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First Sergeant Orders Troops To Polish Black Boots 'Just Because'
Ft. Sam Houston, TX - With a breakdown in morale and discipline, 1SG Dan Melton had enough. The Company First Sergeant had to reach back to the past -- with his decades of experience -- and issue fresh orders.
"We just came back from a 15-month deployment," says Melton, "and we've been having some serious problems with our junior soldiers."
The First Sergeant, part of the 14th Military Intelligence Battalion, stares at his soldiers standing in formation, upset that it's come to this. "Everyone has grown so enamored with the 'New' Army stuff," he says, using condescending air quotes. "Well I for one think it's bullshit!"
The soldiers just stare back blankly, unsure of what the First Sergeant is talking about. He then goes on to tell them that "they'll be going back to his day." Most have no idea what he means.
The troops soon got a taste after he replaced computers with a "butcher paper" method for analysis many hadn't seen since Fort Huachuca, AZ, if at all. He also instituted a regime of what he has deemed "purely infantry-oriented PT".
And then he issued black jump boots to all his soldiers.
"I'm doing this for your own good. When I was in Primary Leadership Development we used to dedicate at least three hours a day to cleaning those things! I'm not doing this as a punishment, but rather out of love for my soliders."
Many troops remain skeptical.
"What the hell are we supposed to do with these?" whined SPC Wade Galliston. "I used to hear stories about black boot polishing. And I saw them in an old recruting poster once, but I thought all that was over. Hell, my recruiter sealed the deal by saying we were only wearing Danners now."
One platoon sergeant tried to defend the First Sergeant and motivate his soldiers.
"Top's heart is in the right place. He just wants us to maintain a higher standard." said SSG Joshua Barrish. "It'll pass," he says, watching his platoon slave over the boots, black polish staining their multicams.
"It'll pass." he says again.
Later, during a listening session with other leadership, 1SG Melton faced something of a mini-rebellion, when he suggested the Army break out the old freeze dried MREs so "these pussies can stop crying about trading."
On what can only be determined an upside, 1SG Melton said he might forego any more radical changes and simply jump the chain of command, writting to SMA Raymond F. Chandler with his ideas to "cull the wheat from the chaff".


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Galegeae — триба квіткових рослин родини бобових (Fabaceae). Представники триби поширені на всіх материках. Найбільшого різноманіття триба сягає у північній півкулі. Містить 2900-3200 видів у 22-24 родах.

Роди
 Astragalus L., 1753
 Barnebyella Podlech
 Biserrula L.
 Carmichaelia R.Br., 1825
 Clianthus Sol. ex Lindl., 1835
 Colutea L.
 Eremosparton Fisch.& C.A.Mey.
 Erophaca Boiss.
 Galega L., 1753
 Glycyrrhiza L.
 Lessertia DC.
 Montigena Heenan, 1998
 Oreophysa (Bunge ex Boiss.) Bornm.
 Oxytropis DC., 1802
 Phyllolobium Fisch., 1819
 Smirnowia Bunge, 1876
 Sphaerophysa DC., 1825
 Sutherlandia R.Br.ex W.Aiton & W.T.Aiton
 Swainsona Salisb.

Примітки

Метеликові
Триби рослин

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Category: Web Design & Development
First published Dec 14th 2022, 12:42 am. This is a continuation from Our Platform Part 1 – Envisioning a Full-Stack Solution with the Capacity to Power Any Start-up, Prototype, MVP, or SME. The roll-out of the platform is targeting 3 phases of functional milestones via an agile iterative product improvement focus. Phase 1 – 2022… Continue reading Our Platform Part 2 – Phase MVP Out-of-the-Box Capabilities: Ensuring our Platform is the Right Solution
Categorised as Internet of Things, Our Platform, Platform Development, Web Design & Development
First published Nov 27th 2022, 10:44 am. TLDR: The Solution The core of this platform consists of the following scalable components: It is a platform that allows full user-centric customization of its data, objects, relationships, and user access. At its core, it acts as a service that enables the storage, access control and manipulation of… Continue reading Our Platform Part 1 – Envisioning a Full-Stack Solution with the Capacity to Power Any Start-up, Prototype, MVP, or SME
The 8 Best HTML Books of 2022
Looking for the best HTML books to get you up to speed or hone your skills? This list was first published in 2011, and has been updated yearly since. HTML is easy to learn, understand, and master. Partnered with CSS, it is the building block of all web design and development today. If you are… Continue reading The 8 Best HTML Books of 2022
The 9 Best Photoshop Books of 2022
Looking for the best Photoshop books to get you up to speed or hone your skills? This list was first published in 2011, and has been updated yearly since. Adobe Photoshop is an extremely popular graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems. Photoshop is also currently,the leading graphics editing application and is used… Continue reading The 9 Best Photoshop Books of 2022
The 9 Best C++ Books of 2022 (Beginners to Advanced)
Looking for the best C++ books to get you up to speed or hone your skills? This list was first published in 2011, and has been updated yearly since. C++ is a powerful general purpose programming language that is statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm and compiled. It is one of the most popular programming languages in… Continue reading The 9 Best C++ Books of 2022 (Beginners to Advanced)
The 8 Best PHP Books of 2022
Looking for the best PHP books to get you up to speed or hone your skills? This list was first published in 2011, and has been updated yearly since. PHP is an open source server-side scripting language designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It is used extensively by web designers and developers… Continue reading The 8 Best PHP Books of 2022
The 8 Best C Programming Books of 2022
Looking for the best C programming books to get you up to speed or hone your skills? This list was first published in 2011, and has been updated yearly since. C is a general-purpose, powerful system programming language and is one of the most widely used programming languages of all time. C has proven to… Continue reading The 8 Best C Programming Books of 2022
The 7 Best Javascript Books of 2022
Looking for the best Javascript books to get you up to speed or hone your skills? This list was first published in 2011, and has been updated yearly since. JavaScript is the world's most popular programming language. It is the language for HTML and the web, for servers, PCs, laptops, tablets, smart phones, and more.… Continue reading The 7 Best Javascript Books of 2022
The 7 Best C# Books of 2022
Looking for the best C# books to get you up to speed or hone your skills? This list was first published in 2011, and has been updated yearly since. C# (pronounced see sharp) is a multi-paradigm programming language encompassing strong typing, imperative, declarative, functional, procedural, generic, object-oriented (class-based), and component-oriented programming disciplines. C# is intended… Continue reading The 7 Best C# Books of 2022
The 6 Best CSS Books of 2022
Looking for the very best CSS books to get up to speed or hone your skills? This list was first published in 2011, and has been updated yearly since. I decided to run with the best CSS books of 2012 despite it only being the first quarter of the year for the simple fact that… Continue reading The 6 Best CSS Books of 2022

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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People should bear with restrictions on National Highway due to Amarnath Yatra: J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik to Mehbooba Mufti, Omar Abdullah
J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik made the statement in response to Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah's claim that the restrictions imposed by the government on the movement of civilians are against the people of the state.
Pilgrims leave Nunwani base camp in J&K's Pahalgam to perform the annual Amarnath Yatra (Image Courtesy: IANS)
Zee Media Bureau
Tanweer Azam
Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik on Monday hit back at PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah and said that the restrictions on civilian traffic on National Highway during Amarnath Yatra has been reduced to just two hours and people should bear with it.
Malik made the statement in response to Mehbooba and Omar's claim that the restrictions imposed by the government on the movement of civilians are against the people of the state. The Jammu and Kashmir governor said that the restriction is not going to have any serious impact on tourism in the state. Recalling the February 14 terror attack in Pulwama, Governor Malik said that people know what has happened on this highway. He added that the restriction of two hours is not something to worry about and noted that in Uttar Pradesh there are 20 days restriction due to Kanwar Yatra but nobody says anything.
On Sunday, Mehbooba had said that the preparations put into place by the government for the ongoing Amarnath Yatra are adversely affecting the day-to-day lives of locals. "Amarnath Yatra is taking place since years. But unfortunately, the arrangements done this year are against the people of Kashmir. It's causing a lot of trouble in the day-to-day lives of local people," she was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, however, did not elaborate on what specific arrangements are causing inconvenience to the locals but said that she had asked Governor Malik to take note of the matter.
Omar Abdullah also echoed similar feelings said that Kashmiris are concerned about the security of yatirs but the current administration of Governor Malik is the only administration in 30 years that has decided to close the highway/railway line to protect yatris.
The 45-day-long Amarnath Yatra started last week and around one lakh pilgrims have already made their way to the holy shrine which is at an elevation of 3,888 metres above sea level. Tight security arrangements have been put in place to conduct the Yatra in a peaceful manner, While the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Jammu and Kashmir Police is primarily in-charge for security, personnel from the Indian Army and Border Security Force have also been deployed on the two routes. Mehbooba, however, said that locals are being inconvenienced by the Yatra.
Jammu and KashmirAmarnath YatraSatya Pal MalikMehbooba MuftiOmar Abdullah
Wall collapses in Mumbai's Andheri East, woman trapped in debris rescued


The information is serialized into a string then encrypted.
The encrypted string is packed into a url safe base64 encoded string.
When the user uses the link, the token is consumed by the service and the information is decrypted. The expiry is checked then the service uses the metadata and the challenge to produce a json schema or form that it sends back to the user.
The user will solve the challenge and the information along with the token are sent back. The token is decrypted once again and the challenge is safely checked.
If the challenge is successfully answered, then the service uses the information about the upload stored in the decrypted token to construct an S3 upload policy.
The policy is then signed using AWS v4 signature SDK. The policy is sent back to the user and the Frontend uses it to construct a form.
When the user adds documents to the page, the upload will go straight to S3 using the signed request.
The s3 bucket has events turned on and a virus scanning service goes to work making sure the documents are clean.
From there the rest is very boring.
At first glance of the above design, I would reach for AWS lambda, and a dynamo db table, but that wouldn't be any fun for the rest of my team. So I put the following restraints on myself.
With those constraints in place, let's look at the ingredients list.
Framework: You'll need Rails, Sinatra or whatever the cool kids are using these days.
Crypto: You will also need a way to encrypt things. rbnacl is what I chose. It used the sodium native library behind the scenes.
Cloud: Aws SDK for me thank you.
Coffee: Light roast, organic and always direct trade.
Since the framework and AWS are well documented let's move to the Crypto part. After my exhaustive research I decided that the builtin Crypto library was 'unhip' and that rbnacl was the way to go. Especially when I saw this in their docs.
I'm not a complete idiot when it comes to security and cryptography, but I'm not an expert either. So using a library that takes the collective brain power of lots of security people and lets me focus on what I want to do with my service, sounds great! So I cracked my knuckles and installed rbnacl and rbnacl-libsodium (installs sodium for you and tweaks rbnacl for you to look on the gem path for it by monkey patching stuff like all good Ruby libraries should).
Rails loads your gems from top to bottom. So make sure if you are wanting rbnacl-libsodium to install sodium for you that it is the first gem in your Gemfile to also have rbnacl as a dependency. This is really important if you use the jwt gem, since it requires rbnacl too.
If you are like me, you wanted to use rbnacl to generate a private key. And if you are like me you want to actually be able to encrypt/decrypt stuff with it. In order to do this, you will need to store the key somewhere. I chose to have each environment of my service have a specific private key. At first I had trouble storing it.
I started reading through the docs, not the rbnacl docs, but the Ruby docs on string encoding and eventually landed on this nice little solution.
So I had my key and I'm encrypting things right an left, but I ran into a snag. Using the secure box method you need to create a nonce before you encrypt stuff. This nonce is a one time use thing. It is meant to ensure perfect forward secrecy. In this case, that means any time you generate a link, even if it's the exact same payload being encrypted, the resulting encrypted token will be different. This also means you have to keep track of the silly little nonce. Typically I would do this with a redis, mongo, dynamo db, cockroach db, rethink db, raven db, your mom db, why are there so many databases db, or heck even a mysql if we are gonna get crazy. Wait, I can't use a database! This application needs to be stateless. Why? Because I feel like it okay. And it lends itself to super simple deployments and coordination. So here is what I did. Using my private key from tip 2, and a nonce. I wrote some encryption helpers that will do the following. I have removed a few things that don't matter, but in essence, and with a better design pattern, the below is what is happening.
Ruby Crypto: Stateless use of rbnacl was originally published in Ygrene Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Currently, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City presents the first comprehensive exhibition in New York of the works of Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA, the Tokyo-based architects who have designed the museum's new building at 235 Bowery. "SANAA: Works 1998-2008" features not only the new museum, which is the first art museum ever constructed from the ground up in downtown Manhattan. The show provides an opportunity to understand the new New Museum in the context of the firm's other projects such as the Christian Dior Bulding in Omotesando, Tokyo, Japan (2001-2003) and Vitrashop Factory Hall in Basel, Switzerland (2004-); domestic architecture like the House in a Plum Grove, Tokyo, Japan (2001-2003) and Flower House, Suiza, Switzerland (2006-); and cultural projects including the Zollverein School of Management and Design, Essen, Germany (2003-); EPFL Learning Center, Lausanne, Switzerland (2004-); and the highly anticipated Louvre-Lens, France (2005-). On the occasion of "SANAA: Works 1998-2008", the Museum will release SHIFT: SANAA and the New Museum, a book about the making of the New Museum's building on the Bowery. The exhibition runs until June 15, 2008. March 28, 2008.
Update (March 7, 2014): Watch also: Rolex Learning Center EPFL Lausanne / Interview with Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA).


Inter have reached an agreement with Monaco over the transfer of attacker Keita Balde according to a report from Gianluca Di Marzio.
Keita will join Inter on a €5 million loan deal with the transfer being made permanent for €34 million at the end of the season.
Keita, who was omitted from Monaco's squad for their first league match of the season, will sign a one year contract and will be linked to the Nerazzurri club for a further four seasons if they trigger their redemption option for him.
That contract is reported to be worth around €3 million net per year.
The signing of Keita has ramifications for both Antonio Candreva and Yann Karamoh. Candreva was originally to be part of a loan swap deal for Keita, but the Inter winger is hesitant to move to the sun of Monaco.
If Candreva stays at Inter then Karamoh will go out on loan for the season to ensure regular playing time, something that can not be guaranteed if both Keita Balde and Candreva are part of Spalletti's squad.
What do you think of Keita Balde? Do you think he is a good signing?


Find more information about personal injury case studies, including how much compensation has been awarded to the claimant.
Court award 6 times more compensation for injury claim. Stewart Dewar was working as a delivery driver when he badly injured his back at a delivery to a supermarket in Stirling. Read more.
However, we understand you won't want to just take our word for it, which is why we can provide personal injury compensation case studies to help you make an informed decision ... Bicycle Accident Case Study – Soft tissue injury to wrist – £2,500 in compensation ... Accident at Work – Back Injury – £5,500 Compensation.
A range of personal injury case studies from JMW Solicitors, showing how our experts have helped people to claim for the accidents they have suffered.
Case Studies. Injury Compensation Personal Injury Case Studies BeardsellsPersonalInjury.co.uk. Mrs B from Stockport sustained injuries to her left wrist and left ... While Mr S was lifting heavy rolls of adhesive tape at work, he sustained a back injury. We secured a settlement for £55,000 in back injury compensation.
Read our injuries & accidents at work case studies, where Carrs Solicitors has helped many victims receive 100% compensation on a no win no fee basis. Call 0800 587 0746.


We all need food to survive, but the challenges that come with urbanisation makes it difficult for people to have time to cook their own food.
As the e-commerce industry in Nigeria began to gain momentum, opportunities for buying and selling several things online began to open up. One of them was cooked food. You no longer need to go to a restaurant to buy your favourite food. These days, a the click of a button (or some buttons), you can have your meal at your doorstep in minutes.
At the forefront of this industry is Jumia Food, which acquired Hello Food circa 2015. Our #BellaNaijaWCW this week Olamide Bada was the pioneer Managing Director of Jumia Food, one of the leading food delivery service in Nigeria, with services across Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.
Under Olamide's leadership, Jumia Food, which doesn't run a kitchen, became a household name in food delivery in Nigeria.
Before joining Rocket Internet's Jumia Group, Olamide was a practising M&A lawyer, working for Baker McKenzie in their London and Johannesburg offices. At Baker McKenzie, she gained industry experience across FMCGs, private equity, and energy projects and worked in driving the Africa initiative to develop cross-continental businesses from both their London and Johannesburg offices.
Olamide was instrumental in the planning and implementation of the overall strategy across business functions for Jumia's Black Friday 2015, one of the biggest days of sales in Nigeria's e-commerce history.
In 2017, Olamide won the Prize for Professional Service at The Future Awards Africa (TFAA). Olamide is currently pursuing an MBA at Columbia Business School.
Well done, Olamide, and all the best in your future endeavours.
Beauty and brains! Love it.
As in beauty mixed with brains…….kudos!


text:
Science Debate 2008 questions are really lame
By Michael Eisen | Published: September 15, 2008
Most of you have probably heard about Science Debate 2008, an effort "to restore science and innovation to America's political dialogue" by having the candidates discuss pressing issues in science. Since Obama and McCain won't have an actual debate, the organizers of this effort have posed 14 questions (culled from 3,400 submissions from the community).
Obviously this is a well intentioned effort. And I'll have more to say about Obama's and McCain's answers once I read them. But I wanted to look at the questions before I looked at the answers. And my first impression is, "Man, these are lame questions." I have several problems:
1. The questions are all obvious and overly general. They basically call on the candidates to say "Rah Rah Science!" And yes, I understand that, sadly, in this climate it's important for presidential candidates to actually stand up and say "I support Science." But still, I wish they'd asked them more difficult and more specific questions.
2. Many of the questions aren't really about science. For example:
Climate Change. The Earth's climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet. What is your position on the following measures that have been proposed to address global climate change—a cap-and-trade system, a carbon tax, increased fuel-economy standards, or research? Are there other policies you would support?
Whether the president supports a carbon tax, cap-and-trade or increase fuel-economy is a political question about which science is neutral. Now scientists may have an opinion on this. But Science only tells us that the planet is warming and that we need to do something to reduce carbon emissions now. It says nothing about how we should do that. To conflate these two issues is a huge mistake that only serves to foster the idea that science somehow favors different political solutions to our problems, which in turn undermines politician's and the public's sense that science is neutral.
3. They avoid controversy and controversial questions.
Why pussyfoot around the important question of the day? Where's "Do you believe that the release of CO2 from human activity is dangerously warming the planet?"
And hello, evolution anyone? Can there be a more important topic to ask about? Not because evolution is so important relative to other aspects of science. But rather because the assault on evolution is a direct assault on science. And our failure to defend evolution is one of the major reasons Americans do not believe in science.
Here are some questions I would have asked just off the top of my head:
1. Much has been written about declining public understanding of and belief in science. Why do you think this has happened, and what would you do about it?
2. Do you believe in evolution, and what are you going to do as president to make sure that it is taught in schools. For example, would you support legislation requiring that schools receiving federal funding teach evolution, including human evolution, in their high school biology classes?
3. What do you think is the appropriate balance between basic and applied research, and how would this be reflected in your budgets and agency appointments?
4. Fewer and fewer of our brightest young students are going in to careers in science. Why do you think this is and what will you do about it?
5. Many of the important questions you will face as president will involve or be potentially informed by science. What will you do to insure that you receive unbiased and unvarnished advice from scientists studying the issues of the day?
6. The reception of many important scientific issues – from evolution to stem cells to global warming to human genetics – has become highly partisan. What will you do as president to have policy decisions made on the basis of a commonly agreed-upon set of scientific facts?
7. Human genetic research is advancing at breakneck speeds and having an increasingly important impact on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease. As genetics increasingly enters daily life, there have been calls to place limits on research and on the kinds of genetic knowledge that are available to the public. What would you do as president to make sure that we effectively confront the ethical issues raised by human genetics without slowing down its progress.
8. To promote public faith in genetic testing, would you agree to have your genome sequenced and made freely available online?
(These last two are issues that are perhaps of more interest to me than the general scientific community – but if I'm getting a chance to grill the next president…):
9. The Bayh-Dole act is very popular in Washington, but many scientists (ok, at least me) are concerned that it has overly blurred the line between academic and commercial research, that it has created needless obstacles to the exchange of research material amongst scientists and that it inhibits rather than promotes the commercialization of government-sponsored research.
10. Along the same line, what steps would you take to ensure that the public has access to and benefits from the results of Federally funded research?
UPDATE: Dr. Free-Ride felt the same way. She has her own list of great questions for the candidates.
This entry was posted in science and politics and tagged evolution, politics, science. Bookmark the permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
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This event is sent to the event listener URL by Flock to request the app to unfurl a list of URLs. Your app is expected to send back an Attachment object in response to this event.
The app should respond back with an Attachment.


Many children and adults suffer from visual discomfort when reading, which can affect fluency, concentration and can cause rapid fatigue. This is generally seen as a 'movement' (shimmering) of the print on the page causing headaches and eyestrain. This phenomenon is termed 'Visual Stress' and is found to exist in dyslexia, photosensitive migraine, photosensitive epilepsy, autism and ADHD. It typically affects 20% of the population, with 5% of the cases being severe.
For children in particular it is very important to diagnose 'Visual Stress' problems early, since their inability to read causes frustration, loss of self-esteem and poor performance at school in these crucial formative years.
It is thought that this discomfort when looking at the print is due to a hyperexcitability of the neurones in the anterior visual cortex (the part of the brain that processes vision), but these neurones are also colour sensitive – so by placing a very specific colour in front of that individual's eye, this pattern of excitation can be changed.
In other words the colour will help to slow and calm these cells, therefore quieting the pattern and reducing the visual stress. This whole discovery on colour started in the 1980's and early 1990's by Olive Mears (New Zealand). Helen Irlen (USA) and Prof. Arnold Wilkins (UK).
The first thing we recommend is a full eye examination with particular emphasis on how well the eyes work together. After any appropriate spectacles or exercises have been prescribed, and if the symptoms are still present, then an assessment using spectral overlays (coloured transparent acetate sheets) are used. These coloured sheets are used as a screening test only to give an indication if colour will be beneficial to this person. (Their accuracy falls down as the person's eyes are adapted to the surrounding illumination and colour of the room, as opposed to being adapted to a precise colour of a lens held up to the eye – this will nearly always give a different colour of spectacle tint prescribed relative to the chosen overlay).
If colour apparently helps the individual, we move on to the Intuitive Colorimeter. This is an instrument which allows text to be viewed under different coloured light scenarios. The hue (colour), saturation (how deeply coloured) and brightness can all be altered by tiny increments until a precise shade is found which helps the individual by minimising or eliminating their symptoms.
The machine works by having a unique cylindrical mechanism inside, made up of seven specifically coloured filters and one large uniform grey filter – enabling up to 110,000 shade possibilities. This gives a very precise and tailored result for everyone being tested.
Trial coloured lenses are then used to match the chosen colour and 'Rate of Reading' tests carried out to confirm findings. Coloured spectacles, either with or without a prescription lens can then be ordered.
The mixing of light to create different colours and shades is in itself a science, where for example, yellow is created by mixing red and green lights – but if we alter one of these colours slightly, hue, saturation and brightness all change.The colorimeter overcomes these problems and enables colour and saturation to be varied without a change in luminance. Also the internal matt white walls of the unit, where the light is internally reflected, has a great ability to mix colour.
The early identification of visual stress which can coexist quite closely with dyslexia is so important in the developmental years. Many who suffer from Visual Stress are often quite unaware that they see the page differently from others, until someone applies an appropriate coloured overlay or tinted lenses in front. They then say how the words 'stop moving' and the page appears 'clear and still'.


Mrs. Schley and Mrs. Rushton, Bellevue Elementary's third grade teachers, help each student reach his or her potential -- academically, socially, and emotionally. Their goal is to nurture and guide each child toward becoming a life-long learner, as well as a happy, caring and responsible citizen of our country. Third Grade curriculum engages students in Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Social Studies, Science, Health, and Character Ed. In addition, our students receive classes in Physical Education, Music, Art, and Technology. Computer training and Library skills are also offered once a week.
Active participation and involvement on the part of students, teacher, and parents are key to each student's success. As classroom teachers, we actively work with the entire school team to meet each child's unique needs. Parents involvement is the most essential element in a child's education and the biggest and best investment you can make in your child's future! Students need to come every day ready and willing to learn.
Each year our third graders participate in community service in order to build character and come to an appreciation of all members within the community. Involving children in these kinds of activities not only gives them a greater sense of worth, but enriches our society as a whole, and creates well rounded citizens.
Over the years, we have found third grade to be a challenging transitional year for many students. Not only is the curriculum full of new skills and concepts, but students are expected to become more independent in completing work as well as becoming more responsible for their own learning. We foster this by creating a climate where all are nurtured, accepted, supported, and challenged.
Bellevue Elementary School truly is a thoughtful and caring place, and we have the good fortune to have the opportunity to work here.


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09/28/16--15:35: _Bombing onslaught i...
09/28/16--15:40: _Does the bill permi...
09/28/16--15:45: _News Wrap: Congress...
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09/29/16--10:50: _Shake shake shake. ...
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09/25/16--19:37: Watch Live: The first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face off at Hofstra University in New York for the first of three 2016 presidential debates. Who will win the night? Watch PBS NewsHour live here or on you local PBS station. After the debate, stay tuned for analysis from Mark Sheilds, David Brooks and the PBS NewsHour politics team.
While you're gearing up to watch the debate, thumb through PBS Newshour's coverage of the issues, the candidates and the state of the race.
Hillary Clinton:
Who is Hillary Clinton?
What President Hillary Clinton would do on day 1
What does Hillary Clinton believe?
Who is Donald Trump?
What President Donald Trump would do on day 1
What does Donald Trump believe?
The post Watch Live: The first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
09/28/16--11:45: After the recession, entrepreneurs are on the rebound, study says
Women entrepreneurs hold a discussion during a meeting. Photo by wocintechchat.com/Flickr
On Wednesday, PBS NewsHour special correspondent April Brown explored issues that African-American entrepreneurs face.
Nearly a decade after the Great Recession, entrepreneurship in industrialized countries shows small but promising signs of recovery.
In the United States, the number of businesses created this year is still down 15 percent compared to 2007, according to a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But when researchers looked at the first six months of this year, they noticed 12 nations with new business growth, including 0.6 percent in the United States.
Economist Mariarosa Lunati has studied entrepreneurship within these nations for more than a decade for the organization, and she said that's a "very positive sign."
It took a long time to build up investor and consumer confidence after the economic crisis swept the globe, she said, which accounts for the slow rebirth of new businesses. Among the countries studied, Finland was the worst hit and is halfway to the 2007 rate, while France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden are better off today than they were before the recession.
To gauge the health of entrepreneurship, Lunati and a team of researchers analyzed 27 indicators, such as business openings, closure, size and owner diversity, across 37 industrialized nations.
Positive New Business Growth in Industrialized Nations
Source: OECD
Among entrepreneurs in industrialized nations, one out of 10 are women, and men were more likely than women to say they could access the money and training to start a business, the report said. But once women overcome those barriers and start their businesses, they are just as confident about their work as their male counterparts.
"It confirms that it makes sense to support women entrepreneurship," Lunati said.
To "level the playing field" and encourage more women to spearhead their own ventures, Congress approved funding for a network of women's business centers through the Small Business Administration in 1988.
"It confirms that it makes sense to support women entrepreneurship." — Mariarosa Lunati, OECD economist
Today, there are nearly 100 centers scattered across the United States. Since the late 1980s, businesses owned by women have grown nearly sixfold nationwide — from 5 percent to 29 percent, said Kiesha Haughton, the managing director for the Maryland Women's Business Center.
Each year, about 1,600 women come to her center to build networks, share tips and introduce each other to new opportunities, Haughton said.
But challenges still emerge, especially for women who want work in fields dominated by men, Haughton said. Less than a decade ago, she met a woman who owned a construction company near Baltimore and reported problems securing bids for contracts on new projects.
"What she found out was they were putting solicitations in the men's bathroom, and she'd have to go into the men's bathroom to find solicitations," Haughton said.
When Jaimie Mertz decided three years ago to start her own business, the 27-year-old gluten-free baker from Bethesda, Maryland, said the hardest part of running a business was just "getting it started."
She built a website and bakes banana-chocolate vegan muffins, kale-turmeric loaf and custom birthday and wedding cakes for up to 10 hours a day to sell online and at local farmers' markets. She loves talking about oat flour and toys with paleo recipes. And that's not counting her other full-time job working with accounting software clients.
"I'm suppose to be answering to my day job from 8-to-5 like a normal person," she said. "I'm usually baking at the same time."
Mertz turned to the local economic development centers and the Maryland Women's Business Center for advice on securing finance, insurance (she needed 17 different kinds) and licenses as she developed her business.
"You're figuring out the whole thing as you go along." — Jaimie Mertz, entrepreneur
But she said she hopes her efforts will soon pay off. With a $181,000 small business loan and $30,000 of her personal savings, she said she plans to open a brick-and-mortar bakery in November. She purchased a 60-quart standing mixer along with a pair of refrigerators and freezers and wants to hire staff.
Mertz said she knows the first year can be tough for any new restaurant and business, but she's ready.
"You're figuring out the whole thing as you go along," she said.
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09/28/16--12:20: Two students and a teacher wounded in South Carolina school shooting
Town officials and law enforcement spoke at a news conference Wednesday, providing preliminary details on a shooting at Townville Elementary School in South Carolina, where two children and a teacher were injured. Video by PBS NewsHour
A teenager opened fire at an elementary school in Anderson County, South Carolina, on Wednesday, wounding two students and a teacher, authorities said.
Two children and one teacher were injured in the shooting at Townville Elementary School on Wednesday afternoon, town officials told reporters this afternoon.
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Capt. Garland Major of the Anderson County sheriff's office told reporters that the shooter, armed with a handgun, was taken into custody within minutes of officers arriving at the scene.
The captain said one student was shot in the leg, while another was shot in the foot. The third victim, a female teacher, was wounded in the shoulder. The injuries do not appear to be life-threatening
A body found nearly two miles from school is believed to be the shooter's father, police said. The teen, who police has in custody and has yet to identify, apparently shot and killed his 47-year-old father around 1:45 p.m. today before descending on the school to continue the carnage.
Shortly after the shooting, students and teachers were evacuated by bus to a nearby church. All three people injured in the shooter were transported to a nearby trauma center, WYFF TV reported
"My heart is sick for Anderson & South Carolina. Praying initial reports of no loss of life remain true & for those injured and their families," Sen. Tim Scott tweeted.
My heart is sick for Anderson&South Carolina.Praying initial reports of no loss of life remain true & for those injured and their families
— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) September 28, 2016
Gov. Nikki Haley released a statement following the shooting.
"As we work together with law enforcement to make sure they have the support they need to investigate what happened in Townville, Michael and I ask that everyone across South Carolina join us in praying for the entire Townville Elementary School family and those touched by today's tragedy," the governor said.
The school is located in a small hamlet nearby the Georgia state line. It houses nearly 280 students in pre-kindergarten to sixth-grade classes.
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09/28/16--13:26: Here's who's seen Trump's tax returns (and it's not just his accountant)
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rallies with supporters at Orlando Melbourne International Airport in Melbourne, Florida. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
WASHINGTON — While Donald Trump won't publicly release his income tax returns, the New York businessman has turned them over when it suited his needs — if he stood to make a profit, needed a loan or when a judge forced him.
Pennsylvania gaming regulators were given at least five years' worth and eight boxes full of Trump's tax documents. Nevada, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana and other state gaming officials also had access to multiple years of his returns. Large banks that lent Trump money over the years have also obtained Trump's returns.
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One common thread ties all those who have seen the documents: They can't talk about them.
In all cases reviewed by The Associated Press, each person, organization, company or government office that has seen Trump's tax returns is barred from discussing their full contents by professional or legal restrictions.
For example, employees of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board could face criminal penalties if they leaked information from Trump's tax returns maintained in the board's electronic files. Missouri officials are similarly barred from discussing the returns by state law.
That leaves the public knowing little about Trump's more recent finances beyond the few details that have trickled out in public documents unearthed by reporters, Trump's own self-reported estimations of his wealth and statements like the one he made in Monday's debate.
While Democrat Hillary Clinton questioned whether Trump's tax returns might reveal that he has paid little or no taxes, Trump said he was "smart" for not paying federal income taxes in some years.
Trump referred to public documents unearthed by Politico showing he didn't pay any federal income tax during at least two years in the early 1990s because he lost more money than he earned. Other documents show he also didn't pay any federal income taxes in 1978, 1979 and 1984, but the documents provided only limited information about other aspects of Trump's finances that could be settled by him releasing his tax returns.
IRS and tax experts have said an audit doesn't bar Trump from making his tax returns public.
Trump has repeatedly refused to release his tax returns citing an IRS audit, but the IRS and tax experts have said an audit doesn't bar Trump from making the documents public. Since 1976, every major party nominee has released the returns and Clinton has publicly released nearly 40 years' worth. Even Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, released 10 years of his tax returns.
Trump's tax returns would reveal his charitable contributions. Despite boasting of sweeping generosity, the AP reported more than a year ago that there is little record of substantial personal philanthropy from Trump. Trump has been dogged by questions about his personal giving and how his namesake foundation operates. The Washington Post has reported that Trump used donations given by others to pay for legal settlements, political contributions and even purchase portraits of himself.
The returns would also reveal how much Trump earned from his assets, helping someone work back to an approximation of his net worth to compare to his own estimation. Though the returns wouldn't give an exact measure.
Trump's own estimates of his income and net worth have previously been scrutinized by those who had access to his taxes.
Donald Trump stands alone as a presidential candidate who refuses to release his tax returns. The GOP nominee says he is waiting until the Internal Revenue Service finishes its audit, a process that could last as long as seven years. Hillary Clinton and her supporters say he must be hiding something. Lisa Desjardins offers some context behind the headlines.
For a decade, Trump tangled with New York City authorities over his city tax bill, a battle first reported in June by journalist David Cay Johnston in The Daily Beast.
In Trump's 1984 tax filings, he said he had lost money during a time in which he had just completed Trump Tower and regularly boasted about the success of his business deals. Trump also declared that he was primarily a consultant that year, and that his consulting business had $684,000 in business expenses and no income. He provided no receipts to justify the claimed expenses.
City tax authorities didn't buy it — and after Trump appealed his tax bill, they fought with him for the next ten years. Trump lost and was ordered to pay the taxes on more than $1 million in income.
Trump's multibillion-dollar fortune has also been questioned by banks that demanded his tax returns before lending him money. Commercial lenders generally require both personal and business tax returns as part of a loan application, and Trump provided such information to North Fork Bank in 2004 and 2005.
According to a deposition of Trump taken in a defamation lawsuit he filed against journalist Tim O'Brien, North Fork concluded that Trump's net worth was $1.2 billion and not the $3.5 billion he had said. Deutsche Bank also reviewed Trump's finances as of 2004, deeming him to be worth "give or take $788 million," according to the deposition.
Trump, who disputed the findings in the deposition, lost the defamation suit.
AP Polling Editor Emily Swanson contributed to this report.
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09/28/16--13:57: Where do the presidential candidates stand on guns?
File photo of guns by Jim Young/Reuters
ATLANTA — The right to bear arms is fundamental to the U.S., carved into the Constitution and seemingly embedded in the national DNA. But after a seemingly endless stretch of violence, Americans are confronting how far those rights extend, propelling gun issues to the forefront of this year's elections.
Do Americans have the right to have AR-style firearms, the long guns with a military look used in the past year in several mass shootings? Should they be able to buy magazines that hold 10 or more bullets? Can those on a terrorist watchlist, but not charged with a crime, be allowed to buy a gun? Should every gun buyer have to pass a background check?
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are like bookends marking the divide that exists in the U.S. today on gun issues.
Trump casts himself as an ardent protector of the Second Amendment and proclaims that if more "good guys" were armed with firearms there would be fewer gun tragedies. He even went a step further than the National Rifle Association after the Orlando nightclub shooting, suggesting that if it weren't a gun-free zone, a patron would have been able to stop the bloodshed. (The NRA, while supporting Trump, said it's not a good idea to allow firearms where alcohol is being served.)
Trump also has vowed that on his first day as president he would end gun-free zones at schools and on military bases. He also supports reciprocity among all 50 states for concealed-carry permits.
Clinton, whose husband as president successfully pushed for a 10-year ban on assault-type weapons, has advocated renewing that ban. She's also called for measures to ensure background checks are completed before a gun sale goes forward, mandating such checks for gun-show sales and repealing a law that shields gun manufacturers from liability.
The next president will get to nominate at least one member of a Supreme Court that's closely divided on how to read the Second Amendment, and the next Congress will continue to confront gun-rights issues.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February and will be replaced by a nominee from the next president, was the decisive vote in a Washington, D.C., case in which the court on a 5-4 vote affirmed the right of individuals to own handguns for self-defense.
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Whatever gun policies a Clinton or Trump administration were to pursue would probably be challenged, and Scalia's replacement could be the pivotal vote. This year alone, for example, the court sided with gun control advocates to rule that people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes can be barred from owning weapons, and also rejected challenges to assault weapon bans in Connecticut and New York.
A recent AP-GfK Poll found the highest levels of support for restrictions on guns since the question was first asked in 2013. That's a sharp departure from the past two presidential election years, when gun issues were largely absent from the campaigns.
Much has happened to bring guns to the forefront again: Charleston. Orlando. Oregon. San Bernardino. There's even been a protest staged by members of Congress on the floor of the House.
There are roughly 300 million firearms in the United States and tens of thousands of shootings each year.
In a world that feels increasingly violent, whether at home or across the globe, America's cowboy culture and the Second Amendment are under the microscope. Voters are asking what will make them safer, more guns or fewer?
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09/28/16--14:10: 7 things you didn't know about lead
Tonight on the PBS NewsHour, Miles O'Brien takes a deep dive into the hazards and history of lead. Here are seven facts to get you started.
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1. Before it was banned from gasoline in the 1990s, three common environmental sources of lead were pipes, paint and fuel.
Lead used to be found in almost everything, from paint to gasoline.
2. Lead melts at 621 degrees Farenheit, a relatively low temperature for metals. The malleable metal used to be a popular choice for plumbers.
Lead becomes easily pourable at the low melting point of 621°F.
3. An estimated 10 million U.S. homes still connect to water mains with lead pipes.
Despite health concerns, lead pipes still connect 10 million homes to water supplies.
4. The Romans knew lead was dangerous. The physician Dioscorides wrote, "Lead makes the mind give way."
Using lead pipes to transport water dates back to the ancient Romans.
5. Lead is an impostor. It is so similar to calcium that human cells take on lead instead.
Lead molecules are so similar to calcium molecules that the human body accidentally absorbs lead toxins instead.
6. Higher lead levels in teeth are tied to lower IQs, behavior problems and language delays.
Scientists discovered the dangers of lead toxicity to health by studying teeth.
7. Have lead pipes? Over time, other metals in water actually interact with lead to create a protective barrier.
When water comes in contact with lead pipes, it creates a protective barrier, shielding drinking water from lead toxins.
But what happens when this barrier goes away? For that and more on lead, tune in to Wednesday's PBS NewsHour for Miles O'Brien's in-depth report on the toxin. And check out digital science producer Nsikan Akpan's story on an unexpected new tool for removing lead from water.
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09/28/16--14:17: Air rage is taking off around the world, say airlines
A Delta jetliner (foreground) is de-iced while an American Airlines plane (rear) takes off at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. Photo by Gary Cameron/Reuters
WASHINGTON — Incidents of unruly passengers on planes are increasing, and more effective deterrents are needed to tackle the problem, a global airline trade group said Wednesday.
There were 10,854 air rage incidents reported by airlines worldwide last year, up from 9,316 incidents in 2014, according to the International Air Transport Association. That equates to one incident for every 1,205 flights, an increase from one incident per 1,282 flights the previous year.
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Incidents have been rising almost consistently since 2007, when the association began tracking the issue. That year airlines reported 339 incidents to the association.
A majority of incidents involved verbal abuse, failure to follow crew instructions and other anti-social behavior. Eleven percent included physical aggression toward passengers or crew or damage to the plane. Alcohol or drugs were a factor in 23 percent of the cases. In the vast majority of incidents involving drugs or alcohol, the substances were consumed before boarding or imbibed secretly on board, the association said.
Training staff in airport bars and duty-free shops to sell alcohol responsibly, including avoiding offers that encourage binge drinking, can cut incidents by half, the association said, citing an initiative by Monarch Airlines at London's Gatwick Airport.
Airlines already have strong guidelines and crew training on "the responsible provision of alcohol," the association said.
A woman in England pleaded guilty in June to assaulting an easyJet pilot. Prosecutors said she punched the pilot in the face after he deemed her too intoxicated to fly. In another case, a male passenger allegedly urinated on fellow easyJet passengers as they were waiting to deplane after landing at Edinburgh.
Six men involved in a drunken brawl during a Jetstar flight from Sydney to Thailand in July were ordered off the plane after it diverted to Indonesia. Incidents have been rising almost consistently since 2007, when the association began tracking the issue.
An American Airlines pilot tackled one passenger to the floor after he tried to force his way off the plane as it taxied to the gate in Charlotte, North Carolina. "You don't put your hands on my flight attendant!" the pilot can be heard yelling on a video taken by another passenger. The unruly passenger was arrested and charged with being intoxicated and disruptive.
Charlie Leocha, president of Travelers United, an advocacy group for airline passengers in Washington, said he knows of no changes in the way alcohol is sold in airports or on planes that would account for the increase in the rate of incidents. But he noted that the increases correspond with efforts by airlines to squeeze more passenger seats onto planes by shrinking legroom and seat width.
"We've always had alcohol sold at airports, we have always had alcohol served on aircraft," he said. "The only difference today is that people now have less space and they are required to interact more intimately with other passengers."
Other recent incidents include a Los Angeles-bound Delta Air Lines flight diverted to Tucson, Arizona, escorted by two Air Force fighter jets, after a passenger refused to return his seat. The following month, the FBI and Hawaii state sheriffs arrested a 35-year-old man who allegedly bit a flight attendant on a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Pago Pago in American Samoa to Honolulu.
Airlines also want more countries to ratify a 2014 treaty that closes gaps in laws for dealing with unruly passengers. So far, only six countries — Bahrain, Congo, Dominican Republic, Gabon, Guyana and Jordan — have ratified the pact.
"More are needed in order to have a consistent global approach to this issue," said Alexandre de Juniac, the association's director general.
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09/28/16--14:21: How do the Affordable Care Act and Medicare interact?
Hisham Uadadeh enrolls in a health insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act at Leading Insurance Agency in Miami, Florida. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Editor's Note: Journalist Philip Moeller, who writes widely on aging and retirement, is here to provide the answers you need in "Ask Phil." Send your questions to Phil.
Check out his new Recommended Reading section with links to notable stories and reports at the end of today's post.
Stuart – Texas: I am unable to work and have been receiving disability since 2006. I am not yet 60 years old. When the Affordable Care Act began in 2014, I enrolled in an individual plan through the marketplace and was granted a subsidy because of my income. When I re-enrolled in 2015, the folks at Healthcare.gov refused to give me the subsidy, because I was technically on the Medicare roll (Part A only because of my disability). Now, in 2016, Social Security has added me to Part B, costing me even more. I now am paying a full individual premium through the marketplace plus the Medicare payment of $158 per month. I am not benefiting whatsoever from the Medicare plan. What options do I have?
Phil Moeller: Readers dying to know about the interactions of Medicare and the Affordable Care Act have struck gold today. Of course, I grant you that this might not be an enormous group, but I shall press on nonetheless. Unfortunately, the facts aren't so favorable for Stuart. I have been in touch with both Medicare and Social Security about this. I have not shared Stuart's name, so their responses are necessarily general. But I think the situation is clear, especially where it concerns Medicare.
By design, state health exchanges and Medicare are not supposed to work together. Most people signing up for health insurance on a state exchange qualify for subsidies that are often substantial. Given this federal support, providing such subsidies to Medicare beneficiaries would amount to a double subsidy. While Part A of Medicare, which covers hospital expenses, is fully funded by worker payroll taxes, the other parts of Medicare are not fully covered. In fact, taxpayers foot the bill for about 75 percent of Part B expenses and a hefty share of Part D drug expenses and Medicare Advantage plans as well. While Medicare premiums can be expensive for many older and disabled Americans, they would be unaffordable for most of us if we had to pay the full cost of the programs.
A person on Medicare is not entitled to also receive subsidies when they buy an ACA policy on a state exchange. And a person age 65 or older is not even permitted to buy an ACA policy in most situations. The exception is for older persons who do not qualify for premium-free Part A coverage. To qualify, they need to have worked at least 40 quarters (10 years) at jobs where they paid Social Security payroll taxes. Or they need to be married or have been married to someone who worked that many quarters. If not, they will have to pay steep Part A premiums that can exceed $400 a month. This small group of people may continue to purchase ACA policies.
However, ACA subsidies are not available to Medicare beneficiaries who qualify for premium-free Part A coverage. This includes Stuart. Now, I do not know whether Stuart was covered by Medicare at any period from the time of his disability until he signed up on a state exchange in 2015. But he was still on Medicare. How can this be? Because anyone receiving Social Security benefits must, by law, also receive Part A. And anyone receiving Part A is considered to be a Medicare beneficiary. This fact alone — which I grant may appear unfair in some circumstances — is a disqualifying factor when it comes to ACA subsidies, according to Medicare. Someone having either Part A or Part C of Medicare (Part C is the formal name of Medicare Advantage plans) is deemed by the agency to have what's called Minimum Essential Coverage, or MEC, and having MEC disallows them from receiving any ACA financial support.
My guess is that while Stuart thinks he is getting a bad deal by losing his subsidy this year, the fact is that he never should have been entitled to a subsidy in 2015. The fact that he was is a not uncommon oversight; its one that Medicare has been working to correct. Here's a statement to that effect from the agency:
CMS is reaching out to the small number of consumers enrolled in both Medicare and Health Insurance Marketplace coverage with financial assistance. We are doing this to make sure they take action to end their Marketplace coverage with advance payments of the premium tax credit because they are receiving Minimum Essential Coverage (MEC) Medicare, and thus are not eligible for this financial assistance. It's important that such consumers do this in a timely manner, to help reduce the amount of advance payments of the premium tax credit the tax filer(s) may have to pay back when they file their federal income tax return. We're committed to helping consumers with Marketplace coverage and will continue to work with them to understand their options.
So Stuart is 0-for-1 so far. In terms of being signed up by Social Security for Part B of Medicare, it seems to me he is correct that this is inappropriate. However, as I'll explain, it could be that he winds up needing Part B.
A Social Security spokeswoman said she knows of no reason why Stuart would have been enrolled in Part B. Going back to 2006, when he qualified for disability payments, it's quite possible that Social Security automatically signed him up for Part B when he became eligible for Medicare. This normally takes at least two years after disability payments have begun. And being entitled to Medicare at any age because of a disability is normally a helpful benefit.
However, Stuart did not have to accept Part B, and it appears he did not. He may have had other private health insurance himself or been insured on his spouse's health policy. I don't know. But it's pretty clear he did not have Part B until Social Security enrolled him in it earlier this year.
"Based on the facts presented in this case," the Social Security spokeswoman said, "I can't think of any reason Social Security would have automatically enrolled this disability beneficiary into Medicare Part B 10 years after entitlement to disability benefits."
If Stuart wants to pursue this matter and avoid paying Part B premiums, I'd suggest he call a local office of the State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) and ask a Medicare counselor to help him. SHIP deals more with Medicare than Social Security, so he may have to contact Social Security directly, which is what the agency suggested.
However, having lost his ACA income subsidy, there's a good chance that Stuart's best insurance deal would actually be to drop his ACA policy, purchase Part B and move onto Medicare. He can do this during the Medicare open enrollment period that begins Oct. 15 and extends through Dec. 7, and his new coverage would take effect next January. This decision means some more homework for Stuart to determine the mix of Medicare policies that make the most sense for him and to then shop for the best available policies. Future installments of Ask Phil will be dealing with open enrollment and can help guide Stuart and others in deciding whether what Medicare coverage they should have in 2017.
David – Calif.: Are there Medicare Advantage plans with a "Passport" feature that provide coverage benefits in two different states? I spend about seven months in California and five months in Washington state each year. Can I just enroll in a new Medicare Advantage plan when I move back and forth?
Phil Moeller: Passport is a trade name used by UnitedHealthcare and describes the portability feature offered by some of its Medicare Advantage plans. While UnitedHealthcare does offer the Passport feature on some Washington plans, a spokeswoman says, it is not available in California. So you are out of luck regarding this particular feature. I have not heard if other insurers offer similar Medicare Advantage plans, but perhaps some readers have. If so, please let me know, and I'll pass the information on to David.
The idea of enrolling in a new Medicare Advantage plan every time you move back to one of these states is possible in theory, but challenging in practice. According to UnitedHealthcare, you would need to change your legal address every time you move, and make sure the new address has been registered with the Social Security Administration. It is the official arbiter of Medicare enrollments. Even if you do this, enrolling in a new plan every five or seven months would play havoc with your plan deductibles, which would need to be reset every time you switch to a new plan.
If a Medicare Advantage plan does not seem feasible given these constraints, you also could use the upcoming Medicare annual open enrollment period to switch to original Medicare (Parts A and B) plus a stand-alone Part D drug plan. You also should explore whether you can get a Medigap plan to close any coverage gaps in original Medicare. If you're interested in Medigap, you should use Medicare's Medigap tool to identify the best policies for you available at your current legal address. Then contact the insurers to see if they will sell to you and what their terms would be. Newcomers to Medicare have guaranteed access rights to Medigap policies on favorable terms. But people already on Medicare may not have these right, so you should check first. Open enrollment runs from Oct. 15 through Dec. 7. Good luck!
Older and disabled Americans have a lot at stake in the upcoming Presidential election. Trying to get an impartial assessment of the issues is hard. The Kaiser Family Foundation certainly is biased to the extent it generally supports more health benefits for people. But its arguments are fact-based and very useful. (Source: Kaiser Family Foundation.)
Social Security Should Give Seniors Better Advice About When to Start Benefits
When Larry Kotlikoff, Paul Solman and I wrote our Social Security book last year, we often felt we had walked out onto a very long pier. Readers kept telling us about all the problems and mistakes they were encountering in their efforts to get the Social Security benefits to which they were entitled. But the Social Security Administration kept saying that it was doing a wonderful job, that its websites were winning awards for transparency and effective consumer communications and that its approval ratings were off the charts. Now, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, it turns out that we have a whole lot of company on that pier. The Social Security Administration and its employees are not doing a particularly good job of helping people or of telling them about their benefit choices, the Government Accountability Office found. (Source: Mark Miller for Reuters.)
The Doctor Is In. In Your House, That Is.
Rising numbers of older Americans are "aging in place" — staying in their homes well into their later years. People always have preferred to stay in their homes as they age, and advances in "telehealth" and related technologies promise to deliver good and cost-effective care in the home. The trend is also being supported by the rise of age-friendly home design and retrofits, such as safer bathrooms and wheelchair accessible homes and rooms. Now, the push is on for Medicare to ease its restrictions and expand its coverage of in-home care. (Source: John Wasik for The New York Times.)
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09/28/16--15:20: Maureen Dowd on why politics in 2016 sounds like a 'primal scream and death rattle'
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09/28/16--15:25: How and why we need to get the lead out of our lives
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09/28/16--15:25: For African-American female entrepreneurs, funding challenges call for creative bootstrapping
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09/28/16--15:30: Remembering Shimon Peres, a founding father of Israel
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09/28/16--15:35: Bombing onslaught in Syria triggers condemnation, threatens U.S.-Russia cooperation
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09/28/16--15:40: Does the bill permitting lawsuits against governments set dangerous precedent?
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09/28/16--15:45: News Wrap: Congress ends stalemate over funding bill, averting crisis
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09/28/16--15:50: With debate momentum, Clinton works to win over young voters
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09/29/16--10:50: Shake shake shake. Planet Mercury may have earthquakes
False color image of the eastern limb of Mercury as seen by MESSENGER as the spacecraft departed the planet following the mission's first Mercury flyby in January 2008. The colors convey information about the distribution of different rock types on Mercury's surface. The Caloris basin, visible as a large bright yellow circular area in this image due to its infill of volcanic plains, dominates the northern region. Photo and caption by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
The hills of Mercury are alive with earthquakes, according to a study published Monday in Nature Geoscience. The diminutive planet joins Earth as the only other known tectonically active planet in the Solar System.
"We have to take another look at how rocky planets are evolving," said Thomas Watters, Smithsonian planetary scientist and study co-author.
The discovery was made thanks to NASA's MESSENGER probe, which orbited the closest planet to the sun from 2011 to 2015. MESSENGER spotted fault scarps, which are cliff-like features that indicate a history of contractions in the planet's crust. These scarps are huge, with the largest up to 1,000 kilometers — 621 miles — long.
NASA Probe Ends Mercury Mission With A Bang
The smoking gun came when Messenger spotted the presence of small scarps, measuring less than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). "Small landforms are not going to survive for terribly long" due to the asteroid bombardment on Mercury, Watters said, meaning the tectonic activity responsible for them must have occurred recently.
Large fault scarps had been discovered previously by Mariner 10, a NASA probe sent to Mercury in the 1970s, but small scarps had never been observed in the past.
Another cool finding: The tiniest planet in our celestial neighborhood is shrinking. Watters and his colleagues found the planet is becoming smaller due to a cooling core.
Small graben, or narrow linear troughs, have been found associated with small fault scarps (lower white arrows) on Mercury, and on Earth's moon. The small troughs, only tens of meters wide (inset box and upper white arrows), likely resulted from the bending of the crust as it was uplifted, and must be very young to survive continuous meteoroid bombardment. Photo and caption by NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institution of Washington/Smithsonian Institution
Early signs suggest Mercury harbors a single tectonic plate across the entire planet, unlike Earth which sports a mosaic of plates. And this uniform shell appears to be contracting.
"As the interior of the planet cools, it contracts and shrinks," said Watters. But even though the core is cooling, he added, Mercury's core remains warm enough to drive movement of these plates. This feature contrasts with Mars, which is tectonically dead.
Mercury's cooling core is likely accompanied by seismic activity. After detecting evidence of recent slip events on the rocky planet's large faults, Watters believes Mercury might boast stronger earthquakes than the magnitude-5 events found on our moon.
To confirm "Mercuryquakes," scientists will need readings from seismic stations on the surface, Watters said.
The post Shake shake shake. Planet Mercury may have earthquakes appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
09/29/16--12:11: Column: The psychology behind why clowns creep us out
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For the past several months, creepy clowns have been terrorizing America, with sightings of actual clowns in at least 10 different states.
These fiendish clowns have reportedly tried to lure women and children into the woods, chased people with knives and machetes, and yelled at people from cars. They've been spotted hanging out in cemeteries and they have been caught in the headlights of cars as they appear alongside desolate country roads in the dead of night.
A 2008 study conducted in England revealed that very few children actually like clowns
This isn't the first time there has been a wave of clown sightings in the United States. After eerily similar events occurred in the Boston area in the 1980s, Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist who studies the folklore behind mythical beasts such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, came up with something called "The Phantom Clown Theory," which attributes the proliferation of clown sightings to mass hysteria (usually sparked by incidents witnessed only by children).
It's impossible to determine which of these incidents are hoaxes and which are bona fide tales of clowning around taken to the extreme. Nonetheless, the perpetrators seem to be capitalizing on our longstanding love-hate relationship with clowns, tapping into the primal dread that so many children (and more than a few adults) experience in their presence.
In fact, a 2008 study conducted in England revealed that very few children actually like clowns. It also concluded that the common practice of decorating children's wards in hospitals with pictures of clowns may create the exact opposite of a nurturing environment. It's no wonder so many people hate Ronald McDonald.
But as a psychologist, I'm not just interested in pointing out that clowns give us the creeps; I'm also interested in why we find them so disturbing. Earlier this year I published a study entitled "On the Nature of Creepiness" with one of my students, Sara Koehnke, in the journal New Ideas in Psychology. While the study was not specifically looking at the creepiness of clowns, much of what we discovered can help explain this intriguing phenomenon.
The march of the clowns
Clown-like characters have been around for thousands of years. Historically, jesters and clowns have been a vehicle for satire and for poking fun at powerful people. They provided a safety valve for letting off steam and they were granted unique freedom of expression – as long as their value as entertainers outweighed the discomfort they caused the higher-ups.
Jesters and others persons of ridicule go back at least to ancient Egypt, and the English word "clown" first appeared sometime in the 1500s, when Shakespeare used the term to describe foolish characters in several of his plays. The now familiar circus clown – with its painted face, wig and oversized clothing – arose in the 19th century and has changed only slightly over the past 150 years.
Nor is the trope of the evil clown anything new. Earlier this year, writer Benjamin Radford published "Bad Clowns," in which he traces the historical evolution of clowns into unpredictable, menacing creatures.
The persona of the creepy clown really came into its own after serial killer John Wayne Gacy was captured. In the 1970s, Gacy appeared at children's birthday parties as "Pogo the Clown" and also regularly painted pictures of clowns. When the authorities discovered that he had killed at least 33 people, burying most of them in the crawl space of his suburban Chicago home, the connection between clowns and dangerous psychopathic behavior became forever fixed in the collective unconscious of Americans.
Psychology can help explain why clowns – the supposed purveyors of jokes and pranks – often end up sending chills down our spines.
Following the notoriety of Gacy, Hollywood exploited our deep ambivalence about clowns via a terror-by-clown campaign that shows no signs of going out of fashion. Pennywise, the clown from Stephen King's 1990 movie "It," may be the scariest movie clown. But there are also the "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" (1988), the scary clown doll under the bed in "Poltergeist" (1982), the zombie clown in "Zombieland" (2009) and, most recently, the murderous clown in "All Hallow's Eve" (2013).
The nature of creepiness
Psychology, however, can help explain why clowns – the supposed purveyors of jokes and pranks – often end up sending chills down our spines.
My research was the first empirical study of creepiness, and I had a hunch that feeling creeped out might have something to do with ambiguity – about not really being sure how to react to a person or situation.
We recruited 1,341 volunteers ranging in age from 18 to 77 to fill out an online survey. In the first section of the survey, our participants rated the likelihood that a hypothetical "creepy person" would exhibit 44 different behaviors, such as unusual patterns of eye contact or physical characteristics like visible tattoos. In the second section of the survey, participants rated the creepiness of 21 different occupations, and in the third section they simply listed two hobbies that they thought were creepy. In the final section, participants noted how much they agreed with 15 statements about the nature of creepy people.
The results indicated that people we perceive as creepy are much more likely to be males than females (as are most clowns), that unpredictability is an important component of creepiness and that unusual patterns of eye contact and other nonverbal behaviors set off our creepiness detectors big time.
Unusual or strange physical characteristics such as bulging eyes, a peculiar smile or inordinately long fingers did not, in and of themselves, cause us to perceive someone as creepy. But the presence of weird physical traits can amplify any other creepy tendencies that the person might be exhibiting, such as persistently steering conversations toward peculiar sexual topics or failing to understand the policy about bringing reptiles into the office.
When we asked people to rate the creepiness of different occupations, the one that rose to the top of the creep list was – you guessed it – clowns.
The results were consistent with my theory that getting "creeped out" is a response to the ambiguity of threat and that it is only when we are confronted with uncertainty about threat that we get the chills.
For example, it would be considered rude and strange to run away in the middle of a conversation with someone who is sending out a creepy vibe but is actually harmless; at the same time, it could be perilous to ignore your intuition and engage with that individual if he is, in fact, a threat. The ambivalence leaves you frozen in place, wallowing in discomfort.
This reaction could be adaptive, something humans have evolved to feel, with being "creeped out" a way to maintain vigilance during a situation that could be dangerous.
Why clowns set off our creep alert
In light of our study's results, it is not at all surprising that we find them to be creepy.
Rami Nader is a Canadian psychologist who studies coulrophobia, the irrational fear of clowns. Nader believes that clown phobias are fueled by the fact that clowns wear makeup and disguises that hide their true identities and feelings.
This is perfectly consistent with my hypothesis that it is the inherent ambiguity surrounding clowns that make them creepy. They seem to be happy, but are they really? And they're mischievous, which puts people constantly on guard. People interacting with a clown during one of his routines never know if they are about to get a pie in the face or be the victim of some other humiliating prank. The highly unusual physical characteristics of the clown (the wig, the big red nose, the makeup, the odd clothing) only magnify the uncertainty of what the clown might do next.
There are certainly other types of people who creep us out (taxidermists and undertakers made a good showing on the creepy occupation spectrum). But they have their work cut out for them if they aspire to the level of creepiness that we automatically attribute to clowns.
In other words, they have big shoes to fill.
Frank T. McAndrew, Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology, Knox College
The post Column: The psychology behind why clowns creep us out appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
09/29/16--12:50: Obama signs bill to fund government until December
Members of Congress will have to reach agreement on funding for the rest of the budget year when they meet in a lame-duck session after the election. Photo by Eric E Johnson/via Flickr
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has signed a short-term funding bill to keep the government from shutting down at the end of the week.
Lawmakers eager to leave town to campaign for re-election gave themselves breathing room by voting to continue existing spending levels for another 10 weeks, beyond the Nov. 8 election.
Members of Congress will have to reach agreement on funding for the rest of the budget year when they meet in a lame-duck session after the election.
The bill Obama signed Thursday also provides $1.1 billion to address the Zika crisis. And it has $500 million to help Louisiana flood victims.
This post will be updated.
The post Obama signs bill to fund government until December appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
09/29/16--13:32: If DEA blocks kratom, promising research on opioid alternative may suffer
Capsules of the drug Kratom are seen on May 10, 2016 in Miami, Florida. The herbal supplement is a psychoactive drug derived from the leaves of the kratom plant and it's been reported that people are using the supplement to get high and some states are banning the supplement. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Your body would never get used to the perfect painkiller, says Susruta Majumdar, a chemist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. So unlike the case with common opioids such as morphine or Oxycontin, you would not need to take ever-increasing doses to relieve the same amount of pain. The ideal analgesic would not have the high risk of addiction, withdrawal or fatal respiratory slowdowns that have turned opioid abuse into a massive epidemic. The holy grail of painkillers would not induce the seductive euphoria of common opioids or their less-pleasant side effects like itching or constipation.
A painkiller with just one of these properties would be great, but Majumdar thinks he has stumbled onto a class of chemicals that might have them all. They are found in kratom, a plant that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration intends to effectively ban from the U.S. in an emergency move as early as September 30. Without legal access to it, research on some of the most promising leads for a better painkiller may grind to a crawl.
Kratom comes from the Mitragyna speciosa tree native to parts of Southeast Asia, where people chew the leaves for a light, caffeine-like jolt of energy or as a traditional medicine for ailments ranging from diarrhea to pain. Kratom has been illegal since 1943 in Thailand, where it is believed to be addictive. Case studies have suggested that suddenly stopping regular kratom use may lead to withdrawal symptoms—but they are widely considered milder than those associated with opioids.
The DEA plans to place kratom and its psychoactive ingredients in the agency's most restricted controlled substance category, Schedule I, on September 30 at the earliest.
Majumdar first learned about kratom via a Web search a couple of years ago. By then there were stories in the West about how kratom tea could be used to manage pain—and to mitigate brutal opioid withdrawal. That caught Majmundar's attention, and he found research from the 1970s that described some of the basic biochemistry of kratom's two primary psychoactive compounds, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, as well as one more molecule called mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, which is produced when kratom ferments.
"We got excited because the chemical structure is almost completely unrelated to that of commonly used opioids," says Andras Varadi, a colleague of Majumdar who is a medicinal chemist at Columbia University and Sloan Kettering.
When Majumdar and his team started studying the compounds in the laboratory, they realized all three molecules were binding to the mu-opioid receptor—one of three known kinds of opioid receptors in the brain—in an unconventional way. Think of this receptor as the ignition to a "hybrid car," Varadi explains, and the opioids that bind to it as keys.
A typical opioid such as morphine turns on the "electric engine," and that leads to a desired effect like pain relief. But it also starts up the "gas engine," causing negative side effects. The mitragynine molecules from kratom seem to activate mostly the "good" systems, leaving behind the unwanted effects yet keeping pain relief.
Some Kratom purchased in the U.S. has been found to be adulterated with other compounds, including common opioids like hydrocodone.
Scientists have been trying to develop next-generation drugs with this property. There is one candidate, pharmaceutical company Trevena's TRV130, in clinical trials now. That's part of what makes kratom exciting to researchers, says Laura Bohn, a biochemist at the Scripps Research Institute who was not involved with this work. "The more chemical structures you have [with this property] the more you can say, 'here's the right features of these, and let's impart that into our drug development.'"
Majumdar noticed that the fermented-kratom compound mitragynine pseudoindoxyl—unlike most other drugs in development—also blocks off another opioid receptor, the delta receptor. "That's when we got excited," Majumdar says. Past experiments have shown that delta receptor blockers could reduce morphine tolerance and withdrawal symptoms in mice. "There were signs that delta antagonism is good," Majumdar says. And if mitragynine pseudoindoxyl could both block the delta receptor and produce favorable behavior on the mu receptor, Majumdar says it might be better than any other pain drug science is currently investigating.
In an attempt to find out about these blocking capabilities Varadi injected mice with mitragynine pseudoindoxyl twice a day for a month. Then he checked if they could feel pain, using techniques such as putting them on a hot plate. In such experiments morphine usually loses its painkilling effects after five days. But after 30 days on a consistent dose of mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, the mice still showed numbness to pain.
"It was the most exciting experiment I've ever done," Varadi says. In other experiments Varadi and Majumdar reported that the mice exhibited few withdrawal symptoms from mitragynine pseudoindoxyl—and they displayed no indication that they actually enjoyed taking the drug. "[This is] early promise it's nonaddictive," Majumdar says. His team reported its findings in The Journal of Medicinal Chemistry last month.
A Thai Malay Muslim drug user breaks up the kratom leaf into a pan to form part of a popular cheap narcotic drink called 4 x 100 on September 1, 2011i n Narwathiwat, southern Thailand. Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Varadi says his results indicate that mitragynine pseudoindoxyl may have the peculiar ability to both activate the mu receptor—possibly making it a powerful painkiller that also reduces addictive and potentially deadly side effects—as well as lower withdrawal and tolerance. "It's a double whammy," Varadi says.
Although the kratom compounds have yet to be clinically studied in humans, Andrew Kruegel, a pharmacologist at Columbia who was not involved in Varadi's study, says the results hold promise for better designer painkillers.
"Those compounds alone may already be superior to codeine and oxycodone. At a minimum, if you can get rid of respiratory [problems] then you can save thousands of lives," Kruegel says. "But we can tweak their properties to make them even better than the natural starting point." Or they would do so if the research were able to legally continue, he adds.
The DEA plans to place kratom and its psychoactive ingredients in the agency's most restricted controlled substance category, Schedule I, on September 30 at the earliest. That would place it in the same group as heroin, ecstasy and marijuana. All Schedule I drugs are supposed to have a high potential for abuse and harm, and to have no medical use.
Scientists can obtain a license to study Schedule I drugs but they are hard to acquire and significantly slow down research.
Scientists can obtain a license to study Schedule I drugs but they are hard to acquire and significantly slow down research, says Chris McCurdy, a kratom researcher at the University of Mississippi. "I don't oppose it being regulated, I just oppose Schedule I," he says. "That's where the frustration comes in, realizing you have to shut everything down because we don't have a Schedule I license."
At the moment, neither do several other kratom researchers, including Majumdar. "We'll have to destroy all our samples in the lab," Kruegel says.
The DEA's emergency scheduling of kratom will expire after two years if the agency does not move to make the scheduling permanent. But for that to happen, Kruegel thinks scientists will likely need to show further proof that kratom is medically useful. "That we'll have any progress in the next two years is very unlikely," he says.
Russ Baer, a spokesperson for the DEA, says the reason for putting kratom and its psychoactive ingredients in the most restrictive drug category is to protect public safety and stop misuse. "Independent of the DEA, the Food and Drug Administration has issued a number of public health warnings and import alerts, most recently about July 2016, and concerns they have about kratom representing a health risk," he says. "And it's been on our radar for awhile as a drug of concern."
A DEA announcement cited 15 kratom-related deaths between 2014 and 2016, and there have also been accounts of kratom being misused.
"One of my [research] partners has treated people in the emergency room who would dissolve and then inject kratom extract," says Ed Boyer, a professor of emergency medicine at University of Massachusetts Medical School and a kratom researcher. Most of these incidences of abuse probably involved other substances as well, he adds.
"People think they're getting kratom; they could be getting anything," says Kavita Babu, a toxicologist at UMass Memorial Medical Center who was not involved with Majumdar's study. "In terms of death, we really only get into that issue when it's combined with other substances," says Alicia Lydecker, also a toxicologist at UMass. She was not involved in the study.
Mitragynine seems to be a fairly weak drug on its own, Majumdar says. It is about 55 times less potent than morphine in terms of pain relief. "I did drink kratom tea," he says, "and I felt nothing." Another compound, 7-hydroxymitragynine, is about six times more potent than morphine—but Majumdar says it occurs in such small amounts in the plant that it is probably not responsible for most effects experienced by consumers of unaltered, natural kratom.
The DEA's decision on kratom has even begun to draw critical attention from U.S. lawmakers. Rep. Mark Pocan (D–Wis.) has urged Congress to sign a letter asking the DEA to delay making it a controlled substance. But the impending ban has left an especially bitter taste with many researchers who feel there is already ample evidence the plant has clear medical potential.
"It is frustrating," Bohn says. "I totally empathize with trying to prevent misuse, but it has to be thoughtful and protective. For us, [kratom] is a valuable, valuable research tool."
The post If DEA blocks kratom, promising research on opioid alternative may suffer appeared first on PBS NewsHour.


text:
Q: what is the default weight initialization used in Pytorch embedding layer? When we create an embedding layer using the class torch.nn.Embedding, how are the weights initialized ? Is uniform, normal or initialization techniques like He or Xavier used by default?

A: In Embedding, by default, the weights are initialization from the Normal distribution. You can check it from the reset_parameters() method:
def reset_parameters(self):
        init.normal_(self.weight)
        ...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange