AFC TELFORD United are prepared to make Worcester City skipper Chris Smith their club record signing in a bid to take him to the New Bucks Head.
United chairman Lee Carter faxed over a take-it-or-leave-it offer for the 26-year-old central defender today and now they are awaiting a response from City chairman Dave Boddy.
Worcester's Blue Square North rivals splashed out £5,000 for former Tamworth striker Lee Moore in December 2006, but Carter says the deal for the ex-Leeds United trainee will exceed that.
"If we succeed with our bid then Chris will eventually become our club's record signing," the Bucks chairman said.
"We have made what we feel is a very good offer for him and it is a substantial increase from our initial bid.
"We will pay a large cash sum up front and there will be add-ons depending on appearances."
The two chairmen met yesterday in a prior arranged meeting, which was planned before Telford made a bid for Smith, where Carter made a verbal second offer for the central defender.
Last week, the Shropshire club made an offer of £1,500 for the St George's Lane captain which was quickly rejected by Boddy and City boss Richard Dryden described it as "derisory".
"During the meeting on Monday I made Dave a verbal offer for Chris and he said that he did not want it in writing," Carter said.
"But come Tuesday morning we were getting mixed messages about it so we followed up the verbal offer in writing."
Carter is hopeful, should he get the chance to speak to a player Dryden describes as the "best in the league", that he will be able to persuade Smith to join Telford.
But the Bucks supremo says that he will not wait forever.
"The bid we have made is subject to the deal being concluding at 3 o'clock on Friday afternoon," he said. "This is our final bid and if it doesn't happen then we will have to move on.
"I haven't had any indication whether the bid has been successful or not. Dave is obviously going to have to speak to Richard Dryden and then the club's board.
"We know Worcester are keen to keep him as they feel they have a chance of the play-offs, but we want to stay there and we are desperate to sign him."
City chairman Boddy was unavailable for comment at time of publication.


text:
Threat or Opportunity? Big Data and Cyber Security
Michelle Moore, PhD Read Full Bio
The age of big data and cyber security is here. And that means both opportunity and risk for most businesses. If you are in the cyber security field you are likely very familiar with big data, which is the term used to describe a very large data set that is mined and analyzed to find patterns and behavioral trends. It is generally defined as being dense in variety, velocity and volume. From a cyber security standpoint big data has ushered in new possibilities in terms of analytics and security solutions to protect data and prevent future cyber attacks. But just as big data has opened up new possibilities for cyber security teams, it has also given cyber criminals the opportunity to access mass quantities of sensitive and personal information through the use of advanced technologies.
Threats and Opportunities
There are three main challenges that businesses are running into with big data:
Protecting sensitive and personal information
Data rights and ownership
Not having the talent (i.e. data scientists) to analyze the data
While meeting the main challenge of safeguarding information may sound simple enough, when you look at the scale of data that needs to be processed and analyzed in order to prevent cyber attacks, the challenge becomes a little more daunting. For example, "to give you an idea of how much data needs to be processed, a medium–size network with 20,000 devices (laptops, smartphones and servers) will transmit more than 50 TB of data in a 24–hour period. That means that over 5 Gbits must be analyzed every second to detect cyber attacks, potential threats and malware attributed to malicious hackers," according to Computer World.
Traditionally, the technologies and security tools that have been used to mine data and prevent cyber attacks have been more reactive than proactive and have also created a large number of false positives, creating inefficiencies and distracting from actual threats. What's more these traditional tools do not have the bandwidth required to deal with the large volumes of information.
In comparison, big data analytics give cyber security professionals the ability to analyze data from many different sources and data types and then respond in real time. Big data analytics is not only able to gather information from a vast universe but it is also able to connect the dots between data, making correlations and connections that may have otherwise been missed. This increases efficiencies for cyber crime professionals and casts a wider more reliable net when it comes to thwarting cyber attacks.
[RELATED] 10 Reasons to Join a Cyber Security Master's Degree Program >>
If businesses can figure out how to use modern technologies to safeguard personal and sensitive data, then the opportunities that big data present are great. The two biggest benefits big data offers companies today are:
Business intelligence through access to vast data/customer analytics that can be used to enhance and optimize sales and marketing strategies
Fraud detection and a SIEM systems replacement
Increasing Big Data Security
When cyber criminals target big data sets, the reward is often well worth the effort needed to penetrate security layers, which is why big data presents such a great opportunity not only for businesses but for cyber criminals. They have a lot more to gain when they go after such a large data set. Consequently, companies have a lot more to lose should they face a cyber attack without the proper security measures in place.
In order to increase the security around big data, your business may consider:
Collaborating with other industry peers to create industry standards, head off government regulations, and to share best practices
Attribute based encryption to protect sensitive information shared by third parties
Secure open source software such as Hadoop
Maintain and monitor audit logs across all facets of the business
Overall, big data presents enormous opportunities for businesses that go beyond just enhanced business intelligence. Big data offers the ability to increase cyber security itself. Yet, in order to benefit from the many opportunities big data presents, companies must shoulder the responsibility and risk of protecting that data.
At the University of San Diego we offer a 100% online Master of Science in Cyber Security Operations and Leadership. To learn more about our nationally accredited information security degrees, visit our program page.
Getting a Degree in Cyber Security: 8 Important Considerations
28-page eBook to walk through 8 important factors when considering a graduate degree program in Cyber Security
Get the ebook!
Michelle Moore, PhD
Academic Director and
Professor of Practice
The age of big data and cyber security is here. And that means both opportunity and risk for most businesses. If you are in the cyber security field you are likely very familiar with big data, which is the term used to describe a very large data set that is…
Master of Science in Cyber Security Operations and Leadership
Master of Science in Cyber Security Engineering
USD Ranked 9th on List of Best Online Master's in Cybersecurity Degrees in 2022
How to Become a Data Protection Officer [Career & Salary Guide]
Cyber Security Thought Leaders Address Students at Exclusive University of San Diego Forum

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
ALERTS / RSS
COVID-19 in children with rheumatic diseases (RD) in the spanish national cohort EPICO-AEP
Cristina Calvo, Agustín Remesal, Sara Murias, Fátima Ara-Montojo, Enrique Otheo, Francisco J Sanz-Santaeufemia, Álvaro Villarroya, Clara Udaondo, Cinta Moraleda, Alfredo Tagarro
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.17.20214296
Cristina Calvo
1Pediatric and Infectious Disease Unit. Hospital Universtiario La Paz and La Paz Research Institute (IdiPaz). Madrid, Spain
2Traslational Research Network of Pediatric Infectious Diseases (RITIP). Madrid. Spain
For correspondence: ccalvorey@gmail.com
Agustín Remesal
3Pediatric Rheumatology Department, Hospital Universitario La Paz. Madrid. Spain
Sara Murias
Fátima Ara-Montojo
4Pediatric Department. Hospital Unvierstario Quironsalud. Madrid. Spain
Enrique Otheo
5Pediatric Department. Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal. Universidad de Alcalá. Madrid. Spain
Francisco J Sanz-Santaeufemia
6Pediatric Department. Hospital Universitario Niño Jesús. Madrid. Spain
Álvaro Villarroya
7Pediatric Infectious Disease Department. Hospital Universitari i Politècnic La Fe. Valencia
Clara Udaondo
Cinta Moraleda
8Pediatric Infectious Diseases Unit. Department of Pediatrics, Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre. Universidad Complutense. Pediatric Research and Clinical Trials Unit. Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Hospital 12 de Octubre (imas12). Fundación para la Investigación Biomédica del Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain
Alfredo Tagarro
9Pediatric Research and Clinical Trials Unit (UPIC). Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Hospital 12 de Octubre (IMAS12), Madrid, Spain. Fundación para la Investigación Biomédica del Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain. Pediatrics Department. Hospital Universitario Infanta Sofía. Pediatrics Research Group. Universidad Europea de Madrid. Madrid, Spain
Info/History
Data/Code
Objectives SARS-CoV-2 infection in adults with rheumatic diseases (RD) is a cause for concern. Data in the pediatric population are practically absent. We aimed to describe the prevalence of patients with RD and their complications among children admitted with COVID-19 in the Spanish national cohort EPICO-AEP; a multicenter prospective national study.
Methods Children <18 years old with RD and COVID-19 enrolled in EPICO-AEP were included in this study.
Results By June 30th 2020, 350 children were admitted in secondary and tertiary hospitals of Spain with SARS-CoV-2 infection. A total of 8 patients presented RD (2.2% of those hospitalized). All were female. The median age was 12.1 years (IQR 8.3-14.5). The diagnosis related with COVID-19 were febrile syndrome and/or upper respiratory infection (4 cases) and pneumonia (4 cases). One of the 8 (12.5%) patients with a severe juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) with interstitial lung disease died. Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) was the most frequent diagnosis in 3/8 (37.5%) patients. In 5/8 (62.5%) cases, the RD was not fully controlled, and all patients except one received corticosteroid treatment.
Conclusions Children with RD have accounted for 2.2% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in our series. The evolution has been moderately favorable, with one deceased. In case of active disease and use of corticosteroids patients should be managed with caution.
What is already known about this subject?
Studies in adults with rheumatic disesases (RD) show that immune-mediated inflammatory disease and use of biologics are not associated with worse COVID-19.
Poorly controlled active RD or some treatments such as corticosteroids, may have an increased risk of infection and serious disease in adults. No data in children.
What does this study add?
Pediatric data from the national EPICO-AEP registry in Spain are presented, where children with RD and COVID-19 were 2.2% of those hospitalized.
Active disease and the use of corticosteroids could be considered risk factors in the pediatric population as well as in adults.
How might this impact on clinical practice or future developments?
The rheumatologist pediatrician must be very careful in the management of children with COVID-19 infection, especially if they receive corticosteroid treatment or have active RD.
SARS-CoV-2 infection in children is relatively mild, although the pediatric population suffers at least 10% of identified cases[1] with a small proportion of them requiring hospitalization. From 25% to 60% of admitted children with COVID-19 have comorbidities, including rheumatic diseases (RD)[2,3]. Pediatric patients with RD often receive immunosuppressive medication and in theory, they are a group of risk.
Studies in adults with RD show that immune-mediated inflammatory disease and use of biologics are not associated with worse COVID-19 [4-7]. However, if patients have poorly controlled active RD or receive some treatments such as corticosteroids, they may have an increased risk of infection and serious disease. Based on the results of the published series, some scientific associations have relased management recommendations for these patients[8]. The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) has made recommendations for SARS-CoV-2 infections in children with RD, but they acknowledge the lack of pediatric data[9].
We aimed to describe the prevalence of patients with rheumatic diseases and their complications among children admitted with COVID-19 in the Spanish national cohort EPICO-AEP.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
The Epidemiological Study of COVID-19 in Children of the Spanish Society of Pediatrics (EPICO-AEP) is a multicenter prospective national study aiming to describe the pediatric COVID-19 in Spain. Children younger than 18 years with infection due to SARS-CoV-2 and attended at 49 hospitals were included in this registry. Inclusion criteria included positivity in real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in nasopharyngeal sample, IgM or IgG in lateral-flow rapid test, ELISA or chemiluminescence serology, or severe disease suggestive of multi-Inflammatory syndrome related to SARS-CoV-2 (MIS-C) and recent household contact with a confirmed patient with COVID-19. From March 1st to June 30th, 2020, children with RD and COVID-19 enrolled in EPICO-AEP were included in this study.
This study was approved by the ethics committee of Hospital 12 de Octubre (code 20/101). Informed consent was obtained by parents and mature minors. Data were analyzed using the Stata version 15, College Station, TX.
By June 30th 2020, 498 children attended in secondary and tertiary hospitals of Spain were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection and included in the EPICO-AEP cohort (manuscript in preparation). The median age was 61 months (Interquartile range (IQR) 6-140) and 54.6% were males. Of those, 350 (72.9%) were hospitalized and 262 (52.6%) had a symptomatic COVID-19 disease, 48/350 (13.7%) patients requiring intensive care unit admission, and 4/350 children died (1.1% of hospitalized).
A total of 8 patients presented RD (2.2% of those hospitalized). All were female and the median age was 12.1 years (IQR 8.3-14.5). The clinical data are shown in Table 1. The admission diagnosis related with COVID-19 were febrile syndrome and/or upper respiratory infection in 4 cases and pneumonia in 4 cases (one of them with respiratory failure). Unfortunatly, 1 of the 8 patients with RD (12.5%) died. She was 1 of the 4 only patients (25%) deceased within the whole cohort. She had a severe juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) with interstitial lung disease.
Table 1. Clinical characteristics of children with rheumatic diseases and SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) was the most frequent diagnosis, and was present in 3/8 (37.5%) patients. In 5/8 (62.5) cases, the RD was not fully controlled and had been diagnosed <1 year before. In 2 patients, the diagnosis of COVID-19 was coincident in time with the onset of RD. In the most severe case, who had juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) with interstitial lung involvement, the disease was always active and she did not evolve favorably since the diagnosis. Although 7 of the cases had a good outcome, complications included 2 deep vein thromboses and 1 pulmonary bacterial superinfection. All patients except one received corticosteroid treatment for their underlying condition (although 1 patient with PFAPA syndrome only received steroids intermittently). Other immunosuppressants are detailed in Table 1. Immunosuppressive treatment was not fully suspended in any case (azathioprine was withdrawn in one case). Three patients required oxygen, and most (6/8; 75%) were treated with hydroxychloroquine or lopinavir/ritonavir as recommended by local guidelines at the time of admission. Only the most serious case received remdesivir.
Special mention deserves the patient with JDM, that has been previously published[10]. Anti-melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 juvenile dermatomyositis (anti-MDA5 JDM) is associated with a high risk of developing rapidly progressive interstitial lung disease. She was complicated with a secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis and during her clinical course evolution a RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 performed in bronchial aspirate sample was positive. Despite the aggressive treatment of interstitial lung disease due to anti-MDA5 JDM, there was no improvement of respiratory failure in the following days and the patient developed refractory septic shock and died.
We report the prevalence of children with COVID-19 and RD in the Spanish national EPICO-AEP cohort of hospitalized children. As far as we know, it is the first national cohort that collects children with RD, representing 2.2% of admitted children with COVID-19 in Spain. Although the general outcome was favorable, 1 patient (12.5%) died and 2 had thrombotic complications. Most of the patients received prednisone, which has been considered a drug that confers an increased risk of severe COVID-19 in adults with RD[4,5].
The series published in adults agree that patients with RD have a similar risk to the general population of contracting a SARS-CoV-2 infection and those having other comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes or cardiac diseases are at higher risk of developing a more severe course of COVID-19[4-7]. However, certain conditions such as the presence of active disease, and some immunosuppressants confer an increased risk of hospitalization. Thus, in the German National register in 104 adults with RD and COVID-19, hospitalized patients were more often treated with glucocorticoids while biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) were used less often[4]. The Global Rheumatology Alliance physician-reported registry[5], with a total of 600 cases of COVID-19 in adults with RD from 40 countries, found that nearly half of the cases were hospitalized (277, 46%) and 55 (9%) died. In a multivariable-adjusted model, prednisone dose ≥10 mg/day was associated with higher odds of hospitalization. The use of conventional DMARD alone or in combination with biologics/Janus Kinase inhibitors was not associated with hospitalization. Neither does the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) was associated with hospitalization. Tumour necrosis factor inhibitor (anti-TNF) use was associated with reduced odds of hospitalization, while no association with hydroxychloroquine use was observed. Other adult's Spanish series[6] with 122 patients with RD found that treatment with methotrexate (MTX) and rituximab was a risk factor for hospital admission, but not for mortality, while other DMARDs did not show differences. However, glucocorticoids seem to increase the risk of mortality.
Chronic steroids have a strong immunosuppressive effect, as long as hypothalamic-hypophysis axis suppression. Our results, along with literature in adults, suggest that steroids might have more risk for COVID-19 admission than biologics. Pediatricians should be cautious when evaluating children on chronic steroids and COVID-19.
For children with RD and COVID-19, the ACR[8] recommends maintaining treatment with NSAID, conventional DMARDs and biological DMARDs. Regarding glucocorticoids, the task force recommended that glucocorticoids should be continued or initiated when clinically indicated, using the lowest effective dose to control underlying RD without defining a specific dose (e.g., less than or equal to 10mg prednisone used in adults) for the pediatric population. In our patients, the treatment was not modified, except for azathioprine withdrawal in one case. Most patients had active disease, and the risk of withdrawal was considered higher than the risk of maintaining the drugs. Although more data in children with RD are necessary to release strong recommendations, our series seems to support that corticosteroid treatment may be a risk factor for hospitalization in this group of children.
Data in the pediatric population are practically absent. In 2 series from Italy and UK, COVID-19 in children with rheumatic diseases were not reported[3,11]. In our series, it is worth mention that 100% were females and age was higher than the overall cohort, possibly reflecting the pediatric population of patients with RD. Virtually all patients were receiving treatment with prednisone or MTX that have been found to risk hospitalization or serious illness in adults[6]. Importantly a significant percentage was in the early stages of the disease, without good control of it. Two patients had COVID-19 at the time of onset of RD, which raises the hypothesis if COVID-19 may have a role triggering the disease. This hypothesis have also been formulated for other autoimmune disease, as diabetes[12]. Overall outcome was good, except in the case of JDM, and interstitial lung disease has been recognized as risk factor of severe COVID-19 in adults[13]. Thrombotic complications are common in adults with COVID-19 but are rare in children. In our series two girls presented them; one of them related to central venous catheter and the other in the context of antiphospholipid syndrome and suspicion of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), so the role that SARS-CoV-2 infection can play in this complication is uncertain.
In summary, in the Spanish national EPICO-AEP cohort, children with RD have accounted for 2.2% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. The evolution has been moderately favorable, with one deceased. Active disease and the use of corticosteroids could be considered risk factors in the pediatric population as well as in adults. More prospective studies are needed to characterize risk factors in this population.
Data is available on request
No conflicts of interest
This study has been partially funded by a grant from the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP)
Sisk B, Cull W, Harris JM, et al. National Trends of Cases of COVID-19 in Children Based on US State Health Department Data. Pediatrics. 2020 Sep 29:e2020027425. doi: 10.1542/peds.2020-027425. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32994175.
Götzinger F, Santiago-García B, Noguera-Julián A, et al. COVID-19 in children and adolescents in Europe: a multinational, multicentre cohort study. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2020 Sep;4(9):653–661. doi: 10.1016/S2352-4642(20)30177-2. Epub 2020 Jun 25. PMID: 32593339; PMCID: PMC7316447.
Swann OV, Holden KA, Turtle L, et al. Clinical characteristics of children and young people admitted to hospital with covid-19 in United Kingdom: prospective multicentre observational cohort study. BMJ. 2020 Aug 27;370:m3249. doi: 10.1136/bmj.m3249. PMID: 32960186; PMCID: PMC7488201.
Hasseli R, Mueller-Ladner U, Schmeiser T, et al. National registry for patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases (IRD) infected with SARS-CoV-2 in Germany (ReCoVery): a valuable mean to gain rapid and reliable knowledge of the clinical course of SARS-CoV-2 infections in patients with IRD. RMD Open. 2020 Sep;6(2):e001332. doi: 10.1136/rmdopen-2020-001332. PMID: 32878994.
Gianfrancesco M, Hyrich KL, Al-Adely S, et al. Characteristics associated with hospitalisation for COVID-19 in people with rheumatic disease: data from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance physician-reported registry. Ann Rheum Dis. 2020 Jul;79(7):859–866. doi: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-217871. Epub 2020 May 29. PMID: 32471903; PMCID: PMC7299648.
Nuño L, Novella Navarro M, Bonilla G, et al. Clinical course, severity and mortality in a cohort of patients with COVID-19 with rheumatic diseases. Ann Rheum Dis. 2020 Jun 30:annrheumdis-2020–218054. doi: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-218054. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32606046.
Haberman R, Axelrad J, Chen A, et al. Covid-19 in Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Diseases - Case Series from New York. N Engl J Med. 2020 Jul 2;383(1):85–88. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc2009567. Epub 2020 Apr 29. PMID: 32348641; PMCID: PMC7204427.
Schulze-Koops H, Iking-Konert C, Leipe J, et al. Recommendations of the German Society for Rheumatology for management of patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases in the context of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic - Update July 2020. Z Rheumatol. 2020;79(7):679–685. doi:10.1007/s00393-020-00851-x
Wahezi DM, Lo MS, Rubinstein TB, et al. American College of Rheumatology Guidance for the Management of Pediatric Rheumatic Disease During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Version 1. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2020 Jul 23:10.1002/art.41455. doi: 10.1002/art.41455. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32705780; PMCID: PMC7404941.
Quintana-Ortega C, Remesal A, Ruiz de Valbuena M, et al. Fatal outcome of anti-MDA5 juvenile dermatomyositis in a pediatric COVID-19 patient: a case report. Mod Rheumatol Case Rep. 2020 Oct 6:1–16. doi: 10.1080/24725625.2020.1832755. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33019894
Costi S, Caporali R, Cimaz R. Dealing with COVID-19 in a Pediatric Rheumatology Unit in Italy. Paediatr Drugs. 2020 Jun;22(3):263–264. doi: 10.1007/s40272-020-00395-2. PMID: 32297225; PMCID: PMC7159988.
Unsworth R, Wallace S, Oliver NS, et al. New-Onset Type 1 Diabetes in Children During COVID-19: Multicenter Regional Findings in the U.K. Diabetes Care. 2020 Aug 17:dc201551. doi: 10.2337/dc20-1551. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32816997.
Drake TM, Docherty AB, Harrison EM, et al. Outcome of Hospitalization for COVID-19 in Patients with Interstitial Lung Disease: An International Multicenter Study. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2020 Oct 2. doi: 10.1164/rccm.202007-2794OC. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33007173.
Posted October 20, 2020.
Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about medRxiv.
NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.
You are going to email the following COVID-19 in children with rheumatic diseases (RD) in the spanish national cohort EPICO-AEP
Message Subject (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from medRxiv
Message Body (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the medRxiv website.
medRxiv 2020.10.17.20214296; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.17.20214296
Allergy and Immunology (141)
Cardiovascular Medicine (408)
Dentistry and Oral Medicine (67)
Endocrinology (including Diabetes Mellitus and Metabolic Disease) (171)
Forensic Medicine (3)
Genetic and Genomic Medicine (670)
Health Economics (187)
Health Informatics (621)
Health Systems and Quality Improvement (200)
HIV/AIDS (155)
Infectious Diseases (except HIV/AIDS) (5278)
Intensive Care and Critical Care Medicine (323)
Medical Education (91)
Medical Ethics (24)
Obstetrics and Gynecology (124)
Occupational and Environmental Health (203)
Pharmacology and Therapeutics (129)
Primary Care Research (84)
Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology (765)
Public and Global Health (1796)
Radiology and Imaging (321)
Rehabilitation Medicine and Physical Therapy (138)
Sexual and Reproductive Health (68)
Surgery (100)


Wetherby-based renewables specialist, Earthmill, the country's largest agricultural wind turbine business, has expanded with the launch of a new division dedicated to servicing and maintaining wind turbines, to help maximise returns from wind power for farms across the UK.
The £15m turnover business, which has installed more than 250 'farm-scale' turbines since it was launched out of managing director Steve Milner's garage in 2009, has invested in new staff and technology in response to the high demand for assistance from turbine owners whose initial service warranties have expired.
Earthmill has won more than 20 new service and maintenance contracts in the last few months and expects to have gained at least a further 50 by the end of this year.
The system enables the team to react immediately to problems, either fixing issues from the Wetherby control centre or deploying their nearest engineer to the faulty turbine whatever time of day problems occur.
Mr Milner added: "We've put together a turbine management package for clients, specifically designed to take that stress away from farmers, who have more than enough to worry about already.
"There are a lot of basic maintenance deals on the market now but we take a holistic and more proactive approach to looking after each turbine site. While the industry average availability, or uptime, rate is 95 per cent, the rate for the turbines that Earthmill services and maintains is 98 per cent, thanks to our highly experienced team.
"Typically that extra 3 per cent means an additional £2,000 a year in revenue for hard-pressed farmers who need to maximise their farm income," said Mr Milner.
Earthmill's turbine management package also includes managing clients' power purchase agreements, which can achieve an average 0.5p above the standard market rate, equating to up to £3,000 in additional annual income. The company also advises on business rates and insurance for turbines.


text:
Home Lifestyle Health Documentary suggests breasts are becoming a health hazard
Documentary suggests breasts are becoming a health hazard
The documentary explores why 99% of women with breast cancer have no family history of the disease. SBS
Fiona Giles, University of Sydney
Most people would be aware of Angelina Jolie's preventative double mastectomy after she found she was carrying a mutation to the BRCA 1 gene which confers an extremely high risk of breast cancer.
But according to a new documentary airing at 8:30pm Sunday April 6 on SBS ONE, The Secret Life of Breasts, it's less well known that the majority of women with breast cancer have no family history of the disease. (Although it should be noted that most authorities attribute between 5% and 27% of breast cancer cases to family history or known mutations).
We are a culture obsessed with breasts – but how much do we really know about them? The Secret Life of Breasts seeks to find out.
The documentary is based on the work of US environmental journalist Florence Williams' 2012 book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, whose main thesis is that while we eroticise breasts, they may actually be a hidden toxic waste ground.
Williams proposes that our breasts, with their fat deposits and oestrogen receptors, are a "sentinel organ". Like canaries in a coalmine, they're dying ahead of the miners who seem not to be heeding the warning.
Following in her footsteps, documentary makers interview Williams and follow people who are engaged with their breast health in some way, due to early puberty, breastfeeding, cancer risk or disfigurement.
This includes a young man in Brisbane undergoing breast reduction surgery, a group of ten young mothers in Sydney who decide to have their breast milk tested for contaminants and a woman in northern New South Wales who has a preventative double mastectomy and donates her breast tissue for chemical analysis.
The results from both the tests are disturbing; our bodies are apparently burdened by pesticides and other toxins, despite some of them having been banned decades ago. Interestingly, this sort of test was the start of Williams' work, who decided to have her own breast milk tested after she read a news story about toxins in breast milk.
In line with Williams' work, the documentary highlights the tendency of fatty tissue to attract surplus oestrogen. Because the human breast contains billions of oestrogen receptors as well as fatty tissue, it's a magnet for not only the hormone itself but for oestrogen-like impostors, or "endocrine disruptors", contained in food and industrial chemicals, particularly during developmental stages. These are absorbed into our bodies throughout our lives – from furnishings, packaging, detergents, and numerous other commodities.
The Secret Life of Breasts highlights how manufacturing and agriculture are not required to test the safety of the chemicals they use. According to the director of the US National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, Linda Birnbaum, chemicals are only subject to testing when ill-effects are suspected.
According to the documentary, the alarm being sounded by breasts include steadily rising breast cancer rates, early puberty (from as young as age seven), bigger female breasts with bra size double D being the new normal, and gynaecomastia (man boobs), among other things.
Williams is particularly concerned about the possible risks passed on to babies through contaminated breast milk. While it's still generally accepted that breast milk beats formula for safety and benefits, it's nevertheless a disturbing idea that a mother's burden of chemicals will be present in her child's nourishment.
But is the documentary overstating the harms posed to babies by toxins in breast milk? US researchers who measured levels of volatile organic compounds in the breast milk of three mothers found the levels of the same compounds were higher in the air in their homes. This was a pioneering study but it was quite small – only three mothers from the same area were involved – so it's difficult to know which to give greater credence.
And this is not the first time the idea of babies being exposed to toxins through breast milk has been raised either. Biologist Sandra Steingraber's 2001 book Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood asked – if "breast is best", how can we help our environment ensure the purity of its milk?
This documentary provides plenty of food for thought about mammary glands, and while it raises as many questions as it tries to answer, it's worth deciding for yourself whether you need to be worried about the secret life of breasts.
Previous articleCostly, toxic and slow to charge? Busting electric car myths
Next articleWe're self-obsessed – but do we understand the nature of the self?
18 million US children are at risk of hunger: How is the problem being addressed and what more can be done?
How to outsmart your COVID-19 fears and boost your mood in 2021
Bogeyman of credit crisis needs reform to align risks and responsibilities...
By Yesha Yadav, Vanderbilt University In 2009, US trucking company YRC Worldwide faced ruin as it struggled to restructure its debt. With tens of thousands...
What the US could learn from Thailand about health care coverage
Hundreds of genes and link to immune system found in largest...
Where politicians fail, storytellers address the Troubles in Northern Ireland
How to be more eco-friendly in the home
Why Amazon and friends' plan could be a major disrupter of...
I'm an OB/GYN who attended thousands of deliveries before wondering why...


Getting married is an amazing experience. It's a day full of emotion, joy, joy and sometimes just a little despair when a relative or friend who's no more with us is not there to share our special day.
As professional wedding photographers we all understand how stressful organizing your wedding day can be. With all these photographers around, where do you start? What do you have to know if you're looking for a wedding photographer? With costs ranging from a few hundred pounds to many thousands, how can you know whether they're ideal for you?
It is a simple fact of life that with the arrival of digital cameras, many people now call themselves a "photographer". Over recent years there has been an explosion of people offering their services as wedding photographers, many of who haven't received any training, don't have any insurance, do not use professional equipment and do not have sufficient backups in place to cater for almost any eventuality.
A professional photographer will have all the above and this post is a quick "Help Guide" into the things to search for and the questions we recommend you ask when choosing a wedding photographer. Grab yourself a cuppa and get comfortable. This isn't a definitive guide, merely a general overview of what to search for.
Personal Recommendations: Have you ever been to a wedding recently? What did your friends think of their photographer? As a Yorkshire wedding photographer the majority of our customers come from personal recommendations from either Bride and Grooms who have used us , or by Venues that know the quality of the work we create and the wonderful value for money we offer.
A fast search on some of the significant search engines will generate a mind numbing number of choices. By way of example, if you enter Google the search terms "Wedding Photographer" it will yield millions outcomes. Simply going through every outcome would take you years, so as a general rule of thumb, stick with those on page 1 or page 2. The reason for this is straightforward: If they are on page 1 or two then they've taken the time to make certain their website is well designed, optimised and placed, to ensure that their goods or services are easy to find for potential Bride and Grooms.
The moment you have settled on a date, have booked your wedding site and obtained confirmation then book all other services required for your wedding day as swiftly as possible. Leaving it to the last minute to reserve your wedding photographer isn't a fantastic idea.


Last year, Boston singer-songwriter Marisa Nadler released Covers Volume I. We named it one of the best cover albums of the year, so needless to say, we're excited to report she's recorded a follow-up. Once again, it will be for sale exclusively through crafting online marketplace Etsy, but you can download three tracks now (and her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Winter Lady" here).
In the songs she released to Soundcloud, Nadler covers Bruce Springsteen's "The River," Clinic's "Distortions," and Bob Dylan's "Farewell Angelina." She enlists folk friends Faces on Film and Red Heroine to provide backing vocals on the tracks. They offer the same beautiful, haunting folk that you'd never tire of. "I'm not really into the fad of 'ironic' cover songs so I just decided to covers songs I love," she wrote about the set. "I hope you love them too." Download 'em below, then check out the full tracklist.
Check Etsy next week to buy the full set.


Ichigo's new Bankai. Ichigo's new Tenza Zangetsu. HD Wallpaper and background images in the animé Bleach club tagged: bleach ichigo kurosaki.
This animé Bleach photo might contain feu, flammes, enfer, inferno, and feu.


text:
Wrapping Their 25th Year, Slamdance Co-Founders Discuss the Festival's Past, Present and Future
Dan Mirvish, Peter Baxter and Paul Rachman at Slamdance in 2010
by Scott Macaulay
in Festivals & Events
Dan Mirvish, Paul Rachman, Peter Baxter, Slamdance Film Festival
"In a way, I see the festival as run like a punk rock label — a successful one!" says filmmaker and Slamdance "co-conspirator" Paul Rachman. With its award ceremony and final screenings, the Slamdance Film Festival concluded its 25th year last night (read the full list of winners here) — an astonishing fact of longevity that none of its founders could have predicted when they launched the outsider event in Park City back in 1995.
"We were a wild bunch of filmmakers who got together to do something different," says co-founder Peter Baxter. "And we're realizing now how naive we were back then — and how lucky we were to be that naive. If we had known then what we know now, we might not have continued Slamdance. Fortunately, we had all of us to support each other."
Of Slamdance's history, filmmaker Dan Mirvish, who, along with Baxter, Shane Kuhn and Jon Fitzgerald co-founded the festival, says, "Like any 25-year-old organization, we have had our ups and downs, behind-the-scenes dramas, and organizational and economic challenges as the economy has gone up and down and other festivals have come and gone. But we always come back to why it is we are doing this, and what our purpose is, [and ask] does it still make sense? And [we conclude], yes, we should still keep doing this, and in more or less the same way."
Twenty-five-year anniversaries can be challenges, events prone to excess nostalgia, but Slamdance's has been one of, says Mirvish, "business as usual, which is in a way keeping with [our mission] of first-time filmmakers and low budgets. That's the mantra that has led to our longevity. A little nod, though, is showing Steven Soderbergh's new film [High-Flying Bird] — he's been such a big part of our history."
Soderbergh received this year the Slamdance Founder's Award, which previously went to festival alumni the Russo Brothers and Christopher Nolan. Other returning alumni this year included jury members Jeremiah Zagar and Lynn Shelton. Says Rachman, "That was our approach — joining the past to the present and the future, and bringing back the family from a historical perspective."
Venturing down memory lane, all of the Slamdance heads I talked to all referenced the challenges of Slamdance's first year in 1995, which began after three of the founders had their films rejected from Sundance. Also, reported Noah Cowan — then a programmer at the Toronto Film Festival and now the Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society — in Filmmaker, the Slamdance founders were spurred on by a quote from producer's rep John Pierson about the IFP's Independent Feature Film Market and relayed in the New Yorker. Pierson said to a young filmmaker at the IFFM, "If some percentage of people in their twenties who want to make an independent movie would build some infrastructure, that would help." As Cowan noted, "the cowed filmmaker was none other than [Slamdance co-founder] Fitzgerald."
That first year saw flyers placed all over Park City proclaiming, "The first annual guerrilla international film festival." The films selected — including the microbudget God Drives a Pontiac as well as a Mimi Rogers/Billy Zane-starrer Reflections on a Crime — were drawn from submissions following a front-page Variety article just weeks earlier announcing the festival. Films screened in Salt Lake City at the University of Utah campus and were free for Sundance badgeholders and $3 for others. Additional showings were added at the Yarrow and Prospector hotels — both now Sundance venues.
"We had no idea that we would even make it through the 1995 edition," says Baxter. "The Park City police said our days were numbered," adds Mirvish. "When we first started, Sundance had a lot of influence over the city of Park City, and Sheriff Bell tried to run us out of town. By the third year, we had run into this young hip couple who ran the Treasue Mountain Inn" — the Slamdance festival's longtime homebase — "and he took us in. And now, years later, the guy from that couple, Andy Beerman, is the mayor of Park City and our best friend. He brings council members to our events."
Indeed, engagement with the local community has been a Slamdance priority. "We have discounts for locals," says Mirvish, "and we have made a point to show student films by Brigham Young University students. One of those films was Jared Harris's short, Palooka. At his Q&A there were two producers who told him, 'We love your short, do you have a feature?' And he was ready with the script for Napoleon Dynamite in six months."
But while in the early days, Mirvish says, "Sundance tried to run us out of every venue," Baxter says a more amorphous force has been the biggest challenge to Slamdance in recent years. "Our biggest battles have been with celebrity culture," he says. "How difficult it has been to compete with celebrity and corporations and media outlets that were besotted by celebrity culture that financed events around that. Slamdance hasn't done that. We have dug in."
Other stories from Slamdance's history include Christopher Nolan walking into the first screening of his debut microbudget feature, Following, in 1999 and finding only 14 people in the audience. The film had been picked up by Zeitgeist Films, and Nolan and producer Emma Thomas had assumed they'd be promoting — and, as Mirvish says, "vice versa." "We told him, 'Go down to Kinkos, make some flyers and pass them out! Don't be shy!' And he did and got people into his second screening, which Roger Ebert and Elvis Mitchell came to. And his career has done okay ever since."
Rachman recalls other Slamdance memories, like the time Soderbergh first showed up at the festival with Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers, which he produced. "It was the year we were using these portable 35mm projectors, and every couple of screenings they would fail. Soderbergh was on the floor fixing the projector himself, and afterwards he said, 'I'll be back next year.' And he showed up then with Schizopolis." And then there were the two years — 2001 and 2002 — that Slamdance moved to the Silver Mine, which coincided with even more festivals (Lapdance, Nodance) crowding Park City and parties fueled by the dotcom craze.
"We had tried to expand the festival, but it was a trek up there, and it kind of stopped working after the second year," says Rachman. "But that was the year Bong Joon-ho had come to the festival with Barking Dogs. It was his first time in America, and he had a blast." And all of the founders cite LeAnn Rimes attending the premiere of Jordan Brady's Dill Scallion in 1999. "We had two fire alarms go off in the screening, which has never happened before," says Mirvish. "LeAnn sat frozen still, as if she was made up of asbestos, while everyone cleared out. At the end of the screening, Jordan introduced her, and without a word of intro she belted out 'Amazing Grace' and blew the room away. And then sat down."
Baxter breaks down both the history and identity of Slamdance into three parts. There was the first year, the origin story, so to speak. Then there were the years following, "when we realized that we wanted to continue doing this." And finally there's Slamdance in its current iteration, which is not just a festival but a community serviced by a year-round organization based in a Los Angeles office and staffed full-time by Baxter and a small team. "This artist-led community that we have created — we have done this on our own terms," he says. "And some of our better-known alumni are really going to be part of the development of our future. There's the Russo Fellowship, where they are giving a filmmaker a $25,000 prize and mentorship." Yassmina Karajah's 2018 Slamdance short, Rupture, for example, is being being turned into a feature film with their help."
There's also the Slamdance Screenplay Competition, which, Mirvish notes, "is one of the more respected ones out there, and is one of the first to give coverage back to the writers. That's now almost a standard thing."
The Slamdance founders are all keen to note the box-office returns of some of its alumni directors — "Between the Russo Brothers, Christopher Nolan and Rian Johnson [Marvel, DC and Star Wars, respectively], it's not a stretch to call Slamdance 'the birthplace of the masters of the universe!" says Mirvish. But this proclamation folds into part of a larger point about careers and longevity. Says Mirvish, "We recognized very early that most of our films are not going to get picked up, certainly not at the festival, although there have been dozens of cases over the years. We measure success by where the careers have gone for these directors." Adds Baxter, referencing not just the festival but the year-round programs, "Slamdance had to start getting involved in nurturing talent whole heartedly and passionately because the industry doesn't invest in developing new talent over a longer period of time."
Would Slamdance ever consider moving away from Park City and to another spot in the calendar where there'd be less competition for viewers and easier access to larger screening facilities? Says Rachman, "Every year at Park City gets more expensive, but we feel that our energy and our raison d'etre is there — we're part of the ecosystem. So it's been discussed, but we've never gone beyond thinking about it. We have always come back to Park City."
The Truth, The Horror: Eliza Hittman on It Felt Like Love By Sarah Salovaara on Mar 17, 2014
Ten Lessons on Filmmaking from James Franco By Ariston Anderson on May 21, 2013
Digital Motion Picture Cameras in 2014: The Next Chapter By David Leitner on Apr 6, 2014
Park City Critic's Notes #2: How Should a Family Be? By Brandon Harris on Jan 19, 2014


Pao Houa Her's experimental, spare new installation work, combining sound and photographic collage, offers understated but potent commentary on the intersection of desire with notions of culture and authenticity.
Pao Houa Her, The King's Seven Daughters (detail). Courtesy of The Bindery Projects.
When I arrive at The Bindery Projects, I think I have gotten the wrong time or location. I had arranged to meet Nate Young, co-owner of the gallery, on a Tuesday morning after Pao Houa Her's The King's Seven Daughters had its opening reception, but when I walk in there doesn't seem to be any art on the walls. The gallery is completely empty, save for the leftover wine and sparkling water from the earlier night's reception. The walls are completely blank.
"Hello?" I call. I'm frantically checking my phone to see if the Bindery Projects has relocated, or if they are, perhaps, using an outlet space for the show. Eventually, Young arrives. He says he thought we'd planned to meet the following week but that it isn't a problem for him to turn the exhibit on for me now.
"There are just two pieces," he says, directing me toward the visual art work while he turns on the sound piece. At first, it seems like he's pointing at a blank section of the gallery space, but then I realize I need to walk around a temporary wall; the art is installed in a little alcove behind it. Going into that small, closet-sized space, I find a back-lit photographic image of a figure standing in a field of pink flowers. The central figure is in fact a conglomeration of numerous women, their images overlaid on each other. Stacked as they are, these various individuals merge into one: different sets of eyes and lips and noses and outfits swimming together to make a single blurry and shadowed face.
I step out of the alcove and walk back into the main gallery, where Young lets me know the sound piece is on. I prick my ears, straining to hear. There is a faint sound of young girls laughing. Young says that, for the opening, he turned the audio up a bit so people could hear, but that it's the artist's intention for the sound to be very low.
I listen again. The sounds are barely audible.
"We knew it was risky, just doing two pieces," Young says, but the Bindery Projects is all about experimentation. Young notes that the show is a major departure for Houa Her, whom he met when they were both Jerome grantees last year. The title recalls Hmong folklore, he says — a story about a king with seven daughters, each one has a particular trait that makes them desirable to men. The youngest daughter, endowed as she is with a combination of all her sisters' gifts, is the most desirable of them all. Young explains that Houa Her, who was born in Laos and moved to Minnesota with her family in 1986, has used appropriated images of Hmong women from an international Hmong dating site to create the visual piece. This dating site mostly pairs Hmong-American men with Hmong women still living in Laos, although there are some Hmong men from Laos in the mix as well.
It strikes me that there are a couple of separate currents running through the exhibit. On the one hand, you have the installation itself, where both the image and the sound comment on notions of ideal femininity within Hmong culture, especially in the context of diaspora. With the giggling girls' voices and the amalgamated image of women who've put themselves out into cyberspace to find a mate, Houa Her investigates the intersection of desire with notions of culture and authenticity. That is: for Hmong communities living in the United States or other high-income countries how are traditional and cultural notions of courtship and desirability in conflict with life in the diaspora? What prompts a Hmong-American to return to a country where they've never lived (or where they lived only as a young child) in order to seek a mate? Why not find a peer in the place they now call home? Houa Her illuminates how the pull of heritage, untainted by American or Western ways, still looms as an ideal. Her work also calls attention to the imbalanced power dynamics involved — between men and women, and between high-income and low income countries.
The sound component of the piece — the barely audible giggles of young girls — seems to point to a cultural preference for childlike beauty. Perhaps the particular dating site Houa Her references is "legitimate" and not used for human trafficking as other, similar sites, have proven to be. But the quietness of the voices in the audio work combined with the the tucked-away presentation of visual piece is suggestive of secrets, things hidden and possibly untoward. It strikes me that the layout of the gallery exhibition, the solitary wayfinding required to get to the work, physically references the experience of being online, at once alone with a monitor and in communication with countless, albeit virtual, others. Read that way, Houa Her's work gives a sense of what it is to live in this digital age, when screens and smartphones supercede in-person interactions and we're caught between limitless connection and loneliness. Like the king's youngest daughter, Houa Her's collaged figure is a combination of the best of many women, but she is also no woman at all, but a monster of many faces clouded by shadows.
The King's Seven Daughters runs from March 21 through May 9 at The Bindery Projects in St. Paul. Visits may be arranged by appointment.


Our first task in the Leigh Bell Restoration project was to open up the trap door in the floor of the ringing chamber so that the bells can be removed from the tower for retuning. We needed to do this in advance as a new glass ceiling was going to be installed in the tower below the ringing chamber and once this was in place it would be more difficult to access the floor of the ringing chamber from below. We had discovered that there was a trap door in the floor but it had been boarded over on both sides at some time in the past.
We have now made the trap door openable again. These pictures show the work being performed by Leigh ringers Ian Tucker, John Davis and Jackie Davis. The photos are by Chris Cudmore.


At Bionical, we have a singular focus - improving health outcomes for patients. All the solutions we build for our clients are designed to provide better health for the patients they serve.
We take time to understand the needs of our clients, and then work with them to make sure results are quickly achieved.
We focus on the patient experience and identify how to encourage behavioral change, both through the healthcare professional, and directly with patients.
We take advantage of our exceptional technical and operational experience to make sure our programs are designed with patient needs in mind.
Our carefully chosen values ensure we bring the right approach to problem solving, programme development and delivery.
We are committed to being: Empathetic, Progressive, Inquisitive, Disruptive, Creative and Collaborative.
Our services accelerate product approval and product launch, enhance communication and engagement with healthcare professionals and patients, bringing clarity and building confidence. Bionical delivers these market-leading services through its UK/EU and US hubs and through local offices in Canada and Australia.
All rights reserved © 2019 Bionical Ltd.


text:
Mysterious Fiery Hole Near Mountain Home, Arkansas Remains Unsolved
Mario Garcia Published: March 7, 2022
KARK 4 News/YouTube
I'm sure most of you have heard about Turkmenistan in the Karakum desert known as the "Gates of Hell," because of the fire spewing from the enormous crater. But did you know that Arkansas had its own mini version of that back in 2018, and it still remains somewhat of a mystery today?
It happened on the morning of September 20, 2018, in the small community of Midway, Arkansas when the local fire department responded to a call about a fire shooting out of a hole approximately 2 feet wide. The fire lasted around 45 minutes according to fire officials from the Midway Volunteer Fire Protection District. Once the fire finally went out crews examined the scorched hole and discovered it to be around three and a half feet deep with a 45-degree turn near the bottom.
At first, it was believed to be caused by a natural gas line that may have ruptured but there were no gas lines in the vicinity or area where the fire was spotted. It was also thought to be a meteorite or space debris that had crashed into the wooded area but that was eventually ruled out as well. A Fayetteville-based Gas Company was sent in to further investigate the incident but they found nothing that could have caused it, the only thing they recall is that the area smelled like burnt plastic. Thank God, because I would have really worried if it would have smelled like sulfur, something associated with the devil.
There were reports of lighting in that area late Sunday night but no reports of fire coming out of the hole until Monday morning.
Watch this report from KARK 4 Little Rock.
Here's another report.
So, what do you think it is?
Filed Under: arkansas
Have You Ever Experienced the Mysterious Gravity Hill Street in Hot Springs, Arkansas?


Woodwool is a man-made board material about 50 to 75mm thick comprising shredded timber bound together in a cement paste. It was used generally during the 1960s to provide insulation often at roof level and as a permanent shutter to in-situ concrete.
Unfortunately, when woodwool was incorporated as a permanent shutter, unless great care was taken when placing concrete against the woodwool soffit shutters, inadequate compaction of the concrete could occur due to the compressible nature of the board. This lack of compaction resulted in voids and honeycombing on the soffit of the slab sometimes leaving no cover to the reinforcing steel. As the woodwool boards were left in place these defects then remained undetected.
Woodwool boards were used both as a permanent shuttering to flat slabs but also as a void former between concrete ribs.
The ribs were 75mm wide, 220mm deep and at 390mm centres, spanning between a central spine beam and the building edge beams. The woodwool beneath the ribs was about 30-40mm thick.
The concrete around the reinforcement in the bottom of the ribs was found to be honeycombed, in some cases leaving the steel fully exposed. In this instance the poor compaction was probably due to the inherent difficulty of compacting concrete around a reinforcing bar in a relatively narrow rib being exacerbated by the woodwool compressing and absorbing energy. However, as the building had been well maintained and was dry internally, the exposed steel was in a reasonably good condition with only surface corrosion.


The Flow: Soda tax poll; got leche?
A new nationwide survey showed that 70 percent of Americans oppose a national tax on all non-diet soft drinks, while only 18 percent supported the idea of an "obesity tax" on regular soda.
Sensient Technologies Corporation will hold its conference call to discuss 2008 fourth quarter and year-end results at 10:00 a.m. CST on Friday, February 6, 2009. To make a reservation for the conference call, contact InterCall Teleconferencing at (706) 645-6973 and refer to the Sensient Technologies Corporation conference call. • Despite economic turmoil there, Coca-Cola continues to invest in the Russian market. • Advanced H2O LLC signed a 15-year lease to occupy some 313,000 square-feet in the southern Dallas County logistics park. • Ball Corporation reported full-year 2008 net earnings of $319.5 million, or $3.29 per diluted share, on sales of $7.56 billion, compared to $281.3 million, or $2.74 per diluted share, on sales of $7.39 billion in 2007. Fourth quarter 2008 net earnings were $33.8 million, or 36 cents per diluted share, on sales of $1.73 billion, compared to $33.3 million, or 33 cents per diluted share, on sales of $1.76 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007. • The Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc. announced that it will webcast its fourth quarter 2008 earnings conference call with financial analysts and investors on Tuesday, February 10 at 10:00 a.m. EST. PBG will release its fourth quarter financial results before the market opens that morning.
Steaz launched Steaz Energy Shot with 150 mg of clean, plant-based caffeine. • Naked Juice announced Acai Machine juice smoothie and Pomegranate juice, both antioxidant rich and all-natural, 100% juice containing no added sugar or preservatives.
Celsius Holdings, Inc. announced that Celsius Green Tea Peach Mango and Celsius Green Tea Raspberry Acai, will soon be available for consumer purchase in most GNC stores across the country. Initial distribution will put Celsius in GNC-owned and operated locations. • PepsiAmericas, Inc. announced that its fourth quarter and full-year 2008 earnings conference call will be webcast live over the internet on Wednesday, February 4 at 10 a.m. CDT (11 a.m. EDT). PepsiAmericas will issue its financial results before the market opens that morning. In addition, the company will provide financial guidance for 2009. • XYIENCE announced that Canadian distribution of their sugar-free energy drink, Xenergy, increased from May 1 to December 31, 2008. During the seven-month period, XYIENCE added nine Canadian retailers to the roster of stores that carry Xenergy. An additional 11 retailers have agreed to begin carrying Xenergy in the second quarter of 2009. • Icelandic Glacial secured a new listing agreement with convenience store chain, The Pantry. • Isbre Holding Corp., importers of Isbre Norwegian Glacier Spring Water, announced placement into the 29 stores owned and operated by the Ukrop's Supermarket chain.
Beauty queen, author, actress and humanitarian Dayanara Torres is the latest famous face to wear a milk mustache and is the official spokesperson of got milk?'s wellness campaign. As part of the campaign, Dayanara will help "reintroduce" Hispanics to milk as nature's wellness drink. • The World Environment Center's (WEC) Twenty-Fifth Annual Gold Medal for International Corporate Achievement in Sustainable Development has been awarded to The Coca-Cola Company for implementing strategic business initiatives in the high impact areas of water stewardship, sustainable packaging, energy management and climate protection. • Who's Your Daddy, Inc. announced that it will be a premier sponsor of the 23rd annual Leigh Steinberg Super Bowl Party, which will be held at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo on January 31, 2009 between 2 – 5 p.m ET, and will provide 2000 bottles of its unique energy shot to partygoers. • The Gatorade Company, in partnership with ESPN RISE Magazine, announced senior distance runner Jordan Hasay of Mission College Prep (San Luis Obispo, Calif.) as its 2008-09 Gatorade National Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year. • Charlotte-based Coca-Cola Consolidated, the City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, and six Mecklenburg County Towns (Matthews, Pineville, Mint Hill, Davidson, Huntersville, Cornelius), and Harris Teeter announced a partnership designed to increase recycling throughout the area. Recycle and Win is a public/private initiative designed to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills. • For the second straight year, Diet Coke tapped Heidi Klum as its heart health ambassador in support of The Heart Truth campaign, a national effort sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to educate women about the risks of heart disease.


Most people these days are consuming far more protein than they need, together with excessive non-fiber carbs and not enough healthful fatty acids This could hinder your wellbeing and fitness goals by elevating blood glucose levels, promoting weight gain, holding extra body fat, stressing your kidneys, draining important bone minerals, and even leading to dehydration.
If, on the other hand, you're eating low-carb, I do not think it makes as much difference, as your blood glucose and insulin levels are going to be much more under control anyway.
Given that athlete's food generally focuses on carbs, the diet is relatively low fat but principally it is a sort of calorie-restricted diet, since expenditure is typically 1,000 to 2,000 calories extra each day than an person can easily consume.
I do best on an Atkins / South Beach variety diet to shed weight, and yes I do gain fast when I consume virtually any white carbs (sugar, white flour, white rice, pasta etc.) so I try to eat always on a plan that avoids white foods.
Also, I've also read that bit regarding choline and fatty liver but as there isn't any need to eat copious amounts of fructose, and as it takes time to change eating habits (choline from meals are infinitely better for you than choline in supplements) and the best low-carb sources are egg yolk and liver, two foods most of us have been trained into a pathological fear of eating, advising people with fatty liver to avoid fructose is still valid advice.
Not everyone who is having trouble losing weight on a low-carb diet plan is taking in more calories/carbs/protein/fat than they think.
If you're on a low-carb diet and are setting up a caloric deficit of a couple of hundred calories daily, eating even a helping of these nuts will do your weight loss in. But who is able to eat only one serving?
What ultimately remedied the predicament was a low-carb, high-fat diet, which she calls a low-impact eating due to the benign effects on blood glucose and insulin.
Having read many articles and reactions, I understand that when consuming a high-fat, moderate-protein, and incredibly low carb diet (sub 30g/day), calorie restriction is more important if fat loss is sought after.


Overprinting "Blendmode Darken" vs. "Overprint Operator"
I'm using Condes 9.5.2 and I'm looking for the overprinting-mode which brings the best printing result on a high-end digital printing maschine (postscript-printer).
I'm a bit confused about the two different overprint-modes. I see no differents in the two different pdfs if I examine it with PitStop. Also the difference of the filesize is only 4 bytes (2.951.959 vs. 2.951.955 bytes). I'm thinking in the past there is a bigger difference between the two modes.
Re: Overprinting "Blendmode Darken" vs. "Overprint Operator"
You are right - when inspecting the file, there should be very insignificant visible difference, and the file sizes should be virtually identical.
Initially, the reason for introducing blend mode DARKEN was to make life easier for the user. As standard, Adobe Reader doesnt show the overprint efftct - you have to change a setting in Adobe Reader to see the overprinted effect. However, Adobe Reader shows the blend mode effect as standard, so using Blendmode DARKEN eliminates a pitfall.
It turns out that there are additional advantages to using Blendmode DARKEN. I have described this in a presentation held at the IOF IT COmmission Open Meeting in 2016. The presentation can be found at the IOF website. www.orienteering.org under IT commission Documents.


Don't blame the player, blame the game. For 3-6 players. For more players just shuffle more decks into the original deck. Spend as much US Taxpayer money by passing 'Pork' spending bills in Congress. The player that spends the most Pork by game end wins. Of course, the US Government is bankrupt by then so everybody else loses. Deck consists of 54 cards: 46 Pork cards and 8 Politics cards. There are two copies of each Pork card, Pork cards represent Government bailout programs. They are divided into 5 'suits' representing different sectors of the U.S. economy. A symbol representing the suit/sector is printed on each Pork card along with the cost of the bailout program ( in BILLIONS!).


text:
Scientists look into tropopause to find early signals of persistent strong rainfall
The flooding season had just ended in China. Persistent strong precipitation events in many regions of China resulted in severe flooding disasters in the just passed summer of 2020. It is of great significance to capture precursor signals of persistent strong precipitation events.
To find the signal, Prof. XIAO Ziniu and his team from The State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and their collaborators used a powerful analysis tool - the intraseasonal oscillation (ISO) of isentropic potential vorticity (PV) - to track precursors near the tropopause preceding persistent strong precipitation in South China.
The results were published on Sept. 2 in Climate Dynamics.
The researchers found that the early signals leading to persistent heavy rainfall in South China originate from two regions: the Arctic region and the tropical monsoon region.
"20 days before the peak rainfall, the western Tibetan Plateau and the northern side of the East Asian westerly jet near the tropopause are two transit points for the anomalous potential vorticity to strengthen and change propagating direction," said ZHAO Liang, the first author of the study. ZHAO is a senior engineer with LASG.
It is very critical for prediction to find the special early configuration of synoptic systems for the occurrence of persistent heavy rainfall events.
"We find that when the anomaly low pressure is surrounded by three anomaly high pressure systems, including South Asia high, Okhotsk Sea blocking high and the western Pacific subtropical high, this special situation is often responsible for the following persistent heavy rainfall in South China," said Prof. XIAO.
According to this study, 10 days before the peak rainfall, the joint action of the South Asia high and the Okhotsk Sea blocking high compresses the anomaly cold air between the two highs, and forms a narrow and steady cold air transport channel on the inclined isentropic surface. It enables the cold air to a lower latitude and continually meet with the warm and moist air in South China brought by the anomaly strong subtropical high, forming a persistent heavy precipitation.
"Our finding provides a new potential factor for the prediction of regional persistent heavy rainfall," said Prof. XIAO.
This research was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China and the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Related China Articles from Brightsurf:
China 2050: How the US should prepare for an ascendant China -- RAND Report
New RAND report says US should prepare for a triumphant or ascending People's Republic of China -- scenarios that not only align with current PRC national development trends but also represent the most challenging future scenarios for the US military.
The GDP fudge: China edition
By linking GDP growth to promotions, the Chinese government has inadvertently created incentives for provincial officials to report inaccurate financial data, a study says.
Opportunity blows for offshore wind in China
If China is to meet and exceed its Paris Climate Agreement goal by 2030, it's going to need to find a way to increase its wind capacity.
Cesarean delivery rates in China
This study assessed changes between 2008 and 2018 in the rate of cesarean deliveries in China.
Environmental pollution in China begins decreasing
For decades pollution in China has paralleled economic growth. But this connection has been weakened in recent years, according to a new international research study published in the Science Advances journal.
Farming for natural profits in China
Expanding monoculture threatens valuable services from land, such as flood control, water purification and climate stabilization.
Cardiovascular disease in China
This study analyzed data from the Global Burden of Disease Study to look at the rate of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in China along with death and disability from CVD from 1990 to 2016.
New integrative stratigraphy and timescale for China released
A special issue, edited by professor SHEN Shuzhong and professor RONG Jiayu of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, summarizes the latest advances in stratigraphy and timescale as well as discusses the correlation among different blocks in China and with international timescales.
Cambrian integrative stratigraphy and timescale of China
The review paper briefly summarizes the historical narrative of the present international chronostratigraphic framework of the Cambrian System and recent advances and problems of the undefined Cambrian stage GSSPs, in particular the authors challenge the global correlation of the GSSP for the Cambrian base, in addition to Cambrian chemostratigraphy and geochronology.
What causes extreme heat in North China?
A collaborative research team from China has published a new analysis that shows the horizontal heat flux in the mixed layer plays a crucial role in extreme heat events in the North China Plain region.
Read More: China News and China Current Events


text:
Series 04: Histories
TAGS: PMSS Histories Guide, PMSS histories by former workers, students or visitors, personal narratives, oral histories
The PMSS HISTORIES GUIDE links to histories of Pine Mountain Settlement School written or spoken by the School's former teachers, nurses, doctors, students, administrators, and visitors. This Guide also provides links to the Creech Family correspondence, documents and photographs.
For more about PMSS histories, go to HISTORIES.
[NOTE: Some listings are still under construction.]
GENERAL HISTORIES
MARY ROGERS A PINE MOUNTAIN ALBUM 1913-1963. [Private]
MARY ROGERS – THE PINE MOUNTAIN STORY 1913-1980. This survey of Pine Mountain Settlement School history covers the founding of the School until 1980. Written and illustrated by Mary Rogers, "The Pine Mountain Story 1913-1980" remains a valuable resource in the PMSS Collection. GUIDE TO THE PINE MOUNTAIN STORY 1913-1980
GUIDE TO HISTORY of PMSS Summaries 1937 – 2000
COPY OF LETTER, DATED MAY 1, 1920 [Anon.] – 1920 [2 pages].
ASTRID ANDERSON – A PMSS bookkeeper in the 1930s, was one of two workers who wrote the narrative, "II. Funeral," located on the page titled "A Mountain Funeralizing." The other worker is unknown, but possibly Fern Hall (Hayes), a former student and secretary for the School.
ALICE COBB – A PMSS staff member describes life at Pine Mountain and in a variety of other settlement schools and folk schools in her 1944 report for Pine Mountain Settlement School trustee, Dorothy Elsmith. Included in her report are graphic descriptions of John C. Campbell Folk School, Highlander Folk School, Pi Beta Phi in Gatlinburg, TN, and other locations. Also included is an interview with Luigi Zande in Asheville, NC. She was a prolific writer and her cumulative work is a close observation of Pine Mountain School as well as the surrounding community. The ALICE COBB GUIDE TO WRITINGS AND LETTER COPIES will direct the reader to a dense collection of writing over the course of some twenty years associated with the School.
WILLIAM CREECH "A SHORT SKETCH OF MY LIFE" – Creech, a founder and donor of land for the School describes his purchase of land the settlement in the Pine Mountain valley. His narrative of the early settlement process and his marriage to Sally Dixon and the building of their first home captures the life of early pioneers. He describes the actions he took to encourage Pettit to come and found the Pine Mountain Settlement School.
See also Series 04a: Creech Family History, GUIDE TO PMSS HISTORIES – CREECH FAMILY, "GUIDE TO CREECH FAMILY LETTERS," Guide to Letters from and to Creech Family and CREECH FAMILY – Selected documents, letters and photographs.
RACHEL H. DAVIS – (Housemother at Big Log & Office worker, 1924-1926) Letter to Paul Hayes, 27 February 1991, with stories and a photograph of her time at Pine Mountain Settlement School.
BILL DAWN – Bill's article "Welcome Back … " in the 1979 Homecoming Report of the Association of Alumni & Friends describes his experiences as a student at Pine Mountain Settlement School in the 1920s.
PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL, INC.: Pine Mountain, Harlan County, Kentucky. January 1918. The History of the Pine Mountain Settlement School: The Clothing of an Idea with Substance 1918. Written by Ethel de Long Zande, Katherine Pettit and William Creech, Sr., this small promotional booklet is one of the first "histories" of the School.
ETHEL DE LONG ZANDE [?] – The History of the Pine Mountain Settlement School: Clothing of an Idea with Substance. c. 1920.
JAMES S. GREENE III – "Progressives in the Kentucky Mountains: The Formative Years … Settlement School, 1913-1930" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, ED Policy and Leadership, 1982). http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?cc_num=osu1249487592 [412 pages]. See also an excerpt from "Pine Mountain Beginnings," a talk given by Dr. Greene, in the Centennial Issue of NOTES – 2013, image 008.
NANCY JUDE – A narrative of her life as a student at Pine Mountain Settlement School and Big Laurel Medical Settlement. Born and raised in the area, Nancy Jude's autobiographical account of her years at Pine Mountain captures the School from both the student and the worker perspective. This autobiography of Nancy Jude has been given many "disguises" to keep the privacy of the family and associates. She gives herself the name of "Roaz" (Rosa Dale) in this biographical account of her life and her time at Pine Mountain Settlement School.
ORADEL MAHLON – A teacher and staff at the School who, describes her life at Pine Mountain Settlement School in the mid-to-late 1930's and afterward. The narrative includes a broad sweep of years and memories. Mahlon taught English at the school in the late 1930s and her memories are gathered in this autobiography that sums up her personal reflections on the School and beyond.
GLYN MORRIS – This is a biography entry only. It covers the ten years that Morris led the School and shaped an educational program that was Progressive and nationally recognized. Personal autobiography and institutional history is fully incorporated in his book, Less Traveled Roads (1983). It is not available in full text on this website.
GLYN MORRIS 1940 General Statement of History and Philosophy for PMSS for Staff. A thoughtful statement on the educational vision of Morris and his perspective on the past and future direction of the School.
MARGARET MOTTER – "Recollections of Pine Mountain Settlement School." Reflections of a staff member who was a central figure in the textile focus of the School in the 1940s. (See also Guide to Margaret Motter Collection.)
MARGARET MOTTER – In "Reflections (c. 1946)," a staff member records her reflections on Pine Mountain Settlement School when she returns to the School some fourteen years after her first work there. (See also Guide to Margaret Motter Collection.)
DOROTHY NACE – [Biography entry only.] "End of the Road, A Summing Up," 2002. 1941-2000. [Personal and institutional history.] A chatty and personal response to a lengthy relationship to the Creech family and to Pine Mountain Settlement School where she served as an instructor and as a secretary.
GRACE M. ROOD – This is both autobiography and history. Rood describes her early education, work in India, and her years as a nurse in the Pine Mountain community.
Bertha Shepherd with Dorothy Whiteside and Labrida Handy – "Little Journeys," written in 1938, details an early journey by automobile through the South and includes an account of the trios stopover at Pine Mountain Settlement School. All three were visitors to the School and were never employed by the institution.
EVELYN K. WELLS – A RECORD OF PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL, PINE MOUNTAIN, HARLAN CO., KY. 1913-1928 — [See: GUIDE TO WELLS RECORD OF PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL 1913-1928] Contains collected notes and anecdotal information regarding life at the School during each year from 1913 until 1928. The material gleaned by Wells from letters and reports in the PMSS archive is comprehensive in scope for the range of years and is a rich resource for the foundational years of the institution. Wells served as a secretary at Pine Mountain, a fund-raiser, and on the Board of Trustees. Her reflections are thorough and substantive with facts. She left PMSS and served on the Wellsley College faculty until her retirement.
ALFREDA WITHINGTON – [Biography entry only.] The autobiography, Mine Eyes Have Seen (1941), is an account of Dr. Withington's medical career. The last chapter in her book details her years at Pine Mountain Settlement School as the rural doctor who serviced the region surrounding Pine Mountain Settlement School by horse-back. Stationed at the Medical Settlement at Big Laurel, a satellite of Pine Mountain School, Withington took the position at the age of 67 and continued working for nine years until her forced retirement due to a heart condition.
KCET TELEVISION PROGRAM "Settlement Schools in Kentucky." Includes historical sketches by PMSS directors and staff.
DOROTHY NACE – Various histories including Pine Mountain Settlement School staff and her own personal journey.
RUTH SMITH CREECH – Various historical reminiscences.
FERN HALL HAYES and WILLIAM HAYES – Various reminiscences of their history at the School from 1933 until the 1990s. Fern served as Secretary and Bill as the Farm Manager.
Anonymous, likely written by Ruth B. Gaines. HISTORY Early Description of PMSS.
CELIA CATHCART "A Funeralizing on Robber's Creek" – See also: "A Mountain Funeralizing."
[To see a full listing of Oral Histories go to GUIDE TO AUDIO RECORDINGS].
Jane Bishop Oral History
John Deaton Oral History
Arthur and Georgia Dodd Oral History
Bill and Fern Hayes Oral History
Burton Rogers Oral History
Mary Rogers Oral History
Grace Rood Oral History
Brit Wilder Oral History


text:
Total Solar Eclipse of 2008 on August 1st...from C...
Deceased--H. Tracy Hall
Good science among paleontologists
Gavin Menzies--back at it again
UFOs and foreign invasions [Earthly kind]
"Cuil" again
Student loans--going, going, gone!
50 years with NASA
Solomon E. Levy's passing and influence
"Cuil" challenges Google as a search engine
Marketing physics
NASA and the Internet Archive
SLAC vs government intentions
Nguyen Van Hieu [particle physicist]--celebrates 7...
Rusi Taleyarkhan will fight
Another review of Stephen and Lucy Hawking's child...
Teaching science with Bayer's involvement
Perseid Meteor Shower--2008
Darwin site of worth..."the Dispersal of Darwin"
And the winner is...Ms Kathryn Tabb
Cooooooooool--LHC in preparatory stage
Rusi Taleyarkhan--falsified research?
Delia Derbyshire--revival for "Doctor Who"
International Year of Astronomy 2009...gaining mom...
Hawking--England or Canada...makes no difference
Yoky Matsuoka--robotics expert and inventor
Title IX and women in physics
Just a reminder...July 16th, 1945
Academic salaries
EGADS--what's going on at MIT?
Trekies and scifi buffs--"Warp Drive"
Margaret Thatcher: Chemist/Politician
Phthalates or Norman Bates?
Rush Holt--will he assist science?
"This American Life"--Einstein-Newton wrong?
Deceased--Yoji Totsuka
Hercule Poirot, et. al. at Fermilab
Phlogiston
Dow Chemical's greatest acquisition--ever!
Looted goods returned
BULLETIN...Christmas has been canceled for 2008
Scan those "cubetainers" for radioactivity.
Flatfish fossils fill evolutionary link?
A corrupt administration and environmental health ...
Olivia Judson [New York Times] celebrates Darwin
Deceased--Sir John M. Templeton
Sex in space--amusing but a problem
Lick Observatory...100 years of astronomy
Bhopal disaster--the $550 payoff
Deceased--William R. Bennett Jr.
Birth of a very popular mythology
"The Lost Ladybug Project"...something to do this ...
Fragility of the human species
No government funding for SETI!
Psilocybin...for that metaphysical experience
Some nostalgia
Historic sites endangered
Martin Gardner -a tribute
Spinthariscope
UK physics got their budget--two billion pounds
Mr. Wizard--more
Darwin/Wallace--Michael Shermer's perspective
Ancient metallurgy--art
Junior paleontologists--"hands on" experience
African Einstein...implementation has begun
Caesar invades England
LHC again
Sir John M. Templeton
November 29th, 1912 to July 1st, 2008
"Sir John M. Templeton, Philanthropist, Dies at 95"
Robert D. McFadden
Sir John M. Templeton, a Tennessee-born investor and philanthropist who amassed a fortune in global stocks and gave away hundreds of millions to foster understanding in what he called "spiritual realities," died on Tuesday in Nassau, the Bahamas, where he had lived for decades. He was 95. His death, at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, was caused by pneumonia, a spokesman, Don Lehr, said.
The foundation awards the Templeton Prize, one of the world's richest, and sponsors conferences and studies reflecting the founder's passionate interest in "progress in religion" and "research or discoveries" on the nebulous borders of science and religion.
In a career that spanned seven decades, Sir John dazzled Wall Street, organized some of the most successful mutual funds of his time, led investors into foreign markets, established charities that now give away $70 million a year, wrote books on finance and spirituality and promoted a search for answers to what he called the "Big Questions" — realms of science, faith, God and the purpose of humanity.
Along the way, he became one of the world's richest men, gave up American citizenship, moved to the Bahamas, was knighted by the Queen of England and bestowed much of his fortune on spiritual thinkers and innovators: Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, the physicist Freeman Dyson, the philosopher Charles Taylor and a pantheon of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus.
Inevitably, the Templeton charities engendered controversy. Critics called his "spiritual realities" a contradiction in terms, reflecting a fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. To many, the very idea of "progress" in religion seemed strange, and giving grants for "discoveries" in the field invited accusations that science was being manipulated to promote religion.
But Sir John was unmoved. A Yale graduate, a Rhodes Scholar, an audacious investor, a Presbyterian who preached open-mindedness and eschewed literal interpretations of Scripture, Sir John — who began annual meetings with prayers, he said, to clear the minds of shareholders — made billions as a pioneer in his globally diversified Templeton funds, often taking the old advice, "buy low, sell high," to extremes.
In 1939, when World War II began in Europe, the 26-year-old investor borrowed $10,000 and bought 100 shares each in 104 companies that were selling at $1 a share or less, including 34 in bankruptcy. A few years later, he made large profits on 100 of the companies; four turned out to be worthless.
In 1940, he bought a small investment firm that became Templeton, Dubbrow and Vance, the early foundation of his empire. Sir John embarked on mutual funds in 1954, establishing the Templeton Growth Fund in Canada to cut the taxes of many shareholders — Canada then had no capital gains tax — and to emphasize the global reach of its investment strategy.
As investor interest widened in the 1950s, he started funds specializing in nuclear energy, chemicals, electronics and technology. In 1959, with five funds and $66 million under management, he joined a surge of funds going public. Growth was dramatic. The flagship Templeton Growth Fund reported a 14.5 percent average annual return from 1954 to 1992; a $10,000 investment, with dividends reinvested, would have grown to $2 million.
Sir John sold the Templeton family of funds — scores of them with $13 billion in assets — in 1992, and turned to philanthropies that had engaged him for decades. While he was an elder of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), he took a broad view of spirituality, espousing non-literal views of heaven and hell and a shared divinity between humanity and God.
Contending that almost nothing of God was actually "known" through Scriptures and theology, he founded the Templeton Prize in 1972 to foster "progress in religion" — an idea that included philosophy and exemplary conduct relating to love, gratitude, forgiveness and creativity. He called it an effort to redress the fact that no Nobel Prize was given for religion.
Its first recipient, in 1973, was Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who received $85,000 for her charities. In the 35 years since, the prize, given in London, has grown to $1.6 million. And its criteria has been refined in recent years to encompass "progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities."
The Templeton Foundation, based in West Conshohocken, Pa., was established in 1987 to administer the prize and promote "projects to apply scientific methodology to the study of religious subjects," with room for theoretical physics, evolutionary biology, cognitive science and researches into love, human purpose and the nature and origin of religious beliefs. Today, with a $1.5 billion endowment, it largely sustains the controversial modern movement to reconcile science and religion.
Foundation projects have included a multimillion-dollar study of forgiveness, and a two-year study to demonstrate the effect of prayer on 600 patients about to undergo surgery.
Many critics contend that reconciling science and religion is not possible, and that studies to that end are naïve, quixotic or motivated by a desire to put religious beliefs on an equal footing with scientific knowledge.
But others defend the foundation's approach, insisting that science has no monopoly on truth and that religion and science can cooperate productively.
"We have somehow to break down the barriers between our contemporary culture of science and disciplined academic study" and "the domain of the spirit," the philosopher John Taylor said in accepting the prize in 2007.
John Marks Templeton was born on Nov. 29, 1912, in Winchester, a small Tennessee town 60 miles from Dayton, the scene of the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial" pitting Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a battle over the theory of evolution versus fundamentalist views of the Creation. The boy was only 12 then, but issues in the case dominated his later life; he wrote at least eight books on spiritual matters.
He was raised in a devout household and was the first student in town to go to college. Supporting himself at Yale in the Depression, he graduated near the top of his class in 1934, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Balliol College at Oxford University and earned a master's degree in law. He began his Wall Street career in 1937.
That year, he married the former Judith Folk. The couple had three children. His wife died in 1951. In 1958, he married Irene Reynolds Butler, who died in 1993. His daughter, Anne Templeton Zimmerman, died in 2005, and a stepson, Malcolm Butler, died in 1995. He is survived by two sons from his first marriage, John M. Jr., of Bryn Mawr, Pa., a retired surgeon and the chairman and president of the Templeton Foundation, and Christopher, of Colfax, Iowa; a stepdaughter, Wendy Brooks, of Delray Beach, Fla., and three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Among his many gifts was the 1984 endowment of Templeton College, a business and management school at Oxford. In 1987, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his philanthropies. After many years on Wall Street, he renounced his American citizenship in the 1960s, became a British subject and moved to the Bahamas, a Commonwealth nation that has long been a tax haven.
Sir John said his investment record improved after he distanced himself from Wall Street and no longer worried about the tax consequences of his decisions. He was an early investor in Japan in the 1960's and later in Russia, China and other Asian markets. He sold large holdings before the technology bubble burst in 2000, and warned several years ago that real estate prices were dangerously high.
In Nassau, his net worth swelled into the billions, but his lifestyle remained relatively modest. He drove his own car and spent his days reading, writing and managing his foundation. Visitors were given sandwiches, tea and courtly advice in the afternoon at his white-columned antebellum home on Lyford Cay, set on a hillside lush with citrus trees and bougainvillea, overlooking a golf course and the ocean.
Philanthropy and science
Templeton Prize...good idea; bad idea?
Labels: philanthropy, Sir John M. Templeton, Templeton Prize


text:
Emily Tapper
Emily is currently at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. She has ulcerative colitis and has been living with complications from multiple surgeries since 2011. She has spent most of the last two years in the hospital in three different states.
Emily was diagnosed with UC when she was 8 years old. Her health was mostly controlled through medicine and she was in and out of remission for many years. In 2011, when she was 13, she developed toxic mega-colon and had emergency surgery to remove her colon. Complications from this kept her in the hospital for five months. She lived with an iliostomy for nearly two years then had two more surgeries to create a j-pouch, then the final takedown of the iliostomy. Unfortunately, soon after she started developing abscesses and fistulas that began the road she has been on for the past two years. Surgery in January 2015 found that her j-pouch had a twist in it, which caused a weak spot in her intestines and was allowing the fistulas and abscesses to form and keep forming. Finally, she was directed to the Cleveland Clinic for care and her fifth surgery in June 2015 was to create an iliostomy which was intended to allow her body to rid itself of the infections that had been pooling inside her for the past 18 months. Sadly, it is now January 2016 and she is still trying to rid her body of the infections. She is back in Cleveland so that the surgeon can work on this himself.
Emily is a senior in high school and despite her being in the hospital for so long, has managed to keep up with her class work and will graduate this May 2016 with her twin brother Scott. She is smart, witty, beautiful, very social and wise beyond her years. She loves frogs! and is very girly.
Visit Emily's Site
To interact with Emily's website, sign in or register today.


text:
People are seeing all kinds of unexpected things in nature as a result of warmer global temperatures. And Allegheny Front host Kara Holsopple wanted to know if a super-hot summer could be the reason she's seeing so many dragonflies in Pittsburgh. Photo: zizzybaloobah via Flickr
Your Environment Update for August 31, 2016
The Allegheny Front August 31, 2016
Is It Just Me, or Are There A Lot of Dragonflies This Summer?
To help us tell stories about how weather and climate change are affecting our region, The Allegheny Front has partnered with iSeeChange—an online almanac where people share their observations and questions about what's going on around them. This summer, our host Kara Holsopple found herself mulling over her own wildlife mystery: Why she was seeing so many dragonflies in Pittsburgh.
"I mean, sitting in the middle of traffic, two were mating on my car windshield. I don't remember seeing anything like it before," Kara said.
So we consulted an expert: Dennis McNair, a retired biology professor from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. He's been studying dragonflies at a wetland in Bedford County for 20 years. And he said part of the reason Kara's seeing so many dragonflies could be psychological.
"When people start seeing things, no matter what it is—smart cars or whatever—once you've seen one, you start seeing others," he said.
LISTEN: Your Environment Update for August 31, 2016
http://www.alleghenyfront.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AF083116_MODULE_Web.mp3
But there could also be some science behind it.
"This was a droughty summer, so the dragonflies maybe had warmer water they were developing in," McNair said.
Turns out, dragonflies spend most of their lives in the larval stage, swimming around in the water. They eat mosquitoes and other bugs, which have also done well this summer. McNair says it's possible the early spring and warm summer caused more of them to take flight.
McNair says dragonflies, like some other insects and birds, also might be shifting their range north. He has seen a couple of species in Bedford County that are usually found in places like Virginia and the Carolinas. It's warmer here than it used to be. But he says without more study, it's hard to say if climate change is impacting dragonflies.
For more climate stories from people just like you, head over to iseechange.org.
The Chesapeake Bay Restoration Effort Goes High-Tech
Though it may feel like a far-flung place to many Pennsylvanians, the Chesapeake Bay—and its environmental health—is actually tied intimately to life in the Keystone State. In particular, the Susquehanna River watershed feeds the Chesapeake—with both freshwater and runoff pollution.
But the Chesapeake Conservancy's Jeffrey Allenby says new high-resolution imaging technology could help the state's ongoing land conservation efforts to improve the Bay. Allenby and others are now using aerial images from USDA farm agency airplanes as well as technology that can recognize roads, houses and wetlands the way people would in a landscape. With it, they can see 900 times more data than the satellite images conservation groups have traditionally been using to make their decisions.
"It allows us to identify small-scale features like individual trees or small buffers that have a really large ecological benefit but may not be showing up in data that people have been using before," Allenby says.
Using that technology, the Chesapeake Conservancy is working with partners in Clinton and Centre counties to pinpoint the most effective places to plant riparian forest buffers—trees and grassy strips along the banks of streams and rivers. Allenby says they're the last line of defense in slowing down rainwater and preventing sediment and agricultural runoff like nitrogen and phosphorus from getting into the water.
But even though Pennsylvania has made strides in its commitment to curbing pollution reaching the Chesapeake Bay, Allenby says the state could be doing more. Right now, he says Pennsylvania is on track to miss its 2025 goal of having swimmable, fishable rivers.
Help wanted: River Ice Spotters to keep an eye on potential flooding
Kara Holsopple January 20, 2023