Simon & Schuster Children's Books has acquired The Royal Rabbits of London, the first children's book by Santa and Simon Sebag Montefiore.
Senior commissioning editor Jane Griffiths acquired the world rights in a two-book deal from Sheila Crowley at Curtis Brown and Georgina Capel of Georgina Capel Associates. The illustrator is Kate Hindley (United Agents).
The Royal Rabbits of London, described as The Hobbit meets Fantastic Mr Fox meets Watership Down, is about a rabbit called Shylo, who moves to London to discover the secret world of the Royal Rabbits of London, who defend the kings and queens of England.
Santa Montefiore is the author of 15 novels for adults, including her latest title, A Mother's Love (Simon & Schuster).
Her husband, Simon Sebag Montefiore, is the author of non-fiction history books such as Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar and The Romanovs (W&N).


I guarantee these are 100% true and tested authentic humans. No giant mechanical death machines here!
RHB on Steam, 1st August 2018!
It's so close I can taste it on my organic human lips.
Tastes a bit like raw spaghetti, or the taste we all feel when opening a window on a hot summer night. Puts me in the mood for wishlisting!
Here is a free game!
We did it! We make our silly basketball game in two weeks, and now we've packaged it up and it's ready to play!
It's local multiplayer, for 2-10 players, and it really is an explosively ordinary game of basketball, with absolutely nothing weird going on and DEFINITELY no giant robotic death machines!
Working on one big project for years can be exhausting, so we thought we'd freshen ourselves up with a little game jam! We took two weeks off and made a completely stupid little multiplayer basketball game.
It's called "Regular Human Basketball" and really the name says it all. You play basketball and are a regular human, definitely not a giant mechanical death machine! We'll be releasing it for free later in the week.


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Royalties can be up to 40% compared with the 7-10% offered by traditional publishers. Union Square Publishing's authors maintain ownership and control of their Intellectual Property Rights. In addition, we offer our Authors advances.
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Authors become part of our Algorithms for Success trade-marked Ecosystem which establishes the best future for your book, your business and beyond.


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World NewsNorth America
Visualization shows how droplets from one cough can infect an entire airplane
This visualization from Purdue University shows how tiny invisible droplets from a single cough can flow through the cabin of a Boeing 767 passenger jet. The model is based on the assumption that the 2003 SARS virus was airborne.Qingyan Chen/Purdue University School of Mechanical Engineering
The coronavirus pandemic has brought air travel to an unprecedented standstill — wreaking all sorts of havoc and putting countless jobs at risk — but a new visualization is unlikely to make people eager to fly the friendly skies again soon.
The motion graphic produced by Purdue University researchers shows the aftermath of a single cough on an airplane, with tiny invisible droplets dispersing throughout the cabin, possibly infecting a large number of fellow passengers.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), air travel is down 95 percent from normal levels. As states and countries begin to slowly reopen, will people feel confident enough to get back on airplanes in the wake of COVID-19?
It's an open question. Passenger cabins have always posed a risk for transmission of all kinds of germs, thanks to the close proximity, many multi-touch surfaces and a lack of fresh air.
Boeing has been experimenting with bathrooms that can sanitize themselves and kill 99.9 percent of germs and pathogens in mere seconds, according to the company. But most airlines were not planning for a major global pandemic.
"When you can easily sell your airplanes, you try to defer the problems to the future," Qingyan Chen, a Purdue University engineering professor who helped lead a major FAA-funded research project on disease transmission aboard aircraft and has received research funding from Boeing, told The Washington Post. "Today we found that the future is actually 2020."
Breakthroughs are possible, however.
Ultraviolet lights that promise to destroy viruses without hurting humans are being tested by Columbia University scientists, who say the lights would be effective in airplane cabins, airports, hospitals and schools.
"As we speak, there are 100 hairless mice being exposed for 15 months," David J. Brenner, director of Columbia's Center for Radiological Research, explained to The Post. The mice apparently live under the lights for eight hours a day and get eye and skin tests every couple of weeks, and after eight months the researchers have found no damage, "which is encouraging," he said.
For the study, Chen worked with Boeing engineers to determine whether changing an airplane's ventilation system would affect the risk of contracting SARS, used as a stand-in for other dangerous viruses that might emerge.
Researchers found that passengers sitting with a SARS patient in a seven-row section of a Boeing 767 would have a one-in-three chance of getting sick from a 5-hour flight. On a shorter 737 flight, the risk was one in five. But they also discovered that changing the ventilation system — for example, by having airflow into the cabin from near the floor rather than from above — would cut the risk by half or more.
It's worth noting that the Purdue study assumed the virus that caused SARS could stay airborne for long periods, which is different from what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says is typically occurring with the novel coronavirus.
Still, it remains to be seen how far the struggling airline industry — which has received billions in stimulus funds — will go.
Boeing recently announced a plan to lay off 16,000 workers, and a survey from the International Air Transportation Association, which represents carriers worldwide, found that 40 percent of recent passengers said they may wait at least six months after the outbreak is contained to travel again.
"It's very hard for the industry to change … It's not like a flip of a switch," added Chen, pointing to the expense of developing new features and getting them certified by the FAA. But those high costs also underscore the key role for government, he said.
"Regulation is very important. If you regulate that, then they will have to do something."
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Turns in Magnetic Thin Films Could Lead to Better Data Storage
A magnetic phenomenon newly discovered by MIT researchers could lead to much faster, denser, and more energy-efficient chips for memory and computation.
The findings, reported in the journal Nature Materials, could reduce the energy needed to store and retrieve one bit of data by a factor of 10,000, says the paper's senior author, Geoffrey Beach, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at MIT. The paper's co-authors are graduate students Satoru Emori and Uwe Bauer, postdoc Sung-Min Ahn, and Eduardo Martinez of the University of Salamanca in Spain.
Beach says that hints of the new phenomenon have been reported for several years, but these had remained unexplained until now. The new results could overcome "a lot of what had seemed like fundamental limitations" in the control and use of magnetic materials, he says, adding: "It's a whole new approach to the design of magnetic materials."
It turns out the key to this phenomenon lies not in the magnetic materials themselves, but in what's next to them: In this case, the team used very thin films of a ferromagnetic material, deposited on a metal base, and with a layer of an oxide material on top — a sort of ferromagnet sandwich. The behavior of the ferromagnetic layer, it turns out, depends on the metal that layer rests upon.
Ferromagnetic materials, including the familiar bar magnets, have a north and a south pole. When such materials are used for data storage, such as on a computer's hard disk, separate tiny "domains" on their surface can have these poles pointing either up or down, representing ones and zeros. Normally, when a ferromagnetic material is exposed to a current, these domains are pushed along the surface in the same direction as the electron flow.
But previously, in rare cases, the movement was in the opposite direction, puzzling researchers. The MIT team found that when the thin ferromagnetic film was deposited on a slab of platinum, it exhibited this backward flow — which Beach likens to being dragged upwind.
But under circumstances that were identical, except that the film was deposited on the metal tantalum, the magnetic domains flowed in the normal direction — meaning that the key was not in the ferromagnet itself, but in its next-door neighbor. Both platinum and tantalum are nonmagnetic, so they would not ordinarily be expected to affect magnetic behavior.
It turns out that in either case, an unexpected effect alters how magnetic domains switch from one orientation to the other. Normally, when the spin orientation changes from one domain to the other (say, from "up" to "down"), the direction of that change is random. But in these thin-film sandwiches, spin rotations are aligned, consistently either turning clockwise or counterclockwise. The researchers showed that because of this peculiar effect, current can push domains with much more force than in conventional materials, and the direction that the domains move can be engineered simply by selecting the nonmagnetic metal underneath the magnet.
Such asymmetrical behavior is called a chiral effect; the researchers say this is the first demonstration of chiral behavior in magnetic domains.
"There are very few systems in nature that have this preferred way to rotate," Beach says. Among the few are the molecules that form the basis for life, such as those that assemble into DNA molecules. Additionally, a few magnetic materials have shown this property, "but only in very exotic structures," he says: at temperatures just slightly above absolute zero, and only in a perfect single crystal.
The new phenomenon, by contrast, is seen "at room temperature and well above room temperature, and in devices that are ideally suited for integration into electronic devices," Beach says.
In the new ferromagnetic sandwiches, the forces pushing the magnetic domains are 100 times greater than in conventional ferromagnetic storage systems. Since the power needed to move the domains varies with the square of these forces, Beach says, such a system could be 10,000 times more efficient than existing technology.
With that, "all of a sudden these go from just looking interesting to being competitive even with very entrenched technology," Beach says. And because these structures are compatible with existing manufacturing methods, he predicts, "these things are going to be out there and making a difference very soon."
Emori, the paper's lead author, says that there are now several kinds of memory systems, from the ones within a computer's internal memory to those on hard disks or solid-state USB thumb drives. Theoretically, by harnessing these new effects, he says, "all of these could be satisfied by one material."
This is "a very important, major advance," says Robert Buhrman, a professor of engineering and senior vice provost for research at Cornell University. The MIT research, he says, is part of "a very intense effort worldwide to efficiently control the motion of ferromagnetic domain walls in thin-film nanostructures for future very high-performance data-storage and nonvolatile logic operations."
Buhrman adds, "This work has answered several important questions raised by earlier studies as to how a current pulse can very rapidly move domain walls in a preferred direction." Besides providing those answers, he says, it "raises new questions for follow-on work."
"It's really a whole new class of magnetic materials," Beach says. "It opens up possibilities that it would have been difficult to even speculate about a couple of years ago."
The work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
For more information visit www.mit.edu.


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Doing Their Part
Recommendations and Resources
New resource available: U.S. Coin Circulation: The Path Forward (Follow up to the State of Coin Paper).
Independent review provides findings and recommendations to addressing the U.S. coin circulation disruption. To read the report (Off-site, PDF)
Help Get Coin Moving Again:U.S. Mint YouTube Video
Click on the video to view the latest video from the U.S. Mint on how you can help coins circulate by cashing in the coins you've got sitting around.
Click on the image to view a U.S. Coin Task Force report
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted normal circulation patterns of U.S. coin and has posed significant challenges for the U.S. coin supply chain. A number of factors contributed to these challenges, including changes in consumer payment behavior, stay-at-home orders by state and local governments resulting in many business and bank closures, as well as the slowdown of the ability to obtain raw materials for manufacturing new coins, the availability of labor across the coin supply chain, and changes to the coin-supply-chain-servicing infrastructure.
All of these factors contribute to hurdles for the American consumers and businesses to get the coin that they need to support cash transactions. Yet, like never before, the pandemic has emphasized the importance of cash for consumers. Millions of Americans rely on currency and coin as their only or preferred form of payment, and businesses rely on cash and coin to make change for those transactions.
This pandemic is quite unique when compared to other previous disruptions, and as a result, operational challenges caused by COVID-19 are hard to diagnose. Many factors leading to the slowdown of coin circulation were easily observable and explainable. However, given the anonymous nature of cash transactions, the proportional contributions of each factor to the problem are difficult to measure with any degree of certainty. Consequently, while the circulation slowdown has persisted now for more than a year and half, it is still unclear what factors weigh most heavily.
This paper is a work product of the U.S. Coin Task Force, a group of coin industry representatives that came together at the onset of the pandemic to identify, refine and promote strategies to resolve the pandemic-related coin supply chain issues. The paper examines the causes that contributed to the coin circulation disruption, the impacts to those affected by this issue, as well as response actions taken by the coin industry to address the situation.
Read more about the state of coin… (PDF)
Click on the image to view a report from the Today Show
#getcoinmoving PSA from United States Mint
United States Mint Director David Ryder speaks about how Americans can help #GetCoinMoving again and into the hands of the people and businesses that need them.
Statement from the U.S. Coin Task Force on the Coin Circulation Issue
Coin circulation has once again emerged as a disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have referred to this as a shortage; however it is not. There is approximately $48.5 billion in coin already in circulation, much of which is sitting dormant inside America's 128 million households. Returning coins into circulation by spending them, or depositing or exchanging them at banks or kiosks, will make a meaningful difference for the millions of American people and businesses that rely on coins to support cash transactions.
"The weak circulation affects most everyone, but the hardest hit are small cash-dependent businesses and those who are least well off" says Hannah vL. Walker, a U.S. Coin Task Force member and Vice President with FMI – The Food Industry Association. "For millions of Americans, cash is the only form of payment."
If just a fraction of the coin sitting dormant in households and businesses is redeemed and reused, this problem can be greatly reduced.
Every Coin Counts: How Americans Can Help Get Coin Moving
The U.S. Coin Task Force continues to offer resources and recommendations, and guidance for banks and retailers, and we continue to encourage the American public to:
Start spending their coins
Deposit coins at their financial institutions
Redeem coins at coin kiosks
Use the hashtag #getcoinmoving in your own social media posts to promote awareness and understanding of this issue
Visit getcoinmoving.org for more information
Working to Recharge Coin Circulation in the United States
Coin circulation has emerged as a new disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have referred to this as a shortage; however it is not. There is more than $40 billion in coin already in circulation, most of which is sitting dormant inside America's 128 million households. As people have changed their spending habits, and coin-intensive businesses and financial institution lobbies have been less accessible, the nation's coin is pooling in change jars, in car cup holders and in shuttered businesses, making it difficult for the businesses of this country to get the coin that they need to support cash transactions. To address the circulation problem, the United States Mint and Federal Reserve established a U.S. Coin Task Force in July 2020 that includes representatives of critical parts of the coin supply chain.
"The weak circulation affects most everyone but the hardest hit are small cash-dependent businesses and those who are least well off" says Hannah vL. Walker, a Task Force member and Vice President with FMI – The Food Industry Association. "For millions of Americans, cash is the only form of payment."
About the U.S. Coin Task Force and this Website
The U.S. Coin Task Force was convened in July 2020 (Off-site) and charged with identifying, refining and promoting strategies to resolve the coin supply chain issues resulting from COVID-19-related disruptions to normal coin circulation. Task force members represent all major participants in the coin supply chain, including representatives from the following groups:
Unites States Mint
Armored Carriers
Independent Community Bankers of America
National Association of Federal Credit Unions
Coin Aggregator representatives
Retail Trade Industry
For a complete list of members, visit the Members page.
Content and materials provided on this website are a product of a cross-industry work group – the U.S. Coin Task Force – and do not reflect the views of the Federal Reserve or any individual or organizations represented on the task force.
July Report and Initial Recommendations
On August 4, the U.S. Coin Task Force published its initial recommendations for addressing the coin circulation issues in the supply chain as a result of COVID-19. These initial recommendations are an outcome of the task force's first phase, which concluded at the end of July. The task force agreed to continue work in August on the second phase, focused on refining these recommendations as well as identifying strategies that would require a longer lead time to develop.
Engaging the U.S. Coin Task Force
Organizations interested in providing feedback and input to the task force are encouraged to reach out to the trade association representative members who most closely align with their industry / interest. Please refer to the Members page for member information.
U.S. Coin Task Force Public Statements
U.S. Coin Task Force Announces Recommendations (Off-site) (August 4)
Statement from the U.S. Coin Task Force on the Coin Circulation Issue (Off-site) (July 24)
U.S. Mint Press Releases
United States Mint Releases Public Service Announcement Regarding Circulating Coins (Off-site) (August 5)
United States Mint Statement on Circulating Coins (Off-site) (July 23)
Federal Reserve Financial Services Announcements
U.S. Coin Task Force Members Confirmed (Off-site) (July 10)
Federal Reserve Convenes U.S. Coin Task Force with Industry Partners (Off-site) (June 30)
This website is managed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on behalf of the U.S. Coin Task Force. Content, opinions, and recommendations on this site are the product of the U.S. Coin Task Force and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve or any individuals or organizations represented on the task force.


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A stunning amount of work has been done on biochemical reactions, literally millions of experiments costing billions of dollars. These experiments produce little pieces to much larger puzzles, such as that of how cancer develops, and how drugs interact with the pathways to cancer. Unfortunately, this knowledge is not in a unified database that you could do statistical inference over, but rather spread out over millions of journal articles using inconsistent technical language that requires domain-specific knowledge.
The Reach project Reach on Github. is a system that uses hand-written rules to extract entities and events from text automatically, using a rule-based language for information extraction called Odin. Odin is part of Processors, an open-source library of Natural Language Processing tools on Github. Because the rules are hand-written, it is easy to interpret how you got a certain result, and relatively easy to debug. You can explore the results of our work or try out your own sentences at the Reach project site.
This is an annotation by the Reach Visualizer of a sentence from a real biomedical paper, displayed using brat annotation format.
It shows a single reaction, a binding Binding is one of the many kinds of biochemical reactions. It's when two proteins stick together to make a complex protein. resulting in a complex of Raf and Ras. By building lots of this little links like this one, and linking those in turn (again, using text as our guide), we will make much larger directed graphs that are closer to what we want.
One of the many aspects of biomedical text that differentiate it from "normal" text is the way it uses coreference relations. Coreference resolution is linking different mentions in a text (like she and the Speaker of the House in a sentence about Nancy Pelosi) as referring to the same real-world referent—something that we as readers do constantly, but that's hard to do automatically. Some of the cues that open-domain coreference resolution uses to great effect such as gender and animacy are less important here, since almost all pronouns and other deictic expressions in biomedical texts are third-person inanimate (it, they, its, etc.) in English. On the other hand, we get a lot of additional information constraining how we link our mentions that isn't availble in the open domain, like what kind and how many molecules can interact in a given reaction. In order to improve our automatic reading as much as possible, my colleagues and I adapted Bell, Hahn-Powell, Valenzuela-Escárcega, & Surdeanu (2016) an open-domain coreference resolution system to take advantage of this information. Like Reach, this system is rule-based and easily interpreted and modified.
Social media sites are treasure troves of information about their users being updated by the minute. The social media sites themselves are leveraging this information constantly to improve the effectiveness of marketing to users, but the same data can be used for a wide variety of applications, including public health. Colleagues at the University of Arizona and I use the language of food in a project called Twitter for Food Twitter for Food to predict demographic data including obesity rate, rate of diabetes, political party, and geographical location (city and state). ⊕ Age-corrected obesity rates in US adults according to CDC data, with diabetes prevalence also from the CDC divided over US Census data (1, 2, 3, 4). Here, overweight means a Body Mass Index (BMI) ≥ 25.0, and obese ≥ 30.0. Although Body Mass Index is not a direct measure of fatness or of healthiness, it is very simple to collect, and does correlate with risk for health problems.
Obesity and related health problems such as Type II Diabetes are epidemic in the United States. An estimated 86 million Americans over the age of 20 exhibit signs of pre-diabetes 2014 National Diabetes Statistics Report, and as much as 70% of these pre-diabetic individuals will eventually develop Type II Diabetes Nathan et al. (2007), a chronic and debilitating disease associated with heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney failure, and amputations. However, previous work Ashrafian et al. (2014) has demonstrated that intervention by social media has modest but significant success in decreasing obesity, and so what is lacking is efficient identification of obese individuals.
In one study Fried, Surdeanu, Kobourov, Hingle, & Bell (2014), we found that we could classify a whole state as being more or less overweight than median with 80% accuracy (chance would be 51%, because we included the District of Columbia) based on the words in its tweets. But when we attempted this classification on individuals using a classifier trained on state-level data, the result was at chance, meaning that individuals are not strongly represented by or representative of their state on average. Since we want to classify individuals, this is a serious problem. So we developed a system Bell, Fried, Huangfu, Surdeanu, & Kobourov (2016) to take a classifier from the state-level data and make a 20-questions quiz out of it. The idea was to have a fun game people could play, and to get some more training data if they were willing to share their Twitter usernames with us as well as their BMI. That would help us build a training set for hopefully more accurate classification of individuals. In fact, hundreds of people did take the quiz, although the accuracy of the quiz was not good relative to chance. We're also pursuing other methods of building such a training set and making a more sophisticated classifier for individuals.


Alright, so you want to know a little about the book?
Well, it's got me thinking. I like that in a book.
It has me thinking about things that I often think about on my own, but I like the points the author brings up and how she leads me to think in different directions than I might on my own.
Michelle talks a lot about letting things go. (Sidenote: My kids are totally into the new Disney movie, Frozen, so I've been hearing a lot of belted out "Let it go! Let it go!" around my house, so every time I read "let it go" in Michelle's book, I had that song going through my head- I guess it helped cement the idea for me!) She writes about letting go of pity, a need for others' approval, fear, doubt, comparing ourselves to others, envy, guilt, & shame in order to become confident and get past insecurity.
When I read the part about envy, I wrote this in my notes: "envy ruins our attitude & our gratitude", and "Opposite of Envy = Charity". When we have charity we are glad when others prosper. We love, serve, and are happy for others. Our view of them is not tied to our view of ourselves.
This issue comes up in my mind a lot (and I assume I'm not the only one who deals with it). It's good to read this fun book (which is full of cute and thought provoking stories) that helps me to think through it all and put things back into perspective.
You can find Does this insecurity make me look fat? (as a paperback book or ebook) on Deseret Book's webpage. You can also find Michelle online at her website and blog.
You can also enter to win your own copy of the book over here and here.


text:
Kabinett Straujuma steht für folgende Regierungen von Lettland:

 Kabinett Straujuma I, 2014, Koalition aus Vienotība, Reformu partija, Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība und Nacionālā apvienība
 Kabinett Straujuma II, 2014 bis 2016, eine Koalition aus Vienotība, Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība und Nacionālā apvienība

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Google Places SERP Showing Different Results – New Changes?
Late on April 16th and continuing on today, Google Places is showing a new display format on the SERP (search engine result page) for Places searches solely across all niches of businesses.
Here is a screenshot of how the Places SERP looked just yesterday.
You will notice at the bottom, you can see more than 1 page to the SERP.
Today, that same search returns this SERP.
If you scroll down to the bottom, you will see NO other organic rankings that lead to page 2 and 3 and so on. It looks as though they have just vanished into thin air.
We do not currently know if it's a bug or a new design. Personally, I think it's just an error but time will tell.
If you are not staying on top of what's happening with Google Places and your business listings, let Dallas SEO firm, Advice Interactive Group, manage your Places page and your local visibility.
HI Justin, thanks for showing us a very detailed presentation. You have made this very easy for us. Thanks again and we are looking forward to reading more and more very helpful post from you. More power to your blog.
It's my pleasure to bring information like this to light. I'm sure you are aware now that Google has fixed the issue.
Will Facebook Services Take Over Local Search?
Home BlogGoogle Places SERP Showing Different Results – New Changes?


Prior research has consistently observed that mindfulness facilitates emotion regulation. However, this research mainly examined explicit, self-reported emotion.
Does mindfulness also facilitate regulation of implicit emotional responses?
To address this question, the authors induced sadness among a group of healthy volunteers (N = 72), after which participants performed a mindfulness, distraction, or rumination exercise.
explicit mood changes were assessed with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule.
Participants' implicit and explicit negative mood improved in the mindfulness and distraction groups, but not in the rumination group.
The mindfulness group displayed greater congruence between implicit and explicit mood than the other groups.
Trait mindfulness was associated with lower implicit—but not explicit—negative mood across the whole sample both before and after the strategy induction but did not moderate the effects of the strategy induction on mood improvement.
These findings indicate that mindfulness can facilitate emotion regulation on both implicit and explicit levels.
People can regulate their emotions on a nonconscious or implicit level.
•Implicit processes allow people to decide whether or not to engage in emotion regulation.
•Implicit processes help people to select suitable emotion regulation strategies.
•Implicit processes help people to enact emotion regulation strategies.
•Implicit emotion regulation contributes to health and well-being.


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Learning From Secondment: Why Kindness is Key
Jul 16 2020 Blogs
Tracey Rawlinson, Whole System Flow Programme Manager
Kindness matters…..and to realise the effort of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders have had to demonstrate appreciation in ways that maximise the impact for each individual.
I'd been with AQuA for less than a year when in March 2020 it was agreed to pause all existing programmes, and offer our members the opportunity of additional support in their response to Covid-19. One of the reasons I applied for a role with AQuA was that their values aligned to my own – Excellence, Respect, Integrity and Collaboration.
So when I was offered the opportunity to support a member organisation through a Covid-19 secondment, I approached the senior leadership team at Oldham Care Organisation. I already had established networks in place and felt that I was more likely to be able to hit the ground running, and worry less about how I might be received. I was also keen to see their 'Kindness Collaborative' that I had heard so much about on Twitter via the hastags #bekindtoeachother, #kindatalltimes, and most recently #coronakindness – and to experience first-hand how and if they were sustaining their kindness during challenging times.
I started my four week secondment on 2nd April – armed with my laptop, notebook, coffee mug, an untamed enthusiasm and an open mind to offer whatever support I could. An additional bonus was free parking too!
It was immediately noticeable that things were far from business as usual, but their clear consistent principles were still demonstrated on a daily basis – and were openly visible across the organisation.
Why kindness is key
It was clear from speaking with different people during my time at Oldham, that we each have different preferences when it comes to giving and/or receiving kindness. For example, being sincere wasn't always enough. Whether it's a pat on the back, a card for a job well done, a box of chocolates or simply just being heard, we each have unique emotions attached to what makes us feel appreciated, and what constitutes kindness.
So, when it came to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the need to respond to rapid and sometimes frequent changes in the way we work, individual motivation would have been maximized when we received our ideal form of praise, encouragement, or reward for our efforts.
Car parking fees were suspended, pizzas were delivered to wards, water bottles were distributed, and wobble rooms were established across the site – for both clinical and non- clinical staff who just needed some 'me' time. The impact from the kindness of strangers was really visible, with gifts from the public being distributed widely across the whole organisation, reaching as many teams and individuals as possible.
Personally, a simple 'thank you for your support' from a Care Organisation leader was enough for me to be inspired to go above and beyond what was expected. The kindness of my AQuA colleagues was also appreciated as they took the time to check in on me!
Kindness can improve patient safety
There's a growing body of evidence that shows a culture of kindness and civility can result in many benefits to patients in terms of their experience and the quality of care they receive. How staff interact and treat each other has a direct link to the quality of care patients receive and even the outcomes they get.
Kindness can improve job performance, reduce staff turnover and sick leave[i]
As part of my secondment, I captured a lot of the emergent learning from the Covid-19 response. In the spirit of learning and improvement, the Senior Leadership Team at the Care Organisation sought out this feedback and reality check from the learning captured. We talked a lot about kindness and in particular the human factors associated with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs[ii], and the examples of when kindness had been met – or indeed were perceived as unmet by individuals and teams. Following on from the feedback, I was delighted to be invited to be an 'external voice' on the Care Organisation's Kindness Expert Faculty in the 2nd phase of their Kindness Collaborative.
"Tracey's continued involvement in our kindness collaborative as we enter into our next phase looking to develop a culture that is 'kind at all times' will be incredibly helpful both in terms of her personal insight and expertise in this area but also to add a healthy dose of realise to our discussions so that we don't fall back on our confirmation biases!"
Dan Grimes, Director of Operations
Kindness improves our quality of life in the workplace as well as in our personal lives. It brings people together. Doing good for others feels good. Showing kindness to others is just as rewarding as receiving it from someone else. The point is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to kindness. Moving out of escalation and into recovery, when staff may be feeling less resilient, it is crucial for leaders to look into what motivates, stimulates, and makes other people feel appreciated…and to always remember to be kind.
P.S Since writing this blog, Oldham's Kindness Collaborative has been shortlisted for a HSJ Award in the 'Recognising Safety, Culture and Experience in Patient Care' category.
[i] "Can Kindness Be Contagious, Even At Work?" Feb 2018, R. Davidson, University of Wisconsin
[ii] "A Theory of Human Motivation" 1954, A Maslow, Psychological Review


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A decision algorithm for determining safe clearing limits for the construction of skid roads
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Home » Management Case Studies » Corporate Restructuring Exercises by Procter & Gamble (P&G)
Corporate Restructuring Exercises by Procter & Gamble (P&G)
The case discusses the 'Organization 2005' program; a six-year long organizational restructuring exercise conducted by the US based Procter & Gamble (P&G), global leader in the fast moving consumer goods industry. The case examines in detail, the important elements of the restructuring program including changing the organizational structure, standardizing the work processes and revamping the corporate culture. The case elaborates on the mistakes committed by Durk Jager, the erstwhile CEO of P&G and examines the reasons as to why Organization 2005 program did not deliver the desired results. Finally, the case discusses how Alan George Lafley, the new CEO, accelerated the initiatives under the Organization 2005 program and revived P&G's financial performance.
Gain insight into the common causes that contribute to steady decline over a period of time in the performance of a large multi-product multi-national company of high repute.
The US based Procter and Gamble (P&G), one of the largest fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies in the world, was in deep trouble in the first half of 2000. The company, in March 2000, announced that its earnings growth for the financial year 1999-2000 would be 7% instead of 14% as announced earlier. The news led P&G's stock to lose $27 in one day, wiping out $40 billion in its market capitalization.
To add to this, in April 2000, P&G announced an 18% decline in its net profit for January – March 2000 quarter. For the first time in the past eight years P&G was showing a decline in profits. In the late 1990s, P&G faced the problem of stagnant revenues and profitability. In order to accelerate growth, the erstwhile P&G's President and CEO, Durk Jager (Jager) officially launched the Organization 2005 program in July 1999. Organization 2005 was a six-year long organizational restructuring exercise which included the standardization of work processes to expedite growth, revamping the organizational culture in order to embrace change, reduction in hierarchies to enable faster decision-making, and retrenchment of employees to cut costs.
With the implementation of the program, P&G aimed to increase its global revenues from $38 billion to $70 billion by 2005. According to analysts, though Organization 2005 program was well planned, the execution of the plan was a failure. Analysts believed that Jager concentrated more on developing new products rather than on P&G's well-established brands.
Alan G. Lafley
Analysts felt, and Jager himself admitted, that he did too many things in too short a time. This resulted in the decline of the company's revenues and profitability. After a brief stint of 17 months, Jager had to quit his post. In June 2000, Alan George Lafley (Lafley) took over as the new President & CEO of P&G. Under Lafley, P&G seemed to be on the right path. He was able to turn the company around through his excellent planning, execution and focus. With Lafley at the helm, P&G's financial performance improved significantly (Refer Exhibit II). The company's share price shot up by 58% to $92 by July 2003, as against a fall of 32% in S&P's 500 stock index. A former P&G executive, Gary Stibel said, "If anybody had any doubts about AG, they don't anymore. This is about as dramatic a turnaround as you will see."
However, analysts expressed doubts, whether the measures taken by Lafley would sustain P&G's growth in the long term. They felt that with a dominant market position in developed markets the scope for generating more growth there would be difficult for P&G.
Procter & Gamble was established in 1837 by William Procter, a candle maker, and his brother-in-law, James Gamble, a soap maker, when they merged their small businesses. They set up a shop in Cincinnati and nicknamed it "porkopolis" because of its dependence on swine slaughterhouses. The shop made candles and soaps from the leftover fats of the swine. By 1859, P&G had become one of the largest companies in Cincinnati, with sales of $1 million. The company introduced Ivory, a floating soap in 1879 and Crisco, the first all-vegetable shortening in 1911. In the period between the 1940s and 1960s, P&G embarked on a series of acquisitions. The company acquired Spic and Span (1945), Duncan Hines (1956), Chairman Paper Mills (1957), Clorox (1957; sold in 1968) and Folgers Coffee (1963).
In 1973, P&G began manufacturing and selling its products in Japan through the acquisition of Nippon Sunhome Company. The new company was named "Procter & Gamble Sunhome Co. Ltd." In 1985, P&G announced several major organizational changes relating to category management, purchasing, manufacturing, engineering and distribution.
In 1988, the company started manufacturing products in China. P&G became one of the largest cosmetics companies in the US when it acquired Noxell (1989) and Max Factor (1991). After witnessing a period of significant organic and inorganic growth, P&G began to face several problems during the 1990s. In the early 1990s, a survey conducted by the consulting firm, Kurt Salmon Associates, had revealed that almost a quarter of P&G's products in a typical supermarket sold less than one unit a month and just 7.6% of the products accounted for 84.5% of sales. The remaining products went almost unnoticed by consumers. Complicated product lines and pricing were also causing problems to retailers who had to struggle with rebates and discounts…
The 'Organization 2005' Program
In January 1999, Jager, a P&G veteran became the new CEO taking charge at a time when P&G was in the midst of a corporate restructuring exercise that started in September 1998.
Jager faced the challenging task of revamping P&G's operations and marketing practices. Soon after taking over as the CEO, Jager told analysts that he would overhaul product development, testing and launch processes. The biggest obstacle for Jager was P&G's culture. Jager realized the need to change the mindset of the P&G employees who had been used to lifetime employment and a conservative management style. On July 1, 1999, P&G officially launched the Organization 2005 program. It was a program of six-year duration, during which, P&G planned to retrench 15,000 employees globally. The cost of this program was estimated to be $1.9 billion and it was expected to generate an annual savings (after tax deductions) of approximately $900 million per annum by 2004…
Change in Organization Structure
Till 1998, P&G had been organized along geographic lines with more than 100 profit centers. Under Organization 2005 program, P&G sought to reorganize its organizational structure from four geographically-based business units to five product-based global business units – Baby, Feminine & Family Care, Beauty Care, Fabric & Home Care, Food & Beverages, and Health Care.
The restructuring exercise aimed at boosting P&G's growth (in terms of sales and profits), speed and innovation and expedition of management decision-making for the company's global-marketing initiatives.
It also aimed to fix the strategy-formulation and profit-creation responsibilities on products rather than on regions. The global business units (GBUs) had to devise global strategies for all P&G's brands and the heads of GBU were held accountable for their unit's profit. The sourcing, R&D and manufacturing operations were also undertaken by the GBU.
Standardization of Work Processes
One of the major objectives of Organization 2005 program was to significantly improve all inefficient work processes of P&G including its product development, supply chain management and marketing functions. In order to achieve this objective, P&G undertook several IT initiatives including collaborative technologies, B2C e-commerce, web-enabled supply chain and a data warehouse project for supplying timely data to company's various operations located globally.
Revamping the Corporate Culture
The Organization 2005 program made efforts to change P&G from a conservative, lethargic and bureaucratic to modern, quick-moving and internet-savvy organization. The new structure was directed towards revamping the work culture of P&G so as to focus on its new Stretch, Innovation and Speed (SIS) philosophy. Emphasizing on innovation, Jager said, "Organization 2005 is focused on one thing: leveraging P&G's innovative capability.
The Mistakes Committed
The Organization 2005 program faced several problems soon after its launch. Analysts were quick to comment that Jager committed a few mistakes which proved costly for P&G. For instance, Jager had made efforts in January 2000 to acquire Warner-Lambert and American Home Products. Contrary to P&G's cautious approach towards acquisitions in the 1990s, this dual acquisition would have been the largest ever in P&G's history, worth $140 billion.
However, the stock market greeted the news of the merger negotiations by selling P&G's shares, which prompted Jager to exit the deal.
Implementing Strategies to Revive P&G
In June 2000, Alan George Lafley (Lafley), a 23-year P&G veteran popularly known as 'AG,' took over as the new President and CEO of P&G. The major difference between Lafley and Jager was their 'style of functioning.' Soon after becoming CEO, Lafley rebuilt the management team and made efforts to improve P&G's operations and profitability. Lafley transferred more than half of P&G's 30 senior most officers, an unprecedented move in P&G's history. He assigned senior positions and higher roles to women.
P&G – Current Status
In 2003, Lafley continued his efforts to make P&G more adaptable to the dynamic changes in business environment. He challenged P&G's traditional perspective that all its products should be produced in-house. In April 2003, Lafley started outsourcing the manufacturing of bar soaps (including P&G's longest existing brand, Ivory) to a Canadian manufacturer. In May 2003, IT operations were outsourced from HP. Since Lafley became CEO, P&G's outsourcing contract went up from 10% to 20%. Lafley continued to review P&G's businesses and new investments with the aim of achieving sharper focus on its core businesses, cost competitiveness and improved productivity.
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3 thoughts on "Corporate Restructuring Exercises by Procter & Gamble (P&G)"
Arjit Jain says:
Nice article, but can you please add a bit more on what Lafley did to turn things around.
Abey Francis says:
Alan G. Lafley has brought P&G out of a difficult period of declining sales and dropping share prices into a promising new beginning. Revitalized brands like Pampers, Tide, Crest, and Folgers; "new and improved" versions of familiar products like Bounty and Downy; marketing innovations; and acquisitions like the Clairol hair-care line and the powered-toothbrush start-up called SpinBrush are among the ways in which Lafley is helping bring in more revenue–enough to push sales past $40 billion and beat Wall Street's expectations for eight financial quarters in a row. The company has also cut costs, shortened the time it takes to roll out new products, and entered partnerships and licensing agreements with other firms to pave its way into the market for upscale cosmetics and perfumes.
Lafley, a history major who has about 25 years with P&G and once considered a graduate degree in Renaissance studies, became the company's chief executive in June 2000. He is now also president and chairman of the board. But his easygoing manner and relaxed management style downplay his impressive roles in the turnaround. Lafley dismantled the company's executive suite, stripping away the oak panels and donating to museums the art that hung on the walls. Cubicles for him and his staff have taken their place. Lafley has also introduced a new accessibility into the firm's formerly arrogant atmosphere. "You can tell him bad news or things you'd be afraid to tell other bosses," says one of P&G's vice presidents.
Gary Stibel, chief executive of the New England Consulting group that monitors P&G's performance, agrees. Lafley "wants to hear any bad news–and as a result," Stibel says, "he hears far less of it."
Known as a hands-on manager, Lafley has kept his longtime habit of dropping in on stores all over the world where P&G products are sold. He'll inspect the displays in each aisle, observe shoppers, and consult with store owners about what's selling well and what isn't. "I don't think the answers are just in numbers," he reveals. "You have to get out and look." Lafley has also been known to do his own product research, calling on consumers in their homes and spending an hour going through the contents of their kitchen and bathroom cabinets with them. His much-admired listening skills complement his natural curiosity. "I am a broken record when it comes to saying, 'We have to focus on the consumer,'" Lafley admits.
Lafley also knows how to get back to basics. He quickly reduced the number of product-development projects at P&G from over 50 to a mere dozen. "I think we got into a little trouble getting excited about the technologies before we thought through the consumer," he says.
Under Lafley's management, sales are up, costs are down, and the share price has never looked better. Strife within the company seems to have been resolved, and P&G is once again turning its sights on the competition. "What I'm trying to build into this organization," he says, "is something that will last long after I'm gone. This is a company that aspires to be around for 1,000 years."
Xolisile says:
Nice article, but what happen to the P&G'S dividend yeild since 1999 and revenue since 1999.
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A. There's a world of difference between the specific high-quality supplements your body needs, and the low-quality, "all-in-one" multivitamins you can find at the grocery store or health food store. As a naturopath, Dr. Doty has received extensive training in herbal and nutritional healing. He is knowledgeable about potentially harmful interactions and can help you assess the right supplements and the right dosage for your condition – today and as your needs change in the future. Would you trust your health to the young, inexperienced clerk in the vitamin aisle or an expert in the field of supplementation and nutrition?
Q. What can Dr. Doty provide that a medical doctor cannot?
A. A naturopath will look at you from a holistic perspective, seeking the underlying causes of your illness, rather than elimination of symptoms. Generally, you will spend more time with Dr. Doty exploring issues of lifestyle, personal history, exercise and diet than you would with your general physician. A naturopath will also search for the least intrusive methods of healing with the lowest risk of side effects. Dr. Doty encourages you to become a partner in your healthcare, actively making decisions to better your wellness.
Q. I'm also seeing a medical doctor. Should I tell the physicians about each other?
A. Yes, it's very important that both Dr. Doty and your medical doctor are aware of the therapies you are receiving as well as any medications, herbs or natural supplements you are taking. Naturopaths are trained in herb/drug interactions and can help assure that any herbs or supplements you take are compatible with your medications.
Q. Will I have to change my diet and take supplements?
A. Yes. There is no way to fix your underlying dysfunction without changing your diet and supplying your body with the nutrients it needs for health. Every metabolic process taking place daily in your cells is driven and maintained by the use of nutritional elements - they're the only way to prevent disease.
The current education process in this country indoctrinates people into the belief that drugs can replace nutrients. If this were true, then why can't you find drugs in the food you eat? Let's not forget that drugs are relatively new in human history. Penicillin was the first U.S. drug and was manufactured in 1938.
Before that, the only drug was a sulfa drug manufactured in England in 1902. Taking a look at human evolution – which spans roughly 4 million years – drugs have only been in our lives for a little more than 100 years. This is a blink of an eye in the history of human evolution.
If you are ready to regain your health, then you must not abandon the very life-giving principles which have allowed us to evolve into the 21st Century.
Q. I am confused and frustrated. Conventional medicine says the opposite of natural health. I don't know who to believe.
A. Trying to decide what to do when you have a health disorder can be very frustrating. The basic question you have to ask is who do you listen to? Medical advice or alternative advice? The answer is neither – until you have done your own research into the plusses and minuses of both types of treatment.
And even when you think you've exhausted all the research, it can still be overwhelming. What's a person to do? The single most important advice Dr. Doty can give you in this situation is to use common sense.
Think about what someone is telling you, especially when it comes to putting drugs in your body. If drugs truly cure, then why does the U.S. health system cost Americans so much money? If drugs truly cure, why do people continue to take drugs year after year? If drugs are the answer,why does one out of every two people develop either cancer or heart disease?
Dr. Doty believes cure means you have regained your health, but what he sees on a daily basis is people getting worse and worse, being prescribed even more drugs. It's extremely important you understand no doctor can cure you; only the human body has the capability to cure.You either facilitate the process of cure or you inhibit it. Drugs are suppressive therapy, not curative therapy.
It is also very important when trying to make a decision based on scientific research that you are actually using the right research.Often we believe that science has all the answers, however the majority of the research being conducted and published is being performed by the very companies who stand to make a profit on the use of that research.
If you're still not sure what to do, then compare the side effects of nutrients vs. drugs. The bottom line: there are virtually no safety standards to drugs. People take drugs believing they are safe because they don't understand the fraudulent science being used to market the drugs. Unfortunately, people question natural health because they have faith in a lie and often don't realize it.
Take charge of your health today. Contact us for a free consultation.


For Scottish Water CEO Douglas Millican, climate change is a very real issue.
Douglas Millican never planned to be CEO of Scottish Water. It just kind of happened and not in the best of circumstances either. When Richard Ackroyd, his boss and the former CEO of Scottish Water, passed away suddenly in October 2012, Douglas, who was CFO at the time, stepped into an interim CEO role. Shortly after, the board of the publicly owned utility asked him to be the permanent CEO.
Douglas draws inspiration from those who ran the company before him. "Having worked under two very different CEOs, I've learned that it's really important to be true to yourself," he says. "There's no single way to be CEO and you've got to play to your own strengths and build a team around you to give you the collective strength you need to lead the business.
Scottish Water supplies wastewater and drinking water services to 2.52 million households and 153,000 businesses in Scotland, covering 80,000 square kilometres and reaching 97% of Scotland's population.
A colossal 1.38 billion litres of water are delivered and 929 million litres of wastewater are removed annually by Scottish Water. There's generally plenty of the stuff to go around in Scotland, which gets its fair share of rainfall through the year, particularly in the highlands.
Douglas personally drinks "huge quantities" of H2O and he's a strong proponent of the water his company delivers.
He says it tends to have a "soft, pleasant taste", although this varies regionally and depends on the ground conditions where the water is stored, or where it passes through, be that deep underground aquifers or picturesque lochs.
However, there isn't always an abundance of the natural resource for Scottish Water to draw on, particularly during extreme weather events, which are increasing in frequency and intensity as a result of climate change.
"Through the summer of 2018, when we had very long, hot, dry periods, we were having to work furiously to keep everybody in supply," says Douglas, adding that climate change is the biggest threat to the business.
It has the potential to impact the availability and nature of the water that Scottish Water treats, as well as the quantity of wastewater it will have to deal with.
Scottish Water invests about £600 million (€690 million) a year, equating to roughly £3.9 billion (€4.4 billion) between 2015 and 2021, on improving its services. Douglas says this will help the company to increase the reliability, resilience and sustainability of its services.
He also wants Scottish Water to be better at risk management so that it can comfortably deal with weather events like the notorious "beast from the east", which struck the UK in the winter of 2018, and the warm summer of 2018 that led to a 30% increase in demand.
Technology will play a vital role in all of this. Smart sensors, analytics and artificial intelligence are just some of the technologies that Douglas wants to harness in the coming years. "We've got so much further to go in understanding the data within our complex systems and looking at how we can make smarter decisions," he says.
There are some 4,000 staff helping Douglas on his mission, as well as 3,000 others in the supply chain. "There is enormous pride among our people in working for Scottish Water and in the nature of what we do as a business.


The Malta Internet Governance Forum was officially launched by Ing. Philip Micallef, chairman of the MCA on 1st. June, 2011.
The Malta Internet Forum will provide an organisational platform and will work collaboratively with local stakeholders in the Internet community to ensure a truly representative event befitting the Internet Governance Forum (IGF - http://www.intgovforum.org) global vision. A committee will be formed, with representatives from Malta Communications Authority, Malta Internet Foundation, University of Malta, MCAST, MITA, Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, representatives from the main ISPs, representatives from local banks, Cyber Police Squad and Aġenzija Appoġġ. Their role will be to provide their stakeholder perspective and play an active role in reaching out deep within their community to shape the forum and promote active organisation/participation.
The second Malta Internet Governance Forum meeting was held at 'The Palace Hotel', High Street, Sliema, on 15th November, 2011.
The forum was opened by Ing. Philip Micallef, Chairman of the Malta Communications Authority who emphasised on how the Internet will continue to change the way we live. He outlined how the Internet enables communication on an unprecedented scale and is woven into billions of lives around the world. Its openness, its inclusiveness, its relative lack of regulation make it a fertile field for innovation and competition, an engine for much needed economic growth. The fact that the Internet works is the ultimate tribute to the multistakeholder governance model.
The third Malta Internet Governance Forum meeting was held at 'The Palace Hotel', High Street, Sliema, on 28th March, 2012.
The forum was opened by Ing. Philip Micallef, Chairman of the Malta Communications Authority who explained how just six weeks ago, thousands of people took to the streets of freezing European cities to protest against ACTA. The demonstrations were organized entirely in a decentralized manner via the Internet. The participants were mostly very young and took part in a demonstration for the first time. Supporters have described the agreement as a response to the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works. Opponents say the agreement adversely affects fundamental rights, including freedom of expression and privacy.
The forum was then preceded by a presentation and discussion on ACTA and other Internet rules that could shape the way we use the Internet. The discussion was led by Professor Reinhard Posch who is member of many professional societies and has received several awards among those the IFIP Silver Core and the ID Peoples Award 2006. He is also one of the world's leading authorities on e-Government and electronic systems. Within the i2010 framework, Professor Posch participated in the e-Government subgroup, taking the lead in e-Identities and interoperability of electronic documents. Professor Posch was appointed coordinator for the electronic citizen card, a signature based smart card, by the Austrian government and headed "Digital Austria", a coordination body for ICT in public administration and E-Government in Austria.


The San Francisco office has been working with third-party developers to try to publish some non-Ubisoft developed titles. How has that been going so far?
YG: It's going very well. They now have good deals with lots of good developers. This year, we'll have a good lineup with third-parties, and will next year as well. There's a good portfolio, and the quality of work we see from third-party developers is really high.
Ubisoft has been doing a lot more localization of titles from Asia than other major Western publishers. Why is that? Is that going well for you?
YG: It's going well for us, and I think many people would do the same, because it was very profitable for us to do that. We will have more guys doing the same by the end of the year.
It's mostly been smaller publishers that make that sort of move. Ubisoft is the only real big third-party publisher that does that.
YG: It happened because the casual business is also growing fast in Japan. They have ten million machines for a population that is very small. It gives us good information on what can be done.
The DS and Wii are really getting huge over there, and I don't know if anything else is going to get that big over there at this point.
YG: It's very impressive. It's doing a lot better than even what was anticipated, so it's a good chance for the industry.
Do you find that you have any kind of advantage in Europe, since you're the biggest European-based third-party?
YG: Yes, I'd say that we know those countries better. An advantage in Europe can turn into a disadvantage in the U.S., though. I would say that because we are there, we have a better understanding of the European market. We are number two in Europe and number five in the U.S., but are growing fast here, so we should better understand the U.S. market soon.
Are you approaching that by building up Canada a lot?
YG: Yes. It's a good way to create products that fit automatically with the U.S. branch.
French accounting doesn't have to be as obvious as American accounting. For instance, you don't have to announce if you've made a profit every quarter and things like that. Is that advantageous to you?
YG: I think it's very important, because we can move products from a semester instead of moving them from a quarter. Because it's not very important what we do at the semester, we can move products all during the year, and it gives us an approach to do better games.
So you can make sure that you have a good thing to announce every time.


In the beginning there was a dark, seething, heaving void: an ocean of chaos, full of potential. This dark ocean filled all of space, and all things that were to come drifted in its depths, as yet unrealised and unborn. There were no stars as there are now, for even light had not yet been created. There was only the idea of a light yet to come. But there was life, even before life existed, for just the thought of life is also a form of life, for thought is the potential form of something which exists before that thing is created. This dark ocean was in motion, writhing with the momentous event to come. In its depths a creative seed was growing, growing: the cosmic egg out of which the universe would be born.
With the breaking open of the cosmic egg light and life welled forth, unimaginable in its intensity, in its raw power. All of space vibrated with a new knowing: a knowing that was an awareness of its own existence. This Awareness could create its own form, and the form which it created was a new darkness: a darkness that was other than the darkness which had gone before. This darkness was a wise darkness, a darkness which was aware that darkness is a gift, a necessary part of a light to come: something which light needed to define itself by. This darkness was a new chaos, for without chaos it knew that there could be no cosmos, no dance of magic to bring forth new awareness. This new creative chaos was called Sophia.
How things began fascinates us: we find this story of the birth of the universe in many cultures. To the Ancient Egyptians this primal ocean was known as Nun. The Babylonians knew her as Tiamat – and it was a 'her', because to the ancients this ocean was female, for the dark ocean was the cosmic womb out of which all was born. It was full of potential, because it already contained everything that would be created in potential form: the templates for everything that would flow forth from its depths. So while this ocean was (to use the Biblical phrase) 'without form', it was a void, yes, but not a 'void' in the sense of being empty. In Norse mythology this void is known as Ginnungagap, whose meaning, when translated, brings us close to what is truly being expressed: a magical space, full of creative power.
The power and magic of myth lies in more than its language and vivid imagery. It also lies in the fact that a myth goes on being true. The birth of our universe is also the birth of each individual soul, and our own trials and experiences are reflected in those experienced by Sophia, with light and darkness, chaos and cosmos, weaving their eternal dance through all of time.
~ T.S. Eliot, from 'Four Quartets'.
Thank you Emma for this truly interesting blog! Humans are deeply fascinated by beginnings. We wish to know where we came from and where we are going. Many beginnings are shrouded in mystery including the stories and myths surrounding creation. Some myths express a hidden element of truth, not that these myth in some way are true, but that these myths seem to point to a greater reality, something truth they are trying to reveal to us. Within the cycles of creation and dissolution, birth and death, the Cosmic Dance, is that which has no beginning and has no end. When we discover this, we discover who we truly are.
Joseph, yes - we want to know why things are the way they are, and also how they got to be that way. The various myths which attempt to describe and explain these things tend to have a common thread because, as you say, they contain that 'hidden element of truth' which is the greater reality behind all things. The idea of the cosmic dance expresses these great cycles of time and of creation and a return to the void, the inhaling and exhaling of universes, but it is the stillness at the centre - to quote T.S. Eliot again: 'the still point of the turning world' - around which everything dances, which contains the ultimate awareness.


After advancing to regional competition, which included the top recruiters from Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa and Minnesota, Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Mannel was named one of the nation's Expert 7, a distinction reserved for the top recruiting noncommissioned officer in each of the nation's seven recruiting regions.
The Combined Arms Collective Training Facility (CACTF) at Fort McCoy has been completed and is ready for use. Terry Hoff, Fort McCoy Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security Range officer, said the new facility will provide state-of-the-art urban combat training opportunities.
The Wisconsin Army National Guard's 64th Rear Operations Center cased its colors as part of a formal ceremony during its final weekend drill before inactivation. A rear operations center was responsible for the administrative framework behind the front lines and oversaw the essential life support functions that supported the forward units.
Medical personnel from the Expeditionary Medical Force Great Lakes One exchanged duty on a ship for land-based, cold-weather training at the Regional Training Site Medical Fort McCoy. The training included erecting and living in outdoor tents with heaters and showers instead of aboard Navy ships.
Oshkosh Corporation executives and shareholders feel pretty good about 2013. Share prices haven't been higher in two years, multiple company segments have roared back to life and Carl Icahn ended his second bid to gain control of the company. The company's leadership continues to move on after Icahn's two successive proxy fights for control of the company.
The first Black Hawk helicopter medevac crew consisting entirely of female Wisconsin Army National Guard Soldiers took flight at 10 a.m. Friday (Feb. 1) at the West Bend, Wis., armory, 125 Chopper Drive. This first all-female flight was also the last for Capt. Luella Dooley-Menet, of Company F, 2nd Battalion, 238th Aviation Regiment. Dooley-Menet, of Milwaukee, is retiring from the Wisconsin Army National Guard after 13 years, and was one of two pilots on this flight.


text:
Gut enzyme IAP found to prevent aging and frailty in animal models
BOSTON - It's now accepted that gut-barrier dysfunction and gut-derived chronic inflammation play a role in human aging, but how that process is regulated is still largely a mystery. A team led by Richard Hodin, MD, chief of the Division of General and Gastrointestinal Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has uncovered an important piece of the puzzle which is described in the journal JCI Insight.
Studying mice and fruitflies, researchers found that the enzyme intestinal alkaline phosphotase (IAP) helped prevent intestinal permeability and gut-derived systemic inflammation, resulting in less frailty and extended life span. "Oral IAP supplementation in older mice significantly preserved gut barrier function and was associated with preserving the homeostasis of the gut microbiota during aging," said Hodin. "In other words, the enzyme maintained the composition of the gut bacteria and controlled the low-grade chronic inflammation that can happen with aging."
Because the scientists were using animal models, they were able to test blood from the portal venous system, which goes from the GI tract into the liver and then on through the rest of the body. "This gave us a more direct measure of what's passing across the gut barrier than blood from a human arm would," said Hodin, who began studying the function of IAP over a decade ago after connecting the dots in a couple of obscure papers suggesting the enzyme blocks an endotoxin called LPS. "I was studying IAP for other reasons, not knowing anything about its function," he said. "No one really did."
Because IAP is a naturally occurring enzyme that almost entirely remains in the gut rather than traveling throughout the system, Hodin believes it should prove nontoxic to humans, and those who are found have low levels, especially as they age, will simply be able to supplement. "Because IAP confers anti-inflammatory properties systemically," Hodin said, "it could have implications not only for inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, but also for other human conditions that we now know are linked to the gut and inflammation, such as obesity and diabetes." The team is already at work on the next steps toward getting FDA approval for a supplement.
The study's co-authors are Florian Kühn, of the Department of Surgery at MGH and the University Hospital of Munich (LMU); Fatemeh Adiliaghdam, Paul M. Cavallaro, Sulaiman R. Hamarneh, Amy Tsurumi, Alexander R. Munoz, Yashoda Dhole, Juan M. Ramirez, Enyu Liu, Robin Vasan, Yang Liu, Shsan Samarbafzadek, Rocio a. Nunez, Matthew Z. Farber, Laurence G. Rahme, and Madhu S. Malo of MGH's Department of Surgery; Raza S. Hoda of the Pathology Department at MGH; Vanita Chopra of the Department of Neurology at MGH.
About the Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with an annual research budget of more than $1 billion and comprises more than 8,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments. In August 2019 the MGH was once again named #2 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in its list of "America's Best Hospitals."
JCI Insight
Noah Brown
nbrown9@partners.org
/Health and medicine/Health care/Medical facilities/Hospitals
/Life sciences/Biochemistry/Biomolecules/Enzymes
/Social sciences/Political science/Government/Public policy/Science policy/Research management/Research funding/Science budgets


text:
Archaeologists in Mexico discover ruins of ancient Mayan palace
By Nicole Chavez
Mexico's National Institue of Anthropology and History/Reuters
An archeologist works cleaning the stucco of the Temple of the U, located in the archaelogy area of Kuluba, in Tizimin, Yucatan state, Mexico in this handout photograph released to Reuters by the National Institute of Anthropology and History on December 24, 2019.
SOURCE: Mexico's National Institue of Anthropology and History/Reuters
A Mayan palace dating back more than 1,000 years was discovered by archaeologists in Mexico.The ruins were found in the Kuluba archaeological zone in the Mexican state of Yucatán, about 63 miles west of Cancún, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said.The building is about 19 feet high, 180 feet long and 49 feet wide, the INAH said.Experts think the building was used by priests and government officials during two eras of the Mayan civilization."This work is the beginning," said archaeologist Alfredo Barrera in a video. "We've barely began uncovering one of the most voluminous structures on the site."Barrera said his team wants to learn more about how Mayans lived in this southeast area of Mexico. Mexican archaeologists don't know much about that aspect of the civilization.The INAH said the architecture, ceramic and mural techniques in the palace appear to be similar to those in Chichen Itza, a Mayan settlement in Yucatán that is believed to date back to the 5th century AD. Chichen Itza is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.In addition to the palace, archeologists discovered a temple, residential buildings and other stone structures, the INAH said.The Mayans were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished across Mexico and Central America from 2000 BC to the time of the Spanish conquistadores.Kuluba, the archaeological site were the palace was found, is not open to the public yet pending more restoration work.
A Mayan palace dating back more than 1,000 years was discovered by archaeologists in Mexico.
The ruins were found in the Kuluba archaeological zone in the Mexican state of Yucatán, about 63 miles west of Cancún, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said.
The building is about 19 feet high, 180 feet long and 49 feet wide, the INAH said.
Experts think the building was used by priests and government officials during two eras of the Mayan civilization.
"This work is the beginning," said archaeologist Alfredo Barrera in a video. "We've barely began uncovering one of the most voluminous structures on the site."
Barrera said his team wants to learn more about how Mayans lived in this southeast area of Mexico. Mexican archaeologists don't know much about that aspect of the civilization.
The INAH said the architecture, ceramic and mural techniques in the palace appear to be similar to those in Chichen Itza, a Mayan settlement in Yucatán that is believed to date back to the 5th century AD. Chichen Itza is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In addition to the palace, archeologists discovered a temple, residential buildings and other stone structures, the INAH said.
The Mayans were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished across Mexico and Central America from 2000 BC to the time of the Spanish conquistadores.
Kuluba, the archaeological site were the palace was found, is not open to the public yet pending more restoration work.


#671040: apparmor: FTBFS[kfreebsd]: No rule to make target `/usr/include/linux/capability.h', needed by `list_capabilities'.
It has been closed by Kees Cook <kees@debian.org>.
tree needs to be created already.
to package file list correctly (Closes: 670431).
* debian/control: bump standards version, no changes needed.
Subject: apparmor: FTBFS[kfreebsd]: No rule to make target `/usr/include/linux/capability.h', needed by `list_capabilities'.
make list_capabilities failed: make: *** No rule to make target `/usr/include/linux/capability.h', needed by `list_capabilities'.  Stop.