The American Colony Committee Plans another Fourth of July picnic this year. That the event would be held has been known for some months, but the committee has started updating its Web page with current information intermixed with details from previous years.
The private organization also is seeking donations.
As it has been the tradition, the picnic will be from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, July 4, in the Cervercería Costa Rica picnic grounds west of San José on the General Cañas autopista.
"The festivities include a wide variety of food and drinks including the ever-popular traditional hot dogs, great entertainers, games and other fun activities for all ages," the committee said. "Beyond the food and fun, the picnic also provides an opportunity to learn about many nonprofit organizations here in Costa Rica. Most importantly, you will participate in a quintessentially American tradition: the celebration of the Independence Day of the United States, complete with a special Flag Ceremony featuring members of the United States Marine Corps."
The committee estimates that as many as 5,000 persons attended in past years. The early start and early afternoon finish is to defeat the likely rainy season storms.
Because the date falls on a Friday this year, serious drinkers will have the chance to adjourn in the afternoon to commercial establishments that also will be celebrating Independence Day. And the event also will kick off a weekend of Independence Day parties.
driver. The traffic police have targeted those leaving the picnic in the past because of the tradition of free beer for those who pay the admission. There are public bus stops within walking distance.
The committee also said that it is continuing the tradition of encouraging U.S. citizens to bring a Costa Rican friend to the picnic to share in the experience of a good old fashioned 4th of July celebration. For years, the picnic was restricted to U.S. citizens and family members. And for many years it was free. But more recently the committee has been charging a 5,000-colon admission for adults.
The goal of the picnic is to transport a bit of July Fourth celebration to Costa Rica, mainly for the benefit of expat children. More than 50 years ago when the U.S. Embassy staff began hosting a picnic on the grounds of the ambassadorial residence, there was a lot less contact with the United States. U.S. expats were few, and the Internet did not exist.
Expats founded the American Colony Committee and took over the picnic in the early 1960s, and the affair has been private since.
More details are available on the committee Web site.
President Luis Guillermo Solís Sunday joined the chorus of officials asking teachers to return to work.
His plea followed a similar request from Sonia Marta Mora, minister of Educación Pública, who spoke at a Friday press conference.
The pleas seem not to have been heeded by teacher unions.
The central government has deposited 750 million colons (about $1.375 million) to cover deficiencies in pay to some 6.600 teachers for February and March as well as the first 15-day pay period of May, said the president.
But he said that the teacher union was demanding payment in advance for yet another pay period, which he called an impossible action.
Solís said to make the advance payment would jeopardize the government's capacity to meet the payroll for the entire public sector. He said the difference to teachers was just three days in the date of payment. The president said it was not acceptable for the teachers to persist in maintaining the suspension of lessons and meals to 657,000 students.
He renewed the government's offer to take no action against the striking teachers and promised not to dock their pay. He noted that his government inherited the problem May 8.
The country demands that classes begin again, he said.
Teachers have been on strike over the lack of pay for two weeks. The government blames the problem on the process of switching over from one payroll system to another.
The problems caused irregularities in pay since January. The education minister ordered new oversight at the ministry's human resources department to find out the details of the problem.
The Asociación Nacional de Educadores, one of the principal unions, is calling on its Web site for another gathering of teachers at points all over the country for a demonstration today.
The head of the Corte Suprema de Justicia said she wants to create specialized courts in San José that would handle organized crime and drug trafficking cases from all over the country.
The proposal came on the same day that investigators took in to custody a judge in Limón on an allegation of rigging court cases in favor of drug traffickers.
"I'm very satisfied with the ways we are combating drug trafficking in our organization," said Zarela Villanueva. "But we believe that to act more rapidly we should create a national court for organized crime and drug trafficking in order to make a system that is independent and effective." She is the president of the supreme court.
The Limón judge suspected of rigging court cases in favor of drug traffickers is Rosa Elena Gamboa, She is under investigation for suspicious rulings relating to the freeing of drug suspects with whom she may have had prior agreements, said a Judicial Investigating Organization press representative.
The representative said that the 62-year-old judge of the Primer Circuito Judicial de la Zona Atlántica was specifically detained for suspected crimes listed under Ley 8204, which covers influence peddling.
Magistrate Villanueva, who ordered the initial investigation, said Friday that this raises an unfortunate cloud over the country's court system. The Judicial Investigating Organization has been working on this specific case for more than a year, according to the report.
"It's been enough time in which our institution has used the appropriate mechanisms to detect and investigate," Ms. Villanueva said. "This is not a product of acting overnight. This action has taken time to develop."
She confirmed that the Ministerio Público and the Judicial Investigating Organization are handling a joint investigation into Ms. Gamboa, who will pass through the normal judiciary process.
"This is a criminal process that continues until any subsequent consequences are deemed necessary or unnecessary," she said.
Ms. Villanueva said that this case is being treated as an isolated incident as of now and it should not cast doubt on other judges in Limón or throughout the country. She added that court officials are trying to improve individual responsibility profiles of judges that monitor their actions in trials.
Agents brought the judge to San José for questioning, but she was released later. Friday they confiscated a computer, tablet, and documents from her house and office, an judicial representative said.
The Obama administration is joining forces with Texas A&M University in the fight against coffee rust, a fungus threatening to devastate the Latin American coffee crop.
The orange-colored fungus has already caused more than $1 billion in damage. It is especially dangerous to Arabica beans used to brew gourmet coffees that are much in demand in U.S. coffee shops and elsewhere.
Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama have been especially hard-hit. The disease is known as roya de café in Costa Rica and the other Spanish-speaking countries.
U.S. officials say Latin bean production could drop as much as 40 percent in the coming years, putting about 500,000 farmers and others out of work and into poverty. The officials believe many would turn to the illegal drug trade to make a living.
Most so-called mass-produced coffee sold in supermarkets come from Asian beans.
Judicial agents have detained a 19-year-old neighbor in the robbery and murder of a 52-year-old woman in Las Palmiras de Siquirres. Agents said they recovered a bottle of alcohol and a DVD from the home of the suspect some 200 meters from where the woman and her vehicle were found destroyed by fire Saturday about 10:30 a.m.
The arrest came about 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
The woman was the owner of property in the area and also the owner of the vehicle, which is how judicial agents managed to identify her by the last name of Fernández.
The canton of Cañas is infuriating opponents of Monsanto's genetically modified crops. The canton is about to declare itself in favor of the genetic approach. If the municipal council does so Tuesday, it will be the first in Costa Rica to take that action.
Most of the country's municipalities, under prodding from Monsanto opponents, have declared themselves against the use of genetically modified seeds.
Monsanto opponents are expected to show up at the meeting.
The opponents also are lobbying for a national moratorium on genetically modified crops. Such a measure already has been introduced in the legislature.
For the most part, the modified crops are resistant to Monsanto's herbicides, so farmers have to do much less cultivation. The most recent protest was sparked by a Monsanto proposal to grow modified corn on a small tract. Opponents feared that the pollen from the crops would enter the national gene pool of corn.
Nearly all the corn products imported from the United States contain modified products.
Fuerza Pública officers said they detained four men after they found that their truck contained 12 cocobolo logs.
The logs were being transported in an enclosed truck. Cocobolo is a beautiful wood but on the way to extinction in Costa Rica, police officers said.
The men detained have records of illegal logging, officers said. The detention was in San Miguel de Cañas, Guanacaste.
Fishermen on the Caribbean coast are considering the use of traps to catch lionfish, the predators that eat their weight in other species each day.
The Asociación de Pescadores Artesanales del Caribe Sur said it has created a model of a trap that will be duplicated and distributed along the coast.
The other alternative to getting rid of the lionfish is spearing by divers. The association notes that traps can operate at a depth where divers cannot go. And they operate 24 hours a day, the association said.
This is the same group that runs the fish spearing contest every year.
The association is expected to make a symbolic distribution of traps at the end of the month to some 70 fishermen.
The project has the support of the U.N. Priogramme for Development and the central government, the association said. The Municipalidad de Talamanca and the Universidad de Costa Rica also are involved, the association said.
The association said it still will run its annual sweep. This year it will be in Manzanillo Sept. 27. Prizes are awarded to the divers who bring in the most lionfish.
Traps have proved to be effective elsewhere. A lobster fisherman in Florida was reported to be complaining that his traps become full of lionfish instead of lobster.
The principal criticism is that the traps have to be maintained. However, the lionfish is edible and can be sold for human consumption.
The lionfish is a beautiful creature, and the invasive species in the Atlantic may have come from aquariums. There are 10 species of the fish, and two, including Pterois volitans, are in the Atlantic.
A University of Oregon researcher studies the colorful lionfish.
through the Atlantic Ocean and south throughout most of the Caribbean.
The fish use their large fins to herd together mainly smaller fish so they can be eaten. Because they expand their fins they are vulnerable to traps because once they are inside, they cannot exit.
Perhaps one of the major failings of the Laura Chinchilla administration was the lack of crisis management. That also seems to be the case with state agencies and private firms.
An example is the collapse of the Banco Nacional online banking Web site two weeks ago. There was no explanation from bank officials even after the problem was resolved. Customers were hung out to dry without any way to figure out if the Web site failure cost them any money.
A lot of firms and agencies adopt the it's-not-my-fault approach when faced with unexpected crisis. The Banco Nacional fiasco is trivial when compared to the four years of the Chinchilla administration. The former president summed up her approach in her May 1 talk to legislators.
The president blamed nature, the world economic situation, climate change, the hostile administration in Nicaragua, lawmakers and even the news media for her failures. There was not a hint of the buck-stops-here policy made famous by U.S. ex-president Harry Truman.
Ms. Chinchilla faced a number of crises, many of her own making. She was not very forthcoming with the media, and when accused of taking rides in a plane owned by a suspicious character, she fired a minister and aides.
Even when the administration knew that Intel Corp. was about to move its manufacturing arm out of the country to Vietnam, officials stayed silent and allowed rumors to spread the news.
Luis Guillermo Solís promises transparency in his administration. And transparency gives a top manager an opportunity to define the situation.
The classic example is the rapid and candid response by Johnson & Johnson to the 1982 Tylenol poisonings in Chicago. The company embarked on a major publicity campaign that probably prevented others from taking acetaminophen capsules that some mass killer had laced with cyanide. The company received universal praise and managed to recapture its market share.
The contrast is the way Metropolitan Edison handled the 1979 accident at its nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. In addition to continually understating the problem, the firm failed to acknowledge the release of some radioactivity.
Both approaches can be found as examples in nearly any public relations text.
Presumably Ms. Chinchilla did not have a copy of such a text. Apparently neither does Barack Obama. When a U.S. ambassador and others became the victims of terrorists in Libya, the U.S. administration tried to blame the deaths on a Benghazi crowd irate about an anti-Muslim video.
"Wag the Dog" is a 1997 movie in which an expensive political manipulator played by Robert De Niro fakes a U.S. military action in Albania to distract the American public from a president's indiscretions with a young girl in the Oval Office.
Unlike in the movie, such distractions have a short life. So the Obama administration just released a big report on global warming that some consider to be the second step in wagging the public.
According to the public relations texts, the first step in crisis management is personal involvement by the CEO or, in this case, the president. And absolute candor. With that approach the public and the voters generally are very understanding.
But lies, as Richard Nixon found out, are toxic.
Fuerza Pública officers in the Quepos area uncovered 965 kilos of cocaine hidden in beach vegetation. Meanwhile the anti-drug police conducted a raid in Guácimo to find more than 731 kilos of suspected cocaine.
The larger haul was at Playa Linda, Savegre de Aguirre. Police said a routine patrol turned up the hidden merchandise. Officers had to carry out the bales of cocaine. The merchandise was flown to San José.
The raid in Barrio El Hogar in Guácimo turned up 1,069 packages of cocaine badly hidden in a home. The suspected drugs were in barrels partly buried in the back yard of the home. Officers detained a 77 year old and a 43 year old in the home. Both are Colombians.
Also discovered in the home was a selection of firearms.
The confiscations were over Friday night and Saturday morning.
In another drug-related incident, Fuerza Pública officers and agents of the Policía de Control de Drogas detained two Canadians and a U.S. citizen after they stopped a car in the canton of Mora. The security ministry said that the officers found marijuana and 27 ampules of morphine.
The Canadians were identified by the last names of Garrity and Brishke. The U.S. citizen was identified by the last name of Basset, said the ministry.
Officers also said they found more than 24 million colons, about $64,000. and $54,920 in U.S. currency.
Police officers are hauling out cocaine from a beach hiding place.
Emergency officials in Colombia say at least 31 children were burned to death when their bus caught fire near the city of Fundación.
Officials said the bus burst into flames Sunday while transporting children home from a church service. At least 20 other people were seriously burned and taken to hospitals.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, speaking at a campaign rally in Bogota, said he would immediately travel to Fundación to console families of the victims.
Unconfirmed reports say the bus driver was handling a fuel container inside the cabin in an attempt to get the bus restarted when the fire broke out and spread quickly.
It's an unlikely best seller, catapulting a soft-spoken French economist into rock star status and possible Nobel Prize contention.
"Capital in the 21st Century" by Thomas Piketty examines the history of income inequality in the U.S. and Europe since the 18th century.
The book is number one in the non-fiction book category of The New York Times and sold out in its first week on Amazon. It presents a compelling case for something many have long suspected — that the rich are getting richer.
"You know, if two-thirds of this growth goes to the top 1 percent, it's not clear that this is a good deal for the rest of the population, Piketty said.
Using charts and tax data going back to the start of the industrial age, Piketty's grand theory is that, over time, capital or wealth grows faster than economic output. But the controversy centers on the author's policy solutions, among them a global tax on wealth.
Critics say such punitive measures would hurt everyone.
"I disagree with pretty much all of his policy recommendations, but, even beyond that, in the sort of purely analytical part, I think he exaggerates how much capital has grown over the last 100 years," said Stan Veuger, a political economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Veuger argues much of the wealth accumulation in the U.S. has been due to the rise in home ownership; but, others say that does not account for the growing concentration of wealth among a privileged few.
"Perhaps there's something more general about a problem where inequality in a democracy is going to lead to the rich prevailing despite the rules that we have on the books that should normally prevent that from being the case," said New York University's David Stasavage.
And emerging economies are not immune. In China, Piketty says negative population growth will drive a wedge between rich and poor.
"Already, you know, inheritance of assets is becoming a big issue and access to real estate property in larger Chinese cities where you have some people inherit from the property of their parents. And, you know, some migrants will be completely unable to access property."
Piketty hopes the book sparks more discussion. That's a view shared by Yale professor Robert Shiller, who, after winning the Nobel prize for economics, said that rising income inequality is the biggest problem facing the world.
At nearly 700 pages, Piketty's book is not an easy read, but both fans and critics say it's bound to generate heated discussion in a U.S. election year likely to be dominated by economic issues.
The so-called right to be forgotten is being debated after the European Court of Justice ruled that the Internet search engine Google must sometimes, on request, remove links to articles containing personal information.
It's a debate about which is more important: the right to privacy or the freedom of information.
According to Glenn Gabe, president of G-Squared Interactive, who has provided digital marketing services to executives and celebrities, many people have something in their past they would like to have removed from the Internet.
"They went to prison, right? And maybe ten years ago everything happened, and everything's still showing up in Google on page one, even though they've paid their dues," he said.
At the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, executive director Marc Rotenberg agrees with the court's ruling that privacy is a basic right.
"When you talk about free expression, you have to consider the ability of individuals to control the dissemination of information about themselves," he said. "That is, in many respects, the core of free expression — how we choose to express ourselves or not to say things or do things. That's, you know, what makes us human."
But a number of U.S. privacy advocates disagree with the European court's Google ruling.
For Jules Polonetsky, executive director of Washington's Future of Privacy Forum, the decision sets a legal precedent that is likely to limit the freedom of information in general — both in terms of individual privacy and, in some cases, the right to a free press.
"If someone can tell search engines, news aggregators or maybe bloggers, 'Sorry, that information tells us about some individual, that individual doesn't want to be found, you need to take it down,' the effects really could be dramatic," she said. "It breaks the Internet."
While the right to a free press is specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the right to privacy is merely implied.
"It's a real blow to transparency if legal, public information can be obscured simply because somebody decides that it's information that they would rather not be available," said Ms. Polonetsky.
But Rotenberg says the European judges did a good job of balancing privacy with press freedom in this particular case, in which they ordered Google to delete links containing personal information about a Spanish lawyer's 1998 tax problems at the lawyer's request, because the information, the court said, was no longer relevant.
"And what the European Court of Justice has done with this decision is to say, in effect, you know, search is an important service, but it has to be done in a way that protects privacy," he said.
The ruling will be costly for Google and other search engines in Europe, but is not expected to immediately affect their U.S. operations.
California Gov. Jerry Brown says his state is getting ready for what could be its worst wildfire season to date, even as better weather has allowed firefighters to take control over several blazes that broke out in the southern part of the state last week.
Brown said Sunday that global warming is to blame for the worsening conditions. He also said people have to be more careful how they live, how they build their homes, and what kind of vegetation is allowed to grow.
Extreme drought, low humidity and high winds led to a number of fires in San Diego County last week. Those fires destroyed dozens of homes and forced tens of thousands of people to flee with little notice. At least one death was reported.
Damage is estimated at more than $20 million.
After being declared inoperable last year, NASA's planet-hunting space telescope Kepler has been given a second life.
NASA said Friday that for the next two years, it will fund a mission for the telescope. The new mission is known as K2 and will let the telescope continue to search for new exoplanets and active galaxies.
Last year, NASA said the telescope had been crippled by the failure of a second mechanical reaction wheel that helps keep it pointed. The telescope was launched with four wheels and needs at least three of them to keep it aimed precisely at distant stars.
NASA engineers say they have found a way to use solar radiation pressure, together with the remaining functional wheels, to keep the spacecraft stable enough to continue observing distant stars.
Kepler was launched in March 2009 and positioned in an orbit around the sun with a mission to look for Earth-like planets in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. The $600 million spacecraft identified 130 planets with additional 2,740 candidates.
Since the stars are thousands of light years from Earth, the precise pointing of the Kepler's instruments is of critical importance. The planets cannot be seen, but their presence can be calculated from the dip in the light of their stars when other planets pass in front of them.
After analyzing previously collected data, NASA scientists announced in April that the telescope found the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the so-called habitable zone.
A new study has, for the first time, demonstrated that a specific kind of virotherapy can infect and kill cancer in humans, leaving healthy cells unharmed.
The study, conducted by the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, involved just two patients, both of whom received a single intravenous dose of an engineered measles virus that is selectively toxic to myeloma plasma cells, researchers said.
Multiple myeloma affects the plasma cells in the bone marrow and causes skeletal or soft tissue tumors. It is rarely cured.
The therapy brought about a complete remission in one of the patients, while only improving the second patient.
The two patients in the trial were given enough measles virus to vaccinate 100 million people. In a video about the treatment, Mayo doctors say the modified measles virus makes cancer cells join together and essentially explode.
The therapy also may boost the patient's immune system, allowing it to mop up any remaining cancer, they said.
Good results with this kind of therapy have been seen with rodents, but this is the first time success has been reported in a human being. However, remission was only achieved in one of the two patients.
The other patient did not respond as well. Nonetheless, by using a sophisticated imaging technique, doctors were able to tell that the virus had targeted cancerous cells.
Russell said he and his colleagues found the difference in reaction between the two patients puzzling, but had some theories about why.
He said the patient who'd gone into remission had less myeloma in her body and that the second patient's cancer was in a very advanced state with"massive tumors in the legs and abdomen.
Another theory was that the second patient had more tumors in the muscles.
"If we'd treated her earlier, we'd have done better, Russell said, adding that they might also have seen better results at a higher dose.
There were negative side effects, he said, such as severe flu-like symptoms almost immediately upon dosing. Despite that, one patient called the side effects trivial, compared to other treatments they'd received, according to Russell.
William Phelps, director of the Preclinical and Translational Cancer Research Program at the American Cancer Society, said the study is exciting because it shows efficacy with humans.
"Viruses are very good at disseminating throughout the body," he said, adding that they're also adept at hunting, detecting and infecting metastatic tumors.
Another advantage of using viruses is that they're mutable, said Phelps.
When asked if the study had implications for other types of cancer, Russell answered with an emphatic yes.
"There's no real reason why it can't work on other cancers," said Bell, adding that cancer provides the perfect substrate for viruses because they're metabolically active, fast growing and, don't know how to turn off.
"We want to take this virus and test it much more efficiently in a larger group to determine how often it works," said Russell.
According to the Mayo Clinic, more of the therapy is being manufactured for a larger, phase 2 clinical trial later this year.
Phelps said his one concern about the study was that the two patients did not have any antibodies for measles, making them very rare because most people have been vaccinated against or had the measles.
One possible next step is "trying to engineer the virus so that it wouldn't be neutralized by your antibodies," said Phelps. "Intuitively, you should be able to do that."
Russell believes that what this study has proved is valuable and can be built upon.
"We recently have begun to think about the idea of a single shot cure for cancer, and that's our goal with this therapy," he said.
Colombia's government and the rebel group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia say they have reached an agreement on ending the illegal drug trade.
The deal calls for the rebels known as the FARC to cooperate with the government in convincing farmers to grow crops other than coca, which is used to make cocaine.
The announcement was made Friday in Havana where the two sides have been negotiating an end to a 50-year-old insurgency.
Colombia was the world's leading producer of cocaine until Perú recently overtook it in cultivation of coca. The cocaine industry has been the major source of funds for the Marxist rebel group and a cause of crime and instability in the South American country.
With the agreement on ending the drug trade, the two sides have resolved three of the six points on their agenda. Previously FARC and the government had reached deals on agrarian reform and political participation.
FARC has also announced a unilateral cease-fire for a week around Colombia's presidential election, scheduled for May 25.
Imperial College London physicists have discovered how to create matter from light, a feat thought impossible when the idea was first theorized 80 years ago.
Gregory Breit and John Archibald Wheeler suggested that it should be possible to turn light into matter by smashing together only two particles of light (photons), to create an electron and a positron, the simplest method of turning light into matter ever predicted. The calculation was found to be theoretically sound but Breit and Wheeler said that they never expected anybody to physically demonstrate their prediction. It has never been observed in the laboratory, and past experiments to test it have required the addition of massive high-energy particles.
The scientists had been investigating unrelated problems in fusion energy when they realized what they were working on could be applied to the Breit-Wheeler theory. The breakthrough was achieved in collaboration with a fellow theoretical physicist from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, who happened to be visiting Imperial.
Demonstrating the Breit-Wheeler theory would provide the final jigsaw piece of a physics puzzle which describes the simplest ways in which light and matter interact. The six other pieces in that puzzle, including Dirac's 1930 theory on the annihilation of electrons and positrons and Einstein's 1905 theory on the photoelectric effect, are all associated with Nobel Prize-winning research.
In a major scientific review of research on e-cigarettes, scientists found that industry claims about the devices are unsupported by the evidence to date, including claims that e-cigarettes help smokers quit.
The devices, which are rapidly gaining a foothold in popular culture particularly among youth, are marketed as a healthier alternative to tobacco smoking, as an effective tool to stop smoking, and as a way to circumvent smoke-free laws by allowing users to smoke anywhere. Often the ads stress that e-cigarettes produce only harmless water vapor.
But in their analysis of the marketing, health and behavioral effects of the products, which are unregulated, the University of California at San Francisco scientists found that e-cigarette use is associated with significantly lower odds of quitting cigarettes. They also found that while the data are still limited, e-cigarette emissions "are not merely harmless water vapor, as is frequently claimed, and can be a source of indoor air pollution.
The paper is published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation.
E-cigarettes deliver a nicotine-containing aerosol popularly called vapor to users by heating a solution commonly consisting of glycerin, nicotine and flavoring agents. E-liquids are flavored, including tobacco, menthol, coffee, candy, fruit and alcohol flavorings.
In one indication of the swiftness by which the devices have been embraced, in the U.S. youth ever use of the devices rose from 3.3 percent in 2011 to 6.8 percent the following year; in Korea, youth ever use of e-cigarettes rose from .5 percent in 2008 to 9.4 percent in 2011. Ever use means whether one has smoked the product even just once.
Furthermore, most adults and youths who use e-cigarettes are engaging in dual use – smoking both e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes.
"E-cigarettes do not burn or smolder the way conventional cigarettes do, so they do not emit side-stream smoke. However, bystanders are exposed to aerosol exhaled by the user," said the authors. Toxins and nicotine have been measured in that aerosol, such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acetic acid and other toxins emitted into the air, though at lower levels compared to conventional cigarette emissions.
When scientists pooled the results of five population-based studies of smokers, they found that smokers who used e-cigarettes were about a third less likely to quit smoking than those who did not use e-cigarettes. Whether e-cigarette use prevents attempts to quit or whether people who choose to use e-cigarettes are more highly dependent and therefore have a harder time quitting remains to be determined.
Clouds play a critical role in Earth's climate. Clouds also are the largest source of uncertainty in present climate models, according to the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Much of the uncertainty surrounding clouds' effect on climate stems from the complexity of cloud formation.
New research from scientists at the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, including Carnegie Mellon University's Neil Donahue, sheds light on new-particle formation — the very first step of cloud formation and a critical component of climate models. The findings, published in the Friday issue of Science, closely match observations in the atmosphere and can help make climate prediction models more accurate.
Cloud droplets form when water vapor in the atmosphere condenses onto tiny particles. These particles are emitted directly from natural sources or human activity, or they form from precursors emitted originally as gaseous pollutants. The transformation of gas molecules into clusters and then into particles, a process called nucleation, produces more than half of the particles that seed cloud formation around the world today. But the mechanisms underlying nucleation remain unclear. Although scientists have observed that the nucleation process nearly always involves sulfuric acid, sulfuric acid concentrations aren't high enough to explain the rate of new particle formation that occurs in the atmosphere. This new study uncovers an indispensable ingredient to the long sought-after cloud formation recipe — highly oxidized organic compounds.
"Our measurements connect oxidized organics directly, and in detail, with the very first steps of new particle formation and growth," said Donahue, professor of chemistry, chemical engineering, engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. "We had no idea a year ago that this chemistry was happening. There's a whole branch of oxidation chemistry that we didn't really understand. It's an exciting time."
The air we breathe is chock-full of organic compounds, tiny liquid or solid particles that come from hundreds of sources including trees, volcanoes, cars, trucks and wood fires. Once they enter the atmosphere, these so-called organics start to change. In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012, Donahue and colleagues showed conclusively that organic molecules given off by pine trees, called alpha-pinene, are chemically transformed multiple times in the highly oxidizing environment of the atmosphere. Additionally, other research, including from Donahue's lab, has suggested that such oxidized organics might take part in nucleation — both in new particle formation and in their subsequent growth.
The project at the European center is a unique facility that allows scientists to reproduce a typical atmospheric setting inside of an essentially contaminant-free, stainless steel chamber. By performing experiments in the precisely controlled environment, the project's scientists can change the concentrations of chemicals involved in nucleation and then measure the rate at which new particles are created with extreme precision.
In the current work, the team filled the chamber with sulfur dioxide and pinnanediol (an oxidation product of alpha-pinene) and then generated hydroxyl radicals (the dominant oxidant in Earth's atmosphere). Then they watched the oxidation chemistry unfold. Using very high-resolution mass spectrometry, the scientists were able to observe particles growing from single, gaseous molecules to clusters of up to 10 molecules stuck together, as they grew molecule by molecule.
"It turns out that sulfuric acid and these oxidized organic compounds are unusually attracted to each other. This remarkably strong association may be a big part of why organics are really drawn to sulfuric acid under modern polluted conditions," Donahue said.
After confirming that oxidized organics are involved in the formation and growth of particles under atmospheric conditions, the scientists incorporated their findings into a global particle formation model. The fine-tuned model not only predicted nucleation rates more accurately but also predicted the increases and decreases of nucleation observed in field experiments over the course of a year, especially for measurements near forests. This latter test is a strong confirmation of the fundamental role of emissions from forests in the very first stage of cloud formation, and that the new work may have succeeded in modeling that influence.
A University of Southampton oceanographer is working with experts from around the globe to warn against lasting damage to the deep-ocean, caused by fishing, oil and gas development, industrial-scale mining, waste disposal and land-based pollution.
Writing in the research journal Science, the University of Southampton's Maria Baker and co-authors call for a balance to be struck between the wise use of resources and maintenance of the deep ocean's delicate ecological balance.
The deep-ocean, below 200 meters, extends across national and international authorities and is managed separately by individual sectors. This means an area protected against trawler fishing, for example, could still be considered for mining operations and vice versa. The paper suggests this approach is not sufficient to ensure a balanced, sustainable use of resources and calls for further collaboration to manage the cumulative effects of these activities.
"Currently, governance of our deep-ocean is fragmented," Dr. Baker says, "We need to achieve integrated thinking and communication across all deep-sea stakeholders and across all jurisdictions. This is key to delivering the best possible solutions for future deep-ocean resource use and long-term environmental protection."
Dr. Baker said: "We require transparency and flexibility within all areas of governance to make this work. Management should be a dynamic process whereby strategies will evolve as we learn more about our deep-ocean ecosystems and their response and resilience to exploitation. We should not hesitate - we need to move forward at once. Future generations depend upon our actions."
Meet one of the participants in a march Sunday in support of a bill that would punish mistreatment of animals. The bill is now in a legislative committee. Hundreds of dog owners walked on Avenida Segunda with their pets, and one man brought his snake. There were no cats to be seen.
For the first time, scientists have developed an early warning system to predict the risk of dengue infections for the 553 microregions of Brazil during the football World Cup. The estimates, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, show that the chance of a dengue outbreak is enough of a possibility to warrant a high-alert warning in the three northeastern venues of Natal, Fortaleza, and Recife but is likely to be generally low in all 12 host cities.
Dengue is a viral infection that is transmitted between humans by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. In some cases, it causes life-threatening illness. There are currently no licensed vaccines or treatments against dengue. So far this century, Brazil has recorded more cases of dengue fever than anywhere else in the world, with more than 7 million cases reported between 2000 and 2013.
"Recent concerns about dengue fever in Brazil during the World Cup have made dramatic headlines, but these estimates have been based solely on averages of past dengue cases. The possibility of a large dengue fever outbreak during the World Cup, capable of infecting visitors and spreading dengue back to their country of origin, depends on a combination of many factors, including large numbers of mosquitoes, a susceptible population, and a high rate of mosquito-human contact," explained lead author Rachel Lowe from the Catalan Institute of Climate Sciences in Barcelona, Spain.
The researchers estimate little risk of dengue outbreaks during the forthcoming World Cup period in the southern and central capitals of Brasília, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, and São Paulo. However, they predict that there is some chance of dengue risk exceeding medium levels in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Salvador and Manaus. The three cities with the highest risk are Natal, Fortaleza, and Recife, although the risk still remains relatively low.
Worried about upsetting Switzerland's strong economy or driving its high costs even higher, more than three-quarters of Swiss voters rejected a plan Sunday to create the world's highest minimum wage.
The clear rejection of the proposed minimum wage brings relief to business leaders worried the measure would have hurt competitiveness and damaged the Swiss workplace.
"If the initiative had been accepted, without doubt that would have led to job cuts, particularly in remote and structurally weaker regions," Swiss Economy Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann said at a news conference. "The best remedy against poverty is work."
Switzerland has some of the world's highest living costs and trade unions had sought in the balloting to require minimum salaries for workers that would total more than $53,000 annually. The median salary in the Alpine nation is now about $77,000, but pay is set by individual employment contracts or collective bargaining agreements.
The minimum pay referendum was the third in Switzerland in the last 18 months to deal with the increasing gap between rich and poor people. Voters previously adopted restrictions on bonuses for corporate executives, but rejected controls that would have limited their salaries to no more 12 times that of the lowest paid workers.
Switzerland's ruling Federal Council welcomed the defeat of the minimum wage plan sought by trade unions.
Trade unions had proposed the higher minimum wage as a way of fighting poverty in a country that, by some measures, features the world's highest prices and most expensive cities.
But opinion polls had indicated that most voters sided with the council and business leaders, who argued it would cost jobs and erode economic competitiveness, driving Switzerland's high costs even higher.
The proposal would have eclipsed the existing highest minimum wages in force elsewhere in Europe. Switzerland has no minimum wage, but the median hourly wage is about 33 francs ($37) an hour.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which adjusts figures for spending power, lists the highest current minimum wage as Luxembourg's at $10.66 an hour, followed by France at $10.60, Australia at $10.21, Belgium at $9.97, and the Netherlands at $9.48.
The U.S. wage, an adjusted $7.11 down from the actual $7.25 rate, came 10th on the list.


Click here to view the updated 2018-2019 Program Schedule!
With the start of the calendar year comes a shift in focus for the leadership team of our FEI Chapter.
For the most part we have our professional development topics and keynote speaks lined up for the rest of this chapter year. Peer Group and Diversity Group events have been calendared. Planning and scheduling for various other events like the golf outing and the Leadership Summit are well underway. The Executive Committee and Board of Directors is beginning to focus on the 2019/2020 Chapter Year.
Click here to read Jim's president's message for the new year.
Click here to view event details and register for the Tuesday, February 26, 2019 Webinar: Ready to Stretch? It will be hosted by Godfrey & Kahn and take place in downtown Appleton.
Are you wondering how other financial leaders handle risk mitigation, auditing and tax fees, benefit cost increases or difficult accounting rules? The Peer Group meeting gives you an avenue to discuss the topics, issues, questions and challenges important to you!
All FEI members are welcome to join the discussion.
Click here to register! You can earn 3 CPE credits if you attend the meeting in person.
National is offering a special annual dues rate of $299 for the first 12 months of membership versus the normal rate of $499. This is a substantial savings of 40%.
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Giving you an insider's perspective on the mergers and acquisitions marketplace, with exclusive industry research not available anywhere else.
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Our Strategic Partner, Francis Investment Counsel, is pleased to share all curriculum presented at Money University 2018 is now available for online viewing. From budgeting and investing to raising financially savvy kids and saving for retirement, explore the recordings and learn more about the money topics that matter to you.
Please click here to access the Money University curriculum.
Written By: Benjamin D. LaFrombois, von Briesen & Roper, s.c.
The Federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the "Act") reduced corporate tax rates (C corporation) and allowed for a deduction of certain income from pass-through entities. These changes create opportunities for business owners to reduce taxes with good planning. Every business owner should reassess whether to be taxed as a C corporation, a pass-through entity (S corporation or partnership) or combination thereof.
For the Wisconsin business owner, the re-assessment takes heightened importance because Wisconsin rejected one of the major benefits of the Act – the Section 199A deduction of certain pass-through income. By losing the Section 199A deduction for Wisconsin income tax purposes, the Wisconsin taxpayer may find that a C corporation has significant tax benefits.


text:
Monday 8 Rajab 1444 - 30 January 2023
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Ruling on wearing a wig for a woman who is bald; can she wipe over it when doing wudoo'?
Publication : 11-11-2010
I suffer from hair loss, and have bald patches on parts of my head. This has made me depressed. Sometimes I see young girls with beautiful hair and they feel sorry for me. I have tried to get hair transplant surgery, but the doctors told me that it will never work with me, because the skin of my scalp is not suitable. Even though I cover my head when I go out and I wear hijab, when I am at home or in family gatherings or parties where men and women are segregated and I do not need to wear hijab, I feel very upset because I cannot take it off. Is it permissible for me to wear a wig?
If the answer is yes, does it have any effect on wudoo'?.
Firstly:
In the answer to question no. 1171, we stated that it is haraam to use wigs in principle, even if it is for a woman to adorn herself for her husband, and that it comes under the heading of hair extensions, which are haraam.
In the answers to questions no. 101430 and 113548 , we stated that it is permissible to wear a wig in order to cover a defect in the case of a woman who is bald, and that this is the view of Shaykh al-'Uthaymeen (may Allah have mercy on him), unlike other contemporary scholars who regard that as coming under the same heading as hair extensions which are haraam. The words of Shaykh al-'Uthaymeen may be found in the questions referred to.
Secondly:
With regard to wiping over the wig when doing wudoo', it is better and more on the safe side to remove it when doing wudoo' and to wipe the head directly. This is more on the safe side, even though wiping over it is permissible. The Prophet (sa) wiped over his hair when it was held together with a sticky substance (mulabbad), and he wiped over his turban.
But in the case of ghusl, it must be removed so that the water can reach all of the skin.
Shaykh Muhammad ibn Saalih al-'Uthaymeen (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
The scholars differed with regard to whether it is permissible for a woman to wipe over her head cover.
Some of them said that it is not acceptable because Allah enjoined wiping the head when He said (interpretation of the meaning): "rub (by passing wet hands over) your heads" [al-Maa'idah 5:6]; and if she wipes over her head cover, she has not wiped over her head, rather she has wiped over a barrier, namely the head cover, so it is not permissible.
Others said that it is permissible, and they drew an analogy between the head cover and the man's turban: the head cover for women is like the turban for men, and difficulty is present in both cases.
Whatever the case, if there is any difficulty because of cold weather, or in taking it off and wrapping it again, then there is nothing wrong with wiping over it in that case, although it is better not to wipe over it, and there is no saheeh hadeeth in this regard.
If the hair is stuck together with henna or dye or honey and the like, it is permissible to wipe over it, because it is proven that the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) used to stick his hair together with something when he entered ihram, and whatever is applied to the hair in this fashion is regarded as being part of the head.
This indicates that there is some element of leniency with regard to purifying the head.
Based on this, if a woman has stuck her hair together with henna, it is permissible for her to wipe over it, and there is no need for her to undo her hair and scrape away this henna.
It may be said that there is a precedent, namely the ring; the Messenger (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) used to wear a ring, but despite that he did not make the water go between the ring and the skin. Such matters may be overlooked in sharee'ah, especially since the basic principle concerning the head is that it does not have to be purified by washing; rather it is purified by wiping. Hence its purification is reduced to wiping.
The turban, khuff (leather slipper) and head cover may only be wiped in the case of minor impurity, not major impurity. The evidence for that is the hadeeth of Safwaan ibn 'Assaal who said: The Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) instructed us when we were travelling not to take off our khufoof (leather slippers) for three days and nights, except in the case of janaabah, but not in the case of defecation, urination or sleep.
The words "except in the case of janaabah" refer to major impurity.
The words "but not in the case of defecation, urination or sleep" refer to minor impurity. If a person becomes junub during the period when wiping over the khufoof is permitted, then he should not wipe over them; rather he has to do ghusl, because in the case of major impurity, there is nothing that can be wiped over at all, except a plaster cast. End quote.
Al-Sharh al-Mumti' 'ala Zaad al-Mustaqni', 1/239-242.
And Allah knows best.
Source: Islam Q&A
Women wearing wigs
Is it permissible to donate or sell one's hair to someone who will make it into a wig?
Ruling on wearing a wig and hair transplants for a woman whose hair has fallen out
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Founded in 1864, the J. Walter Thompson Company (JWT) is one of the oldest and largest enduring advertising agencies in the United States. The Iconographic Collection spans the years 1848-2005 with the bulk of materials dating between 1940 and 1985, and includes black-and-white and color photographs, negatives, slides, contact sheets, photograph albums, and microfiche. It is an artificial collection created to document the facilities, key events, advertising highlights and corporate culture of the J. Walter Thompson Company (JWT). Domestic and international offices are included, with the New York, Chicago and London offices being the most heavily represented. Key executives include James Walter Thompson, Stanley and Helen Landsdowne Resor, Don Johnston, Dan Seymour, Norm Strouse, and E.G. Wilson. Client advertising includes Ford, Kodak, Chesebrough-Pond's, Lever Brothers (Unilever), and Warner-Lambert. Notable photographers whose work appears in the collection include Fabian Bachrach, Ralph Bartholomew, Cecil Beaton, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Philippe Halsman, Horst P. Horst, George Hurrell, Yousuf Karsh, Baron Adolf de Meyer, Bill Ray, Jean Raeburn, Edward Steichen, Thomas Veres, Brett Weston and Dorothy Wilding. Acquired as part of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.
The Iconographic Collection spans the years 1848-2005 with the bulk of materials dating between 1940 and 1985, and includes black-and-white and color photographs, negatives, slides, contact sheets, photograph albums, and microfiche. It is an artificial collection created to document the facilities, key events, advertising highlights and corporate culture of the J. Walter Thompson Company (JWT). Domestic and international offices are included, with the New York, Chicago and London offices being the most heavily represented. Key executives include James Walter Thompson, Stanley and Helen Landsdowne Resor, Don Johnston, Dan Seymour, Norm Strouse, and E.G. Wilson. Client advertising includes Ford, Kodak, Chesebrough-Pond's, Lever Brothers (Unilever), and Warner-Lambert. Notable photographers whose work appears in the collection include Fabian Bachrach, Ralph Bartholomew, Cecil Beaton, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Philippe Halsman, Horst P. Horst, George Hurrell, Yousuf Karsh, Baron Adolf de Meyer, Bill Ray, Jean Raeburn, Edward Steichen, Thomas Veres, Brett Weston and Dorothy Wilding.
Restrictions on Access: Reproduction-quality copies of Pond's Advertising Photographs may not be produced for non-JWT users.
Collection is arranged into eight series: Corporate Events; Office Photographs; Officers and Staff Photographs; Negatives; Pond's Photographs and Negatives; Slides; Thomas Veres Photographs and Negatives; and Oversize Materials.
Corporate Events includes photographs of some of JWT's art and artifact collections as well as of meetings, seminars and anniversary parties of company-wide significance. Office Photographs document interiors and exteriors of JWT's domestic and international office buildings. Officers and Staff Photographs primarily feature senior-level management, but there are also publicity photographs and group portraits of departments, sports teams, and employee outings. Negatives comprise negatives associated with the Corporate Events, Office Photographs, and Officers and Staff Photographs Series. Pond's Photographs and Negatives include portraits of celebrities and socialites taken by leading photographers for Pond's beauty products advertising campaigns. Slides consist primarily of monthly advertising highlights as well as materials assembled for presentations. Thomas Veres Photographs and Negatives consist of work performed by Veres under contract to JWT, primarily of company events and staff. Oversize Materials include large-format materials pulled from other series.
However, nitrate negatives and some other items may not be accessible due to preservation concerns.
Additionally, reproduction-quality copies of Pond's Advertising Photographs may not be produced for non-JWT users.
Consists of photographs of official meetings and events that have corporate-wide significance: management meetings; major training seminars; anniversaries and retirement parties of key executives; and corporate mergers. Also includes limited photographs of art items owned by JWT, and of historical artifacts held by the JWT Archives.
Arranged into Artifacts and Publications; Corporate Artwork; Meetings; Programs; Seminars; Corporate Expansion; and Recognition Events. Order reflects original order of series as received from JWT Archives. Corresponding negatives have been moved to the Negatives Series and noted in the container list.
Contains photographs of exteriors and interiors of buildings housing JWT offices around the world; office activities such as employee events, outings, and celebrations; and client related activities. Organized into U.S. and International categories. The U.S. offices are organized with New York first, followed by Chicago and then the rest of the U.S. offices listed alphabetically. International offices are organized alphabetically by country and city. Corresponding negatives have been moved to the Negatives Series and noted in the container list.
Grand Central Station colorama, 1980 Feb.
Lever Brothers--Lux Video Theatre, 1955 Apr.
Radio Corp of America Graphic Division, Warhol Pig, 1967 Jan.
RCA (Color Trak TV commercial), 1975 Dec.
Physical fitness demonstrations, 1964 Oct.
New York Times Supplement, 1969 Nov.
"The Chase and Sanborn 101st Anniversary Show Presents Edgar Berger and Charlie McCarthy," 1965 Nov.
Intra-Office Move-- "Scrambled Eggs," 1976 Feb.
Office Rally "We're gonna stay hot," 1977 Jan.
Party--Opening of 466 Lex, 1981 Dec.
Program--Eyes on Thompson series, "New Business Presentations," 1969 Dec.
Program--Eyes on Thompson series, "Women's Rights," 1971 Feb.
World Wildlife Fund, 1973 Oct.
Spanish Copy group, 1965 Dec.
Alberto Culver Christmas, 1967 Dec.
Kraft Music Hall Premiere, 1968 Sept.
Kraft Music Hall-Vaudeville, 1968 Mar.
Theo. Hamm Brewing, 1969 Mar.
50th Anniversary of opening of Chicago Office, 1941 Dec.
Thanksgiving turkey giveaway, 1983 Nov.
Buildings--Petroleum Securities Building, 1931 Dec.
Buildings--Petroleum Securities Building interior views, 1931 Nov.
Clients--Art Appraisers of America, 1977 Sept.
The bulk of photographs are of the London office, but other offices are depicted. Many of the photographs were collected in the 1960s by Connie Ivie, then Manager of International Services. Most offices sent her photographs of interiors and exteriors of buildings, some depicting staff at work. Arranged alphabetically by country and city.
Building--Interior views--Reception area, 1964 Dec.
Clients--British Market Research Bureau--Client Decimalisation Survey, 1968 Sept.
Event--Annual JWT Ball, 1937 Jan.
Group portrait--Officers and Staff with E.G.Wilson, 1966 Oct.
Event--Hindustan Thompson Associates party--Subhas Ghosal retirement, 1985 Apr.
Event--Party, "Spring Training," 1956 Mar.
Group portrait--Selected staff members, 1964 Dec.
Group portrait--Sutton, Tom address to JWT Tokyo, 1966 Nov.
Melchor Ocampo No. 469, 1965 Aug.
Event--Benefit--World Wildlife Fund, 1973 Oct.
Event--Owl of Wisdom, 1970 Jan.
Event--Reception--New Office Building, 1974 Dec.
Photographs of JWT staff, primarily senior officers. There are substantial sets of photographs of J. Walter Thompson; Stanley and Helen Resor; Sam Meek; Norman Strouse; Dan Seymour; and Don Johnston. For many officers, there are both formal and candid poses, although many photographs were taken for publicity purposes. Notable photographers include Edward Steichen (Helen Landsdowne Resor, 1925; Stanley Resor, 1930; and perhaps John Reber, circa 1930); Brett Weston (James Webb Young, circa 1950); Jean Raeburn; Fabian Bachrach; Yousseff Karsh; and Bill Ray (Don Johnston, 1984). Arranged alphabetically by name. Corresponding negatives have been moved to the Negatives Series and noted in the container list.
Consists of negatives; where prints are known to exist, that fact is noted, otherwise cross-reference to print images has primarily been made beginning with the photographs, where the existence of corresponding negatives has been noted where known. Arranged according to the overall arrangement scheme for the photographs.


text:
Pinscreen animation makes use of a screen filled with movable pins, which can be moved in or out by pressing an object onto the screen. The screen is lit from the side so that the pins cast shadows. The technique has been used to create animated films with a range of textural effects difficult to achieve with any other animation technique, including traditional cel animation.

Origin

The technique was invented and developed by Alexandre Alexeïeff and his wife Claire Parker in their own studio in Paris, between 1932 (first tests) and 1935, when Claire Parker registered in her own name the Brevet d´Invention nº 792340 at the Direction de la Propriété Industrielle, Ministère du Commerce et de L´Industrie, République Française, Paris 1935. They made a total of 6 very short films with it, over a period of fifty years. The films have short running time, because the device is difficult to use, and have a monochrome nature, due to the images being created using shadows over a white surface.

There is no material evidence that the National Film Board of Canada was involved in the development of the technique. The National Film Board of Canada did buy one of the pinboards built by them and, as guests of the NFB, on August 7, 1972, Alexeïeff and Parker demonstrated the pinscreen to a group of animators at the NFB. Due to Cecile Starr (friend of Alexeieff and Parker, and distributor of their work in the US) most insisting intervention talking to Norman McLaren that the opportunity should not be missed to preserve Alexeïeff's knowledge, this demonstration was filmed, and later released by the NFB as Pin Screen. This film, along with "Pinscreen Tests" (1961), appear on disc 7 of the Norman McLaren: The Master's Edition DVD collection. In this film several animators can be seen in the end of the demonstration experimenting with the pinscreen board, including Caroline Leaf.

Until his retirement in 2005, the National Film Board's Jacques Drouin remained involved in pinscreen animation. Drouin's pinscreen work included the 1976 film Mindscape (Le paysagiste).  Michèle Lemieux, used the pinscreen with support of the NFB for her 2012 film Here and the Great Elsewhere.  In 2015, the CNC acquired and restored the Épinette, the last pinscreen that Alexeïeff and Parker built in 1977. Eight artists were invited to train on the newly restored device, under the direction of Lemieux as part of an initiative to inspire a new generation of pinscreen artists. French animator Justine Vuylsteker was one of the artists selected for the intensive four-week residency on the Épinette. This residency led Vuylsteker to complete the short film Embraced  in 2018.

Ward Fleming patented the vertical three-dimensional image screen, a toy which to date has sold more than 50 million pieces worldwide. Smaller, cheaper models have since been developed as a 5×7 inch toy version called "Pin Art", sometimes sold in science museums or through the Web and printed catalogs. This device, even if it might have been inspired by the pinscreen board technique, should not be called pinscreen: there are some similarities to the original pinscreen created by Alexeïeff and Parker but these similarities do not make it a pinscreen. It is made of freely moving nails, instead of movement resistant headless pins. The nails form some sort of image by density distribution, while in the original pinscreen the images are created with cast shadows. Without cast shadows there is no pinscreen.

The pinscreen device

A pinscreen is a white screen perforated with thousands of pins in small holes. Light shines from the side of the screen causing each pin to cast a shadow. Each pin, being able to slide back and forth through the holes, can cast different shadows. The pins do not move easily, presenting some resistance to movement in order to avoid unintended dislocation and thus image error. The pins' motion resistance depends on the pinscreen calibration. The white screen becomes darker the farther the pins are pushed out, protruding from the surface. The more the pins are pushed in less shadows are cast, the lighter the screen becomes, giving a grayish tone and eventually an all-white screen again.

The animation technique
According to Claire Parker, the images created by the pinscreen made it possible to make an animated movie which escaped from the flat, "comic" aspect of cel animation and plunged instead into the dramatic and the poetic by the exploitation of chiaroscuro, or shading effects. To obtain the desired gray tones that are cast from the shadows of the pins, several methods are used.

The original pinscreens built and used by Alexeïeff and Parker had more than 1 million pins. Today those pinscreens are at National Center of Cinematography and the moving image, near Paris. The pinscreen currently in Montreal, at National Film Board of Canada, has 240,000 pins. The pins are usually pressed with a small tool, groups of pins at a time, or with other specialized instruments. Being so thin, it is very difficult, and actually not desirable, to manipulate individual pins: moving one pin at a time there is the risk that it bends, thus ruining the pinscreen. Furthermore, the shadow cast by one single pin is negligible, almost non perceivable; only when manipulated in groups are the pins' shadows sufficiently dense to produce the chiaroscuro effect. Groups of pins are pressed and protruded with different tools, from specially created ones to more mundane, such as lamp bulbs, spoons, forks, and even Russian Matryoshka dolls. Frames are created one at a time, each frame being the incremental modification of the previous one. After each frame has been photographed, the images are strung together to create an image without pauses. The frame assembly containing the pins was built very solidly and mounted in a secure fashion to offer a stable image to the animation camera day after day, week after week as each image of the movie was painstakingly composed.

This form of animation is extremely time consuming and difficult to execute, rendering it the least popular method of animation. An additional reason for its unpopularity is its expensive nature. Individually, the pins are relatively cheap; however, it is not uncommon that a million or more may be used to complete a single screen, quickly increasing the cost for manufacture.

Probably the most famous use of Pin Screen technique is Orson Welles' 1962 film of Kafka's novel The Trial; the film begins with a brief but striking memorable Pin Screen segment, elements of which reappear in a later scene projected onto and behind the actors.

Digital pinscreen animation
Because of the cost and labor-intensive animation process, several computer programs have been made with the goal of simulating the images generated by a physical pinscreen. One of the advantages of using digital pinscreen animation is the recovery of images. With the traditional pinscreen, there is no way to recover a previous image except for creating it all over again with no guarantee of precision. With digital pinscreen, the same image can be retrieved and altered without having to be recreated.

See also
 Refreshable braille display

References

External links
 National Film Board of Canada – Overview of the pinscreen animation technique - Link no longer available
Watch Mindscape and a trailer for  Here and the Great Elsewhere at NFB.ca
 The Pinscreen in the Era of the Digital Image by Pedro Faria Lopes
 Encarta Article on  Animation
 Pinscreen animations by Alexandre Alexeieff at YouTube

Animation techniques
Stop motion
National Film Board of Canada

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Dr Jane Webb-Williams
Lecturer School of Education
Magill Campus (C1-72)
email Jane.Webb-Williams@unisa.edu.au
External engagement & recognition
Play and Playful Pedagogies
Self-Efficacy and Social Comparison
Student Engagement and School Performance
Dr Webb-Williams gained her PhD in & Education & Psychology from Cambridge University, UK
Dr Jane Webb-Williams is a leading early childhood expert, highly experienced social researcher and an Academic at the University of South Australia. Jane's career in education spans over 25 years in a variety of roles including Program Director of Master of Learning & Teaching, Deputy School Principal and Early Years Teacher.
Dr Webb-Williams is recognised Nationally and Internationally as a leader in the field of Play. She is a member of the high profile team writing the National Statement for Play for Australia to be launched in 2020, she sits on the National Board of Play Australia and is a member of the Play... Read more
Training the socially-conscious educators of the future. Programs span early childhood, primary and secondary education.
Dr Webb-Williams is recognised Nationally and Internationally as a leader in the field of Play. She is a member of the high profile team writing the National Statement for Play for Australia to be launched in 2020, she sits on the National Board of Play Australia and is a member of the Play Australia SA committee.
Jane is well known her advocacy and expertise in Play. She regularly promotes play through keynotes, invited lectures and professional development sessions to schools, NGOs, teachers, librarians, community groups and families. She regularly works in an advisory and research capacity with councils, landscape architects and education settings, and she has worked with organisations including Parks and Leisure Australia, Nature Play and Recreation SA.
In 2016 Jane was awarded an Academic Excellence Award by the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences in recognition of her research with industry partners.
Jane is a passionate advocate for play within schools and communities to benefit children's social and emotional wellbeing. A highly experienced leader, Jane leads undergraduate teacher education courses in Learning Through Play (600 + students per year) as well as postgraduate courses in Play, Learning and Development.
Jane's research focuses on play, playful pedagogies and playspace design to support focuses on improving children's wellbeing and social & emotional development. She has been a Chief Investigator on a number of significant projects tackling a diverse range of global issues including 'Young and Well CRC: Safe and Well Online' which examined at the role of technology to improve youth mental health and 'Preschool Children's Participation and Education as Valued Active Citizens'.
Recent research projects Jane has led include 'Children's Voice in Playspace design', Co-Constructed Student-Led Pedagogies for Engagement & Learning in the Early Years of School", 'Children's Voices in Play' and 'Community Connectedness through Play' which focused on the role of play to promote community connectedness in disadvantaged, multicultural communities.
American Educational Research Association
Australian Association for Research in Education
Early Childhood Australia
British Educational Research Association
Play Australia
Doctor of Philosophy University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Master of Education University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Curriculum and Pedagogy
Education Systems
Idenitity
CURRENT FUNDED RESEARCH PROJECTS
Safe and Well Online . Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) (2014 - 2016) Team member: Dr Jane Webb-Williams
Connecting Community Through Childrens Play research project. Campbelltown Council (2015 - 2016) CI: Dr Jane Webb-Williams
Preschool Children's Participation and Education as Valued Active Citizens. Professor Pauline Harris, Dr Eleni Giannakis, Dr Andrew Peterson, Dr Jane Webb-Williams, Dr Sue Nichols, Dr Jamie Sisson, Dr Elspeth McInnes with SA DECD, UNICEF Australia and Save the Children Australia (2014 -16), Lillian de Lissa Trust Funds (SA Public Trustee), $82,450.65,
Social Comparison Processes in the Classroom: A Cross Cultural... Read more
Connecting Community through Childrens Play: A Collective Impact Research Project, Campbelltown City Council, 01/08/2015 - 31/12/2016
Safe and well online, Young and Well CRC Ltd, 01/07/2012 - 30/06/2016
Child Voices Project, City of Salisbury, 26/09/2014 - 31/12/2014
Safe and Well Online: Researching social communictions in the promotion of young people's safety and wellbeing, Young and Well CRC Ltd, 01/07/2011 - 30/06/2014
Children's Voices in Play . City of Salisbury Council (2014 - 2015) Dr Jane Webb-Williams, Susie Raymond and Martyn Mills-Bayne
Social Comparison Processes in the Classroom: A Cross Cultural Analysis. CI: Dr Jane Webb-Williams Divisionial Research Performance Fund. University of South Australia. (2013 - 2016)
Professional identities: A narrative inquiry of preschool and junior primary teachers. Dr Jamie Huff Sisson, Professor Pauline Harris, Dr. Tricia Johnson (WU) and Dr Jane Webb-Williams, Divisional Research Performance Fund (2013 - 2015)
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 2006- 2009 PHD research at Cambridge University, UK
Best Practice Research Funding (BPRS) 2004 - 2006 Masters of Educational research at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Research since 2008 is shown below. To see earlier years visit ORCID
Webb-Williams, J 2017, 'Science self-efficacy in the primary classroom: using mixed methods to investigate sources of self-efficacy', Research in Science Education, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 939-961.
Webb-Williams, J 2017, Connecting community through children's play: a collective impact research project, University of South Australia, Australia.
Spears, B, Taddeo, C, Barnes, A, Collin, P, Swist, T, Webb-Williams, J, Brock, C, Kavanagh, P, Drennan, J, Razzell, M & Borbone, V 2016, Something haunting you? Reframing and promoting help-seeking for young men: the co-creation and evaluation of a social marketing campaign., Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre, Australia.
Webb-Williams, J, Mills-Bayne, M & Raymond, S 2015, Children's Voices in Play: Research report prepared for City of Salisbury Council 2015, University of South Australia, Australia.
Webb-Williams, J 2014, 'Gender differences in school children's self-efficacy beliefs : students' and teachers' perspectives', Educational Research and Reviews, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 75-82.
Webb-Williams, J 2019, 'How others shape the development of children's self-perceptions: implications for early childhood education', in D Whitebread et al. (eds), SAGE handbook of developmental psychology and early childhood education, SAGE, US, ch. 7, pp. 133-150.
Sisson, JH, Giovacco-Johnson, T, Harris, P, Stribling, J & Webb-Williams, J 2018, 'Collaborative professional identities and continuity of practice: a narrative inquiry of preschool and primary teachers', Early Years, online, pp. 1-16.
Spears, BA, Taddeo, C, Barnes, A, Collin, P, Swist, T, Webb-Williams, J, Kavanagh, P, Drennan, J, Razzell, M & Borbone, V 2016, Connect. Challenge. Do. Design and evaluation of Goalzie: a goalsetting campaign to promote positive attitudes towards help-seeking for wellbeing., Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre, Australia.
Webb-Williams, J 2016, Community connections through play, 2016, University of South Australia, Australia.
2016 Mills-Bayne, M, Webb-Williams, J & Raymond, S 2016, 'Transforming play: the nature of
modern childhood and implications for education', AARE Conference, Melbourne, 27 November-1 December
2016 Webb-Williams, J. L (2016) I Hate Myself, I Want to Be Him: Comparison with Peers and the
Vulnerability of Children in Low Ability Groups. European Conference in Education, Brighton, UK.
2016 Webb-Williams, J (2016) Social Identity in Childhood: Peer to Peer Interactions and Pressures of
Conformity, Uniformity and Comparison. European Conference in Education, UK.
2013 Webb-Williams, J. L (2013) Children's Self-Perceptions in Relation to Others : Social Comparisons
in the Classroom and the Effects on and Self-Efficacy. European Conference in Education, Brighton, UK.
2013 Webb-Williams, J. L (2013) Why Play Matters in a Changing Society: Issues for Providers in Exploring
Play Design. Parks and Leisure Australia National Conference, Melbourne, Australia.
2013 Webb-Williams, J. L (2013) Student Wellbeing, Social Comparison and Grouping in the Classroom.
2013 Webb-Williams, J. L (2013) Using Others to Shape Self: Making Sense of Information about Others
in the Social World of the Primary Classroom. Australian Association for Research in Education, Australia.
2010 Webb-Williams, J. L. (2010) Using Social Comparison Information to Inform Pedagogical Approaches
to Primary Teaching. London International Conference on Education, London, UK
2009 Webb- Williams, J. L. (2009) Self-Efficacy Belief and Social Comparison Processes in the Context of
Transfer from Primary to Secondary School. PhD Thesis. Cambridge University. British Library
EthOS – Electronic Theses online services
2008 Webb- Williams, J. L. (2008) Social Comparison in Education. Cambridge Education Research
Annual Conference (CamERA) University of Cambridge, UK.
2008 Webb- Williams, J. L. (2008) Gender Effects of Social Comparison in Schools. Cambridge Education
Research Annual Conference (CamERA) University of Cambridge, UK.
2007 Webb-Williams, J. L. (2007) Self-efficacy beliefs and social comparison processes in the primary
classroom. BERA Annual Conference.
2007 Webb-Williams, J. L. (2007) Self-efficacy in the primary classroom: an investigation into the
relationship with performance. British Educational Research Association Annual Conference.
Current research & highlights
Academic Excellence Award 2017 – End User Research Industry Engagement Commendation. Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, University of South Australia, 2017. This award recognises outstanding contribution to engagement which was evaluated via a competitive application process.
Queensland University of Technology AUSTRALIA
University of South Australia AUSTRALIA
University of Wyoming UNITED STATES
Western Sydney University AUSTRALIA
Zuni AUSTRALIA
Engagement/recognition
American Educational Research Association (AERA)
Education Board Committee Member
Scotch College Adelaide
Senior Reviewer
iafor International Academic Forum
TRB Accreditation Panel Member
Teachers Registration Board
Invited Expert Panel Member - Nature, Children and Play Spaces
Natural Resources Adelaide and Mt Lofty Ranges in conjunction with Nature Play SA
Invited Speaker, The meaning, value and role of play, 21st century perceptions at Shifting the Paradigm of Outdoor Play Spaces
Early Childhood Organisation and Parks and Leisure Australia
Play in Early Childhood and Primary School Settings
Educational Psychology: particularly the self-constructs of self-efficacy and social comparison
EDUC 5270 Play, Learning and Development (2020)
EDUC 1102 Foundations in Learning and Teaching 1: Learning through Play (2020)
Programs I'm associated with
MBET - Bachelor of Education
MMET - Master of Teaching
Teacher self-efficacy and play in the reception classroom: a case study of six South Australian teachers Current
The essential elements of conceptual understanding: Towards a framework for the development of understanding in a concept-based curriculum framework. Current


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Route 711 ramp closure begins Friday
by: Patty Coller, Dave Sess
Posted: Mar 29, 2019 / 10:29 AM EDT / Updated: Mar 29, 2019 / 10:16 PM EDT
A ramp closure on the busy Route 711 connector begins Friday.
At 6 p.m., the Ohio Department of Transportation will close the ramp from State Route 711 southbound to I-680 southbound.
The detour will be Gypsy Lane to US 422 and State Route 193 to I-680.
WATCH: WKBN takes you through Gypsy Lane detour for 711 ramp closure
WATCH: WKBN takes you on Meridian Road detour for 711 ramp closure
The ramp will be closed through October to repair a 40-year old bridge on I-680.
Also starting on Friday, drivers on I-680 northbound will be put into what is called a contraflow traffic pattern. Northbound drivers will be moved over to the southbound side, with a barrier separating them from southbound traffic.
Drivers should allow extra time, especially during the first week, while everyone gets used to the closure and new traffic flow.
Detours can be frustrating and a big change, whether you are driving for yourself or for a business. One company said they have dealt with this inconvenience before and are ready to handle it again.
Multiple crews from House Doctors go out every day to install windows and doors for customers. One of their favorite routes is going south on the Route 711 connector to I-680 South, which helps them get to Boardman and Poland faster.
"It's going to be an inconvenience. It's going to add more miles to our trip and we're going to make a lot of bypass," said John Bartos with House Doctors.
House Doctors has been making house calls for three decades. They did not have the Route 711 connector when the business opened. The three-mile connection between Girard and Youngstown was finished in 2005.
"That route has been a blessing to us. It helps us service our customers better. It helps us get to places quicker. It cuts a lot of time off of our day and a lot of traveling time," Bartos said.
The business dealt with another inconvenience three years ago. The Tibbetts Wick bridge over Route 11 was fixed right next to their showroom.
They now have 17,000 customers and want to reach them as quickly as possible.
Bartos has seen a few accidents and trucks tipped over on the closing ramp. The business is staying the course and realize this connection is important.
"If we're patient and let this follow through, I think it'll be good for the whole community because we need good roads and we need safe roads, and I think that's what attracts business and commerce in our area."
by Brooke Meenachan / Jan 17, 2021
(WKBN) - Bars and restaurants across the Valley are excited for the Browns playoff game, but they're more excited it's an afternoon game.
Because of Ohio's curfew last week, fans could only stay out until 10 p.m. for the Browns wildcard match up against the Steelers in primetime.
by WKBN Staff / Jan 17, 2021
WARREN, Ohio (WKBN) - The Warren Police Department is asking for the public's help in identifying a person suspected of causing damage to a local business.
The police department posted the photos to Facebook.
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) - Youngstown police are investigating a multiple vehicle crash that happened Sunday morning.
This happened on South Avenue near East Boston Avenue.


Here is this week's "name that airport" photo.
UPDATE: The photo in this week's "name that airport" post is of Alaska's Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.
Congratulations to Today in the Sky reader Rick Tanaka for being the first to correctly identify the photo.
Thanks to Paul Minne of Parker, Colo., for submitting the photo.
Be sure to come back on Friday at 12:10 p.m. ET for your chance to guess the next "name that airport" photo.
ORIGINAL POST: Here is this week's "name that airport" photo.
Check back on Wednesday after noon ET to see the answer. Good luck!
Do you have a photo you'd like to submit for our "name that airport" series? You can email it to todaysky (-at-) gmail.com for consideration. Please be sure to include your name and city of residence along with and acknowledgment that you have taken the picture yourself. And know that we cannot respond to every e-mail. Thanks!


The Immortality Institute Call to Action – Fight Aging!
The number of people who die of old age and age-related conditions is staggering. So staggering that, as balanced humans, we find it easy to put out of our minds. The Immortality Institute has added a counter and call to action to their site. Looking at that counter is another sobering reminder of what is lost every second of every day. This constant toll, each life individual and precious, must be fought.


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FILE – Opposition leader Juan Guaido explains the income and expenses of his self-proclaimed, parallel government in Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 16, 2022.…
FILE – Opposition leader Juan Guaido explains the income and expenses of his self-proclaimed, parallel government in Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 16, 2022. Venezuela's opposition on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, has selected an all-female team of exiled former lawmakers to replace Guaido as the face of its efforts to remove socialist President Nicolas Maduro. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)
Exiled Venezuela lawmakers chosen to lead anti-Maduro fight
by: CAMILLE RODRIGUEZ MONTILLA and JOSHUA GOODMAN, Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's opposition has selected an all-female team of mostly unknown exiled former lawmakers to replace the beleaguered Juan Guaidó as the face of its faltering efforts to remove socialist President Nicolas Maduro.
Last week, politicians who were elected to the National Assembly in 2015 voted to oust Guaidó from his role as "interim president," a title he claimed as head of what was widely considered the South American nation's last democratically-elected institution.
On Thursday, those same former lawmakers chose Dinorah Figueroa as his replacement. She'll be joined by two other backbenchers — Marianela Fernández and Auristela Vásquez — in a triumvirate leadership of a legislature that operates as a symbolic shadow to Maduro's rubber-stamping National Assembly, which convened Thursday in their traditional chambers.
The women represent three different parties that had been pushing for Guaidó's removal as a way to reconnect with disillusioned voters ahead of next year's presidential elections. But it remains to see how, living outside Venezuela, they will manage to mobilize their compatriots to counter Maduro's increasingly firm grip on power.
Figueroa, a medical surgeon who has been living in Spain, appealed for unity in her first address to fellow Maduro opponents. She also promised to work to shield the OPEC nation's extensive oil assets abroad, which include Houston-based refinery Citgo, from seizure by a long list of creditors stiffed by Maduro's profligate spending over the years.
"I have the conviction that this parliament will raise the flag of faith, hope and justice," Figuera said in the session, which was held virtually, in a Zoom meeting, because so many opposition politicians like her have fled Venezuela in recent years.
In January 2019, the National Assembly, then controlled by the opposition, voted to stop recognizing Maduro as president after several top opponents were barred from running against him. It then appointed Guaidó, who was one of the few leaders in his Popular Will party to avoid arrest or exile, to be the nation's "interim president," in accordance with the order of succession outlined in Venezuela's constitution.
Guaidó was quickly recognized as Venezuela's legitimate leader by the United States and dozens of governments in Europe and Latin America.
But his interim government was unable to win over the military, the traditional arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela, and the opposition-controlled National Assembly's five-year mandate officially ended at the close of 2020. With leftist leaders winning elections across Latin America in recent years, the U.S.-led international coalition to pressure Maduro has also frayed. Colombia, Brazil and Spain are among the countries that recently re-established diplomatic ties.
Guaido, in Thursday's meeting, thanked his many supporters, both domestic and foreign, in what was something akin to a farewell address. Standing at a lectern emblazoned with the Venezuelan presidential seal, the 39-year-old said he would remain in Venezuela — despite calls for his arrest from among Maduro's more radical supporters — and urged his successors to rebuild the unity needed to unseat Maduro.
"We can't generate a power vacuum that only benefits the de-facto dictator," he said.
Guaido's departure from the political scene may only be temporary however.
Although no longer the harbinger of hope he was when he rose from obscurity amid a wave of street protests to challenge Maduro's rule, he remains a popular figure in the otherwise rudderless opposition, admired for his bravery and commitment to the cause of Venezuela's democracy if not for always delivering results. He's expected to be among those who will compete in opposition primaries this year to see who runs against Maduro in 2024.
Goodman contributed to this report from Miami.