Why Do The Weeds Stay Green?
August 07, 1988
The dormant, drought-burned grass looks like straw, but the weeds perversely remain green and lush. Why? Paul Sorensen, associate professor of biological sciences at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb, explains that weeds' long roots reach down to deeper soils and moisture.
''They have survivability,'' he says. ''That's why they're weeds. Those we recognize as nuisance plants have a great range of tolerance for adverse conditions, such as wind, pests and drought.''
Plants that have a kind of photosynthesis called the C-4 photosynthetic pathway have built-in drought resistance, he explains. Most plants follow the C-3 pathway.
''Many C-4 plants are found in desert environments, closer to the equator, between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn,'' Sorensen says. ''Corn is a C-4 plant. That's why even when corn's leaves curl in the drought, they're still green.
''Crabgrass also is a C-4 plant. We usually get a midseason drought, not as bad as this, but you'll notice that crabgrass always stays green, even when the bluegrass lawn around it turns brown.''
Sorensen points to bluegrass as ''the greatest weed we have. Its adaptability is beyond belief. It's found everywhere except on high cliffs. It's present in woods where there is deep, deep shade. You don't find crabgrass in the woods.'' -


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Two bronze dōtaku (ritual bells), Yayoi period (about 300 BC-AD 300), Japan.
The origin of the dōtaku is thought to be the Chinese cattle bell. However, the Japanese did not practise cattle farming, so the first bells must have been imported as ritual objects. The fact that they are often found buried on isolated hill-sides and show evidence of having been buried and dug up several times, suggests their use in an agricultural ritual. - britishmuseum.org

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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||This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2008)|
The circumnavigation of Eastern North America by water is known as The Great Loop. Also improperly referred to as the Great Circle Route (see definition of a great circle), the trip varies from 5,000 miles to 7,500 miles depending on the options used. The boats used range from personal watercraft (jet-skis) to 60-foot yachts. Both sailboats and powerboats are used but the most common boats are 34–45 ft recreational trawlers. The main factors that govern the size of the boat are the limited draft (5 feet) in some locations on the loop and the height of one bridge (19 feet) in Chicago. People traveling The Great Loop are known as "loopers." The number of people attempting this voyage is growing with the baby boomers reaching retirement age. In 2007, more than 150 boat owners notified America's Great Loop Cruisers' Association that they were planning to attempt the loop in the coming season.
Most Great Loop cruisers travel the Loop counterclockwise, taking advantage of the downstream currents on the Illinois River, Mississippi River, Tombigbee River and Black Warrior River to Mobile, Alabama. To avoid summer hurricanes and winter ice, most Loopers head north in the spring, spend the summer in the Great Lakes region, and head south on the rivers in the fall, arriving in Florida after the beginning of November.
Starting on the east coast of Florida at Stuart the route heads north on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) along the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Chesapeake Bay offers many different locations to visit and some loopers go 95 miles up the Potomac to Washington. At the north end of Chesapeake Bay the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal connects to Delaware Bay. The Intracoastal Waterway resumes at Cape May and ends at Manasquan, New Jersey.
There is a 30-mile stretch of open Atlantic Ocean to New York harbor. From this point a few loopers continue up the coast, around the Gaspé Peninsula and up the St Lawrence River to Lake Ontario. This adds about 1,500 miles to the loop. Most loopers go up the Hudson River to Waterford and then take the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario or Lake Erie or the Champlain Canal to the St. Lawrence. Canada's Rideau Canal, built in 1832 from Ottawa to Kingston, is frequently chosen. Most loopers will take the Trent Canal from Trenton, Ontario to Port Severn on Georgian Bay. The North Channel is one of the highlights of the loop. This is the most northerly point on the loop and has the shortest season, just 8 weeks of good warm weather from July 1 to Aug 30th.
Lake Michigan is next with most loopers taking the east side of the lake to Chicago. From here it is down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, up the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, then down the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway to Mobile. The route then joins the Intracoastal Waterway going east to Carrabelle, Florida. The ICW now extends to Fort Myers where loopers can cruise the Okeechobee Waterway to Stuart on the east coast of Florida or turn south to the Keys rounding the southern tip of Florida, returning north to Stuart.
Looper culture
Many loopers retire, sell everything, and live on their boats. Some complete the loop every year with the record being nine complete Great Loops. Many spend the winters in the Bahamas on their boats. Other loopers complete the loop in stages, storing the boat at various locations while they return to work. A few take their children and home-school them on the route. Loopers who are members of the America's Great Loop Cruisers' Association (AGLCA) meet two times a year in different locations along the Great Loop. The first reunion is near Charleston, South Carolina in the spring, the second reunion is traditionally in October at Joe Wheeler State Park in Alabama. This is a very popular one. The reunions and rendezvous are organized by AGLCA. The reunions are designed to allow mixing and mingling with old friends and new members, sharing stories and tips, also include general lessons on safety, vessel safety checks and other valuable cruising information. One highlight of the events is the Looper Crawl.
The America's Great Loop Cruisers' Association assists Great Loop cruisers with various needs such as safety, sharing navigational and cruising information, and networking among loopers. The networking through the daily e-mail blast provides updates and local advice. The boaters can broadcast information requests for anything such as docking, anchoring, water depth, hazards, repairs, fuel prices or dinner reservations.
Another source of useful information is Capt. John's site with many pictures, route options, and an interactive planning map, five time Looper Capt John, gives you boat restrictions, fuel requirements and frugal options for cruising America's Great Loop.


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Public Statements
Rep. Chu Praises President Obama's Push for Gun Safety
Press Release
Location: Washington, DC
Today, President Obama announced his plan to protect America's children and communities by reducing gun violence. Following the plan's unveiling, Congresswoman Judy Chu (CA-27), a member of the House Judiciary Committee with jurisdiction over our nation's gun laws, released the following statement:
"This proposal is exactly what we need to reclaim our safety from those who commit acts of violence. President Obama put forth a compelling vision for our nation's safety. His comprehensive plan includes immediate and long-term changes to our nation's gun laws that balance protecting our Second Amendment rights and protecting our children. Now is the time to get this done -- I will do all I can to pass President Obama's proposal. I urge every other member of Congress to do the same."
President Obama has proposed a four-step plan to help protect Americans from senseless gun violence:
1. Close background check loopholes to keep guns out of dangerous hands;
2. Ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines;
3. Make schools safer;
4. Increase access to mental health services.
In addition to the legislative steps that President Obama is calling on Congress to pass, his plan also includes 23 steps that can be taken unilaterally through executive action.
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text: Featuring more than 500 photos and maps, this is the first comprehensive, research-based history of Navajo weavings with imagery inspired by tribal sacred practices. These Yei, Yeibichai, and sandpainting textiles have been the most sought after by collectors and the least studied by scholars. In spite of their iconography, they never served a ceremonial function. They were created by Navajo women at the instigation of Anglo traders, for sale to wealthy collectors willing to pay premium prices for their perceived spiritual symbolism. This book describes the historical and artistic development of the genre from its controversial emergence around 1900, to the _PHONE_ period of intense creativity, and concluding with the contemporary search for innovative patterns. Never-before-published weavings, detailed annotations, and an extensive bibliography make this an invaluable reference for scholars and collectors, and a fascinating exploration for all who are interested in the Southwest and its native cultures.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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We systematically investigate stress-strain behavior of ferrite and bainite with nano-sized vanadium carbides in low carbon steels; the ferrite samples were obtained through austenite/ferrite transformation accompanied with interphase precipitation and the bainite samples were via austenite/bainite transformation with subsequent aging. The stress-strain curves of both samples share several common features, i.e. high yield stress, relatively low work hardening and sufficient tensile elongation. Strengthening contributions from solute atoms, grain boundaries, dislocations and precipitates are calculated based on the structural parameters, and the calculation result is compared with the experimentally-obtained yield stress. The contributions from solute atoms and grain boundaries are simply additive, whereas those from dislocations and precipitates should be treated by taking the square root of the sum of the squares of two values. Nano-sized carbides may act as sites for dislocation multiplication in the early stage of deformation, while they may enhance dislocation annihilation in the later stage of deformation. Such enhanced dynamic recovery might be the reason for a relatively large elongation in both ferrite and bainite samples.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
- Ceramics and Composites
- Polymers and Plastics
- Metals and Alloys


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Before you can talk about the origins of gold farming, you have to talk about the history of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) — they're the main marketplace for gold farming. MMOGs are games in which thousands, or even millions, of people interact simultaneously over an Internet connection. They got their start in the late 1980s, when networked mainframes were set up to run text-based games known as multi-user dungeons (MUDs) [source: Heeks]. Much like modern MMOGs, MUDs were set in fantasy worlds and featured virtual objects like currency, weapons and armor.
Advancements in technology led to an explosion of graphics-based MMOGs by the late 1990s, including games like "Ultima Online," "EverQuest" and "Lineage." Such role-playing games (RPGs)— a type of MMOG in which players navigate characters through virtual worlds and perform tasks or quests — remain quite popular. Analysts projected the well-known massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) "World of Warcraft" would boast 8.2 million subscribers at the end of 2015 [source: SuperData].
Gold farming has been a part of MMOGs from the beginning. Players of the text-based MUDs were the first to trade virtual currency and other items for real money, though not nearly on the scale it's done today. The practice really took off in 1999 when players began using the new online trading platform eBay to sell virtual goods. Winning bidders would meet the seller in the game, and the items would be traded in the virtual world. Soon, opportunistic entrepreneurs realized there was real money to be made in virtual commerce and set up businesses to create and sell video game wealth. And they've been quite successful: By 2009, these third-party transactions accounted for an estimated $3.023 billion [source: Lehdonvirta and Ernkvist].


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Online chemistry resources have expanded dramatically in the past few years with resources such as PubChem, ChEBI, Wikipedia, ChemSpider and many others offering rich resources to scientists seeking data and information. ChemSpider has become one of the primary chemistry portals delivering a heterogeneous mix of Open and Closed data. ChemSpider offers a structure-centric community for collaboration enabling the crowd-sourced deposition and validation of online chemistry data. ChemSpider has also been integrated into the ChemMantis system – CHEMistry Markup And Nomenclature Transformation Integrated System. This platform facilitates entity extraction of science related terms using both heuristics and highly curated dictionaries. The resulting documents are marked up to allow viewing of chemical structures linked out to over 200 different data sources via the ChemSpider database.
Clipping is a handy way to collect important slides you want to go back to later.


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Huang, Shaoping (China University of Geosciences) | Yan, Echuan (China University of Geosciences) | Li, Xingming (China University of Geosciences) | Liu, Xuyao (China University of Geosciences) | Chen, Qian (China University of Geosciences) | Yang, Kai (China University of Geosciences)
ABSTRACT: The anti-dumping layered rock slope is a common type of slope with various deformation and failure modes, complicated mechanics mechanism and many influencing factors. Through utilizing 3DEC to research on deformation and failure of toppling rock slope in 3D, "curved book dumping" mode under the condition of two free faces was proposed, and based on "Cantilever Theory", a mechanical model was established for stress analysis. The action law of Geometry and structure characteristic parameters can be concluded from the research: deformation displacement of slope increases as slope height, slope angle and joint inclination increase; the displacement decreases as the included angle between the joint surface and the free face decreases; the largest deformation displacement of the slope appears either when the angle between the two free faces is 90°or when the joint spacing is 1.5m. The sensitivity sorting is concluded through orthogonal test on numerical simulation results: joint inclination angle > slope height > cut slope angle > angle of two free surface > angle between slope surfaces > layer thickness > included angle between the joint surface and the free face.
The anti-tilted slope refers to the slope that the strike of the rock strata is close to the trend of the slope, and the inclination of the slope is opposite to the slope. The dumping deformation is a typical failure form of rock slope. A method to analyze the stability of slopes based on the principle of limit equilibrium was proposed (Goodman et al, 1976). Many scholars have further developed and studied on the basis of Goodman's theory (ZANBAK C, 1983; AYDAN O et al, 1989; KLICHE CA, 1999; LIU C H et al, 2009; LIU C H et al, 2008; Hai Feng LU et al, 2012). A large number of scholars have conducted detailed studies on formation mechanism, criterion of instability, influencing factors and possible instability modes of anti-incline rock slopes by means of geological analysis, numerical simulation, physical simulation and modern scientific theory(Dong Xing CHENG et al, 2005; Xi Jie YIN et al, 2007; Bao Cheng ZUO et al, 2005). However, at present, the study is conducted under the condition of one free surface to research on the formation mechanism of anti-dip slope from a two-dimensional perspective (Bei Chuan HAN et al, 1999; Nichol S L,Hungr O and Evans S G, 2002; Ji Liang ZHU et al, 2001; Fa Quan WU et al,1997). Only a few scholars have studied the deformation and failure of anti-dip slope under the condition of two free surfaces (YOON W S et al, 2002: Liang Qing WANG et al, 2011: Jun QIU et al, 2016). In practical engineering, there may exist multiple free surfaces for the anti-dumping rock slope, and the slope is a spatial geometry. So the study should be conducted on the anti-incline rock slope in three-dimensional space, in this paper, 3DEC is used to study the genetic mechanism of the anti-tilting layered rock slope with different faces. The dumping deformation of the anti-inclined bedded rock slope is affected by many factors, a large number of scholars have studied the relationship between the stability of anti-dip slope and factors such as slope angle, rock dip, slope height, rock thickness and other factors (Dong Xing CHENG et al, 2005: Bei Chuan HAN et al. 1999: Jun QIU et al. 2016).


Naturelly Juicy Jelly Pouch range with Vitamin C
Fun for Kids. Come and play with us!
We want to help parents encourage their Naturelly curious kids to have fun, live healthy and grow up Naturelly brilliant. We believe every child deserves an active, well-balanced childhood full of imaginative play. Play outdoors and do these nature inspired things together!
Play Outdoors!
Be inspired by nature and enjoy these must-do things that are fun for kids and parents to do together!
Roll down a really big hill
Go on nature trails
Fly a kite
Build a Den
Hunt for creepy crawlies
Create some wild art
Create a garden theatre
Build a sandcastle
Go stream dipping


Can I Drink Wine If I'm Taking an Antihistamine?
You should never drink wine, or any other alcoholic beverage, while you are taking any antihistamines.
Image Credit: gdjukanovic/iStock/GettyImages
Although antihistamines can provide relief from allergy symptoms, taking an antihistamine and alcohol together may trigger some unwelcome side effects. You could become extremely drowsy and find it difficult to concentrate.
You should never drink wine or any other alcoholic beverage while you are taking any antihistamines. The medication and alcohol can make you drowsy, creating a potentially dangerous combination, says the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Determining the Function of Antihistamines
Officially known as hay fever or allergic rhinitis, seasonal allergies result when trees, grass and other vegetation release pollen particles into the air, notes the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
When some of those airborne particles (or allergens) enter your eyes, throat and nose, your body releases histamines to combat the perceived invaders. As a result, you will experience an allergic reaction. Symptoms may include congestion, sneezing, a runny or stuffy nose, itchy eyes, a chronic cough and a sore throat.
To avoid these undesirable symptoms, check your local area's pollen counts, often available from online weather service portals. When pollen readings are at their highest, minimize outdoor activities such as gardening or sports. Keep your home's windows closed, and cool your house via air conditioning placed in recirculation mode.
Although you can take medications that provide symptom relief, Harvard Health Publishing states that allergy pretreatment, or antihistamines, will result in better symptom control.
Read more: 5 Uncommon Ways to Fend Off Cold and Flu
Risks of Antihistamine and Alcohol
If you're taking an antihistamine for your seasonal allergy symptoms, it's best to avoid having a glass of wine or a cocktail, states the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. First, some medications, including cold and allergy drugs, contain multiple ingredients that can react with alcohol. If the medication label isn't clear, consult with your pharmacist about the potentially negative effects of combining the two substances.
Some seemingly innocuous medications, including many over-the-counter drugs, can interact negatively with alcohol. Certain herbal remedies, often publicized as having beneficial effects for varied health conditions, can also be harmful when taken with any type of alcoholic beverage.
Some antihistamines have been shown to cause drowsiness and sleepiness, while alcohol often produces the same effects. Combining an antihistamine and alcohol will likely magnify your sleepiness and drowsiness. Excessive sleepiness makes it tough to concentrate or perform work and driving or operating machinery could be especially dangerous.
Finding the Right Antihistamine
With numerous antihistamines on the market, finding the right one for you might take some time. Some antihistamines work for four to six hours, while others are designed to be effective for 12 to 24 hours, says the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Some antihistamines are formulated to contain a decongestant that should put a halt to your runny nose.
Certain antihistamines are designed to trigger less feelings of sleepiness than others but, regardless of your medication choice, always avoid alcohol when you're taking an antihistamine.
Claritin is the brand name of the antihistamine loratadine. This widely used drug has become well known as an allergy, cold and flu medication, notes the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
As is the case with other antihistamines, mixing Claritin and alcohol can make you very drowsy. You might also feel dizzy, and face a higher risk of medication overdose. Claritin and alcohol can be a very dangerous combination.
Read more: 8 Foods That Boost Your Immune System
A Zyrtec alcohol mix is equally hazardous, states the University of Rochester Medical Center. Known generically as cetirizine, Zyrtec has also become a prominent player in the antihistamine market. To avoid potentially dangerous Zyrtec alcohol interactions, you should refrain from consuming wine, beer or other alcoholic drinks while taking this antihistamine.
Although most antihistamines can make you feel drowsy, Zyrtec-D is an exception, notes the Mayo Clinic. This dual-purpose medication combines cetirizine and pseudoephedrine, a decongestant often used to treat seasonal allergy symptoms. Zyrtec-D's decongestant component could potentially cause you to have trouble obtaining restful sleep. If that's the case, take each day's final dose several hours before bedtime.
Is This an Emergency?


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layer of cells, while stratified epithelia have more than one. Squamous means the cells are flat, like fried eggs. Cuboidal means square-ish in appearance (cells are 3D, but look 2D under the microscope). Columnar means the cells are tall (like columns).
Figure 2.7: Simple squamous epithelia (endothelia) forming the walls of capillaries.
Simple squamous epithelia
If you look at the lining of a capillary, you might be able to see the simple squamous epithelium that lines the inner surface. These cells, called endothelial cells, are functionally really cool cells, even if they are hard to see. Normally, endothelial cells keep blood inside of a capillary, but they can become damaged, such as during probing, flossing or coughing.
Figure 2.8: Simple cuboidal epithelia, histology and illustration. Legend: cuboidal epithelial cells (pink). underlying connective tissue (light blue) and lumen of tubes (white).
Simple cuboidal epithelia
Simple cuboidal epithelia line most exocrine gland ducts, such as sweat and salivary glands. In Fig 2.8, you should see two ducts coming out towards the camera, and one duct running side-to-side. The lumen of each duct is lined by a simple cuboidal epithelium. The cuboidal cells in the epithelium are connected to their neighbors on the sides by anchoring junctions. Where two ducts get close together, it is two simple cuboidal epithelia, not one stratified one, there are two separate layers of epithelia, with a little ground substance between them. Stratified cuboidal epithelia exist, such as in parts of the parotid salivary gland, but they are rare enough that we can skip them. The capillaries in Fig. 2.7 are lined by flat cells to allow for diffusion of nutrients out of the capillary and waste products in, while salivary ducts in Fig. 2.8 have thicker cells to keep saliva from leaking out and dissolving connective tissues of the face.
Figure 2.9: Histology of a simple columnar epithelium (highly folded), with illustrations highlighting the columnar cells (pink), goblet cells (blue) and the underlying connective tissue (lighter blue).
Simple columnar epithelia
Simple columnar epithelia are not found in the adult oral cavity, but in an embryo the columnar Inner Enamel Epithelium differentiates into enamel-producing ameloblasts during embryogenesis. The cells' shape isn't important other than it helps histologists to identify these cells in a developing tooth.
Figure 2.10: Lateral view of bed, showing a cat between the basolateral surface of the comforter and the apical surface of the thin bed sheet. Image credit: "photo" by unknown is in the Public Domain, CC0
If you are looking at the illustration in Fig 2.9, you may wonder why there are fewer cartoon nucleuses than visible in the histology picture. Did the illustrator mistakenly give you a picture of a stratified columnar epithelium and try to pass it off as simple? No. When we say an epithelium is simple, it means one cell thick from apical-to-basolateral. But when we cut a tissue sample to view under the microscope, the slice may be several cells thick from side-to-side. And when we lay the tissue sample on its side, the cells that were running side-to-side are now sitting on top of one another. We have illustrated what a simple epithelium should look like if we had the ideal one-cell-thick slice of tissue. This might be a good time to bring up perspective. Epithelia form flat sheets, and in Fig. 2.9 we are looking at a (folded) sheet in cross section. Imagine slicing through your bed and looking at it from the side view. You could make out the individual, single layers of your bed sheet and comforter. Furthermore, you might note that while each is a single layer, the bed sheet is thin and the comforter is thicker. You could identify the basolateral surface of your bed sheet (the side that touches you when you sleep) and the apical surface (the side close to the comforter). In Fig. 2.10, if there was a second cat on top of the first cat, we could say the layers of cats is stratified. But if the bed sheet was covered in a single layer of cats, side-to-side and front-to-back, the layer of cats would be simple. Under the microscope, we're doing the same thing, but unfortunately cells are semi-transparent, so it gets messy. When we call this a simple epithelium in Fig. 2.9, that means there is only one pink cell between the white space (here, the lumen of the intestines) and the very light-blue space (the connective tissue, where nutrients can be absorbed into blood vessels). Those cells are thicker than cells we looked at in Fig. 2.8, but there are no columns on top of other columns.
Figure 2.11: Histology and cartoon of a stratified squamous epithelium (and a little connective tissue below)
Stratified squamous epithelia
Stratified squamous epithelia can be found in the outer lining of the skin, and the inner lining of the oral mucosa. While we have different names for the skin and the oral mucosa, if we were to name them based off of embryology, rather than superficial appearance, they would both contain a stratified squamous epithelium. Chapter 3 covers in more detail the epidermis of the skin, which is a keratinized stratified squamous epithelium. Keratin is a tough, water-resistant protein made by the main type of epithelial cell in this tissue, the keratinocyte. The stratified squamous epithelium changes at the vermilion border to less-keratinized, and the stratified squamous epithelium of the oral mucosa is either less or not keratinized. Based on that information, should we classify the vermilion zone as an extension of the labial mucosa, or as part of the skin and lips? Or is there a line in the vermilion zone that divides into a skin half and an oral mucosa half? It's times like this we could use the advice of an embryologist to inform us we shouldn't always look for lines in adult tissues, nor define borders between the skin, the vermilion and the oral mucosa based on color. If you change careers and go into proctology, use this same information down there.
Stratified cuboidal, stratified columnar and transitional epithelium
These tissues are not appearing in this textbook.
Figure 2.12: Pseudostratified epithelium, histology and cartoon. Order of appearance: epithelial cells, goblet cells, underlying connective tissue.
Ciliated pseudo-stratified columnar epithelium, or as many people say, pseudostratified epithelium, can be found in upper portions of the respiratory tract, such as lining the nasal cavity and the para-nasal sinuses. This tissue definitely deserves a different name from the stratified squamous epithelia of the skin, labia and oral mucosa. However, it probably didn't need to break the naming rules outlined in Table 2.2. A pseudostratified epithelium has more than one layer, but it is hard to count how many. As a result, someone named this tissue pseudo-stratified.
The big fat blue cells in Fig. 2.12, which don't have cilia, are goblet cells. These cells produce mucus. Goblet cells synthesize mucous proteins within their rER and secrete them, and when they attract water, they become mucus. This is very similar to ground substance, however mucus is secreted out of the body, ground substance is a part of the body. The blue coloring of the goblet cells tells us that mucous proteins do not carry the same ionic charges as most proteins found within the epithelial cells of the pseudo-stratified epithelium. Due to this difference in color, they are classified as a distinct cell– a unicellular gland found within the pseudo-stratified epithelium. But what does our friend the embryologist say? Well, the columnar cells can't become goblet cells, and the goblet cells can't become columnar cells, but they do share a common ancestor (or stem cell), so we probably should consider the goblet cells a part of the pseudo-stratified epithelium. Does it matter? No, but questions like this matter later in the book, it's good to start practicing now.
Connective tissue (CT)
Figure 2.13: Somites of an early stage embryo, from which connective (and muscle) tissue develop
General characteristics of connective tissue
Many textbooks tell you connective tissue connects 2 other tissues. That's like saying your smart-phone connects you to other people. It is technically true, but glosses over the fact these could be people you know, people you don't know, or people you don't want to know. It ignores the fact you could be communicating synchronously with people on the other side of the world, communicating asynchronously over email, accessing information from the near sum-of-all human knowledge (the internet), or reading the soph


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* Beauty queen's amputation is rare complication of septicemia
* Update: Mariana Bridi da Costa died on Jan. 24.
A Brazilian beauty queen underwent amputation of her hands and feet earlier this week, a rare and tragic consequence of a common infection.
The woman, Mariana Bridi da Costa, 20, was diagnosed with a bacterial infection that progressed to septicemia. Septicemia, which is also called bacteremia or sepsis, occurs when bacteria gets into the bloodstream. The illness is always serious and can become life-threatening very quickly. Septicemia can arise from any infection in the body, such as in the lungs, abdomen and urinary tract. News reports describe Bridi's case as a urinary tract infection caused by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This type of bacteria is usually contracted in the hospital.
Once bacteria enters the bloodstream, infection can wreak havoc. The patient often appears to have a severe case of the flu, according to information from the National Institutes of Health. A high fever, chills, rapid heart rate and rapid breathing are common. The patient can go into shock if not treated quickly, and the death rate can be as high as 50% depending on the type of bacteria. Patients are treated with antibiotics, fluids, blood pressure medication and sometimes blood products to prevent clotting.
Amputations of limbs are rare and most often occur in children and young people with septicemia because the infection causes clotting that then leads to tissue death.
Relatives of Bridi, who was a finalist to represent Brazil in the Miss World contest, emphasize that doctors are trying to save her life. A study published in September in the journal Pediatrics urges doctors not to withdraw life support in such severe cases of septicemia. The researchers studied children who underwent amputations because of meningococcal septicemia three to five years after their surgeries and found they were coping well and "had a good quality of life."
-- Shari Roan
Photo credit: Octavio Bastos / EPA


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Rolling the "RRRR"
Marc Latamie responds to The Substantial Ghost: Towards a General Exegesis of Duchamp's Artful Wordplays
by Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould's
text is very interesting and full of pleasant "interactive consonants."
Though it seems important to add Frantz Fanon's "R- assimilationist"
so to speak, to the discussion. Fanon actually devoted part of his book
"Black Skin, White Mask" (1952) to the importance of language and pronunciation.
A doctor and trained psychoanalyst, Fanon discovered an obsession of
pronouncing the letter "R" by the people from the French speaking Antilles
(Martinique and Guadeloupe). To differentiate themselves from other
black people in Paris during the 1950's and 60's, these so-called "assimiléé,"
went out of their way to pronounce the rolled "R," producing an exaggerated
sound effect. The general French black population had a tendency to
skip and not pronounce the consonant.


What Is The Real Definition Of An All-Wheel Sports Car?
The Houghton Mifflin definition of the two-seat rule seems out-of-date. Many sports cars today offer small back seats (sometimes referred to as 2+2 seating) and there is a current movement underway to increase the seating room in models long considered sports cars by most automotive experts.
Insurance companies use their formula in classifying automobiles and often the presence of two doors automatically makes any car a sports car in their eyes. This perspective, of course, is as overly simplistic as the standard dictionary approach to defining a sports car. One can certainly think of any number of two-door vehicles that fall far short of being an actual sports car. Economy cars and even larger two-door vehicles that are not built with power and performance in mind should not qualify as true sports cars.
Some car buffs will refer to high-performance muscle cars and other larger vehicles as sports cars. Others, however, distinguish these vehicles and true sports cars. These individuals will claim that a car can be a sporting car or simply sporty but still fall short of being a true sports car. Thus, regular cars may be outfitted with a sports package and/or accessories to make the car sportier, but may not fit a strict definition of a sports car.
Others will maintain that the distinction between a sports car and any other type of car lies in how the car's suspension and handling are addressed. Technical debates rage over whether various suspension packages qualify as belonging to true sports cars.
Road and Track, a leading automotive publication, summarizes the sports card definition debate with a simple observation: Ask five people the exact definition of a sports car, and you'll likely get five different answers.
There is no clear-cut definition of what is a sports car. The restrictive definitions of the past seem ill-suited to categorize today's diverse automotive offerings and common usage of the term runs contrary to most long-held definitions.
There is, however, a common thought that seems to run through almost all of the outlooks on the meaning of sports cars. If a car is designed with high performance or race-like capabilities in mind, it can probably be safely termed a sports car. Some purists may balk at such a liberal perspective, but alternative definitions fall far short of accurately distinguishing sports cars from regular production models.
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On March 30, 2007, in a groundbreaking decision, the United States Department of Commerce for the first time applied the countervailing duty law - or anti-subsidies law - to imports from the People's Republic of China. This decision, though preliminary, appears to mark a fundamental shift in the way the United States will counter unfair trade practices in China. For the first time, subsidies given to Chinese manufacturers or other producers may be offset by duties imposed at the United States border. The case is called Coated Free Sheet Paper from the People's Republic of China,1 and deals with unfair assistance provided by the Government of China ("GOC") to certain manufacturers of high-end paper products. The type of paper covered by the case is used for annual reports, glossy magazines, and high-end textbooks. While this particular determination covers only coated free sheet paper, the precedent the case may set will apply across the manufacturing sector and fundamentally alter the landscape of Sino-American trade.
The United States countervailing duty law (often referred to as the "CVD" law) is a trade remedy that provides that if a foreign government gives financial assistance, low-cost inputs, or other subsidies to foreign manufacturers, and the resulting imports injure a United States industry, duties will be imposed to offset the amount of the subsidization.2 Until the March 30, 2007 decision, however, the United States had never applied the CVD law to a non-market economy, including China. The rationale was that non-market economies did not really have what could be considered subsidies because the entire economy was directed by the government, and the economic distortion known as subsidization could not be isolated. Fair enough. The effect of this legal and economic position by the U. S. Department of Commerce and the courts in the past had been somewhat limited, however, because trade with non-market economy countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and even Russia had been small due to intrinsic economic factors. However, trade with China, and the trade deficit with China, is enormous.3 Also, the Chinese economy itself is very different from the Soviet-style economies of the 1980s. So Commerce, in its Notice of Initiation of the Coated Free Sheet Paper case, said it would look again at its policy of not applying the CVD law to non-market economies.
China itself has also made changes in its posture in the world trading system. It joined the World Trade Organization ("WTO") in 2001, and in its accession papers agreed to be bound by subsidies disciplines, including agreeing to notify its subsidies to the WTO. China also specifically agreed to an unusual provision that says when establishing comparison benchmarks to determine the fairness of such things as loan rates or input prices in a countervailing duty case, an investigating authority could look outside of China for an appropriate comparator.
The Department of Commerce sought input broadly in reviewing whether to apply the CVD law to China, including putting out a Federal Register notice requesting public comment. The Department received comments from approximately 50 parties, the large majority of whom supported applying the law to China. Among those in support were the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the AFL-CIO. Numerous individual industry representatives also supported application of the law including the American Forest & Paper Association, the American Iron and Steel Institute, Nucor, Mittal Steel USA, industry associations representing the plastics, textiles and machine tool sectors, and furniture producer groups. Agricultural producers including honey, garlic, and shrimp producers also weighed in with their support. Some parties opposed application of the CVD law to China, notably the Chinese coated free sheet paper producers and certain other U.S. importer groups.
The path to the determination in the Commerce case was not easy. On January 9, 2007, the GOC began a court action at the U.S. Court of International Trade ("CIT") to try to stop the Commerce case from even going forward. According to the GOC, Commerce's investigation was ultra vires of the countervailing duty statute because, in a 1986 decision entitled Georgetown Steel Corp. v. United States,4 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit prohibited the application of the U.S. countervailing duty law to non-market economies. In fact, however, the Federal Circuit's decision in Georgetown Steel affirmed Commerce's discretion not to apply the countervailing duty law to certain non-market economies based on its decision and analysis at that time.
The CIT denied the GOC's motion for a temporary restraining order and requested briefing on the motion for a preliminary injunction. Both the United States and NewPage opposed the preliminary injunction and moved to dismiss the GOC's complaint. They argued that the CIT lacked jurisdiction, that Commerce's decision to initiate the investigation was not "final agency action" under the APA, and that the GOC failed to make the four-part showing for preliminary injunctive relief. The CIT held a hearing on January 25, 2007 and, on March 29, 2007, dismissed the GOC's complaint for lack of jurisdiction.5 The CIT held that it lacked jurisdiction at this point because the normal statutory provision for challenging Commerce's decisions at the end of a case would provide the GOC with an adequate remedy. The CIT also did not find that it was ultra vires for Commerce to apply the CVD law to China.
The Court decision came down one day before the Commerce determination, where Commerce, using its appropriate administrative discretion and looking at a very different landscape from what it saw in Soviet-style non-market economies of the mid-80's, did in fact apply the CVD law to China. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez explained:
The China of today is not the China of years ago. Just as China has evolved, so has the range of our tools to make sure Americans are treated fairly. By acting on the petition filed last October, the United States today is demonstrating its continued commitment to leveling the playing field for American manufacturers, workers, and farmers.
The decision by Commerce triggered the contemporaneous imposition of import duties at the border, which in this case amount to 20.35 percent for one of the Chinese companies under investigation, 10.90 percent for the other company, and 18.16 percent for all other Chinese exporters of coated free sheet paper.
The subsidies found in the preliminary determination run the gamut from outright cash payments to subsidized loans and tax forgiveness. One of the largest subsidy programs identified consists of preferential loans from GOC banks to enterprises in encouraged industries such as the paper industry. Commerce also investigated numerous income tax programs for companies operating in encouraged industries or that had attracted certain minimum levels of foreign investment. Among these programs, manufacturing companies with the requisite level of foreign investment do not pay any income tax during their first two years of profitability and pay at only half the standard rate for the next three years. Commerce also found subsidy programs involving VAT rebates and tariff exemptions for the purchase of production equipment, and cash payments to companies that followed the GOC's economic plans, and for upgrading technology in order to compete with companies abroad.
In tandem with its preliminary determination, Commerce also issued a separate memorandum on the threshold issue - whether the U.S. CVD law applies to China. Commerce concluded that although the Chinese economy remained "riddled with the distortions attendant to the extensive intervention of the PRC Government," it had progressed such that it was more flexible than the Soviet-style economies of old. Unlike the economies at issue in Georgetown Steel, a subsidy in the modern Chinese economy is not simply one branch of the government giving money to another branch. Rather, the Chinese government is able to favor certain industries and enterprises over others. In addition, the right to own property and to establish private enterprises was not permitted in the Soviet economies of the 1980's. By contrast, beginning in the 1990's, China began to allow the development of private enterprise. This has resulted in an overall economy in China that presents a degree of private entrepreneurship with continued state control and guidance. Given these economic developments, Commerce reasoned it could not only identify, but also measure, subsidies provided by the Chinese government.
Looking To The Future
Commerce's decision bodes well for the United States manufacturing sector, assuming it is upheld at the final determination stage. For many years, this sector has had to compete against subsidized Chinese imports without recourse to any trade remedy law. The legal reasoning which prevented such application has now been changed, and countervailing duty cases can be pursued. In fact, many of the subsidies countervailed in the Coated Free Sheet preliminary determination - including below market interest rate policy loans, tax write-offs, and grants - are clearly available to other segments of the Chinese manufacturing base. One identifying issue is whether an industry has been labeled by the GOC as "encouraged" (which the paper industry has). If an industry is encouraged, it is easier to prove some of the elements of a countervailing duty case, such as "specificity," that is, whether the benefits are given only to a select group of favored companies. It is clear from public Chinese documents that many other industries are "encouraged" by the GOC, including the electronics, steel, textiles, and non-ferrous metals industries, light industry, chemicals, and the agricultural sector. All of these may now be subject to subsidies discipline.
The United States Department of Commerce is to be lauded for standing up for a new and important principle - the application of the countervailing duty to China. March 30, 2007 may long be remembered as the day when the United States took a significant step to revive its manufacturing base. 1 72 Fed. Reg. 17484 (April 9, 2007) (Preliminary). The case will be subject to


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Crystal Paper Crafts
Something a little more challenging for the grown ups - fold up crystals! Simply print out the template below, colour it in, then cut out and fold up! All instructions are included in the print out.
Materials you will need are:
- Print out
- Craft knife & cutting board or scissors (craft knife may give better results)
- Glue stick
- Colouring materials of your choice
Please remember to take care when using knives, scissors, or other sharp tools, and do not let children do this activity unsupervised.
3D Crystal Tower


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Research & Innovation
Omegaven saves livers
Many children who have complex intestinal surgery can't eat normally for a long time. These children are usually placed on an intravenous method of feeding called pareneteral nutrition (PN).
- PN provides the necessary nutrition for children until their digestive systems adapt and they can eat on their own.
PN has revolutionized treatment for diseases such as Hirschsprung's and short bowel syndrome. But its prolonged use often damages the liver, potentially leading to liver failure and the need for a transplant. And unfortunately, infants are at the greatest risk due to the small size of their livers.
Back in 2001, Children's surgeon Mark Puder, MD, surgical resident Jenna Garza, MD, and pharmacist Kathy Gura, PharmD, decided to conduct studies in mice to see why PN was causing liver disease.
- They found evidence that the fat used in standard PN solutions, called Intralipid, was contributing to liver disease by causing fat to accumulate in the liver.
They then tested Omegaven, an IV fat mixture made from fish oil. Fish oil contains omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to prevent fat accumulation and have anti-inflammatory properties.
- As they had hoped, PN using Omegaven as the fat prevented liver injury in the mice.
Surgeon Rusty Jennings, MD had heard of Puder's research and wanted to try Omegaven in one of his patient. Since Omegaven wasn't approved for use in the United States, Puder had to receive special permission from the FDA to use Omegaven rather than Intralipid in his PN solution.
- Within eight weeks, the baby's liver function improved so much that he was removed from the liver transplant list.
Puder later treated a second child, a premature baby whose bowel had ruptured; he too had complete resolution of liver disease. Now, more than 100 children at Children's have received Omegaven.
Puder and colleagues are now conducting a formal clinical trial aimed at preventing liver disease in PN recipients.
- Their work has caused a worldwide shift in treatment.


text: Fig 19-17. Section through a young leaf of F. chiloensis. A) stomata, B) air space, C) thick cuticle of upper leaf surface, D) upper epidermal cell, E) palisade cell, F) mesophyll cell. The interior cell surface exposed to air space is from 2.2 to 4.4 times greater than the exposed outer surface; in F. chiloensis it is about four times greater. Oxygen in the air enters through the stomata, comes in contact with the cell walls and enters the cells. Carbon dioxide and water are given off and go out through the stomata.


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The dictionary defines "pervert" as
1 a: to cause to turn aside or away from what is good or true or morally right : corrupt b: to cause to turn aside or away from what is generally done or accepted : misdirect
2 a: to divert to a wrong end or purpose : misuse b: to twist the meaning or sense of : misinterpret
Likewise, "perverse" is defined:
1 a: turned away from what is right or good : corrupt b: improper, incorrect c: contrary to the evidence or the direction of the judge on a point of law
2 a: obstinate in opposing what is right, reasonable, or accepted : wrongheaded b: arising from or indicative of stubbornness or obstinacy
3: marked by peevishness or petulance : cranky
4: marked by perversion : perverted
So when I read today at LifeSiteNews that Brazilian President Luiz Lula said that opposition to homosexuality was "perverse," in addition to recalling sayings like "the pot calling the kettle…", a passage from the Bible came to mind.
Here's what the LifeSiteNews article said:
After calling for a universal embrace of the homosexual movement, the president affirmed that "homophobia" is perhaps "the most perverse disease impregnated in the human head."
Homosexuality fits the definition of "pervert" and "perverse" because it perverts (to divert to a wrong end or purpose; misuse; turns aside from what is good and morally right) God's design–and the apparent natural function–for human sexuality and is perverse in that the act and those who promote it are being "obstinate in opposing what is right, reasonable, or accepted" and are often "marked by peevishness or petulance."
That Bible verse that came to mind? Isaiah 5:20, which says
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light
I guess those words can also simply describe the kind of world we've come to live in.
Try us out at the new location: American Clarion!


Jasmine Jafferali, MPH, ACE-CPT is a fitness and wellness manager at a major health club in Chicago. She has a diverse fitness background having worked in corporate wellness and the commercial health club setting. Her practical experience in wellness programming gives her a distinctive opportunity to teach wellness to other fitness professionals. She also advocates on bringing the fitness and medical community together through wellness and preventative programming. Jasmine specializes in women's health and wellness, focusing on preand postnatal fitness, and is a Master Trainer for Healthy Moms® Fitness and Resist-a-ball®.
March is National Nutrition Month. To remain cutting edge and competitive in today's market, you must do something to separate your business from the competition, and celebrating National Nutrition Month is one way to do that—as long as you do so properly.
While fitness professionals render fitness and exercise advice, it is important that they remain within their scope of practice. Giving nutritional advice that is outside of the USDA Food Guide Pyramid's general recommendations is not advised for fitness professionals. Despite all of the continuing education seminars and workshops that are offered for fitness professionals, they are just not qualified to create solid nutritional programs or give out supplemental advice for their clients.
Registered dietitians (RD) go through extensive training with completion of a four-year degree in a science-related field, and then they complete a nutrition program approved by the Commission on Accreditation for Dietetics Education (CADE). CADE is recognized by the United States Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education. This affirms that CADE meets national standards and is a reliable authority on the quality of nutrition and dietetics education programs. Once accepted, they must complete a minimum of 1,000 hours of supervised practice program, which includes clinical rotations, food service management, community nutrition, and public relations and marketing. After completion of the supervised practice program, RD candidates take a national examination approved by the Commission of Dietetic Registration (CDR), a national credentialing agency for the American Dietetic Association. This exam is comparable to taking a nursing board exam.
In addition to RD credentialing, many states have regulatory laws for dietitians and nutrition practitioners. Frequently, these state requirements are met through the same education and training required to become an RD. Once the dietitian has passed his/her exam, they are expected to complete 75 continuing education credits in a five-year period.
We as fitness professionals must be careful on how we label ourselves. In most states, there are no current standards, no definition and no regulatory laws for the title "nutritionist." And if medical doctors are not qualified to give out nutritional advice, it makes you think twice before we render out any nutritional advice, right?
Hiring a qualified, registered dietitian to work within your club does have its challenges.
If you are contemplating hiring a dietitian, here are five reasons why you should:
 1. Increase member services, which will make your club more competitive.
 2. Increase club services by offering products and supplements.
 3. Increase food services by offering healthy menu items or a healthier juice bar.
 4. Increase employee work time by offering a referral system for employees.
 5. Offer cutting edge, up-to-date nutritional information to members and employees.
Unsure as to whether you should hire an outside consultant or a full-time, in-house dietitian?
Five problems that may arise with outside consultants:
 1. They are client-based only and may not be available for programs and seminars.
 2. They have higher fees for programs and higher commission rates for consultations.
 3. They are not readily available for members or to address their needs.
 4. They are time-restricted because of outside obligations.
 5. They are not familiar with employees and have a difficult time building a rapport with your staff.
Five things you need to know when considering hiring a full-time dietitian:
 1. They can create innovative nutritional programs that are unique to your member population.
 2. They can give lectures that lead to one-on-one appointments.
 3. They can increase referrals to both trainers and themselves.
 4. They can provide nutritional education for employees.
 5. They are readily available to address members' needs.
However, there will be some costs involved in hiring a full-time dietitian. You will have to budget for resources to help build programs and to create and to develop brochures, handouts, educational materials, benefits, assessment forms, business cards, office space, nutrition programming software, etc. Costs will vary by facility.
Deciding to hire a dietitian can be an added-value service to your facility, your members and your employees. It not only will boost your revenues, but it will also put you ahead of major competitors. Sure, there will be trials and errors, but it is worth the solid reputation that will put you ahead of the nutrition game.


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The lineGatherDigits function initiates the buffered gathering of digits on the specified call. The application specifies a buffer in which to place the digits and the maximum number of digits to be collected.
LONG WINAPI lineGatherDigits( HCALL hCall, DWORD dwDigitModes, LPSTR lpsDigits, DWORD dwNumDigits, LPCSTR lpszTerminationDigits, DWORD dwFirstDigitTimeout, DWORD dwInterDigitTimeout );
Handle to the call on which digits are to be gathered. The application must be an owner of the call. The call state of hCall can be any state.
Digit modes to be monitored. This parameter uses one or more of the LINEDIGITMODE_ Constants.
Pointer to the buffer where detected digits are to be stored as text characters. Digits may not show up in the buffer one at a time as they are collected. Only after a LINE_GATHERDIGITS message is received should the content of the buffer be assumed to be valid. If lpsDigits is NULL, the digit gathering currently in progress on the call is terminated and dwNumDigits is ignored. Otherwise, lpsDigits is assumed to have room for dwNumDigits digits.
Number of digits to be collected before a LINE_GATHERDIGITS message is sent to the application. The dwNumDigits parameter is ignored when lpsDigits is NULL. This function fails if dwNumDigits is zero.
Null-terminated string of termination digits as text characters. If one of the digits in the string is detected, that termination digit is appended to the buffer, digit collection is terminated, and the LINE_GATHERDIGITS message is sent to the application.
The list of valid characters is dependent on the constant provided in dwDigitModes. For a list of the valid characters for each possible mode, see LINEDIGITMODE_ Constants.
If this pointer is NULL, or if it points to an empty string, the function behaves as though no termination digits were supplied.
Time duration in milliseconds in which the first digit is expected. If the first digit is not received in this timeframe, digit collection is aborted and a LINE_GATHERDIGITS message is sent to the application. The buffer only contains the NULL character, indicating that no digits were received and the first digit timeout terminated digit gathering. The call's line-device capabilities specify the valid range for this parameter or indicate that timeouts are not supported.
Maximum time duration in milliseconds between consecutive digits. If no digit is received in this timeframe, digit collection is aborted and a LINE_GATHERDIGITS message is sent to the application. The buffer only contains the digits collected up to this point followed by a NULL character, indicating that an interdigit timeout terminated digit gathering. The call's line-device capabilities specify the valid range for this parameter or indicate that timeouts are not supported.
Returns zero if the request succeeds or a negative error number if an error occurs. Possible return values are:
LINEERR_INVALCALLHANDLE, LINEERR_NOMEM, LINEERR_INVALCALLSTATE, LINEERR_NOTOWNER, LINEERR_INVALDIGITMODE, LINEERR_OPERATIONUNAVAIL, LINEERR_INVALDIGITS, LINEERR_OPERATIONFAILED, LINEERR_INVALPARAM, LINEERR_RESOURCEUNAVAIL, LINEERR_INVALPOINTER, LINEERR_UNINITIALIZED.
Digit collection is terminated when the requested number of digits has been collected. It is also terminated when one of the digits detected matches a digit in szTerminationDigits before the specified number of digits has been collected. The detected termination digit is also placed in the buffer and the partial buffer is returned.
Another way of canceling digit collection occurs when one of the timeouts expires. The dwFirstDigitTimeout expires if the first digit is not received in this time period. The dwInterDigitTimout expires if the second, third, (and so forth) digit is not received within that time period from the previously detected digit, and a partial buffer is returned.
A fourth method for terminating digit collection is by calling this function again while collection is in progress. The old collection session is terminated, any digits collected up to that point are copied to the buffer supplied from the previous call to this function, and the buffer is delivered when the LINE_GATHERDIGITS message is sent to the application. The mechanism for terminating digit gathering without initiating another gathering of the digits is to invoke this function with lpsDigits equal to NULL.
This function is considered successful if digit collection has been correctly initiated, not if digit collection has terminated. In all cases where a partial buffer is returned, valid digits (if any) are followed by a NULL character.
Although this function can be invoked in any call state, digits can typically only be gathered while the call is in the connected state.
The message LINE_GATHERDIGITS is sent only to the application that initiated the request. It is also sent when partial buffers are returned because of timeouts or matching termination digits, or when the request is canceled by another lineGatherDigits request on the call. Only one gather-digits request can be active on a call at any given time across all applications that are owners of the call. Given the asynchronous behavior of the operation, an application that issues multiple lineGatherDigits requests in quick succession may be able to do so and receive several LINE_GATHERDIGITS messages later. While this would be unusual application behavior, the application is able to count the number of these messages to allow cancel messages to be matched with the earlier requests. In any case, only the most recent request should be assumed to be valid.
Note When an application invokes any asynchronous operation that writes data back into application memory, the application must keep that memory available for writing until a LINE_REPLY or LINE_GATHERDIGITS message is received.
An application can use lineMonitorDigits to enable or disable unbuffered digit detection. Each time a digit is detected in this fashion, a LINE_MONITORDIGITS message is sent to the application. Both buffered and unbuffered digit detection can be simultaneously enabled for the same call.
Gathering of digits on a conference call applies only to the hConfCall, not to the individual participating calls.
If the lineGatherDigits function is used to cancel a previous request to gather digits, the function copies any digits collected up to that point to the buffer specified in the original function call. The function then sends a LINE_GATHERDIGITS message to the application, regardless of whether the lpszDigits parameter in the second call specifies a NULL or different address.
|Requires TAPI 1.3 or later|
Unicode and ANSI names
|lineGatherDigitsW (Unicode) and lineGatherDigitsA (ANSI)|
- TAPI 2.2 Reference Overview
- Supplementary Line Service Functions
Build date: 10/26/2012


Change a few words on your website to gain more customers
What if changing a few words on your website could win you more customers?
It would be a no-brainer. An easy win for getting more business. And you could outsmart the competition.
website more customers
The smallest details can be the most important
Sometimes it's attention to the small details that can be the most important but also the most overlooked.
The button on your website or email that you're hoping delivers an enquiry or sale is known as a 'Call To Action' (CTA).
You're hoping people click on it
So does it say something compelling?
If it says 'click here', 'send' or 'submit' like most do, then you probably haven't paid it much attention.
But it's too important for default text. It could be the difference between getting an enquiry or sale and not getting one.
What you should write
The message depends on your brand. How it connects with people.
Decisions, decisions
Do you know the motivations of people buying from you? If so, you need to distill that into a few words.
Those words need to be that persuasive push for people to make that final step and click your CTA.
Example 1.
We created this button text to convey the value of a recruitment company.
The person isn't being asked to 'click', 'send' or 'submit'.
Changing a few words so your website gets more customers
'Find my ideal staff'. They're being asked if they personally want a trusted, expert service.
It's far more attractive proposition than some meaningless default text.
It's one of the reasons why their website conversion rate increased.
Example 2.
It can relate to a specific campaign, such as a price incentive like this one from a
How changing a few words on your website could win you more customers
It shows the saving and gives you a nudge to help persuade you make that decision.
It suggests it's time sensitive but isn't too pushy.
It's a more human approach than 'buy now'
Design to be enticing
Design doesn't just mean making something look 'good' or 'professional'. It means being enticing to your target audience.
The CTA needs to be particularly enticing because it's the final step to getting more business. It requires consideration.
An enticing experience needs to be planned. It should inform the design which realises it, including the small details.
recommended website design agency for winning more clients
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Take the next step
Does your brand need a website design agency to make your offer more enticing?
If so, take the next step and get in touch using the form below to start the discussion.
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The Oxford dictionary definition of a seal is
A device or substance that is used to join two things together so as to prevent them coming apart or to prevent anything passing between them.
In other words, a seal is a device that helps join systems or mechanisms together by preventing leakage, containing pressure, or excluding contamination. The imperfect mating parts require some type of 'sealing device' to be inserted between them to seal against loss of liquid, gas or solid fluids or particles. There are various types of seals including hydraulic, oil, mechanical and pneumatic seals.
Seals can have a critical impact on system performance. Getting what is often considered a simple component right can make all the difference to products and operations, their life and reliability. Contact ATC today for your sealing requirements.
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Democratic political candidates can skip this weekend's July 4th parades. A new Harvard University study finds that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day.
"Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party," said the report from Harvard. [See political cartoons about the 2012 GOP field.]
"The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats. According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans," write Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University Assistant Professor Andreas Madestam. [Enjoy political cartoons about President Obama.]
Their findings also suggest that Democrats gain nothing from July 4th parades, likely a shocking result for all the Democratic politicians who march in them. [Check out editorial cartoons about the Democrats.]
"There is no evidence of an increased likelihood of identifying as a Democrat, indicating that Fourth of July shifts preferences to the right rather than increasing political polarization," the two wrote.
The three key findings of those attending July 4th celebrations:
- When done before the age of 18, it increases the likelihood of a youth identifying as a Republican by at least 2 percent.
- It raises the likelihood that parade watchers will vote for a Republican candidate by 4 percent.
- It boosts the likelihood a reveler will vote by about 1 percent and increases the chances they'll make a political contribution by 3 percent.
What's more, the impact isn't fleeting. "Surprisingly, the estimates show that the impact on political preferences is permanent, with no evidence of the effects depreciating as individuals become older,"said the Harvard report.
Finally, the report suggests that if people are looking for a super-patriotic July 4th, though should head to Republican towns. "Republican adults celebrate Fourth of July more intensively in the first place."


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How do your financial priorities stack up with our pyramid?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's food pyramid, designed to help set healthy dietary priorities, debuted in 1992, urged us to indulge sparingly in fats. Meanwhile, bring on the carbs: pasta, rice, bread, and cereal made up the bottom of the pyramid graphic, with a recommended six to 11 servings per day.
Oopsie. Dietary scientists eventually determined that eating a lot of refined carbs isn't that good for us after all, so the original pyramid was replaced with another, more confusing-looking pyramid in 2005. The revised pyramid showed fruits and vegetables on a near-equal scale alongside grains.
Alas, in 2011 the pyramid was scrapped altogether in favor of a square food plate called MyPlate. Vegetables take up more than one fourth of the MyPlate plate, followed by smaller portions of grains, protein, fruit, and dairy.
A guide to allocating time and resources
Yet even though the USDA abandoned the pyramid as an image to help set dietary priorities, it's still a useful shape to convey how to allocate your time and resources, including when you're investing. At the bottom of the pyramid are the activities that you should spend the most time and energy on because they have the biggest impact on your results. They're the equivalent of broccoli and brown rice. Meanwhile, at the top are tasks that, though worthwhile, will have a smaller impact on your bottom line.
The following investment pyramid can help guide priorities for new investors. It can also assist in keeping more experienced investors on the right track. After all, the more you know, the more likely you are to geek out about small matters such as whether to own a high-yield exchange-traded fund or an actively managed fund. In so doing, it's possible you'll lose sight of game-changers such as your saving and spending rates and your total asset allocation.
Here's a look at the investment pyramid I would propose, ranging from what should be investors' top priorities - the base of the pyramid - to the least important ones.
The pyramid's base: setting your financial goals
You know how it is when you don't start a day with a to-do list? You get buffeted around by whatever comes up. Phone calls, answering emails, chatting with colleagues about favorite childhood candy bars, and whoops – how on earth did it get to be 11:20 already?
Managing your finances without first articulating your nearand long-term goals is similar. Rather than operating with the amorphous goal of 'wealth accumulation', take a step back and articulate the specifics of what you're trying to achieve, when you'll need the money, and how much.
Paying the full freight for college for each of your kids? Retirement while you're still young enough to enjoy it? A move to a bigger house within the next five years? By quantifying each of your financial goals, you may see that it's not going to be possible to achieve them all, but it's better to know that early on so you can prioritise. And each of those goals likely carries its own time horizon, which in turn will dictate what types of investments you hold and where.
The next band: managing your saving and spending
Budgeting is boring, which is why it's easy to give short shrift to it in favor of sexier pursuits such as trading stocks. But even if you select the very best investments, you'll be hard-pressed to make up for a shortfall if you haven't saved enough.
This is key to ensure that your savings rate puts you on track to achieve the above-mentioned goals. This concept matters long after you've stopped saving, too. Retirees are obsessed with the topic of spending rates and for good reason. The difference between a 4% and a 6% withdrawal rate can be enormous when it comes to the viability of a retirement plan. Being able to adjust one's spending rate – especially downward in times of market duress – has also emerged as a best practice in the realm of retirement portfolio management because it helps a retiree avoid turning paper losses into real ones.
The next band: choosing your asset allocation
There's near-universal consensus among market practitioners that the asset-allocation mix you choose matters. A lot. A portfolio that consists entirely of cash and short-term bonds will exhibit very few fluctuations, which can provide peace of mind and may be appropriate for very short-term goals. Over time, however, it will get eaten alive by a portfolio that includes a stock component.
Specific recommendations about asset allocation will vary by adviser and financial services company, but the basic rules of the road should hold you in good stead during your investing career. For your long-term goals, start heavy with stocks, then gradually shift more into safer securities as your need for the money draws near. And be careful not to gorge on niche investments such as gold and emerging-markets stocks, whose returns are sometimes explosive but so is their downside potential. Diversify reasonably among the core asset classes – high-quality stocks, high-quality bonds, and cash – and you'll be OK. Setting an asset allocation in retirement is a bit more complicated than asset allocation in the years leading up to retirement.
The next band: managing your own behavior
Even if you've gone to the trouble of creating a well-allocated portfolio, none of it is going to matter if you freak out and retreat to cash in times of turmoil. Many financial advisers say one of their most important contributions to their clients' financial well-being is to help them manage their emotions and stick with their plans through good and bad market environments. It's important to identify and manage your own potential behavioral hang-ups, such as a tendency to be too risk-averse for your life stage or to have more confidence in your investing abilities than is warranted.
The next band: managing for tax efficiency
Paying attention to tax efficiency encompasses a very broad and important set of issues, including taking advantage of tax-advantaged superannuation accounts, using low turnover stock funds, proper asset location, and employing tax-efficient withdrawal strategies during retirement. In fact, tax-efficient decision-making is one of the key factors that add value in the financial planning process.
The top: making investment selections
Ta-da! We're finally at the top of the pyramid and on to the fun stuff - investment selection. Its placement here shouldn't indicate that picking securities is not important. Needless to say, we at Morningstar think there's a big difference between investing with a high-quality fund than a C-list fund, and that investors will be better off buying a wide-moat stock that has a Morningstar Rating of 5 stars than one with no moat and a high valuation.
Rather, investment selection appears at the top because it needs to be informed by the factors beneath it in the pyramid. It's not always the case that tax considerations will trump your investment selection, but taxes should be an input in what securities you choose, as should your allocation needs, your expectations for the investment (having the right expectations should ameliorate bad behavior), and the rest of your financial plan.
Once those factors point the way toward a certain category of investments, you can then look at fees, management, and other investment-specific hallmarks of quality. And if you have little time left once you've made it to the top of the pyramid, you can reasonably skimp on investment selection by opting for a portfolio that consists of inexpensive index funds.
Christine Benz is Morningstar's director of personal finance and author of 30-Minute Money Solutions: A Step-by-Step Guide to Managing Your Finances and the Morningstar Guide to Mutual Funds: 5-Star Strategies for Success. This article does not consider the circumstances of any investor, and minor editing has been made to the original US version for an Australian audience.
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2 pp. sm.8vo,
Lord Lugard commenced his career as a professional soldier and later became known as an African Explorer and Colonial Administrator. He was distinguished in the Afghan War of 1879-80, in the Sudan Campaign in 1884-85, and the 3rd Burmese War of 1886-87. He was Governor of Hong Kong from 1907-12, and Governor General of Nigeria from 1914-19. His great work, The Rise and Fall of our East African Empire, was published in 1893.
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text: This study investigates the relationship between gender and participation in mathematics and engineering undergraduate degree programmes in Iran. The number of female students enrolling in Iranian Higher Education (HE) is relatively high and this remains the case in mathematics and most engineering programmes. However, the number of female graduates gaining employment in engineering and STEM-[science, technology, engineering and mathematics] related jobs in Iran remains relatively low, with gender discrimination in recruitment practices identified as a key barrier. This presents a contradiction which makes Iran a particularly interesting context to study gender in mathematics and engineering in HE. This study adopts a narrative inquiry approach to investigate how Iranian female students studying mathematics and engineering describe their choice of subject, experience of studying at university, and their future aspirations. It seeks to investigate how the social, cultural and historical structures of Iranian society shape the way these students narrate their identity as a mathematics or engineering student. In-depth analysis highlights how they position their degree as offering more or less âcapitalâ (Bourdieu) which resources their future identities of becoming successful career women in STEM-related professions. In doing so, these women feel able to navigate barriers to success by using their capital to improvise and exert agency over their future trajectories. In sum, I suggest the predominance of âmoving abroadâ as a theme across the interviews is a consequence of the aforementioned contradiction between their desire to become successful career women whilst facing gendered discrimination in the labour market.


Three-stratum theory
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The three-stratum theory is a theory of cognitive ability proposed by the American psychologist John Carroll in 1993.[1][2] It is based on a factor-analytic study of the correlation of individual-difference variables from data such as psychological tests, school marks and competence ratings. These analyses suggested a three-layered model where each layer accounts for the variations in the correlations within the previous layer.
The three layers (strata) are defined as representing narrow, broad, and general cognitive ability. The factors describe stable and observable differences among individuals in the performance of tasks. Carroll argues further that they are not mere artifacts of a mathematical process, but likely reflect physiological factors explaining differences in ability (e.g., nerve firing rates). This of course does not alter the effectiveness of factor scores in accounting for behavioral differences.
Carroll proposes a taxonomic dimension in the distinction between level factors and speed factors. The tasks that contribute to the identification of level factors can be sorted by difficulty and individuals differentiated by whether they have acquired the skill to perform the tasks. Tasks that contribute to speed factors are distinguished by the relative speed with which individuals can complete them. Carroll suggests that the distinction between level and speed factors may be the broadest taxonomy of cognitive tasks that can be offered. Carroll distinguishes his hierarchical approach from taxonomic approaches such as Guilford's Structure of Intellect model (three-dimensional model with contents, operations, and products).
Carroll's three-stratum model. Key: fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), general memory and learning (Gy), broad visual perception (Gv), broad auditory perception (Gu), broad retrieval ability (Gr), broad cognitive speediness (Gs), and processing speed (Gt). Carroll regarded the broad abilities as different "flavors" of g.
 1. ^ J. B. Carroll (1993), Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor-analytic studies, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA.
 2. ^ J. B. Carroll (1997), "The three-stratum theory of cognitive abilities" in D. P. Flanagan, J. L. Genshaft et al., Contemporary intellectual assessment: Theories, tests, and issues, Guilford Press, New York, NY, USA, pp.122-130.
See also[edit]


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This paper focuses on conditional optimization as a decoding primitive for high rate space-time codes that are obtained by multiplexing in the spatial and code domains. The approach is a crystallization of the work of Hottinen which applies to space-time codes that are assisted by quasi-orthogonality. It is independent of implementation and is more general in that it can be applied to space-time codes such as the Golden Code and perfect space-time block codes, that are not assisted by quasi-orthogonality, to derive fast decoders with essentially maximum likelihood (ML) performance. The conditions under which conditional optimization leads to reduced complexity ML decoding are captured in terms of the induced channel at the receiver. These conditions are then translated back to the transmission domain leading to codes that are constructed by multiplexing orthogonal designs. The methods are applied to several block space-time codes obtained by multiplexing Alamouti blocks where it leads to ML decoding with complexity O(N 2) where N is the size of the underlying QAM signal constellation. A new code is presented that tests commonly accepted design principles and for which decoding by conditional optimization is both fast and ML. The two design principles for perfect space-time codes are nonvanishing determinant of pairwise differences and cubic shaping, and it is cubic shaping that restricts the possible multiplexing structures. The new code shows that it is possible to give up on cubic shaping without compromising code performance or decoding complexity.


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We are now using the Sir Linkalot app to help children to practise spellings.
Each day, pupils will have access to daily Sir Linkalot time at school. At home, they can access this too! (see below). Together, we will build up their bank of tricky words, homophones and spelling conventions. Pupils will learn mnemonics, rhymes and patterns, alongside other spelling strategies, to recall and retain these words. They also explore words at greater depth, looking at the morphology and etymology of words.
Pupils in Y5 will learn 10 words per week. They will be assessed every Friday. Your child will be told they are either Jupiter or Mars spellings (available in the usual same spot on our Class Page.
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Spelling Practice Activities
How to work out tricky words Spelling play - route to spelling interactive resource


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Jacket Plum – Pappea capensis
Jacket Plum, Pappea capensis, is a long-lived, hardy, evergreen, small to medium fruit bearing tree, indigenous to southern Africa. It reaches heights of 2-8 meters and under ideal conditions can grow at a moderate rate but slow-growing under dry and/or cold conditions. Jacket Plum is of value as a street tree, shade tree in parking lots and townhouse gardens since it does not have an aggressive root system.
Pappea capensis leaves are simple and oblong, paler green below, hard-textured and rippled. Leaf borders vary from sharply toothed (in young growth) to almost smooth. Flowers are greenish, round and velvety, over 1cm in diameter, borne on catkins in the axils of the leaves, followed by round green velvety fruits. The wood is hard, light brown with a reddish shade, tough and heavy with a twined grain. Leaves and bark used as an important source of traditional medicine today.
Jacket Plum Fruit
Jacket Plum fruit is edible, with a tart flavor. It is eaten fresh or used to make preserves, jelly, vinegar and alcoholic drinks.
Jacket Plum Propagation Methods
Plant propagation is by seed and stem cuttings. Seeds should be collected from the ripe fruits, remove the red flesh and sow immediately. Pappea capensis is a member of the family Sapindaceae the genus Pappea. The plant can tolerate both cold and heat as well as prolonged periods of drought. Nursery-grown plants adapt well to cultivation.
Jacket Plum, Pappea capensis
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Just fill in the moon
Just fill in the moon
World October 15, 2015 11:57
- It sounds like a science fiction story but scientists are convinced that rockets off even on the moon to Mars in the future will stop to refuel. It is a relatively small detour, but in a rocket traveling through the moon is less than 68 percent of the weight saved.
Which scientists at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated.
Storage of fuel on the moon is relatively simple and the fuel savings would be considerable. The cost to launch a rocket from Earth in space because of the weight ratio is particularly high. Scientists went for a trip to Mars is always a straight line from the earth. The savings to travel moon through the stop sign, make a return march for a missile with people aboard suddenly much more real.
The distance from Earth to Mars is about 225 million kilometers. To the moon is only 384.000 kilometers.
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text:
Certainties of the postwar world are ending
As Philip's generation passes into history, the Munich analogy, Pax Americana and the Cold War mean increasingly little
When Prince Philip was mentioned in dispatches for his heroism during the battle of Crete in 1941, he was still a teenager. And when, later in the war, his quickthinking and inventiveness saved the lives of his crewmates on HMS Wallace, he was still only 22 years old.
So his death just short of his hundredth birthday is not only a landmark in the history of the modern royal family. It is also another reminder that our Second World War veterans are passing into history. As with Captain Sir Tom Moore, even those who served young and lived exceptionally long lives are now dying. The youngest soldier fighting abroad at the end of the war will now be at least 94 years old.


How to Balance a Traditional Sewing line?
Today I will teach you how to do line balancing in the apparel manufacturing.
You know that a number of operations are involved in making a garment. In bulk garment production, generally a team works on an assembly line (Progressive Bundle system) and each operator does one operation and passes the garment another operator to do next operation. In this way garment reached to end of the line as a completed garment. In the assembly line after some time of the line setting, it is found that at some places in the line, work is started to pile up and few operators sit idle due to unavailability of work.
When this situation happens in the line it is called an imbalanced line. Normally it happens due to two main reasons –
 - variation in work content (time needed to do an operation) in different operations
 - operator's performance level. To meet the production target, maintaining smooth workflow in the line is very important. So it is very important to know basics of quick line balancing.
How to balance an imbalanced line has been explained in the following.
The main job in line balancing is to eliminate or reduce WIP (work in process) at bottleneck operations. To do that you have to know which operations are a bottleneck in the line. Through capacity study and target setting, you will find existing bottlenecks in the line.
Tools required:
i) Stopwatch
ii) Spreadsheet or Calculator
Step 1: Capacity study:
List down all operations (with operator name) as per operation sequence in a paper. Using stopwatch cycle time (time study) for each operation for five consecutive cycles. With average cycle time calculate the hourly capacity of the operators. (i.e. operation cycle time 30 seconds and total allowances are 20% then capacity is 100 pieces per hour). Draw a line graph with per hour capacity data.
Step 2: Target setting:
With the above capacity data set your target output per hour from one line. Normally, it is calculated using following formula (Target per hour= Total no of operators X 60 /garment SAM). Check current hourly operator production report. Draw a straight line with target output data on the line graph.
Step 3: Identification of bottleneck areas:
Now go to the capacity study table and compare each operator's capacity with the target capacity. Each individual operator whose capacity is less than the target output is bottleneck operation for the line. It is impossible to improve imbalanced line's output without improving the output of the bottleneck operations. A bottleneck operation is like a weak link chain.
Step 4: Eliminate bottlenecks from the line: Now to eliminate bottleneck areas use following methods which suit best to your situation but don't jump without trying initial steps.
 1. Club operations where possible. Where there is higher capacity than the target output, give that operator another operation with less work content. Considering machine type and sewing thread colors.
 2. Shuffle operators. Operations that have low work content use low performer there. And where work content is higher use high performers.
 3. Reduce cycle time using work aids and attachments. To assist the operator in handling parts during sewing, positioning cutting and disposing of the finished task, work aids, guides or attachment can be used. Think of that if possible provide the operator work-aids. It will reduce operation cycle time.
 4. Improve workstation layout and improve methods. Most important area for improving output from a particular operation is using best workstation layout and best method of work. There is always a chance that through improving the method of bottleneck operations you can do line balancing.
 5. Add more operators to bottleneck operations. Adding one additional machine in the easy task than others. Before adding one more machine compare the cost-benefits of putting an additional machine into the line. It can be simplified compared to estimating machine productivity in both cases.
 6. Do extra work at bottleneck operations. At lunch break and Tea break when each operator of the line goes for a break, bottleneck operator can continue work to feed next to his operator. Later he can take the break. At the end of the day tell this operator to work for one hour extra to reduce the WIP.
Important things to keep in mind:
Conduct Time Study hourly basis and check the output of each operator. Once you have eliminated one bottleneck, you will find a new bottleneck operation. Follow the same methodology to improve line balancing.
Also Read: How to do Line balancing using Operator Skill History?
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