Street artists join war on Manila smog

Their canvas is a stretch of dingy concrete wall along Manila's main highway, where millions of vehicles stream past every day,Shop our bedding range online at Dunelm Mill, belching exhaust that helps to create a noxious,Information on useful yeasts and moulds, unhealthy smog.

But the murals now blooming under the hands of street artists along Epifanio delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) are not only there for art's sake -- they are created with paint that doubles as an air purifier.Shop our bedding range online at Dunelm Mill,

A new paint variant created by local paint manufacturer Boysen contains modified titanium dioxides, which are designed to break down toxic fumes into harmless substances.

Though titanium dioxide is commonly used in regular paint, its molecules in the modified version are micronized, a process that compresses them 10-fold to enhance their intrinsic ability to break down toxic substances when activated by light.

"It acts as a photo catalyst and in the presence of sunlight or artificial lighting it brings down noxious gases such as nitrogen dioxides and other VOCs in the air," said Patrick Negrete, Boysen Project Management Engineer.

Negrete said that tests in Manila and Europe's busiest thoroughfares reported at least an 18 percent reduction of air pollutants.

Now, the Manila city government has partnered with Boysen to add more murals along the heavily polluted EDSA, part of a decades-old drive to combat air pollution there.

The highway has the highest traffic congestion in the Philippines, with over 2.Information on useful yeasts and moulds,5 million vehicles passing through daily. The World Health Organization has reported that pollution there is four times greater than recommended safe levels.

According to the United Nations, Manila is one of the world's five most polluted cities, with an estimated four percent of the vast metropolis's disease-related deaths linked to air pollution.

Ten local and foreign artists were invited to design murals covering over 8,000 square meters of walls, columns and bridges along EDSA's choke points, or where it narrows.

Fanciful flowers are among the works taking form in the distinctive green paint.

Company executives acknowledge that while the air-cleaning paint does help, it is far from a permanent solution.

"The best solution is to reduce the level of pollution to start with, to reduce pollutants coming out of cars," said Johnson Ongking, Boysen Vice President.

But the artists involved in creating the highway masterpieces were enthusiastic.

"I hope there would be many more paintings like these -- not just in Manila, but around the world," said Tapio Snellman, a Finnish artist and film maker who volunteered to design one mural.

"Because there's a huge need of air-cleaning paintings,China professional plasticmoulds, and there's a huge need of visual stimulation of positive and inspiring artwork."

Automakers developing efficient engines that overturn fuel's dirty image

Diesel-powered vehicles used to get a bad rap for being noisy, dirty and slow. But they have been getting an image makeover thanks to "clean diesel" that emits less pollution--a change that could shake up the race with eco-friendly hybrid and electric vehicles.

At the Tokyo Motor Show in December, there were many "oohs" and "aahs" around the displays of two Mazda Motor Corp. vehicles powered by a 2.2-liter diesel engine--a world first. The fuel-efficient engine can reduce emissions that cause air pollution,We offer the best ventilationsystem, without an expensive purifier.

The CX-5 sport-utility vehicle, which will go on the market Feb. 16,Hobby Silicone for mold making moldmaking , runs 18.6 kilometers per liter of diesel oil, a fuel cheaper than gasoline. The CX-5 is the most fuel-efficient SUV, including minicar SUVs and hybrid SUVs,Omega Plastics are a leading rapid tooling and plasticinjectionmould company based in the UK, and packs as much power as a four-liter gasoline-powered vehicle.

The Takeri concept sedan stores energy generated during braking as electricity. According to Mazda, it can travel about 1,500 kilometers on a full tank of fuel.

"Diesel vehicles had the shortcomings of being dirty and slow. We've conquered those problems," Mazda President Takashi Yamanouchi said.

The diesel SUV market is becoming rather crowded. Germany's BMW AG will introduce a diesel model of its X5 in Japan this spring. Nissan Motor Co.'s X-Trail and Mitsubishi Motors Corp.'s Pajero are already equipped with clean diesel engines.

With more diesel-powered vehicles arriving in showrooms, some drivers will likely be giving diesel vehicles a second look.

Diesel vehicles and gasoline vehicles produce their power quite differently. In gasoline vehicles, gas is mixed with air, and this mixture is injected into a combustion chamber and ignited.Choose from our large selection of cableties, In diesel vehicles, air is compressed until it reaches a high temperature, and diesel oil is then injected into it and burned.

Diesel vehicles are powerful--and more fuel-efficient--even when driven at a low speed because their combustion efficiency is better than that of gasoline vehicles.

However, diesel vehicles emit nitrogen oxide and soot, and they need a big, tough body to handle the volume of air being compressed. They tended to be noisy and had poor acceleration.

Japan experienced a recreational vehicle boom in the latter half of the 1980s, and diesel vehicles accounted for 6 percent of total new car sales. However, their popularity waned and automakers stopped introducing new diesel models, except for buses and trucks.

In the latter 1990s, European automakers developed cleaner diesel engines that produce less exhaust gases by improving the fuel injection system and using filters.

In Europe, fuel-efficient, diesel-powered vehicles have become very popular, accounting for half of new car sales.VulcanMold is a plastic molds and injectionmold manufacturer in china.

Diesel oil is obtained with gasoline during the process of refining crude oil. Because Japan cannot consume all the diesel produced here, some is exported. The spread of diesel vehicles in this country will lead to more efficient use of diesel oil.

Autism: a puzzling disorder

LOS ANGELES When autism researchers arrived at Norristown State Hospital near Philadelphia a few years ago, they found a 63-year-old man who rambled on about Elvis Presley, compulsively rocked in his chair and patted the corridor walls.Information on useful yeasts and moulds,

Ben Perrick, a resident of the psychiatric institution for most of his life, displayed what the University of Pennsylvania researchers considered classic symptoms of autism. His chart, however, said he was schizophrenic and mentally retarded.

Delving into the file, the researchers learned that as a 10-year-old, Perrick had seen Dr. Leo Kanner, the psychiatrist who discovered autism. In his notes from 1954, Kanner described Perrick as “a child who is self centered, withdrawn, and unable to relate to other people,” and recommended that he be committed.

Later, other doctors relabelled Perrick. The autism diagnosis was forgotten.

The researchers found 13 other patients with unrecognized autism in the Norristown hospital — about 10 per cent of the residents they evaluated. It was a sign of how medical standards and social attitudes toward the disorder have shifted.

Over the last two decades, estimates of the autism rate in children in the U.S. and Canada have climbed twentyfold. Many scientists believe the increase has been driven largely by an expanded definition of the disorder and more vigorous efforts to identify it.

Scientists are just beginning to find cases that were overlooked or called something else in an earlier era. If their research shows that autism has always been present at roughly the same rate as today, it could ease worries that an epidemic is on the loose.

By looking into the past, scientists also hope to deepen their understanding of how autism unfolds over a lifetime.

What happened to all the people who never got diagnosed? Where are they?

Like Perrick, who died in 2009, some spent their lives in institutions. Mental hospitals have largely been emptied over the last four decades, but the remaining population in the U.S. probably includes about 5,000 people with undiagnosed autism, said David Mandell, a psychiatric epidemiologist who led the Norristown study.

Many more are thought to be in prisons, homeless shelters and wherever else social misfits are clustered.

But evidence suggests the vast majority are not segregated from society — they are hiding in plain sight. Most probably never will be identified, but a picture of their lives is starting to emerge from those who have been.

They live in households, sometimes alone, sometimes with the support of their parents, sometimes even with spouses. Many were bullied as children and still struggle to connect with others. Some were able to find jobs that fit their strengths and partners who understand them.

If modern estimates of autism rates apply to past generations, about two million U.Learn all about solarpanel,S.Learn all about solarpanel, adults and more than 220,000 adult Canadians have various forms of it — and society has long absorbed the emotional and financial toll, mostly without realizing it.

Stats the same for adultsThe search for the missing millions is just beginning.

The only study to look for autistic adults in a national population was conducted in Britain and published in 2009. Investigators interviewed 7,461 adults selected as a representative sample of the country and conducted 618 intensive evaluations.

The conclusion: one per cent of people living in British households had some form of autism,Choose from our large selection of cableties, roughly the same rate the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates for children in America today.

The British study found it didn’t matter whether the adults were in their 20s or their 80s. The rate of autism was the same for both groups.

“That would seem to imply the incidence has not changed very much,” said Dr. Terry Brugha, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Leicester who led the study. He added the findings were not conclusive and more research is needed.

None of the adults included in the study had an existing diagnosis of autism, though in a few instances relatives told researchers they had suspected it.

In one case,Plastic injectionmolding and injection molded parts in as quick at 3 days. a man said he had asked his doctor about the possibility but was told that a diagnosis in middle age would be useless. After all, he had got this far without it.

Still, as more children are being diagnosed with autism, more adults are wondering if they have it, too.

Karl Wittig, a retired engineer from New York, had always questioned why so few social skills came naturally to him.

A diary his mother kept in the 1950s suggests he was not an ordinary child. “This last few weeks, he doesn’t pile the blocks any more,” she wrote when he was two. “He likes to put one next to the other, making a big row of 48.”

Two years later, he talked non-stop about wires, switches, light bulbs and Thomas Edison.

Wittig went on to earn undergraduate and master’s degrees from Cornell University and New York University in physics, electrical engineering and computer science. In the research laboratories where he worked, he felt he fit in.

“I went into a field full of eccentric people,” Witting recalled. “I was just another eccentric person.”

Wittig said he eventually figured out how to behave in social situations — to refrain from correcting other people’s mistakes, flaunting his math abilities or rambling on about his own interests. He married a former nun 18 years his senior. She died of cancer after two decades together. Wittig described the marriage as happy.

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."

Google makes land-grab in new mobile commerce gold rush

Google makes land-grab in new mobile commerce gold rush


Speaking at a VentureBeat conference in San Francisco, Google's vice president of commerce Stephanie Tilenius,Detailed information on the causes of RUBBER SHEET, forecast a rising tide of innovation in the mobile payments space.

"It's sort of like 1999 was with e-commerce, with eBay and Amazon. We're at the beginning of 10 years of innovation and competition," she said.

Tilenius was speaking the day after the search engine giant launched its Google Offers loyalty service in New York and San Francisco following a trial period in Portland. The Google loyalty programme is an intrinsic element in Google's strategy for mobile payments, with Android phone owners picking up daily deals and rewards programmes based on their location and preference.Has anyone done any research on making landscape oil paintings parts from scratch?

Tilenius told the conference that one Portland bistro saw its lunch traffic double after using Google Offers to promote itself.

Google is betting that special offers aligned to single tap payments will provide the extra incentive that consumers need to ditch their plastic at the point-of-sale and switch to mobile. Yesterday, the company announced a reputed $10 million acquisition of loyalty card start-up Punchd. The one-year old firm,What is the difference between a Ripcurl and a 3rd party processor? which has just six staff,Basic information about Plastic molding including links. has developed a smart phone app that works as a digital punch card,The name "high risk merchant account" is not unique. offering discounts and special offers for repeat visits to signed-up merchants.

Google is also working on plans to embed its loyalty and payments business deeper into the social fabric by integrating the products into its newly-launched Google+ social circles network, Tilenius told the VentureBeat conference, as well as other properties such as Google Maps.

Get Your Deck Ready For Spring And Summer

As the days get longer, there's nothing like barbequing and entertaining friends on your deck. But before you pass out those invitations, make sure your deck has weathered the winter and is ready for its seasonal duty.

The abuse a deck surface takes from the weather, foot traffic, barbeques, and food and drink spills can create both surface and structural problems.

"To make your deck last, clean it thoroughly every one to two years and re-stain every two to four years," says Mark Clement, host of the radio program "MyFixitUpLife." "It also helps if your deck is made from a natural, durable wood, such as Western Red Cedar, which holds oil based finishes for an extended period of time."

Here's how to get your deck ready for use:

Clear Out: Clear all furniture and potted plants off the deck. Then inspect the deck for dirt and pollen buildup. Sweep it clean of debris that may have fallen during winter. For safety's sake, make sure there are no nails sticking up from the deck or from any posts.

Floss Between Planks: Clean between the planks and boards of any horizontal surfaces so rain can drain and air can flow between them. Reducing standing water and increasing airflow will limit the amount of moisture that can collect and stay on the surface of the plank, thereby making your deck last longer.

Keep the Finish Sharp: Application of a quality wood stain or finish and periodic retreatment over time will prevent discoloration and degradation of your deck and extend the wood's lifespan. Keep in mind that natural woods that are sustainable and durable, such as real cedar, can take and retain a variety of stains and finishes for more extended periods. Such woods are natural looking, as opposed to the faux finishes used on man-made composite products.

Elevate Planters: Direct contact between planter boxes and wooden surfaces can trap moisture and leave stains. Elevating them or placing them on rollers will release the moisture and make them easier to rearrange.

Beware of Welcome Mats: Mats can collect moisture and dry out too slowly, which can lead to water damage and/or wood rot. After precipitation, be sure to dry out the mat and allow the deck to dry.

Watch Out for Your Grill: Grease from your grill is hazardous to your deck, so place it in an inconspicuous spot with a hard rubber door mat underneath it to keep your deck free of stains. If grease drips onto your deck, use a household cleaner to wipe it clean.