text:
Gold Policy in the 1930s
How the fed monetarily starved the country into the great contraction.
Richard H. Timberlake
Interventionism Federal Reserve Market Failure
Between 1929 and 1933, the Federal Reserve System, which is the central bank of the United States, monetarily starved the country into the worst economic crisis it has ever experienced. Markets, and the market system generally, did not fail, and nothing was inevitable about the collapse that occurred. Rather, the monetary system was so mismanaged that even a healthy and vigorous market system could not correct the disequilibrium that resulted.
The popular application of "market failure" to describe the economy during the years of the Great Contraction, 1929–1933, is wrong. Market actions in that era made the politically inspired crisis less severe than it otherwise would have been. Furthermore, "market failure" is a term people often apply to events when they cannot understand the complexities of economic processes that result from ill-conceived government policies. The operations of just about any monetary system, and especially one with a central bank, are always puzzling to the layman. Consequently, when things go wrong owing to monetary mismanagement by central bankers or some other political intervention, the instigators can ring in "market failure" as an excuse for their personal failures to make the right decisions.
Failure in other aspects of human endeavor often generates learning that subsequently leads to correction and eventual success.[1] Federal Reserve policy failure in 1929–1933, however, led only to federal legislation that increased the number and power of federal government agencies. The Republican Hoover administration, for example, initiated the expensive Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932 to carry out lending policies that the elaborately structured Federal Reserve System had failed to undertake. The Roosevelt administration then took control of the political machinery in 1933 and began a program of federal intervention and bureaucratic propagation that is mind-boggling even today.
Two items of Roosevelt-era legislation markedly affected the U.S. banking and monetary system. The first was the so-called Gold Reserve Act of 1934. This legislation gave the president the unconstitutional power to call in all privately owned gold for deposit in the U.S. Treasury. It also gave him the unconstitutional power by his fiat to revalue the price of gold (devalue the dollar) by as much as 60 percent.
Congress's constitutional power to "regulate the value of money" was a power that could not be delegated to the executive. Furthermore, "regulate" did not mean a massive change in the monetary values of either gold or silver. Its sole purpose was to provide a means for congressional housekeeping control over the coinage system. Properly used, it allowed Congress to make incremental changes in the legal tender value of either gold or silver so that both metals would stay in circulation. It was put into the Constitution to counteract Gresham's Law. Otherwise, changes in the market value of one or the other metal would result in what had now become the cheaper metal going to the mint and the other, dearer, metal going into the markets as a commodity.[2]
A New Central Banking Measure
The other piece of legislation, the Banking Act of 1935, was more momentous than the original Federal Reserve Act passed in 1913. In fact, the Act of 1935 might better have been labeled "The Central Banking Act of 1935," because it virtually rewrote the earlier Act.
A central bank, like a gold standard, can assume many institutional forms that differ markedly from one another. The 1913 Fed Banks, for example, were regionally autonomous; the Board in Washington was relatively powerless. Board members were treated and paid on a scale similar to government employees in the U.S. Treasury, while the presidents of the regional Fed Banks commanded salaries comparable to those of executives heading major corporations. The Fed Banks' gold reserves severely restricted their lending policies, as was proper under an operational gold standard. Finally, the real bills doctrine was supposed to furnish the grounds for Fed Banks' accommodation of credit to their client member banks.
The Banking Act of 1935 changed the whole paraphernalia of monetary control. It vested the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) with complete discretionary control to determine the stock of money in the United States. Regional Fed Bank presidents still had five of the 12 seats on the FOMC, but the Board was now a seven-man majority. From that time on, the FOMC has fashioned monetary policy by authorizing the purchase (or sale) of U.S. government securities in the open market, an operation that the Fed Bank of New York conducts week by week.
When the FOMC buys the U.S. securities that the Treasury has previously sold to pay the government's bills, it does so by creating money. This new money is either commercial bank reserves or Federal Reserve note currency. Clearly, if a 12-person board is determining the quantity of money that exists, the quantity of gold in the system has little or nothing to do with the money. Either a gold standard specifies the quantity of money in the economy, or a central bank does. A marriage of the two never lasts longer than an unhappy weekend.
The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 was the final divorce decree between gold and the monetary system. After January 31, 1934, no private household, bank, or business was allowed to own or hold more than a trivial amount of gold. Gold coin was forbidden for monetary purposes. This Act also authorized the president, Franklin Roosevelt, to raise the price of gold by 60 percent. Roosevelt, however, did not use all the power given him—only 98 percent of it. In early 1934, he increased the official mint price of gold, which had been $20.67 per ounce for 100 years, to $35 per ounce. The Treasury gold stock, valued at $4,033 million in January 1934, became $7,348 million in February 1934, an increase of $3,405 million by the decree of one man.[3]
The federal government had also, unconstitutionally, repudiated all gold clauses in its contracts and debts, so it did not have to share any of its newfound wealth with the private sector. In one month Congress and Roosevelt, by their legislative and administrative fiats, created seigniorage revenue from gold equal to one year's ordinary tax revenues. In contrast, the federal government of 1834–1837, when it realized one year's extraordinary revenue from land sales, returned that surplus to the state governments to be used or distributed as those sovereign governments saw fit.[4]
President Roosevelt rationalized this usurpation of private property rights in gold in one of his notorious fireside chats. "Since there was not enough gold to pay all holders of gold obligations," he claimed, "the Government should in the interest of justice allow none to be paid in gold."[5]
This rationalization of government confiscation was fatuous pretension. Gold in banks was then and had always been a fractional reserve against outstanding obligations. When the banks were on their own, they had adequate means to protect their reserves—gold, silver, or other legal tender. The Fed Banks and the U.S. Treasury—government institutions—also held only fractional reserves against their outstanding currencies. Use of gold as a recognized fractional reserve always precluded immediate liquidation of all monetary obligations into gold. So in effect, Roosevelt was saying, "Since there was not enough gold to pay all holders of gold obligations, ... the federal government should expropriate and keep all of the gold."
The increase in the dollar price of gold, though other countries had gone off the gold standard or had also raised the price of gold in their own currencies, started a massive inflow of gold to the United States. Political apprehension in Europe and elsewhere also contributed to the U.S. accumulation. By 1940, the U.S. gold stock totaled $20 billion, or almost 20,000 tons! The contrast was notable between a government awash in gold and a depressed economy denuded of money and functioning with a shell-shocked banking system.
Fed Banks and the Treasury still accounted new gold coming into the U.S. system as though the gold were a monetary asset. The Treasury issued "Gold Certificates"—currency notes in $100,000 denominations—accounted at the new gold price of $35 per ounce, which it "deposited" in Federal Reserve Banks. Fed Banks then debited their "Treasury deposit" liability account, and credited their "Gold Certificates."
Whoever had received a check for the gold from the Treasury, however, had by now deposited that check in a commercial bank that, in turn, sent it to the Fed Bank for clearance. The Fed Bank cleared the check against the "Treasury deposit" account and debited the deposit-reserve account of the client bank by the same amount. No one could get the gold out of the Treasury, or touch it, or see it, or use it. (It was now a criminal act to use gold for monetary purposes!) Nonetheless, the gold provided an accounting medium for increasing the basic money stock of bank reserves and Federal Reserve note currency.
The Treasury in Control—The Fed Plays Ball
With all of the new gold coming into the system, the FOMC did not need to use its newly legislated powers. From 1933 to 1936, the M2 money stock grew at annual rates of 9.5, 14.0, and 13.0 percent.[6] In fact, so much gold was coming into the Fed-Treasury's coffers that sentiment in both the Fed and Treasury leaned toward monetary restriction.
The Fed had active hands-on control of monetary policy. Not only did it have the power to initiate open-market operations in government securities through the FOMC, but the Banking Act of 1935 also gave the Fed Board extensive control over member bank reserve requirements. Prior to the Banking Act, reserve requirements were statutory at 7, 10, and 13 percent—not based on the size of the bank, but on the size of the city in which the bank was located. The larger the city, the higher the legal reserve requirement.[7]
The Banking Act of 1935 used the existing set of reserve requirements as the lower end of a new range of requirements: 7–14, 10–20, and 13–26 percent. Board of Governors' decisions in Washington were to specify the precise set of requirements in force at any time. Thus Fed policy could be restrictive by mandating an increase in requirements.[8]
Banking Act or not, the Treasury was still very much in the monetary picture. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., had recommended to President Roosevelt the appointment of Marriner Eccles to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Eccles outspokenly favored lots of federal spending and fiscal budget deficits. By his stance, he effectively signed over monetary policy to the Treasury. (Morgenthau had recommended Eccles for this reason.) The upshot of the arrangement was that Morgenthau ran the show. Both men favored a dominant fiscal policy that had Federal Reserve support. Although the new Banking Act took the secretary of the Treasury off the Fed's Board of Governors (he had been the ex officio chairman), he now had a surrogate as chairman. He was more than satisfied to see his purposes served from behind the throne.
Even a surrogate position was not enough for Morgenthau. The realized seigniorage from the gold devaluation had given the Treasury a $2 billion windfall, accounted in an Exchange Stabilization Fund, that the Treasury was supposed to use to "stabilize" the dollar price of foreign currencies. The Treasury thus had a gold "position" and license for conducting gold policy.
Federal Reserve policy directed the first increase (50 percent) in reserve requirements in August 1936—from 7, 10, and 13 percent to 101¼2, 15, and 191¼2 percent. A few months later the Treasury initiated its own gold sterilization policy—the same policy the Fed had fostered in the 1920s. Its purpose was "to halt the inflationary potentialities [sic]" of all incoming gold. Beginning December 22, 1936, the Treasury placed its gold purchases in an "inactive" account. Instead of issuing gold certificates and depositing them in Fed Banks to raise the necessary credit balance to pay for the gold, the Treasury paid for the gold by selling government securities in financial markets. By this means, it carried out its own open market operations—sales in this case—with its own "FOMC." This way the gold remained stockpiled but unmonetized in the Treasury.
Besides neutralizing the gold inflows, the policy was further deflationary because it brought more government securities into markets to compete with consumers' and investors' dollars. It thereby tended to raise interest rates as it inhibited general spending. In March and May of 1937, the Fed complemented this generally deflationary policy by increasing reserve requirements to the maximum allowable percentages: 14, 20, and 26 percent.
Fed-Treasury policymakers had acted deliberately and purposely. They believed in human management of the monetary system. Just before he was appointed Fed chairman, Eccles had boldly stated that the Fed should "support expansionary fiscal policy through discretionary monetary policy."[9] Unfortunately, the discretionary monetary policy now being practiced was anything but expansionary. It was, in fact, extremely repressive.
Unprecedented Depression
However, the rest of the economy, unlike politically prosperous Washington, was moving at an unprecedentedly slow rate. Never before had a recession-depression been so tenured or so intense. By late 1936, business was picking up, but the price level was still 18 percent below its 1929 value, and unemployment was still 16 percent of the labor force. Nonetheless, the great concern in the Treasury and Federal Reserve was the danger of inflation! Fed and Treasury officials looked at the overhang of excess legal reserves in the banking system and imagined what would happen if the commercial banks expanded all those reserves into an avalanche of checkbook money. Monetary mismanagement had just provoked the most disastrous hyper-deflation in history. Yet, before all the foreclosures had been properly settled, the government's monetary managers were contriving to counteract the inflationary potential that they had systematically built into the monetary machinery.
Secretary Morgenthau announced in a press release, dated December 20, 1936, that Treasury gold policy was coordinated with the Fed's reserve requirement increases.[10] By mid-1937 "inactive" gold in the Treasury was $1,087 million, or about 9 percent of total Treasury gold.
Meanwhile, the banking system and the private economy foundered in a new recession. If one were to write a script that chronicled the end of free-enterprise capitalism, the events of 1929–1938 would logically serve the purpose. Since few people understood the nuances of Fed-Treasury monetary policies, the common perception was that the Recession of 1937–1938 posed yet another failure of the market system. Dozens of tracts, novels, plays, and newspaper editorials reflected this notion.
The appearance of the depression-recession evidently convinced Morgenthau that the "danger of inflation" was passed. In September 1937, he released $300 million of gold from the inactive account thereby restarting the machinery of gold monetization. Gold certificate accounts at Fed Banks responded and gave rise as usual to increases in monetary base items in Fed Banks' balance sheets. Finally, on April 19, 1938, Morgenthau announced the discontinuance of the inactive gold account altogether.
The time span of the Treasury's gold policy was 16 months—December 1936 to April 1938, while the Fed's reserve requirement increases occurred in August 1936 and March-May 1937, and continued in force with little change until after World War II. Treasury policy cut off new gold at the initial point of monetization; Fed policy effectively smothered the money-creating potential that old gold had already provided. For the next three years, the economy stagnated. By 1941, the price level was still 14 percent below its 1929 value, and unemployment was still 10 percent of the labor force. Treatises appeared analyzing "the stagnant industrial economy." The Keynesian notion of less-than-full-employment equilibrium seemed documented beyond reasonable doubt.
Fed-Treasury methods in the mid-1930s reflected the prevailing notion of the times—that someone had to run the show, that operations without the rule of men were destined to be "chaotic." Economists and financial gurus were just as convinced of this argument as politicians and political scientists. One economist, Gove Griffith Johnson, commented in his contemporary book on Treasury policy:
"One may be skeptical of the wisdom with which monetary instruments will be used, but the possibility of abuse extends throughout the whole sphere of governmental activity and is a risk which must be assumed under a democratic or any other form of government."
The Treasury's gold policy, Johnson continued, "was an essential instrument for producing desired political aims." Congress had given over the Fed's powers of monetary regulation to the Treasury because the central bank had proven ineffectual. These powers had become more democratic because "they were now exercised by politically responsible officials ... [and] would eventually be subject to review by the electorate. ... In large part," he concluded, "the [Federal Reserve] System has served merely as a technical instrument for effecting the Treasury's policies."[11]
Clearly, the awesome monetary powers the Fed-Treasury had wielded were not the product of either "wisdom" or scientific analysis. They were simply discretionary, seat-of-the-pants responses, sometimes politically motivated, by political authorities who faced no responsibility for their decisions. Furthermore, the "risk of abuse" did not need to be "assumed" under a democratic government suitably restrained by the rule of law. Finally, the electorate knew less about these policies than it knew about Sanskrit, and it had no power at all either to pass judgment on them or to change them.
Under a true rule-of-law gold standard, the Treasury would not have had a "gold policy." The gold standard itself would have been the gold policy and would have been self-regulating through the concerted actions of thousands of households and businesses that bought and sold goods and services in hundreds of markets. The gold, more important, would not have been stockpiled in Treasury vaults unavailable and illegal for human use, like some dangerous drug or weapon. It would have been in commercial banks primarily, serving its conventional function of securing bank-issued money.
The monetary mismanagement chronicled here should serve as the all-time example of the failure of discretionary monetary policy. Although a gold standard was still on the books, it was nothing more than a façade for Fed-Treasury manipulations. First the Fed by itself in the 1920s, then the Treasury ten years later, simply fit this "gold standard" into their other hands-on policies. Both agencies saw to it that the gold was safely tucked away where it could do no one any good. Approximately seven thousand banks failed in the early 1930s for want of reserves while the stockpiling went on. Congress then gave the executive the power to enact an unprecedented increase in the price of gold and added as well significant new powers to the Federal Reserve's authority. By 1936, the Fed-Treasury managers, fearing they had over-done monetary expansion, decided to put on the brakes by again sterilizing gold and doubling bank reserve requirements. The result was a virtual paralysis of the monetary system and the economy.
Had the banks held their own reserves or had them available in their own clearinghouses, as they did before the coming of the Fed, bank and clearinghouse executives (who were often the same people) would have parlayed the gold into strategic trouble spots where it would have prevented failures of healthy banks and general monetary destruction. Gold to be effective cannot be declared illegal and buried in the ground where no one can get it. If that is the best that civilization can do, we might as well have left the gold in California, the Klondike, Australia, and South Africa.
See, Dwight R. Lee and Richard McKenzie, Failure and Progress: The Bright Side of the Dismal Science (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1993).
For further discussion of this issue, see Richard H. Timberlake, Gold, Greenbacks, and the Constitution (Berryville, Va.: The George Edward Durell Foundation, 1991), pp. 8–9.
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Banking and Monetary Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,1943), p. 537.
See my Monetary Policy in the United States: An Intellectual and Institutional History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), chapter 5.
James D. Paris, Monetary Policies of the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), p. 18.
Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (Princeton: National Bureau of Economic Research and Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 544.
This pattern of law reflected the flawed notion that banks in larger cities were more subject to "speculative" influences and were more likely to make risky loans than banks in the "country."
In next month's issue of The Freeman, I will treat the reserve requirement episode in more detail.
Donald F. Kettl, Leadership at the Fed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 48–53.
U.S. Treasury, Press Releases, nos. 9–20, December 20, 1936.
Gove Griffith Johnson, The Treasury and Monetary Policies, 1933–1938 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1939), pp. 205–11, 223; emphasis added.
Richard H. Timberlake, Jr. (born June 24, 1922) is an American economist who was Professor of Economics at the University of Georgia for much of his career. He also has become a leading advocate of free banking, the belief that money should be issued by private companies, not by a government monopoly.


text:
23: - Kickstarter Launch Day!
Today is the day. After numerous trials and tribulations, it is finally here. Kickstarter Launch Day.
HERE IS A LINK TO OUR KICKSTARTER PAGE!!!
Our Kickstarter campaign is going to run from May 20th to June 28th and our funding goal will be $35,000. That sounds like a lot, but in order to make the game affordable for everyone, a larger print run of 1,500 units is required. When accounting for start-up tooling costs as well as shipping pallets across the ocean and then to backers, that's the number that it has to be. What money is leftover John and I will use to finish the game's art. We have stretch goals planned for over the $100,000 mark, which is probably too optimistic but we'd rather have a plan now then try to come up with one later. Rest assured that the money will be used to improve game components, add custom dice, and finally miniatures to replace the cardboard cutout fleet markers.
Minimum pledge to get a full copy of Space Frontier will cost $39, but a pledge of merely $1 will give backers access to the Print and Play version of the game so they can try it out for themselves to see if they want to commit to a higher pledge or just to help John and I out on play-testing by sharing their experiences. If being immortalized within the universe of a board game is your thing, there are also several pledge levels that allow backers to name some important element in the game, such as player factions, planets, or trade guilds. Finally, if you're crazy, made of money, or just REALLY want to support the project (perhaps all 3), there will be an epic level reward that involves a double sized version of Space Frontier with 3D printed miniatures scaled to fit the new 2X sized map.
To say I'm excited would be an extreme understatement. Please go check out our page, ask questions, give us feedback, and tell anyone you know who you think might be interested in checking out Space Frontier and potentially helping to make it a reality.
22: May - State of the Prototype
The latest Space Frontier Prototype is done. So far I've sliced out 2 copies and the only reason I don't have more is my aching hands. Seriously. You can only wield a pare of scissors and an Exact-o-knife for so long.
Overall, the game feels good. Play testing is finding less and less faults in the rules and overall games are completing faster and players are having more fun. The rulebook was finalized about 5 days ago and despite slight tweaks has remained intact. I'm looking to get a lot more people to play Space Frontier and so I've been trying to set up a Demo Day over at Card Kingdom in Seattle on the 19th of May.
The Kickstarter launch date is actually even closer than that. John and I are looking at 2 PM on May 17th. As of this post, that is less than 48 hours away. We have a lot to do. In the meantime however I wanted to show off some pictures of the completed Prototype that has been the fruit of over a year of labor. I'm quite proud of it and hope that its quality speaks for itself.
I will have more updates soon about our Kickstarter Campaign, the game box, and overall news in the coming weeks.
More Pictures are after the break.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


If you have voicemail, callers can leave you a message if you're on the phone or away from home.
We don't enable voicemail by default, so please get in touch if you'd like to add this to your NOW account.
Some phones have voicemail built in. If yours does, you'll need to choose to use your phones voicemail, or NOW's voicemail as having both enabled can cause issues. If you're unsure whether your phone has voicemail built in, have a look for the box / manual or let us know the make and model.
From your NOW landline, dial 081122. As we know that you're calling from your address, you won't have to enter your voicemail PIN.
If you're calling from your mobile, or another landline, still call 081122, however you'll be asked for both your landline number and PIN.
If you have forgotten or do not know your PIN, please get in touch with us and we can reset it for you.
How do I know if someone has left me a voice message?
Your phone will beep before you hear dialtone. This isn't a fault on your line, rather us letting you know to check your voice messages.
If your phone supports a message indicator, it may also display a voicemail light / message on the handset itself.
We will also send you an email with the voice message attached. If you do not want this feature enabled, let us know.
How do I call NOW's voicemail from overseas?
Easy! Just dial +64 6 650 0000 instead of the national 081122 number.


Management of a multi-use resource like Narragansett Bay requires state-of-the-art models supported by state-of-the-art data sets. Since the turn of the century, NBC has invested in the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography (URI-GSO) students and faculty to develop a Narragansett Bay (NB) version of the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), and the data sets needed to constantly test and improve the model. Alongside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the NBC has supported the collection of unprecedented spatially-temporally detailed hydrographic data sets which have been used in guiding model development, all with the goal of characterizing circulation and biogeochemical transport in the Bay and the water quality impact of various nitrogen reductions from all major wastewater treatment facilities (WWTFs).
ROMS is a public domain, three-dimensional hydrodynamic-transport model for coastal systems. The model solves a coupled set of conservation equations for the circulation and transport of salt and temperature within estuarine waters subject to an array of environmental forcing factors (e.g., tides, winds, runoff, density, air temperature, etc.). ROMS is designed to work in challenging coastal systems like Narragansett Bay, as it can readily represent changes in water depth and represent 3-D flows that are so important in our local estuary. Since ROMS is open to the public domain, it is constantly being utilized, tested and improved by scientists around the world. Because of this, many liken ROMS to a living, evolving organism.
All models are only as good as the data used to drive and constrain numerical (or computational) solutions. The Coastal Hydrodynamics Group at the URI-GSO, led by Dr. Chris Kincaid, has collected unparalleled flow data on the upper Bay. In collaboration with NBC, NOAA, Save the Bay Girls in Science Program and others, over 10 million flow measurements have been made in the chronically low oxygen waters of the Edgewood Shoals region of the estuary alone.
The NBC began this effort by funding Dr. Kincaid and D. Bergondo (URI PhD student) to collect hydrographic data in the Providence and Seekonk Rivers during 2001, 2002 and 2005 using Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs).An ADCP is an instrument that measures water column velocities by sending out acoustic pulses that bounce off of particulate matter in the water column (Figure 1).The energy returning to the instrument is Doppler shifted based on whether particles are moving toward or away from the instrument, thereby providing a real-time indication of water column flow patterns. By completing underway surveys, achieved by attaching ADCPs to small vessels and driving repeat surveys for 16 hour periods, Dr. Kincaid and students were able to map flow structures in these rivers, identifying jets and eddy structures in amazing detail. An eddy, or small gyre, is a parcel of water that moves in a circular motion, typically counter to the main flow.One eddy of particular importance was found to be present on Edgewood Shoals, an area of chronic poor water quality.These underway surveys were completed during all four seasonal periods to see if these structures are present year round (Kincaid, 2001 a, b, c; Kincaid and Bergondo, 2005).
Starting in 2004 – 2005, the NBC funded URI students D. Bergondo, J. Rogers and N. LaSota to expand our understanding of temporal flow dynamics in Narragansett Bay. Underway ADCP surveys provide remarkable spatial maps of water circulation, but only at limited times. Given this, the NBC once again worked within a multi-pronged, multi-agency effort to advance the NB-ROMS data set. The next step was to build from a RI Sea Grant-funded effort which deployed moored ADCPs that sit on the ocean bottom to image water flow at every meter of the water column for extended periods of time. Figure 2 summarizes the locations where Dr. Kincaid's lab has collected moored ADCP data for periods of 3 months to approximately 1 year. To provide this level of temporal flow data in the Providence and Seekonk Rivers, NBC supported the deployment of moored ADCPs in strategic locations of the shipping channel near the mouth of the Providence River, south of Fields Point and at on the Edgewood Shoals (Kincaid and Bergondo, 2005). Four months of 6-minute flow data was collected at 50-centimeter depth increments throughout the water column, bringing prior underway ADCP maps to life. These surveys revealed how average and pulsating circulation of shallow (outbound) and deep (inbound) water currents within the shipping channel respond to factors like wind and runoff. These data show in fascinating detail how the Edgewood Shoals water-retaining gyre, first defined in the underway ADCP maps, pulses with these same environmental factors. It is important to note that every time a moored ADCP is deployed, underway ADCP data are collected at discrete times to gauge how representative moored data are of flow through the local cross-section.
In 2010, NBC again capitalized on an opportunity to augment RI Sea Grant work to utilize a new low-cost RI-developed sensor technology called tilt current meters (TCMs; developed by URI scientist V. Sheremet) to capture more flow data throughout the Bay (Figure 3). TCMs are simply small buoyant sticks attached to a mooring by a flexible membrane. Data on tilt angle (large tilt = large flow rate) and tilt direction are converted to water velocity. TCMs provide a key advantage: time series data at multiple, distributed sites, for long periods of time. RI Sea Grant funded URI student C. Balt to deploy large numbers of TCMs (e.g., >20 per experiment) for 2- to 3-month periods in the two regions of the Bay with the most chronic low oxygen conditions: Greenwich Bay and the Edgewood Shoals region of the Providence River (Balt, 2014). Additional TCMs, sponsored by the NBC, were placed on Edgewood Shoals to enhance the spatial-temporal detail, particularly along the channel-shoal interface to resolve small-scale eddy structures. TCMs reveal in exquisite detail how the Edgewood Shoals gyre evolves given a wide range of tide, wind and runoff conditions, and provide an invaluable check point to gauge the accuracy of ROMS simulations in the most impacted regions of the estuary. Interestingly the TCMs on Edgewood Shoals were deployed over an optimal window for capturing the flow conditions before, during and after the historic March 2010 floods.
To further investigate the flow structures of the Providence River, Dr. Kincaid worked with world-renowned colleague Dr. Ross Griffiths at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (GFD) laboratory of the Australian National Lab to develop a scaled model of the Providence River channel and the Edgewood Shoals region (Figure 4; for more information on this click here). The simplified model includes scaled bathymetry features, tides, and river runoff. For a wide range in parameter choices, the scaled lab model replicated the primary features of flow in the channel and on the shoal that were observed in ADCP and TCM data. The scaled lab model also provided clues to how small-scale eddies along the channel-shoal interface feed the larger gyre flow.
The NBC, along with many other organizations, also continue to support another important data set that is utilized in the NB-ROMS: the fixed-site water quality network. This network includes thirteen buoys that collect water quality data throughout the Bay for months at a time. Sensors collect data that are imperative to calibrating the NB-ROMS, such as depth, temperature, salinity, density, chlorophyll and dissolved oxygen levels. The data from the fixed-site stations maintained by the NBC are available here.
The NBC teamed with Dr. Kincaid and his students to develop and improve the NB-ROMS, incorporating the various water quality data collected over several years. Early models by D. Bergondo and J. Rogers focused on upper Bay and RI Sound-Narragansett Bay processes, shown in the black box and by the blue dots in Figure 5, respectively. The upper Bay ROMS included the Providence River south to the tip of Prudence Island (black box in Figure 5; Kincaid and Bergondo, 2005; Bergondo and Kincaid, 2007), employing grid boxes that were relatively large, or coarse.
The size of the grid boxes is referred to as the grid resolution, which for this version of the model was 150 m. These models agreed well with tidal predictions and made a number of interesting predictions for flushing and chemical transport (Bergondo, 2004). While simulations predicted the flow of northern pollution sources to the south and the efficient flushing of the many sections of the Providence River, they did not capture other structures that were present in the ADCP data sets, such as the Edgewood Shoals gyre. Based on these results along with feedback provided by RI Department of Environmental Management and an external consultant hired by NBC, it was determined that more work was necessary to increase the grid resolution and spatial coverage on this version of the NB-ROMS. A key comment from the consultant was that the upper Bay ROMS used an open ocean boundary at North Prudence Island that was too close to the region of interest (ATM Inc., 2007). While NB-ROMS models existed that had an open ocean boundary all the way out in Rhode Island Sound (blue nodes in Figure 5; Rogers, 2008), the outside consultant agreed that these models also lacked the resolution to recreate hydrodynamic features of the upper Bay defined in field data and the scaled lab model. To resolve the issues of the previous versions, a new model grid, often referred to as the NBC-URI Full Bay ROMS (or simply the Full Bay ROMS), was developed that utilized a grid resolution <50 m in the Providence River, expanding to approximately 200 m grid resolution near an open ocean boundary at the mouth of Narragansett Bay (red colored grid in Figure 5). In addition to the horizontal grid resolution, the Full Bay ROMS divides the water column into 15 vertical layers.
The question was: could this new higher resolution version of the Full Bay ROMS stand up to the extensive data sets and the lab results? Figure 6 shows a comparison between how the low and high resolution (Full Bay ROMS) versions of NB-ROMS simulate flow on Edgewood Shoals. The former misses the Edgewood Shoals gyre, while the latter successfully captures the gyre's circular counter-current. As this is only a snapshot comparison conducted as part of a study to map the dispersion of dye throughout the Bay (Kincaid, 2012), a number of statistical data-model comparisons were done to see how the Full Bay ROMS performed at representing other spatial and temporal aspects of circulation. Such a comparison for Edgewood Shoals during the 2010 March flood shows the Full Bay ROMS successfully captures the flow conditions before the flood. Perhaps more impressive is that the model captures the response of the system to one of the largest runoff events on record, and the return from this event to "normal" conditions. This is shown qualitatively and through statistical data-model skill factors (Kincaid, 2012).
Through the extensive data collection efforts and the equations for simulating hydrodynamics in the Full Bay ROMS, much has been ascertained and confirmed about the flows within Narragansett Bay (Figure 7). These data have revealed how water moves northward on average through the East Passage and southward through the West Passage of Narragansett Bay (Kincaid et al., 2003; Kincaid et al., 2008), how water is circulated in RI Sound, just outside the mouth of the Bay (Kincaid et al., 2003; Wertman et al., 2015), and how water is exchanged between RI Sound and the Bay (Pfeiffer-Herbert et al., 2015). The speed and strength of this circulation pattern is affected by the wind direction, with northward winds slowing down the flow and southward winds speeding it up.
In the Providence River, the sub-tidal flow tends to move strongly out the western side of the shipping channel, while a deep sub-tidal inflow is located on the eastern side of the shipping channel (Kincaid, 2001 a, b, c). This creates a two-layer flow in the shipping channel (surface out and bottom in), which seems to be very stable.
In the shallower regions of the Providence River, adjacent to the shipping channel, there is weaker, often reversed flow of water in eddies and small gyres as described in ADCP and TCM data and the scaled lab model in Australia (Kincaid and Bergondo, 2005; Kincaid, 2012). The gyre on Edgewood Shoals is highly prominent, but smaller eddies also exist in several other shallow near-shore areas. As in the shipping channel, there is also a two-layer flow in the gyres. On Edgewood Shoals, the mid to lower section of the water column moves in the clockwise gyre flow, while the surface water tends to be influenced mainly by the prevailing winds. This two-layer flow can stratify the water column, having a negative effect on water quality. The Full Bay ROMS shows gyres can also decrease water quality through increased water retention times, which on Edgewood Shoals can be on the order of 7 to 10 days. The Full Bay ROMS also shows that the breakwall at the Pawtuxet River appears to direct nutrient-rich bottom water north onto Edgewood Shoals, which further intensifies water quality issues on the shoal. Field data to confirm this northward flow of Pawtuxet River water was collected in the summer of 2014 and is in process.
In addition to highlighting the circulation of the Bay, the Full Bay ROMS is able to test how changing different factors, such as wind and runoff, affects and controls the circulation patterns of Narragansett Bay. Currently, the Full Bay ROMS is established for the conditions experienced in 2010, using the local precipitation, wind and temperature, as well as river and wastewater treatment flow. In idealized runs, the wind and runoff conditions are changed from what actually happened in 2010. Results of the 2010 model runs show that specific runoff and wind conditions control the retention time in the Providence River, as well as how water is directed to the East and West Passages. Winds out of the northeast cause the Providence River to drain effectively and force the flow through the West Passage, while winds from the south, typical of what Rhode Island experiences during the summer months, holds water in the Providence River, increasing retention times on the Edgewood Shoal and directing water into the East Passage (Kincaid, 2012).
The encouraging successes of the Full Bay ROMS model have allowed Dr. Kincaid and his team to move forward with next stages of modeling biochemical transport in the Bay. Long-term biochemical transport and flushing processes are reliant on good representations of sub-tidal flows, or what remains after the sloshing effect of the twice-daily tides is averaged away. Sub-tidal flows are essential to estimating long-term pollution transport and water quality dynamics. This model's ability to simulate sub-tidal flows in such a key region of the Providence River provides a good foundation for higher order transport and ecosystem modeling efforts.
1) Do all nitrogen particles flush equally?
2) Do particles from southern sources exit the system more efficiently?
3) Which nitrogen particle sources contribute most to levels in the regions with chronic water quality problems?
4) What is the long-term effect of runoff pulses, either in spring or early summer?
5) What is the benefit of various nutrient reduction management strategies for lowering nitrogen levels in areas with chronic water quality problems?
To answer these questions, the Full Bay ROMS was run for the actual events of 2010, as well as for idealized runs where the winds and runoff conditions were changed. The model runs showed that all of the nitrogen particles do not flush equally. For example, the Blackstone River nitrogen particles spread out evenly over the Providence River, while the Field's Point WWTF particles tend to become incorporated into the southerly flow on the western side of the shipping channel (Kincaid, 2012).
The nitrogen particle tracking work also showed that the southerly sources of nutrients do not always flush more efficiently. This is true for two cases, the Pawtuxet River and the Taunton River. The nitrogen particles present in the bottom water of the Pawtuxet River are carried north and become incorporated into the gyre that is present on Edgewood Shoals. This is important due to the long flushing times of the gyre and poor water quality of this area. For the Taunton River, the modeling suggests that significant amounts of water and associated nitrogen are carried north during southwestward winds. From winter to mid-summer, the Full Bay ROMS predicts that the Taunton River is an important source of nitrogen in the East Passage, Providence River, West Passage and even into Greenwich Bay (Kincaid, 2012).
Greenwich Bay is a region of Narragansett Bay with chronic water quality problems. In times of normal to low river flow (with no winds applied), the Blackstone and Pawtuxet Rivers and the Field's Point WWTF (at 2010 nitrogen loading) together can contribute approximately 30% of the nitrogen in Greenwich Bay. During periods of high river flow and northwestward winds, the rivers can account for even more nitrogen inputs to this region (Kincaid, 2012).
The long-term effect of runoff pulses, either in spring or early summer, were able to be studied extensively due to the 2010 March flood and the data collected during this time period. The Full Bay ROMS results show that, as a result of a spring flood, a 10% increase in nitrogen concentrations in the Field's Point channel region, Edgewood Shoals and at the mouth of the Providence River may persist through early August. The model revealed that the longest influence of the storms was in Greenwich Bay, where the impact was seen to last for at least 40 days. Dr. Kincaid goes into further description of the effect of this event at other locations in the Bay in his 2012 report (Kincaid, 2012).
The Full Bay ROMS was utilized to determine possible benefits of various nutrient reduction management strategies for lowering levels in areas with chronic water quality problems. Dr. Kincaid executed model runs lowering the Field's Point WWTF nitrogen output from 10 mg/L total nitrogen to the facility's current permit limit of 5 mg/L. In Edgewood Shoals, there was a 10% decrease in the total nitrogen concentration with the Field's Point WWTF effluent decrease (Figure 9). Further south in the Bay, including Greenwich Bay, this change was muted, if not indiscernible (Kincaid, 2012).
The NBC is continuing to develop the NBC-URI Full Bay ROMS with Dr. Kincaid. In future phases of the model, full hydrodynamic modeling of the Seekonk River will be included. In addition, the NBC is supporting the inclusion of a biological-oxygen model to the Full Bay ROMS. Model runs will be able to predict phytoplankton and dissolved oxygen concentrations as a result of changing nutrient inputs. In the future, the NBC has discussed the options of modeling scenarios of innovative engineering solutions to improve water quality conditions in upper Narragansett Bay. Examples of possible options include dredging a channel on Edgewood Shoals to increase flushing, removing the breakwall at the Pawtuxet River redirect nutrient rich flows south away from Edgewood Shoals, or even moving the NBC outfall at Field's Point to Edgewood Shoals to see if flows from the treatment facility can break up the gyre.
The NBC-URI Full Bay ROMS is a powerful tool for resource managers and is already being used in a few different projects in Narragansett Bay. Full Bay ROMS is the basis of the Coastal Hypoxia Research Project of Narragansett Bay, funded by NOAA. The RIDEM is also using the Full Bay ROMS to investigate quahog larval transport within Narragansett Bay. The NBC sees the Full Bay ROMS as a valuable investment that can assist in management decisions to ensure that future expenditures result in realized improvements to water quality in the upper Bay.
Applied Technology and Management, Inc., 2007. Review of the University of Rhode Island, ROMS Hydrodynamic Model Application to Narragansett Bay. Final Report Prepared for the Narragansett Bay Commission.
Balt, C., 2014. Subestuarine circulation and dispersion in Narragansett Bay. University of Rhode Island, Ph.D. Dissertation, Kingston, RI, 322 pages.
Bergondo, D., 2004. Examining the processes controlling water column variability in Narragansett Bay: Time series data and numerical modeling," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rhode Island.
Bergondo, D., and C. Kincaid, 2007. Development and calibration of a model for tracking dispersion of waters from Narragansett Bay Commission facilities within the Providence River, Report submitted to the Narragansett Bay Commission Prov., R.I., 46 pp.
Kincaid, C., 2001a. Results of Hydrographic Surveys on the Providence and Seekonk Rivers: Summer Period, Report submitted to the Narragansett Bay Commission, Prov., R.I., 45 pp.
Kincaid, C., 2001b. Results of Hydrographic Surveys on the Providence and Seekonk Rivers: Fall Period, Report submitted to the Narragansett Bay Commission, Prov., R.I., 35 pp.
Kincaid, C., 2001c. Results of Hydrographic Surveys on the Providence and Seekonk Rivers: Winter Period, Report submitted to the Narragansett Bay Commission, Prov., R.I., 27 pp.
Kincaid, C., 2012. Development of the Full Bay ROMS Hydrodynamic Model for Simulations of Chemical Transport with Multiple Freshwater Sources, Report submitted to the Narragansett Bay Commission, Prov., R.I., 100 pp.
Kincaid, C., 2018a. A Seekonk-Narragansett Bay (SNB) ROMS model applied to coupled circulation-ecosystem processes: A 2010 Seasonal Study, Report submitted to the Narragansett Bay Commission, Prov., R.I., 134 pp.
Kincaid, C., D. Bergondo, and K. Rosenburger, 2008. Water exchange between Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound, in Science for Ecosystem-based Management, edited by A. Desbonnet and B. A. Costa-Pierce, chap. 10, Springer, 2008.
Kincaid C., and D. Bergondo, 2005. Development and Calibration of a Model for Tracking Dispersion of Waters from Narragansett Bay Commission Facilities within the Providence River & Narragansett Bay, Report submitted to the Narragansett Bay Commission, Prov., R.I., 27 pp.
Kincaid, C., R. Pockalny, and L. Huzzey, 2003. Spatial and temporal variability in flow at the mouth of Narragansett Bay, Journal Geophysical Research, doi:10/1029/2002JC001395.
Pfeiffer-Herbert, A., C. Kincaid, D. Bergondo, and R. Pockalny, 2015. Dynamics of wind-driven estuarine-shelf exchange in the Narragansett Bay estuary, Continental Shelf Research, 105:42-59.
Rogers, J., 2008. Circulation and transport in upper Narragansett Bay, University of Rhode Island, Master Thesis, Kingston, RI, 107 pages.
Wertman, C., R. Yablonsky, Y. Shen, J. Merrill, C. Kincaid, and R. Pockalny, 2014. Mesoscale convective system surface pressure anomalies responsible for meteotsunamis along the U.S. East Coast on June 13th, 2013, Scientific Reports 4, doi:10.1038/srep07143.


text:
Àngel Vicent Calpe Climent (València, 4 de març de 1966) és un lingüista i escriptor valencià, acadèmic de l'Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.

Estudià Medicina en la Universitat de València (Estudi General), on es va doctorar en el Departament d'Història de la Ciència i Documentació amb una tesi sobre la medicina en els sainets d'Eduard Escalante. Feu la seua formació com a especialista en Medicina Familiar i Comunitària en la Unitat Docent de Mallorca i té diverses publicacions en el camp de les ciències de la salut.

Autor centrat en l'assaig i la investigació, amb esporàdiques incursions narratives, va ser nomenat agregat col·laborador de la Secció de Llengua i Literatura Valencianes de la Real Acadèmia de Cultura Valenciana el 2001. Esta institució li encomanà l'organització i coordinació del I Seminari Internacional de Llengües Minoritàries (SILM), que tingué lloc en el Palau de Congressos de la Ciutat de València en juliol de 2002, amb una rellevant participació d'experts valencians i de la resta d'Europa. És membre del Consell de Redacció i columnista habitual de la revista cultural Lletraferit, i va ser vocal de la Junta de Govern de l'Associació d'Escritors en Llengua Valenciana i professor de Llengua Valenciana per Lo Rat Penat des de 1990.

Provinent dels sectors secessionistes lingüístics, és acadèmic de l'AVL des de 2003, i en 2007 va escriure un article a Las Provincias cridant la societat a assumir el consens normatiu de l'AVL. Va ser expulsat de la RACV en 2005 arran la publicació d'un dictamen on, entre altres coses, l'AVL reconeixia la unitat de la llengua valenciana-catalana.

Publicacions

Llibres
 1995: La guerra insidiosa. Lo Rat Penat.
 1999: El valencià, una llengua del segle XXI (coautor amb Josep Giner Ferrando i Albert Cuadrado de la Flor). Editorial L'Oronella.
 2001: La medicina en els sainents d'Eduard Escalante i Mateu. Publicacions de la Universitat de València.
 2001: L'idioma valencià en el sigle XXI : IX Jornades dels Escritors dedicades a l'idioma valencià en el sigle XXI, 11 al 13-12-2000, Valencia (coautor amb Felip Bens i Carrión i Albert Cuadrado de la Flor). Editorial L'Oronella.
 2002: La declaració universal dels drets llingüístics i el cas valencià (coautor amb Voro López i Verdejo i Jorge Navarro Pérez). Real Acadèmia de Cultura Valenciana.
 2003: Nicolau Primitiu i Valéncia: treballar, persistir, esperar (coautor amb Felip Bens i Carrión i Antoni Atienza i Peñarrocha). Editorial L'Oronella.
 2005: Aproximació al lèxic mèdic valencià popular del segle XIX. Real Acadèmia de Cultura Valenciana.

Articles
 2002: «El lèxic gastronòmic de l'alimentació en els sainets d'Eduard Escalante i Mateu. Terminologia de l'alimentació i classificació semàntica del lèxic». Revista de Filologia Valenciana, 9:47-105. ISSN 1135-1896
 2003: «Tradició lliterària, identitat i model de llengua pròpia en Valéncia». Paraula d'Òc, juny 2003, (6): 31-72. ISSN 1577-2047.
 2005: «La producció editorial en les Normes de la RACV (1979-2004)», dins 25 anys de les Normes valencianes de la RACV, dites d'El Puig. A. Atienza, F. Bens, V.R. Calatayud et al. Associació d'Escritors en Llengua Valenciana – l'Oronella [Cresol Lliterari, 9 / Els fanals de la terra, 9], pàg. 9-139. .
 2018: «La contrareforma lingüística de TrenTo». La Vanguardia (29/10/2018)
 2018: «El valencià de l'AVL no és un patués». El Mundo (18/11/2018)

Referències

Enllaços externs

 Pàgina web personal
 Fitxa personal en l'Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua

Escriptors valencians contemporanis en català
Alumnes de la Universitat de València
Militants d'Unió Valenciana
Acadèmics de l'Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
Polítics valencians contemporanis
Filòlegs valencians contemporanis
Professors de català

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Association explores technology's role in real estate's 'new normal'
Several technology experts from the National Association of Realtors gathered during the 2020 REALTORS Conference & Expo to learn more about the real estate industry's growing reliance on technology and how the integration of artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, digital transaction management, and 5G innovations will impact the buying [...]
By Weston Turner|2020-11-28T14:07:35-08:00November 26th, 2020|Real Estate|Comments Off on Association explores technology's role in real estate's 'new normal'
More security measures urged as fraudsters exploit COVID-19 concerns
The Internal Revenue Service, state tax agencies, and the nation's tax industry said the 5th Annual National Tax Security Awareness Week will take place between Nov. 30 and Dec. 4, 2020. This year, there's a heightened need for security as fraudsters seek to use the COVID-19 to scam taxpayers and [...]
By Noah Evans|2020-11-21T17:42:30-08:00November 24th, 2020|Finance|Comments Off on More security measures urged as fraudsters exploit COVID-19 concerns
Pandemic driving college-bound high school seniors to stay closer to home
In this age of COVID-19, believe it or not, a growing number of college-bound high school seniors and their parents would now prefer a college or university closer to home, according to a new report recently released. According to Brian Communications, a national strategic communications agency, this national survey commissioned [...]
By Weston Turner|2020-11-18T12:20:53-08:00November 19th, 2020|Student Loans|Comments Off on Pandemic driving college-bound high school seniors to stay closer to home
How the CARES Act changes deducting charitable contributions
Whether taxpayers are supporting natural disaster recovery, COVID-19 pandemic aid, or another cause that's personally meaningful to them, their charitable donations may be tax-deductible. These deductions basically reduce the amount of their taxable income. Here's How the CARES Act Changes Deducting Charitable Contributions Made in 2020: Previously, charitable contributions could [...]
By Noah Evans|2020-11-14T16:55:14-08:00November 17th, 2020|Finance|Comments Off on How the CARES Act changes deducting charitable contributions
Best cities for veterans and military money survey
With Veterans Day on the minds of many this month and the COVID-19 pandemic leading to an increase in veteran unemployment, the personal-finance website WalletHub recently released its report on 2020's Best & Worst Places for Veterans to Live. The report compares the 100 largest U.S. cities across 20 key [...]
By Weston Turner|2020-11-11T12:12:31-08:00November 12th, 2020|Finance|Comments Off on Best cities for veterans and military money survey
IRS makes it easier to set up payment agreements for struggling taxpayers
The Internal Revenue Service has several changes designed to help struggling taxpayers impacted by COVID-19 more easily settle their tax debts with the IRS. The IRS assessed its collection activities to see how it could apply relief for taxpayers who owe but are struggling financially because of the pandemic, expanding [...]
By Noah Evans|2020-11-08T13:49:29-08:00November 10th, 2020|Student Loans|Comments Off on IRS makes it easier to set up payment agreements for struggling taxpayers
NAR named a 'great place to work'
The National Association of Realtors has chalked up a nice award. It said in a news release it has been identified by the global firm Great Place to Work Institute as one of the top employment destinations in America. In being named a "Great Place to Work," NAR and its roughly [...]
By Noah Evans|2020-11-04T15:56:25-08:00November 5th, 2020|Real Estate|Comments Off on NAR named a 'great place to work'
Income ranges for determining IRA eligibility change for 2021
The Internal Revenue Service announced cost‑of‑living adjustments affecting dollar limitations for pension plans and other retirement-related items for the tax year 2021 in Notice 2020-79 PDF, posted on IRS.gov. Highlights of Changes for 2021 The income ranges for determining eligibility to make deductible contributions to traditional Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs), to [...]
By Noah Evans|2020-10-30T14:11:27-08:00November 3rd, 2020|Finance|Comments Off on Income ranges for determining IRA eligibility change for 2021


The good folks at AFL House must have mixed feelings when they look at the ladder.
On one hand, it shows the payoff for years of hard work and investment.
Mechanisms like the draft and salary caps are producing a regular turnover in finalists (the once-in-a-generation Hawthorn are the exception) and equalisation funds redistributed to North Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs and Melbourne are being used by the clubs to make them more competitive.
Then there's more than $100 million in investment – and some manipulation of the draft rules – that are helping produce on-field success for Greater Western Sydney and, to a lesser extent, Gold Coast.
All of these factors point to the long-term competitiveness of all the teams – in other words, if you are down now, it is increasingly likely you will get a chance at the top in a few years' time.
This is important, as competitiveness is the special ingredient shown across sports globally as the single most important factor for a league and its clubs in creating sustainable revenue and profit.
This may not be much consolation if your team is near the bottom this year, but your chance should come around – as long as clubs don't make too many poor decisions.
But there is one cloud on the otherwise sunny horizon.
And that is the size of crowds at games.
The last year without expansion teams was 2010, and total attendance for the season was just over seven million fans.
This is a number that has never been reached with an 18-team competition.
More concerning is that total attendances in 2015 for the 16 clubs around in 2010 have dropped by close to a million fans.
This is one of the natural consequences of a more even competition.
As the clubs with less followers rise to the top, the increases in matchday attendance that they experience is more than offset by the drop in attendance from fans of the bigger clubs as their teams become less competitive.
The drop in crowds can represent a big loss in match-day revenue.
While the losses are felt most keenly by the traditional powerhouse clubs like Collingwood, Carlton and Essendon – although obviously there are other factors at play here – smaller clubs also feel the pain when they collect dwindling gate receipts from visiting fans.
Given the fragile financial state of many AFL clubs, this causes pain in club land.
The pain is partly offset by increased broadcast and sponsorship distributions from the AFL, but it also means the clubs become more dependent on the policies and largesse of AFL House.
I don't know many businesses that see increased dependence on HQ as a good thing.
The challenge for the AFL is to decide whether they need to do anything or not.
Do they allow the special draft and salary cap conditions given to the expansion clubs to wash through and assume that a 'pure' draft and salary cap will mean the powerhouse clubs will rise again, bringing attendances with them?
Should we look at total crowds over a 10- or 15-year cycle to test the success of a more even competition? Or should they put major programs in place now to grow attendances?
I would be inclined to act now, to make sure that the fans who are walking away are still available to be drawn back, before they are permanently lost to other sports or other leisure time activities.
Last year was dubbed the year of the fan, but maybe it's time to make every year the year of the fan and give their experience the same level of attention that has been so successfully directed to other parts of football, and week in, week out, give the players the joy of playing in front of big crowds.
I'm told it's one of the biggest thrills in sport.
Dr Colin McLeod is an Associate Professor at the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne. He spent six years as the general manager of marketing and corporate affairs at the AFL from 2004 to 2009.


Using technical surveys delivered by Greater Manchester's Business Growth Hub, Dawson Precision Components has identified a range of simple, low cost ways to reduce its energy consumption.
Wigan-based SureSave Energy is planning to cement a place in the competitive energy management market with support from the Greater Manchester Business Growth Hub.
Wigan-based corrugated cardboard packaging company, Belmont Packaging, has implemented a host of energy-saving measures, ranging from small no-cost changes to long-term investments.
Axiom Displays, an Oldham-based retail fixtures and display specialist, has slashed energy and waste costs with a new biomass boiler and is working with the Business Growth Hub to find further savings.
The Business Growth Hub's Green Growth service – that incorporates the ENWORKS service – wishes to appoint a provider to enter into a contract to deliver support services for bespoke online software for environmental business support.
The company behind Sudstech, a 'porous' paving solution developed to improve urban water drainage, is working with the Business Growth Hub to expand its service and develop new products.
Neptune Aqua, a Rochdale-based manufacturer of bespoke rainwater harvesting systems, is working with the Business Growth Hub to raise awareness of the technology in UK industrial and commercial markets.
ENWORKS is celebrating the landmark achievement of saving one million tonnes of CO2e through its award-winning support that helps businesses to reduce their use of energy, water and materials in day-to-day operations.


Prime Accounts with Loyalty Badge.
Oldest Verified & Highly Trusted Smurf Account Provider.
Counter Strike Global Offensive or CSGO in short is one of the most popular video games that can be played exclusively or even online. The game has millions of followers and if you are one of them you need one of the CSGO accounts to play the game with others online.
To get the best gaming experience you need a trusted provider of all types of CSGO accounts. If that is the issue in question then approaching Buy Ranked Account can prove to be one point solution for all your requirements relating to an account for playing CSGO.
CSGO account Kaufen among others.
The list is only suggestive and not exhaustive. We offer everything from Silver 1 through Global elite account for you.
You can buy CSGO Smurf accounts from us that are of very high quality as well as legitimate. In addition; we also provide top quality CSGO ranked accounts for you including the followings.
CSGO Global elite accounts for you.
CSGO ranked accounts and other accounts we provide are boosted by our professionals and they are not only easy playing but safe as well. Buy our CSGO Smurf accounts and enjoy high hours and high levels in private ranks. In addition; we also provide CSGO prime accounts for our valued clients. Accounts are boosted using the services of trusted boosters and we never buy accounts from external sources. This renders the accounts provided by us 100% safe and secure in nature. As the accounts are boosted without third party software intervention all accounts and thus when you buy CSGO prime accounts from us you is free of all tensions relating the safety and security.
When you buy CSGO prime accounts you have to appreciate that they are the special types of CSGO accounts. Minimum private ranking of 21 is necessary to be eligible for the prime matchmaking. You will also need to verify your phone number so as to unlock the prime features in the account. With custom solutions, we verify the phone number on your behalf as well. Advantage of prime matchmaking is that it minimizes the possibilities of walking into some hacker or cheater as the accounts are 100% clean.
There are many people that use steam wallet for playing CSGO. For convenience of such players we provide Steam CSGO accounts. This means you can use your Steam account to play CSGO game at any location with our steam supported CSGO account.
It helps matching with players with lesser skills and experiences enhancing chances of winning.
You may opt for the PUBG accounts or the Player Unknown Battle Ground account or use your steam wallet for buying steam enabled CSGO accounts Kaufen. In any case, you will only get the best from us at the most reasonable prices in the industry.
Buy Ranked Account is the industry leader in providing all types of CSGO accounts from CSGO Smurf through CSGO Global elite accounts and all intervening accounts facilitating the game playing. We are only a phone call or few mouse clicks and keystrokes away. Try us now and you will only thank yourself for having taken one of the best decisions in your life.
Well, Don't scroll anymore. Grab your very own smurf account right away!


text:
NY Supreme Ct.
IN RE: ANGELA F.
Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, New York.
IN RE: ANGELA F., Appellant, v. GAIL WW. et al., Respondents.
Decided: January 26, 2017
Before: McCarthy, J.P., Egan Jr., Lynch, Clark and Mulvey, JJ. Susan Patnode, Rural Law Center of New York, Castleton (Cynthia Feathers of counsel), for appellant. Reginald Bedell, Elizabethtown, attorney for the child.
Calendar Date: January 9, 2017
Appeal from an order of the Family Court of St. Lawrence County (Morris, J.), entered August 6, 2015, which dismissed petitioner's application, in a proceeding pursuant to Family Ct Act article 6, to modify a prior order of visitation.
The underlying facts are set forth more fully in our decision on an earlier appeal (113 AD3d 889 [2014] ). As relevant here, petitioner (hereinafter the mother) and respondent Michael WW. (hereinafter the father) are the parents of a daughter (born in 2001). In April 2010, Family Court awarded joint legal custody of the child to the mother, the father and respondent Gail WW. (hereinafter the paternal grandmother), with the paternal grandmother having physical custody and the mother having visitation as set forth in orders in then pending neglect proceedings, which provided for weekly supervised visits. In 2011, after the relevant Family Ct Act article 10 petitions had been dismissed, the mother commenced this Family Ct Act article 6 proceeding seeking a modification of the April 2010 order by awarding her weekly visitation with the child and approving her husband as a visitation supervisor. In July 2012, following a hearing, Family Court modified the April 2010 order by, among other things, directing that the mother have a two-hour period of visitation with the child "a minimum of one time each month" and that the paternal grandmother, or such other person designated by the paternal grandmother, supervise the visits.
In January 2014, upon the mother's appeal, this Court modified Family Court's order, concluding that, although the requisite change in circumstances had been established, a sound and substantial basis did not exist in the record "to reduce the mother's visitation from one supervised visit per week as existed under the prior orders to as little as one supervised two-hour visit per month" or to deny the mother's request for approval of her husband as a visitation supervisor, and remitted the matter for further proceedings (id. at 890–891). This Court also indicated that, while the determination whether to conduct a Lincoln hearing was within the discretion of Family Court, "hearing from the child in camera, while not dispositive, could be an insightful and useful factor in determining the extent to which her mother's visitation is in the child's best interests" (id. at 890). Upon remittal, Family Court conducted a hearing on June 20, 2014 solely on the issue of whether the mother's husband was an appropriate visitation supervisor and subsequently held a Lincoln hearing with the child in September 2014. Over 13 months later, in August 2015, after having rendered a bench decision in June 2015,1 Family Court directed that its July 2012 order be "continued in full force and effect without modification." The mother appeals.2
As recognized by the mother, upon remittal, Family Court failed to address a fundamental aspect of this Court's January 2014 order—namely, that a sound and substantial basis did not exist in the record to support a reduction of the supervised visitation that the mother was afforded under the relevant prior orders. Family Court made no acknowledgment—on the record or in the order appealed from—of this aspect of this Court's January 2014 holding. At the June 20, 2014 hearing, Family Court expressly restricted the proof to the issue of whether the mother's husband could serve as a visitation supervisor and repeatedly cautioned the mother when she, proceeding pro se, strayed from this issue.3 Furthermore, aside from the child's testimony at the Lincoln hearing, Family Court received no further proof as to the extent of visitation that should be afforded to the mother. The Lincoln hearing testimony, standing alone, particularly given the passage of time since Family Court's July 2012 order, was insufficient to cure the deficiencies—identified in this Court's prior order—in the proof relied on by Family Court to support its July 2012 determination to reduce the mother's visitation (113 AD3d at 890). Accordingly, a sound and substantial basis did not exist in the record to support Family Court's adherence to its July 2012 order reducing the mother's visitation (see id.). As such, the matter must be remitted for a new hearing to determine the extent to which the mother should be afforded visitation, this time before a different judge (see Matter of Angela F. v St. Lawrence County Dept. of Social Servs., _ AD3d _ [decided herewith] ).
As to Family Court's determination that the mother's husband could not serve as a visitation supervisor, we similarly find that such determination was not supported by a sound and substantial basis in the record. The record evidence demonstrated that the mother's husband had been approved as a supervisor by the St. Lawrence Department of Social Services, had previously supervised the mother's contact with their child without incident and was willing and able to supervise the mother's visitation with the subject child. The mother's husband testified that he had been present at 10 to 20 of the mother's visits with the child, in part so that he could facilitate a bond between the child and her half sister. He acknowledged that, on two occasions, the mother made inappropriate comments to the child regarding ongoing court proceedings. However, the husband and the paternal grandmother consistently testified that the husband voiced his opinion about the inappropriateness of the comments after the paternal grandmother spoke up. While the paternal grandmother criticized the husband for not raising the issue first, the mother's husband explained that he did not intervene first because he, unlike the paternal grandmother, was not a designated supervisor of the child. Family Court improperly concluded, without any basis in the record, that the husband could not be relied upon to protect the child from the mother. Upon consideration of the foregoing, Family Court's determination to deny the mother's request for approval of her husband as a visitation supervisor lacks a sound and substantial basis in the record (see 113 AD3d at 890–891; compare Matter of Wormuth v. Mathis, 58 AD3d 923, 924 [2009] ). Accordingly, the husband is deemed to be a designated supervisor of the child. Pending a determination upon the remitted issue, the mother shall, on a temporary basis, have visitation with the child as set forth in the July 2012 order, except that such visitation may now be supervised by the husband.
McCarthy, J.P., Egan Jr., Lynch and Mulvey, JJ., concur.
ORDERED that the order is modified, on the law, without costs, by reversing so much thereof as adhered to the reduction of petitioner's visitation to a minimum of one time per month and denied petitioner's request to have her husband supervise visitation; matter remitted to the Family Court of St. Lawrence County for further proceedings not inconsistent with this Court's decision before a different judge, said proceedings to be commenced with 30 days of the date of this decision and, pending said further proceedings, petitioner shall have visitation as specifically set forth herein; and, as so modified, affirmed.
Robert D. Mayberger
FN1. In its June 2015 bench decision, Family Court also resolved other pending petitions brought by the mother with respect to three of her other children. The mother appealed from the orders resolving those other petitions and such appeals are decided herewith (Matter of Angela F. v St. Lawrence County Dept. of Social Servs.,_ AD3d _ [decided herewith]; Matter of Abigail QQ. [Angela F.],_ AD3d _ [decided herewith] ).. FN1. In its June 2015 bench decision, Family Court also resolved other pending petitions brought by the mother with respect to three of her other children. The mother appealed from the orders resolving those other petitions and such appeals are decided herewith (Matter of Angela F. v St. Lawrence County Dept. of Social Servs.,_ AD3d _ [decided herewith]; Matter of Abigail QQ. [Angela F.],_ AD3d _ [decided herewith] ).
FN2. While the mother's notice of appeal purports to appeal from Family Court's June 2015 bench decision, from which no appeal lies (see CPLR 5512[a]; Family Ct Act § 1112), we will, in the exercise of our discretion, view it as an appeal from Family Court's August 2015 order (see CPLR 5520[c]; Matter of Joshua UU. [Jessica XX.-Eugene LL.], 81 AD3d 1096, 1097 n 2 [2011]; Matter of Gunthorpe v. Cathey, 52 AD3d 907, 908 n [2008] ).Additionally, although the St. Lawrence County Department of Social Services submitted a brief on appeal, it was not a party in the underlying Family Ct Act article 6 proceeding, nor did it seek to intervene in the proceeding as an interested party. As such, we have not considered the Department's brief on appeal.. FN2. While the mother's notice of appeal purports to appeal from Family Court's June 2015 bench decision, from which no appeal lies (see CPLR 5512[a]; Family Ct Act § 1112), we will, in the exercise of our discretion, view it as an appeal from Family Court's August 2015 order (see CPLR 5520[c]; Matter of Joshua UU. [Jessica XX.-Eugene LL.], 81 AD3d 1096, 1097 n 2 [2011]; Matter of Gunthorpe v. Cathey, 52 AD3d 907, 908 n [2008] ).Additionally, although the St. Lawrence County Department of Social Services submitted a brief on appeal, it was not a party in the underlying Family Ct Act article 6 proceeding, nor did it seek to intervene in the proceeding as an interested party. As such, we have not considered the Department's brief on appeal.
FN3. We also note that Family Court's statement, in the order appealed from, that the mother "failed to show by a preponderance of the evidence ․ that the [July 2012 order] should be changed" reflects the court's inherent misunderstanding of this Court's January 2014 order.. FN3. We also note that Family Court's statement, in the order appealed from, that the mother "failed to show by a preponderance of the evidence ․ that the [July 2012 order] should be changed" reflects the court's inherent misunderstanding of this Court's January 2014 order.


text:
ABS-CBN hailed Best TV station at Umalohokjuan Awards
ABS-CBN Corp. Comm. March 25, 2015 08:06 PM
ABS-CBN Corporation reaped 10 awards, including Best TV Station, at the 2nd UmalohokJUAN Awards which was recently held at the Lyceum University of the Philippines in Intramuros, Manila.
DZMM 630 won as Best AM Radio Station, "TV Patrol" as Best News Program, "Failon Ngayon" as Best AM Radio Program, Ted Failon as Best AM Radio Announcer, "It's Showtime" as Best Entertainment Program, "Matanglawin" as Best Youth-Oriented Program and MYX Magazine as Reader's Choice for Magazine.
Meanwhile, Kapamilya stars Coco Martin and Anne Curtis were awarded as Best Male TV Personality and Best Female TV Personality, respectively.
UmalohokJUAN Awards 2015 was organized by Lyceum Manila's Department of Mass Communication, Journalism, and Multimedia Arts. It aims to recognize media entities and personalities that epitomize excellence in the field of TV and radio broadcasting, print, advertising and public relations. Award winners were chosen by the Lyceum community, comprised of some 12,892 students, 420 faculty members, and 245 administration/non-teaching personnel.


text:
National parks and Conservation areas
Travels and Expeditions
SafariADV
Lake Natron
Lake Natron - Photo Credits: Romina Facchi
The Natron Lake is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, it is located in Northern Tanzania, on the border with Kenya.
This lake is a highly alkaline body of water that takes up a hollow in the Rift Valley, it looks like a deserted and desolate Martian landscape.
It may seem unlikely at first glance, but the lake is home to several life forms, both in shallow waters and outside of its surface.
Millions of Lesser Flamingos choose this area to nest.
This lake, located not too far away from the border with Kenya, lies on the Gregory Rift, the latter is an Eastern branch to the wider Great Rift Valley and it is about 600 metres above the sea level.
This salty lake extends for 56 km of length and 24 km of width, its maximum depth is of only 3 metres.
The water feeding into it comes from the subsoil and it is extremely alkaline due to the high concentration of sodium carbonate, as a matter of fact, this lake gets its name from hydrated sodium carbonate itself: this salt is better known as Natron.
Natron has been known since Ancient Egyptian times, in those days, it was used for the mummification of corpses.
This salt has the property to absorb water from body tissues and leave them dehydrated, ancient Egyptians collected it from momentarily dry alkaline lakebeds to use it for its drying and antibacterial properties.
If a body is immersed in Natron, the salt absorbs all of its liquid components, at the same time, the microorganisms responsible for decomposition move away from the body because they are not capable of surviving in such an alkaline environment.
It is possible to see some amazing-looking animal remains, prevalently bird ones, looking like stone statues, in fact, after their death the animals become mummified due to the high concentration of sodium carbonate in the waters of the lake.
These waters come from the volcano that also acts as a background to Natron Lake scenery, it is called Ol Doinyo Lengai, "Mountain of God" in maa, the language of the Maasai.
Sodium carbonate originates from the remains of the volcano's eruptions, when it is raining, the water penetrates the soil and it acquires such elements, and when it resurfaces in the lake, makes it one of the most inhospitable environments of the African Continent.
The Natron Lake area is characterized by a semi-deserted climate, making it an extremely dry place with high temperatures, even reaching 40°C, especially during the dry season from June to October, this causes the lake's waters to evaporate a lot and quickly.
Because of the effects of evaporation, the level of salinity of the water increases, thus creating the ideal conditions for the development of cyanobacteria, these are microorganisms drawing their nourishment from a process comparable to the photosynthesis of plants; cyanobacteria contain red pigments that give to the lake its characteristic colour.
The lake tends to take on a red hue that tones down to orange in shallow waters, this happens considerably more during the driest months.
It is during this period, especially between July and August, that about 2 million and a half Lesser Flamingos reach the Natron Lake shores to reproduce and nest, flamingos can filter water through their beak to hold in the nourishment they need.
This place is wild and inhospitable, the pH of water is so high it makes it as corrosive as ammonia.
It is surprising there are life forms that can get their food and breed here. On the other hand, this inhospitality creates a means of defense for certain species, as a matter of fact, the caustic ground acts as a barrier keeping predators away.
Lesser pink Flamingos elected this place as their ideal habitat, the Natron Lake is the location in the world with the highest concentration of these birds, about 75% of the entire global population lives and breeds in these waters.
However, flamingos are not the only living beings found in this area.
In the Lake's waters swims the Natron Tilapia or Tilapia Alcalica, Alcolapiaalcalicus in Latin, this tropical fish is able to survive in these saline waters feeding on the same organisms and algae as Flamingos.
In this extreme-temperature and strong-wind environment, the vegetation is sparse and the ground is so covered in mud, it is an almost impossible task to move through it for most mammals.
Therefore, few are the animals that can live here.
Those actually residing here are especially ostriches, gerenuks and lesser kudus; moreover, this area is part of the migration route that buffalos, zebras, wildebeests and elephants cover to move from the Tarangire National Park to the Manyara Lake National Park; predators are rarely found, however, it is possible to spot hyenas, jackals and leopards.
The Natron Lake is also a favored destination by birdwatching lovers, since it offers the possibility to catch sight of more than 400 species of birds.
Plant life is particularly scarce in the dusty and dry plains around the lake, but it is possible to find many Desert Rose, Adenium obesum in Latin.
This juicy plant has a very enlarged trunk at the base, where it collects lots of water to be used in times of drought, this allows it to live in dry environments without any water for long periods, it usually develops few leaves, while its white and pink flowers are many.
VUOI LE NOSTRE FOTO?
Follow Exploring Africa:
Follow us on FacebookFollow us on InstagramFollow us on Pinterest
ExploringAfrica's photogalleries
SAFARI ADV
Visit Africa with us!
Find out here our itineraries
We will make you live an unforgettable experience!
Travel with SafariADV
Help for Africa
Botswana - Photo Credits: Romina Facchi
Our trip to South Africa and Botswana in numbers
Flamingos al Lake Natron - Photo Credits: Romina Facchi
Ngorongoro crater: walking lions - Photo Credits: Romina Facchi
Ol Doinyo Lengai - Photo Credits: Romina Facchi
Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano
Flight Refund
Testi e immagini © Exploring Africa - 2021 Privacy Policy


text:
Saint-Martin-de-Hinx is een gemeente in het Franse departement Landes (regio Nouvelle-Aquitaine) en telt 1083 inwoners (2004). De plaats maakt deel uit van het arrondissement Dax.

Geografie
De oppervlakte van Saint-Martin-de-Hinx bedraagt 25,4 km², de bevolkingsdichtheid is 42,6 inwoners per km².

Demografie
Onderstaande figuur toont het verloop van het inwonertal (bron: INSEE-tellingen).

Externe links

Gemeente in Landes


text:
April 19, 2020 By Mozahidul Islam Leave a Comment
Foreign workers in Malaysia – A ladder to economic growth
Malaysia, a south East Asian nation has already earned the reputation for their fast growing economy in world business. When analyzed the core source of this rapidly growing economy, it has been seen that the country mostly relies on labor forces. Along with native workforces, the country welcomes a huge number of foreign workers in Malaysia to develop and strengthen the national infrastructures.
Foreign workers put a big footprint on this vast economic development in Malaysia. In current date each international worker in Malaysia contributes their utmost efforts and skills to build up the Malaysian economy, as a result, placing the nation to a state of appreciation before many other developing nations.
So, what makes Malaysia the hotspot for foreign workers and what are the benefits the nation is getting from these large numbers of foreign workers in Malaysia?
Why Malaysia is preferable for foreign workers?
The tradition of foreign workers working in Malaysia is not a new thing here. The foreign enforcements are working since the pre-independence time of this nation. During that time the Chinese took a bigger interest to work in tin mining and manufacturing industries and Indians found their way to the rubber and palm oil plantations in Malaysia.
Over the time the policies and rules have change for international workers. The past history, however, was not that much delighted for the laborers and Malaysia has been questioned over many years for labor discriminations, overworks, underpay and even physical abuses. However, rules are now much consolidated and labor laws are now way more in favor for foreign workers working in Malaysia. Moreover, various insurance and welfare policies and packages made current Malaysia far more enticing destination for work.
Now the rate consists of more than six million foreign workers in Malaysia which count more than 18.5% of total population of Malaysia. Currently the foreign worker quota itself counts more than 35% of the total workforce actively working for various companies and employers in Malaysia. Most of these workers find their employments in plantations, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and various other small services.
The reason for ready availability of labors in Malaysia is its convenient immigration process. Flexible work areas and sober remuneration, the majority of which they can transfer easily to their family back at home. There are many strong reasons why in spite of 3D (Dirty, Dangerous. Difficult) type job Malaysia is still one of the foreign worker's hotspots.
One of the reasons is wide Job opportunities are available along with various government welfare projects which is applicable for skilled, unskilled and less educated employees. Furthermore, due to the global diversity and huge boom of tourist industries, the workspace has been created in those sectors as well. Certainly, those scopes are far more exciting for laborers. Lastly, the government put great efforts to keep up the living and working conditions for overseas workforce.
They have come up with compulsory social welfare and safeguard packages for foreign workers like SOCSO, MHI or Medical Health Insurance packages, EPF scheme or Employee Provident Fund, Workmen's Compensation Scheme, and many more.
Contribution of foreign worker in Malaysia
As already highlighted earlier in this article, foreign workers encompass more than 35% of the total work fork force in Malaysia. The contribution is therefore obvious as far as the economy of Malaysia is concerned.
Foreign worker Malaysia is highly prioritized as they can be deployed at any time and in any given location in Malaysia. The contributions of laborers come up in either skilled or unskilled basis, in both ways they have a big hand in uprising the Malaysia economy.
The participation of the foreign employees in 3D categories' of job is mentionable in this point of the article. 3D refers to Dirty, Dangerous, and Difficult. Overseas labor force, especially those took the labor immigration permit from most of the Asian nations, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh etc. are mostly deployed for works which involves agriculture, manufacturing, mining, construction etc.
However, some are lucky enough to make their way to cook, waiter, cafeteria management or tourism related works. Nevertheless, big chunk of foreign workers in Malaysia put their relentless efforts every day to keep the wheel of the Malaysian economy rolling throughout the year.
The process of hiring foreign workers in Malaysia
Malaysia took a great attention on the major revenue that is adding up to the national treasury generated by foreign laborers working relentlessly in this country. So, their contribution towards Malaysia's economic growth is absolutely undeniable.
Oversees worker here are pre-appointed once applied for a job of any position in this nation. The employer here plays a vital role of short listing, selecting, determining the curriculum activities, health conditions, and finally handling the required paperwork of any foreign labor they are interested to deploy.
Another process employers choose to appoint foreign workers in Malaysia is by establishing their own company in this nation. The company however, needs to be a labor orient business, such as manufacturing, Construction or agriculture industries.
Malaysian government highly appreciates entrepreneurs and put a great compensation for any individuals who tries to register a Private Limited company in Malaysia. Here, in this case, employers can appoint foreign laborers with convenience for new companies in Malaysia.
Where in Malaysia most foreign workforce is deployed?
The answer you must be wondering is Kuala Lumpur, which is the capital of Malaysia. So far most of us have heard that Kuala Lumpur is the business center of Malaysia. This is a true statement but that doesn't make Kuala Lumpur the biggest hub of foreign workers in Malaysia.
In fact, the capital city occupies very little foreign workers, and whoever managed to settle down in the capital city are probably have a little bit better earning source than the odd works allocated for Most of the other immigrant workers in Malaysia.
Most of the foreign employee seems to get appointed from Sabah state in Malaysia. This is because the workers prefer the wide diversity of culture of this area and is much nearer to the nearby countries like the Philippines and Indonesia.
Moreover, Sabah is a much more agriculture oriented state, where laborers needs are compulsory to manage and manufacture goods for national and international demands. So, naturally, this makes this province one of the most demanding states in Malaysia. With this in mind, this state creates maximum work scopes for foreign worker in Malaysia.
Other states in Malaysia like Selangor and Johor are also two of the big hubs for overseas employees. These two states along with Sabah occupies around two third of total foreign workers in the country. Rest lies in a scattered manner in provinces mostly in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Sarawak, and Pahang.
Check out how to get a work permit in Malaysia!
Employment Laws in Malaysia – Employment Act 1955
Human resource development fund – HRDF in Malaysia
Visa relevant:
Malaysia Entry Visa Requirements With Documents
Malaysian business visa requirements and fees.


We are glad to inform you that rASiA.com and III Baikal Venture Fair and XIII Russian Venture Fair are official partners.
There will be the biggest event for leading Russian and international investors and innovative professionals on 21-22 September 2012 in Irkutsk. Major investment and consulting companies, venture founds, banks and other business leaders who are interested in Baikal region will take part in the Fair.


Sustainable Packaging: Why You Need to Step Up Your Game?
When it comes to packaging, brands have an ocean of choices: color, texture, shape, material, size, etc. And we all know how packaging is a key part of the customer experience and how it is determinant for them in the making a purchase decision process.
As the first consumers' point of contact, each packaging component should be chosen carefully, it has to be aligned with the brand identity and be a storyteller. Sustainable packaging has become, since few years now, the future of packaging.
Plastic waste is one of the biggest worldwide challenge when it comes to preserve our planet and everybody is concerned. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation forecasts that by 2050 there could be as much plastic as fish in the oceans, if current trends continue. Among the 32 million tons of plastic waste per year, only 9% is recovered for recycling. But not only our planet is damaged, around 700 marine species could go extinct if we keep going this way.
Most countries have taken a step forward and banned free plastic bags in supermarkets to encourage consumers to take re-used bags instead. Taiwan has committed to go even further by prohibiting all single-use plastics by 2030, it means no more plastic cup, cutlery, etc. anywhere – restaurants, fast-foods, supermarkets and more.
Now, it is time for brands to step up their game and adopt sustainable packaging. In the Food and Beverage industry, McDonald has announced last month its global sustainable commitment to provide 100% sustainable packaging to its customers by 2025 – come from renewable or recycled source. Dunkin Donuts, on its side, will use only recyclable and certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Standards cups by 2020.
Personal care and cosmetics brands are concerned by the change too. Not only because consumers are requesting it, but also because saving our planet is a concern for all of us. Since few years, L'Oréal, has driven several initiatives to improve their product packaging's eco-design. Encouraging their suppliers to use eco-friendly materials, internal teams to find new ways to design packaging and products but also other personal care and cosmetic businesses to think about new ways to reduce their plastic waste footprint. In May 2018, L'Oréal and Quantis have launched SPICE – the Sustainable Packaging Initiative for CosmEtics, a collaboration of cosmetic industry players – such as Coty, Chanel, Shiseido, Avon, etc. with a common goal of reinventing the packaging of tomorrow on a sustainable way.
Lush cosmetics is also a good example when it comes to sustainable packaging, encouraging their customers to bring back their empty boxes in order to get a free face mask. They have also launched in 2010, their "knot-wraps" where they use re-usable scarves instead of paper to wrap customers' gifts.
On the same way, Sephora – only in France for now, encourages its customers to bring back their empty perfume bottles to get a 20% discount on their next purchase. Empty bottles are then recovered for recycling. Kiehl's, Origins, Mac or even Avedo have initiate similar approaches.
Sustainable packaging: yes but how?
No packaging at all. E.g. Lush cosmetics sells 35% of their products naked, 100% packaging free.
Reduce quantity of material used: prefer lighter packaging. E.g. Chanel latest perfume bottle.
Better quality: use recycled, easy-to-recycle, low-consumption to produce and/or certified raw materials. E.g. In 2016, L'Oréal has used more than 7,000 tons of post-consumer recycled packaging (PCR) materials.
Design re-usable/refillable boxes or bottles. E.g. L'occitane offer refill pouches for most of their best-selling product.
Encourage customers to give back their used empty boxes or bottles. E.g. Lush, Sephora, Kiehl's, etc.
Many others options could be take into consideration by brands and major groups but the first step is always the harder to make. You should start somewhere.
Lascom CPG solution can help you design your packaging from raw material sourcing to artwork. Please feel free to learn more about us here.
Share the post "Sustainable Packaging: Why You Need to Step Up Your Game?"