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Figure 1. Facial Acne Scarring in a Young Woman
A, Baseline appearance. B, Improvement in appearance and texture of scarring on the cheeks 3 months after 6 full-face treatments.
Figure 2. Acne Scarring, Nevus of Ota, and Melasma in a Young Woman
A, Baseline appearance. B, Improvement in appearance and texture of scarring, Nevus of Ota, and melasma 3 months after 6 full-face treatments.
Figure 3. Histologic Findings in Elastic Fibers
A, Baseline specimen. B, Increase in density and elongation of elastic fibers 3 months after 6 treatments. Elastic–van Gieson stain; original magnification ×400.
Figure 4. Histologic Findings in Dermal Collagen Deposition
A, Baseline specimen. B, Increase in dermal collagen deposition 3 months after 6 treatments. Collagen III stain; original magnification ×100.
Figure 5. Histologic Findings in Dermal Mucin Deposition
A, Baseline specimen. B, Increase in dermal mucin deposition 3 months after 6 treatments. Colloidal iron stain; original magnification ×100.
Supplement.
eFigure. Depiction of Evenly Spaced High-Energy Pulses With Surrounding Lower Level Energy of the Diffractive Lens Array
Fried RG, Wechsler A. Psychological problems in the acne patient. Dermatol Ther. 2006;19(4):237-240.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
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Hasegawa T, Matsukura T, Mizuno Y, Suga Y, Ogawa H, Ikeda S. Clinical trial of a laser device called fractional photothermolysis system for acne scars. J Dermatol. 2006;33(9):623-627.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Gonzalez MJ, Sturgill WH, Ross EV, Uebelhoer NS. Treatment of acne scars using the plasma skin regeneration (PSR) system. Lasers Surg Med. 2008;40(2):124-127.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Munavalli GS, Smith S, Maslowski JM, Weiss RA. Successful treatment of depressed, distensible acne scars using autologous fibroblasts: a multi-site, prospective, double blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Dermatol Surg. 2013;39(8):1226-1236.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Fabbrocini G, Fardella N, Monfrecola A, Proietti I, Innocenzi D. Acne scarring treatment using skin needling. Clin Exp Dermatol. 2009;34(8):874-879.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Gawdat HI, Hegazy RA, Fawzy MM, Fathy M. Autologous platelet rich plasma: topical versus intradermal after fractional ablative carbon dioxide laser treatment of atrophic acne scars. Dermatol Surg. 2014;40(2):152-161.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Cho SI, Chung BY, Choi MG, et al. Evaluation of the clinical efficacy of fractional radiofrequency microneedle treatment in acne scars and large facial pores. Dermatol Surg. 2012;38(7, pt 1):1017-1024.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Ross V, Naseef G, Lin G, et al. Comparison of responses of tattoos to picosecond and nanosecond Q-switched neodymium:YAG lasers. Arch Dermatol. 1998;134(2):167-171.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Brauer JA, Reddy KK, Anolik R, et al. Successful and rapid treatment of blue and green tattoo pigment with a novel picosecond laser. Arch Dermatol. 2012;148(7):820-823.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Saedi N, Metelitsa A, Petrell K, Arndt KA, Dover JS. Treatment of tattoos with a picosecond alexandrite laser: a prospective trial. Arch Dermatol. 2012;148(12):1360-1363.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Woo SH, Park JH, Kye YC. Resurfacing of different types of facial acne scar with short-pulsed, variable-pulsed, and dual-mode Er:YAG laser. Dermatol Surg. 2004;30(4, pt 1):488-493.PubMedGoogle Scholar
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Sardana K, Manjhi M, Garg VK, Sagar V. Which type of atrophic acne scar (ice-pick, boxcar, or rolling) responds to nonablative fractional laser therapy? Dermatol Surg. 2014;40(3):288-300.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
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Dreno B, Khammari A, Orain N, et al. ECCA grading scale: an original validated acne scar grading scale for clinical practice in dermatology. Dermatology. 2007;214(1):46-51.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
Goodman GJ, Baron JA. Postacne scarring: a quantitative global scarring grading system. J Cosmet Dermatol. 2006;5(1):48-52.PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
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Acne Dermatology Facial Plastic Surgery
Brauer JA, Kazlouskaya V, Alabdulrazzaq H, et al. Use of a Picosecond Pulse Duration Laser With Specialized Optic for Treatment of Facial Acne Scarring. JAMA Dermatol. 2015;151(3):278–284. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2014.3045
Use of a Picosecond Pulse Duration Laser With Specialized Optic for Treatment of Facial Acne Scarring
Jeremy A. Brauer, MD1,2; Viktoryia Kazlouskaya, MD, PhD3; Hamad Alabdulrazzaq, MBBCh1; et al Yoon Soo Bae, MD1; Leonard J. Bernstein, MD1,4; Robert Anolik, MD1,2,4; Patricia A. Heller, MD3; Roy G. Geronemus, MD1,2
1Laser & Skin Surgery Center of New York, New York, New York
2Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology, NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, New York
3Ackerman Academy Dermatopathology, New York, New York
4Department of Dermatology, Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York, New York
Importance Fractional laser technology is routinely used in the treatment of acne scarring, with thermal injury resulting in collagen synthesis and remodeling. Use of a picosecond pulse duration with a diffractive lens array may be a new technologic advancement in the treatment of acne scarring.
Objective To investigate the safety and efficacy of a 755-nm alexandrite picosecond pulse duration laser with diffractive lens array for the treatment of facial acne scarring.
Design, Setting, and Participants This single-center, prospective study performed in a private practice with a dedicated research department included patients with clinically diagnosed scarring secondary to inflammatory or cystic acne.
Interventions Patients received 6 treatments with a 755-nm picosecond laser with a spot size of 6 mm, fluence of 0.71 J/cm2, repetition rate of 5 Hz, and pulse width of 750 picoseconds in combination with a diffractive lens array, allowing for greater surface area and pattern density per pulse.
Main Outcomes and Measures The pain and satisfaction scores for overall appearance and texture were recorded. Masked assessment of clinical photographs and analysis of 3-dimensional volumetric data were performed. Biopsy specimens were obtained for independent histologic evaluation by 2 investigators at baseline and at 3 months after last treatment.
Results Fifteen women and 5 men (mean age, 44 years; age range, 27-61 years) with Fitzpatrick skin types I through V and facial acne scarring were enrolled. The mean pain score was 2.83 of 10. Patients were satisfied to extremely satisfied with improvement in appearance and texture at their final treatment and follow-up visits. The masked assessment scores of 17 patients were 1.5 of 3 and 1.4 of 3 at 1 and 3 months, respectively (a score of 0 indicates 0%-25% improvement and a score of 3 indicates >75% improvement). A 3-dimensional analysis revealed a mean 24.3% improvement in scar volume, maintained at 1 (24.0%) and 3 (27.2%) months after treatment. Histologic analysis revealed elongation and increased density of elastic fibers, with an increase in dermal collagen and mucin.
Conclusions and Relevance Treatment of facial acne scars with a diffractive lens array and 755-nm picosecond laser produced improvement in appearance and texture at 3 months after the last treatment, with objective findings similar to those published for a series of fractional ablative laser treatments. Histologic findings suggest that improvement in scarring from this treatment goes beyond remodeling of collagen.
Acne and subsequent scarring affect patients of all ages and ethnicities and can cause severe psychological effects.1 Acne scars have been categorized as atrophic (icepick, boxcar, or rolling), hypertrophic, and keloid scars.2 Historically, acne scarring has been treated by chemical peeling for superficial scars, dermabrasion for deeper scars, subcision to release fibrous tethering below the acne scar (with or without concurrent use of fillers), and punch excisions and elevations to remove deeper scars.3 More recent treatments include the use of a plasma skin regeneration system, autologous fibroblasts, platelet-rich plasma, and needling.3-8 Lasers, intense pulsed light, and other energy devices are also regularly used in the treatment of scarring and fractional resurfacing, whether with ablative or nonablative devices, and have become the current standard of care.3,4 These resurfacing procedures often require anesthesia, sometimes with prolonged healing and greater risk of adverse events, and restrictions on appropriate patient populations.
Many of these modalities are used alone or in combination, each with their own advantages, disadvantages, and contraindications. Multiple retrospective and prospective studies have contributed to our understanding of these devices and approaches to treating acne scars. However, there is room to improve the efficacy and recovery of treating the multiple types of acne scars we encounter, for patients with all skin types, in a safe manner.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the use of a 755-nm picosecond alexandrite laser (Cynosure) for the treatment of unwanted tattoos. The evolution from traditional nanosecond to picosecond lasers has been observed to produce a photomechanical effect that causes fragmentation of tattoo ink or pigment.9 This technology can be used to deliver lower fluences of energy, theoretically leading to fewer adverse effects, to affect tattoo pigment particles and melanosomes because these chromophores have a thermal relaxation time of less than 10 nanoseconds.9
Furthermore, an innovative optical attachment for the picosecond laser, a diffractive lens array, has been developed that gauges distribution of energy to the treatment area. This specialized optic affects more surface area, has a greater pattern density per pulse, and may improve the appearance of acne scars. We describe the use of a picosecond 755-nm laser with a diffractive lens array in the treatment of facial acne scarring.
Men and women with Fitzpatrick skin types I through V and facial acne scarring were enrolled. The study received institutional review board approval from the New England Institutional Review Board, and all patients provided written informed consent. Patients had to be otherwise healthy without a history of skin cancer (including melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer), keloidal scarring, localized or active infection, immunodeficiency disorders, and light hypersensitivity or taking medications with known phototoxic effects. In addition, they could not have been taking isotretinoin for a period of 12 months before treatment. Pregnant or breastfeeding women were also excluded. Demographic data were obtained from all enrolled patients, and study investigators assigned skin type (Fitzpatrick skin types I-VI) and qualified the type of acne scarring within the treatment areas.
Facial photography and 3-dimensional imaging (PRIMOS imaging system; Canfield Scientific Inc) to measure scar volume were performed, and 6 treatments with a 755-nm alexandrite picosecond pulse duration laser with a diffractive lens array were performed every 4 to 8 weeks. Treatment intervals were determined based on the Fitzpatrick skin types of the patients. All areas of scarring were treated, and patients had the option to treat the remainder of the face as well. Selected spot size, fluence, frequency, and pulse duration were standardized and used for all patients (spot size, 6 mm; fluence, 0.71 J/cm2; repetition rate, 5 Hz; and pulse width, 750 picoseconds). A diffractive lens array was applied to the handpiece to allow for delivery of varying levels of heat at this fixed spot size and fluence. Specifically, the array is made up of approximately 120 closely packed diffractive lenses that redistribute energy into evenly spaced high-energy pulses, affecting approximately 5% to 10% of the total treatment spot. These high-energy pulses are 20 times the energy of the lower-level heating that surrounds these defined areas (eFigure in the Supplement). Therefore, the number of pulses or passes was the only variable treatment parameter, dependent on skin type and size of treatment area. After treatment, patients were advised to avoid sun exposure and to use a broad-spectrum sunscreen daily on the treated areas. Topical anesthesia with lidocaine, 2.5%, and prilocaine cream, 2.5%, and antiviral prophylaxis with acyclovir were offered to all patients. Anesthesia was applied 1 hour before treatment, and use of acyclovir was continued for 4 days after treatment.
Two patients agreed to and signed written informed consent forms for skin biopsies to be performed in areas of treatment before initiation of and at 3 months after treatment. Administration of local anesthesia was achieved with injection of lidocaine, 2%, with epinephrine, and 2-mm punch biopsies were performed, with 6-0 nylon sutures (Ethicon Inc) used for closure. These patients returned for an additional office visit 7 days later. Specimens were submitted in Michel medium, frozen at −20°C, and washed with phosphate-buffered saline. Specimens were stained with elastic–van Gieson stain (Dako), colloidal iron (Poly Scientific R&D Corp), and collagen I and III antibodies (Sigma-Aldrich Co LLC; dilution 1:200). Immunohistochemical analysis was performed on commercially available, positively charged slides (Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc) and processed on a Benchmark XT Stainer (Ventana Medical Systems Inc). Appropriate controls were studied. Character of elastic fiber and changes in density, distribution of mucopolysaccharide deposition, and collagen were independently evaluated by 2 investigators (V.K. and P.A.H.) using standard microscopic evaluation of tissue at baseline and 3 months after treatment.
Patients were asked to provide a subjective score for pain experienced during each treatment session ranging from 0 (no pain) to 10. Before their final treatment visit and at 1 and 3 months after the sixth treatment visit, patients were asked to rate their satisfaction with improvement in overall appearance and texture on a 4-point scale (0 indicating not satisfied; 1, dissatisfied; 2, satisfied; and 3, extremely satisfied).
Three independent masked physician evaluators used a 4-point scale (0 indicating 0%-25%; 1, 26%-50%; 3, 51%-75%; and 4, 76%-100%) to assess improvement at 1 and 3 months after 6 treatment sessions. Improvement in volume, texture, and overall appearance of the treatment areas was assessed with before-and-after photographs. These independent evaluators were masked to the chronologic order of the photographs and were not involved with patient enrollment, device treatments, and study visits.
Twenty patients, 15 women and 5 men, were enrolled, and 17 completed all 6 treatments and presented for 1- and 3-month follow-up visits. Patient ages ranged from 27 to 61 years, with a mean age of 44 years. Individuals with Fitzpatrick skin types I through V were enrolled, with 7 patients (41%) categorized as having Fitzpatrick skin type II, 6 patients (35%) as having type III, 3 patients (18%) as having type IV, and 1 patient (6%) as having type I. On initial physical examination, of the 17 patients, most had rolling-type acne scars (16 [94%]), 4 (24%) had boxcar scars, and 3 (18%) had icepick lesions.
Only 1 of the 17 patients requested application of topical anesthesia before treatment. Treatments were performed every 4 to 8 weeks, with the total number of pulses ranging from 2305 to 4017 (mean, 3073 pulses). The mean pain score was 2.83 of 10 (range, 1-7). The mean pain scores increased with each treatment session from 2.66 at the first session to 3.25 after the sixth session, likely reflecting an increased mean number of pulses. Patients were satisfied to very satisfied with overall appearance and texture at the final treatment session and at 1 and 3 months, with scores on a range of 0 to 3 of 2.33, 2.45, and 2.2 for overall appearance and 2.33, 2.36, and 2.2 for texture. By patient report, immediately after treatment, only transient erythema and edema were experienced, which resolved within hours to at most 2 days.
Masked assessment of 2-dimensional photography of 17 patients was performed, with mean scores of 1.5 and 1.4 at 1 and 3 months, respectively (score range of 0 indicating 0%-25% improvement to 3 indicating >75% improvement). Analysis of 3-dimensional data of 10 of 17 patients yielded a mean 24.3% improvement in scar volume at the sixth treatment session. This benefit was maintained at 1 (24%) and 3 (27%) months after treatment (Figure 1 and Figure 2).
Although not initially defined as a study end point, one consistent and unanticipated finding was significant subjective clinical improvement in texture and pigmentation of uninvolved skin. In particular, one patient with a Nevus of Ota and melasma that opted for full-face treatment had pronounced clearing of pigmentation not only in the areas of scarring but also in areas of the Nevus of Ota and melasma (Figure 2).
Evaluation of histologic specimens at 3-month follow-up revealed notable changes from baseline. Specifically, within the dermis there was an elongation and increased density of elastic fibers, an increase in collagen III, and an increase in deposition of mucin throughout all the layers of the dermis (Figures 3, 4, and 5). For collagen I staining, no visible changes between baseline and follow-up were noted because it stained the dermis in its entirety in all specimens.
This is the first study, to our knowledge, to report the efficacy of the 755-picosecond laser and diffractive lens array technology in the management of facial acne scarring. Treatments were performed safely in individuals with skin types I through IV, requiring minimal preparation and having little downtime. Not only was the treatment well tolerated by patients, with a mean pain score of 2.8 of 10, it also had a favorable safety profile as indicated by a lack of observed adverse effects. Clinical efficacy was maintained at 3 months after treatment using subjective and objective measurements, and histologic analysis revealed increases in collagen and mucin with an increase in density of elastic fibers.
The 755-picosecond laser is highly effective in the rapid clearance of tattoos, especially those with green and blue pigment.10,11 For our study, a specialized diffractive lens array was used to alter the distribution of energy delivered to the skin. Standard handpieces deliver the energy in a uniform fashion. In contrast, this particular optic, initially developed to safely treat individuals of darker skin types, delivers variable levels of heat energy at a fixed spot size of 6 mm and energy density of 0.71 J/cm2, with 70% delivered as high-energy pulses that are 500 µm apart, and the surrounding areas receive low-level heat energy. By using the diffractive lens array, approximately 5% to 10% of the cutaneous surface area receives the higher fluence, whereas the remaining surface is exposed to a background of low-level heat. Although it was previously suggested that a longer pulse duration would result in the desired thermal effect and clinical outcome,12 we found good efficacy with collagen stimulation and remodeling with a shorter pulse duration.
In this prospective study, treatments were performed only on atrophic facial acne scars, in particular the rolling subtype, which result from tethering or anchoring of the dermis to the subcutaneous layer.2 Because of the nature of these scars, it has typically been recommended that mechanical techniques, such as subcision, be performed to obtain good clinical outcomes. More recently, fillers, such as polymethylmethacrylate microspheres in collagen, have shown promise.13 Regarding recent advances in the use of lasers, Sardana et al14 found a 43% improvement of depth to width ratio using a 1540-nm fractional nonablative laser; for their study, greater than 51% improvement was considered meaningful. Other options include the use of a microsecond Nd:YAG laser and ablative fractional devices.15 Our findings indicate that the picosecond laser can be added as another safe treatment option.
Although several different grading systems have been proposed16-18 to standardize acne scar classification and evaluation, there is no accepted criterion standard scale. Similarly, there is no widely accepted device for measuring acne scar improvement in a reproducible and objective fashion. The lack of a standardized acne scar measurement scale has led to great variability in evaluation and interpretation of data in different studies. To demonstrate efficacy, we used masked clinical assessments, patient improvement evaluations, objective measurements with the PRIMOS imaging system, and histologic analyses.
Our masked assessments of 2-dimensional photographs performed by 3 dermatologists (Y.S.B., L.J.B., and R.A.) found a 25% to 50% global improvement at the 1-month follow-up, which was maintained at the 3-month visit. To supplement the improvement scales, objective measurements of improvement were used, including the PRIMOS imaging system and histologic assessment. The PRIMOS imaging system obtains in vivo 3-dimensional images of the skin's microtopography,19 allowing for assessment of scar depth and volume and for measurement of improvement over time. Our results indicate a mean improvement in scar volume of 24.3% after treatment completion. Improvement was maintained at the 1- and 3-month follow-ups, with a mean of 24.0% and 27.2%, respectively. One limitation, however, was the potential for lack of reproducibility with possible variation in angle or pressure, as well as misalignment of before-and-after images.
These objective findings correlated well with the clinical improvement scales and compare favorably with data in the existing literature. A mean improvement of 38.0% in scar volume was achieved after 3 treatments with an ablative fractional device, performed at 1- to 4-month intervals, in one study20 that examined atrophic postoperative and traumatic scarring. Compared with treatments performed in this study, ablative fractional resurfacing procedures require far more preparatory effort, including nerve blocks and a course of oral corticosteroids, with a prolonged period of recovery.
Biopsy specimens taken from 2 patients at baseline and at the 3-month follow-up revealed increased density and elongation of the elastin fibers in the dermis. Collagen III and mucin deposition were also increased. The increase in collagen III reflects the effects of the treatment in dermal wound healing and neocollagenesis.21 Significant increases in dermal elastin fibers have also been found using a 1540-nm fractional laser,22 suggesting that elastogenesis and possibly other mechanisms play a role in the improvements seen. Interaction of picosecond duration laser radiation with tissue involves photothermal and photomechanical processes; however, given the low fluence used in this study, it is more likely that the efficacy arises in large part from the latter.
We believe increasing the number of pulses used in each treatment session could have resulted in a better clinical outcome. Initial treatments were conservative to assess for tolerability and adverse reactions. In general, as the safety profile declared itself and patients demonstrated tolerance, the mean number of pulses when full-face treatments were performed was generally increased.
Even with this increase in number of pulses, patients were satisfied to very satisfied and tolerated the treatments well. Little preparation was required, with the face cleansed to remove any makeup or excess sebum before initiating treatment. All but one of the patients did not require any topical anesthesia, and no analgesia cooling technologies were used during the treatment sessions. The mean pain score was mild, gradually increasing from 2.66 in the first treatment to 3.25 after the sixth treatment. This slight increase likely correlated with the increase in number of pulses per session during the study period. Downtime was minimal, with patients experiencing transient facial erythema and mild edema, and no exfoliation, vesiculation, crusting, scarring, hypopigmentation, or postinflammatory pigment alteration noted. Most important, unlike existing laser resurfacing modalities, this favorable safety profile was reproducible across all skin types treated, including Fitzpatrick skin types I through V.
Our study was limited by a follow-up period of only 3 months, relatively small sample size, and lack of a control (split-face design) or comparative group. In addition, although photographs were not evaluated in chronologic order, because the 755-nm wavelength is absorbed by pigment, evaluators may be able to determine order by improvement in facial dyspigmentation. Because this was a pilot study, there was a period of acquisition as treatment parameters were established, specifically the treatment intervals and number of pulses, which were maintained on the conservative side during the earlier sessions. Because of the difficulty of recruiting patients for facial skin biopsies, the histologic analysis was limited to 2 patients. Findings were demonstrated and consistent in both samples, and the use of immunostaining does not allow for quantifying changes or reveal smaller changes, which likely explains why no changes were noted in collagen I staining. Finally, with the lack of a proper streamlined scale to assess acne scar improvement, 3-dimensional imaging was used to add objective support to the clinical evaluations; however, difficulty remains in obtaining precise measurements.
In summary, this is the first study, to our knowledge, that demonstrates favorable clinical outcomes in acne scar management with the 755-picosecond laser and diffractive lens array. Observed improvement in pigmentation and texture of the surrounding skin suggests that there may be benefits for indications beyond scarring. Additional studies with larger sample sizes, specific scar subtype stratification, and histologic analyses are needed.
Accepted for Publication: August 12, 2014.
Corresponding Author: Jeremy A. Brauer, MD, Laser & Skin Surgery Center of New York, 317 E 34th St, New York, NY 10016 (jbrauer@laserskinsurgery.com).
Published Online: November 19, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2014.3045.
Author Contributions: Drs Brauer and Geronemus had full access to all the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
Study concept and design: Brauer, Heller, Bae, Anolik, Geronemus.
Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: All authors.
Drafting of the manuscript: Brauer, Kazlouskaya, Alabdulrazzaq, Bae, Heller, Geronemus.
Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Brauer, Bae, Bernstein, Anolik, Heller.
Statistical analysis: Brauer, Kazlouskaya, Alabdulrazzaq.
Obtained funding: Geronemus.
Administrative, technical, or material support: Brauer, Bae, Bernstein, Anolik, Heller, Geronemus.
Study supervision: Geronemus.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Brauer reported receiving honoraria from Cynosure/Palomar Medical Technologies Inc and performing consultancy work for Miramar. Dr Geronemus reported receiving honoraria from Cynosure/Palomar Medical Technologies Inc, owning stocks or having stock options with Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc and OnLight Sciences, and serving on the medical advisory board of Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc, Syneron Inc and Candela Corporation, and Cynosure/Palomar Medical Technologies Inc. No other disclosures were reported.
Funding/Support: This study was supported in part by Cynosure.
Role of the Sponsor: Cynosure had a role in the design of the study but not the conduct, collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of data. They approved the manuscript but did not prepare or decide to submit.
Additional Contributions: We are indebted to the Research Department at the Laser & Skin Surgery Center of New York.


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These Hover Fly (Syrphidae to taxonomists) larvae are avid aphid predators.
During the summer of 2014, some of us spent quite a bit of time nosing around a few Hudson Valley apple orchards. Our central, if general, question was 'how do orchard production and surrounding nature interact?'. Or, in other words, 'how can apple production help wild organisms?' and 'how can wild organisms help apple production?'. Below are some of our findings.
This link leads you to Jan 2015 report on that project. It doesn't quite contain all the data, but it summarizes our general results.
Early Summary
The summary below was written only part way through the 2014 field season. It is thus much less complete than the above report. However, it has more pictures and might, in some ways, be a more friendly intro., so I left it up.
During 2014, we're looking at some of the ecological interactions between orchards and their surroundings: What habitat do adjacent lands provide for pests and beneficials? What role might such lands play in nature conservation? To look at these questions, we're working with seven different orchards around the Hudson Valley: Threshold and Thompson-Finch in Columbia County, Breezy Hill and Fishkill in Dutchess County, Westwind and Stone Ridge in Ulster County, and Saratoga Apple in Saratoga County. This is only a Pilot Project meant to better understand the best techniques to apply during a full-scale study. Our sample size is small and our techniques far from perfected, but we did want to summarize some of our early observations. Thanks to these growers and to an array of apple orchard scientists who have been willing to share their time and expertise.
In each orchard we're looking at the abundance of pests and beneficials along a line of sampling points from adjacent 'wilds' into the orchard itself. This generalized diagram might help you 'get the picture':
A simplified diagram of where we're sampling in the orchards.
At each of our four sampling points in each orchard, we are using various techniques to assess the abundance of relevant insects (and other invertebrates like spiders and mites) and their effects (such as pollination and damage to leaves and fruits). We are also using a 18-foot long net trap to try to catch insects at the edge of the orchard. If the 'wilds' are playing a role in the dynamics of orchard insects, then we should be able to intercept their movements as they enter or leave the orchard, and we might predict that they and their effects are most common near the edges.
The results presented here are preliminary, I've attempted no colorful graphs or statistical analyses yet, just some basic data to let anybody who's really interested start to get an idea of what we're seeing.
So, one of the first things we did back in late April and early May was some basic leaf and flower inspections. We inspected 10 leaf and flower bud clusters at each sampling tree in each orchard. We counted how many leaves showed some sort of damage and also tallied the aphids and the Hover Fly eggs that we saw (Hover Fly eggs hatch into Hover Fly maggots and Hover Fly maggots enjoy eating aphids).
Results of tree inspections in late April and early May, averaged across orchards. A total of 1696 leaves were inspected; "Hover Flies" refers to their eggs.
The highest proportion of leaves with damage was found on the edge trees, although aphid density was highest at 75'. Hover Fly egg density was also greatest at 75' - not surprising since Hover Fly mothers seem to be able to seek out aphid colonies for their eggs. The best way to study this would be to have leaves with equal numbers of aphids in containers at each distance into the orchard - something for next year or my next life.
A time bomb of sorts - a Hover Fly egg resting amongst aphids.
Pretty soon bloom came along and we spent a couple of weeks in mid-May observing bees. Again, we looked at bees at three distances into the orchards. Although it would be ideal to just look at bees on apple blossoms, some of our trees didn't flower very much and some of our surveys during peak bloom were dampened by the weather. Thus, duirng a second trip to each orchard, we also looked at bees on wild flowers found adjacent to our study trees. For our purposes here, we have lumped all these data. At each collection of flowers, we watched bees for 10 minutes, tallying how many came and whether they were Honey Bees or one of our other wild, mostly native bees.
Bees observed visiting flowers during mid-May.
A couple of points are interesting here. First of all, we saw more native or wild bees than Honey Bees, although this is not a direct index of pollination activity, because many native bees tend to be more hectic than Honey Bees who, in turn, tended to spend more time on each flower. On the other hand, some native bees, because of morphology or behavior, cause more pollination than Honey Bees. It is clear however that native bees are an important component of apple orchard pollination. The data also suggest that those bees are entering the orchards from the edges and that their density declines the deeper one gets into the orchard; Honey Bees, on the other hand, showed no such pattern.
An Andrena bee, one of our native pollinators, resting on an apple petal in mid May.
This is a good point for introducing data from our net trap.
Some of the insect groups captured in the Malaise trap set up along the orchard edge. This trap let us determine which direction the given insect was traveling in. These are total captures for 3-hour trapping sessions at six orchards (we got rained out at one orchard).
These data were collected after orchard bloom and so cannot be directly related to our pollination observations, but it's clear that more insects appeared to be entering the orchards during this time period than leaving it and also that flow across the edge in any direction includes ample wasps, bees and flies. Many species of wasps and flies are considered beneficial in orchards because they are pest parasites. A few fly species are also considered pests, and we're honing our identification skills so that we can try to tell these apart. European Apple Sawfly, a pest in the wasp group, was not counted with the wasps; and few were observed.
Insects captured flying out of a June orchard.
Insects captured flying into a June orchard from the surrounding uncultivated area. Note the abundance of beneficials - bees and wasps.
After flowering, our next set of inspections, in mid-June, focused on assessing damage to fruit and leaves. We did this by inspecting leaf shoots and fruit clusters at our study trees.
The damage and aphid abundance observed on our study trees in both conventional and organic orchards.
Although we did see and record pests and beneficials other than aphids, aphids were the most commonly observed and hence the only ones I've included in this first summary. I have separated conventional (2 of our orchards) and organic sites because, as others have suggested, edge may be playing a different role under these two forms of management. In conventional orchards, more of the in-orchard pests and beneficials are eliminated by pesticides and so most of these must regularly re-colonize an orchard from its edges. In organic orchards, on the other hand, more pests and beneficials are resident in the orchards and so 'edge effects' may be less. This is suggested in these data where, for the conventional orchards, leaf damage and aphid density are highest at the edge, whereas no such pattern is evident in the organic orchard. Thus, one might say, managing edge damage is more of an issue for conventional growers than organic ones. As one might expect, leaf damage and aphid densities were somewhat higher in the organic orchards.
The larva of a Lady Beetle consumes an aphid.
Finally, we have also completed one round of fruit scouting. This seems to be a banner year for Plum Curculio, an apple-eating weevil. Theirs was by far the most common form of damage we observed during our mid-June surveys and hence the only fruit pest included in this first analysis. Again, we split out the conventional and organic orchards.
Plum Curculio damage observed on fruit clusters during mid-June.
The effects of pesticide application are evident when comparing the total Plum Curculio damage between conventional and organic orchards. What is less clear is the role of edge in providing refuge to this beetle. Edge has long been considered an over-winter refuge for this pest although, as remarked above, that might be less true in organic orchards. It may well be that the size of our sample and/or the fact we do not enter the orchards very deeply is masking the role of edge in supporting Plum Curculios. Yet another topic to follow-up on...
That is all we have for now; the study continues and I hope to be able to update these results in a month or two.
A Plum Curculio resting on a young apple beside the scars from its work.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: How to convey object hierarchy when object is converted to json for updates? I have some classes being serialized via frugal (this is an open source extension of Thrift). The primary reason this is relevant is that the serialization process is out of my control and needs to support multiple languages, so I cannot easily modify it.
Imagine my classes look like:
class response_component:
    value = 'string value'
    another_value = 4
    another_string = 'another string'

class the_response:
    contained = response_component

This gets serialized into json similar to:
{"response": {"the_response": {"value": "string value", "another_value": 4, "another_string": "another string"}}}

This can be interpreted and recreated by the underlying messaging framework into classes on the recipient end. What I am interested in doing is having middleware make modifications to underlying attributes.
For example, I may wish to change the "another_string" value in the response example here to "hello."
The difficulty I have is understanding how to denote this reference in such a way that is meaningful within the json context.
I can do something which feels hokey like articulating the absolute path through the classes, such as RESPONSE.contained.another_string and then in the deserialization process unpacking this (or, in python, doing a series of getattr until I find the last value. This might look like, in Python:
r = the_response()
print(r.contained.another_string)
path = 'the_response.contained.another_string'

v = None
paths = path.split('.')
for p in paths[1:-1]:
    if not v: v = r
    print(p)
    v = getattr(v, p)

setattr(v, paths[-1], 'hello')

print(r.contained.another_string)

communicated via json such as:
{"modified_value": {"key": "the_response.contained.another_string", "val": "hello"}}

However, I really dislike the path approach and am hoping for a different and better way to convey where to modify the values.

A: If you have a JSON document and want to modify specific keys, there's no good way around specifying absolute paths. This changes when you can deserialize into classes under your control, because you can apply the composite/visitor pattern.
In the pure-JSON case where entries are not self-describing beyond their key names, you only have the key names available to navigate the data structure. Therefore, no solution but using absolute paths is possible.
There is a RFC 6901 "JSON Pointers" which provides a syntax for these paths, with Python implementations available. This is approximately XPath-ish, but can only address a single element – there are no wildcards. This makes JSON Pointers unsuitable e.g. when you want to change every entry in an array. It may therefore be sensible to implement your own, more flexible syntax, as you sketched out in your question.
With custom classes, you can add behaviour to these classes that simplifies the search of entries to be changed significantly. This requires two changes:

*

*All of these classes implement the Visitor Pattern so that an externally defined operation can be applied to the instance, but only to a specific type.

*Each class knows which of its members are also visitable, and distributes the operation to its children – an instance of the Composite Pattern.

If you dislike patterns, all of this can be also implemented on a good-enough basis using reflection features.
This requires your data model to have a clear concept of types so that changes can be restricted to the correct types.
The Visitor/Composite solution would look something like this:
class response_component:
  ...
  def accept_visitor(self, visitor):
    visitor.visit_response_component(self)

class the_response:
   ...
   def accept_visitor(self, visitor):
     visitor.visit_the_response(self)
     # distribute the operation to relevant childs
     self.contained.accept_visitor(visitor)

class SetAnotherString(object):
   def __init__(self, value):
     self.value = value

   def visit_the_response(self, r): pass
   def visit_response_component(self, c): c.another_string = self.value

json_data.accept_visitor(SetAnotherString('hello'))

As your actions seem to be rather dynamic, it might make sense to replace the visitor's method dispatch with a dictionary lookup:
class response_component:
  ...
  def accept_visitor(self, visitor):
    visitor(self, 'response_component')

class the_response:
  ...
  def accept_visitor(self, visitor):
    visitor(self, 'the_response')
    # distribute the operation to relevant childs
    self.contained.accept_visitor(visitor)

class SetValues(object):
  def __init__(self, changes_for_class: Dict[str, Dict[str, Any]]):
    self.changes_for_class = changes_for_class

  def __call__(self, instance, classname):
    try: changes = self.changes_for_class[classname]
    except KeyError: return
    for k, v in changes.items():
      setattr(instance, k, v)

json_data.accept_visitor(SetValues({
    'response_component': dict(another_string='hello'),
}))

Compared with the double-dispatching visitor, these updates are easier to represent in a language-agnostic manner. But compared with JSON Pointers, both visitor approaches need to search the complete document to find all instances that must be updated, whereas the Pointer only resolves a single element. It may be possible to create an ad-hoc query language that combines both of these approaches, e.g. using a JSON Pointer to specify a prefix of the data structure where the visitor-based search should start.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Plentzia in Pais Vasco is a sheltered beach break. Winter is the best time of year for surfing here. The best wind direction is from the southwest. Tends to receive a mix of groundswells and windswells The beach breaks offer lefts and rights. Best around low tide. Sometimes crowded. Be aware that the sea here is polluted.
For Sopelana, 4 km from Plentzia.
At Bilbao Sondica Airport, 13 km from Plentzia.
The two graphs above are also combined in the single Plentzia surf consistency graph.
Also see Plentzia surf quality by season and Plentzia surf quality by month.
Compare Plentzia with another surf break.
The closest passenger airport to Plentzia is Bilbao Airport (BIO) in Spain, 13 km (8 miles) away (directly).
The second nearest airport to Plentzia is Vitoria Airport (VIT), also in Spain, 62 km (39 miles) away.
Third is Santander Airport (SDR) in Spain, 70 km (43 miles) away.
San Sebastian Airport (EAS) in Spain is 94 km (58 miles) away.
Anglet (Biarritz-bayonne) Airport (BIQ) in France is the fifth nearest airport to Plentzia and is 116 km (72 miles) away.
This is the Surf-Forecast page for Plentzia, Pais Vasco. Use the tab navigation above to view Plentzia sea temperature, Plentzia photographs, Plentzia detailed swell predictions, wind and weather forecasts, Plentzia webcams, current wind from Pais Vasco live weather stations and Plentzia tide predictions. The Spain (Europe) swell maps link will open up the big picture showing Spain (Europe) and the surrounding seas. These swell maps can be animated to show the different swell components, wave energy, wave period, wave heights, together with wind and weather forecasts, current weather and sea state observations from Spain (Europe) wave-buoys, passing ships and coastal weather stations. Each of the forecast pages for this surf break feature a global and regional wavefinder tool to locate the best surf conditions in the area around Plentzia.


She tells me nobody likes me and that I'm a hoe. I don't do anything to her. I got her a really nice Christmas gift and I always try to look out for her and this is what I get. Sure I'm not always the nicest person to her but honestly when I say stop talking it means stop talking, but she doesn't, she just goes on and on about how no one likes me. Really? Not meaning to sounded conceited at all but I'm really nice, pretty, funny, smart, and I do have friends. I'm really insecure about myself so when I have someone that I love and care about say that that really hurts.


text:
Westlaw Asia
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For over twenty years, Les Editions Yvon Blais has provided a complete range of reference and research tools for Canadian French language legal information needs.
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Poll: Should council staff travel business class overseas?
Two Auckland councillors want a vote on banning business class travel within the organisation, but it's been blocked by Chief Executive Stephen Town.
Do you think coucil staff should travel business class overseas? Vote in The AM Show poll below.


Workers' compensation insurance provides financial protection against liability for workplace injuries.
Workers' compensation is a compulsory statutory form of insurance in every state and territory in Australia.
Each state or territory government regulates its own workers' compensation scheme. The schemes are administered in different ways and insurers have different roles within them.
Contact JMD Ross for comprehensive information on all states and territories' workers' compensation schemes.


A Unified Indiana Hashtag? What Do You Pick? (Indirect Open Letter to Amy Stark) - Search Engine Marketing: PPC & SEO. Startups & Strategy in Bay Area & Beyond.
Amy Stark – innovator of the #indiana Twitter trend movement of December 10, 2009 and the founder of the Indiana Social Media Summit – just talked to a few of us on the prospect of developing one unifying Twitter HashTag for Indiana social media movements.
I'm a fan. The topic needs further discussion and, once again, Amy's picked up the reigns.
It's not that state hasn't been using them. And when I say "the state," I mean "Indianapolis." Not that the boys in Indy are being exclusive so much as they outreached hadn't reached the rest of the state when they started.
Right now, they use #si for social media / SmallerIndiana things, #Indy for all things Indianapolis, & #indiana for things referring to the state.
The trick to hashtags is to try and pick things that won't get a lot of crosstalk.
Kinda the same problem Chevy had when they introduced the Nova to Mexico in the 70's and 80's. Same thing: NO GO!
Once again, in quick defense of the Indy boys, Twitter wasn't as popular in Spanish speaking countries when they started using it.
I've asked them about it, but the topic doesn't get much traction.
2) #indy is cool, but that's pretty Indianapolis-centric and Amy's looking for something about Indiana Social Media. I'd just as soon leave this one alone and let it fulfill its primary purpose.
Why use #in_sm when you could use #INsm . The latter is one less character, and when you only get 140 characters.
But then a search for #insm reveals why there's an underscore.
So after frittering around the rabbit hole, I'm all a fan for #in_sm. I've tested it and can't think of anything better.
What do you guys think the Indiana Social Media Hashtag should be?


text:
About this Recording
8.120658 - HERMAN, Woody: Get Your Boots Laced Papa! (1938-1943)
Woody Herman, Vol. 2
Get Your Boots Laced Papa! – Original 1938-1943 Recordings
A major player in the broader, commercial canopy of jazz, during his long career Woody Herman underwent several metamorphoses and, surviving various vicissitudes remained in the vanguard of American popularity as "the best white band of the Big Band Era". In his youth almost universally recognised as an ace clarinettist, during the Swing Era he was admired for his individuality of style and for the innovation, versatility and distinctive timbre of his playing. Latterly, and perhaps more famously still, this noted "talent-spotter" converted Dixieland to Progressive and went on to structure and organise the longest-running, most innovative big-band in jazz history. Between 1937 and 1952, he charted with more than fifty hits.
Woody was born Woodrow Charles Herman in Milwaukee on 13 May 1913, the son of a shoemaker. Encouraged in music by his family, he also had from the start the advantage of a precocious musical talent which showed itself simultaneously in more than one direction. After early experience as a child-singer and tap-dancer on the vaudeville stages of his native-town and music-hall circuits of the Midwest from the age of eight, he at last came face to face with jazz in his own home town. At twelve he had already mastered the saxophone prior to taking up the clarinet with even greater distinction. Billed 'The Boy Wonder Of The Clarinet', he quickly evolved a solo routine and at fourteen, while still a high-school student, joined his first band.
Woody studied at the Marquette School of Music in Milwaukee and from his mid-teens onwards played in a variety of locally active commercial society outfits, including Myron Stewart's at the Blue Heaven Club and, in 1930, Tom Gerun's at the Schroeder Hotel (in this last his fledgling fellow vocalists included Ginny Simms and saxophonist Tony Martin). Soon in demand himself not only as a clarinettist-saxophonist but also as a vocalist in his own right, from 1931 he toured with Gus Arnheim's Los Angeles-based Cocoanut Grove Orchestra in both capacities. Following a spell in Chicago with Harry Sosnik, in 1934 he was appointed saxophonist-vocalist with Isham Jones's renowned 'sweet' band and, more significantly, became a member of Isham Jones' Juniors, the small jazz group within the band with whom he made his first records, eight sides for Decca, early in 1936. When Jones retired later that same year to his Colorado ranch, the band temporarily folded until resurrected — at first as a co-operative — by a nucleus of its leading former sidemen with Herman at its helm.
The Jones style was initially still apparent in Herman's first outfit, 'The Band That Plays The Blues' but by 1937, the high summer of Swing, thanks largely to Woody's outstanding skill as an organiser and integrator of talent, the band was playing alternately sweet and hot with equal success. Effectively a swing big-band with a superimposed Dixieland flavour comparable to that of Bob Crosby, it held its own with the competition. During 1937 Herman gave the world a first inkling of his native talent for fronting a band and in December of that year his first hit "I Double Dare You" charted at No. 18. In purely discographic terms, however, his first true milestone was reached in 1939 with his trademark hit "At The Woodchoppers' Ball". A collaboration by Herman and his flugelhorn-player and arranger Joe Bishop (1907-1976), this provided him with a recognisable signature-tune and (by 1948) his first Golden Disc.
The first Herman band housed two noted jazz small groups within its larger framework: The Four Chips (a quintet comprising Herman, Linehan, White, Yoder and Carlson, heard here on Chips' Boogie Woogie, Elise and Yardbird Shuffle) and The Woodchoppers (a septet featuring Herman, Lewis, Reid, Linehan, White, Yoder and Carlson, on South and Fan It). However, while consistently never less than jazz-inspired, Herman kept an eye firmly fixed on other more commercial requirements. With this full-scale pre-1944 (i.e. pre-First Herd) band he steadily carved a reputation with a succession of other jazz-swing titles in the American popular charts, including, in 1940, "Blues On Parade", "Looking For Yesterday" and Get Your Boots Laced, Papa (No. 27); in 1941, "Frenesí" and his other theme-tune "Blue Flame"; in 1942, "By-U, By-O" and Amen (No. 5) and, during 1943, Four Or Five Times (at No. 14) and, both at No. 21, I Dood It and a chart re-entry of "At The Woodchoppers' Ball" during the musicians' strike.
In addition to blues and jazz-orientated items, a staple early-1940s Herman programme also featured a significant cross-section of popular Tin Pan Alley war-effort and film repertoire. Into these categories fall his fine versions of "Rose O'Day" and "Someone's Rockin' My Dreamboat" as well as two hit songs from the 1941 Oscar-winning Abbot & Costello-Andrews Sisters vehicle Buck Privates and, one of his greatest — if uncharted — successes: the Academy Award-nominated Johnny Mercer—Harold Arlen title-song from the 1941 Warner melodrama Blues In The Night.
Peter Dempsey, 2003
The Golden Wedding (La Cinquantaine) (Gabriel Marie, arr. Jiggs Noble)
Decca 3436, mx 68328-AA
Recorded 9 November 1940, New York
Indian Boogie Woogie (Woody Herman)
Decca 2250, mx 64632-A
Recorded 22 December 1938, New York
Big-Wig In The Wigwam (Roe Alexander - Kenneth Case - Byron Bradley)
Recorded 12 April 1940, New York
Get Your Boots Laced Papa (Woody Herman - Joe Bishop)
Decca 3187, mx 67589A/90-A
Five O'Clock Whistle (Kim Gannon - Josef Myrow - Gene Irwin)
Recorded 27 September 1940, New York
Chips' Boogie Woogie (Woody Herman)
Recorded 9 September 1940, New York
Everything Happens To Me (Matt Dennis - Tom Adair)
Recorded 11 March 1941, New York
South (Bennie Moten - Thamon Hayes)
Recorded 13 February 1941, New York
Fan It (Frankie Jaxon - Dan Howell)
Misirlou (N. Roubanis - Fred Wise - Milton Leeds - S.K. Russell)
Decca 4024, mx DLA 2735-A
Recorded 5 September 1941, Los Angeles
Elise (Beethoven - James A. Noble)
Recorded 28 August 1941, Los Angeles
Yardbird Shuffle (James A. Noble)
Recorded 10 September 1941, Los Angeles
Amen (Roger Segure - Bill Hardy - Vic Schoen)
Decca 18346, mx 70619-A
Recorded 2 April 1942, New York
Ten Day Furlough (Lowell Martin)
Decca 18544, mx DLA 2737-A
Ooch Ooch A Goon Attach (The Backward Song) (Yad O Esor) (Sbocaj Yor)
I Dood It (Jack Owens)
Decca 18506, mx L 3168-AA
Recorded 31 July 1942, Los Angeles
Four Or Five Times (Marco H. Hellman - Byron Gay)
Decca 18526, mx L 3123-A
Who Dat Up Dere? (Walter Kent - Bob Russell)
Jukin' (Woody Herman - Bob Mersey)


The Digital Dozen is a series of profile interviews with thought leaders in the technology industry. Here we speak with Giovanni Strocchi, CEO, of ADmantX, the leading brand safety specialist, about his career path, and ask the question on everyone's lips… what doughnut would you be?
What's the biggest lesson you've learnt in your working life?
What career path would you be following if you weren't in your current job?
And finally, the question on everyone's lips…what's your favourite doughnut?


XML Tutorial >> XML Editors.
As we know the XML is text based language and the best way to learn XML with its basics we recommends to work with notepad. Because it will be always good technique to start any language with its lowest form. One big opportunity is that XML files can be created and edited using a simple text-editor like Notepad that's why avail this opportunity.
However, when we start working with XML, we will soon find that it is better to edit XML documents using some kind of professional XML editor .
Why we need XML Editors?
GGL Recommendations for XML Editors.


The apple genus – Malus – contains about 30-55 species. They are shrubs or small trees in the Rosaceae family. The domesticated apple grown in orchards is part of this family. Some of the other species are commonly known as crabapples, crab apples, crabs or wild apples.
Trees grow in the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere. When flowering in spring, blooms appear as either pink, red or white with five petals. The fruit borne varies greatly in size from 1 – 8 cm depending upon the species.
Grown often as ornamental trees (I have three of my own planted in my front yard.), they provide colour in the spring and food for birds. Long after the leaves have fallen from the tree in the fall, the fruit remains hanging like Christmas decorations on the tree.
Crabapples remain on the trees during winter providing food for birds.
Photographed in the early fall.
Large - 3243 x 4327 - For the full-size resolution of this image click here.
Large - 4049 x 3037 - For the full-size resolution of this image click here.
Photographed in the early fall showing fruit, leaves & bark.
Large - 4345 x 3259 - For the full-size resolution of this image click here.
Large - 3007 x 2252 - For the full-size resolution of this image click here.
Large - 2988 x 2242 - For the full-size resolution of this image click here.


text:
Logs

        <form>

                <input type="checkbox" id="infoCheckbox" value="INFO" {{#infoEnabled}}checked{{/infoEnabled}}> Info

                <input type="checkbox" id="warningCheckbox" value="INFO" {{#warningEnabled}}checked{{/warningEnabled}}> Warning

                <input type="checkbox" id="errorCheckbox" value="ERROR" {{#errorEnabled}}checked{{/errorEnabled}}> Error

        </form>

            <button id='scroll-to-top' type="button" class="btn btn-default" title="'Scroll to top"></button>
            <button id='scroll-to-bottom' type="button" class="btn btn-default" title="'Scroll to bottom"></button>
            <button id='refresh' type="button" class="btn btn-default" title="Refresh"></button>

{{{log}}}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


HYBRIDMAGAZINE.COM | REVIEWS | Bill Kirchen - Word To The Wise album review hybridmagazine.com :: indie counter-culture daily, no secret handshakes.
There are no other guitar players like Bill Kirchen. Period. The man knows his way around a fretboard like no one's business and can get the twang from a Telecaster in a way that most only dream about. But Kirchen is definitely not a one trick pony; he has penned some of the finest songs of the past few decades, whether they are earnest songs about life and love or tongue-in-cheek country ditties full of humor and word play. Kirchen first came to prominence as guitarist in the great Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen, playing the wicked guitar - and writing - the classic "Hot Rod Lincoln". Over the years, a dude like Bill makes a lot of friends, and on his latest release he gets a few of them to stop in and help out on a song here or there.
The record kicks off in high Kirchen style with the swinging and jumping "Bump Wood". This song preaches the gospel of you can't take it with you so you'd better live for today and enjoy it all, and is filled with some incredible guitar playing, as well as lyrics like the refrain, "When I wake up in the morning I know it's gonna be good when I stick out my elbows and I don't bump wood." Kirchen's old pal Nick Lowe stops by to lend a hand, along with the inestimable Paul Carrack, on the 1950's style slow-rocker "Shelly's Winter Love". This track nails the vibe and slow pull of those sad ballads from the classic rock'n'roll era, and Carrack sounds amazing. Kirchen reinvents his great song "Man In The Bottom Of The Well", casting it as more of a slow-rock dirge, which nicely offsets the vocals of the iconic Elvis Costello who joins in this time around and might possibly lend some help on guitar, as well.
Commander Cody swings by to sting the ivories on "I Don't Work That Cheap", a fun and hilarious epithet about the value of one's own contributions as the author runs through history. "Time Will Tell The Story" is a moody track with a heavy message and is a virtual lesson in playing guitar with tremolo. The album continues with some heavier-subject tracks, including a cover of Roger Miller's beautiful "Husbands And Wives" and the classic-sounding "Arkansas Diamond" that almost sounds as if it could have been lifted off of an old Buck Owens' record. Maria Muldaur lends her wonderful voice to the jazzy "Ain't Got Time For The Blues" and Dan Hicks lends some great guitar and vocals to the jumping jazz track "Word To The Wise". The album ends with another great Kirchen track that lives up to his legacy, filled with swinging and twanging guitars, brilliant lyrics, and the excellent harmonica playing of Norton Buffalo.
and hopefully, with all these folks who've joined him on songs some of their fans will be brought into the know on just how great Bill Kirchen is. Inside the liner notes are stories about how Kirchen came to know the folks who helped with the record or how they came to play on certain songs. Not only is the music a peek into the soul of a great musician, but the written words show how much esteem some of the industry's greatest performers feel about their pal Bill. If you aren't hip to his great rock, shouldn't you be? Nick Lowe seems to think you should be.


text:
Найсе́р, или Найса́р, или Нейса́р, или Най Сер, или На ий Сар () — город на западе Ирана, в провинции  Курдистан. Входит в состав шахрестана  Сенендедж и является восточным пригородом его одноимённого центра. По данным переписи, на 2006 год население составляло 12 480 человек.

География
Город находится в южной части Курдистана, в горной местности, на высоте 1543 метров над уровнем моря.
Найсер расположен на расстоянии приблизительно 5 километров к востоку от Сенендеджа, административного центра провинции и на расстоянии 380 километров к западу от Тегерана, столицы страны.

Примечания

Города Курдистана

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Escape from Obesity Farmer's Market Lima Beans!
I was born and raised in the south, and we eat a lot of beans. Here is a easy and basic lima bean recipe. Weve been doing it this way for years. You can use ham hocks, hambones, smoked bacon or smoked sausage for the pork flavor in this dish. Also fresh, frozen or even canned beans can be used-they just wont have to cook �... These Lima Beans (also known as butter beans) are a large, white kidney-shaped legume. The inner pod of a climbing bean; they are grown in the USA, are non GMO and have no added preservatives.
I love lima beans IF they are straight from the garden. This is an easy, delicious way to prepare them. I started the limas in the chicken broth while I cooked the onions to cut down on cookin... This is an easy, delicious way to prepare �... 23/11/2009�� Childhood trauma from eating canned lima beans? Get over it. There are few vegetables as delicious as a properly cooked, fresh lima bean, and there are few easier to prepare.
Learn how to cook lima beans the Southern Style. When you visit a Southern cafeteria or a home-style restaurant down South and order lima beans, chances are, this is how they will serve it. So let�s go ahead and prepare the following ingredients first.
lima beans Sometimes called "butter beans" because of their starchy yet buttery texture, lima beans have a delicate flavor that complements a wide variety of dishes. Although fresh lima beans are often difficult to find, they are worth looking for in the summer and fall when they are in season.


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Eddie Redmayne is back, once again playing someone who must contort themselves and speak in an unusual manner while having problems with their family. Hopefully we don't get a repeat of what happened in Jupiter Ascending.
This time, he plays Lili Elbe, the first person to have a male to female sex change, back in the 1920s. Through the runtime of this movie, Einar Wegener, famed Danish painter, transforms into Lili, while the change puts a strain on her marriage to another Danish painter, Gerda Wegener (played by Alicia Vikander).
Redmayne and Vikander
I was interested in seeing this movie since it was announced last year for three reasons. One, I enjoy (most of) the work of Redmayne and I now know that I wholly enjoy the work of Alicia Vekandar. Two, it's directed by Tom Hooper, the director who may be Oscar baiting, but is actually a pretty darn good talent when he puts his mind to it. And thirdly, I was interested to see what a mainstream movie in 2016 would do with the subject of transsexuality.
Before we go onto what this movie does with its subject matter, let's review the movie itself.
Redmayne and Vikander are both up for Oscars this year for their performances here. I agree, their performances are actually very good. Not too showy, but still getting all the right marks of despair in this confusing situation. Their relationship is the core of this movie and I am very pleased by how well they connect and how tragically things fall apart.
I don't think either should win, however. My choice for Best Actor is Leo DiCaprio and Vikander's role here is by no means "Supporting", that is if I cared about the Oscars. I also believe that Vikander's stand out performance of the past 12 months was her work on the marvellous Ex Machina.
The story is also very good. The formation of Lili into a full woman is very well-paced and does contain some moving moments. Watching someone discover who they really want to be, after years of it being hidden is something that I can't help but be moved by.
For some reason though, I found myself not fully moved by this sad story. Perhaps it's because it was obvious from the get-go where this story would lead. Anyone with a basic idea of what the premise is will be able to predict where this film will go.
There's also an irritating sub-plot, if you can call it that, wherein Vikander's character tries to reach out, romantically to another man. I don't know if this actually happened and I get why they would include it, to show what this experience is doing to her, but I found it way too clichéd and distracting from the point of the piece.
Tom Hooper is a director that I notice has been getting flack from some corners of the internet film critic community, not necessarily because they don't like his movies, but more because he appears to be exploiting a formula for giving himself Oscar gold.
While The King's Speech, Les Miserables (2012) and even The Danish Girl all tick various boxes for the retrieval of the golden naked man (actors having transformative "actor-friendly" parts, bizarre hit & miss cinematography, historical subjects, British accents, royalty, technical and subjective gimmicks that grab headlines just for being there etc) I still love the former two films very much and I think that's down to in no small part the work of the helmsman.
The Danish Girl is probably his best looking film thus far. I hope that he has learnt the lessons of his previous work, that just because one can break the rules of basic composition to convey something unique, sometimes those rules are meant to be followed. (Just re-watch Les Mis and ask why the camera is that close to Russel Crowe's face.) What's also good is that he still knows how to gain good performances.
Now let's get onto the tricky subject, the subject.
With so much going on in the world regarding the LGBTQ community, it was only a matter of time before we started to get more mainstream depictions of those in that community. Queer cinema, cinema that predominately features gay, bisexual or transsexual themes, has been around for ages and has been getting the attention of critics for ages.
Maybe that's why when I looked at initial reviews of The Danish Girl, some were a little negative when discussing this subject matter. They'd seen all this before and this movie feels like an introductory course on what being transgender means.
But to me, as someone outside of that community, having never gone to Cannes or Sundance or really seen any of these smaller movies, Boys Don't Cry, Tangerine etc, my experience is probably a lot closer to that of the general cinema going public, or at least the ones who go to the awards season movies.
These people, for the most part, will obviously not need a beginner's guide to what transgender people go through. However, with this film, a classy "Based on a True Story" drama, we have a means of breaking down an invisible, non-enforced barrier when discussing this subject. Like with something like Django*, taking a subject matter (in that case slavery) and putting it in a familiar genre (in that case the western) gave a bit of a refresh in the way we look at this issue.
Mainstream media is certainly talking a lot about the transgender community at the moment and the depictions in movies and TV that are coming out at the moment are thankfully positive.
I don't think we'll be talking about The Danish Girl as if it's something earth-shatteringly controversial, but it serves as an example of 21st century mass media opening up this whole issue to a new generation. I think that's a humble achievement that doesn't necessarily deserve a standing ovation, but deserves recognition from a polite nod.
Recommended Scenario: If you want a pretty decent costume drama that does something pretty unique with a pretty Eddie Redmayne.
*I'm sorry I keep going on about Tarantino films. I'm getting into a habit.
This entry was posted on February 21, 2016 by Craig Andrew Robertson in Film Review, Released in 2016.
https://wp.me/p5ciAT-h0


Wood cutting boards are one of the most versatile kitchen tools you can have! Not only are they great for chopping meat or veggies, they also are lovely serving platters for cheeses, meats, and breads. But cleaning them thoroughly while also guaranteeing they live a long, beautiful life can sometimes be a challenge. Here are some great tips for making sure your board stays clean and gorgeous.
First, before we begin: Don't ever soak a wooden cutting board in water or put it in the dishwasher! It can cause it to warp, split, and/or crack.
To clean the board: After you're done slicing and dicing your meat or veggies, take the cutting board to the sink and wash it down with hot water and soap. Dry it immediately and stand it up so that air can circulate on all sides.
To get rid of odors: Wood surfaces can really hang on to odors, especially if you're chopping something potent like onions or garlic. While it might seem counter-intuitive, wiping down the cutting board with white vinegar will remove these strong odors. An once it's dry, white vinegar has very little scent itself.
To remove stubborn stains: It's easy for cutting boards to get little stains here and there—it means you're really using it! Just sprinkle baking soda on the surface of the cutting board, then work it into the surface stains with a lemon (which also makes the board smell amazing, by the way) or a gentle sponge or wash cloth. Rinse the board and dry it with a towel.
You can also rub kosher salt into the board with a lemon for both stains and odor. It's a great natural abrasive, and it's pretty gentle!
Revitalize: If your cutting boards get a lot of use and a lot of washing, they can start to look dull and dried out. Replenish the wood using mineral oil—just apply a small amount with very slightly damp rag.
And always remember: No matter what cleaning method you use, dry the cutting boards with a clean towel and stand them up to dry completely. You don't want to lay them down right away, as moisture can be trapped underneath.
This was a reader question that was sent in! So thank you for letting us know what you want to read and see here.


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MM6 offers aperitifs in Milan, GCDS hits the club at the beach
Following the sporty runway presentation from Boss, which opened proceedings in a baseball stadium, the second day of Milan Fashion Week ended beautifully on Thursday, with two playful shows that were full of freshness and fantasy. MM6 chose to show at La Belle Aurore, a Milanese bar with a deliciously retro charm, while GCDS revealed a futuristic aquatic film that was equal parts quirky and fantastical.
MM6's show at La Belle Aurore - ph Dominique Muret
For its first physical show in Milan, MM6, which has previously shown in London and New York, went all out. Having shown on the Italian calendar for two seasons, Maison Margiela's contemporary line, which was launched in 1997 and is still designed by an anonymous collective, took over La Belle Aurore, an authentic-feeling bar with fashionably outdated decor that's remained unchanged for more than 30 years. In fact, the show commandeered the whole street around the bar, setting up an expansive terrace where guests could sip on aperitifs while they waited for the fun to start.
As waiters in black jackets ducked in and out of the bar with trays full of drinks, the show's spectators could sample snacks charmingly presented in little white boxes, placed atop red and white checked napkins that also served as invitations. "The idea was for all of us to meet up again finally, and to celebrate this reunion with a drink, in a celebratory spirit," explained a house spokesperson.
The atmosphere was good natured, with neighbors stepping out onto their front steps to watch the commotion with curiosity. Suddenly, the first model, dressed in a white suit featuring a jacket with three sleeves, strode down from the end of the street and entered the bar. She was followed by another model in a black satin sheath and long, glamourous gloves.
The first look from MM6's Spring/Summer 2022 show in Milan - MM6
That's when the party started. The Fellini-inspired soundtrack mixed Nino Rota classics with Italian hits from the 1950s to create a very Dolce Vita ambiance. As always, the collection was inspired by the archives of the inventive Martin Margiela and featured more than a touch of irreverence, as seen in a kraft paper suit that was cinched with a belt made of string.
Then, out of nowhere, the show took a turn, transforming into a kind of Halloween parade with a series of looks featuring a psychedelic harlequin pattern and large clown-like ruffs, not to mention a net top that resembled a giant spiderweb. There was even a pointy witch hat and a gothic black dress with a jagged hem.
It is into an entirely different universe that GCDS seeks to transport viewers with its chic and sexy, dreamlike video, directed by designer Giuliano Calza, which takes place in a futuristic red planet-esque environment with never-ending dunes. "I imagined an island, a fantastical underwater world where I would like to have gone after the dark period that we have been through," explains Calza.
"The aesthetic is light and summery, a bit 70s, with a very glam side and thousands of crystals. As though I've recreated Studio 54 on an island," muses the designer, who has upped his game once again with this ultra-rich collection, which focuses on details and embellishments. Perched on maxi-platform sandals with vertiginous 25cm heels, the models walk through their mysterious environment in sparkly, ultra-short outfits.
GCDS's dreamlike island - GCDS
Lurex cardigans allude to the sun setting over the sea with a red-orange-pink dégradé that finally plunges into gray-blue. A pair of denim shorts is covered in teardrop-shaped stones, while certain tracksuits are sprinkled with a shower of sequins. Mini tulle tunics are also decorated with crystals. On a handful of pop-print pieces, one can make out characters from hit Japanese manga series One Piece.
The marine theme, as seen through the playful prism of GCDS, runs through the whole of this Spring/Summer 2022 collection. The One Piece "Straw Hat Pirates" skull and crossbones logo is repeated to make up the structure of a cut-out crochet dress elevated with cabochon emeralds. The same pattern also appears in a look combining a top with a maxi-fringed miniskirt. Elsewhere, three panels of organza in the shape of a wave come together to create a jacket featuring different shades of blue, while an impalpable azure blouse recalls the sea.
Coats in pink denim seem to have been bleached by the sun and saltwater. Retro swimming caps are crocheted like fishnets and decorated with pearls. Large raffia hats and bags complete the wardrobe, which has been designed with vacations and a return to happier times in mind. "I had a lot of fun making this collection. Everything seems simple at first glance, but there's a huge amount of craftsmanship and research behind each piece," emphasizes Calza.
Best of Milan Fashion Week : FORZA ITALIA !
Milan Fashion Week : The 5 summer trends spotted on the catwalk
Paris Couture: Maison Margiela Artisanal; Elie Saab and Julie de Libran
Chanel couture: Meditating on muses and museums
Brave Kid inks MM6 Maison Margiela deal, launches D2C multibrand webstore
Milan Fashion Week in flux, awaiting September
Relaxed Giorgio Armani ends Milan Fashion Week after Covid constraints
Milan Fashion Week Men broadens horizons
Dolce & Gabbana shines a thousand lights in Milan
Plan C launches e-commerce deadstock collection; opens pop-ups in East and West
OTB appoints two top executives to board


At the rise of World War I, German patriot Paul Baumer (Thomas) and his friends enlist in the Imperial German Army. In search of adventure and eager to assert the superiority of their nation, the young men endure a brutal training camp and soon find themselves face to face with the full horrors of war when they are sent to the front lines to fight... and likely die. As the conflict rages, Paul grows from an eager boy to a disillusioned man who bears the scars of war on both his body and his soul.


Simply snap open sachet and squeeze the honey straight into your mouth. Convenient, No Mess, Deliciously Simple! Wedderspoon 'Honey on the Go' is the answer to taking your Manuka Honey with you, it is convenient, simple and has no messy honey pots. There are 24 easy to use sachets of Weddersoon 'RAW' KFactor 16+ Manuka Honey in every box, perfect for our busy lives.
Simply snap open sachet and squeeze the honey straight into your mouth. Convenient, No Mess, Deliciously Simple!
Wedderspoon 'Honey on the Go' is the answer to taking your Manuka Honey with you, it is convenient, simple and has no messy honey pots. There are 24 easy to use sachets of Weddersoon 'RAW' KFactor 16+ Manuka Honey in every box, perfect for our busy lives.
Wedderspoon's Raw Manuka KFactor Honey is harvested from the remote pristine areas of New Zealand's South Island. Each batch of Wedderspoon Manuka Honey KFactor 16+ is sourced and tested for its higher pollen count, live enzymes, antioxidants and various other phytochemical components.
Product of New Zealand, Raw, unpasteurized, smooth, creamy manuka honey.
Activity in our honeys has been reached naturally.
Hives are made from environmentally friendly material.
Our packaging is BPA Free.
Each jar is traceable back to the master beekeeper.
rom a place where the beekeepers actually talk to their bees and take the time to understand nature to its fullest, Wedderspoon's products have received word of mouth recognition due to their outstanding quality and consistency.


Akb Architects is a studio from Toronto, Canada that has received some popularity for an outstanding project of theirs – the Muskoka Boathouse in Ontario. This unique modern boathouse is located along the edges of the Muskoka lakes and is surrounded by absolutely breathtaking natural sights.
The building is right next to an expansive wooden deck that can be used as a diving platform but also as a nice outdoor deck in the middle of nature.
An elongated cantilevered trellis supported by a permeable wood screen provides an area of reprieve from the expansive, south-western exposure on the dock. Locally supplied cedar wood siding was charred in a Japanese process known as Shou Sugi Ban to preserve the wood from natural weathering, providing a low maintenance exterior finish.
A sequence of horizontal and vertical boards differentiates each planar element while a combination of Baltic Birch and Douglas Fir plywood wrap the interior walls and ceiling.
A concrete floor on the upper level defines the interior living space in contrast to the cedar wood decking that presents an otherwise continuous field throughout.


The Glencoe City Planning Commission discussed the addition of a solar ordinance in the city at its Thursday, Nov. 19, meeting.
Currently, Glencoe has nothing to regulate solar power. City Administrator Mark Larson said the city wants to establish regulations because there is concern that panels are not always attractive.
The city currently has two solar panel systems within the city.
Larson provided model ordinances from other cities and the Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association (MMUA) as examples to help create Glencoe's own ordinance. He said the Planning Commission can use these to decide what regulations to include, from setbacks to height and anything else.
Commissioner Greg Ettel asked if the city will have something different for industrial use versus residential use. Larson said that would probably be the case.
Commissioner Lynn Exsted said the city should step back and make only a few regulations so the energy movement can move forward.
City Council Member Gary Ziemer asked if those with solar panels are always hooked into the city's electrical grid. Exsted said there are options.
Larson explained the MMUA would recommend mandating that solar users hook into the city's system.
Commissioner Ron Knop said it's not practical not to be hooked in because then the user would have to rely completely on solar without a backup option.
Exsted said she'd like to see common sense regulations but nothing constricting enough to stop growth. Commissioner David Stark agreed with her.
For more, see the Nov. 25 print edition of The Chronicle.


In November 1975, Ryszard Kapuściński telexed his editor in Warsaw to plead for permission to return home from Angola. The era of Portuguese colonialism was ending, the fight for independence that would become one of the many proxy battlefields of the cold war was intensifying and, after three months spent on dangerous roads and in a capital city growing more paranoid and hallucinatory by the day, the Polish Press Agency reporter was spent.
Kapuściński, long acknowledged as one of the greatest journalists of the 20th century for his literary evocations of wars and revolutions in Africa and Latin America, was right on both counts.
He was haunted by what he had seen, what he had done – and what he had failed to do – while the nascent conflict he had chronicled would stagger on until 2002.
The experience provided him with the raw material for Another Day of Life, his deeply personal book "about being alone and lost" in the chaos and confusion of Angola.
Eleven years after Kapuściński's death, the book has been adapted into an award-winning film that mixes animation and documentary to retell and update the story.
The idea came to the film's co-director, Raúl de la Fuente, and his producer and partner, Amaia Remírez, when they were on holiday on Menorca 10 years ago. The Spaniards had loved Kapuściński since they were teenagers, and saw Another Day of Life as both a geopolitical parable and a portrait of a journalist enduring a dark night of the soul.
One of the main challenges they faced was how to evoke the sense of confusão "a state of absolute disorientation" – that permeates the book. The answer lay in Kapuściński's two-notebook habit: one for straightforward, factual reporting; one for impressionistic observations and reflections.
While De la Fuente and Remírez travelled to Angola to shoot documentary footage and track down the book's surviving protagonists, the Polish animator Damian Nenow took on the task of translating Kapuściński's brutal poetry for the screen. "His descriptions of the world and how it changes are pure animation – they just cry out for animation," says Nenow.
The journalist's thoughts, fears and recollections are rendered in surreal sequences of disintegrating cities, bodies and even a fragmenting telex machine. In one of the film's most stunning scenes, Kapuściński and an Angolan journalist, Artur, come across a long stretch of road littered with the corpses of civilians, and imagine them being slaughtered by a cloud of weapons that roils a red sky.
Accusations of "not following the facts per se" – or of simply inventing episodes – were levelled against Kapuściński in a biography published eight years ago, which claimed he had crossed the line between reportage and fiction.
Another Day of Life ends with the journalist speculating as to the fates of some of those he met in the confusão of 1975: Artur, the bright young guerrilla Carlotta, and the Che Guevara-like figure of Comandante Farrusco, a Portuguese special forces soldier who swapped sides to fight for liberation.
Not long before he died in 2007, Kapuściński and Farrusco managed to speak by phone with the help of the Polish ambassador in Angola. The former commando, who still addresses people as "comrade", is now 70 and his bones have begun to ache as he tends his garden.
Time, however, has done nothing to diminish his affection and admiration for the middle-aged Pole who materialised at his redoubt almost half a century ago, an unexpected emissary from a habitually indifferent world.


FAB Design's Noreia, which is based on the Range Rover Vogue, doesn't just bear the name of a goddess. With impeccable elegance the specialists of FAB Design present a tailor-made Range Rover Vogue in the usual perfect quality. Of course, the body of the goddess may only be dressed exclusively in the best material: composite material with a multitude of components made from visible carbon.


A previous blog post offered a complete workflow for identifying and quantifying new N-termini using terminal amino isotopic labeling of substrates (TAILS) with TMT10-plex (tandem mass tagged) reagents.1 Recently, the Klein et al. (2015) research team offered enhanced data and identified a novel substrate and cleavage site that impacts ubiquitination, which plays a role in inflammatory response.2 While researchers knew that this modification relied on heme-oxidized IRP2 ubiquitin ligase (HOIL1)-interacting protein (HOIP) activity and the formation of a linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex (LUBAC), its regulation remained unclear.
Toward this end, the team evaluated HOIL1 as a mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma translocation protein 1 (MALT1) substrate with a potential regulatory function. To do this, they relied on human cells derived from the only known living person with a genetic MALT1 deficiency as well as controls drawn from her relatives. This resource offered researchers the unique opportunity to detect new substrates in an intact human system, mediating the previous intractability of experimental efforts.
Klein et al. applied isobaric 10plex TMT labeling followed by trypsin digestion and a single analytic run through an Orbitrap Fusion Tribrid mass spectrometer (Thermo Scientific) as well as preTAILS shotgun analysis. They relied on Proteome Discoverer software revision 2.0 (Thermo Scientific) for data processing. They were able to identify 7,498 unique acetylated or TMT-labeled N-terminal peptides in 3,772 proteins, a significant improvement from the earlier study. Ultimately, they also confirmed HOIL1 as a MALT1 substrate and located its specific, non-redundant cleavage site: 162LQPR↓G166.
The team indicates that this discovery elucidates a novel role for MALT1 in nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) signaling. In addition to removing negative regulators in the pathway (negative feedback inhibition), Klein et al. reveal that MALT1 also acts as a feedforward inducer. In this role, it cleaves HOIL1 at a single, specific site, resulting in LUBAC disruption, downregulated linear ubiquitination at the B-cell receptor, and reduced NF-κB activity. In the patient, MALT1 deficiency and the subsequent failure to cleave HOIL1 upregulated linear ubiquitination and, ultimately, chronic inflammatory response due to unrestricted B-cell activation. The authors indicate that this combination of positive and negative regulation should inform the therapeutic application of MALT1 inhibitors for autoimmune disorders.
The enhanced data presented here offers unique insight into the consequences of genetic MALT1 deficiency. Molecular characterization of rare immunodeficiencies not only impact current understanding of immune system function but also inform the development of novel treatments.
1. Blank, M.A., et al. (2014) "TMT10 TAILS workflow for identification and quantitation of the N-terminome by terminal amino isotope labeling of substrates," Thermo Scientific poster note PN-64116-EN-0614S.


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Xylotrupes lorquini är en skalbaggsart som beskrevs av Schauffus 1885. Xylotrupes lorquini ingår i släktet Xylotrupes och familjen Dynastidae. Utöver nominatformen finns också underarten X. l. zideki.

Källor

Externa länkar

Skalbaggar
lorquini


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Daily Archives for June 11, 2013
Coursera Condescension
Yesterday I watched the video of Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera, speaking at UBC a couple of weeks ago. After her presentation, three UBC professors who have taught or are currently teaching a Coursera MOOC contributed to a panel discussion.
In many ways, neither the talk nor the discussion were particularly illuminating. Koller gave a talk that, I understand, she has been giving for some time. It's the basic schtick for Coursera: "The Online Revolution: Learning without Limits." It begins with the mathematical sublime, stunning us with the sheer numbers who register or show initial interest in Coursera offerings. And it transitions smoothly through the prestige of the universities who have signed up so far ("30 of the top 60 universities worldwide," represented by their logos) to the pathos of individual cases.
For the first of three "vignettes" that she provides, we dwell on Raúl Coaguila, a Peruvian who won a Fulbright, we are told, thanks to his Coursera expertise. Because the fact is, Koller informs us, there is "not very much computer education to be had in Peru." Only Coursera could give him this opportunity, dedicated as the company is to "people whose lives have been transformed by education that they would never otherwise have had."
As soon as I heard this, I wanted to call bullshit. Because I've been to Lima (and Cuzco and Trujillo and Huamanga…) and pretty much all you see are endless adverts for computer courses at the multitude of local colleges and universities. Try for instance, the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas or the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería. Or even the venerable Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, which has been teaching computing for over seventy years. Heck, this October you could take part in the V Congreso Internacional de Computación y Telecomunicación, hosted at the Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.
What, did Koller think they live in mud huts down there?
In fact, if this is the same Raúl Coaguila whose user page you can find on the Coursera site (and it's likely: 24 year old male from Lima, Peru, with a strong interest in computing), then in fact he did his BA in software engineering at (precisely) the aforesaid Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. Indeed, his LinkedIn profile suggests that he has been teaching there for the past three years.
Now, none of this is to say that putting Coursera on his CV didn't help Raúl in his Fulbright application. Nor that he isn't a Coursera fan. On the contrary: he's clearly heavily involved in the site, listing 21 courses from "Machine Learning" to "Introduction to Guitar." (It's not clear how many–if any–of these he's completed.) And he's satisfied with his experience enough to encourage his followers on Twitter to vote for the company as "Best Education Startup" in the 2012 Crunchie Awards. Sadly for Raúl, they only came second, losing out to Codecademy. But he's also a fan of sky-diving (hardly a regular past-time of Lima's urban poor), and who knows if that influenced his Fulbright assessors just as much, if not more, than his application's mention of Coursera.
Let me stress that in no way do I want to suggest that Raúl Coaguila is an undeserving recipient of a Fulbright. I wish him well in his future studies (and hope he takes care with his sky-diving).
But I do object to the romanticized pathos invoked by Koller (here and increasingly as her talk goes on): the conceit that Coursera's object is to lift up the impoverished in Latin America, Africa, and the Third World more generally. Or the notion that North American universities' participation with her company is the best way to make up for lack of educational capacity in the global South. Beyond the immense condescension and ignorance that it betrays on her part, I bet she isn't spinning this line to her venture-capital investors. And I'd rather she didn't spin it to us.
June 11, 2013 by Jon	Categories: academia, canada, teaching	| Tags: politics | 23 Comments