communities especially recovering addicts/alcoholics.

Benefits for participants:

Improved health and well being

Building Confidence and self esteem

Connecting with others

Developing skills for Education and employment

Wider benefits include:

Community Cohesion

Breaking down the stigma surrounding addiction

Raising awareness of addiction

Breaking down stigma

Drug/Alcohol intervention.

About You

Fallen Angels Dance Theatre is a professional Dance Theatre Company which exists to break down barriers, through creativity and self expression, demonstrating the power of transformative Theatre.

We offer creative dance participation and performance activities for young people and adults recovering or affected by addiction. We specialise in social inclusion and those sections of the community who are excluded through economic and social barriers. We inspire and support them to make positive life choices through our education and outreach programmes.

Our vision is to strive for artistic excellence whilst raising awareness that art changes lives with its rehabilitative power.

We are a registered charity (no:1158251) based in Chester UK.

There are several values, which underpin Fallen Angels’ philosophy and approach:

Fallen Angels is a non-discriminatory inclusive dance theatre company. We champion recovery from addiction by inspiring others through creating the highest quality arts. We create a safe environment for learning and exploration to nurture a journey of self discovery.

What is your idea?

This money will enable the group to meet weekly for 10 weeks and if we exceed our target it will sustain and enable us to reach out and support more people on their path to recovery.

Why are you Crowdfunding?

The money we raise will pay for members to access the group. It will pay for: travel expenses, venue hire, and general running cost. If we were successful in exceeding our target the money would help us reach out and support more people on their path to recovery.

Feedback from group members:

“Still buzzing from the dance! Absolutely loved the experience..best feeling I've had throughout my whole recovery journey so far. I've never felt such a natural high-no drug has ever come close to giving me this rush of energy and elation..and such a bloody big smile on my face that keeps igniting my whole being as I continue living the dance.”

"I felt more in control of my inner feelings and strengths. Building relationships within the group has increased my self-esteem and confidence. Putting my experiences both bad and good through my recovery process and journey into movements has been an uplifting and inspirational experience. I look at things differently now in a positive way. Turning

negative into positive feeling and expressing those feelings into movement."

Case study:

Tony heard about the Cheshire group through his local AddAction service “ I always liked dancing raving years ago but never would have the confidence to do it sober. I was talked into it by a load of girls from the service. I had a stereotype of the kind of dancing it would be and I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as I did. It wasn’t what I expected.”

He talks about his experience: “I was very apprehensive and fearful due being in a paranoid and safe conscious place at that time. Being sober and around people was scary and I felt very vulnerable at first.

Straight away I entered a friendly non-judgemental atmosphere. It was the first time I had a genuine smile and a laugh for a long time. I had suffered depression for years and some physical barriers, but I knew it would be good to do the exercise. The workshops were as demanding as I wanted it to be, nobody was pushing me, it excelled all my expectations.”

He has moved onto Risen group in Liverpool “FADT gives me a sense of being part of something special. it gives me the opportunity to excercise, and be creative, always enjoyable. Of all the treatments I was attending at the time I would always attend no matter how shit my mood was ‘cos I new I would feel better after it. It benefits my health both physically and mentally and still always leave with a smile on may face 9 months later.”


Capsule Reviews

"Bill Traylor, William Edmondson and the Modernist Impulse" Bill Traylor and William Edmondson are two African-American artists whose work came to the attention of the art world and the broader public in the late 1930s because of its modern aesthetic. This Menil exhibition explores the modernist aspects of their work. Traylor was born into slavery in 1854. In 1939, at age 85, he began to make art on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama. He made drawings, amazing drawings. His figures are abstracted into silhouettes or flat forms and patterns. Traylor was a keen observer of life, and rather than conveying a static geometry, his angular images of people are wonderfully attenuated and animated as they work, fight, talk and gesture. In contrast to Traylor's elegant, two-dimensional linearity, Tennessee artist William Edmondson's sculptures emphasize a solid, rounded geometry. Created from chunks of stone from demolished Nashville buildings, the figurative works aren't about creating an illusion that stone has turned to flesh. Rather than defying the blocky, massive qualities of his material, Edmondson embraced them. It has been easier for the American art world to deal with African-American artists in a paternalistic manner rather that treating them as equals. Traylor and Edmondson did not intend their work to participate in the modernist dialogue, but if something looks and smells like modernism, does that make it so? Depending on how you define modernism, there can also be something patronizing and elitist in trying to tie their work into the movement, as if doing so somehow elevated their work. Traylor and Edmondson's art is powerful, and it remains so regardless of what we decide to call it. Through October 2. 1515 Sul Ross, 713-525-9400.

"David Simpson: Iridescent -- Interference" Seventy-seven-year-old David Simpson has been painting abstractly since the 1950s and was included in the famed 1964 exhibition "Post Painterly Abstraction" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which was organized by Clement Greenberg, the czar of modernism. One wonders what the anti-minimalist Greenberg would have to say about Simpson's work 40 years on, given that it has become decidedly minimal. In this exhibition, Simpson makes minimalist paintings with a lush, iridescent beauty. Using layers of color and interference pigments that have the ability to refract light, Simpson creates paintings that shimmer like fish scales. Their burnished surfaces glow, and their colors shift according to the light in the room and the position of the viewer. A painting that appears lavender will shift to pink or gray. The works are quietly beautiful. No word on what Greenberg is doing in his grave. Through October 30. Gallery Sonja Roesch, 2309 Caroline, 713-659-5424.

"Gego, Between Transparency and the Invisible" Gego was the Venezuelan avant-garde artist formerly known as Gertrud Goldschmidt. Sculptures, drawings, prints and collages by the artist are on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The woman who would become a major figure of the Latin American avant-garde was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1912. After the Kristallnacht in 1938, she escaped to Caracas. In looking at her work, you can see evidence of Gego's Germanic training in architecture, engineering and drafting. Line is the dominant element in her art. But the lines she uses warp and subvert notions of geometric and mechanical precision, thwarting and relaxing them. For an untitled 1970 work, Gego used a ruler to draw an anal-retentive grid of angled lines. But then she disrupted the crisp regularity of the diamond-shaped cells of the grid. Cell by cell, she bisected each one with a tentative, hand-drawn line. In a similar untitled 1966 work, she covered a page with two ruled grids of lines. They look like they should meet in the center of the page, but they're intentionally off. With a careful, purposeful line, Gego carefully traced around where the lines should meet. In these drawings, she's setting up an expectation of precision and then subtly and delicately undermining it. Gego mastered the skills and precision demanded by her fields of study but comfortably discounted them, like a classically trained musician who strays and improvises. In her series "Drawings Without Paper," Gego used wire to break free from the page. Using random scraps like old coat hangers, she created whimsical drawings in space. In her later years, Gego was afflicted with arthritis and could no longer work with wire. She turned instead to paper, creating tejeduras by cutting strips from old catalogs and magazines and weaving them together in loose grids. Her pursuit of line continued unabated. Through September 25. 5601 Main, 713-639-7300.

"Perspectives 147: Adrian Paci Adrian Paci hired a professional mourner for his video The Weeper (Vajtojca) (2002), one of the strongest works in the artist's show at the Contemporary Arts Museum. The artist left Albania with his family in 1997, fleeing the country's post-communist strife. In the video, set in his native land, Paci arrives at the vajtojca's home and changes into a dark suit while she carefully arranges a sheet over a Soviet-esque day bed. Paci lies down on the bed and neatly folds his hands over his stomach as the vajtojca sits in a chair beside him. She drapes a scarf over her head and begins to mourn. The mourner weeps for his children and for his exile through a poem she wrote. When she is finished, the corpse, Paci, rises from the dead to shake her hand, and they embrace. The ironic yet poignant work mourns the fate of a country as well as the fate of an individual. Through October 2. 5216 Montrose, 713-284-8250.

Upcoming Events

"The Splendor of Ruins in French Landscape Painting, 1630-1800" If you have a thing for classical ruins and fussy 17th- and 18th-century French painting, this is the show for you. The paintings abound with Greek and Roman architecture in scenic states of decay, but there are some unexpected images in the cavalcade of academic classicism. Biblical scenes seem to have been an excuse for many of the artists to wallow in verdantly overgrown architectural splendor. Pierre-Antoine Patel, also known as Patel the younger, painted Landscape with Classical Ruins and Figures -- the title is self-explanatory. The painting is dominated by crumbled columns and temple ruins lit with a warm, golden light -- you almost miss the tiny figures in the foreground. The exhibition catalog says the work appears to be the Stoning of Stephen from the New Testament. Squint at the tiny figures, and it does seem that one of them is about to brain the other with a rock. (Isn't smashing people in the head with a rock more of an Old Testament thing?) With its bizarre juxtaposition of miniature, macabre figures with lush landscape and romantic ruins, this painting is one of the exhibition's oddball surprises. Through October 16. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet, 713-639-7300.

"Wyatt Nash: Images of a Pathetic Youth" In this exhibit, growing up is fraught with mishap, angst and fiasco. Wyatt Nash's sculptures re-create a skewed, loosely autobiographical reality out of Styrofoam and joint compound. His life-size objects have a wonderfully strange fleshy-looking finish, whether they depict a hand, an electric drill or a telephone. In his surreal vignettes, failure is the only option: A lawn mower crashes into a street sign; java cascades from an old beige Mr. Coffee appliance; a guitar is lodged in an amp; a chair sits empty by the phone while a squashed bouquet lies on the floor in a litter of cigarette butts. Through September 10. Lawndale Art Center, 4912 Main, 713-528-5858.

Upcoming Events

Sponsor Content

  • Top Stories

Sign Up >

No Thanks!

Remind Me Later >


DOWNEY, Idaho -

The Bannock County Fair Board's efforts after taking-on a challenging past few months is finally underway on Monday.

South Bannock County Fair organizers said the board's struggles have impacted this year's fair in Downey, but in a positive way.

South County Fair Superintendent Piney Morrison said she has been seeing extra help pulling through this year which is just the extra push needed to make this year's fair bigger than ever.

"We needed the fair board to be our voice for the south end of the county, and now we're expecting more people than before," Morrison said.

She added, the board's new upgrades to this year's event was crucial.

Some of those improvements include: new bathrooms, updated facilities, new canopies, upgrades to electricity, new plumbing, and anything else that wasn't working before but is now up to code.

"The bathrooms are a huge asset. They've also painted the bleachers and brought the plumbing up to code. It's just a lot of these things you don't realize that takes from your fair when things are happening," Morrison added.

The south county fair will run until Saturday, August ninth, and the north county fair will run from Aug. 11 through the sixteenth.

Here is a list of the events going on at the fair:


Navy upsets Notre Dame

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish made a valiant comeback late but it was not enough as the Navy Midshipmen pulled off the upset, 23-21 on Saturday afternoon.

The Midshipman covered the 13-point spread, while the final score played UNDER the day's posted total of 55.5.

Ricky Dobbs threw for 56 yards and a touchdown and also ran for 102 yards and a touchdown.

Jimmy Clausen totaled 453 yards, two touchdowns and one interception for Notre Dame.


A Simpler Route to Plastic Solar Cells

A new method will reduce the cost and complexity of manufacturing.

A simplified process for printing polymer solar cells could further reduce the costs of making the plastic photovoltaics. The method, which has been demonstrated on a large-area, roll-to-roll printing system, eliminates steps in the manufacturing process. If it can be applied to a wide range of polymer materials, it could lead to a fast and cheap way to make plastic solar cells for such applications as portable electronics, photovoltaics integrated into building materials, and smart fabrics.

Solar roller: This roll-to-roll printer is fabricating polymer solar cells in a lab at the University of Michigan. The clear plastic substrate is visible on the top left red-colored roller.

Polymer solar cells aren’t as efficient as silicon ones in converting sunlight into electricity, but they’re lightweight and cheap, a trade-off that could make them practical for some applications. And they’re compatible with large-area printing techniques such as roll-to-roll processing. But manufacturing the solar cells is challenging, because if the polymers aren’t lined up well at the nanoscale, electrons can’t get out of the cell. Researchers now use post-printing processing steps to achieve this alignment. Eliminating these extra steps will, University of Michigan researchers hope, bring down manufacturing costs and complexity.

“Our strategy solves a number of issues at the same time,” says L. Jay Guo, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan. Their process involves applying a small amount of force during the printing process with a permeable membrane. The process allows the printing solvents to evaporate and leads to well-ordered polymer layers–without any need for post-processing. These improvements in the structure of the cell’s active layer have an additional benefit: cells made using this technique require one fewer layer of materials than polymer solar cells made using other methods. This work is described online in the journal Advanced Materials.

When light of a certain wavelength strikes the semiconducting material in a solar cell, it creates electrons and positively charged holes. To generate an external current, the cell must separate the electrons from the holes so that they can exit. This separation doesn’t happen as readily in polymers as it does in inorganic materials like silicon, says Guo. The active layers in polymer solar cells combine two materials, one that conducts holes and one that conducts electrons. Ideally the electron-accepting polymer would be on top of the electron-donating polymer, so that it’s near the cathode, allowing as many electrons to exit as possible.

So far, Guo has used a common but relatively low-efficiency polymers to fabricate the solar cells, but he says the method should be compatible with higher efficiency polymer materials. The Michigan cells have an efficiency of only about 3.5 percent. Researchers are working on materials sets that should bring the efficiencies of polymer solar cells up to 12 to 15 percent, a boost that’s necessary if polymer solar cells are to reach a broad market and more fully compete with conventional silicon and thin-film cells.

“I think this process has very strong potential,” says Yang Yang, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s uncertain whether this method also works for other polymer systems, but there is no reason why it won’t.” Yang is collaborating with plastic solar-cell company Solarmer of El Monte, CA, which is on track to reach 10 percent efficiency with its devices by the end of this year.

Insider Online Only

$19.95/yr US PRICE

You've read of free articles this month.


Improved location procedures at the International Seismological Centre

The International Seismological Centre (ISC) is a non-governmental, non-profit organization with the primary mission of producing the definitive account of the Earth's seismicity. The ISC Bulletin covers some 50 yr (1960–2011) of seismicity. The recent years have seen a dramatic increase both in the number of reported events and especially in the number of reported phases, owing to the ever-increasing number of stations worldwide. Similar ray paths will produce correlated traveltime prediction errors due to unmodelled heterogeneities in the Earth, resulting in underestimated location uncertainties, and for unfavourable network geometries, location bias. Hence, the denser and more unbalanced the global seismic station coverage becomes, the less defensible is the assumption (that is the observations are independent), which is made by most location algorithms.

To address this challenge we have developed a new location algorithm for the ISC that accounts for correlated error structure, and uses all IASPEI standard phases with a valid ak135 traveltime prediction to obtain more accurate event locations. In this paper we describe the new ISC locator, and present validation tests by relocating the ground truth events in the IASPEI Reference Event List, as well as by relocating the entire ISC Bulletin.

We show that the new ISC location algorithm provides small, but consistent location improvements, considerable improvements in depth determination and significantly more accurate formal uncertainty estimates. We demonstrate that the new algorithm, through the use of later phases and testing for depth resolution, considerably clusters event locations more tightly, thus providing an improved view of the seismicity of the Earth.


ERCIM News No.44 - January 2001 [contents]

Boosting Algorithms for Automated Text Categorization

by Fabrizio Sebastiani, Alessandro Sperduti and Nicola Valdambrini

As part of its Digital Library activities, and in collaboration with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa, IEI-CNR is working on the construction of tools for the automatic or semi-automatic labeling of texts with thematic categories or subject codes.

Text categorization (TC) uses machine learning (ML) techniques to build automatic text classifiers, ie programs capable of labelling natural language texts with thematic categories from a predefined set. TC has many applications, including automated document indexing for Boolean information retrieval systems, adaptive document filtering and spam e-mail blocking, Web page classification under hierarchical directories, and even author identification for documents of controversial paternity. In TC a general inductive process (called the ‘learner’) automatically builds a classifier by learning the characteristics of the categories from a ‘training set’ of preclassified documents. Once a classifier has been built, its effectiveness (ie its capability to take the right categorization decisions) may be tested by applying it to a ‘test set’ of preclassified documents and checking the degree of correspondence between the decisions of the automatic classifier and those encoded in the test set.

A wealth of different ML methods have been applied to TC, including probabilistic classifiers, decision trees, regression methods, batch and incremental linear methods, neural networks, example-based methods, and support vector machines. Recently, the ‘classifier committees’ method has gained popularity. The underlying idea is that, given a task that requires expert knowledge, several independent experts are better than one if their individual judgments are appropriately combined. In TC, this means applying several different classifiers to the same task of deciding under which category (or categories) a document should be classified, and then combining their outcome appropriately.

Boosting is a method for generating classifier committees which is characterized by state-of-the-art effectiveness and a strong theoretical grounding in computational learning theory. In the boosting method, the S classifiers that make up the committee are not trained in a conceptually parallel and independent way, as in other committee-based methods, but sequentially. In this way, when generating the i-th classifier the learner can take into account how the previously generated classifiers perform on the training documents, and can force the i-th classifier to concentrate on those training documents where the previously generated classifiers performed worst.

Each classifier is a one-level decision tree, ie tests for the presence or absence of a term in a document, depending on whether a positive or negative classification decision is taken. The term on which this decision hinges is generally different for each of the S classifiers and is chosen each time, according to a complex error-minimization policy. The key step of this policy consists in scoring each term by a scoring function, and picking the term with the smallest score. The scoring function adopted by the boosting method is extremely complex, and computationally onerous. As this computation has to be performed for each of the terms and this has to be iterated S times, boosting is a computationally expensive method (in typical TC applications both the number of terms and the number S of iterations are in the tens of thousands).

We have devised a new method, called AdaBoost.MH(KR), based on the construction of a sub-committee of classifiers at each iteration of the boosting process. Instead of using just the best term, as the standard AdaBoost.MH(R) algorithm does, we select the best K terms, and generate K classifiers, grouping them in a sub-committee. This idea comes from the observation that, while in the first iterations (ie in the generation of the first classifiers) the scores of the best terms are markedly different from each other and from the worst ones, in the last iterations the differences among scores are very small. In AdaBoost.MH(KR) we choose, at each iteration, K top-ranked terms that would be good candidates for selection in the next K AdaBoost.MH(R) iterations. We can thus build a committee composed of S sub-committees at a computational cost comparable to that required by AdaBoost.MH(R) to build a committee of S classifiers. In fact, most of the computation required by the boosting process is devoted to calculating the term scores, and by using only the top-scoring term AdaBoost.MH(R) exploits these hard-won scores only to a very small extent.

In all our experiments (conducted on the standard Reuters-21578 benchmark), AdaBoost.MH(KR) achieved better effectiveness and much better efficiency than AdaBoost.MH(R). For instance, in one experiment the effectiveness achieved by AdaBoost.MH(KR) with 300 iterations was not obtained by AdaBoost.MH(R) in 16,000 iterations. AdaBoost.MH(KR) is more effective than AdaBoost.MH(R) because of the latter’s ‘greedy’ approach when selecting the best classifier for the final committee. This approach does not guarantee optimality of selection, and AdaBoost.MH(R) is unable to search the classifier space. On the contrary, AdaBoost.MH(KR) allows the designer to explore, at least partly, the space of classifiers by setting its internal parameters (eg number of classifiers in each committee) to different values or according to different policies.

Please contact:
Fabrizio Sebastiani - IEI-CNR
Tel: +39 050 3152 892
E-mail: fabrizio@iei.pi.cnr.it


August 15, 2012

Feedback On A Performance Can Take A Negative Turn

Research shows not all feedback is good for you

Study author Dr Magda Osman explained: "The kind of task people had to perform was difficult and demanding. So, when people received positive or negative feedback, it overloaded them with too much information and distracted them from making a good decision.

"We found that people's performance got worse when they had to make sense of the feedback they were given while also performing the main task.

"The role of feedback is overemphasized. People typically think that any form of feedback should improve performance in many tasks, and the more frequently it is given the better performance will be.

However Dr Osman said this type of finding can be generalized and applied to a variety of other complex situations.

"The introduction of smart energy meters into the home to monitor the amount of energy you're consuming seems like a nice 'green' idea to help you consume less energy, but the complexity of the feedback people receive may not necessarily help them to reduce their energy consumption," she said.

"We have shown that feedback really doesn't help people who are making complex decisions. People in management positions need to give their staff more time to analyze and evaluate things in detail when dealing with difficult situations so they can come up with solutions without any distractions in order to get the best out of them."

Dr Osman added that her findings disagree with Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman who writes in his popular book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' that feedback is good, and is also at odds with the authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein whose book 'Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness' was named Best Book of the Year by The Economist.

"My work shows that feedback alone is not enough to ensure success in decision making. I may not be popular for my research into the role of feedback in complex decision-making tasks but I hope it will make some people think twice about whether they could potentially hinder people's performance with the feedback they provide," she said.

On the Net:


ARLINGTON, Va. (June 30, 2010) - About 2,500 members of the Texas National Guard are on standby in anticipation of Tropical Storm Alex, which is expected to become a hurricane and hit the lower Texas coast late Wednesday or early Thursday.

The actual deployment of troops and the locations where they will go is dependent on future weather predictions and where actual landfall occurs, Texas National Guard officials said.

Texas Guard assets that may be employed include eight UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters and crews, and three C-130 Hercules aircraft and crews that can assist with air evacuations if needed.

Additionally, said Texas Guard officials, Guardmembers have vehicles capable of crossing high-water areas.

The Guardmembers would be working in support of local and state authorities and in addition to providing evacuation capabilities, they can also bring with them medical personnel, communication equipment and security teams if needed.

"We continue to closely monitor this storm, and are preparing accordingly for its potential impact to our communities," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said on his Website today. "Tropical Storm Alex is now in the Gulf, and it is imperative that residents pay attention to this storm, heed warnings from their local leaders, and take the steps necessary to protect their families, homes and businesses."


Flowing fluids behave different from static fluids. In these videos and articles you'll learn about volume flow rate and the equation of continuity. You'll also learn how Bernoulli's principle and Bernoulli's equation relate the pressure and speed of a flowing fluid. The effects of turbulence and viscosity will also be discussed.


Composite + Dental Bonding

Narrow 19 questions by:

Sort by:
  • Most visited
  • Recent
  • Answers

Worn down Front bottom teeth due to Grinding - Dentist want to do filling with composite?

I have over bite and grinding problem too. Because of this my front bottom four teeth have worn down. The top surface of all the 4 teeth is exposing... READ MORE

Composite Filling Discolouration?

I had bad staining on my front teeth. My dentist decided at my last appointment that he would cover the two stained teeth with composite fillings,... READ MORE

I have had composite bonding on two of my teeth just to the left of my front teeth that has been there for approximately 18 months. I've noticed that... READ MORE

Why does my bonding come off so quickly from my tooth? (Photo)

I have a tooth with eroded enamel (top right incisor) and my dentist put composit bonding on it. The first time, it popped off. Second time, It wore... READ MORE

Temporary fix for a large chip to the composite resin on my front tooth?

I have composite resin bonding on #8 and #9. I just bit into something today and the bonding broke on #9 - just part of it came off, but it looks... READ MORE

Does bonding have to be redone? (photos)

Composite veneer feels tight, and to close to gums. They're inflamed and throbbing. Do I have to get redone? Can it be smoothed down? Don't want to... READ MORE

Am I a good candidate for Composite Resin bonding on my small lateral incisors? (Photo)

I've seen about 3 dentists so far and I'm getting nervous as my appt gets closer. Will it make a big difference in my smile? Will my gum line still be... READ MORE

Can my bonding (composite veneers on four front teeth) be removed and my teeth polished back to normal?

I had composite veneers done to four front teeth, it was completely cosmetic, my teeth were small and turned slightly inward. So I had it done 2 yrs... READ MORE

Can composite bonding be used as a method of whitening the teeth? Can the resin be applied to the surface of the molars?(Photo)

I am thinking about getting composite bonding done to fill the spaces between my central and lateral incisors. I would like to know if the bonding... READ MORE

I want to go for cavity filing; Cerec filing. Would you recommend a silver or composite filing?

Hello. I want to go for cavity filing - Cerec filing. Please guide me, is it a good option than silver or composite filing? and let me the doctors... READ MORE

Can a toothbrush cause dental composite bonding to wear?

I recently had some bonding done to two of my teeth. My dentist told me to brush normally so I did. However, the night of the same day I got the... READ MORE

Composite bonding removal?

When I was younger (maybe 14? I'm 19 now) my mom had my dentist put what I believe is composite bonding on my two front teeth to make them look whiter... READ MORE

Is composite bonding safe when applied along gum line? Am I a suitable candidate? Will home whitening kits damage gums? (Photo)

I have neglected my gums and was using a terrible toothpick tool. They have receded and now I have many small gaps between my teeth. I would like to... READ MORE

Is the composite bonding material dentists put on chipped front teeth supposed to shrink over the course of one day?

I just got my two front teeth filled in because they were chipped. It has been about 4 hours and I've noticed that behind my teeth the bonding... READ MORE

Can composite bonding done to cover up exposed dentin? (photos)

I have exposed dentin on the front bottom teeth due to bruxism. Is it possible to get composite bonding done just to cover up the exposed dentin? My... READ MORE

After composite bonding removal, will my teeth ever feel the same?

I just got my composite bonding removed due to the fact I could not cope with the texture and the way it felt on my gums. My question is when the... READ MORE

No matching results


Hedge fund manager charged in U.S. captured in Italy

      LOS ANGELES (AP) - A fugitive German hedge fund manager was arrested Friday at an Italian art gallery on charges filed in Los Angeles that accuse him of orchestrating a stock manipulation scheme that led to at least $200 million in losses to investors across the world.

      Florian Wilhelm Jurgen Homm, 53, was captured at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence after being on the lam for five years. Homm has been charged with four counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. If convicted, Homm faces up to 75 years in prison.

      Homm founded Absolute Capital Management Holdings Limited that managed nine hedge funds between 2004 and 2007. Using a Los Angeles brokerage company he co-owned, Homm directed the hedge funds to buy billions of shares of U.S. penny stocks, according to a criminal complaint.

      Homm controlled the trading among the hedge funds and manipulated the market, authorities said.

      After allegations were made by a whistleblower in 2006, prosecutors said Homm dumped millions of dollars worth of his own shares, which caused at least $200 million in losses to investors. He and his co-schemers are believed to have profited more than $53 million via trades.

      The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit two years ago in Los Angeles against Homm and four other people, alleging a stock manipulation scheme as part of portfolio pumping plot to increase the value of Absolute Capital.


Trail - 95.7FM
Castlegar - 90.3FM
Grand Forks - 103.3FM
Creston - AM 1340
Nelson - 106.9FM
Crawford Bay - 101FM
New Denver - 93.5FM
Kaslo - 95.3FM
Nakusp - 103.1FM

Barry Manilow

In terms of record sales and career longevity, Barry Manilow is one of the most successful adult contemporary singers ever. That success hasn't necessarily translated to respect (or even ironic hipster appreciation) in most quarters; instead, Manilow's music has been much maligned by critics and listeners alike, particularly the romantic ballads that defined his career, which were derided as maudlin schlock even during his heyday. It's true that Manilow's taste for swelling choruses and lush arrangements often bordered on bombastic, but unlike many of his MOR peers, Manilow wasn't aiming to make smooth, restrained background music: he conceived of himself as a pop entertainer and all-around showman in the classic mold, and his performances and stage shows were accordingly theatrical.