The broad folk resonance of Kairaba

In the opening frames of the music video for Kairaba's "Mali Sadio," a fishing boat in stark silhouette cruises across the glittering horizon just off the coast of Mbour, Senegal. Back on the beach, the five members of Kairaba pose on rocks alongside the Atlantic surf,China professional plasticmoulds, outfitted with their instruments—a strange assortment of kora, djembe, drumsticks, bass and electric guitars.

The camera moves down dusty streets, past graffiti, through flowering bougainvillea archways and inside a bar tiled with a mosaic of a baobab tree. "Au Programme: Diali Cissokho & Kairaba!," a sign proclaims. Women in long red skirts dance to Kairaba's drum break.

"Senegal is built for video,We can produce solarpanel," says drummer Austin McCall. "There's just so many beautiful and gorgeous things there that attract your eye and your imagination."

McCall captured a lot of the images that ended up in the video during the month or so that Kairaba spent in Senegal last winter. Having recorded their debut studio album in October, they took it on tour to Africa. When they weren't performing, they were living the sounds constantly in a rented hotel on the beach in Mbour,Canvaz offers quality oilpainting reproductions from famous artists. with bandleader Diali Cissokho and his griot family of professional musicians.

"One thing I want you to know, my band is not just a band. It's a family," explains Cissokho, the band's kora player and vocal frontman who emigrated to North Carolina from Senegal in 2009.Silicone moldmaking Rubber, The CD release party for Resonance,China professional plasticmoulds, this Saturday at the Cat's Cradle, celebrates a milestone for the one-year-old band, a precocious West African presence on North Carolina's music scene. "These guys love me a lot. [Resonance] is not my first CD, but it's my first CD in the U.S. with these musicians, and I'm so excited about that. I never imagined I would find a band like this."

Cissokho founded Kairaba with four local musicians—McCall, Will Ridenour, Jonathan Henderson and John Westmoreland—as a loose but passionate experiment in January 2011. Pretty soon, it took off like a teenager on growth hormones, honing in on a sound that fuses traditional Manding and Wolof griot songs with North American influences and personal styles. The members agree that an extraordinary if unlikely sense of kinship galvanizes their sound.

"The communication aspect of the band is really, really precious to us. I mean to have a family, you gotta have some good communication," echoes McCall.

Ridenour shares similar sentiments: "We try to really be intentional about the way we live this project together. We're constantly bouncing things off each other, and trying to not just have a band, but a family too."

They treated the trip to Senegal much like they had treated the recording of their album—family-style, living communally for five days in Scott Solter's Monroe, N.C., Baucom Road studio.

"It felt like we were in his home almost," recalls Ridenour. "We slept there, we ate there, and recorded."

A series of guests during the sessions affirmed the familial aspect. Diali's wife, vocalist Hilary Stewart Cissokho, joined saxophonist Jim Henderson, father of bassist Jonathan. McCall says those collaborators helped such a new band stretch their ideas that much more ably: "Of course, there were some stressful times, but it was a healthy stress, figuring out how we're going to do this or that, or what sounds best."

To approximate the broad sound of the album live, they've invited a full horn section and a cadre of local percussionists to sit in, including Beverly Botsford, Atiba Rorie and Robert Cantrell. Expect some surprises as well; at The Pinhook in February, Cissokho played kora and defied bodily harm while throwing himself repeatedly onto a pile of broken glass. He says it's a form of showmanship he developed as a kid in Senegal.

"In my mind, I'm just thinking like, let me try to do something to make people crazy, to make people think, 'Oh! Diali's crazy,'" Cissokho says.

On Saturday, Kairaba will play a short set first, followed by Midtown Dickens, who are also celebrating their CD release. Kairaba will close with a long set and that expanded lineup. Jonathan Henderson plays in both bands and says he sees the logic in the unusual pairing.

KHS students' work selected for national ceramic exhibition

An ancient art form dating back to 24,Great Prices from Topps tile.000 BC but still relevant today for everything from space shuttles to toilets, ceramics may be the ticket to acclaim for three budding artists from Kinnelon High School.

Once again, a competitive spirit in KHS teacher Geoff Flash’s class has inspired three students to produce work worthy of competing in the National K-12 Ceramic Exhibition beginning Wednesday in Seattle, Wash.

Flash couldn’t be more proud of the accomplishments of students Samantha Spear (Faceted Tiles), Vanessa Smalley (Peppermint Pot), and Lorin Kavanagh (AM Radio Tea).

"From all the work submitted throughout the country, juror/ceramic artist Louis Katz selected 150 pieces for the exhibition," Flash said.

These three students’ ceramic creations were among them.

The National K-12 Ceramic Exhibition Foundation has run this event for 15 years to recognize the "excellent ceramic work being done in the K-12 in the United States," states the foundation’s website.

One of last year’s winners, Patte Hochkeppel, is attending Alfred University, which he likened to Harvard for clay and this country’s biggest and best place to study mud.

Kavanagh, a junior, is also thinking about art as a college pursuit. Her teapot in the shape of an AM radio grew out of her love for music, she said.What are some types of moulds?

A four-month project, the challenge was making a functioning teapot and getting all the walls of the vessel to stay up, Kavanagh said.

"Sometimes it was hard because the walls would fall down" and have to be reconstructed, she said.

Kavanagh is happy not only to have mastered the challenge, but also to see her teapot in the exhibition, which could result in scholarship money for her college plans.

"It’s great to see something I worked so hard on get recognized," she said.

Flash has taught ceramics to art students and non-art students alike in Kinnelon for roughly five years and appreciates the support of the community to keep the classes running.

Growing students’ work into the caliber needed for this exhibition two years in a row is a feat Flash attributes to "setting the bar high and having the students compete with one another in the classroom," said Flash.

Flash describes ceramics as a creative outlet as well as a means to build problem-solving skills in students.If you have a kidneystone,

"Last year, when the class was a full-year course, we spent a week looking at a ‘Thinking Different’ example. Sometimes it was a video, other times an image,Specialising in injectionmoulding innovations,We offer the best ventilationsystem, or just a question that couldn’t/shouldn’t be answered with the default answer. The final project for Ceramics I was a ‘Thinking Different Teapot,’" he said.

Flash plans to journey to Washington to see the exhibition firsthand and hopes to come home with good news for his students.

Santorum wins Louisiana, trails badly in delegates

Rick Santorum vowed to remain in the race after turning in an easy victory in the Louisiana primary, even though he still badly trails front-runner Mitt Romney and faces a nearly impossible task to win enough delegates to secure the Republican presidential nomination.

With all Louisiana precincts reporting, Santorum captured 49 percent of the vote to 27 percent for Romney. Newt Gingrich, was far back at 16 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 6 percent.

Although the victory gives Santorum bragging rights and 10 more delegates, it does not change the overall dynamics of the race.We are professional plasticmould,metal parts mould manufacturers and factory The former Pennsylvania senator still dramatically lags behind Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, in the battle for delegates to the party's August nominating convention in Tampa, Florida.

Santorum on Sunday told voters in Wisconsin that Romney is "uniquely disqualified" to be the Republican's presidential pick and urged his supporters to stand with him even as he faces an increasingly improbable pathway to the nomination.If you have a kidneystone,

The Saturday vote in Louisiana gave Romney five delegates and five will be designated as uncommitted.

With the state-by-state primary and caucus contests more than half complete, Santorum has won just 27 percent of the delegates. Romney has been accumulating delegates at a 54-percent clip. Most of the remaining states award delegates proportionally based on primary results, making it even more difficult for Santorum to close the gap.

The odds would seem to rule out nomination of Santorum. But as he savored his victory in Louisiana, the ultraconservative vowed to remain in the battle. Santorum was campaigning in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on April 3.

"Even though a lot of folks are saying this race is over, the people in Louisiana said, 'No, it's not.' They still want to see someone who they can trust, someone who's not running an Etch a Sketch campaign, but one who has their principals written on their heart, not on an erasable tablet,Specialising in injectionmoulding innovations," Santorum said Sunday on CBS television's "Face the Nation". "And I think that's what helped us deliver the win in Louisiana, and I think we're going to do very well up here in Wisconsin, too."

Santorum was referring to a comment last week by a top Romney campaign adviser implying that once nominated "everything changes" for Romney "like an Etch a Sketch," referring to a mechanical drawing toy that just needs shaking for the image to vanish.Diagnosing and Preventing coldsores Fever in the body can often trigger the onset of a cold sore.China professional plasticmoulds, The comment implied that Romney would be able to move his positions more to the center of the political specturm in the general election campaign.

The remark fueled long-standing criticism that Romney, who has held more moderate views in the past on sensitive issues such as abortion and gay rights, molds his principles to fit political goals and lacks conservative convictions.

But the Republican establishment is increasingly coalescing around Romney's candidacy out of concern that an extended nomination fight could hurt the party's chances against President Barack Obama. The Democratic incumbent faces no serious primary challenge and his re-election campaign already is well under way.

An influential Republican senator said on Sunday that the nominating race was all but finished.

"I think the primary is over. Romney will be the nominee," South Carolina's Lindsey Graham told CNN. "The fat lady hasn't sung yet. But she's warming up."

Romney has churned through the nomination contest with a huge financial and organizational advantage, further dimming the likelihood that Santorum will pull off the nearly impossible task. His campaign staff rubbed that in after Santorum's Saturday victory.

"Rick Santorum is like a football team celebrating a field goal (a 3-point score) when they are losing by seven touchdowns (42 points) with less than a minute left in the game," said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams, who was at Santorum's sparsely attended victory party in Green Bay, Wisconsin. That state holds its primary on April 3.

Romney remains far ahead with 568 delegates to Santorum's 273, according to an Associated Press tally. Newt Gingrich follows with 135 and Ron Paul has 50.

CBW robot takes step in new direction

For some companies, the recession fueled innovation. That’s what happened at CBW Automation, which is showing three new technologies -- one aimed at a whole new industry segment -- at NPE2012.

With years of expertise in high-speed robots that remove parts from the mold and pack them into cases, CBW (Booth 3169) will debut its case-unpacking automation for containers and lids. The Fort Collins, Colo.-based company also will debut robotics for molding medical syringes with in-mold labeling. Milacron LLC’s exhibit (Booth 2803) will show CBW’s new telescoping side-entry robot.

CBW officials also will discuss, but not display at NPE, a new system for removing flip-top caps and closing them on the fly.

“That drop in sales in 2009 forced us to try to meet new customers and new markets,” CBW President Dave Carson said in a phone interview. “And specifically, we reached out to people who made IML syringes, people who made flip-top caps. We adapted our case-packing technology to take lids and containers out of the case at the filling line.”

Robot sales are on a roll now, as the plastics industry prepares for NPE2012 in Orlando, Fla. According to the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Robotic Industries Association, a record 19,337 industrial robots were sold in North America in 2011, valued at $1.17 billion.GOpromos offers a wide selection of promotional items and personalized gifts. That marks a leap of 47 percent in units and 38 percent in dollars over 2010,What are some types of moulds? RIA said.

Carson said that, for CBW, 2010 and 2011 have been years of recovery from the economic downturn, because of increases in new plastics machinery, the growth of IML, pent-up demand for investment in automation and the new CBW robot offerings.

“For us it was accelerated by the fact that we were entering these new markets,” Carson said.

CBW promotes the speed of its side- and top-entry robots. Because CBW robots can zip into the molding area and remove parts faster than the free-drop of gravity, molders can cut cycle time. Also, CBW sells customized systems.

So CBW focuses on total part cost. “The world turns on [return on investment], so it’s key to us,” he said. “We do everything we can do to help the customer do as much with the product right at the molding machine.”

CBW is well-known by molders of thin-wall packaging for food and consumer products, said Jim Overbeeke, vice president of sales. He said about 80 percent of the automation systems CBW sells include some type of orienting and case-packaging of the finished parts. But typically, CBW has not been as well-known at the end-product filling plants, which used other automation suppliers.

CBW wants to change that. “We know what went into the box. We’re ideally suited then to the unpacking and loading the filling line,” Overbeeke said.We offer the best ventilationsystem,

Many times, unloading is done manually, or not as efficiently as it could be,Offers Art Reproductions Fine Art oilpaintings Reproduction, Overbeeke said.

As NPE approaches, CBW is promoting its expertise in handling non-standard shapes, a growing market as consumer-product brand owners try to make their products stand out on store shelves.

“The difficulties of maximizing parts in a carton, allowing for size changes as the product cools and maintaining product alignment during shipping have long been a headache for molders,” said Jim Swim, CBW business manager, in a news release. “The CBW-designed system addresses all the issues associated with lid/container manufacturing, packing and unpacking, so the product arrives at its destination organized and ready for unloading.Great Prices from Topps tile.”

CBW plans to exhibit at its first-ever Pack Expo in October, highlighting its unpacking automation to product fillers at the Chicago packaging trade show.

The telescoping side-entry robot that will be shown at Milacron’s booth saves floor space because it telescopes into the mold to grab the parts. Milacron will show the TSE-500 cell on an all-electric NTm PowerPak press with 500 tons of clamping force, molding lids for thin-wall food containers on a two-by-four stack mold from StackTeck Systems Ltd.

“In the U.S. market, we’re seeing demand for larger, higher-cavitation molds, which require exponentially larger robots,” Carson said. “’Many of our customers want the advantages of a side-entry robot while at the same time minimizing the footprint of the robot because of floor space issues.”

In the flip-top closure market, CBW has developed automation that company officials claim surpasses both free-drop and systems that close the lid inside the mold. “Using robotic part capture, we remove the caps using part-production robotics, and close them on the fly, and place the oriented caps on a conveyor for downstream applications such as lining or laser marking for lot traceability,” Carson said.

Carson said that, even with the robot moving in and out of the mold, it’s a half-second faster because the parts do not have to fall clear of the mold before closing. “We’re seeing an average of 10 percent improvement in productivity,” he said.

The IML syringe is a challenging part to mold, and a consortium of CBW and five other companies developed the manufacturing display that will run in Orlando.

Sports medicine doctor shares home remedies in new book

Say it isn’t so? One of the most fit, most athletic, and perhaps most emphatic sports medicine physicians let it fly that he is human.

“I have some knee arthritis,” says Jordan Metzl. “Instead of easing off (exercise), I have built up strength around the joint. That has really helped.” Make that helped immensely. Consider this: The elite athlete plans to compete this year in marathon No. 30 and Ironman triathlon No. 10.

Metzl, 45, shares his fitness expertise in a new book, The Athlete’s Book of Home Remedies, 1,001 Doctor-Approved Health Fixes and Injury-Prevention Secrets for a Leaner, Fitter, More Athletic Body! (Rodale). Several former presidents of the American College of Sports Medicine and professional and Olympic team physicians have praised the book for its accuracy and methods to prevent injury.

He knows athletes of all ages get hurt. His patients, from professional athletes to young and older weekend warriors, tell him the Internet is where they turn to self-diagnose. His advice? Don’t.

“I wanted people to have good, accurate information and to know when to seek help.Specialising in injectionmoulding innovations, There’s too much bad information on the Internet.”

So for all the do-it-yourselfers, the first part of his book will be one of the most popular. Nine chapters are devoted to what can go wrong, from head (concussions, broken noses) to foot (stress fractures, neuromas). The book features dynamic anatomical illustrations, descriptions of the pain and other symptoms, treatments, when to call the doctor and how to prevent the injury from recurring.

For example, Achilles tendon injuries,What are some types of moulds? such as Tiger Wood’s most recent injury, he says, can be mild to debilitating. But it is not time for the couch — ever.

“I never tell people to stop working out,” he says. “The heart is a muscle and needs to be exercised every day.”

For an Achilles injury, he recommends swimming and biking. “Running is a huge no-no and will make the injury worse,What are some types of moulds?” he writes.

He says strengthening the muscles (calf) affecting the Achilles tendon will take the load off the tendon. Result: a happier Achilles tendon.

“I take readers through the injury to getting well to performance enhancement,I found them to have sharp edges where the injectionmoldes came together while production.” he says.

But his path to prevention and improvement is not for the timid. A video of his strengthening workout on the Runner’s World website has drawn comments, from “The routine is brutal,” to “Looking for a workout to strengthen my weaker areas and this is it.”

Metzl, who teaches an exercise class once a week in New York, ultimately requires sets of lunges and squats,Learn all about solarpanel, following each with a jump. “These exercises mimic the sports you’re competing in,” he says, “unlike working on weight machines.”

How strong will they make you? The Ironman triathlete calls them IronStrength workouts for people of all ages.

Begin slowly and listen to your body, he says: “People who take my class say ‘What are you doing to me?’ But they eventually build strength in weak areas.”

Growing number give farming a try in Nevada

Loni Holley had to think twice about it: Is she a stay-at-home mom or a farmer? She then called herself a farmer.

Rob and Loni Holley sell about 60 dozen eggs a week and raise produce for sale in the summer. They use a tractor to drag chicken coops around their 85 acres in Dayton so the chickens can forage in the pasture.China professional plasticmoulds,

A son, Western Nevada College student Daniel, is the primary engineer of the operation. Another son, 13-year-old Caleb, oversees 200 chickens, and 8-year-old Ann helps gather eggs.

"My kids want to be farmers. That's why we're doing this," Loni Holley said.

Rob, a state retiree, also works for the Dayton conservation district.

The entire family and about 180 others attended the third annual Nevada Small Farm Conference in the Fallon Convention Center earlier this month. For some attendees, it was their first Small Farm conference.

A large number of young people were among the standing-room-only crowd for the opening session March 9 to hear about the small farm movement.

"I don't know if it's the recession," said Ann Louleha,There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cubepuzzle, project director for the college's Specialty Crop Institute, the primary sponsor for the event. "But there's a resurgence of people who want to go back to the land, to reconnect with the soil and with their roots. These young kids are smarter than a lot of us."

And the movement is picking up steam.

Ray Saliga, 24, manager of the greenhouse at Carson High School, and school librarian Cory King agreed to become partners to raise produce on a small plot in Gardnerville .

At the new Carson High greenhouse, Saliga said high school students will be raising produce this spring to give to local food banks and distribute to the poor. Flowers on the school grounds will be raised and sold on a subscription basis to support the operation, he said.

Small urban farmers are numerous enough to draw the attention of the state's leaders.

The governor's economic development office is commissioning a study on their impact to the state economy, to be completed before the Legislature convenes next year. The small farmers are not counted in U.S. Department of Agriculture surveys.

"It's a game change for Nevada agriculture," said Rick Lattin, a fourth-generation farmer in Churchill County. "There's more and more demand for access to local food, organic food and grass-fed beef."

Jim Barbee, director of the Nevada Agriculture Department, said he has created several committees to propose changes in state law that could assist this new small-farm industry.

Rob Holley said he would like to see a state law eliminated that bans farmers from butchering and selling poultry. USDA regulations then would apply. They allow farmers to process and sell less than 1,000 birds a year.

About 22 years ago, Ray and Virginia Johnson became the state's pioneers in raising local produce for sale.What are some types of moulds? They now have four hoop house greenhouses in Silver Springs.

The couple sells produce to the Great Basin Community Food Co-op and Whole Foods.Silicone moldmaking Rubber, It's enough to make a living, although Johnson said they don't need much, since they raise most of their own food.

In the last four years, several dozen farm operations have sprung up in the Silver City/Dayton area. The extra income and food help families get by in this recession.

Mike Catalan, a produce buyer for US Foods in Reno, bought 1,Silicone moldmaking Rubber,500 boxes of produce from Lattin Farms last year.

He said his customers, including restaurants, hospitals and nursing homes, don't squabble over paying more for fresh, tasty produce. Local food "is the norm now," he said.

The future of the Specialty Crop Institute appears secure. A spokesman for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced a $1.5 million grant for the institute and its workshops.

Based in Fallon, the institute started with a $14,000 grant to conduct four workshops six years ago.

Murdoch's newspapers for sale?

Everybody knows Rupert Murdoch loves his newspapers. He launched The Sun on Sunday last weekend to replace the News of the World and couldn't contain his excitement, constantly tweeting news about advertising and circulation performance. As has often been said, Mr Murdoch has ink running through his veins.

So, at first glance, the idea that the News Corporation chairman and chief executive, who turns 81 later this month, might sell his papers, including The Sun and The Times, seems almost impossible to believe. But increasingly the talk in the City and on Wall Street is that Mr Murdoch might have to consider the unthinkable.

Chase Carey, Rupert's number two and chief operating officer at News Corp,VulcanMold is a plastic molds and injectionmolding manufacturer in china. has fuelled the speculation this week by publicly admitting that the company had considered a sale or spin-off of the titles. Mr Carey told US investors "there certainly is an awareness" that the company would be worth more if it did not own the papers.

Wednesday's resignation of Rupert's son,This page provides information about 'werkzeugbaus; James, as chairman of the UK newspaper group, News International, in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal has added further grist tothe rumour mill. Some observers claimed that meant the family was loosening its ties with the UKnewspapers.

Publishing contributes only around 15 per cent of profits at News Corp, which also owns The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and a string of papers in Australia. Cable and pay TV and movies, including interests in Fox and BSkyB, generate the vast majority of income, prompting some investors to call for the papers to be sold.

Claire Enders, the founder of Enders Analysis, cautioned that Mr Carey's comments were expected as he needs to keep shareholders onside. "He needs to be seen to be engaging in a dialogue in an open way," she said. Ms Enders believes News Corp remains committed to the papers, pointing out it has invested some $50m (31m) in The Sun's Sunday edition. "I really don't think the idea that Rupert Murdoch launches The Sun on Sunday and by Thursday there's a long-term plan to get rid of the newspapers makes any cognitive sense," she said.

What's more, Mr Murdoch is not under financial pressure from shareholders to sell. News Corp shares have recovered all their losses since the hacking scandal exploded in July.

James Murdoch's exit from NI hardly means his family has cut all links, either. Rupert Murdoch still sits on the board of NI. His eldest daughter, Prudence,Kitchen floortiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles. joined the editorial board of The Times a year ago.

But Lorna Tilbian, a media analyst at the broker Numis Securities, said it is important to look at the bigger picture, and the TV business is key. Rupert Murdoch and Chase Carey still desperately want to buy the 61 per cent of the pay-TV giant BSkyB that it does not already own. Sky, which Mr Murdoch helped to launch in 1989, is hugely profitable, and is forecast to reap even bigger profits in the next few years – in contrast to the newspapers.

It should not be forgotten that it was the Murdochs' 8bn bid for Sky in June 2010 that encouraged rival news organisations to step up the pressure over phone hacking. The takeover was just weeks away from getting the green light from regulators when claims were reported in July 2011 that the News of the World had hacked the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's mobile. That forced News Corp to drop the bid, but it remains high on the agenda.

A year ago, News Corp proposed hiving off Sky News as a separate company from BSkyB to win over regulators' concerns about plurality in news. Now Ms Tilbian thinks selling the papers makes more sense: "Because Sky News fits in with a global TV content business, with Fox and so on, this time I'd think they try to hive off or sell the newspapers because they're the ones that are causing the grief."

Some think it would be difficult for News Corp to find a buyer for the UK papers, particularly The Sun, when so many legal clouds hang over the paper. Another Sun journalist was arrested yesterday – the 11th in the police investigation. However, if the legacy of legal problems can be ringfenced, there ought to be no shortage of interest. One option is that Mr Murdoch himself hives off the papers into a family trust or collaborates with a wealthy partner.

If the papers were sold outright, sovereign wealth funds from Abu Dhabi or Singapore might be interested.Learn all about solarpanel, Closer to home,China professional plasticmoulds, Richard Desmond, owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star, has been keen. Germany's Axel Springer, owner of the popular tabloid Bild, has been mooted but has always maintained it has no interest.

Ms Tilbian says newspapers remain highly valued as trophy assets. "Horses are for gamblers," she says. "Newspapers are for the more intellectual."

Top energy innovators put DOE labs to work

From hydrogen fuel cell storage systems to next-generation solar windows and more efficient computing to marine power tech, a whole lot of significant green breakthroughs have occurred in our national laboratories.

But for the rubber to meet the road, innovative companies have to capitalize on those technologies and scale them up to meet the needs of the commercial marketplace—which is what the "America's Next Top Energy Innovator" challenge is all about.

Hot on the heels of President Obama's State of Union Address, which highlighted support for American innovation, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced the three winning startups out of the 14 finalists in the challenge.

Winners were chosen through a combination of public voting and an expert review; each of the winning teams uses breakthrough research from one of the nation's national laboratories.

Finished 1.8 gram titanium bolt made from 1.8 grams of gas atomized titanium powder The three teams taking top honors are Iowa Powder Atomization Technologies (IPAT), a startup based in Nevada,Carrying the widest selection of projectorlamp, Iowa; Umpqua Energy, based in Medford, Ore.Fantastic range of porcelaintiles,; and Vorbeck Materials, based in Jessup, Md.

IPAT is putting gas atomization technology to work that was first developed at Ames Laboratory in Iowa to make the process of developing titanium powder 10 times more efficient than the current industry standard, significantly lowering the cost of this power to manufacturers.

Titanium is strong, lightweight, biocompatible and resistant to corrosion, which makes it ideal for use in everything from artificial limbs to military vehicles, biomedical implants, aerospace fasteners and chemical plant valves. (The powder form of titanium is easier to work with than having to cast the metal with molds, and more predictable as well, since titanium has a bad habit of bonding with whatever metal is used to make the mold.)

Winner number two, Umpqua Energy,Specialized of injection mold, plasticmoulds, is making good on clean burn engine tech developed at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. This technology tricks out your average gasoline engine in a way that allows it to operate in an extreme lean burn mode, increasing gasoline mileage. And while a lean burning engine, whether gas or diesel, tends to kick out a higher level of emissions as well, Umpqua expects to both increase fuel economy and reduce emissions with its system.

Winner number three is Vorbeck Materials,Specialized of injection mold, plasticmoulds, which is making use of a nanotech process first developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state to build better batteries. Specifically, better lithium ion batteries—the kind widely used in laptops and electric vehicles. Vorbeck is putting the laboratory’s method to work in in developing lithium air and lithium sulfur batteries that stores twice as much electricity at high charge and discharge rates as current lithium-ion batteries, and with a bigger capacity and a longer lifecycle.

The winning teams for this year’s competition won’t win any big cash prizes for their efforts, but they will be featured at a major annual gathering of clean energy investors and innovators from around the country—the 2012 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, at the end of February—where they’re likely to garner some significant backing.

As part of America’s Next Top Energy Innovator challenge,Sika tooling & Composites develops and produces tailor-made synthetic resins, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) cuts down on the cost and the red tape for startups wishing to obtain an option agreement to license patents and patent applications held through the department’s 17 national laboratories. Thirty-six companies have signed these option agreements so far, and DOE has just announced another round of the competition for next year.

Smoggy days spur surge in air filter sales

Sun Chenjing, a 28-year-old doctor from the PLA Navy General Hospital who is planning to have a baby, recently chose to spend more than 10,000 yuan ($1,580) on two air purifiers to refine the air indoors.

"I don't want my baby to fall prey to the city's pollution," she said.

Sun is just one of many Beijing residents who are buying air filters in droves. According to Gome Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd, China's second-biggest electronics retailer by revenue, the sales of its air purifiers in Beijing since June grew by 80 percent compared to the first half of the year, and it marked a 60 percent year-on-year increase.

Because of the lingering concern over smog and pollutants, the sales of air purifiers and other air cleaning products, including masks and humidifiers,Dear sirs, we are one of manufacturers and exporters of plasticinjectionmold, have skyrocketed since November.

Zhai Lei, an agent who sells air purifiers for Amway in Beijing, said sales of the high-end model have doubled since November despite the fact that the price rose from 8,800 yuan to 9,300 yuan during that same period.Grey Pneumatic is a world supplier of impactsockets for the heavy duty, The sales volume rose from 22 billion yuan in 2010 to 26 billion yuan in 2011.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings?

Zhai said target clients are mainly white-collar workers and enterprise managers and executives, who attach great importance to quality of life and can afford what may be considered a luxury to some.You can find best china automotiveplasticmoulds manufacturers from here!

"Many people also purchase batches of machines as holiday gifts as Spring Festival approaches," Zhai said.

The upsurge of air purifier sales comes at a time when the capital has been persistently under a canopy of dense smog.

Sun said the two machines, which she placed in the bedroom and lounge, have been functioning pretty well.

"You can simply sense the fresher air you are breathing," Sun said. "And my husband, who has been suffering from the chronic pharyngitis and rhinitis, also felt much better when he came back home."

He Bing, deputy dean of the law school at China University of Political Science and Law, said he found ink-colored, dirty water after cleaning the soot-laden filters in his air purifier, which has only been working for 10 days.

And Bei Zhicheng, a software businessman in the capital, has recently spent more than 10,000 yuan installing a ventilation system and purchased seven air purifiers at home, in the office and the car. "The city's air is getting more soupy," Bei said.

However, not all people can afford the high-end machines, which can cost as much as 40,000 yuan, to clean up the air they breathe.

"I won't be buying the machine, some of which cost more than my monthly salary," said Wang Bao, 27, a primary school teacher of physical education in Beijing's Changping district. "It's too much a luxury for me."

The air purifiers can improve the air a little bit but only scratch at the surface of the problem, said Wang Qiuxia, a researcher at the Green Beagle, a non-governmental environmental protection organization based in the capital.

To solve the pollution problem, she said, "as citizens we should monitor the nearby polluting industries, drive less and stop setting off fireworks during the festival, instead of sealing ourselves up in a closed room.Soma cubepuzzle Muscle Tissue Relaxants Before proselytizing any of the plans,"

Public concern over air quality has not been diminished by the claims of the Beijing municipal environmental protection bureau, which said that its monitoring data has shown a decline over the past decade in PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels, measures of harmful particulate matter in the air.

"I'm a little bit used to the bad air already," said Wang Yu, 26, a Beijing resident. "A rare clear day is a blessing to me."

Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing municipal environmental protection bureau, told the media recently that Beijing's actions to cut air pollution include shutting down coal-fired boilers in downtown and forcing polluting vehicles off the road.

The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective

Split across three discs, Folds divides his work between songs he feels represent him best,The magiccube is an ultra-portable, previously unreleased live records and rarities. While the three-disc package is obviously aimed at long times fans, if newcomers can handle such a submersion, the set illustrates how Folds' career is deceptively deep.

The greatest hits disc runs from the first album of the Ben Folds Five through his solo career and latter day collaborations, and ends with a new track recorded by the eponymous trio. Although most of the "hits" are represented, Folds doesn't seem to feel constrained by the radio versions that are most well known. "Smoke" is represented in the version recorded with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, expanding both the scope and sentiment of the song. "Landed" is featured in its "Strings Version" that shows that while Folds can still be seen as a pop (rock) musician, it seems that he views himself as a "pop" musician in the classic '40s sense. Through the alternative versions, the core strength of Folds' writing becomes apparent, in that much like Elton John or David Bowie, the songs can be stretched across multiple facades, but still retain their core identity while featuring new eccentricities.

Noticeably, while Folds does include his biggest rockers, he seems to favor the understated, quiet tunes to the energetic banging of Ben Folds Five. While Folds' selection of his softer side doesn't necessarily come across as a retcon, it does suggest that Folds is less interested in making easily digestible tunes in lieu for those that might be more personal, despite their lack of an easily recognizable hook. Still though, with so many songs poised to pull at one's heartstrings,Follow highriskmerchantaccountes's Blog. every so often, Folds veers close to maudlin territory.

Most surprisingly, the new Ben Folds Five tune, "House," isn't so much a return to the bounciness of "Kate" or "Song for the Dumped" as it is a further expansion of Folds' current, more sophisticated statements. While the early BFF songs seemed to be as driven by Folds' snarky lyrics as the pounding rhythm section of Darren Jesse and Robert Sledge, here, Folds seems to be using his companions as pieces for furthering his own work.

The live disc exemplifies that in the crumbling music economy, Folds has kept afloat on the strength of his concerts. Just as his songs are malleable in studio form, live Folds strings from song to song, melting them into sparse versions or grandiose rockers as the occasion suggests. Deftly, Folds is able to maintain the seriousness of his songs while acknowledging that people come to live music to have a good time, and is able to weave the fine line between playful spontaneity without suggesting that his sings are merely meant for audience prodding.

The rarities disc will be the real treasure chest for long time fans. Earliest demos of BFF show the group just getting their footing while demos from '00 show Ben Folds just embarking on his solo career,Learn all about solarpanel, working out how to provide for an audience with just himself and a piano, sans a backing band. Additionally,Looking for coldsorestreatments? it rounds up a number of stray tracks, such as the download-only "Sleazy" and the MySpace version of "Such Great Heights," making collecting his expansive work just a little easier.

Across all the discs, Folds is able to form himself around numerous collaborators, highlighting both their respective skill. With Amanda Palmer, he's able to shade differences in approaches to grief between two mourning parents. With Regina Spektor, he's able to conjure the magnetic contrast between the sexes in a form rarely seen since the big band era. On the George Micahel cover "Careless Whisper," he's able to play the "straight man" to Rufus Wainwright's brokenhearted lamenting, once again illustrating Folds' ability to keep it silly and serious at the same time.

Most fascinating, however, is the likely unintended consequence of the recurring themes found throughout Folds' work when the 61 tracks are stacked next to each other, which are not quite so prevalent on his albums. It could be telling that through many of the songs handpicked by Folds, a great deal of them show him finding fault with other people. "You Don't Know Me" finds the subject nastily berating a former spouse for failing to address his needs. "Battle of Who Could Care Less" finds the subject dismissing an unnamed slacker. "Landed" again finds the song's central character admonishing a partner for failing to live up to his expectations. Yet across all 61 tracks, there doesn't seem to be a single song where the narrator exclaims, "Man, I blew it this time" or "it's all my fault."

Indeed, in sharp contrast to the lovey-dovey songs which are present on the disc, a vengeful creature seems to emerge from between the piano keys. It seems that with such a bilious thing lurking on some tracks, even those tracks which profess a purity, such as the ode to permanent love on "The Luckiest,There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cubepuzzle," one wonders just how much of that sentiment is transient or even deceptive. In a way, this gives the music an even more complex depth then would be found on a separate reading. Furthermore, it gives a new, and possibly troublesome insight into the real Ben Folds, who despite having written some timeless modern love song, has seen four marriages to date.

China toy factories face troubles

Hong Kong’s plastic toy factories face tough conditions, squeezed between weak markets overseas and rapidly rising wages and costs in their mainland China factories.

In interviews at the recent Hong Kong Toy Fair,Muyoung mould specializes in manufacture plasticmoldingonsale, the world’s second-largest toy exhibition after the Nuremburg International Toy Fair in Germany, local plastics executives and industry leaders struck tones somewhere between caution and pessimism.

Looking at the numbers it’s easy to see why: The global toy market grew only 1 percent in 2011, according to market research firm NPD Group, and the head of the Hong Kong Toys Council estimates local factories will see only 1 percent growth this year.

Add in wages in Chinese factories going up 15-20 percent a year, labor shortages, and other rising costs, and toy factory executives said they have no breathing room.

“2011 was a disaster for the toy industry overall,” said Lawrence Chan,The magiccube is an ultra-portable, chairman and CEO of Hong Kong-based plastic toy maker Wynnewood Corp. “The first half of last year was unbelievably bad. It hurt most of us.”

Hong Kong is the world’s second-largest toy exporter, and along with mainland Chinese firms, make up by some estimates 70 percent of world toy production. Hong Kong firms have substantial toy production in the Pearl River Delta region around Guangzhou.

Yeung Chi Kong, executive committee member of the toys council and vice chairman of plastic toy maker Blue Box Group, predicted that Chinese factory wages would rise 15 percent this year, after going up 20 percent each of the last two years.

China’s strengthening renminbi also rose 5 percent against the U.S. dollar in 2011, which added another 3 percent to factory production costs, he said. Raw material costs for plastics, metals and cotton also have risen.

“I am seeing a lot of badly run factories going out of business, leaving the cream of the crop,” Yeung said.

He and other Hong Kong toy factory executives at the Jan. 9-12 fair called on toy brand owners to accept higher prices to ensure quality. But Yeung also urged toy factories to treat workers better, upgrade management systems and invest more in automation.

“In the mainland in the last 30 years, we have gotten used to hiring more workers” to solve a problem,5 hours ago by electriccarjackes on the bright side for the heal. Yeung said.

From interviews with toy brand owners, however, it seems unlikely they’ll accept much in the way of higher prices.

Canadian plastic action figure maker Round 5, for example, said it was very aware of problems facing the Chinese injection molding factory it contracts with for production, and is working to address them, but toy retailers are not accepting higher prices.

“We definitely feel the labor shortage,” said Barron Lau, CEO of Markham, Ontario-based Round 5, which has licenses to produce Bruce Lee action figures, among others. But, he said, “Retailers keep our price steady. We have to eat the costs.”

The shortage of workers in Pearl River Delta toy plants means orders that used to require four-month lead times now require six months,It has downgraded price targets for David Jones honeycombpanelsbest , complicating his company’s planning, he said.

China’s higher costs had some toy factories elsewhere in Asia seeing opportunities.Looking for coldsorestreatments?

In Taiwan — where factory wages are still much higher than mainland China but have been flat over the last decade — the rising costs in China could bring business back, said Meiko Wang, sales manager with Cyber Giant Enterprises Co. Ltd., a manufacturer of plastic ride-on toys in Tainan.

But executives of several factories from Taiwan, Korea and elsewhere in Asia said they had not seen much movement of toy orders from China.

One longtime toy industry analyst, Jane Zimmy with NPD Group Inc. in Port Washington, N.Y., said she was skeptical that much production would leave China, even with higher costs.

Zimmy, who has followed the industry for 30 years, said toys increasingly have substantial electronic components that require skilled manufacturing and strong supply chains, which is hard for lower-wage countries to match.

“Moving the production processes is pretty complicated,” she said, noting, for example, that the production lines for popular toy tablet computers like the LeapFrog have many of the same requirements as manufacturing iPads.

It’s a point echoed by others at the fair, including Round 5’s Lau. He said that while Vietnam and India are sometimes mentioned as alternate locations for making toys like his PVC action figures, they lack the infrastructure, supply networks and experience of China.

Gilead inn gets new lease on life

The Pioneers Inn got a bailout last year, but not from Uncle Sam.

People who live here and in nearby communities pulled together and raised about $3,500 to keep the town's only business open.

"We want this town to have something when we drive through,Click to see more results for hemorrho." said Marjure Coordsen, sitting in a booth with friends Alvina Krueger and Kathy Schroeder on Friday morning.

The women didn't just help save a historic 125-year-old building -- made of quarried limestone blocks -- that needed extensive repairs and new equipment.The mold consists of two primary components, the injectionmoulds and the ejector mold . They may have saved the lifeblood of the town, which has as its slogan: "There is a balm in Gilead."

People go to the Pioneers Inn for more than food. This is the place where birthdays are celebrated. It's where local clubs get together,Welcome to order chinaprojectorlamp, and the men and women meet for coffee, sometimes twice a day.

During Christmas, owners Karen and Lyle Keilwitz coax Santa Claus to visit and hire a horse-drawn sleigh for the kids. They follow it up with an Easter egg hunt in the spring.

The Pioneers Inn is where the UPS man drops off packages for Gilead's 36 or so residents. The John Deere dealer in Hebron does the same thing for farmers who order tractor parts.

People go to the café to buy stamps when the Post Office is closed -- and that's most of the day.

"The whole community would fall apart if we didn't have this place. We've seen it happen in other towns," Schroeder said.

The Keilwitzes bought the building in 1986, did some remodeling and opened it up as the Pioneers Inn.

They had many good years, but last fall they decided to close because they were not making enough money to do some much-needed repairs.

The roof over the front entrance is riddled with holes, and the pitted floor needs to be replaced. Two freezers are in bad shape, and the couple is shopping around for a new air conditioner/heating unit.

"I just didn't have enough money to sink into this place. I was just going to close up at the end of the year," Karen Keilwitz said.

Some of her customers asked her if she had any big plans, and she admitted she had none, save working for somebody else.

Then they did something extraordinary. They asked if she and her husband would stay if the community got together and raised money to fix up the place.

They agreed.

"I like this job. It's kind of part of me," said Karen Keilwitz, who does everything from taking customer orders to cooking the meals.

The customers formed a committee, and donations began to trickle in last month. On New Year's Eve, they held a customer appreciation day and sold tiles at $25 each for a new floor -- about $1,200 worth so far, Krueger said.

"I would have to move out of town," said Robert Schroeder, who drops by the Pioneers Inn four times a day. "I think it's the right thing to do."

So far, new studs and walls have been put in to help insulate a drafty storage room,EvoEnergy is a leading installer of solarpanels for homeowners and businesses across the UK. and some customers cleaned up the basement so the sagging floor can be raised a few inches. More work is scheduled in February.

"I think it's wonderful," said Karen Keilwitz. "It's amazing who's all helping out. People in Fairbury and Hebron are donating to keep this place open. It's kind of weird.EvoEnergy is a leading installer of solarpanels for homeowners and businesses across the UK."

But there may be ulterior motives at work.

"She has the best Sunday buffet," said Kathy Schroeder. "Her chicken and pies are unsurpassable. ... She is our balm in Gilead."

Deer rescued from thin ice

Most years, by late December, Lake Gardner has transformed from a shallow body of water to an expansive sheet of ice, serving as a skating rink, ice fishing hole or a bridge to adjacent conservation land used by people, pets and sometimes local wildlife.

But in this unseasonably warm winter, only a thin sheet of brittle ice that had just formed overnight was covering the lake yesterday morning when a deer attempting to escape from two dogs didn't make it across.

The trapped deer prompted a full ice rescue response by the Amesbury and Merrimac fire departments, which, as protocol, share resources and undertake a mutual response for such incidents.

For public safety officials, the question of whether to venture into the icy waters to rescue the animal,Shop for airpurifiertarget at Target, which was brought to shore alive but ultimately did not survive the ordeal, was easily answered.

"We don't want a civilian to go out and try to rescue it," Amesbury Deputy Chief Glenn Fournier said. "Then we have a real problem.The magiccube is an ultra-portable, full-sized virtual computer keyboard."

A carpenter preparing to pull into a job site at 103 Whitehall Road yesterday morning around 11 nearly hit the deer as it bounded across the road. The animal was then apparently spooked by dogs and headed onto the fragile ice. The frightened deer didn't get far before it fell through, but continued to try to fight its way to the woods on the other side.

When the first emergency vehicles arrived at the scene, the exhausted deer was floating with its head above the water about 100 yards offshore.

For ice rescues, the Amesbury Fire Department typically considers two options — use its air boat or call in the Merrimac Fire Department, which has an ice rescue sled. Because the air boat would likely have spooked the animal further, and given the relatively thin ice to deal with, the crew from Merrimac was sent out, Fournier said.

Clothed in thick rubber suits, two firefighters began paddling through the ice. The deer appeared to be ready for rescue as it began to swim toward them. The animal got about halfway back to shore and stopped about 20 feet from the firefighters, who then slowly approached it to keep from sending it in the other direction. The deer was secured by a rope and pulled to shore, where it lay quietly in a blanket on the ground.

After it was loaded into an environmental police truck,Plastic injectionmolding and injection molded parts in as quick at 3 days. firefighters told a group of kids who were watching that the animal was "headed to the doctor."

Upon examination, the deer was hypothermic and found to have suffered a bullet hole, likely from a hunter. The shotgun hunting season for deer ended Dec. 10, but open season for black-powder rifles continues through Saturday.

The deer was euthanized humanely, an environmental police spokesman said.Find the best achickencoopplans plans with our chicken coop plans review page，

Fournier said ice rescues of animals or dogs happen maybe once a year,If you have a akidneystones, you may already know how painful？ adding that such calls are a valuable training tool for rescuers, who conduct annual training in Lake Attitash or Lake Gardner.

Though human rescues are rare, and some local ponds can form a few inches of ice with just a few cold days, the firefighters stressed that venturing onto any ice right now "is just a bad idea."

Practical Surgical Treatments For Hemorrhoids

You have several variations and severity stages of hemorrhoids requiring different hemorrhoid treatment. For victims where the hemorrhoids are intense enough,Read about coldsorestreatments, which are caused by a viral infection that attacks the skin and nervous system. surgical operations could very well be the most appropriate option for treatment of hemorrhoids. Having said that, what is reckoned to be intense for one individual probably won’t appear quite so intense for another. Typically, if the anal opening is totally covered up with hemorroids that is considered to be intense. Strictly speaking though, thrombosed hemorrhoids as well hemrhoid treatment as bleeding hemorrhoids are generally occasions where you may possibly look into a hemorrhoid treatment involving surgical operations.

Not all the hemorrhoid treatment surgery prospects are the same. In fact quite a few of them are rather uncomfortablel.In addition to that they may take a considerably long time to heal. Luckily, a few of the more modern options aren’t as painful,We parkingguidancesystem , vehicle location system and urban area parking management system, but they’re ordinarily more beneficial as a treatment option to overcome hemorrhoids.This entry was posted by billabongboardshortscloths. If you’re checking out surgical operations as a hemorrhoid treatment method then you are most certainly striving to figure out what variations of surgical operations are available to you. This short article was published to supply you an overview of the individual variations of surgical operations that you can benefit from to overcome hemorrhoids.

Rubber Band Ligation is a widely chosen method of hemorrhoid surgical operations . A tiny rubber band approximately 1 millimeter in diameter is pressed over the root of the hemorrhoid by a specialized kind of gadget . The rubber band blocks the oxygen supply to the hemorrhoid. In just about a week hemorrhoid relief give or take the hemorrhoid dries up and drops off leading to a scar.

You may want to look into laser surgery. Laser surgery consists of the use of a laser to zap the hemorrhoid off. The surgical treatment needs a reasonably short time so this means you can go back home that day. it is an out patient hemorrhoid treatment. Laser surgical operations is not going to hold the common concerns connected facts about hemorrhoids with surgical operations , specially bleeding because the laser beam cauterizes the resulting injury.With Payflowpaymentgateway,

A Stapled Hemmorhoidectomy is a relatively well recognised variation of hemorrhoid surgery . This variation of medical operation helps stop hemorrhoids from bleeding which in the long run relieves a lot of the pressure induced by the clotted blood.Manufacturer of industrial coatedabrasive rolls, This operation is usually utilized on prolapsed hemorrhoids but it performs for any variation of bleeding hemorrhoid. This solution involves stapling the hemorrhoid.

Hemorrhoidal Artery Ligation Operation sometimes known as HAL is a modernday variation of hemorrhoid treatment facts about hemorrhoids that involves surgical operations. This procedure is becoming more popular operation doesn’t bring about significant pain. Effectively the approach consists of locating all the arteries that’re supplying the hemorroid with blood. Once the arteries are identified they are stitched to choke off the supply of blood to the hemorrhoid. For this reason the hemorrhoid dries up and falls off The only thing that remains is a scar.

Amish Cook: Kids prep for holiday programs

Every morning son Joseph, 9, reminds us of how many more days it is until Christmas. I think the children are getting a little worried and keep asking Joe and me when we are going Christmas shopping. We have a few of their gifts, but it just seems time goes too fast.

Christmas morning is exciting for the children to see their gifts, but let's not forget the true meaning of Christmas. Jesus is the reason for the season.

Joseph,This profile page summarizes all known activity of the domain promotionalusbonsale. Lovina, 7, and Kevin, 6,Thank you for visiting our newly improved DIY chickencoop website! are often practicing their songs for their school Christmas program.Competitive Plastic Mould products from various China Plastic Mould manufacturers and plasticmouldsuppliers are listed below, It will be held this week.Find everything you need to know about coldsores including causes,

Joe has two weeks off from the factory over the holidays. The children also have two weeks off from school. I know those weeks will go fast with us having Joe’s family over for Christmas on Jan. 7.

There is a lot to do during that time to prepare. Some of the time will be spent cleaning the house more than usual.

Our basement needs a good cleaning. Our coal stove is the basement so it does not take long for dust to collect. We do laundry down there and the children play down there a lot, too.

We recently celebrated daughter Verena’s 14th birthday with a fried chicken dinner. She baked a chocolate cake and frosted it. We put on candles and had her blow them out.

We also had vanilla ice cream to go with the chocolate cake.

For her birthday we gave her a dolphin anniversary clock and an electronic money jar. Verena collects anything with dolphins or dogs, so she really liked the clock.

She doesn’t remember her 13th birthday due to losing her memory for a year because of her brain concussion in June 2010. We are so thankful she is doing better. She has caught up with her school grades again and is excited to be back on the honor roll list.

I took her to the doctor for a three-month check-up since her surgery. She still needs to wear the ankle brace, but the doctors were very pleased with how she is doing.

Today is laundry day again. We usually do laundry two to three times a week. The boys cleaned out the chicken coop on Saturday. So now we have some extra smelly coats and pants to wash.

When the eggs start coming into the house dirty, we know it is time to remind the boys that the chicken coop and nests need to be cleaned again.

Our chickens have slowed down in laying eggs since the cold weather began.Read about coldsorestreatments, which are caused by a viral infection that attacks the skin and nervous system. I must get busy now and hope all of you readers stay healthy over these holidays.

Saturday morning our thermometer showed 11 degrees. Today the temperature is in the low 20s.

A melange of menorahs

As Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, begins Tuesday at sundown, Jewish families typically gather for a festive meal that usually includes potato latkes, songs and the exchange of gifts.

But the singular experience of Hanukkah is the lighting of the menorah, the holiday's tangible symbol.

For Rabbi Steven Fineblum and his wife, Barbara, the choices of menorahs are ample.

"We've collected them,A glassbottles is a bottle created from glass. gotten them as gifts, and cherished them," said Fineblum, the spiritual leader of Temple Sinai on New Albany Road, which is celebrating its 50th year.

A candelabrum with eight candleholders, the menorah commemorates the ancient miracle of a tiny supply of oil lasting for a full eight days, and the victory of the Jewish Maccabees over the powerful Greek-Syrian army.

The ninth candleholder, called a "shamas," is designated as the candle used to light all the others. After the first night's candle is lit, a candle is added each succeeding night, until all blaze.Order high quality hand painted oilpaintingre reproductions, Lighting them each night is the important holiday ritual that focuses on the symbolic meaning of the menorah.

Menorahs now come in so many varieties, from ultramodern to traditional, they are collected as works of art as well as for religious and sentimental reasons.

In some households, these symbols of Hanukkah are displayed year-round for their sheer aesthetic beauty, and in many Jewish homes, those imperfect ones, made by a young child's tentative hands in Sunday school, have as much emotional meaning as the most intricate work of Judaic artists.

Of course,A glassbottles is a bottle created from glass.The Zentai Project is a group of people who go out in public wearing zentai suits, the true message of Hanukkah, Fineblum said, is that it created the fundamental principle of religious freedom.

"Had the Maccabees not stood up against religious persecution, Judaism might not have survived," he said. "So historically, Hanukkah represents our ability to protect ideals in the face of overwhelming odds, and reminds us that the struggle for religious freedom never ends."

In the case of the Fineblums, some favorite menorahs include the simple brass one with the figures of lions at either side of a base where the candles are placed, against a background of a tablet imprinted with Hebrew words. The piece was handed down through the family, along with a larger brass menorah, also a family treasure, in which the candles are held on curved arms.

"In Jewish tradition, all of the candles should be on the same level to suggest the equality of each day of Hanukkah," Fineblum said.

A menorah with a whimsical assemblage of Winnie the Pooh characters, including Winnie and Tigger, is also part of the Fineblum collection, one that includes several strikingly modern menorahs fashioned from silver, stainless steel and Lucite.

Then there's one of Barbara Fineblum's favorites. The sixth-grade language arts teacher in Westmont, an avid mah-jongg player, delights in an unusual menorah that features mah-jongg tiles as candleholders. Each tile is emblazoned with the Chinese characters and symbols in miniature to represent the ancient Chinese game of skill, strategy, and some element of chance.

A gift from her three young adult children, the playfulness of the unique menorah charms Fineblum. But she said it's the coming together of the family for the holiday that really matters.

"Every holiday is a kind of magnet that works to draw family and friends together," she said. "As the extended family spreads out, that becomes harder to accomplish,Welcome to the online guide for do-it-yourself ceramictile. but we still make the effort."

One Hanukkah in particular stands out for the couple.

Back in April 1997, the Fineblums lost most of their home and nearly all of their possessions in a fire that ravaged their Cinnaminson split level. Grateful that no one was home or hurt, they still went through the ordeal of putting their lives back together, with the help of a caring community.

They were able to move back to their rebuilt home the following December — on the first night of Hanukkah.

"And that," Rabbi Fineblum said, "was a homecoming and a Hanukkah like no other."

ConocoPhillips Signs Deal With Heartland Payment Systems

ConocoPhillips has signed a five-year contract with payment processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc. Under the expanded contract, Heartland Network Services group will continue to authorize debit- and credit-card transactions and will now also begin settling Visa and MasterCard credit-card transactions at ConocoPhillips-branded locations nationwide.

The expanded card processing agreement is being supported by a new partnership between Heartland and Barclays Bank Delaware, the U.S. operation of Barclaycard, which will be delivering the payment network sponsorship services for the ConocoPhillips transactions.

"ConocoPhillips has a longstanding commitment to responsible refining and fuels marketing, just as Heartland has a longstanding commitment to responsible payments processing," said Bob Carr, Heartland's chairman and CEO. "We're proud to continue and expand our 20-year relationship by delivering secure, PCI-compliant network transaction processing services to ConocoPhillips branded locations across the country."

He added, "Heartland is pleased to announce our arrangement with Barclays Bank Delaware for the bank sponsorship activities for the ConocoPhillips transactions."

Barclays is a major global financial services provider engaged in retail banking, credit cards, corporate and investment banking and wealth management with an extensive international presence in Europe, the Americas,We offer hundreds of thousands of oilpaintingsforsale. Africa and Asia.

Separately, Heartland recently announced that Gilbarco Veeder-Root has certified Heartland's SmartLink Managed ProPlatinum, ProPlus and Pro managed network services as a certified solution on the Gilbarco Passport point-of-sale (POS) system. SmartLink provides secure network connectivity that operates efficiently and effectively to deliver payment transactions on Gilbarco equipment in a PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant environment.

SmartLink is a secure,A true insulator is a material that does not respond to an electric field， managed network service that supports secure transaction data and backoffice systems. SmartLink is supported by the security of a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) gateway for critical payment applications and a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) for the backoffice functions provided by the Gilbarco Passport POS. SmartLink technology also helps petroleum retailers protect sensitive data and meet PCI standards.

SmartLink can transmit both transactional data as well as integral backoffice information for retail petroleum operations. SmartLink's merchant gateway allows operators to monitor their automatic tank gauge, in-store environmental control system and daily backoffice data such as email, file sharing and internet usage. The payment gateway allows operators to monitor their POS terminals, money-order terminals, check verification, ATM, fleet card and loyalty card transactions. SmartLink operates on any broadband circuit and can be scaled to save cost and improve operations for single-store and multi-store operators.

Greensboro, N.C.-based Gilbarco Veeder-Root is a leader in providing technology for retail and commercial fueling operations. It offers a range of integrated solutions from the forecourt to the convenience store and head office.

Heartland, Princeton, N.J.With Payflowpaymentgateway,, is one of the largest third-party payments processors in the convenience store and petroleum industry, offering a comprehensive suite of products and services including card processing, managed network solutions, gift marketing, prepaid services,Find the best achickencoopplans plans with our chicken coop plans review page， check management,Original thelandscapeoilpaintings, buy landscape paintings online. payroll services and more.

New Volkswagen Amarok Details Released

The British division of Volkswagen revealed today technical specifications for the new Amarok, a serious contender for the pick-up market. The vehicle comes available in two engine variants, a 2.0-litre TDI developing 122 PS and 340 Nm of torque from 1,750 rpm, and a 2.0-litre Bi-turbo TDI developing 163 PS and 400 Nm from 1,750 rpm.  All models are fitted with a six-speed manual gearbox.
Taken separately, 122 PS engine can achieve 0-62 mph (0-100 km/h) in 13.7 seconds, while the 163 PS unit reaches 62 mph (100 km/h) from a standstill in 11.1 seconds.

This pulling power is matched by a maximum towing weight of up to 2,800 kg (6,173 lbs) for the Amarok Highline with permanent 4MOTION, or 2,690 kg (5,930 lbs) for models with selectable 4MOTION.
Styling options include a front bumper trim, exterior decor sets, side steps, plus stainless steel side rails and styling bars for the loadspace, and the option to upgrade to 19-inch alloy wheels.

Accessories available include a lockable toolbox designed to fit between the wheelarches, across the load bay.  Alternatively, to cover the entire loadspace there is a choice of tonneau covers, or a complete body-coloured hardtop.  Tonneau covers range from a soft waterproof cover which can be rolled out the way, or a choice of aluminium or body-coloured hard plastic covers which are lockable and hinge open for access.
To help protect the Amarok’s interior and exterior, there are seat covers and rubber or carpet floor mats for the cab, parking sensors, mud flaps, an aluminium liner for the loadspace, plus a black steel grid for the rear window.  Offering extra protection during off-road driving, gearbox and underbody protection packs are also available.