text:
Nicola Mazzarotto
KPMG LLP15 Canada SquareLondonEnglandE14 5GL
+44 20 7311 3768Contact via email
Thought Leaders - Competition
WWL Ranking: Thought Leader
Competition - Economists 2019
WWL says
Nicola Mazzarotto is an "absolutely excellent economist" extol peers who applaud his "wealth of experience in the field".
Dr Nicola Mazzarotto is a partner at KPMG Economics, based in London, and heads KPMG Economics' international network. With teams of competition economists in the UK, France, Spain and Belgium, KPMG Economics is one of Europe's leading economics consulting firms.
Nicola has over 15 years' experience working on competition cases at UK and EU competition authorities and advising private sector clients.
The team in London comprises over 25 economics specialists and works across all types of competition cases. KPMG Economics conducts innovative work, particularly in the use of advanced data techniques in competition cases, drawing on KPMG's data analytics expertise.
Since joining KPMG in 2011, Nicola has advised clients from various sectors on a wide range of competition matters. Nicola advised a number of large companies in the course of merger inquiries in the UK and EU, competition enforcement cases, follow-on damages litigation, state aid matters and market investigations. For example, Nicola supported the Hospital Corporation of America through the Competition and Markets Authority's investigation into private healthcare, subsequent appeal and remittal inquiry, helping overturn a divestment decision against HCA. He also leads KPMG's work acting as expert advisors to the European Commission, in monitoring and assessing Google's compliance with the remedies imposed by the European Commission's Shopping decision.
Nicola has testified as an expert witness in litigation and arbitration proceedings in the UK and internationally. This includes acting as the expert for a defendant in follow-on damages litigation in the automotive bearings market before the UK Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT), as well as providing expert witness testimony in the context of commercial litigation in North America.
Prior to joining KPMG, Nicola was head of policy analysis at the UK Competition Commission (CC), now part of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). At the CC Nicola led the economic analysis in a number of high-profile inquiries, as well as the economic analysis underpinning the CMA's current UK Merger Guidelines. Nicola has also worked at the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT), at the competition division of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and at the Directorate-General for Competition (European Commission).
Nicola has a PhD in economics from the University of East Anglia, home to the Centre for Competition Policy, a global centre for competition policy research. He is also a regular speaker at UK and international competition conferences.


January is National Mentoring Month. As leaders in Internal Medicine, ABIM governance members share how teaching and mentoring has impacted their careers.
Take some time to #ThankYourMentor today!
"Mentorship is a big part of my job. I once supervised a resident in his longitudinal outpatient clinic. When he started, he had some professionalism problems. Our relationship was not initially easy, as he was not open to feedback… Over time and with support, our relationship became a partnership between learner and teacher, and by the time he finished residency, he was one of the most confident, compassionate and outstanding patient care providers that I have known.


text:
French stadium. Thomas Lombard: "It is better to focus on the state of mind of a footballer than his generation"
by jackerstes.comPosted on January 5, 2023
By Writing rugby
has been published January 5, January 23 at 12:56 p.m
Rugby news
Check out my news
Follow this media
Thomas Lombard, CEO of Stade Français, explains that he has reviewed his recruitment philosophy to achieve results. (©Icon Sports)
the France stadium He is having his best first half of the season since 2015. With 8 wins, a draw and 5 losses, Parisians are in 2nd place.e Top 14 place. Stylish Pau (37-3) winners on Saturday 31 December remain on a 3-point win streak before hosting Gonzalo Quesada's men. Castres 15 on behalf of this Saturday, January 7 (17.00).e championship day.
For exclusive Rugby newsGeneral manager of Stade Français Thomas Lombard he is sure that his club has started the season well.
News: How do you rate the first part of the season at Stade Français?
Thomas Lombard: The output and content of the team is satisfactory. We lose a few matches and stop for 80 minutes. This start of the season shows a very good mood of the players. They are attractive, do not let go and unite. Then the balance is good. We are second in Top 14. We received 8 bonuses: 5 attack and 3 defense. This group's participation and new state of mind is highlighted through these statistics. This is an important difference compared to previous seasons, which were more erratic and we were unable to chain this kind of performance.
Aside from the mental state, how do you explain this start to the Paris season?
LT: We should also highlight the good things that are done on a daily basis. The squad has improved with the arrival of Paul Gustard as defense coach and James Kent in charge of skills. They bring their experience and new things are introduced. Faced with the demands of our championship, a successful conquest, a good defense and a good scorer allow us to exist and have very strong arguments. Today our conquest is great. With the arrival of Paul Gustar, we built a defense. This is the success of the system: making the player love the defense through the content offered on the pitch. Paul tries to express satisfaction and desire to participate in defense work. We traditionally favor offense over defense. Looking back at last season, the defenses of Castres, Montpellier and the teams at the top of the table were always effective.
"Morgan Parra was able to translate her motivation within the group, internally."
Thomas LombardCEO of Stade Français
Today's group also featured several recruits during a tough offseason…
LT: The new players have all come with the desire to work, to succeed and to do something with Stade Français. These aspects are felt in everyday work. Last year, we wondered if the players had asked themselves what they wanted to do with the Stade Français. Today we have more certainty. Then, not all of them have the same profile and experience. In general, when these elements are put in the right order, they work better and are easier for coaches.
On a more personal level, there were strong expectations for Morgan Parra. How do you analyze his start to the season?
LT: He brought qualities as a rugby player, a leader and a desire to win. He succeeded in translating his motivation within the group, internally. After that, a player does not change the team. But the gathering of arrivals allowed the other players to raise the level of participation and demands to be more decisive. There are those who talk and those who act. But they all point in the same direction. This state of mind creates a very favorable dynamic that gives the team this quality.
Do you have samples?
LT: Today our captain Paul Gabrillagues is one of them. He is a football player with a deep commitment to the club. He has a desire to do good. Sometimes he could be a little too lonely. There he feels empowered and encouraged. We should also mention the emergence of Romain Briatten, who has a more recent past at the club. It took on an extra dimension for its second season.
Videos: currently on Actu
Thomas Lombard is proud of his side's display during the derby against Racing 92, but remains unclear ahead of the second leg. (©Icon Sports)
What does the last big win (10-48) in the Racing 92 derby mean?
LT: It's a source of pride because we've got a head start on our last 5 consecutive defeats against Racing 92. They were heavy. We appreciated the reaction of the group and the participation of the players. By playing the Challenge Cup, we had the opportunity to prepare this trip to Racing 92 in more detail. Therefore, it is an achievement of the group that agreed to meet at this meeting. This match was marked. After that we are clear and know that there is a return match. The success of our season is not because we won this match at the Paris La Défense Arena.
"Our goal is to be in the top 6 and qualify for the finals. We are halfway there."
With this second place in the table, have Stade Français' goals improved compared to the start of the season?
LT: We know where we come from. We suffered enough from the end of the last season and our ranking (11th, 20 points from the first 6, editor's note). So we are quite realistic. Our goal is to be part of the top 6 teams and qualify for the Top 14 finals.
Got a Brennus shield quest in the back of your mind?
LT: You need to remain objective. We have a speaker. But these are still fragile. There are 12 games ahead. Then the players decide what to do, and that's the most important thing. This season they decided to get involved, work hard and get better. They get there. But our goal is to be competitive in the top 6. We are halfway there.
In October 2019, you were appointed general manager of Stade Français. How do you rate your first 3 years?
LT: There was quite a long reconstruction work. We have also reshaped the workforce. Sometimes, we tried our hand at recruiting by doing tests that didn't work out. As a result, we have decided to prioritize the selection of players who have a mental state today. You can take players of large breeds. It's more complicated if they're not there to help the club win, serve the team and be part of a collective project. We have few players called up to the national teams because rebuilding the team was the main principle. The players had to be there to create the spirit, the culture and the dynamic. We will see how we can integrate players with more international fame and experience, but everything will come in time…
Interview by Nicholas Dendry
Get our best articles delivered to your inbox every day with the Actu Rugby newsletter. Sign up here, it's free!
Was this article helpful to you? Note that you can watch Actu Rugby in My Actu. With one click, you can find all the news of your favorite cities and brands after registering.
window._nli=window._nli||[],window._nli.push(["brand","BNLI-1380"]),function(){var n,e,i=window._nli||(window._nli=[]);i.loaded||((n=document.createElement("script")).defer=!0,n.src="https://l.actu.fr/sdk.js",(e=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]).parentNode.insertBefore(n,e),i.loaded=!0)}();
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.defer=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '183114723670867'); fbq('track', 'PageView');
Prev Three directions of sustainable finance in 2023
Next [SBB célèbre ses 10 ans] "What have they become?" » Alexandre Frachet, ICN BUSINESS SCHOOL Head of Marketing Department
(2nd LD) Samsung Electronics: Q4 operating profit down nearly 70%

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Reminder that there there is a parent meeting tonight for parents of current Grade 9 students. It will be at Gonzaga tonight (Tuesday) at 7pm in the Gonzaga school gym. This meeting will be about course selection for the 2019-20 school year.


Stagecoach Festival brought country music's best and brightest all the way out to Indio, California this weekend (April 27-29) for a party under the sun.
The three-day festival was headlined by Garth Brooks, Florida Georgia Line and Keith Urban. Others to hit the stage included Jake Owen, Kelsea Ballerini Tanya Tucker, Brett Young, Brothers Osborne, Chris Janson, Dwight Yoakam, Kacey Musgraves, Lee Brice, Trisha Yearwood and many more familiar names.
In case you weren't able to head out West, we got you covered. Here are some top moments you may have missed.


🎅 🤶 'Tis the season to be jolly!
Bring yuletide cheer and seasons greetings to your favorite R IDE. Based on the Yule tmTheme and modified to fit in well with RStudio Dark Mode. It's surprisingly pleasant and merrily festive!
You'll need RStudio version 1.2. Grab the preview version here.
Run the following code in RStudio to download and apply the theme.
💻 and enjoy coding by the open fire.
If the steps above don't work, you can manually download the Yule-RStudio.rstheme file and place it in .R/rstudio/themes in your R home directory (see path.expand("~")). Then, in the RStudio appearance settings, select the Yule RStudio editor theme.
As a starting point, though, I used found the Yule theme on the tmTheme Editor and fiddled with the base colors there until they worked well with RStudio's blueish dark theme.
The upcoming 1.2 version of RStudio now supports adding themes, and .tmTheme files are converted automatically into RStudio's .rstheme format. Turns out, an .rstheme is just CSS!
This got me half the way there, but there were still a number of missing elements that I wanted to tweak. Figuring out how tmTheme scopes get mapped to Ace CSS classes was painful trial and error. To get the theme all the way there, I went straight to the source. I opened up a few scripts and R Markdown documents, used Insepect Element to identify the appropriate Ace CSS class, and then fiddled until it looked great good enough.
The blinking Christmas-light cursor is just a CSS animation!
⚠ May waste some CPU cycles in the spirit of the holidays!
The animated christmas-light cursors may increase the CPU usage of RStudio. To disable the animations but still enjoy the theme, edit the theme file in ~/.R/rstudio/themes/Yule-RStudio.rstheme.
Find the CSS blocks for .ace_cursor and .normal-mode .ace_cursor and comment out the lines starting with animation-*.


Pre-stressed concrete nuclear power plant containment vessel is the third barrier in case of an accident so that quantifying concrete properties with Non Destructive Evaluation (NDE) is a continuing goal. This includes the mapping of the following concrete properties: elastic modulus, water saturation, permeability. In addition, those measurements have to be challenged with the level of stress (which will be modified during an accident) possibly coupled with thermal induced damage. In the ANR French project "Non Destructive Evaluation of containment nuclear plant structures" (ENDE) eight partners have carried out laboratory and in situ NDE measurements with the aim to compare and combine them to reach quantitative useful information about concrete conditions. In this paper we present a synthesis of the mains results obtained with classical and non-classical NDE methods. This includes electromagnetic techniques such as radar, capacitive measurements, resistivity measurements and ultrasonic measurements (impact echo, ultrasonic pulse velocity – in reflexion and transmission mode for longitudinal and transverse waves, surface waves, diffuse waves, coda wave interferometry, nonlinear acoustics, etc.). The laboratory experiments have been conducted on slabs 0.5 m x 0.25 m x 0.12 m, for one concrete mix formulated to be representative of nuclear containment walls, in different conditions: - sound concrete without any stress for different water saturations, - heat damage of partially saturated slab (at 80°C, 150°C, 200°C), - sound concrete under stress (up to 30% of the compressive strength), - heat damage concrete under stress. A series of NDE method combinations (using data fusion approach) is performed to solve the problem of multiple sensitivity issues. This laboratory work is then transposed on the VeRCoRS mock-up which is a 1/3 scaled concrete power plant (a ϕ 16 m x h 30 m cylinder, with 0.40 m thick walls) heavily instrumented (700 sensors, 2 km of fiber optic). In this paper we present results obtained before, during and after a decennial test simulation which consists in increasing the internal pressure with air, maintaining its level to 4 bars during 2 hours and then decreasing back to the atmospheric pressure level. To conclude industrial and research perspectives are presented.
Abraham O., Piwakowski B., Villain G., Durand O., 2012, "Non-contact, automated surface wave measurements for the mechanical characterisation of concrete," Construction and Building Materials, 37, pp 904- 915.
Abraham O., Legland J.-B., Durand O., Hénault J.-M., Garnier V., 2018, "Non destructive testing of concrete nuclear containment plants with surface wave Lab experiment on decimeter slabs and on the VeRCoRs mock-up ", AIP Conference Proceedings, QNDE 2017, 1949, 030003, 6p.
Balayssac J.-P., Laurens S., Arliguie G., Breysse D., Garnier V., Dérobert X., Piwakowski B., 2012, "Description of the general outlines of the French project SENSO – quality assessment and limits of different NDT methods," Construction and Building Materials, 35, pp 131–138.
Dérobert X., Iaquinta J., Klysz G., Balayssac J.-P., 2008, "Use of capacitive and GPR techniques for nondestructive evaluation of cover concrete," Non Destructive Testing & Evaluation International Journal ; 41 (1), pp 44-52.
Garnier V., Piwakowski B., Abraham O., Villain G., Payan C., Cjaix J.-F., 2013, "Acoustical techniques for concrete evaluation: Improvements, comparisons and consistencies," Construction and Building Materials, 43, pp 598-613.
Garnier V., Henault J.-M., Hafid H., Verdier J., Chaix J.-F., Abraham O., Larose E., Piwakowski B., Villain G., Sbartai Z.M., Balayssac J.-P. et al., 2016, "Containment Nuclear Plant Structures Evaluation by Non Destructive Testing: Strategy and Results," TINCE proceedings, Technological Innovations in Nuclear Civil Engineering, Paris, France, 13p.
Hilloulin B., Zhang Y., Abraham O., Loukili A., Grondin F., Durand O., Tournat V., 2014, "Small crack detection in cementitious materials using nonlinear coda wave modulation", Non Destructive Testing & Evaluation International Journal, 68, pp 98-104.
Kaczmarek M., Piwakowski B., Drelich R., 2016, "Non-contact ultrasonic non destructive technique: state of the art and their use in civil engineering," Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 23 (1).
Krause M., Milmann B., Mielentz F., Streitcher D., Redmer B., Mayer K. Langennerg K.-J., Schickert M., 2008, "Ultrasonic imaging methods for investigation of post-tensioned concrete structures: a study of interfaces at artificial grouting faults and its verification," Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, 27, pp 67-82.
Quiviger A., Payan C., Chaix J.F., Garnier V., Salin J., 2012, "Effect of the presence and size of a real macrocrack on diffuse ultrasound in concrete," Non Destructive Testing & Evaluation International Journal, 45 (1), pp 128-132.
Payan C, Ulrich T. J., Le Bas P. Y., Griffa M., Schuetz P., Remillieux M. C., Saleh T. A., 2014, "Probing material nonlinearity at various depths by time reversal mirrors," Appl. Phys. Lett., 104 (14), 144102.
Polder R., Andrade C., Elsener B.,Vennesland O., Gulikers J., Weidert R., Raupach M., 2000, "Test methods for on site measurement of resistivity of concrete," Materials and Structures, 33 (10), pp 603-611.
Villain G., Le Marrec L., Rakotomanana L., 2011, "Determination of the bulk elastic moduli of various concrete by resonance frequency analysis of slabs submitted to impact echo," European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering, 15 (4), pp 601-617.
Verdier J., Carcassès M., Ollivier J.-P., 2002, "Modelling of a gas flow measurement - Application to nuclear containment vessels," Cement and Concrete Research, 32 (8), pp 1331-1340.
Vu Q.A., Garnier V., Payan C. Chaix J.-F., Lott M., Eiras J., 2016, "Concrete cover characterization using Dynamic Acousto-Elasticity Testing and Rayleigh waves," Construction and Building Materials, 114, pp 87-97.
Zhang Y., Abraham O., Grondin F., Loukili, A., Tournat V., Le Duff A., Lascoup B., Durand O., 2012, "Study of stress-induced velocity variation in concrete under direct tensile force and monitoring of the damage level by using thermally- compensated coda wave interferometry," Ultrasonics, 52 (8), pp 038–1045.


text:
Harvard Likes SB Nation
By papiblez Jun 9, 2010, 11:29pm PDT
Share All sharing options for: Harvard Likes SB Nation
OK so maybe that's simplifying it a bit. But the Nieman Journalism Lab of Harvard takes a closer look at what SB Nation is doing on the regional front by interviewing our CEO Jim Bankoff. My favorite part?
Bankoff's approach is to think about people's habits, rather than a broad topic. "We're not fans of sports - we're fans of teams," Bankoff says. "We're not fans of television. We're fans of shows."
That's the basic feeling of which this network was built upon six years ago and remains true to this day.


text:
Jon Pattons Cruz' Driver
Posted on 20 January, 2016 20 January, 2016 by TH custom effects
About the circuit
Jon Patton is a great engineer in building guitar effects. He developed a good number of circuits that are well known in the DIY community.
What Jon sais about this circuit:
This was a fun challenge, and it came together pretty quickly once we identified what would work well with his amp at home (a Bruno S100, holy crap) and on a big Fender. At home he just wants a "more" button, so I had to make sure there was a flat dirty boost in here somewhere.
I replaced the op amp buffer + inverting drive stage with a MOSFET booster, and replaced the tube stages with with FETs in the normal manner. Note that the design inverts phase, which the original did, too.
I moved the tone controls to put it before the last gain stage because otherwise it was just insanity on the gain levels. It's already pretty nuts even with all the cuts in front of each stage, but this gives a lot more control over the overall clipping. The tone control and switch are really what make this cool. (Thanks to Cody and Thomas for tossing around some ideas, even if I ultimately went with something different.) Really I'm just repurposing once again the tone control from my Sakura amp, but everything worked out just right for me to get a third mode out of this one and to have a usable bass control.
1) The bass control just shaves off some low frequencies below about 400Hz. It's is a shelf filter, so the bass isn't gone, just deemphasized, and at 5:00 the cutoff is at 18Hz.
2) Treble/Tone control: This is based on a version of the Big Muff tone control, with the resistor to ground for the low-pass removed. A lot can be done to radically alter the behavior of the tone control just by varying C9, so that's what the switch does. R8 is a small resistor (I picked 2.2K) to limit the ultimate range of the tone control so that it doesn't turn into a full low-pass filter, but it can be omitted for some very very dark settings in the scoop mode. I just don't like tone controls that bottom out.
Three modes:
a) Mode 1 flipped to one side: Flat treble at ~3:00 on the knob, at 5:00 a VERY tiny boost in the treble above 700Hz, and CCW cuts the treble at that same frequency, like a see-saw. With both tone controls down, it'll form a mid hump right around the middle of a Fender amp. (If I were to leave off the switch, this is what I would use as the stock mode.)
b) Mode 2 in the center: At ~3:00, the mids are boosted by about 3dB centered ~1KHz (bass and treble are flat). There's again a slight treble boost at full. CCW, the treble gets cut at 2KHz, so it's milder than mode 1, for just shaving off the harsher harmonics created by the distortion. This mode was a freebee on the layout by adding one capacitor, so I saw no reason to omit it. It's not as dramatic as the other modes, but it will usually sound flatter when there's a lot of distortion present.
c) Mode 3 (flipped the other way) has a mid scoop at ~250Hz for added clarity (this is the "mud" frequency for guitars, so it's a good frequency to cut). CCW, the treble is cut very deeply, which allows for bass boost with the bass at full and the tone turned down, or a treble boost with the tone up and the bass down. But with the treble and bass at about 9:00, it's back to a nearly flat response but with the gain cut a lot, for some "mostly clean" boost settings.
Jons original design was built to fit in a 1590a enclosure. My first layout also was designed to fit in a 1590A but I managed to mess this one up by laying out all the pots the wrong way.
Fortunately I also did a 1590B layout which worked out the first try. I had a lot of fun trying out the prototype.
It's a very impressive circuit regarding character and tonality. All the people listening to it in my studio wanted to play it on and on.
Here is Jons original sound recording of it:
http://diy.thcustom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Cruz-Drive-demo.mp3
Jon Patton's Cru'z Driver "L" – PCB
Jon Patton's Cruz' Driver V1.0 "L" - Build Instructions
- 10 September, 2015 568.98 KB
PControl Modular Part#3


text:
Immigration backlog keeps live-in caregivers from their families back home
By Nicholas KeungImmigration reporter
Thu., July 20, 2017timer3 min. read
When Jocelyn Godroy left behind her three kids in the Philippines to work abroad as a live-in caregiver, they were 10, 7 and 3.
After working in Hong Kong for four years, she arrived in Toronto in 2008 under Canada's live-in caregiver program.
Two years later, she applied for permanent residency to reunite with her family as soon as she met the live-in work requirement.
Over the 13-year span working abroad, the former midwife has only managed to visit her children — now 23, 20 and 16 — three times because the money for trips is better spent on her kids' education and basic needs.
"I'm taking care of others' children but can't take care of my own kids, who are living by their own selves," said Godroy, 43, whose marriage has broken down and whose mother — the care provider of her children — has passed away during her time away from home. "Please put yourself in my shoes as a mother."
Godroy's story is not uncommon, especially among the Filipino community, the main source of Canada's foreign caregiver workforce, said Vilma Pagaduan, a Filipino TV and radio host in Toronto, who herself came to Canada in 2007 under the same program.
"There are a lot of heartache, pain and disappointment," Pagaduan said. "This is killing families."
According to the immigration department, there are currently 29,000 foreign caregivers caught up in permanent residency backlog and they wait an average of 53 months to have their applications processed.
17 years on, nanny still fighting to bring family to Canada
Foreign caregivers wait years to call Canada home
"They are waiting and waiting and waiting. The backlog is astounding," said MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP opposition immigration critic, at a Toronto news conference on Thursday. The conference was held to urge the Liberal government to put in the resources to process these caregivers' permanent residence applications.
"The stories of live-in caregivers are heartbreaking and really highlight the devastating impact of these immigration policies on families. If Canadians knew of the injustices and hardships live-in caregivers have to endure, I don't believe they would find this acceptable."
All it takes to eradicate the backlog is for Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen to issue a special order to expedite the processing of the caregivers' permanent residence applications, said Kwan, herself a mother of two.
"It has to stop. It can stop. It just takes political will," Kwan said.
Although Ottawa has made the live-in requirement of the caregiver program optional and removed the four-year limit on migrant workers' work permits, advocate Jesson Reyes said the caregiver program still "smack of indentured servitude."
"The temporary nature of the caregiver program is what exposes the workers to abuse, mistreatment and the feeling of being a second-class citizen in this country," said Reyes of Migrante Canada, an umbrella group of 19 organizations across the country that promote the rights and welfare of Filipino migrant workers.
"The demand of 'good enough to work, good enough to stay' must be realized in policy implementation by giving caregivers landed (immigrant) status upon arrival."
Immigration officials said only 11,000 eligible caregivers were granted each year between 2009 and 2013, a level way below the number of applications received. This year, the government has raised the target and hoped to grant permanent resident status to as many as 20,000 caregivers and their family members, noted immigration department spokesperson Nancy Caron.
Godroy said it's hard to be apart from her children, especially when they are sick. She scrambled to locate her daughters and son for months by phone and social media after the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan (known locally as Yolanda), the deadliest tropical cyclone on record in the Philippines, flattened her home in Leyte.
"It's depressing," she said.
Advocates also urged Ottawa to require only one medical exam for the caregivers, their spouses and children to be done prior to entry to Canada. Many are asked to repeat the costly exams multiple times because results expire while their applications are in process.


Datalert was built with tools like Tableau Server, Tableau Online and other analytics tools in mind. Build your visualisations in Tableau and get it out to your audiences with Datalert. Integration is easy and doesn't take more than 5 minutes.


text:
Get more FourFourTwo
Twitter UK
Facebook UK
FIFA 20 tips
FM 2020 tips
More FFT
FFT Worldwide
Klopp laughs off claim Liverpool are 'virtually impossible' to beat
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp found the funny side of Neil Warnock's suggestion that Cardiff City will not be able to win on Saturday.
Jurgen Klopp has laughed off a suggestion from Neil Warnock that Liverpool will be "virtually impossible" for Cardiff City to beat.
The Reds will aim to extend their unbeaten start in the Premier League to 10 matches when they take on a Cardiff side who got their first win of the season against Fulham last week.
Manager Warnock suggested his side would have a thankless task at Anfield if Liverpool were at their best, but Klopp is not prepared to take Saturday's task lightly.
"I'm really looking forward to meeting him," he laughed after Warnock's claims were put to him at a news conference. "I've heard a lot about him and he's obviously vocal-wise very talented. It will be a big pleasure to meet him.
"It would be so cool if that's the truth but it's not, and they will try everything. He's one of the most experienced managers in the world of football and so successful in the past. It's unbelievable what he did. My respect for the Championship grows every day, pretty much, it's such a difficult league and he looks like he could do in that league what he wants. He got promoted and it's an unbelievable achievement.
"We are aware of the quality of Cardiff. Last week gave them a big boost but before they were not bad, the games before then were pretty tight, and they could have got a different result. They deserve all our respect and they'll get it.
"[Warnock] looks like a character, a very, very emotional and lively person. I saw a lot of the final period of the Championship last year and it was impressive how they did.
"He looks like a very demanding manager and his team are playing like he wants them to play, so he has all my respect because that's not too easy. Of all the big English active managers, he's the last one I have to meet, so I look forward to it."
Fantastic @_fabinhotavares, your @carlsberg Man of the Match.
How good was this man last night? pic.twitter.com/pvGTBIecsZ
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) October 25, 2018
Klopp, who confirmed midfielders Jordan Henderson and Naby Keita would not be fit to return after missing the win over Red Star Belgrade, would not say whether Fabinho would keep his place in the side.
The Brazilian made his second start for Liverpool in the 4-0 Champions League win on Wednesday and was widely praised for his performance.
"I don't know what you can expect and don't want to tell you what you should expect but it was good, it looked good," he said. "It was a game where I thought it made sense to do it like this, it was not because of injuries.
"I heard people were quite excited by the performance of Fabinho especially, but he is still is a young fella and still has to and can improve."
Joe Gomez is another who has impressed with his recent form and Klopp was keen to praise the defender's progress amid suggestions he is due to be offered a new contract.
"Joe is a very important part of the squad and it's so nice to see," Klopp added. "I remember when I came in, I knew him but not really well, everybody told me about him and how good he was when he came to Liverpool. When I watched games back to learn a bit more about the team, I think he played mostly as a left-back, wing-back or whatever, so it was good, but it was not 'okay, that will change the football world'. Then he got an injury and since then he had to fight back, and it took a while.
"Now, seeing him full of confidence and fit, I know what they were talking about when they told me how good he was and, much more important, how good he is. He has a big future at Liverpool, no doubt about that."
Jordan Henderson, Neil Warnock, Jürgen Klopp, Fabinho, Joe Gomez, Naby Keita, Liverpool, Cardiff City, Premier League, News
Klopp: Henderson key despite Fabinho, Keita signings
Jurgen Klopp hails 'very important' Liverpool midfielder Fabinho
Competition for places at Liverpool drives captain Jordan Henderson on
FourFourTwo is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site
About FourFourTwo
©Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.


text:
Syntaxonomy of steppe depression vegetation of Ukraine
Posted on December 13, 2021 December 13, 2021 by David Zeleny
The post provided by Viktor Shapoval & Anna Kuzemko
Phytocoenoses of the association Lathyro nissoliae-Phalacrachenetum inuloidis on the bottom of the Ahaimansky pid, aspect of Phalacrachena inuloides, single shoots of Rumex crispus and Beckmannia eruciformis visible in the background, June 6, 2008. Photo credit: V. Shapoval.
This post refers to the article Syntaxonomy of steppe depression vegetation of Ukraine by Shapoval & Kuzemko, published in Vegetation Classification and Survey (https://doi.org/10.3897/VCS/2021/62825).
Steppe depressions or pody are a unique habitat type, which are large drainless depressions of elliptical or round shape with gentle slopes and flat bottoms, periodically flooded by meltwater and characterized by Luvic Planosol soils and original ephemeral grassland and wetland vegetation. The term pody includes large depressions, with a bottom area of more than 500–1000 ha, rather than small saucers, which are often generally called pody, thus erasing their identity. Previously, such depressions were much more widespread in Europe and were particularly known from the Pannonian Plain, but almost all of them were plowed and now survive only in Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
Despite the long history of their studies, the problem of the origin of depression still has no clear solution. There are many hypotheses and theories of pody genesis, but it seems most likely that they represent a polygenetic group, and their development is caused by a complex of subsidence-suffusion, fluvial and aeolian transformations.
There are two seasonal types of flooding of depressions: in winter and spring, caused by melting snow during thaws, and extremely rare in summer and autumn, by heavy rains. Interestingly, according to existing literature during the 20th and 21st centuries, summer floods were observed only three times, but the last such phenomenon occurred in July – August 2021 in the Chorna Dolyna (Black Valley) depression, coinciding with the publication of our paper. According to the materials of the retrospective analysis of the known dates of pody floods, the average duration of the period between strong floods is 7-12 years. Occasionally, flooding is observed for 2 or 3 years in a row, but much more often at intervals of 15-17 years or more. In the past, the flooding of the steppe depressions was much larger, so on old maps, they were marked as lakes. Currently, due to the over-regulation of the catchment area, their total plowing, and crossing of most catchment basins by various communications (like water supply canals or highways), the frequency and duration of flooding has decreased significantly, leading to xerophytization of these habitats. Usually, modern heavy flooding begins in February and lasts until the beginning of June (the last small puddles may last until the end of July). The area of flooding can reach 3-4 thousand hectares, but the water depth in the center of a bottom is only 20-40 cm.
Phytocoenoses of the subassociation Elatino-Butometum umbellati damasonietosum alismae in the central part of the bottom of the Great Chapelsky pid during flooding, flowering individuals of Damasonium alisma among vegetative shoots of Butomus umbellatus and Elytrigia repens subsp. pseudocaesia, May 17, 2010. Photo credit: V. Shapoval.
Polygenetics, different sizes, differentiation of microrelief and soil cover of depressions together with sporadic hydrogenic fluctuations, historical and current management determine the heterogeneous nature and pulsating dynamics of their vegetation. It is a unique dynamic complex of hydro-, meso- and xeromorphic communities, which complicates its study. In fact, the existing vegetation types (dry, mesic, wet grasslands, and wetlands) in the pody are scattered territorially (some are confined to the deepest, moist areas of the bottom, others tend to its raised dry periphery), and on the other hand – delimited in time (initially the deepest areas with open water mirror overgrown with wetland vegetation, which is later replaced by mesic grasslands and an extensive list of steppic communities). At the same time, the boundaries between these phytocenoses are often blurred.
Too irregular and short-term flooding of pody, as well as the shallow water of these temporary standing water bodies, do not have a detrimental effect on perennial mesic as well as some xerophytic components. Such hydrogenic fluctuations can withstand even perennial turf of the xeromorphic plant Festuca valesiaca s.l.
Unfortunately, most steppe depressions in Ukraine are plowed, and the surviving remains are exploited, mainly as meadows and pastures, often without compliance with rational norms of management. The only depression that has a conservation status is the Great Chapelsky Pid, as part of the natural core of the Askania-Nova Biosphere Reserve. In fact, this depression is the most studied, and our long-term research, which is summarized in this paper, originates from it.
Considering the floristic, coenotic, and habitat specifics of the steppe depressions, as well as the absence of such units in the EUNIS system, and accordingly in Resolution 4 of the Berne Convention, which makes it impossible to protect such habitats in the Emerald Network of Ukraine, the authors of this paper prepared proposals to include them in the Convention. In 2018, these proposals were adopted by the Executive Committee of the Berne Convention, and the depression of the steppe Ukraine was included as a complex type X36 in Resolution 4 and the EUNIS (https://eunis.eea.europa.eu/habitats/8009), which requires a comprehensive study and protection of this habitat type.
Due to the exceptional rarity of floods, it is possible to observe and describe these original phytocoenoses only for very limited periods of time, and the interval between the growing seasons favorable for the mentioned ephemeral vegetation can reach decades. At the same time, it is very difficult to predict such a possibility of contemplation and research. Floods depend on the coincidence of a number of factors, so the probability of flood forecasting is possible only on the eve of the flood – in 1-1.5 months. The largest dataset of such unique data was collected in 2010 during the last major flood.
For the first time, the idea of the need for a syntaxonomic revision of the pody vegetation arose in 2011 during the excursion of the EDGG conference participants in Askania-Nova. Since then, repeated meetings of authors and discussions have outlined a common range of problems, developed their common vision, and ultimately led to a comprehensive revision of pody vegetation. The situation was complicated by the fact that no syntaxonomic unit of pody vegetation has been validly described in accordance with ICPN.
Ecological and coenotic profile of model steppe depressions of the Left Bank of the Lower Dnieper. The central part of the bottom is occupied by wetland communities, which change along the slopes by wet, mesic, and xero-mesic phytocoenoses. The transect shows the difference in absolute height between the bottom of the depression and its slope, the length and asymmetry of the «body» of the depression along the line: slope-bottom. Figure by V. Shapoval.
According to the research results, an updated and consistent syntaxonomic system of mesic and wet grasslands vegetation of the pody was obtained, which reflects their ecological and territorial differentiation, the syntaxonomic status of a number of syntaxa, which were considered doubtful, was restored, and a proper place of pody vegetation in the system of syntaxonomic units of Europe according to EuroVegChecklist was found. We sincerely hope that our study will help to properly organize the conservation of these unique habitats.
New Editors of JVS and AVS
Extreme drought has limited effects on soil seed bank composition in desert grasslands


Just prior to joining Page as co-leader of the firm's new Branding & Graphics consulting service, Herman Dyal was named as the most significant individual in the Austin art and design community. DAM (Downtown Austin Magazine) recently published the 50 most influential Austinites from various industries who have impacted the city's lifestyle and landscape, particularly in the downtown area.
Herman was lauded for leading a "creative explosion" in which newcomers and natives alike are solidifying the city's aesthetic with both regional and international styles. Almost a decade ago, he helped introduce Austin to Pecha Kucha Night, a Tokyo-based international program that regularly presents emerging and mature architects, designers, artists, musicians and others to a loyal following.
Since the local chapter's founding, thousands of people have transcended traditional professional cliques to interact in a stimulating public discourse about design, creativity, and ideas. Virtually all of them have seen Herman's work for high-profile entities such as the University of Texas at Austin, the Blanton Museum of Art, Gibson Flats, the Harry Ransom Center, the headquarters for the Livestrong Foundation and many more projects.
To view the page about Herman and his accomplishments in the issue of DAM No 004, click here. Congratulations, Herman!


Esquire, American monthly magazine, founded in 1933 by Arnold Gingrich. It began production as an oversized magazine for men that featured a slick, sophisticated style and drawings of scantily clad young women. It later abandoned its titillating role but continued to cultivate the image of affluence and refined taste.
Esquire's early notoriety became the subject of a celebrated court case. In 1943 Frank C. Walker, the U.S. postmaster general, attempted to withdraw the magazine's second-class mailing privileges (an economic rate generally considered essential to a magazine's survival) on the grounds that Esquire was "not devoted to useful information" worthy of the mail subsidy. Gingrich and his associates protested, enlisting noted writers in their defense; he brought suit against Walker and in 1946 won his case in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Esquire was a pioneer in the use of unconventional topics and feature stories. As it began to publish the work of Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer, the magazine's risqué image and its once racy air gradually receded. It provided an outlet for new writers of fiction and nonfiction, and its topical features, satiric humour, and excellent book, cinema, and music reviews filled a void between literary and opinion periodicals in the American market. Although the magazine continued to emphasize clothing and advertising directed to men, Esquire evolved into more of a general-audience publication.


text:
mrschristine.com
716. Sisters
Title: Sisters Director: Jason Moore Year: 2015 Run time: 1hr 58m
"Tina Fey (TV's Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock) and Amy Poehler (TV's Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation) reunite in the hysterical Unrated version of Sisters, the story of two disconnected sisters summoned home to clean out their childhood bedroom before their parents sell the family house. Looking to recapture their glory days, they throw one final high-school-style party for their classmates, which turns into the cathartic rager that a bunch of ground-down adults really need."
2:58 – "Are you selling it to each other?" 3:46 – Sneezing ruining the fake freeze is a lot of fun. 5:52 – "I am not a hot head, I am brassy!" 7:47 – I really think people shouldn't mess with their eyebrows. 9:58 – Lyrics is hard. 14:56 – Grown up tantrum! 18:33 – "I don't clean up after myself anymore, I'm an adult." SO ME! 21:58 – Keeping a diary is the best. 26:25 – I think I genuinely would pull out of the house sale if they were there. 27:27 – "That monster and her minions…" 40:34 – The terrible flirting, oh god. 44:40 – "That would bring me joy," with a screwed up face. Believable. 47:08 – I really want to do that, reference Jurassic Park when walking in a room. 57:22 – Heart cramps! Adorable. 1:04:38 – I wish I had a dance I could do at parties like that. 1:07:11 – "I'm sure I do." Great answer. 1:18:48 – Argh, blue people from the swimming pool. 1:27:11 – Aw, I liked her inventive sensibleness. 1:32:49 – "Beethoven. What a genius." 1:40:16 – Honesty about parenting is my favourite. 1:48:45 – "I was going to send it to you but I didn't have any stamps because they don't make them anymore."
Just like The Boss before it, I really wasn't anticipating particular greatness from this film, although I love Amy and Tina enormously. I was so wrong. AGAIN. I should not be allowed to judge comedies from their trailers. It was brilliant, so funny and with some fabulous references.
It was, perhaps, a bit too crude in places, but the other stuff made up for that - the god awful cringeworthy flirting, the who-gives-a attitudes, the way bits of it were like Final Destination so you had to guess what was going to go wrong next, and ultimately, the way the family disintegrated and then came back together again.
It wasn't perfect, but it was encouraging to have two female leads, bossing the situation, and getting their lives together. Yay for Sisters!
← Previous 715. The Boss
Next → 717. Mother's Day
In or out of the Arcade
Enjoy Yourself by Kylie
Heavy Is The Head by Stormzy
Miranda's what-I-call celebration
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
Red sky in the morning
Best and worst rated albums
Best and worst rated books
Best and worst rated films
Films by actor
Films by director
Films by genre
Films by series
Films revisited
Music by year
Follow @mrschristine
© Copyright 2002-2019 Christine Blachford. All rights reserved.


Nowhandling buys and sells used industrial equipment in Dallas, TX, from all the top brands. We're great at sourcing hard-to-find equipment to meet our customers' needs, and due to our low overhead, we're able to price everything very low. Whether you're buying or selling, we'll get you a good deal for your money.
Optimize your facility and improve your operations with the help of Nowhandling. We are your source for industrial equipment in Dallas, TX. With our selection of shelving units, warehouse structures, and vehicles, you have the materials you need to create safe, efficient, and organized workspaces. Count on us to provide the products and support you need to take your enterprise further.
Whether you are expanding your operations or planning a new facility, our used industrial equipment will meet your needs. We source from dependable retailers and pass the savings to you. Our company is flexible, and we work hard to meet your specific orders. We serve a variety of clients throughout the United States. Our catalog includes industrial shelving, forklifts, and other warehousing essentials.
Choose a used warehouse equipment company that understands the challenges you face daily. Our diverse clientele includes warehouse managers, facility operators, distributors, and much more. As such, we are highly adaptive and provide the right support—wherever and whenever you need it.
Since we are highly knowledgeable in products from the top brands and manufacturers, we have the capability of providing support far beyond sales. Our services also include installation and teardown. So whether your facility expansion plans require a new industrial mezzanine or storage center, we work with you to ensure everything goes right.
Contact us and request a consultation for industrial equipment sales. Our company is based in Dallas, TX, and serves clients nationwide.


text:
Dream Dark Page 2
"Excuse me? Did you say somethin', Clayton?
Because I thought I heard you underminin' my authority while you're sittin' there eatin' the breakfast I cooked for you."
Link's dad swal owed hard. "I was just sayin'—"
"I think it would be best if you didn't say anything at al ," she snapped.
Mr. Lincoln knew when he wasn't going to win a battle. He'd given up and started waving the white flag at his wife as soon as their son was born.
"Not a word," Mrs. Lincoln repeated.
"I expect I can do that." Mr. Lincoln sighed at his
"I expect I can do that." Mr. Lincoln sighed at his fork.
Link's mom picked out the crispiest pieces of bacon from the serving platter and turned her attention back to Link, who had been pushing the food around on his plate while she wasn't looking.
"Now that you mention it, you've been actin' peculiar ever since you came home last night."
"No, ma'am. I didn't."
"Didn't what?"
"Mention it."
"Don't you sass me. I was the one who said spending time with questionable folks only gets you a big fat question mark next to your own name."
"Yes, ma'am." Link stared down at the pile of white slush. His mom was no Amma in the kitchen. Amma would no more sit down to a plate of Mrs. Lincoln's biscuits 'n' gravy than she would bring home store-bought biscuits.
"Aren't I always sayin' that, dear?" She turned to Link's dad, but she didn't give him a second to respond. "I'm here to tel you, there's no question mark by my good name. The Lincolns have kept the family name spit shine around these parts for generations."
Link looked up in time to see gravy dribbling down his mother's chin. His stomach lurched. He shoved his chair back from the table, then sprinted out of the room and up the stairs.
"Wesley Lincoln!" she cal ed after him.
"Mom, I think I'm gonna be—"
The sound of dry heaving floated down the stairs.
Link's parents looked at each other. "That boy probably caught some kinda nasty virus," Mrs.
Lincoln said. "I'm gonna cal over to Doc Asher's and see if he can squeeze Wesley in today."
Mr. Lincoln put down his fork, hesitating. But I guess al the browbeating had taken its tol , and he couldn't resist. "Maybe it was somethin' he ate."
The look his wife shot him was so charged, it could've knocked a whole flock of pigeons off a telephone wire. Without saying a word, she grabbed every dish she could off the table and carried them over to the sink. It was al Mr. Lincoln could do to hold on to his half-eaten biscuit.
"I'l tel you one thing. People in this house should start listenin' to me. If Mary Beth Sutton had listened when I told her that husband a hers was as crazy as a wolf starvin' in a henhouse, she wouldn't be in the fix she is now. Sissy Honeycutt told me that she heard from Loretta Snow that Mary Beth told her he took their son Waylon's pickup and drove it al the way to Memphis. And they'd just gone and put new tires on it."
Link's mom kept talking as fast as she could. She had to. Otherwise, she would have to think about the fact that either something was wrong with her only son or something was wrong with her only biscuits 'n'
gravy recipe.
It would be hard for her to decide which was worse.
The Birds, the Bees & Mötley Crüe
Up in Link's room, everything was al wrong.
I mean, it always looked wrong because his mom hadn't let him change anything in it since third grade.
She said the wal paper had at least ten good years left in it, and every good Baptist knew that vanity was the Devil's business, anyway. The Star Wars border around his ceiling was stil there, Darth Vader peeling around the edges, right above the cross with Noah's ark and the animals marching over it. His basketbal trophies, going al the way back to elementary school, were lined up above his Field Day ribbons.
And in case there was any doubt, a church camp poster read: GOD WANTS YOU!
Only Link had changed YOU to YOUTUBE in pencil, light enough that his mom couldn't see it if she wasn't wearing her good reading glasses, the ones she saved for the packages wrapped in brown paper that Marian sent from the library. Link liked to hide the glasses because he said it made his life a whole lot easier if his mom could only see half of what he did. Since I had delivered some of those packages with Liv, and knew that Mrs. Lincoln was reading romance novels, I hoped she never found her glasses. And this from a woman who made us turn off the television if the animals got too frisky on the Discovery Channel.
Link's CDs were in a box under his bed, next to his comic book col ection and some back issues of Hot Rod magazine. But tonight even his favorite comic, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and his favorite CD, The Best of Heavy Metal Power Ballads, couldn't distract the most distractible guy in town.
Al he could think about was his mom's gravy and how it had smel ed like roadkil on a plate. It was time to pul out the big guns. The one girl who could keep his mind off anything—except her.
Ridley. His candy-striped pink and blond bad girl with a heart of gold. Or, at least, gold plate. Not that Link would want it any other way. In his eyes—and in hers—she was perfect.
He thought about Lena's Claiming, which he had started thinking of as Hel Night. It had felt like someone tore a hole right through him when Ridley disappeared and he thought she was dead. And then like someone had duct-taped it closed again when he saw her alive just a few minutes later. She'd jumped into his arms and hugged him like she was a regular girl—for about two minutes. Those were an awesome two minutes, the best two minutes of his life.
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next


Mr. Papers dropped a video of a freestyle he did in his car. The rapper is going through it right now after his failed relationship with Lil Kim he's now having trouble with visitation and seeing his daughter. Check out his rhyme.


The Anxiety and Depression Association of America defines hoarding as the compulsive buying, acquiring, searching for and saving of items that have little or no value. Its signs include living in unsanitary conditions, too-cluttered and therefore unusable rooms, unsanitary level of trash and food build-up, and blocking access to home.
Calling a reliable service provider in your area can help your hoarder loved one remove all hoarded items, haul appliances and other heavy items, and perform a thorough cleaning of the house.


text:
Blessed Solicitor Bails Out
Hairy Davies, the Blessed Solicitor and Monitoring Officer has decided to call it a day, after a record breaking 28 months in the post.
The resignation came a month ago, but Blessed Chair Temper Turtle decided not to inform Blessed Members for security reasons, and because none of them would be interested anyway. "He's only the solicitor" he said. "It's not like he's had much to do these last few years".
Routinely forced to risk his professional reputation by ignoring the law and abusing the Authority's own processes, Davies finally threw in the towel when asked to make new rules to clamp down on complaints. "I've had to re-define so many words that there's now a Blessed Dictionary on every desk" he said. "'Defamatory' now means 'anything that makes us cry' and 'unreasonable' operates on a sliding scale depending on who's doing the accusing."
"The new policy is caused by changing public attitudes rather than our actions" said sacked Chair and so-called "Professor" Granny Burgess. "So we must do more to explain to stakeholders why they are always wrong."
Her apprentice Temper Turtle agreed. "Unfortunately, the number of complaints has exploded, so we must find new and imaginative ways of dismissing them without investigation, rather than trying to understand why so many people are complaining about us" he said.
Blessed Benevolence
"As a responsible employer, we have a duty to protect our staff from criticism, no matter how justified it might be" commented Dr Pikeman. "Under the new rules, we can dismiss complaints out of hand rather than waste time covering up incompetence."
"Intimidation of Blessed Officers has always been unacceptable," he said "and now, under my new rules, we are redefining 'intimidation' to mean 'disagreeing with an officer or pointing out that they are wrong.' Better to dismiss the complaint than the officer - we have more than enough people leaving as it is."
"We must remain free to bully people and make up arbitrary policy on the hoof without the risk of being held accountable" Pikeman explained to a group of Blessed Sheep last week. "So we should always focus on the person doing the complaining, and where they got their evidence. Any complaint which refers to unofficial recordings or photographs taken in public places will automatically be dismissed."
Other grounds for ignoring a complaint include mentioning it to your MP, DEFRA or the National Audit Office, speaking to the press, publishing your concerns on social media or telling your Mum.
It's been confirmed that anyone using all three stages of the Authority's complaints process will automatically be deemed a persistent complainant. "I get seriously bored with the repetitive inanity in these intemperate and highly objectionable complaints" grumbled Dick "Vice" Bilson. "All criticism is intolerable and the Authority will decline to engage with anyone who indulges in it."
Posted by Broads National Pike at 20:01
Old Frank 28 November 2018 at 22:16
Blessed Authority acts on sneaks.
John Culley 10 December 2018 at 18:21
I might apply for the job, naively assuming they're looking for a replacement. I have no experience or qualifications in lawyering, so I'd fit right in.
Pikeman Strikes Back
Blessed Planners Demand Flammable Cladding


text:
The Life of the Law
||| A Nation Begins
|||The 1st Inauguration
Federal Hall, NY City
Monday : 31 October — Andis Kaulins
This is our Halloween "Great Pumpkin" for this year. The carving was done so as to leave a very thin transparent outer skin which gives the pumpkin its intense reddish glow from the red candle inside. The photograph was taken just 30 minutes ago, at midnite in Germany.
Happy Halloween to all.
Copyrights, Blogs, News, Content Aggregation and RSS Feeds
Thursday : 27 October — Andis Kaulins
RSS and Atom Feeds: Really Simple Syndication
RSS feeds are revolutionizing the way that information is being processed on the Internet. Even Google just started their own Google Reader for RSS feeds this month.
What is the legal status of RSS feeds under Internet Law and IP Law ("intellectual property" law), especially in view of the fact that many blogs and news media make their content available through their RSS feeds? We include ATOM feeds here under the general rubric of RSS feeds, i.e. as "Really Simple Syndication". Indeed, the IEEE sees Atom as the "standard in syndication", even though the term RSS is everywhere used.
Implied Licenses Granted by Placing Material Online?
Eric Goldman at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog discusses whether making RSS feeds publicly available thereby grants an implied license of use to RSS feed users, and if so, how such an implied license could be negated, if necessary. But see Fair Use Vs. Fared Use: The Impact of Automated Rights Management on Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine by Tom W. Bell, 76 N. Carolina L. Rev. 557 (1998).
As Goldman writes:
"[I]f a blogger makes a feed of his/her blog available, what can others [legally] do with that content?"
Take a look at his analysis and see also Scobleizer for a panoply of opinions on this topic. The non-exclusive implied license granted by placing materials online is also discussed at When One Thing Leads to Another – Linking and Metatag Liability, by Barbara S. Murphy and Lynn S. Walker, Georgia State University College of Law, Law and the Internet, Professor Wiseman, Summer 2003 (see II.1 in that article).
The Legality of Data Harvesting (not to be confused with E-Discovery Harvesting)
One issue that faces RSS feeds is the practice of "data harvesting" for purposes of creating websites which then sell ads to make money. Martin Schwimmer at the Trademark Blog refers to a ClickZ article by Pamela Parker which refers to other instances of data harvesting such as the ad aggregator Oodle.com or the job aggregator Indeed.com.
There are data harvesting cases which have been decided and which clearly support the principle that data harvesting is legal under some circumstances. See the article Golf Scores v. Yacht Sales: Copyright Law and Data Extraction by Javad Heydary and By No Other (related USA Today, Nautical Solutions Marketing v. Boats.com). At the same time, there are also cases which clearly have found other kinds of data harvesting to be illegal, albeit not necessarily on copyright infringement grounds, e.g. Register.com, Inc. v. Verio, Inc., 126 F. Supp. 2d 238 (S.D.N.Y. 2000), aff' d, 356 F.3d 393 (2d Cir. 2004). See Phillips Nizer for an abstract of that case and the Boston University School of Law, Journal of Science and Technology Law, Legal Update by James J. Tracy for a contract view of browsewrap agreements.
Terms of Use for RSS Feeds
The terms of use for RSS feeds published by mainstream publishers such as the New York Times clearly claim a full copyright to content syndicated by RSS feeds. These terms of use strictly exclude commercial use such as commercial data harvesting.
The New York Times offers over 30 free RSS feeds, albeit under the following terms and conditions:
"We encourage the use of NYTimes.com RSS feeds for personal use in a news reader or as part of a non-commercial Web site or blog. We require proper format and attribution whenever New York Times content is posted on your Web site, and we reserve the right to require that you cease distributing NYTimes.com content. Please read the Terms and Conditions for complete instructions.
NYTimes.com also offers a free headline feed for displaying headlines on personal or professional Web sites, for non-commercial purposes. For more information and instructions, see Add New York Times Headlines to Your Site."
Use of Headlines Written by Other Sources
With regard to the use of headlines, the Japanese Intellectual Property High Court recently decided that it was copyright infringement for a commercial online enterprise – without asking for permission – to use newspaper headlines on its website from Japan's largest daily newspaper. We do not doubt that courts in other countries would make similar holdings.
Fair Use of RSS Feeds and Attribution
The free use which the New York Times offers is essentially an expanded "fair use", i.e. use of news on a "non-commercial Web site or blog". This is essentially similar to the "Creative Commons" license found at the bottom of the LawPundit blog pages, where use of LawPundit material – with proper attribution – is permitted for non-commercial purposes. The NY Times also requires proper attribution of their materials, although attribution has an unclear status in copyright law as far as "fair use" of copyrighted materials is concerned.
As written by Mark A. Lemley, Rights of Attribution and Integrity in Online Communications, 1995 J. ONLINE L. , art. 2, par. 20:
"Both of these cases [Waldman Publishing Corp. v. Landoll Inc. and Robinson v. Random House Inc)] suggest that a right of attribution does in fact exist in United States law, at least in circumstances where the failure to attribute has a commercial effect. If you copy material without identifying it as copied, that fact may hurt you in a copyright infringement suit. Even if you cannot be sued for copyright infringement, your failure to attribute copied material may be actionable under the Lanham Act if it confuses consumers as to the source of the copied material. Taken together, these cases suggest that the worst cases of nonattribution will be taken care of by the existing law."
Attribution not required for Works in the Public Domain
The rule is different for works in the public domain, where attribution is not required. This was decided in Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003). See Stacey L. Garrett, No need to Search the Nile: The Supreme Court Clarifies the Use of Public Domain Works in Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox, Journal of Law, Technology & Policy (Univ. of Illinois), Fall, 2003.
Where is the Line between Commercial and Non-Commercial Use?
The line between a non-commercial or commercial website or blog is not clear. In Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) , the US Supreme Court found:
"The fact that a publication was commercial as opposed to nonprofit is a separate factor that tends to weigh against a finding of fair use. "[E]very commercial use of copyrighted material is presumptively an unfair exploitation of the monopoly privilege that belongs to the owner of the copyright." Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S., at 451 . In arguing that the purpose of news reporting is not purely commercial, The Nation misses the point entirely. The crux of the profit/nonprofit distinction is not whether the sole motive of the use is monetary gain but whether the user stands to profit from exploitation of the copyrighted material without paying the customary price. See Roy Export Co. Establishment v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 503 F. Supp., at 1144; 3 Nimmer 13.05[A]1., at 13-71, n. 25.3."
Many websites and blogs place advertising on their online pages to help pay for costs, e.g. of webspace, etc. and are not really "commercial" undertakings as such, nor are they generally viewed to be "commercial" in nature. Where will the courts draw the line?
What happens, for example, when an otherwise "non-commercial" website or blog is so successful that its commercial ads begin to reap actual profits for the website or for the blogger? Once that happens, such websites or blogs surely become "commercial" in nature, which makes it much more difficult, but not impossible, to invoke the "fair use" exception to the copyright laws.
But even if no profit is being made, could a site harvesting RSS feeds use RSS feed material to promulgate e.g. pornographic advertising on a website in the hope of gain? The answer here must surely be "no", and evidence of purpose, rather than profit, ought to be sufficient.
Clear Terms of Use are Important
In any case, put into different words, RSS feeds "belong" as such to the originator of the RSS feed. Fair use can be made of these feeds, but not commercial use. The solution for the "grey cases" may be in part that RSS feed originators clearly declare the permissible uses of their materials on the website pages. The New York Times terms of use listed here provide a good model to start. Of course, no copyright holder can prohibit lawful fair use, even if such fair use were to be expressly denied by the copyright owner. There will be friction in this grey area.
What about RSS Feed Catalogues?
The most interesting legal question in this connection is whether the use of RSS feeds for legitimate "cataloging purposes" by a commercial enterprise, such as Technorati or Google BlogSearch, is fair use. We think it is in principle, because we find it to be a permissible "transformative use" as in the Arriba case. However, we do not know what the courts will decide in this regard.
IP, intellectual property, law, James J. Tracy, RSS feeds, LawPundit, copyrights, Javad Heydary, NY Times, ATOM feeds, Mark A. Lemley, copyright law, Google Reader, legal, IP law, syndication, implied license, linking, metatags, data harvesting, copyright infringement, browsewrap agreements, attribution, public domain, data extraction, feed catalogs, fair use, Kaulins, Arriba, Tom W. Bell, Technorati, North Carolina Law Review, Stacey L. Garrett, blog search.
Posted in Uncategorized. Leave a Comment »
IP – Is "Intellectual Property" a Misnomer?
Tuesday : 25 October — Andis Kaulins
At Slate's "Jurisprudence: The law, lawyers, and the court", Tim Wu, Professor of Law at Columbia and a teacher of copyright law, has a nice October 17, 2005 article titled Leggo My Ego – GooglePrint and the other culture war, in which he makes the following comparison between the planned GooglePrint "book searches" and ordinary "maps":
"Consider what it would mean, by analogy, if map-makers needed the permission of landowners to create maps. As a property owner, your point would be clear: How can you put my property on your map without my permission? Map-makers, we might say, are clearly exploiting property owners, for profit, when they publish an atlas. And as an individual property owner, you might want more control over how your property appears on a map, and whether it appears at all, as well as the right to demand payment."
This idea by Wu mirrors the argumentation made by Larry Lessig at Lessig Blog:
"Property law since time immemorial had held that your land reached from the ground to the heavens. Then airplanes were invented — a technology oblivious to this ancient law. A couple of farmers sued to enforce their ancient rights — insisting airplanes can't fly over land without their permission. And thus the Supreme Court had to decide whether this ancient law — much older than the law of copyright — should prevail over this new technology.
The Supreme Court's answer was perfectly clear: Absolutely not. "Common sense revolts at the idea," Justice Douglas wrote. And with that sentence, hundreds of years of property law was gone, and the world was a much wealthier place."
The concept of "property by law" is as unnatural as it is thought to be natural. There was a day when nothing on the Earth was owned by anyone, prior to the emergence of Mankind. In the beginning, property was anything that could be defended as such. Indeed, most land property rights are rooted in the exercise of sheer force, the force by which a piece of property, at some distant point in history, was taken and occupied either from other men or from nature.
Let us take America as an example. Did Native Americans "own" all of the Americas just because they were there? And what about their own legends of having driven out other – former – groups from this property?
"As Europeans settled Michigan they crowded out the native Indian populations, destroying ancient burial sites and raiding them for treasures and artifacts. They were particularly fascinated by the burial mounds scattered throughout the state.
Even the native Indians claimed not to know who the mound builders were. Some recalled old legends that their ancestors had conquered and ousted an ancient evil civilization which had dug for copper and built mounds. "
So. Even in this traditional sphere of "real property claims", there are no absolutes.
What about intellectual property?
If we look historically at copyrights, trademarks and patents, we find that in the good old days, there were no intellectual property rights at all. Rather, all of these rights are modern legal inventions which have dynamically expanded in the modern age.
Mark A. Lemley (William H. Neukom Professor of Law and Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology) has an abridged article on Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding in the Fall, 2005 Issue of the Stanford Lawyer (Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 34-39) which was originally published in the Texas Law Review, March, 2005.
Lemley writes that intellectual property law (IP Law) has nothing to do with common-law based property law as taught in the law books. Rather, IP Law is pure "statutory law", created by legislation.
Lemley writes that "the basic economic justification for intellectual property law comes from what was only an occasional problem with tangible property – the risk that creators will not make enough money in a market economy to cover their costs".
This original compensatory view, which was adopted to give holders of intellectual property rights a proper incentive to be creative, has recently mushroomed into a view "that creators will not have sufficient incentive to invent unless they are legally entitled to capture the full social value of their inventions".
But that of course is a horse of a different color, which, in our own view, involves countervailing economic costs to society which are – thus far – not compensated for by the copyright holder (whereas e.g. real property holders have to pay property taxes).
According to Lemley, there are five such significant economic costs which attach to the granting of "overbroad intellectual property rights". These are:
1. Market distortion, creating static inefficiencies (deadweight losses)
2. Dynamic inefficiencies, created by interfering with the ability of other creators to work
3. Socially wasteful rent-seeking behavior
4. Administrative costs
5. Distortionary overinvestment in research and development
In other words, or so we interpret Lemley's view, if an intellectual property right holder wanted to capture the full social value of their inventions or writings, then that same holder should also be prepared to pay for the costs to society of granting that holder that full social value, costs which someone has to pay. Regretably, many intellectual property right holders do not see this aspect of the issue.
Of course, no one can capture the full social value of the works that they produce any more than they can pay for the costs to society which the protection of their work engenders. As a result, intellectual property rights are not absolute and permit a "fair amount" of "free riding", of which something like "fair use in copyrights" would be a good example.
As Lemley writes:
"Granting intellectual property rights imposes a complex set of economic costs, and it can be justified only to the extent those rights are necessary to provide incentives to create. The economics of intellectual property simply do not justify the elimination of free riding."
Lemley concludes that:
"Intellectual property law is in need of reform. Many of the problems stem from the association that lawyers and judges often make between intellectual property and real property. In fact, there are very few similarities between the two fields of law…."
"If people think of intellectual property as a form of property because of its name, then the name should probably go…let's start talking about "IP."
IP, intellectual property, law, property, real property, property rights, copyrights, trademarks, patents, economics, property law, copyright law, Google Print, legal, IP law, Native Americans, Indians, American Indians, mounds, mound builders, civilization, ancient civilizations, dynamic inefficiencies, market distortion, static inefficiencies, free riding, fair use, Kaulins, Lessig, Wu, Lemley, Texas Law Review, Stanford Lawyer, copper cultures.
Regulation of Political Speech on the Internet – Blogs and Blogging
VoteLaw has a posting about a one-page order just issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit which has "declined to reconsider a decision requiring the FEC to write new rules to carry out a 2002 campaign finance law". Reference is made to a Boston Globe AP article of October 24, 2005 titled "Appeals court declines to review decision on campaign finance rules".
This is a development of utmost importance to blogging. What is the background?
The Bloglines Blog (see also WingedPig) has a posting about the fact that the FEC (Federal Election Commission) has been reviewing regulations concerning political speech on the Internet, including blogging.
The Committee on House Administration held a hearing on the topic on September 22, 2005.
The issues involved are found in this statement by Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney which we have excerpted:
"The Committee is meeting today to hear testimony on the subject of regulation of political speech and activity on the Internet….
The Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold or BCRA) required the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to develop regulations to implement the Act. The Commission determined that Congress did not intend for BCRA to cover Internet communications and, therefore, adopted regulations that exempted them.
Congressman Shays and Meehan, believing the FEC regulations did not follow the intent of BCRA, sued the Commission. The Court [see material below] agreed with the Congressmen, and ordered the FEC to rewrite the rules.
As a result of this lawsuit and Court decision, the FEC was forced to rewrite the rules that cover communications on the Internet. That new rulemaking began in March 2005.
While this new rulemaking was going on, some Members of Congress were making clear that they did not intend for BCRA to cover the Internet, and that they did not want the FEC regulating these communications. In March, Congressman Conyers and 13 of his colleagues wrote to the FEC seeking an exemption for web logs or blogs….
Identical bills were also introduced in both bodies to preserve the exemption – in the Senate by Minority Leader Harry Reid and in the House by Jeb Hensarling (R-TX). Their bill language was adopted by this committee, and included in H.R. 1316, the Pence-Wynn bill, reported by the committee on June 8, 2005.
These bi-partisan congressional endorsements of the exemption show there still some issues on which both sides of the aisle can agree. We'll later hear from two witnesses who operate blogs, one conservative and one liberal, who probably do not agree on anything except that they do not want the FEC to be regulating what they say or do on their websites.
The debate here then is not between Republicans and Democrats or liberals and conservatives. Instead, the debate here is between those who favor regulation and those who do not…."
The court decision in question was described at the hearing by Scott E. Thomas, Chairman, Federal Election Commission as follows [we quote footnote 1 at the linked source]:
"The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia concluded that the Commission's broad Internet exemption would "severely undermine [the Federal Election Campaign Act's] purposes," and would permit "rampant circumvention of the campaign finance laws and foster corruption or the appearance of corruption." Shays v. FEC, 337 F. Supp. 2d 28, 70 (D.D.C. 2004), aff'd, 414 F.3d 76 (D.C. Cir. 2005), petition for rehearing en banc filed (Aug. 29, 2005). Though the district court held some 15 regulations invalid, it nonetheless indicated that pending resolution of the litigation and adoption of needed revisions by the FEC, the challenged regulations remain in effect. Shays v. FEC, 340 F. Supp. 2d 39, 54 (D.D.C. 2004)."
This is the court decision which the D.C. Appeals Court declined to reconsider.
Here are the issues:
Thomas points out in his testimony that the Internet should be regulated by the BCRA because the Internet is becoming a major player on the political scene.
Vice Chairman Michael E. Toner of the FEC testified that political speech on the internet should not be regulated and that the BCRA was never intended to apply to the internet.
Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub of the FEC emphasized that "the focus of the FEC is campaign finance. We are not the speech police." Hence, Weintraub indicates that the proposed rules will in fact regulate the internet, but that substantial exemptions will be made.
Bradley A. Smith, Professor of Law at Capital University Law School, and former Chairman of the FEC, testified that the "the on-line community has reason to be concerned" and that "there is a sizeable and powerful lobby both in and out of Congress that clearly wants to regulate the internet….A regulated internet will strengthen those who already have political power and influence; a deregulated internet will boost the influence of ordinary Americans who just want to play by the rules…." Smith particularly points to the inherent conflicts created between internet regulation and press freedom, the resolution of which is a controversial matter. For the position of blogs, see The Volokh Conspiracy.
Lawrence Noble, Executive Director and General Counsel of the Center for Responsive Politics, testified that: "There is little doubt that the Internet can be used in much the same way television, radio and the print media have been before; as an avenue for the spending of large amounts of undisclosed soft money to finance various forms of political ads aimed at electing or defeating Federal candidates. "
Michael J. Krempasky of RedState.org provided testimony from one side of the political spectrum of blogging and Duncan Black of Eschaton provided testimony from the other side. Both stated that blogs should be exempted from the BCRA.
Some links to the history of this topic are:
CNet News.com
pbaHQ
In the Agora
Democracy Project
Ask Jeeves Blog
Captain's Quarters
Newspaperindex
Given this court decision and barring Congressional action, there will now be much, much more about this matter on the blogosphere, you can be sure.
internet law, political speech, campaign contributions, blogs, blogging, bloggers, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, FEC, Federal Election Commission, Campaign Finance Law, Campaign Reform Act, BCRA, legal, House Administration, Committee on House Administration, McCain-Feingold, Pence-Wynn, communications, Internet, Kaulin, web logs, campaign finance, online community, internet regulation.
Crossposted to Punditmania.
Stanford Law Grads as Technology Company General Counsels
As a Stanford Law School alum, I just received the Fall, 2005 Issue of the Stanford Lawyer (Issue 73, Vol. 40, No. 1) which I always read from cover to cover. This issue is powerpacked with technology.
The feature article by Josh McHugh (photography by Peter Stember) is entitled "Technology's Field Generals" and profiles the general counsels at "Microsoft, Google, Cisco, eBay, Yahoo!, Qualcomm, Autodesk, and Oracle – Stanford Law School alums, all…."
Although Stanford is known for its political liberalism, these general counsels show the other side of the law school equation, i.e. the indisputable fact that top faculty and top students also produce top legal people for business and technology.
It is not a question of politics – but rather one of competence.
As Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer writes in his introductory "Leading the Way in Law and Technology":
"[T]his issue of Stanford Lawyer touches on just a few of the myriad ways in which Stanford Law School has become the world's premier place for teaching and scholarship about the legal dimensions of new technology and the astonishing, often perplexing, society it is creating…. Though ranked as one of the top universities in the world, this is not a place where people sit on their laurels or tradition. Amazing things are going to happen here in the next decade, especially in law and technology."
CALEA Wiretap Law to Increase College Tuition by $450? – FCC Rule Under Fire
Sunday : 23 October — Andis Kaulins
Sam Dillon and Stephen Labaton write at the New York Times online on October 23, 2005 that "Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems".
The protest relates to the 1994 "Wiretap Law", the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which has been very broadly interpreted in an FCC notice issued on August 5, 2005 and published October 13, 2005 in the Federal Register (html, pdf, summary).
As written by the FCC at its AskCALEA compliance assistance page:
"In October 1994, Congress took action to protect public safety and ensure national security by enacting the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA), Pub. L. No. 103-414, 108 Stat. 4279. The law further defines the existing statutory obligation of telecommunications carriers to assist law enforcement in executing electronic surveillance pursuant to court order or other lawful authorization.
The objective of CALEA implementation is to preserve law enforcement's ability to conduct lawfully-authorized electronic surveillance while preserving public safety, the public's right to privacy, and the telecommunications industry's competitiveness."
The August, 2005 notice of the FCC provides:
"Responding to a petition from the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Commission determined that providers of certain broadband and interconnected voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services must be prepared to accommodate law enforcement wiretaps, the Federal Communications Commission ruled today.
The Commission found that these services can essentially replace conventional telecommunications services currently subject to wiretap rules, including circuit-switched voice service and dial-up Internet access. As replacements, the new services are covered by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, which requires the Commission to preserve the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct court-ordered wiretaps in the face of technological change.
The Order is limited to facilities-based broadband Internet access service providers and VoIP providers that offer services permitting users to receive calls from, and place calls to, the public switched telephone network. These VoIP providers are called interconnected VoIP providers.
The Commission found that the definition of "telecommunications carrier" in CALEA is broader than the definition of that term in the Communications Act and can encompass providers of services that are not classified as telecommunications services under the Communications Act. CALEA contains a provision that authorizes the Commission to deem an entity a telecommunications carrier if the Commission "finds that such service is a replacement for a substantial portion of the local telephone exchange."
Because broadband Internet and interconnected VoIP providers need a reasonable amount of time to come into compliance with all relevant CALEA requirements, the Commission established a deadline of 18 months from the effective date of this Order, by which time newly covered entities and providers of newly covered services must be in full compliance. The Commission also adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will seek more information about whether certain classes or categories of facilities-based broadband Internet access providers – notably small and rural providers and providers of broadband networks for educational and research institutions – should be exempt from CALEA.
The Commission's action is the first critical step to apply CALEA obligations to new technologies and services that are increasingly used as a substitute for conventional services. The Order strikes an appropriate balance between fostering competitive broadband and advanced services deployment and technological innovation on one hand, and meeting the needs of the law enforcement community on the other."
As written at the New York Times:
"The action, which the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil liberties issues…."
Lawyers for the American Council on Education … are preparing to appeal the order … Terry W. Hartle, a senior vice president of the council, said Friday….
The universities do not question the government's right to use wiretaps to monitor terrorism or criminal suspects on college campuses, Mr. Hartle said, only the order's rapid timetable for compliance and extraordinary cost….
Even the lowest estimates of compliance costs would, on average, increase annual tuition at most American universities by some $450….
Hat tip to Morningstar.com
internet law, law enforcement, law, telephony, VoIP, CALEA, wiretap, wiretapping, Wiretap Law, communications, telecommunications, broadband, access, legal, PSTN, colleges, universities, compliance, FCC, Federal Register, POTS, providers, AskCALEA, educational institutions, college tuition.
Stanford on iTunes – The Future is Here
Friday : 21 October — Andis Kaulins
Stanford on iTunes !?
Via if:book, the Free Range Librarian, and the Georgia State University Library, we were linked to an October 21, 2005 story by Doug Lederman at Inside Higher Ed News entitled "The sounds of Stanford, via the iPod" concerning the October 20, 2005 Stanford University announcement that it was cooperating with Apple to make audio content of various kinds available to students and alumni across the Stanford on iTunes website:
"The project has two prongs. Through the Stanford on iTunes Web site, the university will make lectures, music, sports and other content available not only to its alumni but to the public, free of charge. Stanford unveiled the site Thursday as it opened its reunion weekend, Stocker said, and alumni crowded around a campus booth downloaded music and lectures onto their iPods. "It's already creating a lot of buzz," he said.
The other part of the Stanford-Apple collaboration – and the one with perhaps greater implications for others in higher education – is a controlled-access Web site through which students will be able to download course materials. The restricted-access iTunes site will enable Stanford students to load course lectures and other audio content (and, eventually, video content, now that Apple is introducing a new version of iTunes that includes movies and other images) onto their iPods and listen to them whenever they wish."
We definitely see applications here to the law school curriculum.
Postings by Date
Our Menu Pages
Law in a Cloud
Law Law School
37,264 hits since March 10, 2010


Munitions Constituents (EM) are chemicals used in formulations as propellants, pyrotechnics, and explosives in weapon systems, munitions, and blasting agents. This article introduces these materials, major physical and chemical properties, and fate in the environment. Important chemical groups include nitroaromatics (e.g. 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and 2,4-dinitrotoluene (2,4-DNT), nitramines (e.g. hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) and octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetreazocine (HMX)), nitrate esters (e.g. nitroglycerin (NG), pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN)), and nitrocellulose (NC). Ammonium perchlorate (AP) is commonly used as a propellant in solid rock fuel and is addressed in a separate article on perchlorate. Insensitive munitions (IM) are energetics in newer military explosives and are generally considered more stable than traditional explosives.
CONTRIBUTOR(S): Dr. Kevin Finneran and Dr. Robert Borden, P.E.
EPA Federal Facilities Forum Issue Paper: Site Characterization for Munitions Constituents, EPA/505/S-11/001, 2012.
Table 1. Common US military explosives, propellants, and IM formulations.
Explosive materials are commonly classified according to the speed of the chemical reaction wave that propagates through the material. If the wave velocity is greater than the speed of sound (supersonic), the material is said to undergo detonation and is considered an explosive. If the wave propagation velocity is less than the speed of sound, the material is considered to undergo deflagration (rapid burning) and is often used as a propellant.
Common military explosives are mixtures consisting of one or more explosive compounds including trinitrotoluene (TNT), 1,3,5-hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitrotriazine or Research Development Explosive (RDX), octrahydro-1,3,5,7- tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine or High Melting Explosive (HMX), and 2,4,6- trinitro-phenylmethylnitramine (tetryl) and ammonium picrate. However, the US military is replacing many of these materials with insensitive munitions (IM) to reduce risks of accidental detonation. IM materials will burn, rather than explode, when subjected to fast or slow heating, bullets, shrapnel, shaped charges, or the detonation of another nearby munition. Important components of IM include 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN), nitroguanidine (NQ), 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (NTO) and other traditional munitions components (RDX, HMX). We highlight common military explosives, propellants, and IM formulations in Table 1.
Propellant formulations often contain several components. The primary component is often nitrocellulose (NC), which is combined with other EM compounds including nitroglycerin (NG), NQ, DNT, HMX, burn rate modifiers, binders or plasticizers, and stabilizers. Gun propellants usually are single component based (e.g., NC), double based (e.g., NC and NG), or triple based (e.g., NC, NG, and NQ).
The structure (e.g., Fig. 1), as well as physical and chemical properties of explosive materials control their fate and transport in the environment (Table 2).
With the exception of NG, the major EM are solids at ambient temperatures (Table 2). Table 2 provides the molecular mass, aqueous solubility, Log octanol-water partition coefficient (Log Kow), and vapor pressure of common explosive materials. Although NG is a liquid, it is commonly used as a component of double- and triple-base propellants, with the solid polymeric NC. Aqueous solubility of EM varies dramatically between the different materials and can have an important influence on their mobility in the environment. Organic compounds with a high Kow are more likely to sorb to organic carbon in soil or bioaccumulate; however, EM tend to be high in nitrogen, and by definition, are strong oxidizing agents. EM materials tend to form crystals. The vapor pressure of these materials is relatively low, so volatilization is not an important removal mechanism for most EM.
a = Thiboutout et al. (2002), b = Pennington et al. (2006) Final Report, c = EPA Technical Fact Sheet for TNT, d = EPA Technical Fact Sheet for RDX, f = EPA Technical Fact Sheet for DNT, g = EPA Technical Fact Sheet for Perchlorate, h = McGrath (1995), i = Monteil-Rivera et al. (2004), j = DNAN WEEL FINAL, l = DRDC 2011, m = NTO WEEL FINAL, n = van der Schalie (1985), o = Hawari (2014), p = Hawari et al. (2015).
Table 2. Physical and chemical properties of important explosives and propellants.
Exposure of humans to EM compounds can result in significant health issues. High oral or dermal exposures to TNT can cause liver and blood damage, anorexia, and anemia. High oral exposures to RDX can cause neurological affects such as convulsions. Some EM can bioaccumulate in crop plants (e.g. RDX), leading to potential exposure by eating or direct contact. TNT and 2,4-DNT are classified as possible human carcinogens by the U.S. EPA. In contrast, HMX is not currently classified as a human carcinogen, but has been shown to have adverse impacts on the liver and nervous system in some laboratory animals. The US military is replacing many of traditional explosives with IMs to reduce risks of accidental detonation. Since IM materials including DNAN, NTO, and NQ have not been in common use, considerable effort has been focused on understanding the toxicity of these materials (see Munitions Constituents - IM Toxicology).
There are currently no federal maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for TNT, RDX, and HMX. Life-time health advisory levels in drinking water vary from 400 µg/L for HMX, to 2 µg/L for RDX, and 2 µg/L for TNT.
Much of the early work on environmental issues related to EM focused on concentrated sources including manufacturing facilities and locations where off-specification, unserviceable, and obsolete munitions were destroyed . More recently, attention has focused on potential contamination from military training when partial detonations deposit EM particles on range soils (see Munitions Constituents - Deposition). Once deposited on a range, the EM dissolves over time, a process thought to be the rate-limiting step for aqueous transport of these compounds to soil and groundwater. The mass of EM dissolved is a function of the aqueous solubility of the compound, the mass of explosive residues deposited on the soil, the size of individual residues, and the three-dimensional (3D) structure of formulations that have multiple constituents (see Munitions Constituents - Dissolution). During transport through the subsurface, EM migration is influenced by sorption to the solid phase (see Munitions Constituents - Sorption), as well as chemical transformation and biodegradation.
However, the Department of Defense (DoD) has invested considerable resources to understand how these factors can be influenced, or how they operate in natural settings, to limit transport of EM in surface or groundwater. In addition, a number of remediation strategies have been developed that address EM, and applied both in situ and ex situ at DoD facilities.
^ Jenkins, T.F., 2007. Energetic Munitions Constituents on DoD Training Ranges: Deposition, Accumulation, and Appropriate Characterization Technology, In: SERDP and ESTCP Technical Exchange Meeting on DoD Operational Range Assessment and Management Approaches, SERDP and ESTCP, Arlington, VA.
^ Fung, V., Schreiber, B., Patel, C., Samuels, P., Vinh, P. and Zhao, X.L., 2012. Process Improvement and Optimization of Insensitive Explosive IMX-101. In Insensitive Munitions & Munitions Constituents Technology Symposium (IMEMTS) & National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA): Las Vegas, NV, USA.
^ DRDC, 2011. Annual Report 2010-2011. Environmental fate and ecological impact of emerging energetic chemicals (DNAN and its Amino-Derivatives, NTO, NQ, FOX-7, and FOX-12). Prepared by J. Hawari. NRC# 53363, Defense Research and Development Canada, National Research Council of Canada, Montréal, Québec.
^ Spain, J.C., Hughes, J.B. and Knackmuss, H.J. eds., 2000. Biodegradation of nitroaromatic compounds and explosives. CRC Press, 456 pgs.