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This is a beautiful tall hairgrass that is often used in Mr. Amano's Nature Aquariums. It is often used as a background in Iwagumi layouts (Japanese style stone arrangements) The fresh green color and soft hair like leaves contrast well and softens the look of rock scapes. This was a rather difficult to find plant in the aquarium trade and we have finally made it easily obtainable in tissue culture form.
Tissue culture plants are grown in-vitro (literally: in the glass) in a nutrient-rich synthetic growing medium, either liquid or gel, without the presence of any other lifeforms. This guarantees a pest and disease-free specimen, while also providing accuracy throughout the trade.
Tissue culture plants should be removed from the cup as soon as possible. All plants grow on some sort of synthetic growing medium, ranging anywhere from liquid to jelly to firm gel. This should be removed and rinsed off. Gently massage the roots between your fingers until the gel dissolves away. Most plants can be broken up into smaller pieces and spread out in your aquarium. Smaller pieces are easier to plant.

domain: hobby


text:
I am the squirrel teeth, cracked The riddle of the palm; remember This, and dig me deeper still into The god's swollen foot. It holds a rural setting with a boastful tone. Men with broken heart found Love The sad, joy and happiness. These lines means that there is no existence of Abiku, our scientific generation has made us to understand that there is an introduction of gene. The parents then consult the oracle and appeases the spirit family of the child, if it is confirmed that it is from there.
Hear my words through your cries;Tell them when you go again,That I wait. Such is My cycle: The world of Men, The world of Spirits And I, Existing in both, Yet unable to effect any sort of permanence In either. Cryin babies on their Mother's stops and listen to this splendour with mouth ajar. Works Cited: Encarta dictionaries 2009 Abiku Poem by Bode Ojoniyi Fallacies among Yoruba mythologies by Olatunde Temitayo. Lets ignore argument and view the plot of the poem. Whence she sits and play her flute Beneath the iroko tree Her songs bringeth life, Any one sicketh amongst you? Once and the repeated time, agelessThough I puke. I am bound upon the Borderlands, Suspended from a Thread Over the fine line between the Worlds By forces external.
Do you see tearsIn my eyes? ClarkComing and going these several seasons, Do stay out on the baobab tree,Follow where you please your kindred spiritsIf indoors is not enough for you. Few of the themes are 1 cultural believe 2 supernatural 3 pride 4 discontentment Samuel C. Then step in, step in and stay For her body is tired, Tired, her milk going sour Where many more mouths gladden the heart. On this note, I will discuss what really makes the poem a unique one in the literary world. Yams do not sprout in amulets to earth Abiku limbs. The poem is however, a calculated lines that is meant to reply the two Abiku poems written by John Pepper Clark and Wole Soyinka. In the silence of webs, Abiku moans, shapingMounds from the yolk.
I'll be the Suppliant snake coiled on the doorstep Yours the killing cry. Please give a brief explanation below. And he reveals to the readers that his parents treat him like a mystical or divine being. Parker feels blessed or forsaken. The dominant mood of the poem is pride. I am the squirrel teeth, cracked The riddle of the palm.
So when the snail is burnt in his shell Whet the heated fragments, brand me Deeply on the breast. A pitiful cry is sent up, Up into the infinite pool of black. Things of the Earth are insufficient To sever the threads of the Spirit. The last two lines of the poem is the major lines that conclude the messages that the poetic persona wants the reader to know. Goats and coweries,palm-oil and sprinkled ash all symbolises the sacrifial element.
Now the blowing wind is calm, one that cuddles, nudges and embraces. I'll be theSupplicant snake coiled on the doorstepYours the killing cry. Yes, I wait,To marry a cackle to your cries. The trees sway and listen to her mysterious songs. The stanza is written in a simple language with complex meaning. Abiku, borne with this gift, With her flute, she plays melodious tunes Heavenly tunes that sends one to heavenly stairs At a tender age she played She plays for all to hear. This stanza has no rhyming scheme since it treats a very serious subject matter.
The ripes fruit was saddest; Where I crept, the warmth was cloying. This poem is a personified sword that slays one of the mythological beliefs of Yoruba folks. You must see why I bind myself to the sickly new fruit, Why I bind as an objectionable leech To the only other as close to the Borderlands as I. Your gashes will not remove me. Gerald Brom's illustrated novel, The Plucker, depicts a child's toys fighting against an abiku. Restrained as if by splinter-clad tent pegs. Do not expect goats and cowries;My yams are dryAnd the barns are emptyFrom your many comings.
True, it leaks through the thatch When floods brim the banks, And the bats and the owls Often tear in at night through the eaves, And at harmattan, the bamboo walls Are ready tinder for the fire That dries the fresh fish up on the rack. RememberThis, and dig me deeper still intoThe god's swollen foot. In conclusion the first stanza introduces us to the second stanza. Then step in, step in and stay For her body is tired, Tired, her milk going sour Where many more mouths gladden the heart. It is I, the Transitory. The poem has 5 stanzas each in parentheses theme of confined space, isolation , and have a pattern of stanzas.

domain: artistic


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NEW ORLEANS — In a matter of minutes, the large black and gold S had been removed and subsequently so had another season of Super Bowl dreams for the New Orleans Saints.
The man driving the Pioneer P-REX paint remover and extractor methodically removed the black and gold letter from the right side of the end zone inside the nearly silent Mercedes-Benz Superdome. This unknown man riding what can be best described as a riding mower with water tanks on it was just doing what he was paid to do. Not to mention that the paint on the end zone turf had to be removed anyway due to next week’s national championship game.
That unknown worker though also seemed to be erasing the final hopes of the Who Dat Nation!
In the aftermath of another playoff disappointment, this one a 26-20 overtime defeat to visiting Minnesota, the feeling that the combination of the legendary quarterback Drew Brees and longtime head coach Sean Payton hoisting the Lombardi Trophy for a second time seems over.
There was an air of finality in the Superdome on Sunday evening as the magical run to the Super Bowl in Miami from a decade ago seemed to occur even further back in time.
From the start, the atmosphere was odd even for New Orleans standards. The crowd was loud but seemed muted for most of the first half. Even when Will Lutz kicked a 49-yard field goal to force overtime — the nearly 70,000 in attendance released more of a sigh of relief than a roar of cheers.
The tense nature of the Dome came from watching the home team get outplayed and in some ways out coached for most of the contest. Brees threw for only 208 yards, was sacked three times and had two turnovers including a gut punch of a lost fumble right outside the red zone late in the fourth.
Then there was the play calling with the deep pass before the two-minute warning in the first half or taking the 10-second run off instead of taking a timeout — which killed at least two chances of getting points or just how flat the team was to start the game.
The best offensive plays also came courtesy of the team’s third-string quarterback-wide receiver-special teams gunner Taysom Hill.
The fan favorite led the team in rushing, threw a 50-yard pass that set up a touchdown and caught two passes including a 20-yard touchdown.
A Super Bowl contender is usually not led to a playoff victory by a niche player.
The defense did its job by forcing an early turnover, keeping Kirk Cousins under 250 yards passing and extending their streak of not surrendering a 100-yard rusher to 43 games.
But when the defense needed to make a stop they could not as Cousins marched the Vikings down the field in overtime and found tight end Kyle Rudolph open in the end zone for the game-winning four-yard pass.
Did Rudolph push off? He sure did.
Did the Saints lose the game because of that one play? Nope.
The Saints struggled against the Vikings pass rush (credit to Payton’s old pal from his Dallas Cowboys days — Minnesota head coach Mike Zimmer), Brees couldn’t get in a rhythm at all, and the offense was absolutely lethargic.
How were the Saints not more amped up for the game? Why was the energy down? And how did they let one of the most maligned quarterbacks in the NFL beat them in their own house? By the way, three of the team’s four losses this season occurred in the Superdome.
Those are the tough questions the front office, coaches and players will be asking themselves this long offseason. The Saints now turn their attention to the NFL Draft, the team has the No. 24 overall pick, and will see if they can somehow keep the window on a Super Bowl run open ever so slightly.
But that seemed like a monumental task while strolling out the Superdome on Sunday evening.
Even after Marshawn Lynch’s “Beastmode” run during the 2010 playoffs or the Vernon Davis touchdown catch at old Candlestick Park in 2011, there was still hope that Brees and Payton would get another chance at winning a title together. The QB and coach still had plenty left in the tank.
It may have taken a few years but the team reloaded with shrewd drafting and free agent pickups. The result was three straight years of 13 wins and three straight NFC South titles.
But all three seasons ended with a stunning heartache. The “Minneapolis Miracle” in 2017, last season’s “NOLA No Call” in the NFC Championship Game and then Sunday’s overtime loss.
The most recent loss means the Saints are the first team in NFL history to have six straight playoff eliminations by one score. Not the history any team wants to be associated with.
Does this franchise have anything left? Does the soon-to-be 41-year-old quarterback and likely first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer have enough in him to make another run? And does The Who Dat Nation have anything left to give to this team?
Those questions remain to be answered but in the aftermath of another loss on Sunday it sure did feel like the man driving that P-REX was removing a lot more than black and gold paint on artificial turf.

domain: sports


In case you haven’t heard yet, there’s a certain rad-looking film on the way by the name of Iron Man 3. It cost about as much to make as what we received in kickbacks for that positive Bioshock: Infinite review, and stars pretty people. But enough about them, because like any other high budget film, it also has…toys!
Iron Man 2 had a partner by the name of War Machine, played by Captain Planet himself, Don Cheadle. Cheadle is now back for the threequel, but with a stylin’ new Team America look as the Iron Patriot. As usual, Hot Toys is releasing some merch of the character, and it looks like another kickass sculpt so far.
The US of A mascot comes complete with all kinds of accessories, is 30 cm tall and will set you back over $300. That’s pretty much around R2800 smiling Randelas.
Damn, I still want one. Time to sell more of Yolanda’s organs. Freedom isn’t free and all that.
Last Updated: March 26, 2013


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The new release date: March 27.
For what its worth, Amazon.com still has February 7 as Inversion's release date.
We've reached out to Namco Bandai for comment.
Inversion's hook is the way it allows the player to manipulate gravity. Please enjoy this video, which goes into great detail on this unique mechanic.
There's co-operative play available in Inversion, which is always nice. And here's the very latest trailer we've got on the game, from last summer's E3:


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Chhattisgarh: Special court rejects bail plea of Sunil Agrawal in alleged money laundering case; next hearing on Dec 6
Confirming the court order, ED prosecutor Dr Saurabh Pandey said, “All the accused have been sent on 14 days of judicial custody. The next hearing of the case has been scheduled on December 6.”
Raipur (Chhattisgarh) [India], November 23 (ANI): A special court of additional district and session judge Ajay Kumar Rajput on Wednesday rejected the bail plea of businessman Sunil Agarwal arrested in an alleged money laundering case related to coal transportation in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur.
During the hearing of the case on Wednesday, businessman Sunil Agarwal and others accused in the scam which includes, IAS Sameer Vishnoi, Suryakant Tiwari and Lakshmikant Tiwari were produced before the court. Confirming the court order, ED prosecutor Dr Saurabh Pandey said, “All the accused have been sent on 14 days of judicial custody. The next hearing of the case has been scheduled on December 6.”
Aggarwal’s counsel A C Singh said before that court that whatever documents were to be seized in respect of his client had already been done and there was no possibility that his bail would affect the investigation.
On the other hand, Pandey said, “He had his links with the high sources. The investigation is not over yet. In such a situation, if we require any more documents, then there is a possibility that he will not hesitate to tamper with it.”
The court accepted the argument of the ED prosecutor and rejected the bail plea. The next hearing in the case will be held on December 6. (ANI)

domain: news


text:
Arrests made after heroin and crack cocaine found at property in Fore Street, Ipswich
- Credit: Archant
Three people have been arrested – and one of them has been charged - after police carried out a warrant at a property in Ipswich and found a quantity of class A drugs.
Officers from the Ipswich-based Scorpion pro-active team carried out the warrant at an address in Fore Street around 5.30pm on Wednesday and discovered a quantity of wraps, believed to be heroin and crack cocaine.
Two men and a woman were arrested at the scene on suspicion of conspiracy to supply class A drugs and all three were taken into custody where they were interviewed in connection with the find.
A 28-year-old man and a 51-year-old woman, both from Ipswich, have now been bailed to return to police on February 18, 2016.
Garth Street, 53, of Minerva Court, Fore Street, has been charged with possession of crack cocaine with intent to supply and possession of heroin with intent to supply and has been detained to appear before magistrates this morning.

domain: law


Coleen Perlas: Yet Another Hate Ranter | It's me :)
Amerl - 09/05/2013 09:59I was curious because I thought it was about Coleen Garcia and Maxene Magalona, both Filipino celebrities. It turns out that it's actually about Coleen Perlas and Maxine Gozon, people I didn't know about until I watched a ... more »
Coleen Perlas Video Goes Viral, Trends on Twitter | Barako ...
The Pastels - 09/05/2013 03:42Coleen Perlas Video Goes Viral, Trends on Twitter -- This girl allegedly recorded a video acting like having a squabble or verbal war with a certain Maxene, earned loads of bashing on Twitter and YouTube alike, pointing her ... more »
The Good and The Bad.: Bad #2: People Like Coleen Perlas
Kristine B. - 08/05/2013 20:51So yesterday, I saw a video on my News Feed on Facebook about a girl named Coleen Perlas. Apparently this girl has been trending on Twitter because of her video. I watched it, and yes, I got inspired to make a new post. more »
Coleen Perlas and Maxene Gozon trending online- Pinoy ...
admin - 28/04/2014 18:02Coleen Perlas vs Maxene Gozon was trending online on May 8, 2013 after. Coleen Perlas who seemed to be so angry with someone who was later named Maxine made a hate video that is currently trending on Twitter ... more »
Coleen Perlas (Original) Youtube Video, trending in Twitter ...
DiversityHuman - 11/05/2013 00:50A video of a girl known as Coleen Perlas made the rounds online after netizens got irked of her video in Youtube. Coleen Perlas made several rude claims against someone whom she used to treat and even threatened to kill ... more »
Original Coleen Perlas Video na Trending sa Facebook at ...
admin - 16/04/2014 18:42You are here: Home > Original Coleen Perlas Video na Trending sa Facebook at Twitter. April 16, 2014 | 25 Comments ... Presenting the New Trending Topic of the CyberWorld, Miss Perlas!. adrian rojas. April 17, 2014 at 12:15 am. more »
Coleen Perlas – Original Video (Trending on FB and Twitter ...
admin - 06/10/2014 13:08Coleen Perlas - Original Video (Trending on FB and Twitter) - watch more listed here: http://www.youtube.com/observe?v=cgIec0vsysU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0LcWX0---Q. Video Score: 1 / 5 Trending Video clips This Month... more »
Acid Pixels: Coleen Perlas ang batang mayabang
Ryuuren - 09/05/2013 00:35Dami pang kaaway nito sa twitter.. haha suspended na tuloy: twitter.com/Coleenperlas Coleen Perlas (ang reyna ng mga sipon) - Original Video (Trending in FB and Twitter) ... more »


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Thornton, Aurora and Fort Collins Police are currently investigating three different incidents that happened in their respective jurisdictions during the New Year.
Police reports stated that the incident happened at 12:33 a.m. between 144th Avenue and Highway 7 near the interchange with Colorado E-470 and the Northwest Parkway. The woman was hit by two cars traveling on Interstate 25.
Reports of the incident revealed that a ride-share vehicle carrying the victim stopped at the location and ended the ride due to the passenger getting ill. The woman passenger got out of the vehicle and paid the bill, then the driver left.
She walked into the roadway, where she was sideswiped by a pickup truck and then she was hit by another vehicle. According to the police, the vehicle that hit that collided with the victim was an old, dark-colored Dodge Ram. The vehicle did not stop after the collision, and its driver might not have been aware of the accident.
The accident prompted the officials to shut down the lanes for several hours early Sunday morning and according to the Thornton Police Department, the investigation is still ongoing.
Pedestrian struck by car, killed near City of Aurora
Earlier on December 31, one person was reported dead after being struck by a car on Interstate 225 near East 6th Avenue near the City of Aurora, Colorado.
The accident happened at 9:54 p.m. Police said a GMC SUV heading to the north ran into a pedestrian who was crossing the roadway. The driver attempted to avoid the pedestrian but was unsuccessful.
When the police arrived, the victim was in the middle of the median strip and sustained severe life-threatening injuries. The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital but died moments later.
Police have not released the victim’s identity. However, reports stated that the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office would release the victim’s identity once they have informed the victim’s relatives.
Meanwhile, the driver of the GMC SUV remained on the scene and fully cooperated with the investigations.
Fort Collins hit-and-run crash
In Fort Collins, Colorado, a pedestrian was caught in a hit-and-run crash early on New Year’s Day. According to the police, the vehicle was a silver Mazda with front-end damage like the grill, hood and windshield.
Police received the call regarding the accident at 1:14 a.m. on Sunday. The victim was an adult male who was injured at the intersection between Suniga Road and Redwood Street.
According to police reports, there was evidence that indicated a vehicle heading north from the east on Suniga Road struck the man while he was crossing the road. The man sustained a serious injury and was taken to the hospital. The full extent of his injuries is currently unknown.
Based on reports from Fort Collins Police Services, the driver left the scene and never contacted the police. The police are currently still searching for the driver responsible for the incident. Sgt. Mike Avrec from the Fort Collins Police CRASH team said the investigators are asking for help from the community to find the suspected vehicle and the driver responsible for the incident.
“Hit-and-run collisions cannot become common in our community, someone knows who the run driver and vehicle are, and we ask them to contact us to help solve this crime,” Avrec said.
As a result of the incident, the Fort Collins Police Collision Reconstruction and Scene Handling Team partially closed Suniga Road and Redwood Street for around seven and a half hours.


I bought a 2006XLS in March 2006.
Today, it has 206,000 miles on it without one single problem.
I have replaced the tires, battery and brake pads.
It still has the original spark plugs, water pump, starter, antifreeze, trans fluid and serpentine belt (which isn't even cracked!).
This car has been nothing short of amazing.
It is big, the back seat is the biggest of any car I have seen.
It is fast with plenty of torque all the way through the powerband, feels like a V8.
It averages 27 miles to the gallon with 80 percent highway driving.
It is super quiet and smooth.
The Camry isn't even close to an Avalon.
This is BIGGER than Lexus ES350, yet cheaper. Im going to keep on driving it.
Size, Ride, Power and Economy of the 3.5 vvti engine.
Toyota's 3.5 is one of the best V6's in any car avaliable.
† Edmunds.com received the highest numerical score in the proprietary J.D. Power 2014 Third-Party Automotive Website Evaluation Study℠. Results based on responses from 3,381 responses, measuring 14 companies and measures third-party automotive website usefulness among new and used vehicle shoppers. Proprietary study results are based on experiences and perceptions of owners surveyed from January 2014. Your experiences may vary. Visit jdpower.com.


AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - America Movil , the telecoms group controlled by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, has offered to buy a stake worth up to 3.2 billion euros ($4.2 billion) in Netherlands-based KPN NV , seeing it as a base for potential expansion in Europe.
America Movil, which is seeking up to 28 percent of KPN, sees the move as a long-term investment that would give it a presence in Europe at a time when the Mexican group has run out of opportunities to expand at home, its chief financial officer said on Tuesday.
KPN shares surged more than 20 percent to their highest since early April, having earlier this month slumped to a seven-year low. KPN welcomed the offer, saying it was "moderately positive" and showed the undervaluation of its shares.
America Movil is the biggest mobile operator in Latin America and a major cash cow for Slim, ranked by Forbes magazine as the world's richest man, who built his empire by purchasing troubled companies and turning them around.
"AmÃ©rica MÃ³vil is a long-term investor, we think if the company (KPN) executes (its strategy) well, it will perform well. It's a company that should benefit for the long term," Carlos Garcia Moreno, America Movil CFO, told journalists, adding there was scope to cooperate in areas like roaming and procurement.
Moreno said it was too early to say America Movil would do any other deals in Europe, but suggested KPN would allow it to get a closer look at the European markets.
"KPN is the target for our first investment. Europe is facing some times which are economically challenging. We have a long-term investment horizon. We've taken our time. This one seems to make a lot of sense," Moreno told reporters.
Moreno said the Mexican company had few opportunities to expand in Latin America, while Europe appeared attractive because of a similar cultural identity.
Some analysts said the approach could be a prelude to a full takeover offer.
"We believe the 28 percent stake could be a first step to try to gain full control of KPN," SNS Securities said in a research note. "Buying an incumbent operator is politically not without risk, which may explain the cautious approach of first acquiring a 28 percent stake.
"Compared to other European incumbents we believe KPN is a less difficult target to acquire: the state has no stake and political resistance is probably not as substantial."
Shares of KPN, which traces its origins back to the Dutch government's construction of telegraph lines in 1852, traded up 20.1 percent at 7.781 euros by 1001 GMT. By Monday's close the stock had fallen 39 percent over the past 12 months, against an 11 percent fall in the European sector <.SXKP>.
"There has been one conversation about cooperation," KPN spokeswoman Maryse Ducheine said, adding the discussion was about issues such as shared purchasing and roaming.
KPN, the largest telecoms provider in the Netherlands with 45 percent market shares in fixed line and mobile, posted core earnings of 5.1 billion euros in 2011 and free cash flow of 2.45 billion.
But the company, whose logo shows three green, blue and yellow blobs behind a crown, has been hit by a string of problems in recent months under chief executive Eelco Blok, a keen sailor and KPN-lifer who took the helm in April 2011, and has faced criticism from analysts, regulators, politicians and the public.
Analyst Ulrich Rathe at brokerage Jefferies in London noted KPN had underperformed the sector on a total return basis by 29 percent over the past year.
"That is relative to a sector which has suffered a lot," he said. "On that basis you have a strategic investor who has been eyeing Europe for a long time, according to media reports, saying this is my opportunity."
KPN has been struggling to reverse a decline in revenue, profit and market share in its fixed-line and mobile operations as it faces intense competition on its home turf. Its chief financial officer unexpectedly quit in January, citing disagreements over internal governance.
KPN and other mobile phone operators in the Netherlands are under antitrust investigation for possible price-fixing, while the local telecoms regulator put KPN under close supervision in December saying it may have broken the law to the detriment of consumers and competitors.
Another potential negative is that the Netherlands may get a fourth mobile operator at the next auction of mobile licenses later this year, since the regulator has set aside a chunk of spectrum at a low price for a new entrant. Further competition could mean KPN's mobile business in its key home market will become structurally less profitable.
Under pressure from shareholders to improve performance, KPN has started to look at divestments including the possible sale of its Belgian subsidiary.
Sources familiar with the company's plans say KPN is mulling the sale of BASE, Belgium's smallest operator, and wants 1.8 billion euros for it.


JABO Supply, with its power of being part of the Delta Buyers Group, is a major player in the commercial PVC market. Whether the job calls for schedule 40 or 80 PVC, CPVC, perforated pipe, Aquamine pipe or PVC valves and fittings, JABO can always meet your needs.
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The next time you need plastic pipe, give JABO a call and see what we can do for you.
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text:
Blue USPS Mailboxes located in Lexington, NY
The map shows United States Postal Service (USPS) blue mailboxes in Lexington, NY.
Type any location in the field above, or click the GPS button to automatically find mailboxes near you.
You can also pan and zoom the map to find mailboxes anywhere in the United States.
Click to show more
Show Mailboxes in Zip Codes of Lexington, NY
Show USPS Mailboxes in Nearby Cities
Ellenburg Center, NY
Miller Place, NY
White Plains, NY
West Kill, NY
Kenoza Lake, NY
Big Indian, NY
Van Hornesville, NY
Pleasant Valley, NY
New Hampton, NY
Ozone Park, NY
North Bangor, NY

domain: geography


Network measurement is an important tool in network research and operations, and is increasingly utilized in end-user applications. However, active measurements compete with other applications for limited network resources. These measurements are typically performed by individual users and applications, with limited coordination or planning. This dissertation addresses network measurement in the context of a measurement infrastructure, which can coordinate measurements, monitor and control their resource consumption, and even improve the quality of measurement results. We address three specific areas of operation in a measurement infrastructure. We present an architecture for an infrastructure that uses admission control to bound the resource consumption of measurements. We use estimates of the resources consumed by real-world measurement tools in the admission control mechanism. We evaluate methods of estimating the resource consumption of measurements in terms of network bandwidth, and show that these estimates are important to the accuracy of admission control. We propose several algorithms for determining when network measurements can be replaced by a network inference mechanism to reduce measurement load in the network at a cost of measurement accuracy. We experimentally evaluate these algorithms on measurement patterns designed to present difficulties, measurement patterns based on real-world peer-to-peer distributed communication, and random measurements. We show that the algorithms successfully reduce the measurement load on the first two types of graphs, and that they do not incur undue expense on the latter. We design and evaluate a family of methods for selecting vantage points from which to take active measurements to increase reachability into the Internet. We show that two of these methods perform substantially better than selecting vantage points at random, allowing a larger number of hosts to be probed with direct measurements with the same number of vantage points.
Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
- Ethan L Blanton (2012). Controlling the cost and increasing the utility of network measurement infrastructures. Purdue University Research Repository. doi:10.4231/D3TH8BM5D
This data set contains the raw data from Chapter 5 of the dissertation.


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The Global Thinkers’ Book Club
Want to think like the world's best minds? Start by reading like them. The FP Global Thinkers' 20 most recommended titles.
1. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (2009)
By Liaquat Ahamed
Recommended by Nancy Birdsall, Deepa Narayan, and Paul Ryan
1. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (2009)
By Liaquat Ahamed
Recommended by Nancy Birdsall, Deepa Narayan, and Paul Ryan
Liaquat Ahamed profiles the four central bankers — in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States — who sought to reconstruct the global financial system after World War I. His findings, however, are not purely historical:
“As I write this in October 2008, the world is in the middle of one such panic — the most severe for seventy-five years, since the bank runs of 1931-1933 that feature so prominently in the last few chapters of this book.… Watching the world’s central bankers and finance officials grappling with the current situation — trying one thing after another to restore confidence, throwing everything they can at the problem, coping daily with the unexpected and startling shifts in market sentiment — reinforces the lesson that there is no magic bullet or simple formula for dealing with financial panics. In trying to calm anxious investors and soothe skittish markets, central bankers are called upon to wrestle with some of the most elemental and unpredictable forces of mass psychology. It is the skill that they display in navigating these storms through uncharted waters that ultimately makes or breaks their reputation.”
2. Why the West Rules — for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future (2010)
By Ian Morris
Recommended by Gareth Evans, Joseph Nye, and Arvind Subramanian
Stanford University historian Ian Morris takes a look backward to answer the “burning question” of how long — and whether — the West will stay on top. His answer:
“The patterns established in the past suggest that the shift of wealth and power from West to East is inexorable. The transformation of the old Eastern core into a Western periphery in the nineteenth century allowed the East to discover advantages in its backwardness, and the latest of these — the incorporation of China’s vast, poor workforce into the global capitalist economy — is still playing out. Bungling, internal divisions, and external wars may hold China back, as they did so often between the 1840s and 1970s, but sooner or later — probably by 2030, almost certainly by 2040 — China’s gross domestic product will overtake that of the United States. At some point in the twenty-first century China will use up the advantages of its backwardness, but when that happens the world’s center of economic gravity will probably still remain in the East, expanding to include South and Southeast Asia. The shift in power and wealth from West to East in the twenty-first century is probably as inevitable as the shift from East to West that happened in the nineteenth.”
3. Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011)
By Niall Ferguson
Recommended by Sherry Rehman and Kenneth Rogoff
Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson (a 2010 Global Thinker) identifies six major causes for the West’s ascent, including the roles of representative government and modern medicine.
“The critical point is that the differential between the West and the Rest was institutional. Western Europe overtook China partly because in the West there was more competition in both the political and the economic spheres. Austria, Prussia and latterly even Russia became more effective administratively and militarily because the network that produced the Scientific Revolution arose in the Christian but not in the Muslim world. The reason North America’s ex-colonies did so much better than South America’s was because British settlers established a completely different system of property rights and political representation in the North from those built by Spaniards and Portuguese in the South.… European empires were able to penetrate Africa not just because they had the Maxim gun; they also devised vaccines against tropical diseases to which Africans were just as vulnerable. In the same way, the earlier industrialization of the West reflected institutional advantages.”
4. Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More (2011)
By Charles Kenny
Recommended by Bjorn Lomborg and Steven Pinker
Contrary to doomsayers, FP contributing editor Charles Kenny argues that advances in education, health, security, and human rights are improving life in the developing world.
“Despite counterclaims and hand wringing, things are getting better, everywhere. Rich countries may be getting richer faster than poor countries, and we may be unsure how to improve that situation, but poor countries and poor people aren’t stuck in the nightmare of an ever-growing and unsupportable population, living on bare subsistence. Instead, those countries with the lowest quality of life are making the fastest progress in improving it — across a range of measures including health, education, and civil and political liberties. The progress is the result of the global spread of technologies and ideas — technologies like vaccinations, and ideas like ‘you should send your daughter to school.’ And Third World governments, alongside aid agencies and nonprofits, have played a vital role in extending the reach of these technologies and idea.”
5. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011)
By Global Thinker No. 48 Steven Pinker
Recommended by Gareth Evans and Andrew Sullivan
Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker also has good news: Over the broad sweep of history, he finds, human violence has dwindled.
“For all the dangers we face today, the dangers of yesterday were even worse. Readers of this book (and … people in most of the rest of the world) no longer have to worry about abduction into sexual slavery, divinely commanded genocide, lethal circuses and tournaments, punishments on the cross, rack, wheel, stake, or strappado for holding unpopular beliefs, decapitation for not bearing a son, disembowelment for having dated a royal, pistol duels to defend their honor, beachside fisticuffs to impress their girlfriends, and the prospect of a nuclear world war that would put an end to civilization or to human life itself.”
6. Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius (2011)
By Sylvia Nasar
Recommended by Nancy Birdsall and Nouriel Roubini
Sylvia Nasar — acclaimed for her biography of mathematician John Nash — chronicles the emergence of modern economics, the dismal science that “transformed societies around the globe.”
“The notion that man was a creature of his circumstance, and that those circumstances were not predetermined, immutable, or utterly impervious to human intervention is one of the most radical discoveries of all time. It called into question the existential truth that humanity was subject to the dictates of God and nature. It implied that, given new tools, humanity was ready to take charge of its own destiny. It called for cheer and activity rather than pessimism and resignation. Before 1870 economics was mostly about what you couldn’t do. After 1870, it was mostly about what you could do.… Victorian intellectuals were obsessed with economics and an extraordinary number aspired to produce a great work in the field. Inspired by advances in natural sciences, they began to fashion a tool for investigating the ‘very ingenious and very powerful social mechanism’ that is creating not just unparalleled material wealth, but a wealth of new opportunities. Ultimately, the new economics transformed the lives of everyone on the planet.”
7. Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World (2010)
By Doug Saunders
Recommended by Paul Collier and Andy Sumner
Doug Saunders visits the outskirts of major cities around the globe, from Shenzhen to Sao Paulo, where the poor are moving in — and gaining a crucial foothold.
“We need to devote far more attention to these places, for they are not just the sites of potential conflict and violence but also the neighborhoods where the transition from poverty occurs, where the next middle class is forged, where the next generation’s dreams, movements, and governments are created. At a time when the effectiveness and basic purpose of foreign aid have become matters of deep and well-deserved skepticism, I believe that these transitional urban spaces offer a solution. It is here, rather than at the ‘macro’ state or ‘micro’ household level, that serious and sustained investments from governments and agencies are most likely to create lasting and incorruptible benefit.”
8. WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency (2011)
By Micah Sifry
Recommended by Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Anne-Marie Slaughter
The rise of an increasingly open Internet culture is bigger than WikiLeaks, political analyst Micah Sifry argues — it’s about a “new chapter in human history.”
“Information flows more freely into the public arena, powered by seemingly unstoppable networks of people around the world cooperating to share vital data and prevent its suppression. Old institutions and incumbent powers are inexorably coming to terms with this new reality. The ‘Age of Transparency’ is here: not because one transnational online network dedicated to open information and whistle-blowing named WikiLeaks exists, but because the knowledge of how to build and maintain such networks is now widespread.… WikiLeaks is just one piece of a much larger continuum of changes in how the people and the powerful relate to each other in this new time — changes that are fundamentally healthy for the growth and strength of an open society. Secrecy and the hoarding of information are ending; openness and the sharing of information are coming.”
9. Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future (2010)
By Robert Bryce
Recommended by Terry Engelder and Gary Lash
Robert Bryce demystifies the allure of “going green.” Like it or not, he says, the future of energy is good old carbon.
“We use hydrocarbons — coal, oil, and natural gas — not because we like them, but because they produce lots of heat energy, from small spaces, at prices we can afford, and in the quantities that we demand. And that’s the absolutely critical point.… It may be fashionable to promote wind, solar, and biofuels, but those sources fail when it comes to power density. We want energy sources that produce lots of power (which is measured in horsepower or watts) from small amounts of real estate. And that’s the key problem with wind, solar, and biofuels: They require huge amounts of land to generate meaningful amounts of power.”
10. The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (2011)
By Daniel Yergin
Recommended by Gary Lash and Bjorn Lomborg
In a long-awaited follow-up to his 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Prize, Daniel Yergin delivers a sweeping account of the past and future of energy geopolitics. (Tip: Keep an eye out for the story of Global Thinker No. 36 George P. Mitchell.)
“If this is to be an era of energy transition, then the $6 trillion global energy market is ‘contestable.’ That is, it is up for grabs among the incumbents — the oil, gas, and coal companies that supply the bulk of today’s energy — and the new entrants — such as wind, solar, and biofuels — that want to capture a growing share of those dollars. A transition on this scale, if it does happen, has great significance for emissions, for the wider economy, for geopolitics, and for the position of nations.”
11. The Lie of Nuclear Power (2011)
By Hiroaki Koide
Recommended by Mizuho Fukushima and Yuichi Kaido
After four decades of (largely ignored) anti-nuclear activism, Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, has seen a sudden spike in demand for his work this year, following Japan’s tsunami-induced nuclear meltdown. As of late September, The Lie of Nuclear Power — a Japanese-language, anti-nuke polemic — had sold 280,000 copies since its release in June.
12. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)
By Naomi Klein
Recommended by Mizuho Fukushima and Yuichi Kaido
Naomi Klein posits that, over the past 50 years, free market fundamentalists have capitalized on the world’s worst disasters — from the ruthlessness of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet to the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq war, and Hurricane Katrina.
“The idea of exploiting crisis and disaster has been the modus operandi of Milton Friedman’s movement from the very beginning — this fundamentalist form of capitalism has always needed disasters to advance. It was certainly the case that the facilitating disasters were getting bigger and more shocking, but what was happening in Iraq and New Orleans was not a new, post-September 11 invention. Rather, these bold experiments in crisis exploitation were the culmination of three decades of strict adherence to the shock doctrine. Seen through the lens of this doctrine, the past thirty-five years look very different. Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by anti-democratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market ‘reforms.'”
13. Keynes: The Return of the Master (2009)
By Robert Skidelsky
Recommended by Saskia Sassen and Martin Wolf
Robert Skidelsky — a political economist who also authored a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes — explains in this book why the “master” is still relevant.
“Keynes’s importance is not just a progenitor of ‘stimulus’ policies. Governments have known how to ‘stimulate’ sickly economies — usually by war — as long as they have known anything. Keynes’s importance was to prove a ‘general theory’ which explains how economies fall into slumps, and to indicate the policies and institutions needed to avoid them. In the current situation no theory is better than bad theory, but good theory is better than no theory. Good theory can help us avoid panic responses, and give us insight into the limitations of both markets and governments. Keynes, in my view, provides the right kind of theory, even though his is clearly not the last word on events happening sixty-three years after his death.”
14. Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007)
By Walter Isaacson
Recommended by Terry Engelder and Condoleezza Rice
Before he wrote the biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson told the life story of another remarkable mind — Albert Einstein.
“Einstein’s life and work reflected the disruption of societal certainties and moral absolutes in the modernist atmosphere of the early twentieth century. Imaginative nonconformity was in the air: Picasso, Joyce, Freud, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and others were breaking conventional bonds. Charging this atmosphere was the conception of the universe in which space and time and the properties of particles seemed based on the vagaries of observations. Einstein, however, was not truly a relativist, even though that is how he was interpreted by many, including some whose disdain was tinged by anti-Semitism. Beneath all of his theories, including relativity, was a quest for invariants, certainties, and absolutes. There was a harmonious reality underlying the laws of the universe, Einstein felt, and the goal of science was to discover it.”
15. Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall — from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness (2011)
By Frank Brady
Recommended by Tyler Cowen and Kenneth Rogoff
Frank Brady, who knew Bobby Fischer for many years, records the American chess master’s astonishing rise to fame — and his baffling decline thereafter.
“Bobby was secretive, yet candid; generous, yet parsimonious; naïve, yet well informed; cruel, yet kind; religious, yet heretical. His games were filled with charm and beauty and significance. His outrageous pronouncements were filled with cruelty and prejudice and hate.… Bobby had an uneasy relationship with his extraordinary celebrity and ultimately grew to despise it. It was the public’s intrusive gaze that caused him, in later years, to lead a determinedly reclusive, almost hermetic life.… We may not — and perhaps should not — forgive Bobby Fischer’s twisted political and antireligious assaults, but we should never forget his sheer brilliance on the chessboard.”
16. Shah of Shahs (1982)
By Ryszard Kapuscinski
Recommended by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski recounts the decline of the last shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The book begins with the man who led the revolution that overthrew the shah: Ruhollah Khomeini.
“A small, flat, gray, charmless city, Qom lies a hundred miles south of Teheran in a vacant, wearying, parched, sunbaked desert.… It contains five hundred mosques and the nation’s biggest seminaries. Koranic scholars and the guardians of tradition quarrel in Qom; the venerable ayatollahs convene their councils there; Khomeini rules the country from Qom. He never leaves, never goes to the capital, never goes anywhere.… He’s moved to his daughter’s house, from whose balcony he appears to the crowds in the street below (usually, zealous pilgrims visiting the mosques of the holy city and, most important of all, the tomb forbidden to non-Muslims, of the Immaculate Fatima, sister of the eighth Imam Reza).”
Robert Lacey unfurls a complex portrait of modern-day Saudi Arabia, explaining the kingdom’s recent history and current struggles, while making a case for its growing global influence.
“Think of the new words that we have had to learn in the past thirty years: wahhabi, jihadi, Arab-Afghan, Desert Storm, fatwa, Al-Qaeda. What do they all have in common? Which nations supplied fifteen of the nineteen hijackers on 9/11? One of the largest groups of foreign fighters captured in Afghanistan? The second largest contingent at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp? Plus several hundred terrorists and suicide bombers in Iraq? Saudi problems have transformed the modern world. Saudi conflicts and growing pains got the twenty-first century off to a start that no one had anticipated, and we are still trying to work out what that means.”
18. Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future (2010)
By Stephen Kinzer
Recommended by Wadah Khanfar and Sherry Rehman
Stephen Kinzer proposes a new “power triangle,” uniting Iran, Turkey, and the United States, as the solution to Middle East troubles.
“The old triangle — actually two bilateral relationships, the United States with Israel and the United States with Saudi Arabia — served Washington’s interests well during the cold war. It has not, however, produced a stable Middle East. On the contrary, the region is torn by violence, hatred, terror, and war. Yet for economic as well as strategic reasons, the United States must remain engaged there. Its dilemma can be simply stated: America wants to stabilize the Middle East, but its policies are having the opposite effect. What new policies could America adopt to replace those that have failed? Here is one answer: First, build an ever-closer partnership with Turkey and, in the future, with a democratic Iran. Second, reshape relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia in ways that will serve their long-term interests and those of the United States — even if they protest.”
19. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2011)
By Mohammed Hanif
Recommended by Abhijit Banerjee and Pervez Hoodbhoy
In Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif’s second novel, Alice Bhatti, the daughter of a sewer cleaner, takes a job as a nurse at a squalid Catholic hospital in Karachi upon her release from a reformatory. In the book’s opening, Alice prepares for her interview at the hospital, where she eventually finds corruption, misogyny — and love.
“Less than three minutes in front of the interview panel and Alice Bhatti knows in her heart that she is not likely to get the job advertised as Replacement Junior Nurse, Grade 4.… She has been in this room before but is dreading the prospect of sitting down on a chair and talking. She has always stood here and taken her orders: Have you cleaned the floor, Alice? Why have you not cleaned the floor? Who do you think will clean that blood on the floor, Alice? Your father? The room is a monument to pharmaceutical merchandising: the orange wall clock from GlaxoSmithKline, the calendar with blonde models in various stages of migraine from Pfizer Pain Management Systems, the box of pink tissues promising Dry Days, Dry Nights. The ornamented gold-framed verse from the Quran exhorting the virtues of cleanliness carries the logo of Ciba-Geigy: a housefly in its death throes.”
20. Open City (2011)
By Teju Cole
Recommended by Abhijit Banerjee and Saskia Sassen
Teju Cole’s debut novel — which New Yorker critic James Wood called “beautiful, subtle, and, finally, original” — tells the story of its narrator, Julius, a young, Nigerian-German psychiatrist-in-training prone to wandering the multicultural streets of New York City.
“One night, I simply went on and on, walking all the way down to Houston Street, a distance of some seven miles, and found myself in a state of disorienting fatigue, laboring to remain on my feet. That night I took the subway home, and instead of falling asleep immediately, I lay in bed, too tired to release myself from wakefulness, and I rehearsed in the dark the numerous incidents and sights I had encountered while roaming, sorting each encounter like a child playing with wooden blocks, trying to figure out which belonged where, which responded to which. Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks. My futile task of sorting went on until the forms began to morph into each other and assume abstract shapes unrelated to the real city, and only then did my hectic mind finally show some pity and still itself, only then did dreamless sleep arrive.”
8 More Books Recommended — and Written — by FP‘s Global Thinkers
1. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (2011)
By Global Thinkers No. 60 Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Recommended by No. 66 Barry Eichengreen
2. Empire of the Mind: The Dawn of the Techno-Political Age (2012)
By Global Thinker No. 83 Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt
Recommended by No. 83 Alec Ross
3. The Plundered Planet: Why We Must — and How We Can — Manage Nature for Global Prosperity (2010)
By Global Thinker No. 56 Paul Collier
Recommended by No. 55 Martin Wolf
4. Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System (2011)
By Global Thinker No. 66 Barry Eichengreen
Recommended by No. 25 Kenneth Rogoff
5. That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World We Invented and How We Can Come Back (2011)
By Global Thinker No. 58 Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
Recommended by No. 13 Bill Gates
Gates on That Used to Be Us: “I’m a big fan of Tom’s stuff, and I think he makes some key points … that we can renew our excellence not so much with the things others have invented, but rather with things that we used to do quite well ourselves.”
6. The Future of Power (2011)
By Global Thinker No. 64 Joseph Nye
Recommended by No. 30 Nouriel Roubini
7. Le triomphe de la cupidité (2011)
(In English, 2010’s Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy)
By Global Thinker No. 33 Joseph Stiglitz
Recommended by No. 100 Stéphane Hessel
8. Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance (2011)
By Global Thinker No. 97 Arvind Subramanian
Recommended by No. 65 Nancy Birdsall
More from Foreign Policy
Chinese Hospitals Are Housing Another Deadly Outbreak
Authorities are covering up the spread of antibiotic-resistant pneumonia.
Henry Kissinger, Colossus on the World Stage
The late statesman was a master of realpolitik—whom some regarded as a war criminal.
The West’s False Choice in Ukraine
The crossroads is not between war and compromise, but between victory and defeat.
Washington wants to get tough on China, and the leaders of the House China Committee are in the driver’s seat.

domain: library


Yothu Yindi (Yolngu for "child and mother") are an Australian band with Aboriginal and balanda (non-Aboriginal) members formed in 1986. Aboriginal members come from Yolngu homelands near Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in Northern Territory's Arnhem Land. Founding members included Stuart Kellaway on bass guitar, Cal Williams on lead guitar, Witiyana Marika on manikay (traditional vocals), bilma (ironwood clapsticks) and dance, Milkayngu Mununggurr on yidaki (didgeridoo), Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu on keyboards, guitar and percussion, and leader Mandawuy Yunupingu on vocals and guitar.
|Dots on the Shells|
|World of Innocence||3:57|
|Back to Culture||3:17|
|Dots on the Shells||3:20|
Tribal Voice
|Djapana (Sunset Dreaming)||3:59|
|Treaty (Filthy Lucre Radio Mix)||4:04|


The new technologies has been introduced to S4 which pulls power. Audi claims the new three-litre supercharged engine is a whopping 37 per cent extra economical than its predecessor. The engine selections readily available are 2-litre direct injection turbocharged making 200bhp and three.two litre V6 making 255bhp. Added to these, the common ones are 1.6 litre generating 102 bhp, 2 litre creating 130bhp and 1.eight litre turbo-charged producing 163 bhp.
Through the years, there are Ford Parts that came out that not only increase the functionality of the automobile but at the very same time keep it ?green?. Ford Motors applied various automobile technologies to further hold its automobiles ?sensitive? enough to care for the atmosphere. The catalytic converter, for instance, is applied by the American automaker in its vehicles, sport utility automobiles, and trucks to keep the noxious emissions on secure levels. With this auto element intact in the system, method exhaust fumes produced by through the internal engine combustion is treated ahead of released into the air. In this way, damaging gases are lessened mainly because of the catalytic converter.
Read More – Car Dealerships In Newton Ks
Many new things of Vorsprung Durch Technik meaning, ?Advancement Through Technology? which tends to make the Audi S4 deal with like no Audi saloon has before. The second optional extra which impressed was Audi Drive Pick, which enables the settings for the active steering, seven-speed S Tronic gearbox (if fitted), active sport differential and adjustable suspension to be tweaked by means of buttons on the dashboard.
A further component installed in the company?s autos is the oxygen sensor.
Ford Motor Business, which debuted in the industry additional than a century ago, is a single of the top automobile corporations worldwide. This American automaker requires pride in its competent sales across the globe that makes this brand a household name specially in the United States. Aside from making certain that its models can perform nicely, the corporation is also keen in improving its Ford Parts to grow to be efficient yet atmosphere-friendly.
Yet another element installed in the firm?s automobiles is the oxygen sensor. This diminutive part is strategically placed along the exhaust manifold and close to the catalytic converter as it examines exhaust fumes for the availability of air. When it detects a low oxygen presence in the engine?s mixture, it relays the information quickly to the engine control unit. From there, required adjustments are accomplished for the engine to have a superior mixture of cool air and fuel. Once the car?s energy plant is effective sufficient, it will no longer emit as well a great deal exhaust fumes that are dangerous to the atmosphere. These are just some of the numerous Ford Parts that make the cars of the firm gentler to the atmosphere.
Read More – Car Dealerships In Las Vegas
Can this S4 match the M3. Definitely not, BMW nevertheless overpowers thanks to its superior steering wheel and terrific chassis balance. The S4?s superior torque thrashes the M3 on in-gear occasions. Audi has hinted BMW with S4 that it is capable of providing an equivalent sportier automobile in this horsepower battle. The specific extras added to the S4 are a slightly much more aggressive front bumper, extended side skirts, brushed aluminium door mirrors modest spoilers and four chrome exhaust pipes enhance the stealthy character.
The new technology has been introduced to S4 which pulls energy. Audi claims the new three-litre supercharged engine is a whopping 37 per cent more economical than its predecessor. The engine options offered are two-litre direct injection turbocharged producing 200bhp and 3.2 litre V6 creating 255bhp. Extra to these, the regular ones are 1.6 litre producing 102 bhp, two litre generating 130bhp and 1.eight litre turbo-charged creating 163 bhp.
Bad Credit Used Car Dealers – The S4?s superior torque thrashes the M3 on in-gear instances. Audi has hinted BMW with S4 that it is capable of providing an equivalent sportier car in this horsepower battle.


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Go Ape! Outdoor Activities Haldon Forest
When: Throughout the year
Where: Haldon Forest, Bullers Hill, Kennford, Exeter, Devon, EX6 7XR
Price: Gorilla (16 years plus): £33, Baboons (10-15 years) £25
Bring out your inner ape and and take part in an adrenaline-fuelled day at the Go Ape! tree top adventure course at Haldon Forest, near Exeter. This is an obstacle course set up high in the trees, truly not for the faint-hearted or those with a fear of heights! Starting at a height of over 14 metres, you’ll have to climb up into the trees to begin the course (don’t worry, you’ll be clipped into safety harnesses).
Once you’re up in the trees along the course you can expect to find zip wires, tarzan swings, rope ladders and a variety of other obstacles and crossings. If you’re attempting the adult version of the course, you can expect this to take 2-3 hours to complete. There is also a junior version of the course too for any little ones.
Google Maps calculates the journey from Bowerland Cottage Holidays/Devon Dogs to Go Ape! at just over 30 mins via the A30. If you’re staying with us this year it’s the perfect day out on any of days when you’ve got a break from dog training.
Why not combine your visit with a half day in Exeter city centre itself, which has plenty of shopping opportunities and restaurants to eat at? Alternatively, you could spend more time at the centre and take part in one of their many other activities, such as riding a segway, or exploring the nearby area yourself.
Read more What’s On Wednesday blogs HERE.

domain: travel


Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the creation of a Patient Engagement Advisory Committee (PEAC) to advise the FDA Commissioner on complex issues relating to medical devices, the regulation of devices and their use by patients.
In a blog post announcing the PEAC, Nina Hunter, Ph.D., a regulatory scientist in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said the PEAC will “give FDA the opportunity to obtain expertise on various patient-related topics, with the goal of improving communication of benefits and risks and increasing integration of patient perspectives into the regulatory process.”
“Some questions that the PEAC may discuss include where and how best to engage patients across the device development and assessment lifecycle as well as how FDA and sponsors should communicate patient preference information to patients. The PEAC represents a new and exciting opportunity to foster patient partnerships with FDA, and it complements other efforts at FDA to bring the patient into the medical device regulatory process,” Hunter stated. Hunter also serves as a special assistant to Robert Califf, M.D., the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Medical Products and Tobacco.
According to the FDA announcement, the PEAC may consider topics such as agency guidance and policies, clinical trial or registry design, patient preference study design, benefit-risk determinations, device labeling, unmet clinical needs, patient reported outcomes and device-related quality of life or health status issues, and other patient-related topics.
The PEAC will provide relevant skills and perspectives, in order to improve communication of benefits, risks, clinical outcomes, and increase integration of patient perspectives into the regulatory process for medical devices, the FDA statement said. And, the PEAC will also provide advice and recommendations in areas such as identifying new approaches, promoting innovation, recognizing unforeseen risks or barriers and identifying unintended consequences that could result from FDA policy.
“We are entering an era of ‘patient-centered’ medicine in which patients and their care partners participate actively in decision-making and priority-setting about all aspects of health care,” Hunter wrote. “FDA believes that patients can and should bring their own experiences to bear in helping the Agency define meaningful benefits or unreasonable risks for certain new devices.”


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No one knows exactly what happened to 43 college students who disappeared in Mexico. Authorities believe the students were kidnapped, executed and dumped in a river. A mayor and his wife are behind bars and accused of playing a key role in the disappearance. Rosa Flores has new information on the couple's reported ties to violent drug cartels.
Violent clashes erupt as tensions flare over the disappearance of 43 college students in Mexico. Authorities believe the students were kidnapped, executed and dumped in a river. Police fired rubber bullets at protesters and they responded with fireworks, rocks, sticks and essentially anything they could get their hands on. Rosa Flores reports from Chilpancingo, Mexico.
Immigrants heading north through Mexico risk life and limb in hopes of crossing the border into the U.S. For many, the most dangerous part of the journey is a ride on the train that has been nicknamed both 'The Beast' and 'The Train of Death.' Gary Tuchman spoke to a mother who nearly lost an arm in an accident on 'The Beast' that cost her two-year-old son his leg.
Once immigrants reach the U.S., many are facing angry protests. In Oracle, Arizona, demonstrators made their voices heard after learning young undocumented immigrants would be making a local ranch their temporary home. Anderson discussed the volatile situation with Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.
Gary Tuchman is in Mexico, following the trail that many immigrants are taking from Central America to the United States. He met people who are ready to risk life and limb to ride on a dangerous train heading north. He also meets a six-day-old baby born during her mother's journey to reach the U.S. border.
Last night, Gary Tuchman reported from the Guatemalan border, where U.S. bound immigrants are paying $1.30 to take a rickety raft across a river into Mexico. The dangers don't end there. Gary is following the trail that countless immigrants are using to travel north through Mexico while putting their lives at risk in hopes of reaching America.
Gary mentioned the train that many immigrants use on this journey derailed. Karl Penhaul spent time on board and shows why it is nicknamed the train of death.
For some Guatemalan immigrants, the start of their journey to the U.S. begins with a dangerous ride on a zip line or a raft. They are risking their lives to escape their home country and cross the border into Mexico. Gary Tuchman got a first hand look when he visited a remote area of the Suchiate River along the Guatemala-Mexico border.
Gary sent back behind the scenes photos from his report:
There is no sign of a slowdown in the flood of undocumented children illegally entering the U.S. Some are traveling alone, others are with their parents. Gary Tuchman is in Arizona where he got a first hand look at the treatment they are receiving. Gary also visited the border fence to demonstrate how easy it is to get across.
David Brat says voters' concerns about immigration helped him beat Eric Cantor in their primary race. That victory comes as illegal border crossings are surging. More than 1,000 undocumented people are entering the U.S. through Texas everyday. About 400 of them are children traveling without a parent. Gary Tuchman reports from Arizona on why these children are making the journey and what happens when they get here.
He was Mexico's most wanted drug kingpin. Part of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's legend was his ability to elude the law. His time on the run ended over the weekend with a predawn raid. Brian Todd has the latest on how "El Chapo" ended up behind bars.
Even in hiding "El Chapo" inspired equal measures of fear and respect. Gary Tuchman visited his home turf in Mexico last year when there were rumors he had been killed. A warning, some of the images are graphic.
Anderson Cooper goes beyond the headlines to tell stories from many points of view, so you can make up your own mind about the news. Tune in weeknights at 8 and 10 ET on CNN.
Questions or comments? Send an email
Want to know more? Go behind the scenes with


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|To The Rescue!|
This big red engine scurries to its bidding, becoming a fast favorite among the little guys! The vibrant red color adds a lively spirit to any bedroom or playroom! Available in beveled edge, canvas wrap, or framed, this fun print is completely glass free and safe for curious fingers to touch! The surface is laminated for lasting protection and years of enjoyment!


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About our work
Throughout the world, those with low, irregular or uncertain incomes are generally excluded from formal financial services. Over 1.7 billion people worldwide are still financially excluded – women and the rural poor generally being the most affected.
In 2017, the ILCU Foundation continued the fight against poverty and the injustice of financial exclusion by empowering individuals and educating organisations to provide access to strong, secure and sustainable credit unions in some of the poorest countries in the world. In 2017, the ILCU Foundation supported the credit-union systems in The Gambia, Ethiopia, Albania, Russia, Sierra Leone, Ukraine and Moldova; however, the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia comprised the focus of our work.
A focus on poverty reduction is always core to the Foundation’s programme and partner selection processes. Bearing this in mind, the characteristics of this support included:
- Technical support and training – provided on a broad range of financial cooperative issues;
- Capacity building of financial cooperative movements, including apex organisations;
- Maximising aid effectiveness, through knowledge management, exchange programmes and the development of local capabilities to deliver technical expertise;
Thanks to the support of almost 200 credit unions in 2017 we have continued to share the success of the Irish credit union movement. Contributions towards the ILCU Foundation’s work from Irish credit unions equated to just over €635,000.
- Through our provision of financial and technical assistance we have supported 9 credit union movements to assist over 1,000 credit unions and 800,000 members
- In our core countries – Ethiopia, The Gambia and Sierra Leone - we have supported 476 credit unions and 142,501 members
- In 2017 for every €2 received in core funding from credit unions we leveraged almost €1 from government funding
What did we do?
- We continued the implementation of a three-year programme (2015-2018) co-funded by Irish Aid to support the credit union movements in Sierra Leone and The Gambia
- Graduation Microfinance (GMF) members received training in financial literacy
- We began implementation of a new donor funded project to undertake development of national and regional apex bodies in Ethiopia
- A social performance management (SPM) audit was conducted in The Gambia
- We produced a number of technical manuals and toolkits including a strategic planning toolkit, country diagnostic study toolkit, stabilisation technical note, PEARLS manual and market research toolkit
- We provided technical support to credit union movements in Albania, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine
- The first Volunteer Coaching Programme took place in Sierra Leone.
- We hosted a study visit delegation from Russia, Kazakhstan and Moldova
- We visited a number of credit unions to update them on our work
The ILCU Foundation and its partners would like to express gratitude and appreciation for this support; we are passionate about our work to reduce poverty and are committed to creating a financially-inclusive world. Thank you for your continued support, trust and encouragement.

domain: economics


DISCLAIMER: This article may include minor spoilers for those who have not seen the show before.
In 1997, MTV unleashed Daria on an unsuspecting world. Spun off from Beavis and Butt-Head, the show was one of the final things of quality ever shown on MTV.
Daria Morgendorffer, voiced by Tracy Grandstaff, began life as a supporting character on Beavis and Butt-Head, first created as an intelligent female foil to everyone’s favorite brainless dumbasses. These made for some of the best moments on the show, including Daria offering the twosome advice on growing a plant for class, having to explain the concept of “graduation” to the boys (they apparently did not know that school eventually ends), snapping humiliating photos of them for the school paper, and even asking brutally honest questions to the President of the United States.
Daria began airing on MTV in March of 1997, and the show ran on MTV for five seasons and two television movies, ending its run in early 2002. Reruns continued to air on the channel for years, and have also been seen on The N and Logo. Most recently, the show appeared on the newly launched MTV classic, but it has disappeared from the channel in more recent months. The show was released on DVD in 2010, eight years after its original run had ended, with legal issues regarding licensed music being cited as one of the reasons the release was held up for so long.
The basic plot of Daria begins with Daria and her family, comprised of bubbly, shallow fashion-obsessed sister Quinn, workaholic attorney mother Helen, and hyperactive, troubled consultant father Jake, all moving away from Highland to the new city of Lawndale. Upon arrival, the bubbly Quinn is immediately popular at school, becoming Vice President of the school’s Fashion Club, and gaining the attention of every boy in Lawndale High. The sarcastic, less social Daria is almost immediately an outcast, and is sentenced to a boring self-esteem class. While this seems like a bad experience for our young heroine, it ends up being a blessing in disguise, as she ends up meeting Jane Lane, an artist who is equally snarky, sarcastic, and fed up with the world. The two strike up a friendship and quickly become inseparable, in spite of their bleak outlook on, well, just about everything, with Daria visiting Jane, and the twosome indulging in Sick, Sad World, a ridiculous tabloid style television program, and visiting the local pizza restaurant.
Lawndale High’s faculty consists of Principal Angela Li, who seems more concerned with her own name and reputation than the welfare of her students, sensitive and kind-hearted English teacher Timothy O’Neill, traumatized and frustrated social studies teacher Anthony DeMartino, quirky and bubbly economics instructor Diane Bennet, down-to-earth art instructor Claire Defoe, and science teacher Janet Barch, who holds a grudge against all men following a nasty divorce.
The student body at Lawndale High includes an equally diverse group of student characters including the idiotic but popular jock and cheerleader couple Kevin Thompson and Brittany Taylor, model African-American student couple Jodie Landon and Michael “Mack” Mackenzie, shameless horndog Charles “Upchuck” Ruttheimer III, The “Three J’s,” three boys obsessed with winning over Quinn despite her lack of interest, mysterious goth chick Andrea (pronounced “awn-DRAY-uh”), and Quinn’s fellow Fashion Club members, including unsympathetic deep-voiced president Sandi Griffin, the timid Stacy Rowe, and the beautiful but brainless “yes man” Tiffany Blum-Deckler.
Other recurring characters on the show include Helen’s business partner Eric, with whom she has regular phone conversations, even in the middle of family dinners and when her daughters are in desperate need of advice, Jane’s brother Trent, who Daria has a not-so-secret crush on, and his struggling band, Mystik Spiral. A major change to the series comes in the form of romantic interest Tom Sloane, a prep school student who debuts in the third season finale. A number of tertiary characters make background appearances throughout the series but rarely play a major role, including extended family members of the main characters, the ultra-conservative Gupty family, UFO abductee Artie, and the morbidly obese hypoglycemic Mrs. Johanssen.
This was my first time going back and watching Daria in years, and just from those last three paragraphs, you can see just how daunting and large of a cast the show has (and this does not even cover all of the extended family members and one-off characters!) One of the greatest strengths of this show is the sheer diversity of its cast of characters, and how nearly everyone is utilized in a major role, typically on more than one occasion. Many of these personae evolve over the course of the series, and in many cases, they defy conventions and the stereotypes they represent. A great example of this is with Jodie and Mack, who initially may seem like “token” characters inserted to give the cast diversity, but they end up as some of the most intelligent and well-spoken cast members, with a number of the most interesting plotlines revolving around them. Any show can have a big cast, but Daria knows what it is doing, with so many of these persons juggled in effective, interesting plotlines. If you watch the series from start to finish, you will see the cast change over the show’s five-season run, from minor changes to full-blown transformations, with Daria’s sister Quinn being another great example, particularly in the later seasons.
Of course, no review is complete without giving credit to the namesake character. Daria herself is one of the most memorable sitcom heroines of recent decades, animated or otherwise. She is a deep, developed character, yet has a witty quip or one-liner for literally ANY situation. Her emotional range may seem one dimensional due to her speaking style, but over time, Daria herself is a far more interesting character than meets the eye. She must contend with workaholic parents that barely acknowledge her, a sister who refuses to let people know the two of them are related, and in later seasons, romantic drama, not to mention the fact that everyone writes her off as “depressed” and “unpopular.” As you watch the seasons, you will not only laugh at Daria’s endless quips, but find yourself sympathizing with her, and following her growth and maturing as a character. When is the last time you could say THAT about someone from an animated sitcom?
While Daria was spun-off from Beavis and Butt-Head, the two shows are worlds apart. Beavis and Butt-Head was about two dimwitted teenagers oblivious to the sheer hypocrisy of the world that was dangled right in front of them. Daria, on the other hand, knows what a sick, sad world (joke most definitely intended) it is, and spares no expense at letting the viewer know this. Perhaps the greatest irony is that in the years since the show ended, MTV transformed itself into the very shallow and mindless things Daria hated and spoke out against.
The tone of the show is another one of its greatest strengths. At times the show seems downright silly and off the wall, but like the characters themselves, there is more depth than meets the eye here. Later seasons in particular take on a more dramatic tone, yet still for the most part manage to retain the show’s signature sense of humor. At times, starting in the third season, the creators released more surreal episodes, ranging from an episode with “Holiday Spirits” as characters, to a “Musical” episode! While critical reception to those episodes was mixed, it did show that the crew was not afraid to take risks, and many of them pay off. I personally was surprised by how edgy a few of the episodes were, particularly in the more “dramatic” years. The show is never “explicit,” but it does touch on some ground you would not expect to find in an animated sitcom of all things. Regardless of who you are, if you are alive and a part of the modern world, some element of this show will hit close to home for you.
The show feels surprisingly undated and is still fresh and relevant, with the only real signs of datedness coming from the outdated technology used by the characters. They still have to go to a cyber café to use the Internet, cell phones are the older “brick” style, characters actually have and use beepers; etc. If this show was made today, you wouldn’t be able to get the Fashion Club off their smart phones! But if you can overlook those minor signs of technological datedness, you will love what you see, and be just as engrossed as you were back in 1997, if you caught the show the first time around.
The show primarily used a veteran voice cast and veered away from “guest stars,” though this rule was bent in the first of the two movies, “Is It Fall Yet?,” which featured one-off guest-voiced characters, including Dave Grohl as an egotistical artist, Bif Naked as a lesbian living in an art colony visited by Jane, and Carson Daly as a tutor. While I admire the show for staying away from using guest voices, these ones were surprisingly well done. Daly’s tutor character scores major points for being one of the few teenage males on the show to not become obsessed with Quinn, and in fact speaks his mind in a very blunt moment. Once again, it goes to show just how strong a cast and crew the series had.
Daria was released on DVD in 2010, however the DVD release removes the licensed music the show used due to the stratospheric costs associated with retaining popular music for home video releases (although Splendora’s theme music and the songs they did for the TV movies are intact). The “generic” music in its place actually tends to mimic the actual songs that were used on the show, so they at least handled it in a tasteful manner, and it rarely detracts from the experience. Audio and video quality show their limitations (this is a standard definition show from the 90s!) though the later seasons actually look quite good. Some bonus features are included on the DVD set, including interviews with cast and crew, and the “Daria Day” intros for episodes when they were shown in a marathon on MTV (not every episode has one of these). The set can be had for a relatively low price from online retailers, and it includes every episode and both movies, so it is a worthy investment.
I am celebrating 20 years of Daria, and the show is just as enjoyable and fresh now as it was when it hit the airwaves in 1997. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll fall in love with the Misery Chick and the cast of characters all over again. Some elements, namely the technologies used on the show, show their age, but as a whole, Daria is well worth rediscovering, or discovering for the first time.


Young couple commits suicide in UP
Kaushambi (UP): A young couple allegedly committed suicide by jumping before a moving train after being upset by their families, police said on Wednesday.
The couple belonged to the same caste, which was not acceptable to their families, they said.
On Tuesday night, they left their respective homes in
Mujahidpur village and their bodies were found from the railway tracks at the Mardhara crossing in Kokhraj on Wednesday morning, police said.
The police have sent the bodies for post-mortem.


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Information about COVID-19 in Manitoba is updated weekdays at 12:30 p.m. on these DataMB dashboards:
Based on provincial data, public health officials are highlighting the following trends for the week ending Jan. 6:
Public health officials advise four new deaths in people with COVID-19 are being reported today:
Outbreaks have been declared at:
Outbreaks have been declared over at:
The Manitoba government is also providing an update on ongoing enforcement efforts to protect Manitobans from the spread of COVID-19. A total of 31 warnings and 33 tickets were issued for the week of Jan. 3 to 9 including:
Manitobans are urged to continue reporting compliance and enforcement issues by visiting www.manitoba.ca/COVID19 and completing the reporting form or by calling 204-945-3744 or (toll-free) 1-866-626-4862 and pressing option three on the call menu. Updated enforcement statistics are posted online weekly at:
Tickets issued by health region include:
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization recently examined the interval between first and second doses for children ages five to 11 to determine if a shorter interval would provide more protection against the virus, particularly with rising Omicron cases.
NACI determined that eight weeks was still the recommended interval. Manitoba’s Pediatric Vaccine Advisory Committee also re-assessed this recommendation and re-affirmed its guidance of eight weeks between first and second doses. Public health has also maintained this recommendation.
Provincial clinics, doctor’s offices, pharmacies, community clinics and public health will continue to reiterate this recommendation. However, in some circumstances it may be possible to shorten the duration between first and second doses for this age group to a minimum of 21 days.
Parents are encouraged to discuss their concerns with a health professional before arriving for their appointment. Clinic staff will discuss individual circumstances to determine next steps for those who request an early second dose.
As of today, a total of 63,247 first doses have been given to children ages five to 11, or 50.6 per cent of that age group.
There is currently a limited supply of the Pfizer vaccine. All adults ages 30 years or older will be offered the Moderna vaccine for their first, second or third dose. This will help ensure enough Pfizer remains available for people ages 12 to 29. People under 30 receiving an mRNA vaccine may face an increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis as a rare side effect. While this is rare after Moderna, it is even more rare after Pfizer. These side effects are rare, temporary, mild and treatable. This means that if only Moderna is available to a young person, it is still safer for them to get the Moderna vaccine than to take the risk of a COVID infection. When both vaccines are available, Manitoba wants to ensure young people are offered the option that has the lowest risk of myocarditis. People over the age of 30 did not experience the same increased risk of these side effects, regardless of which vaccine they received.
When attending a vaccine appointment, people are reminded to bring their completed consent form (available online at https://protectmb.ca ), wear a short-sleeved shirt, wear a well-fitting mask and bring their health card or other form of identification. To help support good physical distancing on site, people should arrive no more than 15 minutes before their scheduled appointment time.
Manitobans are encouraged to get their second and third doses as quickly as possible. While COVID-19 vaccine appointments continue to be available at regional or provincial vaccine clinics, for many people the fastest way to be immunized is at a nearby medical clinic, pharmacy or urban Indigenous clinic. Check the online vaccine finder or a medical clinic or pharmacy near you that provides the COVID-19 vaccine to find the next available opportunity to be immunized. The timeline between second and third doses and eligibility criteria information can be found at:
Eligible individuals can book their appointments online, by calling (toll-free) 1-844-626-8222 (1-844-MAN-VACC) or by contacting their local pharmacy or medical clinic directly. Visit www.gov.mb.ca/covid19/vaccine/finder.html for some of the available options.
Up-to-date information on COVID-19 in Manitoba: www.manitoba.ca/COVID19


Tammy Abraham’s maiden goal for England will be the “first of many” for the Chelsea striker, Gary Lineker has predicted.
Abraham came off the bench to score his first goal for England during last night’s 7-0 thrashing of Montenegro.
The Three Lions secured their qualification for next summer’s Euro 2020 finals with ease as Tottenham’s Harry Kane scored a hat-trick at Wembley.
Abraham came on as a second half substitute for the England skipper – who overtook Alan Shearer to sit fifth on the all-time England goals list on 31 – and marked his fourth appearance for the national team in style.
The 22-year-old latched on to Jadon Sancho’s ball across the face of goal to tuck away his first England strike.
And the Chelsea striker was congratulated by Lineker, who sits third on the all-time leading scorers’ list, and expects big things from Abraham.
He tweeted: "Congratulations to @tammyabraham on his first @England goal. Always a truly special moment. First of many for his country, I suspect."
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain opened the scoring on his return for England, with Marcus Rashford also on the scoresheet as the Three Lions ran riot in the first half at Wembley.
And Lineker was also full of praise for Gareth Southgate’s youthful side – England’s youngest in 60 years – and backed them to have a say in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
He posted: "Well played @England. This side is progressing nicely and given the number of talented young players we now have, they’ll only get better. Euros may came a tad early, but 2022 onwards, they’ll be hugely competitive."


Ultraseal International, the global leader in solutions to the eternal problem of porosity in cast metal parts, has scooped Exporter of the Year award in the Midlands Business Awards 2014.
The Coventry-based company has led the field for decades with its vacuum impregnation equipment and porosity sealants that provide a reliable and permanent solution to casting porosity.
With its headquarters and Research and Development based firmly in the UK, Ultraseal International has had to adapt over the years as many of its customers in the automotive supply have relocated overseas as the automotive industry has increasingly become more globalised.
Whilst Ultraseal International has always been a keen exporter, in the past its strongest market share has traditionally been in the domestic automotive markets, today the opposite is true: it exports over 95% of its products and maintains a world-wide support network.
Managing Director Gary Lloyd picked up the award – an Oscars-style statuette – at a glittering gala evening at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole hotel near the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham.
Mr Lloyd said afterwards: “I feel very proud of the team’s performance, pride, passion and effort in making Ultraseal such a successful exporter that has led to this marvellous recognition for Ultraseal International at the Midlands Business Awards.
“I would like to congratulate everyone in the company for all of the daily contributions that have resulted in this fantastic and well-deserved achievement of being named Midlands Exporter of the Year.”
He gave special thanks to the directors at Norman Hay plc, Ultraseal International’s parent company, for supporting and encouraging the company with its plans for further export expansion.
Vic Bellanti, Chief Executive of Norman Hay plc, said: “I am delighted that Ultraseal International was named Midlands Exporter of the Year at the Midlands Business Awards 2014.
“It is testament to all the hard work, enterprise and ingenuity that Ultraseal International has shown in bringing its world-beating products to a truly global marketplace.”
Over the years Ultraseal International has pioneered many breakthroughs in impregnation equipment design and sealant technology: it was first to market with modern, methacrylate-based, thermocure sealants and first to market with recycling sealants that use less water, less chemical and produce less wastewater, such as its global benchmark recycling sealant Rexeal 100™.
Casting porosity is, essentially, microscopic holes that form in a cast metal part during the casting process. These lead to a host of problems, the most serious of which is forming leak paths in cast metal parts that have to remain pressure-tight, thus causing them to fail.
Ultraseal International has joint ventures in China and India, an operation in the United States, based in Ann Arbor, MI, an office in Japan, and a global network of 22 agents/distributors around the world.
For further information visit Ultraseal’s website


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$45.99 - $49.99
As we have visited dealers throughout the world we have heard a common theme, customers want an option for a thicker bar tape! 89 inch rolls and 78 grams per set. (including plugs) The 3.2 mm thickness DSP tape is the thickest version in the DSP line. DSP (Durasoft Polymer) features increased shock absorption and a tacky feel in dry or wet conditions.
Wolf Tooth Supple handlebar tape is extra-thick, extra-wide, extra-soft, and extra-tacky. Designed for the abuse of unforgiving trails, the 40mm wide tape can be tuned for additional thickness by wrapping with increased overlap. - 5mm thick, 100% silicone is washable, resistant to wear and packing out - Self-fusing silicone finishing tape included for a clean finishing touch
Our thickest bar tape is ideal for your next double century, gravel grinder or cyclocross race. Discover why our Pro Tour teams spec this tape for the Spring Classics.
$41.99 - $45.99
- 2.5mm thick DuraSoft Polymer (DSP) - Micro-chevron grip pattern for superior comfort, feel and control - Ultra lightweight at 56 grams per set (82 inch length per roll) - Includes plugs and finishing strips - Dual color option: primary color transition at 33 inches
$43.99 - $45.99
Balance is the key to optimum performance in a stage race. Experience the perfect blend of grip and comfort that teams AG2R La Mondiale Pro Cycling Team, Lotto Soudal and Movistar Team use to win in the pro peloton.
CONFIDENCE UPGRADE Designed for performance road riders. The all-new Stratus Lite bar tape provides impressive comfort and superior grip thanks to the omnidirectional surface coding. At 70g, Stratus Lite is one-third lighter than the original version, and it’s easier to wrap and replace thanks to the new adhesive backing. FEATURES: - High-friction PU material with omnidirectional texture design offer superior anti-slip and hand feel - Ultralightweight, 33% lighter than previous Stratus - Unique gel adhesive backing is washable and reusable and provides easier wrapping - Length (2160mm), Width (30mm), Thickness (3mm) - Weight: 73g
PDW Wraps with Silicone Grip take our much loved PDW Wraps to a whole new level of comfort! Like no other handlebar tape before, the PDW Wraps with Silicone Grip are constructed of durable tightly woven nylon, with added strips of clear silicone to provide superior grip and comfort. The woven nylon and silicone grip is layered over cush foam with a self-adhesive backing. The PDW Wraps With Silicone Grip make sure that both the style and comfort of your ride are decked out to the max!
- High friction Polyurethane material with OMNI direction texture design offers superior anti-slip properties and hand feel - Ultra-lightweight material with a high-density foam backing reduces weight by 33% over Giant Stratus tape - Unique backing adhesive leaves no residue to make tape changes easy - 2mm thickness
- Ultralight EVA foam backing. - Shock-proof foam. - 2.5mm thick.
- High-friction silicone coating offers extra anti-slip and hand feel in wet condition. - Ultralight EVA foam backing. - Shock proof foam with water wave pattern. - 2.5mm thick.
- High-friction silicone coating offers extra anti-slip and hand feel in wet condition - Ultra-light EVA foam backing - Shock proof foam with water wave pattern - Includes bar end plugs and finishing tape
Fizik's Performance Bar Tape is made of Microtex, a perforated synthetic leather that's smooth and grippy, even when wet. High density foam padding keeps your hands comfortable on long rides and stitching details keep your bar tape looking sharp.
Pro's Microfiber Smart Silicon Handlebar Tape is soft to the touch for top comfort. It's made of synthetic leather with perforations for an excellent grip and top control even in the wet. This fine tape has an adhesive backing for easy wrapping and a stay-put hold and it's made to last.
- PU and microfiber material - Extra grippy for all conditions - Smart silicone adhesive back (easy to replace) - Thickness: 2.5mm
- High-friction PU surface improves grip and reduces slipping - Microfiber backing provides a smooth, comfortable feel - Embossed tulip pattern looks powerful and improves overall grip - 3.0mm thick
$21.99 - $24.99
- Special Micro-cellular structured tape material with perforations for breathability, comfort, and less weight - High Elastic modulus Provides vibration-damping and comfort - White printed logo throughout tape length and self-adhesive backing - Plastic end plugs and finishing strips included
Make every ride more fun and comfortable with Fizik's Bar Gel. It's placed beneath your handlebar tape (sold separately) to add excellent padding and protection. And, it's made from the same soft Technogel that's used in Fizik saddles, so you know this cut-to-fit Bar Gel will add a world of comfort.
Giant's Gel Cork Handlebar Tape features gel padding for top-notch comfort. It provides a great grip even when wet because it becomes slightly tacky. And, the wide array of bright colors allow you to easily customize your bike. Two rolls and plugs are included in each package.
$11.50 - $23.00 $23.00 On Sale
- High-friction PU surface improves grip and reduces slipping - Microfiber backing provides a smooth, comfortable feel - Embossed tulip pattern looks powerful and improves overall grip - 2.0mm thick
Durable, stretch-resistant and super-comfortable on your hands, Fizik's Soft Touch Bar Tape is the choice of discerning cyclists everywhere. It's made of Microtex, a perforated synthetic-leather-like material that's smooth and grippy, even when wet. Plus, the soft, felt-like outer feels great all-ride long.
$20.00 - $21.00
• Half perforated surface • EVA integrated absorbs shock and increases comfort • Durable all-conditions perforated surface for ventilation • Thickness: 2.3mm • Includes Liv end-plugs and finishing tape
• Embossed with Liv logo • Non-slip PU surface • Anti-vibration EVA foam base absorbs shock and increases comfort • Includes Liv end-plugs and finishing tape • 2.5mm thick
Wrap your handlebars in comfort, luxury and style with Salsa's Gel Cork Tape. It's made from cork with a vibration-damping gel backing and is embossed with the Salsa logo. And, with a variety of palette-pleasing colors to choose from, you're sure to find your favorite one!
• Washable surface • EVA integrated absorbs shock and increase comfort • Durable all conditions perforated surface for ventilation. • Includes Giant logo end-plugs and Giant finishing tape
Pro's Smart Silicon Handlebar Tape is soft to the touch for top comfort. Plus, it's made of EVA foam for an excellent grip and total control even in the wet. This great tape is also durable and features adhesive backing for easy wrapping and a stay-put hold.
Give your bike some personality and a super comfy ride with Profile Bar Wrap. The gel cushion damps vibration better and leaves you fresh so you can go longer. It comes in many colors for customizing your ride. And, with extra stretch and length, it's easy to install, too.
Add a dash of traditional aesthetic to your ride with the synthetic leather Ritchey Classic bar tape. - Material: soft and supple premium quality synthetic leather - Thickness: 2.8mm - Length: 200cm - Weight: 100g
• Anti-vibration gel absorbs shock for increased comfort • Includes Giant logo end-plugs and Giant finishing tape
$12.99 - $14.99
Traditional EVA tape looks great on the bike and feels comfortable on the hands no matter how long the ride. EVA tape is flexible and comes with an adhesive backing so it wraps well and stays put during and after installation. - EVA vibration-damping foam increases grip and comfort - Adhesive backing for perfect bar placement - 78 inches (200cm) per roll - Finishing strips and bar end plugs included
Pretty much everyone has lost the plugs from drop bar bikes. It's obnoxious. These plugs, however, have two elastomers that expand when tightened, keeping them secure within the bar. - Fit bars with 18-20mm inner diameters - Installs with a 3mm hex wrench - Outer diameter of plug measures: 25mm
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