For once, I am inclined to believe Hillary Clinton. The U.S.
Secretary of State, suffering from a sick stomach, has reportedly
fainted and bumped her head. As a result, her spokespeople have already
announced that she will be unable to testify at the Benghazi hearings,
although she was not due to appear until December 20, many days after
the vaguely reported fainting spell.
Already,Best howo concrete mixer
manufacturer in China. the internet is resounding with a chorus of
"How convenient!" (See here and here, for example.) Many, upon hearing
this news, are assuming that Clinton, who has been hedging on whether
to appear at the congressional hearings for a month, has concocted yet
another excuse to avoid facing the music on a scandal which, if pursued
with integrity, would likely end her political career, to put it
mildly.
I,Our technology gives rtls
systems developers the ability. on the contrary, would like to give
Secretary Clinton the benefit of the doubt on this one. Though I have
never participated in a cover-up involving the brutal murder and
defilement of people under my direct employ, I can only imagine that if
I had, and if I were being called on the mat to answer questions about
my role in events surrounding a seven-hour terrorist assault on my
representatives in Libya, and the subsequent disinformation campaign
being managed, in part, out of my office, I would be feeling sick to my
stomach, too. I imagine I might even faint, as the day of reckoning
approached.
The basic question here is whether Hillary Clinton
has so completely dissolved her own moral core -- the way her boss and
fellow Alinskyite has clearly done -- that she is incapable of feeling
even the fear of self-revelation when she is called to account for her
words and actions. In other words, is this week's illness and fainting
spell just a convenient excuse for avoiding her responsibilities, or
might it be the pounding of a tell-tale heart?
Never having sat
on my hands for several hours while receiving live reports and images
of my employees being attacked by Ansar al-Sharia, I cannot say for
certain how I would feel in her situation.
Never having
received communications from men in distress pleading for rescue or
support, and done nothing to respond to their cries for help,Installers
and distributors of solar panel,
I can only speculate as to how I would feel if a committee -- some of
whose members are not my political allies -- wanted to ask me what
happened.
Never having offered an initial statement immediately
following the murder of my ambassador in which I explicitly blamed his
death on "heavily armed militants" and never mentioned any
"spontaneous protest" in Libya, only to follow it up with subsequent
statements cagily blaming an anti-Muhammad video and fudging on the
spontaneous protest story, I have no idea how I would feel if I feared
that someone might ask me about the sudden 180-degree turn in my
account.
Never having spent three months, in cahoots with my boss and other liars, carefully avoiding,Quickparts builds injection molds
using aluminum or steel to meet your program. deferring, and obscuring
the simplest inquiry of all -- "At what time, exactly, did you first
hear of the attack on your Libyan consulate, and by what sequence of
reasoning did you all decide that a rescue attempt was uncalled for?"
-- how can I know how I would feel if I were concerned that I might
finally be asked that question in a congressional hearing?
Never having spent forty years climbing the political ladder,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose
tubing, only to feel that it was about to collapse from under me at the
very moment when people were saying that I was "inevitable" for 2016, I
cannot deny that I might feel sick to my stomach, standing so close to
the peak and yet looking into the abyss as Hillary Clinton must be
doing today.
Never having spent decades pushing my leftist
agenda from behind the camera while desperately, humiliatingly covering
tracks for "the talent," my sociopathic spouse -- and then, having
finally burst out from behind that demeaning mask, finding myself
reduced to running interference again for yet another sociopath -- I
cannot deny that I, too, might be suffering from vertigo.
In
sum, it seems entirely believable to me that Hillary Clinton is feeling
sick these days. In her situation, who wouldn't feel sick?
My
question, however, is why this illness and minor injury, from which she
is purported to be recovering happily at home, should be considered an
acceptable excuse for not having to testify about a scandal in which
she was a major player -- a foreign policy disaster for which she has
expressly declared herself the buck's final destination.
Adults
get sick. Some of them are prone to feeling nauseous or faint when
faced with stressful situations for which they know they are
unprepared. But adults typically do not use their personal discomforts
as justifications for ducking out on their most important
responsibilities and commitments.
Some years ago, my wife was
given the unpleasant task of invigilating the final exam of a
university freshman who was suffering from a terrible stomach flu, but
who, having already purchased a ticket home for the following day,
insisted on writing her exam while sitting on the floor of the women's
bathroom, resting her head against the cool tiles to calm herself
between mad dashes to -- well, you get the point.
Here, on the
other hand, is the secretary of state of the most powerful nation on
the planet, called to testify before both houses of congress regarding a
foreign policy debacle which resulted in the deaths of an important
State Department official and three other Americans; here is the
highest ranking member of the president's cabinet, the one who stood at
his side when he made his September 12 Rose Garden address on
Benghazi; here is the woman who, in a supposed act of statesmanship,
claimed personal responsibility for the Benghazi security failure
(though simultaneously casting off that responsibility by saying "I
want to avoid some kind of political gotcha") -- here she is, being
excused from the most important day of her tenure as secretary of
state, in effect by means of a note from President O-Mama saying
"Hillary isn't feeling well today, and she won't be feeling well next
week either."
While the chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, John Kerry, was only too eager to accept this sick
note from Mrs. Clinton, and happy to announce her replacement by two of
her deputies, Kerry's counterpart on the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, played the role of rational adult:
We
have been combing classified and unclassified documents and have tough
questions about State Department threat assessments and
decision-making on Benghazi. This requires a public appearance by the
Secretary of State herself.
Yes, it does "require" such an
appearance -- if your interest is in exposing the truth about Benghazi,
namely that "failure" is too kind a word for the administration's
actions before the attack, and "conscienceless" too kind for their
conduct during and after it.
Hillary Clinton has made her
reputation on being a tough, resilient woman. If she were really so
tough, she would insist on appearing before Ros-Lehtinen's committee,
even if she had to testify from the bathroom floor.
The
Benghazi scandal, as I have said before, makes Watergate -- during
which Clinton suffered her own first scandal, incidentally -- look like
cheating at tiddlywinks. Men died after a seven hour battle, and after
their repeated pleas to Washington for help were rejected. In the wake
of this horror, the Obama administration created a calculated cloud of
conflicting half-stories in order to protect Obama's re-election bid.
The centerpiece of their cloud of lies was a fabrication about a
"spontaneous" or "natural" protest that never occurred -- and that they
knew never occurred -- a lie which, by emphasizing and repeatedly
blaming a "disgusting" video about Muhammad, actually stoked real and
deadly protests throughout the Middle East.
Hillary Clinton is
the highest-ranking member of the administration scheduled to testify,
and her prospective testimony would be most pertinent -- not because of
what she would say, but because of what others would then need to say,
or unsay, to remain consistent with her story.
But she isn't
feeling well, and wants to stay home this week, so you should just
forget the whole thing; goodness knows she'd like to forget it.
And
if you are wise you will follow John Kerry's advice and dismiss any
ideas about offering her a rain check. After all, rescheduling her
appearance for a future date is only likely to remind her of that
urgent meeting she has to attend in Bora Bora, or the hair appointment
she promised herself for Christmas, or poker night with the gals at
Huma's.
2012年12月17日 星期一
Due Diligence Heads Off Acquisition Surprises
As I scan the trades, it is evident that broadcast station trading
is ramping up again. Stations are being bought and sold in various
locations, and I suspect that this will continue.
Buying a radio station is, in some respects, like buying a used car. Caveat emptor is the rule, and you can easily end up with a pig in a poke if great care is not exercised in the due diligence process.
Over the years, I have done a lot of due diligence work on station trades, and I have also worked with local station and market engineers on such transactions. In my dealings on the local level, it has been my experience that local station and market engineers are often not equipped for such tasks. It’s not that they don’t have the skills; it’s that they don’t have the right mindset.
The decisions that go into the process of a station acquisition are based in large part on the findings and recommendations of the engineer. A mistake or oversight at the technical due diligence stage can have a far-reaching impact on the operation and success of that station.
In this column, I hope to convey some of the things that an engineer should be looking for and thinking about in performing due diligence for a station acquisition.
The primary concern that a station owner or GM will usually have in an acquisition is coverage. That would seem to be a fairly simple question to answer. Drive the signal and find out. But it really goes deeper than that. Starting with knowledge of the facility (power, HAAT, directional pattern, transmitter site location relative to the market, etc.) the engineer should make some judgments and predictions before he sets out to evaluate the signal.
For example, if an FM station is a rim-shot, driving the signal may not tell the whole story. The signal as observed in an automobile may seem fine, with just the occasional multipath flutter here and there in the expected places, but it may not be receivable indoors on home, tabletop or portable receivers. I’ve seen this time and again, and it leads to great frustration down the road.
So in addition to the usual signal drive, take a portable and/or tabletop radio indoors in select parts of the coverage area and see how the station does. If the purchase goes through and there are indoor signal frustrations down the road, at least the decision will have been made with that knowledge and the owner or GM won’t be blaming the engineer for not finding out and telling him about it in advance.
AM stations present even more challenges with regard to coverage determination. All of the above applies — check the indoor coverage in addition to driving the signal — but there is also the element of night coverage to deal with. Time after time, I have to explain to managers that just because a station does not change power or pattern does not mean that the coverage is the same at night. And just because the night coverage is good on the night of the drive test doesn’t mean it’s good every night. Ideally, the night signal should be evaluated over several different nights.
In one due diligence in the St. Louis market back in the 1990s, our local manager raved about the night signal of the station we were looking at purchasing, saying how it was just as good as the day coverage. As negotiations proceeded, the time came for me to go look at the station, and I found the same thing the local manager did — the night signal was good. Too good. So on the next evening, I set up in a nighttime null location with a FIM and watched the sun go down.
Not surprisingly, nothing changed. I waited 15 minutes past local sunset and still observeWe recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory.d the same field intensity at that location. Finally, I called the request line and the jock picked up. I asked him if the station changed power or pattern at night. He said, “Oops” and hung up. I watched the needle on the FIM go to zero, then switching scales I found what should have been there every night. With a deep null right over the city, we decided to pass on the purchase. That would indeed have been a pig in a poke.
It almost goes without saying that a thorough inspection of the equipment complement is a vital part of the due diligence process. This is the one part of the process that local engineers are usually well-equipped to handle, so I won’t dwell on it here. Still,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. mistakes can be made.
It’s important that the seller provide the prospective buyer with a full inventory of the equipment and assets to be conveyed, and that should be the document the engineer works from as he does the inspection. Check off each item to confirm that it is there and make notes as to condition, operability, etc. Before settlement, the studio and transmitter sites should be re-inspected to confirm that each item on the list is still there and working.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. It’s not uncommon for last-minute substitutions to be made or for equipment to be missing altogether come settlement time.
One critical area that most engineers may not think about is the real estate, land and/or structures and space that will be conveyed or leases that will be assigned. Land, particularly transmitter site land, can have all kinds of defects that will come back to bite a buyer at some point. It’s not uncommon for guy anchors or portions of the ground system to be located off the conveyed property.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china, If not discovered in due diligence, that kind of defect can ruin your whole day.
I like to have a survey made prior to settlement. Often a seller will provide a survey, but the only way to know for sure that what you thing you are getting is what is actually being conveyed is to hand the surveyor the legal description from the agreement of sale, have him stake the property boundaries and then make a survey showing those boundaries and all the improvements.
Sometimes such a survey will reveal an encroachment by a neighbor that can amount to adverse possession down the road. In one acquisition I was involved with, a residential neighbor had actually extended his backyard well into the tower site property — 30 feet or so — and installed a fence and playground equipment for his kids. By dealing with this up front, we allowed the neighbor to continue using that piece of dirt without giving up any of our rights, and we made a friend in the process.
The title report should be carefully examined and any exceptions noted. There may well be easements across the land that could impact towers, guy wires, buried transmission lines and the like. Public rights-of-way may extend well into the property, and even though a road may not exist there now, it may come some day and significantly impact the operation. Mineral rights not conveyed can also be a time bomb waiting to go off in some locations.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Landowners often have little recourse when the mineral rights owner leases those rights to an energy company and the drilling rig rolls up.
Check with the county or municipality for the zoning, permitted uses, conditional use permits and the like. It’s not uncommon for tower sites to have conditional use permits or variances, and sometimes these may have time limits or triggers. If a conditional use permit has a 25-year span and it was issued 23 years ago, the buyer will have to get it renewed or find a new piece of dirt in a hurry. It’s best to figure this out before the notice arrives in the mail.
Buying a radio station is, in some respects, like buying a used car. Caveat emptor is the rule, and you can easily end up with a pig in a poke if great care is not exercised in the due diligence process.
Over the years, I have done a lot of due diligence work on station trades, and I have also worked with local station and market engineers on such transactions. In my dealings on the local level, it has been my experience that local station and market engineers are often not equipped for such tasks. It’s not that they don’t have the skills; it’s that they don’t have the right mindset.
The decisions that go into the process of a station acquisition are based in large part on the findings and recommendations of the engineer. A mistake or oversight at the technical due diligence stage can have a far-reaching impact on the operation and success of that station.
In this column, I hope to convey some of the things that an engineer should be looking for and thinking about in performing due diligence for a station acquisition.
The primary concern that a station owner or GM will usually have in an acquisition is coverage. That would seem to be a fairly simple question to answer. Drive the signal and find out. But it really goes deeper than that. Starting with knowledge of the facility (power, HAAT, directional pattern, transmitter site location relative to the market, etc.) the engineer should make some judgments and predictions before he sets out to evaluate the signal.
For example, if an FM station is a rim-shot, driving the signal may not tell the whole story. The signal as observed in an automobile may seem fine, with just the occasional multipath flutter here and there in the expected places, but it may not be receivable indoors on home, tabletop or portable receivers. I’ve seen this time and again, and it leads to great frustration down the road.
So in addition to the usual signal drive, take a portable and/or tabletop radio indoors in select parts of the coverage area and see how the station does. If the purchase goes through and there are indoor signal frustrations down the road, at least the decision will have been made with that knowledge and the owner or GM won’t be blaming the engineer for not finding out and telling him about it in advance.
AM stations present even more challenges with regard to coverage determination. All of the above applies — check the indoor coverage in addition to driving the signal — but there is also the element of night coverage to deal with. Time after time, I have to explain to managers that just because a station does not change power or pattern does not mean that the coverage is the same at night. And just because the night coverage is good on the night of the drive test doesn’t mean it’s good every night. Ideally, the night signal should be evaluated over several different nights.
In one due diligence in the St. Louis market back in the 1990s, our local manager raved about the night signal of the station we were looking at purchasing, saying how it was just as good as the day coverage. As negotiations proceeded, the time came for me to go look at the station, and I found the same thing the local manager did — the night signal was good. Too good. So on the next evening, I set up in a nighttime null location with a FIM and watched the sun go down.
Not surprisingly, nothing changed. I waited 15 minutes past local sunset and still observeWe recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory.d the same field intensity at that location. Finally, I called the request line and the jock picked up. I asked him if the station changed power or pattern at night. He said, “Oops” and hung up. I watched the needle on the FIM go to zero, then switching scales I found what should have been there every night. With a deep null right over the city, we decided to pass on the purchase. That would indeed have been a pig in a poke.
It almost goes without saying that a thorough inspection of the equipment complement is a vital part of the due diligence process. This is the one part of the process that local engineers are usually well-equipped to handle, so I won’t dwell on it here. Still,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. mistakes can be made.
It’s important that the seller provide the prospective buyer with a full inventory of the equipment and assets to be conveyed, and that should be the document the engineer works from as he does the inspection. Check off each item to confirm that it is there and make notes as to condition, operability, etc. Before settlement, the studio and transmitter sites should be re-inspected to confirm that each item on the list is still there and working.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. It’s not uncommon for last-minute substitutions to be made or for equipment to be missing altogether come settlement time.
One critical area that most engineers may not think about is the real estate, land and/or structures and space that will be conveyed or leases that will be assigned. Land, particularly transmitter site land, can have all kinds of defects that will come back to bite a buyer at some point. It’s not uncommon for guy anchors or portions of the ground system to be located off the conveyed property.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china, If not discovered in due diligence, that kind of defect can ruin your whole day.
I like to have a survey made prior to settlement. Often a seller will provide a survey, but the only way to know for sure that what you thing you are getting is what is actually being conveyed is to hand the surveyor the legal description from the agreement of sale, have him stake the property boundaries and then make a survey showing those boundaries and all the improvements.
Sometimes such a survey will reveal an encroachment by a neighbor that can amount to adverse possession down the road. In one acquisition I was involved with, a residential neighbor had actually extended his backyard well into the tower site property — 30 feet or so — and installed a fence and playground equipment for his kids. By dealing with this up front, we allowed the neighbor to continue using that piece of dirt without giving up any of our rights, and we made a friend in the process.
The title report should be carefully examined and any exceptions noted. There may well be easements across the land that could impact towers, guy wires, buried transmission lines and the like. Public rights-of-way may extend well into the property, and even though a road may not exist there now, it may come some day and significantly impact the operation. Mineral rights not conveyed can also be a time bomb waiting to go off in some locations.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Landowners often have little recourse when the mineral rights owner leases those rights to an energy company and the drilling rig rolls up.
Check with the county or municipality for the zoning, permitted uses, conditional use permits and the like. It’s not uncommon for tower sites to have conditional use permits or variances, and sometimes these may have time limits or triggers. If a conditional use permit has a 25-year span and it was issued 23 years ago, the buyer will have to get it renewed or find a new piece of dirt in a hurry. It’s best to figure this out before the notice arrives in the mail.
A Subsidiary of the American Corporate Empire
As one of the most resource-rich countries on earth, and the largest
single trading partner with the United States, Canada is strategically
positioned to influence the changing nature of global power
structures. Do we support – and siphon our resources for the benefit of
– the American Empire, co-operating in the wholesale plundering of the
world, the oppression and impoverishment of peoples, destruction of
global ecology, all for the benefit of an increasingly small class of
global corporations and banks… Or, do we become independent and free?
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper once said, “You won’t recognize
Canada when I get through with it.” With multiple “free trade”
agreements under way, expanded corporate rights, expropriation of vast
amounts of natural resources,Find detailed product information for Low
price howo tipper
truck and other products. Canada is becoming one of the world’s
foremost corporate colonies, unrecognizable from what Canadians once
imagined our nation to be.
Canada is the second largest country by landmass in the world, after Russia, and with roughly 10% of the population of the United States, it is also one of the most resource rich countries on the entire planet. Looking at a list of the ten most resource-rich nations on earth (determined not by the multitude, but rather the ‘market value’ of the resources they contain) is rather revealing.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? At number ten, and in descending order is: Venezuela, Iraq, Australia, Brazil, China, Iran, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Russia. Canada has one of the largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran,as well as having some of the largest mineral resource deposits in the world, with the second-largest proven reserves of uranium and the third largest amount of timber.[1] According to Statistics Canada, the nation’s natural wealth tripled in value between 1990 and 2009, then valued at $3 trillion, largely due to the increased price of oil.Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program.
In June of 2012,This is my favourite sites to purchase those special pieces of buy mosaic materials from. the United Nations released a major report in which it established a new index to account for and define ‘wealth’ beyond mere reports of GDP. Termed the “Inclusive Wealth Index” (IWI), it determines national wealth based upon three types of assets: “manufactured”, “human capital”, and “natural capital”. The study, Inclusive Wealth Report 2012, analyzed 20 different countries, and was intended to take into account depleting resources and sustainability for future generations when determining a nation’s real wealth. While GDP growth has taken place in China, the U.S., South Africa and Brazil, these nations have significantly reduced their natural capital. Between 1990 and 2008, the “natural capital” of the United States declined by 20%, 17% for China, 25% for Brazil, and 33% for South Africa. In fact, 19 out of the 20 countries studied showed a decline in natural capital, offset only by an increase in human capital.
Human capital is based upon the average years of schooling, wages that the country’s workers can demand, and how many years they are expected to work before they retire or die. With this measurement, human capital amounts to the largest percentage of a nation’s wealth,accounting for 88% of Britain’s wealth and 75% of America’s.Canada is of course included among the 19 countries with rapidly declining natural capital.
Out of the box this is a very manly phone, It is big, it is weighty, it definitely makes an impression. The design cues stem from the 'less is more' philosophy, the single piece polycarbonate body provides a clean, simple visual whilst providing a very solid feel. After using a white phone for the last 6 months the satin black finish is a welcome change.
This phone ships with one of the tidiest USB AC chargers I have ever seen. Nokia have beaten Apple at their own game, the charger is tiny, the USB cable is long and feels superior to what we have come to expect. One does have to ask the question though, why Nokia do you ship a black phone with a white charger and USB cable? The micro-sim tray will look very familiar to Apple users, as it resides in the top of the phone and requires a special tool (included) to pop the sim tray out but again some engineering excellence is highlighted as the tray design makes loading and containing the sim a very simple task.
Powering up the phone for the first time I had no idea what to expect, I had never so much as held a Windows Phone device let alone used one. Given I have had reasonable experience with Android and the Google eco-system I figured there would be some element of similarity so had already created a Microsoft Live account in anticipation. One aspect I did not expect to be so easy was integrating non-Windows accounts, after signing into my windows live account I connected two Gmail accounts, Facebook and LinkedIn also. This seamlessly integrated contacts and calendars into the native apps so literally within a few minutes I was up and operational and connected to the world. It couldn't be simpler.
Of course Windows Phone 8 is not perfect, the number of apps available in the app store highlights that it is an operating system still in its infancy.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. A bugbear for me is the notifications/tones options are relatively limited, you can apply custom ringtones but not custom email or messaging tones, also there is no independent control of volumes. I am also missing a few of the automation/productivity type apps of which I was spoilt for choice with Android. This however does lead me to some questions I have asked myself repeatedly throughout the week, do I actually need the customization that Android offers? Is it a need or a want? Does it cause more problems than it provides solutions? What is the ultimate combination of smart devices?
In rounding off this blog there is one aspect above all else that the Nokia Lumia 920 has reinforced to me over this past week and that is that it is a truly fantastic phone, putting aside that it is a very capable smart device, it is also a truly fantastic phone. In a time before smartphones being as common place as they are today, Nokia was probably the brand that most of us were most familiar with, there were few if any phones that offered that combination of call clarity, strong reception and long battery life that Nokia did so well.
The Nokia Lumia 920 looks to continue this tradition being most pleasant to actually talk on and use as a conventional phone, something often overlooked in the tech specs race. Coupled with my move across to the Telecom $59 Open Smartphone plan with 500 anytime minutes I have found myself in a position where I have plentiful minutes plus a great phone so I am tending to ring people where previously I would have just sent a text or email.
Canada is the second largest country by landmass in the world, after Russia, and with roughly 10% of the population of the United States, it is also one of the most resource rich countries on the entire planet. Looking at a list of the ten most resource-rich nations on earth (determined not by the multitude, but rather the ‘market value’ of the resources they contain) is rather revealing.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? At number ten, and in descending order is: Venezuela, Iraq, Australia, Brazil, China, Iran, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Russia. Canada has one of the largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran,as well as having some of the largest mineral resource deposits in the world, with the second-largest proven reserves of uranium and the third largest amount of timber.[1] According to Statistics Canada, the nation’s natural wealth tripled in value between 1990 and 2009, then valued at $3 trillion, largely due to the increased price of oil.Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program.
In June of 2012,This is my favourite sites to purchase those special pieces of buy mosaic materials from. the United Nations released a major report in which it established a new index to account for and define ‘wealth’ beyond mere reports of GDP. Termed the “Inclusive Wealth Index” (IWI), it determines national wealth based upon three types of assets: “manufactured”, “human capital”, and “natural capital”. The study, Inclusive Wealth Report 2012, analyzed 20 different countries, and was intended to take into account depleting resources and sustainability for future generations when determining a nation’s real wealth. While GDP growth has taken place in China, the U.S., South Africa and Brazil, these nations have significantly reduced their natural capital. Between 1990 and 2008, the “natural capital” of the United States declined by 20%, 17% for China, 25% for Brazil, and 33% for South Africa. In fact, 19 out of the 20 countries studied showed a decline in natural capital, offset only by an increase in human capital.
Human capital is based upon the average years of schooling, wages that the country’s workers can demand, and how many years they are expected to work before they retire or die. With this measurement, human capital amounts to the largest percentage of a nation’s wealth,accounting for 88% of Britain’s wealth and 75% of America’s.Canada is of course included among the 19 countries with rapidly declining natural capital.
Out of the box this is a very manly phone, It is big, it is weighty, it definitely makes an impression. The design cues stem from the 'less is more' philosophy, the single piece polycarbonate body provides a clean, simple visual whilst providing a very solid feel. After using a white phone for the last 6 months the satin black finish is a welcome change.
This phone ships with one of the tidiest USB AC chargers I have ever seen. Nokia have beaten Apple at their own game, the charger is tiny, the USB cable is long and feels superior to what we have come to expect. One does have to ask the question though, why Nokia do you ship a black phone with a white charger and USB cable? The micro-sim tray will look very familiar to Apple users, as it resides in the top of the phone and requires a special tool (included) to pop the sim tray out but again some engineering excellence is highlighted as the tray design makes loading and containing the sim a very simple task.
Powering up the phone for the first time I had no idea what to expect, I had never so much as held a Windows Phone device let alone used one. Given I have had reasonable experience with Android and the Google eco-system I figured there would be some element of similarity so had already created a Microsoft Live account in anticipation. One aspect I did not expect to be so easy was integrating non-Windows accounts, after signing into my windows live account I connected two Gmail accounts, Facebook and LinkedIn also. This seamlessly integrated contacts and calendars into the native apps so literally within a few minutes I was up and operational and connected to the world. It couldn't be simpler.
Of course Windows Phone 8 is not perfect, the number of apps available in the app store highlights that it is an operating system still in its infancy.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. A bugbear for me is the notifications/tones options are relatively limited, you can apply custom ringtones but not custom email or messaging tones, also there is no independent control of volumes. I am also missing a few of the automation/productivity type apps of which I was spoilt for choice with Android. This however does lead me to some questions I have asked myself repeatedly throughout the week, do I actually need the customization that Android offers? Is it a need or a want? Does it cause more problems than it provides solutions? What is the ultimate combination of smart devices?
In rounding off this blog there is one aspect above all else that the Nokia Lumia 920 has reinforced to me over this past week and that is that it is a truly fantastic phone, putting aside that it is a very capable smart device, it is also a truly fantastic phone. In a time before smartphones being as common place as they are today, Nokia was probably the brand that most of us were most familiar with, there were few if any phones that offered that combination of call clarity, strong reception and long battery life that Nokia did so well.
The Nokia Lumia 920 looks to continue this tradition being most pleasant to actually talk on and use as a conventional phone, something often overlooked in the tech specs race. Coupled with my move across to the Telecom $59 Open Smartphone plan with 500 anytime minutes I have found myself in a position where I have plentiful minutes plus a great phone so I am tending to ring people where previously I would have just sent a text or email.
2012年12月12日 星期三
37 Garden Road
The good bones of this turn-of-the-century Colonial were the
framework for a renovation that added all the amenities expected in a fine home
today without losing any of its original grandeur.
Built in 1907 and completely renovated in 2007 by an owner/builder, 37 Garden Road in Wellesley offers exquisite craftsmanship and style in 3,934 square feet of living space on a .62-acre corner lot.
Professionally decorated by a renowned Boston designer, the house boasts charm and sophistication in equal measure.
Located in the desirable Wellesley Farms neighborhood, the house is close to shopping in Wellesley Hills and has easy access to both train and major commuter routes.
Kathy Riley and Tom Aaron of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage have listed this 11-room home at $2,195,000.
“What is really nice about this property is that you are getting the best of both worlds with the Old World charm and the established Wellesley Farms neighborhood,” according to Riley and Aaron. They also noted that the Wellesley Farms neighborhood was originally a 100-acre farm so homes in this area typically have a little bit more land.
The house features beautiful period details such as high ceilings, stately windows, crown molding and wood floors as well as a new custom granite kitchen and six bedrooms, including a master suite with a fireplace.
The renovation added a family room with a fireplace, a lower level mudroom with a closet, a carpeted playroom, an exercise room and an oversized garage suitable for four cars. The 2007 renovation added new bathrooms throughout the house as well as all new systems and insulation.
The appeal of the house begins with the exterior which features a covered porch with a balcony, dormer windows, authentic wooden shutters and hardware, copper downspouts and exposed rafter tails in the soffits.
The front entry includes a vestibule, a charming feature of older homes, which opens to a large foyer and a turned staircase with a carved newel post and balusters. The foyer includes a powder room and is the hub of the home with access to the living room, family room and kitchen.
The formal living room has a charming Inglenook fireplace with an intricately carved mantel, generous windows, oak flooring and a French door that opens to a front-to-back sunroom with windows on all sides.
A second French door from the 10- by 28-foot sunroom opens to a dining room, a formal space with a chair rail, wide baseboards, crown molding, coffered ceiling and a built-in hutch with a leaded glass cabinet.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory.
The old-fashioned butler’s pantry updated with a sleek granite counter,High quality stone mosaic tiles. wet bar and wine fridge is a preview to the kitchen,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. which has all the modern amenities but retains the old-fashioned touches, such as brushed nickel cup-pull style hardware.
The custom kitchen cabinetry includes crown molding, glass-front detail, arched window trim, paneling on the Sub-Zero refrigerator and dishwasher and a built-in mahogany-top desk area. Granite countertops and a generous island with a built-in microwave and a clever table extension,Trade platform for China crystal mosaic manufacturers a six-burner gas cooktop with custom wood hood and double ovens by Thermador, and a pullout drawer with bins for trash and recycling are features of the large kitchen.
The 20- by 20-foot family room, a new addition, has the same generous windows that make this house full of natural light as well as a squared-off cathedral ceiling, fireplace and two double sliding French doors to a mahogany deck.
The blending of old and new continues on the second floor. There is an original built-in linen press in the wide hallway, and the renovated baths have details such as bead board paneling and hexagonal floor tiles and gleaming subway tile.
Two family bedrooms, one with a balcony and private bath and the other with an adjacent bath, and a bedroom-size laundry room with a window are on the second floor along with the master suite. The 16- by 16-foot master bedroom has a fireplace with a mantel with a carved floral medallion and fluted columns.
A dressing area includes a walk-in closet with a window and two additional his-and-her closets. The bath has a shower and a whirlpool tub, Carrara marble floor and double vanity and a pocket door to a separate the water closet.
The third floor is a delightful hideaway with high ceilings and three more bedrooms, closets and eave storage and a full bath.
A staircase from the kitchen leads to a new lower level under the family room addition. It includes a mudroom with a deep closet, side entrance to a bluestone walkway and a finished walkout basement with a playroom, exercise room and storage. There is also direct access to a tandem garage which can accommodate four cars.
Built in 1907 and completely renovated in 2007 by an owner/builder, 37 Garden Road in Wellesley offers exquisite craftsmanship and style in 3,934 square feet of living space on a .62-acre corner lot.
Professionally decorated by a renowned Boston designer, the house boasts charm and sophistication in equal measure.
Located in the desirable Wellesley Farms neighborhood, the house is close to shopping in Wellesley Hills and has easy access to both train and major commuter routes.
Kathy Riley and Tom Aaron of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage have listed this 11-room home at $2,195,000.
“What is really nice about this property is that you are getting the best of both worlds with the Old World charm and the established Wellesley Farms neighborhood,” according to Riley and Aaron. They also noted that the Wellesley Farms neighborhood was originally a 100-acre farm so homes in this area typically have a little bit more land.
The house features beautiful period details such as high ceilings, stately windows, crown molding and wood floors as well as a new custom granite kitchen and six bedrooms, including a master suite with a fireplace.
The renovation added a family room with a fireplace, a lower level mudroom with a closet, a carpeted playroom, an exercise room and an oversized garage suitable for four cars. The 2007 renovation added new bathrooms throughout the house as well as all new systems and insulation.
The appeal of the house begins with the exterior which features a covered porch with a balcony, dormer windows, authentic wooden shutters and hardware, copper downspouts and exposed rafter tails in the soffits.
The front entry includes a vestibule, a charming feature of older homes, which opens to a large foyer and a turned staircase with a carved newel post and balusters. The foyer includes a powder room and is the hub of the home with access to the living room, family room and kitchen.
The formal living room has a charming Inglenook fireplace with an intricately carved mantel, generous windows, oak flooring and a French door that opens to a front-to-back sunroom with windows on all sides.
A second French door from the 10- by 28-foot sunroom opens to a dining room, a formal space with a chair rail, wide baseboards, crown molding, coffered ceiling and a built-in hutch with a leaded glass cabinet.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory.
The old-fashioned butler’s pantry updated with a sleek granite counter,High quality stone mosaic tiles. wet bar and wine fridge is a preview to the kitchen,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. which has all the modern amenities but retains the old-fashioned touches, such as brushed nickel cup-pull style hardware.
The custom kitchen cabinetry includes crown molding, glass-front detail, arched window trim, paneling on the Sub-Zero refrigerator and dishwasher and a built-in mahogany-top desk area. Granite countertops and a generous island with a built-in microwave and a clever table extension,Trade platform for China crystal mosaic manufacturers a six-burner gas cooktop with custom wood hood and double ovens by Thermador, and a pullout drawer with bins for trash and recycling are features of the large kitchen.
The 20- by 20-foot family room, a new addition, has the same generous windows that make this house full of natural light as well as a squared-off cathedral ceiling, fireplace and two double sliding French doors to a mahogany deck.
The blending of old and new continues on the second floor. There is an original built-in linen press in the wide hallway, and the renovated baths have details such as bead board paneling and hexagonal floor tiles and gleaming subway tile.
Two family bedrooms, one with a balcony and private bath and the other with an adjacent bath, and a bedroom-size laundry room with a window are on the second floor along with the master suite. The 16- by 16-foot master bedroom has a fireplace with a mantel with a carved floral medallion and fluted columns.
A dressing area includes a walk-in closet with a window and two additional his-and-her closets. The bath has a shower and a whirlpool tub, Carrara marble floor and double vanity and a pocket door to a separate the water closet.
The third floor is a delightful hideaway with high ceilings and three more bedrooms, closets and eave storage and a full bath.
A staircase from the kitchen leads to a new lower level under the family room addition. It includes a mudroom with a deep closet, side entrance to a bluestone walkway and a finished walkout basement with a playroom, exercise room and storage. There is also direct access to a tandem garage which can accommodate four cars.
Noy while lawyer threatens the Chair Wrecker
In a December 5 communication, United
Nations Office for Disaster Reduction head, Jerry Velasquez, “praised the
improved performance of early warning systems in the Philippines as Typhoon
Bopha cut a swathe of destruction across the country resulting in over 200
deaths and significant economic losses.”
Velasquez also said: “This time last year over 1,400 people died on Mindanao in a similar event but this time big improvements in the early warning systems have saved many lives. More than 167,000 people have been evacuated to shelters.” Velasquez was obviously referring to that weather disturbance we named as Sendong.”
Velasquez singled out “the new automated rainfall and flood prediction systems as being critical to the provision of accurate forecasts and timely warnings as part of Project NOAH, introduced earlier this year by the Department of Science and Technology at the request of President Benigno S. Aquino.”
The UN official added: “The Government’s NOAH Project has enabled central government agencies, local governments and citizens to prepare and act before intense weather arrives. The project includes dissemination through television and the Internet of real-time satellite, Doppler radar, and other weather information enabling people to see not only wind speed and location of incoming weather disturbance but also the possible amount of precipitation. The Philippines is hit by about 20 typhoons each year so this is vitally important. It is also evident that since we met with local mayors in Mindanao earlier this year, practical measures have been taken on the ground to improve the alert system and communication with affected communities.”
Indeed, the improvement in disaster management in our country was made possible by the investment the government of President Benigno S. Aquino III (P-Noy) made in weather forecasting technology. Without the new technology, it’s like building a house without tools.High quality stone mosaic tiles. We’ll end up taking the word of soothsayers instead of the expert analysis of weather forecasters.
Technology is only one aspect of the enormous task to reduce disaster effects. Technology cannot go to a landslide area of Mindanao and rescue the affected and endangered families there. Soldiers died trying to do that in Mindanao during Typhoon Pablo. Technology cannot go from house to house to prod its occupants to leave for higher ground. We’ve seen in the recent past how Filipinos made it more difficult to save them by foolishly taking chances with the impending flood surge.
There’s the expression that when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. In other words, it’s under the most trying moments when we see heroes or the men of the hour emerge. As described by the Midanaoans, Typhoon Pablo was even more vicious than weather disturbance Sendong in 2011. The wind and rainfall from Typhoon Pablo were considered more intense compared to that of Typhoon Sendong that claimed as many as 1,400 lives. And yet, the government managed to reduce the casualties of Typhoon Pablo, with thanks to President Aquino III for instilling a much higher level of efficiency and commitment among those in government who are involved with disasters.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory.
Government workers’ commitment is one thing in the awesome task of coping with the effects of disasters. This would have not been feasible if the P-Noy government did not allocate enough funds for meeting the objectives. No doubt, DAANG MATUWID (Straight Path), the banner of the P-Noy administration, has produced the savings that would have been gobbled by graft and corruption. Per Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, the Philippines moved up by 24 points ? from 129th in 2011 to 105 in 2012. In 2011, the Philippines went up by 5 notches, from 134th to 129th.
A certain Atty. Lodelberto S. Parungao sent me a letter, dated November 22, with regards my November 18 column — “The truth about the Subic waste brouhaha”. Parungao claimed to be representing Rose Baldeo,The oreck XL professional air purifier, one of those at the center of the Subic controversy. They wanted me to retract certain portions of that column — or else criminal charges could be filed.
Fat chance they’ll get a retraction when my best lights tell me that everything written in that column followed the guidelines for exercising free speech. My source of information is solid — the minutes of official meetings in Subic as well as a Senate Hearing. The column was written in the pursuit of the truth and public interest and not to “defame” Mrs. Baldeo, as Atty. Parungao claimed.
Even a very corrupt judge would find it hard to find libel in that column. It was an expression of opinion on matters of general/public interest, which right or freedom is guaranteed and duly recognized by the Constitution. Former First Gentleman Mike Arroyo sued me for libel in 2005 and lost. The only reason why Mike Arroyo was not sued for damages, after my acquittal, is because he was reported to be in a very delicate health situation.
West Virginia 511 provides real-time traffic information, including congestion, crashes, construction, lane closures, road conditions and severe weather information on all of West Virginia's interstates and other major highways.
The 511 system launched one day after a gas line explosion severely damaged 800-feet of the northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 77. The heavily traveled interstate was closed for approximately 20 hours.
"I am committed to improving the safety of our roadways, and the West Virginia 511 Traveler Information System will be a valuable addition to this effort," Gov. Tomblin said. "For motorists throughout the state, having access to real-time information on traffic and road conditions before they go, provides advanced warning of road conditions and congestion that can be crucial in increasing safety on the roadways."
Motorists can receive real-time traffic updates 24 hours a day by calling 511 toll-free, visiting WV511.org,Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, downloading the free WV 511 Drive Safe mobile app for Android and iPhone, or following WV 511 on Twitter.
Mattox said the West Virginia Department of Transportation encourages drivers to "Know Before You Go" by using the West Virginia 511 system before getting behind the wheel.
"We stress Know Before You Go because knowledge of traffic conditions can save you time and contribute to a safe traveling experience," Sec.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. Mattox said. "We all know traffic conditions change and having modern technology available during your trip can make all the difference-we urge travelers to obey our law and use the technology appropriately."
By dialing 511 from any landline or mobile phone, callers will receive traffic information, road conditions and weather forecasts in addition to transfers to the Department of Tourism and neighboring states' 511 systems. West Virginia 511 also is updated with public safety alerts, including AMBER and Silver alerts.
The WV511.org [website provides an interactive map with the locations of traffic incidents, roadway construction and weather advisories. The map also allows users to view traffic cameras from around the state in addition to showing the location of electronic roadway signs and their current messages.
Velasquez also said: “This time last year over 1,400 people died on Mindanao in a similar event but this time big improvements in the early warning systems have saved many lives. More than 167,000 people have been evacuated to shelters.” Velasquez was obviously referring to that weather disturbance we named as Sendong.”
Velasquez singled out “the new automated rainfall and flood prediction systems as being critical to the provision of accurate forecasts and timely warnings as part of Project NOAH, introduced earlier this year by the Department of Science and Technology at the request of President Benigno S. Aquino.”
The UN official added: “The Government’s NOAH Project has enabled central government agencies, local governments and citizens to prepare and act before intense weather arrives. The project includes dissemination through television and the Internet of real-time satellite, Doppler radar, and other weather information enabling people to see not only wind speed and location of incoming weather disturbance but also the possible amount of precipitation. The Philippines is hit by about 20 typhoons each year so this is vitally important. It is also evident that since we met with local mayors in Mindanao earlier this year, practical measures have been taken on the ground to improve the alert system and communication with affected communities.”
Indeed, the improvement in disaster management in our country was made possible by the investment the government of President Benigno S. Aquino III (P-Noy) made in weather forecasting technology. Without the new technology, it’s like building a house without tools.High quality stone mosaic tiles. We’ll end up taking the word of soothsayers instead of the expert analysis of weather forecasters.
Technology is only one aspect of the enormous task to reduce disaster effects. Technology cannot go to a landslide area of Mindanao and rescue the affected and endangered families there. Soldiers died trying to do that in Mindanao during Typhoon Pablo. Technology cannot go from house to house to prod its occupants to leave for higher ground. We’ve seen in the recent past how Filipinos made it more difficult to save them by foolishly taking chances with the impending flood surge.
There’s the expression that when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. In other words, it’s under the most trying moments when we see heroes or the men of the hour emerge. As described by the Midanaoans, Typhoon Pablo was even more vicious than weather disturbance Sendong in 2011. The wind and rainfall from Typhoon Pablo were considered more intense compared to that of Typhoon Sendong that claimed as many as 1,400 lives. And yet, the government managed to reduce the casualties of Typhoon Pablo, with thanks to President Aquino III for instilling a much higher level of efficiency and commitment among those in government who are involved with disasters.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory.
Government workers’ commitment is one thing in the awesome task of coping with the effects of disasters. This would have not been feasible if the P-Noy government did not allocate enough funds for meeting the objectives. No doubt, DAANG MATUWID (Straight Path), the banner of the P-Noy administration, has produced the savings that would have been gobbled by graft and corruption. Per Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, the Philippines moved up by 24 points ? from 129th in 2011 to 105 in 2012. In 2011, the Philippines went up by 5 notches, from 134th to 129th.
A certain Atty. Lodelberto S. Parungao sent me a letter, dated November 22, with regards my November 18 column — “The truth about the Subic waste brouhaha”. Parungao claimed to be representing Rose Baldeo,The oreck XL professional air purifier, one of those at the center of the Subic controversy. They wanted me to retract certain portions of that column — or else criminal charges could be filed.
Fat chance they’ll get a retraction when my best lights tell me that everything written in that column followed the guidelines for exercising free speech. My source of information is solid — the minutes of official meetings in Subic as well as a Senate Hearing. The column was written in the pursuit of the truth and public interest and not to “defame” Mrs. Baldeo, as Atty. Parungao claimed.
Even a very corrupt judge would find it hard to find libel in that column. It was an expression of opinion on matters of general/public interest, which right or freedom is guaranteed and duly recognized by the Constitution. Former First Gentleman Mike Arroyo sued me for libel in 2005 and lost. The only reason why Mike Arroyo was not sued for damages, after my acquittal, is because he was reported to be in a very delicate health situation.
West Virginia 511 provides real-time traffic information, including congestion, crashes, construction, lane closures, road conditions and severe weather information on all of West Virginia's interstates and other major highways.
The 511 system launched one day after a gas line explosion severely damaged 800-feet of the northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 77. The heavily traveled interstate was closed for approximately 20 hours.
"I am committed to improving the safety of our roadways, and the West Virginia 511 Traveler Information System will be a valuable addition to this effort," Gov. Tomblin said. "For motorists throughout the state, having access to real-time information on traffic and road conditions before they go, provides advanced warning of road conditions and congestion that can be crucial in increasing safety on the roadways."
Motorists can receive real-time traffic updates 24 hours a day by calling 511 toll-free, visiting WV511.org,Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, downloading the free WV 511 Drive Safe mobile app for Android and iPhone, or following WV 511 on Twitter.
Mattox said the West Virginia Department of Transportation encourages drivers to "Know Before You Go" by using the West Virginia 511 system before getting behind the wheel.
"We stress Know Before You Go because knowledge of traffic conditions can save you time and contribute to a safe traveling experience," Sec.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. Mattox said. "We all know traffic conditions change and having modern technology available during your trip can make all the difference-we urge travelers to obey our law and use the technology appropriately."
By dialing 511 from any landline or mobile phone, callers will receive traffic information, road conditions and weather forecasts in addition to transfers to the Department of Tourism and neighboring states' 511 systems. West Virginia 511 also is updated with public safety alerts, including AMBER and Silver alerts.
The WV511.org [website provides an interactive map with the locations of traffic incidents, roadway construction and weather advisories. The map also allows users to view traffic cameras from around the state in addition to showing the location of electronic roadway signs and their current messages.
Virtual heart predicts real cardiac risks
Authors of the new study, published in the
Journal of the American College of Cardiology, say this is the first report of
cardiac modeling being used as an arrhythmic risk predictor for patients and
paves the way for the use of more complex models to calculate the consequences
of genetic, lifestyle, and other changes to the heart.
“This is a strong proof-of-principle study showing that computer simulation can be used to predict risk of cardiac arrhythmias,” says Coeli M. Lopes, lead study author and assistant professor at the at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “With this model we can determine the influence of a single mutation on the much bigger overall response of the heart.”
With this study under their belts, the research team is pursuing a more sophisticated model of the whole human heart.
They plan to predict the effects of new drugs on the electrical activity of the heart—one of the most challenging hurdles in the development of new drugs and an extremely important part of keeping potentially dangerous drugs off the market.
The computer model, designed by IBM scientists Matthias Reumann,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. and J. Jeremy Rice,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, includes 192 heart cells made to function electrically like the ventricle wall by assigning varying properties to cells based on their position—inside, middle, or outside—in the heart wall.
The scientists used canine cardiac cells as a guide, adapting the model cells to act more like ours based on extensive data on the electrical properties of the human heart. In the end, the simulation requires the solution of more than 100,000 complex mathematical equations at least 1,000 times over just to simulate a single heartbeat.
The team turned to more than 600 patients with Long QT syndrome type 1—an inherited disorder that puts patients at greater risk of arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death—to help test the model.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale agate beads from china, Patients were drawn from Long QT syndrome registries from the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden.
Patients with the disorder have mutations in a specific gene, KCNQ1, which helps heart cells appropriately generate and transmit electrical signals. The study used 34 different mutations to the gene, identified with patient blood samples and genetic tests. To better understand the characteristics of each mutation—how they act and the defects they cause—the team recreated all of the mutant proteins in the lab and tested them in various cell lines.
Researchers plugged each mutation’s electrical profile into the model to simulate the mutation’s effect on the heart wall. The model produced a one-dimensional, transmural (across the heart wall) electrocardiogram or ECG for each mutation, which predicts how the mutation influences the electrical properties of the heart wall as it is excited and relaxes after each beat.
When the team compared this information to patient data, analyses revealed that mutations the model predicted would strongly prolong repolarization—the time it takes for the heart wall to recover after each beat—put patients at greater risk of potentially life-threatening events. For every 10 milliseconds that repolarization was delayed a patient’s risk of sudden cardiac death or aborted cardiac arrest rose by approximately one third.
This risk is separate from the increased risk observed for patients that show a very prolonged repolarization on traditional ECGs, when electrodes are placed on the skin and attached to a machine that records the heart’s electrical signals. They suggest that the computer simulation may reflect a lifelong risk of heart rhythm problems, while the conventional ECG may show only a single point in time.
They identified four high-risk mutations that were predicted to have particularly extended repolarization periods and determined that patients with these mutations experienced the greatest number of cardiac events.
The results show that a relatively simple model, used in the right hands with the proper experimental data, can give insight into complex ECGs from real patients. “Using this model, we can predict the likelihood that an individual will experience a deadly cardiac event based on the type of mutation they have and how that mutation acts,” notes Lopes.
Rice, a seasoned cardiac modeler that led the IBM team,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, adds, “This is a very powerful study because we used so many different mutations. Oftentimes, scientists will study only one mutation at a time, and the research community remains unconvinced as the right answer may have come by luck. By comparing our results to so much patient data, we’ve shown that you can get meaningful information out of computer models, hopefully paving the way for wider acceptance and use in the medical community.”
The research has shown that the location of a mutation plays an important role in assessing risk, but this is the first time scientists have used the function of a mutation to identify patients at higher risk, says Arthur Moss, a study author and longtime professor of Cardiology at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
“This kind of movement, from identifying a mutation, to locating where it is, and now to evaluating how the mutation functions, is going to happen in every area of medicine, from heart disease to cancer,” says Moss, an expert on electrical disturbances of the heart.
“This type of knowledge is going to help us better predict risk for each individual patient and provide more aggressive prevention and treatment strategies for those who need it.”
Moss adds that the research exemplifies a strong trend in medicine where practitioners are moving away from diagnosing disease primarily by signs and symptoms and instead focusing more on the basic genetic aspects of specific ailments.
Computer models of the human heart have been in development since the 1960s, but the authors believe they are the first to publish a study demonstrating that they can be used to generate clinically relevant information that predicts patient risk.
Lopes and Rice, along with Jean-Phillippe Couderc, a biomedical engineer and cardiology researcher at the Medical Center,Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology. are taking their model to the next level with the use of IBM’s next generation supercomputer, the Blue Gene/Q, which was recently installed in the University of Rochester’s Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation.
It is one of the most powerful and efficient computer systems in the world and enables scientists to sift through mountains of data and create complex models. The team plans on using the supercomputer to generate a gender-specific model to better understand which drugs may cause lethal disruptions of the heart’s electrical activity.
“This is a strong proof-of-principle study showing that computer simulation can be used to predict risk of cardiac arrhythmias,” says Coeli M. Lopes, lead study author and assistant professor at the at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “With this model we can determine the influence of a single mutation on the much bigger overall response of the heart.”
With this study under their belts, the research team is pursuing a more sophisticated model of the whole human heart.
They plan to predict the effects of new drugs on the electrical activity of the heart—one of the most challenging hurdles in the development of new drugs and an extremely important part of keeping potentially dangerous drugs off the market.
The computer model, designed by IBM scientists Matthias Reumann,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. and J. Jeremy Rice,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, includes 192 heart cells made to function electrically like the ventricle wall by assigning varying properties to cells based on their position—inside, middle, or outside—in the heart wall.
The scientists used canine cardiac cells as a guide, adapting the model cells to act more like ours based on extensive data on the electrical properties of the human heart. In the end, the simulation requires the solution of more than 100,000 complex mathematical equations at least 1,000 times over just to simulate a single heartbeat.
The team turned to more than 600 patients with Long QT syndrome type 1—an inherited disorder that puts patients at greater risk of arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death—to help test the model.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale agate beads from china, Patients were drawn from Long QT syndrome registries from the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden.
Patients with the disorder have mutations in a specific gene, KCNQ1, which helps heart cells appropriately generate and transmit electrical signals. The study used 34 different mutations to the gene, identified with patient blood samples and genetic tests. To better understand the characteristics of each mutation—how they act and the defects they cause—the team recreated all of the mutant proteins in the lab and tested them in various cell lines.
Researchers plugged each mutation’s electrical profile into the model to simulate the mutation’s effect on the heart wall. The model produced a one-dimensional, transmural (across the heart wall) electrocardiogram or ECG for each mutation, which predicts how the mutation influences the electrical properties of the heart wall as it is excited and relaxes after each beat.
When the team compared this information to patient data, analyses revealed that mutations the model predicted would strongly prolong repolarization—the time it takes for the heart wall to recover after each beat—put patients at greater risk of potentially life-threatening events. For every 10 milliseconds that repolarization was delayed a patient’s risk of sudden cardiac death or aborted cardiac arrest rose by approximately one third.
This risk is separate from the increased risk observed for patients that show a very prolonged repolarization on traditional ECGs, when electrodes are placed on the skin and attached to a machine that records the heart’s electrical signals. They suggest that the computer simulation may reflect a lifelong risk of heart rhythm problems, while the conventional ECG may show only a single point in time.
They identified four high-risk mutations that were predicted to have particularly extended repolarization periods and determined that patients with these mutations experienced the greatest number of cardiac events.
The results show that a relatively simple model, used in the right hands with the proper experimental data, can give insight into complex ECGs from real patients. “Using this model, we can predict the likelihood that an individual will experience a deadly cardiac event based on the type of mutation they have and how that mutation acts,” notes Lopes.
Rice, a seasoned cardiac modeler that led the IBM team,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, adds, “This is a very powerful study because we used so many different mutations. Oftentimes, scientists will study only one mutation at a time, and the research community remains unconvinced as the right answer may have come by luck. By comparing our results to so much patient data, we’ve shown that you can get meaningful information out of computer models, hopefully paving the way for wider acceptance and use in the medical community.”
The research has shown that the location of a mutation plays an important role in assessing risk, but this is the first time scientists have used the function of a mutation to identify patients at higher risk, says Arthur Moss, a study author and longtime professor of Cardiology at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
“This kind of movement, from identifying a mutation, to locating where it is, and now to evaluating how the mutation functions, is going to happen in every area of medicine, from heart disease to cancer,” says Moss, an expert on electrical disturbances of the heart.
“This type of knowledge is going to help us better predict risk for each individual patient and provide more aggressive prevention and treatment strategies for those who need it.”
Moss adds that the research exemplifies a strong trend in medicine where practitioners are moving away from diagnosing disease primarily by signs and symptoms and instead focusing more on the basic genetic aspects of specific ailments.
Computer models of the human heart have been in development since the 1960s, but the authors believe they are the first to publish a study demonstrating that they can be used to generate clinically relevant information that predicts patient risk.
Lopes and Rice, along with Jean-Phillippe Couderc, a biomedical engineer and cardiology researcher at the Medical Center,Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology. are taking their model to the next level with the use of IBM’s next generation supercomputer, the Blue Gene/Q, which was recently installed in the University of Rochester’s Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation.
It is one of the most powerful and efficient computer systems in the world and enables scientists to sift through mountains of data and create complex models. The team plans on using the supercomputer to generate a gender-specific model to better understand which drugs may cause lethal disruptions of the heart’s electrical activity.
Pierce Artist Residency debuts with “Lean Back”
Her train ride on Amtrak from
Brattleboro, Vt., to New Haven, Conn., started out like any other. Bronwyn Sims
— an actor, acrobat, choreographer and educator — was on her way to the Yale
Repertory Theatre at Yale University to work as an aerial consultant on a
production of “The Master Builder” by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. But
Sims said her journey that September day in 2010 came to an unexpected halt in
Massachusetts where she came face-to-face with tragedy.
“In Leverett, Mass., I felt the train start to slow down. I knew something was wrong,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals.” said Sims, who still resides Brattleboro, Vt. “We were stopped at that location for about five hours. A young boy had jumped in front of the train, and as we know now committed suicide.”
Sims said she has never forgotten the sequence of events on that day. In an instant, a young boy’s life had intersected with her own.
“It’s like when you drop a pebble in a pond and it has a reverberating effect,” Sims said.Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors.High quality stone mosaic tiles. “That day got me thinking about life and death and how every day we have the responsibility to engage and touch others’ lives or not.”
Sims’ real-life journey on Amtrak has since inspired a solo theater production that combines dance, physical skill and comedy to tell a story about life, loss, love and ambition. “Lean Back” is a work in progress, which will be performed for the first time this Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Warehouse Theatre at Franklin Pierce University.Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. The event is free and open to the public, with an artist reception to follow.
For the past week, Sims has workshopped “Lean Back” at the Warehouse Theatre as a part of a new initiative through the university’s Department of Theater Arts and Dance called Pierce Artist Residency. The residency program, which launched this fall, provides an opportunity for FPU students and the Monadnock region’s residence to interact with working professionals in the arts through public performances, guest artist visits, master classes and artist talks on campus, according to Mark O’Maley, the FPU theater professor who founded the program.
While students have had the opportunity to attend artist talks on campus this semester, O’Maley said “Lean Back” will be the first public performance associated with the program. “Lean Back” is financially supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts and Vermont Community Foundation.
In the Pierce Artist Residency program, professional artists have the opportunity to use the university’s theater, sound equipment and lightening to workshop their creative pieces. In exchange, they are asked to return to FPU later on to help teach a master class. “Right now we don’t have the budget for professionals to come in, but we do have space,” O’Maley said. “I can have artists come in for free and, in exchange, they will return the following semester to work with students. We’re trading off.”
The residency program also gives the community the chance to visit the campus, interact with FPU faculty and students, and share in their love of art. “The university is a secret little gem in the woods and I want to connect the communities more to that,” he said.
For Sims to help the university debut the residency program to the community is a real treat, O’Maley said. Her credits include New York City Opera at Lincoln Center, National Black Theatre of Harlem in New York City, American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., as well as a European tour with Sandglass Theatre of Putney, Vt.
In “Lean Back,” Sims said she is challenging herself with a solo piece, in which she assumes the role of many characters to tell the story of three people: Sims, the young boy and the master builder. The master builder, who is in his mid- to late-40s and is based on Ibsen’s character from the play by the same name,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. is an aging architect fearful that the young generation will rise up and cast him aside.
While there are subtle connections between the three main characters and the life challenges they face, Sims said that on a deeper level the piece is about the meaning of life and the choices one makes.
Sims, who has been performing since she was a child, said there are not enough opportunities for artists to work in residency and that she is thankful to O’Maley and the university for helping her advance her latest work.
“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” Sims. “[Residencies] help artists dig into their work and help give them the courage to put an unfinished piece out there for the community to critique.”
While we “in the industry” talk about the limitations of “ten blue links” and other perceived Google mobile shortcomings it’s not at all clear that the public believes that mobile search is “broken” or that it needs alternatives to Google on mobile devices. One potential counterpoint to that assertion is the fact that smartphone owners often bypass Google or mobile search and go directly to trusted apps to get the information they need.
On the PC most people start at Google, even to navigate to known sites. This behavior has been bitterly described by some publishers and brands as a “Google toll” or “Google tax” because users often click on paid ads for the intended brand or site. Publishers are compeled to pay for customers and users they already ”own” in many cases. That navigational query behavior is almost typically absent in a smartphone context where users have dedicated apps installed.
Google’s adaptations to mobile devices have included the creation of a Siri-like voice search experience, as mentioned, more “answers” in the form of knowledge graph content and information “cards”. Google Now is the company’s own version of “predictive” or persistent search, which presents these info-cards in response to temporal or environmental cues. In fact Grokr is being described as “Google Now for iOS.”
As more “big data” and “ambient” information are collected by smartphones and utilized by companies and apps, predictive search will get better. Google Now can be very impressive but it can also be wrong. Expect much more development in this area.
Another interesting variation on predictive search is Expect Labs‘ MindMeld iPad video chat app. In partnership with Nuance, which also front-ends Siri, MindMeld uses natural language understanding to offer search results and content in real time in response to the content of conversations. On a more sophisticated level it’s like what Google is doing by matching ads in Gmail to the content of emails.
As people chat on the Face Time-like app the machine mines the content of the conversation and offers information and suggestions. For example, a conversation about where to go to dinner in San Francisco would yield data about San Francisco but also produce a list of restaurants. None of this involves the formal input of a query into a search box.
The Expect Labs technology is very interesting and has lots of enterprise applications (think customer care). MindMeld is merely one expression of the underlying technology. Below is a video of MindMeld and how its “search” function works.
“In Leverett, Mass., I felt the train start to slow down. I knew something was wrong,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals.” said Sims, who still resides Brattleboro, Vt. “We were stopped at that location for about five hours. A young boy had jumped in front of the train, and as we know now committed suicide.”
Sims said she has never forgotten the sequence of events on that day. In an instant, a young boy’s life had intersected with her own.
“It’s like when you drop a pebble in a pond and it has a reverberating effect,” Sims said.Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors.High quality stone mosaic tiles. “That day got me thinking about life and death and how every day we have the responsibility to engage and touch others’ lives or not.”
Sims’ real-life journey on Amtrak has since inspired a solo theater production that combines dance, physical skill and comedy to tell a story about life, loss, love and ambition. “Lean Back” is a work in progress, which will be performed for the first time this Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Warehouse Theatre at Franklin Pierce University.Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. The event is free and open to the public, with an artist reception to follow.
For the past week, Sims has workshopped “Lean Back” at the Warehouse Theatre as a part of a new initiative through the university’s Department of Theater Arts and Dance called Pierce Artist Residency. The residency program, which launched this fall, provides an opportunity for FPU students and the Monadnock region’s residence to interact with working professionals in the arts through public performances, guest artist visits, master classes and artist talks on campus, according to Mark O’Maley, the FPU theater professor who founded the program.
While students have had the opportunity to attend artist talks on campus this semester, O’Maley said “Lean Back” will be the first public performance associated with the program. “Lean Back” is financially supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts and Vermont Community Foundation.
In the Pierce Artist Residency program, professional artists have the opportunity to use the university’s theater, sound equipment and lightening to workshop their creative pieces. In exchange, they are asked to return to FPU later on to help teach a master class. “Right now we don’t have the budget for professionals to come in, but we do have space,” O’Maley said. “I can have artists come in for free and, in exchange, they will return the following semester to work with students. We’re trading off.”
The residency program also gives the community the chance to visit the campus, interact with FPU faculty and students, and share in their love of art. “The university is a secret little gem in the woods and I want to connect the communities more to that,” he said.
For Sims to help the university debut the residency program to the community is a real treat, O’Maley said. Her credits include New York City Opera at Lincoln Center, National Black Theatre of Harlem in New York City, American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., as well as a European tour with Sandglass Theatre of Putney, Vt.
In “Lean Back,” Sims said she is challenging herself with a solo piece, in which she assumes the role of many characters to tell the story of three people: Sims, the young boy and the master builder. The master builder, who is in his mid- to late-40s and is based on Ibsen’s character from the play by the same name,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. is an aging architect fearful that the young generation will rise up and cast him aside.
While there are subtle connections between the three main characters and the life challenges they face, Sims said that on a deeper level the piece is about the meaning of life and the choices one makes.
Sims, who has been performing since she was a child, said there are not enough opportunities for artists to work in residency and that she is thankful to O’Maley and the university for helping her advance her latest work.
“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” Sims. “[Residencies] help artists dig into their work and help give them the courage to put an unfinished piece out there for the community to critique.”
While we “in the industry” talk about the limitations of “ten blue links” and other perceived Google mobile shortcomings it’s not at all clear that the public believes that mobile search is “broken” or that it needs alternatives to Google on mobile devices. One potential counterpoint to that assertion is the fact that smartphone owners often bypass Google or mobile search and go directly to trusted apps to get the information they need.
On the PC most people start at Google, even to navigate to known sites. This behavior has been bitterly described by some publishers and brands as a “Google toll” or “Google tax” because users often click on paid ads for the intended brand or site. Publishers are compeled to pay for customers and users they already ”own” in many cases. That navigational query behavior is almost typically absent in a smartphone context where users have dedicated apps installed.
Google’s adaptations to mobile devices have included the creation of a Siri-like voice search experience, as mentioned, more “answers” in the form of knowledge graph content and information “cards”. Google Now is the company’s own version of “predictive” or persistent search, which presents these info-cards in response to temporal or environmental cues. In fact Grokr is being described as “Google Now for iOS.”
As more “big data” and “ambient” information are collected by smartphones and utilized by companies and apps, predictive search will get better. Google Now can be very impressive but it can also be wrong. Expect much more development in this area.
Another interesting variation on predictive search is Expect Labs‘ MindMeld iPad video chat app. In partnership with Nuance, which also front-ends Siri, MindMeld uses natural language understanding to offer search results and content in real time in response to the content of conversations. On a more sophisticated level it’s like what Google is doing by matching ads in Gmail to the content of emails.
As people chat on the Face Time-like app the machine mines the content of the conversation and offers information and suggestions. For example, a conversation about where to go to dinner in San Francisco would yield data about San Francisco but also produce a list of restaurants. None of this involves the formal input of a query into a search box.
The Expect Labs technology is very interesting and has lots of enterprise applications (think customer care). MindMeld is merely one expression of the underlying technology. Below is a video of MindMeld and how its “search” function works.
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