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The blog post about Extreme Backyard Adventures was published at October 16, 2017 at 9:30 am. This article is published in the Backyard category. Extreme Backyard Adventures is tagged with Extreme Backyard Adventures, Extreme, Backyard, Adventures..
Extremeex•treme (ik strēm′),USA pronunciation adj., -trem•er, -trem•est, n.
- of a character or kind farthest removed from the ordinary or average: extreme measures.
- utmost or exceedingly great in degree: extreme joy.
- farthest from the center or middle;
endmost: the extreme limits of a town.
- farthest, utmost, or very far in any direction: an object at the extreme point of vision.
- exceeding the bounds of moderation: extreme fashions.
- going to the utmost or very great lengths in action, habit, opinion, etc.: an extreme conservative.
- last or final: extreme hopes.
- [Chiefly Sports.]extremely dangerous or difficult: extreme skiing.
- the utmost or highest degree, or a very high degree: cautious to an extreme.
- one of two things as remote or different from each other as possible: the extremes of joy and grief.
- the furthest or utmost length;
an excessive length, beyond the ordinary or average: extremes in dress.
- an extreme act, measure, condition, etc.: the extreme of poverty.
- the first or the last term, as of a proportion or series.
- a relative maximum or relative minimum value of a function in a given region.
- [Logic.]the subject or the predicate of the conclusion of a syllogism;
either of two terms that are separated in the premises and brought together in the conclusion.
- [Archaic.]the utmost point, or extremity, of something.
Backyardback•yard (bak′yärd′),USA pronunciation n.
- the portion of a lot or building site behind a house, structure, or the like, sometimes fenced, walled, etc.
- a familiar or nearby area;
Adventuresad•ven•ture (ad ven′chər),USA pronunciation n., v., -tured, -tur•ing.
- an exciting or very unusual experience.
- participation in exciting undertakings or enterprises: the spirit of adventure.
- a bold, usually risky undertaking;
hazardous action of uncertain outcome.
- a commercial or financial speculation of any kind;
- to risk or hazard.
- to take the chance of;
- to venture to say or utter: to adventure an opinion.
- to take the risk involved.
- to venture;
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Substantial research has documented pervasive disparities in the prevalence, severity, and morbidity of asthma among minority populations compared to non-Latino whites. The underlying causes of these disparities are not well understood, and as a result, the leverage points to address them remain unclear. A multilevel framework for integrating research in asthma health disparities is proposed in order to advance both future research and clinical practice. The components of the proposed model include health care policies and regulations, operation of the health care system, provider/clinician-level factors, social/environmental factors, and individual/family attitudes and behaviors. The body of research suggests that asthma disparities have multiple, complex and inter-related sources. Disparities occur when individual, environmental, health system, and provider factors interact with one another over time. Given that the causes of asthma disparities are complex and multilevel, clinical strategies to address these disparities must therefore be comparably multilevel and target many aspects of asthma care. Clinical Implications: Several strategies that could be applied in clinical settings to reduce asthma disparities are described including the need for routine assessment of the patient's beliefs, financial barriers to disease management, and health literacy, and the provision of cultural competence training and communication skills to health care provider groups.
Keywords: Asthma disparities, multi-level model of asthma disparities, clinical recommendations

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


114855: Ruling on eating snails; is it permissible to cook them alive?
What is the ruling on eating snails? Bear in mind that preparing snails dish requires cooking them alive! Were snails used as food during the era of prophet Muhammad peace be upon him?.
Praise be to Allaah.
Snails are of two types, land snails and sea snails. Land snails come under the same heading as "insects and vermin" which have no blood that flows. Sea snails come under the heading of shellfish, which are sea animals.
In al-Mawsoo'ah al-'Arabiyyah al-'Aalamiyyah it says:
The snail is a invertebrate sea animal, and it is a kind of shellfish. Most snails have an external shell; some snails have a small flat shell above or under the skin, but most do not have a shell at all.
Land snails have a pair of antennae, with an eye at the end of the longer antenna. The large sand snail is regarded as a harmful pest, because it has a voracious appetite for plants. Its length reaches 10 cm. End quote.
With regard to the ruling on eating snails:
1. Land snails come under the ruling on eating "insects". The majority of scholars are of the view that it is haraam. Al-Nawawi (may Allaah have mercy on him) said in al-Majmoo' (9/16): The view of the scholars concerning land insects … our view is that it is haraam. This was the view of Abu Haneefah, Ahmad and Dawood. Maalik said: it is halaal. End quote.
Ibn Hazm (may Allaah have mercy on him) said:
It is not permissible to eat land snails or any other "insects and vermin", such as geckos, cockroaches, ants, bees, flies, wasps, worms, lice, fleas, bedbugs, mosquitoes or anything else of that type, because Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): "Forbidden to you (for food) are: Al‑Maitah (the dead animals)" and "unless you are able to slaughter it (before its death)" [al-Maa'idah 5:3]. And there is sound proof that slaughter can only be done in the neck or upper chest, so if it is not possible to slaughter it, then there is no way one can eat it unless it is dead i.e., not slaughtered properly, so it is haraam. End quote.
Al-Muhalla (6/76, 77).
The Maalikis did not stipulate that a creature which has no flowing blood should be slaughtered, rather they included it under the same ruling as locusts, and its slaughter is by boiling, roasting, or piercing it with a stick or needle until it is dead, whilst saying the name of Allaah over it.
In al-Mudawwanah (1/542) it says:
Maalik was asked about something in the Maghreb (North Africa) which is called a snail, that is found in the desert on the trees – can it be eaten? He said: I think it is like the locust. If it is taken alive and boiled or roasted, I do not think there is anything wrong with eating it, but if it is found dead, it should not be eaten. End quote.
In al-Muntaqa Sharh al-Muwatta' (3/110) by Abu'l-Waleed al-Baaji (may Allaah have mercy on him) it says:
If that is proven, then the ruling on snails is the same as the ruling on locusts. Maalik said its slaughtering is by boiling or being pierced with a stick or needle until it dies, and the name of Allaah should be mentioned whilst doing so, as it is mentioned when cutting off the heads of locusts. End quote.
2. Sea snails are halaal, because of the general permission with regard to eating seafood. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):
"Lawful to you is (the pursuit of) water game and its use for food — for the benefit of yourselves and those who travel"
[al-Maa'idah 5:96]
al-Bukhaari narrated that 'Umar ibn al-Khattaab (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: "Water game means what is hunted, and its food is what the sea throws out (onto the shore)."
al-Bukhaari narrated from Shurayh, the companion of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), that he said: "Everything in the sea is madhbooh (slaughtered)."
But we have not seen any hadeeth which suggests that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) ate snails.
To sum up:
The permissibly of eating snails applies to both types, both land and sea snails. If they are cooked alive there is nothing wrong with that, because land snails have no blood so that it might be said that they must be slaughtered properly and the blood extracted, and sea snails come under the general permissibility of sea game and food.
And Allaah knows best.
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GPWv3 depicts the distribution of human population across the globe. GPWv3 provides globally consistent and spatially explicit human population information and data for use in research, policy making, and communications. This is a gridded, or raster, data product that renders global population data at the scale and extent required to demonstrate the spatial relationship of human populations and the environment across the globe.The purpose of GPW is to provide a spatially disaggregated population layer that is compatible with data sets from social, economic, and Earth science fields.The gridded data set is constructed from national or subnational input units (usually administrative units) of varying resolutions. The native grid cell resolution is 2.5 arc-minutes, or ~5km at the equator, although aggregates at coarser resolutions are also provided. Separate grids are available for population count and density per grid cell.
Population data estimates are provided for 1990, 1995, and 2000, and projected (in 2004, when GPWv3 was released) to 2005, 2010, and 2015. The projected grids were produced in collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Programme (FAO) as Population Count and Density Grid Future Estimates. There is also an extensive map collection that includes population density and sub-national administrative boundary maps (depicting the input units) at country, continental, and global levels. The Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project, Version One (GRUMPv1) data collection builds on GPW to construct a common geo-referenced framework of urban and rural areas by combining census data with satellite data.


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I'll not make modifications to the text except for differences between C and Python.
You can find the first part of this article here: Writing a Widget Using Cairo and PyGTK 2.8
Making the clock run is as simple as starting a timer that calls a callback. However, we might also want to be able to set a different time on our clock, so we'll store the time for the clock inside the widget. We don't want to let people change the time directly, in object-orientation speak, we want to make the time variable private.
Python, in its "trust the programmer" philosophy usually use a convention (the single "_" underscore) to identify a variable as private. I implemented the public API as a property in this way:
# public access to the time member def _get_time(self): return self._time def _set_time(self, datetime): self._time = datetime self.redraw_canvas() time = property(_get_time, _set_time)
Now you can externally access the time property as if it's a simple object member.
We can use the property in the update() method which will update the clock with the new time:
def update(self): # update the time self.time = datetime.now() return True # keep running this event
Notice that this method returns a boolean value (true). Functions passed as timeout events return a boolean value. If the value is true, the event will be run again; if the value is false it will not. There is also a method that we haven't defined yet, redraw_canvas(). This method will redraw the canvas for us. From the manual page for GtkDrawingArea (our parent class), we are told to use gdk.Window.invalidate_rect(), to reexpose the canvas (and cause it to redraw). In order to make our event happen now, we should also call gdk.Window.process_all_updates(). Our redraw function looks like this:
def redraw_canvas(self): if self.window: alloc = self.get_allocation() rect = gdk.Rectangle(0, 0, alloc.width, alloc.height) self.window.invalidate_rect(rect, True) self.window.process_updates(True)
Drawing the hands requires us to think about a little geometry. For the hour hand, the hand is rotated around 30� for each hour and then a 1/2� more per minute.
So to draw the hour hand, we might do something like:
context.save() context.set_line_width(2.5 * context.get_line_width()) context.move_to(x, y) context.line_to(x + radius / 2 * math.sin( math.pi / 6 * hours + math.pi / 360 * minutes), y + radius / 2 * -math.cos( math.pi / 6 * hours + math.pi / 360 * minutes)) context.stroke() context.restore()
The minute hand and the seconds hand each rotate 6° per minute/second. The minute hand is easily implemented as:
context.move_to(x, y) context.line_to(x + radius * 0.75 * math.sin(math.pi / 30 * minutes), y + radius * 0.75 * -math.cos(math.pi / 30 * minutes)) context.stroke()
Finally, we need to set it running, in __init__() we will add our timeout function:
def __init__(self): super(EggClockFace, self).__init__() self.connect("expose_event", self.expose) # make it private self._time = None self.update() # update the clock once a second gobject.timeout_add(1000, self.update)
We're left with clock_ex4.py which you can run with:
$ python clock_ex4.py
and should look like this:
The animated GIF of the clock ticking was done with a tool called byzanz. I simply recorded 60 seconds of the clock. In order to find out the window location for byzanz-record, I added this to the main function after gtk.Widget.show_all():
rect = gdk.Rectangle() rect = window.window.get_frame_extents() print "-x %i -y %i -w %i -h %i" % (rect.x, rect.y, rect.width, rect.height)
This printed settings that I could paste onto my other command line:
$ byzanz-record -d 60 $GEOMETRY -l clock.gif
So far we've written a GObject with opaque property storage and we've used Cairo to draw our clock face. However the GTK+ widgets we commonly interact with also offer public APIs and emit signals to notify us when certain events take place. We will add a signal to say when someone is dragging the minute hand around.
Firstly we need to decide on what our signal is going to send and add this our file. We will implement a "time_changed" signal that along with the object also gives the time in hours and minutes that the clock has now been set to. If we were connecting this signal, our callback would look something like this:
def time_changed_cb(widget, hours, minutes): pass
Finally we need to register our signal in the class:
__gsignals__ = dict(time_changed=(gobject.SIGNAL_RUN_FIRST, gobject.TYPE_NONE, (gobject.TYPE_INT, gobject.TYPE_INT)))
More information on gobject.signal_new can be found in the documentation.
Next we have to implement a button_press_event handler so that we can determine when someone has actually clicked on a hand. We can override the signals for button_press_event, button_release_event and motion_notify_handler at the same time as replacing the expose_event. In __init()__:
self.connect("expose_event", self.expose) self.connect("button_press_event", self.button_press) self.connect("button_release_event", self.button_release) self.connect("motion_notify_event", self.motion_notify)
From reading the documentation for GtkDrawingArea, our parent class, you will see that button events and motion events are masked out, so we will need to set them so that we receive events for processing. We need to do this for each EggClockFace, so in __init__() we'll add:
self.add_events(gdk.BUTTON_PRESS_MASK | gdk.BUTTON_RELEASE_MASK | gdk.POINTER_MOTION_MASK)
The line formed by the bearing of the hand is infinitely thin, so we can't expect a user to be able to click on it. It would be nice to detect if the user clicked within 5 pixels of the line. To do this we require some more geometry.
We know that (sin φ, cos φ) is a point on the unit circle, that is it has magnitude 1. Thus a vector from the origin to (sin φ, cos φ) will be a unit vector, we will name it l. We will also take a vector p which is the vector from the origin to the point where the user clicked.
This would give vector components equal to:
px = event.x - widget.get_allocation().width / 2 py = widget.get_allocation().height / 2 - event.y lx = math.sin(math.pi / 30 * minutes) ly = math.cos(math.pi / 30 * minutes)
Simple reasoning will tell us that there exists a point ul where l is perpendicular to (ul – p) (which is the shortest distance between the point and the line and is what we want to measure).
We can project p onto l using the dot product such that u = p.l. The dot product can be done mathematically like so:
u = lx * px + ly * py
If u comes out to be a negative number we'll ignore it, this means that the user clicked on the opposite side of the clock to where the hand is. Finally, the magnitude of the distance can be found. If the magnitude of the distance (squared) is less then 5 pixels (squared) we can set the private member _dragging to be true (we used squared values here because we have no need to do a slow sqrt()).
if u < 0: return False d2 = math.pow(px - u * lx, 2) + math.pow(py - u * ly, 2) if d2 < 25: # 5 pixels away from the line self._dragging = True
We now need to implement handlers for the motion_notify_event and button_release_event. Both of these signal handlers share a lot of their code, so we can move it out into another method, emit_time_changed_signal(). The geometry for this method is simply the reverse of the geometry that we used to draw the hands on the clock face.
def emit_time_changed_signal(self, x, y): # decode the minute hand # normalize the coordinates around the origin x -= self.get_allocation().width / 2 y -= self.get_allocation().height / 2 # phi is a bearing from north clockwise, use the same geometry as we # did to position the minute hand originally phi = math.atan2(x, -y) if phi < 0: phi += math.pi * 2 hour = self.time.hour minute = phi * 30 / math.pi # update the offset self._minute_offset = minute - self.time.minute self.redraw_canvas() self.emit("time_changed", hour, minute)
The time_changed signal is actually sent to all listeners by emit(). You may also notice the variable _minute_offset, we use this to know how far out of phase the minute hand is with the current time. This offset has to be added to any other requests for the current time. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to implement a similar offset for the hour hand.
After all of this our two signals handlers from above are simply:
def motion_notify(self, widget, event): if self._dragging: self.emit_time_changed_signal(event.x, event.y) def button_release(self


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Online Vital Skills: Training for Trainers
25 April - 16 May; Webinar 17 May, 9:30am - 12:30pm
The training you provide to your volunteer befrienders needs to be relevant, engaging and dynamic for it to be effective. A trainer must have the skills to design and deliver appropriate training and also to inspire and motivate their participants. The aim of this Training for Trainers module is to give you the all background and information you need to develop these skills.
This module is designed to develop your knowledge and understanding for training your staff and volunteers. This module will give you an opportunity to explore:
– the general principles of successful learning methods
– the concept of individual learning styles and its implications for trainers
– frequent barriers to learning and strategies for overcoming them
– how to prepare and introduce a training session
– the purpose of icebreakers and energisers and principles for using them effectively
– facilitation and presentation skills in training delivery
– how to achieve the transfer of learning
– your own strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears as a trainer
– the purpose and content of your befriender training programme
– the session planning skills required to put training content together effectively
– challenging situations in training and how to overcome them successfully
Vital Skills is made up of one resource pack (which includes the theory, best practice and advice) and one activity pack where you are asked to put your knowledge to the test. Modules may also have quizzes. All work is accessible online and is marked online. This streamlined format is designed to support your busy schedules. The contact session takes place on Go To Meeting. During this webinar you can compare answers with other organisations, share best practice as well as get feedback on your work.
**Both the course work and the webinar session are mandatory for achieving the module.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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- Cut a square or rectangular shaped cardboard for the ground.
- Use markers to color the runway and ground.
- Make two large rectangular towers with square roofs, using construction paper.
- Make one long rectangular building.
- Glue the long building in the middle of the two towers.
- Using cardboard, cut out a long rectangle, a large isosceles triangle, and a small isosceles triangle; these will become the plane's body and wings.
- Draw and cut out a tail for the plane. It will be a quadrilateral (a four-sided shape); choose angles you like.
- To assemble the plane, cut two slices in the center of the long rectangular.
Slide the large triangle inside the first slot, and the smaller triangle in the second. Use glue to keep them in place. These are the wings of the plane.
- Finally, glue the plane's tail to the rear top of the plane.
- Don't glue the plane to the board so you can play with it and make it fly!
This math craft was created in January 2004 by Victor B., grade 5,
- One of your towers could be three-sided with a triangle-shaped roof, as in the photo. Or what about a 5- or 6-sided tower?
- You might try cutting out a few different tails to see which looks best, before gluing.
- Can you design a helicopter out of polygons?
- A cardboard airplane won't fly far! Make some paper airplanes, too. Try different designs and paper thicknesses and test how well they fly. What polygons do you see in the folded paper airplanes?
- See Number City or Little Village of Shapes for other ideas on making buildings from construction paper.
Philip G. Vroom Elementary School, Ms. Geis's class, Bayonne, New Jersey, U.S.


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You probably have a local "Mystery Spot" in your area, and it undoubtedly features a gravity hill — that is, a place where either water or solid objects seem to move uphill against the force of gravity. But do these uncanny spots really defy the laws of physics?
Most publicized gravity hills require a few bucks to get into, but in the San Francisco Bay Area you can see one for free. In Golden Gate Park, as you go down John F Kennedy Drive — just past the Shoreline Highway that crosses the park and just before you get to Lloyd Lake, which sports some fairly ill-advised fake classical ruins — you'll see a stream running just along the north side of the road. Keep moving along, and you will notice, just before the stream empties into the lake, it goes uphill. I have walked this way again and again for years, and I have never been able to convince myself that the stream isn't flowing up.
Many people all around the globe have found themselves happening upon physics dilemmas similar to this. Often they're on sloped roads in their cars, and when the car goes into neutral, they find themselves rolling up the slope of the hill. Occasionally, they drop something round, and watch it skitter up a hill.
The phenomenon has sparked a lot of ghost stories, from spectral children to Civil War soldiers trying to roll cannons into position. Since the illusion is most noticed on roads near hills, those with a scientific bent nickname it the Magnetic Hill. People think that the hill behind has to have some magnetic property that is influencing their cars. What's really influencing their cars is good, old-fashioned glitches in human perception.
Remember the joke where a grumpy old-timer tells kids that, in his day, they had to walk to school through the snow, uphill, both ways? That's not just a joke. People do tend to see inclines as being tilted up more than they seem as tilted down. Researchers at the University of Padova and the University of Pavia found that it's relatively easy to make people see something as uphill, and hard to make them see it as downhill.
They created a fake landscape out of angled boards. When the middle board was angled slightly downhill, and the boards around it were angled steeply downhill, most people they asked saw the middle board as going uphill. However, when they reversed the experiment, and showed people a slightly uphill stretch between two steeply uphill boards, it was seen as level, and not downhill. When the experimenters went on to test a horizontal board between two downhill stretches it was seen as uphill. When they tested a downhill segment between two uphill boards, it looked level. In other words, there wasn't anything they could do to make that middle section look downhill to anyone.
And these were just boards. Gravity hills make use of the entire landscape. First, most gravity hills are in places where a straight horizon is obscured in every direction. There isn't any horizon line to help people get their bearings. Usually the hill in question is a road cut into two uphill segments, but there are hills that are surrounded by downhill slopes. Generally, there are also trees and no buildings in the area. Buildings tend to stay perpendicular to the ground. Most of the time, trees do as well. When it comes to a choice between light and perpendicularity, though, the trees choose light every time. When they lean so that they're perpendicular to a downhill slope, it looks straight.
When everything, the contrasted slope of the landscape, the angle of the trees, and the inability to check anything against a horizon line, comes together on a slightly downhill slope, it will look uphill to whatever hapless chump happens to be wandering along it. Whenever someone checks with a level, or a GPS system the fun is over. Downhill is downhill. This illusion, though, is one that generally doesn't fade when you know the trick. So, if you have any mystery spots in your area, do let us know where they are, so we can roll up them.


Gaede, Wolfgang
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(b. arb. Lehe, near Bremerhaven, Germany, 25 May 1878; d. Munich, Germany, 24 June 1945)
Gaede, the founder of high-vacuum technology, through his invention of the mercury rotary pump (1905), the molecular pump (1912), and the diffusion pump (1915), made possible numerous new applications in technology and physicsm-semiconductor technology and nuclear physics, to mention only two.
The son of Karl Wilhelm Gaede, a Prussian army captain, and of Amalie Ruef, Gaede spent his youth in Freiburg im Breisgau, his mother's native city. There he attended the university. From childhood he had shown a remarkable ability to visualize and analyze complicated moving systems, a skill ob viously of invaluable help in his later inventions. He gave his technicians little more than a rough sketch, since he told them every detail of the pump under construction from memory.
At the University of Freiburg. Gaede first studied medicine but soon changed to physics. He received the Ph.D. in 1901 with a dissertation titled "Umlber die Aumlnderung der spezifischen Waumlrme der Metalle mit der Temperatur." He remained at Freiburg, as assistant to Franz Himstedt, until 1908. Continuing the work of his dissertation with experiments on
a housing
b porcelain drum
c mercury pool
d1, d2 chambers
e intake port
f1, f2 exhaust channels
h stopcock.
the Volta effect in a vacuum, Gaede was led to his first invention, the mercury rotary pump. It was the first continuously working air pump and had a much higher pumping speed than previous pumps-about 0.2 cubic decimeters per second.
Gaede presented the pump to the scientific world in 1905, at the Naturforscherversammlung in Meran. The efficient pump immediately was in great demand, and Gaede commissioned the small firm E. Leybolds Nachfolger to produce it. Gaede maintained a close connection with this establishment, which became a leader in vacuum technology.
Between 1905 and 1909 Gaede spent much of his time investigating the external friction of gases and its possible usefulness for a new method of creating a high vacuum. He qualified to teach at the University of Freiburg with the Habilitationsschrift "Die aumlseere Reibung der Gase" (1911.)
a housing
b> rotating cylinder
c slot
d hose
e manometer.
One consequence of Gaede"s work on external friction of gases was the construction of the molecular pump in 1911. It was the first pump to be based on a method different in principle from that used by Otto Von Guericke. The gas molecules adhere to a fast-rotating surface, thus gaining additional mo mentum away from the vessel to be exhausted. The pumping speed was about 2 cubic deciliters per second, ten times greater than the mercury rotary pump. The ultimate vacuum presure was less than 10–6 millieters of mercury. In 1913 this invention brought Gaede an associate professorship at Freiburg and the Elliot cresson gold medal of the Franklin Institute.
Another new pumping principle discussed in Gaede"s Hanbilitationssschrift was that of the diffussion pump. In it the gas molecules diffuse into a rapidly moving vapor jet and thus move away from the evacuted space and toward the backing pump. With this apparatus Gaede obtained a new record low pressure. The prototype had a pumping speed of 0.2 cubic deciliters per second. In 1923 the efficiency
a mercury pool
b vapor compartment
c conduit for mercury vapor
d distributor
e nozzles
f slit
g cooling water intake and outlet, respectively
h return pipe for liquid mercury
i vacuum pump connection.
was improved to 150 cubic deciliters per second and in 1944 to 1.500 cubic deciliters per second.
In 1917 Gaede was offered a professorship at the declined because of the political instability in that city. In 1919 he decided to go to the Technical University of Karlsruhe, where he accepted the professorship once held by Heinrich Hertz. The Physical Society of London awarded Gaede the Dudell medal in 1933; in the same year he was de nounced by some of his assistants as being "polit ically unreliable.' and the medal made him an object of persecution by the Nazi regime. Although he was not Jewish. Gaede was dismissed from his pro fessorship at the end of 1933. However, the Siemens
a housing
b rotor with dampers
c gas ballast valve
d oil trap
e intake port
f dirt trap.
Ring Foundation voted to give him the Siemens Ring, the highest award a German inventor could receive. He transferred his work to a private lab oratory in Karlsruhe that was equipped and spon sored by Leybold.
In 1935 Gaede invented the gas ballast device that he applied to an oil-filled rotary vane pump (gas ballast pump). This device, which prevents pumped vapors from being condensed in the pump during the compression phase, injects a permanent gas, usually air, into the compression ratio of the vapor is reduced when the exhaust valve of the pump opens, and thus no condensation occurs.
In 1939 Gaede went to Munich, where he estab lished a private laboratory. In his contact with Arnold Sommerfeld and his co-workers he found an ac knowledgement he had not earlier enjoyed. The laboratory was destroyed during an air raid in 1944. A year later Gaede contracted a fatal case of diphtheria.
Throughout his life Gaede was an outsider. He could afford to be. Since he had no financial problems after the invention of the mercury rotary pump. He never married, and his sister Hannah always took care of him. Contacts with his colleagues were rare, and his students testified that he was a bad teacher. He seems to have been an amiable, eccentric man, asingenious inventors are sometimes said to be.
1. Original Works. "Uuml die Aumlnderung der spezi fischen Waumlrme der Metalle mit der Temperatur" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1902); "Demonstration einer rotierenden Quecksilberluftpumpe," in Physikalische Zeitschrift, 6 (1905), 758–760; "Demonstaration einer neuen Verbesserung an der rotierende Quechsilberluftpumpe." ibid., 8 (1907). 852–853; "Die aumlussere Reibung der Gase," in Berichte der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft Zu Freiburg im Breisgau, 18. no.2 (1911), 133–197, his Habilita tionsschrift; "Die aumlssere Reibung der Gase und ein neues Prinzip fuumlr Luiftpumpen: Die Molekularluftpumpe," in Physikalische Zeitschrift, 13 (1912) 864–870, and in An nalen der Physik, 41 (1913), 289–336; "Die Molekular-Iuftpumpe," in Annalen der Physik, 41 (1913), 337–380; "Die Diffusion der Gase durch Quecksilberdampf bei niederen Drucken und die Diffusionsluftpumpe," ibid., 46 (1915), 357–392; "Die Entwicklung der Diffusions pumpe," in Zeitschrift fuumlr technische Physick, 4 (1923), 337–369; "Die Ældiffusionspumpe," ibid., 13 (1932), 210–212; and "Gasballastpumpen," in Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, 2A (1947), 233–238.
Gaede wrote articles on pumps and vacuum technology for Felix Auerbach and W. Hort, eds., Handbuch der Physikalischen und technischen Mechanik, VI (Leipzig, 1928), 90–121; and Wilhelm Wien and F, harms, eds., Handbuch der Experimentalphysik, IV, pt.3 (Leipzig, 1930), 413–461.
II. Secondary Literature. Tributes are E. Justi, in Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift, 64 (1943), 285–287; K. May, in Zeitschrift fuuml technische Physik, 24 (1943), 65; and W. Molthan, ibid., 19 153–154.
Obituaries include Arnold Sommerfeld, "In Memoriam. Wolfgang Gaede," in Zeitschrift fuumlr Naturforschung, 2A (1947), 240; and Franz Wolf, in Physikalische Blätter, 3 (1947), 384–386.
Biographical material is in Manfred Dunkel, Geschichte der Firma E. Leybolds Nachfolger: 1850–1966 (Cologne, 1963); Hannah Gaede, Wolfgang Gaede, der Schoumlpfer des Hochvakuums (Karlsruhe, 1954); Poggendorff, V (1926), 407


The Great White Silence - Blu-ray Review
'its historical significance is unparalleled'
Herbert Ponting's 1924 film of Captain Scott's tragic attempt to reach the South Pole in 1911, The Great White Silence is a marvel of technical achievements both old and new. Restored by the BFI to a brilliant new print, this Blu-ray outing of Ponting's silent film is presented by the institute with a new score by Simon Fisher Turner and a restoration of Ponting's original 'tinting', a process which gives the black and white negatives a semblance of colour.
That colour is used to stunning effect. Purples, blues, greens and yellows fill the screen in alternative scenes as Ponting uses the differing shades to reflect mood and content. The new soundtrack also adds multi-faceted layers to the on-screen narrative. Turner's score is a mixture of industrial clanking (representing'soundless' on screen items, such as icebergs) and contextual sound effects (such as the ship's bell on the Terra Nova, the vessel used to ferry the explorers in to the Antarctic). Ponting's on-screen textual narration feels a little twee but it is also very well written and reflects the feelings of a man experiencing the awe of a little-seen part of the world.
The whole package feels like the 'definitive edition' the BFI really want it to be and the historical significance of Ponting's work is impossible to underestimate. That someone was there on the Antarctic shelf at all is remarkable, that someone managed to capture footage like this is incredible. Of particular poignancy is the recreation of Scott and his company's daily routine which gives a glimpse into the ordeal they must have faced during the several months of journeying from their camp to the pole itself and back.
It is tempting at this point to slap a reverent five-stars at the bottom of Ponting's film and label it a classic. It is of course. Such a film-making endeavour will never be repeated and its historical significance is unparalleled. For all that though, parts of it drag significantly. Ponting rather unnecessarily recreated sections of the journey in miniature format. Watching tiny sledges wander over fake polar ice caps at a benign rate is hardly intriguing, much less involving. The lagging run-time of one-hundred and ten minutes is a long time to sit through a silent documentary which, despite its remarkable footage, has been superseded by hundreds of nature and anthropological documentaries in the intervening years. It's a fine film and a fitting monument to the legacy of Scott and his endeavour but its perfection is of a flawed nature, even if this restoration is worthy of significant praise.
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'it struck me that it demonstrates that there is no need for 3D or any fancy gimmicks to convey drama. All that is required is a staggeringly good story' - Every Film In 2011, 8/10
 1. I never knew this existed. I have read a number of books on Scott and the ill-fated expedition. I was fortunate enough to see Shackleton's silent movie of his Endurance expedition almost 10 years ago on the big screen. Harrowing stuff and well worth reading about if it is your thing.
 I will be looking out for this, it may play in our coming Film Festival.
 2. It's well worth seeing if it does appear there. I imagine the sound would be great to experience on the big screen. Not without its problems but whilst watching it you do get *that* feeling of being in the presence of something absolutely momentous. Never heard of the Shackleton film. I'll have to look into it.
 3. It is called South. Shackelton wrote a memoir of the expedition and named it South as well! Can't re-call the film maker's name off hand but it shows the Endurance being crushed among other things.
 4. I had the opportunity to see this film at a Film Society screening a couple of weeks ago. However, I wasn't very well and the length of the film put me off so I didn't see it after all. Thanks for the review, interesting to read. One point I must make is that the word is superceded or alternatively superseded.
 5. Thanks for the correction Lynn! I imagine the experience in a cinema screening could have been great but the Blu-ray transfer is excellent (as, I imagine, is the DVD) so if you get chance definitely give it a go.


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Side By Side: movie review
What do advances in tech mean for art?
Host of the documentary Keanu Reeves asks good questions of the famous subjects, including directors Martin Scorsese and George Lucas.
Courtesy of Tribeca Films
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Chris Kenneally's fascinating documentary "Side by Side" is about the impact of digital technology on modern-day movie-making. This may sound like a dry subject, but, as presented here, it's anything but – especially if you have more than a passing interest in the art and science of what gets projected onto our movie screens these days.
Featured is an A-list roster of talking heads, including Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Steven Soderbergh, George Lucas, and James Cameron, as well as lesser-known but no less challenging commentators such as the cinematographer Ellen Kuras, the editor Anne V. Coates (who cut "Lawrence of Arabia"), and the wizardly sound designer and editor Walter Murch. Keanu Reeves, looking more like a scraggly film school grad student than a movie star, is the documentary's host and guide. He asks good questions.
The primary question overhanging everything is: Is film dead? That is to say, is photochemical film, the standard for 100 years, rapidly on its way to being replaced by digital technology? The answer, judging from the evidence on view, is a qualified "yes."
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Purpose：This study was designed to identify the effects of carrying bag positions (None, left hand, right hand,left shoulder, right shoulder) on static balance.
Methods：Fourteen healthy adult females participated in the this study. The exclusion criteria were orthopedic or neurologic disease, predominant left side. Measurements were performed initial effects. Results were evaluated by OSI, APSI, and MLSI in the biodex stability system.
Results：There are among the three assessments (overall stability index(OSI), antero-posterior stability index (APSI), medio-lateral stability index(MLSI) significants difference for the carrying bags positions (None bag, left hand, right hand, left shoulder, right shoulder)(p<.05). The post-hoc test revealed a significant difference between none bag and both left hand and left shoulder in the OSI, APSI, MLSI (p<.05). Also, comparing the carrying positions significant difference between right hand and both left hand and left shoulder in the MLSI (p<.05).
Conclusion：The results suggest that none dominant side with carrying bag improve more imbalance than none bag and right hand of dominant with carrying bag improve more balance than non dominant side. When comparing the four carrying bag conditions, right hand was more effective than another conditions in static balance.


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White Screen After Installing The Theme
If you upload the theme and activate it, and see nothing but a white screen, please read the following information. This is more common than you might think, and it can be frustrating to sort out. First, it is important to understand what the white screen, often referred to as the "white screen of death," actually means. Simply put, there is an error that you can't see. The reason you can't see it is because, WordPress is not displaying the error that is causing the problem. When attempting to diagnose a white screen condition consider what you did before the condition occurred:
There are several causes for this condition. We will be addressing the ones most likely to occur — Plugins, Theme, and Other Causes.
No matter how hard developers try, it is basically impossible to write plugins that will work and play well together with every single theme. The same is true in reverse. If you experience a white screen after activating the theme, the problem could be a plugin that is in conflict with the theme. Try the following:
The most likely issue associated with a theme being the cause of a white screen condition is when the upload of the theme did not complete the transfer of all files, the transfer resulted in corrupted theme files, or you have PHP configuration memory limits set too low. Try this:
The following is a list of possible other causes for the white screen condition, because they too can cause this error:


When wearable computing meets the Pilates shirt
Move, a wearable-computing concept created by Artefact designer Jennifer Darmour, is a Pilates shirt that uses sensors to constantly monitor body position and muscle movement. Artefact
But wearable computing remains a niche business. Even as the cost and size of the sensors the devices use has dropped, and the ability to transmit the data those sensors collect to smartphones has become a snap, most gadgets are kludgy.
Jennifer Darmour, a user experience designer for the Seattle design firm Artefact, wants to fix that. Darmour, who also authors the Electricfoxy blog, which focuses on wearable computing, has come up with a prototype Pilates shirt designed to challenge current conventions in wearable computing.
The garment has sensors in it that monitor a person's body position. It can notify wearers, with a vibration, if it detects that their body position is wrong.
The idea isn't so much to create a new business as it is to experiment with principles involved in getting wearable computing gadgets to the masses. Darmour believes making those gadgets less gadgetlike will ultimately lead to wider adoption.
"It doesn't look like a computer that you're wearing," Darmour said. "It looks like a simple Pilates shirt."
Artefact's Jennifer Darmour Artefact
Darmour will talk about the shirt, and wearable computing in general, at a Saturday session at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival.
Artefact has tinkered with concept products before, designing a novel printer, with a touch interface, that easily connects to cameras, computers, phones, and tablets. Its engineers ginned up a concept camera that has a slim, iPhone-like body with a detachable lens that connects wirelessly.
The idea of all these exercises is to push the state of the art. And if that generates some buzz for Artefact, which helped develop the CR200 controller for the Sonos music system and worked on the user experience on the BlackBerry PlayBook, that's fine too.
Darmour sees three basic challenges with most wearable computing devices. The devices are generally tech gadgets, made with hard plastics, not more appealing flexible fabrics. The data the devices generate is massive, since they constantly monitor users' movements, vital signs, and surroundings, making it hard to draw meaningful conclusions. And the interactions users have with wearable computers are often disruptive, requiring them to stop what they're doing to check the device.
The Pilates shirt, dubbed Move, tries to address each of those challenges. It has four sensors woven in on the front, back, and sides of the garment. Those sensors constantly monitor body position and muscle movement. And the shirt can prompt users to correct their body position through haptic feedback components at the hips and shoulders.
"It's all about precision in movement," Darmour said.
Darmour focused on Pilates because she's passionate about the exercise program. But she believes the technology could be applied to golf shirts, for example, to help improve someone's swing. Or it could be used for posture management, to help workers stop slumping at their desks.
The Move concept, which Artefact doesn't currently plan to turn into a product, shows how wearable computers can seamlessly blend into someone's life.
"Your body becomes the interface," Darmour said. "We're going from interacting with it, to it interacting with us."
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DIGNITY TO THE CARE WORKER
To improve the value and status of carework, to support mutual respect between people who provide care and people who recieve it.
COMISSIONERS & PROVIDERS SHOULD:
- Allocate adequate resources to produce the best outcomes for people using services. Low pay is unlikely to motivate workers or improve the status of the work. The alternative may be costly in terms of recruitment, retention and reputation.
- Ensure that staffing levels and time allocated for home care visits allow workers to carry out their work properly in a way that respects the individual.
- Promote autonomy for care workers, moving away from task-centred and time-restricted work schedules and reflecting the wishes of people using the service.
- Ensure care workers are provided with the training they need to do their job well. Training should be structured, ongoing and largely work-based, focused on the needs of the people using the service and provided, at least in part, by people who use services and those with experience of frontline care work.
- Ensure that care workers are supported by other professionals (e.g. social workers, community nurses, occupational therapists, dieticians, continence advisors) who can provide practical and emotional support, develop their knowledge and skills, and enable them to cope with difficult situations e.g. challenging behaviour and family conflict.
- Respect the experience and the knowledge care workers have of the people they work with.
- Assess applicants' attitudes at interview and regularly monitor thereafter.
- Provide a clear definition of the care worker role and a clear career path, from induction onwards, associated with training, learning and skills development. The framework for progression should reward achievement and be linked to pay and other benefits.
- Promote and reward quality time spent on compassionate, person-centred care. Ensure the complaints procedure also encourages compliments.
- Provide strong leadership, regular supervision and ongoing practical and emotional support to frontline care staff.
- Provide training and awareness-raising, to reduce any negative effects of cultural and racial differences (including language and accent) between care workers and people receiving the service.
- Ensure that abuse against care workers is taken seriously and that policy and procedures, as well as training, supports people to understand and respond to challenging behaviour in positive ways.
- Involve care workers in day-to-day decision-making and service improvement.
- Ensure workers do not feel isolated, either by working in isolated services or, for home care workers and personal assistants, by the nature of their work.
- Promote connections with other community services and peer support groups.
- Promote awareness of how to raise concerns about safeguarding and whistleblowing.


Question: What Are Two Lines That Intersect To Form Right Angles Called?
What are opposite angles called?
Another word for opposite angles are vertical angles.
Vertical angles are always congruent, which means that they are equal.
Adjacent angles are angles that come out of the same vertex.
Adjacent angles share a common ray and do not overlap..
When two lines intersect they create a?
Two intersecting lines form a pair of vertical angles. The vertical angles are opposite angles with a common vertex (which is the point of intersection).
When two lines intersect four angles are formed called?
Vertical Angles When two lines intersect, they create four angles. The angles opposite one another are called vertical angles. Vertical angles are equal to each other. Here 1 = 2, and 3 = 4.
When two lines intersect the opposite angles are?
Vertical angles are pair angles formed when two lines intersect. Vertical angles are sometimes referred to as vertically opposite angles because the angles are opposite to each other.
What do you call the lines that never intersect?
In geometry, parallel lines are lines in a plane which do not meet; that is, two straight lines in a plane that do not intersect at any point are said to be parallel. Colloquially, curves that do not touch each other or intersect and keep a fixed minimum distance are said to be parallel.
Is there a symbol for intersecting lines?
Straight lines that cross each other at some point are called intersecting lines. These lines will intersect at one point only over their entire length. There is no symbol to use when naming intersecting lines.
What are two lines in the same plane called?
Two lines, both in the same plane, that never intersect are called parallel lines. Parallel lines remain the same distance apart at all times.
What is the symbol for parallel lines?
Geometric SymbolInterpretation||Parallel⊥PerpendicularCongruentSimilar6 more rows
What are the types of angles in parallel lines?
Angles that are in the area between the parallel lines like angle H and C above are called interior angles whereas the angles that are on the outside of the two parallel lines like D and G are called exterior angles. Angles that are on the opposite sides of the transversal are called alternate angles e.g. H and B.


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The Story of the Fire-Swan contains examples of:
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Because the fire-swan's feathers are in some way made of flames, they can't develop properly as long as he's in water.
- Gray Rain of Depression: The fire-swan swims around in one for a time, due to his inability to fly.
- The Owl-Knowing One: The fire-swan goes to seek the wise old owls help.
- Swans A-Swimming: The protagonist; the fire-swan.


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The California Legislature has proclaimed Oct. 4-11 "No Drugs Down The Drain Week" to educate you about pollution caused by flushing old and unwanted medication.
Why? Because drugs in waterways have a negative impact on fish and other aquatic wildlife.
Everyday in California, unwanted or expired medicine is disposed of down the toilet and flushed medication ends up in local waterways.
As chemical analysis has improved, wastewater treatment agencies now can detect even trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in rivers, bays and oceans that may have impacts to fish and wildlife. As a result, it is now necessary to work with communities across California to educate people about keeping medication out of your toilet and drains and disposed of safely.
To deal with this pollution issue a coalition of local, regional, state and federal agencies is conducting a one-week statewide effort to remind us that flushing down the toilet and/or pouring down the sink are not acceptable means of medicine disposal.
During this week the public will have access to various proper disposal options, with local agencies providing local recommendations such as special events, ongoing programs and trash disposal.
Disposal options are available on-line at _URL_
With drug sales doubling in recent years and outpacing population growth, pharmaceutical waste has emerged as a major issue for the environment.
If dumping all these drugs into our waterways has bad effects on wildlife … it may also do the same to us humans. Not good! /Gary


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O-1 Self Petition / Entrepreneur
If an applicant does not have an employer / job offer, they can still apply for an O-1. Instead of self-petitioning, which is not permitted by the USCIS, applicants can create a company that will petition for them in an Employee-Employer Relationship.
The key to "self-petitioning for an O-1", or having a company the beneficiary owns to petition for the beneficiary, is to establish employee-employer relationship.
The Neufeld Memo of 01/08/2010 redefines an employee-employer relationship for U.S. employers. Under this memo, if the beneficiary is "the sole operator, manager, and employee", the beneficiary cannot be fired since he cannot fire himself and has no other entity to do so. If the applicant cannot be fired, then an employee-employer relationship cannot exist.
On the other hand, the beneficiary can still be the "sole stockholder of a corporation" and be employed by the corporation they have majority ownership as long as there are entities that can fire, hire, pay, or otherwise control the beneficiary (i.e. a Board of Directors). To check if such a relationship exists, the beneficiary should consider the following:
- Do you have evidence of other investors (i.e. purchase agreements)?
- Do you have bylaws that list board members' names and responsibilities?
- Do the bylaws specifically state that the board has the right to fire you?
- Do other investors supervise your work on-site?
- Are there performance reviews done for you? What is your level of supervision?
- How is your day-to-day task determined?
Factors that USCIS will consider
When the USCIS receives a "self-petitioning" case, they look at a number of factors to determine if the petitioner (company) has the right to control the beneficiary. None of the following factors are decisive, but will affect the final determination.
- Does the petitioner supervise the beneficiary and is such supervision off-site or on-site?
- If the supervision is off-site, how does the petitioner maintain such supervision, i.e. weekly calls, reporting back to main office routinely, or site visits by the petitioner?
- Does the petitioner have the right to control the work of the beneficiary on a day-to-day basis if such control is required?
- Does the petitioner provide the tools or instrumentalities needed for the beneficiary to perform the duties of employment?
- Does the petitioner hire, pay, and have the ability to fire the beneficiary?
- Does the petitioner evaluate the work-product of the beneficiary, i.e. progress/performance reviews?
- Does the petitioner claim the beneficiary for tax purposes?
- Does the petitioner provide the beneficiary any type of employee benefits?
- Does the beneficiary use proprietary information of the petitioner in order to perform the duties of employment?
- Does the beneficiary produce an end-product that is directly linked to the petitioner's line of business?
- Does the petitioner have the ability to control the manner and means in which the work product of the beneficiary is accomplished?
Establishing Extraordinary Ability as an Entrepreneur
1. Receiving a major, internationally-recognized award (i.e. Nobel Prize)
Funding from outside investors (including venture capital funding and angel investors) qualifies as a major award. The investor must be a reputable source and have a history of selecting quality investments.
2. Fulfilling 3 of the following:
- Memberships that require outstanding achievements as judged by experts: There are many available associations that entrepreneurs can join for this O-1 qualification. Research should be done prior to starting an O-1 so that applicants can fulfill any necessary requirements for membership.
- Receive nationally or internationally recognized prizes/awards: Other sources of funding for the company may be used for this criteria.
- Publications in professional or major media such as newspapers: Any press about the company could qualify as a publication; however, it must be a reputable or professional major media (i.e. Business Today, Fortune).
- Original and major professional contributions: The company's product can be considered an original and major contribution. The impact or significance of this product can be shown through letters and other media.
- Employment in critical role for distinguished organizations: If the applicant founded the company, this criteria is usually easily fulfilled through role description, letters, and other evidence.
- Judged the work of others in field (such as pitch competitions)
- High salary in field (depends on the individual field)
- Author of articles in professional journals or other major media (if applicable)
3. Providing other evidence that shows that applicant is the top in their field
In addition to the regular O-1 process of packaging your entire case file from start to finish and training you for the mock interview, we provide additional services for clients who have not created or is in the process of creating a business for the purpose of an O-1.
We will help you create a business tailored to the factors that the USCIS will examine. This includes creating and/or examining your bylaws, articles of incorporation, minutes of the board of directors, articles of association, business hierarchy charts, and other relevant materials.


Delhi: Introduction
A multidimensional metropolis
Delhi Introduction Delhi Introduction
The city of Delhi is busy, chaotic and truly stunning. It's a city of extremes, where the rich and poor live in tandem with each other, where different cultures and religions exist side by side, often bringing each others customs and traditions into their own folds. The city of Delhi isn't for the fainthearted.
To witness a slice of India, Delhi is where you would want to be.
Delhi is urban and cosmopolitan, and at the same time traditional in various respects. Following customs and traditions are a priority among Indians, and this fact is evident in every sphere of the capital of India. Home to a number of historical monuments which tell of India's struggle for independence from the British rule, the city of Delhi also serves as the historical capital of India, and is a delight for every historical traveler. If indulging in food tops your travel list then there is no better place to be than Delhi. With a mix cuisines from throughout India, as well as cuisines from the world over, Delhi has mastered a culinary expertise which remains unmatched. To witness this magnificent city in all its glory you will need at least a week to get an insight into what Delhi is all about.


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For those times when Windows completely freezes and you can't even open the start menu, you can also restart your computer from Task Manager instead of just powering the machine off.
Doing a hard reset isn't as healthy for your computer's internal components, this method would be preferable if possible.
There are two ways you can bring up Task Manager:
- Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and click on Task Manager.
- Hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc to bring up Task Manager
Once you are in Task Manager, you can restart a hung process in the processes list, or you can click on Shutdown \ Restart to restart your computer.
Pretty simple tip, but very useful


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Definition of Fetal pleural effusion
Fetal pleural effusion: In the fetus, excess fluid between the two membranes (the pleurae) that envelop the lungs. The pleural effusion may be unilateral (in one lung) or bilateral (in both lungs) and it may be an isolated finding in an otherwise normal fetus or be associated with generalized edema (hydrops). If untreated, fetal pleural effusion often causes severe, sometimes fatal, respiratory insufficiency in the neonatal period. Treatment is by the prenatal insertion of a thoracoamniotic shunt (to shunt the pleural effusion into the amniotic fluid). Survival after this procedure is over 90% in fetuses with isolated pleural effusion and about 50% in those with associated hydrops.
Last Editorial Review: 6/14/2012
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Justice ministers are due to agree proposals next Thursday (30 November) for common rules and penalties to tackle gangs like the Chinese 'Snakeheads' which smuggle immigrants into the Union.
But member states are divided over just how far the rules should go. Some worry that strict regulations will mean that charitable organisations which circumvent the law to bring genuine refugees into European countries could find themselves classed with professional gangs.
But other governments are insisting on a hard-line approach, saying that no matter how good their intentions, if these groups break the law they should be punished. "The law is the law. If these groups are acting illegally, then we would expect them to be dealt with," said one diplomat.
Ministers are due to reach preliminary agreement on two separate proposals next week. The measures are seen as a key part of the Union's attempts to crack down on human trafficking in the wake of the Dover tragedy, in which 58 Chinese immigrants suffocated in the back of a lorry which was carrying them into the UK earlier this year.
Under the first proposal, ministers would agree a common definition of the crime of trafficking in human beings and set an
EU-wide maximum penalty for the offence. The French want this to be set at ten years, but other member states such as Belgium are pushing for just five years.
The wording of the definition is also proving controversial. Many member states insist that in order to be guilty, an individual must be smuggling 'for financial gain'.
This would protect those caught transporting genuine refugees into the Union for ethical reasons. However, other EU governments, including France and the UK, say this would let too many people off the hook and make it harder to prove a case against professional smugglers.
The second proposal is designed to get agreement on common penalties for those who transport illegal immigrants across borders. France has advocated a penalty of at least 2,000 euro for lorry drivers and others who allow themselves to be used for human-trafficking operations.
But diplomats say that this is likely to be watered down ahead of next week's meeting and replaced with a requirement that member states set the maximum penalty for the offence at a minimum of 5,000 euro.
More from... John Shelley


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A chandelier made of bones, skulls on altars, hanging skeletons -- enter the creepy world of crypts and catacombs for a look into burial practices of the past. Warning: Images not for the squeamish.
Down in the cold, dry basement of the Capuchin Monastery, on the outskirts of Palermo, Italy, are the remains of 8,000 people. When the monastery outgrew its original cemetery in 1599, catacombs were excavated beneath the building. In addition to friars interred here, well-known locals chose the crypts as their final resting place. The catacombs are open to the public; iron grills prevent visitors from touching or posing with those laid to rest here.


Can Solar Backpacks Get Wet?
Before investing in a good piece of gear like a solar backpack, it makes sense that you want to make sure it will hold up. There are a lot of different rumors, stories, and claims about how solar backpacks handle water. This article is here to answer all of your questions on the topic.
Solar backpacks are water resistant, but not waterproof. The solar panels will not be damaged from water or rain. So it's perfect fine for solar backpacks to get wet, but as with any pack you don't want an exposed electronic charging when the rain is pouring down and you're soaked.
raindrops on solar panel
Solar Power Must Be Weather Resistant
Considering that solar power by definition needs to be used outdoors, it seems odd to me that so many people wonder if solar backpacks can handle rain.
Solar backpacks are just as durable as your average backpack and many times even more so. While no backpack is likely to be 100% waterproof, solar packs are almost certainly going to be water-resistant.
KEY POINT: Basically questions about solar backpacks usually revolve around how the panels hold up. Solar panels themselves are waterproof, resilient, and designed to get through any weather!
That being said, it is important to take certain precautions. In the same way you wouldn't just jam your laptop into a backpack with no raincoat or protective poncho over the top when it was pouring rain outside, you should take all precautions when using a solar pack.
That has to do with water soaking through backpack material, not whether a pack is solar or not.
As for charging electronics while going through rain, if you have a full cover poncho so no rain is getting through then you should be fine.
Believe it or not, the solar backpacks are still pulling in solar energy during cloudy or rainy weather.
The amount being pulled in is much lower than on a sunny day, but the panels are still working to pull what little energy they can even during inclement weather.
This is a pleasant surprise for many people, as is finding out that portable solar panels can charge via LED lights indoors.
But the solar panels you will find on modern backpacks are designed to go through the wear and tear that they will see through everyday life and use.
Solar Power Made Practical Use
Solar power backpacks are meant to be reliable. Because of the long-time negative news campaigns run against solar power decades ago, there's an unfair (and normally not true) perception of solar as being unreliable.
Which means solar gear needs to work at a higher standard just to get the benefit of the doubt.
So when people ask are solar backpacks reliable the answer needs to be far more enthusiastic than a tepid yes.
This is why many items that are solar powered are built as good or even better than the standard non-solar equivalents.
Your solar backpack will be fine in the rain as long as you take the regular precautions you would with any other backpack.
Quality of Backpack Matters
As with regular backpackers, the quality of the brand of backpack you buy matters when seeing how well your solar backpack will function and hold up.
If you pay for cheap you will get cheap.
The top brand solar backpacks are exceptional. There are even companies that really focus on making solar packs for hikers and backpackers. Obviously these must be able to hold up against inclement weather.
The chances of hiking for three months without getting caught in the rain are going to be next to nothing.
Unless you're doing a desert hike, in which case you wouldn't be worrying about how rain proof or water resistant your pack is.
But if you go with a quality solar backpack, you won't have to worry about that.
We talk about some of our favorite picks for solar backpacks in the "Are solar backpacks reliable?" that we linked to a bit further up.
If you're lazy the picks basically are (with links to up to date Amazon listings):
A good solar backpack will be water resistant and the solar paneling will be just fine no matter how much the water comes down.
How Resilient Solar Panels Are in Storms: A Personal Experience
We survived the horrific Derecho in Cedar Rapids, IA back in 2020. To put the short summary, including those asking "What the heck is a Derecho?" Imagine a category 3 hurricane at full force for two to three hours slamming into the middle of the Midwest of the United States.
A place not exactly known for hurricanes, to put it mildly.
The city was smashed, and large chunks had no power for three weeks. Virtually every house within five blocks had roof damage. At least the ones that still had roofs.
Ours was undamaged. Even the "I don't know how much I trust that structure much less roof" garage (which also has some solar panels on it).
Those solar panels were like Viking shields. Terrifying new weather condition unlike any ever seen in Iowa's history?
Wind, rain, giant tree branches, the panels couldn't care less.
Granted – those are full scale solar panels for homes and buildings versus the smaller portable solar panels put onto backpacks.
But it goes to show that solar panels in all their forms aren't considered about rain, sleet, or snow.
If this seems amazing keep in mind they have already developed solar panels that harvest additional energy from rain drops.
As anyone who has watched solar grow over the past 20 years, the technology is only going to continue to get better and better.
The Verdict: Solar Backpacks Work Well in Rain
The only major difference between solar backpacks and regular packs is that the solar packs give you the option of harnessing solar power in order to charge electronics like smartphones, laptops, or tablets.
These will be just as water resistant as most well built backpacks while helping you to keep important electronics charged even when you're a long way from the nearest charging port.
As long as you stay with the proven dependable solar backpack brands you can rest easy knowing that your solar backpack will function just fine in the rain.
Hi, I'm Shane! I've always felt a passion for two worlds: one in technology and one for the great oudoors away from it. The amazing advances in solar power in my lifetime have really opened up the possibilities, and both my brother and I are deeply passionate about where solar power meets outdoor gear!
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Photo by Brad Otto
One of the world's most technologically advanced floating nautical survey platforms has been anchored off Birch Bay for the past few weeks collecting data to update national nautical charts.
The Rainier, one of the research ships in the Pacific fleet of the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA), is in the middle of a mission collecting data to update NOAA's nautical charts for the Strait of Georgia. Its work will eventually take it up the coast of Alaska.
The data will provide more information on the shoals in the vicinity of Cherry Point, which is the largest tanker port in Washington. This information will be helpful to the Puget Sound pilots who steer large tankers through the sound and the Strait of Georgia. The area has seen changes in vessel traffic recently due to the increased capacity of the facilities at Cherry Point, according to the NOAA website for the ship.
The Rainier, originally launched in 1967, is 231 feet long and weighs about 1,500 tons. It can house a total of 25 crew members and stay at sea for 22 days at a time. For more information on the Rainier, visit the ship's website.


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I am looking for a circular power point menu template, something that looks like this:
What is this template like this called? Do you guys have any recommendation where to look one for free?
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It's not that hard to create such a template yourself or modify another template to contain a radial progress indicator. Start by creating the base frame with a circle object and lines going out to boxes or other circles. Label each object. Now duplicate the slide as many times as needed. Last, go to each of the duplicated slides and bold the text on the active item you're about to cover or perhaps change the background color like in the example you provided.
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This article is part of the supplement: Twentieth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting: CNS*2011
Open Access Poster presentation
A model of healthy aging and motor inhibition in the basal ganglia
Kyle Lyman1*, Joaquin Anguera2 and David Terman1
Author Affiliations
1 Math Department, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43201, USA
2 Department of Neurology and Physiology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
For all author emails, please log on.
BMC Neuroscience 2011, 12(Suppl 1):P331 doi:10.1186/_PHONE_-S1-P331
Published:18 July 2011
© 2011 Lyman et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
Poster presentation
The basal ganglia have received a great deal of attention from modeling studies because of their putative role in normal motor function including action selection and sequencing, as well as their distubrances in Parkinson's disease. However, their interaction is complex, and is thought to be more sophisticated than can be accounted for by simple box and plot diagrams.
In the present study, we have examined trial by trial variations in response times in the stop signal task for both young (YA) and older (OA) adults. We compare previously reported YA data [1] with data collected from 18 older adults performing the same task. Unlike YA, the OA do not show a specific pattern of response times that is modulated by stop signal success in the previous trial. Additionally, the OA did not show an effect of inter trial interval (ITI) as was observed in YA. Based on our behavioral data [1], we concluded that a task switching interpretation was the most likely explanation of the YA results.
We also compare the electrophysiological data collected during the ITI from OA and YA performing the stop signal task. In YA, the power spectral data revealed a midline frontal theta effect with more desynchronization following a stop signal trial. As in [1], we concluded that this evinced a task set switching interpretation as YA subjects went from a 'ready to inhibit' mode to a 'ready to respond' mode. In the OA data presented here, we failed to observe a similar frontal theta effect, which was expected given the lack of a behavioral result in the OA subjects.
To test hypotheses about the role of the basal ganglia in task switching in young and older adults, we have developed a conductance-based network model of the subthalamic nucleus, internal and external segments of the globus pallidus. The model incorporates cellular properties described in previous modeling studies [3] based on experimental findings. First we establish network properties which lead to patterns of beta activity that are consistent with observed phenomenon in human subjects [2]. Next, we determine which network parameters affect trial to trial variations in response times within the model. Using this approach, we examine how known changes in healthy older adult basal ganglia may affect task performance. Similarly, we discuss the implications for Parkinson's disease.
 1. Anguera JA, Lyman K, Gazzaley A: Neural correlates of response inhibition after-effects. In Human Brain Mapping Conference. Barcelona Spain; 2010. OpenURL
 2. Swann N, Tandon N, Canolty R, Ellmore TM, McEvoy LK, Dreyer S, DiSano M, Aron AR: Intracranial EEG reveals a timeand frequency-specific role for the right inferior frontal gyrus and primary motor cortex in stopping initiated responses.
 J Neurosci 2009, 29(40):12675-12685. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | PubMed Central Full Text OpenURL
 3. Terman D, Rubin JE, Yew AC, Wilson CJ: Activity patterns in a model for the subthalamopalldal network of the basal ganglia.
 J Neurosci 2002, 22(7):2963-2976. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL


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The Heritage of Sophia Street
When we think of Fredericksburg history as it relates to Sophia Street, we immediately bring to mind a few specific remaining structures and sites as we see them today: The Toll House at the foot of Rocky Lane; the present Half Way house at Wolfe and Sophia Streets, once an early tavern. The Center for the Creative Arts, referred to as the Silversmith's House; and the Sandstone Warehouse at the bridge at Sophia and William Streets.
If any other structure of eighteenth century vintage stood on Sophia Street, it no longer stands today. For that matter, did any eighteenth century structure ever face Sophia Street?
The Toll House in its relationship to the ferry served a special purpose and may have faced the river, but it was remote from primary areas of warehouse activity.
The present Half Way House, which could be Fredericksburg's earliest standing structure, obviously faced up river and for good reason. A visit to its basement level reveals huge sandstone fireplaces at either end of the building. The riverside fireplace is filled in while the Sophia Street or west end has been converted to an entrance necessitating the removal of the chimney. This magnificent eighteenth century tavern no doubt once resounded with the then nearby activity of the wharf and the warehouses that packed in merchants, sailors and warehousemen. Perhaps someday it may be restored to its original splendor and play an informative role in Sophia Street and waterfront history.
The Center for the Creative Arts, or Silversmith's House, obviously faced George Street for practical access to the commercial activity of the river and the more negotiable George Street. Assuming that the tunnel beneath George Street was there during the late eighteenth century, ships must have anchored at the river entrance to the tunnel in order to load and unload merchandise or slaves.
The gable end of the Center for Creative Arts now fronts on Sophia Street as does the Half Way House. With the nineteenth century development of Sophia Street, new structures naturally fronted on this growing area of activity and those of the eighteenth century converted their front entrances to the now more practical approach to the town--Sophia Street.
The Center, a very important historical attraction, has many fine historical features. Its sandstone basement floor and walls, its ghost story, its silversmith relationship -- all contributed to its historic value. As time went by, the sandstone warehouse at William and Sophia Streets no longer used its riverfront loading areas at the lower and earlier levels of the building. Instead, the William and Sophia Street entrances served the upper levels as these were constructed later.
It appears that Caroline Street was the more heavily urbanized area of eighteenth century Fredericksburg as commerce and development bypassed Sophia Street until it was sufficiently filled and broadened to serve as a negotiable street. The precipitous Sophia Street banks resulted from incessant fill which covered up much early riverfront history.
The transition of commerce from riverfront to Caroline Street and then, to a degree, back to Sophia Street, presents an intriguing picture of early Fredericksburg history. Other structures that may have paralleled those still standing are lost beneath fill and time. The sandstone structure beneath the Briar Patch Antiques* on Sophia Street, supporting the frame building above, is a unique example of early riverfront warehouse activity. Its recent exposure while remodeling was taking place revealed large riverfront entrances with huge sandstone lintels, characteristic of such riverfront warehouses. The building erected on it actually saved it from total oblivion and its brief appearance presented a fascinating glimpse into early waterfront history.
We must remember that even though Sophia Street was mapped in the early eighteenth century, structures at that time faced the river which was the practical and negotiable route of commerce.
This article originally appeared in the Fredericksburg Times magazine and was later reprinted in Fredericksburg Underground: Archaeological History, with Roy G. Butler, pp. 118-121.
*The Briar Patch Antiques was a few doors down from the Old Stone Warehouse. Today, it also houses an antique shop.


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Several recent reports of "swimmers itch" have occurred as a result of swimming or wading in shallow areas with very warm water temperatures. Individuals with compromised immune systems, other health issues and children may want to avoid water contact at warm and shallow beaches — particularly North Nets, South Nets and Long Beach.
An advisory is a warning to swimmers but it is not a beach closure and all public beaches at Pyramid Lake remain open. During an advisory, a beach is posted with warning signs when the water contains levels of bacteria that indicate there may be an increased risk of developing minor skin, eye, ear, nose and throat infections and stomach disorders. Anyone who chooses to swim during an advisory is asked to avoid dunking their head in, or swallowing the water.
Anyone swimming should take additional precautions, including drying off vigorously with a towel, showering shortly after swimming and avoiding the ingestion of lake water. If visitors to Pyramid Lake do experience symptoms of "swimmers itch" they are encouraged to report it to the tribe by calling _PHONE_.


What is the DISC Test
What is the DISC Test
The DISC test it is not a 'test' because a person can't pass or fail when writing it. Also, there are no right or wrong answers, and there is no bad or good score. Everyone is a mix of all four personality dimensions, and each mix is equally valuable.
- Intelligence
- Morality/character
- Levels of ambition or motivation
- Self-esteem or lack of it
What are the origins of the DISC test?
The idea of personality testing is not new. In fact, the word 'personality' itself comes from the Latin word 'persona' which referred to the masks worn by stage actors in Greek theatre.
The first recorded use of four quadrants of personality comes from Empedocles in the 5th century BC. Hippocrates in the 4th century BC believed that the four personality types came from four fluids within our bodies. Galen (2nd century AD) first came up with the terms choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine to describe the four categories of human personality.
DISC dates back to 1928 when William Marston published his landmark book "Emotions of Normal People." Marston was a lawyer and a psychologist and contributed to the first polygraph test, authored self-help books, and even created the character "Wonder Woman!"
Psychologist Walter Clark developed these ideas into the first DISC profile in 1956. Clark created the 'Activity Vector Analysis,' a checklist of describing words on which he asked people to indicate descriptions that were true about them. The assessment was intended to be used by employers trying to find qualified employees.
Is there a difference between DISC and DiSC?
There are both similarities and differences between DISC and DiSC. Both tools are based on Marston and Clark's original work, and both use similar categories and descriptors to describe the four personality types.
In the 1970s, John Geier began developing material using the DISC categories. His assessment material would eventually become known as 'Everything DiSC' and is currently owned by John Wiley and Sons.
DISC on the other hand, is a similar tool developed by others, and used by many coaches (such as Tony Robbins) and other professionals to promote self-understanding, enhance team function, and put right people in right roles.
What does DISC stand for?
In 1928, William Marston labelled the four personality types:
- D: Dominant
- I: Influential
- S: Steady
- C: Compliant
Based on administering personality assessments to approximately 10,000 people over a 25-year span, gettingpeopleright.com has updated these four categories to:
- D: Dominant
- I: Inspiring
- S: Steady
- C: Conscientious
These categories are updated to better reflect what Marston originally meant, and are also more in step with modern culture. Few people today wish to self-identify as 'compliant' for instance. Nor is the 'S' personality type necessarily steady in all circumstances.
A simple description of each of the four DISC personality types:
The dominant person is direct, forceful, strong-willed and proactive.
They like to do tasks quickly, and are always interested in taking action, especially when the action is bold and decisive. It's important for them to be in charge and as a result may be poor at dealing with authority. Working towards and achieving goals energizes them, and they are focused primarily on the future.
Also, they are naturally task-oriented and tend to think only later about how the people involved might be affected.
Possible weaknesses include being insensitive, being too pushy or forceful, and being too blunt for the comfort of other personality types. They may also think they're often (or always) right, and it's hard to convince them to change once their minds are made up.
The inspiring person is enthusiastic, outgoing, ideas-oriented, and fun.
The inspiring person is talks a lot; they enjoy expressing themselves and persuading others. They are natural-born salespeople. They like to perform and are drawn to the spotlight. They love brainstorming and collaborating with other enthusiastic people who display vision and share their passion for ideas.
Their possible weaknesses include talking too much, struggling to compete projects once their initial enthusiasm has worn off, and maintaining focus on one idea for a long time. They also find details challenging; they know that details are important, but struggle to get them exactly right.
The supportive person is patient, diplomatic, flexible, and empathetic.
The supportive person is energized by feeling that they've helped someone. They love to contribute behind the scenes, away from the spotlight. They need to know that they're more than just a number, and so they thrive in collaborative environments. They are energized by doing practical jobs that they feel confident in completing. To a supportive person, trust is everything, and when they feel trusted and appreciated, they perform at peak levels.
Their weaknesses may include avoiding conflict, and not speaking their minds (especially about controversial topics. Since they don't enjoy engaging in conflict, they may struggle with feelings of bitterness, or hold grudges over real or perceived sleights. When they feel badly treated, they may become stubborn and display a 'quiet will of iron.'
The conscientious person is detailed, accurate, thorough, and precise.
The conscientious person is energized by doing a task thoroughly and well. They desire the time and quiet necessary to focus on doing a perfect job.
Detail and data appeal to them because data is predictable and consistent; people are not!
Also, it's natural for them to create structure, order and process, and they're very interested in building a detailed plan that will lead to quality results.
Their weaknesses include being too picky; they spot what's wrong before they see what's right in most situations. At times they exert inappropriate control over others, especially when they're under stress. Since they strive for quality results, they may become bogged down in detail, trying to be perfect in every aspect of a task, whether the task matters or not.
How is the DISC personality test used?
- Learning how to communicate better with others
- Understanding the motivations of others
- Hiring the right person for the right job
- Coaching people to recognize their natural areas of strength and weakness
- Self-reflection and personal growth
Summary of the DISC Test
- grow communication on your team
- increase your knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses
- learn the strengths and weaknesses of those around you
- understand the motivations of yourself and others
- improve success in hiring and promotion
- dramatically increase your effectiveness working with people
The tool is simple, easy to use, and highly effective. Give it a try and see for yourself. Try writing it for free at gettingpeopleright.com
Additional resources
Thanks for reading this article on 'What is the DISC test?' Below are additional resources from Getting People Right, the global provider of online human resources and leadership tools:
Trevor Throness is a speaker, consultant, and author of "The Power of People Skills." He is also co-founder and senior instructor at gettingpeopleright.com _URL_
Find more about "The Power of People Skills" here: _URL_
Related Resources
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Access to 10 of Getting People Right's Flagship Courses:
 - Discovering and implementing core values
 - Enhancing your career through delegation
 - Building a one-page strategic business plan
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 - Dealing with under performers
 - Learning the process to hire a-players
 - How to fire with minimum pain and drama
 - Objectively assessing your team
 - Building your personal annual plan
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An official enumeration of the people of a country to obtain statistics concerning their ages, occupations, education, and the like. In ancient Rome the census was taken with a view to taxation. In canon law, census means a tax or tribute imposed on a benefice, usually by a bishop and payable to himself. In diocesan and parochial usage it is the enumeration of the faithful, and certain data about their spiritual needs and conditions. A census or enrollment of the people is mentioned several times in the Old Testament and notably in the New Testament (Luke 2), the enrollment of "the whole world" which occasioned the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem wherc Christ was born.
New Catholic Dictionary
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- ABOUT EOC
- WHAT WE DO
- WHERE WE WORK
- ONLINE LIBRARY
- NEWS & EVENTS
For environmental issues to be appropriately integrated nationally and subnationally, a method of analysing and recording environmental performance is required. The Environmental Performance Assessment (EPA) component of the CEP-BCI has addressed that need by introducing a process for regular EPA reporting.
A core feature of this process is the use of 'pressure-state-response' (PSR) analytical frameworks to identify and measure environmental issues or concerns.
Typical 'pressures' include those that have both a direct and indirect impact on the environment, such as air pollutants and the intensity of natural resource extraction.
Environmental 'state' refers to the quality and quantity of natural resources, for example this might include looking at how contaminated air, water and soil is, and how this is impacting human health and the status of wildlife.
'Response' refers to the way governments are reacting, mitigating or adapting policies and plans to reduce negative environmental and social impacts.
Through the EPA component, CEP-BCI supported the six GMS countries in strengthening their capacity to collect, compile, analyze, and disseminate environmental data, using an analytical framework, and to identify environmental baseline data.
This data can then be used by GMS countries to track their efforts to meet established environmental and social targets (such as those prescribed in the Millennium Development Goals), as well as improve the quality and quantity of their environmental assessments.
Mainstreaming the EPA approach
During Phase 1 of CEP-BCI (2006–2011), two rounds of national EPA reporting were conducted, with each round covering a four-year period (the first round started pre-CEP-BCI, covering the period 2003–2006).
Work on the EPAs has been a collaborative effort between GMS governments, the EOC and regional institutions such as the United Nations Environment Programme and Institute for Global Environmental Strategies.
Under the most recent round of reports (2007–2011), an enhanced analytical and indicator framework was adopted, which has helped ensure that the assessments more effectively complement existing country performance monitoring systems and reporting needs.
In fact, evidence suggests that integration of the EPA framework into existing performance assessment systems is already taking place. For example, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam are using national EPA reports as an input to their State of Environment (SoE) reporting. In Yunnan, PR China, meanwhile, provincial EPAs are being adapted to for use in prefecture environmental performance reporting.
A further indication that EPA is being mainstreamed and institutionalized is the establishment of EPA national and provincial implementing nodes enabling government officials, national consultants and EOC staff to closely collaborate in preparing EPA reports.
Progress is also being achieved in forging linkages between EPA focal institutions, usually environment ministries and line and sector ministries. This is enabling inter-ministry participation in data gathering and analysis, and the utilization of EPA findings in planning processes.
As efforts to further mainstream the EPA approach continue, it has been agreed that environmental ministries are best placed to take the lead. They will be responsible for facilitating and coordinating the participation of line ministries as they conduct cross-sector or individual analyses of environmental performance. To aid their efforts, a clear mandate and regulatory framework to further institutionalize EPA will be required.
Implementation Challenges and Future Responses
Among the challenges for subregional EPAs are differing country priority issues, sometimes incompatible indicators and variable data quality.
In response, from January 2012, CEP-BCI begun work to pilot a GMS-adapted environmental performance index (EPI). This index will calculate a single performance rating for each country by integrating a large number of variable data sets into a smaller set of aggregated indicators.
Conducting an EPI exercise across the GMS is expected to provide a baseline for a more meaningful comparison of performance across different sectors. It will also facilitate the benchmarking of environmental performance by comparing country performance against regionally agreed targets.
Future CEP-BCI work on EPA will also focus on creating greater institutional links to socio-economic development planning processes and country multilateral reporting obligations, such as the Millennium Development Goals.
A further focus will be to diversify EPA reporting to incorporate climate change and socio-economic indicators (e.g. socio-economic vulnerability index, climate change vulnerability).
Click here to find out more about these activities and other CEP-BCI work on EPA.
18 - 20 June 2013
Reducing emissions from Viet Nam's freight sector (16 May 2013)
Mekong Countries Seek Greater Cooperation on Green Agriculture (02 April 2013)


Special equipment and emergency stockpiles from the warehouses of the State Material Reserves Administration help in about 90 cases per year. This means that it is in action every fourth day.
The most often used equipment is special rescue equipment, which helps firefighters get people out of car wrecks in serious traffic accidents.
The mobile chemical laboratory also helps very often. There are dozens of cases a year. These are mostly disrupted gas connections or findings of an unknown chemical substance.
Tank trucks and drinking water containers help to solve water supply in municipalities and cities. In recent years, the Administration has helped dozens of municipalities in this way. They had problems with extreme drought, for example, in Mikulášovice, Staré Křečany and Jiříkov in the Ústí nad Labem Region, in Rosice and Jedousov in the Pardubice Region and in Nedašova Lhota in the Zlín Region. If the technology from the Czech reserves had not helped them, over twenty thousand people would have been left without drinking water. In recent years, the mayors of Liboměřice, Nedašov, Píště and Maršovice have also solved the same problems. Technology from Czech reserves then helped to ensure sufficient drinking water for Žumberk, Míčov-Sušice, Varnsdorf, Dešná, Seč, or Dobříš.
Other special equipment is often used. Especially the suction excavator, which makes it easier for firefighters to work in the ruins of houses when searching for people buried underneath. And it also helped to remove derailed wagons on the track near Mariánské Lázně, where it accelerated unloading of a load of limestone. The lightened wagons could then be finally lifted by the crane, freeing up the tracks so that other trains could run on them again.
If this technique had not been available, it would have been difficult for the units of the Integrated Rescue System to save lives and property.
It is the help in non-crisis situations that is increasingly important for the Czech reserves.