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Home International Rugby League News United States USA's Eichner re-signs with Northern Pride
USA's Eichner re-signs with Northern Pride
Brian Lowe
USA Hawks backrower Joe Eichner has re-signed with Intrust Super Cup team the Northern Pride for the 2021 season.
Due to COVID-19, however, the 2020 season did not happen and Eichner has had to return to the United States.
He must reapply for his visa from outside of Australia and that whole process could take some time.
"Yeah, it's been quite the hassle," Eichner told Rugby League Planet.
"The team manager moved on and so there was no one there to sort it unfortunately. The coach reluctantly agreed to re-sign me on the basis I would be back at the beginning of the year, but it's proving to be quite difficult.
"I'm reaching out to an immigration lawyer (in Cairns) currently seeing if I can expedite the process."
The Pride played just one game in March before the Queensland Rugby League (QRL) made the decision to cancel the 2020 season in the interests of player safety in the wake of the global pandemic.
Eichner has remained in Cairns, in Far North Queensland, since then to continue his employment obligations outside of football, but his visa was nearing its expiration date, so he had no choice but to return to the US.
The Hawks forward this week flew back to his native Florida.
"I'm back in my hometown of Geneva, Florida," he said.
"Helping my parents out on the family farm and I think I'm going to pick up some laboring work with my brother while I'm here till things get sorted."
Eichner has been playing rugby league in Australia since 2018. He started with the Junee Diesels in the New South Wales Group 9 division before moving north to Queensland in 2019 and linking up with the Cairns Brothers RLFC, a feeder club to the Northern Pride, in the Cairns and District competition.
It didn't take long for him to be given a shot to try out with the Pride and he had been a regular starter on their team before this season was shelved.
He is the first American-born player to earn a starting spot on an Intrust Super Cup team in a regular season.
Eichner has also been a regular fixture in the American national team since the 2017 Rugby League World Cup (RLWC) after getting his first start with the Hawks a year earlier.
He began his rugby football playing career in 2009 at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville where he played rugby union before signing on with the Jacksonville Axemen in the USA Rugby League (USARL) national clubs competition.
Eichner was part of the Axemen team that clinched its second USARL national championship in 2012.
Brian is a strong and effective communicator with more than 30 years' experience in broadcast and electronic media. He has been writing for Rugby League Planet since 2012 and is frequently the first reporter to break news stories about the sport. He has been our North American correspondent reporting on news in the US, Canada and Jamaica covering everything from league standings to strategy analysis to breaking news on key trades to editorials and colourful features on athletes. He is now writing about rugby league on a broader scale to cover developments around the globe. An accomplished storyteller, Brian started his career in Australian radio, before moving to the United States. He is an experienced podcast host and producer and is also a successful TV commentator having done play-by-play and analysis for ESPN, FOX Sports and the Rugby League European Federation (RLEF) among others.


CATL has been discussing the required specifications for the batteries with Tesla officials, the people said, asking not to be named because the talks are private.
The new company will commercially exploit Isro programmes like the small satellite, small satellite launch vehicle (SSLV) or mini-PSLV programme and polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV).
Johnson Controls is engaged in selling and recycling low voltage energy storage products using lead-acid and lithium-ion technologies for use in passenger vehicles and trucks.


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Guitar Shows in Texas, United States
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2 events found.
Guitarlington
Esports Stadium Arlington & Expo Center, Arlington, TX, United States
Amigo Guitar Shows

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may have forgotten he is a Republican.
"Trump clearly needs to change, in my opinion, to win the general election," McConnell said in an interview with Time Warner Cable News on Tuesday.
"What I've said to him both publicly and privately: 'You're a great entertainer. You turn on audiences. You're good before a crowd. You have a lot of Twitter followers. That worked fine for you in the primaries. But now that you are in the general, people are looking for a level of seriousness that is typically conveyed by having a prepared text and Teleprompter and staying on message,'" McConnell said.
The Republican senator endorsed Trump last month but has had reservations about the billionaire's readiness to assume the role of president, once allegedly telling Senate colleagues they would "drop him like a hot rock" if Trump became the GOP nominee.
McConnell now believes Trump is "getting closer" to being a credible candidate. "My hope is that he is beginning to pivot and become what I would call a more serious and credible candidate for the highest office in the land," he said.
Though McConnell hoped Clinton would not win the presidential election, he complimented his former Senate colleague.
"She's an intelligent and capable person, no question about it," he told TWC News.
Trump, meanwhile, took to Twitter to disagree with McConnell.
ISIS exploded on Hillary Clinton's watch- she's done nothing about it and never will. Not capable!
Video from Geoff Bennett, YouTube.


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Q: Add button to jqgrid column header Is there a way to add a button just next to column header? lets say just after the 'Sort indicators' ?
for a example
| Id (button) | Name (button) |
Thanks in advance.

A: I suppose that you knows that you can include HTML markup in the column headers. One should just place HTML fragment instead of the text in the colNames. I suppose that you want to add in all column headers some button with an icon and do some custom actions if the button are clicked.
You can implement the requirement in many ways. In the demo I show just one from many possible implementation:

on clicking on the custom button an alert will be displayed which shows the name of the column which header was clicked.
The corresponding code is
var $grid = $("#list");
//... here the grid will be created
$grid.closest("div.ui-jqgrid-view").find("div.ui-jqgrid-hdiv table.ui-jqgrid-htable tr.ui-jqgrid-labels > th.ui-th-column > div.ui-jqgrid-sortable")
    .each(function () {
        $('<button>').css({float: "right", height: "17px"}).appendTo(this).button({
            icons: { primary: "ui-icon-gear" },
            text: false
        }).click(function (e) {
            var idPrefix = "jqgh_" + $grid[0].id + "_",
                thId = $(e.target).closest('div.ui-jqgrid-sortable')[0].id;
            // thId will be like "jqgh_list_name"
            if (thId.substr(0, idPrefix.length) === idPrefix) {
                alert('Clicked the button in the column "' + thId.substr(idPrefix.length) + '"');
                return false;
            }
        });
    });

A: In the past, I have used jquery to add a button to the header.  Where my column name was "id":
$('#gs_id').after('<button id="clear_filters" class="button blue">Reset</button>');

A: .append may be helpful. Add a class to the column and then append button to that with requisite css.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Petit indi és una pel·lícula hispanofrancesa del 2009 dirigida per Marc Recha, autor també del guió amb Nadine Lamari i produïda per Parallamps amb coproducció de Televisió de Catalunya. Ha estat rodada en set setmanes a Vallbona i descriu en clau de faula fatalista el pas per l'adolescència d'un noi d'una família disfuncional, interpretat pel debutant Marc Soto, amb somnis que topen amb la crua realitat, mostrant una perspectiva de la perifèria de Barcelona fronterera entre la ciutat i el camp lluny de l'AVE i el turisme. Ha estat doblada al català.

Sinopsi
L'Arnau és un adolescent que prepara ocells per portar-los a concursos i té les seves esperances posades en un verdum. La seva mare és a la presó de Wad-Ras i viu amb la seva germana Sole en una casa a punt de ser desallotjada a Vallbona (Nou Barris). El noi veu contracta un advocat de prestigi que ha vist a televisió perquè alliberi la seva mare. Un dia troba una guineu ferida als marges del riu Besòs, se l'emporta, la cura i l'adopta. Quan el seu ocell guanya el concurs, influït pel seu oncle Ramon i el seu germà Sergi, comença a apostar, però un dia li roben la cartera. Aleshores decideix vendre l'ocell per pagar l'advocat, però descobreix que la guineu l'ha matat. Aleshores mata la guineu i la llença al Besòs.

Repartiment
 Marc Soto ...	Arnau
 Eulàlia Ramon 	...	Sole
 Sergi López i Ayats...	Oncle Ramon
 Eduardo Noriega...	Sergi
 Pere Subirana 	...	Aranya
 Lluís Marco	 ...	President penya ocellaire
 Agustí Villaronga	...	Home sabates blanques

Nominacions
Fou estrenada al Festival de Cinema de Locarno, on va ser candidata al Premi Variety Piazza Grande. També fou exhibida a la Seminci del 2009. Marc Soto fou nominat a millor actor als Premis Cinematogràfics José María Forqué de 2010.

Premis Gaudí de 2010

Referències

Pel·lícules del 2009 doblades al català
Pel·lícules d'Espanya del 2009
Pel·lícules dramàtiques del 2009
Vallbona (Nou Barris)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Organized Solitude
Does anyone remember the golden age of confinement, when humanity believed itself to be One in universal love? Many saw the omen of redemption, the promise of a historic rectification: we would be reborn in a better condition. That dream did not last long, because very soon it changed into a nightmare and the zombies returned, the dismal creatures that slept in the same mud from which we came. If the virus is already a misfortune that spreads over the earth, each new wave brings with it outbreaks of evil. The pandemic and the ideologies of darkness have sealed a powerful alliance, bringing to life old symbols and rituals that celebrate hatred and death. Why does demonic repetition thrive in the pandemic, showing us once more the grimace of totalitarianism?
Perhaps the archaic cosmic fear that surrounds us has been agitated by the action of an invisible enemy that poisons bodies and nations. Hannah Arendt in "Ideology and Terror" formulated the thesis that the foundation of totalitarianism consists in the capacity of ideological thought to imprison individuals in an organized solitude. When existence breaks down in the face of an event that strips us of the little bit of meaning to which we had been clinging in order to go on, terror and vulnerability make us turn towards the black sun of ideological thought, looking there for an answer. For Arendt, totalitarianism is implanted through the calculated organization of solitude, destroying the ties that link subjects with each other and with the individual experience of reality. Totalitarianism replaces the individual framework of the fantasy, the scenario where each subject stages their unique experience of reality, with a mould where singularities are crushed under the weight of collective terror. Ideology is the horror even greater than the terror that takes hold of us when we have to confront the abyss of our unconscious. We thus prefer to take refuge in the solitude of the masses and to become savage automatons, devoid of all human solidarity, ready to follow the paths shown us by the prophets of salvation. Ideological thought introduces the idea that beyond the singular experience of each subject there is another reality, more real, that no one has been able to see, a reality hidden from perception but revealed to us by totalitarian discourse. "The ideal subject of the totalitarian mandate is not the convinced Nazi or Communist, but the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, the difference between true and false, no longer exists", writes Arendt in the work cited.
The so-called "social networks" can become the perfect instrument for desocialization, the most suitable vehicle for sliding down the slope of paranoid fiction. In a remarkable essay on the distinction between solitude and isolation, Samantha Rose Hill points out that in one of her diaries the German philosopher wonders if there is a mode of thinking that would not be tyrannical, and why it is that human beings are such easy prey for the most horrendous formulas. She concludes that humans prefer slavery to the possibility of thinking for themselves. Surely psychoanalysis, by introducing the dimension of the unconscious, can take that terrible question and its possible answer even further. Language constitutes the first tyranny from which we cannot escape and it is probable that the germ of all subsequent injunctions emerges from this inevitable capture.
Unlike what the great Arendt believed, for psychoanalysis freedom does not consist only in the ability to think outside of ideology, but in the impossibility of speech to organize all of the singular experience of each subject. Something manages to escape the institution of language and its doctrinal power through that remainder that cannot be assimilated into the All, taking refuge in the symptom. It is for this reason that the symptom is the first thing that a totalitarian system would have to eliminate. The Germans understood this perfectly: the One can only reign over the ashes of symptoms. They did not have time to eliminate them all, but their new emulators distributed throughout the world, and better equipped to organize solitude, want to return to complete the task.
By Gustavo Dessal| 2020-11-28T19:03:56+00:00 November 28th, 2020|LRO 261|


A two dimensional and three dimensional computational study has been carried out respectively regarding aerodynamic forces affecting a symmetric airfoil, NACA0015 and a cambered airfoil, NACA2414. The negative lift (down force) and drag forces were predicted through the simulation of airflows over inverted rear-wings in different configurations namely; varying incidences i.e. angles of attack of the airfoils, two dimensional cross section of the inverted rear wings to be mounted on back of a car, and varying speeds of initial airflow.
The downforce increases as the angle of attack increases however, if an inverted rear wing is fixed on a car at high angle of attacks the rearwing starts to stall which is not a desired condition affecting the vehicle stability. Furthermore, the camberness added to the airfoil increased the downforce, which contributes more to the stability concept of the automobile.
Consequently, three dimensional simulations have evaluated effects of the 3D features of the airflow over the rearwings of a road car. The features are tip vortices along the upper edge, the lower edge and at the tip in addition to the sheet vortex along the trailing edge. The visualizations of the vortex vectors and streamlines explicitly depicted the features. The contour and the 2D plots of the pressure distribution over the inverted rearwings, set at angle of attack of 4° illustrated the effects of the airflow features. The tip vortices and the vortex sheets decrease the downforce.
Kamas, Tuncay, "2-D and 3-D Assessment of Cambered and Symmetric Airfoils: A CFD Study" (2009). All Theses. 693.


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Home » Blog » Podcast » Ep 5: Explore the Boundary Waters Canoe Area
Ep 5: Explore the Boundary Waters Canoe Area
BWCA Insight from Local Expert Steve Piragis
Can you tell us a bit about the BWCA?
What are the access points to get to the wilderness and what are the different towns?
How to get to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area?
How busy is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area?
So if you've never been to the BWCA, is it something that anyone can do if you? Do you feel like backpacking experiences required or necessary? Or are there ways to do the BWCA for even a beginner?
What do you like about the portaging experience of the trip?
Can the boundary waters be done easily as a "glamping" backpacking trip?
Starting Piragis Northwoods Co
How many years have you been going into the Boundary Waters? When did you start?
Were there Outfitters then, or were you one of the first Outfitters and how did you get started into starting Piragis?
How did you decide to start Piragis Northwoods Co?
Are you still in the original location?
What was Boundary Waters like back then in the 70s when you first started going? Were there still designated campsites? Were you seeing more wildlife, less wildlife? What are some of the big differences then, can you take us back in time?
How does the BWCA bring people together and create special memories?
You remember like it was yesterday too so it must be something about our first canoe trips that really stay with us.
What is some of the new outdoor/canoe gear that you really like?
Kevlar Canoes
Carbon Fiber Paddles
What do you rent vs needs to be packed prior to the trip?
What outdoor equipment do you not rent?
What's the best time to visit the BWCA? How is the BWCA different in different seasons?
When does the winter season that start in the BWCA? Is there a date that gets announced that the lakes are frozen?
When do the BWCA permits open? How to get a BWCA permit?
What are the different areas and entry points for the BWCA? How are they different?
What is something that you love about the Boundary Waters? That's different from other wilderness areas? I know we've talked a lot about wildlife and different things, but what do you get out of it personally? Every time you go in, come back out.
Save the Boundary Waters
In this episode, we talk to Steve Piragis, the co-founder of Piragis Northwoods Co about his journey of starting an outfitting business, learning about how the Boundary Waters Wilderness got established and how it's changed over time, and what he loves about the area. I hope that you enjoy this podcast and find the information below helpful.
I always love hearing from you, please leave a comment here or on any of our channels and let me know what you think of this content.
The Boundary Waters has been around since the original wilderness act of 1964 as one of the original 10 wildernesses that were designated and a lot more since then. 1.1 million acres were set aside, it's on the Canadian border, contiguous with the Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, which is another million acres. So, combined over 2 million acres of wilderness that are shared and kind of a very special geographic area and geologic area. The glaciers were nice enough to pass through here and carve out some of this really hard rock into about a thousand lakes and left behind ridges and valleys that were filled with water and we have contiguous lakes that probably one could paddle or ski or snowshoe for the rest of their lives and never see them all. because there are so many. There are people who like to go on trips every year like you do, and mark their maps and show the lake they'd been on, but after 20 years, there's still lots of lakes you haven't been on. So it's unique geographically and geomorphologically. There's no place really like it on the surface of the earth. I don't know where there are this many lakes in this small of an area on the edge of a boreal forest.
Entry points and to get into the Boundary Waters, you need a permit, at any time of the year, but obviously very busy in the summer. And there are just 23 entry points around our little hometown of Ely. There are more, on the other side, we have two sides to this Wilderness, you can kind of look at it as the East and West and we're the west. To drive around to the other side, the Gunflint side of this, of this beautiful park, it's takes us about three hours to drive around to a place where you could probably paddle to in about a day and a half. The Gunflint side is the eastern side. It's accessed off the Gunflint trail and there are another 20 or so access points over there, entry points. So, lots of ways to get into it and Ely is sort of, I think in the center of it all. And we kind of consider ourselves a canoe capital of the world here.
There are over 40 something outfitters in these combined areas. And the number of access points really helps. It never really feels crowded at any one of those places, which is incredible how spread out they've put these access points.
If you're traveling from out of state, chances are you probably going to come into Minneapolis, either fly in or now drive in and head up to Duluth, MN area and then you're going to go either East or West, whether you go to Grand Marais or go West to Ely and get most of the access to the Boundary Waters is through those two towns.
A lot of our customers fly from all over the, all over the country. They either fly to Minneapolis and rent a car or they fly to Duluth and we can arrange shuttles or they rent a car from there.
It's about two hours from Duluth to the Canadian border where we're located in Ely.
It's pretty accessible. It's one of the most popular wilderness areas in the country with around 80,000 permits given out every year and if there are three people in a permit that's 240,000 people. But, you can easily lose the crowds here.
The forest service administers this because it's part of the superior national forest. The Boundary Waters is well-regulated and for the last, at least 30 something years that I've been here or 40 something years I've been here. We haven't seen a situation where there's tremendous overcrowding in any one place, the forest services designed the system so that you are, you enter at a designated entry point, that's based on your permit application. And once you're in, you're in, you can go wherever you want and camp, as long as you camp on one of the designated campsites. So it's not like you have to reserve a campsite. You just reserve an entry point and from there you're on your own. This was our busiest year ever and because of the pandemic, people were looking, seeking wilderness, and seeking outdoor experiences. So we've never had a summer quite this busy in the Boundary Waters. And we managed to take on more customers and more wilderness travelers than we ever have in the past and I think everybody had a great experience.
[Buy a BWCA permit]
I think it's definitely a great place for beginners to learn about the wilderness for their first trips, whether their first time. As a student or as a boy scout or girl scout or as an elder who's never done it before because it's a user-friendly place. I think of it as the easiest wilderness trip you could do and still have that real feeling of being in a remote wild place. We've done a lot of backpacking and hiking and day hiking and backpacking in the mountains and spent a lot of time in the deserts. Each place has its unique and wonderful feel about but having a canoe and being able to take comfort items and not have to carry them very much.
There are some entry points where you don't have to portage at all, but portaging is a beautiful part of the experience really because you get to see the land as well as the water. So that's an opportunity to see stuff that you don't see while you're paddling. We always take two trips on every portage because we take a lot of stuff and we like to be comfortable and we don't mind walking the portages twice. So if there's a portage, that's a half-mile long, you know, and up walking at three times, right over back and back again. So you've got a 1.5-mile walk and you get to see what's growing, what's in the woods. The plants and birds and mushrooms and all kinds of stuff that you wouldn't see if you weren't portaging,
Well, we did that this summer because we took a family trip with some friends who had three daughters and the two of us and, and my wife and I, and we did a tow in.
You can get a motorized tow into some of these more remote places on the edge of the Boundary Waters. One is up the Loon River into a black LaCroix. Black LaCroix this year was much quieter than it's ever been because the Canadian side of the wilderness was closed and that's on the Canadian border so we had the whole Lake to ourselves basically, and we took the motor tow. We didn't portage at all and we brought a Yeti cooler. So we had cold food and cream for our coffee every day, it's pretty nice. And we saw some beautiful campsites and caught a lot of fish and hiked a few portages just because we wanted to see what you could see off of Black LaCroix. There are so many ways to enjoy the Boundary Waters without any portaging at all, or doing 12 portages a day for six days in a row if you want. If you're young and hardy and you really want to do a major expedition, you can do it. It's just a different mindset.
Gosh, you know Reet, Nancy and I got here very luckily from New England in 1975, seems like only yesterday to us really, but it's a long time ago, I guess. And she and I were in grad school out at the University of New Hampshire studying zooplankton of all things and limnology. And we got a job here in Ely for the summer as contractors with the EPA, the environmental protection agency, it was doing a study on Shagawa Lake, which is the Lake here right in town that had been a little polluted by the city of Ely over the century of mining that had gone on. And it was slowly cleaning itself up and we did part of the work that was necessary for a mathematical model of the Lake as it cleaned itself up. And we discovered Ely not knowing anything about Minnesota or the North Woods or the Boundary Waters, and just got so lucky to end up right here on the edge of this great Wilderness. Fell in love with it on our first trip and came back from new England again in 1976 to do more study on Shagawa. And at the end of 1976, we were Ely residents!
Well, we can't claim that we were one of the first. There have been Outfitters around, especially in Ely since the 20s. This has been a destination for wilderness travel since the 1920s and probably earlier but it's evolved to be a major destination since then.
We started our outfitting business, our retail, and our outfitting business in 1979. We worked here on a couple of biologic projects for a few years and taught at the community college for a couple of years. And by 1979, we had a nice little house in town and were enjoying and loving the Boundary Waters and loving this little town of Ely and we just didn't have anything else to do. I was interested in alternative energy and I started selling wood stoves out of my garage. And, along came a fellow who said,
"you know, you guys love the Boundary Waters you ought to sell my, my line of canoes."
So I said, yeah, you know, canoes are a whole lot lighter than wood stoves. I'd rather sell Canoes! We metamorphosed pretty quickly into a wilderness shop in downtown Ely and over the last 41 years, we've kind of grown by accretion. We keep adding on to our store by buying other pieces of property around us.
It's not the original location, we moved three times before we got here, but I think that was about 1982 by the time we got here and started buying the stores around us. And now we're going to build a new one across the street from us this next summer. We've kind of outgrown our outfitting division, it's building. Part of that building was our outlet store and it's been a good business for us, to have an outlet store. So, we're going to build a new outlet store across the street from our original store and our original outfitting department and expand that business. We're not giving up, we're still growing, I think, and my daughter has taken over a lot of the business. So we're leaving a legacy.
Well, the major differences, there were more motorized routes back then, the Boundary Waters was a little bit smaller. In 1978, the Boundary Waters wilderness act passed. It was in 1964 was part of the wilderness, a group of wilderness areas in the United States, but it expanded in 1978 with the Boundary Waters wilderness act. It took away some of what had been designated motorized routes and snowmobile routes that were within the wilderness. It was a little bit different than some of the wilderness areas out West, which had banned all motorized use. I think Senator Humphrey and vice-president Humphrey, he was part of the legislation that initially made the Boundary Waters and he was kind of hoping to please everybody, including some of the locals here and the people in Minnesota who liked to use motorboats. So by 1978, a lot of that had been eliminated, the wilderness got a little bit bigger. It was a shift, I think, between seeing a lot of people with motorboats on the main street in Ely to seeing almost everybody with a canoe on their roof. There's no place in the world, I don't think, where you can go other than Ely, Minnesota, where you'll see more cars with canoes than cars without on an August day.
It is, it is a unique culture here where people come out of the woods and talk about what they saw and what their campsites were like and what about the wind on Tuesday? And gosh, did you see that storm that brewed up a Thursday afternoon? It's exciting to be here when you're amongst a group of maybe at one time maybe 5,000 people are in the Boundary Waters at one time and this million acres of wilderness and they all have stories to tell. The thing that impresses me is that we've been here all these years and there's people been here longer than us and these folks that are now I'm pushing almost 70, we get some older folks then even old people like me who come in and say, yeah, I was here in 1948 when I was a boy scout.
And they remember what lakes they were on and they remember the route that they took. It's just such a memorable thing to people who have done it. You don't remember even where you lived in 1975 or 1965, but you remember the lakes you were on. You were carrying cans back then and Duluth packs and that's changed since then, but it's still a beautiful wilderness. One thing I've noticed too Reet is that the trees grow bigger, a lot of the Boundary Waters had been logged in the early 1900s and late 1800s. Since 1975, I've I think I noticed that these pine trees, especially the big White Pines have gotten bigger, I guess we would expect that wouldn't we?
So that had to be some of the heaviest packs and canoes you were moving around back then. The stoves, the fuel, the canoes are probably all aluminum. You just had to be a lot stronger back then!
Well, I was actually! My dad was a boat dealer in Athol Massachusetts. He sent me out here with a Grumman canoe. He said, you're going to Ely, Minnesota, you got to have a canoe. And the summer of 1975, I drove my little Volvo out here Grumman canoe on the roof, not knowing what I was going to find. I took a lot of back roads from Grand Marais to Ely. I thought I was in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden I pull into Ely, it's an Oasis. A town bustling with people on canoe trips and I've got a canoe! So Nancy and I took off, I think the second or third weekend we were in Ely after we got established with our research. We did our first canoe trip into Hagman Lake where there are some beautiful pictographs and that was it. It was love at first sight.
I remember I couldn't catch any fish! I don't know why, but it took me a while to figure out how to catch fish out here, that's kind of a big part of the experience for us anyway, is having a meal of fresh walleyes or Northern pike, or, you know, bluegills or whatever it is you're catching. We always bring the cast aluminum griddle and enough oil and batter, so that we can always have a fish meal if we're lucky.
Kevlar Canoes now weigh 40 pounds my old Grumman weighed 75. So I cut 35 pounds off really quickly.
The Carbon Fiber paddles are what we always use now, these days instead of 72-inch long wooden paddles that we used to use in the seventies. So a little 52-inch long carbon paddle that weighs, seven or eight ounces, you gotta watch out so it doesn't blow away.
What a difference, you know, we had what, white entitled white pads back in the seventies that we slept on, they were about half an inch thick and you could feel every rock underneath you if there was any.
Nowadays now there's, self-inflating like the Nimo pad that you can pump up with your foot. It's three inches thick and you feel like you're sleeping at home and you're on your Serta. So that's been a big difference.
The tents have evolved to become a lot lighter. I think we started out with something that probably weighed 12 pounds. Back in the forties, of course, then when boy Scouts were using canvas tents, they weighed 20 pounds. And our first nylon tent that we used was probably a Eureka Timberline, they might've been nine or 10 pounds. And now, the tensor, four or five pounds. So things have changed a lot, everything's lighter, but that means we probably bring a little more fresh food and when we're not, portaging maybe a cooler and some frozen food and, and some real pleasures, like cream in the coffee.
Picking up a 75-pound canoe was probably not good for anybody's back or, and before that wood canvas canoes after a week maybe weighed 90 pounds. So, so everybody's a little healthier now. I think they come out of the woods feeling better and they go a little further with a little less work, but then you see a little more wilderness because things are lighter.
You also reduce the risk of injury as getting into the canoe around the sketchy rocks, putting in and out. That could be tricky with a really heavy canoe.
There is soup to nuts. A lot of people have here have sleeping bags and tents and they bring their own and we supply everything else. A lot of times people just rent canoes from us because they don't have a $3,000 Kevlar canoe and we have 140 of them to rent. We do a lot of just canoe rentals, but what we call "full outfitting" out here is everything basically from sleeping gear and food and cookware and tents, the canoes and the paddles and all, everything that you would need. A tarp, cause it's kinda nice on a rainy day to have a place to sit outside and chairs. If you want to take them, we offer everything.
The only thing we don't provide with a full outfitting party is a water filter because water filters tend to be used up over time. We invite our customers to buy their own, bring a water filter instead of us renting them one and fishing gear.
Fishing gear can be pretty basic. If you've never done it before and you want, you want to do a canoe trip, it's not a bad idea to buy a license and just buy a cheap rod and reel. And we sell those combinations here in the store for $30 and a couple of rappels and that'll get you going, probably catch a lot of fish. So those are the things that we don't provide, but everything else, whatever you need, if you want to run a pack or just a sleeping bag, we'll do that too. A lot of people flying in from New England or if you're flying in from Florida or California, probably not gonna want to bring too much with you.
I think we, as an outfitter, have absolutely the best, the highest quality of every piece of gear that you can imagine. And we sell it all used at the end of every season. So we start next spring with brand new gear, the first person that rents in May, when you're the first one here, you're going to have everything that is brand new. Tents and sleeping bags and a canoe that has no scratches on it. It's a little intimidating, but most people get over it.
The high-end gear [price] really adds up. If you're not sure you're getting into backpacking and you're not doing it all the time, everything that you guys provide is probably a couple of thousand dollars, even without the canoe.
And backpackers have generally a smaller, lighter, internal frame pack. We use canoe packs, which are bigger, a little bulkier maybe, but easier to pack and easier to put into a canoe. And we have food packs that are lined with foam so that they keep the food from overheating and staying cool. It's just little things that make the Boundary Waters a little bit different than backpacking and the experience that people have, they learn over a period of time what works and what doesn't work as well.
The summer season starts here in May when ice out usually happens at the end of April or the first week of May. So the water's cold, there are no bugs. The fishing season doesn't open until the middle of May. So that first week there are not many people around that's for sure. There are people that show up as soon as the ice goes out, they somehow keep track of it and they're here the day the ice goes out, but a really good season gets underway, gets busy about the 1st of June. And that's a little bit a buggy season, people especially from Colorado, for some reason, those folks who don't like bugs try to avoid the month of June, but the month of June is also the most active period of time for birds singing flowers, blooming. It's a, it's a beautiful time of the year. And if you choose a campsite on a point out in the breeze, the bugs won't be as big a problem, as you might imagine.
July, from about the 4th of July until the middle of August, that's our busiest season. Lots of boy scout groups and girl scout groups and lots of families and church groups and permits are a little harder to get. But, it's also the warmest time, there is good swimming, there's still good fishing. Things are mellow cause it's mid-summer and it's, and it's warm. We do occasionally get a 90-degree day here, but a warm day in Northern Minnesota is usually about 80 degrees, 75 to 85, somewhere in there. That's a great time for, for kids, I think, and bring in families.
By the middle of August, things start to slow down a little bit, and towards labor day, we have a very busy weekend on labor day weekend, but right after Labor Day, it's relatively low key. Fewer people, cooler water obviously, and nice sleeping weather, nights would get cool and a beautiful time to be out. Things start to change. As the leaves change at the end of September and into the middle of October and basically, it's lights out about the 15th of October things start to freeze up here this year. Especially, but yeah, that's the seasons.
We had people ice fishing here last week, but then we had 70 degrees this weekend so that all ended. We don't get snow that sticks around until the end of November early December and lakes. Big lakes don't freeze until sometimes the middle of December. So if you want to be safe and do a winter trip, I think it's really from Christmas on until the middle of April and cold, short days when you talk about December and January, we're pretty far North.
The forest service has a website, recreation.gov and the Boundary Waters is part of that system for getting permits. The permit system opens up at the end of January. We certainly keep track of it and with our website Piragis, we keep everybody informed of what's going on. You don't really need to get a permit on the first day. The system opens, a lot of people do get a permit, but really there's plenty of permits available and lots of entry points available until into the summer.
But if you decide last minute, it's July 10th and you think maybe we'll go next weekend and you look online. There's still probably going to be a few permits left. They might be the entry points where you have to take a Portage right away to get into a lake.
Start early, plan your trip, call us, contact an outfitter to help with what you need. You gotta stick to that entry date, so if you chose July 12th, that's the date you gotta be here, July 11th, early on the 12th, because that's the only day that you're allowed to enter. After that, once you have that permit, you can stay as long as you want, go wherever you want from that entry point and then have fun.
We like to work with our customers and find out what they have in mind. Waterfalls? Lots of portages? Lots of lakes? A round trip? Where you enter and spend six days traveling and coming back. Wildlife is basically ubiquitous. There's probably not a lot of places where there's any more or less wildlife, there's a chance of hearing wolves, maybe even seeing one or two, there's a chance of seeing bears, hopefully not in your camp, but you keep your camp clean and avoid bears. There's always the opportunity to see a Moose, mostly while you're paddling on a quiet stream somewhere is a good opportunity to see Moose because they're in the water a lot in the summertime.
Geomorphologically, there's not a lot of difference between the East and the West. There are just different routes, different amounts of time, different amounts of portages. Some people like our family group, we just, one or two families, we just go into a big lake and just set up one or two campsites over the course of a week and travel and do day trips and really relax and fish a little bit and enjoy the campsite and the conversation and do some hiking into other lakes or portaging into other lakes, but coming back to our campsite every night. So that's a different kind of trip. Rather than day in and day out foraging and finding new campsites and resetting up camp, which we also do. It just depends on the individuals and what they had in mind and what they find enjoyable.
I always think about that and it's almost subconscious, but when you're, at least in this wilderness area, and probably true in others as well, but what I see is my mind changes. I focus on what I'm doing at the time and forget about all the superfluous chatter that goes on in your head. And you kind of focus on the present and this wilderness area and more than others has a subtle beauty. It's not the Grand Canyon, for instance, it's not Yosemite and El Capitan. It's a subtle beauty of lakes and sunsets and skies full of stars and, and loons calling and campfire activities and being with friends and taking time to just lay back, relax, and, sit on a rock and you're in your little comfortable chair watching, a family of Loons swim by. And so many things that attract your attention that keeps your mind occupied. That's what I find is so enticing about wilderness in general, but especially the Boundary Waters. I hope other people feel that too. I think they do, most people, it takes them a day or two to relax, to get into that mindset.
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is threatened by sulfide-ore copper mining. The Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters is leading the effort to ensure permanent protection for the Boundary Waters Wilderness, America's most visited Wilderness and Minnesota's crown jewel, from proposed sulfide-ore copper mining.
What would a Twin Metals mine on the edge of the Boundary Waters mean? Pollution. Here's a look at different ways this toxic mine could pollute the Wilderness. Not this mine. Not this place. #SavetheBWCA
Find out more about how you can help Save the BWCA!
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Great tips for outdoors
March 24, 2021 by JSK0113 from United States
I love these podcasts because of the knowledge and depth of the host and the guests. Continue making these and get more people outside! You guys rock!
Great interviews and information!
January 29, 2021 by BuckeyeWarrior from United States
The Trip Outside folks are a great crew who are genuinely interested in conservation and helping people responsibly recreate outdoors. The Trip Outside podcasts are a great way to learn more about a destination before you go. Many times, it can be difficult to choose an outfitter or tour company when you don't know who to trust or anything about the company's ethics. You can rest assured that any recommendations from Trip Outside have already taken this into account. They also offer very helpful tips and advice about how to plan an outdoor adventure when you don't know anything about the place you are traveling. Thanks Trip Outside!
Informational and educational
January 7, 2021 by LJL111111 from United States
I'm enjoying these- I like the flow, pace, and content so much! I'm learning a lot and already planning my next outdoor adventure!
A MUST for outdoor enthusiasts (even city slickers)
January 6, 2021 by @themanreet from United States
I love this podcast! Even though I'm a city slicker I do love an outdoor adventure. Reet and his guests do a fantastic job of making the outdoors seem accessible to anyone. They take the guesswork out of trip planning and I learn something fascinating in every episode! Highly recommend listening to this podcast.
If you love the outdoors, you'll enjoy this!
December 5, 2020 by Live Small Ride Free from United States
Whether you're just getting into the outdoors or an experienced outdoor enthusiast, you'll enjoy this podcast. There's a take away for everyone: tips on tryin out a new activity, learning about a new region or getting info from the locals!
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McPherson, Inc. Research Grade Czerny-Turner Monochromators are available in many different focal lengths and with many different options. Chances are good that we have one just right for your application. Models ranging from 0.67-m to 2-meter focal lengths share a wealth of features.
The Model 207 offers the user the most throughput and fastest aperture in a long focal length instrument. This is ideal for photoluminescence and Raman applications. We also make the Model 207, and all the long focal length Czerny-Turner models, in vacuum compatible versions. PDF data for the Model 207 Vacuum (207V) is available here. General information for the long focal length vacuum Czerny-Turner models is here.
Used in air the spectral range of these instruments extends from 185-nm to 78-µm, and with vacuum down to 105-nm (depends on the grating.) For intermediate ranges a purge gas can be used (Nitrogen, for example.) McPherson SNAP IN gratings allow the alignment-free use of many different gratings. Easily view a wider spectral range or obtain higher resolution! You can retrofit years later and not have to worry about alignment with the McPherson SNAP IN approach. Our dual grating turret also accepts these easy to exchange gratings.
McPherson optics are Aluminum coated with a top layer of Magnesium Fluoride. This coating provides extremely good response in a broad spectral range. If required by your application other coatings (Gold, Silver, Aluminum, etc.) can be provided.
Well equipped, these instruments feature: multiple entrance and exit ports, high precision wavelength drives, extended range operation, Echelle, and oversize grating mounting capabilities. Optional features include grating turrets, imaging optics, multi-source, and multi-detector turrets further increasing versatility. See the features sheet to learn more.


PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC — Render Legion, a Chaos Group (chaosgroup.com) company, has launched Corona Renderer for Cinema 4D, simplifying the visualization process for artists and designers. Corona Renderer's simple, yet powerful approach can now be used by the C4D community to turn out photorealistic visuals very quickly. By reducing the rendering process to a few clicks, artists can spend more time on their ideas.
Corona Renderer for Cinema 4D builds on the strengths of its popular 3ds Max version, aligning product standards with tools specifically designed for Cinema 4D. Through a tight integration, Render Legion has tied Corona Renderer deep into Cinema 4D, making it an easy addition to any architecture or design-based workflow.
Instead of test renders, artists get immediate feedback as they work. Whether modifying geometry, lighting, camera location or materials, each change appears in photorealistic quality within the Corona VFB (or Cinema 4D Picture Viewer), greatly accelerating the look development process.
Corona Renderer operates like a native rendering engine, allowing users to render to the Picture Viewer, Corona VFB or Cinema 4D viewport. Full compatibility with Team Render lets Corona Renderer apply its innate speed boosts to any distributed process. Users can interactively adjust the color and intensity of scene lights before, during or after rendering, allowing for subtle or extreme changes with just one render.
The release offers a simpler way for artists to create, edit and reuse shaders between channels or materials. The editor works with all Corona and many Cinema 4D material sets, and introduces the ability to spread changes across multiple materials at once. Users can also choose between high-quality CPU or interactive GPU-based AI denoising to speed up renders and look development.
Corona Renderer for Cinema 4D is available for MacOS and Windows, and is compatible with Cinema 4D R14 to R20. A workstation and three render notes are priced at $28.50/month, with yearly rates available as well.


UPDATE: The water main has been repaired.
While the Council Chambers at 547 N. Carney Drive, receive repair and maintenance and until further notice, City Council meetings will be held at Pine Shores Golf Course, 515 Fred Moore Highway, St. Clair MI 48079. Please note the address on the top of each agenda to verify the location before attending.


Hyundai Veracruz upgrades touchscreen Bluetooth hands free calling backup camera what!
Lexus truck added some heated rear seats HOT!!
We can fix your exhaust too!!
Wanting more power for your car? Change your straw (exhaust) and look good too!
If you still have factory speakers than they probably look like, we can replace it.
Jeep Wrangler 2014 installing backup camera and upgrades to the sound system!
We can do brakes too!
Add some tunes and Bluetooth tech to your ride. This is a 2011 Chevy Malibu audio video system and replacement stereo CD player, speakers For 93 Buick Rivera Kenwood.


Parenting is a hard enough job. Do we really need all the sensational headlines warning us that our children are destined for unemployment, obesity, and a lifetime living in our basement?
In all seriousness, in the age of social media, where research and opinions on just about anything related to parenting flood our consciousness, it's no wonder that some parents are anxious about lasting damage they might be doing to their children with seemingly innocent and innocuous decisions. Determining what really should concern us - and what doesn't deserve a second thought - is practically a full time job.
A few weeks ago, the district I have the pleasure of leading in the heart of Silicon Valley, the Menlo Park City School District, had a cursory mention in a New York Times piece that attempts to draw some conclusions about the impact of screen time on youth, based mostly on the input of one psychologist from the East Bay promoting his book about the dangers of screen time, and a few disperate and incomplete examples of schools' and communities' relationship to technology.
Adding to what I would describe as the superficiality of the article and the lack of research (for example, no one from my district or Hillview Middle School was contacted for background information or an interview, while quotes from a Waldorf representative are included), my district--MPCSD--was set up as a counter example to a "rich" private school that has "eschewed" most screens. While it is true that our flagship Hillview Middle School is both public and a 1:1 device school, it is not the "low income, public school" that the author frames it as to make her point that low income, public school students across the country are being taken advantage of by technology companies out to make students addicted to their products. Quite the contrary. Hillview is, in fact, one of the most well-resourced and thoughtful educational institutions of its kind, one that attracts far more "Silicon Valley executives" (the article's words, not mine) than the Waldorf school to which the author compares it.
This type of "Google search" journalism for the purposes of making a dramatic point fails to appropriately address the actual concern--screen time's impact on our youth--and sensationalizes the challenges and responses to an honest problem that parents today face. In this blog, I will attempt to offer some clarity, some perspective, and some hope.
Technology is ubiquitous. It is part of how we "do life." It can be argued that in the United States today it is nearly impossible to function efficiently and effectively without interacting with technology. In most schools, public and private, technology is a part of students' learning experience because to deny children access to technology or technical training would be to withhold essential skills for their future success.
In our middle school, we chose to provide each student with their own device because we believed that it could do three things. First, it can make organizational and learning tasks more efficient for the student and teacher and more accessible for all learners. Second, it could provide teachers with the opportunity to reimagine learning experiences. And third, and maybe most importantly, it allowed us to partner with parents in educating their children on the safe and effective use of technology. If parents are going to have to navigate raising their children in the world of technology, who better to partner with than the trusted teachers in their community?
In my opinion, we must stop conflating "scary screen time" (my words, this time) with meaningful and efficient uses of technology in purposeful settings. Simply put, not all screen time is the same. In our district, we take great effort to ensure that technology is not a "shiny toy" meant to impress, but which adds little value. Rather, it is a tool to be used to enhance learning, not overtake it. Teachers in our elementary schools, where by design we do not have 1:1 programs, teach all students using Common Sense Digital Citizenship curriculum. We train all of our middle school students in our "Digital Driver's Licence" program before students are released to responsibility with their new device. Our skilled district librarians regularly instruct students on how to evaluate digital resources and differentiate between reliable information and opinion, propaganda, or outright lies. Our devices are all managed by the school district, linked to our protected district wireless network, and have strict filters. In recent years, our staff have instituted a daily device-free break and lunch. A visitor to our classrooms would note that students often only use the devices a small portion of their instruction time, and when they do use them, students show a fluency and adeptness with the devices to such a degree that the device almost disappears into the background of effective teaching and engaged learning. And if all else fails? Parents in our schools have a choice to limit or completely disconnect from technology for their child's learning.
Don't get me wrong, there are challenges. Those challenges evolve as our experience increases and the technology changes. We meet those challenges head-on with honesty and transparency, trying hard not to be myopic or reactionary in our response. However, now eight years into our initial efforts with 1:1 technology, I can honestly say that our student experience is richer, our instruction is better, and more students' needs are met because the educators in our schools have been empowered to use technology as a tool for learning.
No educational reform, program, or tool is a panacea. The same resource can be detrimental or helpful, depending on how it is used. Technology is not inherently bad. I have witnessed some of the best teaching occur with nothing more than a chair and time, and I have also observed incredible discovery when technology is involved.
Today's reality is this: if 90% of what we learned in school 30 years ago in upper elementary and beyond can now be Googled (not scientific, but you get my point), then teaching and learning must adapt to a new reality. This new reality is one in which the teacher is far more influential than simply a provider of low-level (on Bloom's Taxonomy) knowledge; rather, the teacher is a learning clinician, thoughtfully posing powerful questions, skillfully designing learning experiences that require students to seek knowledge and then apply it, and adeptly providing meaningful and actionable feedback for students to improve their understanding and skill. When well used, technology is not something to fear in the classroom; it is a tool that allows teachers to teach in a more profound manner and students to own more of their learning. I encourage us to embrace the strategic use of technology in our schools, especially as students get older.
I don't mean to minimize the cases in which technology is being used poorly by schools, particularly in schools that serve students in high poverty. In those cases, we must recognize it and do everything in our power to change it. However, to paint all technology-using schools with a wide brush misses the point altogether.
But if it's not in schools where we should be most concerned about screens, where is it?
Most of the nefarious technology examples highlighted in the Times article are not found in educational devices; they are found in the small supercomputer that lives in the pockets and backpacks of many, if not most, of our children, some as young as eight. Yes, I'm talking about the smartphone. If we as parents and educators want to really address what is very likely (although research is still very nascent) the cause of the lion's share of negative impacts of screen time, we need to look no further than the smartphone most of our children feel they deserve. Last year around this time, I wrote a blog in support of the parents who are struggling to determine when is an okay time to get their child a smartphone. I don't judge. Every child is different. Every family has different expectations. However, if as a parent you are concerned about your child and screen time, I would suggest you thoughtfully consider the age at which you provide your child a smartphone and the rules and expectations you set around the device should you give them one.
A close second to the smartphone for causes of concern are video games. While there are benefits to video games and I am no luddite when it comes to technology, video games have many of the same concerns associated as does the smartphone. For more on this topic, you may read the blog I wrote last year about the content and effects of videogames on children.
It's hard to be a parent these days. There is so much competing for our child's attention and devotion. Screen time is today's parenting "boogeyman" and, like it or not, we have to remain strong, informed, and determined when managing our children's expectations with technology. It is possible though. Your child may throw a tantrum or two in the process, but for most children, clear boundaries, expectations that are regularly adhered to, and close monitoring of use is a recipe for success.
There is great research being conducted on a myriad of topics related to technology and our kids. As more of the good research is published and as more "tech natives" are themselves leading some of this research, I am confident there will be a large body of evidence that will tell us precisely what to avoid and what to embrace. In the meantime, I hope we won't allow ourselves to be too reactionary or too protectionist or too judgmental or too laissez faire.
Knowing our own children as we do, combined with a nice balance of skepticism, mixed with practicality, imbued with confidence in our gut, is the best recipe for parenting I can think of. It's a recipe that can serve us well as we navigate screen time. And, if we can also trust our teachers to find that "just-right" use of technology in the classroom and celebrate that our schools are partnering with us in educating our kids about safe and good uses of technology, maybe - just maybe - we'll all get through this crazy modern time in which we find ourselves, relatively unscathed. And our kids will (hopefully) end up employed, healthy, and independent!
I appreciate your nuanced response, "Sup" Burmeister. It's all about balance and thoughtful application. Melo Park is fortunate to have someone so reflective at the helm.


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LAH Weekly
Learning at Home | Week of 6/27 – 7/01
After years of anticipation, autonomous vehicles are now being tested on public roads around the world. As ambitious innovators race to develop what they see as the next high-tech pot of gold, some experts warn there are still daunting challenges ahead.
Ballerina Boys is a portrait of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (The Trocks), an all-male ballet company and international dance sensation. For over 45 years the company has shared their signature style and message of equality, inclusion and social justice with audiences around the world.
Valley PBS presents this two-hour documentary film based on the experience of Japanese Americans before, during and after WWII with a focus on local Assembly Centers, Merced, Fresno, Pinedale and Tulare.
Scott Yoo goes to Germany to learn Bach's sonatas and partitas, widely considered among the greatest works ever written for solo violin. There, he discovers a riddle Bach left behind in his portrait.
As global temperatures continue to rise, scientists are wondering if we need solutions beyond reducing emissions. Enter geoengineering.
Searching for Timbuctoo tells the little-known story of a Black settlement, established in the wilds of upstate New York, that brought together a group of ardent abolitionists willing to risk their fortunes, their families, and their futures to destroy slavery.
If spacecraft OSIRIS-REx can grab a piece of an asteroid and bring it back to Earth, scientists could gain great insight into our planet's origins — and even how to defend against rogue asteroids. But NASA only gets three shots at collecting a sample. Can they pull it off?
When the bow of the colossal Ever Given container ship plowed into the bank of the Suez Canal on March 23, 2021, international supply chains ground to a halt. What went wrong? Follow the dramatic efforts to free the ship and the investigation into one of the most expensive shipping disasters ever.
"Stories in Thread" focuses on Hmong Pa Dau or Story Cloths. The traditionally hand-made textiles are integral to what it means to be Hmong in America.
The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart was one of America's first celebrities. After only a few years as a pilot she became the best-known female flier in America, not only for her daring and determination but also for her striking looks and outspoken personality.


Working through a number of global collaborations, they are developing the necessary infrastructure—scientific, technical and institutional—to support the use of genomics as a tool in the fight against infectious diseases. The next challenge is to apply this understanding to real-world efforts to fight these illnesses.
CGGH's work is focused on three related areas of research: Data science, Networks and Technology.


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Neurology > Autism
Sniffing Strength 'Profoundly Altered' in Autism
— Study suggests a potentially simple way to screen for ASD in preverbal children.
by Mollie Marko PhD, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today July 14, 2015
Abnormalities in the olfactory response to pleasant and unpleasant odors may be related to an underlying deficit in sensorimotor control for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), researchers found.
In a study involving 18 children with ASD and 18 typically developing (TD) children, those with ASD failed to modulate the magnitude of a sniff -- that is, the strength of the nasal inhalation, or "sniff response" -- upon exposure to pleasant versus unpleasant odors, according to doctoral student Liron Rozenkrantz, of the Weizmann Institute of Science, and colleagues.
Action Points
Abnormal sniff response to pleasant and unpleasant odors may identify children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The sniff response is a language-free task-free automatic odor-specific response, and thereby eliminates the potential confounders of task comprehension and motivation.
In contrast, TD children had an increased sniff response for pleasant odors relative to unpleasant odors, with the sniff strength lower by about 30% for unpleasant versus pleasant aromas (mean 0.665 versus 0.918 normalized flow units, P<0.05 after Bonferroni correction), the researchers reported online in Current Biology.
Importantly, among children with ASD, greater abnormalities in the sniff response were associated with greater social impairment (r=-0.72 for social affect, P<0.001) and overall autism severity (r=-0.75, P<0.0005), as measured by the Autism Diagnosis Observation Schedule (ADOS). But there was no relationship between the sniff response and performance on a battery of standardized motor assessments (P≥0.18), suggesting that the findings were not related to a generalized motor impairment.
The investigators also used the results to develop a computer program that could classify individual children as ASD or TD based on the characteristics of their sniff response alone. When tested on the children individually, the classifier correctly identified 17 of 18 TD children and 12 of 18 ASD children (81% accuracy, P<0.001).
Rozenkrantz and colleagues suggested that quantification of the sniff response could "provide for a novel early non-verbal non-task-dependent ASD marker."
The sniff response was recorded using a custom-designed, double-barreled, pediatric nasal cannula, which delivered either pleasant (roses or shampoo) or unpleasant (sour milk or rotten fish) odors while recording nasal airflow. Participants -- mostly boys, mean age 7 -- watched a cartoon during the 10-minute task.
Prior studies of olfaction in ASD typically required verbal or written instructions, as well as verbal or written responses. "The sniff response is largely devoid of these limitations, as it consists of a language-free task-free automatic odor-specific response," Rozenkrantz and colleagues wrote.
As such, they asserted, examining the sniff response eliminates the potential confounders of task comprehension and motivation.
Another benefit of the measure comes from the speed at which the researchers were able to obtain their measurements. "As a clinician, you want something fast that tells you there is a problem here," Elizabeth Torres, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University, who was not involved with the study, told MedPage Today. "You have a limited number of minutes with the child in your clinical practice to make a decision as to what course of treatment you are going to follow and to actually provide a set of recommendations to the parent," she continued.
But Torres was wary of placing too much faith in the relationship between an objective measure, such as the sniff response, and the observational measures of autism severity and social impairment.
"[The ADOS] is a diagnostic tool that is very useful to identify the problem, but it should not be used to guide our research," Torres explained. "It is much too noisy to be correlated with anything that comes from a physical measurement of something that the body is experiencing," she said.
The authors described their findings in the context of internal models of action (IMAs), or mappings within the brain that relate a prediction of the sensory consequences of an action to the actual sensory feedback experienced. Prior research has suggested that IMAs may be impaired in children with ASD, and that this may lead to social dysfunction.
But the relationship between the sniff response and IMAs is not well defined in the paper, and Torres was concerned with the lack of discussion regarding feedforward/feedback control, or how the brain estimates the sensory consequences of the upcoming action. This, she explained, "is at the heart of internal models."
Torres suggested that abnormalities in the reward system, or the brain network that qualifies a positive or negative experience, may contribute to the lack of sniff modulation in children with ASD.
However, the potential contribution of the reward system was not addressed in the paper. Rather, like many recent studies of ASD, the authors "aim for establishing a link with social interaction issues," Torres noted. The use of such social and diagnostic measures has become common across the field, and Torres explained that, "instead of science leading the clinical practice, the clinical practice is leading the science."
The study had no commercial funding. Authors reported no personal financial interests, but the Weizmann Institute is considering patent filings on technology related to the work.
Source Reference: Rozenkrantz L, et al "A mechanistic link between olfaction and autism spectrum disorder" Curr Biol 2015; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.05.048.
Secondary Source
Nature Neuroscience
Source Reference: Haswell C. C., et al "Representation of internal models of action in the autistic brain" Nat Neurosci 2009; DOI: 10.1038/nn.2356.