HomeBlogDid You Know About Tree Removal Permits?
At Bob Mar Lawn & Tree Services in Miami, we know all about the tree removal Florida law, and we can make the process easy for you. Because we work with landscaping all the time, we know what it takes to get a tree removal permit and we can help with the corresponding paperwork to ensure a smooth and easy process. We want to make the removal of trees on your property as simple and as easy for you as possible. To learn more about the tree removal Miami trusts, contact us at Bob Mar Lawn & Tree Services.
Do You Have a Tree Removal Miami?
Trees are not always a blessing. Sometimes, a tree may cause damage to a home's roof if it is positioned too closely to the house. Other times, the tree may be in danger of collapse, which can put everyone in danger if a storm were to blow through. Then there are, of course, the trees that bring unwanted pests far too close–and into–the home. In those instances, it can seem necessary to remove the tree in order to avoid disaster down the line.
However, before you take a chainsaw to your backyard, it is important to know what the law says about removing trees in your area. If you live in Miami, you cannot simply cut down the tree that is causing issues; you have to go through the government in order to get a permit so that you can have it removed.
Trees are an important part of every community. They not only help to increase the real estate value of any property by 15%, but they also help to cut the air conditioning cost of a home by up to 40%. Beyond that, trees are essential the environmental conservation of a community. With trees around, the air quality improves and flooding is reduced. Additionally, the beauty of any neighborhood is enhanced by the addition of trees.
Miami-Dade County, however, suffers a unique condition. They are well below the national average when compared to similarly-sized metropolitan areas because they have lost thousands of trees to hurricanes, disease such as citrus canker, and urban development. It is because of this that preserving whatever trees are left is such an key initiative for Miami-Dade.
In order to have a tree removed in Miami, you require a tree removal or relocation permit. This is the case for any tree in Miami-Dade County unless it is specifically exempt under the Environmental Code of Miami-Dade County.
Bob Mar Lawn & Tree Services is a landscaping expert located in Miami. We understand that the tree removal Florida law can seem daunting and complicated, but that is what we are here for. We can help you go through that process so that you do not have to take on all the hard parts alone. Then, we remove the tree itself so that you have a smooth process from start to finish. If you are interested in learning more about our services or you would like to schedule a consultation with us, contact us at Bob Mar Lawn & Tree Services today.


This lecture provides an in-depth insight into the state of the art in securitization and structured credit risk transfer. In addition to covering new developments in asset-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations, the lecture explains risk transfer using synthetic asset securitization, a versatile and fast-growing technique in the ABS market. It opens new possibilities for the transfer, pricing and management of credit risk.
Where is the global asset-backed securities market headed?
What is "future flow securitization"?
What risk transfer choices do emerging market banks have?
Example: Pakistan Telecommunications: Securetel SPV. Securitization as a local-currency asset-liability management tool.
Example: Fresco. A South African synthetic CLO securitization.
Ian Giddy is on the faculty of finance at New York University, USA. He has taught finance at NYU, Columbia, Wharton, Chicago and abroad for the past thirty years. He was Director of International Fixed Income Research at Drexel Burnham Lambert from 1986 to 1989. The author of more than fifty articles on international finance, Dr Giddy has served at the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury and has been a consultant with numerous financial institutions and corporations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. He has lectured in more than forty countries, and has been involved in the asset-backed securities market for over 15 years. He is the author or co-author of The International Money Market, The Handbook of International Finance, Cases in International Finance, Global Financial Markets, Asset Securitization in Asia, and The Hudson River Watertrail Guide. He and his wife are the founders of Cloudbridge, a nature reserve in Costa Rica.


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Usain Bolt missing millions from investment fraud scheme
The world's fastest man, Usain Bolt, has run into some financial issues in Jamaica after his manager reported the sprinter is missing millions of dollars from an investment account with Jamaican firm Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL).The eight-time Olympic champion's manager told Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner that Bolt had noticed discrepancies with his accounts on Jan. 11 and has since launched an investigation with Jamaica's Financial Investigations Division and Financial Services Commission.
Bolt has reportedly been a client of the investment firm for 10 years, but the firm has no idea where the money went; they suspect fraud.
"His entire portfolio is being reviewed," said his manager Nugent Walker to the newspaper. Walker did not specify the exact amount of money missing from Bolt's account, but claimed it is in the millions.
However, The Gleaner reported that a former SSL employee has been involved in a widespread fraud scheme, which may relate to the same developments in Bolt's case.
Representatives for Bolt and SSL did not respond to requests for a comment on this story.Bolt is one of the highest-earning track and field athletes of all time, earning a reported 33 million dollars in 2016 alone. In 2018, Bolt was listed as the 45th highest-paid athlete in the world, according to Forbes.
Bolt set the 100m and 200m world records at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, where he won double gold. He is the only sprinter to have won three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the men's 100 metres and 200m, from Beijing 2008 to Rio 2016.
Since 2017, Bolt, 36, has stepped away from athletics, besides racing one unofficial 800m for an insurance advertisement.
posted Saturday January 14th
by Running Magazine

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


We created Boat Club Manager around our five years of boat club experience. Our software was built to fit that need. This is what makes, Boat Club Managers service and software superiors to all other competitors.
Boat Club Manager clubs will gain our five years of experience and we will continue to share them as we grow beyond 130 members.


Encryption is the process of converting readable information into indecipherable code, while in transit or storage. Encryption is important because it prevents unauthorized parties from accessing sensitive data or information, which for the healthcare industry in particular, is critical for keeping patient health records private.
While no organization is immune to the threat of security breaches, the process of encryption can significantly decrease the chances of data breaches occurring. Yet despite this, many healthcare organizations are falling short when it comes to encryption; a recent report suggests more than half of compromised records in the healthcare sector are the result of a failure to encrypt data, as opposed to just 16% of breaches in other sectors.
Despite the relationship between encryption and health data security, encryption is not a specific requirement under HIPAA. However, that does not mean it can be ignored, far from it.
Under HIPAA, there are three sets of safeguards that define security standards to help ensure the confidentiality of patient information, which are Physical, Administrative, and Technical.
The Technical safeguards are broken down into six standards that focus on the technology that protects and controls access to PHI. Within these six standards, there are nine key areas that organizations need to implement, classified as either 'required' or 'addressable'.
Encryption (and decryption) fall into the addressable category. This is where issues can arise, because the term addressable is easily misconstrued. To be clear, just because encryption is an addressable safeguard, it doesn't mean it is optional. By ignoring encryption, healthcare organizations leave themselves significantly more vulnerable to security breaches and the fines that come with it.
For HIPAA covered entities and their business associates, safeguarding patient data no longer an optional. Failure to comply with HIPAA can result in both civil and criminal penalties, not to mention long-term reputational damage. At Scrypt, security is our highest priority. We know how important the safeguarding of sensitive data and personal information is to our customers, which is why we encrypt all documents with full 256-bit SSL security and AES algorithms. You can find out more about our commitment to security and encryption at https://www.scrypt.com/company/security/.


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Октябрьская всеобщая (всероссийская) политическая стачка — первое общероссийское политическое выступление рабочих и служащих, один из ключевых эпизодов Революции 1905—1907 годов в России. Бастовали более 2 миллионов человек. Проходила под лозунгами свержения самодержавия, завоевания демократических свобод, а также с экономическими требованиями. Стачка стала главной причиной издания Николаем II Манифеста 17 октября.

Литература

Примечания

Революция 1905—1907 годов в России
Забастовки в Российской империи

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Iraq and Syria: What if Bombing Makes Things Worse?
A 56th Fighter Wing F-16 Fighting Falcon from Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, releases two GBU-12 laser guided bombs during a training mission.
However one felt about the humanitarian intervention to save the Yazidis stranded on Mt. Sinjar (and we can all be happy so many were safely evacuated), the U.S. military intervention in Iraq -- and potentially soon in Syria -- has become something completely different. As has so often been the case in conflict, the mission has crept its way from a noble humanitarian goal towards something far more complicated.
We are becoming deeply involved in a sectarian conflict that spans from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, with multiple fronts, multiple actors, shifting alliances, and horrific violence on all sides. In short, we're in the middle of a giant mess.
We should take a minute and acknowledge something. ISIS (or ISIL or Islamic State depending on who you ask) is a collection of some of the most despicable beings to walk the earth. They have reportedly executed religious minorities (and an American journalist), forced women into slavery, and are committing atrocities faster than anyone can monitor them. Being opposed to a broadening U.S. military intervention does not mean you have to think that ISIS is somehow not evil. They are. The question is what you do about that and how you can avoid making them stronger.
Cooperating with Assad to unilaterally strike ISIS in Syria makes zero sense and would likely exacerbate the regional crisis. It is true that the border between Syria and Iraq has, in some ways, become irrelevant. However, the fact that we could soon be bombing a country that, one year ago, the American public overwhelmingly rejected bombing, should be a stark reminder of how much has changed. Even more absurd is that, exactly one year after Assad gassed his own people, our potential military action would be to target his chief rivals in a now three-year-old civil war that has claimed 191,000 lives. The icing on this illogical cake is that the ISIS spokesman who threatened to 'raise the flag of Allah in the White House' is reportedly dead at the hands of Assad's forces. As a reminder, it remains official U.S. policy that Assad must leave power and we will spend $500 million in FY2015 arming Syrian opposition forces.
The truth is that ISIS feeds off of war. They need it to survive. It's at the core of their identity and they are very good at provoking a fight. They are purposefully inciting sectarian fights in Iraq in the hopes of rallying Sunnis around them. They want nothing more than for the U.S. to get involved so that it's not just apostates and infidels they are fighting, but the Great Satan itself. Bringing the fight to them and taking sides in Iraq's sectarian conflict and Syria's civil war is exactly what ISIS wants.
Some argue that, because we cannot negotiate with ISIS, the only way to defeat them is through unilateral military action. Here's where we have to learn from history. Our efforts in Yemen and the tribal regions of Pakistan offer a useful preview of how this will go, and the future does not look bright. Years of airstrikes, with local forces fighting proxy ground battles for us, has led to increasing extremism and a growth in the Taliban (both Pakistani and Afghan) and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Nowhere where we have gone down this path has it ended with peace or fewer extremists. Even worse, unilateral airstrikes have ended disastrously for the inhabitants of those places. Life in Iraq and Syria right now is truly awful, and we should do everything we can to ease the humanitarian crisis. But history has shown us that a stepped-up counterterrorism in isolation effort will have the opposite effect: empowering terrorist organizations and causing collateral damage. We've seen this movie before and we know how it ends.
This is not about whether or not we trust President Obama or his intentions. Once a president starts down the road of military intervention, mission creep is almost always inevitable. We now have roughly 1,000 U.S. troops in Iraq with requests for more to deploy. The Iraqis have asked us to ramp up our fighting and it is unclear what promises we have made as carrots for their ousting of former Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. What started as a humanitarian mission to save Yazidis on a mountain has grown to over 100 airstrikes, the majority of which have been in support of an Iraqi and Kurdish military mission to recapture the Mosul Dam. Following the execution of an American journalist, the promise of a second execution, and the personalization of this fight to the president, it is becoming next to impossible for Obama to 'back down.' The Pentagon has reportedly been so pleased by their airstrikes that they've asked for the ability to ramp them up. Add to this the very real likelihood that American bombs will soon fall into the middle of the Syrian civil war, and it becomes clear that this train has left the station.
But it is not too late to change direction. Countless experts and scholars have watched America's misadventures in the Middle East over the past several decades and learned the painful lesson so few in Washington can seem to grasp: American bombs do not solve the problem. While the impulse to 'do something' remains compelling, we must continue to seek out solutions that will actually solve the challenges we face and not simply plunge America and the Middle East further into war.


Custom Covers PVC - "We've got it covered"
Custom Covers has been making PVC covers in Southampton for over 26 years and are the UK's leading marquee manufacturer. These are available for our own Coverspan range as well as for all standard marquee manufacturers in Europe and the USA from 3m up to 40m widths. We have an extensive CAD library of existing patterns covering all reputable tent frame systems. We also offer a bespoke service and are happy to quote to make PVC to fit any structure.
The company has experience in both modern frame marquees as well as more specialised structures. Stage covers, awnings and tension structures are also manufactured to suit individual customer requirements, both for UK and overseas markets.
Fabric Specification: Manufactured at our base in Southampton all coverspan covers are made from 650g per square metre weight fire retardant PVC. This cloth is a low wick anti fungal treated hardwearing cloth. In addition to our standard PVC, covers can be manufactured using a variety of colours or different weights of fabric, canvas or other suitable materials. We have extensive knowledge in this area and would be delighted to discuss any special requirements you might have.


Dr. Yood received his doctorate from the University of Denver and completed his predoctoral internship at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the BTC. Dr. Yood's areas of clinical interest include Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety and other related anxiety disorders. He has specialized training and experience in the use of exposure therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP). Additionally, he completed the Trichotillomania Learning Center's Behavioral Training Institute and has experience treating Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors. Dr. Yood has also worked extensively with parents and children with various behavioral struggles, including anxiety and oppositional outbursts. He works with children and their parents in BTC's Disruptive Behavior Management Program, designed for children and adolescents with OCD and/or tics who also display externalizing behavioral difficulties.


This entry was posted in Just Life and tagged Badly, Consistent, desire, life, power, work. Bookmark the permalink.
II am always inspired by what you share, your thoughts are always nourishing to the mind, soul, and spirit! Hugs, and blessings to you dear sister!!!
Thank you, brother Wendell. May the Lord lift you up each and every day.


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Australian Open Round-up
Kudos to Angie Kerber in winning her first Grand Slam title; we didn't think she had it in her, in her defense when she totally took apart Azarenka we should've seen it coming. She seemed so relaxed out there and was playing the game the way it has to be played, just trying to win every point, and not caring how she looks. Many times however after a big win, player's come back to earth in their next match after "Treeing", but the way that she just went about her business instead of playing over her head did show signs of her moving right along in the tourney. Playing a very easy Semi Final didn't hurt either. She woke up in the Final and said "All I need to do is win one match and I'm a Grand Slam Champion", and she did and now the pressure is off. Look for her to be in many more Semis and Finals from here on in.
I can't believe we are doing this, but if she was sincere we want to gives props to Serena for "acting" at least for one day like she wasn't a sore loser and appearing (whether it was for show or not) that she was happy for her opponent. Serena is all about branding however and at this point in her career if she doesn't win she had better not act like a jerk ,if she wants to keep on being invited to Hollywood's "A" list parties after her career is over. We are going take the high road here and say that she was happy for Kerber.
For the Men it was the same old thing as Djokovic proved that Murray and Federer can't beat him in a best of 5 anymore at least not on this surface. Nadal has a shot on clay or maybe a hot young player can take him out early in the tourney if he has very bad day, but for now there is no one that can compete with him. When we saw him play in the Semis of the French when he was young, we thought he would be the next dominant number one. He had all the shots. His mental makeup and physical body weren't ready then however. Well they are now and he will reign for quite a while now.
Also kudos to Milos Raonic who proved he has the game to play with the big boys. He should've beaten Murray but Murray wanted it more and the Canadian ran out of gas after winning 2 or the first 3 sets in fine fashion. We always thought he was slow but has gotten his body in better shape and is a bit faster but more work needs to be done. He has the serve obviously and his coaches are groundstroke specialists, and amazingly he is coming into the net following big forehands and ending points quickly.
This is huge as he can volley pretty well and if he uses this philosophy as Federer did later in his career he will be very tough to beat as long as I said he works on his conditioning. He is the only one of the young guns at this point (Maybe Nishikori) who can play with the big boys on the big stage. Nishi has his limits in what he can do however as all he has are groundstrokes and his body is small, Dimitrov is well rounded but has no weapons, so that leaves Raonic as the only guy in the near future will can challenge the Top Guns in the majors. If I was you I would always place futures bet on Milos at America's Bookie in every major till he finally breaks through.
This week we scatter around the globe as the "dirtballers" go to Ecuador, and there are also 2 indoors tourneys in Montpellier and Sofia. Let's put a few bucks on Falla -240 who always plays well in South America to take out Lapentti and get our week off right. Enjoy the tennis guys and we will see you next week.


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Q: Tranposing a single column into rows and grouping microsoft server 2008 I have a table in the following format;
ID | Factors | Value
---------------------
1  |    A    |  4542
1  |    B    |  454
1  |    C    |  43

I need to transpose the Factors column and group the id column so I get the following result;
ID|  A   |  B  | C  |
1   | 4542 | 454 | 43 |

I've looked into the pivot function but From what I've read its very memory intensive and I'm dealing with 1000's and ID's and values.
I've tried creating a table with the columns that I want but no idea how I could insert the correct data into it.

A: The two common ways to achieve this are either Pivot:
SELECT ID AS NMI, [A], [B], [C]
FROM
MyTable
PIVOT
(
    SUM(Value)
    FOR Factors in ([A], [B], [C])
) pvt;

Or using a manual CASE ... WHEN projection with a grouped aggregate:
SELECT
    ID AS NMI,
    SUM(CASE WHEN Factors = 'A' THEN Value END) AS [A],
    SUM(CASE WHEN Factors = 'B' THEN Value END) AS [B],
    SUM(CASE WHEN Factors = 'C' THEN Value END) AS [C]
FROM MyTable
GROUP BY ID;

Fiddle of both here

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


I've been traveling a lot this past week, from Toronto to Georgetown to Ottawa.
Several times, I've been asked about what I think about the newest lamb being lead to slaughter by the Liberal Party of Canada, Justin Trudeau.
Everything I've said can be better summed up by this gif.


Kristina found her yoga home at Southtown Yoga when she participated in the 2011 Yoga Bender. In 2014, she completed Southtown Yoga's 200-hour teacher training and is now a Certified Yogahour® Teacher. Kristina loves that yoga makes everyday better and often uses it as a tool to flip perspective. When she's not practicing, she enjoys running, cooking, and being a nurse. Expect a fun but challenging class from this playful and feisty teacher.


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Revamped Art-A-Fair Makes its Debut
By : LB Indy Staff
Muralist Okuda San Miguel recently transformed Art-a-Fair's exterior.
Laguna Art-A-Fair, 777 Laguna Canyon Rd., showcases its newly renovated grounds with an opening night gala from 6-9 p.m. on Friday, June 29.
Guests purchasing a $150 ticket will enjoy food and wine, live music and a hosted bar.
Interior designer Nancy Vengoechea has made a "design wall" featuring the latest trends in furnishings, flooring, lighting and wall finishes so homeowners can envision fine art in various settings.
Proceeds will benefit the California Sports Hall of Fame founded by former all-pro Kansas City Chiefs running back Christian Okoye. The nonprofit helps at-risk youth by hosting free athletic clinics with pro athletes. Okoye and other known sports celebrities will be on hand at the VIP to greet guests.
Purchase tickets online at:at http://art-a-fair.com. The venue also opens to the public on June 29 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and continues through Sept. 2.
BC Space Reopens With Turnbull Exhibit
BC Space Gallery exhibits the Betty Turnbull collection of contemporary California art, opening on June 29 and running through July 29.
Portrait of Betty Turnbull by Lance Richbourg
The exhibit is the first since the April death of gallery director Mark Chamberlain. Proceeds will help support the event space at 235 Forest Ave., says an announcement.
Turnbull, who helped found and later curated exhibitions and collections at what is now known as the Orange County Museum of Art, collected the work of California modernists.
Her children Mark and Glenda have decided to display and sell some works eight years after their mother's death. These include paintings and sculptures by artists including James Strombotne, Wayne Thiebaud and Tony DeLap.
Singer/songwriter Mark Turnbull composed new work for the exhibition, which he will perform at 8 p.m. on opening night and subsequent Fridays, July 6, 13, 20 and 27.
Bernstein Brings the Yucatan Alive
Steve Bernstein
Steve Bernstein, Cove Gallery's artist of the month, exhibits works from a remarkable week in the Yucatan.
During a visit, Bernstein travelled off the beaten track to Tizimin, where he saw school children heading home looking angelic in their school uniforms. He also made pictures of unusual dwellings, including "The Castle."
Scenes from Bernstein's Yucatan excursion.
Bernstein will also be at Cove Gallery, 1550 S. Coast Highway, during First Thursdays Art Walk, Thursday, July 5, from 6-9 p.m.
Soka Shows Dynamic Paintings, Student Works
A reception for the artist Mutlu Ertac is set for 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 28, at Soka University, which is showing "Breaking the Rules of the Past: A Retrospective by Mutlu Ertac" in its Founders Hall Art Gallery on the Aliso Viejo campus through Aug. 31.
Admission is free and the gallery is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. A collection of student work will also be exhibited.
Laureates to Host Writing Contest
Play Sifts Beliefs, Social Challenges


This paper proposes to build "implied stochastic volatility models" designed to fit option-implied volatility data, and implements a method to construct such models. The method is based on explicitly linking shape characteristics of the implied volatility surface to the specification of the stochastic volatility model. We propose and implement parametric and nonparametric versions of implied stochastic volatility models.


Eventray is a ready-to-use UI kit includes multiple layouts and UI elements designed for Web and Mobile use. Free PSD designed by DtailStudio.
Posted on January 28, 2015 in Free PSD, UI kits and tagged ui. This post has been viewed 16557 times.
Tourex is a free flight booking app design template designed in Sketch and Adobe Xd and released by Nasir Uddin.
Modular is a free Android UI kit released by the design team at Framer. This kit features everything you need to design your next project for Android and create your own unique user flows.


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Can Big Data Shed New Light on Root Causes of Obesity?
December 1, 2022 by Eric Graber
Current Developments in Nutrition authors believe big data may reveal new causal associations
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2016 more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these, over 650 million were affected by obesity. These statistics translate into 39% of adults with overweight and 13% with obesity.
Overweight and obesity are risk factors for a broad set of non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers. WHO underscores that "most of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kill more people than underweight." In the United States alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that in 2019 "medical costs for adults with obesity were $1,861 higher than medical costs for people with healthy weight."
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem: obesity complicates COVID-19 treatment, recovery, and vaccine efficacy. As a result, studies estimate that people with obesity were 1.5 times more likely to die of COVID-19.
Given rising obesity rates around the world alongside the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic, honing in on the precise causes and drivers of obesity is critical. The authors of "Towards Systems Models for Obesity Prevention: A Big Role for Big Data," published in Current Developments in Nutrition (CDN), believe that big data, the ability to computationally analyze extremely large data sets to reveal patterns, trends and associations, may make that possible.
Despite copious research, the relationship among the various causal factors of obesity is still not well understood. According to the authors of this CDN article, "while recent studies have made advances in capturing a wider range of systemic factors using mixed-methods approaches, static or traditional survey-based approaches fail to appropriately capture the complexity of factors and dynamic interactions between the individual and their environment." The authors believe that "the collection of big data has begun to allow the exploration of causal associations between behavior, built environment, and obesity-relevant health outcomes." Eventually, they believe that "big data have the potential to identify intervention points for obesity prevention or management in vivo, across different environmental settings, as well as create data-driven causal maps of obesity determinants."
The authors point to three areas in particular where big data may be employed to advance our understanding of the underlying causes of obesity, presenting an overview of mobile sensing, citizen science, and artificial intelligence. Rather than replace traditional obesity research methods, these three facets of big data can complement them, improving data quality and making resource-intensive surveillance efforts more efficient. For example, the authors believe big data have the potential to complement single-study-derived insights into food intake, eating rate, and satiety by linking these findings to "relevant bio-social individual characteristics such as history of breastfeeding, health co-morbidities, and subjectively reported satiety and motivations for food choice."
The authors present BigO, Big Data against Childhood Obesity, as a case study of how big data contribute to evidence-informed obesity policy making. A Horizon2020 project, BigO was launched in 2016, using a mobile health and citizen science approach to capture environmental features and link them to individual behavior and weight status of children. The project involved more than 5,500 children from four European countries who acted as "citizen scientists," submitting data via a smartwatch or smartphone application. The data collected from BigO is currently available via a public health dashboard and is "intended for eventual public health use as a policy planning tool."
Despite big data's potential, the authors note that "several important caveats and limitations surround the use of big data, particularly when tracking multiple individual characteristics or behaviors across time and space." In particular, there are significant privacy concerns when employing mobile tools, especially among children. Nonetheless, the authors believe that the collection and analysis of big data is critical "to arrive at a more advanced and integrated understanding of the inherently complex etiology of obesity."
Eric Graber
Eric Graber is a freelance copy writer and marketing consultant, working primarily for publishers and professional associations in science and medicine. He has a BA in Spanish Literature from Columbia University and an MBA in marketing from NYU Stern School of Business.


I'm sure most of you already know about my love for FabFitFun and that I have been a #fabfitfunpartner for the past year but I genuinely can't sing this brand's praises enough! It is by far THE BEST way to discover new products and treat yourself without breaking the bank. One of the best parts? It covers all of my favorite product categories: fashion, beauty and lifestyle like fitness and home so you will have seasonal favorites that cover your needs from head to toe! If you're way late to game, the quick rundown on FabFitFun is that it's a seasonal subscription box that brings you full-size fashion, beauty, fitness and lifestyle products on a quarterly basis. With your subscription, FabFitFun will deliver new awesome products to your front door every single season. The value of their boxes is always over $200 and you get it all for only $40 using my discount code! Those are legit numbers, people. Crazy, right?! I don't know about you but I'm a sucker for an epic deal, especially as a mama-to-be! If I've already piqued your interest and you want to head straight to fabfitfun.com now, don't forget to use my special code SHENAEBLOG at checkout to receive $10 off of your Fall Box! If you need a little more convincing or are just curious about what you're going to receive when you sign up then keep reading for my full sneak peek and review of the FabFitFun Fall Box 2018! One last fun fact about FabFitFun: You are now able to customize a handful of items in your box so you can choose from several rad products and still get surprised with a few, too!
Get Your Fall Box Now!
While I know technically this is one of the smaller ticket items in the box, it was also one that I was most excited about! I use a beauty blender every single day to apply makeup but these little guys cost a pretty penny for a bit of egg-shaped sponge so a majorly discounted one is a major score in my books!
I've used several masks from GLAMGLOW but this is the first cleansing sheet mask I've ever tried and it was an interesting product to say the least. I suppose it provides a deeper clean than your typical cleanser otherwise I don't much see the point but I do love the novelty of trying different masks any which way so this is a fun product to receive anyway!
This is a major ticket item and one that you have the option of choosing for your box. I love Vince Camuto and his products are always stylish, timeless and last well over time. This bag costs $128 retails so this alone is four times the value of the entire box if you use my code to buy your FabFitFun box!
I am always losing headphones on and in between flights so the more the merrier in my life. These earbuds also happen to be wireless and connect to your device via bluetooth so they're cute and high tech.
This is just too cute. As a pregnant gal and soon-to-be breastfeeding mama, my coffee intake has been cut way back so a good cup of tea has become a new friend and steeping it in this cherry blossom adorned pot just makes me smile.
I know this is another smaller ticket item but again, this is one I was most excited about! I cook and entertain quite a bit and I feel like you have never have too many tea towels handy in the kitchen. The chevron print of these is so cute and modern and the white and grey coloring goes perfectly in my house!
My bathtime appreciation has skyrocketed with this pregnancy and while I'm sticking to epsom salt baths at the moment, I can't wait to try these detox bath product out after my post-baby recovery is all said and done!
This is a facial moisturizer that hydrates your skin without leaving it feeling oily or sticky (two of my pet peeves with face cream). While I try to stick to products I know and trust on my face, I can't help but love experimenting with new ones when they arrive at my door and I quite liked this one.


All roof sections are rolled separately, no one piece of screen over head.
Single panels for each section.
Another complete re-screen with quality phifer screen products.
One panel or a complete re-screen, we get the job done right.
We provide screen repair and installation services for Cape Coral and surrounding communities. Daniel screen service does one panel or a complete re-screen. We have competitive pricing and only use phifer screen products. Safety is a priority and we only use OSHA approved wall planks and new class A ladders. We service lanai, patios, entry doors and pool enclosure screens. For fast and reasonably priced screen repair services for the local Cape Coral community, don't hesitate to give us a call at 239-573-6366.
I am a local small business owner living and working throughout the Cape Coral community. I moved to Cape Coral in 1971 and when I became of age, I then joined the Navy in 1981 right out of high school. I spent my four years in the UDT seals teams as a support technician. I was honorably discharged in 1985 move back to Cape Coral and have lived and worked here ever since. After working for a screen company for eight years I started my own business, I became a state certified contractor, in order to keep up with the strict new licensing requirements. I answer all my phone calls and do all my own work. I have A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and a nearly perfect Google review rating. Thank you for considering me for your next screening project. All estimates are free and I show up on time every time.
Known as NO-SEE-UMS screen, this fiberglass screen is a tightly woven 20×20 mesh designed to keep out smaller flying insects. While densely woven, this screen still allows good ventilation and visibility and provides some daytime privacy. Phifer's fiberglass screening is woven from permanent glass yarn which has been coated with a protective vinyl to ensure lasting beauty, color and flexibility. It is produced under the most exacting conditions to meet extremely rigid specifications. Fiberglass screen is noncombustible and will not rust, corrode or stain. Learn more here.
Phifer Glas-Shield is our 18×14 fiberglass mesh that has been vinyl – laminated. Glas-Shield can be installed in the lower enclosure panels (chair rail down) to keep dirt and debris out of pool enclosures. Glas-Shield also functions as a privacy screen in vertical (wall) applications, however it is not made to be used as roofing material or in horizontal applications. Learn more here.
The second generation of Super Screen™ has better visibility. It's stronger and more durable, carcinogen-free, pet resistant and comes with a 10 year warranty. What you get with Super Screen™ second generation is quality, longevity and value. You may never have to re-screen again. Don't purchase a knock-off. Be sure to look for the gold line and the gold seal. Learn more here.


Everyone ages eventually. Some of us age gracefully while others do not. Read on for ways to stay young longer and age better.
TIP! Try new things and constantly keep an active mind. The old are the wisest and you should continue your path to intelligence.
The key to dealing with aging is ignoring the numbers. Focusing on numbers like height, weight and age will distract you from what's important. Let your physician focus on these things. Spend your energy focusing on other things.
Encourage your mind to stay active through learning. They say the older you get the wiser you become, so learning is essential as you age. You may want to consider taking a class at your community college or just work on a crossword puzzle each day. No matter what you do, it will allow your mind to work and help keep you feeling mentally sharp.
Always make certain you are receiving the appropriate rest for your age bracket. You will maintain a sense of calm and relaxation, as well as a proper hormonal profile if you sleep for roughly 7-9 hours nightly. Running on too little sleep also makes you grouchy and annoying to be around.
TIP! Strong friendships are great for your emotional health and provide energy and vitality. You should make new friendships throughout you life.
Wherever you are, look for ways to make others happy. Making others feel great and happy is going to, in turn, make you feel wonderful. Happiness is free! It's one of the best things you can share with others, and yourself, too.
Adding special, personal touches to the place you live will make it homier. When you get older, you may find you have to downsize your house to a smaller home or an apartment. If you have relocated to a new home, fill it with items that make you feel comfortable.
Friendships will energize you and fill your emotions with love and happiness. You can always make a new friend, no matter your age. Make new friends today and live a longer, happier life.
Reading the advice we have offered has armed you with the appropriate knowledge to stall the process of growing older. Best of luck to you!
The purpose of this article is to give you a concise overview about additional reading. However, you should understand that you will still have to teach yourself a lot more on the subject. Keep researching to find further information sources. You will get better results once you know more about additional reading.


text:
IoT Time: Internet of Things digest
Ericsson has agreed to sell its IoT Accelerator and Connected Vehicle Cloud businesses and related assets to California-based IoT solutions provider Aeris Communications, with Ericsson's IoT employees set to become part of Aeris at the closing of the transaction, which is expected in Q1 2023. Ericsson IoT Accelerator is used by over 9,000 enterprises to manage more than 95 million connected devices with 22 million eSIM connections globally. These enterprises and connections leverage Ericsson's growing ecosystem of over 35 communications service provider partners for global IoT cellular connectivity. The Connected Vehicle Cloud platform is used by major automotive IoT players to connect more than six million vehicles across 180 countries. Aeris' Intelligent IoT Network, targeting industry verticals such as transportation, energy, automotive and healthcare, gives communications service providers the opportunity to monetize new services on top of connectivity enabled by the IoT Accelerator.  The company has already teamed up with several leading communication service providers including Softbank, AT&T, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and is also working with leading automotive original equipment manufacturers. Together, Aeris' and Ericsson's IoT platforms will connect over 100 million IoT devices worldwide, covering 190 countries. A press release adds that: 'Through the transaction, Aeris will become a market leader in IoT, generate strong market synergies, and further simplify IoT for 9,400 enterprises by providing them with a global, feature rich platform with secure, reliable, and intelligent IoT solutions.' Ericsson's IoT business, with 2022 full-year forecasted net sales of SEK800 million (USD77 million), has been the main factor in recent losses reported by the Swedish group's 'Business Area Technologies and New Businesses' in the Enterprise segment, with the transaction expected to eliminate quarterly losses of SEK250 million.
Vodafone Italy announced that its Vodafone Business division has partnered Edison Next in launching a platform designed to assist companies and public sector agencies in accelerating digital and energy transformation. The 'Vodafone Business Energy Data Management' platform enables organisations to monitor, control and improve the efficiency of heating, air conditioning and ventilation flows in buildings, supporting the management and optimisation of energy consumption.
Telefonica Argentina (Movistar) has launched a 5G/IoT Laboratory via the group's investment/open innovation arm, Wayra. Tech entrepreneurs can use the facility's high-speed, low-latency connectivity and equipment to enable them to register, develop and test their products before release on the market. Agustin Rotondo, CEO of Wayra Hispam, commented on the Lab launch: 'We want it to be an open space and we want to bring together entrepreneurs, the educational community, academia and companies so that this is a test place where they can launch products and think about the future.'
We welcome your feedback about IoT Time. If you have any questions, suggestions or corrections, please email editors@commsupdate.com.
Argentina, Italy, Sweden, United States, Aeris Communications, Ericsson, Telefonica Argentina (Movistar), Vodafone Italy, Mobile, M2M/IoT, 5G
ENACOM authorises 3.3GHz-3.6GHz band for mobile use
AT&T, BlackRock form Gigapower JV to deploy fibre outside of telco's footprint
Starlink reaches one million subscriptions milestone


text:
News Africa
Nigerian preacher TB Joshua under pressure over church collapse
Wednesday, September 17, 2014 — updated on July 03, 2020
Popular Nigerian preacher and televangelist Temitope Balogun Joshua. PHOTO | FILE
A popular Nigerian preacher and televangelist was under mounting pressure on Wednesday to cooperate with the authorities after a fatal building collapse that claimed at least 67 lives.
Temitope Balogun Joshua and staff at his Synagogue Church of All Nations had so far failed to disclose information to investigators, the Lagos state government and emergency services said.
South Africa's President Jacob Zuma announced on Tuesday that 67 of his compatriots were killed in the collapse on Friday.
Museveni: It is 'obvious' Africa deserves permanent seat at UN
Africa Sep 17, 2014
ICC seeks witness as details on Yebei role emerge
News Sep 17, 2014
Pretoria's ambassador to Abuja complained investigators had faced difficulties in getting detailed information on the ground.
In Lagos, rescuers were still picking through the rubble with heavy lifting equipment and using sniffer dogs in the search for survivors.
"The church is not cooperating with emergency workers at all," said National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) spokesman for the southwest region, Ibrahim Farinloye.
"For the first three days of the incident, the church people were very hostile and prevented rescue officials access to the site," he told AFP.
SAVED LIVES
Earlier access may have saved lives, he added, giving the latest toll as 67 with 131 survivors.
South Africa's ambassador to Nigeria, Lulu Mnguni, told the eNCA news channel that the death toll was still uncertain.
"The numbers can still either go up or down. We have put more people on the ground to assist us," he said.
Some five South African church tour groups totalling about 300 people were thought to have been in Lagos at the time, the government said.
Toyin Ayinde, Lagos State commissioner for town planning and urban development, said an investigation would examine Joshua's claim that a low-flying plane may have been responsible for the collapse.
He told Nigeria's Channels television they were checking with Lagos international airport, which is just east of the church, about the altitude of planes in the area at the time.
Samples were being taken from the building to determine the material used in the construction.
Initial indications suggested the collapse was caused because extra floors were being added to the building without strengthening foundations.
Ayinde said Joshua and his staff had not yet met engineers and representatives of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, which was affecting their ability to disclose accurate information.
The Ugandan leader said Africa, like other developing regions of the world, is not asking for favours.
Africa 36 min ago


Following up on its enormously successful debut set, 2013 Rittenhouse Game of Thrones Season 2 trading cards continue to offer in-depth coverage of both the show and its massive cast of characters.
The 88-card base set provides plots synopses for all ten episodes of the show's sophomore season. Like the first set, a good chunk of the 2013 Rittenhouse Game of Thrones Season 2 base set is also dedicated character profiles. The cast is so big that this should help viewers, particularly casual ones, get the connections between them a little more. Base set parallels are inserted every third pack.
Autographs will, once again, be a big part of the set, with more than 40 different signers. Among the signers are Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke, Sophie Turner, Natalie Dormer, Rose Leslie, Lena Headey. Like the Season 1 set, autographs have two different designs, Full-Bleed and Bordered. Every box has a pair of signed cards.
Relic Cards debut for the first time in a Game of Thrones set, featuring items used in the making of the show. There are 20 different memorabilia cards, which fall 1:48 packs.
Rittenhouse is upping the number of basic inserts. Quotable cards (1:12 packs) continue with another nine cards. Twenty Storyboard Art cards (1:12 packs) look at the making of the show. Family Sigil cards (1:24 packs) give a distinct look at the different factions that make Game of Thronestick. Finally, six Gallery cards (1:48 packs) offer stellar shots of key cast members.
Sketch cards make their debut in the product. The artist checklist is extremely limited. Sean Pence and David DesBois are the only solo artists. DesBois is also teaming with Charles Hall on some pieces.
2013 Rittenouse Game of Thrones Season 2 has incentive cards from some of the creative minds behind the show. For every three cases ordered, dealers get an autograph from either David Benioff or D.B. Weiss, both executive producers for the series. The six-case incentive is an autograph from author George R.R. Martin, who also serves as a co-executive producer. For every 18 cases, dealers receive a 2013 Rittenhouse Game of Thrones Season 3 Archives Box.
63 Sandor Clegane "The Hound"
46 cards. Inserted 1:12 packs. View a full guide to all 46 autograph cards here.
6 cards. Inserted 1:24 packs.
6 cards. Inserted 1:48 packs.
10 cards. Inserted 1:12 packs. Q20 exclusive to Rittenhouse Rewards program.
20 cards. Inserted 1:48 packs.
20 cards. Inserted 1:12 packs.
These cards and items are given to dealers based on pre-orders. Dealers receive one of the three-case incentives at random for every three cases ordered.
I hope they include James Cosmo. Been looking for an authentic autograph from the man for nearly 30 years – since Highlander.
I hope they include Liam Cunningham!
I wonder if they have Carice van Houten as a signer. That would be awesome.


text:
> Create a WOFF font from a TTF one with [Gulp](http://gulpjs.com/).

[![NPM version](https://badge.fury.io/js/gulp-ttf2woff.svg)](https://npmjs.org/package/gulp-ttf2woff) [![Build status](https://secure.travis-ci.org/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff.svg)](https://travis-ci.org/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff) [![Dependency Status](https://david-dm.org/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff.svg)](https://david-dm.org/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff) [![devDependency Status](https://david-dm.org/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff/dev-status.svg)](https://david-dm.org/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff#info=devDependencies) [![Coverage Status](https://coveralls.io/repos/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff/badge.svg?branch=master)](https://coveralls.io/r/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff?branch=master) [![Code Climate](https://codeclimate.com/github/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff.svg)](https://codeclimate.com/github/nfroidure/gulp-ttf2woff)

## Usage

First, install `gulp-ttf2woff` as a development dependency:

```shell
npm install --save-dev gulp-ttf2woff
```

Then, add it to your `gulpfile.js`:

```javascript
var ttf2woff = require('gulp-ttf2woff');

gulp.task('ttf2woff', function(){
  gulp.src(['fonts/*.ttf'])
    .pipe(ttf2woff())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('fonts/'));
});
```

## API

### ttf2woff(options)

#### options.ignoreExt
Type: `Boolean`
Default value: `false`

Set to true to also convert files that doesn't have the .ttf extension.

#### options.clone
Type: `Boolean`
Default value: `false`

Set to true to clone the file before converting him so that it will output the
 original file too.

### Note

You may look after a full Gulp web font workflow, see
 [gulp-iconfont](https://github.com/nfroidure/gulp-iconfont)
  fot that matter.

## Stats

[![NPM](https://nodei.co/npm/gulp-ttf2woff.png?downloads=true&stars=true)](https://nodei.co/npm/gulp-ttf2woff/)
[![NPM](https://nodei.co/npm-dl/gulp-ttf2woff.png)](https://nodei.co/npm/gulp-ttf2woff/)

### Contributing / Issues

Please submit TTF to WOFF related issues to the
 [ttf2woff project](https://github.com/fontello/ttf2woff)
 on wich gulp-ttf2woff is built.

This repository issues is only for gulp and gulp tasks related issues.

You may want to contribute to this project, pull requests are welcome if you
 accept to publish under the MIT licence.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Most of the bloggers use images to improve the search engine optimization and to enhance the website content. And this is a fact that photos and graphics bring more organic traffic to the site, especially if we are thinking about Google Image Search.
Today I am explaining few basic tips and tricks, which help you to optimize your images for Google, Bing, Yahoo and create more search engine exposure for your WordPress site.
This is the great SEO opportunity to get organic traffic from Google image search. So, optimize the photos and graphics on your website to rank in Google Image SERPs.
Loading time of web site directly impact users and ranking position. As compare to text, images take more time to load and search engines indexed those web pages which have less load time and user spend time that gives good impression to search engines.
The algorithm of Google search engine for images is unique and well maintained to index the images. So it's very important that you give a useful description to avail this opportunity.
Always use a relevant and descriptive filename. Avoid to use generic filenames like Image 6.jpg or IMG0015.jpg, because these are not giving you any benefit according to SEO.
File name photodun.jpg, which clearly helps the photo rank in Google Images when someone searches for the phrase "Photo dune".
Spare some time to watch this video of Matt Cutts, well explained about the alt tag is and how you should use it.
It is very easy for WordPress user because it will give the option to include a title and a caption when you upload images. At this time you have the option to provide descriptive information and give Google a sense of what the image is all about.
Just like the the filename and alt text, Google also uses the content of the webpage to determine what an image is about. So try to make connection between images and content for better SERPs.
The quality of images is very important, always try to use sharp, colorful and visually-rich images to get better rank and for Google SERPs.
By following the above tips and tricks, one can easily tweak their website images for best results in search engines. If you feel, I missed something important, then please let me know in the comments section below.


Influenza surveillance serves the dual purpose of detecting both natural morbidity and trends, and the emergence of non-natural and bioterrorism-related events. In 2007, the Houston Department of Health and Human Services (HDHHS) developed a network of community-based clinics and private physicians to serve as sentinel surveillance sites. Providers reported morbidity and forwarded clinical specimens for testing to the HDHHS lab in order to provide data on circulating strains of influenza in the current season. However, several providers have dropped out of the program due to declining trends of the disease as well as a reduction of clinic staff, resulting in several gaps in the influenza surveillance system. Currently, HDHHS is able to monitor emergency departments (ED) across the Houston metropolitan area by using a syndromic surveillance system called Real-time Outbreak Disease Surveillance (RODS). The RODS system utilizes syndromic categories to classify ED chief complaints. HDHHS staff will access weekly ILI morbidity data from RODS for surveillance and analysis. ILI data will be limited to several specific symptoms, such as �fever or chills,� �cough,� and �sore throat� and limited to cases seen in Harris County. Final results will include data from February 1, 2012 until May 1, 2012. It is important to bridge the gaps in existing influenza surveillance programs as well as identify existing systems as solutions in order to effectively protect the public's health in Houston. Collaboration with hospital, community clinics, and private providers are a necessary component to safeguarding the welfare of the citizens of Houston as well as preventing any potential outbreaks.
1) Identify gaps in existing influenza sentinel surveillance system. 2) Identify ways RODS can help fill those gaps.


Can Vcarve Desktop create a .tap file for Mach 3?
Does anyone know if Vcarve Desktop can create a .tap file for Mach 3?
I know you were asking specifically for Vcarve Desktop, however, Aspire has quite a few choices for MACH 2/3, but they are only .txt files. I did see quite a few different .tap for other machines. So it appears Vectric does make a .tap just not for MACH 2/3. MACH 2/3 had 6 or 7 to choose from.
My understanding is that they're all just text files. Just choose an appropriate post processor.


text:
40 Gallon Water Heater in Diamond Bar, CA
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On the subject of 40 Gallon Water Heaters in Diamond Bar, CA, you've got to be well informed to make the most effective choices. We won't let you make unwise judgments, since we understand exactly what we are working on, and we ensure you know exactly what to look forward to with the work. That's the reason we make every attempt to ensure you learn the procedure and are not facing any sort of unexpected situations. Start off by contacting 800-217-2490 to talk about your project. We'll resolve your concerns and questions and arrange your initial appointment. We are going to work closely with you all through the whole project, and our company is going to arrive promptly and ready.
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You have got many great reasons to look to 40 Gallon Water Heater Guys for your needs when it comes to 40 Gallon Water Heaters in Diamond Bar, CA. Our company has the highest client satisfaction scores, the highest quality materials, and the most practical and successful money saving strategies. Our company has the skills that you need to fulfill all of your objectives. Call 800-217-2490 when you want 40 Gallon Water Heaters in Diamond Bar, and we're going to work with you to successfully finish your job.
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The second of the NYT REP Company's plays is Jekyll and Hyde, reimagined by Evan Placey. People who were almost entirely excluded from the original narrative are put right at the forefront of this play. As a result, most of the characters are women, including the dual character of Jekyll and Hyde.
The play follows the key principles of the book - Dr Jekyll (here Mrs Jekyll) uses some sort of concoction to switch personalities , becoming the wild Mr(s) Hyde. Apart from this, it is almost entirely different.
This story's protagonist is the widow of Dr Hyde, an intelligent woman who wants to continue her husband's scientific research. The play moves through Victorian London to show the treatment and position of women of that time... a central element to the play is its focus on feminism.
For those who have never read the book, you do not need to have any prior, in depth knowledge to understand the play. This version is entirely comprehendible (apart from the bit with the vicar - what was that about?) and enjoyable as its own piece.
The plot of Placey's play takes the most unexpected twists and turns, it is brilliantly clever and various obscure little things in the first act come together in a most ingenious way in the second act. I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on a script, it was one of the most engaging and interesting pieces in terms of writing that I have ever seen.
The set was interesting with small cupboards on wheels that drew you into a multitude of different settings. What is so wonderful about these NYT REP shows is that they do not just deliver fabulous acting - it is not just a display of the acting talents of the REP Company members - it comes as a whole package. The stage design as a whole is neither overdone nor underdone, it is created to perfection - used just enough to have an effect on the audience. I think it is also worth mentioning that stage blood seems to be a particular favourite of the NYT, appearing in abundance throughout both Jekyll and Hyde and Othello.
On the acting front, the REP Company honestly amazed me. Learning two completely and entirely different plays and performing them on consecutive nights must be no small feat. It served to show how well the group work as an ensemble, being able to switch from a central role to a much more minor role seamlessly - they work so well together as a unit. Harriet Jekyll (and Flossie Hyde) was played exceptionally by Elizabeth McCafferty, who in Othello played a drunk, shrieking girl. Similarly, Jenny Walser gave an outstanding performance as the intelligent, 18 year old Florence Monroe, but she was a very minor role in Othello. The NYT REP Company was remarkable.
I highly recommend this production for a different take on a well known story. It was brilliant all round!


text:
Tag: mammoths
Posted in Elephants, Extinction, Mammoths, Mastodons, Nature, Pleistocene
Mammoth Dreams
Posted on February 24, 2017 by Cheryl Merrill
Rouffignal – The Cave of a Hundred Mammoths, France
I live at the edge of the continent, where an elbow of the world's largest ocean juts into the far western side of North America, where ocean is trying to become land and land ocean. I live where elephants once roamed, where mastodons and mammoths ranged the southern edge of ice sheets.
They lived, literally, in my back yard. Thirty years ago mammoth bones and teeth eroded from the cliff just a half mile from my house.
Last night I had a dream, born, I guess, from the days when I lived in Seattle. As if my clock radio had gone off, I heard the voice of a male announcer in my ear.
Traffic Alert! The 520 bridge is slow, slow, slow this morning. Mammoths are beginning their annual migration from the Cascade Corridor into the Arboretum for salal berries! Let's take a look at the traffic cams. Yep, cars are really creeping, trying to get a look, as the mammoths cross the Wildlife Bridge at Montlake. And now we've got reports of a couple of herds at the beach near the old Pier 51 site.
Female voice: Wow, Clark, look . . .at. . .that! Ferry commuters are gonna get a great view from Coleman Dock. Isn't that something!
Male voice: Well, that's the latest traffic update. Expect major delays into downtown this morning. Now, back to our top story . . .
It's dark, 4 a.m., and I awaken laughing and crying, wondering where dreams come from. Wondering if I've imagined an alternative present where mammoths and mastodons still migrate through our daily routines, safe from the closed door of extinction. Wondering what I would see if I rose in my dream and looked out my window: mammoths in the grass, in the moonlight, plucking the heads of dandelions one by one, mastodons stripping the bark of the cedar tree in my neighbor's back yard. Elephant ghosts reclaiming their land.
Posted in Extinction, Mammoths, Pleistocene
Under the Cold, Unblinking Animal Eyes of the Night Sky
Posted on October 5, 2016 October 5, 2016 by Cheryl Merrill
In 1898, on the central coast of British Columbia, Franz Boas recorded oral beliefs of the Heiltsuk tribe. Their creation stories told of a world made of water and ice and a narrow strip of shoreline. The oral history of the Heiltsuk stated that their peoples settled the central coastal area "before the great flood," which may refer to the rising sea levels as ice sheets further inland melted.
The First People of North America spread up rivers and along the Rocky Mountain foothills, out into the Great Plains and on to the Atlantic seaboard as the glaciers melted. Twelve thousand years ago, a band of humans travelling the steppes of what would become the state of South Dakota, might have witnessed something like this:
To the north are huge, receding remnants of the Pleistocene glaciation. But here it is spring, and the valley below them bursts with sedge, Arctic sagebrush, dwarf willows, buttercups, daisies and new shoots of grass. A braided river born from ice meanders south, glistening under a rising sun.
In the distance immense clouds pile behind a series of small, rolling hills. The clouds groan, rumble and rain fingers the earth. A rainbow arcs, glistens, and fades.
Up and over the nearest hill strides a Columbian mammoth, and then another and another, until the horizon holds thousands of them in parallel lines, headed in a single, purposeful direction. It's the spring migration, following a route used for generations.
The humans squat, clothed in the skins of llama and deer, rabbit and fox. They watch as the mammoths fill the basin below them. They watch interrelated family units greet each other joyously, trumpeting, bellowing and intertwining trunks. The air shivers as mothers rumble reassurance to their offspring. The circles of kinship within the mammoth families include aunts and grandmothers, uncles and grandfathers, whose experiences carry the entire library of mammoth knowledge.
A young calf with wild eyes and a swinging trunk veers out of the herd and toward the humans, stops, lifts a foot, raises her chin, then rips out a clump of grass and throws it over her back. As a self-appointed guardian for her family, she's young enough to be uncertain and old enough to be full of herself.
Satisfied with her display, festooned with wisps of grass, she rejoins her family. A sibling tugs at her fur, liberates a stalk of grass and waves it around like a magic wand. Her mother, the matriarch, is constantly alert to the humans, her awareness evident by an uplifted trunk smelling in their direction.
The humans keep an eye on her. They know what she's capable of if they threaten the herds. They watch and wait, scanning the valley, smelling sweet grass crushed between thousands of massive molars.
On a distant hill a solitary male mammoth flips over shocks of grass, searching for new growth. He's an oddly dainty monster, with a squashed, flattened face and a tall head dome. The skirt of hair across his flanks and under his belly ripples in the breeze. His fur coat is three feet long, his feet covered with six inches of hair. Around his neck and under his chin, is a dark-colored beard, a feature often depicted by Ice Age artists.
The humans communicate with silent glances at each other, recognizing the woolly mammoth is old and slowed by age. They are not surprised when he is surrounded by a pride of American lions, Panthera leo atrox, a species 25% larger than today's African lions. Timing and opportunity are gifts to all predators.
The lions surround the mammoth as he stands his ground, whirling in circles, brandishing his tusks. The more agile lions slice in and out of the fray and finally succeed in hamstringing the bull, severing the tendons of both back legs. A long time later, the mammoth goes down. The lions eat their fill and spend most of the afternoon upside-down, napping. The humans settle for a long wait. Often lions will defend prey this size for days on end.
But humans aren't the only hunters following the herds, waiting for opportunity. Other scavengers are drawn to the kill. Circling in a slow funnel of doom, paratroops of vultures spiral down, down, down and muster on the ground in untidy rows. A group of Condors, slump-shouldered and patient undertakers, perch on a jumble of nearby rocks.
At the first hint of blood on the breeze, Arctodus simus, the Giant Short-faced Bear, stands upright on his two back legs, sniffing for the direction of its source. The biggest bear ever – twice the size of a grizzly – he is 11 feet tall when upright. Like all bears, he is also an opportunistic carnivore. With olfactory organs larger than those of any other bear, he locates the lion kill quickly and strides toward it at a graceful, rapid pace, moving in the same way a horse paces, the legs on a side moving forward together. He does not waddle like modern bears. He charges up the hill, roaring. The lions give way to the largest land predator of the Pleistocene, intimidated by his size. They are unwilling to risk injury from his strong jaws and their ability to crush bones with a single bite.
The humans stay put and let the bear eat. They too are intimidated. Even when standing on all four legs, Arctodus simus is seven feet tall, able to look any man directly in the eye.
Toward dusk, when the bear shows no signs of moving on, the humans concoct a plan. They gather stones, large stones, and ferry them within throwing range. The bear stands erect each time the humans edge closer, but is glutted, lethargic, and does not charge them. The humans spread into a half-circle, each one next to a pile of stones, and with a single nod, begin to throw as fast as they can. Surprised, furious, the bear charges in one direction, only to be hit from another. Before their piles of stones diminish, the humans have routed him. They are many and he is just one.
They build a ring of low, smoky sagebrush fires around the mammoth. They cut out his tongue and eat it raw. Fortified, they work through the night, scattering coyotes with well-timed stones. They carry a small arsenal of bone-tipped spears and arrows, but these are precious and not used unless it is absolutely necessary. Wolves, howl at a distance, pack-hunting under a full moon.
More than half the mammoth, the down side, is still left. One of the men separates an exposed shoulder blade from the rest of the skeleton and sharpens it by flaking away pieces of bone. At thirteen pounds, it's a heavy tool. He uses both of his hands to chop at the carcass. He hacks at a lower leg, frees it, and and drags it to one side.
A woman uses a splintered tibia as a knife, shaves layers of fat from a disarticulated foot. She eats as she shaves, wipes blood and fat from her face with the palm of her hand, and pushes her hair from her eyes. It clumps in crests like greasy, matted feathers. She swats at the mosquitoes swarming around her, then rises and throws dried mammoth dung on the nearest fire. It smokes, repelling the small, persistent predators, a species so adaptable it will live on long after both mammoths and humans vanish from the earth.
Under the cold, unblinking animal eyes of the night sky, in a world lit only by a small circle of fires, the humans eat and butcher and sometimes sleep.
Posted in Elephants, Extinction, Mammoths, Mastodons, Nonfiction, Writing
The Great Ones
Posted on January 1, 2016 January 1, 2016 by Cheryl Merrill
Outside my window shaggy shadows move among the firs. An immense shape assembles and disassembles in the wind.
Fourteen thousand years ago, mastodons and mammoths roamed North America, grazed alongside the buffalo. Paleolithic peoples followed the woolly giants across the Bering Bridge to lands as game-rich as the Serengeti. Projectile points can be found embedded in the bones of their prey.
But now the great ones are nearly everywhere gone.
Time twists as I stare out the window at the huge ghost facing me. A giant form conjured from a smear of rhododendrons and shadows lifts his trunk into the wind, changes back into a bush beast with flowers in his stomach, and is extinct once again.
Near a small, bog-rich pond, a pussy willow rattles pearl-gray catkins in the driving sleet. Ice coats the bare branches of a soopolallie growing at the water's edge, frozen red berries clinging to their stems. Upslope from the pond, in a brushy part of the tundra, a herd of elk seeks shelter from the spring squall. Higher still, the mountains are sheathed in glacial ice.
The temperature drops and the sky clears. When night falls curtains of light shimmer in the north, an aurora rippling in solar winds. Oxygen atoms bombarded by geomagnetic storms turn the whole hemisphere red. Glazed with the colors of fire, the pond flickers and burns throughout the night.
A muskrat surfaces and swims towards her burrow. The legs of a frog dangle and twitch from her mouth. The wake behind her broad tail sends ripples through the aurora's reflection shimmering on the pond's surface. The ripples pass through a black, four-legged silhouette in the middle of the pond. Looming over his own night shadow, an old mastodon bull curls his trunk into his mouth and releases cold clear water down his throat.
All day, during the icy storm, the mastodon browsed on sage, spirea, rosehips, frosted buttercups, wormwood and sedge as the wind left ice crystals in his eyelashes. He trudged across a marshland through sticky, hydrated clay, each footstep making a loud, sucking sound. Sunshine and snow, both opalescent, washed over him in waves.
All day long on the tall-grass prairie, through blowing clouds of sunshine and snow, he saw herds of equus and pricus, horses and bison, standing with heads lowered, their backs to the stinging wind. He saw a shaggy outline sweeping the tall grass clear with her curled tusks. Barely visible, a small calf nuzzled the fur between her front legs and suckled from a hidden breast.
Recognizing her high domed cranium and sloping profile, the mastodon did not cross the prairie to meet her, though he has seen her foraging at this place before. She is a mammoth and not of his low-browed kind.
At a gravel bar he crossed a crystalline river formed from glacial outmelt. A goose feather spiraled down from a migrating flock. His pace was slow and he often stopped, his trunk resting on the ground. An Arctic fox circled in behind him, veered away when he wheeled and held his huge tusks high.
Finally, in the middle of the night, he reached the pond and waded in.
Now he drinks and eats listlessly, pulls out hippuris, water plants with long tails and sweet green stems. The sky is clear, cold, and the blood-red aurora flames and dances over his head, wildfire in the sky. Cattails chatter in the wind.
He staggers toward the bank of the pond and into boggy mud – rich, black, and carnivorous. He touches his side, where the hole-that-hurts still bleeds. Mired, he closes his eyes, sways, falls.
Near dawn the two-legged hunters find him on his side, half in water, half out. They build a fire and settle to their work.
Fourteen thousand years later, in the summer of 1977, near the town of Sequim in Washington State, Emanuel Manis decided he wanted a duck pond in his front yard. His backhoe brought up a couple of blackish curved logs. His wife Clare thought they might be tusks and started making phone calls, eventually contacting Washington State University. The resulting excavation lasted eight years and attracted 50,000 visitors to the Manis farm.
In the loam of an ancient pond the archaeological dig found a mastodon. The left side of the skeleton was intact, all the bones in their correct anatomical position. The bones of the uppermost side, the right side, were scattered upslope from the pond and the mastodon's shattered skull faced backwards, as if staring at its own remains. Many bones had scratches, indentations, rectangular gouges and sharp-edged cut marks – the type of fracturing done in large-scale butchering, butchery less like gutting a fish and more like chopping up a tree.
But the star of the excavation, the reason so many people journeyed to the Manis Mastodon site, was a fragment of rib that had a bone spear point embedded in it.
The first direct evidence that humans hunted mastodons.
Originally researchers thought the spear point was made of elk bone, but later analysis confirmed it was fashioned from another mastodon. It was sturdy enough to penetrate thick hide, ten inches of muscle, and three-fourths of an inch into the rib. The rib was healing, so the mastodon may have died of infection, old age, or many more wounds that did not show on his bones.
Three charcoal beds, one on top of the other, were unearthed near the pond, evidence of the oldest human occupation yet found in the Americas. During a later phase of the excavation, twelve separate layers of human habitation were discovered, ranging from 7,000 to 14,000 years ago.
The site was occupied again and again by people hunting and butchering other large mammals, such as bison, that gathered at the ancient pond. The partial remains of two more mastodons were excavated. Radiocarbon dating determined that their bones – which also had the square-cut marks of butchering – were even older than those of the mastodon originally discovered. In 1996, the remains of a mammoth were found near the site. The two elephant species lived there together, 14,000 years ago.
Emanuel and Clare Manis were more than generous. They built a fence, arranged parking, allowed researchers to construct a laboratory and storage sheds, gave tours and turned their barn into a theater for audio slide shows. And to the skeptics at the time who questioned whether or not humans hunted mastodons, Clare Manis had a short, curt reply. "What, did an elk explode?"
After the excavations were finished in 1985, the ancient pond was reburied to protect the bones that remained. The site officially became part of the National Registry of Historic Places in 1978. "Manny" Manis died in 2000; Clare Manis Hatler eventually remarried. In 2002, the land was donated to an archaeological conservancy.
Not long ago I visited the museum in Sequim, near the site of the Manis farm. Some of the mastodon's bones remain there, caged behind glass, chop marks clearly visible from the butchering. A huge tank holds the tusks underwater so they won't dry out and become brittle. On a shelf nearby is a rib bone labeled "Please touch me." It's highly polished by the thousands of hands that have done so. And just as thousands of hands obeyed the impulse to caress its delicate, yellowed length, so did mine.
I missed him by only 14,000 years, an eyelash of time.
Posted in Elephants, Mammoths, Nonfiction, Pleistocene, Sacred, Writing
Cave Walls
Posted on December 9, 2015 December 16, 2015 by Cheryl Merrill
There is comfort in keeping what is sacred inside us not as a secret, but as a prayer.
Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds
There are certain things that can only be learned from a different perspective.
Pushing aside the darkness, a tiny, flickering lamp in hand, our ancestors crawled into the caves of Europe to paint the animals important to them. Still alive on those walls, mammoths with high, domed foreheads and a hump over their shoulders face two-legged stick hunters. Their humps held fat reserves, making them coveted prey, and dangerous prey make great stories.
Caves are potent, resonant underworlds. Tallow lamps held in a hand cast a low-level light, shadow each curve of the rock wall, suggesting a hump over there, the curve of an antler here. With red, brown and yellow soils dampened by egg white, blood, animal fat or plant juices, our ancestors recorded the vocabulary of the hunt on wall after wall. They made their brushes of hair and their sponges of moss or leaves. They inhaled the dampness of the earth that receives all, both those who eat and those who are eaten.
Escape, exhaustion, success, death, galloping bison and herds of antelope, squared jaws of lions, the arched necks of horses, and outlines of cave bears – painted by generation after generation of artists, who left their signatures in an outline of a hand or a couple of dots, who left only stick representations of themselves.
After etching the outline of a mammoth on rock and storing its spirit forever in darkness, the crawl back to light perhaps gave the world a new appearance – as if it could be conquered, controlled, illuminated, literally brought alive by an artist. Life stories painted under the ribs of the earth. Hidden knowledge. The past the present the future recorded on rocks deep in caves.
Was the crawling to light a prayer?
We are the progeny of ancestors who lived with, hunted and ate the great ones. We are the result of their lives intertwined with those they knew in the belly of the earth.
I carry in my veins a longing for turquoise-blue glaciers, a blood-red night sky and breath I can see as I breathe. Ancient memories flicker across my mind, casting shadows against cave walls. I press my hand against rock, blow pigment between my fingers. This is my signature. Look, I was once here. See how your hand fits into the outline of mine? See these hairy elephants? They were here then, too.
Imagine the smell of air freshly born from retreating glaciers, a sky cleared by melting snow. Imagine the scent of an earth newly thawed. Out there, just like you painted, a mammoth driven by a hunt has fallen over a cliff and bellows arrive in waves.
Our palm prints on cave walls, carvings on bone, the exposure of light on glass plates full of chemicals, digital cameras, electrons arranged in display across computer screens, voices tumbling through the air – is it the destiny of the human race to remember and record? Is that our place on earth?
There is a cave of light from our eye to our brain; but it is the corners of our eyes that perceive the most light; the corners of our minds where we begin to understand.
Cave of the Hands, Argentina
Posted in Nature, Photography, Writing
Ivory, Part Two
An Ivory Timeline: from Mammoths to Pharaohs
Around 40,000 years ago, someone took a fragment of a mammoth's tusk and carved a small mammoth from it – one of the earliest known pieces of art made from ivory. Roughly an inch high and one-and-a-half inches in length, it's unmistakably a mammoth, complete with trunk, tail and a high domed head. Twelve thousand years after the carving was discarded in a cave in Germany, a band of Paleolithic people dug three shallow graves into permafrost near present-day Moscow. Thousands of tiny ivory beads adorned each skeleton, each bead laboriously made with stone tools.
The earliest carved portrait of a human face dates from around 23,000 years ago. Discovered in a cave in France, it too was crafted from mammoth ivory. Named the Venus of Brassempouy for the village near where it was found, the small ivory figurine has a forehead, eyes, brows, nose, but no mouth. The top and sides of her head depict braided hair. It was unearthed in 1894 with numerous other figurines made of stone. Other late Stone Age "Venus" figures, with their bulging torsos and small heads devoid of detail were found in sites that range from the Pyrenees to Siberia. Ongoing excavations and reconstructions of ivory carvings from the "Stone Age" include ivory birds, lions, horses, and several lion-headed humans, all made by stone tools.
Mammoth Skull in situ, Mammoth Museum, Hot Springs, South Dakota
At first, there was quite enough ivory simply lying around on the ground to satisfy the needs of man. Ice Age huts discovered in the Ukraine used mammoth skulls as foundations and shoulder blades as walls. Tusks held down hides draped over the rooflines. One hut had 35 such weights. The age of individual bones used in the construction of these huts spanned more than 10,000 years, an indication of the amount of ivory to be found at hand. When new sites are found, they are collapsed inward upon themselves; shelters reduced to reliquaries of bone.
Reconstruction of a mammoth bone hut at the Mammoth Museum, Hots Springs, South Dakota
Early Egyptian pyramids had already been built before the last of the mammoths died. As pharaohs consolidated their kingdoms, elephant ivory (the material closest to hand) was one of the valued items of tribute sent down the Nile by conquered states. Not only did Tutankhamen have an ivory headrest in his tomb, he also had ivory statuettes of concubines to accompany him in his afterlife. Game boards were entombed in his royal suite, to also allay boredom in eternity. Made of solid ivory, the boards were fitted with carved-out drawers to hold gaming pieces.
Egyptians carved ivory into veneers, reliefs, statuary, jewelry, arrow points, small furniture, combs, spoons, the handles of weapons, scarabs, amulets, coffin lids, and used as inlays on toilet caskets (cosmetic boxes) containing such items as eye shadow pots, mirrors and perfume jars, some also made of ivory. Cleopatra, who presided over the last of the Pharaonic dynasties, quite possibly participated in banquets while lying on a bronze couch inlaid with glass and ivory described as being in her palace in Alexandria. The palace was also described as having ivory-paneled entrance halls. Re-discovered in 2012 beneath the Mediterranean Sea, the royal quarters are relatively intact, having slid under water during cataclysmic earthquakes and tsunamis in the fourth and eighth centuries. Excavations have just begun of its treasures.
To Egypt's north, no one society dominated the eastern Mediterranean trade. However, around 1,000 BC, the Phoenicians, in what is now modern-day Lebanon and Syria, had an efficient maritime network that supplied King Solomon with the ivory he needed to build his ivory throne in his temple at Jerusalem. Described in 1 Kings 10 of the Bible, it was "a great throne of ivory," covered with the finest gold. The throne also included rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other precious stones.
In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus traveled to the Egyptian city of Elephantine, located at the first cataract of the Nile, and reported that elephants could still be hunted to the west, in Libya. Also in the fifth century BC, Greeks saw the construction of two immense ivory-covered statues, one of Athena at the Parthenon and the other of Zeus, at Olympia. Erected around 432 BC, both were made of "chryselephantine:" clothes and scepters of gold, faces, bare arms, shoulders, and torsos covered in ivory. Zeus, sitting on his throne, was thirty-nine feet tall, the height of a four-story building. Because ivory dries out once it is separated from the creature who bore it, Zeus and Athena were constantly anointed with olive oil, which collected into a gleaming surrounding pool.
The statue of Zeus was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Carried off to Constantinople in 394 AD, it was destroyed by fire in 462 AD. By the Middle Ages all chryselephantine statues had been stripped of their valuable materials and demolished. Only the hole remains at the Parthenon that held Athena's central wooden support.
By the third century BC, Rome replaced Greece as the center of the ancient world. Romans used more ivory than any other civilization until the 1880s. For their marble statues they inserted ivory into chiseled, empty eyes. Birdcages, scroll holders, currency, cameos, candleholders, dolls, boxes, and statuettes of gladiators were all made of ivory. Caligula built an ivory manger for his horse. Immense consular diptychs (two ivory panels joined by a hinge) carved with the image of the governing consul served as the sign of his office.
Roman doll, Louvre, copyright Genevra Kornbluth
The Roman demand for ivory caused North Africa's last wild elephants to vanish around the 2nd century AD, about the time that the last Mediterranean cedars and oaks were felled.
Land that once supported elephants now barely supports goats.
African elephant tusk
Posted in Elephants, Extinction, Nature
Mammoth Tree
Posted on August 25, 2013 by Cheryl Merrill
"Look," my friend says, "it's an elephant." I turn around. We're walking along a path above the tide pools at Salt Creek, on the Straits of Juan de Fuca. It's a cold, foggy morning, summer slipping into fall. She points to a western red cedar on a curve of the path. "I see an elephant," she says.
She's right. But where she sees a generic elephant I see a mammoth, a young Columbian mammoth, with a shaggy curl of moss on its domed forehead and layered fur all the way down its trunk. Its small ear flaps forward and a rounded burl eye stares sightlessly out over the straits. His trunk (by now I've already decided his gender) reaches down into salal and young firs, as if he is browsing while standing on the edge of a cliff where land meets sea.
I reach out and touch this frozen young giant – about seven feet tall to the top of his dome. He'll be ten feet tall when fully grown. Of course he's impassive, wooden to my touch, but the swirl of his bark/fur makes him seem as if he just stopped as we rounded his corner, hoping to blend in before deciding on our intent.
I retrace my steps to the other side of the tree and discover that my gender assignment is completely wrong. On the exact opposite side of the mammoth's head is its unmistakably female rear end, two legs solidly planted on the ground, a hanging vulva in between them. Even though shaggy fur covers her rump, anus and legs, her triangular shaped vulva can clearly be seen. Male elephants have internal scrotum and their small hanging folds are tucked up and under. This mammoth is definitely female.
The western red cedar grows straight and tall from the middle of her back. I assume she grew around a nurse log, forming her shape during a hundred years or more. Cedars like this one will grow to 180 feet and live for a thousand years. Mammoths disappeared ten thousand years ago. But I wonder if giants remember giants and try to resurrect them however they can.
Posted in Extinction, Mammoths, Mastodons, Pleistocene
And Just Where Would We Put Them?
Posted on May 7, 2012 July 16, 2012 by Cheryl Merrill
Theoretically, it is possible to reclaim extinct beings, to spin evolution backwards. To recreate a mammoth all you need are a few live mammoth cells, since each and every cell contains complete genetic information. Red-furred segments of mammoth flesh are not uncommon discoveries in Siberia, usually found by sled dogs that eagerly gnaw on frozen haunches. But cells die if stored above minus 94º Fahrenheit, even for short periods. Still, the possibility of finding live cells does exist. Paleontologists in Ohio have isolated 11,000-year-old bacteria from the stomach of a mastodon, the oldest living organisms ever found.
To recreate a mammoth, destroy the nucleus in the ovum of an Asian elephant. Then inject live mammoth-cell DNA into the altered ovum and implant the artificial zygote into the uterus of an Asian elephant. If the 22-month pregnancy is successful, you can expect the birth of a 100% mammoth baby.
Another method is to take mammoth sperm (selected to ensure female offspring), inject it into an elephant's egg and wait 22 months for your mammophant, a half elephant, half mammoth calf. Then wait until the hybrid is sixteen or so, breed it with more female-selected sperm, and in 3 generations of mammophants, say sixty years, the resulting pachyderm will be 90% mammoth with 16-foot tusks. The obvious obstacle to this method is that hardly any non-degraded frozen mammoth cells exist, let along viable sperm. And even if some were found, would two species separated by millions of years of evolution even be capable of producing offspring?
So let's go back to the method that just might be successful. Let's find live mammoth DNA, or perhaps just replicate some of it, and join it with the ovum of an Asian elephant. The resulting offspring would be a cloned mammoth.
To get more mammoths you have to artificially construct more zygotes, which need more live mammoth cells, which would result in clones of clones – unless you find a lot of live mammoth DNA from many different individuals. And for such a project you need elephants as surrogate moms. Endangered Asian elephants. Even with a whole herd of resurrected mammoths, inbreeding could make the population nonviable. Would a hyper-disease be resurrected too? Could it jump to elephants?
And where would we put our newly minted species? In zoos? On reservations? In those isolated pockets we call National Parks? While we're at it, shouldn't we resurrect some cavemen, too? In Northern Siberia scientists are already attempting to create a mammoth ecosystem called Pleistocene Park. Imagine the tickets they could sell to watch Neanderthals, our human cousins, hunting.
And where do we stop? Do we bring back Saber-toothed Cats, Dire wolves and Giant Short-faced Bears? Do we re-create their habitats? Lower the temperature of the earth four degrees in this time of global warming? Bring back the Ice Ages?


1) The View From Section 17 - Thank goodness for the bye week!
2) Michigan Gameday - Shemy Schembechler, son of legendary head coach Bo Schembechler addresses Team 134's woes.
3) Wolverine Quick Hits - Injury update and bye week notes.
1) The View From Section 17 - Letdown? Or lack of focus?
2) Visitors Segment - UConn radio voice Joe D'Ambrosio talks about the Huskies chances against Michigan.
3) Michigan Gameday - Beat writer Mark Snyder from The Detroit Free Press talks Akron & previews UConn.
1) The View From Section 17 - Under The Lights At The Big House 2! Are you ready?
2) Visitors Segment - Editor Lou Somogyi from Notre Dame's Blue & Gold Illustrated previews the Irish.
3) Michigan Gameday - Our guest is Michigan beat writer, The Angel of The Big House, Angelique Chengelis from The Detroit News.


LucasArts' Star Wars RPG begins adventuring on PCs on February 10; features enhanced graphics.
PC owners may have felt a disturbance in the Force today. LucasArts announced that Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has shipped for the PC and will be in stores on February 10. The game was previously released on the Xbox on December 6. The Sith Lords is the sequel to GameSpot's Best Role-Playing Game of 2003 and was developed by Obsidian, the studio behind Neverwinter Nights 2.
The Sith Lords takes place five years after the original title and focuses on one fledgling Jedi's choice between the light and the dark side of the Force. Players' characters awake with no knowledge of their past. The sequel builds largely on the original's winning formula, with a few new additions to keep gameplay fresh, including upgrading or combining items and influencing your party to keep their loyalty. The PC version also features more enhanced graphics than the Xbox version.
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is rated "T" for Teen and has an SRP of $49.99. For more information on the game, check out GameSpot's full review.