text:
Q: Q: Consecutive nested IF statements in Python Sometimes I need to consecutively check several conditions in Python.
I know, that in Python we're encouraged to avoid using too many nested IF-statements, and there are several ways to do that.
For example, you can flatten them into a one-liner:
if condition1 and condition2 and condition3:
  do_stuff()

Or create a boolean variable, containing the result of all the condition checks and then check that variable.
But sometimes, I can't avoid using nested IF-statements, because they absolutely have to be checked in that particular order, otherwise, if condition1 isn't met, then trying to check condition2 might lead to an exception. E.g.:
# var must be a list of numpy arrays
if var is not None:  # is it not Null?
  if isinstance(var, list):  # is it really a list?
    for v in var:
      if isinstance(v, numpy.ndarray):  # is it really a numpy array?
        if len(v.shape) == 3:   # does it have three dimensions?
          if v.shape[2] == 3:   # does it have three channels?
            v = cv2.cvtColor(v, cv2.COLOR_BGR2HSV)  # then convert RGB to HSV

Now, this is of course a synthetic example, and I generally don't write code like that. But you can clearly see, that if you try to check these conditions and the same time as one line, you'll get an exception. Unless you put everything in a try...except block of course.
Of course, sometimes, if you're doing it inside a function, it is possible to do these checks one by one and just exit the function earlier by returning a "FAILURE" result:
def foo(var):
  if var is None:
    return False

  if not isinstance(var, list):
    return False

  if len(var) == 0:
    return False

  ...
  # and so on

But sometimes, I find myself unable to do that and I absolutely have to do these as nested IF-statements.
Question: is there a standard way in Python to avoid that, when the 'one-liner' and 'early exit' solutions are unavailable?


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설명한다. 이에 대한 과학적 참고자료와 문헌 목록을 하단에 표기하였다.
* 비타민 D 가 부족하면 다음과 같은 현상을 초래한다.
* 비타민 D의 숫치가 높으면 잇몸출혈의 위험이 감소한다.
박테리아를 퇴치하는 카텔리시딘과 또 다른 구강 박테리아를 퇴치하는 디펜신이 있다.
지고, 부으며 따갑거나 염증, 출혈과 관련이 있다.
* 비타민 D가 낮은 숫치의 사람들은 높은 숫치의 사람들보다 치주부속물 손실이 더 많았다.
* 아프리카계 미국인들은 백인계 미국인에 비하여 치주질환의 위험이 훨씬 더 높다.
26 ng/mL 이었다. 비타민 D의 대부분은 태양의 중파장 자외선에 노출되면서 생성된다.
중파장 자외선은 검은 피부의 하부층에 더 적게 도달하는데 이곳에서 비타민 D가 생성된다.
법칙에 따르면 매 25 mcg 의 비타민 D3 마다 혈중 비타민 D 숫치는 6-10 ng/mL 상승한다.
* 치주질환이 있는 사람들은 혈중 비타민 D 숫치를 40ng/mL 까지 높이는 조치를 취해야한다.
역할을 하며 비타민 E의 산화방지 활동을 촉진한다.
체계 기능 생성에 필수적이기 때문이다.
이것을 50% 더 필요로하기 때문이다.
CoQ10 의 숫치를 정상적으로 유지하기 위해서 보조제를 섭취하는 것이 중요하다.
* CoQ10 은 화학적으로 비타민 E와 비슷하며 미토콘드리아의 전자이동에 포함되어 있다.
보다 최근에 이루어진 연구 결과는 CoQ10 국소 도포 시 잇몸 상태가 개선되는 것을 보여준다.
대상으로 한 잇몸 조직검사는 29명 전원이 최소 20~63% CoQ10 활동이 감소한 것을 보여준다.
CoQ10 은 치주질환 감소와 회복에 현저한 효과를 보여준다.
- 낮은 아연 숫치는 시고 쓴, 그리고 쇠맛과 관련되어 있다.
- 글루콘산아연은 모든 아연화합물 중 가장 쓸만하며 빠른 효과가 있다.
- 아연화합물은 아침 구취를 감소시킨다.
비타민 C 를 크게 감소시키기 때문이다(15).
확인되고 있으며 그 중에는 잇몸의 부실, 입냄새,입마름, 잇몸출혈 등이 포함된다.
요소일뿐만 아니라 치조골 건강에 주된 기능을 한다.
캡슐당 비타민 C 를 250 mg 함유하고 있는 이유 중 하나이다.
바이오플라보노이드 및 비타민 E 와 함께 상승작용을 한다.
어떤 가설은 사람이 건강하지 않기 전까지는 산화방지 보조제가 필요하지 않다고 주장한다.
American Board of Family Medicine, January 2009. Posted March 19, 2009.
- 비타민 B 결핍으로 인한 흔한 구강 증상은 입안이 타는 듯한 느낌으로 특히 혀가 그러하다.
조직이 창백해지며 쉽게 분리되어 각질이 벗겨진다.
변기에 쏟아 흘려버리는 것과 같다.
포함되어 있다. 흡수율은 30-60% 가 증가한 것으로 나타났다.
함유되지 않은 조효소Q10의 1 회 복용량 48 mg 과 같은 것으로 해석할 수 있다.
복용할 경우 구강 내 세포가 잇몸질환이 진행되기 전에 재생을 도와준다.
periodontal disease. Int. J. Vitam. Nutr. Res 1973;43:84-92.
2. Wilkinson, E. et al. Adjunctive treatment of periodontal disease with coenzyme Q10. Res.
Commun. Chem. Pathol. Pharmacol 1976;14:715-9.
coenzyme Q. Int J Vitam Nutr Res 1973 Apr;43(4):537-548.
7. Nakamura R, et al: Deficiency of coenzyme Q in gingiva of patients with periodontal disease.
Int J Vit Nutr 43:84,1973.
evidence for a deficiency of coenzyme Q10. Proc Natt Acad Sci 71:1456,1974.
in periodontal therapy. Res Commun Chem Pathol Pharmacol 1975 Sep;12(1):111-123.
Yamamura Y (eds.). Elsevier / North-Hollarn Biomedical Press, Amsterdam, 1977, ppl. 251-265.
with periodontal disease. J Dent Res 1967 Nov;46(6):1382-1384.
Dent Soc. 1993;89(1-2):51-9., Periodontal health related to plasma ascorbic acid.
on periodontal tissue ultrastructure in subjects with progressive periodontitis. Int J Vitam Nutr Res 52: 333-341.
PMC193894. Periodontitis Is Associated with a Low Concentration of Vitamin C in Plasma.
71(8):1215-23. Dietary vitamin C and the risk for periodontal disease.
16. Nakamoto T et al.: The role of ascorbic acid deficiency in human gingivitis-a new hypothesis.
J Theor Biol 1984 May 21;108(2):163-171.
cohort study. Zong G, Holtfreter B, Scott AE, V?lzke H, Petersmann A, Dietrich T, Newson RS, Kocher T.
of periodontitis and risk of tooth loss in a prospective cohort study.
A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
was performed with primary care patients. The intervention group received vitamin B12 ointment for 2 days.
the quality of life for patients with mouth ulcers. Copyright ? 2015 American Society for Pain Management Nursing.
19. Wray D, Ferguson MM, Hutcheon WA, Dagg JH. Nutritional deficiencies in recurrent aphthae. J Oral Pathol.
of all patients with recurrent aphthae.
of vitamin B12 deficiency: a case report. J Can Dent Assoc. 2009 Sep;75(7):533-7.
causes of megaloblastic anemia, the most common are disorders resulting from cobalamin or folate deficiency.
Bioperine. Research Report, Sabinsa Corporation, 1996.
J Clin Periodontol. 1980 Oct;7(5):402-14.
during the fourth and eighth months of pregnancy. Thirty women were randomly divided into three groups.
Group C: folate mouthwash and placebo tablets. Supplementation lasted for 14 days during months 4 and 8.
significantly improvement in gingival health in pregnancy.
non-smoking adults in Japan. Oral Dis. 2010 Jan;16(1):96-101. doi: 10.1111/j.1601-0825.2009.01619.x.
was found between CPI scores and folate intake level.
may provide an important clinical target for intervention to promote gingival health.
Deficient Patient Precipitated by Anticonvulsant Drug Therapy, Journal of Periodontology. October 1973, Vol. 44, No.
Effectiveness of CoQ10 Oral Supplements as an Adjunct to Scaling and Root Planing in Improving Periodontal Health.
2015/13486.6291. Epub 2015 Aug 1.
gingival inflammation and periodontal pocket depth.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was a randomized, double-blind, controlled, parallel group design clinical trial.
a probing pocket depth ≥5mm were included in the study. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups.
t-test for intragroup comparison and unpaired t-test for inter-group comparison.
month and three months when compared to control group.
showed significant reduction in gingival inflammation when compared to scaling and rootplaning alone.
taste and lingual trigeminal nerves sensitivities.
Idaho State University, Pocatello 83209, USA.
Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Heilkunde der Medizinischen Fakultat Carl Gustav Carus, Technischen Universitat Dresden.
Disorders of olfaction and taste are infrequent, but a complete loss of smell or taste reduces the quality of life significantly.
May-Jun;9(3):218-24. Department of Internal Medicine, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI.
Zinc is needed for growth and development, DNA synthesis, neurosensory functions, and cell-mediated immunity.
thymulin activity, IL-1 production, and lymphocyte ecto-5'-nucleotidase increased significantly after supplementation.
deficiency appears to be a significant clinical problem in free-living elderly people.
School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Smell and taste disorders are common in the general population, yet little is known about their nature or cause.
with oral sensory distortion. The findings are discussed in relation to management of patients with chemosensory disturbances.
months. The remainder must rely on supportive measures such as additives, flavor enhancers, and rinses.
treatment of olfactory and gustatory symptoms in psychiatric patients: a case series. J Clin Psychiatry 1994 Jul;55(7):309-11.
function. However, zinc supplements have not been tested in psychiatric patients with smell or taste symptoms.
taste and smell perception in the context of acute psychiatric illness or treatment.
with zinc sulfate or zinc gluconate, apparently independent of the improvement in their underlying psychiatric disorder.
treatment for the underlying psychiatric disorder.


text:
Coleg Ceredigion, formerly known as  Aberystwyth Technical College and later as Aberystwyth College of Further Education, is a bilingual further education college in Ceredigion, Wales. It has two campuses in the two largest towns in Ceredigion, namely Aberystwyth  and Cardigan  The Principal is Andrew Cornish.

External links

College website

Buildings and structures in Aberystwyth
Universities and colleges in Wales
Education in Ceredigion

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Abu Dhabi Chamber Discusses Economic Cooperation with Armenia
His Excellency Mohamed Helal Al Mhairi, Director General of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has received His Excellency Mher Mkrtumyan, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Armenia to the UAE, at the Chamber's tower in Abu Dhabi and discussed with him the means of increasing joint economic cooperation between the two countries.
Deputy Directors General of the Abu Dhabi Chamber Mr. Abdullah Ghurair Al Qubaisi and Mr. Helal Mohammed Al Hameli attended the meeting.
During the meeting, H.E. Al Mheiri praised the outstanding relationship between the UAE and Armenia, expressing the awareness of the Abu Dhabi Chamber to increase the level of cooperation between the two sides in order to serve the interests of businesses and investors in both countries.
Al Mheiri also pointed to the role of the Chamber in motivating the economy of Abu Dhabi and in realizing its economic vision by facilitating the flow of businesses in the emirate and by providing a set of exceptional services for its members as well as solidifying the partnerships of businesses in Abu Dhabi with their counterparts across the globe.
For his part, Ambassador Mkrtumyan, extended his thanks and appreciation for the Chamber's reception, expressing high hopes in increasing the exchanged visits of entrepreneurs and businesses between the UAE and Armenia. He noted that such visits would allow Armenian businesses to benefit from the economic and managerial experiences of UAE considering it an advanced hub for the best modern managerial practices in business management.
The Armenian Ambassador highlighted the investment opportunities available in his country and the facilities the Armenian government provides for foreign investors and its economic plans for economic development in the future.
Abu Dhabi Chamber Discuss Strengthening Trade and Investment Relations with Pakistan Business Professional Council
Mr. Helal Mohammed Al Hameli, Deputy Director General of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has received Dr. Syed Qaiser Anis, President of the Pakistan Business Professional Council – Abu Dhabi (PBPC), at the Chamber's tower in Abu Dhabi. Dr. Hadi Shahid, Founding Member of the PBPC, Mr. Mohammed Eqbal Naseem, Vice President of the PBPC, and Ms. Sadia Rehan, Board Member of the PBPC, attended the meeting as well.
The Abu Dhabi Chamber Discusses Investment Opportunities in Iraqi Kurdistan
HE Mohammed Hilal Al Mheiri, Director General of Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, met via visual communication technology with HE Dr. Mohammed Shukri Mohammed Saeed, Chairman of the Investment Authority of the Kurdistan Regional Government and HE Ahmed Al Dhaheri, UAE Consul General in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. They discussed ways of strengthening economic and business relations between the business sector in both Abu Dhabi and the Kurdistan Region.
Chairman of UAE Chambers discuss with Ambassador of Greece joint trade cooperation
His Excellency Mohammed Thani Al Rumaithi, Chairman of the Federation of the UAE Chambers, has received the Ambassador of the Hellenic Republic to the UAE His Excellency Dionyssios Zois at the Chamber's tower in Abu Dhabi, and discussed with him the means of strengthening joint economic cooperation and serving the business communities in both the UAE and Greece.

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Create a luxurious, bubbly bath with the scent of tropical fruit and flowers. As long as humanity exists, she is looking for ways and methods to make everyday life more pleasant to soften, lighten, care and to make you feel better. Treets fizzing bath balls are based on this knowledge.
They have a mild cleansing effect and soften the bath water. These effects are great for your skin. And the scent will help your mind to relax. Directions for use: Drop the bath ball gently into warm water to create a luxurious, fizzing bath scented with a delightful fragrance. Rinse bath well after use.


Bestselling author Alyson Noel brings you the high energy, glamourous, and murderous world of the Beautiful Idols. Go behind the velvet rope to the gritty LA club scene where anything goes, and mystery is around every corner. Welcome to the party EVERYONE wants to be someone. Layla Harrison wants to be a reporter. Aster Amirpour wants to be an actress. Tommy Phillips wants to be a guitar hero. But Madison Brooks took destiny and made it her own a long time ago. She's Hollywood's hottest starlet, and the things she did to become the name on everyone's lips are merely a stain on the pavement, ground beneath her Louboutin heel. That is, until Layla, Aster, and Tommy find themselves with a VIP invite to the world of Los Angeles's nightlife and are lured into a competition. The prize, or rather the target? Madison Brooks. Just as their hopes begin to gleam like stars through the California smog, Madison Brooks goes missing...And all of their hopes are blacked out in the haze of their lies.
So on my blog today I have an extract from Unrivalled and it is from a post from Layla!
captured every wretched wrenching moment on video.
will be tattooed on your retinas for life eternal.
Number One New York Times bestselling author Alyson Noël has won numerous awards and achieved international bestseller status for her wildly popular young adult series, The Immortals and The Soul Seekers, and her middle grade series, Riley Bloom. Alyson Noël is an established global phenomenon with books printed in 36 languages and sold in over 50 countries. Now she is taking on the seductive world of L.A. nightlife in a new series using what she knows best: steamy romance and high-stakes Hollywood competition.


text:
The Sixth Mass Extinction Will Be Like Nothing In Earth's History
Sep 15, 2016, 4:00pm
The sixth mass extinction — the one that seven billion humans are doing their darnedest to trigger at this very moment — is shaping up to be like nothing our planet has ever seen. That's the conclusion of a sweeping new analysis, which compared marine fossil records from Earth's five previous mass extinction events to what's happening in the oceans right now. Image: Wikimedia
"There is no past event that looks biologically like what's happening today," lead study author Jonathan Payne, of Stanford University, told Gizmodo. Unlike the past, Payne said, "processes like warming and ocean acidification are not the dominant cause of threat in the modern ocean."
Instead, the dominant threat is people. It's the nets, harpoons and trawlers that are systematically emptying the oceans of fish and other marine life forms. Whereas the mass extinctions of the past tended to target organisms in certain environments, the sixth mass extinction is poised to hit the biggest animals the hardest. And that could have have profound implications for how our planet's future unfolds.
A palaeontologist by training, Payne and his research group started compiling data on modern marine organisms several years back, in order to study how body size and ecological traits have changed over evolutionary time. Payne, who has studied the End Permian extinction event that wiped out more than 95 per cent of all marine species 250 million years ago, soon realised that his dataset — which included living and extinct members of nearly 2500 marine genera — could serve another purpose.
"We thought the data we had would allow us to examine extinction in the modern [era] in a way that would be very comparable to the fossil record," Payne said. "Our hope was that we might be able to identify past events that biologically were most similar to the extinction threat the oceans are facing today."
So that's exactly what the researchers did. By comparing the extinction threat faced by modern marine genera (as indicated by their official conservation status) with their ancestral counterparts, Payne and his colleagues discovered that modern extinction threat is more strongly associated with body size. Larger animals face a greater risk of disappearing than smaller animals.
In past mass extinction events, body size didn't matter that much. Instead, it was an organism's habitat that dictated its fate. Animals that lived in the open ocean, or pelagic zone, went extinct at a higher rate than benthic creatures living on the seafloor.
This difference in "extinction selectivity" can be explained by different drivers. During the End Permian, changes in ocean chemistry triggered by microbes, volcanoes or some combination of the two are thought to have created a toxic environment for most marine life. At the end of the Cretaceous period, an enormous asteroid impact followed by supervolcano eruptions sent plumes of dust into the sky, choking out sunlight and cutting off the energy supply at the bottom of the food chain. In both cases, organisms that lived in more isolated, sheltered environments away from the ocean's surface fared better.
Today, the dominant driver of marine extinction is people, and people aren't terribly selective about which environments they pluck animals from. We go for the biggest game, fishing down the food web and removing top predators. Within species, too, we tend to hunt the largest individuals, which is why North Atlantic cod and Chesapeake oysters were historically much larger. "In a sense, we're driving evolution [toward smaller individuals]," Payne said.
Dead coral around Lizard Island after the coral bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef in May 2016. Image: XL Catlin Seaview Survey
There are a few big caveats to the analysis. For the sake of comparison, Payne and his co-authors only analysed marine genera that have fossil counterparts, which means certain soft-bodied organisms that don't preserve well (like octopods) were excluded. What's more, they only looked at organisms whose extinction risk has been assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). That creates a rather serious bias toward big, charismatic groups — fish, sea turtles, marine mammals and the like. There are countless species of marine invertebrates that we simply don't have enough data on to do a proper threat assessment.
Perhaps most significantly, the study excluded corals, which are currently in the midst of a catastrophic, global die-off. As habitat for roughly a quarter of all marine species, the loss of coral reefs due to global warming and ocean acidification would be a major blow to the health of the oceans overall.
"This study largely does not address the impact we are having on ocean ecosystems through global climate change," Dr Mark Eakin, a biological oceanographer with NOAA who was not involved with the study told Gizmodo. "Our increases in atmospheric CO2 will add to the impacts found by the authors to broaden our species' destructive reach."
Even considering the omissions, the pattern the authors uncovered implies that the trajectory of the sixth mass extinction could be unique. The loss of large animals tends to cause what ecologists call a "tropic cascade", basically a ripple effect down the food chain. Larger organisms also play an outsized role in global nutrient cycling — whale poop fertilises the oceans with iron, for instance, while salmon migrations bring nitrogen and phosphorus upstream and even onto the land.
It's unclear whether the loss of these ecosystem services will make it harder for marine life to recover, but it's certainly a possibility. The study minces no words to this point: "The preferential removal of the largest animals from the modern oceans, unprecedented in the history of animal life, may disrupt ecosystems for millions of years."
There is, however, a bright spot: Things haven't gotten too terrible yet. In Payne's dataset, there is only one genus that has actually gone extinct in the past 500 years. While more species have gone extinct, and some genera are too poorly studied to be sure, we're at best on the precipice of a sixth mass extinction. We can still turn this sinking ship around.
"We have the opportunity to totally avert this, if we make the right decisions," Payne said. "Even on the land, where we have lost a bunch of large species, almost everything at the genus level is still here."
"To claim we're in a sixth mass extinction is something very enormous," he continued. "It is a possibility. It is not the reality yet."
[Science]


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Q: Why does the Apple Watch health reminders pop up at 50 minutes past the hour? The Apple Watch gives me health reminders about standing or walking goals. These reminders pop up at 10 to the hour - ie at XX:50.
This seems like an opinionated choice, but I thought there might be something behind it, some reasoning I'm missing.
My question is: Why does the Apple Watch health reminders pop up at 50 minutes past the hour?

A: The Apple Watch wants you to stand each hour to complete your stand goal. So if you haven't stood during all the hour, it will remind you to do it 10 minutes before the next hour to give the the time to stand a little and add an hour to your stand goal !
It's anyway what apple says on their website :

Even if you're active part of the day, sitting too long has its own health risks. So Apple Watch senses when you stand and move just a bit and gives you credit. And if you've been sitting for almost an hour, it reminds you to get up. You close the Stand ring when you've stood and moved for at least one minute in 12 different hours during the day. It may sound like a small thing, but sitting less can improve your health in significant ways.

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text:
COSSA Washington Update, Volume 35 Issue 11
Posted on May 31, 2016 by COSSA
House Bill Includes Flat Funding for NSF, Boosts for NIJ, BJS, and Census
Complete Archive of COSSA Washington Update Now Available
Senate Appropriations Committee Approves FY 2017 Agriculture Bill
OBSSR 2016-2020 Strategic Plan Discussed at NIH Council of Councils
White House Releases First-Ever Working Group Report on Language and Communication
John Haaga Named Director of NIA's Division of Behavioral and Social Research
Maureen Goodenow Appointed NIH Associate Director for AIDS Research
NSF Accepting Applications for Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences Position
NIMH Seeks Perspectives on the State of Mental Illness Research
NIGMS Solicits Input on Approaches for Supporting Team Science
IES to Hold Webinars on FY 2017 Funding Opportunities
NIA Webinar to Provide Overview of Grants Process
National Science Board Elects New Leadership
COSSA Welcomes North Carolina State University
Posted in Issue 11 (May 31), Update, Volume 35 (2016)
On May 24, the House Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal year (FY) 2017 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (CJS) Appropriations Bill. This bill serves as the vehicle for annual appropriations for the National Science Foundation (NSF), Census Bureau, National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), and countless other federal departments and agencies. The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced its version of the CJS bill on April 21.
The House bill would provide NSF with a total budget of $7.4 billion in FY 2017, slightly below the FY 2016 level of $7.46 billion. Most notably, the bill does not include language targeting social science accounts for cuts, as we saw last year. In addition, the House bill would provide NIJ and BJS with $40 million (+11%) and $48 billion (+17%), respectively, and $1.47 billion for the Census Bureau, an increase of 7.3 percent over the FY 2016 level, but 10 percent below the amount requested by the President.
Read on for COSSA's full analysis.
You can keep up-to-date on the status of FY 2017 funding for social science research agencies on the COSSA website.
Tagged with: BJS, census bureau, congressional news, featured, FY 2017, NIJ, NSF
COSSA is pleased to announce that the first 25 volumes of the COSSA Washington Update are now available on the COSSA website, completing the online archive of the newsletter. The archive offers a unique window into nearly 35 years of social and behavioral science policy.
Tagged with: new from COSSA
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved its fiscal year (FY) 2017 spending bill for the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies (S. 2956) on May 19 (the bill had marked up in the Subcommittee earlier in the week). The House passed its version of the legislation (H.R. 5054) in April. So far, neither chamber has scheduled the Agriculture appropriations bill for floor consideration, although given that they are relatively uncontroversial, it would not be surprising to see votes on the floor before the summer recess.
The Senate bill would provide the Economic Research Service (ERS) with $86.8 million and the National Agricultural Statistics Service with $169.6 million. These numbers are both slight increases over FY 2016 and the House proposal, but below the Administration's request. The bill includes $1.4 billion for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). The House, Senate, and Administration have all recommended a $25 million increase (+7.1%) for NIFA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI).
Read on for the Senate Appropriations Committee's proposals for Economic Research Service, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
The Committee's full report can be found here, and audio from the markup is posted on the Committee website.
Tagged with: congressional news, ERS, FY 2017, NASS, NIFA
On May 20, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) Director William Riley updated and received feedback from the NIH Council of Councils regarding the progress of the OBSSR 2016-2020 Strategic Plan. The Council consists of approximately 30 members, selected from the various NIH Institute and Center (IC) Advisory Councils, representatives nominated by the Office of the Director program offices, and broad lay representation. It also advises the NIH Director on matters related to the policies and activities of the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI), where OBSSR is housed. (more…)
Tagged with: executive branch news, NIH, OBSSR, strategic plans
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's (OSTP) National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Subcommittee on Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences recently released the first ever, Report from the Interagency Working Group on Language and Communication, "an inventory of current programmatic activities across Federal agencies and departments that relate to the scientific and technological aspects of language and communication." The report explains why the government and the American people benefit from its investments in R&D activities relating to language and communication. A key feature of the report is the Language and Communication R&D Taxonomy providing a "common framework for developing a Language and Communication R&D Inventory Survey for collecting, cataloguing, and classifying the various R&D efforts across the Federal Government." A main finding of the report, resulting from the application of the taxonomy, is that there are a number of cross-agency leveraging opportunities. It also includes an important recommendation that agencies should identify and develop opportunities to optimize the available Language and Communication R&D resources. The Interagency Working Group is comprised of 20 agencies and departments. It is led by Elizabeth R. Albro, Institute of Education Sciences (Department of Education), and CDR Joseph Cohn, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Research & Engineering).
Tagged with: communications, executive branch news, language, white house
On March 24, National Institute on Aging (NIA) Director Richard Hodes announced the appointment of John Haaga as director of NIA's Division of Behavioral and Social Research (BSR). Haaga has served as the Division's acting director where he has served as deputy director for the past 11 years. Prior to joining NIA, Haaga held leadership positions at the Population Reference Bureau, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the Population Council, and the RAND Corporation.
Tagged with: executive branch news, NIA, NIH
On May 18, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins announced the selection of Maureen M. Goodenow as NIH Associate Director for AIDS Research and Director of the NIH Office of AIDS Research (OAR). Goodenow, currently at the University of Florida, Gainesville, is a professor of pathology, immunology, and laboratory medicine, and the Director of the Florida Center for AIDS Research. She is expected to join the agency in July.
Tagged with: executive branch news, HIV/AIDS, NIH
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is accepting applications for the position of Deputy Division Director in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) within the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE). The Deputy Division Director will serve as a member of the BCS leadership team and as the "principal spokesperson in the area of behavioral, cognitive, anthropological and geographic sciences." More information can be found at USAJOBS. The deadline for applications is June 3, 2016, though applications may be accepted afterwards to ensure a pool of qualified applicants is identified.
Tagged with: executive branch news, jobs, NSF
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is inviting "perspectives on the state of mental illness research" and the institute's role in development of the research. The institute is seeking the input of the extramural community to "develop briefing materials that represent the full diversity of perspectives on mental illness research in preparation for the next NIMH director." Comments are solicited on such topics as: basic neuroscience, translational, intervention, clinical, and services research; Research Domain criteria initiative (RDoc), global mental health, diversity and training of the workforce; advocacy and outreach efforts; and translational biomarkers. Comments are due June 30, 2016. For more information and/or to provide comments, click here.
Tagged with: executive branch news, NIH, NIMH


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Vineet Rai
Founder and Chairman, Aavishkaar Group
Vineet Rai is the Founder of Aavishkaar group and chairs its Group Executive Council. Aavishkaar Group is an Impact Investment Platform impacting millions of people in Asia and Africa using entrepreneurship based development approach.
Vineet believes in building impact ecosystem to deliver real Impact as enshrined in the vision of Aavishkaar Group "We exist to bridge the Opportunity Group for the Emerging 3 Billion". Vineet believes that Impact Investing has the potential to change the world of finance irreversibly.
Aavishkaar Group today comprises Aavishkaar Capital – the ground breaking Impact Investment Fund Manager, Arohan – a Microfinance Institution, IntelleGrow – a Venture Debt Company, Tribe3 – a technology enabled lending platform and IntelleCap – the Global Impact Ecosystem builder. The Group also manages Sankalp - the foremost Global platform for engagement around impact investing.
Aavishkaar Group has 6000 employees, manages assets in excess of US $ 1 Billion while trying to serve needs of entrepreneurs from debt of US $ 150 (INR 10 thousands) to equity of US $ 15 Million (INR 100 Crore) while aligning the group to 13 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals or SDG's.
Vineet has received numerous awards including the Impact Investor of the Year by News Corp for 2016, Porter Prize for Strategic Leadership in Social Space, 2016, CNBC TV 18 Award for being the Catalyst Fund for India 2016, G 20 – SME Innovation in Finance Award 2010 in Seoul South Korea, UNDP-IBLF –ICC World Business Award in 2005 and Lemelson Award for Social Venture Investing. He is an Ashoka Fellow and Honorary Member of XLRI Alumni Association. Vineet recently featured on the cover of Forbes India, January 2018 issue. Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever endorsed Aavishkaar Intellecap Group for its efforts in furthering inclusive development. Vineet was invited by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for consultations on doubling the income of the farmers in September 2017 as part of his champions of change program. Vineet also serves as Commissioner at the Business Commission for Sustainable Development, as Senior Advisor to Blended Finance Working Group at OECD and as an Advisor to United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Science Technology and Innovation Advisory Board. Vineet is also appointed by SEBI on its Working Group for Social Stock Exchange in India.
Driving on Indian roads is one of his passions and he tries to cover 50,000 KM every year.
How to back an inclusive post-COVID recovery
Impact investing and philanthropic capital can and should work together to channel financial resources into building a more resilient post-Covid world.


Peer health educators are students who are trained to promote awareness about alcohol and other drugs, sexuality, nutrition, and lifestyle wellness. They act as resources for students through workshops, individual consultations, and other activities that address health-related issues on campus. Applications are welcome during Winter Quarter.


Every lady should strive to maintain the perfect condition of her hands and manicure. Nail polish is a big part of this effort and has been around for a long time. Women have used it for centuries to enhance their looks.
Nail polished is believed to be invented in China 5000 years ago. Can you believe that in those days women from the aristocracy were sporting nails with an average length of 25 centimeters? In this way they announced their social status. Their wealth was so great that they did not need to work with their hands in order to make a living, but used their hands for decorative purposes only.
In reality, the first women to start painting their nails were not the Chinese but the Egyptians. More than 6000 years ago they rubbed henna into their nails in order to decorate them. In ancient Egypt as in ancient China, hand and nail decorations were a statement of wealth and high social status.
In ancient Rome women decorated their nails with a mixture of animal fat and blood.
In contemporary times, nail polish and all of its varieties have overtaken a significant deal of the cosmetic industry. Here are some tips in caring for your nail polish.
It is easy to distinguish old nail polish from new. When applied, the old polish forms bubbles or visible brush traces.
Cosmeticians advise to store nail polish in cool dark places. It is also important to keep the neck of the bottle clean in order for it to seal properly and prevent air from going inside.
When applying nail polish, start at the middle of the nail plate, slide the brush toward the base and then back up toward the tip. After that, cover the sides in the same way.
Be patient and wait for the polish to dry completely. Many women blow on their nails to help them dry faster, however this may spoil the shine of the polish.


League play will be on Monday's, and the tee times will be from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Cost $25.00 per person or $50.00 per couple. Fee includes prizes (Pro Shop merchandise), admin and cookout.
Alternating play between the front and back nines.
Sign-up on Couples bulletin board up to 14 days prior to next event.
Greens fees: $21.00 + tax, or $18.00 w/Patron Card.
Patron card holders receive $8.00 off 18 holes, $3.00 off 9 holes and 10 day advanced tee time privileges.


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Amy Henderson Musician
Amy
Amy is an engaging performer who has created a unique sound on her instrument. She blends her love and passion for Scottish traditional music and culture, with her interest in other genres to create a distinctive sound with complex rhythms and harmonies
At school, Amy secured a place at the prestigious National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music at Plockton High School where she studied under Blair Douglas. Following school, Amy moved to the University of Newcastle where she had accordion tuition from Ian Lowthian, as well as furthering her studies in whistle and flute. During her final year at university Amy spent a day of a week working in a primary school in Newcastle. This sparked a passion for community music and, since graduating BA Folk & Traditional Music in 2011, Amy has worked to further her skills in this area.
Since returning to the Highlands, Amy lives on her croft with her husband and animals, where she blends her music and crofting way of life
Amy plays with a wide range of musicians and performs regularly at Festivals, functions, Ceilidhs and Weddings.
Amy Henderson
amyhendersonmusic.com
amyhenderson51@gmail.com


PTIPresident Pranab Mukherjee with French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves during an At-Home reception hosted by him on the occasion of the 67th Republic Day at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
President François Hollande's visit is the fifth such by a French leader to have been honoured as the chief guest at the Republic Day, more so than any other country. Equally significant, this was his second state visit (the first was in 2013), a trend that was started by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was chief guest at the 2008 Republic Day and returned for another state visit in 2010. With corresponding visits by Indian Prime Ministers, this annual summitry highlights the expanding areas of cooperation and convergence between the two countries.
In independent India's history of 68-odd years, we have fought five major wars, four of which were with Pakistan and one with China. The Indo-Pak wars went clearly in our favour, although the 1965 clash may not have had as definitive an outcome as we wanted. The Indo-China war of 1962 was a monumental fiasco, the ripple effects of which still resonate in our collective psyche. This disaster was, of course, documented by Australian journalist Neville Maxwell in his landmark study, India's China War, published in 1970. The huge controversy surrounding this book was fuelled and exacerbated by the fact that Maxwell clearly had access to the top-secret 'Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report' (HBBR), which is still treated as classified and top-secret by the mandarins in Raisina Hill. And we all know that the feisty Maxwell rubbed the government's nose in the dust by releasing the first and operative part of the HBBR on the Internet in March 2014.
For more than 13 years, ever since nearly 3,000 innocent lives were taken from us on 9/11, our nation has been at war in Afghanistan. Now, thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.
More than a year later, in President Obama's final State of the Union address, concerning the progress of the mission in Afghanistan, he said … nothing.
This is disappointing, but not surprising. The Obama administration often prefers to leave open difficult questions about U.S. failures to meet its goals. This leads to inconsistencies between White House messaging about the campaign and realities on the ground.
NATO's Resolute Support Mission (RSM) is the inheritor of ISAF and has become the main effort for coalition forces in Afghanistan. RSM is designed to train, advise, and assist senior leaders and headquarters in the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) and the Ministries of Defense and Interior to do the kinds of things that armed forces need to do to maintain an army and sustain combat operations in the field.
Editor's Note: This article is adapted from the Heritage Foundation's forthcoming Solutions 2016, a policy handbook for federal candidates that is being released today.
Relations between the United States and Pakistan have ebbed and flowed over the last decade. Tensions peaked following the May 2, 2011 U.S. raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden, and the relationship hit its post-9/11 nadir in November of that year, when Pakistan cut off U.S. supply lines into Afghanistan after a NATO strike killed over two dozen Pakistani troops stationed along the Afghan border.
U.S.–Pakistan ties have improved somewhat since then. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief of the Army Staff Gen. Raheel Sharif made separate visits to Washington last fall, during which leaders of the two countries expressed commitment to an enduring partnership. The United States also continues to provide substantial economic and military assistance to Pakistan. In Fiscal Year 2015, the U.S. appropriated around $371 million in security-related assistance and $468 million in economic-related aid for Pakistan. An additional $1 billion was authorized for Coalition Support Fund (CSF) reimbursements (payments for Pakistani military deployments and operations along the border with Afghanistan), although $300 million of CSF funding was withheld because of Pakistan's failure to meet legislative conditions on the aid. Still, U.S. and Pakistani goals in South Asia remain far from aligned.
At stake in the region are some of America's most vital national security interests including: ensuring that neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan serves as a safe haven for global terrorists; keeping Pakistan's nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists; and preventing war between India and Pakistan that could potentially go nuclear.
The United States has made significant strides against the al-Qaeda core leadership, thanks to an aggressive drone campaign in Pakistan's tribal border areas. However, the global terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan remains a major U.S. national security concern as a multitude of different extremist groups with varying degrees of ties to al-Qaeda continue to operate in and from Pakistan.
At the height of combat missions in Afghanistan, the U.S. military occupied nearly 825 military outposts throughout the war-ravaged region. That number now stands at roughly 20. The outposts served an extensive intelligence-gathering network, using surveillance balloons and wide-range signals intelligence collection operations. The rapid drawdown of these facilities following the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from the region created a black hole of information, with Afghan forces struggling to fill the gap.
Afghan forces require a robust intelligence collection and targeting capability if they want to turn back the tide of a reinvigorated Taliban insurgency, which has occupied more territory since its collapse following the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Currently, Afghanistan relies on a fledgling air force struggling to keep aircraft in the skies and lacking any precision strike capability to target Taliban and ISIS commanders.
Aging Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters, provided by Russia and India, and theMD-530, a two-man light attack helicopter similar to the U.S. Kiowa Warrior, comprise Afghanistan's air force. The nation lacks a dedicated fixed-wing, light attack aircraft capable of providing close air support to ground forces and delivering precision strike GPS-guided munitions—until the recent delivery of the A-29 Super Tucano.
Resolute Support Mission commander Gen. John F. Campbell, USA, described the A-29 as a potential "game changer" for Afghan forces. It is slated to serve as a dedicated close air support platform for the Afghan forces struggling to hold back the Taliban.
The aircraft can be retrofitted with GPS guided munitions kits for precision strike capabilities, turning it into a precision targeting platform that will require an advanced intelligence network—one capable of providing real time intelligence to battlefield commanders. This would include a buildup of Afghanistan's signals intelligence collection capabilities and the exploitation of the electromagnetic spectrum, beyond the collection and triangulation of unencrypted VHF enemy communication that has helped Afghan forces locate enemy command and control nodes using the U.S. Army's Wolfhound intelligence gathering system.
– Section 1 focuses on the Afghan economy. Despite more than a decade of reconstruction and development efforts, the Afghan economy remains in fragile and worsening condition. Intractable insurgents, cutbacks in foreign military personnel, persistent emigration of people and capital, and a slowing global economy are shifting Afghanistan's economic prospects from troubling to bleak.
– In this reporting period, Afghanistan proved even more dangerous than it was a year ago. The Taliban now controls more territory than at any time since 2001. USFOR-A reports that approximately 71.7% of the country's districts are under Afghan government control or influence.
– The lack of security has made it almost impossible for many U.S. and even some Afghan officials to get out to manage and inspect U.S.-funded reconstruction projects. The dangers of absent oversight were exposed when a task force appointed by President Ashraf Ghani reportedly found that millions of dollars were being embezzled while Afghanistan pays for numerous nonexistent "ghost" schools, "ghost" teachers, and "ghost" students.
– A group of 93 Members of Congress have asked SIGAR to conduct an inquiry into the U.S. government's experience with allegations of sexual abuse of children committed by members of the Afghan security forces.
– SIGAR's work to date has saved over $2 billion for the U.S. taxpayer.
– Afghanistan's domestic revenues paid for 40% of budget expenditures through the first 11 months of the fiscal year. The country's large budget deficits and trade imbalances will require substantial donor aid for the foreseeable future.
– Cumulative funding for Afghanistan reconstruction increased to approximately $113.1 billion, with approximately $11.5 billion of this amount remaining in the pipeline for potential disbursement. A total of $8.4 billion of the reconstruction funding has been provided for counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan.
– This quarter, Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) assigned force strength was 322,638 (including civilians), this assigned-strength number reflects a decrease of 2,078 since July 2015 and 9,306 since May 2015.
– Since 2003, USAID has spent at least $2.3 billion on stability programs in Afghanistan.
The former defense secretary on U.S. gains forfeited in Iraq, America's rudderless foreign policy and the 'completely unrealistic' Donald Trump.
Many Americans probably had misgivings when U.S. troops were withdrawn from Iraq in 2011, but even the most pessimistic must be surprised at how quickly things went south.
Turn on the TV news: Western Iraq, including the Sunni triangle that the U.S. once worked so hard to pacify, is in the hands of a terrorist group, Islamic State, radiating attacks as far as Paris, Jakarta and San Bernardino, Calif.
The battlefield where the U.S. spent most of its blood has become swept up into the chaos of next-door Syria. Refugees from the region are destabilizing Europe. Proxy forces, shadowy groups and national armies representing half a dozen countries are fighting on the ground and in the air. The world seems one incident away from World War III in the vacuum U.S. troops left behind—as when NATO member Turkey recently shot down a Russian jet.
Mr. Gates, along with President George W. Bush and Gen. David Petraeus, was a prosecutor of the troop surge, a decision unpopular even in the Pentagon to double down on the Iraq war in 2006. His 2014 memoir, "Duty," which a New York Times reviewer called "one of the best Washington memoirs ever," makes clear that the suffering of U.S. troops weighed more and more heavily on him as he served under President Bush and then re-upped under President Obama.
At stake in South Asia are some of America's most vital national security interests, including stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan and ensuring that neither country serves as a safe haven for global terrorists; keeping Pakistan's nuclear weapons safe and secure and out of the hands of terrorists; preventing (potentially nuclear) war between India and Pakistan; and building a strong strategic partnership with India to enhance its ability to play a stabilizing role in the broader Asia–Pacific region. America needs to maintain diplomatic, economic, and military engagement in South Asia to protect these core national security interests.
Afghanistan. There are currently around 13,200 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan as part of Operation Resolute Support to train and advise the Afghan forces. NATO formally ended combat operations in December 2014, but coalition forces regularly conduct airstrikes in support of the Afghan forces, and American Special Operations Forces continue to carry out raids on Taliban and al-Qaeda hideouts.
President Obama's decision to extend the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan beyond 2016 is welcome news, but he needs to drop all arbitrary deadlines for withdrawal. Despite his earlier pledge to withdraw all U.S. forces, except those necessary to protect the U.S. embassy, by the end of 2016, Obama announced in October 2015 that a force level of 5,500 U.S. troops will remain in the country when he departs office in January 2017. The 9,800 U.S. troops currently deployed in Afghanistan will now remain in the country through most of 2016.
Freedom House's index of freedom in the world is flawed — but the story it tells is indispensable.
It's January, which means we've just learned that freedom around the world is declining. This — for the tenth year in a row — is the conclusion of an annual report released earlier this week by Freedom House, the venerable human rights and democracy organization. Freedom lost ground in 72 countries in 2015, the report somberly concludes. This is the largest such number over this gloomy ten-year period, during which the percentage of the world's population that lives in "free" countries declined from 46 to 40 percent.
These annual "Freedom in the World" reports, which describe and numerically rate the state of freedom in every country on earth, inevitably generate buzz, and this year will be no exception. And it's not just the media. Ministers, diplomats, Washington policymakers, U.N. bureaucrats, and other international wheelers and dealers will be paying close attention. There's little doubt that diplomatic cables reporting the latest scores are already flying — and in some capitals (I'm looking at you, Budapest) you can almost hear the gnashing of teeth.
In spite of all this commotion, the ivory tower regards the exercise with a mixture of skepticism and exasperation.
In spite of all this commotion, the ivory tower regards the exercise with a mixture of skepticism and exasperation. Over the last decade, political scientists have produced a wealth of literature documenting the annual reports' biases and methodological problems. Their conceptual basis is flawed; the data collection is opaque; the results are overly simplified; Freedom House has a neo-liberal bias. Jay Ulfelder, a political scientist and independent consultant, has convincingly disputed Freedom House's overall findings — that freedom in the world is steadily declining — for two years in a row.
Make an assessment of proposed AH-64 transfers from Army National Guard to the Regular Army.
AMERICAN AND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE secretly tapped into live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter jets, monitoring military operations in Gaza, watching for a potential strike against Iran, and keeping tabs on the drone technology Israel exports around the world.
Several of the snapshots, a subset collected in 2009 and 2010, appear to show drones carrying missiles. Although they are not clear enough to be conclusive, the images offer rare visual evidence to support reports that Israel flies attack drones — an open secret that the Israeli government won't acknowledge.
The Intercept is publishing a selection of the drone snapshots in an accompanying article.
Additionally, in 2012, a GCHQ analyst reported "regular collects of Heron TP carrying weapons," referring to a giant drone made by the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, known as IAI.
Anarchist operated from a Royal Air Force installation in the Troodos Mountains, near Mount Olympus, the highest point on Cyprus. The Troodos site "has long been regarded as a 'Jewel in the Crown' by NSA as it offers unique access to the Levant, North Africa, and Turkey," according to an article from GCHQ's internal wiki. Last August, The Intercept published a portion of a GCHQ document that revealed that NSA and GCHQ tracked weapons signals from Troodos, and earlier reporting on the Snowden documents indicated that the NSA targeted Israeli drones and an Israeli missile system for tracking, but the details of the operations have not been previously disclosed.
Andrew Small's The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopoliticsdelivers a comprehensive assessment of one of the world's most consequential, peculiar, and poorly understood bilateral relationships. Small weaves together his own interviews and travel observations with extensive use of other histories and narratives that touch on various aspects of China-Pakistan relations but, as he rightly observes, have thus far failed to deliver a full and up-to-date version of the story.
Small's book took a half-dozen years to write, but its timing is nearly ideal. He concludes his history by observing that "the China-Pakistan axis is almost ready to step out of the shadows" (p. 181). It is now quite safe to remove the caveated "almost" from his phrase. China's new One Belt, One Road initiative—the grand scheme to extend and improve interconnectivity throughout China's western periphery through massive state-led investments—is finding its most important test case in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, where, according to Pakistan's probably inflated accounts, China has pledged $46 billion in new investments over the coming years. The China-Pakistan Axis is truly one of a handful of books that must be read by professionals seeking to understand Pakistan's past or hoping to catch a glimpse into its future. And as China's own fate becomes more intertwined with South, Central, and West Asia, the book will be an increasingly vital resource for serious China hands as well.
View full text of article.
By now, it has been nearly forty years since the Cultural Revolution officially ended, yet in China, considering the magnitude and significance of the event, it has remained a poorly examined, under-documented subject. Official archives are off-limits. Serious books on the period, whether comprehensive histories, in-depth analyses, or detailed personal memoirs, are remarkably few. Ji Xianlin's The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which has just been released in English for the first time, is something of an anomaly.
The relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) is one of growing complexity, as American decision makers must balance necessary cooperation but increasingly intense competition. The U.S. must maximize the benefits of its economic relationship with China even as it maintains the alliances, partnerships, and forward-deployed military to balance China's increasingly strident bid to displace it as the Asia–Pacific's preeminent power. Only through applying the principles of free trade can the U.S. maintain its economic leadership, effectively manage the China challenge, and help to preserve peace, security, and freedom in Asia.
China and the U.S., as the rising power and currently dominant power, respectively, are constantly competing with each other throughout East Asia even as the two economies continue to intertwine. As China's strategic center of gravity has shifted to the coast, Beijing's views of its "core interests" and fundamental national concerns mandate dominance, if not outright control, of the region lying within its "first island chain" stretching from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines to the Malacca Strait. That the various East Asian states along that line are largely U.S. allies as well as major Chinese trading partners only highlights the complicated situation confronting U.S. decision makers in East Asia.
Unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the U.S. and Chinese economies are highly interdependent. While China has consistently run a large current account surplus with the United States (largely as a result of higher saving rates over domestic consumption between both nations), the U.S. currently enjoys a large capital account surplus with China. The importation of capital from China into the U.S. has provided enormous liquidity and a lower cost of capital for both consumers and businesses. This has resulted in a higher rate of gross domestic investment and economic growth. It is just politics to say current account surpluses are superior to capital account surpluses.
Many think of aerial bombardment as a cheap, effective alternative to spilling American blood. They're wrong.
The next president will need "more than tough talk or calls to carpet-bomb civilians," declared President Obama in his final State of the Union address this month. He delivered a few well-placed barbs aimed at Republican presidential candidates and slammed Ted Cruz for his hard-line position on ISIS. After deflating the Texas senator's call to bomb ISIS "back to the Stone Age," President Obama said Cruz's brand of bombast "might work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn't pass muster on the world stage." It was an interesting critique coming from a president whose Air Force flew 21,000 sorties over Iraq and Syria last year—9,000 of which involved "weapons release." Altogether, more than 20,000 U.S. bombs were dropped in Iraq and Syria last year. If that doesn't count as a massive bombing campaign, then what does?
Obama's strategy of bombing ISIS isn't working. It isn't that the bombs aren't having any effect—they are, and they're probably more catastrophic than the Pentagon will admit—but the act of bombing itself isn't accomplishing what it's suppose to: that is, reducing the number of ISIS terrorists while preventing as many civilian casualties as possible. Operation Inherent Resolve's spokesman, Colonel Steve Warren, recently said: "If you're part of ISIL, we'll kill you. That's our rule." But the size of ISIS has remained relatively static, around 30,000 since 2014. And as far as avoiding civilian casualties, the Pentagon late last year gave the suspiciously low estimate of six civilian casualties during the entire bombing campaign. An independent investigatory group puts the number at something around 100 times that. The bombings may be helping troops on the ground—the Kurds and the Iraqi army—but is the assistance the United States is providing cost-effective? So far, the air war against ISIS has cost Americans around $5.5 billion, or about $11.2 million per day.
If the current — and future — U.S. administration wants to battle the Islamic State, save Syria, and keep ties with Israel, it's got to ditch the Cold War playbook.
Do you know what the United States should do in the Middle East? The answer to that question used to be pretty obvious, but not anymore. For most of the past half-century, U.S. leaders knew who their friends and enemies were and had a fairly clear sense of what they were trying to accomplish. No longer. Today, there is greater uncertainty about U.S. interests in the region, more reason to question the support it gives its traditional partners, and no consensus on how to deal with the dizzying array of actors and forces that are now buffeting the region.
One thing is clear: The playbook we've been using since the 1940s isn't going to cut it anymore. We still seem to think the Middle East can be managed if we curry favor with local autocrats, back Israel to the hilt, constantly reiterate the need for U.S. "leadership," and when all else fails, blow some stuff up. But this approach is manifestly not working, and principles that informed U.S. policy in the past are no longer helpful.
Things used to be so simple — and no, that's not just nostalgia talking. During the Cold War, for example, the central elements of U.S. Middle East policy were reasonably well understood. First and foremost, the United States sought to contain and, if possible, reduce Soviet influence in the region. It also wanted to make sure Middle East oil and gas continued to flow to world markets and that Israel survived, although the dysfunctional "special relationship" that now exists did not begin to emerge until the late 1960s.
To achieve these goals, from 1945 to 1990 the United States generally acted as an "offshore balancer." In sharp contrast to its military deployments in Europe or Asia, Washington didn't station large ground forces in the Middle East and kept its overall military footprint low, relying instead on a variety of local allies and clients. In particular, the United States backed conservative Arab monarchies in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Persian Gulf; had a close relationship with Iran until the 1979 revolution; and saw Israel as a strategic asset mostly because it kept defeating the Soviet Union's various Arab clients. Indeed, a string of defeats and rising economic problems eventually convinced Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to abandon his Soviet patron and realign with Washington. The United States also played a balance-of-power game in the Gulf: Ronald Reagan and Bush 41 tilted toward Iraq during its war with Iran, and then Bush turned against Iraq when it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
It is an understatement to say that 2015 was a terrible year for the Middle East: the humanitarian disasters spawned by the wars in Syria and Yemen continued unabated; the Islamic State expanded its terrorist operations throughout the region; and Iran accelerated testing of its ballistic missiles and increased its domestic oppression after agreeing to the nuclear deal that will provide Tehran with up to $150 billion in sanctions relief.
Unfortunately, 2016 may already be off to an even worse start. On January 2, Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr after his conviction on terrorism charges stemming from his support of mass anti-government protests in 2011. Iran responded by permitting mobs to attack the Saudi missions in Tehran and Mashhad. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states subsequently cut diplomatic ties with Iran, thereby heightening the already deadly sectarian tensions sweeping the region.
However, it is unlikely that these tensions will escalate into a shooting war in the near term. Saudi Arabia faces systemic challenges to its internal stability and is already militarily engaged in neighboring Yemen. Meanwhile, Iran's conventional military strength still lags behind that of the Gulf states' when U.S. military power in the region is taken into account. Yet rather than a military confrontation, the more probable threat is that Iran will launch a campaign that operates in the gray areas of hybrid warfare similar to Russia's efforts in Ukraine. Given Iran's penchant for operations that attack its adversaries' soft targets while assuring Tehran a degree of deniability, U.S. policymakers should be concerned about the real possibility of a full-blown cyberwar emerging between Iran and our Gulf allies.
Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council, said in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets that the United States was trying to weaken Russia in order to gain access to its mineral resources. He added that the "disintegration of the Russian Federation is not ruled out" by the United States. "This will open access to the richest resources for the United States, which believes that Russia possesses them undeservedly."
Coming from a senior Russian official and former head of the Russian intelligence service close to President Vladimir Putin, this statement has to be taken seriously. This is not because the statement is true, nor even that Patrushev believes it's true, but because it gives us a sense of how the Russians are framing the ongoing confrontations with the United States and in turn, the reasons for Russia's problems. The United States is being framed as an existential threat to Russia's survival because of conscious, intentional U.S. strategies. As the Russian economy disastrously declines and real wages plunge, explaining the country's troubles as the result of the malignant intentions of an outside power shifts the blame from a failure of the Russian government to an American plot. The Russian government becomes the victim and the protector of the Russian people, who in turn are expected to rally behind the Kremlin.
Putin has recently made several statements praising Josef Stalin. Stalin had miscalculated the Nazis' intentions and signed a treaty with them in 1939, only to then face a German invasion of the USSR in June 1941. Stalin used the invasion to create a bond between himself, the Soviet state and the Soviet people. Whatever questions the public might have had about Stalin's wisdom in being so unprepared for the invasion became unimportant. Germany threatened the Soviet public, the state protected them and only Comrade Stalin could keep the state and the people together. There is a link between Putin's slow resurrection of Stalin and the idea that the United States is plotting Russia's destruction.
NOTHING excites the febrile intellects of Brussels more than analysing the theoretical underpinnings of European foreign policy. Entire tracts are devoted to the security strategy of the European Union, its neighbourhood policy, the countless "tools", "instruments" and "levers" it has designed to help it advance its global concerns. A keen student can lose himself for hours in strategy papers and advisory memos to the policymakers supposedly shaping Europe's place in the world.
When the EU signed a German-inspired deal with Turkey to help stem the flow of refugees late last year, none of this mattered a jot. Presented by European officials as a hard-nosed piece of statecraft, the "action plan" offers Turkey money, the prospect of visa-free travel inside the EU and an acceleration of its membership bid so long as the Turks keep the migrants away. It was one of the most important European foreign-policy initiatives in years, but there was not a sniff of strategy to it. It reeked of desperation.
The deal seemed emblematic of a "realist" turn in European foreign policy. Ideas such as slashing aid to countries that refuse to accept the return of failed asylum-seekers are doing the rounds. Officials in international-development agencies tear their hair out as carefully nurtured relationships in Africa are tossed aside to make way for quick-and-dirty deals to ship back rejected migrants. Southern European countries fret that a plan to open EU markets to Middle Eastern exports (to create jobs for refugees) will crowd out their manufacturers.
No threat facing America has grown as fast or in a manner as difficult to understand as has cybersecurity. The media vacillate between claiming that the threat is nothing but hype and panicked cries that the digital sky is falling. Neither position is correct.
President Bush took strong steps to improve the overall security of the nation's networks, and it seemed that President Obama was following suit. Securing cyberspace was a very early priority for the Obama Administration, which was wise enough to use former Bush appointees to set the tone and maintain some continuity, but the initial flurry of activity was not followed up in a consistent and effective manner.
The main point of contention is the degree to which federal regulatory powers should play a role in cybersecurity. Many seem to think reflexively that this 19th-century solution is the answer. Those with a little more understanding of the dynamic and fast-moving nature of cybersecurity see regulation as far too slow and clumsy to be of any benefit and recognize that it might actually hinder security by building a culture of mere compliance with regulations and a false sense of security against enemies who are agile, motivated, and clever.
Russia is the most sophisticated cyber threat, with China as a close second. China also has a strong desire to jump-start its economic efforts by rampant theft of commercial intellectual property. This fact is common fodder for the news media but is actually a greater problem than the news illustrates. Iran and North Korea are much less sophisticated than the two giants, but what they lack in expertise they make up for in malice. For example, the 2012 "Shamoon" virus unleashed upon the Saudi ARAMCO oil production company was a brute-force attack that destroyed 30,000 computers, and the recent cybersecurity breach of the Office of Personnel Management, a campaign believed to be undertaken by the Chinese government, resulted in compromised information of approximately 4 million federal employees. Attacks such as these have shown the U.S. that countries like China have the capabilities to inflict serious damage. North Korea has also used high-profile cyberattacks against the U.S., with the most notable being the one launched against Sony Pictures Entertainment, allegedly over a movie depicting North Korea in a negative light. The hackers took terabytes of private data and released confidential information to the public, including five Sony movies.
To address this growing threat, the U.S. should leverage the forces of the market, motivating the private sector to make the sort of continual and dynamic investment needed to really secure our diverse networks. Heritage Foundation analysts have developed steps to do this that should be taken legislatively to begin the process of improvement that is so badly needed.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional probe into the impact of a hack of Juniper Networks Inc software will examine the possibility that it was initially altered at the behest of the National Security Agency, a lawmaker said in an interview on Thursday.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, at least 75 Islamist-inspired terrorist plots against the United States have been foiled thanks to domestic and international operation. In the war on terrorism abroad, Osama bin Laden and his deputies have been killed; the core of al-Qaeda has been flushed from Afghanistan and hounded in Pakistan (although tactical successes by the Taliban in 2015 show continued threat from terrorist groups in the region); and a number of affiliated groups across Southeast Asia, in part through U.S. counterterrorism assistance and cooperation, have been weakened. The U.S. has come a long way in terms of its readiness to prevent and combat acts of terrorism. Large investments in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, the intelligence community, state and local partners, and other government agencies have increased the U.S.'s ability to prevent terrorism before it strikes. While it is tempting to believe that the threat of terrorism has receded in light of these investments and improvements, the reality is that the threat is as present as ever. The "tides of war" have not receded, and new players have come to the game, namely, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS), or ISIL, or Daesh.
While there were successes, many resulted from more than a decade of efforts to make sanctuaries unsafe, cause attrition in the cadre of terrorist leaders, preempt planning and operations, disaggregate networks, thwart terrorist travel and communications, and disrupt fundraising and recruiting. With the recent rise of IS and other terrorist groups, Islamist terrorist activity has not only increased around the world, but also in the U.S. As Congress and the Obama Administration wrestle with the difficult decision of where best to spend precious security dollars, success in the war against terrorism and preventing terrorist attacks during the past decade are important priorities.
When Rob Joyce, head of the National Security Agency's top hacking outfit, made an appearance at the brand new Usenix Enigma security conference in San Francisco this week, he didn't strike the casual onlooker as an alpha predator. He had neatly parted dark brown hair with slightly graying sideburns, and he wore a light blue button-down shirt tucked into slacks. His demeanor more resembled that of a high school physics teacher than a dogged hunter.
On Wednesday the hacker-in-chief, as Wired has dubbed him, delivered a rare talk at the event. In case there's any doubt, when the nation's top information infiltrator dishes on the dark arts of breaking into and entering computer networks, cybersecurity wonks stop whatever they're doing. Ears perk up. People pay attention. His presentation was easily the confab's main attraction.
In this case, Joyce put on full display the awkward dual role of his employer: defending national computer systems, and exploiting the weaknesses in foreign ones. "I will admit it is very strange to be in that position up here on a stage in front of a group of people. It's not something often done," Joyce said, motioning toward his surrounding upon taking the floor. "My talk today is to tell you, as a nation state exploiter, what can you do to defend yourself to make my life hard," he added.
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter on Thursday announced a series of new policies intended to support service members and their families, including expanding paid maternity leave and access to child care and family planning options.
08… The mythos of Special Operations has seized our nation's popular imagination, and has proved to be the one prism through which the public will engage with America's wars. From the box office to bookstores, the Special Ops commando — quiet and professional, stoic and square-jawed — thrives. That he works in the shadows, where missions are classified and enemy combatants come in silhouettes of night-vision green, is all for the better — details only complicate. We like our heroes sanitized, perhaps especially in murky times like these.


CAC Member Services - When Should I Pay My Dues?
When Should I Pay My Dues?
It is a good question! There is really only one good way to check. Login to your CAC account by clicking here. From there, you can check the date that your next dues payment is due. It will be next to the words "Renewal due on."
If you first applied for CAC membership anytime after December 1st, your due for the upcoming December 1st are already paid. For example: I applied on 2/5/2011. That means I don't have to pay dues until 12/1/2012. Pretty nice, huh??
If you are a current member and you upgraded your membership anytime after December 1st and paid the upgrade fee, that counts as your dues that would have been due that December. For example: I upgraded and paid my $80 on 8/25/2011. That means I don't have to pay dues until 12/1/2012.
But if you have any questions, feel free to contact us.


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¿No te ha llegado el segundo cheque de estímulo de $600? Aquí algunas razones
Sentinel editorial cartoonist Ralph Dunagin: An appreciation | Commentary
By Jane Healy
Guest Columnist |
Ralph Dunagin, an editorial cartoonist for the Sentinel and its predecessor, the Orlando Evening Star, from 1961 to 2001, died Wednesday. He was 83. Dunagin also collaborated with Dana Summers on the comic strip "The Middletons," which continued to appear in the Sentinel after his retirement.
Below, Jane Healy, his former supervisor as editorial page editor and managing editor of the Sentinel, recalls working with Dunagin.
Orlando Sentinel political cartoonist Ralph Dunagin is retiring at the age of 64. (GEORGE SKENE / ORLANDO SENTINEL)
Meeting Ralph Dunagin, it would be hard to imagine that this soft-spoken southern gentleman was one of the nation's great cartoonists.
I began working with Ralph in the early 1980s when he drew simple line-drawing cartoons for the op-ed page. His cartoons elicited laughs from the readers and stung the politicians he skewered — the perfect combination for a cartoonist. It's no wonder he was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
When he retired 20 years later, there was a hole in our editorial pages that couldn't be replaced. I still have his cartoons on my walls at home — even though some were skewering myself and the editorial board! In his low-key way, of course.
Jane Healy is the former editorial page editor and managing editor of the Orlando Sentinel.


text:
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
var Schema = mongoose.Schema;

var magazineSchema = new Schema({
    region: {}, // province, city, district
    name: String, //杂志名称
    type: String, //杂志类别
    period: String, //发行周期
    adType: String, //广告形式
    pageSize: String, //版面规格
    size: {}, //尺寸
    originalPrice: Number, //刊例价
    discountPrice: Number, //执行价
    images: [], // 图片集合
    title: String, //标题
    contacts: String, //联系人
    phoneNum: String, //联系电话
    details: String, //详情
    createdAt: { type: Date, default: Date.now },
    user: {type: String, ref : 'User'},   // 关联的User
    category: {type: String, ref : 'ContentCategory'},//关联的资源类别
    refreshedAt: { type: Date, default: Date.now },//更新时间
    isDeleted: { type: Boolean, default: false }, //是否删除标识
    isShowing: { type: Boolean, default: true }, //是否正在显示
    isTop: { type: Boolean, default: false }, //是否置顶显示
    adsFrom: Date, //推广开始时间
    adsTo: Date,//推广截至时间
});

var Magazine = mongoose.model("Magazine", magazineSchema);

module.exports = Magazine;

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


What comes to mind when you hear the word LOVE?
I feel some of you are pondering over this question a little longer than others, especially as it is the season of love and romance – yes, Valentine Day is in the air.
February has long been a month of romance. It is the month associated with Valentine's Day celebrations. A time when we all want to be in love, as Valentine's plays us all to believe that to be loved is the root to happiness, peace and fulfilment.
When we think of Valentine's Day, we often think of red roses, colourful cards, mouth-watering chocolates in heart-shaped boxes, silky lingerie, mushy valentines, and winged cherubs flying about shooting starry-eyed lovers with arrows.
Our modern language uses the word 'love' almost too frequently. We say "I love you" to our partners, and say "I love chocolate ice cream!" to a friend, but how often do we say I love me, myself or I, or however you wish to address yourself.
…the greatest love of all is inside ourselves and it is also the greatest love we can receive, this is what all of us have and deserve, yet it's what so few of us truly discover.
But should we ask Oscar how we begin and maintain this lifelong romance.
Once you nurture a heightened awareness of love for yourself, you will be able to let go of these bounding chains of the past.
Loving yourself is not as easy.
This is because we are programmed to always give OUT love. We are pruned, conditioned by habits and beliefs since childhood and right through to adulthood.
The message is that we must always project our love OUT and NOT IN. We must "love" other people, we must love our country, pets, food, sports, music, clothes, and the list goes on, but we are not reminded enough to love ourselves.
Like Charity, Love should begin at home too.
I believe Love is a D.I.Y (see services) instalment job, so to get you on the pathway of how to input love into yourself. Here is a very interesting way which I have learned and reaped treasures of benefits from it. I LOVE the Program! It keeps all things running smooth, and the Peace and Serenity programs working well!! I hope everyone will find the same and greater rewards from LOVE!!!


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Home NEWS Koko: PDP-Laban meeting with China's Communist Party aim to 'strengthen ties'
Koko: PDP-Laban meeting with China's Communist Party aim to 'strengthen ties'
Published January 13, 2017 3:50pm
By XIANNE ARCANGEL, GMA News
Senate President Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III on Friday confirmed that officials of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) and China's ruling Communist Party in Beijing will meet from January 22 to 25.
Pimentel, PDP-Laban president, said the only aim of the meeting will be the "strengthening of ties" between the two parties.
"Very simple objective only," he told reporters in a text message Friday.
Pimentel, however, did not give other details about the meeting, saying it is an internal party matter.
"This is an internal party matter which we want to keep 'internal' as there will be no adverse effect on the State whatsoever. Hence, this is not an 'issue' of national concern," he said.
The upcoming meeting between PDP-Laban officials and their counterparts from the Communist Party came to light after former Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) chairman Efraim Genuino disclosed it in the motion he filed with the Sandiganbayan dated Jan. 10 for permission to travel.
Genuino, who is facing multiple criminal charges connected to his stint as Pagcor chair, said he was invited to join the PDP-Laban delegation as he heads the party's finance committee.
The PDP-Laban delegation to China will be led by the party's vice chairman, Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi. — VVP, GMA News
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Stories from Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Floyd Lester Orman (Obituary ~ 12/17/03)
NORTH PLATTE -- Floyd Lester Orman, 90, of North Platte, died Monday (Dec. 15, 2003) at Great Plains Regional Medical Center. He was born Aug. 15, 1913, to Fred M. and Delia (Ohlson) Orman in Hayes County. On July 27, 1937, he married Lillian Fichtner in Hayes County. He spent most of his life in Hayes County as a farmer and also with the agriculture office in Hayes County for over 40 years. The couple moved to North Platte in 1980...
Kent L. Bennett (Obituary ~ 12/17/03)
LINCOLN -- Kent L. Bennett, 67, of Holdrege, died Tuesday (Dec. 16, 2003) at Bryan LGH-East Hospital in Lincoln. He was born June 16, 1936, to Harold and Hazelle (Broomfield) Bennett on the family homestead near McCook. He attended school at the Red Willow School and continued his education in Lebanon. After his education, he worked on the family farm...
Joe Schwab (Obituary ~ 12/17/03)
ST. FRANCIS -- Joe Schwab, 43, of Oberlin, died Sunday (Dec. 14, 2003) in St. Francis. He was born Sept. 13, 1960, to Bill and Pat (Huff) Schwab in Norton, Kan. He was raised on a farm near Norcatur and attended Norcatur Grade School. He graduated from Decatur Community High School in 1979. He lived on a farm near Norcatur and then moved to Oberlin...
People, Pets and Places contest page 118 (Features ~ 12/17/03)
Committee favors site in Trenton for high school (Local News ~ 12/17/03)
Lakeside Central and Culbertson schools are one step closer to coming to an agreement on a centralized junior and senior high school. According to an article by Jason Frederick in the Hitchcock County News a committee including board members from Culbertson, Trenton and Stratton met Monday night and recommended a realignment with one high school in Trenton and an elementary K-6 school in both Stratton and Culbertson...
Southwest school board sets next year's attendance sites (Local News ~ 12/17/03)
Students from the newly formed Southwest School District have a better idea of where they will be attending school next year after a decision by the Board of Directors. According to the Indianola News, K-5 students will be attending school at Indianola, 6-8 graders will go to Bartley and 9-12 grades will attend school a Red Willow...
Director: Development starts at home (Local News ~ 12/17/03)
Economic development has to start somewhere and according to Rex Nelson, McCook's new Economic Development Corp. executive director, it needs to start at home. Nelson, who will take over his post on Jan. 12, said the first thing economic development must look at is the city's business environment...
Bison wrestling squad splits duals at home triangular (High School Sports ~ 12/17/03)
The McCook Bison wrestling team split its two duals Tuesday night at its home triangular against Cambridge and Gothenburg. The Bison doubled up Gothenburg 48-24 and lost to Cambridge 42-33. Cambridge opened up the action at the McCook High School gymnasium with a 46-27 victory over Gothenburg...
Diligence, brilliance paid off for Wrights (Editorial ~ 12/17/03)
Years of experimentation, careful planning, hard work and a touch of brilliance paid off for two brothers from Dayton, Ohio. Firing up a 12-hp., four-cylinder motor, hand-built in six weeks by Lincoln, Neb., native Charlie Taylor, Orville and Wilbur Wright flipped a coin, and Orville won the toss...
Healing halls, healing word (Column ~ 12/17/03)
Hospitals are a world of their own. Once you walk through those doors, hear the whoosh behind you as the doors close, your entire reality undergoes a subtle shift. Gone are the mundane cares of the day. Your routine is taken from your hands and, even if you would want to, you cannot snatch it back...
Twin Valley Rebel girls rip Maywood (High School Sports ~ 12/17/03)
MAYWOOD -- Despite a double-double by Maywood's Crystal Zwickl, Maywood fell to Twin Valley, 68-43, in girls basketball. Three Lady Rebels each scored a dozen points in the Tuesday night win. Amanda Weaver scored all of her 12 points in the second half, while 10 of Kim Starr's 12 came in the frist half. Kayla McConville spead her's throughout the game, including one three-pointer...
Legendary storyteller (Local News ~ 12/17/03)
Just two years shy of the century mark, former Nebraska Gov. Frank Morrison remains one of the state's premiere storytellers. Tuesday night, he demonstrated his remarkable memory and his ability to spin a yarn, delighting members of the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Committee at the group's December meeting. ...


In a distributed system, it is not enough to know who called you, but you also need to make sure the data which you receive are not altered in transit.
The use of tokens (like Bearer JWT tokens according to the OpenId Connect or MicroProfile JWT Auth specifications) can be captured and briefly used to send fake request to your endpoints.
And SSL (like using HTTPS connections) cannot guarantee that your message isn't read or altered by someone due to the possibilities of SSL Proxy termination or even Man In The Middle Intermediates who fakes correct SSL.
The solution is that your processes somehow make sure that the communication between them is 'safe'. If the processes themselves (your client and your server application) perform these tasks and not some network layer (SSL, in fact, doesn't fit in any OSI based network layer) of your (virtual) machine.
When your process is performing these tasks, it is possible to create a security context between the 2 processes and then each process can ensure or detect that the message is unaltered or can't be read, regardless of any Proxy or Man In The Middle.
Whether you need encryption of the message (because you have confidential data) or signing (sensitive data) depends on the data. But at least you need the signing of the message so that we can guarantee the message is actually sent by someone we trust and isn't altered.
It is very HTTP friendly as it adds an additional header to the request. Within this header, enough information is placed so that the target process can verify if the message was altered or not.
Signature : keyId="rsa-key-1",algorithm="rsa-sha256",headers="(request-target) date digest content-length",signature="Base64(RSA-SHA256(signing string))"
The specification defines the structure and framework how the header should be created and the verification process must be performed but leaves a lot of freedom to the developer to tailor this protection to his/her needs.
The idea is that there is a signature calculated based on some parameters which are mostly just other headers. And by calculating them on the receiving side, we can verify if these values are changed.
The values of these headers are concatenated (there exist a few rules about how to do it) and for this string, the cryptographic hash is calculated the signature.
The calculation is done using the value specified by the algorithm parameter (rsa-sha256 in our example above) and from the key with id rsa-key-1 is used for this in our example.
There are a number of crypto algorithms allowed, but RSA keys are the most popular ones.
This signature value is a binary, so a BASE64 encoded value is placed within the header.
In theory, all headers can be used but some of them are more interesting than other ones.
(request-target) is a pseudo header value containing the concatenation of the http method and the path of the URL. If you like to include also the hostname (which can be interesting if you want to make sure that a request for the test environments never hits production, you can add the host header in the set of headers which needs to be used for the calculation of the signature value.
date header contains the timestamp when the request is created. This allows is to reject 'old' requests.
digest is very interesting when there is a payload send to the endpoint (like with put and post). This header contains then the hash value of the payload and is a key point in the end to end protection we are discussing here.
digest is verified to see if the header value is the same as the calculated hash value from the payload.
And of course, the signature is verified. Here we decode the signature value with the public key defined in the keyId parameter, using the algorithm specified.
And that value should match the calculated value from the headers.
I have created a Proof Of Concept how this can be integrated with JAX-RS, client and server side.
For the server side, it is quite simple since you can add filters and interceptors easily by annotating them with @Provider. By just then indicating if this interceptor and filters should need to do their work, verification of the HTTP Signature, you are set to go.
One thing is on the roadmap is to integrate it with the MicroProfile Rest Client way of working so that you can register the Signatures Feature and you're done.
The initial code can be found on Github.
With the Http Signatures specification, you can add a header which can be used to verify if the message is changed or not. This is a nice non-intrusive way of having an End-To-End protection implement which can complement the SSL features to be sure that no intermediary party changes the message.


HARTFORD --The vintage carousel in Bushnell Park reopened Saturday.
During the spring season it will be open to the public on Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M. The carousel will offer a functional room that is great for gatherings such as birthday parties and weddings.
"This is a treasure in Bushnell park, there are less than 200 antique wooden operating carousels left in this country and Hartford has one in its downtown. This is a real treasure," said the executive director of Bushnell Park Carousel Louise Demars.
For the small price of just $1.00 you can enjoy a 3.5 minute ride on this hand crafted masterpiece. Additional offers include a prepaid ticket book good for 30 rides for the prize of $25.
Want to ride for free for the year? Then join the Friends of the Carousel where you can engage in efforts to support carousel preservation work.
Additionally the carousel sells delicious popular concessions including popcorn, ice cream, and soft drinks.
The carousel was hand carve in 1914 by Solomon Stein and Harry Goldstein and is being restored by the New England Carousel Restoration Workshop. It includes 36 jumpers, 12 standers, 2 chariots, and a Wurlitzer band organ.


Mentors and how have they assisted you in your career: One of my earliest mentors was Pat Callaghan from Pepperidge Farm. At the time, Pat was in charge of the Frozen division and I was a new Brand Manager having just done a career switch from marketing research to marketing. I was now responsible for making decisions that would directly impact the day to day business and P&L. Pat was not only incredibly accepting, but he was the very best example of a leader that even today, I look up to. He was inclusive and treated everyone's opinions equally. He was smart, deliberate in his decision making and, most importantly, brought everyone along. He was someone that everyone respected and wanted to follow. I learned a lot from his leadership style that even today, I try to emulate.
What are you most proud of in your career achievements? Do you have a defining moment of your career to date? I am most proud of developing people and having a positive impact on people's careers. There are so many people that I have kept in touch with or that have kept in touch with me. It is amazing to see people that worked for me that I mentored that are now in leadership positions themselves and having big impacts on their companies.
Most challenging part of your job: The most challenging part of the job is being able to prioritize all the amazing ideas that we have. We have great ambitions and a robust pipeline of ideas. We would love to get to them all!
Advice for upcoming younger executives: Do what you love and work for a company that loves what you do.


A client account is basically a bank account that is used by a professional or a company for a client. A conveyancer will be obliged to keep all of the client's funds in a different bank account from that of their firm's .
All conveyancers will need to use a client account as a separate account. This is where the money is kept when the conveyancing procedure takes place.