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Access Control in Data Management Systems by
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Access control is one of the fundamental services that any Data Management System should provide. Its main goal is to protect data from unauthorized read and write operations.
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Publication Date: 2011-08-26
This book will help you address the questions of when, where, with what, and how to leverage cloud, virtual, and data storage networking as part of your IT infrastructure.
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Computer Networks, Fourth Edition, continues to provide an enduring, practical understanding of networks and their building blocks through rich, example-based instruction.
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If you are in search of real-world practical scenarios of IT performance management practices, with a desire to obtain examples of strategic directives, accountabilities, outcomes, and performance measures for managing IT services, with an interest toward how performance management integrates with strategic and operational management, then Integrated IT Performance Management is the book you need.
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Advancement in sensor technology, smart instrumentation, wireless sensor networks, miniaturization, RFID and information processing is helping towards the realization of Internet of Things (IoT). IoTs are finding applications in various area applications including environmental monitoring, intelligent buildings, smart grids and so on. This book provides design challenges of IoT, theory, various protocols, implementation issues and a few case study. The book will be very useful for postgraduate students and researchers to know from basics to implementation of IoT.
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Until now, almost all books on logical database design focused exclusively on relational design. However, modern database management systems have added powerful features that have driven a movement away from truly normalized database design. Logical Database Design Principles reflects these recent changes.
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Revised and updated with the latest data in the field, the Second Edition of Managing Risk in Information Systems provides a comprehensive overview of the SSCP® Risk, Response, and Recovery Domain in addition to providing a thorough overview of risk management and its implications on IT infrastructures and compliance.
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ZDNet brings together the reach of global and the depth of local, delivering 24/7 news coverage and analysis on the trends, technologies and opportunities that matter to IT professionals and decision makers.
Computer Science from the University of Oxford
episodes created by the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, one of the longest-established Computer Science departments in the country.
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Rear Adm. Carl Lahti remembers meeting Rear Adm. Grace Hopper as a plebe.
She gave a lecture at Mitscher Hall, during which she handed out pieces of nanowire, including to Lahti.
That was 34 years ago, Lahti said Thursday, as he stood in front of the Naval Academy’s latest building.
“I would never believe today we would be dedicating a hall to her honor and her legacy,” Lahti, commandant of the Naval District Washington, said.
Hopper Hall is the academy’s new center for cybersecurity studies. Although the academy celebrated its ribbon cutting Thursday, the building has been open with students attending in-person classes since mid-September, according to an academy press release.
Hopper Hall represents the future of the Navy, Lahti said, adding that the building shows the commitment of the Navy to advancements in cybersecurity and cyber warfare. The midshipmen trained in the $143 million building could be asked to provide code patches to keep a ship on the network, as an example, Lahti said.
“We do not know what is going to come out of the heads of the midshipmen who are being trained here, but what it is going to be is great and glorious,” he said.
While the ribbon ceremony focused on the advancements in cybersecurity, the new building will now provide, speakers also took time to remember Hopper.
She was infamous for handing out the nanowire, like the one Lahti received. She used it to show, in an understandable way, how quickly information flowed, said Vice Adm. Sean Buck, Naval Academy superintendent.
“Adm. Hopper was a brilliant computer scientist whose contributions to the field are responsible for many of the modern computing advancements we take for granted today,” Buck said. “She was an innovative thinker who bucked against archaic systems that stifled our nation’s advancements in technology.”
Hopper Hall reflects the vision of the Navy, the Department of Defense and Congress in preparing future leaders to be prepared against cyber attacks, said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Baltimore County , who is the chair of the academy’s Board of Visitors.
“Hopper will be a place where our country’s future leaders will learn to ask new and reasonable questions,” Ruppersberger said. “It’ll be a place for inspiration and innovation for decades to come.”
The state-of-the-art facility will bring the computer science, engineering and robotics curricula to the forefront, Buck said. Hopper believed in letting students have the space and freedom to develop innovative ideas, and Buck said he believes the new glass, open space building will allow midshipmen to do that.
Hopper Hall is the first building at the Naval Academy, as well as the Air Force Academy and Military Academy at West Point, to be named after a woman.
“Above and beyond Adm. Hopper’s incredible contributions to computer science, to national security and the Naval Academy, it’s apt that we have chosen to name out newest building in her honor,” Buck said.
(c) 2020 The Capital
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday vowed to continue with the war on Gaza “till victory.”
During his visit to a military base in southern Israel, the Israeli prime minister said that his country will not cede to ‘international pressures’, Al Jazeera reported.
“We will continue until the end. There is no question at all. I say this in light of great pain, but also light of international pressure. Nothing will stop us. We are going until the end, until victory, nothing less than that," AFP reported quoting the Israeli prime minister.
Netanyahu's remarks come as the country, earlier in the day, reiterated its commitment to continue its Gaza war "with or without international support" as pressure mounts amid increasing ceasefire calls.
It is pertinent to mention here that at least 18,608 people have been martyred and 50,594 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Meanwhile, the situation in Khan Younis area of under-attack Gaza is getting tougher by the minute, Al Jazeera reported, as the street battles erupt between Hamas and Israeli forces.
With the Israeli military trying to advance deeper into the city, Palestinian resistance fighters block their entry while using the network of tunnels.
Meanwhile, Israel continued the bombing and attacks on residential areas as they expanded their offensive, targeting civilian areas.


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2 Jun 2011: Luk SU, Lee TKW, Liu J, Lee DTW, Chiu YT, et al. (2011) Correction: Chemopreventive Effect of PSP Through Targeting of Prostate Cancer Stem Cell-Like Population. PLOS ONE 6(6): 10.1371/annotation/0f6309be-936c-4974-97bf-ed3a98289cd9. https://doi.org/10.1371/annotation/0f6309be-936c-4974-97bf-ed3a98289cd9 View correction
2 Jun 2011: Luk SU, Lee TKW, Liu J, Lee DTW, Chiu YT, et al. (2011) Correction: Chemopreventive Effect of PSP Through Targeting of Prostate Cancer Stem Cell-Like Population. PLOS ONE 6(6): 10.1371/annotation/b0312c4c-e06a-47ef-9e9c-b044dbfa3d6a. https://doi.org/10.1371/annotation/b0312c4c-e06a-47ef-9e9c-b044dbfa3d6a View correction
Recent evidence suggested that prostate cancer stem/progenitor cells (CSC) are responsible for cancer initiation as well as disease progression. Unfortunately, conventional therapies are only effective in targeting the more differentiated cancer cells and spare the CSCs. Here, we report that PSP, an active component extracted from the mushroom Turkey tail (also known as Coriolus versicolor), is effective in targeting prostate CSCs. We found that treatment of the prostate cancer cell line PC-3 with PSP led to the down-regulation of CSC markers (CD133 and CD44) in a time and dose-dependent manner. Meanwhile, PSP treatment not only suppressed the ability of PC-3 cells to form prostaspheres under non-adherent culture conditions, but also inhibited their tumorigenicity in vivo, further proving that PSP can suppress prostate CSC properties. To investigate if the anti-CSC effect of PSP may lead to prostate cancer chemoprevention, transgenic mice (TgMAP) that spontaneously develop prostate tumors were orally fed with PSP for 20 weeks. Whereas 100% of the mice that fed with water only developed prostate tumors at the end of experiment, no tumors could be found in any of the mice fed with PSP, suggesting that PSP treatment can completely inhibit prostate tumor formation. Our results not only demonstrated the intriguing anti-CSC effect of PSP, but also revealed, for the first time, the surprising chemopreventive property of oral PSP consumption against prostate cancer.
Citation: Luk S-U, Lee TK-W, Liu J, Lee DT-W, Chiu Y-T, Ma S, et al. (2011) Chemopreventive Effect of PSP Through Targeting of Prostate Cancer Stem Cell-Like Population. PLoS ONE 6(5): e19804. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019804
Editor: Kelvin Yuen Kwong Chan, Tsan Yuk Hospital, Hospital Authority, China
Received: December 23, 2010; Accepted: April 16, 2011; Published: May 16, 2011
Copyright: © 2011 Luk et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: Vice Chancellor Research Fellowship. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common male malignancy in western countries and represents a major disease burden in the world. When diagnosed at an advanced stage where surgery is no longer feasible, the only frontline treatment available is hormone ablation therapy. Unfortunately, the majority of PCa patients eventually relapse and develop hormone refractory PCa (HRPC), a fatal and terminal stage regarded as incurable .
Chemoprevention is an ideal strategy for battling prostate cancer, and a number of chemotherapeutic agents or natural food supplements are currently being tested for their potential of inhibiting prostate cancer development. For example, finasteride, a 5-alpha reductase specific inhibitor, has been shown to reduce prostate cancer incidence by 25% in a clinical trial . Similarly, dutasteride, an analog of finasteride, was also reported to significantly inhibit prostate cancer development . Despite of the promising result, the side-effects associated with the finasteride treatment remains the major concern for it to be used widely for prostate chemoprevention. Therefore, bioactive food compounds such as epigallocatechin-3-gallate or resveratrol , ,  represents an attractive alternative for prostate cancer chemoprevention, mainly due to their relatively low toxicity. Unfortunately, most of the previous studies have produced inconclusive results regarding their chemopreventive potential.
Recent identification of prostate cancer stem cells (CSCs)  has provided a new insight into prostate carcinogenesis. The ability of these cancer stem cells to self-renew and differentiate into bulk cancer cells suggested that they may be the origin of prostate cancer . Moreover, the highly resistant nature of these CSCs to different chemotherapies suggested that CSCs may also contribute to treatment failure and disease relapse . Interestingly, a number of bioactive food compounds have recently been shown to have anti-CSC effect. For example, we recently reported that gamma-tocotrienol extracted from palm oil inhibits prostasphere formation ability and tumorigenicity of prostate cancer cells , suggesting that gamma-tocotrienol is effective in suppressing prostate CSC properties. In addition, a triterpene extracted from fruits was also found to inhibit the self-renewal ability of liver CSCs and sensitize the liver tumor to cisplatin treatment . These findings highlight the potential of bioactive food compounds as CSC targeting agent either for the prevention or for the treatment of prostate cancer.
Here, we demonstrated that the polysaccharopeptide (PSP) extracted from Turkey tail (known as Coriolus versicolor or Yun-zhi) targets prostate CSCs in vitro and suppresses tumor formation in vivo. Treatment of prostate cancer cell line PC-3 with PSP led to the down-regulation of CSC markers (CD133 and CD44) in a time and dose-dependent manner. Meanwhile, formation of prostasphere, a major property of prostate CSCs, was completely suppressed in PC-3 cells in the presence of PSP. Furthermore, PSP pre-treatment significantly suppressed tumor initiation of PC-3 cells in immunocompromised mice, suggesting that PSP suppresses the tumorigenicity of the PC-3 cells. More importantly, oral feeding of transgenic mice (TgMAP) that spontaneously develop prostate tumor with PSP was found to completely inhibit prostate tumor formation. Our findings support that PSP may be a potent chemopreventive agent against prostate cancer, possibly through targeting of the prostate CSC population.
Effects of PSP on CSC marker expression
PSP has previously shown to possess anti-cancer properties , , , although the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. To test if the anti-cancer effect of PSP is through targeting of CSC properties, we first investigated if PSP treatment affects the expression of prostate CSC markers in PC-3 cell line, which has been reported to contain CSCs. PC-3 cells were treated with 250 and 500 µg/ml of PSP for either 48 or 72 hr, and the expression of CSC markers such as CD133 or CD44 was examined by western blotting. As shown in Figure 1B, protein expression of CD133 was significantly down-regulated after PSP treatment in a time and dose-dependent manner. Downregulation of CD44 was also observed after PSP treatment, although the effect was less obvious. However, examination of the mRNA level of both CD133 and CD44 revealed that the downregulation of both proteins by PSP is not due to inhibition of gene transcription (data no shown). Nevertheless, these data suggest that PSP may be effective in targeting the putative prostate CSCs.
A) Western blotting of prostate CSC markers CD44 and CD133 in PC-3 cells after PSP treatment. Note that PSP significantly down-regulates both stem cell markers in a dose- and time-dependent manner. B) Viability of PC-3 cells after treatment with 5, 25, 125, 250 and 500 µg/ml of PSP for 48 or 72 hr was measured with MTT assay. Results are presented as mean ± s.d. C) Flow cytometry analysis of PC-3 cells after treatment with 250 µg/ml of PSP for 72 hr. Note that no significant difference in cell cycle distribution was observed. D) Western blotting results for apoptotic markers (left panel) and stem cell maintenance proteins (right panel) in PC-3 cells after PSP treatment. Note that no changes in Bax and Bcl-2 or cleavage of PARP were detected.
To test if the down-regulation of CSC marker expression by PSP is due to a decrease in cell viability, PC-3 cells treated with PSP at different dosages (0, 5, 25, 125, 250 and 500 µg/ml) for 24, 48 or 72 hr were examined by MTT assay. Interestingly, 48 hr of PSP treatment did not have any observable effects on cell viability, even though the same treatments was found to significantly suppress the expression of CSC markers (Figure 1B & 1C). Meanwhile, PSP treatment also failed to induce cell cycle arrest or apoptosis, as evidenced by the lack of sub-G1 population in the result of flow cytometry analysis (Figure 1D). This was further confirmed by examination of apoptosis-associated proteins (i.e. Bax, Bcl-2 and cleaved PARP) (Figure 1E). However, the Akt/β-catenin pathway, which is responsible for the enrichment of CSCs in breast cancer, was drastically inhibited by PSP treatment. As shown in Figure 1D, activation of AKT by phosphorylation at ser 473 was inhibited by PSP at both doses, which was accompanied by complete disappearance of β-catenin expression (Figure 1E).
PSP inhibits prostasphere formation of prostate cancer cells under non-adherent culture conditions
The ability to form prostaspheres in non-adherent culture is one of the characteristics of prostate CSCs , , . To confirm that PSP treatment can inhibit prostate CSC properties, prostasphere formation of PC-3 was studied in the presence or absence of PSP. As shown in Figure 2A, culturing of both PC-3 and DU145 cells for 14 days under non-adherent conditions results formation of prostaspheres, further confirming the presence of a stem-like population within both cell lines. Strikingly, addition of PSP into the medium drastically inhibited prostasphere formation in both cell lines. In particular, no prostaspheres was found in either cell line in the presence of 500 mg/ml of PSP, suggesting that PSP treatment significantly eliminated the prostate CSCs. To further proved that PSP is effective in inhibiting prostasphere formation, primary prostaspheres with enriched CSC population were dissociated and re-seeded into non-adherent culture condition to allow for the formation of secondary prostaspheres. Consistent with the result from the primary spheroid formation assay, PSP treatments significantly suppress the number of prostaspheres found in each cell line, although the higher dosage of PSP (500 mg/ml) was unable to completely eliminate all the secondary prostaspheres. Nonetheless, these results suggest that PSP is effective in suppressing the CSC properties of prostate cancer cells.
A) Spheroid formation assay was performed with PC-3 and Du145 cells. Two hundred of cells were seeded onto polyHEMA pre-coated plates and treated with either 500 µg/mL of PSP or vehicle for 14 days. The number of prostaspheres formed was counted, and the result was presented as the mean ± s.d. Note that γ-T3 treatment efficiently suppresses the spheroid formation ability of PC-3 cells. Image of the prostaspheres was captured under microscope. Note that no prostaspheres can be found in cells treated with 500 µg/mL of PSP. (B) PSP inhibited the formation of secondary prostaspheres. Primary prostaspheres were dissociated and re-seeded into polyHEMA pre-coated plate. PSP was added 24 hr after the plating. Note that prostasphere formation was inhibited by more than 70% and 90% in the presence of 250 µg/mL and 500 µg/mL of PSP respectively. * P<0.001, ** P<0.0001, t test.
PSP significantly reduces the tumorigenicity of prostate cancer cells in vivo
Since CSC is responsible for cancer initiation, it is possible that PSP treatment may inhibit the tumor formation ability of PC-3 cells in vivo. To test this hypothesis, we first treated PC-3 cells that stably expressing the luciferase protein (PC-3-Luc) with PSP for 72 hr before orthotopically injected them into the SCID mice. As examined by bioluminescence imaging, all of the mice that were injected with vehicle-pre-treated PC-3-luc cells formed tumors two weeks after the implantation (Figure 3A). Intriguingly, three out of the eight mice that were injected with PSP pre-treated PC-3-luc cells failed to develop tumors even at week four post implantation (Figure 3A&B). The lack of tumors in the PSP-pre-treated group was further confirmed by examination of the mouse prostate glands at the end of the experiment (Figure 3C). Taken together, our results suggested that PSP was effective in reducing the tumorigenic potential of prostate cancer cells, which is an essential characteristic of CSCs.
A) Bioluminescent images of SCID mice orthotopically injected with PC-3-luc cells for two weeks. SCID mice in the upper row were injected with vehicle-treated PC-3-luc cells, whereas mice in the bottom row were injected with PSP-treated PC-3-luc cells. B) Table summarizes the percentages of mice developing detectable tumors at week 2. Approximately 40% of mice in the PSP pretreated group did not form detectable tumors, whereas 100% tumor formation was found in the control group (p = 0.07). C) Selected ex vivo images of the prostate from both groups. Note that in PSP-treated mice with negative luciferase signal, no visible tumor were found in the prostate tissue.
Oral administration of PSP fails to inhibit prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN) development in TgMAP mice
The effect of PSP on prostate CSCs supports the hypothesis that it may have a chemopreventive effect against prostate cancer. To test this hypothesis, we have employed a transgenic mouse model that spontaneously develops adenocarcinoma of the prostate (TgMAP) , . The TgMAP mice develop PIN between 16–20 weeks of age and progress to prostate adenocarcinoma after week 24 (Figure 4A). Because PIN is considered as the pre-malignant lesion and the most important risk factor of prostate cancer , we first tested if PSP administration affected PIN development in TgMAP mice. Five TgMAP mice (14-weeks old, at least 2 weeks before PIN development) were fed with 200 mg/kg of PSP for 4 weeks. Four mice of the same age were fed with water only for the same period of time. All mice were sacrificed at 20 weeks old and prostatic tissues were collected and sectioned for histology. As shown in Figure 4B&C, no differences were observed between the control and PSP-treated TgMAP mice regarding to the gross anatomy and the histology of the prostate gland. At low power magnification, tissue sections from both groups retained glandular structures, and at high power, PIN was detectable in both the control and PSP-treated mice. These results suggest that 4 weeks of PSP consumption was unable to stop the development of PIN.
A) Time frame of the PIN and PCa development in TgMAP mice and the schedule of the PSP treatment. Fourteen-week old TgMAP mice were treated with 200 mg/kg of PSP by oral gavage feeding for 4 weeks and sacrificed at the time when PIN has developed (20 weeks old). The table summarizes the results of the histology examination of the prostate from the vehicle- and PSP-treated TgMAP mice. C) Representative photos of the Hematoxylin & Eosin staining of the prostatic tissues from the TgMAP mice. Note that both control- and PSP-treated TgMAP mice developed prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN), as indicated by the arrows.
Prolonging PSP consumption inhibits prostate cancer development in TgMAP mice
The failure to inhibit PIN formation by PSP treatment may due to insufficient dose or treatment length. We therefore tested if a higher dose and longer period of PSP consumption may affect prostate tumor formation using the same model. Five TgMAP mice (8-weeks old) were fed with 300 mg/kg of PSP for a total of 20 weeks (Figure 5A). Four mice at the same age were again fed with water only for the same period of time. All mice were sacrificed at 28 weeks old when prostate tumors were formed, with prostatic tissues collected and sectioned for histology. As shown in Figure 5B, tumors were found in different sections of the prostate gland from all of the mice that were fed with water only. Surprisingly, examination of all of the prostate section revealed that none of the mice that were fed with PSP bare any prostate tumors (Figure 5C), suggesting that PSP treatment completely inhibited prostate tumor formation in the TgMAP mice. Meanwhile, whereas three of the PSP-fed mice were found to have PIN, the other two mice were found to have completely normal prostates (Figure 5D). Furthermore, consistent with the low toxicity of PSP, long term consumption appears to have no side effect on the mice, as judged by the body weight changes and physical signs (data not shown) (Figure 5E). These findings strongly suggest that oral intake of PSP may be a safe and effective chemopreventive agent against prostate cancer.
A) Outline of the schedule for PSP treatment. Eight-week old TgMAP mice were treated with 300 mg/kg of PSP by oral gavage feeding for 20 weeks and sacrificed at age of 28 weeks. B & C) Representative photos of the Hematoxylin & Eosin staining of the prostate tissues from the vehicle and PSP-treated TgMAP mice. Note that tumors were found in all of the mice that were treated with vehicle only but were absent in all the PSP-treated mice. D) The table summarizes the results of the histology examination of the prostate tissues from the vehicle and PSP-treated TgMAP mice. *P<0.05 compared to control treatment by Fisher's exact test. E) Average body weight of the mice during the PSP treatment.
PSP has previously been demonstrated to induce apoptosis and inhibit growth of a wide-range of cancer cells which includes breast , , , liver  and prostate cancer , although the mechanisms underlying its anti-cancer effects remain poorly understood. Here, we demonstrated for the first time that PSP has anti-CSC effects, as evidenced by the downregulation of CSC markers and the suppression of prostasphere and tumor formation.
Prostate CSCs were first identified by Collins et al. in 2005 using CD44+/alpha2beta1hi/CD133+ as the cell surface markers . Using similar approaches, CSCs have also been identified in prostate cancer cell lines such as LNCaP , DU145 ,  and PC-3 , . These prostate CSCs not only express high level of CD133 and CD44, but are also highly tumorigenic when compared to the non-CSC population. The fact that PSP can significantly suppress the expression of both CD133 and CD44, as well as the tumorigenicity of PC-3 cells, clearly indicates the effectiveness of PSP in targeting prostate CSCs. As demonstrated by Hsieh et al , PSP is effective on induction of apoptosis and inhibition of cell proliferation in LNCaP cells. However, its effect were much less prominent in androgen independent prostate cancer cell lines such as PC-3. This is indeed consistent with our finding, which showed that PSP can suppress CSC properties without inducing any detectable cell cycle arrest or apoptosis. Nevertheless, the finding that both Akt phosphorylation and β-catenin expression were also down-regulated by PSP (Figure 1E) suggests that PSP may act by inactivating the Pten/Akt/β-catenin pathway to inhibit CSC renewal. This recently identified stem cell maintenance pathway was shown to play a key role in the regulation of prostate and mammary stem cell populations , . Aberrant activation of the Akt/β-catenin pathway through the knockdown of Pten was found to enrich the mammary stem cell population, leading to the induction of hyperplastic lesions in the mouse . Similarly, knockdown of Pten in prostate cancer cells was also found to enhance prostasphere formation ability and tumorigenicity of the cells . Therefore, the the loss of “stemness” of prostate CSCs after PSP treatment may be due to down-regulation of the Pten/AKT/β-catenin pathway.
One of the key properties of stem cells is their ability to form spheres in non-adherent, serum-free conditions . Indeed, spheroid formation assays have recently been used to identify and to enrich putative CSCs , , , . Consistent with previous studies, both prostate cancer cell lines PC-3 and DU145 were able to form prostaspheres in non-adherent culture , suggesting the presence of CSCs within these cell lines. These primary prostaspheres, which are resistant to chemotherapeutic drugs , are highly sensitive to PSP treatment (Figure 2A). In addition, the secondary prostaspheres were significantly inhibited in a dose-dependent manner (Figure 2B), supporting that PSP is effective in eliminating prostate CSCs in vitro.
Prostate CSCs is believed to be origin of prostate tumor, which have the ability to self-renew and differentiate into the bulk tumor . The fact that PSP pretreatment can significantly inhibit the tumorigenicity of PC-3 cells (Figure 3) not only highlights the anti-CSC effect of PSP, but also suggests that PSP may have chemopreventive effects against prostate cancer. We tested this hypothesis using a recently developed transgenic mouse model of prostate cancer (TgMAP) , . The stepwise development of the prostate tumor (from low grade PIN to gross tumor) in the TgMAP mouse highly mimics the pathogenesis of human prostate cancer, although it may not totally reflect the complex nature of prostate carcinogenesis. Nonetheless, it allowed us to develop an optimal PSP treatment dosage and time frame. Whereas four weeks of PSP oral consumption at 200 mg/kg failed to produce any differences in PIN development, complete inhibition of prostate tumor formation was achieved after 20 weeks of oral PSP feeding at 300 mg/Kg. Meanwhile, the suppression of PIN formation by PSP further suggested that the chemopreventive effect of PSP may due to suppression of the tumor initiation at early stage. The extremely low toxicity and the highly potent anti-CSC effect of PSP warrants further evaluation of its chemopreventive effect in human clinical trials.
In summary, we have demonstrated, for the first time, that PSP treatment not only inhibits CSC properties, but also effectively suppresses prostate tumor formation. Our results suggest that PSP may be an effective agent for prostate cancer chemoprevention.
Materials and Methods
PSP extracted from Yun-zhi was kindly provided by Wonder Herb Health Products, Ltd. The PSP powder was dissolved in autoclaved Milli Q water at a concentration of 30 mg/ml by mixing in a rotator at 4°C overnight. The PSP solution was stored at 4°C. For cell culture study, PSP stock was sterilized with 0.2 µm filtration prior to use. In the animal study, PSP was fed directly to mice.
Cell lines and culture conditions
Prostate cancer cell lines PC-3 and DU145 (ATCC, Rockville, MD) were maintained in RPMI 1640 medium (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA) supplemented with 1% (w/v) penicillin-streptomycin (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA) and 5% fetal bovine serum (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA). All cell lines were kept at 37°C in a 5% CO2 environment. Luciferase-expressing PC-3 cell line was generated in our previous study.
TgMAP prostate tumor model
TgMAP C57/BL6 mice at week 8 and 14 were administered with PSP at 200 mg/kg for 4 weeks (n = 5) or 300 mg/Kg for 20 weeks (n = 5) respectively by oral gavage feeding (5 days per week). Control group were fed with water only for the same period of time. Mice were sacrificed (at the age of 20 weeks for 200 mg/Kg treatment group and 28 weeks for the 300 mg/Kg treatment group) and prostate tissues were collected, fixed in 10% formalin and embedded in paraffin. The whole prostate was cut into 4 µm sections and one in every five consecutive sections was stained with H&E. Histology examination was performed by Dr. K.W. Chan (pathologist, HKU). Statistical difference was determined by Fisher's exact test and was considered as significant if p<0.05. Animal ethics was approved by the Committee on the Use of Live Animals for Teaching and Research (CULATR) with the approval no. of 1694-08. All animal handling procedures were carried out according to the guidelines of the Committee on the Use of Live Animals in Teaching and Research (CULATR), The University of Hong Kong.
Spheroid formation assay
The spheroid formation assay was modified from a previously reported protocol . Briefly, PCa cells (200 cells per line) were seeded onto 12-well polyHEMA (Sigma)-coated plates. Cells were grown in DMEM/F12 medium (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA) for 14 days supplemented with 4 µg/mL insulin (Sigma), B27 (Invitrogen), 20 ng/mL EGF (Sigma), and 20 ng/mL basic FGF (Invitrogen) with PSP at either 250 µg/mL and 500 µg/mL. For serial passage of primary spheres, the primary spheres were treated with PSP for the above doses for 72 h and subsequently collected, dissociated with trypsin, and resuspended in DMEM/F12 medium with the above supplements. Each experiment was repeated in triplicate, and each data point represents the mean and standard derivation. Statistical difference was determined by Student's t-test and was considered as significant if p<0.05.
Cell viability assay
Cell viability upon PSP treatment was measured by a 3-(4,5-Dimethyl thiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay as described previously . Briefly, cells were seeded on 96-well plates and treated with different concentrations of PSP for the indicated time. At the end of the treatment, MTT (Sigma, St. Louis, MO) was added to each well, and wells were incubated for 4 hr at RT. DMSO was then added to each well to dissolve the formazan crystals. The plate was incubated for a further 5 min at RT, and the optical density (OD) was measured at a wavelength of 570 nm on a Labsystem multiscan microplate reader (Merck Eurolab, Dietikon, Switzerland). All individual wells were analyzed in triplicate. The percentage of cell viability was presented as the OD ratio between the treated and untreated cells at the indicated concentrations.
Detailed experimental procedures have been described previously . Briefly, cells were lysed with RIPA buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl pH 8.0, 150 mM NaCl, 0.5% deoxycholic acid, 1% NP-40, 0.1% SDS) with protease inhibitors (1 mg/ml aprotinin, 1 mg/ml leupeptin, 1 mM PMSF) and the protein concentrations were determined using a DC Protein Assay Kit (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA). Proteins were resolved in SDS- polyacrylamide gel by electrophoresis and then transferred onto Hybond-P PVDF membrane (Amersham Biosciences, Piscataway, NJ). The membranes were blocked by 10% non-fat dry milk in TBS-T or 3% non-fat dry milk in TBS and incubated with primary antibodies at room temperature against Akt (ser 473), Bcl-2, PARP (Cell signaling, Technology Inc, Beverly, MA), CD133 (Miltenyi Biotec, Auburn, CA), CD44, β-catenin and β-actin (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Santa Cruz, CA) for 1 hr at room temperature. After washing with TBS-T, the membrane was incubated with either anti-mouse or anti-rabbit IgG secondary antibodies, and the signals were visualized using the ECL plus western blotting system (Amersham, Piscataway, NJ).
Cell cycle analysis
Cells were fixed with 1 ml ice cold 70% ethanol at 4°C. After fixation, cell pellets were collected by centrifugation, resuspended with 500 µl PBS, and then incubated at 4°C a day before performing flow cytometry. On the next day, cells were stained with propidium iodide (50 µg/ml) and RNase (1 µg/ml) for 30 min. Cell cycle analysis was performed on a flow cytometer EPICS profile analyzer and analyzed using the ModFit LT2.0 software (Coulter, Miami, FL).
Orthotopic implantation of PC-3-luc cells
The orthotopic model was established with procedures described previously . Briefly, eight-week-old CB-17 SCID mice were anesthetized and placed under a dissecting microscope. An incision at the midline of the abdomen was made, exposing the dorsal prostate at the base of the bladder. Equal amounts of viable PC3-luc cells (2.5×104) with or without prior PSP treatment were injected into the dorsal prostates of the mice. The organs were replaced, and the abdomen was closed. Tumor development was monitored by measuring the bioluminescent signal every two weeks for six weeks after tumor implantation. Mice were sacrificed at the end of the experiment and prostate tissues were collected for physical examination. Statistical difference was determined by a two-tailed t-test and was considered significant if p<0.05. All surgical and animal handling procedures were carried out according to the guidelines of the Committee on the Use of Live Animals in Teaching and Research (CULATR), The University of Hong Kong.
Conceived and designed the experiments: M-TL. Performed the experiments: S-UL TK-WL JL DT-WL Y-TC FLC SM. Analyzed the data: IO-LN Y-CW. Wrote the paper: S-UL M-TL.
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domain: biology


Nigerian Singer, Tobechukwu Victor Okoh professionally known as Peruzzi has being dragged online after he disclosed that he was the brains behind of Grammy award winning singer, Burna Boy’s hit song.
Taking to his Snapchat handle, Peruzzi shared a video of Burna Boy performing the song while hinting at how he developed its lyrics.
Captioning the video he wrote;
I wrote this song at exactly 2:56am at Parktonian Hotel. One of my favs tbh. I’ll always be proud of myself.
Watch the video below:
The revelation obviously didn’t sit we with Netizens as they dragged the singer to filth.
See some comments below;
One iam_xam_: If peruzzi sing am, e no go blow
whykay_044: “Peruzzi collect him money or not? If yes make everybody shut up…”
iruo_jenifa: “But he pay na”
jbrock64: “U collect or Abi u no collect?”
the_adeyemi: “Who still Dey hear peruzzi?? Bobo wan find means trend for a while 😂”
southerneddygram: “Him pay you too na, no be free😂”
doyin_romaro: “Which one is he should shut up? Did he write the song or not? What? He shouldn’t give himself some credit? Make una rest abeg”


text:
At the beginning of the story, we experience Lara embarking on her first job after graduating from University. She shows fear in the face of danger, initially lacking confidence in her own abilities and judgment. Still, we can see the seeds of what Lara will eventually become. She possesses a powerful sense of moral courage. She is clever, resourceful and determined.
Story Play Review
I decided to jump on the band wagon this time and join Lara Croft in her newest game. I have never been one to buy the Lara Croft Tomb Raider games but since I liked Uncharted I thought I would give it a try.
First if you like Uncharted you will like this game, basically the same concept but with the added benefit of boobs.
There is one frustrating thing that occurs when you first start the game. A little pop up comes up from Enix and asks for your email address. Oddly enough I went ahead to enter my email address and received a message stating that I needed to verify my email. No problem I will do it later. I never did and the next time I started the game that darn pop up came up again.
The story line starts off on Lara’s first expedition after school, according to some of the dialog in the beginning she is the apprentice to some archeologist with a camera crew.
Without giving up to much details….
“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship. “
That is right, something occurs and the ship becomes wrecked on a remote island. Lara and her crew become separated and must fight for their lives to survive and to attempt to get off the island. And if you didn’t get the reference above, I am not sure you are old enough to play games with the M rating. j/k 🙂
You start the game with pretty much nothing but happen across your weapons and tools as you progress in the game. First to start is the bow an arrow. I didn’t think that I would like this but it actually ended up my weapon of choice, even after the shotgun, pistol and AK came about.
All of your weapons can be upgraded using the currency you get from looting objects, animals and dead bad guys. Again I don’t want to spoil anything in the review so I am not diving into too much detail but there are some pretty cool upgrades. Take a look at the Tips tab if you want spoilers.
I started the game on the normal difficulty level because I didn’t know what I was getting into. I purchased the game on a Sunday and got home at 2pm. Between bathroom breaks, dinner and a few other short intermissions I played for roughly 10 to 11 hours. The following Monday I had to work so I didn’t get to start playing until 7 pm. Again with bathroom breaks I was hooked to the TV for another 3 or 4 hours and that was it the game was over. So I beat the game playing somewhere between 13 to 15 hours with a 94% completion score. This is normal for me, single player games generally only last me two days but I am never near that high of a completion. Looking back I should have started on the hardest level
I do want to add that I was caught a little off guard by some of the morbidity in this game. There are several points where you find yourself in a room full of skinned or mangled bodies and a river or lake of blood. At one point towards the end you actually have to walk through one of these pools of blood to get where you are going. I wouldn’t say that this is a bad thing in a game really but I did not expect it, and it really creeped out my daughter.
The final boss for me was pretty easy and anticlimactic and I’ll leave it at that. As a matter of fact the “Normal” setting is more along the lines of “Very Easy”. I will play next on hard.
As far as replay ability goes, since the first go round I got 94% I would say that there really isn’t much point of playing again except to see the weapons upgrades the rest of the way and collect the other hidden items through the map. I did start to go back through and noticed that you cannot play through again. Tomb Raider uses check points called Base Camps. You can move about from level to level with the base camps but from what I could see I could not start at level one and run all the way to the final level. I could be mistaken on this but I sure couldn’t figure out how to do it.
Overall, the graphics were pretty good, the people are starting to look so real on these games. The combat was ok as well, I feel the hand to hand could have been a bit more dynamic but rarely did I get close enough to need to hit someone.
I have a few complaints about the game though, I understand Lara is a female and they have emotions, but holy shit, she cried a lot. For example since this a prequel to all others in the series this game had a scene where Lara took her first kill of a human, and of course she cried. After that she was the trigger happy Lara that everyone has played and seen in the movies. But, every time a friend was in danger, got hurt or died, she cried. When she got captured she cried. I know I may seem like a heartless bastard, ok I am, but come on man ease up on the sappy tears.
My next complaint would be how long they took to establish Lara’s character through cut scenes. Almost the first hour of the entire game was cut scenes. I like a story just as much as the next guy, but I like my game play a lot more. IMHO game developers need to keep the cut scenes shorter and focus on enlarging the maps and extending the overall play.
So the final notes are that it is a good treasure hunter type game, some blood and gore, nice weapons and weapon upgrades, Lara’s boobs shrunk (oops I must have missed that up top.. pun intended) it is a bit short, Lara needs to quit crying and less movie more game. Overall I would recommend giving this game a go.
Update: I decided to venture to the online multiplayer. My advise, skip it. It is pretty bad, the only good thing I can say about it is that it does show the a life bar above everyone that as you are shooting them of course decreases.

domain: entertainment


text:
The following is a summary of the First Regional Assembly of the United States of America. Before the Assembly, the members had a reflection given by Gerry Rauch of the Holy Family Institute.
The Regional Assembly was held from Monday, August 9 to 13, 2021 in Canfield, Ohio. The Regional Superior, Bro. Marco Bulgarelli, presided. All members participated except for Fr. Edmund Lane and Bro. Aloysius Milella who could not attend. Bro. Javier Lee participated via GoogleMeet. Fr. Jose Pottayil from the General Government also participated via GoogleMeet.
The Assembly began with Fr. Valdir de Castro, Superior General, addressed the Assembly virtually from Rome. After the election of the Assembly officers the Assembly heard reports from the outgoing Delegate and from the Superiors of the two communities – Staten Island, NY and Canfield, OH. After these presentations the Assembly broke into two groups discussing several important issues concerning the Region that will be addressed over the next three years. The results of these groups along with the Letter of the Superior General to the Region formed the basis for the drafting of the Final Document.
The Assembly reviewed the draft of the Final Document as well as the Statute for the USA Region. Both documents were approved.
On the Final Day, the Superior General once again addressed the Assembly virtually from Rome. Then Fr. Matthew Roehrig and Fr. Tony Bautista were elected Regional Councilors. Br. Marco Bulgarelli, Regional Delegate, gave his concluding address to the Assembly and then formally concluded the Assembly.
Members then celebrated a Thanksgiving Mass followed by the taking of pictures of the Assembly members and of the new Regional Council.


The Bellevue College Environmental Advisory Committee (EAC) was established in 2007 to advise campus constituencies regarding environmental and sustainable policies and programs on the BC campus. We strive to provide resources to the campus and community that allow us all to learn, work, live and play in a sustainable and healthy environment. Please feel free to contact the committee if you have any questions or comments.
The Environmental Advisory Committee provides a forum for identification and discussion of issues pertaining to sustainability. The Committee also assists in identifying strategies and resources for effectively advancing sustainability goals. The Committee provides oversight and advocacy for student and faculty led subcommittees and programs.
- Serve as an advisory board for President’s Staff, the Office of Sustainability and any campus constituencies.
- Review and recommend policies and procedures related to campus environmental impact, and environmental education
- Review and make recommendations regarding the College’s sustainability initiatives.
- Provide leadership in response the campus sustainability issues and promote awareness
The Environmental Advisory Committee includes two sub-committees with partially overlapping membership:
Student Environmental Sustainability Fund Committee
The Student Environmental Sustainability Fund Committee recommends allocations of the revenues collected from the students environmental sustainability fee.
Sustainability Curriculum Committee
The Sustainability Curriculum Committee leads initiatives to infuse sustainability throughout the curriculum. The sub-committee of the EAC evolved from the Sustainability Task Force formed in 2009 – to research and provide advice on how to diversify, strengthen and better incorporate sustainability into the BC curriculum.
|Chair –committee member selected by the committee||Committee||N/A|
|Two (2) administrators, including Vice President of Administrative Services or designee||President’s Staff (1)||1 year|
|Three (3) faculty members; One from Curriculum Sub-Committee, One from SESF, One at Large.||BCAHE President||2 years|
|Three (3) classified staff Bargaining Unit A members including SESF representative||Human Resources||2 years|
|One (1) classified staff Bargaining Unit B member||Human Resources||2 years|
|ASBC Environmental Representative||By virtue of position||1 year|
|Two (2) students from SESF Committee||By virtue of committee membership||1 year|
|The Advisor to the Sustainability and Science Association Program (SSAP).||By virtue of position||Permanent|
|SESF Budget Authority||By virtue of position||Permanent|
|Ray White (Designee: Deric Gruen)||Convener – Vice President of Administrative Services or designated administrator||Permanent|
|Anne Mary Nash-Haruna||Faculty Sustainability Curriculum Committee||6/2014|
|Marika Reinke||Faculty At Large||6/2013|
|Michael Hanson||Faculty SESF Committee member||6/2014|
|Rob Viens||Advisor to SSA||Permanent|
|Hristo (Chris) Stoynov||Classified Staff – Unit A||6/2014|
|Janee Sommerfield||Classified Staff – Unit A||6/2014|
|Jan Ng||Classified SESF Committee member||6/2015|
|Vacant||Classified Staff – Unit B||6/2014|
|Alex Clark||ASG Environmental Representative||6/2014|
|Zawdie Terry||Student SESF Committee member||6/2014|
|Brandon Hartshorn||Student SESF Committee member||6/2014|
|Faisal Jaswal||SESF Budget Authority||Permanent|
Last Updated June 4, 2019


text:
A foreclosed home for sale is for sale Aug. 22, 2006, in Spring, Texas.
Many details of the $8.5 billion mortgage foreclosure settlement that federal banking regulators announced Monday have not yet been finalized. Here are some answers for borrowers.
Q: How much money is in it?
A: Ten banks and mortgage companies will pay $3.3 billion in cash to borrowers and $5.2 billion in mortgage relief to settle federal regulators' investigations into alleged foreclosure abuses. This settlement largely replaces a 2011 settlement between the same regulators and leading home loan servicers. ...

domain: law


text:
A Welfare Function for Shareholder Engagement: Recognizing Profit for What It Is
5 Pages Posted: 15 Mar 2021
Date Written: March 14, 2021
This paper is a comment on Madison Condon’s Externalities and the Common Owner, which plays an important role in the growing literature around shareholder activism aimed at increasing portfolio returns, regardless of individual firm effects. The article raises important questions of political economy, power distribution, and anticompetitive activity. In this comment, I introduce key terminology for discussing these issues, and then reframe several issues raised by the article. With increasingly indexing markets, concentration and externalized social and environmental costs rising, distinguishing common owners’ promotion of responsible practices from welfare-shrinking price collusion is critical for economics, law and finance. Condon's article is an important contribution to the field.
First, the article asserts the need to assess the costs of shareholder primacy when discussing whether and how to remedy its excesses. It also discusses the need to assess the benefit of allowing the power of universal owners to countervail the power of corporate managers. It then frames the question whether the management technique of ESG integration—using a social and environmental lens to increase financial returns-- can effectively meet systemic threats and systematic risk. In framing the issues, the article highlights the importance of distinguishing among beneficiaries, shareholders, and the trustees between them. In light of the foregoing questions, the article asks whether guardrails—shareholder-mediated limits on corporate behavior—are a viable method for reducing negative social and environmental corporate impacts. Finally, the article questions whether antitrust concerns justify limiting the possibility of those asset managers coordinating to preserve social and environmental systems.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

domain: finance


The 2020 elections threw a wrench into the works of both parties. Republicans maintained power in state legislatures and in the U.S. Senate while losing the White House. Democrats did far worse than expected at all levels, including Joe Biden barely squeaking into the White House. The bad news is that this will result in some very bad executive policies, such as increased funding for abortion advocacy. The good news is that it will force both parties to either continue splitting the nation apart or find areas of political agreement.
Several good policies, which could be sources of mutual agreement, lie inside the massive federal budget. Both parties pretend to be fiscally conservative when in the opposition, then throw off the veil when in power. However, 2021 offers voters the chance to pressure Biden, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to crack down on the corruption, incompetence, and inefficiency that cost U.S. taxpayers more than $400 billion annually – enough to buy each American a new iPhone, with money left over.
A good place to start is the F-35 engine program, which is a financial boondoggle. Its supporters boast of its alleged next-generation military capabilities and tout its trillion-dollar long-term cost as a success; however, these so-called “savings” come not from cutting costs, but from spending less than projected. That would be like expecting to spend $60,000 on household expenses, then realizing you are going to spend $50,000, and claiming $10,000 as a “savings.”
Jonathan Bydlak of R Street laid out the full case against the F-35 earlier this year, shortly after the Pentagon opened an investigation into the program’s finances. But then things got worse, thanks to administrative incompetence. Several Democrats in Congress opened an investigation, because the program spent $300 million on defective or missing parts, and another report showed the program will cost $10 billion more than the Pentagon’s previous five-year projections – even as the engine’s developers are still fixing serious design flaws.
Corporate subsidies are another area of potential bipartisan agreement, both in Washington and among both parties’ grassroots. Here are some of the subsidies that richly deserve to be cut:
- Washington saw fit to grant tens of billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money to the airline industry and Boeing this year because of the coronavirus pandemic;
- The Export-Import Bank gave nearly $3 billion, mostly to large corporations for overseas work in 2019;
- Tens of billions of dollars are spent each year on inefficient renewable energy subsidies;
- A Cato Institute report found that 85% of farms that received $25 billion in subsidies in 2014 earned over $134,000. But the annual tradition of sending tax dollars to farms has been exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s efforts to offset his trade war with China. Those subsidies alone have totaled $28 billion; and
- All of these subsidies pale next to the hundreds of billions in bailouts given to financial companies in 2008.
With both parties jockeying for the populist vote, they can easily gain support by eliminating subsidies – though that would risk their ability to collect lobbyists’ money for their re-election campaigns. Pushing Biden and Congress in the right direction on subsidies would take a focused campaign by voters across the political spectrum.
Even that gargantuan undertaking would require less effort than reforming Medicaid and Medicare. They are among the most sieve-like programs in the federal government, losing more than $200 billion each year to fraud and improper payments. The good news is that this acts as yet another argument against government-controlled healthcare; the bad news is that the programs have not become more financially accountable over the years. The worse news is that Sen. James Lankford, R-OK, told me in 2016 that anti-fraud efforts are completely inadequate to prevent significant losses of taxpayer money.
Berwick and the Rand Corporation estimated fraud at $98 billion – about 10% of the total costs of the programs that year. If that percentage holds true for 2020, the total amount lost to fraud is over $130 billion out of over $1.3 trillion spent. In just the last month, a doctor in New Jersey has been charged with $24.6 million in fraud, and last month, an addiction center was charged with making millions of dollars in fraudulent charges.
One of the major problems with preventing fraud is that it costs a tremendous amount of money to prevent fraud or return defrauded money to taxpayers. A 2014 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report found that the costs of such efforts exceed $1.4 billion annually, while federal prosecutors clawed back only $26 billion between 1997 and 2013. That sounds like a lot, except when contrasted with the $98 billion that the Berwick/Rand study found was lost annually. The CBO projected that dollars spent on fraud prevention would result in a 50% above-cost return to taxpayers and that efforts to crack down on present fraud would deter future fraud – but the amount of fraud far outweighs the benefits to taxpayers.
Aside from fraud, improper payments officially totaled $175 billion in 2019. As I laid out in March, however, the real number is likely far higher. And out of that $175 billion, Medicare and Medicaid programs were responsible for more than $100 billion payments made out of simple human error. Medicaid and CHIP lost nearly 15% of their respective budgets to these errors in 2019.
That’s right: The federal government allowed $100 billion of taxpayers’ dollars to slip through the cracks of Medicaid and Medicare in addition to overt fraud. While the programs, especially Medicaid, have become more transparent over time, they still lack financial controls which Congress and the executive branch must implement.
Then, there are simple inefficiencies. One of the late Sen. Tom Coburn’s legacies is the annual Government Accountability Office report on duplication, fragmentation, and overlap in the federal government. This report provides scores of examples each year – nearly 1,000 examples over the last decade – of ways that the federal government’s inefficiency and poor use of taxpayer money pervades agencies and programs. As two former Coburn staffers noted in The Hill earlier this year, “GAO has identified massive amounts of duplication in federal programs, including 15 programs on financial literacy, 160 federal housing assistance programs, 94 green building programs, 253 crime prevention programs, 14 diesel emission reduction programs, and 209 STEM education programs.”
While there is no official estimate of dollars lost each year due to duplication – the GAO simply calculates the sum at “tens of billions” of dollars annually – the agency does estimate that out of “more than 325 areas and more than 900 actions”:
Congress and executive branch agencies have partially or fully addressed 721 (79 percent) of the actions we identified from 2011 to 2019, resulting in about $429 billion in financial benefits. We estimate tens of billions more dollars could be saved by fully implementing our open actions.
GAO Director of Strategic Issues Jessica Lucas-Judy told me about a particularly egregious example of negligence with taxpayers’ dollars:
We examined every class of ships recently built and found 150 examples of systemic maintenance problems, such as failed engines and non-functional plumbing, that would cost the Navy $4.2 billion to correct. Many of these problems could have been prevented with some attention to future maintenance concerns when designing and building the ships. We also found that the Navy underestimated the costs to maintain some ships by $130 billion. In March 2020, we made 11 recommendations to help the Navy focus on maintenance earlier and one suggestion to Congress to enhance oversight.
The 2020 report further outlines that just 57% of its recommendations have been fully implemented. This means that despite nine years of preparation time, federal lawmakers and administrators have not seen fit to assure that taxpayer money isn’t being wasted by a federal bureaucracy too large and too cumbersome to ever be respectful of taxpayers’ dollars.
Voters love to blame politicians for government spending. However, this problem exists, because we fail to hold elected officials accountable. The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs would spend less money if we went to war less often and conducted wars more efficiently – but we do not make politicians care about these goals. Medicaid and Medicare lost enough money last year to pay for a used iPhone for each American … but we don’t blink an eye. And the federal government continues to take money out of our pockets and to line those of criminals, incompetent federal employees, and corporate leaders.
It is time for a change. Can the parties put aside their politicking long enough to stop at least the most stupid and wasteful form of spending? That is what would be required of wise and faithful stewards.


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London: James Bond icon Sean Connery has topped a new poll to find the most popular British actor in the US.
Zee Media Exclusive: Varun, Alia promote `Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya`
Kareena does not want to do films with husband Saif!
Alia Bhatt dedicates her Samjhawan Unplugged to Varun
Ranbir Kapoor, a big fan of Messi !

domain: celebrity


WASHINGTON — Just a couple of weeks ago, President Obama was brushing off Edward Snowden as a "a 29-year-old hacker" hardly worthy of causing an international incident.
On Friday, that attitude changed dramatically as Obama administration officials called out nations that have been friendly to the former intelligence contractor on the day he asked Russia for asylum. Officials also took a hard line against Snowden.
Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin were scheduled to have a phone call Friday afternoon, where it was expected that Snowden's situation would be discussed. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made it clear that the U.S. will be upset if Russia grants Snowden's request.
"Providing a propaganda platform for Mr. Snowden runs counter to the Russian government's previous declarations of Russia's neutrality and that they have no control over his presence in the airport," Carney said. "It's also incompatible with Russian assurances that they do not want Mr. Snowden to further damage U.S. interests."
Carney added that "our position also remains that we don't believe this should and we don't want it to do harm to our important relationship with Russia," and restated the American position that "there is absolute legal justification for him to be expelled" from the airport in Moscow and sent to the United States.
Over at the State Department, the words for Russia were equally tough.
During the State Department press briefing, spokesperson Jen Psaki said the department was "disappointed" in Russia for facilitating the meeting between Snowden and human rights groups on Friday. Snowden invited officials from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among other groups, to the airport before making his formal request for asylum from Russia.
America is not happy about it, Psaki said.
"Our focus is on our concern about how Russian authorities clearly helped assist the ability of attendees to participate in this," she said.
The Russians "facilitated a propaganda platform for Mr. Snowden," Psaki said.
Carney said the airport gathering was hypocritical for Russia, a country that often comes under scrutiny from human rights groups.
"We would urge the Russian government to afford human rights organizations the ability to do their work in Russia throughout Russia. Not just at the Moscow transit lounge," Carney said.
Psaki echoed Carney's call for Russia to release Snowden.
"We still believe that Russia has the opportunity to do the right thing and facilitate his return to the United States," she said.
Psaki said that State Department officials had been in touch with their Russian counterparts asking for Mr. Snowden back. She also said that a State Department official had spoken with Human Rights Watch about that meeting, but the official was not US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. The wrangling over Snowden has gone to the highest levels of American diplomacy: Secretary of State John Kerry had discussed the Snowden issue with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a meeting earlier this month, Psaki said.
Obama's direct call to Putin will be the step in the effort to get Snowden back on American soil by administration officials.
China also got some tough talk at the White House briefing. Hong Kong originally harbored Snowden, before allowing him to leave for Russia over U.S. objections. Carney said the move had threatened the relations built at Obama's recent summit with the new Chinese president.
"We were very disappointed with how the authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong handled the Snowden case, which undermined our effort to build the trust needed to manage difficult issues," Carney said. "At the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue this week, we made clear that China's handling of this case was not consistent with the spirit of Sunnylands or with the type of relationship, the new model that we both seek to build."
As for the man himself, both Carney and Psaki were unimpressed by his summit with the human rights groups.
Snowden "is not a whistleblower, he's not a human rights activist," Psaki said.
Carney dinged the groups who met with them.
"Those groups do important work, but Mr. Snowden is not a human rights activist, or a dissident," Carney said. "He is accused of leaking classified information, has been charged with three felony accounts, and should be returned to the United States where he will be accorded full due process."


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Chris Shryock joined Ross Realty in 2013 as a sales and leasing associate as well as Tenant representation in the Tampa Bay area. Prior to joining Ross Realty, Mr. Shryock was the area developer for 30 years with Kahala Corporation representing Blimpie Subs & Salads in the Central Florida markets, including the Tampa/Orlando markets. During this 30-year period … [Read more...] about The Ross Team Welcomes Senior Associate, Chris Shryock, to The Ross Realty Group, Inc.
Search Results for: ross realty group
Ross Realty Group, Inc. is excited to accept the leasing responsibilities of this 6-building Professional Office Park, currently known as Gulf South Center. The property is ideally located in the heart of Carrollwood with visibility and access from both Dale Mabry Hwy. & Himes Ave. and traffic counts averaging over 68,000 vehicles per day. Under the new ownership and … [Read more...] about Ross Realty Group Announces Carrollwood Office Park For Lease
Courthouse Plaza – 625 E. Twiggs St., Tampa, FL 33602 Features: • Strategically located in the heart of Downtown Tampa • Opportunity to occupy the whole 1st Floor • Furnished Executive Suites Available • Full Service • On-site Parking • 24-Hour Access • Attractive Lobby • Owner-Occupied • Immediate access to I-275, I-4 and the Selmon Crosstown … [Read more...] about Ross Realty Group Announces Class A Downtown Tampa Office For Lease
Ross Realty Group, Inc. is pleased to announce the sale of the 1.74-Acre Redevelopment Site located at 3011 W. Gandy Blvd., Tampa, FL 33611. The sale price was $2,700,000. Elliott M. Ross, CCIM, represented the Seller, Life O’Reilly MHP, LLC., in this transaction. Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate represented the Buyer, Montage Engagement Land Trust. The … [Read more...] about Ross Realty Group Announces Sale of 1.74-Acre Redevelopment Opportunity in Tampa, FL
Ross Realty Group, Inc. is pleased to announce nine new exclusive listings, including a 95% Leased Medical Office Building in Pinellas Park, a Redevelopment Site in South Tampa near MacDill Air Force Base, a 95% Leased Office Building in Clearwater, a Vacant Commercial Site in New Port Richey, FL, Three Vacant Commercial Sites in Pinellas County available for Ground Lease, … [Read more...] about Ross Realty Group Announces New Listings for 3rd Quarter 2019

domain: geography


text:
Greetings, fellow feline enthusiasts! As a cat lover myself, I am excited to share my thoughts on the popular game, Huge Cat Pet Sim X. This game has been making waves in the virtual pet community, and I wanted to see if it lives up to the hype. So, let’s dive in and explore this game together.
The gameplay in Huge Cat Pet Sim X is simple yet engaging. Players take on the role of a cat owner and have to take care of their virtual pet. The game offers several activities to keep the cat happy and healthy, such as feeding, playing, and grooming. The more attention you give to your cat, the more points you earn. These points can be used to unlock new items and areas in the game.
The game also features mini-games that add variety to the gameplay. These mini-games include catching mice, jumping over obstacles, and solving puzzles. They are fun and challenging, and completing them rewards you with additional points.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics in Huge Cat Pet Sim X are impressive. The virtual cats look realistic and adorable, with detailed fur and facial expressions. The environments are also well-designed, with different locations to explore, such as the park, the beach, and the city. The sound effects and music are also well-done, adding to the immersive experience.
Huge Cat Pet Sim X offers a lot of customization options for your virtual cat. You can choose from different breeds, colors, and patterns. You can also dress up your cat in various outfits and accessories, such as hats, collars, and glasses. This level of customization adds a personal touch to the game and makes it more enjoyable.
The game has a thriving community of players who share their experiences and tips on forums and social media. The developers also regularly update the game with new content and events, keeping the community engaged and excited.
Overall, Huge Cat Pet Sim X is a fantastic game for cat lovers. The gameplay is engaging, the graphics and sound are top-notch, and the customization options are impressive. The community is also friendly and active, adding to the overall experience. If you’re looking for a fun and immersive virtual pet game, I highly recommend giving Huge Cat Pet Sim X a try.


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<3 Michael Jackson <3
michael, latoya and janet jackson
Halloween costume reference? Michael Jackson Top 10 Highlights New Hip Hop Beats Uploaded EVERY SINGLE DAY
Michael Jackson on his Neverland ranch. From his book "Dancing the Dream" <3
Love the pictures of Michael Jackson in the big sunglasses!
Michael Jackson...there's just something about a guy on a motorcycle...
Michael Jackson.. The King of Pop. Incredible dancer, amazing voice. I would have Loved to see him perform! Someday in heaven :)
20 Vintage Rock Star Photos


text:
I first learned of Martin Frost when I bought a CD of him playing opera inspired tunes. It included Donato Lovreglio's Fantasia La Traviata, a wonderful bravura piece which I had played and wanted to hear an orchestration of. It also included other standards of opera inspired clarinet music, notably Rossini's Introduction Theme and Variations.
But Frost's playing swept me away. Very few clarinetists impress me as equally in all aspects of their playing. Someone with great tone may not have great musical ideas, someone with technique may lack a gorgeous tone. He is one of the two or three greatest clarinetists in the world who has technique, tone and musicality in generous portions. And I bet most of you would admit he's also kind of cute.
Though you can find many videos of him on YouTube, and of course, many recordings on CD, I give you this impressive video of him improvising two short pieces as an encore after playing the clarinet concerto of Kalevi Aho Clarinet Concerto the Lahti Symphony Orchestra on 11 Oct 2007, conducted by Osmo Vänskä.

domain: hobby


text:
This week’s edition of Evil Stepmothers casts a spotlight on Colleen Harris, a California who was convicted of first-degree murder after gunning down her husband, a former U.S. Forest Service supervisor, in January 2013.
The episode, named A Murder You Can’t Ignore, tells the story of Colleen Harris — whose stepson accused her in court of having “maliciously, hatefully, shot my dad while he was sleeping.”
Colleen Harris was nicknamed “Grandma Cookie” by her family.
“Successful and newly single, Colleen Harris is having a hard time starting over when she bumps into old flame Bob Harris,” says a press release for the show. “She plans to change her luck with this father of three. His kids will soon find out just how evil Colleen can really be.”
Bob Harris — a baseball umpire, sheriff’s volunteer and conservationist — was the third husband of Colleen, a land surveyor. She was allegedly worked up over an extramarital affair he had with a younger woman. Colleen reportedly shot Bob in the face with a shotgun while he slept because she was worried about losing him.
In 1986, Colleen escaped a conviction in a similar case in which she was accused of gunning down her second husband, James Batten.
In the Bob Harris case, Colleen insisted she had experienced a “gray fog” of traumatic memory loss.
But a jury in April 2015 found the Placerville woman guilty of first-degree murder.
Evil Stepmothers airs Thursdays at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.


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Your colleagues who don’t have access to a CAD package can also benefit from Caddossier and use the same document database (Digidossier). It makes it easy for the whole organization to manage all documents and e-mails using add-ins for MS Office such as Outlook and Excel.
Searching, finding and reusing your files quickly saves your company time and money. Caddossier comes standard with the following functionalities for this:
All data and information which is added by Caddossier & Digidossier 365 is not only available in our document database but, you can also use all available data on your drawings e.g. title blocks and BOM’s. This eliminates filling in information manually and thus the possibilities for mistakes. It’s also possible to get your CAD data (i.e. Dimensions) to Digidossier 365.
PDF, DWG, DXF, STP, JPG batch exports are fully automatic, including sheet metal flat patterns. Caddossier goes through the active assembly, automatically generates the desired files and links them to the bill of materials in Caddossier.
Only want to make DWGS and STP files for the underlying milling work for a specific assembly? No Problem, with Caddossier it’s up to you what you export. The Excel lists, STP, DWG and PDF files can all be e-mailed directly to your suppliers from Digidossier 365.
Automatically generate names for your 3D CAD files, based on your own naming convention. Naming conventions include: categories, order numbers, item numbers, version number and so on.
Everything that is useful to you for creating computer-generated file names. This functionality saves you many hours of work during the drawing and design process. It also creates a consistent naming structure throughout the whole engineering department.
A product is more than the sum of its CAD files. Digidossier 365 is the version for non-CAD users. One database, working together and having access to all the necessary data to achieve an excellent result. Engineering, work preparation, manufacturing and project management all use the same data!
View Digidossier 365 page.
Phone: +31 252 68 29 18
Caddossier.com is a product of:
Komdex Software Ontwikkeling BV


text:
TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian stocks gained early on Friday, as hopes for a thaw in the U.S.-China trade conflict fed investor appetites for risk assets.
FILE PHOTO: A man is reflected on an electronic board showing a graph analyzing recent change of Nikkei stock index outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin discussed lifting some or all tariffs imposed on Chinese imports and suggested offering a tariff rollback during trade discussions scheduled for Jan. 30.
U.S. stocks rallied following the report, but pared some of those gains after a Treasury spokesperson told CNBC that Mnuchin had not made any such recommendations. For the day, all three major U.S. indexes were up, led by a surge in industrial stocks. [.N]
Following Wall Street’s lead, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS added 0.25 percent. The index has gained nearly 1 percent this week.
Australian stocks rose 0.6 percent, as did South Korea’s KOSPI .KS11 while Japan’s Nikkei .N225 gained 0.7 percent.
“As with 2018, the U.S.-China trade row remains a key market theme in 2019. A slight difference is that there are some signs that the two sides are seeking some sort of a resolution,” said Soichiro Monji, senior economist at Daiwa SB Investments in Tokyo.
“China seems to be running low on options, while the United States would also want to avoid a prolonged conflict given the negative consequences on its markets and the economy,” Monji said.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will visit the United States on Jan. 30 and 31 for the latest round of trade talks aimed at resolving the bitter dispute between the world’s two largest economies.
In December, Washington and Beijing agreed to a 90-day truce in a trade war that has disrupted the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars of goods.
Indicators released recently have shown signs that the Chinese economy is losing some momentum.
China’s fourth-quarter economic growth, due to be reported on Monday, likely slowed to the weakest pace since the global financial crisis, a Reuters poll showed, as demand faltered at home and abroad.
In currencies, the dollar was mildly supported after U.S. Treasury yields rose amid the improvement in risk appetite in the broader markets.
The greenback was steady at 109.14 yen JPY= after popping up to a two-week high of 109.40 overnight. The dollar has gained about 0.6 percent against the Japanese currency this week.
The euro was little changed at $1.1392 EUR= after dipping slightly overnight. The common currency was on track for a weekly loss of 0.7 percent.
The 10-year Treasury yield US10YT=RR stood at 2.746 percent after going brushing 2.761 percent the previous day, its highest in three weeks.
The pound stood at $1.2984 GBP=D3, hovering close to a two-month peak of $1.3001 scaled overnight on the back of hopes that Britain can avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal suffered a heavy defeat in parliament this week but she survived a subsequent vote of confidence, removing some political uncertainty for now.
U.S. crude oil futures extended gains after rising the previous day on a rebound in Wall Street and news that OPEC sharply curtailed production in December. [O/R]
U.S. crude futures CLc1 added 0.13 percent to $52.14 per barrel. The contracts have gained 1.1 percent this week.
Editing by Richard Borsuk


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|Alias||Rowenski, Rowinski, Rovinsky, Rovinky; changed name to Ravensby in 1915|
|Place||Swiniary, Central Poland; or Lanure (?), Austria|
|Family||Wife Alice Rovinsky (Ravensby) (née Byrness), married 1911; daughters: Ruth Mary Harvey, b.1912, Alice Mathilda O'Brien, b.1914, Joan Lucy Overell b.1916, Haleyon Margaret Ravensby b.1921, served in WWII|
|Contacts||[Andrew Snegovoy](../Snegovoy), [Victor Schepenski](../Schepenski), [Sigismund Vitold Romashkevich](../Romashkevisch) and [Michael Rowinski (Ravensby)](../Ravensby) arrived at Australia together|
|Residence before arrival at Australia||Was a farmer in Swiniary, served in the Russian Cavalry for 5 years, Russo-Japanese War 2 years, became POW during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905|
|Arrived at Australia||
from Far East
per Kumano Maru
disembarked at Brisbane
|Residence before enlistment||Blackbutt, Crows Nest, Wallangarra line, 131 mile Quarry Jondaryan, Toowoomba|
|Occupation||1913 labourer, 1936 farmer|
|Naturalisation||1913 (as former Austrian subject)|
|Residence after the war||Wynnum, Nambour, Queensland|
|Place of enlistment||Toowoomba, Qld|
|Unit||2nd Light Horse Regiment, 4th Light Horse Field Ambulance, 2nd AS Hospital|
|Final fate||RTA 14.03.1919|
Digitised naturalisation (NAA) (Rovin(s)ky)
Digitised service records (NAA) (Ravensby)
Mrs Alice Jane Rovinsky - purchase of property Nambour Qld 1 2 (digitised files) (NAA)
Roll of Honour Circulars 1940-1944 ... Michael ROVINSKI... (AWM) (Rovinsky)
Obituary. Mr. Michael Ravensby. - Tweed Daily, Murwillumbah, 17 November 1936, p. 4.
L. Paszkowski, Poles in Australia and Oceania. 1790-1940, Sydney a.o., 1987.
From L. Paszkowski, Poles in Australia and Oceania:
Michael Rowinski was born at Swiniary, Central Poland, in 1876. As a young man he was conscripted to the Russian Imperial Army and was taken prisoner during the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. After his release he decided to go to Australia with several other Polish ex-prisoners of war. He arrived in Australia by the Japanese ship, Coomano Maru, on 3 April 1910. He was employed by the Queensland Railways, working in Cooktown, Cairns, Ingham, Mackay, Bowen, Proserpine and Toowoomba.
Rowinski married an Australian, Alice Byrness, in 1911 and in 1913 he was naturalized. Two years later he changed his surname to Ravensby, and in 1916 he enlisted in the Australian Army and served as a stretcher bearer in the Australian Medical Corps. He died in 1936, aged sixty, survived by his four daughters.
One of his daughters, Mrs Helen Kacprzak, wrote to me:
"We have always been proud of our Polish blood; my second eldest sister became a pianist who played at many local concerts, with my eldest sister who had a fine soprano voice. Joyce taught music until her marriage, and always regretted the change in name, from Rowinski to Ravensby. She liked the name we had, as so many famous pianists had a foreign name.
[My father] had been a farmer in Swiniary, Poland, which I was fortunate enough to visit in 1969, with my husband. When he decided to visit his family, I decided to try to trace relatives, unknown to me, as all correspondence stopped after Dad's death. I had not known any words in Polish, until I met my husband, when I felt that I had to learn, and never regretted the step, as it brought me happiness and opened many doors to me. The joy of meeting cousins, who hailed me as 'Sister', 'Siostra', was unbelievable, and being able to talk to them was also unforgettable, even though I made dozens of errors, once telling them quite seriously that I was 400 years old, instead of 40, and how they laughed!
I had much pleasure in seeing the same church where my Dad worshipped and prayed, which probably stood for centuries, and realized what a great step my father had taken in relinquishing all the old loved places, and faces, and starting a new life among unknown people. I even met a dear old man who actually knew and remembered my father, and who could tell us of how he set off. His wife, who was the goddaughter of my grandmother, could tell us stories of them both. She remembered how my grandmother used to sing 'spiewam i pjacze, ciesze si? jak moge, ale o swoim Michasiu zapomniec nie moge' [I am singing and weeping, cheering myself as I can, but I cannot forget my little Michael]. This reflects her motherly love, and feeling for the son who left, never to return."
Thus, the Polish side of the emigration of Michael Rowinski-Ravensby was revealed to his Australian daughters after so many years.

domain: history


Most homeowners don’t think about their heating system until it breaks down. Remember that a heating system is an investment, which is why it’s crucial to keep it efficient and know when it’s time to get an upgrade. You need professional heating installation in Jacksonville Beach, FL when it’s time to get your old unit replaced. One of the signs to watch out for is when your unit can’t provide you with adequate heating. While it rarely snows or drops below zero in Florida, it can still get pretty cold in the winter. It’s always better to have an efficient heater to ensure you stay comfortable in your homes.
Other signs to watch out for include sudden spikes in your utility bills, excessive dust, and the age of your system. When your heating system is more than ten years old, consider calling a licensed technician for an inspection. We can help you determine whether it’s time to get a heating replacement.


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We shares a passions for design,technology and communication.
Our focus, allow us to combine those passions to create competitive solutions.
We follow proven processes to achieve the highest levels
of clarity and distinction in our work.
Everyone at Gisysco Agency shares a passions for design, technology and communication. Our focus, insight and determination allow us to combine those passions to create competitive and effective solutions.
We develop brands from scratch with agility to adapt in the constantly shifting space that is advertising.
What’s your story? Let’s embrace business together and unveil the narrative that drives how your brand is perceived.
Organized in small specialized teams, our creatives, designers and devloppers work in close partnership to create highly integrated and intuitive soluttions.
usability & design programming testing databases
We want to create awesome and inspiring work, aligning creative strategy with exceptional results.
Drop Us A Line
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domain: artistic