In a classic puzzle, readers are asked to draw four straight lines through a 3 x 3 matrix of nine dots—without letting their pencils leave the paper (see Figure 1). Most readers fail, at least initially, ending up with one dot left over. The solution requires thinking outside the box. The phrase "thinking outside of the box" has become so overused in recent years as to become trite. And yet, how many investors actually deviate from the norm with their equity allocations? Indeed, most investors follow the pack, implementing one of three "standard" strategies.
In this issue we will look at a different way of constructing the equity portfolio. We will use the concept of "active share"—a measure of how much active equity portfolios actually deviate from their benchmark indexes—as well as what active share tells us about the standard equity structure alternatives.
The success of an investor's overall portfolio is highly dependent on how well the equity component performs; stocks are the largest allocation in most portfolios, on average half of assets or more.1 Therefore, paying special attention to the equity strategy decision is very important.
Cremers and Petajisto found that funds in the highest active share quintile achieved the largest average alpha—1.1% per year net of fees and transaction costs.5 The average active share of this quintile of active managers is approximately 90%—that is, the typical portfolio had only a 10% overlap with the index. For the active management industry as a whole, the authors found that active share was just 30% and that the average fund returned –0.43% against the market. Net net, investors frequently end up paying high active management fees for index-like returns (or worse)!
As a result, retail investors (imitating their institutional cousins) are increasingly shifting assets into low-cost passive index funds, which have grown from 5% of equity mutual fund assets in 1996 to 15% in 2010.7 This trend has led to a "core-satellite" approach, an equity structure that blends cap-weighted indexing as the "core" part of the portfolio with highly active managers as the satellites. A hypothetical equity structure of 50% passive cap-weighted index and 50% actively managed satellite strategies produces a total equity portfolio active share of 45% with an expected excess return of 0.5%. That return potential is better than that offered by a purely passive portfolio, but it is still well shy of the return target.
Because RAFI portfolios are broadly diversified, they tend to have a relatively low active share of 30%. RAFI portfolio excess returns are made more attractive because they are achieved in a smooth fashion, with a low tracking error of 4% (relative to 8% for active managers). Accordingly, the RAFI approach provides the best of both worlds—strong excess returns without the big out-of-index risks active managers take—as Table 1 shows.
The way to solve the puzzle in the introduction is to extend one or more lines outside the matrix (or box). In other words, you must literally think outside the box to find the solution (see Figure 2).10 The puzzle of achieving superior equity performance will not be solved by staying within the box of traditional equity portfolio construction strategies. Investors need to explore newer approaches that might offer superior solutions. A RAFI-centric equity structure improves the risk-return trade-off compared to the three common equity structures implemented today. It's an out-of-the-box approach that is easy and inexpensive to implement, without the rollercoaster ride offered by high active-share managers.
1. 52% in public DB plans, 54% in corporate DB plans, 60% in 401(k) plans. See 401(k) Plan Asset Allocation, Account Balances, and Loan Activity in 2009.
2. We forecast 10-year forward equity returns of 5–6%. This is based on the building block approach of 2% dividends, 1% long term real earnings growth, and 2.5% inflation. Typically, investors have a 7–8% total portfolio rate of return target.
3. K.J. Martijn Cremers and Antti Petajisto, 2009, "How Active Is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance," International Center for Finance, Yale University Working Paper (March 31, revised).
4. The average asset-weighted fund active share is approximately 65%.
5. For comparison, funds in the bottom three quintiles of active share gave up 1.2% per year on average to the index.
6. Scott Stewart and John Neumann, 2009, "Absence of Value: An Analysis of Investment Allocation Decisions by Institutional Plan Sponsors," Financial Analysts Journal, (November/December).
7. Investment Company Institute, 2011 ICI Factbook, Chapter 2.
8. A two percentage point excess return is the average of the 23 developed market FTSE RAFI indexes from November 2005 through June 2011.
9. Research Affiliates and FTSE with data from Bloomberg. 87% of the primary 44 FTSE RAFI indexes have outperformed their respective index since inception.
10. The Original "Thinking Outside the Box" Puzzle!


The Enforcement Directorate said it has issued as many as five provisional orders, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), for attachment of assets in London, New York, bank balances in Singapore and other countries, a flat in Mumbai and diamond studded jewellery that was shipped to India from Singapore.
The Enforcement Directorate Monday said it has attached assets worth Rs 637 crore of absconding jeweller Nirav Modi and his family, including two apartments in New York's iconic central park, as part of its fresh action in the USD 2 billion alleged bank fraud in the PNB. The agency said it has issued as many as five provisional orders, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), for attachment of assets in London, New York, bank balances in Singapore and other countries, a flat in Mumbai and diamond studded jewellery that was shipped to India from Singapore.
It said investigators have got issued multiple court issued Letters Rogatories (judicial requests) for legal formalisation of these assets and the action has come to fruition after three months of "close coordination" between the Enforcement Directorate and its foreign counterparts.
"The international cooperation has bore fruit. This has resulted in seizure and provisional attachment of jewellery, bank accounts and immovable properties worth Rs 637 crore in India as well as four foreign jurisdictions."
"This has also resulted in recovery and return of jewellery from abroad," the agency said in a statement. There are only very few cases where Indian agencies have attached assets abroad in a criminal probe.
Among the attached properties, as per the ED, are two apartments worth Rs 216 crore in New York's popular central park area and are in the name of Nirav Modi.
A flat worth Rs 56.97 crore on Marylebone road in London has also been attached and Nirav Modi's sister Purvi is its "beneficial owner", it said.
The agency also seized diamond jewellery worth Rs 22.69 crore after getting them to India from Hong Kong in 23 shipments. It added that bank balance of Rs 44 crore, kept in an account in Singapore, in the name of a British Virgin Island based company has also been attached.
The beneficial owners of these deposits have been identified as Purvi Modi and her husband Maiank Mehta, the ED said.
Five other overseas bank accounts, holding Rs 278 crore, have been attached and they belong to Nirav Modi, Purvi Modi and their controlled firms, it said. "During investigation it was found that most of the money was transferred to these accounts after FIRs were filed in this scam," the agency said.
A Rs 19.5 crore worth flat in a tiny locality of south Mumbai, owned by Purvi Modi, has also been attached as part of this order, it said.
The central probe agency, a senior official said, also got issued an Interpol Red Corner notice (global arrest warrant) against Aditya Nanavati, an accused and employee of a Nirav Modi firm in the same case, on charges of money laundering.
The agency has attached assets worth Rs 700 crore of Nirav Modi and his family in the country till now. It has also filed a charge sheet against him alleging that he laundered and diverted over Rs 6,400 crore of bank funds abroad to dummy companies that were under his and his families' control.
Nirav Modi, his uncle Mehul Choksi and others are being probed under various criminal laws after the fraud came to light this year following a complaint by the Punjab National Bank (PNB) that they allegedly cheated the nationalised bank to the tune of over Rs 13,000 crore, with the purported involvement of a few employees of the bank.


The New York Times Co says core earnings in the past quarter have lifted by gains in online subscriptions, helping offset declines in print and digital ad revenues.
Results reported on Thursday showed a fourth quarter profit of $US65.6 million ($A73.8 million), compared with $US178 million in the same period a year earlier, which was largely from a one-time gain from spinning off its stake in an online jobs website.
Total fourth-quarter revenues fell 5.2 per cent to $US443.9 million, with circulation revenues down 3.9 per cent and advertising revenues falling 6.3 per cent.
The company said paid subscribers to digital-only subscription packages rose 19 per cent from a year earlier to 760,000 as of the end of the fourth quarter and brought in $US39.1 million in the final three months of the year.
That helped offset quarterly drops in print and digital advertising revenues, down 6.3 per cent and 6.5 per cent, respectively.
The results suggest some progress for the prestigious US daily newspaper as it seeks to get rid of its non-core assets and get more money from readers, especially in digital.
"Our 2013 results reflect progress in some of the fundamentals of our business," said president and chief executive officer Mark Thompson who added that "advertising revenue showed notable improvement in the second half of the year."
"The fourth quarter saw more growth in our digital subscription business than either the second or third quarters," he added.
"Throughout the year, we continued to make progress in solidifying our balance sheet and in significantly improving the underfunded status of our qualified pension plans," Thompson said in the earnings statement.
The Times began its paywall strategy in 2011 and has been emphasising digital as print circulation and advertising decline.
In 2012, the company said it took in more revenues from circulation than advertising for the first time and that trend continued in 2013.
For the full year, circulation revenues rose 3.7 to $US824 million while ad revenues slipped 6.3 per cent to $US666 million.
The overall profit for the year dropped by half to $US65.1 million.
In October, the company completed its sale of the New England Media Group which includes the Boston Globe.


text:
Провінція Каутин  ()  — провінція в Чилі у складі регіону Арауканія.
Включає 21 комуна.

Територія — 18839 км². Населення — 752100 осіб (2017). Щільність населення — 39.92 чол./км².

Адміністративний центр — Темуко.

Географія
Провінція розташована на півдні регіону Арауканія.

Провінція межує:
 на півночі - провінція Мальєко
 на сході - провінція Неукен (Аргентина)
 на півдні - провінція Вальдивія
 на заході - Тихий океан

Адміністративний поділ
Провінція включає 21 комуну:
Темуко. Адмін.центр - Темуко.
Карауе. Адмін.центр - Карауе.
Чольчоль. Адмін.центр - Чольчоль.
Кунко. Адмін.центр - Кунко.
Курареуе. Адмін.центр - Курареуе.
Фрейре. Адмін.центр - Фрейре.
Гальварино. Адмін.центр - Гальварино.
Горбеа. Адмін.центр - Горбеа.
Лаутаро. Адмін.центр - Лаутаро.
Лонкоче. Адмін.центр - Лонкоче.
Меліпеуко. Центр адміністрації — Меліпеуко.
Нуева-Імперіаль. Адмін.центр - Нуева-Імперіаль.
Падре-Лас-Касас. Адмін.центр - Падре-Лас-Касас.
Перкенко. Адмін.центр - Перкенко.
Пітруфкен. Адмін.центр - Пітруфкен.
Пукон. Адмін.центр - Пукон.
Сааведра. Адмін.центр - Сааведра.
Теодоро-Шмідт. Адмін.центр - Теодоро-Шмідт.
Тольтен. Адмін.центр - Тольтен.
Вількун. Адмін.центр - Вількун.
Вільяррика. Адмін.центр - Вільяррика.

Примітки

Провінції Чилі

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Harry Kroto Lectures PPT Masters
Masters of some HK Lecures
NB Note that the master sets contain mainly hyperlinking slides to sub-presentations most of which are to be found (in due course! when I get the time to upload them) on the Powerpoints Snippets TToTTs page. Check the hyperlink dropdown for the correct sub-presentation snippet title!
Comment on Lindau Lectures http://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/videos/laureate-kroto
Amongst the Nobel Laureates lecturing in Lindau, Sir Harold Kroto would probably earn the award for the most unusual and characteristic way of presenting. This lecture, which is the first he ever gave in Lindau, is no exception. Kroto`s way of presenting relies on a quick succession of, sometimes loosely connected, images, which are, in a most creative fashion, gathered from the spheres of history, arts, science, society etc. This brings about a relaxed and – at the same time – enriched and intense atmosphere, which is usually highly appreciated by the Lindau audiences.Unfortunately, there is no video available for this particular lecture and thus a great deal of the unique "Harry Kroto spirit" is lost. Still, the lecture is special, because it is not only the first Lindau lecture Kroto gave after receiving the Nobel Prize, but also the last he gave so far (2012) on the subject of his Nobel Prize research. In later years, Kroto gave preference to more general subjects such as creativity or science, society and sustainability. Kroto and his co-recipients Robert F. Curl Jr. and Richard F. Smalley shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their discovery of fullerenes". Fullerenes are ball-shaped molecules built exclusively from carbon. The most famous fullerene, the Buckminster fullerene (sometimes also referred to as C60), contains 60 carbon atoms and looks pretty much like a football. The fullerenes were so exciting to the scientific community (and the Nobel Committee) because they represented a new modification of carbon, which is distinctly different to the well-known graphite and diamond modifications. Due to the fundamental importance of carbon in almost all processes of life as well as in materials science, it could be expected that the advent of the fullerenes would entail a horn of plenty of potential technical applications. This excitement was stimulated further, when traces of fullerenes were detected in space.However, as far as we know today, the enthusiasm was probably excessive. More than 25 years after the discovery of fullerenes, there are still no major technical applications, or, as Robert Curl put it in his 1998 Lindau talk: the discoverers are still waiting for their kid to get a job. Today, new carbon modifications, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene (Nobel Prize in Physics 2010), which might well be considered advancements of fullerene research, have taken over the role of hope bearers in the field of carbon-only materials. In the present talk, Kroto uses his characteristic presentation style to blend historical snippets with details on his own scientific background, anecdotes on fullerene research as well as some brief notes on the fullerenes' chemical properties. The breadth of his point of view might be estimated from two of the quotes he uses. The first one, given in a rather ironic context, is attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato, 360 BC:"In the first place it is clear to everyone that fire, earth, water and air are bodies and all bodies are solids and all solids again are bounded by surfaces and all rectiliniar surfaces are composed of triangles."The second one comes straight from a Lord of the Rings bumper sticker and is used by Kroto to make an argument in favour of fundamental science:"Not all those who wander are lost."The author of this comment could not agree more.David Siegel
2011 FSU Spectroscopy Course
AL1.1 2011 Intro Part I
A2 was Intro part II
AL3.1 EM Theory to QM
AL4 Spectroscopy
AL5 Spectroscopy Intro Continued
AL6.1 Rotational Spectroscopy s for webite
AL7.1 Rot Spectroscopy Structure
AL8.1 Scattering Raman Spectroscopy Structure
AL9 Spin Stats Vibrational Spectroscopy
AL10 Electronic Spectroscopy
A11 Was a Summary
AL12 Diffraction Experimental Apparatus
AL14.1 Diffractiion Light Expt Electronic Franck Condon
AL15.1 LCAO MO Diatomics
AL16 Photoelectron Spec Finish + 3 Degree Background
AL 17.1 UPS XPS MV=mv H2 Dissoc Variation
AL 18.1 DNA 24 March 2011
AL 19.1a AstroPhysChem 2011
AL 20.11 Carbon Chains Story
AL21.1 C60 Story 12 Ap 2011
Website created by Double Sided and designed by Harry Kroto

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Department of the Air Force remains focused on suicide prevention
Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs / Published April 01, 2021
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Space Force News
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ARLINGTON, Va. --
In 2019, the Department of the Air Force suicide count and rate were the highest in recent history.
Initially in 2020, suicide numbers declined but as the coronavirus pandemic continued, the suicide trajectory increased and returned to the high levels experienced the previous year.
The Department's efforts to address these trends focus on improving care for Airmen, Guardians and families. In 2019, the former Chief of Staff of the Air Force directed a Resilience Tactical Pause to combat the increasing suicide trend, providing the opportunity for Total Force Airmen to gather with their leaders and coworkers to focus on connectedness and resilience. In 2020, we shifted to remaining "socially connected and physically distanced" emphasizing the challenges of the COVID environment.
"One suicide is too many. Our forces and families, like most Americans, experienced many stressors related to the pandemic and loss of connections," said Brig. Gen. Claude Tudor, Air Force integrated resilience director.
The Department's suicide prevention strategy can be summarized as: 'connect, detect, protect and equip.'
"Leaders must connect with their teammates to detect those at risk," said Tudor. "Simultaneously, we must create protective environments that encourage help seeking and equip Airmen, Guardians and family members with the resources needed to meet the life stressors we face."
To empower families, the Department developed an online, family-based suicide prevention training to educate and equip family members when dealing with the signs and symptoms of suicide.
"Families are a key sensor and solution to our care and support ecosystem," Tudor said. "They are often the first to sense distress in their Airmen or Guardians. They are the key to finding potential solutions to prevent suicide and other issues associated with interpersonal and self-directed violence."
Additionally, the Department of the Air Force distributed more than 200,000 gunlocks in 2020.
"Since 2015, personally-owned firearms are involved in more than 70% of Department of the Air Force suicide deaths," said Maj. Jordan Simonson, Air Force suicide prevention research scientist. "Putting time and space between a person in distress and access to lethal means can make all the difference in preventing injury."
"We encourage 'going SLO,' said Simonson. "Using Safes, Locks or Outside the home storage options help prevent accidents and intentional self-harm."
Finding solutions to suicide is a continuous process that requires continuous refinement and collaboration.
"For 2021 and beyond, it's an all-hands-on-deck engagement strategy," said Tudor. "It will take all of us across all levels of command alongside our Total Force teammates to get after the programs, tools and resources available and put them into practice. We need to maintain engagements with our sister services, academia, industry and other government agencies to refine our approach and implement new evidence-based solutions."
"We remain focused on suicide prevention and keeping our Airmen's resiliency as a priority," said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. "We can never stop working to find ways to combat suicide and take care of our Airmen and their families."
The Department will hold a resiliency strategy summit this April where a diverse group of resiliency experts, civilian organizations, families and military members from all Department of the Air Force components will gather to propose a new resiliency strategy to meet today's demanding environment.
"We are committed to seeking innovative ways to better care for Guardians and their families, as well as the Airmen who support our Space Force team," said Gen. John W. "Jay" Raymond, U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations. "We are establishing and distilling a unique culture across this new service, one that values help-seeking and fosters resilience."
During the summit, experts will review a vast collection of data from across the Air and Space Forces gathered by family, spouses and service members. This collection will help the Department analyze this data and continue to refine the new strategy that senior leaders will learn from to make future decisions for the Department.


Hello hockey fans! We're back with another update for this season's Plus/Minus Arena Report. We want to keep you up to speed again this season on arena and franchise changes in the world of North American college, pro, and junior hockey.
University hockey is underway in Canada and college hockey is starting to ramp up in the States. We will bring you arena changes in NCAA Division 1 as well as the Canadian leagues and also list alternate venue games. We will save the outdoor games for another report. Hopefully this info will be used to plan your hockey travels, and maybe you will have the chance to attend a game in a place that you hadn't thought about before.
The Canadian University system houses some competitive hockey from coast to coast. This season there are no new teams coming on board, and no venue changes for this season, although there are arenas in the planning and construction stages for Dalhousie University in Halifax, University of Alberta, and University of Saskatchewan, so there will be some new buildings opening in the coming seasons. We love CIS hockey with its allowance for former pros to play, the use of the visor instead of the cage, and the lack of pretenses that are so common in the NCAA.
Rogers K-Rock Centre Kingston, Ontario. Kingston universities Queen's and Royal Military College will do battle in a cross-town rivalry at the home of the OHL's Kingston Frontenacs on November 17th.
TD Place Arena Ottawa, Ontario. National capital universities Carleton and U. of Ottawa will do meet in the home of the Ottawa 67's and former home of the NHL's Senators on February 11th.
Nanaimo Ice Centre Nanaimo, British Columbia. Vancouver Island University's Mariners will field a BCIHL club this season, and will call this arena home.
The Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference is a steady league that flies under the radar a bit. The same 8 schools will call the same arenas home again this season as far as we can tell.
In Quebec the RSEQ, also known as the CEGEP League is overlooked a lot, but has some interesting venues. Twelve teams from across the province make up the league and the quality of play is decent and entertaining.
The NCAA is an old, slow moving institution which sees little change from year to year. Conferences such as the ECAC have several old, timeless arenas. With no new teams coming on board and no new arenas opening this season fans will have to wait until either new schools start a hockey program or new venues are built. There are quite a few neutral site or one-off games each season however, with many being reoccurring events, and some new ones popping up from time to time. We will cover those venues in the Bonus Plus category.
Resch Center Green Bay, Wisconsin. Folks love their hockey in Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin Badgers will take on Northern Michigan in Green Bay at the home of the USHL's Gamblers on October 20th and 21st.
Gila River Arena Glendale, Arizona. Arizona State was the most recent school to jump on the D1 train, and they will play a couple games at this NHL venue, including November 17th and 18th, and January 20th.
Cross Insurance Arena Portland, Maine. Portland is in between pro teams with the AHL leaving a while back and the ECHL due to arrive next Fall. Maine Black Bears fans can catch a game against BU here on November 18th.
DCU Center Worcester, Massachusetts. Holy Cross has been rumored to make the jump to Hockey East for a while now. They will play at the venue formerly known as the Worcester Centrum to test the waters of big time arenas on November 24th and 25th.
Madison Square Garden New York. Best known as the home of the New York Rangers, MSG usually hosts a couple NCAA games annually. This season college hockey will take place in the Big Apple on November 25th as Cornell takes on BU, and again on January 20th with Midwestern teams Minnesota and Michigan State taking the ice.
PPG Paints Arena Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The home of the Penguins will host Robert Morris on December 8th, and then the annual 3 Rivers Classic on December 29th and 30th including RMU, Lake Superior, Arizona State, and Providence.
T-Mobile Arena Las Vegas, Nevada. Vegas will not only see the NHL this season, but also a college tourney on January 5th and 6th.
Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum Uniondale, New York. The newly renovated home of the Islanders will see Army take on Sacred Heart on January 6th.
Times Union Center Albany, New York. Albany saw the AHL leave town in the spring, but will still have a single game at Times Union Center as RPI and Union play for the Governor's Cup on January 27th.
TD Garden Boston, Massachusetts. Hardly a Bonus Plus venue as the Beanpot has been going on the first 2 Mondays of February for over half a century, fans can catch college hockey here for the iconic tournament as well as the Hockey East Championship in mid-March.
Little Caesars Arena Detroit, Michigan. The new Red Wings venue will try to pick where Joe Louis Arena left off and will see college hockey in Detroit as Michigan takes on Michigan on February 10th to hopefully start a new tradition.
Herb Brooks Arena Lake Placid, New York. The home of the Miracle On Ice sees a few college games each season, and this season the ECAC Tournament will return in Mid-March.
Xcel Energy Center Saint Paul, Minnesota. The NCHC will have their season ending Frozen Faceoff in the Twin Cities again this season.
The NCAA provides fans with an excellent hockey experience. Catching a game at one of these Bonus Plus sites may not have the same feel as an on-campus venue, but can be fun. Many of the alternate sites have become traditions that many fans plan their travels around. If in Canada you may have overlooked CIS hockey, but should check it out if you have the chance. Regardless of your hometown, perhaps you can decide to take in some hockey at one of these venues this season.
We will be back with reports on NCAA Division 3 and lower level college hockey, as well as a report on outdoor games. Hockey season is here! Get out and catch a game this weekend.


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The President of the European Council Donald Tusk presented his proposals on February 2 for a 'new settlement of the United Kingdom within the European Union'. If accepted, they would allow David Cameron to campaign in the announced 'Brexit referendum' for continuing membership of the UK in the bloc.
You will find here, the letter sent by the former Prime Minister of Poland to all EU members and here the text of the draft 'decision' which should be adopted by the Heads of State and Government in a meeting on February 18.
This draft is by no means a shot in the air: three months of talks were needed to arrive at this balanced compromise, which still leaves a few issues sufficiently open as to convince those skeptics that the final deal will be 'the best possible' for everyone. These talks involved high-level officials from the EU Commission and the Council Secretariat as well as close advisors of David Cameron. The Prime Minister himself toured the Member States in a declared effort to rally support for his requests for a 'reformed Union'.
They are grouped in four baskets: 'Economic Governance', 'Competitiveness', 'Sovereignty' and – the most tricky – 'Social Benefits and Free Movement'. Tusk's draft decision addresses each of them in order, but it is important first to read the recitals which precede.
They first state clearly that the decision is in conformity with the Treaties; it will just 'clarify certain questions … so that such clarification will have to be taken into consideration as being an instrument for the interpretation of the Treaties'. This is the maximum those who asked for Treaty change could get. The vast majority of the EU members had indeed told Cameron in his tour that a new Treaty is out of the question in today's circumstances.
Tusk however suggests a few openings: a sentence in square brackets states that the substance of the section on Economic Governance as well as the interpretation of the 'ever closer Union' sentence will be incorporated in the Treaties at the time of their next revision – a formula similar to the one used for the 'changes' Denmark had asked for in order to encourage a Yes vote in its second referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. For the social benefits to European Union workers, the draft suggests that new rules might be introduced in future Acts of accession.
The rest of the recitals enumerate the impressive list of opt outs that the UK has already obtained with regard to EU policies in the past: on adopting the Euro, on participating in Schengen, on measures decided in the framework of 'freedom, security and justice' … and so on. The draft contains the most elaborate presentation to date of the 'two speed Europe', as it already exists and as it may develop further. The aim is to reassure those still concerned with the famous sentence in the Treaty preamble that variable geometry is now as much an EU slogan as the 'ever closer Union'.
The section on Economic Governance addresses the difficult issue of the rights and duties of countries not participating in the Euro. Cameron had first asked for the Euro no longer to be considered as the currency of the Union – which would have required a Treaty change and was, for obvious reasons, not acceptable to the current members of the club. He then asked for a sort of veto right on decisions made at the level of the Eurozone members, a suggestion which was difficult to formulate; indeed, the latest formulation suggested infuriated the French, creating a last minute row which explains the late publication of Tusk's proposals. The text of the draft reflects the difficulty of finding a compromise. In fact, the coexistence of bodies and rules established at the level of the Union with bodies and rules with similar objectives established at the level of the Eurozone – like the banking union institutions – is an issue which needs to be addressed even outside the Brexit context. At first sight, the proposed text looks well balanced, but further negotiation will probably be needed in the days to come.
On Competitiveness, the deal was easier to make. The Union is already engaged in the 'better regulation' process advocated by the Juncker Commission and the 'active and ambitious policy of trade' reflects the various bilateral negotiations under way, of which, as was abundantly commented, the UK will no longer be part of in case of Brexit.
The section on 'Sovereignty' addresses several issues. First, the 'ever closer union', a favorite of the Eurosceptics which has been discussed at length in all possible EU academic circles since Cameron opened a debate on the meaning of the sentence in 2014, in the European Council meeting which appointed Jean Claude Juncker. At the time, the Council stated that: 'the concept of ever closer union allows for different paths of integration for different countries, allowing those that want to deepen integration to move ahead, while respecting the wish of those who do not want to deepen any further'. The Tusk draft goes further in stating explicitly that the UK is not committed to further political integration of the European Union, but adds subtly that this is due to 'the specific situation it has under the Treaties', which seems to imply that this does not apply to other Member States. The other issues mentioned in this section are subsidiarity, a precise procedure to strengthen the ability of national parliaments to challenge EU legislation in the making – which should not be objected to by many -, a confirmation that the UK is not bound by policies of which a protocol exempts it and… a confirmation of an evident truth – that national security remains the sole responsibility of the Member States.
And then the 'Social benefits and free movement'. A request was made, rather foolishly, when the debate about the referendum started, to stop the (numerous) citizens from the 'new' Member States who came to London in the last decade from enjoying social benefits in the UK as soon as they arrive. The arguments that discriminating against workers from other Member States is contrary to the basic EU treaty principles, that these migrants rather contribute positively to prosperity in the country, and – as was confirmed later – that the real problem is rather the migrants from outside the EU, did not succeed in removing this request from the table. Since it was not possible to give the UK satisfaction under the Treaties, a formula had to be invented to address the substance of the problem. The draft decision first elaborates on limits to the free movement of workers which could be considered as 'legitimate' – when social benefits are abused or when they face 'flows of workers of such a scale that they have negative effects'. It then introduces the idea of an 'alert and safeguard mechanism' when the flow is of 'an exceptional magnitude over an extended period of time'. All Member States could use this mechanism to limit access to in-work benefits 'for a total period of up to four years from the commencement of employment'; but it would only apply to workers 'newly entering' the country's labor market. Precisions in the timings are left for the final negotiation. Resistance from the new EU members can be expected, but Cameron might count on sympathy from Eurosceptics in Poland, Hungary and others for the overall 'spirit' of his proposals.
Permanent Representatives and heads of governments' 'Sherpas' will have a first look at the text on Friday, February 5. There will be little time after that for further negotiation before the February 18 European Council. But, according to Tusk, there is no other choice than success: 'to fail would be compromising our common future'. If the text is adopted, Cameron will probably announce the date of the referendum at the end of the European Council. His colleagues will press him to choose the earliest possible: the Union is faced with other problems of a magnitude which allows to consider Cameron's demands as secondary and not really timely. He is expected to announce that the referendum will take place on June 23, 2016.
It is now fairly clear that Cameron will play a strong, personal role in making the case for the UK to 'remain' in the EU. But at the same time, his colleagues will know that he will need their help in the campaign to make the scale weigh in favor of Britain staying in the Union – which will remain uncertain until the vote. They will know also, in looking at various exit scenarios developed recently, that a Brexit would be catastrophic for the UK – and a further blow to the Union, which is already suffering one of the toughest periods in its history.


2019 New Hampshire's Kid Governor Lola Giannelli (center) on officially being sworn into office! Joining her on the New Hampshire's Kid Executive Council will be Ben Vachon (left) and Evelyn Ellis-Haines (right).
CONCORD, NH – Governor Chris Sununu announced the 2019 "Governor for a Day" essay competition. The competition is open to all middle and high school students, grades 6-12. The initiative was launched in New Hampshire to foster civic education and promote youth participation in government.
Entry deadline is April 26.


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For the past five years, Woodstock middle years students have visited the Samvedna Disability Resource Centre at Village Dhana on a weekly basis to interact with children with mental and physical disabilities. This is a wonderful opportunity for our students to gain an understanding about different kinds of developmental difficulties and how appropriate interventions can have positive results. It has been a pleasure to see the friendly relationships which have formed between Woodstock students and the children who visit the center which is run by Landour Community Hospital.
On Thursday, October 5th, students and staff members who have been interacting with the children at Samveda were invited to celebrate the official opening of the newly renovated Samvedna Disability Resource Centre at Village Dhana. The renovations were facilitated by the Australian government. This special function was hosted by the centre's team and included a formal program, tour, and a lunch, organized by the Community Engagement Department at Woodstock. The guest of honour, Mr. Timothy Kendall, the Economic Counsellor of the Australian High Commission, provided an accolading message to the teachers and staff of Samvedna to honour their good work, encouraging the team to continue their support of children with developmental disabilities in rural Uttrakhand. Other guests present included the centre's students and parents, Landour Community Hospital representatives, and interested local citizens. We look forward to continuing our service with Samvedna, and to use the new space in our facilitation of student learning.


The late 1960s gave us Neil Young. The 80s saw the rise of Paul Young. The Noughties then chipped in with Will Young. Renowned music producer, Youth, turns sixty next year. How time flies. Fear not, dear reader, because Dublin-founded and London-based trio, whenyoung are here to bring fresh vigour to the picture. Age certainly has not wearied them so far, on the evidence of their performance at Rough Trade.
Led by singer, Aoife Power, they bristled with emotive charge. It's hard to get past her surname without remarking on the lyrical and emotional intensity that comes from her central presence. Live, how that power was channelled and controlled really comes across. In the intimate space of Rough Trade's Live Room, when they sang, "Closer, closer," on 'Never Let Go', we felt the immediacy even further. Whether you're still in the bloom of youth, or in the list of aging Youngs above, whenyoung are an invigorating force, capturing what it feels like to seek your way through this curious thing called life.


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Business, Economics and Jobs
Kuala Lumpur: 10,000 protest rare earth plant over health concerns
November 25, 2012 · 3:34 PM EST
By Talia Ralph
A Malaysian police officer asks anti-Lynas activists to move off the road as they protest against the Lynas Corporation near the under construction Lynas plant in Gebeng, some 270 kilometers east of Kuala Lumpur on April 19, 2012. Scores of anti-lynas activists gathered to record their protest during a media tour to the plant. The Australian miner Lynas Corporation will process rare earths imported from the Mount Weld mine in Western Australia.
Nearly 10,000 people took to the streets in Kuala Lumpur Sunday to protest the opening of Australia-based mining company Lynas' new rare earth plant.
The plant, which is the largest outside China, has already received its first shipment of rare earth concentrates and is scheduled to begin operations within the coming weeks, Channel News Asia reported.
The rally is a culmination of a 13-day march against the plant's opening, and was organized by environmental activist group Himpunan Hijau, who have been demonstrating against the plant's opening for two years.
The activists and demonstrators are concerned with the implications the plant will have on residents' health, saying that the plant could produce dangerous radiation, the New York Times reported. Lynas has denied such radiation concerns.
The protesters were in a standoff with police at Kuala Lumpur's landmark Independent Square, or Dataran Merdeka, vowing to camp there until Monday morning, Xinhua reported.
"We hope the government can hear his people's voices. I believe they can't handle any untoward consequences. Advanced countries like Japan couldn't handle (radiation-related disasters), let alone Malaysia," demonstrator Andrew Lim told Xinhua.
Deputy Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar told reporters that the protesters had not informed police of their rally, nor received permission to picket in the Square, the Malaysian Insider reported.
More from GlobalPost: Malaysia: police fire tear gas, water cannons at huge demonstration
Business, Economics and JobsLifestyleHealthScienceLifestyle & BeliefHealth & MedicineEnvironmentAgence France Presse


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Does being an economist make me a bad person?
Anisha Kidd
Julie Nelson's economic paper "Poisioning the well, or how Economic Theory Damages Moral Imagination" poses an interesting question: is there such a thing as ethical economics? Economic history and literature are embedded with an array of theories that have nothing to do with ethics or moral inclinations. For example, Adam Smith's invisible hand insisted that the market itself would direct individual behaviour in the right direction.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." – Adam Smith
Even social economist Karl Marx asserted that specific economic conditions were required for the workers to ignite in social revolution, as opposed to any other justifiable need for change.
"The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." – Karl Marx
Nelson stresses this point throughout her article, conveying our 'standard' conformation to the idea of the 'economic man', who only deals in self-interest and individualism, is paramount to poisoning the well of moral imagination. The notion of rationality, market mechanisms, and impersonality in the market sphere are actors suppressing our inclinations to prioritise our affective moral response. Consequently, our dependence on these economic values has amounted to a 'ubiquitous self-fulfilling prophecy' adopted by markets, media and increasingly swaying public perception.
So, are we really stacking the deck in favour of individualism and self-interest?
During the holidays I went to watch for myself Jordan Belfort's infamous biographical film 'The Wolf of Wall Street' in Xtreme Screen. Jordan Belfort, among other things, epitomises the harsh reality that economics relies on – greed, greed and greed. Was I sure that Jordan Belfort was a terrible guy whose disregard for human life was appalling? Was I sure that he was acting in an illegal manner and therefore everything he did was an affront to civilised society? Was I sure that I would never do anything like that? Yeah, I was sure of all these things. But at the same time Belfort's life exuded an irrepressible allure, of wealth, money, drugs and power. And it turned out that all of these were things that I wanted and things that I considered skirting ethical principals and moral inclinations to get.
There are many critics of economics out there who will be quick to jump on this increasingly prevalent percepting of the market. Capitalism is seen as the harbourer of greed, brutality and immorality, an idea reinforced by the likes of Charles Ponzi, the Lehman Brothers or Jordan Belfort. But the like of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates or Melbourne's own Simon Griffiths similarly refute this condemnation with their renowned ethical ventures.
So, maybe economics does endorse the prioritisation of profit maximisation and self-interest – or, perhaps we have lost sight of the broader social implications that economics often acknowledges but cannot address. It is true that economics has channels in which social concepts may be addressed within an economic context. Perhaps the simplest way this may be captured is through the concept of negative externalities that attempt to consider and quantify the wider social implications of economic decisions. However, ultimately even in the case of negative externalities, economic forces are the tools used to bring them to light – as highlighted by the Gillard Government's introduction of a carbon tax in 2012. As a hugely unpopular economic policy that was swiftly disregarded by the Coalition, the carbon tax was essentially a social policy implemented using economic tools. Perhaps this was the source of its downfall; the economic framework encouraged the public to prioritise the economic ratifications rather than consider the social implications of the tax and consequently led to vehement opposition and condemnation (enough to displace a government).
Has economics disregarded social inclinations or have individuals? I don't have the answer to this question. I readily admit that there is an abundance of ethically conscious individuals, organisations and institutions in the world. However, like Julia Nelson I agree that ethical imperatives that are not necessarily easily quantifiable or standard for the neoclassical 'economic man' need to become a clear part of all economic conversations. It is up to the public to make a decision that economic and ethical thought should be integrally linked.
Image by Gerd Altmann, https://pixabay.com/illustrations/face-man-money-euro-finance-76561/. Licence at https://pixabay.com/service/license/.


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Meditating on our Sixth Sense: Love.
0 Boost Score Genevieve Gellert-Ilg (1,375,690)
I often feel like an exhibit.
That is because of the rarity of my red hair and the shape of my naked body.
On a recent trip to Europe with my husband, I learned a tremendous amount about my marriage, my sexuality, my body, and especially my capacity to sense myself. This personal set of revelations started while at the Cluny Museum in Paris, a museum dedicated to medieval art.
I was in the gallery for The Lady and the Unicorn, which is a series of six tapestries woven in Flanders from wool and silk dated from the year 1500. Five of the six tapestries are said to represent the five traditionally recognized senses—with a radical twist.
The sixth tapestry is often interpreted as representing love. I sat before it, planning to meditate on the concept of "love as a sixth sense."
In fairness, others interpret the sixth tapestry as representations of understanding or virginity, but love struck me in the moment—and that's the interpretation that resonated most with me.
Previously, I thought of love as an igniter of the five traditionally recognized senses, and not a sense itself. The tapestry suggests that the idea of "love as a sixth sense" is at least 517 years old, but it's certainly new to me.
At this time, instead of using the concept of love to manifest positive feelings toward myself, I perceived myself through love—using love as a conduit to embrace radical self-acceptance.
As I started to cry, lifted from the fog of abuse, I surrendered to the acknowledgement that—like so many of us—I was mortified by my naked body.
Giving myself permission to be freed from the prison of shame, I sensed love for my entire self for the first time. Previously, I only felt this way about parts of myself.
"There's nothing shameful about experiencing our nakedness. People have perverted our natural beauty, our nakedness," our tour guide said earlier in the day—and that statement came to mind while I was admiring the tapestry, even though there wasn't nudity in it.
I'll never forget these words, for this simple sentence—born out of an assessment of art history in the basement of a museum—was the liberation I'd been yearning for, for nearly a decade.
I've come to learn that I had internalized an accumulation of multi-generational and multi-cultural shame for nakedness, which manifested in my inability to perceive my body fully through love—the root of my maladaptive coping.
While sitting in front of one of the greatest works of art from the Middle Ages—on my birthday, no less—I finally understood love, and love of self, as a sixth sense.
Love, as a sixth sense, is the mechanism through which we physiologically and intrinsically feel self-worth, acceptance, affection, and regard for our own well-being and happiness.
I finally realized that our barest and most vulnerable selves is to be perceived without shame by all the senses, including the sense of love.
Inspired to continue sensing love, no differently than I sense other stimuli, I thought it might be interesting to fuse loving-kindness meditation with a basic sensory meditation.
I experimented and engaged with a self-guided meditation of the five traditionally recognized senses, but concluded with exploring love as a sense, instead of as an object or emotion.
I created a guided meditation that I call "Returning Home," and I've used it daily now.
With increased wakefulness and friendliness in a comfortable and dignified seated position, I start with breath awareness to settle into the moment for about two minutes.
I then gently guide my attention, in the present moment, to the sounds, aromas, tastes, light patterns and images (either with my eyes open with a soft gaze or closed), and touch of either the naked or clothed physical body, always spending a few seconds feeling my heartbeat.
Then, after guiding my attention to the sense of my heart beating, I invite myself to send love to myself, those I love, those I feel neutral about, and to all beings by reciting: "Just as I wish too, may you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease, peace, and joy."
Lastly, I focus my attention not on the act of receiving and sending love, but on the sensations I have—knowing that I am and feel loved by many in diverse ways, and that I too send love well.
I gently refocus my attention on my breath awareness, until I feel ready to open my eyes.
Without grasping, resisting, or developing storylines to explain why I sense as I do, I notice, acknowledge, and try to let go, if needed.
Derek Walcott writes, in his poem, "Love After Love:"
"The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door…You will love again the stranger who was yourself."
And this is why I meditate—to return home to the stranger who was myself and to sense love for the very human, beautiful, imperfect woman that I am.
I encourage us all to try to tap into the sense of love, while extending it to everyone. Cultivating love and perceiving through love have become key ways for me to adapt to today's chaotic and concerning world and to navigate a personal journey of health and healing.
Meditating on the sixth sense of love anchors us in our breath and in ourselves—in our home.
Author: Genevieve Gellert-Ilg
Image: Unsplash; Wikimedia Commons
Copy Editor: Callie Rushton
Genevieve Gellert-Ilg


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N Engl J Med. 2004 Jun 17;350(25):2572-81.
Efficacy of B-cell-targeted therapy with rituximab in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Edwards JC1, Szczepanski L, Szechinski J, Filipowicz-Sosnowska A, Emery P, Close DR, Stevens RM, Shaw T.
University College London, London, United Kingdom. jo.edwards@ucl.ac.uk
An open-label study indicated that selective depletion of B cells with the use of rituximab led to sustained clinical improvements for patients with rheumatoid arthritis. To confirm these observations, we conducted a randomized, double-blind, controlled study.
We randomly assigned 161 patients who had active rheumatoid arthritis despite treatment with methotrexate to receive one of four treatments: oral methotrexate (> or =10 mg per week) (control); rituximab (1000 mg on days 1 and 15); rituximab plus cyclophosphamide (750 mg on days 3 and 17); or rituximab plus methotrexate. Responses defined according to the criteria of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and the European League against Rheumatism (EULAR) were assessed at week 24 (primary analyses) and week 48 (exploratory analyses).
At week 24, the proportion of patients with 50 percent improvement in disease symptoms according to the ACR criteria, the primary end point, was significantly greater with the rituximab-methotrexate combination (43 percent, P=0.005) and the rituximab-cyclophosphamide combination (41 percent, P=0.005) than with methotrexate alone (13 percent). In all groups treated with rituximab, a significantly higher proportion of patients had a 20 percent improvement in disease symptoms according to the ACR criteria (65 to 76 percent vs. 38 percent, P< or =0.025) or had EULAR responses (83 to 85 percent vs. 50 percent, P< or =0.004). All ACR responses were maintained at week 48 in the rituximab-methotrexate group. The majority of adverse events occurred with the first rituximab infusion: at 24 weeks, serious infections occurred in one patient (2.5 percent) in the control group and in four patients (3.3 percent) in the rituximab groups. Peripheral-blood immunoglobulin concentrations remained within normal ranges.
In patients with active rheumatoid arthritis despite methotrexate treatment, a single course of two infusions of rituximab, alone or in combination with either cyclophosphamide or continued methotrexate, provided significant improvement in disease symptoms at both weeks 24 and 48.
Copyright 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society
B cells, be gone--B-cell depletion in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. [N Engl J Med. 2004]
Rituximab for rheumatoid arthritis. [N Engl J Med. 2004]
Tumor necrosis factor inhibitors for rheumatoid arthritis. [N Engl J Med. 2006]
10.1056/NEJMoa032534
Antibodies, Monoclonal/adverse effects
Antibodies, Monoclonal/pharmacology
Antibodies, Monoclonal/therapeutic use*
Antibodies, Monoclonal, Murine-Derived
Antigens, CD20/immunology*
Antirheumatic Agents/adverse effects
Antirheumatic Agents/pharmacology
Antirheumatic Agents/therapeutic use*
Arthritis, Rheumatoid/drug therapy*
Arthritis, Rheumatoid/immunology
B-Lymphocytes/drug effects*
Bacterial Infections/etiology
Cyclophosphamide/adverse effects
Cyclophosphamide/therapeutic use
Immunosuppressive Agents/adverse effects
Immunosuppressive Agents/therapeutic use
Methotrexate/adverse effects
Antigens, CD20
Atypon - PDF
CYCLOPHOSPHAMIDE - Hazardous Substances Data Bank
RITUXIMAB - Hazardous Substances Data Bank


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Posts tagged with "Fox Business"
Above, Turkey Hill is going to be giving away free ice cream to a limited number of people who correctly guess its upcoming Mystery Flavor. (Photo source: Turkey Hill Dairy
Turkey Hill is offering 'free ice cream for life' if you can guess its mystery flavor
Turkey Hill is going to be giving away free ice cream—a 48-ounce container of ice cream gratis once a month—to a limited number of people who correctly guess its upcoming mystery flavor, reports Fox Business.
The Pennsylvania-based ice cream manufacturer announced that the contest will run through Monday, March 14.
"Think you and your family can guess our new Mystery Flavor? Here's your chance to put your taste buds to the test," Turkey Hill wrote in a tweet on Tuesday, January 4. "You have until 3/14/22 to solve the most chilling mystery. Visit https://turkeyhill.com/mysteryflavor to enter for your chance to win ice cream for life."
Unlike other food contests—which reserve their offers to one person at a time—Turkey Hill's sweepstakes rules state that the company is extending a variety of free ice cream prizes to a list of winners.
There will be one grand prize, which is the lifetime supply. Turkey Hill's "for life" offer will technically last for a maximum of 50 years, but in that time, the winner will be awarded a 48-ounce container of ice cream per month. That's a whopping 1,800 pounds of ice cream if the winner redeems the full 50 years—a total approximate retail value of $3,859.40, according to the current suggested retail price in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
The other prizes Turkey Hill will be awarded to correct Mystery Flavor guessers include ten free ice cream offers for one year, 15 free ice cream offers for six months, and 30 free ice cream offers for three months.
"Surprising our fans with a delicious, but mysterious new flavor is what the Mystery Flavor is all about," Turkey Hill Vice President of Marketing Kriston Ohm said in a statement. "We like to have fun at Turkey Hill and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to bring the unexpected to the freezer aisle. Our new Mystery Flavor is sure to sneak some mystery and intrigue into homes across the nation-we can't wait for you to try it."
If you're looking to put your name in the running, you can scan the QR code that's printed on Turkey Hill's limited-edition mystery flavor container or you can simply visit TurkeyHill.com/MysteryFlavor. Contest hopefuls can submit one guess per day along with their contact information. Putting in multiple submissions in a single day with alternative email or mailing addresses will lead to disqualification.
Contest entrants must be 18 or older, but entrants between the ages of 13 and 17 can enter if they have their parent or guardian's permission.
Guesses for the mystery flavor guess must be submitted no later than March 14, at 11:59:59 (ET).
Turkey Hill's winners will be selected the next day through a random drawing, and they will be contacted about their prizes through email or U.S. mail. Once the winners have claimed their prizes, their identities will be revealed on Turkey Hill's Mystery Flavor contest page.
Research contact: @FoxBusiness
This entry was posted in Business and tagged 48-ounce container, Contest, Deadline is March 14, Fox Business, Guess the flavor, Ice cream gratis once a month for 50 years, Mystery Flavor, QR code, Turkey Hill on January 11, 2022 by Poll-Vaulter.
Photo source: @circleoflifechiropractic7675/#teachers/Instagram
Survey: 48% of teachers are considering quitting their jobs; 38% are on the verge of changing careers
A recent survey showed that nearly half of teachers are considering quitting their jobs—with about one-third of respondents admitting that they might leave the profession entirely, reports Fox Business.
Data from Teachers Pay Teachers, an online forum for curriculum content for teachers, revealed that 48% of 6,000 teachers surveyed in November said they had considered changing jobs in the past month—an increase from 32% in June, K-12 Dive reports.
The outlet noted that 34% of those teachers surveyed said they had considered changing careers in the past month and 11% said they considered taking a leave of absence.
"Ten years ago, the program enrollment for traditional ed [education] programs started to decrease," Dr. Heather Sparks, director of Teacher Education at Oklahoma City University, said in an interview that aired on Varney and Co. on Monday, January 10.
"People are just not valuing the profession anymore," she added. "These are folks who put in four years and then some, continue to get training even after their degree. and yet are paid minimally compared to other professionals who have four-year degrees."
Schools nationwide say they are dealing with significant teacher shortages, and some principals are saying the start of the school year was the most difficult one yet.
Officals are pointing to an array of factors that have converged to create the vacancies in the wake of COVID-19, and experts warn the problem may not be fixed any time soon.
Administrators are being called into the classroom in some districts dealing with teacher shortages, and several places are calling on retirees to step in and fill the voids.
As teachers continue to flee the profession, studies show fewer college students are pursuing education degrees – a trend researchers had seen long before COVID-19 hit.
Enrollment in education programs at Louisiana colleges has fallen by nearly 8,000 students over the past two decades, according to statewide enrollment data from the Louisiana Board of Regents.
The pandemic is not the sole reason why teachers are leaving the profession, but it has contributed to the burnout that has been common among educators for years.
"Teachers, because of COVID and other reasons, are under a lot of stress," teacher and President of the Lafayette Parish Association of Educators Julia Reed said at a school board meeting last October 6, according to the Lafayette Daily Advertiser.
Reed noted that, when she speaks with teachers, "their No. 1 issue is not money; it's workload."
This entry was posted in Business and tagged 38% are on the verge of changing careers, 48% of respondents consider quitting their jobs, 6K teachers surveyed last November, COVID-19, Fox Business, Julia Reed, K-12 Dive, Lafayette Daily Advertiser, Lafayette Parish Association of Educators, Louisana Board of Regents, Oklahoma City University, Survey, Teacher shortages, Teachers Pay Teacher, Varney and Co. Dr. Heather Sparks on January 10, 2022 by Poll-Vaulter.
Above, Beatles drummer Ringo Starr will benefit charity with his new book. (Photo source: News Break)
Ringo Starr announces coffee table book for charity
Ringo Starr has announced his intention to pen a coffee table book full of photos and memories from his days as a member of The Beatles—and the signed copies, at $495 each—will benefit a charity, reports Fox Business.
"Lifted–Fab Images and Memories in My Life with the Beatles from Across the Universe," is due by Valentine's Day 2022, according to Julien's Auctions, the book's exclusive retailer.
Proceeds from the limited edition book will benefit The Lotus Foundation, which is focused on "advancing social welfare in diverse areas, included but not limited to substance abuse, cerebral palsy, brain tumors, cancer, battered women and their children, homelessness, and animals in need," per the organization's website.
According to Julien's, the book will offer up the 81-year-old drummer's "singular and revealing perspective on his time in the greatest band in music history."
"I am not writing this book as a Beatles historian," Starr said in a statement shared online. "I'm writing this book as a Beatle—and there's only a couple of us who can do that."
He added that he didn't keep all the photos included in the book, but they'd recently circled back into his life "from here, there and everywhere—online and off."
The pictures, he said, "have somehow helped me get back to seeing my life with The Fab Four through fresh eyes."
"A lot of the photos in this book I spotted on my phone and on my computer and 'lifted' them because they brought back so many fabulous memories," he continued.
"In recent years, I'd gather these Beatles photos that I sometimes barely remembered. After a while, I thought, how great it would be to 'lift' these fantastic photos and some of my other favorites for charity and tell my true tales that they inspire about what the four of us—John, Paul, George and Ringo—went through back in the day. And the best thing is that it's all for a good cause because the money is going to our Lotus Foundation."
"So this a book full of Beatle images that many people haven't seen and stories that I'm sharing with a little help from my longtime writer friend David Wild," said Starr. "We've all been through a pretty tough time for a lot of people who've been locked down, and this book has really lifted my spirits and took me back to where I once belonged in a whole new way."
He concluded: "And in the end, that's why this new book is called 'Lifted.' The Beatles changed my life forever. So it's about getting back and giving back."
Five hundred copies of of the book will be produced as a hardcover "signature edition" signed by Starr.
This entry was posted in Business and tagged $495 for signed edition, Beatles, Drummer, Fab four, Fox Business, Julien's Auctions, Lifted-FabImages and Meories, Paul McCartney, Photos and true tales, Ringo Starr, Social welfare, Valentine's Day 2022, Writer David Wild on December 23, 2021 by Poll-Vaulter.
Above, Shake Shack's new drive-thru concept. (Photo source: Heather Lalley/Restaurant Business)
Shake Shack expands into drive-thru industry
In 2022, Shake Shack plans to open 45 to 50 new restaurants, including up to ten drive-thru locations, the popular fast-casual burger chain has announced. But already, the company's first drive-thru location has officially opened for business in Maple Grove, Minnesota, Fox Business reports.
The new location—part of the Shoppes at Arbor Lakes and open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.—features a split-kitchen design; with a separate kitchen dedicated to drive-thru orders, an outdoor digital menu board, a two-lane ordering system, and a separate pick-up window.
In addition to ordering directly in Shack and at drive-thru lanes, guests will have the option of placing orders ahead of time for pickup via the Shack app and online at order.shakeshack.com. The Maple Grove Shack will offer contactless payment at order point for ease of convenience.
Since the original Shack opened in 2004 in NYC's Madison Square Park, the company has expanded to more than 350 locations in 32 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
"Our Maple Grove opening is a huge step forward for our brand. We've been envisioning drive-thru for some time now and have been working diligently to make the experience uniquely Shake Shack. We're bringing our guests an even greater quality, craft, care and experience while adding a new level of convenience," Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti said in a statement. "We'll be learning a lot from this location and will continue to optimize and adapt as we roll out more of these formats next year."
More than half of the planned new locations will open in suburban markets; and will primarily be freestanding and shopping center locations, with enhanced convenience options such as drive-thru and drive-up. Among the suburban locations will be those near Kansas City, Orlando, and Detroit.
This entry was posted in Business and tagged and Detroit, At Shoppes at Arbor Lakes, CEO Randy Garutti, Expect three near Kansas City, First drive-thru in Maple Grove, First-ever in 2004 in NYC's Madison square Park, Fox Business, in 2022, including up to ten drive-thrus, Minnesota, more than 350 U.S. locations, Mostly suburban markets for the drive-thrus, Now, Orlando, Outdoor digital menu board, Plans to open 45-50 new restaurants, Separate pick-up window, Shake Shack, Split-kitchen design, Two-lane ordering system on December 8, 2021 by Poll-Vaulter.
Above, Mark Cuban. (Photo source: NBC 5 Dallas-Forth Worth)
Mark Cuban buys the entire Texas town of Mustang
Mark Cuban , the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and "Shark Tank" investor, purchased an entire Texas town last month, but says his plans for the property are still up in the air, reports Fox Business.
The Dallas Morning News was first to report that the 77 acres that comprise the town of Mustang—roughly 55 miles south of Dallas, with a population of 21—were "lassoed" by the entrepreneur.
The deal includes an abandoned strip club where a murder occurred, a building for the volunteer fire department, and a trailer park in the town of 20-some people at last count.
"I don't know what if anything I will do with it," Cuban told the newspaper, noting that he only bought the town because a good friend needed to offload it.
It's unclear what Cuban paid for Mustang, but the town went onto the market for $4 million back in 2017, and the price was eventually reduced to $2 million.
Mike Turner, the real estate broker who listed the property, told the Houston Chronicle of Mustang during a 2017 interview, "There was a strip club there called Wispers that has since permanently closed. There was a killing there, the business had quite a tale."
As an added bonus for Cuban's purchase, Turner says, "There is a resident alligator in one of the ponds."
Research contact @FoxBusiness
This entry was posted in Business and tagged 'Shark Tank' investor, 77 acres, Buys entire town of Mustang Texas, Fox Business, Friend needed to see the town, Houston Chronicle, Mark Cuban, Owner of Dallas Mavericks, Population of 20, The Dallas Morning News on December 3, 2021 by Poll-Vaulter.
Above, reports are circulating that Trump had COVID before his first debate with Biden ilast September. (Photo source: epsilontheory.com)
Bombshell: Trump tested positive for COVID and lied about it before first presidential debate in 2020
In a bolt from the blue, a former member of the Trump Administration has revealed in a new book that former President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19 three days before his first general election debate with former Vice President Joe Biden and arrived late for the event so he wouldn't have to be tested for the virus, reports CNN.
The revelation came in "A Chief's Chief," by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and was first reported by The Guardian. Meadows writes that after Trump tested positive, he then got a negative test—adding that "nothing was going to stop [Trump] from going out there."
The debate was September 29. Two days later—on October 2 —Trump announced that he had contracted COVID-19.
You'll remember that, according to debate moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News, Trump and his entourage arrived too late on the day of the debate—the afternoon of the 29th—to be tested by an independent party.
As Wallace recounted: "For them to get tested, there wouldn't have been enough time to have the test and have the debate at 9:00 that night," he said. "They didn't show up until 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 in the afternoon. There was an honor system when it came to the people that came into the hall from the two campaigns."
The honor system isn't really something that Donald Trump buys into. This is a man who made more than 30,000 — yes, that number is correct—false or misleading claims over the course of his four years, according to The Washington Post.
Trump released a statement on Wednesday morning, December 1, disputing Meadows' account.
"The story of me having COVID prior to, or during, the first debate is Fake News," Trump said. "In fact, a test revealed I did not have Covid prior to the debate."
However, according to CNN, the context around when Trump got sick is not helpful to the former president. The news network says, "He himself openly speculated that he contracted COVID during an event for military families at the White House. In an interview on October 8 on Fox Business, Trump speculated that it was that event where he got the virus.
In that same debate, when the conversation turned to the importance of masking as a way to mitigate the spread of the virus, Trump offered this comparison to Biden: "I don't wear a mask like him. Every time you see him, he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from him, and he shows up with the biggest mask I've ever seen."
Research contact: @CNN
This entry was posted in Politics and tagged Arrived late to debate and did not take tesst, Chris Wallace of Fox News, CNN, Fox Business, Revealed in "A Chief's Chief" by Mrk Medows, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Then-VP Joe Biden, Trump had COVID at presidential debate on September 29, Two days later announced he was sick on December 3, 2021 by Poll-Vaulter.
Photo source: In-N-Out Burger.
California shuts down a second In-N-Out location for defying COVID rules
Northern California health officials shut down another In-N-Out Burger restaurantlocation on Tuesday, October 26, for allowing indoor dining without requiring patrons to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test, Fox Business reports.
Contra Costa County suspended the permit of the In-N-Out located at 570 Contra Costa Blvd. in Pleasant Hill after the business received an additional two citations. The In-N-Out locations in Pinole and San Ramon also each received violation notices Tuesday for violating the vaccine order.
"We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government," Arnie Wensinger, In-N-Out's chief legal and business officer, shot back in a statement reacting to the most recent closure—categorizing the move by county officials as "intrusive, improper, and offensive" government overreach.
"It is unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe to force our restaurant associates to segregate customers into those who may be served and those who may not, either based on the documentation they carry, or any other reason," Wensinger said. "We fiercely disagree with any government dictate that forces a private company to discriminate against customers who choose to patronize their business."
Under Contra Costa County's order, which has been in effect since Sept. 22, restaurants and other businesses operating indoors, such as bars and gyms, are required to check that all customers 12 or older are fully vaccinated or have had a negative coronavirus test within the past 72 hours.
The Pleasant Hill location had repeatedly violated the county order, received four citations over the past several weeks and paid fines totaling $1,750 before it was shutdown, the Los Angeles Times reported. The restaurant can appeal the suspension of its business, however it must remain closed "until the hazard is abated."
"They have just flouted the law and it was other residents who complained about them, and that is why the health department followed up and issued fines," Contra Costa County District 1 supervisor John Gioia told KABC-TV. "They need to do what 99% of the other restaurants are doing, follow the rules in the interest of public health and not be the exception."
his comes about two weeks after another In-N-Out Burger located in San Francisco's Fisherman's Warf was shut down for allowing indoor dining without checking for proof of vaccination. The local ordinance in San Francisco, which is among the strictest in the state, does not allow patrons to show a negative test in lieu of vaccination proof. That In-N-Out location has since reopened for outdoor dining.
Brooke Armour, of the California Business Roundtable, said the ordinance put employers in a contentious situation because they have to ask their fast food employee— many of whom are high school students—to confront customers about their medical information on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, a new restriction in Los Angeles, which was approved by City Council earlier this month, is set to take effect on November 8 and will require proof of vaccination for restaurants and to enter other indoor venues, including shopping malls and theaters.
Research source: @FoxBusiness
This entry was posted in Business and tagged Arnie Wensinger, California Business Roundtable, Deviating from COVID rules, Fox Business, IN-N-Out Burger, KABC-TV, Must remain closed 'until hazard is abated', must show vaccination proof or negative COVID test proof, To eat inside, Two restaurant locations closed on October 28, 2021 by Poll-Vaulter.
Photo source: Peloton
Peloton subpoenaed by DOJ, DHS for documents, information related to treadmill injuries
Peloton has been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, which are asking for documents and information regarding injuries experienced on its fitness equipment, the company said on Friday, August 27.
The New York City-based fitness company said it was being investigated for injuries associated with its Tread+ treadmill in papers filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The SEC said it's also investigating Peloton's public disclosures of injuries associated with its products, Fox Business reports.
Peloton issued a voluntary recall of its Tread and Tread+ treadmill products in May after the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued an "urgent warning" after one child was killed and citing multiple incidents of "small children and a pet being injured beneath the machines."
Peloton initially pushed back at the consumer watchdog agency's warning. Peloton said Friday it was also named in several lawsuits related to the recalls. Peloton did not immediately return Fox Business' request for comment.
The news comes after the connected fitness company announced on Thursday, August 26, that it would cut the price of its original spin bike by hundreds of dollars from $1,895 to $1,495.
This entry was posted in Business and tagged Children and pets injured and killed, CPSC, DHS, DOJ, Fox Business, Inujuries on Tread + Treadmill, Peloton, Price cut, Subpoenaed on August 27, 2021 by Poll-Vaulter.
Above, the Unity 22 mission on July 11. (Photo source: Branson)
Virgin Galactic Sweepstakes offers two 'out-of-this-world' free seats on 2022 spaceflight
Following Sunday's successful Unity 22 mission, with billionaire owner Richard Branson aboard, Virgin Galactic is giving away two free seats on the aerospace company's first commercial suborbital spaceflight slated for 2022.
According to a report by Fox Business, the giveaway, in partnership with charity fundraiser Omaze, will allow the winners to experience microgravity at the edge of space aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity.
"Until now, most people could only dream of venturing beyond Earth. Now, we are incredibly excited to team up with Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic, and Space for Humanity to give two everyday citizens a chance of going to space, Omaze co-founder and CEO Matt Pohlson said in a statement, adding, "Omaze was founded on democratizing access to out-of-reach experiences. It's an honor to advance this ideal to space travel while partnering with an organization dedicated to democratizing space for the better of all humankind."
Interested individuals can make a charitable donation on Omaze between now and August 31. The proceeds will be given to Space for Humanity, a non-profit which aims to "expand access to space, train our leaders of tomorrow and contribute to a culture of interconnectedness."
Submissions for the sweepstakes will close on September 1, with winners expected to be announced around September 29, Fox Business reports. Entry information is available here.
In addition to the seats, winners will be given an all-expenses–paid trip to New Mexico and a tour of Spaceport America by Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson.
This entry was posted in Business and tagged Deadline is September 1, Fox Business, Omaze, Richard Branson, Space for Humanity, Space tourism, Spaceport America, Suborbital flight, Sweepstakes, Two free tickets on Unity mission slated for 2022, Virgin Galactic on July 12, 2021 by Poll-Vaulter.
Above, the Kardashians. (Photo source: #kardashians/Instagram)
Kardashians sign exclusive deal with Hulu to create new content for late 2021
Kardashian-Jenners, we hardly missed ye. After announcing in September that they would shutter their 20-season reality show on the E! Channel in 2021, the over-exposed family already is planning a return, Fox Business reports.
During Disney's Investor Day presentation, the reality TV icons—Kris, Kendall, and Kylie Jenner; and Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe Kardashian; as well as Kendall and Kylie Jenner—will create global content that will stream exclusively on Hulu in the United States, and on Star internationally in multiple territories. It is expected to debut in late 2021.
It is currently unclear whether the family members will appear in the content they are creating. It is also unclear whether Kris's son Rob Kardashian will participate in the deal, although he was not mentioned in the press release, Fox says.
The wildly popular Keeping Up with the Kardashians series, which has run on E! since its inception in 2007, is executive produced by Ryan Seacrest.
"Without 'Keeping Up with The Kardashians,' I wouldn't be where I am today," Kim Kardashian wrote. "I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who has watched and supported me and my family …. This show made us who we are and I will be forever in debt to everyone who played a role in shaping our careers and changing our lives forever."
This entry was posted in Business and tagged E! Channel, Fox Business, Jenners, Kardashians, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kim Kardashian, Kris Kardashian, New Hulu show in late 2021, Ryan Seacrest on December 11, 2020 by Poll-Vaulter.


Now more than ever, researchers in the life sciences are generating, accumulating, and storing data. In fact, data troves are reaching exabyte levels, prompting a number of questions. What do we do with all this data? How should we analyze it? How the heck do we make sense of it?
Answering such questions is important not only for furthering research efforts, but also for developing diagnostic and therapeutic products—and for expeditiously moving these products along the precision medicine pathway. Accordingly, GEN presented its biggest big data questions to a panel of experts. In response, the experts provided a set of compelling strategies for handing and analyzing big data more efficiently and effectively.
GEN: It is widely acknowledged that pharmaceutical and life sciences researchers both in academia and industry are being inundated and often overwhelmed with the amounts of data they generate themselves and with informational input from other sources. What do you see as the main obstacles to scientists implementing concrete strategies and plans to successfully handle big data and its analysis?
Dr. Asimenos: Data hoarding is one of the biggest obstacles in realizing the true potential of big data. While stockpiling the results of next-generation sequencing (NGS) may make sense from a business perspective, this practice does a great disservice to the research community at large, where scientific breakthroughs are built upon the research of others via collaboration.
The key to unlocking big data's potential is making NGS results accessible through a model such as the cloud commons—that is, a central repository for data sets where members of the research community can access and share data, and collaborate on processes and results.
As datasets become larger, they become more difficult to share with collaborators. By having the data in one location, researchers at institutions worldwide can have immediate access and use of large-scale data sets.
Dr. Stadnisky: There is one main obstacle to implementing a big data strategy: time. Successful teams focus on this key limiting reagent. They ask how value can be extracted where time is spent, and how value can be preserved where it is saved.
The first shift occurs before a pipette is picked up. It involves setting a strategy for annotation and controlled vocabulary curation. I interact with an increasing number of scientists who want to ask questions over many years, modalities, and approaches. Supporting investigations of such scope requires an acknowledgement that the metadata and annotation is just as important as the data itself.
The second shift is in designing and implementing an integrated architecture across measurement modalities, finding the time to explore new tools in limited trials.
Mr. Rudy: In short: lack of established community standards and commercial-grade solutions to streamline analysis based on those standards. Bioinformatics algorithms, reference datasets, and "best practice" tools are fast-changing and often driven by researchers. We are just getting around to having the community discussions, such as those in the GA4GH working groups, on representing at a fundamental data level things like variants and their annotations.
The process of aligning and calling variants is embarrassingly parallel and bundled solutions from Illumina and Ion Torrent generally meet the "good enough" threshold. After this point, variant call sets are no longer "big data," but the complexity of analysis increases exponentially. This is where Golden Helix focuses its efforts in providing commercially supported variant annotation, interpretation, and reporting solutions.
Dr. Shon: Scientists desire to leverage the cumulative knowledge and experience of previous work done in a field. With increasingly large and complex data sets, this task becomes more difficult by the day. The ability to leverage that data is a function of openness and accessibility.
Currently, most organizations are increasingly committed to open sharing of data, but without established processes, standards, and tools to enable easy access to data, metadata, and results, data will not be effectively shared. The ability to fully evaluate previous results enables researchers to determine whether or not a data set answers or validates specific questions at hand. For large institutions, and for the community as a whole, increasing investment in these processes and tools is required for scientists to stand on the shoulders of other scientists.
Dr. Hoefkens: Giving scientists timely and easy access to data is the main impediment to successful analysis of big data in life sciences research. If regular scientists cannot readily access relevant data efficiently, the goals of data integration and knowledge creation can be elusive.
Currently, life sciences research organizations generate data sets that are increasingly multidimensional and information rich and are stored in an ever-growing number of in-house data silos and public data repositories. Scientists' ability to derive value from the data is often limited by the absence of unified access and ability to search across the various data repositories. In addition, the lack of consistent metadata and semantic mapping complicates the integration of data from different sources.
Dr. Davis-Dusenbery: When we work on the cancer genomics cloud pilot for the National Cancer Institute, which holds one of the largest public data sets, we have four guiding principles for overcoming blockers to large-scale analysis.
Data should be usable, not just available. Scientists need tools to help them quickly find the right raw data. Scientists not only need to discern what's relevant, they also need to recognize what's already been processed.
The best science happens in teams. Fine-grained permissions help principal investigators, analysts, and tool developers all work in parallel.
Reproducibility shouldn't be hard because big data is so…big. Scientists need systems to track every analysis automatically.
The impact of data is extended by both new data and new tools. Easily adding more of both unlocks new types of analysis across the entire dataset.
Dr. Greene: In our experience at CSRA, the largest obstacle is researchers not sufficiently planning for the size and complexity of their data. Some large efforts start with an insufficiently resourced pilot that is placed into full production. Another impediment is the need to cohesively combine data from multiple research sites to avoid "data munging." Promoting cohesiveness is coupled to use of standards.
Resolving these issues adds significant overhead, in terms of extending completion times, but it pays off in the long run. For example, we support the development of the Biomedical Research Informatics Computing System, or BRICS (brics.cit.nih.gov).
A project undertaken by the NIH's Center for Information Technology, BRICS embodies a modular, web-based approach that has been used, for example, to support sister neurological databases. BRICS has also entailed the creation of a data dictionary that provides significant cross-comparison benefits.
Mr. King: Today's main obstacle is not about getting the data, but having the systems to manage vast amounts of data, create connections, and extract valuable insights. Such systems are necessary if data is to inform decision making.
For life sciences companies, data-informed processes need to happen in a timely fashion. That is, they need to support real-time decisions, not just for retrospective analyses. By providing predictive insights, these processes can have maximal impact today.
Right now, companies don't have the systems in place to aggregate all data and provide insights and machine learning necessary to guide decisions and seize future opportunities. What scientists need is to have the tools that provide the ability to explore and use data, as well as filter, view, and integrate data within existing systems.
GEN: Which specific big data technological or methodological approach do you favor in helping to address the data analysis roadblock?
Dr. Asimenos: Today, many organizations are participating in global large-scale sequencing projects to study thousands or even millions of genomes. The cloud is the only technology that is capable of keeping pace with big data. It eliminates time and capital expenditure of creating and upgrading local infrastructure for data analysis. The elasticity of the cloud allows for near limitless scalability and immediate availability of resources. And by taking advantage of the cloud's online nature, researchers are able to share data and tools and collaborate instantaneously with others around the world.
As big data accumulate online, new standards will need to emerge for discovering and querying datasets, as well as for authenticating requests, encrypting sensitive information, and controlling access. The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health and others are working together to develop approaches that facilitate interoperability.
Dr. Stadnisky: We have helped our customers realize the value of moving beyond sifting practices to achieve insight and knowledge curation, by automating routine, repeated analysis and providing a suite of discovery tools in an open architecture. Specifically, we have built an analysis ecosystem for single-cell phenomics data (from flow and mass cytometry) that allows users to automate routine phenotyping. The use of smart pipelines can change an analysis for a sample or group of samples based on derived statistics, and be executed immediately following data acquisition.
Thus, we help scientists to answer the key questions of a study and facilitate the work of discovery in an experiment by providing intuitive tools for discovery analysis. Such tools enable clustering, visualization, data reduction, and ontology querying. They also enable scientists to plug in any algorithm and obtain views from alongside ongoing analyses.
Mr. Rudy: The standard exome or genome align-and-call pipelines have become what most informatics infrastructure should become: boring and predictable. Cloud platforms, such as DNANexus, provide an important service. They put this infrastructure into more individual's hands.
What I find more interesting is the analytics closer to gene discovery and clinical care. Variant annotation and interpretation requires not only the constant ingestion of the latest releases of new datasets and annotations, but also the application of data science to your archive of sequenced samples.
Dr. Shon: For large and complex data sets, nonduplication and standardized curation of metadata are essential for aggregation and sharing of data.
Reproducible research relies upon this and economic factors make this increasingly imperative. Federation of data and bringing analytic tools to data vs. aggregation in a single instance is practically how large-scale data sharing can be enabled. Accordingly, systems, technology and tools are required to manage the ethical, privacy, and legal issues involved in data sharing to do this at a large scale. This is increasingly important as genomic data sets and clinical medicine begin to intersect.
Finally, and paradoxically, we will require increasingly large data set aggregation and analysis to enable the provision of precision medicine. While current genomic technologies are more robust than ever, achieving analytic and clinical validation is increasingly critical for the large-scale adoption of these technologies to provide clinical utility to patients and providers. Software to manage end-to-end processes, from sample to answer, are imperative to deliver genomic technology at scale.
Dr. Hoefkens: PerkinElmer is helping to address the challenges scientists face by leveraging big data with an integrated strategy that simultaneously manages the challenges related to data perception, flexibility, and agility. The technological underpinnings of this strategy are Tibco's Spotfire®, which is software for data analysis, visualization, and visual exploration, and PerkinElmer's Signals™, a platform for data storage, retrieval, and normalization.
We have created the PerkinElmer Signals platform as a cloud-based data warehouse system around two key components—a flexible and adaptable means of storing measurement data and associated metadata, and a scientifically aware entity domain model that supports the adaptation of the platform to specific scientific domains.
The high degree of flexibility and agility of the PerkinElmer Signals platform is based on a hybrid approach of combining a traditional SQL data model with a flexible NoSQL search engine. To provide scientists with an easy-to-use and intuitive query interface, the PerkinElmer Signals platform is tightly integrated with Tibco's Spotfire software for data selection and downstream analysis.
Dr. Davis-Dusenbery: From our experience with national and international projects such as the Cancer Genomics Cloud and the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes, we have found that pairing cloud infrastructure with software that helps scientists with different expertise collaborate is most important. While cloud infrastructure offers limitless storage and as-you-need it computation, it is even more important because it allows you to bring your biological questions to the data. This means when you have a hypothesis, you set up a task and run it within an hour instead of waiting for weeks to download the appropriate data set.
The ability to securely collaborate with other teams, regardless of where they are geographically, is also critical. In modern science, no one person has a monopoly on good ideas, and a system that allows researchers to share just the right amount of access with collaborators lets groups test multiple hypotheses at once and share results.
Dr. Greene: Researchers benefit from having an underlying platform to plug into instead of having to resort to one-off system development. We have used Apache's ServiceMix bus successfully at the Centers for Disease Control, and we are exploring using the Agave open source, platform-as-a-service solution for hybrid cloud computing developed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
Keep it light and avoid heavy architectures. A hardware refresh is costly. Take advantage of the scalability of the cloud, which is unparalleled. Using the cloud for hybrid computing is now essential.
CSRA is working with the Institute for Systems Biology and Google to develop an National Cancer Institute Cancer Genome Cloud pilot focused on the security required for a federal information system. CSRA can really add value here because many organizations need advanced, secure data management systems but lack the knowhow.
Mr. King: Today, what we have is data analysis, not insights to guide decisions. To get great insights, you need to know the right questions to ask of the data. You need algorithmic technology. Assuming that you have the right data, and that it's refreshed and integrated with existing data sets, you still need trained experts who can ask the right questions of the data.
The data needs to be linked at the very beginning with algorithmic linkage technology, where the life sciences "lens" drives the analytics to put the structured and unstructured data into context. The analysis layer needs that same algorithmic approach, which is where machine learning improves the data and the analytics over time to deliver those relevant insights better and faster. And, finally, visualization technology can give users at any level the flexibility to access the value extracted from the data to better manage research and/or market dynamics.
Capturing adequate physiological data in late-stage clinical trials has long been difficult for pharmaceutical and biotech researchers, particularly in off-site settings. Until recently, the ability to securely and accurately capture and transmit this patient data has been unattainable, leading to millions of data points simply being lost each year. The result: very low fidelity in clinical investigation records.
Today, promising advances in clinical technology are helping to address this shortfall using a novel, patient-centric BYOD approach leading to much higher clarity in results.
Aces Health is advancing a "bring your own device" (BYOD) approach to capturing, tracking, and communicating patient data in real time for the benefit of clinical trials. The company's mo-bile app is designed to keep patients engaged and ensure that they adhere to trial protocols.
Single-Use Technology: What's to Come?