Unique edition of 99 units
Movement Automatic mechanical, P.9000 calibre, executed entirely by Panerai, 13¾ lignes, 7.9 mm thick, 28 jewels, Glucydur® balance, 28,800 alternations/hour. Incabloc® anti-shock device. Power reserve 3 days, two barrels. 197 components.
Functions Hours, Minutes, Small Seconds, Date
Case Diameter 44mm, AISI 316L stainless steel
Back See-through sapphire crystal
Device protecting the crown (Protected as a trademark) Brushed Steel
Dial Grey with hour markers and Arabic numerals at 6 o'clock and 12 o’clock. Seconds at 9 o’clock, date at 3 o’clock.
Crystal Sapphire crystal formed of corundum
Water Resistance 10 bar (~100 metres)
Strap Calf, Gold, Tone on tone, 24/22 MM Standard
* The trademark Velcro® and Coramid® are not property of Officine Panerai.
* The trademark Velcro® and Coramid® are not property of Officine Panerai.
From the meeting between two ancient and far distant traditions comes the Luminor 1950 Sealand 3 Days Automatic Acciaio – 44mm (PAM00850), the Special Edition made in only 99 units on the occasion of the Year of the Monkey, part of the series created by Officine Panerai in honour of the signs of the Chinese Zodiac. In the Chinese Zodiac, the Monkey symbolises virtues such as intelligence, eloquence and talent. Those born under the sign of the Monkey have a strong and clever personality but they are also honest and charitable. The Luminor 1950 Sealand has a remarkable engraving on the steel cover of the dial, the subject being the Monkey. While the subject and style of the engraving are a tribute to ancient Chinese astrological tradition, the sophisticated technique used is the creation of highly skilled Italian craftsmen who make each individual cover entirely by hand, producing examples that are truly fascinating. The steel is first of all engraved with a special tool called a “sparsello”. Then threads of gold are inlaid in the grooves made in the steel; these are laid in multiple parallel layers and beaten until they completely fill the engraved outlines, thus embellishing the image of the monkey. The case with the engraving of the monkey, on the inside of which is a little mirror, conceals a minimalist grey dial with a small seconds counter at 9 o’clock and a date window at 3 o’clock. The cover is fitted to a Luminor 1950 case (diameter 44 mm), which is made entirely of AISI 316L stainless steel with a brushed finish, as is the lever device which protects the winding crown. The watch has a Panerai in-house calibre: the automatic P.9000 calibre, with a power reserve of 3 days, an oscillating weight which rotates in both directions and the device for rapid setting of the time which also automatically changes the date. The Luminor 1950 Sealand 3 Days Automatic Acciaio – 44mm (PAM00850), available exclusively in Panerai boutiques throughout the world, is water-resistant to 10 bar (a depth of about 100 metres) and it is supplied with a strap of soft brown leather, a spare strap, a screwdriver to replace and the special tool for interchangeability.
AISI 316L 1.4435 stainless steel is Officine Panerai’s material par excellence since it is highly resistant to corrosion and is hypoallergenic, making it ideal for contact with the skin.
The Panerai watches created for the Italian Navy were made of austenitic stainless steel, a reliable material that was also resistant to the extreme environmental conditions in which the commandos operated. AISI 316L, a specification of the American Iron and Steel Institute, is an austenitic stainless steel alloy with a chromium content of 16–18%, 11–14% nickel and 2–3% molybdenum.
Officine Panerai uses the low-carbon variant of this alloy: the lower carbon content of the steel improves its welding qualities where the metal’s thickness is 6mm or less. The excellent technical qualities of this material make it an essential element of every new Officine Panerai collection.
Panerai watches are produced to very high standards of quality. It is worth remembering that the mechanical parts run 24 hours a day when used, so the watch must undergo regular maintenance to ensure long life and good operation.
Have watch checked periodically for water-resistance by an Authorized Panerai Service Centre and renovate it every two years with regular servicing, or whenever the watch has to be opened. The restoration of water-resistance necessarily involves replacing the seals in order to ensure the maximum water resistance and protection. Where the watch is used in underwater sports activities, it is recommended that it should be checked every year before the underwater activities begin.
Have the movement of watch checked periodically by an Authorized Panerai Service Centre in order to preserve its perfect operation. If the watch has a tendency to gain or lose time to a significant degree, the movement may need to be overhauled. The movements are designed to withstand temperature variations between -10°C and +60°C (14°F and 140°F). Outside this range of temperatures, operational variations exceeding those set out in the specifications of the movement may be noticed. In addition, there is a risk that the lubricants contained in the movement may deteriorate, resulting in damage to some of its parts.
CLEANING THE EXTERIOR
To keep the exterior in perfect condition, we recommend washing Panerai watch with soap and warm water, using a soft brush. After this operation, and also after immersion in the sea or a swimming pool, carefully rinse the watch with fresh water. All Panerai watches can be cleaned with a soft, dry cloth.
Panerai straps must be washed in warm water and left to dry. It is important not to dry them on a hot surface or expose them to direct sunlight, because the rapid evaporation of the water could damage their shape and quality. After each immersion in the sea or a swimming pool, carefully rinse the strap with fresh water. It is recommended that the strap and the buckle should be replaced by an Authorized Distributor or a Panerai Service Centre, in order to avoid any problems caused by incorrect replacement. Only an Authorized Distributor or Panerai Service Centre can guarantee the use of genuine Panerai straps, properly designed to fit the dimensions of the case and manufactured according to the quality standards of the brand. All alligator leather used by Officine Panerai comes from farms in Louisiana, USA. Officine Panerai’s suppliers have committed to the highest standard of responsibility and have given their assurance that such farms in Louisiana contribute to the stable growth of wild alligators, thus protecting this endangered species. Panerai does not use leather coming from endangered species taken from the wild.
The P.9000 calibre, created entirely by Officine Panerai and used in a series of Luminor 1950 and Radiomir models, is fitted with various functions: it is an automatic calibre with a 3-day power reserve and a unique technical design which makes these movements immediately recognizable. The calibre has a diameter of 13¾ lignes and numerous features: two barrels which guarantee 72 hours of power reserve; a single piece rotor which winds by moving in both directions thanks to an automatic ratchet device; a balance wheel with adjusting screws, oscillating at a frequency of 4 Hz. To house this movement, a specially made version of the Luminor 1950 case has been designed, keeping the proportions of the original but featuring a slightly less convex sapphire crystal which only barely protrudes from the bezel.
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She has played great roles in TV shows and movies and this has boosted her fan base every time.
She played the role of Lolly Allen in a popular TV series called Neighbours in the year 2007.
Adelaide Kane was born in the year 1990 on 9th of August and this makes her 24 years old at this moment.
Interested readers can read more about her and her interesting biography from wiki sites like Wikipedia and IMDb.Although she recently broke up with Toby Regbo, gorgeous star is dating new boyfriend. Kane was dating fellow Reign star, Toby Regbo who is starring there as King Francis.This makes them one of many celebrity couples who met on the set.She has been very successful in her career and it has always boosted her net worth.
According to some sources she is currently dating her boyfriend Toby Regbo and their alleged affair has been one of the hottest topics of the town.
Adelaide Kane is famous for her leading role as Mary, Queen of Scots in the drama TV series Reign, which is created by CW.


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Rian Johnson Will Start Shooting His Original STAR WARS Trilogy This Year in Scotland
We don't really know what director Rian Johnson is planning for his original Star Wars trilogy. Hell, the last we heard he sais he wasn't even sure what he wanted to do with it. He must have an idea, though, because according to a Scottish news website, he will start shooting the film in June of this year in Argyll, Scotland and other surrounding areas off a major road named Rest And Be Thankful. A source told the site:
"As is now customary with any Star Wars production, the movie is shrouded in secrecy but they want to shoot scenes around the Rest and Be Thankful. Further filming has been pencilled in for elsewhere in the country."
All we know about the trilogy at this point is that it will be completely "separate from the episodic Skywalker saga" and Johnson will introduce new characters from a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never visited. It's also been confirmed that will not include anything from Knights of the Old Republic.
When talking about the film and his excitement for it Johnson said:
"I’m in the very beginning phases of coming up with it so right now the sky is kind of the limit. The appeal of it to me is to do a new story told over three movies, to have that kind of canvas, to be in the Star Wars world and to have the feel of a Star Wars film. Let’s tell one story over three movies, where we go to new places and meet new people. It’s a brand new story that feels like a great Star Wars story."
After seeing what Johnson did with The Last Jedi, I'm excited to see what he ends up doing with this new trilogy. I know not everyone is as excited as I am about that, but I love the fact that we are going to get a completely original Star Wars story. I can't wait to see what Johnson ends up giving us!

domain: artistic


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Having undesirable fat in numerous areas of your body can have a substantial influence on your health and self-esteem. While conventional weight loss through workout and diet plan is a terrific method to lose weight overall, even the very best exercises can't target problem areas like the stomach, inner thighs, arms, and butts. Liposuction is a time checked treatment that is utilized to eliminate excess fat from particular areas of the body, allowing an individual to shape and contour their body to their taste. Is liposuction right for you? Find out now.
Pros of Liposuction
There are numerous benefits to this cosmetic treatment, including:
• Right away obvious changes. Unlike standard weight loss, liposuction produces modifications that are right away visible in the body. Some difference is obvious immediately, and the wanted results are generally achieved in simply a couple of days.
• Proven and safe. This cosmetic treatment has actually been performed by experienced cosmetic surgeons all over the world for several years and the method has been refined over and again to be safe and reliable.
• Recovery time is normally quickly. The downtime needed after having this kind of procedure is usually much less than exactly what is required for other kinds of cosmetic treatments, including abdominoplasty, breast reduction, and more. Individuals who have had the treatment can often return to work a lot more quickly than they expected and can return to living a healthy, active way of life.
• Weight loss can be long-term. With the best upkeep methods, the fat that was removed during the liposuction procedure will not return.
• Complete control over your body. With liposuction, an individual can have complete control over how they wish to look, beyond exactly what conventional diet and workout can provide. Offering people this power over their bodies enhances self-esteem and aid people feel their very best.
While there are numerous advantages to liposuction, there are obviously a few cautions that should be taken into consideration before making the final decision to move forward with the treatment.
Cons of Liposuction
Before having actually liposuction done, it is essential to examine the possible drawbacks of the treatment and determine if the advantages exceed the dangers in your certain case. Your specialist can help you learn more about the dangers related to the procedure and can assist you choose if moving forward is the ideal thing for you.
• Complications with basic anesthesia. Due to the fact that liposuction is performed under general anesthesia, the treatment carries the very same threats as other type of surgical treatment where general anesthesia is used. Hidden medical conditions may enhance these dangers.
• Negative reactions. Bruising, bleeding, and pain are all to be anticipated, nevertheless, in unusual cases can cause more considerable problems.
• The possible to acquire the weight back. After having actually liposuction done, it is crucial to keep a healthy diet and workout correctly as suggested by your physician. Failure to do so could lead to gaining back the weight that was lost or perhaps much more.
Although there are threats associated with liposuction, for many people, the advantages far outweigh them. Educate yourself about the procedure by having extensive conversations with your specialist and think about how liposuction has the prospective to affect you as a distinct individual. Just you and your cosmetic surgeon can identify if liposuction will supply you with the results you are searching for within your expectations.
Laser Liposuction procedure is a new non invasive procedure to loose unwanted bodyfat in Louise MS
Laser liposuction is a more recent, minimally invasive procedure that involves heating the fat cells to melting point and getting rid of the melted fat through a little cannula. The procedure is typically done right in your doctor's office and is an excellent option for individuals who have less than 500 ml of fat to eliminate from any one location. Laser liposuction can be a safe, complementary procedure to weight-loss in order to sculpt the body you've constantly desired.
Contact a Specialist in your Louise MS today.
If you're thinking about liposuction as a weight reduction solution, it is very important that you discuss your desires with a qualified cosmetic surgeon in your area. Your specialist will perform a total examination and health history survey to determine if liposuction can benefit you and assist you reach your physical and psychological goals. Call today for an assessment and find out more about how liposuction can help you attain the body of your dreams.

domain: medical


Unsung heroes of Puketāpapa
Puketāpapa’s superheroes swung into swift action amid Auckland’s wild weather.
Wading through it together at Riverside
At the Riverside Community Centre shelter, local volunteers and council staff helped provide a safe space and assistance during the cyclone.
Local board welcomes new member following by-election
Results from the Aotea/Great Barrier Local Board by-election confirm Laura Caine as the newest member elected to the board.
More funds found for critical projects
Extra funding has been allocated to advance projects at two popular Howick Local Board local sites.
Masterplan for Centre Park put in place
A masterplan to guide development of Centre Park in Māngere has been adopted.
Local grant helps charity glam up the guys
Fix Up Look Sharp is an Onehunga-based charity that provides free styling service for male-identified people looking to sharpen up their appearance for that all-important job interview or meeting.
Boards call for civics education in schools
Poor voter turnout at elections is a concern for local bodies in the south.
Report leaves board committed to greater understanding of Māori issues in Manurewa
A detailed report into Auckland Council’s outcomes for Māori has seen Manurewa Local Board call for a workshop to better understand the issues involved.
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Artificial intelligence companies are sprouting all over the world. With rapid advancements ranging from virtual assistants to fraud detection, AI has come a long way recently. Almost every organization, whether it is fashion, banking or retail, is using AI in a way possible to innovate and make their services better.
Technology giants like Apple, Google, Intel, Samsung and Salesforce are competing in the race to acquire private AI companies. More than 200 small companies using AI algorithms across different verticals have been acquired since 2012, with over 30 acquisitions taking place in the first quarter of 2017 alone.
The need for artificial intelligence, and these kind of acquisitions and fundings by larger tech companies have really fueled up the AI startup growth. Today, we are listing the unicorns of those artificial intelligence startups that have the potential to change the future for better.
Table of Contents
19. Mad Street Den
Headquartered in California and Chennai, Mad Street Den is reimagining the future of retail. The company is teaching machines to observe and understand the world around them, and identify objects, people and their style preferences to learn customer’s likes and dislikes.
The company has raised over $1.5 million in funding. With its team of Neuroscientists, deep learning and data science experts from Stanford and MSFT labs, it has been serving customers across the UK, US, and India.
Sigtuple is building an AI platform named Manthana that helps you analyze visual medical data efficiently. Their primary focus is on medical image analysis – radiology, pathology, ophthalmology for detection of abnormalities and diseases. The aim is to automate the manual inspection of visual data for diagnosis, which will result in improved accuracy of diagnosis and healthcare delivery.
Sigtuple has raised around $6 million from 12 investors, including the founders of Flipkart, Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, and venture capital giant Accel Partners.
Sensely helps patients interact with clinicians in real time from the comfort of their own homes. It provides a video game-like environment with nurse avatar, speech and body recognition. This virtual medical assistant is equipped with a set of remote diagnostic tools to facilitate the assessment of a patient’s condition and provide insights for follow up.
Sensely has raised over $11 million from 12 investors. They are now focusing on integrating artificial intelligence from MindMelds, Affectiva, Beyond Verbal and others to make its platform not only respond to patient’s symptoms and behavior, but also to their mood.
Casetext is especially designed for lawyers that allows them better serve clients via advanced information services, backed by expert analysis from the legal community. All you need to do is drop a brief into CARA’s secure system, and its AI and machine learning technology will research entire database of U.S law and surfacing relevant case law in milliseconds.
Casetext has now become one of the leading source of legal information and has raised over $20 million in funding. They have crossed over one million users per month who access Casetext’s library of state and federal law, and hundreds of law firms, nonprofit and in-house law department.
6Sense helps companies like Cisco and HP predict sales. Their aim is to empower sales and marketing teams with complete visibility into buyers – who they are, needs and timing. They use their private network of billions of time-sensitive intent interaction to predict who is in the market to buy, what they will buy, what products, and where they are in the buyer’s journey.
The San Fransisco company has raised over $40 million from 6 investors, in the top right corner of its Predictive Modelers quadrant. In January 2016, they announced 300 percent growth in annual recurring revenue. Same year, the company received a patent protecting machine learning method to predict B2B sales.
Mintigo’s predictive marketing platform gathers millions of data points on thousands of companies – information like staff and hiring trends, financials, technologies installed, purchase intent and marketing channels used. By combining the power of big data and predictive analytics, sales team can figure out ideal prospects, personalize content for lead nurturing and provide insights that shorten the sales cycle.
Mintigo’s cloud based APIs offer direct integrations with marketing automation and CRM systems like Marketo, Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle. Till now, the company has raised a total of $34 million from 4 investors.
While smart virtual assistants like Google Now, Siri, Cortana and Echo continue to get more useful and reliable, there is a parallel wave of development underway that has captured the public attention, where artificial intelligence, machine learning and language processing are getting corralled.
The New-York based startup named X.ai has designed a bot that helps user to arrange meetings with other people by way of virtual assistant. It has raised over $34 million from 11 investors across the world. They are not revealing details of its valuation, but reliable sources say it is now around $100 million.
CrowdFlower is kind of necessary human-in-the-loop platform for data science teams. It is focused on creating useful data by helping teams gather, clean and label their data at scale. The platform combines human-labelled training data, easy to deploy models, and human-in-the-loop workflows to help companies create value from their unstructured data.
Headquartered in San Francisco and backed by Trinity Ventures, Canvas Venture Fund, and Microsoft Ventures, CrowdFlower has raised over $38 million in funding from 20 investors. It serves data science teams at Fortune 500 and fast evolving data-driven organizations across a wide range of industries.
Arria is an artificial intelligence software that extracts information from complex data sources and communicate that information in natural language. The platform is configured for a wide range of client requirements, and offers its technology as pre-packaged SaaS products and SDK.
The company went public in December 2013, and has raised a total equity funding of $40.27 million. Arria has a partnership with IBM Watson (incorporate compliance insights into data-driven reporting), and Genpact whose lean digital products help companies automate finance operations.
10. Leap Motion
Leap motion is developing 3d motion control technology for virtual reality and other platforms. Its unusual hand tracking deviceallows you to reach into virtual and augmented reality to interact with the new world. Using three infrared LEDs and two monochromatic IR cameras, the device observes 1 meter of hemispherical area.
The company initially distributed thousands of units to developers who are interested in developing apps for the device. In February 2016, they released a major beta update to its core software, which is designed for hand tracking. Till now, Leap Motion has raised over $44 million from 9 investors.
Persado is a cognitive content platform that generates the precise combination of phrases and images that inspires action. It eliminates the random process behind traditionalmessagegeneration . The platform has “smart content” that increases the efficacy of communication with any audience at scale, while providing unique insight into the specific triggers that drive action.
Persado has raised a total equity funding of $66 million from 5 investors. American Express, Microsoft, Verizon, Marcus and other leading brands have realized $1 billion in incremental revenue and an average uplift of 49 percent in conversions across marketing campaigns.
Vicarious is using the theorized computational principles of the brain to build software that can think and learn like a human brain. The company is focused on visual perception problems, like segmentation, recognition and scene parsing. Its underlying framework combines advantages of generative probabilistic models and deep architectures.
The company has raised over $70 million in funding from Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Ashton Kutcher and giant companies like Samsung and Wipro.
Quid is an AI platform that searches, analyzes and visualizes the collective intelligence to help answer strategic questions. It ingests the opinions and ideas expressed in written language to discover patterns across a billion documents. The quid visualization tool makes data easy to interpret – you can manipulate, explore and interact with data the way you want.
The San Francisco based startup has managed to raise over $70 million in funding. It is currently utilized by corporate strategy and development, tech firms, innovative groups and other rapidly transforming industries like defense, chemical, energy and automotive.
Banjo analyzes data about events and breaking news in real time. The company started as a social discovery application, and today it has evolved into something quite different. News organizations like Fox, BBC and NBC use Banjo to power live social content on their network to break news before they gather traction on Facebook or Twitter. Banjo’s insights could also be used to aid emergency responders and improve driving conditions.
The company has raised a total equity funding of $121 million from 6 investors. They announced that they will use some of its new capital to hire more engineers and data scientists.
InsideSales.com has raised a total of $201 million in funding in order to create Neuralytics, the “sales acceleration platform” backed by artificial intelligence. Using the knowledge base of over 100 billion sales transactions, Neuralytics can tell you when people are most likely to answer their calls which can increase contact rates by over 300 percent. No surprise, both Salesforce.com and Microsoft are investors.
Their website claims that they help you create high performance sales teams with breakthrough technology and help your team work smarter. They appear to back these claims up with solid functionalities like predictive analytics and gamification using external and internal data sources.
Founded in October 2015, Chinese startup iCarbonX has taken nearly $600 million in funding so far. Their goal is to develop an ecosystem of digital life based on a mix of individual’s biological, psychological and behavioral data, and the Internet. The company will provide individual health analysis and prediction of health using the most advanced data mining and machine analysis technology.
With the continous growth and optimization of iCarbonX’s database, the null methodology will develop the first intelligent digital guide that provides recommendations, on both large and small basis, for healthier life .
Founded in 2012, Chinese startup UBTECH Robotics is dedicated to bring a robot into every home and integrate it into daily life, creating a more intelligent and human friendly way of leisure life. The company managed to get a billion dollar valuation.
The company has introduced 17 inch tall Alpha 2 humanoid robot developed to make household life easier. It can capture pictures, make calls, read messages, check and send mails, and can control WiFi connected equipment. The robot is programmable and runs on an open source operating system and leverages intelligent voice and perceptual system to receive commands and execute corresponding tasks.
BenevolentAI is a British startup that aims to bring drugs to market faster using artificial intelligence. They were the first European company to buy NVidia DGX-1 deep learning supercomputer. Their deep learning algorithms already found two new potential drug targets for Alzheimer’s disease. One of the United States drugmaker signed on for in a deal worth $800 million.
The current valuation of the company is over $1 billion. It is developing an advanced platform to help researchers make new discoveries and redefine how scientists gain access to, and use, all the data available to them. The aim is to augment human judgment to assist the innovative process that characterizes the best scientist.
Zoox is a robotics company developing fully automated, electric vehicle fleet and the supporting ecosystem needed to bring the service to market at scale. They haven’t announced specific period for its release, but called it a “five year vehicle development program“.
The company founded by Tim Kentley and Jesse Levinson fetched a value of $1.5 billion even before revealing its first product. The Menlo Park based startup has already hired more than 100 employees, some from giant companies like Apple, Alphabet and Tesla.

domain: news


I have an older but good working pc,with motherboard#AX6BC.I just bought new graphic card,Diamond Stealth120 agp 256mb/ddr.But the agp divider wont allow the card to fit.Can I safely remove it?Is this possible?Please help me!!! ty
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hi this sounds like you may have bought the wrong type of graphics card for your motherboard, depending on the age of your motherboard they have changed over from AGP to PCI-e or even ePCI-e now if you have a slot that looks just like a PCI expansion slot at the top on its own away from the other ones, this will indicate a PCI-e or ePCI-e slot, if you have a brown slot at the top of the other ones this will be a AGP slot, just in case you have the right card, for the right slot, there is a locking clip at the end of the AGP slot that you have to pull to one side to put it in check to see if this is the case, then just do that.........hope this helps
Your new Foxconn motherboard Primary Graphics Adapter settings in set to onboard vga that is why there is no display in your monitor. Do not install yet your agp video card. Use first the onboard vga of the motherboard. Power up your computer and go to the BIOS settings. Locate in bios about the Primary Graphics Adapter settings and then select AGP. Save changes and the exit. Turn off your computer and now install the agp video card.
First off, your motherboard is a AGP 4x slot, and the Card is a AGP 8X card. However, NVIDIA based graphic cards which support AGP 8x mode (Accelerated Graphics Port) follow the AGP 3.0 specification. The AGP 3.0 specification retains backwards compatibility with older AGP 4x technology. All NVIDIA Geforce and Quadro GPU's which support AGP 8x mode are downwards compatible with AGP 4x motherboards. When a graphics card which operates at AGP 8x mode is installed on a motherboard which only supports up to AGP 4x mode, the card will automatically switch to AGP 4x operation.


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Rogers' Spring Lake Park Hotel
After many years promoting recreation on the river, A.B. Rogers oversaw the creation of a hotel that he envisioned serving as a bona fide playground for visitors from around Texas and the world. Construction took two years, with special attention required to excavate large amounts of rock to fabricate the foundation. Upon completion, the two-story hotel included thirty-four guest rooms.
Rogers Spring Lake Park Hotel, a first-class hotel at the headwaters of the San Marcos River, held its grand opening on April 22, 1929.
Ground-floor amenities included a spacious and inviting lobby, a golf shop, a cafe, and facilities for bathing and swimming. A second-floor lobby was used as an exclusive ladies' parlor. The hotel's roof offered a dance floor and gardens. The opening night's festivities featured entertainment from Steve Gardner's Orchestra and dancing until 1:30 in the morning. The grand opening marked an exciting night during the midst of Prohibition, taking place just six months before the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
During the 1930s, the hotel business considerably declined and Rogers eventually sublet the building and its facilities. At first the hotel became the Spring Lake Sanitarium, which advertised itself as providing "that rest you need." Then, in 1940, Bert P. Brown leased the property for a twenty-year period during which the former hotel became home to the Brown Training School.
While the hotel was leased out until 1960, the Rogers family continued to enjoy Spring Lake. It was during this time that Paul Rogers pursued an idea that began a long-standing San Marcos tradition.

domain: travel


Is Google Android Auto Better than the Infotainment from the Factory?
Per year, more than 3500 deaths and 390,000 injuries occur due to driver negligence. The main culprit? Infotainment systems, the same kind we get from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Kia Motors, Chevrolet, and many other automakers. Recently, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety decided to conduct a little research on built-in infotainment systems and how well the alternatives match up. Surprisingly, the alternatives in question aren’t aftermarket systems like we discussed not too long ago. Actually, Google Android Auto and Apple CarPlay were the preferred alternatives according to the study.
Here’s what happened. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety rounded up fifteen vehicles; ten of these vehicles were selected for their built-in infotainment systems, and the other five were selected for variety, and based on the requirement that they could support Apple CarPlay or Google Android Auto. These five vehicles were the 2017 Honda Ridgeline RTL-E, 2017 Ford Mustang GT, 2018 Chevrolet Silverado LT, 2018 Kia Optima, and 2018 Ram 1500 Laramie.
While conducting the study, drivers needed to complete several tasks, consisting of selecting or programming audio entertainment, calling and dialing, text messaging, and programming navigation. Whether these tasks were completed by using voice commands, the touch screen, or other interactive technologies were also examined, but the main factor the study was focused on was the level of visual and mental demand, or attention, needed from the driver to complete the above tasks.
According to the results, “CarPlay and Android Auto systems generated an overall moderate level of demand, whereas the built-in (native) systems led to overall very high levels of demand.”
When it came to the ten vehicles specifically studied for their built-in infotainment systems, none of them generated low demand, and six of them generated high or very high demands. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety went a step further and also tested the other five vehicles selected and the operation of their infotainment systems prior to plugging in Apple CarPlay or Google Android Auto. Results indicate that the Kia Optima, Chevrolet Silverado and Ram 1500 generated overall moderate demand, while the Honda Ridgeline and Ford Mustang generated very high demand from the driver.
Furthermore, the results between each smartphone app were also interesting. Each seemed to overthrow the other based on the task selected. For instance, Google Android Auto had much lower driver demand for programming navigation, but needed drivers attention a little more for text messages. When it came to voice commands and interactions, Apple CarPlay had more trouble with completing such tasks and required center console input, whereas Google Android Auto required less attention to perform such tasks.
At first glance, one would think it’s obvious that Apple CarPlay and Google Android Auto help drivers be less distracted. Each app completely locks the user’s phone, only allowing for operation of select apps through the built-in infotainment touchscreen. The study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety added a whole new level of data to take into consideration when buying a new or used vehicle with a built-in infotainment system.
Will these same results prove true for Google’s new Android Auto infotainment system? Maybe, it seems pretty intuitive. We think it would be better suited for autonomous self-driving vehicles though. What do you think? Let us know on Kendall DCJR social media.


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Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver was released in Autumn 1999 for the Playstation, PC, and later Dreamcast. At the time it was roundly described, accurately of course, as a sequel to Silicon Knights’ Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (1996), but for mainstream gamers it might as well have been a new IP, so obscure was Blood Omen at the time and so different Soul Reaver seemed in comparison. Original developer Silicon Knights had tentative plans for a sequel of their own, but Crystal Dynamics, who helped finalise the original game, were also developing Kain 2 themselves. The intricacies of the subsequent litigation between the two companies have been largely secretive even to this day (Neogaf and LoK community legend Divine Shadow/MamaRobotnik has written a detailed post surrounding the various battles between the two studios) but the pertinent fact is that Crystal Dynamics were eventually given control of the series by the courts and the freedom to commence with a new Kain game.
Having been shepherded into existence at Silicon Knights by Denis Dyack and Ken McKulloch, the new creative figurehead for Kain 2 would be Amy Hennig, an English graduate and film enthusiast who had turned her talents to videogames in the late 1980’s. Hennig was part of Crystal Dynamics when they had paired up with S.K. to finish Blood Omen, so she was already well-versed in Nosgoth when the mantle was, so to speak, passed on to her. Seth Carus, another of Soul Reaver’s lead designers and writers, had also polished the scripts for Blood Omen.
At the time Hennig was already busying herself with a novel game idea of her own: a third-person action/puzzle solving game called ‘Shifter’ where the undead lead character could alternate between the worlds of the living and the dead. The higher-ups asked Hennig to adapt this embryonic idea to the Kain series, causing some consternation, but she and her small team mapped out and plotted what would eventually blossom as Soul Reaver.
“The original idea,” Hennig explained in 2012, “was very loosely inspired by the rebellious angels of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The spiritual structure of the world was based on the philosophy of Gnosticism, the belief that the cosmos is ruled by a malevolent ‘pretender’ god, that humans are prisoners in a spiritual lie, and that mankind’s struggle is a fight for free will in the face of seemingly insurmountable Fate.” Indeed, the names of Kain’s lieutenants –and the game’s bosses– all derive from fallen angels and other agents of Heaven or Hell: Dumah, Zephon, Turel, etc.
“Like all games, Blood Omen had its share of technical shortcomings – what made it memorable (and what inspired such a loyal fan following) were its original storyline, complex characters, high-quality writing and voice acting, and its fresh approach to vampire mythology. These are the aspects we want to perpetuate as we carry the Kain franchise into the future.”
~ Amy Hennig, Gamerweb, 2000.
I first encountered Soul Reaver sometime in 1998 when a short trailer (below) was included with an issue of Official UK Playstation Magazine. I recall being drawn to its look and feel – the only games that seemed to have the same tone were the two Resident Evil installments available at the time (halcyon days, they were) and 1998’s Metal Gear Solid. The same magazine later issued a demo of the Sunlight Glyph area which I played repeatedly, intoxicated by what it promised to offer: a player character utterly unique in both design and personality; multiple spells that weren’t bogged down in fantasy wizardry; steampunkish weaponry and locales; monstrous and inventive enemies; and a plane shifting and health replenishment system that was completely innovative at the time. Not only that, but unlike practically every other game at the time (and in an extreme contrast to Blood Omen) Soul Reaver had no loading times between rooms or levels; instead, the map streamed ahead of time, disguising load times and making sure the player’s immersion was not interrupted. Easy to overlook now, but nearly revolutionary at the time.
Storywise, Blood Omen had circulated around a world-in-jeopardy scenario and explored themes of perdition, martyrdom, madness, and the consequences of time travel. It even managed to turn a subplot and what seemed like ancillary material (that is, the rise of the Nemesis and the attendant apocalyptic prophecies, not to mention the whisperings of human possession and demon worship) into a clever springboard for its genocidal third act. But while the first game examined notions of redemption and damnation, Soul Reaver was a straight up revenge story.
But what, in the interest of clarity, has happened in the long interim between the two games? Kain, having refused to sacrifice himself for the supposed good of the world, ensures the collapse of the Pillars of Nosgoth and raises six lieutenants from the grave. They provide him with an army, and the conquest of Nosgoth begins. After a series of wars they eventually defeat humanity, pushing them into the fringes of Nosgoth or into walled citadels entrenched within mountain passes. Slaves construct the Sanctuary of the Clans around the ruins of the Pillars, and the Balance Pillar is fitted as Kain’s throne. Unfortunately, the empire soon becomes bored and decadent.
Concept artist Daniel Cabuco speculated that amongst the clans “Lust for power, hubris, greed and jealousy would cause them to begin plotting against each other … As the empire fell apart, outright war would occur between clans, and Kain would simply wash his hands of them all … I really think of it like the Roman Empire, with Kain as a Caesar. As long as they had a unified enemy, they acted together. Once that threat ceased, they fell upon each other in a mad grab for power.”
A thousand years after Blood Omen the vampire Raziel, Kain’s first-born lieutenant, has the “honour” of surpassing his master in evolutionary terms, having sprouted a set of bat-like wings. In LoK long-lived vampires enter brief stages of pupation from which they emerge, in Raziel’s words, “less human and more… divine.” Raziel, for having the temerity to enter a state of change before Kain, is swiftly condemned to death in an apparent fit of jealously. The wings are torn from his back, leaving only a ragged patagium, and he is thrown into the “swirling vortex of the Abyss” by his brothers-in-arms — only to be resurrected at its bottom by a mysterious ‘Elder God’ who instructs him to eliminate his former master and brethren and return their souls to the Wheel of Fate so that Nosgoth may be restored once again.
It is really worth checing out the game’s opening FMV. I distinctly recall game store displays playing it repeatedly and catching eyes, and it’s short, punchy and exciting to this day and is also an excellent demonstration of not only the game’s visual designs but the excellent score by Kurt Harland:
Raziel emerges to discover that in the centuries between his execution and resurrection the vampire empire has collapsed. He learns that the corruption of Kain’s soul by Nupraptor has been passed down to his vampire descendents, like a form of Original Sin, and they have long devolved into creatures whose cognizance is barely above that of animals. Any organisation among their ranks has long collapsed, allowing some plucky vampire hunters to venture into the various clan territories to pick off fledglings or to engage in skirmishes with the elder brutes. The victory of the vampires was ultimately pyrrhic and it seems the beleaguered humans are too few to ever overwhelm their oppressors and reclaim Nosgoth. Raziel himself has undergone transformation: no longer a Lestat-esque beauty, his body is warped and emaciated and, unlike our favourite hematophage, Kain, he now has to devour the souls of his enemies to sustain his life. It is, he boasts, “an even darker hunger.” Driven by rage and further emboldened by an inflating self-righteousness, Raziel seeks out his vampire brothers and former master to slake his thirst for their souls.
The game elects not to dwell on either the events of Blood Omen or the centuries of history that predate the introductory FMV. Instead, the player is thrust into Nosgoth and must slowly acclimate to that world. Helpfully, so too must the main character, having emerged from a spell in the underworld to a new, tumultuous era in Nosgoth’s history. The Pillars of Nosgoth, the hub of the first game and the series as a whole, do not take primacy in the plot and at this point in Raziel’s quest the state of the world barely figures into his desire to revenge himself on Kain and his brethren. In terms of character development the game leaves him practically where he began: desperate to kill Kain to whet his fury. Kain’s motivations are not elaborated on and we, through the prism of Raziel, assume that he is purely nefarious. This was not to Soul Reaver’s detriment – by remaining so bloody-minded the game allowed newcomers to the series (who in 1999 were the great majority of players) to comfortably settle into Nosgoth and sop up its tangle of mythology and history.
While the game decided to pare down the storytelling (at least for this instalment) the characters were no less effective. Kain was already wonderfully drawn in the first game, but the sequel would have to bring him back in a way that felt true to his incarnation in Blood Omen and as though a millennium of experiences had been infused into the character since players last met him. There was not much in the way of dialogue to convey this (again, in this instalment) but Daniel Cabuco’s design for Kain hits the money – it is immediately evocative and innovative: the ‘crown’ adorning his head and the hard lines and scars tracing his body. It is strange — I had never encountered the character before Soul Reaver, and yet the design felt right. Having played Blood Omen and returned to Soul Reaver, the effect has not diminished in the slightest, but has instead been bolstered. Those involved in bringing Kain to life can rest easy. Simon Templeman again provides his vocal chords and though he only gets two brief speeches he again channels Kain’s power and haughtiness. Ariel, the spirit of a murdered Balance Guardian and Kain’s advisor from the first game, also returns, with Anna Gunn (of Deadwood and Breaking Bad fame) lending her voice yet again.
Raziel is another wonder. His design remains unique to this day, almost sixteen years and two ‘console wars’ and a whole lot of here-today gone-tomorrow IPs since his debut. His voice was provided by Michael Bell, who may be familiar to fans of the Transformers and Rugrats cartoons or perhaps Metal Gear Solid aficionados, and who is generally soft-spoken as Raziel but can lace his voice with indignation and rage and sorrow and even awe like no other (I love lines like his furious ‘Damn you, Kain! You are not God!’ and his sinking ‘My God…’)
Another pivotal character in the series, the Elder God, first appears here as a disembodied voice, though in later games he manifests as a mass of tentacles rooted throughout the Underworld and other subterranean environments. Appendages aside, his other notable features are his eyes -giving Argos of Greek lore a run for his money- and his stentorian voice (omnipresent and yet sourceless), which was provided by magisterial British actor Tony Jay (1933 – 2006).
Jay manages to give the Elder God a multitude of inflections: he can spur Raziel on with a fiery proselytisation; he can quietly threaten or dismiss or mock and he can bellow with rage. The Elder God develops as an antagonist throughout the series but his omnipresence in Soul Reaver can almost feel like a comfort: every death in the spectral plane sees you saved from annihilation and teleported back into his bosom, and he is constantly at hand to provide Raziel with directions and context about the current era. Soul Reaver 2 raises and explores the notion that such directions serve only to further the Elder God’s own goals rather than Raziel’s, and that the context he provides is ultimately prejudiced. But for Soul Reaver, the Elder God is unquestionably your advisor and ally.
Nosgoth itself oozes personality: whereas Blood Omen was indebted to typical European medieval fantasy for its look, the designers here successfully amalgamated steampunk, post-apocalypticism, and traditional medievalry into the world’s environments. It is also successful in implying a deeper backstory through its level design. Areas like the drowned abbey, the Dumahim city and the silenced cathedral all have unspoken backstories that hint at more fortunate times. The abbey and cathedral were once obviously religious hubs and sanctuaries, and the ruined city of Dumah an imperial capital (Dumah’s throne room is desperately ornate – compare it to Kain’s throne at the Pillars and you can see how highly the former prizes himself.)
Speaking of Dumah, the bosses (Raziel’s devolved vampire kin: Turel -absent from this game-, Dumah, Rahab, Zephon and Melchiah) are commonly acknlowledged as being one of the game’s strongest elements in terms of both design and function. They are still, in my opinion, some of the most evocative bosses of the last few console generations, from Melchiah’s Jabba-if-he-were-constituted-from-corpses look and Zephon’s Alien Queen-ish form. The game is essentially built around the bosses, with Raziel’s task being to reach them one-by-one, overcome a puzzle that allows the player to kill the boss, absorb their souls for new abilities, and then move on. By working this way the player always has a goal, and each new area and boss is regular enough (separated by a couple of hours of gameplay, for a first-timer) that it’s hard to lose track of what you’re doing (Soul Reaver 2 in comparison tended to meander). It also helps that defeating each boss unlocks useful new powers (phase through barriers, wall climbing, swimming, telekinesis, etc.) that encourage further exploration of Nosgoth: there are a host of glyph spells that you needn’t ever come across to complete the game that are hidden throughout secret tunnels and play areas.
The different stages of the game are not simply ‘level 1’ or ‘level 2’ but distinct areas and scenarios in their own right with their own histories and unique design elements – the arabic-inspired architecture of the Sanctuary of the Clans, the corrugated industrial structures within Melchiah and Dumah’s dwellings, the pipes and mortar and webwork of the silenced cathedral, and on and on. Occasionally you can find etched murals or headstops or corbels depicting bearded figures – designs that are purely decorative but fire up the imagination with long-lost human saints, demons and chthonic beings. Nosgoth is infused with history, much of it lost or forgotten. Finding the tumbled remains of Nupraptor’s Retreat, one of the first and most memorable locations from Blood Omen, is a particular treat.
Soul Reaver, like other titles in the series, was not short on ambition. Not only were multiple story threads truncated or cut, but entire areas and bosses were, too. Mama Robotnik provides an extensive overview of deleted material in Soul Reaver May Have Been the Most Ambitious Game Ever, and for perusers with more time on their hands The Lost Worlds has long been the go-to resource for deleted LoK materials. The consensus seems to be that while fans would love to see more deleted material from the game, like its original ending, the rush to release it allowed Soul Reaver 2, which arguably contains the series’ most mindbending and satisfying story since Blood Omen, to emerge.
In 2008 Legacy of Kain creator Denis Dyack spoke to 1UP about the appropriation of intellectual properties and the effect he believed this had on the integrity of the IP: “As soon as you take something away from an author, ” he said, “you’re immediately diluting it, and you’re hurting the industry. As an example, I’ll talk about Legacy of Kain. We created the first Legacy of Kain. We came up with all the content, all the story, but in the end we moved away from that series. Crystal Dynamics tried to take it over. A lot of people liked [Soul Reaver]. But if you look at Legacy of Kain where it is right now -so diluted, so dysfunctional as a property itself, it’s pretty much gone in a completely different direction than we would have ever taken it.”
“When we were doing Legacy of Kain, we had a lot of research into vampire mythology and a lot of ideas on where we were going. Crystal Dynamics merged in this entirely different game that had nothing to do with the series and then slapped the IP on it, and that’s where Soul Reaver came from. That was just a weapon in the game. Even if the developer’s good, and I think Crystal Dynamics is not a bad developer, you get this dilution of the content, because the original author is gone.”
~ Denis Dyack
I feel that Dyack is certainly correct about diminishing returns and the dysfunctionality of the series after a point, but I also feel that for all of the Legacy of Kain series’ hampered ideas and hobbled concepts (imposed on Crystal Dynamics by a mixture of budgetary and time limitations rather than any sort of malfeasance or incompetence) the sequels managed to expand upon the premise of Blood Omen with very, very few narrative missteps. In terms of adding to the mythology, the Crystal Dynamics games are an embarrassment of riches, and Soul Reaver proved that Hennig and her team could not only carry the series but build something worthy upon its foundations too.
And then, two short years later, there was Soul Reaver 2…


Jonathan gave a recent interview on This Morning in the UK on September 4 to promote “The Tudors”. You can get a glimpse of his Season 4 look.
Season 3 of “The Tudors” premiered on BBC2 in the UK last Friday night to fantastic ratings! It netted 2.3 million viewers. Minor gallery update: Added 8 new Energie ads for the Fall 2009 campaign and a new still from “Shelter”. Energie has also posted an amazing behind the scenes video of the Fall 2009 photo shoot. Definitely a must-see!
Join the JRMfansite in sending well wishes and love to Jonathan on his birthday!
While Jonathan got no love from the Emmy Awards, he was recognized for his work on “The Tudors” by the 2nd annual CableFAX Program Awards. The CableFAX Program Awards are devoted to cable’s top shows, people, and entertainment icons. They are scheduled to be held in New York City on September 16, 2009. Jonathan was nominated in the category Best Actor in Cable. “The Tudors” was also nominated for Best Show or Series: Drama.
61st Primetime Emmy Award nominations were announced this morning. “The Tudors” received 5 nominations, including for casting yet no acting recognition again unfortunately. Outstanding Art Direction For A Single-Camera Series Outstanding Casting For A Drama Series Outstanding Cinematography For A One Hour Series Outstanding Costumes For A Series Outstanding Hairstyling For A Single-Camera Series Full list of nominations are online.


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Bratislava TOP 10
Here are some tips for you to enjoy the best of Bratislava that locals like to do because they feel good! 🙂
You can explore the city alone or if you would like us to guide you and your friends, pop us an email to firstname.lastname@example.org and we will let you know what kind of day trips in Bratislava we do as well as private tours for groups.
Newly reconstructed Bratislava’s Old Bridge
You can take it by walk, by bike, on rollerblade or in a modern eurotram – either way you will enjoy great view on Danube river, Bratislava Castle and both sides of the city – the Old Town and Petrzalka – the biggest housing estate of Bratislava.
To finish, get yourself a glass of beer or a wine at one of the boats on Petrzalka’s side of Danube and enjoy the beauty of sunset beyond Bratislava Castle. Try Sundeck Boat – favourite place of Bratislava’s music scene with often times a live concert or a homemade beer right on the board of Dunajsky pivovar.
Bratislava’s Old Town
Whether you come during the day or at night, you will enjoy the atmosphere at Old Town’s cafeterias, little squares with fountains, bars and restaurants. Old local bars vs. newly open hipster’s coffee places, typical Slovak food vs. variety of exotics – this all gives you a lot of space to explore! Ask locals where they like to go 😉
Throughout the whole year you can visit cultural exhibitions, food markets, festivals or concerts free to public mainly at Hlavne namestie, Hviezdoslavovo namestie and Tyrsovo nabrezie. Check out the program at www.visitbratislava.com/events
Gelato at Koun
Once you are in the old town – you cannot miss it! Homemade Italian ice cream place Koun is proclaimed by locals to be the best icecream in Bratislava! Prepare for a long queue – demand is high especially in hot summer days! The taste is worth it though and they serve quite fast. Find your favourite taste and you will want to come back to Bratislava again fro sure! 😉
Bratislava Food Markets
Eat like a local = live like a local! Enjoy homemade food, meet local producers and farmers and get to know Slovakia by tasting it! Bratislava has long farmers market tradition and recently this trend has hit the youngsters too! Therefore you can choose from many places where to go – every Saturday there’s Farmers Market at Stara trznica and every Thurdsay Farmers Market next to Medicka Zahrada. You can try the oldest marketplaces in Bratislava – Zilinska, Mileticova or Trznica at Trnavske myto – just dont expect too much English spoken around here 🙂 The newest and the biggest farmers marketplace that we definitely recommend to visit (despite its location a bit further from the city center) is Fresh Market – modern building with all kinds of vegan / vegetarian / local food and healthy stuff.
Telepher Zelezna Studnicka – Kamzik
If you like nature and would like to spend more time outdoors, you should definitely visit Bratislava’s largest Forest park Zelezna studnicka – Koliba. Take troleybus 212 from downtown and get of at Zelezna studienka (terminal station). Hit the road (or the forrest trail) towards the telepher to Koliba – an old fashioned cableway that will take you up for only 3euros one way (operating on Thursday-Sunday + on holidays, in July and August from Tuesday-Sunday; 10am-6pm every hour). Once on the top, have a refreshment at Bufet Horna Stanica, favourite place of locals to eat homemade food and relax from busy city vibes.
If you have more time, pack yourself a frisbee and a few snacks to make barbecue at one of many fireplaces around the park. You can also go for Ropes course Lanoland or funny ride on a bobsled nearby. Another cool thing is panorama view on Bratislava from the TV Tower on the very top of the hill – condition is to consume something in the Altitude restaurant – probably the only restaurant with rotating seats in Bratislava.
After enjoying all the activities and the view from top of the hill of Kamzik you can return back to town either by long walk on the oposite side of the hill (Cesta na Kamzik) or by trolleybus 203 from Koliba terminal station, just 2km by walk from the forrest park.
The second most popular castle after the famous Bratislava Castle. Devin Castle has rich history which you can explore to detail in the local museum. It offers beautiful view on natural scenery and it is an important geographical spot – it lies right on the border with Austria. You can see a Memorial of Victims of the recent Communism era, for people who tried to escape the iron curtain. Spend some time walking around and try the famous Devinsky ribezlak – local wine made from currants!
Danube River Activities
The Danube river offers just so many adventures – canoe or cayak, boat trips or even a jump from a bridge!
You can get yourself a canoe at Lodenica (shipyard), choose a trip from 2 hours to full day and explore the city from completely other perspective!
Feel like raising some adrenalin? Try the popular Bridge jump! This is the kind of memory you will definitely remember for a longtime!
How about boat trip to Vienna? Take a speedboat Twin city liner and you are there in just 75mins! Price per person starts at 20eur one way and the views are definitely worth it. 🙂
Zlate Piesky Lake
Feel like having some relax and refreshment near water? Go ahead for Zlate piesky – Bratislava’s biggest lake with outdoor activities such as wake boarding, beach volleyball, water bicycle and more. You can either enter the lake areal that was build in communist era with big beach, food stands and some sports equipment such as beach volleyball, tennis or minigolf. Or you can go to the more modern part of Wakelake beach resort with wakeboards and music. At the end of August Zlate piesky changes to a big stage hosting the Uprising Reggae Festival.
Especially in summer, there’s plenty of music and other thematic festivals going on in Bratislava and around whole Slovakia. Choose by date / genre / size or city – the offer is huge! 🙂
Bratislava Wine Region
Once in Bratislava Region, it would be just a shame not to try the production of our local wine makers! Almost every weekend since April until October there’s an event you can go to try our wine from grapes growing just on the hills around the city. Feel like tasting Bratislava in a glass of wine? Here some events calendars to choose from:
www.mvc.sk/sk/podujatia or www.nahevina.sk/category/podujatia. You can also join a wine trip organized for small groups around Bratislava or nearby cities in Slovakia and Austria: plnypohar.sk.
If you like to visit these places with our certified guide, pop-us an email to email@example.com and we will let you know what kind of day trips in Bratislava we do as well as private tours for groups.


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Red Stater News and Views according to Red S Tater
South To Stilly documents a student's journey from the Nation's Capital to the capital of cowboys. Moving from the city where history happens, South to Stilly tries to find fun in the haystacks (literally). (It's a personal journal of satire, rea ...

domain: geography


Japan – The figure was revealed on the publication of the Nissan’s annual Sustainability Report. The OEM said that progress has been accelerated by the Nissan Green Program which was introduced in 2002; the most recent version, NGP2016, laid out ambitious targets to reduce environmental impact and resource consumption by 2016.
“We aim to deliver further environmental progress in addition to promoting all electric vehicles and pursuing efficiency, on energy and resource diversity, efficiency and recycling in the current year, as part of the Nissan Green Program,” commented Hitoshi Kawaguchi, chief sustainability officer at Nissan. “This reflects the continued efforts of all Nissan employees and partners, in line with our mid-term corporate objectives.”
In order to cut CO2 emissions, Nissan has implemented a number of projects worldwide:
– The installation of 19,000 solar panels at Sunderland, UK, to supplement the power already generated by ten wind turbines, together supplying 7% of the plant’s energy needs. The solar power will account for the production of 31,000 cars per year
– The harnessing of wind power and biomass in Mexico to supply half the power needed by the Aguascalientes manufacturing complex, since 2013
– Improved energy procurement at Japanese factories requiring lots of electricity, including the Technical Center, Tochigi Plant, Oppama Plant, Yokohama Plant and the Zama Operation Center.
The OEM is running a number of initiatives including the Nissan Energy Saving Collaboration (NESCO), which measures energy loss at its plants. In 2015, the company also created a new team, Resource NESCO, charged with improving water consumption and increasing the use of recycled materials by 25% for new models in fiscal year 2016.
Nissan says it is dedicated to making progress in four key areas: zero-emission vehicles; fuel efficiency; carbon footprint; and use of natural resources.


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Dimensions: 8.5 diam. x 6.5H in. (Pot)
27.5 in. cactus garden
Cement planter included
Cement and plastic construction
With its modern cement planter and lifelike look, this Nearly Natural Decorative Garden Cactus Silk Plant with Cement Planter is sure to make an impact on your décor. This silk plant has the look of a mature cactus and stands over 27 inches tall.
8.5W x 8D x 27.5H in. (Overall)
8.5 diam. x 6.5H in. (Pot)


Though family gatherings are often fraught, they’re key opportunities to reconnect, touch base with our roots, heal old wounds, and catch up with the family gossip!
New babies, new partners, and major life changes are often unveiled or revealed at holiday tables — not always by intent, but in the strange ways families have (coded and explicit) of passing along information to one another and from generation to generation.
But now, in our COVID-mindful culture, travel is curtailed. Hugging is hazardous to our health. Pods are replacing those big, boisterous, shoulder-to-shoulder tables we dread and relish. So how now will the work of families evolve? How can we sustain the values, relationships, silly quirks, and serious traditions that define one family from another? How do you transmit family culture at social distance? And how do we bring newcomers — partners, new children, new identities — into the fold? How do we manage the messiness of change? The holidays offer unique potential for embracing newcomers — those who are fresh to the family — and those who, if not quite so new, are not yet feeling the love. They may not feel as cozy as sitting around a fire — or that familiar table; but in the context of social distancing, they can tide us over till that big celebration when — inoculated and free to hug — we gather as family units again.
1. Unboxing. Unboxing emerged in 2006 (it was a phone, “unboxed” on a YouTube video). The habit spread to toys and food and entered the popular culture as a “thing” by 2014 when unboxing became a recognized form of advertising. While it always seemed a strange pastime to me, co-opting the technique to celebrate passages in the family can be more exciting than a mere email or even a Zoom conversation. Unbox news of a new baby, an engagement, a new identity (as a person in gender transition or recognizing sexual identity), or children accompanying a new marriage with a fun, celebratory — and respectful — series of totems taken out of a box.
Soften the digital experience with an analog box — a real thing the newcomer can hold in their hands. Include a small sign, a piece of jewelry, a token passed from one generation to another, a hat or sweatshirt with the family name, anything that says, “Welcome. We’re glad you’re part of our family.”
Let this unboxing unfold over a Zoom session that allows family members to interact as you might if you were sitting in living room chairs.
2. Design the process. Absorbing change is a process, not an event. Whether you use a note, a phone call, or the unboxing suggested above, introducing a newcomer is just the beginning. Helping newcomers become insiders takes time — and intention. And putting them through steps (see the estate attorney, have dinner, meet family members) is not the same as designing a process that results in a true — and mutual — embrace.
Buddy systems, regular meetings (monthly? quarterly?), meetings with key members of the family network — not just family members but trusted advisors, close family friends, and experts who constitute “insider knowledge” — are all part of a process. It’s also about winning the heart and mind of the newcomer as they bring your family into their world.
But if your son surprises you with a partner he eloped with or your daughter announces via Instagram that she’s embracing her identity as a lesbian — BEFORE you have a chance to absorb the news, it may seem harder to design a process — the die is cast, right?
Well, no. No one wants to go through a trial by fire; most of us are happy to find a path to inclusion. If I know there are key family members who would like to meet me, a photo album that can illuminate family history, a mission statement developed and shared by the family I’m entering, and policies you all take seriously, I have a much better chance of building meaningful relationships than if I walk blindly into a new club with members who are withholding the rules.
Governance is about decision-making and leadership in the family. And making onboarding an initial aspect of the governance process is a means of giving newcomers voice, a way to let them know how they can be part of family deliberations and decision-making.
Designing the process to include onboarding is an aspect of governance that often gets overlooked. And while newcomers may not “fall in line” with the governing rules of family life — the way things have always been — they at least have a starting place for building relationships and negotiating the expectations of the family.
3. Give (and get) information. When newcomers don’t know what they don’t know, they can’t be expected to get everything right. And if they haven’t sorted out what to share with the family system they’re entering, you’ll have questions too. What would you like newcomers to know? Don’t send a box of manuals, but share something welcoming that lets them know you’re giving them a window on the family’s culture of transparency. Are you harboring unspoken expectations? Secrets you hold fast? It’s easy for newcomers to stumble if they don’t know what constitutes family taboos and what is fair game for discussion. One family I work with has an “Awkward Questions” committee, a forum for getting questions asked and answered in an anonymous forum that allows a Q&A without putting either newcomers or family members at risk of embarrassment.
4. Welcome differences. We’re all eating change for breakfast. Coping with life in a pandemic, coming to a new awareness of social justice issues, enduring an especially heated political season, and coping with the impact of climate change (fire in the west, hurricanes in the South and Gulf Coast). Many of us feel we’re enduring all the change we can handle. So being asked to embrace a new family member whose beliefs, religion, habits, race, traditions, knowledge base, or even food preferences (vegan? non-gluten?) are different may be one change too many. And yet, the research is clear: Families who embrace diversity (just as companies who embrace differences) tend to be more successful, resilient, and adaptable than those who subtly (sometimes not so subtly) keep newcomers “new.”
Fear, distrust, and beliefs about the power of “blood” over the loyalty of a new member are all elements that aim to maintain status quo, to keep things the way we know them.
But newcomers can be like gold. Just as families go to great lengths to nurture and grow financial capital assets, those families who recognize and nurture their social and intellectual assets know that a new family member may have much to offer. And while it may not be readily apparent in those first few meetings, over time families can uncover knowledge, talent, fresh skills, and new perspectives that keep families vibrant.
5. Keep it going. Families can set the tone for years or even generations by the way they handle newcomers. Suspicion and distrust can be communicated in a nano-second. And while no one can be expected to embrace a newcomer without qualms, curiosity, and caution, remember becoming an insider can take years in some families. The use of holidays for onboarding events sets a tone of celebration, joy, and beginnings. But creating a process that continues, month after month, year after year is a more reliable way to keep a family member in the fold. Too many divorces have been sown in the first few months of a new marriage when the family culture — however unwittingly — works against the new couple. Too many family members leave the circle and move as far away as possible when they feel that their differences are not respected or embraced. Keeping family strong is serious work. But the payoff — is immense.
It has been a strange year. I wish it were over. I live in California part of the year, and the threat of fire and the reality of climate change sits in my consciousness — and daily life — like an unwelcome dinner guest. Taking care to stay socially distanced from those I care about (and those who insist on crowding too close) is an act of constant vigilance. Working with colleagues who I can’t be in the same room with is often frustrating. So when I’m asked to do “one more thing,” no matter how trivial (send that Zoom link again, mail a package to my brother, write another letter for a political candidate), I sometimes snap. I’m not proud of it — but I’m human. We all do our best to be welcoming, generous, compassionate — and some days we fall short.
These strategies may require more energy than some family members feel they have the heart for — especially now. But they are each investments in relationships that make families stronger.
They are each harbingers of hope, a signal that, however trying this year is, we believe that better days are ahead.
More to come,
Joline Godfrey is CEO, The Unexpected Table, and author of "Raising Financially Fit Kids". She is part of the Hawthorn Institute for Family Success℠, which is dedicated to preparing families for their wealth. In this capacity, Joline develops and delivers a series of products and services for nurturing financially mindful children and thriving families.


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Finally, someone has unearthed the PROPER way to create theater: start with the sound design!
OK, maybe not. But it makes for a great experiment.
Today I am participating in Fresh Ground Pepper's Sounds Good event, which brings together 8 sound designers, 8 writers, and 8 directors into trios to create brand-spankin'-new 10-minute performances. I first heard about this project about 6 weeks ago and knew that I wanted to be a part of it. I've felt more and more drawn over the past few years to creating my own original work, not shaped by script or based upon fellow theater-makers' work. This project seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore that desire and stretch those creative muscles.
The process began with each sound designer/composer creating 10 cues. "Cue" here has a very loose meaning - it could be a single event (a door slam, thunder clap, a single breath) or it could be a fully-composed orchestral piece...or it could be an extended bed of sound. Or anything in between. These 10 cues would then be passed on to a writer (paired carefully and secretly by Fresh Ground Pepper) who would write a script using all 10 cues (in their entirety and in the order they were submitted) to be handed off to the director (also carefully paired by FGP) who would stage the piece.
When I got the acceptance email, I was on vacation with my girlfriend for a week at a friend's dive resort (the place is amazing, I can't recommend it highly enough) in Roatan, Honduras and we were diving every morning, followed by lazy afternoons in the sun, reading. I got the email one afternoon (about 30 hours after it had been sent) to learn that the cues were due 6 days later, which was approximately 12 hours after I'd get back to New York from vacation...and I had been planning to sleep for at least 8 or 9 of those hours. Clearly, I didn't have enough time to wait until I got back to New York to start working on the project and besides, I was excited and wanted to get started!
...But I had to figure out what I wanted to create.
Surrounded by the second longest barrier reef in the world, spending every morning and every afternoon in, under, and around the water, the ocean was the obvious choice for what to explore through my sound design. I knew immediately that I wanted to start and end the piece with the voice of Jacques Cousteau. I found audio online from a 1976 interview between Studs Terkel and Cousteau on WFMT; it's all about how much effect man has had on the oceans (fully 40 years before climate change becomes the hot-button topic it is today) and how preservation progress is stunted by the inherent short-sightedness of our politicians.
After scoring my Overture and Finale cues, I moved on to other textures, finding sounds of water that resonated with me: thunder, rain on a car roof, the gurgle of breathing underwater (thanks to my GoPro and some SCUBA gear.) These sounds have a wonderful, expansive, calming nature to them...so I definitely needed to disrupt that in the middle of the piece. I found a recording of a large Xerox copier that I cut up, looped, and scored to create an event that would stand in tension to the natural sounds that had preceded it. That, along with a monotonous bed of room tones and air conditioner hums, brought a dichotomy to the piece that put nature's creations up against the rough, unrefined reality of what we invent.
I promised myself I wouldn't share the images that I had formed in my head while making these cues with the writer, Max Reuben, or the director, Estefanía Fadul, but it was fascinating that very little of what I had pictured when creating these soundscapes was conjured in Max's head. No offence intended towards Max at all! He got from the cues something entirely different than what I put in, which I love! The piece centers around two people, a man and a woman, possibly recently married. The language is sparse, opting instead for a predominantly movement-based piece.
I'm totally in love with what we've created. To celebrate it and share it with everyone who can't be at the presentation tonight (myself included, I've got a show of my own to perform in!) I've created a short piece that brings all the elements of my design into a soundscape, with some additional scoring. You can listen to it here:

domain: hobby


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A hero Illinois boy has died days after he desperately tried to save his doomed mom from an SUV submerged in a retention pond, police in Aurora said.
Little Ronaldo Alanis-Ramirez told his 7-year-old sister he needed to try to rescue their mother from the vehicle after it careened into a pond about 5 a.m. Wednesday.
The little girl was spotted by a police officer thrashing in the water and was rescued, but her 9-year-old brother wasn't pulled from the SUV until about 30 minutes later.
Ronaldo died just before noon Sunday at a Park Ridge Hospital, police said. His mother, 31-year-old Maria Ramirez, spent 40 minutes under water before her rescue and died Saturday about 11 p.m., said police in Aurora, some 40 miles west of Chicago.


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EKF Diagnostics Holdings plc is a manufacturer and distrbutor of IVD products. It has three core divisions: Point of Care including hemoglobin and HbA1c analyzers; Central Laboratory including the manufacture of enzymes and clinical chemistry; and Molecular Diagnostics which incorporates a unique DNA enrichment technology, PointMan, and a portfolio of molecular testing services.
EKF Diagnostics wins two awards at the Small Cap Awards in London.
New testing capacity complements EKF’s test kit manufacturing and point-of-care diagnostic instrument business
EKF Diagnostics will be exhibiting live & in person at Medica (Hall 3 Stand B71) for the first time in mainland Europe in two years.
Medica is the world’s largest medical trade fair. For more than 40 years it has been firmly established on every professional's calendar attracting over 40,000 delegates and over 5,000 exhibitors from 70 countries in 17 halls.
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domain: biology


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In the House of Lords on appeal from His Majesty's Court of Appeal in Ireland :
between Irvine Thomas Chambers and John George Chambers (appellants) and Irish Land Commission and John Beattie (Respondents).
|Published / Created:||
[Place of publication not identified] : [Publisher not identified], .
Physical description: 1 v. ; 27 cm.
|Call Number||View in||Collection|
|BB3866||Main Reading Room||Irish|

domain: library


Stockholm: “There are large pools of capital for investments that could be used for ambitious water projects, but it is not happening. It is up to political leaders to be bold and embrace practical responses for water preservation. The World Water Week (WWW) is a platform to show them the way. A strong signal of commitment needs to come from all levels of political governance from across the world to set the tone and increase financing flows for water resources security and management.” World Water Council president Loic Fauchon shared these views with leaders of the water community and decision-makers during the World Water Week at Stockholm.
He added: “Water provision and management is expensive, especially in countries that have too much or too little water.
It is costly to build, maintain, and renew infrastructure and equipment, such as massive water transfers, large reservoirs, desalination plants, and waste water re-use systems. However, anything can be done with willpower.”
Participants in various discussion forums at the WWW said funds were available, but there was little urge to spend them on water. They said political decision-makers must assume their responsibilities. “They can create the right environments that will reassure investors and attract capital. Greater political priority for water and sanitation is indispensable to unleash the financial resources needed,” added a participant.
The proposals for practical responses to water financing issues for political leaders were discussed at the conference, mainly elaborating on the need to erase water debt in many countries most affected by lack of water; associate water financing projects with other services (energy, food, health, education); and apply the principle of water pays water to states and municipalities.
The participants felt awareness needed to be raised at the highest levels and continued to call for greater political priority to provide water and sanitation for all.


The campus is made up of five main buildings, covering a surface of roughly 30,000 square metres. We are right next to the Tree of Life and across from the area dedicated to the University of Milan campus.
Palazzo Italia: institutional headquarters hosting open space offices, meeting rooms and space for events.
Incubator labs: Human Technopole’s first experimental laboratories built in the area around the Tree of Life, next to Palazzo Italia. Of the three new buildings, two are built on two levels and are mainly dedicated to laboratory space. The third – on one level – will host the support structure for HT’s CryoEM Facility, including two microscopes, a room for the preparation of samples and a microscope control room. Within the incubator there will be space for over 130 “wet” workstations, including counter spaces for experimental researchers, support desks and laboratories, instrument rooms, cell cultures, core services (washing glassware, kitchen, warehouse, etc.) and office space.
North Pavilion: the building has undergone intense redevelopment work to transform into an adequate space for HT’s CyroEM and Light Microscopy Imaging Facilities. It has support spaces for the preparation of samples and offices for the facilities’ managers. On the first floor it hosts an open space office setting with twenty desks for the staff of the Image Analysis Facility and support space for other facilities. The building has been adapted to meet the microscopes’ requirements which include reinforced floors to support the weight of the machines and stabilisation measures to ensure no tremors, vibrations or movements.
South Pavilion: currently under renovation, it will host experimental laboratories and further Human Technopole facilities. It will also include additional office space.
South Building: the main building of the Human Technopole Campus. Once completed it will host laboratory space for up to 800 scientists, alongside offices, spaces for events, workshops and training courses. The winning project was awarded in April 2020 and the building will be completed by early 2026.
Our campus is built according to criteria of flexibility, durability, innovation and sustainability and is designed and developed in line with the spirit of openness that characterises Human Technopole.
After representing Italy during EXPO Milano 2015, Palazzo Italia is now the institutional headquarters of Human Technopole.
Designed by Nemesi studio, the building is in front of the Tree of Life and is built on five levels, for a total height of 35 metres across an area of 14,400 square meters.
The architecture is inspired by the idea of an urban forest with textures of lines that generate lights and shadows. It was designed according to principles of sustainability and conceived as a low energy building. During EXPO Milano 2015, the exhibition spaces were dedicated to the power of beauty and of the future to underline Italy’s creativity and potential.
At the end of the universal exposition, Palazzo Italia underwent intense refurbishment works to transform the exhibition areas into spaces able to welcome 400 workstations. Several areas have been maintained, including the restaurant space, the auditorium, the panoramic terrace and the internal courtyard.
Palazzo Italia as Human Technopole institutional headquarters was inaugurated in November 2019 in the presence of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
Human Technopole is at the heart of MIND – Milan Innovation District, the city’s new innovation district located on the site that hosted EXPO Milano 2015
In addition to Human Technopole, the area hosts the new headquarters of the Galeazzi research hospital (sixteen floors for a total of 150,000 square metres), the campus of the scientific faculties of the University of Milan (Università Statale) and the headquarters of the Triulza Foundation. In addition, the area also hosts the offices of Arexpo, the company that owns the area and Lendlease, the Australian multinational in charge of the development of the area. Companies and start-ups active in the fields of science, research and innovation will also be able to establish themselves in the MIND area.
The Decumanus – the central axis of the site, 1,500 metres long – will become a green area, creating one of the longest linear parks in Europe.
The entire MIND area is built in a way to encourage meetings, interactions and exchanges between people while also supporting sustainability through driverless and light mobility transport options.


Wrap Around Case Packer
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25 cartons per minute
RML wrap-around case packer featuring our 2-axis Hawk robot to provide fast, precise and smooth movement of product into the blank.
Cartons are accumulated and then stacked up to 3 layers high before being indexed and the case glued closed


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We are in the final weeks of the season and some institutions are ending theirs. Festivales Musicales finished its activity (although the Bach Academy, its "daughter", still has one concert to go) with a splendid Bach-Vivaldi concert at the Colón. It had only one fault: it was too short. At the start of the Second Part, given over to the most famous of Vivaldi´s Glorias, it would have been nice nd useful to add a violin concerto from this composer.
Mario Videla was at his best as conductor and had at his command a picked orchestra of moderate historicism. We had a fluent and beautifully played First Suite by Johann Sebastian, a model of style and execution. Then, the most brilliant of Bach´s Cantatas for solo voice, Nº 51, "Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen" ("Be joyful unto God in all places"), where both the soprano and the solo trumpet have difficult florid music. Soledad de la Rosa´s crystal-clear voice and easy highs are just the ticket for this music. And Fernando Ciancio, except for a tiny accident at the end of the initial Aria, played with beautiful tone and real agility.
The Gloria, RV 589, doesn´t need such a huge choir as the 101 voices of the Orfeón de Buenos Aires (Néstor Andrenacci and Pablo Piccinni) and I wonder why, in a Baroque piece, especially when they call themselves a "project choir", in other words, a flexible organism that adapts to different necessities. But they sounded very well, powerful, in tune and in style. The Ensemble Academia Bach was again outstanding (lovely work from oboist Andrés Spiller), De la Rosa and countertenor Martín Oro sang with quality (although their timbres don´t blend ideally), and Videla was sensitive and exact.
There were rumors during the year that the hard economic situation of the country was affecting sponsorship and that next year´s Festivales season was imperiled. But they decided to form a Circle of friends, and their support has saved them. However, there are almost no foreigners and the programming (announced as has become a good practice in the last concert of the season) is very conservative, when Festivales was in its early years quite adventurous. Still, I can only feel glad that this institution and its "daughter" will be us in 2013.
Nuova Harmonia ended its season with a concert by the Camerata Ireland featuring its longtime leader, pianist/conductor Barry Douglas (they came to us in 2000). As pianist Douglas has been a frequent and always welcome visitor. In his early maturity he showed himself once again impeccably stylish and accomplished. He offered admirable performances of two standards, Mozart´s Concerto Nº 19 and Beethoven´s Nº 2, plus a Nocturne and Aria for piano and orchestra by John Field, the Irish composer who invented the Nocturne and influenced Chopin. As he is very pleasant, I would have preferred to hear one of his seven concerti instead of the Mozart, for they are not known here and should be.
The other two pieces were the witty Overture "La Scala di Seta" by Rossini, and some charming "Druid dances" by Edward Bunting (1773-1843), an important compiler of Irish folklore. Surely Bunting´s and Field´s pieces were premieres. I´m afraid I am much less impressed by the Camerata than by Douglas; there were mistakes in the woodwinds (especially the oboe at the start of Rossini), horns were woolly and the strings had more than a touch of acid. They are, yes, disciplined and correct, but on this showing they are second-line. The President of Ireland, visiting our country, came to the concert with his retinue.
Nuova Harmonia´s programme for 2013 was announced and showed they do have yet some strong sponsors, with heavy accent on symphonic and chamber orchestras. I am very glad that this is so, for back in 2002 they almost died and were rescued by the Italian Government; now Italy is hardly up to the job, so it means that they have been skillful in obtaining sponsors on their own.
When the Buenos Aires Philharmonic´s season was announced early this year I was happy to find that Jorma Panula, the veteran Finnish conductor, would make his belated debut and conduct Sibelius and Nielsen; but I was also surprised that he would be burdened with no less than four Argentine scores and that he would have two Phil first desks playing concerti. As it happened, he was replaced (no explanation at all) by two of our best young conductors, who acquitted themselves quite well, but without the benefit of specialised experience in the important Nordic repertoire, so little-known and -appreciated here. Maybe Panula thought they asked too much from him.
I have space for only the first of the two, conducted by Alejo Pérez and having as main work the marvelous Fifth Symphony by Sibelius. Although not quite as convincing as other instances either from Pérez or the Phil (some passages weren´t distinct enough, or didn´t have all the impact they need) it still was great to hear this music live. A well-written Neoclassic Concertino for clarinet (premiere) by Fermina Casanova was followed by Piazzolla´s "Contemplación y danza", both superlatively played by Fernando Rey. Richard Strauss´ very Romantic First Concerto for horn was executed by Fernando Chiappero with some accidents but fine timbre. At the start, the 1913 "Poema de las campanas" by Alberto Williams was an interesting choice.
For Buenos Aires Herald


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Good news for Indonesia that there is the addition of one location in the country as the UNESCO Global Geopark.
The Toba Caldera is designated as the UNESCO Global Geopark at the 209th Session of the UNESCO Executive Board in Paris, France, Tuesday, July 2.
UNESCO believes that the Toba Caldera has high geological links and traditional heritage with local communities, especially in terms of culture and biodiversity. In this context, UNESCO member countries support the Toba Caldera to be preserved and protected as part of the UNESCO Global Geopark.
“Through this determination, Indonesia can develop the Toba Caldera geopark through the Global Geoparks Network and the Asia Pacific Geoparks Network, especially in relation to empowering local communities,” said the Indonesian Ambassador to UNESCO Arrmanatha Nasir through his written statement on Wednesday.
In addition to the Toba Caldera Executive Board members also designated 15 new UNESCO Global Geoparks.
Determination of the Toba Caldera can encourage economic development and sustainable development in the region. Through the development of sustainable geo-tourism, opportunities are open for local people to promote culture, local products, and create broader employment opportunities.
At the same time, with the world’s recognition and attention on the Toba Caldera, the government and local communities are obliged to improve and continue to preserve the environment and integrity of the Toba Caldera area.
Determination of the Toba Caldera as a UNESCO Global Geopark is a long process of joint efforts of various stakeholders both the central and regional governments as well as the local community living in the Lake Toba region.
“The preparatory process to get UNESCO recognition for the Toba Caldera shows high commitment and good cooperation from all parties in Indonesia since the beginning of the process, from collecting data, holding various workshops, preparing and negotiating nomination documents to be submitted to UNESCO,” said the Indonesian Ambassador.
The Toba Caldera made it to the UNESCO list after being assessed and decided by the UNESCO Global Geoparks Council at the IV UNESCO Global Geoparks International Conference in Lombok, Indonesia, on 31 August-2 September 2019.
Toba Caldera, North Sumatra Province was formed from a supervolcanic explosion of 74,000 years ago. The base of the caldera is filled with water and is the largest lake in Indonesia.
The beauty of the Toba Caldera and its rich cultural assets make Lake Toba one of Indonesia’s top tourist destinations on the “10 New Bali” list.
In addition to the Toba Caldera, Indonesia already has four other UNESCO Global Geopark sites, namely, Batur, Cileteuh, Gunung Sewu, and Rinjani.
Indonesia also has a lot of natural and cultural wealth that is included in the UNESCO list including 10 intangible cultural heritage, 9 cultural and natural heritage sites, and 16 biosphere reserves that have been recorded at UNESCO.


Late October 2019 the JIP participants were gathered at DNV headquarters at Høvik for the 3rd JIP workshop. The main topics were to demonstrate the status of the software development, the standard and the JIP use cases and to discuss future use and corresponding requirements to the Open Simulation Platform for collaborative system simulations.
Both the development of Core Simulation Environment (CSE) and the standardization work are progressing according to plan. The CSE v0.5.0 was recently distributed to partners with features such as individual model step size and command line interface to facilitate more efficient simulations for the JIP use cases. The software development is also closely linked with the development of the standard, supporting features for mapping of signals and connection of models defined by the system ontology under development.
Status for the three use cases under development was presented, a brief summary below:
- For the hybrid ferry case, models from multiple partners are decided upon and the case is currently being configured for simulations with CSE.
- For the virtual commissioning case a live demo of simulation models and control system software for Dynamic Positioning of a vessel running in closed loop was shown. Next steps are to update simulation models and include multiple control systems to test and verify integrated functionality onboard a costal support vessel.
- Simulation models of the research vessel Gunnerus are available from previous R&D projects. The use case for operational planning demonstrate how these models are converted to FMUs and run with CSE software. Challenges related to tightly coupled models and co-simulation is an important topic for the next step.
To make a collaborative simulation platform a success, proper mechanisms for protection of intellectual property rights for those supplying models or data to a simulation, as well as ownership to results are essential. DNV presented how solutions for this can be implemented on for the OSP. All partners where engaged in brain-storming sessions aiming to map intended use and corresponding requirements for a future platform. This session together with overall feedback during the workshop provided valuable input to development of the required platform features.


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Phat Filter 450 CFM Greenhouse Air Purification | IGSPF206. The Phat Filter is a professional grade filter made of the best carbon on the market. Made with 2-inch thick carbon beds, 1200 MG/G iodine test virgin charcoal, and no glues or binders, this filter is incredibly effective. It’s constructed so that no air gets past it without first being filtered. The increased air movement is provided by the internal, conical filter base and outer aluminum mesh. It uses highly effective, low density virgin carbon that’s tightly packed for increased porosity. Genuine Phat filters are sealed immediately after the manufacturing process to help retain moisture and improve their life expectancy. We are an authorized dealer. Includes a 1 year warranty!. Phat Filter 450 CFM Greenhouse Air Purification | IGSPF206

domain: chemistry