Do you have questions about Serato DJ?
Serato will take part in a live video Q&A hosted by DJcity's Crisco Kidd & DJ Dainjazone, Tuesday, August 5 to answer questions submitted by users.
The Q&A will begin at 7:30pm PST and feature Serato's Sam Stokes (Artist Relations Manager), Nick Maclaren (Head of Product Strategy), and Matt Perry (Support Specialist).
There will also be a product demo and news announcement from the Serato team.
To participate, fill out the form here or tweet your questions to @serato and @djcity using hashtag #AskSerato. Questions will be accepted between July 23 to August 4.
Serato's Q&A will also feature live performances from special guest DJs.


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What physician specialties do you support?
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Enabledoc enables me to see patients, document clinical visits, and smoothly operate my business profitably. I am able to work from home or where ever I am, which makes my practice more efficient."
Our EMR set-up specialists go through the physician's workflow and the forms currently used by the office. If such a form does not already exist in the system, custom forms and templates are created for that specialty and for that particular doctor's needs.


Albert Subbloie is the co-founder of Tangoe, a provider of Connection Lifecycle Management software and services to a wide range of global enterprises and service providers. Al has drove global expansion to more than 190 countries and sales and operational presence throughout the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions.
To stay competitive in today's workplace, companies need to think globally. Here are a few tips to prepare a business to take over the world.


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We are the world's largest 'premium aluminium' producer and the biggest industrial company in the UAE outside oil and gas.
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Driving sustainable economic growth is one way we make modern life possible for the societies in which we operate. EGA has played a major role in the industrialisation and economic diversification of the UAE for decades, and is making a substantial economic contribution in Guinea.
Aluminium's use plays an essential role in improving transport efficiencies, reducing energy consumption and global greenhouse gas emissions, improving product longevity and reducing demand on natural resources.
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United Arab Emirates, 17 January 2021: Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, today announced that the company finished 2020 with its highest ever rate of Emiratisation.
Some 42 per cent of in-focus roles at EGA are now held by UAE Nationals - exceeding the company's long-standing goal of Emiratising 40 per cent of these positions by the end of 2020. In-focus roles are all those positions that can feasibly be Emiratised.
Almost 1,200 UAE Nationals now work at EGA, including more than 750 under the age of 35 years old.
When normalised for the high number of blue collar positions in heavy industry, EGA has one of the highest rates of Emiratisation of any major company.
EGA has focussed on national talent development for decades, to drive its business and operational success.
EGA's Chief Executive Officer, Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, said today: "Our success as a company depends on the skills and commitment of our people. In line with 'UAE Vision 2021' we aim to harness the full potential of the UAE's human capital. As a vital industrial company in the UAE, we are proud of the many talented young people who are inspired to contribute to the development of the nation's industrial sector and knowledge economy by joining EGA and of those who have dedicated their careers to our progress."
EGA recruits, develops and empowers the next generation of Emirati innovators through its Graduate Trainee programme, which provides recent university graduates specialising in science, technology, engineering and/or mathematics (STEM) and other fields with 18-months of training to equip them with technical know-how necessary to assume permanent, leading positions within the organisation.
EGA's Executive Committee includes employees who originally joined as fresh graduates.
EGA has also run National Training programmes to prepare young UAE Nationals for technical roles in its operations. More than 5,000 UAE Nationals have graduated from the programmes since they were first established in 1982. Many have gone on to pursue long and successful careers at EGA, with some reaching the highest levels of leadership in the company.
In further support of UAE Vision 2021, EGA's recruitment and development processes also prioritise the advancement of women, with females now holding almost 20 per cent of supervisory and management roles at the company.
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As has been stated by various previous creative artists, researchers and industry practitioners that the life events of the creative artists influence their works to a significant extent. There are various socio, political and geographical aspects including the time period, location, cultural background, family, social/political beliefs, life experience, art work, themes which have represented their lives and art works. In this paper, it will be looked into that the way the life and work of famous American photojournalist Dorothea Lange was influenced by the social/political background of the time to which she belonged.
Lange was born in the year 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey. She belonged to the third generation German immigrants. When Lange was 12 years old, her father abandoned their family which was one of the two hurtful events which took place early in her life. The other traumatic event that occurred during the childhood of Lange took place when she contracted polio at the age of seven. Those had left Lange with an enfeebled right leg as well as a permanent limp. However, it was later said by her that these events helped in forming as well as guiding her through instruction as the same also humiliated her (Linda, 2006). Regarding his posture of walking she had said that she never truly got over it and was aware of the force and power of the same from a formative purpose. She studies photography at Columbia University in New York City. Lange started her career, through various ups and downs, as a studio journalist, when she opened successful portrait studio in San Francisco. However, with the arrival of the Great Depression, Lange slowly shifted her field of work from a studio to the overall society to capture the problems which it was facing during those times. Lange was particularly noted for the way she had studied the homeless and unemployed people on the streets. Some of the widely known works of Lange during this time includes the White Angel Breadline (1933) depicting a solitary person turned away from the crowd in front of a soup kitchen run by a widow known as the White Angel. This work of her not only arrested the fancy of the local photojournalists but also helped her in getting employed with the federal Resettlement Administration (RA) which was later called the Farm Security Administration (FSA) (Linda, 2006).
With her second spouse, Paul Schuster Taylor who was also University of California, Berkeley 's Professor of Economics Lang went on to document rural poverty and the mistreatment of the migrant labourers during 1935 to 1939.
This is when the most celebrated work of Lange was captured which was later widely known as Migrant Mother. This photo was taken in California in 1936 in which a mother and her children were captured who had lost all the hopes for the future during the great depression. This photo, which made Lange won the Guggenheim prize in 1941 also made the public understand the way unemployment impacts the entire family. It has been mentioned by the previous researchers that this phot achieved near mythical status, which symbolized as well as defined that specific entire era of the history of United States. Eminent person like Roy Stryker said that this specific photo was the most definitive photo of the Depression Era and this was the best work of Lange's career in spite of the other works being marvellous.
This range of works by Lange was highly influenced by her social surrounding and her own will to do some good for the society through the skill she had acquired best, photography. Her work characterised her intention as a part of the mass media to stay deeply troubled with the social issues. Lange considered herself as a journalist first and then as an artist. She had a great aspiration for effecting social changes through letting the public know regarding the suffering far away (Matthew, 1998). This made her works very special and some of them immortal not only during the Depression era but also in the post-war years. The above mentioned photographs taken for the Resettlement Administration was widely heralded as the epitome of documentary photography. Edward Steichen described them as "the most remarkable human documents ever rendered in pictures." This urge of staying true to the needs to the people also came from the deep sense of injustice, which Lange felt she was subjected to during her childhood as she felt the need of rescuing other people from suffering the same. After taking this photo, Lange told an editor of a newspaper from San Francisco regarding the deprived conditions which she experienced at the camps and provided him with two photos. Federal authorities were informed by the editor and an article was published with those photos. This led to the speedy action by the government by sending immediate aid to the camp for preventing starvation. This also gave a deep sense of pride and happiness by Lange regarding the usefulness of her work (Matthew, 1998).
Gordon, Linda; Okihiro, Gary Y., eds. (2006). Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.


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December 25 - December 31
The last week of 2022 has arrived! Today is Christmas and the New Year is almost here.
What a year of growth and improvement! I first sent the newsletter under this format to 117 people on April 3, 2022. Since then, that list has grown to 249 people! Every week, I strive to improve the newsletters by including new information and more hyperlinks. Although, many may be able to read through a newsletter in 10 minutes or so, the hyperlinks lead to volumes of additional information!
Speaking of "volumes", some may have noticed that this is the first week that I've included a volume number on the newsletter. This newsletter is Vol. 69. Counting the emails that began in September 2021, this is the 69th This Week in USBP History that I've sent without missing a single week. As a reminder, all of the newsletters are archived in the form of a blog on HonorFirst.com here (<- that is a hyperlink to click).
Speaking of HonorFirst.com, Ray and I have been making improvements to the site. We have changed its appearance (really, I messed up the site's original theme and I'm trying to package the fix as a success). We also did a bit of restructuring to better present information to USBP applicants, and current and former agents, as well as those who are interested in the Border Patrol. It's our goal to constantly improve HonorFirst, so that the site and newsletters of tomorrow are better than ones of yesterday.
This week we remember three Newton-Azrak Award recipients on the anniversaries of their actions.
We also remember three of our fallen on the anniversaries of their deaths.
Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a great holiday season!
Until next year, have a great week!
As an open and continuous invitation to current and former USBP employees, I am always accepting photos to post in the USBP Photo Galleries and in the Upholding Honor First pages. I sure would appreciate you visiting those pages and sending me anything that you think I could post (just send them to cliff@honorfirst.com).
1938 Sketch of the idea that led to the U.S. Border Patrol patch
On December 31, 1910, future Chief and Father of the Border Patrol Frank Berkshire (1870-1934) wrote a memo to the Commissioner-General concerning the posting of a new civil service announcement for the position of "mounted inspector". Here is the announcement.
On December 27, 1927, two Border Patrol Inspectors engaged in a brief gunfight with approximately six alcohol smugglers. After an exchange of about four shots, the smugglers abandoned their load of alcohol which was seized. No injuries were reported. See the report here. The Patrol Inspectors involved in the shooting were:
Patrol Inspector James W. Walsh
Patrol Inspector James W. Metcalfe (1903-1979)
On December 30, 1927, see the report of two Border Patrol Inspectors engaged in a brief gunfight with an alcohol smuggler. The smuggler was apparently wounded.
Patrol Inspectors involved in the shooting were:
Patrol Inspector Bernard W. Holzman (1894-1972)
Patrol Inspector Pedro A. Torres (1880-1958)
Two aspects of the report stand out:
"This report will indicate how liquor smugglers could very easily be shot from the rear without any reflection upon the officers doing the shooting."
"We captured 24 pints of tequila and six pints of American Straight Whiskey. Also one mouse-colored overcoat and one Oxford shoe, left foot."
This undated list of uniform vendors is believed to be from 1927.
This undated map of the El Paso District contains tons of historic information for modern day Tucson, El Paso and Big Bend sectors.
On December 27, 1933, Border Patrol Inspectors Mosely, Smith and Walthall (1900-1933) engaged in a gunfight with smugglers Jose Estrada, Ramon Rice and Fidel Ortega near Cordova Island in El Paso, Texas. During the exchange of gunfire, Inspector Walthall and smuggler Jose Estrada were killed and, Inspector Smith and smugglers Ramon Rice and Fidel Ortega were wounded. Please see the following historic documents that are related to the incident:
El Paso Sub-district Chief Patrol Inspector Herbert Horsley's (1878-1962) report of the shooing.
Diagram of the shooting
Sworn Statement of Border Patrol Inspector Louis A. Smith
Sworn Statement of Border Patrol Inspector Curtis D. Mosley (1897-1981)
Sworn Statement of smuggler Ramon Rico
Sworn Statement of Maria Estrada de Lopez, mother of Jose Estrada, who was caught and admitted to tampering with evidence
Sworn Statement of Carlotta Montes, girlfriend of Jose Estrada
Sworn Statement of Eulalia Gasca, girlfriend of Ramon Rice
These five pages of sketches and notes were found at the National Archives surrounded by documents from 1938. The documents appear to be the notes concerning updating the USBP uniform and includes insignia and "Ernie" associating the silver bar with a "jackass". Most importantly is on page five which is believed to be the earliest sketch of what would become the U.S. Border Patrol Patch. See the HonorFirst History Page for more information.
On December 27, 1944, Former Chief Patrol Inspector and then current Chief of the Alien Central Division in El Paso, Aubrey Slaughter Hudson (1896-1965) wrote a memo to the El Paso District Director concerning arguments for and against consolidation of the Customs Border Patrol with the Immigration Border Patrol, and for and against a consolidated Border Patrol. His closing paragraph is – "I believe the arguments I have set forth against the consolidation of the Customs Border Patrol with the Immigration Border Patrol will apply as reasons against a consolidation of the both agencies under either the Justice or the Treasury Department."
Of course, the USBP would be incorporated with the U.S. Customs Service some 59 years later in 2003 when this public law renamed the Customs to CBP and assigned the U.S. Border Patrol to it (see page 186).
On December 29, 1944, El Paso District Director Grover W. Wilmoth (1884-1951) wrote a memo to Assistant Commissioner for Alien Control Willard Kelly (1903-1969) (Chief of the Border Patrol 1933-1943) concerning the "Proposed consolidation of the Border Patrols". His last paragraph was:
On the whole, a reconsideration of the entire subject after the lapse of several years inclines me to agree with Mr. Hudson that each Service should maintain its own separate patrol. On the other hand, if there must be a consolidation, there is no doubt in my mind that the consolidated patrol would best operate in the Immigration Service, especially in view of our larger volume of apprehensions, and what I consider to be our better training methods. If the patrols are to be maintained separately I would suggest that there be a conference of responsible officials of the Customs Service and our Service and the Bureau of the Budget, to work out a plan of operation that will prevent conflict such as have occurred in the past
At the Tule Lake Segregation Center - Japanese internees calling themselves Hokoku, who shaved their heads and wore sweatshirts emblazed with the rising sun, attempted to militarize the camp population in support of the Japanese war effort. The Hokoku threatened and pressured reluctant internees to become renunciants and pledge allegiance to the emperor and Japan. On December 27, 1944, 41 Patrol Inspectors, reacting to disruptions to camp operations and demonstrations led by Hokoku, arrested and secured 70 men, including 64 Hokuku leaders. They were marched out to the main gate in groups of 10, where they boarded buses and were transferred to the Santa Fe Alien Detention Center.
...the Crystal City Family Internment Camp reached its peak population of 3,374, which consisted of 2,371 Japanese, 997 Germans, and five Italians on December 29, 1944. As reported by the initial Camp Commander Nick Collaer (1896-1977), "many of the camp's residents were not ordered interned, but had requested voluntary internment in order that the family unit might not be split up.
On December 31, 1964, the Bracero Program was terminated due to pressure from labor unions and congressional members.
From - HONOR FIRST: The Story of the United States Border Patrol - Volume II by Joseph Banco
On December 31, 1975, a memo was sent describing aspects to celebrate to the Bicentennial of the United States. Mention in the memo is using the Bicentennial logo on uniforms.
A special thank you to Joe Banco for proving the photograph of the patch below.
On December 28, 1999, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Alejandro N. Mayorkas (who would later become the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama Administration and the first DHS Secretary in the Biden Administration) recommended not seeking further review of the Ninth Circuit's adverse panel decision. The DOJ Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General concurred with "No Rehearing and No Certiorari" thereby keeping Bono a free man.
On October 12, 1967, Victor Jerald Bono pled guilty to two counts of first- degree murder and to two counts of robbery for the theft of Newton and Azrak's weapons, badges, credentials, and the government vehicles.
Bicentennial patch authorized for wearing the right sleeve of the U.S. Border Patrol uniform in 1976. A special thanks to Joe Banco for the use of the photograph.
The USBP Newton-Azrak Award
Mark M. Jones
Sevin K. Neufner
On December 30, 1998, Border Patrol Agents Mark M. Jones and Sevin Neufner were assigned boat patrol duties in the McAllen area of responsibility. While patrolling and area known for alien and narcotic smuggling activities, Agent Neufner, using night vision equipment, observed what appeared to be an individual in distress in the middle of the river. He informed his partner, Agent Jones, who was operating the boat and directed him to the person, who was struggling to stay afloat. While attempting to close the distance between the boat and the person, Agent Neufner observed him slip beneath the surface for several seconds and then reappear still struggling to stay afloat. Upon reaching this person, Agent Neufner observed him go underwater for a second time and acting instinctively, jumped into the river and grasped him by his shoulders, rotating his body to a position where his face was out of the water. Agent Jones assisted his partner by throwing in a line and pulling Agent Neufner and the person into the boat. Once safe inside the boat, the person began coughing out water he had swallowed and regained consciousness.
Michael G. Linder - photo
On December 31, 2020, while off duty, Agent Linder witnessed a vehicle skid to a stop after impacting a highway center-divider at high speed. Agent Linder immediately stopped and ran to the scene to render aid. Upon arrival at the vehicle, Agent Linder found it teetering precariously on the divider, still running, and with the engine compartment smoldering. Without regard for his own safety, Agent Linder took charge of the scene, supervising rescue effort and personally extracting the single male occupant from the burning vehicle. Agent Linder directed efforts to call 911 and extinguish the fire. Agent Linder's quick, decisive, and selfless actions ensured that the driver lived to fully recover from this harrowing event. Agent Linder's actions reflect great credit upon himself, New Orleans Sector, and the United States Border Patrol.
U.s. Border Patrol Badge with a Mourning Band
I will note that Border Patrol Agent John Charles Gigax is not recognized as officially fallen by Customs and Border Protection or the U.S. Border Patrol. The Border Patrol Foundation and the Border Patrol Museum also fail to recognize him. He is remembered by all except organizations containing "Border Patrol" in their title. He is remembered by the:
The U.S. Border Patrol, the Border Patrol Foundation, and the Border Patrol Museum should fix their oversight.
HonorFirst.com remembers and lists Agent Gigax among the fallen.
Fallen Border Patrol Agent John Charles Gigax's tombstone. Fallen Border Patrol Agent Jason C. Panides' tombstone in is the background.
Robert H. Lobdell
Date of Birth: May 15, 1898
Entered on Duty: June 16, 1928
End of Watch: December 25, 1928
Patrol Inspector Lobdell was shot and killed instantly on the night of December 25, 1928, near Roseau, Minnesota, by an individual who was suspected of being an alien entering the United States illegally. Inspector Lobdell was shot while he was attempting to get the individual into the patrol car for transportation to Warroad, Minnesota. The murderer was apprehended the following day, but he denied his guilt and steadfastly refused to make any statement that would reveal his past history. He was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary at Stillwater, Minnesota. Reportedly, he subsequently corresponded with the judge of the court in which he was tried, confessing that he had killed Patrol Inspector Lobdell.
Survivor benefits - As per this document, his wife received $52.50 per month.
Bert G. Walthall
Historical documents of the shooting - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
On the evening of December 27, 1933, Patrol Inspectors Bert G. Walthall, Louis A. Smith, and Curtis D. Mosely were patrolling the international boundary near Cordova Island at El Paso, Texas. Cordova Island is not in fact an island, but Mexican territory left on the north side of the Rio Grande River when the river changed its course. The boundary here was an imaginary line and a person could step across from one country to another.
At about 8:45 p.m., the officers noticed two men cross the line with sacks on their backs and depart in a waiting automobile. The officers attempted to stop the car by blowing their horn but the smugglers only increased their speed. After a chase of a couple of blocks, the patrol car overtook the smugglers, who pulled over to the side of the road. Before the patrol car could be stopped, it had arrived alongside the smugglers' car, about ten feet to the left of it. Inspector Mosely was driving, Inspector Walthall was sitting beside him, and Inspector Smith was in the back seat. When the patrol car stopped, Officers Walthall and Smith alighted from the right side. They were met by a blast of rifle fire from the smugglers that instantly killed Inspector Walthall and wounded Inspector Smith. Inspector Mosely had gotten out of the car on the left side and opened fire on the smugglers, whose car was then in motion. Inspector Mosely continued shooting with his rifle and pistol until his weapons were empty and then turned his attention to his fellow officers.
Survivor benefits - As per this document, his wife received $67.50 per month for her and their child.
George E. Pringle
Entered on Duty: June 5, 1936
Details:
During the evening of December 25, 1940, Patrol Inspector George E. Pringle was working alone near Parker, Arizona. He was engaged in conversation with a Special Agent for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, when he indicated he was going to follow a car that had just passed. The vehicle was known to both men as belonging to a group of aliens suspected of illegal activities in connection with the Parker Dam.
Inspector Pringle was next observed driving south on Parker Road. Two witnesses indicated the government vehicle being driven by Inspector Pringle veered toward the center of the road and swerved to the right off the roadway overturning several times. Inspector Pringle sustained multiple injuries including contusions of the upper frontal region of the skull and a fracture at the base of the skull. He died of injuries received in the accident on December 28, 1940.
Subsequent investigation revealed that the accident occurred as a result of a blow out of the right front tire that was caused by the tire passing over a broken bottle in the roadway.


Netflix, the world's leading entertainment service, has just announced a number of TV shows and movies that are coming to Netflix in April 2019. Unfortunately, there are also shows that have either been cancelled or are just getting taken off of the program.
With a monthly subscription to Netflix, you are able to watch hundreds of popular shows and movies such as Stranger Things, Queer Eye, The Kissing Booth, etc.
This year, they announced they are adding brand new movies and shows to their website. This year's announcement includes adding new movies and shows—some well-known and loved by many, and some brand new Netflix Originals. These originals include: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: PT2, The Perfect Date, and You vs. Wild. There will also be many more included.
On October 26, 2019, Netflix added The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina; the adaptation of the former Sabrina the Teenage Witch television series. It is a dark coming-of-age series that appeals to horror and occult junkies. Fans have been dying for a sequel to the series, and it is finally going to happen on April 5, 2019 (slow clap).
Noah Centineo, heart-throb star of To All the Boys I've Loved Before, is going to be featured in the new Netflix movie The Perfect Date. In this drama, Centineo plays a high school student who needs to find not only an extracurricular activity to participate in, but also the money to get him into the Ivy League school of his dreams. Laura Marano and Camila Mendes are also set to be featured in the upcoming film.
Personally, I am definitely looking forward to watching all of the new content coming to Netflix. I've had my subscription for many years now. It's something I don't see myself getting rid of anytime soon because of the service's consistency, and the fresh, new originals that they bring to the table.


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One of the highlights of any Ionarts season is a concert by Evgeny Kissin. The latest opportunity to hear the Russian virtuoso came on Wednesday night, in an uncompromising program presented by Washington Performing Arts in the Music Center at Strathmore. An inner core of deeply felt emotional masterpieces -- Prokofiev's fourth sonata and sets of Chopin nocturnes and mazurkas -- bolstered by showier Beethoven and Liszt on the ends. Those more profound pieces at the heart of the program were the high point, while Kissin left no doubt as to his near-unassailable technique in the outer ones.
Kissin remains at the top of my list among living interpreters of the music of Chopin, an impression maintained by this performance. In his hands, these pieces had an extemporaneous feel to them, beginning with the gesture of beginning the first nocturne on the program (B-flat minor, op. 9/1) with the right hand almost from nothing, hesitant even to start the piece. Kissin has a fluidity of rubato that sounds like improvisation, not rushed or dragged out sentimentally, but hesitating and impetuous in equal measure, with even the embellishments to the melody sounding not practiced but added on the fly. In all the nocturnes, there were degrees of exquisite softness and exceptional freedom in the runs of the right hand. Six mazurkas, even more intimate pieces, were exquisitely pondered, to the point of almost ignoring the audience: the blue notes savored in op. 6/1, the hurdy-gurdy sections of op. 6/2 and op. 7/3 dark and creaking, the middle section of op. 7/2 more martial.
After the masterful rendition of Prokofiev's eighth sonata heard at his 2009 recital, as well as his recording of the composer's concertos, one expected great things of the fourth sonata (C minor, op. 29). Prokofiev built this sonata from themes of earlier pieces in his old notebooks, and the piece feels heavily layered, strands on top of strands that Kissin teased apart with careful patience, the first two movements steeped in melancholy but also wistful tenderness. The finale provided all of the fireworks Kissin needed to end the first half, at times cantankerous, heavy-handed, even clownish, all around extraordinary.
The only minor disappointment was a somewhat willful performance of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata (C major, op. 53), with the first movement bouncing around in tempo, many of the runs just slightly mushed together and the second theme weighty, maybe a little clunky. Little changes and hesitations here and there seemed over-thought, which made the slow movement viscous and oozing. Then there was the third movement, taken at a moderate pace, the bell-like main theme's first note played as if it were an anacrusis. Kissin's trills were immaculate as they buzzed around the trill-laden statement of the theme. The counterpart of this display was Liszt's outrageous Hungarian Rhapsody no. 15 ("Rákóczi March") at the recital's end, which whipped the audience into a frenzy satisfied only by three encores: Chopin's Nocturne in F# minor (op. 48/2), Liszt's arrangement of Paganini's "La Chasse" caprice, and the march from Prokofiev's opera Love for Three Oranges. So much the better that Washington Performing Arts will not make us wait two years for the next concert by Evgeny Kissin, who will return to the Kennedy Center on October 28.
As a postscript, it bears saying, on this official 100th anniversary of the massacre of Armenians in Turkey, that Evgeny Kissin has spoken out for the recognition of this tragedy as a genocide. After the speech by Pope Francis to the Synod of the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Church earlier this month, more governments may be willing to say the same.


text:
Owner's Retention of Substantial Rights in Patents for Cochlear Implants
By FindLaw Staff on May 14, 2010 4:13 PM
In Alfred E. Mann Found. for Scientific Research v. Cochlear Corp., No. 09-1447, the Federal Circuit faced a challenge to the dismissal of plaintiff's patent infringement suit, involving patents for cochlear implants, for lack of standing to sue on the ground that plaintiff's 2004 agreement with a third party (AB) granting an exclusive license to the patents at issue was a virtual assignment of the patents-in-suit.
As stated in the decision: "While AMF's right to choose to sue an infringer does not vest until AB chooses not to sue that infringer, it is otherwise unfettered. Once its right to sue an infringer activates, AMF can decide whether or not to bring suit, when to bring suit, where to bring suit, what claims to assert, what damages to seek, whether to seek injunctive relief, whether to settle the litigaiton, and the terms on which the litigation will be settled."
Thus, in concluding that such a broad right to sue and control litigation is inconsistent with an assignment of the patents-in-suit to the third party, the court reversed the dismissal of the case as plaintiff is the sole owner of the patents-in-suit because it retained substantial rights in the patents, including the right to sue for infringement if the third party declines to do so.
Related Resource:
Full text of Alfred E. Mann Found. for Scientific Research v. Cochlear Corp


Hepatitis B virus (HBV)-X protein(HBx) is a transactivator of host several cellular genes including alpha-fetoprotein(AFP) and AFP receptor(AFPR) which contributes to HBV-associated tumor development. The expression of AFP/AFPR are correlated with hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC)-initial cells. But the role of AFP and AFPR in promoting occurrence of HBV-related HCC were still unclear.
A total of 71 clinical patients' liver specimens, normal human liver cells L-02 and HCC cell lines, PLC/PRF/5 were selected for analyzing the effects of HBx on expression of AFP, AFPR and Src. The expression of goal proteins were detected by Immunohistochemical stained and Western blotting; HBx-expressed vectors were constructed and transfected into L-02 cells, laser confocal microscopy was applied to observe expression and location of AFP, AFPR and Src in the normal liver cells and HCC cells, soft agar colony formation assay was used to observe colonies formed of the cells.
We confirmed HBx gives preference to promote the expression of AFP and AFPR; HBx priors to up-regulate the expression of AFPR and AFP in L-02 cells and in normal liver specimens; AFPR signal been able to stimulate Src expression. The results also indicated that phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase(PI3K) inhibitors Ly294002 and GDC0941 effectively suppress AFPR mediated up-regulation expression of Src in AFPR positive HCC lines.
HBx priors to drive the expression of AFP and AFPR to promote expression of Src in normal liver cells and hepatoma cells; AFP and AFPR maybe play pivotal role in HBV-related hepatocarcinogenesis; Targeting AFPR is an available therapeutic strategy of HCC.
Hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) development closely associated with infected by hepatitis B virus(HBV). HBV-X protein(HBx), a small regulatory protein of HBV that has been require for contributing to the onset and progression of HBV-related HCC [1-3]. However, the molecular mechanisms involved in HBx-mediated hepatocarcinogenesis remain to be fully elucidated. HBx emerged transcriptional activity on a variety of viral and cellular promoters [4-6]. HBx does not directly bind to genomic DNA of host cells, but has been shown to interact with components of basal transcription machinery [7,8] and several transcription factors, such as p53, HIF-1α and E4F1 [9-11]. However, documents evidenced that the localization of HBx predominantly in the cytoplasm, HBx harbors a function to activate signal transduction cascades, including phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase(PI3K)/protein kinase B(AKT) [12,13] and mitogen-activated protein kinase(MAPK) . Activation of these signal pathways may contribute to HBx-mediated effects on driving malignant transformation of liver cells.
Alpha fetoprotein(AFP) is an early biomarker of HCC diagnosis, promote tumor cells proliferation effects of AFP have been reported by several groups [15,16], furthermore, data indicated that AFP play pivotal role in the hepatocarcinogenesis . Our investigations found that these effects of AFP maybe mediated by AFP receptors(AFPR) [18,19], cytoplasmic AFP activated PI3K/AKT signal pathway to promote expression of some oncogenes and proliferation of HCC cells [16,20,21]. HBx priors to induce expression of AFP and AFPR to activate PI3K/AKT signal pathway in normal liver tissues and cell lines . Because HBx was a critical factor for HBV driving development of HCC, HBx activates Wnt/β-catenin and Src kinase led to malignant transformation of liver cells , and Src plays important role in HCC development . In this study, we discovered that HBx priors to induce expression of AFP and AFPR in normal liver tissues and liver cell lines via activating PI3K/AKT signal, and AFP promoted expression of Src was mediated by AFPR, AFPR signal possess a character to activate PI3K/AKT. Our results supported that AFP and AFPR as potential stimulated factors for HBx inducing hepatocarcinogenesis.
Archived clinical specimens were originally collected during hepatectomy of 71 patients at Hainan Provincial People's Hospital between October 2008 and September 2014. Of the 71 patients, 49 were male and 22 were female. The ages ranged between 22–76 years with an average age of 49.8 years. All enrolled patients were treated with radical surgery and received no other treatments. HBV infection was diagnosed by a test of serum hepatitis B surface antigen, and circulating AFP plasma level was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Clinical data were obtained by retrospective chart review. Follow-up was available for all patients. A section of liver tissue about 2.0 × 2.0 × 2.0 cm was obtained from each patient immediately after the surgery. About 1.0 × 1.0 × 1.0 cm tissue samples were fixed in 10% formalin, embedded in paraffin, and routinely stained with hematoxylin and eosin. Specimens were assessed blindly and independently by two pathologists. In case of interobserver disagreement, final decisions were achieved by general consensus. All selected patients were diagnosed by histopathologic evaluation. About 1.0 × 1.0 × 1.0 cm tissue specimens were stored in formalin and liquid nitrogen. The study protocol was approved by the Ethical Committee of Hainan Provincial Peoples' Hospital and the Science Investigation Ethical Committee of Hainan Medical College. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.
All of clinical patients' liver tissues were performed by immunohistochemical staining. Following deparaffinization and antigen retrieval, the slides were blocked with 3% hydrogen peroxide for 10 minutes and then incubated with mouse anti-AFP, AFP receptor(AFPR), or Src-directed antibodies (Abcam Biotech Company, Cambridge, UK) at 4°C overnight. After washing, sections were incubated with secondary goat anti-mouse antibodies (Merck-Calbiochem) at room temperature for 60 minutes and then developed with 3,3-diaminobenzidine chromogen solution in 3,3-diaminobenzidine buffer substrate(Merck Chemicals). Sections were visualized with 3,3-diaminobenzidine and counterstained with hematoxylin. All sections were visualized by microscope(Olympus).
Human normal liver cell lines, L-02 cell was purchased from the Shanghai Institution of Cellular Biology, Science Academy of China and were cultured in RPMI 1640 medium supplemented with 10% fetal calf serum. The AFP-producing and HBV-infected cell line PLC/PRF/5 was gift from the Department of Cell Biology, Peking University Health Science Center and were maintained in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium(DMEM) supplemented with 10% fetal calf serum. All cell lines were cultured at 37°C in a humidified atmosphere containing 5% CO2.
Construction of the HBx-expressing construct (pcDNA3.1-HBx) and the primer used for HBx gene amplification have been previously described . Lipofectamine® 2000(Beyotime Biotechological Corp, Haimen, Jaingsu, China) was used to promote pcDNA3.1-HBx vectors transfected into L-02 cells. Stably transfected L-02 cells were screened using G418 (Cat No. 30-234-CR, MediatechInc, Manassas, USA) and named L-02-X.
Western blotting was employed to assess the protein levels of AFP, AFPR and Src. Twelve clinical patients' specimens that were randomly selected for detecting and these protein expressed in cell lines as described previously [21,22]. The cells were co-treated Ly294002 or GDC-0941(MedChem) with AFP(Sigma), and the expression of Src, pAKT(Ser473) were detected by Western blotting.
The staining procedure for laser confocal microscopy observing has been previously described . Briefly, cells were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde and incubated with mouse anti-human AFPR, AFP and Src antibody for 12 hours. FITC-conjugated or TRITC-conjugated secondary anti-mouse immunoglobulin G was added and incubated for 2 hours, followed by the addition of 100 μL DAPI (1 μg/mL) and 30 minutes of incubation. Cells were visualized with the Leica TCS-NT SP2 laser confocal microscopy (Leica Camera).
Soft agar formation assays were performed to compare the clonogenic potential of L-02 and L-02-X cells in semisolid medium. Briefly, 5000 cells of L-02 or L-02-X were mixed with 0.5% soft agar and plated on a layer of 0.8% of bottom agar in 6-well plates. 2 mL of complete medium was added on the top of agar. Cells were fed twice a week, and the plates were incubated for 14 or 21 days at 37°C with 5% CO2. Colonies were photographed and counted with a Nikon inverted microscope(Nikon Corp., Tokyo, Japan).
The results of multiple observations were presented as the mean ± SD of at least three separate experiments. Statistical significance was determined using x2 and the student's t test (SPSS 11.5 software).
We studied the expression of AFP, AFPR and Src in liver tissue samples from 71 patients by immunohistochemical staining and Western blotting. The results indicated that AFP expressed in HBV-infected tissues, HBV positive cirrhosis liver tissues and HBV-related HCC tissues was 42.8%, 70.6% and 86.4% respectively; AFPR expressed in these tissues was 50.0%, 75.5% and 90.9% respectively; Src expressed in these tissues was 28.6%, 52.9% and 63.6% respectively; The levels of AFPR was significantly higher in AFP+/HBV+ liver tissues than in AFP-/HBV+ or AFP-/HBV- liver tissues (Additional file 1). Statistical analysis indicated that expression of AFP and AFPR were significantly elevated than the expression of Src during the progression of HBV-infected liver tissues to HBV-related HCC. The expression of Src also progressively elevated in HBV infected liver tissues → cirrhosis liver tissues → HBV-related HCC tissues (Additional file 1). Immunohistochemical staining indicated that AFPR located in the membrane of liver tissue cells, and much higher level in HCC tissues than in other liver tissues, expression of AFPR progressively elevation from normal liver tissue to HBV-infected tissue to cirrhotic tissue to HCC tissues (Figure 1A). Location of AFP was in cytoplasm and the location of Src both in cytoplasm and cytoblast of the cells, these protein expressed much higher level in HCC tissues than in other liver tissues (Figure 1A); Western blotting detection showed that expression of AFPR emerged in HBV-infected liver tissues, but Src and AFP expression were limited to cirrhotic and HCC tissues (Figure 1B); Moreover, the expression of AFPR and AFP significantly higher than Src in hepatitis tissues (Additional file 1 and Figure 1B). We confirmed that expression of AFPR and AFP were positively associated with liver tissues which infected with HBV and progressed of HBV-related HCC.
Expression of AFPR, AFP and Src in clinical patients liver tissues. A, Clinical liver tissues sample were collected after surgical hepatectomy, the expression of AFPR, AFP and Src in clinical patients liver tissues were detected by immunohistochemical assay. B, Expression of AFPR, AFP and Src in these tissues were detected by Western blotting, low column images represented the protein densitometry value contrast to internal control β-actin ratio. *P < 0.05 vs normal liver tissue groups; **P <0.01 vs normal liver tissue groups and hepatitis tissue groups. We carried out at last three reduplicate experiments. HE stained: hematoxylin-eosin stained; IH stained: immunohistochemical stained.
We transfected a vector that expressing HBV protein HBx, pcDNA3.1-HBx, into human liver cell lines L-02 in vitro, Western blotting analysis showed that HBx expressed in L-02 cells (Figure 2A) . The pcDNA3.1-HBx-mediated induction of HBx expression in L-02 cells was evident at 3 days after transfection and remained elevated between 7 and 28 days after transfection (Figure 2A). In order to measure the impact of pcDNA3.1-HBx on the expression of AFPR, AFP and Src, L-02 cells were transfected with pcDNA3.1-HBx vectors and the aim proteins were detected by Western blotting. The results indicated that expression of AFPR and AFP were emerged after transfected with pcDNA3.1-HBx for 7 days and persisted increasing after 28 days (Figure 2B). But expression of Src start emerged after transfection for 14 days and increased after 21 days to 28 days (Figure 2B).
Effects of HBx on the expression of AFPR, AFP and Src in human normal liver cell line, L-02 cells. A, L-02 cells were transfected with pcDNA3.1-HBx vector for 72 hours, expression of HBx in L-02 cells were evidenced by Western blotting, human hepatoma cell line, PLC/PRF/5 cells were used as a positive control. B, L-02 cells were transfected with pcDNA3.1-HBx vectors for 0, 7, 14, 21 or 28 days respectively, expression of AFPR, AFP and Src in L-02 cells were evidenced by Western blotting, right column images represented the protein densitometry value contrast to internal control β-actin ratio. **P <0.01 vs control and 0 day treated groups. The images were representation of three reduplicate experiments.
While human normal liver cell line, L-02 cells were transfected with pcDNA3.1-HBx vectors, to evaluate the effects of pcDNA3.1-HBx on expression and localization of AFPR and AFP by laser confocal microscopy. The results indicated that AFPR and AFP start emerged in 14 days and significantly augmented after transfection for 28 days, AFPR located in the membrane of the cells (Figure 3A), however, AFP located in the cytoplasm of the cells (Figure 3B). Src played critical role in HBV-related HCC development [25,26]. In this investigation, furthermore, we explored the influence of HBx on the expression of Src. The results indicated that while L-02 cells were transfected with pcDNA3.1-HBx vectors in vitro, the expression of Src was stimulated after transfection for 14 days, and significantly elevated for 28 days. Observed by laser confocal microscopy also displayed that the location of Src not only in the cytoplasm but also in the cytoblast (Figure 3C), this appearance coincide to the location of Src in clinical HCC tissues that analyzed by immunohistochemical stained. These results confirmed that HBx been able to induce expression of AFPR, AFP and Src in human normal liver cell line. The results proved that HBx driven hepatocarcinogenesis maybe involved in promoting expression of AFPR, AFP and Src.
HBx induced expression of AFPR, AFP and Src in L-02 cells. L-02 cells were transfected with pcDNA3.1-HBx vectors for 0, 14, or 28 days respectively, expression of AFPR, AFP and Src in L-02 cells were observed by laser confocal microscopy. A, Expression of AFPR in L-02 cells were stained by FITC; B, Expression of AFP in L-02 cells were stained by TRITC; C, Expression of Src in L-02 cells were stained by TRITC. The images were representation of three reduplicate experiments.
L-02 cells were stable transfected with pcDNA3.1-HBx, the cells were screened by G418 named L-02-X cells. Western blotting analytical results indicated that stable expression of AFPR in L-02-X cells, but AFPR could not reveal in L-02 cells. HBV positive human HCC cell line, PLC/PRF/5 also emerged expression of AFPR (Figure 4A). When L-02, L-02-X and PLC/PRF/5 cells were treated with AFP for 24 hours, the expression of Src and phosphorylated AKT(Ser473) were stimulated in L-02-X cells and PLC/PRF/5 cells, but the effects absent emerge in L-02 cells. In order to investigate whether AFPR signal been capable of activating PI3K/AKT signal pathway, PI3K specific inhibitor, Ly294002 and GDC0941 were co-treated with AFP, the results indicated that Ly294002 and GDC0941 had an antagonistic role in AFP inducing expression of Src and phosphorylated AKT(Ser473) in L-02-X cells and PLC/PRF/5 cells (Figure 4B and C). These results proved that AFPR signal was able to activate PI3K/AKT signal pathway to mediate AFP induced expression of Src in L-02-X cells and hepatoma PLC/PRF/5 cells.
Influences of AFP on the expression of Src and pAKT(Ser473) in L-02 cells, L-02-X(stable transfected with pcDNA3.1-HBx) cells and PLC/PRF/5 cells. A, Expression of AFPR in L-02, L-02-X and PLC/PRF/5 cells were analyzed by Western blotting. B, L-02, L-02-X or PLC/PRF/5 cells were treated with AFP(20 mg/L), Ly294002(20 μM) or co-treated with AFP(20 mg/L) and Ly294002(20 μM) for 24 hours respectively, expression of Src and pAKT(Ser473) in these cells were analyzed by Western blotting, right column images represented the protein densitometry value compare with internal control β-actin or total AKT ratio. *P < 0.05 vs treated with AFP, Ly294002 or co-treated with AFP and Ly294002 groups; **P <0.01 vs untreated, treated with Ly294002 or co-treated with AFP and Ly294002 groups. C, L-02, L-02-X or PLC/PRF/5 cells were treated with AFP(20 mg/L), GDC0941(10 μM) or co-treated with AFP(20 mg/L) and GDC0941(10 μM) for 24 hours respectively, expression of Src and pAKT(Ser473) in these cells were analyzed by Western blotting, right column images represented the protein densitometry value compare with internal control β-actin or total AKT ratio. *P < 0.05 vs treated with AFP, GDC0941 or co-treated with AFP and GDC0941 groups; **P <0.01 vs untreated, treated with GDC0941 or co-treated with AFP and GDC0941 groups. The images were representation of three reduplicate experiments.
Expression of Src involve in the tumorigenesis. In the present study, we have found that HBx induced expression of AFPR and AFP prior to induce expression of Src in human normal liver cell line L-02. L-02 cells and stable expression HBx cell line, L-02-X cells were cultured in soft agar. The results indicated that L-02 or L-02-X cells colonigenesis in the soft agar. The number of colonies from 6 randomly selected microscopic fields was counted and an average colony number for each group was shown in Figure 5. L-02-X cells colonies number and growth significantly more than L-02 cells. Overall, these results suggest that HBx promoted expression of AFP, AFPR and Src was able to cause a more malignant phenotype in L-02 cells.
Overexpression of HBx affects colony formation of L-02 and L-02-X in soft agar. 5×103/ml L-02 or L-02-X cells were cultured in soft agar for 14 or 21 days, colony formation of the cells were observed by light microscopy(×40); The low column image indicated the statistical difference of the cellular clone numbers. The images were a representation of three independent experimentations.
HBx proteins play important roles in the development of HBV-related HCC through the activation of growth signal pathways and the inactivation of tumor suppressive pathways, such as transcripted activity of p53 [9,27]. In this study, we found that overexpression of AFP, AFPR and Src in cirrhosis and HBV-related HCC tissue samples, and showed that expression of AFPR and AFP prior to expression of Src during the progress of HBV-related hepatocarcinogenesis. These results implied that HBx is involved in AFPR and AFP overexpression during HBV infection. HBx inactivation transcripted activity of p53 to alleviate p53 mediated repression of AFP expression , HBx also stimulated expression of Src via activating PI3K signal pathway , whereas, in this study, we despite found that HBx upregulated expression of AFPR, but the role played of HBx in regulating expression of AFPR is still unclear. Recently, we found that HBx promoted AFPR expression maybe involve in activating PI3K/AKT signal . These results clued to that activation of PI3K/AKT signal was critical procedure for HBx driving malignant transformation of liver cells.
Recently, documents reported that AFP played pivotal role in HCC development and malignant behavior of liver cells [29-31], cytoplasmic AFP activated PI3K/AKT signal to stimulate expression of Ras, CXCR4 and Src through inhibiting activity of PTEN [16,21], AFP also inhibited the PI3K/AKT pathway through promoting ubiquitination of PTEN to stimulated malignant phenotype of HCC cells . HBV infection caused malignant transformation of liver, during this course, AFP gene was activated in liver cells, so AFP was used as a tumor marker for early warning origination of HCC in clinical diagnosis. Previously, we have found that AFP enhanced proliferation of HCC cells was mediated by AFPR, AFPR was identified as G-protein combined receptor, AFPR signal mediated cAMP and [Ca2+]i transduction of receptor signal to promoted expression of N-Ras and c-myc , these results implied that AFPR signal was also a critical factor for HCC development. In this investigation, the results indicated that human normal liver cells, L-02 were transfected with HBx-expressed vectors been able to stimulate expression of AFPR priors to the expression of AFP and Src, the results implicated that AFP played important role in inducing malignant transformation of liver cells and enhancing HCC cells malignant behavior was mediated by AFPR.
Activation of Src foreshowed the occurrence of cancer. HBx induced HCC development involve in activation of Src [33,34]. In the present study, clinical data displayed that during progression of HCC, elevated expression of Src in liver cells were closely associated with infection of HBV, these results implied that HBx stimulated expression of Src plays an important role in HBV promoting development of HCC. HBx enhanced proliferation and anti-apoptosis and autophagy through activating transduction of PI3K/AKT signal pathway [13,35], and PTEN specific suppression of HBx-mediated cell survival through inhibiting PI3K pathway in human normal liver cells, Chang liver . In this investigation, our results indicated that HBx induced expression of AFPR and location in membrane of L-02-X cells, the expression of AFPR also existed in HBV positive human liver cancer cells PLC/PRF/5. While these cells were treated with AFP, the expression of Src was stimulated, and PI3K specific inhibitor Ly294002 and GDC0941 were capable of withhold the role of AFP. These effects implicated that AFP promoted expression of Src and phosphorylation of AKT(Ser473) in AFPR positive cell lines was mediated by AFPR, it also proved that AFPR possessed a characteristic to activate transduction of PI3K/AKT signal pathway. The present study is the first time that discovered AFPR signal activated PI3K/AKT through signal cross-talk or AFPR maybe plays a role model of tyrosine protein kinase receptor. Recently, we found that HBx driven expression of AFP to activate transduction of PI3K/mTOR signal, stimulated expression of Src and CXCR4 in human normal liver cells , AFP also played role in promoting migration of HCC cells . In this investigation, soft agar cultured experiment demonstrated that HBx induced expression of Src in normal liver cell line was able to promote colonigenesis and growth in soft agar, implied HBx driven malignant phenotype of liver cells involve in promoting expression of Src. Notwithstanding, our previously study results have confirmed that cytoplasmic AFP promoted proliferation and anti-apoptosis of HCC cells through activating growth signal and inhibiting apoptotic signal [21,39,40], but in this study, we found that HBx induced expression of AFPR and AFP to promote expression of Src in normal liver cells, activation of AFPR signal was a critical factor for HBx driving HCC occurrence. AFPR maybe is applied as a novel bio-target for therapeutics of HCC.
Taken together, our findings are the first time to report HBx induced expression of AFPR, and AFPR signal possessed an identity to activate PI3K/AKT signal to promote expression of Src. AFPR plays important role in HBx driving hepatocarcinogenesis. Targeting AFPR to suppress PI3K/AKT signal is an available strategy of HCC therapeutic.
Mingyue Zhu and Junli Guo contributed equally to this work.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No. 81360307, 81260306, 81160261, 31060164, 30960153); Key Program of Science and Technology, Ministry of Education of China(No.211146); Key Projects of Science and Technology, Hainan Province(No. ZDXM 20110038); New Century Excellent Talents in China(NCET-10-0124) Natural Science Foundation of Hainan Province(309034, 310044, 811208, 814293) and Fund of Hainan Province Social Development(2015SF03).
Additional file 1: Expression of AFP, AFPR and Src in clinical patients' liver tissues.
The authors who have taken part in this study declared that they have no competing interests.
Conceived and designed the experiments: ML. Performed the experiments: MZ, JG, WL, HX, YL and XD. Analyzed the data: MZ, YC and XJ. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SF. Wrote the manuscript: ML and JG. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.


text:
Cycling Retreats with NTSQ Velo
Never the status quo.
Writer Shaun Tolson
Less than 10 minutes—and just three kilometres—into our ride, the contoured green of Pebble Beach's infamous 14th hole emerges from behind a cluster of ponderosa and bishop pines growing along 17-Mile Drive. On any other day, I'd be clamouring for my clubs. Instead, I'm doing the first of three challenging, picturesque, and—in some cases—once-in-a-lifetime cycling rides in the greater Monterey, California, area with NTSQ Velo, a Vancouver-based enterprise run by a team of mostly transplanted Australians who specialize in luxuriously appointed North American cycling retreats.
Soon, we've reached the coast. We pass the Monterey peninsula's iconic Lone Cypress—the tree famously at the centre of Pebble Beach's logo. Shortly after, we're snaking our way past the even more aspirational golf holes of the exclusive Cypress Point Club before turning inland, climbing away from the Pacific and toward the dramatic ridgelines of Carmel Valley.
The cycling company's name is an initialism that stands for "Never the Status Quo," and the opening 15 kilometres of this retreat's introductory ride provide evidence of that. On an NTSQ Velo retreat, stunning vistas and charming roads aren't delivered near the end of a ride; instead, they characterize most of it.
More than an hour later, as we're coasting along backcountry roads in a shaded valley about 18 kilometres east of Carmel-by-the-Sea, I ride up alongside Travis McKenzie, the founder of NTSQ Velo, who is steadily pacing the strong riders at the front of the group. "It's a lifelong dream to be able to do this," says 35-year-old McKenzie, an experienced Ironman competitor. "The joy I get from riding my bike is so special. It's a freedom that I crave, and it's very special to share that with our guests."
The cycling company's name is an initialism that stands for "Never the Status Quo," and the opening 15 kilometres of this retreat's introductory ride provide evidence of that.
McKenzie grew up on Australia's Gold Coast and, last year, founded NTSQ Sports Group (parent company to NTSQ Velo), which specializes in organizing and operating a variety of sporting events throughout Canada. The company has also sponsored a few professional cycling teams, which provided McKenzie with an insider's view of how a cycling group can be supported both on and off the road. Armed with that knowledge, as well as his own Ironman experiences, McKenzie is committed to delivering an equally proficient service with NTSQ Velo, albeit one draped in luxury.
Currently, the travel company leads five-day, four-night cycling retreats, starting at $6,900, in six places around the U.S., many of which are based at boutique Relais & Châteaux hotels and resorts. At Twin Farms in Barnard, Vermont, for example, cyclists are treated to a fine dining and beverage program that has routinely earned the New England resort prestigious awards over the last two decades. Guests spend their late mornings and early afternoons traversing the area's quaint and pastoral landscapes on two wheels. "It's like an untouched paradise there," says McKenzie. "There are these undiscovered, beautiful riding places that we're able to share with people, and it gives people a real appreciation for the U.S. and Canada as beautiful places to go and ride their bikes."
With a portfolio of destinations that also includes Maui, Napa Valley, and Kennebunkport in Maine, NTSQ Velo is committed to distinct locales. (Canadian trips to Banff, Lake Louise, Whistler, and Vancouver will be added next spring.) Despite the varied nature of their dramatic settings, every retreat features a bevy of standard amenities that elevate the trips beyond other high-end cycling excursions, such as Cervélo C5 road bikes equipped with Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 components; daily post-ride massages; and access to NormaTec Pulse Recovery System boots, which use air compression to enhance blood flow and quicken muscle recovery from the upper thigh to the lower calf.
Unlike some cycle-focused travel companies that only run a trip if a certain number of guests commit to it, NTSQ Velo guarantees that all of its scheduled retreats will occur. It can accept reservations only a couple of days before a retreat's starting date, if necessary. What's more, the team can craft custom itineraries and retreats for interested cyclists. "We want to create experiences and life-changing moments for people," says McKenzie. "And I'm really lucky that we're creating something that I would want to do myself."
Photos by Chris Thorn.
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Q&A: Dr. Philippe Allouche


He had the whole world in his hands -- the whole world, that is, of Pinocchio, including Gepetto, Jiminy Cricket, the Blue Fairy, and even bad old Monstro the whale. He had it in his hands because that's the way you fix an old movie: you run it through the projector of your fingertips, feeling for flaws, for fissures and cracks and accumulations of grit, all the banal little catastrophes that can destroy it.
And, tomorrow, when the immaculate, bright and nearly pristine "Pinocchio" opens on a thousand screens looking even newer than it looked in 1940, the world will get to judge how well Peter Comandini did his job.
Mr. Comandini, a vice president of YCM Labs in Burbank, Calif., which specializes in rescuing the movie past from decades of indifference, spent hours alone in a little room with clean hands (no oils) and the original 50-year-old negative of "Pinocchio." It was a touchy-feely kind of experience.
"You actually feel the film," he says over the telephone, "because that's the only way you can come across tears or scratches or accumulations of dirt."
With the patience of a hunter, he moved through the reels of nitrite negative, a frame at a time. When his fingers came across a flaw, he'd magnify it and begin the delicate process of repairing the flaw.
"You begin with cotton; if you can't get it with cotton, we move to wooden sticks; finally, we work with razor blades; you have to be very careful."
As in . . . Oops, there goes the famous nose-growing sequence!
But it never happened. Mr. Comandini, who has been interested in film restoration his entire adult life, is far too crafty a veteran to have an accident; before working on "Pinocchio," he restored both "Fantasia" and "Snow White."
"It's very hard work," he says. "It sounds so high tech, but basically it's just working with a 50-year-old strip of celluloid."
The high-tech stuff clicks in later. After restoring the negative, a new "master positive" is struck using a new printer technology that gets an even truer color transfer than was possible in 1940.
In fact, the tech has gotten so high that the process can actually fix flaws that were made in the original development back in 1940 when Walt Disney himself oversaw the creation of the studio's second feature-length, animated, narrative film.
"When we got into it, we found errors in the color that were literally unfixable in the 1940s. Using computers, we were able to create what we call a 'light change address.' That is, we could change the value of the color to even things out. We were able to 'help' the shot. So what people will see in 1992 is technically better than what they could see in 1940."
Viewers will note immediately, however, that the movie is square.
Square, that is, on the screen; the outer edges of the image have been masked, or covered, returning the image to its square configuration, which is the way it was originally composed. The masking at the edge effectively seals off today's standard rectangular format.
"When we restored 'Snow White,' " says Mr. Comandini, "we released it in [rectangular format], which meant that all the information couldn't fit onto the screen. So we had to scan to stay with some of the movement -- when a flock of birds flew up to the sky -- and you should have heard the purists shriek. So Disney made the decision to rerelease 'Fantasia' and now 'Pinocchio' in the original format."
One of Mr. Comandini's favorite moments in "Pinocchio" is a sequence where the famous Disney multi-plane camera is deployed to its fullest extent.
"It's the most ambitious shot in any classic Disney animated feature, except possibly for the shot at the end of the 'Night on Bald Mountain' sequence in 'Fantasia,' and even that was shot full size on a sound stage."
In the shot Mr. Comandini recalls, the camera seems to pass through level after level of reality; actually, it's focusing through images painted on glass.
"When you finally get to the last level," Mr. Comandini says in awe, "you're actually looking through nine pieces of highly polished glass."


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What a season it was in the Westfield W-League.
Just six points separated ladder-leaders Melbourne Victory from sixth-placed Adelaide United in the final wash-up, with Perth Glory and Sydney FC fighting it out for the championship.
The glory went to Sydney in the Grand Final – literally and metaphorically – as Perth's entertainers travelled to the Harbour City but finished second-best to the slick Sky Blues at Netstrata Jubilee Stadium.
It was a showpiece match worthy of the competition, with end-to-end action, a worldie from the home side's Sofia Huerta and, of course, a goal from the season's top scorer, Glory's Sam Kerr.
Sydney and Glory went head-to-head in the goal-scoring department all season, each registering a league-high 28 strikes across the 12-game campaign, as well as the six they shared in that thrilling Grand Final.
Elsewhere, Melbourne Victory's parsimonious defence restricted their opponents to just 15 goals on their way to winning the Premiership, while Brisbane Roar were a model of efficiency in scoring 18, conceding 17 and easing their way to second place in the ladder.
We take a tour through the stats and facts of a memorable 2018/19.
Melbourne Victory hit the top of the ladder after Round 3, and led the way for the bulk of the remainder of the campaign, only slipping from the pinnacle after Round 7 - when Perth assumed first place following a 2-1 home win over Sydney - and Round 9, when Brisbane Roar briefly took the lead.
Fans of Western Sydney Wanderers - look away now.
To nobody's great surprise, Westfield Matildas captain and all-round goal machine Sam Kerr topped the scoring charts, notching 17 times in 13 games including the Finals Series.
Her international partner-in-goals Caitlin Foord netted 10 for Sydney FC, closely followed by Adelaide United's Veronica Latsko and Victory's England international striker Natasha Dowie (nine each).
Melbourne City took best care of the ball during the campaign, caressing 6,446 passes with 81% accuracy on their way to a fifth-place finish.
In front of goal, it was the twin-powerhouses of Perth Glory and Sydney FC who led the way. Each side managed 34 goals (including Finals Series games) at an identical conversion rate of 18%.
Glory are famed for their firepower, but they also took no prisoners at the back, registering a league-high 145 fouls conceded during the course of the campaign.
In addition, Perth boasts four of the league's top tacklers from the 2018/19 season in Nikki Stanton, Alyssa Mautz, Jamie-Lee Gale and Natasha Rigby.
No wonder the West Australians were such a tricky beast to contend with.


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Tag Archives: Game TheoryNarrative Theory
Winning Essay
Trisha Urmi Banerjee wins Richard Stein Prize for "Austen Equilibrium"
INCS: Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies has just announced the winner of its Richard Stein Prize for best article published in 2018, Trisha Urmi Banerjee's "Austen Equilibrium," published in Representations 143 (Summer 2018).
Reviewers for the prize noted the essay's "smart, well-structured, interdisciplinary argument and use of game theory" and its engagement with "the under-theorized nature of Austen's 'economy of writing.'" One reviewer noted: "I think Banerjee's reading intervenes in an impressive number of critical conversations (about Austen's style, narrative time, realism) and cuts across different kinds of methodologies (formal, historical, theoretical), in a clear, compelling, and even exciting way." Another described how the essay "uses innovative methodologies to take on big ideas and develops them with real clarity and significance."
Of the essay, Banerjee herself writes: "By proposing a quantitative game-theory model of the marriage plot in Jane Austen's Emma, the essay demonstrates that free-market moral philosophy underwrites Austen's representation of matrimony and key formal elements of her writing—particularly, matters of verbal profusion. Her famed stylistic 'economy' is revealed to be structured by the emerging capitalist economy that Adam Smith theorized in The Wealth of Nations. Establishing the correspondences among several kinds of economy, the essay unites economic and formal approaches to Austen's work."
TRISHA URMI BANERJEE received her PhD in English from Harvard University and is now based in Paris. "Austen's Equilibrium" derives from her second book project, which uses economic modeling and theory to understand the "economics" of narrative language and structure.
Posted in Awards and Prizes, Essays, News	| Tagged Game TheoryNarrative Theory, INCS, Jane Austen, Prizes, Richard Stein Prize
Thoughts While Shaving
Posted on February 24, 2020 by Reps Admin
RAND Narratology
by Kent Puckett
Robert S. McNamara. US News & aNd World Report, 1965
This penetrating essay by Representations' own Kent Puckett looks at the unlikely historical and aesthetic overlap between narrative theory and strategic defense thinking in the middle part of the twentieth century. Taking in the many writings and frankly odd intellectual styles of nuclear war planners working at the RAND Corporation, the essay examines the unexpected play between the material facts of intellectual history, the obscure but nonetheless real force of narrative desire, and the unthinkable costs of nuclear war.
The essay begins:
In late 1947, John Williams, recruiting for what was then called Project RAND, sent the Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann a letter offering him two hundred dollars a month in exchange for just a little slice of his time:
In practice I would hope that members of the Project with problems in your line (i.e., the wide world) could discuss them with you, by mail and in person. We would send you all working papers and reports of RAND which we think would interest you, expecting you to react (with frown, hint, or suggestion) when you had a reaction. In this phase, the only part of your thinking time we'd like to bid for systematically is that which you spend shaving: we'd like you to pass on to us any ideas that come to you while so engaged.
Von Neumann—who, with Oskar Morgenstern, wrote 1944's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, more or less inventing game theory—would go on to work, and not only while shaving, with RAND on a number of its key Cold War projects, especially helping to refine its early application of game-theoretical models to the problems of nuclear war planning and strategic deterrence.
The story is characteristic of the early days at RAND. First, it is one of many RAND anecdotes about von Neumann that highlight the fact and local value of his uncanny and apparently unlimited brilliance; it is thus proof not only of von Neumann's reputation for intellectual virtuosity but also of the peculiar emphasis that RAND placed on brains, on an intelligence that was rapid, ruthless, burning bright. A colleague at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study reported that "Johnny's mind . . . was lightning quick—stunningly fast. If you gave him a problem he either solved it right away or not at all." More than just a prerequisite for the analysis and modeling to which RAND was committed, excessive, throwaway, for-its-own-sake brilliance was, as we will see, an important and, indeed, constitutive aspect of the early RAND style. Second, Williams's note suggests a kind of desperate whimsy that seemed almost de rigueur at RAND. Hard drinks, good music and good food, modernist interior design, Ping-Pong, dirty jokes, cool jazz, fraternity pranks, and sci-fi: accounts of the early days at RAND make it look as much like a David Lodge novel or an episode of Mad Men as the well-funded think tank that in fact it was. The RAND milieu, writes one critic, "offered the exhilarating emotional palette of a certain type of boy's world: a virtuous people menaced by evil zealots, the fate of millions concentrated in the hands of a daring few." "Life at RAND," writes another, "was a boy's conception of what a man's life should be, down to the fragrant pipe tobacco, fast cars, and clubby exclusivity." Its humor was a boy's humor, too. Like Williams, von Neumann was "an inveterate jokester": "Merrill Flood recalls the time that Einstein was supposed to go to New York and von Neumann offered to drive him to the Princeton train station. Von Neumann purposely put Einstein on a train going in the wrong direction."
A similarly affected eccentricity appears in Williams's own popular introduction to game theory, The Compleat Strategyst: Being a Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy (1954). In addition to its cod-Elizabethan title, its leaden gags, and its water-cooler misogyny, Williams's book was illustrated in an urbane, by-the-way style reminiscent of the New Yorker. Where, however, contemporary comics by Carl Rose, Jules Feiffer, and Herbert "Herblock" Block displayed real wit about midcentury life and things directly relevant to RAND, Charles Satterfield's illustrations feel unmotivated and, predictably, a little distasteful. One image of a besmocked painter pausing fussily before applying yet another color to a globe wouldn't be all that funny in any case, but it seems especially ham-fisted appearing as it does in a RAND publication introducing ideas that backed American policies of containment, strategic deterrence, second-strike capacity, and, in time, proxy war in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.
What's more, Satterfield's image and Williams's text rely on a more general and long-standing relation between war and games that connects the abstract and deadly serious modeling at RAND with a longer if equally fraught history of Kriegsspiel, with, that is, the idea of war as not only a terrible necessity but also an almost aesthetic activity that—like painting, mixing drinks, or telling jokes—is said to give special pleasure when done all for its own sake. Indeed, the offer to pay von Neumann for his nearly idle shaving thoughts, for his extra ideas, for time that would otherwise go to waste, for work that was valuable precisely and paradoxically because it bordered on waste, is evidence of the prodigal ethos of the early days of RAND, an appreciation for the beau geste that could seem to run against the grain of the group's clean-cut, clinical, avowedly pragmatic, and broadly amoral work on military strategy at an especially high-stakes moment in American and world history. What is most interesting to me is what this all reveals about the generative relation between, on the one hand, RAND's "hard-headed" realism and, on the other, the elegant, seductive, and oddly excessive qualities, first, of game theory, which was not invented but rather cultivated at RAND, and, after game theory had run out of steam, of systems analysis.
Elegant, excessive, and, as I will argue, strikingly if also—and this is important—minimally narrative. Take, for example, the prisoner's dilemma, the most famous of game theory's many models, which was developed at RAND by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher in 1950 and subsequently filled out and crucially named by Albert Tucker. Game theory is, roughly, the use of quantitative models to account for or to predict the cooperative or competitive behavior of rational actors within defined states of conflict, and the prisoner's dilemma is a two-person game that imagines two prisoners who have together committed a crime and must choose separately under interrogation either to remain mum or to confess and thus to incriminate the other. If A and B both speak, both spend two years in prison; if either only A or only B speaks, the one who speaks will go free and the other will spend three years in prison; if neither A nor B speaks, both will spend only a single year in prison. Although the prisoner's dilemma is an abstract and, in that sense, apparently timeless conceptual construct, it is also a little story, a "stock narrative," a concrete example that motivates abstraction in terms that recall the bare but nonetheless real narrativity of the folktale: it has characters, a conflict, a setting, and something like a beginning, middle, and end. What's more, the story of the story, the story of the dilemma's itinerant passage from RAND through Tucker and then out into the wider world might—again, just barely—mirror the trajectory of the traditional folktale: "Not published as such until years after its invention, the prisoner's dilemma spread through the scientific community of the 1950s by oral transmission that would satisfy the folklorist's definition of a dilemma tale." If the dilemma's utility is a result of its capacity to quantify conflict, its considerable and enduring appeal is due, at least in part, to what was only apparently inessential or extra to it: a minimally developed narrative set-up that motivated abstraction in the familiar terms of temporally distinct and yet causally related events: crime, confession, punishment. Just as structuralist and formalist thinkers were working in the 1950s and 1960s to theorize literariness as an objective, more or less present, and semi-autonomous aspect of some kinds of language, the quantitative realists at RAND demonstrated—and not only in their early work on game theory—a similar commitment to the ostensible autonomy of rules, systems, and, as I'll argue, to narrative understood as independent of whatever it might in fact narrate.
It is important, given a tendency simply to equate RAND nuclear thinking with game theory, to note that game theory was finally an early and ultimately abandoned expression of a more varied commitment to systems thinking and the quantification of conflict: as Robert Leonard argues, "This burst of game-theoretic analysis of tactics in the late 1940s and early 1950s, although intensive, was short-lived. Although formally impeccable, little of it ultimately found its way into the larger systems analyses conducted at RAND, the studies most influential upon the Air Force client." If, however, game theory per se seemed quickly to hit a wall at RAND, its rationalist, discursive, and minimally narrative promise continued in both more and less diffuse ways to inform the think tank's culture, style, and rhetoric: "That the Cold War was literally a game in this stripped-down, spare sense remained a consistent point of departure for discussions of arms races and nuclear war, even as the adequacy of game theory's calculating brand of rationality for dealing with such situations came in for criticism." At a moment when the enormity, immediacy, and speed of thermonuclear war threatened the very idea of significantly different but related beginnings, middles, and ends, RAND advocated styles and strategies that betray not necessarily a commitment to military victory (an increasingly hollow concept in the age of the bomb), or even to meaning at a moment when meaning seemed under threat, but rather to an unmotivated desire for what we might call bare narrativity. Continue reading …
The author of War Pictures: Cinema, Style, and Violence in Britain, 1939–1945 (2017), Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction (2016), and other books, KENT PUCKETT teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, where serves on the editorial board of Representations. He is currently writing a book about the aesthetics of electoral modeling.
Posted in Essays	| Tagged American History, Cold War, Game TheoryNarrative Theory, Nuclear Threat, Nuclear War, RAND, Strategic Defense


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Assisted Living Technologies has products to help caregivers
Victim identified in Webster Bank Arena crash
by: John Curley
The victim who crashed into the Webster Bank Arena on Thanksgiving has been identified.
According to the City of Bridgeport, the victim is 31-year-old Wagner Mendez of Stamford.
Investigators say Mendez was traveling at a high rate of speed on Main Street in Bridgeport when he lost control and struck the front of the arena.
Related Content: Driver dies after crashing car into Connecticut sports arena
Police extricated Mendez from his car and transported him to Bridgeport Hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
No events were scheduled at the venue on Thanksgiving. As a result, nobody else was hurt.
Bridgeport police continue to investigate.
by DAVID SHARP, Associated Press / Jul 18, 2019
CAPE ELIZABETH, Maine (AP) — A private dive team has located the last U.S. Navy warship to be sunk by a German submarine in World War II, just a few miles (kilometers) off the coast of Maine.
The sinking of the USS Eagle PE-56 on April 23, 1945, was originally blamed on a boiler explosion. But the Navy determined in 2001 that it had been sunk by a German submarine.
by COREY WILLIAMS, Associated Press / Jul 18, 2019
Public housing officials in Chicago are planning wellbeing checks on residents as the heat and humidity are expected to mount to dangerous levels as part of a wave of sweltering weather covering a substantial portion of the U.S.
Chicago's Housing Authority says routine checks also will be done to make sure the temperature in housing units is at safe levels. Window air conditioners are available for emergency situations.
by Vanessa Wojtusiak / Jul 18, 2019
POMFRET, Conn. (WTNH) -- A 40-year-old woman was arrested for Possession of Narcotics and Possession of Narcotics with Intent to Sell.
Kristy Carpenter of Plainfield was a passenger in a rental car that was stopped for a motor vehicle violation by Connecticut State Police - Troop D Quality of Life Task Force on Thursday, July 17.
Connecticut / 1 hour ago
Tractor trailer crashes tree into Meriden home


You can finally buy a 3D printer without emptying your bank account, thanks to a new campaign on crowd-funding website Kickstarter.
The campaign is for Micro, one of the most affordable and consumer-friendly 3D printers available. According to the machine's development team, M3D, all you have to do is plug in the printer, download or create models, hit print, and then "watch your custom creations form right before your eyes".
The Micro features a sensor technology called Micro Motion, as well as a feedback system with auto-leveling and auto-calibration, all of which make Micro super easy for you to 3D-print toys, jewelry, replacement parts - whatever you want. You can also use PLA or ABS, standard 1.75 mm filament spools, or Micro's own filament spools.
As for the software inside of Micro, M3D described it as "interactive and enjoyable", like a game, and that it has a simple interface and full touchscreen capability. It lets you search and browse pre-designed models online, organise 3D models you've downloaded, adjust models, and of course print them.
Micro can be used with any Windows, Mac, or Linux based system. To get on the waiting list, you'll need to pledge at least $299 on Kickstarter. The campaign has already reached its funding goal, so you will definitely receive a unit. That said, place your order now. Spots are limited and filling fast.
Check out Micro's Kickstarter video above for more details.
UPDATE: The Kickstarter campaign, which asked for $50,000 has now raised over $1m in the first 24 hours. Wow.


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Lawyer Referrals
Researchers searching for a better understanding of concussions
by Mario Cattabiani — October 4, 2010
How To Get Your Free Initial Consultation
To start an evaluation of your case, please complete the form below. The more information you can provide, the better able we will be to determine if we can help you.
We will review the information and let you know by email shortly if we may be able to handle your matter and what the next steps may be.
*This web site is designed for general information only. The information presented at this site should not be construed to be formal legal advice nor the formation of a lawyer/client relationship.
With an increasing number of people - from NFL players to soldiers - suffering concussions, researchers are increasing their efforts to understand just what goes on when a brain sloshes within a skull.
For years, researchers have been studying the brains of deceased football players who suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy - a degenerative disease marked by "tangles" in the brain.
But the goal is to peer inside the body while the patient is still alive, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania to the University of California to the US military and beyond have stepped up their efforts. Some of the research focuses on exploring what happens to rat brain cells when they are stretched and identifying protein markers in human blood.
"This is truly an under-addressed area of medicine, one of the last frontiers of medicine that we have not done a good job on as a medical community," Col. Dallas C. Hack, director of the Combat Casualty Care Research Program, told The Inquirer. "We're going to change medicine with the work we're doing."
"Concussion is not like an ACL injury. Everybody's knee is essentially the same. We know what it does, we know what it should do," allowing for a standard treatment protocol, Jeffrey S. Kutcher, chair of the American Academy of Neurology's Sports Neurology Section, added. "Brains are way too diverse for that."
Ross Feller Casey, LLP has a remarkable track record of winning verdicts and settlements involving brain injuries.
Those cases include: $13 million settlement for a man who suffered a brain injury as a result of a truck accident; $12 million settlement for a boy who was left brain damaged after error during heart surgery; and $10 million verdict for a boy who went into anaphylactic shock, resulting in brain injury as a result of an allergic reaction to peanuts.
To learn more, click Brain Injuries
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At age of 5 I liked to take the back off disused radios and was fascinated with the bits inside. I remember spending happy hours hitting all the little bits with my screwdriver and, for want of a more apt word, adjusting the cores in the IF cans. Of course I didn't appreciate that they were IF cans at the time! Enlightened parents never put an end to this and I reckon I was well on the way to a technology career from a very early age.
My big brother's illustrating electronics magazine came along and it was only after reading it several times over that the realisation dawned that something called amplification had been missing from my world. It wasn't long before a passable PA system driven by telephone handset was born. By the age of 14 I'd moved on and upwards to RF and was keen on playing with a few old valve radios that I had recovered from the scrap heap. I got a copy of the RAE manual and I registered for the UK Radio Amateur Examination at a local college in 1975. I remember turning up for the big day having read, and re-read the book from beginning to end. I'd worked through every single worked example and learned off by heart every formula.
There was actually twenty others sitting the exam and they were surprised to see me. I hadn't realised that there was a course running. Schoolchildren weren't allowed to enrol at the local tech anyway. On explaining that I had read the book and registered for the examination there were many tut-tuts and much shaking of heads but through luck or otherwise I sailed through the three hour written paper it and took out my first callsign G8LVR.
In 1984 that became G4WZG and with a move to Scotland, the regional modifier makes it GM4WZG.
Main operating preference is CW followed by SSB.
Having started to play with radio at an early age my career developed along appropriately technical lines and I have been a Chartered Engineer for more than 30 years. Always a believer that a technologist should be able to cross between sectors I have in my time held positions as University Lecturer, Communications and IT Manager for a TV company and IT Director of a Global Pharmaceutical company with offices in 40 countries . I'm now running my own business specialising in Project Management Services across Spanish speaking territories - www.paceprofessional.co.uk .


Atlanta chef Todd Richards is about to add even more to his already full proverbial plate.
Richards, along with Jackmont Hospitality, for which he serves as culinary director, is developing a barbecue restaurant in Atlanta's Westview neighborhood.
Tentatively titled Anderson's Barbecue, the eatery, set to open by the end of March, will serve some of the dishes Richards perfected when he worked at now-shuttered Rolling Bones barbecue restaurant in Old Fourth Ward.
Jackmont Hospitality, co-founded by former Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson, owns and operates restaurants including actor/rapper Ludacris' Chicken + Beer and the James Beard Award semi-finalist One Flew South, both located in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and TGI Fridays restaurants. Jackson's wife, Valerie Richardson Jackson, serves as Jackmont's Chairman of the Board.


An excellent article in the San Francisco Chronicle reports on human suffering and environmental destruction in Ecuador which 30,000 Ecuadorians claim are a result of Texaco's (now owned by Chevron) past oil operations in the country.
These Ecuadorians are plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit that argues that high rates of cancer in the area are a result of toxic waste dumped by Texaco into rivers, wetlands and unlined pits.
Texaco created a "Rainforest Chernobyl" by dumping an estimated 18 billion gallons of toxic waste. In addition to high rates of cancer there have been reports of skin diseases, birth defects and spontaneous abortions that have been caused as a result of the pollution.
The case has been highly contentious. Lawyers and activists involved in the case have been subjected to threats and harassment. The U.N. sent a letter to the Ecuadorian government on Nov. 17 demanding that measures be taken to ensure the safety of the people involved in this landmark case.