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FRACKING POISONING U.S. GROUND WATER - SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN [PART II]
Are Fracking Wastewater Wells Poisoning the Ground beneath Our Feet? [Part II]
The practice of injecting waste underground arose as a solution to an environmental crisis.
In the first half of the 20th century, toxic waste collected in cesspools, or was dumped in rivers or poured onto fields. As the consequences of unbridled pollution became unacceptable, the country turned to an out-of-sight alternative. Drawing on techniques developed by the oil and gas industry, companies started pumping waste back into wells drilled for resources. Toxic waste became all but invisible. Air and water began to get cleaner.
Then a host of unanticipated problems began to arise.
In April, 1967 pesticide waste injected by a chemical plant at Denver's Rocky Mountain Arsenal destabilized a seismic fault, causing a magnitude 5.0 earthquake -- strong enough to shatter windows and close schools -- and jolting scientists with newfound risks of injection, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
A year later, a corroded hazardous waste well for pulping liquor at the Hammermill Paper Co., in Erie, Pa., ruptured. Five miles away, according to an EPA report, "a noxious black liquid seeped from an abandoned gas well" in Presque Isle State Park.
In 1975 in Beaumont, Texas, dioxin and a highly acidic herbicide injected underground by the Velsicol Chemical Corp. burned a hole through its well casing, sending as much as five million gallons of the waste into a nearby drinking water aquifer.
Then in August 1984 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., radioactive waste was turned up by water monitoring near a deep injection well at a government nuclear facility.
Regulators raced to catch up. In 1974, the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed, establishing a framework for regulating injection. Then, in 1980, the EPA set up the tiered classes of wells and began to establish basic construction standards and inspection schedules. The EPA licensed some state agencies to monitor wells within their borders and handled oversight jointly with others, but all had to meet the baseline requirements of the federal Underground Injection Control program.
Even with stricter regulations in place, 17 states – including Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin -- banned Class 1 hazardous deep well injection.
"We just felt like based on the knowledge that we had at that time that it was not something that was really in the best interest of the environment or the state," said James Warr, who headed Alabama's Department of Environmental Management at the time.
Injection accidents kept cropping up.
A 1987 General Accountability Office review put the total number of cases in which waste had migrated from Class 1 hazardous waste wells into underground aquifers at 10 -- including the Texas and Pennsylvania sites. Two of those aquifers were considered potential drinking water sources.
In 1989, the GAO reported 23 more cases in seven states where oil and gas injection wells had failed and polluted aquifers. New regulations had done little to prevent the problems, the report said, largely because most of the wells involved had been grandfathered in and had not had to comply with key aspects of the rules.
Noting four more suspected cases, the report also suggested there could be more well failures, and more widespread pollution, beyond the cases identified. "The full extent to which injected brines have contaminated underground sources of drinking water is unknown," it stated.
The GAO concluded that most of the contaminated aquifers could not be reclaimed because fixing the damage was "too costly" or "technically infeasible."
Faced with such findings, the federal government drafted more rules aimed at strengthening the injection program. The government outlawed certain types of wells above or near drinking water aquifers, mandating that most industrial waste be injected deeper.
The agency also began to hold companies that disposed of hazardous industrial waste to far stiffer standards. To get permits to dispose of hazardous waster after 1988, companies had to prove – using complex models and geological studies -- that the stuff they injected wouldn't migrate anywhere near water supplies for 10,000 years. They were already required to test for fault zones and to conduct reviews to ensure there were no conduits for leakage, such as abandoned wells, within a quarter-mile radius. Later, that became a two-mile minimum radius for some wells.
The added regulations would have prevented the vast majority of the accidents that occurred before the late 1980s, EPA officials contend.
"The requirements weren't as rigorous, the testing wasn't as rigorous and in some cases the shallow aquifers were contaminated," Kobelski said. "The program is not the same as it was when we first started."
Today's injection program, however, faces a new set of problems.
As federal regulators toughened rules for injecting hazardous waste, oil and gas companies argued that the new standards could drive them out of business. State oil and gas regulators pushed back against the regulations, too, saying that enforcing the rules for Class 2 wells – which handle the vast majority of injected waste by volume -- would be expensive and difficult.
Ultimately, the energy industry won a critical change in the federal government's legal definition of waste: Since 1988, all material resulting from the oil and gas drilling process is considered non-hazardous, regardless of its content or toxicity.
"It took a lot of talking to sell the EPA on that and there are still a lot of people that don't like it," said Bill Bryson, a geologist and former head of the Kansas Corporation Commission's Conservation Division, who lobbied for and helped draft the federal rules. "But it seemed the best way to protect the environment and to stop everybody from just having to test everything all the time."
The new approach removed many of the constraints on the oil and gas industry. They were no longer required to conduct seismic tests (a stricture that remained in place for Class 1 wells). Operators were allowed to test their wells less frequently for mechanical integrity and the area they had to check for abandoned wells was kept to a minimum – one reason drilling waste kept bubbling to the surface near Chico.
Soon after the first Chico incident, Texas expanded the area regulators were required to check for abandoned waste wells (a rule that applied only to certain parts of the state). Doubling the radius they reviewed in Chico to a half mile, they found 13 other injection or oil and gas wells. When they studied the land within a mile – the radius required for review of many Class 1 wells – officials discovered another 35 wells, many dating to the 1950s.
The Railroad Commission concluded that the Chico injection well had overflowed: The target rock zone could no longer handle the volume being pushed into it. Trying to cram in more waste at the same speed could cause further leaks, regulators feared. The commission set new limits on how fast the waste could be injected, but did not forbid further disposal. The well remains in use to this day.
In late 2008, samples of Chico's municipal drinking water were found to contain radium, a radioactive derivative of uranium and a common attribute of drilling waste. The water well was a few miles away from the leaking injection well site, but environmental officials said the contaminants discovered in the water well were unrelated, mostly because they didn't include the level of sodium typical of brine.
Since then, Ed Cowley, the public works director, said commission officials have continued to assure him that brine won't reach Chico's drinking water. But since the agency keeps allowing more injection and doesn't track the cumulative volume of waste going into wells in the area, he's skeptical that they can keep their promise.
"I was kind of like, 'You all need to get together and look at the total amount you are trying to fit through the eye of the needle,'" he said.
When sewage flowed from 20 Class 1 wells near Miami into the Upper Floridan aquifer, it challenged some of scientists' fundamental assumptions about the injection system.
The wells – which had helped fuel the growth of South Florida by eliminating the need for expensive water treatment plants -- had passed rigorous EPA and state evaluation throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Inspections showed they were structurally sound. As Class 1 wells, they were subject to some of the most frequent tests and closest scrutiny.
Yet they failed.
The wells' designers would have calculated what is typically called the "zone of influence" — the space that waste injected into the wells was expected to fill. This was based on estimates of how much fluid would be injected and under what pressure.
In drawings, the zone of influence typically looks like a Hershey's kiss, an evenly dispersed plume spreading in a predictable circular fashion away from the bottom of the well. Above the zone, most drawings depict uniform formations of rock not unlike a layer cake.
Based on modeling and analysis by some of the most sophisticated engineering consultants in the country, Florida officials, with the EPA's assent, concluded that waste injected into the Miami-area wells would be forever trapped far below the South Florida peninsula.
"All of the modeling indicated that the injectate would be confined in the injection zone," an EPA spokesperson wrote to ProPublica in a statement.
But as Miami poured nearly half a billion gallons of partly treated sewage into the ground each day from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s, hydrogeologists learned that the earth – and the flow of fluids through it – wasn't as uniform as the models depicted. Florida's injection wells, for example, had been drilled into rock that was far more porous and fractured than scientists previously understood.
"Geology is never what you think it is," said Ronald Reese, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey in Florida who has studied the well failures there. "There are always surprises."
Other gaps have emerged between theories of how underground injection should work and how it actually does. Rock layers aren't always neatly stacked as they appear in engineers' sketches. They often fold and twist over on themselves. Waste injected into such formations is more likely to spread in lopsided, unpredictable ways than in a uniform cone. It is also likely to channel through spaces in the rock as pressure forces it along the weakest lines.
Petroleum engineers in Texas have found that when they pump fluid into one end of an oil reservoir to push oil out the other, the injected fluid sometimes flows around the reservoir, completely missing the targeted zone.
"People are still surprised at the route that the injectate is taking or the bypassing that can happen," said Jean-Philippe Nicot, a research scientist at the University of Texas' Bureau of Economic Geology.
Conventional wisdom says fluids injected underground should spread at a rate of several inches or less each year, and go only as far as they are pushed by the pressure inside the well. In some instances, however, fluids have travelled faster and farther than researchers thought possible.
In a 2000 case that wasn't caused by injection but brought important lessons about how fluids could move underground, hydrogeologists concluded that bacteria-polluted water migrated horizontally underground for several thousand feet in just 26 hours, contaminating a drinking water well in Walkerton, Ontario, and sickening thousands of residents. The fluids travelled 80 times as fast as the standard software model predicted was possible.
According to the model, vertical movement of underground fluids shouldn't be possible at all, or should happen over what scientists call "geologic time": thousands of years or longer. Yet a 2011 study in Wisconsin found that human viruses had managed to infiltrate deep aquifers, probably moving downward through layers believed to be a permanent seal.
According to a study published in April in the journal Ground Water, it's not a matter of if fluid will move through rock layers, but when.
Tom Myers, a hydrologist, drew on research showing that natural faults and fractures are more prevalent than commonly understood to create a model that predicts how chemicals might move in the Marcellus Shale, a dense layer of rock that has been called impermeable. The Marcellus Shale, which stretches from New York to Tennessee, is the focus of intense debate because of concerns that chemicals injected in drilling for natural gas will pollute water.
Myers' new model said that chemicals could leak through natural cracks into aquifers tapped for drinking water in about 100 years, far more quickly than had been thought. In areas where there is hydraulic fracturing or drilling, Myers' model shows, man-made faults and natural ones could intersect and chemicals could migrate to the surface in as little as "a few years, or less."
"It's out of sight, out of mind now. But 50 years from now?" Myers said, referring to injected waste and the rock layers trusted to entrap it. "Simply put, they are not impermeable."
Myers' work is among the few studies done over the past few decades to compare theories of hydrogeology to what actually happens. But even his research is based on models.
"A lot of the concepts and a lot of the regulations that govern this whole practice of subsurface injection is kind of dated at this point," said one senior EPA hydrologist who was not authorized to speak to ProPublica, and declined to be quoted by name.
"It's a problem," he said. "There needs to be a hard look at this in a new way."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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HMCTS steps up video hearing push with county court first
The courts service has quietly completed a landmark moment in the progression towards video hearings and a digital future.
The Gazette understands that the first hearing featuring two remote litigants was held on Friday, run from Manchester civil justice centre.
The hearing involved two litigants in person who were parties to an application to set aside a default judgment. A judge oversaw proceedings from a courtroom which was open to the public.
HMCTS is running a year-long pilot of video hearings for set aside applications and first direction appointments for financial remedy in divorce where both parties are represented. As well as Manchester, cases can also be run by video from the Birmingham civil justice centre.
Court bosses intend to run a limited number of cases with litigants who have been fully briefed and vetted in advance. Both parties must agree to take part, while judges must also approve each case as being suitable for video hearing.
An HMCTS spokesperson said: 'We will continue to independently evaluate fully video hearings so that we carry on learning, testing and adapting the technology and processes.'
This is the second tranche of testing full-video hearings as part of the government's £1bn court modernisation programme. Last year a test involving eight cases was carried out in the first-tier tax tribunal. Users reported that the hearings were convenient and easy to understand, but technical issues were commonplace and the majority of hearings suffered problems such as poor visibility of parties or lack of access to documents.
A practice direction made earlier this year to facilitate the latest pilot stated that all parties or their legal representatives would attend the hearing of the application, using the video-link, from suitable IT equipment and would see and hear, and would be seen and heard by, each other and the judge determining the application.
Members of the public may access a hearing by attending the court in person and would see and hear the judge and the parties or their legal representatives on a screen in the court room.
Each party involved will have completed a pre-video hearing suitability questionnaire at least 14 days before the hearing date.


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The Shamrock and Kymera series from Andor offer a wide range of spectrographs to find a solution for every application. The main difference of the four models is the focal length: 193, 328, 500 and 750 mm, respectively. All models are based on the optical design according to Czerny-Turner.
The USB 2.0 interface of the Shamrock and Kymera spectrographs allows full control of the motorized multi grating turret, the entrance slit and an optional filter wheel.
Use the table below to choose the spectrograph which is best suited to your application.
Get in touch with us, our knowledgeable product managers will review the spectrometer setup together with you and answer any technical questions you may have.
We look forward to discussing your application and experiment setup with you.


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DOC-02 Parties to Documents - name and address requirements
Landgate, to support its guarantee of title, must be sure that the person selling, mortgaging or otherwise dealing with the land in a title is indeed the person shown as the registered proprietor. In its simplest form, for documents such as mortgages, leases, applications, etc. the identity check is the comparison of the name and address shown on the document with the name and address shown on the title.
The name of a person dealing with land must coincide with the name of the registered proprietor or a satisfactory explanation of the difference provided. Amendment of the document and/or amendment to the name in the Register will be required where the document shows that:
- a name has been added to or omitted from the proprietor's name
- the order of names is different
- there is a difference in spelling in the name or names
- the signature of the proprietor indicates another name
- a female has been married since first becoming registered proprietor
- a person has changed name by repute or usage
- a person has changed name by application to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages
- a person has changed name by Deed Poll or Licence to Change Name, or
- a female wishes to revert to the use of her maiden name.
However, there are important exceptions to these rules.
3 Non Anglicised Names1
Landgate follows the anglicised conventions in names, endorsing the surname after the given names and (usually) showing the same surname for married couples. Should a person not wish to use their partner's name after marriage, they do not have to do so. Additionally, after marriage each partner can adopt a hyphenated combination of their surnames in either order.
In the interests of consistency, the Registrar will use the same naming convention for all names but realises the difficulties faced by persons from cultures where the use of a variety of names is both custom and legal. Only the true and correct legal name should be shown on the Register; endorsements including characters such as "@" to indicate "also known as" or "S/O" or "D/O" to indicate "son of" or "daughter of" will not be shown on the title.
The Land Titles Registry requires a Family name to be shown for each party to the document; the Given names field is optional. If a person has one or two given names and no surname, the given name(s) will need to be shown in the Family name field only. The Given name field can be left blank.
Document preparing parties can assist the Registrar to maintain accurate records by underlining the surname in non-anglicised names in documents for lodgement, particularly for transferees in Transfers of Land.
1 [Section 3 updated on 19/06/2019]
4 Corporation Names
The Corporations Act 2001 provides (among other things) for the allocation to each corporation registered, or to be registered, a distinct registration number.
On the first occasion that the name of a corporation is shown in a document, its registered Australian Company Number (A.C.N.) must also be shown. The A.C.N. must also be shown in the common seal. It is not necessary to show the A.C.N. in the sealing clause where the common seal has been affixed.
If a corporation executes a document without using the common seal, the A.C.N. must be shown in the sealing clause.
On 29th May 2000 the Corporations Regulations were amended to include the use of the Australian Business Number (A.B.N.).
The new regulations modify the law only to the extent that if a corporation has an A.B.N., it may use the A.B.N. with its company name in place of its A.C.N. on documents and negotiable instruments, provided that:
- the A.B.N. includes the company's A.C.N. as the last nine digits
- the quotation of the A.B.N. is effected in the same manner in which quotation of the A.C.N. would normally occur, e.g. with the company name where it first appears in the document.
The corporation's common seal must still show the A.C.N. Where a corporation does not have a common seal or does not use a common seal to execute documents (see s.127 of the Corporations Act 2001), their attestation clause can show their A.B.N. where it meets the requirement outlined in the first dot point above.
Corporations registered under State legislation, such as Building Societies and Credit Unions were also allocated a number, called an Australian Registered Body Number (A.R.B.N.), if they wished to operate out of their State of registration. The effect of the law is that any document at Landgate showing as a party a corporation registered in another State must show after the name its A.R.B.N. number. The number should be shown in the attestation clause but not in the common seal.
5 Addresses and Address Requirements
The present address of the parties to a document must be shown. Where a person dealing with land (for instance, by entering into a lease) has changed address, the present address should be shown followed by the former address. For example:
"A of (present address) formerly of (previous address)."
As the address shown on the title is used for the service of notices, every effort should be made to ensure the accuracy of the information given. Landgate will accept any alteration of address authenticated by the person whose address it is or the agent, solicitor or banker of that person.
Two addresses should not be given for any person. The address of a corporation is the address of the registered office of that corporation.
When preparing a transfer, it is acceptable to show the new or proposed address of the transferee (purchaser), thus ensuring that any following notices are received.
5.1 On 12 May 2016, Landgate made changes to address requirements for Western Australia's land registry forms
Landgate uses AS 4590 – 2006 Address Standards for recording addresses for statutory and commercial purposes.
It is strongly recommended that Conveyancers comply with the following basic rules from AS 4590 when entering addresses onto Western Australia's land registry forms.
These addresses are provided to Landgate within title dealings – in both paper and electronic formats - to enter onto the Register to be primarily used for the service of any notices required to be sent to the registered proprietors.
Following these standards will significantly increase the efficiency of processing paper-based title dealings, reduce delays and assist in accurate delivery of important notices to registered proprietors. When in doubt, the format returned by the Landgate Address Verification Service, where applicable, should be used.
5.2 AS4590 – 2006 Address Standards
Unless specifically part of the address, such as a hyphen in a range of numbers (eg 17-18), punctuation, including commas and full stops, should not be captured in address information.
Acceptable format: 1 Midland Square MIDLAND WA 6056
Post Office Box information should be shown in an abbreviated format and capitalised. Private Mail Bag Service should be shown as 'PRIVATE BAG' and General Post Office Box should be shown as 'GPO BOX'.
Acceptable format: PO BOX 2222 MIDLAND WA 6936
In Australia, 'Care of' is used where a letter etc. is to be delivered and entrusted to another person or company.
Consequently, 'Care of' should only be used on land transaction forms when immediately followed by the name of a person or company. References to 'Care of' should be listed in full (not as C/-).
Acceptable format: Care of Joe Citizen of PO BOX 2222 MIDLAND WA 6936
Street addresses
Street names, types, suffixes, prefixes and directional indicators should be shown in full, generally without punctuation.
Acceptable formats:
- Sixth Avenue MOUNT LAWLEY WA 6050 (not 1 6th Ave MT LAWLEY)
- Cottonwood Place O'CONNOR WA 6163 (not 7 Cottonwood Place O'CONNOR)
- Chandler Avenue East FLOREAT WA 6014 (not 3 Chandler Avenue E FLOREAT)
- Kulin-Lake Grace Road NORTH LAKE GRACE WA 6353 (not 6153 Kulin Lake Grace Rd (NTH LAKE GRACE)
Please note that both Unit 1 79, 1/79 and Unit 1, 79 Second Avenue MOUNT LAWLEY WA 6050 are all acceptable.
Suburbs, localities and cities
Suburbs and localities are to be fully spelled out and capitalised (e.g. 'MOUNT), except that ST shall be used for SAINT).
- City Road MOUNT HAWTHORN WA 6016
- Victoria Street ST JAMES WA 6102
States and postcodes
For Australian addresses, the state/territory and postcode (capitalised, abbreviated and without punctuation) are to be included.
State abbreviations should be depicted as shown in the following table:
Acceptable format: 1 Melbourne Street MELBOURNE VIC 3000
International addresses
The listing of an overseas address is to include the country (capitalised and not abbreviated). Street names, types, suffixes, prefixes and directional indicators should be shown in full, in accordance with local usage, without punctuation.
- Brompton Road LONDON SW1K 7XL UNITED KINGDOM
- Glenwood Drive WESTERVILLE OHIO 43081 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Western Australian addresses
Landgate recommends that all Western Australian (not national or international) addresses that are to be entered into the EAS2 system or into legal documents are checked for accuracy and formatting via the Address Verification Service on Landgate's website.
Only a valid returned address should then be entered into EAS2 or the legal form. The tool contains a follow-up notification for any queries relating to failed addresses.
Please note that this service will soon be enhanced to include the state of 'WA' in the resulting address. Please remember to include 'WA' in the address until this is implemented.
5.3 Transitional Implementation
The addressing standards described above are intended to apply to all paper land transaction documents in which the address for service of notices is required.
The initial focus will be on capturing the correct and consistent addresses of the transferees in transfer of land documents. In dealing cases where a mortgage follows a transfer, Landgate will apply the address of the transferee to the certificate of title.
From Monday 1 August 2016, Addresses are no longer be required in the mortgagor panel of mortgage forms lodged in paper. However, where addresses are provided they will be accepted in any format on these forms.
Mortgage documents will not then be sufficient to effect a change of the registered proprietor's address on a certificate of title. Clients are to be directed to the appropriate form, generally NA1, where necessary.
The current Lodgement Acceptability Check (LAC) will be modified to remove the check of addresses on mortgage documents. It will continue to check that other related documents where addresses are required are consistent.
6 Occupation
6.1 Adults
The occupation of every witness to a document and of every person swearing a statutory declaration is an essential part of his or her description and MUST be stated.
Note: This is not a requirement for electronically lodged documents.
6.2 Minors
In law every person under the age of eighteen years is considered a minor. The date of birth of a minor is an essential part of his or her description and must be shown (s.59 of the TLA). To show a minor, the words 'a minor born the [dd] day of [month], [yyyy]' are added after the name and address of the person.


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Freeze-dried and ready to eat.
Sadly, imitating Michael Jackson's Moonwalk, watching reruns of the Jetsons, or rolling out the astro turf is the closest most of us will get to living out our astronaut fantasies.
But now you can take your taste buds on a space odyssey with Astronaut Ice Cream – which comes minus the ice but with the approval of the world's leading authority on space exploration, NASA.
In fact, ever since the Apollo missions through to the more recent development of the international space station, NASA's astronauts have snacked on this delicious freeze-dried ice cream that'll even make Mr.Whippy wanna grab a slice.
That's right – this official NASA ice cream is light enough to throw into your backpack (or a pocket in your space suit) and only contains a mere 8 grams of fat per serve!
Need we say more than to simply take a bite and marvel as the dry and crunchy slice melts in your mouth, taking on the creamy texture and rich flavour of either Neopolitan ice cream (chocolate, strawberry and vanilla) or an Ice Cream Sandwich (vanilla ice cream within two chocolate wafers).
And there's a reason this ice-cream is so popular with NASA's astronauts – it tastes delicious, it's mess-free, long-lasting, won't hurt sensitive teeth and it won't drip all over the place!
Better still, it's great for camping, hiking or picnics at the park so even if you can't hitch a ride on a space shuttle or plant a flag on the moon, you'll still be able to send your sweet tooth into orbit.
Is it real ice cream? Yes and each official Astronaut Ice Cream pack can be stored for many years without refrigeration as long as you keep them in an airtight, sealed container.
How much comes in a package? Each pack contains a standard serving size of ice cream measuring approximately 6.5 x 8 x 2 cm (Neopolitan) and 11 x 4 x 2 cm (sandwich).
What does it taste like? Because it's been freeze-dried (all the moisture has been sucked out of it), it is dry, crunchy and almost has the same texture as the inside of a Malteser. However, once you place it in your mouth and it starts to dissolve, the ice cream flavour really comes out.
Is it legit? Yes, Astronaut Ice Cream is kosher and the package bears the official Astronaut Foods symbol.
Please note: Due to its nature, freeze dried Astronaut Ice Cream will generally arrive broken into smaller chunks or pieces.
Have not yet bought this, but when I visited the NASA space center in Florida (where they do launches), this ice cream was all over the place!! Legit, can't wait to try it because I never bought it when I was in America.
Takes me back to when I use to buy this for my children and now I am buying it for my grand children and it still tastes just as good.
Astronaut Ice Cream has Certified Space Technology approval and is officially used by NASA Astronauts.
Unfortunately, at this time our Astronaut Ice Cream products are not Kosher certified.
Ingredients: Milkfat, nonfat milk, corn syrup, strawberry puree, whey, cocoa, stabilised and emulsified by mono diglycerides, guar gum, cellulose gum and carageenan, artificial flavour, red #40 and vegetable annatto colour.


This function implements folder access control lists (ACLs). Access control lists define who is allowed to do certain operations on a folder, or on messages in the folder. Folder ACLs are implement only for IMAP accounts on IMAP servers that implement access control lists. This function will fail if folder is not a folder on an IMAP server that supports access control lists.
This function computes application's access rights on the folder. If this function succeeds (this function may fail if the requesting client does not have the required access to the folder), rights will be initialized by a text string that contains a list of character which describe the requested client's access rights on the folder.
Administrator access: view and change folder access control lists.
Expunge deleted messages from the folder.
Insert, or add messages to the folder.
List, or view the folder's existence. If a folder does not have the "l" access right, the server will not include this folder when it's asked to list all folders in the folder directory. However, if the "r" access right is present, the folder may be opened if the folder's name is known.
Read, or open the folder. An attempt to open the folder will fail without the "r" access right, even if the folder's name is known.
"Post messages" to the folder. This access right is currently listed in the ACL specification; however its intention is not clear, and most servers do not do anything useful with this access right. It is listed here for information purposes only.
Allow changing the read/unread status of messages in the folder. The server will not automatically clear the unread message status flag on messages after they are read, or let this status flag be explicitly changed, without the "s" access right.
Allow tagging of messages as deleted or undeleted. The server will prohibit changing the messages' deleted message status flag without the "t" access right.
Allow changing the draft, replied, and marked message status flags. The server will not allow changes to these flags without the "w" access right.
Allow this folder to be removed. The server will not this folder to be deleted without the "x" access right.
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Home \ Trading Info \ Financial Instruments \ Stocks \ Saipem
Instrument:SAIPEM.IT
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Saipem is one of the largest oilfield services companies in the world, and its headquarters is in San Donato, Milanese, Italy. Its full name is Società Anonima Italiana Perforazioni E Montaggi. The company was founded in 1957 when drilling company Saip merged with energy infrastructure company Snam Montaggi. It was formerly a subsidiary of Italian oil and gas company Eni but became autonomous in 2016 when Eni sold 12.5% of its stake. Eni retains a 30% share in Saipem as of April 2022.
Enrico Mattei is the founder of Saipem, and he is credited with transforming Italy's oil industry to become more self-reliant during the 1950s. Saipem revolutionized offshore drilling and pipelines in Europe and has since expanded worldwide.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, Saipem constructed several major pipelines. These include the Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline that links Algeria to Italy, the Maghreb–Europe Gas Pipeline that links Algeria to Spain, and the Europipe I and Europipe II gas lines that connect Norway to Germany.
However, the company has also experienced controversies related to its business practices. Saipem paid a $30 million penalty in Nigeria in 2010 to settle a bribery investigation by the country's government. The Italian government also found the company and its former CEO guilty of bribery and corruption in Algeria in 2018. This resulted in 197.9 million Euros being seized from the company.
Fast forward to 2022, Saipem and its approximately 90 subsidiaries have offices in over 60 countries ranging from Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and Oceania. The company's main lines of business range from remote areas and deepwater activities to hydrocarbon and fertilizer production, renewable energy development, and infrastructure construction and decommissioning.
Saipem Stock History
Saipem has been publicly traded on the Milan Stock Exchange since April 20, 1987. The symbol for Saipem is SPM.MI. As of April 2022, the company has a market cap of €1.153 billion.
When it went public in April 1987, the SPM stock started trading at €2.71 per share. At the close of the market on April 22, 2022, the shares traded at €1.16 each. The Saipem stock chart reached an all-time high price of €48.75 on March 1, 2012. The lowest recorded price per share was €0.95, which occurred in October 1991.
Although investors do not receive a dividend every year, Saipem pays dividends yearly. The highest dividend investors received was €0.70 per share in 2013. There were no dividends paid between 2014-and 2019. The most recent dividend paid was in 2020, and it totalled €0.01 per share.
How to Trade Saipem Stock
The Saipem stock price has experienced market forces that positively and negatively affected its stock price. The beginning of 2020 showed positive growth for Saipem shares. This was due to a trade agreement reached between the United States and China and new drilling contracts awarded that suggested stabilization in the energy sector.
However, the global economic crisis that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in high price volatility for the greater market. This, coupled with the reduced demand and subsequent decrease in energy prices, caused a 49% decrease in Saipem stock price.
In general, there are several factors to consider when trading Saipem stock. External factors, such as the ones mentioned above, are key indicators of where the market may be heading. In addition, the results of OPEC meetings can directly impact energy stock prices. Oil producers failed to reach an agreement during the OPEC meeting on March 5, 2020, and Saipem shares fell by 31% between March 6 and March 12 of that year.
New legislation and regulations affecting energy production and import/export in countries where Saipem is active are another factor to be aware of. Quotas, prices, taxes, and trade agreements between countries can impact the share price for all energy companies, including Saipem. Economic recessions on a regional or global scale also affect energy consumption and prices.
Demand for more sustainable and renewable energy sources has been growing during the past decade, causing several industry players to start incorporating greener technologies into their operations. Saipem has taken a proactive approach to sustainability by reducing its environmental impact and tapping into the fast-growing wind and solar energy sectors. Saipem developed the world's first floating wind farm in the North Sea and is currently working on the first floating solar park off the Norwegian coast.
Saipem Competition
Saipem's top competitors include Worley, Nabors, and Oceaneering, publicly-traded companies. Private competitors include McDermott and Bechtel. Bechtel had the highest revenue of all of these companies in the fiscal year 2020, generating $17.6 billion.
Saipem Periodic Earnings
Saipem's fiscal year ends on December 31. The company reports its earnings quarterly. In the fiscal year 2019, Saipem reported 9.1 billion EUR in revenue. In 2020, this figure dropped -by 19.6% to 7.34 billion EUR.
Why Trade Saipem with AvaTrade
There are many reasons why you should consider trading stocks via CFDs with Avatrade.
International regulation: Avatrade is subject to and complies with relevant international regulations and directives.
Leveraged trading – a favourite tool for many CFD traders, leveraged trading can help you to maximize your returns even when there are only small price changes. With Avatrade, you can trade Saipem stock with a leverage of up to and enjoy higher profits. Note that there are risks involved with leveraged trading, as with any trading.
Ability to short sell Saipem stock – as with all other CFDs, at AvaTrade, you can go long or short sell Saipem stocks based on what's happening in the markets.
Automated trading solutions: Avatrade offers automated trading solutions that make investing simpler and quicker.
Competitive spreads – maximize your profit margins by trading Saipem stocks alongside other stocks' CFDs with minimal cost.
AvaProtect risk management solution – a powerful tool that protects your trading positions against losses. Available on specific financial instruments.
Social trading via AvaSocial – an innovative social trading application that allows you to interact with other registered traders at Avatrade in unique ways. (Currently not available in the European Union).
Advanced analysis from the Trading Central – enjoy advanced detailed stock analyses from our Trading Central.
** Disclaimer –While due research has been undertaken to compile the above content, it remains an informational and educational piece only. None of the content provided constitutes any form of investment advice.


Dmitry Metsaev, owner of Icon Suit, is one of Cherry Creek North's Renaissance men. He speaks three languages, has a penchant for discussing politics and religion, taught English in Russian high schools and worked directly with the disabled at camps in Texas. Here, he tells us about his plunge into the world of fashion and what goes in to the well-appointed Icon Suit.
From now until the end of February 2018, mention seeing this piece in the Small Business Spotlight and receive a 20% discount on the purchase of an Icon Suit gift card!
You just opened Icon Suit in March 2017, and while you have stores in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Denver doesn't seem like the next logical choice to expand to. Can you tell us how you ended up here?
There's an MBA program between the London School of Economics and Stern School of Business called TRIUM, and Icon Suit was part of a capstone project there. They did the research and picked Denver as the next location for Icon Suit, because the students found that the lease rates and the salaries were all favorable to starting a business. I wanted to be in Cherry Creek North because it is the most fashionable place in Denver. Incidentally, my Cherry Creek North landlord had not heard of me or my brand, but a well-placed piece on Icon Suit in Inc. magazine Russia served as proof that my business was legit and helped me get my foot in the door.
You were an international business lawyer and made an abrupt shift into fashion? Why?
After that I was flying from Brussels to Moscow. I stumbled upon a nice store with suits called Suit Supply. I met with the owner and told him I wanted to get in to the business. He didn't take me seriously at first, but I persisted. He told me, "look, go and sell 50 suits and then we'll talk." I had only a few thousand dollars at this point, but I put together a list of people from an energy company I'd been working with and my business school friends. I did a trunk show and told them no suit was more than $1,000, and I sold 38 suits. That was convincing enough for the owner. Eventually, I decided I could make a better, handmade product, so I started my own business and now we are the best suit company in Russia.
So when a customer walks into your store to buy a suit, you have a special tailoring process, correct? What is it like and how long does it take from start to finish?
The first thing you do is choose your fabric and the cut. Then, we have master suits that are general sizes. When you try it on, we measure for 70 points across the body and put that into the computer software. How is that better than just measuring you with a tape? When a customer is just measured with a tape, he has no kind of clue what kind of fit he gets. Once he puts the master pattern on, he understands where we are going. They can ask to have the trousers a little bit wider, or slimmer. Or, maybe they would like to have the jacket and the button positioned differently. All our suits are made-to-measure handmade in Italy. Once you've been measured it takes about four to six weeks for a suit to be ready.
Are suits the only thing you sell here?
I am so glad you asked! We also do tuxedos and shirts. Tuxes are very popular in Denver. And, while I can say we can compete with any maker in the quality of suit, no one can beat us when it comes to shirts. That shirt on the rack looks like any other shirt, but its fabric is supplied by Thomas Mason who supplies His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
Speaking of the Prince, I became friends with the British Consul in St. Petersburg. One time he had invited me to a party when Prince Andrew came for a visit. I wore a beautiful double-breasted gray tux with mother-of-pearl buttons and a black tie. The British Protocol Officer reminded me that this was black tux/black tie only, so I was actually turned away. Fortunately, the next time Prince Andrew was in town, I was again invited and this time, appropriately attired, made it in to the party!


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Juneau, Alaska in the 20th century
So what was Juneau in the 20th century like? Due to the unearthing of oil, whales diminished in the late 1800s. Coupled with the fur trade receding, Juneau replaced Sitka as the capital of the Alaskan territory in 1906.
In the early 20th century, Juneau grew from a seasonal, Native fishing camp where the city flourished from a boomtown to a hub for volume hard-rock mining. The surrounding hills were honeycombed by two mines: the Alaska-Juneau Mine and the Alaska-Gastineau Mine. This was where the loose nuggets of gold in the stream beds were exhausted.
Later, a pair of sizable mills were constructed on the mainland side of the Gastineau Channel. Concurrently, the Treadwell Gold Mining Company set up operations on Douglas Island. The ground once reverberated with the 960 stamps from the mills of world-renowned Treadwell Gold Mining Company. That mine reached peak production in 1915, that is, when a deluge of mining accidents swept through the mines, two years before a cave-in flooded three of Treadwell's four mines ending the Treadwell era.
Shortages of manpower and supplies brought about by World War II led to the closure of the A-J Mine in 1944. Still today, there are more miles of mining tunnels within Mount Roberts than there are roads in Juneau.
Alaska during World War II
Noteworthy, Juneau was the most significantly sized city in the territory during the inter-war period. Namely, having surpassed Fairbanks in the 1920 census. The US government bankrolled $3 billion into Alaskan infrastructure during World War II. Later, to take action in the war effort, it sent in 300,000 troops and support personnel.
Juneau becomes Alaska's Capital City
Serving as the seat of government for the territory of Alaska, Juneau became a state capital on January 3, 1959, when Alaska was granted statehood. Juneau's estimated 34,000+ residents are proud hosts for Alaska's Capital while enjoying the benefits of a small community, beautiful surroundings and the adventure of life in the last frontier.
Keeping Juneau as the capital
Opposition between the territory's bigger cities escalated as Alaska's population ballooned after the war. In 1954, Alaskans won the measure to relocate the capital north. One provision of this act stipulated that the new capital be situated at least 30-miles from Anchorage or Fairbanks. Hence, this was to prevent either city from flexing unfair power. And thus, holding sway. Consequently, Juneau remained the capital. Greater efforts to move the capital were proposed again in the 1970s. Later in 1894. And again in 1996. All without success.
Oil and growth
Alaska was awarded statehood in 1959. Accordingly, Juneau grew proportionately with the rise in state government. Throughout the 1970s, saw the construction of the Trans Alaskan Pipeline. Indeed, the city prospered with another growth spike in state government jobs. Predominantly, due to new oil revenues. However, oil-fueled growth ebbed in the 1980s.
Today, the city and borough boasts a population of over 34,000 people. It is the second largest city in the state. Further, it's the second biggest city (by square miles) in the country—larger than Delaware. Federal, state and local government employs four out of every ten Juneau workers. Commercial fishing and mining are growing components of the local economy, as is Juneau's role as a regional hub for tourism, transportation, medical services, education and retail trade. Ultimately: tourism is still the biggest contributing factor to the economy.
NB: See our other posts on The founding of the City of Juneau, Alaska and Native peoples of Juneau, Alaska.
Resources used: Travel Juneau.
By Juneau/Skagway Tours| 2017-09-06T11:19:03-09:00	May 20th, 2017|City and Glacier Tour, City Trolley, Cruise Ships, Juneau, Juneau Cruises, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Juneau, Alaska in the 20th century


Yes! If you'd like to speak with our Help team, just send us an in-app message or an email to hello@tide.co. Please include a convenient contact number and time to speak, and someone from our Help team will reach out to you.


Mystical Mayhem Hippy Clothing give you a warm welcome to our page dedicated to our wonderful hippy throws.
Here at Hippy HQ we stock some of the finest Indian handmade and hand dyed throws. All of which are made using 100% high quality cotton.
A throw is a large piece of material that is used as a cover around the home for items such as beds and sofas. Largely used for decorative purposes and are often used to add a splash of colour around the home. In addition to the aesthetic aspect, they are also super practical in respect of protecting items from dust and pet hairs etc.
There really is no end to what you can use our hippy throws for – they are so versatile! There is of course its main use and then there are these below.
– Wall hangings: These make for wonderful room decorations when hung from the walls and the ceilings.
– Picnic Blankets: A wonderful wide blanket that can be used to share with friends out and a festival. at the beach or out for the day. They even made great upholstery covers for the home and look great in campers, caravans and even cars.
– Curtains: With some tweaking and some lining, our throws can be turned into some very funky curtains. You can be sure that there will be no-one else with the same.
Hippy throws really make a great addition to any hippies life. Not only do they make for a lovely treat but they also make for wonderful well appreciated gifts!


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Is Disney+ Really The Best Streaming Service?
NHS to Perform Rock of Ages
Harry Styles' New Era
Natalie Kruse - 20 Dec 19
Update: The Democratic Race
Alexandra Protter - 19 Dec 19
The Tradition Continues with Santa's 58th Arrival
Alyssa Ostrowski - 19 Dec 19
Willem Wuebben - 19 Dec 19
Disney+ Hype
Julius Disla - 19 Dec 19
Katharina Rakauckas - 19 Dec 19
Jacob Gonzalez - 19 Dec 19
The College Football Playoff
Tyler Dick - 19 Dec 19
Jacob Gonzalez: Nutley Wrestler Preview
Abigail Scheidel - 19 Dec 19
Nutley Tree Lighting
Sophie Soto - 19 Dec 19
Resurrection of the Fall Play
Ms. Gumbs' Experience At NHS So Far
Isabel Maldonado - 19 Dec 19
Modern Love Review- Love in Its Many Forms
Yuna Mehdizadeh - 18 Dec 19
Let's Not Celebrate the New Generation of Celebrities
Dilara Kalebek - 18 Dec 19
Creative Writing Corner: Barack Obama Ran so Black Ariel Could Swim
Karen Greco - 02 Oct 19
NHS sisters Angelica and Sofia Laracuente Travel to Poland to Represent the U.S.
Angelica Laracuente - 19 Dec 19
Behind The Scenes Of The Class Of 2020
Irish Ramsthaler - 19 Dec 19
Lights, Camera, Action!!
Natalie Vitiello - 19 Dec 19
Patriots Club Holds Their Fifth Annual Event
Gianna Santangelo - 5 December 2018
Submitted by Gianna Santangelo on 5 December 2018
On November 12, the Patriots Club, under the direction of Mr. JD Vick presented their fifth annual Veterans Day Program. The Nutley Patriots Club has been active at NHS and John H. Walker Middle School for five years, since the fall of 2013. "We wanted to have a club that would give us a platform to recognize our Veterans and to promote patriotism," says Vick, a social studies teacher at JHWMS.
The Veterans Day Program included performances by the USO Show Troupe, the United States Military Academy West Point Band Duo, and the NHS Choir. "Every veteran that attended was recognized and presented with a certificate and challenge coin," said Vick. A moment was taken to remember the fallen with the playing of "Taps." The 100th anniversary of the end of World War l was also recognized. After the event, the veterans and their families were invited to a dinner at the Knights of Columbus in Nutley.
While this event is a highlight of their year, the Patriots Club has many field trips throughout the school year which are somehow connected to patriotism, American history or veterans. Some of the trips taken yearly are, Boston, Washington DC, the location of where George Washington crossed the Delaware River, the 9/11 Museum, USS intrepid and United States Military Academy at West Point.The students also wrote letters to the US military members who are deployed or in basic training. The club's members often shovel snow from the Nutley war memorials after each snowfall and they prepare.
In addition to trips for students, local veterans have the opportunity to be a part of Honor Flight which is an organization dedicated to taking veterans to see their memorials in Washington DC with no expense to the veterans. Mr. Vick hopes that the club will gain more members over the years. Last year, this club only had 12 members and this year the number of students grew to 50.
Sophie Soto - Dec 19, 2019
Hosted annually at the Nutley Park Oval, the holiday season kicked off with the lighting of the tree on Sunday, December 8. At approximately 5:30 p.m, the festivities and holiday music b
Abigail Scheidel - Dec 19, 2019
On November 18, 2019, Julia Resnick, a junior, reminisced about her success in her theater career at Nutley High School.
Isabel Maldonado - Dec 19, 2019
Ms. Gumbs is a Geophysical and Marine Science teacher who recently transferred to Nutley High School this year. Previously, she taught at Clifton High School and taught in Jersey City.
The Achievements Of Samantha Gabriele
Catalena Robson - Dec 18, 2019
In Nutley High School, many students come and go, leaving their mark behind them as they graduate. Many are remembered as someone who played sports, got good grades, or for being a great
In Memory of James Vincent Tricarico
Allyssa Bovasso Pignataro - Dec 18, 2019
On November 15, 2019, the Tricarico family of Nutley lost someone very important, their son and brother, James Vincent Tricarico. James was a celebrity in Nutley.
The Southern Fried Maniac
Host of 105.5 WDHA's radio show, "Rockturnal," Scotty B., also known as the "Southern Fried Maniac," has been in radio for about 35 years, and he knows everything there is to know about t
NHS Has Style!
10 Facts About New Jersey's New Governor
Nutley High School Puts Security First
Junior Class Spotlight: Grace Pula
Spotlight: NHS Freshmen Girls Basketball
Instant Success for NHS Seniors
Skip the Salad: Romaine Lettuce Recalled After Being Linked to E.coli Outbreak
Cybertruck: The Next Evolution of Vehicles
NHS Maroon and Gray
The Maroon and Gray is the school newspaper of Nutley High School.
© Copyright 2018 by Nutley High School Maroon and Gray


It is estimated that 60 – 80% of Americans will experience a neck or back disorder at some point in their lives. For the majority of these individuals, the condition is mild and temporary. For some people, however, the problem continues and may require medical evaluation and treatment.
The highly-regarded Spine Center from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center now has a full program at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Milton, bringing a team of leading spine surgeons and pain medicine specialists from the medical center to a convenient, community hospital setting.
Under the direction of co-directors Efstathios Papavassiliou, MD, a spine neurosurgeon, and Andrew White, MD, a spine orthopedic surgeon, patients are thoroughly evaluated to determine the best treatment pathway. Patients who are not candidates for surgery, can be treated by pain medicine specialists Cyrus Yazdi, MD, or Paragi Rana, MD, or referred to physical therapy in the hospital's new Rehabilitation Services Center.
This seamless approach ensures patients their spine care is closely coordinated between specialists.
Complex cases requiring the resources of a major academic medical center can also be performed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
To schedule an appointment with the Spine Program at BID-Milton, please call (617) 313-1420. A PHYSICIAN REFERRAL IS REQUIRED.


Well… for absolutely any reason that you'd like.
My experiences with channeling for clients is that we often have questions about what is happening in our lives. We are sometimes seeking guidance; we are feeling at a crossroads, or are thinking about maybe making some changes. We wonder how to formulate the future we really want. Are there any suggestions as to how to continue fulfilling our potential?
Take, for example, Dan (all names changed for privacy purposes), a client who was having multiple career doors opening for him all at once. He was exploring the pros and cons of each choice and desired some input. Dan questioned Zurac about his concerns on each opportunity, and learned of some unconscious belief structures, as well as receiving some insights into each career project. Dan expressed a few weeks after the session that he had made a decision and was very pleased with the outcome.
For some clients a session is motivated by curiosity: what are the reasons we are experiencing some specific situations in our lives at this time? This can be simply inquisitively seeking… There is nothing more exciting then seeing ourselves in a new light and seeking some insight into those viewpoints. My clients find channeling to be informative and comforting in these instances.
In this vein, another client, Karen, asked Zurac questions regarding her recent relationship experiences. She had lately been experiencing old friends and clients seeking to re-connect with her, as well as some current friendships falling by the wayside. She was very interested in some insights to this relational experience. Zurac offered some observations regarding some unfolding patterns in her life and an invitation to explore those patterns at her leisure.
These are simply two examples of client interactions I have had. In what situations might you choose to enjoy a channeling session and what questions would you ask?


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Ostaszewo (Schöneberg fino al 1945) è un comune rurale polacco del distretto di Nowy Dwór Gdański, nel voivodato della Pomerania.Ricopre una superficie di 60,65 km² e nel 2004 contava 3.280 abitanti.

Collegamenti esterni

Ostaszewo

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


You may have come across a situation where you needed to save a phone number on your iPhone during a call and there was nothing nearby to record the number. In this post you will learn some easy ways to record a phone number on your iPhone while the call is in progress.
Let us assume that you are engaged in a conversation on your iPhone and the person at the other end provides you with an important phone number. Noticing that there is nothing nearby to write down the call you tap on the keypad (natural reaction in such situations) and input the phone number on the keypad, hoping that you will be able find a pen and paper after the call has ended.
However, you are mistaken in case you think that the number that just recorded on the keypad will be available for you after the call has ended. Strangely, your iPhone will immediately erase your keypad entry once the call has ended, leaving you with no option but to call back your contact in order to ask for the number.
Fortunately, there are some other ways to save a phone number on your iPhone while the call is in progress, we will be showing you some of them.
You don't have to always think in terms of grabbing a pen and paper whenever you want to note down a phone number or other information during a call on your iPhone. Instead you can make use of the Notes app on your iPhone to record such information.
There are times when you cannot put the phone on speaker mode, this makes it difficult to use the first method of saving the phone number to notes app. In such a situation, you can follow the steps below to note down a phone number while the call is in progress on your iPhone.
1. Take the phone away from your ear while the call is in progress. This wakes up the device display as your iPhone's ambient light sensor detects your action.
2. Tap on Contacts – This brings up the Add contact screen while the ongoing call runs in the background.
4. Next, tap on the Add phone option and input the number that you want to save on your iPhone (phone number as dictated by the caller).
5. You can also type in additional information like First name, Last name and the Company of your new contact.
6. Tap on Done (top-right corner).


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Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy to combat PTSD
By Mr. Lorin Smith (I Corps)January 19, 2010
1 / 1 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Sgt. Matthew Payne demonstrates the "Virtual Iraq" program, a computer simulation that allows behavioral therapists to use Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy to treat patients suffering from PSTD. The Department of Defense National Center for Telehealth and Technology is currently conducting a study to determine the effectiveness of VRET for active-duty servicemembers. (Photo Credit: Hylie Jan Pressey) VIEW ORIGINAL
FORT LEWIS, Wash. (Jan. 19, 2010) -- This summer, thousands of Joint Base Lewis-McChord Soldiers will return home from deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, ready to reunite with family and loved ones. But for some, the war will not be over.
The Improvised Explosive Device that killed their best friend while on a mission will play over and over again in a few Soldiers' minds. For others, who may have just finished up their third or fourth deployment in less than a decade, may recall traumatic events and describe them with little or no emotion, similar to giving results for an after-action review.
Behavioral health providers have treatment options for Soldiers dealing with these serious examples of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but one in particular is receiving lots of attention in the medical community - Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy.
The Department of Defense National Center for Telehealth and Technology, in partnership with the Defenses Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, and the Department of Psychology at Madigan, were funded by the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, to conduct a four-year study to determine the effectiveness of VRET on active-duty servicemembers returning from Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom who are suffering from PTSD.
Through VRET, behavioral health providers can use 360-degree, interactive computer-generated environments uniquely tailored to expose the patients back into the environment and experience where the trauma occurred, to help reduce anxiety and post-traumatic stress.
The congressionally-funded medical research study is the first randomized clinical trial that uses active-duty military diagnosed with combat-related PTSD to compare VRET results to traditional "imaginal" prolonged exposure therapy, and to a control group that waits five weeks for any type of treatment.
The study's sample size is 120 servicemembers to complete the three types of treatment options. Treatment sessions for each type of therapy last about 90 minutes, said Dr. Greg Reger, the chief of T2's Innovative Technology Applications division. And the best way to participate in the study is to be recommended by a behavioral health specialist at Madigan Healthcare System or Naval Hospital Bremerton.
Established prolonged exposure requires a person to imagine, in as much detail as possible, the traumatic situation and describe the image or memory verbally. This treatment is repeated by the patient over and over again, until the stress is reduced. It is currently the technique most used by clinicians throughout the Department of Defense. However, Reger said "imaginal" exposure is less effective for combat trauma than other types of trauma.
He linked the lowered success rate to Soldiers, for example, having to endure multiple deployments for 12 to 15 months at a time. Some people find it difficult to imagine in sufficient detail or for a long enough period of time to reduce anxiety, he said. "With a constant stressful environment and exposure to potentially multiple traumatic events, people get emotional disengagement," Reger said.
VRET is traditionally used to treat phobias like fear of heights or flying, in a cost-effective manner, Reger added.
"I can't fly a patient in a plane to create the exposure, but I can use a computer flight simulator and get the same effect," he said.
Patients undergoing VRET still explain to the therapist what happened that caused the trauma, but are exposed to a variety of computer-generated stimuli with the program "Virtual Iraq." VRET is designed to promote a multi-sensory emotional connection to the memory, thus helping the patient be able to gradually face the traumatic experiences that underlie his or her distressing memories after a number of treatment sessions.
This connection is facilitated by having the patient put on a head-mounted display (over-the-eyes video glasses) and either ride or drive in a simulated convoy, and Reger matches the scenario to the event. Or a Soldier will be given a dummy M-4 with a mounted game controller and conduct a dismounted patrol, and Reger could simulate gunfire.
Reger can customize the simulation experience ensuring ample control of the exposure to the programmed situations - changing weather conditions, terrain, helicopter flyovers, types of attack; even add in Muslim prayer call.
"Consider the difference between someone closing his eyes and imagining the situation versus someone who tells his story while the same type of event is occurring with the sights and sounds - it is so much more emotionally-engaging," Reger said.
Reger encourages those who are suffering from PTSD to give the study a try, because he said it is his job to give back to those who have already sacrificed so much.
"We have treatments that are effective; and we can help get our troops back to the level of functioning their families need them to be in," Reger said.
The DoD is expanding its use of VRET treatments. Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and the Naval Medical Center San Diego are conducting their own VRET-based studies; Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii and a number of Veterans Affairs hospitals are starting to use virtual reality, as more servicemembers transition into veterans.
"Exposure therapy is a well-established therapy and a great way to leverage treatment with technology," Reger said.
(For more information on the VRET study, call (253) 968-4793)
January 6, 2020Class teaches how to stop bleeds, save lives
January 3, 2020Specialized training for Army nurses advancing care for critically-ill patients
December 18, 2019Army Medical Department Board test auto-injectors and gets important feedback from Soldiers
October 30, 2019Planning, partnerships key to emergency response exercise
October 29, 2019Ketogenic Diet: useful or not?
October 23, 2019Guard members train how to handle traumatic events
October 23, 2019Avoid bringing lead dust home from firing range by following these tips
October 22, 2019Program seeks to reduce Soldier injuries, retain readiness
October 4, 2019Service Members encouraged to protect against hearing loss
October 2, 2019Ace lends a paw to Soldiers in need
September 25, 2019US, UK coordinate autonomous last-mile resupply
September 23, 2019Researchers look for new signs of TBIs in Soldiers


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Student pages
Courses and guidance
Supervisory Qualification Programme (SQP)
The PhD-Supervisory Qualification Programme at UiS is offered to academic employees from all faculties at the UiS. Each spring, 30 participants, both potential, new and more experienced supervisors, complete the course.
Published 18. Jan. 2021. Updated on 08. Nov. 2022
UiS PhD Supervisory Qualification Programme
The goal of the course is to provide knowledge and skills that qualify and provide security for new PhD supervisors, while simultaneously providing more experienced supervisors with tools and inspiration to do an even better job.
SQP 2023 will take place at Sola Strand Hotel at the following dates:
Module 1: 2 – 3 Februar 2023
Module 2: 27 – 28 April 2023
Module 3: 8 – 9 June 2023
The course consists of three modules, each with two full-day sessions held in Sola Strand Hotel, outside Stavanger. The sessions run from 09.00 to 16.00. The course modules are all placed within one semester. The course is open for employees from all faculties at the UiS.
The course is offered once every year, during the spring semester. The course details will be published on the university intra-net (ansatt.uis.no), and by e-mail to the departments and faculties in November.
Head of departments will be asked to submit a list of potentital participants from their department. If you wish to participate in the programme, kindly contact your head of department.
Academic staff at the UiS.
Applicants must have a doctoral degree or an equivalent qualification. The applicant will benefit more from the course if they already are doing some supervision (or have done some).
Workload and participation
The course implies a high degree of activity from the participants, and when applying for the course, participants must confirm that they will be present at all sessions. The three modules and the assignments before and between the modules is estimated to a workload of approximately 100 hours.
Requirement for course approval
Participation in all three modules. Lost modules cannot be re-taken at a later stage, as the entire course must be completed within one semester.
Completing the preparations and assignments between the sessions .
Learning outcomes and literature
Upon completion of the course the participant should have knowledge of:
- Research education in national and international contexts
- Regulations and ethics relevant for research and supervision
- Different supervision approaches
- Relationship building and communication in supervision
The participant should be able to:
- Plan and carry out individualized supervision
- Facilitate a working relationship when supervising in pairs
- Elaborate on the role and responsibilities of a supervisor and how these change during the course of a PhD-project.
- Work within a scholarly framework to propose approaches to manage commonly occurring conflicts in connection with research education.
The participant should gain a general competence to:
- Identify challenges and reflect upon the role as a supervisor
- Place themselves as research supervisors in a local, historical and international context
- Discuss commonly occurring ethical and legal issues associated with doctoral supervision
Participants will receive course material and practical information approximately three weeks prior to the first course day. Practical information will also be published in the Teams group for participants.
Taylor et al (2018), A handbook for doctoral supervision, 2nd edtition, Routledge ISBN 978-1-138-19479-3
Anne Lee (2012), Successful research supervision: Advising students doing research, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-66353-3
Teaching and learning methods will include lectures, case work, group work and individual assignments. Active participation is expected. The course content follows two interrelated workflows, where each day is divided between an overall topic and its corresponding theme related to the different phases in the process from starting to finishing a PhD-project. See below for more details on this.
Academic content
Module 1: To be a supervisor
Research training in national and international context
Approaches to supervision and the supervisor's role
Regulations and guidelines for research ethics
PhD process I: Recruitment and selection and II: Role clarification
Module 2: Communication and collaboration
A professional relationship
Challenges: Motivation, abilities and opportunities during the process
Handling cultural diversities
PhD-process III: Building and maintaining relationships and IV: Monitoring and mentoring progress
Module 3) Supervision and the PhD as part of the organizational framework:
Supervising the writing process
Formal, informal and non-formal organizing elements of the PhD and their influence on doctoral supervision
Learning contexts in doctoral education
PhD-process V: Developing texts and thesis and VI: Performing revisions and dissemination
The course certificate is awarded after satisfactory completing all three modules and the requirements for the assignments.
Marit Fosse, Central Research Department
The course is led by a group of academic UiS-staff and mainly run by using internal lecturers covering different topics of their expertise. The following lecturers will be teaching the course in 2023:
Professor Kristin Armstrong-Oma, Museum of Archaeology
Professor Ingunn Studsrød, Faculty of Social Sciences
Professor Atle Skaftun, Faculty of Humanities
Professor, Kolbjørn K. Brønnick, Faculty of Health Sciences
Professor Eirik Bjorheim Abrahamsen, Faculty of Science and Technology
Professor Ole Andreas Engen, Faculty of Science and Technology
University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, P.O. box 8600, Norway
Kitty Kiellands hus, Rennebergstien 30, 4021 Stavanger, Norway
Information on data protection and use of cookies
Centers at UiS


text:
/ Turkiye signs 10-year gas deal with Oman -Turkish Energy Minister
The return of the martyr's remains was a new victory for Algeria's colonial resistance
July 8, 2020 at 7:33 pm | Published in: Africa, Algeria, Article, Europe & Russia, France, Opinion
Funeral ceremony held on 5 July 2020 for the Algeria's independence fighters killed during the Algerian popular resistance against French colonialism in Algiers, Algeria [ALGERIAN PRESIDENCY/Anadolu Agency]
Ahmed Almudallal
Last week, the skulls of 24 freedom fighters were returned to Algeria by the French government. The 24 men were killed in 1849 during the French colonial occupation of Algeria (1830-1962) and their heads were taken to Paris as trophies. They were found in a museum in the French capital and President Emmanuel Macron agreed to their return to Algeria two years ago.
The arrival of the remains on Algerian soil was a moment of great pride for the people of the North African country. Although many massacres and atrocities were carried out throughout the French occupation, the Algerian resistance never wavered. The French thought that the Algerians would forget a little bit of France's dark history in Algeria, but they didn't, and the return of the remains was a new victory for that resistance.
The Algerian people believed unequivocally that they would be victorious eventually; that it was inevitable. However, that victory came about through effort and many sacrifices until the colonists left the country. Such victories don't fall from the sky; those involved have to keep going until the occupation is ended.
READ: Ex-Algerian police commander 'contacts Western intelligence agencies for asylum'
Resistance can take many forms: armed, civil and diplomatic. They are all linked and are equally important. In Algeria, even when negotiations were demanded by the occupiers, and agreed to by those under occupation, they took place as the bullets still flew.
The people of Algeria defeated the French and their occupation which lasted for 132 years, a period filled with pain and suffering. The French tortured the Algerians and the families of the martyrs by stealing their bodies so that they could not be buried locally and become a place of motivation for the resistance. Despite this despicable tactic, the resistance and revolution did not die with them. Instead, their blood fuelled the popular revolution, which persisted until freedom was achieved and French colonialism was defeated. It was then and only then that the Algerian people celebrated their victory.
The Palestinians rejoiced at the Algerian victory in 1962, and today the Palestinians rejoice with them again on the return of the martyrs' remains. And why not, for the Palestinian and Algerian experiences are very similar. Their land has also been colonised by foreigners, and those foreigners also steal the bodies of the resistance martyrs, torturing their families who cannot bury them and have closure.
READ: Tearing down the idols of colonialism: Why Tunisia, Africa must demand French apology
This is how the Zionists try to break the will of the Palestinian people in order to stop their resistance, but the spirit of resistance will continue until freedom is won and our refugees can return to their land. Then we will celebrate the greatest victory with the souls of the resistance martyrs, especially those still held in Israel's notorious "Cemeteries of Numbers". Israel thinks that the Palestinian people will forget and overlook this and its other crimes against humanity, but the blood of the martyrs runs through our people's veins and resistance will continue.
The brutal Zionist occupation authorities forget history and have not learned the lessons from the French occupation of Algeria and other occupations before it, all of which came to an end eventually. We are just as confident as our Algerian brothers and sisters that victory will come, sooner or later.
This article first appeared in Arabic in Arabic in the Palestinian Information Centre on 7 July 2020
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
AfricaAlgeriaArticleEurope & RussiaFranceOpinion


Faber Apartments are situated in Icmeler old village just a short walk from Icmeler centre. Faber Apartments are perfect for families and couples visiting Icmeler, Turkey with the large, spacious apartments. Faber Apartments provide spacious apartments, with separate bed room, large private bathroom and large balcony with land or pool views. Icmeler beach is 15 minute walk from Faber Apartments where you can relax on the sandy beach and paddle in the sea. Faber Apartments has a large swimming pool with separate childrens pool surrounded by sun terrace with plenty of sun loungers and parasols for all guests, and a pool bar providing shade and refreshments during your stay in Icmeler, Turkey.
Faber Apartments Location: Faber apartments is located in the old village, just a short walk from Icmeler centre or catch the local bus that passes every 10 minutes. Faber apartments is perfect for families and groups who want the quiet of Icmeler old village, but are in reach of entertainment.
Entertainment at Faber Apartments: Guests at Faber apartments can relax round the large swimming pool or in the jacuzzi with the pool bar providing refreshments. Faber apartments has an a la carte restaurant where you can dine by the pool in the evening. Walk towards Icmeler centre and there are many bars and restaurants providing food and entertainment to meet everybodies needs.
Holiday Tips for Faber Apartments: Explore Icmeler old village and visit some of the small cafes and experience Turkish hospitality. Visit Sidiks restaurant, a short walk from Faber apartments and enjoy traditional Turkish food cooked fresh while you wait.


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package org.citygml4j.core.model.generics;

import org.citygml4j.core.model.core.AbstractGenericAttribute;

public class IntAttribute extends AbstractGenericAttribute<Integer> {

    public IntAttribute() {
    }

    public IntAttribute(String name, Integer value) {
        super(name, value);
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


A strong, flexible, high-capacity cable widely used in audio, video and data applications. Commonly called "coax" (pronounced "co-axe"), the cable comprises a solid or stranded wire in the center, surrounded by insulation. The insulation is wrapped with a metallic foil or braided wire that serves as the ground line and interference shield. All of this is enclosed in a plastic cover, which may have a fire-safe Teflon coating.
Typically with impedances of 50 or 75 Ohms, cables have different outside diameters and maximum capacities for operating voltage. Designated with an RG (radio grade) prefix such as RG-6, cables are also rated for signal loss (attenuation in dBs per 100 feet). Following are common types; however, there are many more in use. See RCA connector and F connector.
Coax uses two wires. The inner wire is the primary conductor. The ground wire is an aluminum or copper sheath that surrounds the insulation of the primary conductor and also serves as a shield against external interference.


Please complete this form to refer a patient to a Maimonides specialist.
* Is patient the primary insurance holder?
Your information will take a moment to process. To avoid duplicate submission, please do not click on the back button or hit submit more than once.
Welcome to the Georgia Regents Bone & Joint online directory of physicians. Please enter your search criteria in the form below.


text:
/**
 * Created by daviss on 10/27/14.
 */

import org.apache.hadoop.io.IntWritable;
import org.apache.hadoop.io.Text;
import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.Mapper;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.StringTokenizer;

public class WordCountMapper extends Mapper<Object, Text, Text, IntWritable> {

    private final static IntWritable one = new IntWritable(1);
    private Text word = new Text();

    public void map(Object key, Text value, Context context
    ) throws IOException, InterruptedException {
        StringTokenizer itr = new StringTokenizer(value.toString());
        while (itr.hasMoreTokens()) {
            word.set(itr.nextToken());
            context.write(word, one);
        }
    }

}


text:
The Magnetic Fields show last Sunday was good, but part of why we were interested to begin with was that Andrew Bird was opening. He plays violin, and is currently touring without his band, Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. I've liked him since his Squirrel-Nut-Zipper-y days, though the stuff he's doing now is not very much like that at all. There's a nice little interview here.
So a solo violin show was kind of interesting; for the most part, he would begin with playing something which then got looped, and he'd start playing over it, and occasionally adding to the loop as he went, tossing in an effect pedal here and there.
We picked up a copy of his album Weather Systems, which I highly recommend. A lot of the live versions were different, though; the album version if "I" is missing the clever little lifting of the "We All Live in a Capital 'I'" song from Sesame Street. That song has always given me an overwhelming and satisfying feeling of loneliness and melancholy. It was a nice little unexpected surprise to hear it paraphrased in the middle of a different song.
Also,he works out of his barn, which, I can't lie, I think is enviable. My barn would also be in the middle of nowhere, but have wi-fi and nearby rail access to a major urban ganglion.
from Slate: a short paean to the mix tape in general within this spiel on celebrity iTunes playlists ('There's an obscure little ditty out there called "Hey Ya!" Avril Lavigne and the Flaming Lips and Alice Cooper and Mischa Barton, star of The O.C., think you ought to give it a listen.').
Musician, Heal Thyself
Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields did some music reviews in yesterday's New York Times. I wasn't going to blog anything about this, but I find myself continuing to think about it, so it's probably worth discussing. The reviews are fun, well-written, and a little mean. (It made me think Stephin Merritt would be an interesting replacement for the annoying culture guy, Jai, on Queer Eye). And who else would think that a great castrati revival would usher in a new golden age of music? Anyway, lest Terri call me a grump, I should preface this by saying that I like the Magnetic Fields a lot; I listened to nothing but 69 Love Songs from about November 2000 – July 2001. But I'm still going to trash Stephin Merrit's reviews, because I thoroughly enjoyed them. Not because I'm a grump. Well. Not just because I'm a grump.
First off, I have not heard the new Morrissey album, and I haven't decided if I care enough to. But the first criticism Merritt makes could be levelled at any Morrissey album: "the best lyricist in rock, Morrissey, still surrounds himself with dull musicians incapable of properly filling out his introspective kitchen-sink dramas." I'm not sure if Morrissey is or is not the best lyricist in rock (or if it matters), but I don't think that either of the quotes Merritt provides as examples would persuade me.
The thing is, he provides quotes as examples, and that's not necessarily where you'd find excellence in Morrissey's lyrics. Morrissey's infatuation with the ever-epigrammatic Oscar Wilde always seemed to me to be at odds with his own modus operandi. Morrissey claimed substance over style; Oscar Wilde's style was his substance. Only on a really good day does Morrissey ever seem to manage to compress a whole thought into a pithy one-liner, and he doesn't seem to have had a really good day since the Smiths broke up. (Of course, this is Morrissey: has he ever had a really good day?) What's more, I think any Morrissey lyric sounds really prosaic without music. "Spending warm summer days indoors, writing frightening verse to a bucktoothed girl in Luxembourg" Great lyric, not really musical on its own.
So, then, why does Merritt pan the music? "At this level of lyric artistry, these warmed-over arena rock backdrops are a waste." Tell it to Johnny Marr. A big part of the magic of the Smiths was the chemistry between the Morrissey lyrics and the masculine guitar rock. But the next bit, to me, is the skeleton key to the whole review. "One longs to lock him up for a year with, say, the pop orchestra the High Llamas" OK, so now we know Merritt's big problem with Morrissey: he's not Stephin Merritt. Because clever, pithy lyrics put on top of plinky, bubbly arrangements is sort of the formula for the Magnetic Fields.
And for my part, I think if anybody's music deserves better arrangements than they get on their recording, it would be Merritt's. Sometimes it's fine. Sometime's it's even good. But for the most part, I almost always wish someone else were actually playing the song. Or that a real producer had come in and said "you know, this is a little muddy". And this can't be news to anybody: one of Merritt's incarnations is as The Sixths, where each song on an album is sung by a different guest artist. But the vocals aren't the problem for me: I kind of like Merritt's droney super-low bass. It's the love of the ukelele, the reliance on the drum machine that I could do without. One longs to lock Stephin Merritt in a room with Bootsy Collins for a year.
Finally, I can't really fault him for this, because generally newspaper writers don't get to write their own headlines, but that headline is just godawful.
Anyway, I've gone on too long about Morrissey, and I don't have energy left to dig into the other reviews. I really do like the Magnetic Fields, and I'm looking forward to going to see them at Berklee on Sunday. Who knows what they're like live.
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Home / Features and News / Understanding Closed End Funds In ETFs
Understanding Closed End Funds In ETFs
Closed-end funds (CEFs) don't get a whole lot of love in the ETF world.
CEFs are portfolios of securities that pay out dividends and capital gains distributions, but, unlike ETFs, they can't create or redeem shares on a daily basis. Instead, CEFs come to market with a fixed number of shares. They trade intraday, which means CEFs often trade at premiums or discounts to their net asset value.
Some say part of ETF investors' lack of interest in CEFs is due to an education gap on what closed-end funds offer. A lot of CEFs today came to market in the 1980s, and new issuance is rare. A lot of investors don't know how they work, or even why they should care.
The other part of the issue is the ETF wrapper itself—the advent of the easy-to-trade ETF structure cast a long shadow on CEFs.
But some ETF issuers are looking to change that conversation. By highlighting the appeal of CEFs—namely, they're attractive income producers, and, often, good value plays—they are bringing to market ETFs that invest in CEFs, combining the popular ETF structure with the traits unique to the CEF wrapper.
Leah Jordan, vice president of Investor Relations at Saba Capital Management, chatted with us about this underfollowed space, offering the following tidbits:
(Saba is behind the Saba Closed-End Funds ETF (CEFS), launched in 2017. The fund has $26 million in assets under management and has an expense ratio of 2.6%.)
Ticker CEF ETFs AUM ($M) Exp Ratio
PCEF Invesco CEF Income Composite ETF 726 2.07%
CVY Invesco Zacks Multi-Asset Income ETF 281 0.88%
CEFL ETRACS Monthly Pay 2xLeveraged Closed-End Fund ETN 252 0.90%
YYY YieldShares High Income ETF 199 2.02%
XMPT VanEck Vectors CEF Municipal Income ETF 117 1.56%
FCEF First Trust CEF Income Opportunity ETF 45 2.78%
CEFS Saba Closed-End Funds ETF 26 2.62%
MCEF First Trust Municipal CEF Income Opportunity ETF 13 2.11%
GCE Claymore CEF Index-Linked GS Connect ETN 7 0.95%
People often say CEFs are different, esoteric, niche products.
However, that's not true. In reality, CEFs are hardly niche. Today roughly one in five tickers on the New York Stock Exchange are closed-end funds. They command almost $250 billion in market value. And they can invest in just about anything.
"We like to call ourselves here at Saba the jumbo shrimp—the biggest players in a small pond," Jordan said.
ETFs as a wrapper have displaced demand for CEFs.
This is partially true, according to Jordan. Issuance and demand have dropped because of the dawn of ETFs, which offered a low-cost way for investors to "get in and out."
ETFs and CEFs are pretty similar except for the creation/redemption mechanism. ETFs can create and redeem at any point, whereas CEFs have a fixed number of shares at launch.
CEFs are a value play, thanks in part to ETFs.
Sometimes, yes. Currently, absolutely. Because CEFs have a fixed number of shares, demand to buy or to sell can cause the fund to deviate from its net asset value. Right now, a lot of CEFs are trading at 10-15% discounts, offering investors access to stocks and bonds at a fraction of their price, according to Jordan. This level of a discount isn't "normal," but it can happen.
"Historically, these are products that have oscillated between a premium and a discount, and most of them were at their deepest discounts in '08. But in 2013, the taper tantrum brought the entire fixed-income CEF universe to a discount and they just never bounced back," Jordan said. "What's unique about this point is that there aren't a lot of things at a discount right now; valuations are very high."
That makes the opportunity in CEFs compelling, she says. And yet demand is sluggish. One of the reasons CEFs are struggling to go back to a premium is because of ETFs themselves. As a wrapper, investors can simply get similar exposure in an easy-to-trade ETF instead.
CEFs are great for income, but retail may be missing out.
No doubt about it. CEFs typically offer attractive yields because they pass through capital gains and income as cash dividends to investors, Jordan says. And when they are at discounts, yields are even more sustainable, she notes, particularly in the fixed-income space, as lower bond prices mean higher yields. CEFs are great income producers.
"CEFs are yielding 8.5%, 9%. You'd think they'd be flying off the shelves," Jordan said. "But we're in a world where people are not behaving rationally. The universe is heavily retail-dominated, and when retail wants out of something, selling drops price, which begets more selling, and it's kind of this snowball effect. That's where we are today."
"We're actually at some of the widest discounts in history, and at a time when assets are at an all-time high," she added. "It's taking CEFs a long time to mean-revert."
A CEF ETF is a bet on an active manager that's betting on other active managers.
CEFs are actively managed. ETFs investing in CEFs often are too. As an investor, you are trusting that the ETF's portfolio manager is picking the right CEF managers for the portfolio. The whole process is about trust and confidence in active management, no doubt.
But there's a burgeoning trend among managers in this space that is investor friendly. It's so-called activism, where managers will step in if the discount persists or gets too wide, and take action to narrow it whether it's through a tender or liquidating NAV, according to Jordan.
"Activism has become very prominent in this space, and that's something that didn't exist really before," she said. "BlackRock doesn't like its name trading at a discount. Pimco hates its name trading at a discount so much that it makes special distributions to inflate their yield, and a lot of their CEFs trade at a premium, so people see the 13% sticker yields and there's a lot of appetite for that. This type of shareholder-friendly manager helps provide a floor to the discount."
The ETF wrapper works well for CEFs, but it's expensive.
ETFs are great wrappers for CEFs, Jordan says, because ETFs are predominantly a retail-oriented product, and that was "originally the idea of a closed-end fund as well." Today more than 75% of CEFs are held by retail investors.
The ETF wrapper also makes the CEF universe more accessible. Today investors can own a number of CEFs in one transparent wrapper.
But active management often translates into higher fees, and in the CEF space, that's totally true. It's a diverse universe, but it's not rare to see CEFs charging a 3-4% expense ratio—at those prices, it can be really difficult to beat an index, especially on the equity side.
The bulk of the price tag comes from the cost of the underlying closed-end funds that go into the portfolio. Consider Saba's CEFS, for instance. The ETF costs 2.6%, and about 1.5% is currently the acquired funds fee. That fee is also not constant, as portfolio holdings change, so these ETFs' expense ratios are moving targets.
Contact Cinthia Murphy at [email protected]
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