text:
Almara is an ensemble for early music, founded by Elisabeth Pawelke during her studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. The ensemble's musical focus is on the secular repertoire of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in which the musicians engage themselves with great intensity and which they revive with great joy of playing and virtuosity. The musicians studied at the conservatoires in Basle, The Hague, and New York and worked with renowned ensembles and orchestras for early music. In 2009 they published their first CD "Outros Amores" which theme concentrates on the various aspects of medieval love and veneration. The new album with compositions of the 15th century has been released by the label Naxos in the year 2020.
Since the foundation in the summer of 2004, the ensemble RicciCapricci enthrals the concert audiences with music of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque. The musicians met during their studies at the Karlsruhe Conservatoire from which they graduated in chamber music with honours in the summer of 2008. The ensemble received important musical impulses during study stays in Freiburg, Trossingen, Mainz, Basle, and Lyon as well as from taking master classes with Dan Lauryn, Karel van Steen oven, Han Toll und Jasper Christensen. The RicciCapricci musicians are scholarships holders of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, the Erasmus Foundation, the Kulturfond Baden, the Friends of the Karlsruhe Conservatoire, and award winners of various international competitions. By contrasting historical performance practice with avant-garde the ensemble caused a great sensation at the international competition "Blockflöte Kreativ" in September 2005 and received the first prize and the jury's special award. In August 2007, RicciCapricci were awarded the coveted audience award at the Biagio Marini Competition in Neuburg an der Donau. The highlights of the ensemble's national and international concert activities were the participations at the Stockstädt Days of Early Music, the International Messiaen Week in Neustadt an der Weinstraße, the performances in the "Fabulous Fringe" series at the festivals Oude Muziek Utrecht and the "International Van Wassenaer Festival" in Amsterdam.
Egeria was a religious pilgrim of the 4th century and the first woman whose written travel reports were handed down to us. Elisabeth Pawelke (harp and voice) and Barbara Hintermeier (vielle) follow her footsteps and take their listeners on a travel back in time to the 12th to 15th centuries. Together with harpist Thomas Zapf their repertoire also comprises historic and traditional songs from Ireland and other British Isles as well as pieces from an early harp manuscript by Robert ap Huw.


text:
1. Barcelona: Gothic Quarter Walking Tour
Explore the magical corners of Barcelona’s old town on a guided walking tour of the Gothic Quarter. See some of the city's top sights and stroll around the cobbled streets. Step back in time in this historic neighborhood, which was founded by the Romans over 2,000 years ago. Gaze up at the intricate spires of the Cathedral of Barcelona. Enter the Plaça del Rei (King's Square) and admire its medieval archways and windows. Get to know the secrets and the legends about the political center of the city.

domain: geography


text:
Raw in the U.K. and a Look at Other Promotions – Pillar to Post: Episode 12
Monday Night Raw was in the United Kingdom this week, and the Pillar to Post guys break down the show.
See what’s leading up to Extreme Rules with Mike and Tom on this week’s edition, plus, the guys take a look at some of the non-WWE promotions and tell you where and when you can find them on TV.
And Mike Gives his WWE Network watch of the week!
Subscribe to 97.3 ESPN on

domain: entertainment


text:
Louisville Athletic Club
Call Now: (502)412-45229463 Westport RoadLouisville, Kentucky 40241
More About Louisville Athletic Club
Louisville Athletic Club in Louisville, Kentucky may help you obtain your lose weight end goals.
You have the ability to assume the majority of weight loss clinics and eating plan physicians to observe this process: First, you are going to meet with the specialist for a consultation, as well as registered nurses are going to carry out every tests needed. They are going to blend the test outcomes with your medical history to produce an altered plan for your weight loss.
For some people, bariatric surgical treatment could be the best option. For the majority of people, reduced severe as well as invasive resolutions are accessible. Your deal could entail hCG hormone therapy, or merely taking eating plan pills.
All clinics in Louisville, Kentucky such as Louisville Athletic Club will certainly supply you by having a regimen and workout deal. Without proper diet plan and activity, no regimen option are able to work its magic. Ensure to observe all instructions from your physician for finest outcomes.
Recent Reviews From Customers
- No Reviews Yet!

domain: health


text:
Taxing Pensions and Retirement Benefits in Germany
36 Pages Posted: 11 Dec 2015
Date Written: November 27, 2015
The paper motivates and describes the tax treatment of German retirement benefits and pensions after the 2005 reform initiated by the German Federal Constitutional Court. The main question is whether this reform has produced a “level playing field” among the many instruments generating retirement income in Germany.
The paper briefly outlines rational principles for the taxation of retirement benefits and pensions and compares these with current practice in Germany and abroad.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

domain: library


text:
Orthodontic care and especially its effectiveness have increasingly become the focus of political and public attention in the recent past. In 2018, the German Federal Ministry of Health commissioned an evaluation about orthodontic treatments and their potential influence on oral health by the Institute for Health and Social Research (Institut für Gesundheits- und Sozialforschung, IGES). The IGES report came to the conclusion that the dental health benefits of orthodontic treatments currently lack evidence which in turn is no proof against such benefits [15
]. Moreover, oral health not only comprises dental health aspects like tooth loss or caries, but also revolves around functional, emotional, and social issues. In this context, oral health-related quality of life has proven to be reduced in children, adolescents and adults with specific malocclusions [1
]. Dental appearance might have significant psychosocial effects. As our population becomes increasingly more aware of dental appearance and is highly informed about orthodontic treatment opportunities, the general demand for orthodontic treatment has risen [17
]. According to the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS Wave 2) by the Robert Koch Institute with a cohort of 15,023 children and adolescents, 25.8% of all 3‑ to 17-year-old girls and 21.1% of all 3‑ to 17-year-old boys were in active orthodontic treatment between the years 2014 and 2017. During this time span, 13-year-old girls and 14-year-old boys underwent orthodontic treatment most frequently (55.0% and 50.8%, respectively). The authors mentioned an increase in uptake of orthodontic care over the past decade [35
]. Population-based data about orthodontic treatment in Germany along with its outcome and effectiveness are however lacking.
Generally, measuring treatment outcome and effectiveness have been discussed thoroughly in international orthodontic literature. In order to assess the severity and complexity of malocclusions before and after orthodontic treatment, numerous grading systems have been proposed [6
]. However, currently no internationally recognized and consistently used quality assessment tool exists. One of the many systems is the Peer Assessment Rating (PAR) Index developed by Richmond et al. to provide an objective assessment of treatment success [32
]. The PAR Index is an occlusal index that is able to quantitatively evaluate orthodontic treatment outcome by measuring pre- and posttreatment models and the respective improvement rate. It has shown excellent validity and reliability [31
]. When reporting about effectiveness and treatment outcome using the PAR Index, some authors suggest to not solely report about the change between pre- and posttreatment PAR scores, but rather take the final total PAR score as an indicator for a good occlusal outcome. Improvement rates seem to be less sensitive because of the confounding factor of the pretreatment PAR score [30
The outcome of orthodontic treatment might be influenced by specific patient-, practitioner-, and treatment-related factors [21
]. There is varying evidence which patient gender or type of malocclusion is associated with better occlusal outcomes [5
]. Treatment-related factors like the type of appliance (fixed vs. removable) or the number of arches treated (single vs. dual arch treatment) were part of corresponding research as well [25
]. Although international study groups have previously reported about orthodontic treatment outcome and potential influencing factors in large cohorts and for a variety of treatment modalities [16
], such research about orthodontic reality in Germany is scarce and often involves patients of only one or two orthodontic providers/university hospitals [21
In the light of the above-mentioned need for national research, the aim of this explorative multicenter cohort study was to evaluate the effectiveness of orthodontic treatments in Germany as well as potential predictive factors within this cohort.
Due to the exploratory nature of this study, no sample size calculation was performed. We considered previous studies [3
] and aimed for a similar sample size, yet considering the wider range of patient-, practitioner- and treatment-related factors involved in our cohort study. A sample size of 60 patients per study center appeared to be sufficient.
Reliability testing was performed by evaluating intraexaminer (IG) and interexaminer reliability (IG vs. NCB) using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for total PAR scores at T0 and T1. Furthermore, 20% of the study models at one of the study centers were randomly selected and rescored by the principal investigator (IG) after a 30-day period in relation to the first scoring. Finally, all cases scored by NCB were additionally scored by IG to test for interexaminer reliability.
Our primary endpoint was the weighted PAR score reduction between T0 and T1. Because our data failed the Shapiro–Wilk normality test, nonparametric tests were performed. For continuous variables, descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, minimum, 1st quartile, median, 3rd quartile and maximum) were calculated and compared by the Wilcoxon test. Qualitative variables were summarized by count and percentage, and their influential impact was analyzed by using crosstabs in combination with Pearson’s chi-square and Fisher’s exact test. Binary logistic regression helped to determine predictive factors of final PAR score (≤5). Independent variables that indicated statistical significance and/or clinical significance in crosstab analyses were tested in this model. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were provided for potential influencing factors.
Statistical analyses were performed with SPSS® statistical package (version 23, IBM, Armonk, NY, USA), in cooperation with the Institute of Medical Statistics and Computational Biology of the University Hospital of Cologne. A two-sided p-value of less than 0.05 was considered to indicate statistical significance. No adjustment for multiple testing was performed; thus, all analyses, except those related to the primary endpoint, were considered to be exploratory.
Since the aim of this study was to report about orthodontic reality in Germany, we defined very few inclusion and exclusion criteria. The age limit was chosen because we incorporated patient-reported outcomes such as oral health-related quality of life in our cohort study and therefore used questionnaires with an age recommendation. Note that these patient-reported outcomes will be part of future publications, however. Every study center was asked to consecutively screen all patients with upcoming posttreatment record takings. Yet, only an average of 57.2% of the screened patients were recruited, mostly because of a lack of patient and/or parent acceptance with regards to reading and filling-out the informed consent documents and the above-mentioned questionnaire. Although our recruitment rate and the corresponding drop-out-rate are in line with previous studies revolving around patient-reported outcomes and questionnaires [18
], one has to keep in mind that the present results might not fully represent orthodontic reality
in Germany. The results should be regarded as a hint towards the potential
quality of orthodontic care in Germany, which proved to be high within the selected study sample.
The study centers involved were chosen in order to represent orthodontic care at university hospitals as well as at orthodontic practices, yet patient and treatment characteristics along with the detected treatment outcome might not be representative for all orthodontic practitioners in Germany. Nevertheless, uniting seven national—geographically and conceptually different—study centers within this quality of orthodontic care study is unique [2
The patient characteristics within our study were similar to comparable studies: An enlarged overjet (= KIG ‘D’) was the most frequent indication to treat among the study participants. In Western Europe and especially in Germany, this occlusal feature is a frequent trait, which underlines that our study sample seems to be representative [14
]. More females than males made up the sample, which is characteristic for the gender distribution in orthodontics [13
], especially the older the patient becomes. Patient gender was not a significantly influencing factor regarding treatment effectiveness, in accordance with other studies [8
]. Mean age at active treatment start was 14.8 years. Quach et al. found similar gender and age distributions among their UK sample [30
]. González-Gil-de-Bernabé et al. reported about older patients within their Spanish sample—17 years—[13
], while Freitas et al. analyzed data from patients who were 13.5 years old on average [11
]. Depending on the research question and methodology—analyses of specific treatment modalities or analyses of quality of care in general—there is no consistency in international literature about the mean age at the beginning of orthodontic treatments. With regards to patient age, we found a significantly different distribution within the PAR categories ‘greatly improved’/’improved’/’worse or different’: On the one hand, patients with great improvement were 0.6 years younger than patients who achieved mere improvement. On the other hand, these patients were older than the patients who finished with an improvement less than 30%. Thus, according to our data, there is no clinically relevant conclusion regarding the correlation between patient age at active treatment start and occlusal outcome.
Average active treatment duration within this sample was 31.3 months; active MBA treatments lasted 26.2 months on average. This is comparable to other studies that reported about treatment duration [2
]. There are many factors that may potentially influence treatment duration in orthodontics, for example, the treatment modality or the need for orthognathic surgery [26
]; other influencing factors are individual occlusal traits like impacted canines. Our sample comprised almost every aspect of malocclusion and treatment modality because the aim of this study was to report about orthodontic reality with its numerous facets. Although we found a significantly different distribution of treatment duration within the PAR categories of improvement—namely that the treatment duration was longer in the ‘greatly improved’ group than in the ‘improved’ group but shorter than in the ‘worse or no different’ group—no clear conclusion can be drawn about the influence of treatment duration with regards to occlusal outcome. Yet, one has to keep in mind that unwanted side effects for oral soft and hard tissues might be more probable in prolonged orthodontic treatment. Therefore, active treatment duration should be as long as necessary and as short as possible.
In general and regardless of potential confounding factors, the PAR score reduction within this German sample indicated a high standard of orthodontic care. An improvement rate higher than 70% is generally considered a good standard of orthodontic treatment [32
]. In our sample, a mean PAR improvement rate of 83.54% was achieved, which seems to be rather high compared to the reported improvement in similar studies [2
]. Freitas et al. reported about 78.54% improvement in their Brazilian sample that underwent premolar extraction treatments [11
]. Ponduri et al. investigated the PAR Index reduction of orthodontic as well as orthognathic surgery treatments and found an improvement rate of 77 and 74%, respectively [29
]. An improvement rate about as high as in our sample was reported by Isherwood et al. [16
] and Onyeaso et al. [28
]. Moreover, the distribution of cases within our sample with regards to the PAR categories ‘greatly improved‘ (49.0%), ‘improved’ (50.1%), and ‘worse or no different’ (0.9%) represents a very high standard of treatment. Although other study groups have reported about negligible numbers of treatments that resulted in a ‘worse or no different’ outcome as well, 0.9% of ‘worse or no different’ cases, like in our sample, seems to be a very low proportion [2
]. On the other hand, researchers like Ponduri et al. [29
] and Isherwood et al. [16
] even reported about no single ‘worse or no different’ treatment within their samples. Within the present study sample, all PAR components significantly improved throughout treatment course. Yet, improvement rate of the PAR components ‘buccal segments’ and ‘centerline’ was only 44.02 and 33.23%, respectively, whereas the PAR component ‘upper anterior segments’ showed an improvement of 90.94%. These differing PAR component-specific improvement rates are in line with previous studies [2
]. Interestingly, in the present sample the PAR component ‘buccal segments’ was reduced by 52.86% in the high SE group and only by 36.92% in the low SE group (p
< 0.001), highlighting the potential impact of staff experience.
While many authors investigate improvement
measures with regards to the PAR Index, few report about the final occlusal result
as an indicator of treatment quality. Quach et al. expressed the importance of this indicator [30
]. Mere improvement measures should be read with caution because the initial PAR score seems to be highly relevant and influential for the categories of PAR Index improvement (‘greatly improved’, ‘improved’, ‘worse or no different’), having in mind that a case only classifies for ‘great improvement’ when the initial PAR score counts more than 22 points. Thus, Quach et al. had a closer look at the final occlusal outcome and the percentage of treatments that finished with an almost ‘ideal occlusion’ of ≤5 PAR points; 67.9% of the 495 treated and analyzed patients from the UK had such an almost ‘ideal occlusion’ at the end of the treatment, while the improvement rate was 80.5% [30
]. The 335 analyzed patients from our study were treated towards high-quality results more frequently; 81.5% fell in this outcome category, again an indicator of a very high standard of orthodontic care in this German sample. Remarkably, even if a final PAR score of 5 points or less stands for an almost ‘ideal occlusion’ and a high-quality treatment result, this low score might as well comprise a bilateral single tooth crossbite, for example.
In specific, several treatment modalities were significantly more often associated with ‘great improvement’ and high-quality treatment outcome than others. Yet, based on the aims and design of the study, no scientific explanation for the difference in appliance performance can be given. Treatments with HA resulted in high-quality treatment outcome, as it has been proven before [4
]. Furthermore, treatments with L‑MBA were associated with high effectiveness. Note that most of the HA treatments and all L‑MBA cases of this sample were treated in specialized practices/university hospitals, which might be a biasing factor regarding the quality of treatment outcome. A recent systematic review on lingual orthodontics came to the conclusion that especially individualized treatment goals seemed to be achievable by fully customized L‑MBA such as those used in the present sample [27
]. In addition, the PAR component ‘buccal segments’ was significantly more improved in the present L‑MBA group compared to all other treatments, possibly due to their biomechanical properties.
While patients who were treated with RME appliances had only half the chance of achieving an almost ‘ideal occlusion’ compared to the rest (OR 0.441), this negative correlation was not the case with regards to achieving the PAR category ‘greatly improved’. Significantly more patients with RME classified for ‘great improvement’ in comparison to the rest (78.6 vs. 44.9%), while significantly less patients who underwent RME treatment achieved an almost ‘ideal occlusion’ in comparison to the rest (66.7 vs. 83.9%). This apparent contradiction reflects the above-mentioned difference of the two outcome measures ‘high-quality treatment result’ and ‘great improvement’. A case can be regarded as ‘greatly improved’ because of a reduction of the mean PAR score of >22 points, but it does not necessarily finish with an almost ‘ideal occlusion’ with ≤5 PAR points at the end of treatment. RME is used when treating crossbites and a compromised transverse occlusion. In general, especially the PAR component ‘buccal segments’ proved to finish with rather high PAR points. Therefore, it seems to be clinically comprehensible that RME treatments do not finish with a low total PAR score, but can be regarded as ‘greatly improved’ nevertheless. Our result that RME treatments significantly reduce the chance to achieve high-quality treatment results should not lead to direct clinical implications or restrictions, particularly because of the above-mentioned thoughts.
Similar results were found when analyzing the effectiveness of OS treatments compared to the rest. Significantly more patients who underwent orthognathic surgery classified for ‘great improvement’ in comparison to the rest (80.0 vs. 47.1%), while significantly lower percentage of patients who were treated with surgery achieved an almost ‘ideal occlusion’ in comparison to the rest (65.0 vs. 82.8%). These findings could be explained by the previously mentioned difference between both outcome measures, but should be regarded with caution because the subgroup of OS compromised only 20 patients, while the rest made up 314 patients within the mentioned analyses.
Based on our results, a key predictive factor for finishing with an almost ‘ideal occlusion’ was a high staff experience in years. This result is not surprising and supported by other studies [10
]. High staff experience and an increased skill level is likely to come along with increased treatment effectiveness, especially with regards to achieving one of the most important and at the same time most challenging orthodontic goal—to correct buccal occlusion. However, this result should encourage university hospitals with a high number of postgraduates and rather low staff experience, to take care of sufficient supervision by highly experienced staff members, so that the difference in clinical experience and skills does not necessarily have an effect on treatment quality.
Furthermore, the results of this study imply a trend, indicating that a combination of removable—mostly functional—and fixed appliances might result in high-quality treatment outcomes. Whenever treatments were carried out with a RA/functional phase, the chance to finish with a PAR score ≤5 points was almost twice as high (OR 1.92). Yet, this result should only be interpreted as a trend because of missing statistical significance. Quach et al. found a similar correlation between the combination of functional plus fixed appliances and high effectiveness [30
]. However, treating patients with removable plus fixed appliances prolongs the total treatment duration. As orthodontists we try to treat our patients as quickly and efficiently as possible, but should also take the above-mentioned findings into account during treatment planning.
There are several limitations of the present study with some of them already mentioned. Although recruitment procedures were discussed with professionals from the Clinical Trials Center of the University Hospital of Cologne, a positive selection of potential study participants and with it, a selection bias, cannot be completely ruled out. However, a willful (positive) selection of patients was defined as unacceptable and existing good clinical practice guidelines as well as the individual commitment of research partners should not be doubted in general. Study centers with a rather long recruitment duration did not prove to provide study participants whose treatments were more efficient than the rest; in fact, the duration of recruitment was rather short at study centers that contributed a large amount of high-quality treatments. Yet, we cannot be certain about the generalizability of data. Especially with regards to specific treatment modalities such as L‑MBA or HA it is important to keep in mind that highly specialized centers were part of this study. In addition, the study sample comprised a large number of patients, which was not necessarily the case for the analyzed subgroups. Thus, results revolving around treatment modalities with only a small number of patients should be read with a degree of caution. In addition, not every potential aspect of the variety of orthodontic treatment modalities was analyzed. We chose the treatment modalities carefully with regards to frequently applied procedures, yet some aspects of orthodontic reality, like aligner treatments, might be missing. Another characteristic of our methodology was the use of the PAR Index for measuring treatment effectiveness. Although this index can be regarded as the gold standard for measuring treatment effects, there are some PAR-specific aspects to keep in mind. One of them is that the PAR Index is preferred in permanent dentition cases and often scores higher in these cases than in mixed-dentition cases. Another crucial aspect is the above-mentioned fact that a final PAR score of 5 points might be far from representing a truly ideal occlusion. Using the PAR Index, very good insight into the quality of orthodontic care within a sample is obtained, but it does not represent the absolute occlusal truth—as no occlusal index does. Finally, when looking at our results in detail, one has to keep in mind that T1 was not directly after active orthodontic treatment, but rather after a retention phase at the time of final record taking. Furthermore, the time interval between the end of active treatment and record taking varied considerably (6.3–26.9 months) between the study centers. Potential relapse or further improvement due to specific retention protocols were not accounted for.
In addition to the above-mentioned and -discussed findings, patient-reported outcomes were measured and analyzed in the course of this multicenter cohort study. This specific aspect of quality of orthodontic care will be part of future publications.
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

domain: medical


text:
Reports suggest that a phase two deal between the U.S. and China could fall apart, causing Dow Jones ..
Elon Musk falsely claims that that hundreds of thousands of people have ordered the Cybertruck. In reality, ..
Dow futures point to moderate gains for the US stock market on Monday. The US and China traded attacks ..
Berkshire Hathaway has mostly sat out the stock market’s 2019 recovery. However, Warren Buffett’s ..
Amazon is allegedly announcing a new game streaming service in 2020. Google Stadia just launched this ..
Latest CS:GO update creates a “game-breaking” issue. Professional and casual gamers are concerned. ..
WT.Social is a new social network that doesn’t have ads and relies on subscriptions. Created by Wikipedia ..
LeBron James is one of the greatest players to ever set foot on a basketball court. Eventually, he is going ..
Google Stadia has not reviewed terribly well. Google VP Phil Harrison says other companies have been ..
Dalvin Cook’s pre-game into for Sunday Night Football has sparked controversy. Does he harbor any ill will ..

domain: news


text:
She rang round for an electrician. Everything was off; lights, heating, internet. He arrived within the hour, ‘I’m Sparks,’ he said, ‘from OK Electrics.’ She let him in, he was rather nice. He whizzed around the house checking things.
‘Is Sparks a nickname?’ she asked, ‘because you’re an electrician.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘my dad named me after a 70s group, my first name is actually Sparks, causes all sorts of confusion in my line of work.’
‘I’m named after a 70s band too,’ she lied.
‘Oh really, which one?’ he inquired.
‘Kiss,’ she said, hopefully. And a spark ignited between them.
#FLASHFICTION101 February 2021 SHORTLISTED ENTRY
All work remains copyright of the owner. No reproduction of this work is permitted without written permission from the author detailed here. If you wish to contact the author, please contact Tortive Theatre.

domain: literature


WHAT IS INTEL® SECL - DC
Intel® SecL - DC is a set of building blocks that discover, attest, and utilize Intel security features, to enable critical cloud security and confidential computing use-cases. The building blocks provide a consistent set of APIs for easy integration with cloud management software, and security monitoring and enforcement tools. Intel® SecL - DC libraries will be the delivery mechanism for all future Intel Data Center security software components.
INTEL® SECL - DC V2.2 GA RELEASE (NEW!)
- Micro services-based model to expose and use Intel security features.
- Built for cloud scale with the ability to deploy as containerized components.
- Extensible to include any future security use-cases and technologies.
- Current version supports RHEL*, Microsoft* Datacenter Server, and VMWare* vSphere.
- Enables Cloud security use cases including but not limited to resiliency, integrity assurance, data protection and sovereignty
- Extensions part of standard OpenStack* starting with release ‘R’, Docker* and Kubernetes*.
- Easy to automate deployment, provisioning, and management of trusted flavors/configurations.
INTEL DATA CENTER SECURITY STRATEGY
INTEL® SECL - DC INTEGRATED USAGES
INTEL® SECL - DC COMPONENTS
INTEL® SECL - DC DEPLOYMENT ARCHITECTURE
ABOUT INTEL INVOLVEMENT
Intel is the leading contributor and maintainer of Intel® SecL - DC, which leverages Intel processors with Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (Intel® TXT) and other upcoming technologies in its platform to provide the next generation attestation solution that can be used in private and public clouds.


BEST INDOOR PLANTS
Plants are a natural and effective way to improve indoor air quality by removing toxins and producing oxygen. Here are some of the best plants to improve indoor air quality.
Remember, it is important to choose plants that suit your indoor environment, as some plants may not thrive in certain conditions. Additionally, make sure to avoid overwatering plants, as excessive moisture can lead to mold growth, which can worsen indoor air quality.


LSU Health Care Services' chief executive and its chief medical officer is resigning next month.
Tagged with: LSU Health Care Services DivisionRead More »
The state's Civil Service Commission has approved a Jindal administration plan to outsource the health care services currently provided by LSU's public hospital in Baton Rouge.Read More »
LSU hospitals leader Frank Opelka sent an email update to state lawmakers Tuesday, notifying them that he won't move forward with civil service approval of the layoff plans for seven hospitals under the LSU Health Care Services Division.Read More »
BATON ROUGE — Another top leader of LSU’s health care system is being replaced, as Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration pushes the university-run network of hospitals and clinics to change its approach to providing services amid significant budget cuts. Roxane ...Read More »
BATON ROUGE — Notices of impending layoffs have gone out to employees of seven LSU public hospitals as system executives prepare to implement $29 million in Jindal administration budget cuts. The notice from hospital system CEO Roxane Townsend says the ...Read More »
BATON ROUGE — The LSU public hospital system is cutting more than $29 million in the current fiscal year to cope with budget reductions made by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration. LSU System Vice President Fred Cerise said cuts will cause ...Read More »
BATON ROUGE — A legislative auditor’s report issued today found medical billing problems at three LSU-operated hospitals. The Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans, University Medical Center at Lafayette and Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center at Independence “failed to ...Read More »


text:
Recent AML fines
aml case studies
September 4 2018 The Kingdom of Bahrain has the foundation for an effective regime to combat money laundering and terrorist finance, but needs to further...
What is popular
September 4 2016 The world’s top 10 investment banks have already paid out almost as much in fines and penalties so far this year as they did in the 12 months of 2015, dashing hopes that the outlay for misdeeds had begun to taper off. The banks have paid $9.79bn in...


text:
Authentic Thessaloniki sweets
«Hatzifotiou Patisseries» have a history of more than half a century in patisserie and bakery goods. The story started back in 1946 in Xanthi when Stelios Hatzifotiou, a refugee from Prousa in Asia Minor, started working at a local patisserie.
With adherence to tradition and to the pure and natural taste, we produce foil wrapped chocolates, chocolate treats, “syrup desserts”, twits, cakes, tsoureki and other pastries, sweet puff pastry and salty pies, patisserie and ice creams in our privately- owned 3,000 sq.m. facilities.
Our company’s people have embraced the principle of producing and selling top quality products addressed to highly demanding consumers.
Our company is certified with the latest food safety management system ISO 2200:2005 by TUV HELLAS.
Try the famous Chocolate Cigars, the unique Kariokes, the tasty Anomala, the timeless Syrupy, the magnificent Panorama Cream Trigona, as well as the delicious Profiteroles, the light Tsoureki and the Italian authentic Ice cream’s recipes.
Our authentic products are available in our shops either in Thessaloniki or in Halkidiki.
+30 23920 911-12

domain: food


text:
32 years ago today (wow, anyone else feel old?), a little movie called E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial released across the country.
Today’s Buried Treasure is a fun, little alien game that reminds me of this classic movie… mostly because the aliens are cute explorers that you have to help get home (or to the goal) safely. It’s very lemmings-like.
Tell me what buried treasures you’re playing in the comments!

domain: game


text:
It is written by composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen and will feature soprano Goitsemang Oniccah Lehobye.
The orchestra’s South African tour will follow one in its home state this month and will be the first visit to South Africa by a professional US orchestra.
“A highlight of the tour will be a piece specially commissioned as a tribute to Mandela by Classical Movements,” said the concert tour organisers.
“The 90-member ensemble will perform music by Bernstein, Beethoven and South African composer Ndodana-Breen, among others.
“Its visit follows a tour to Cuba,” said its president and chief executive, Kevin Smith.
“We recently became the first American orchestra to tour Cuba after a 2014 thaw in diplomatic relations.
“The experience was so uplifting for us we decided to forge similar cultural exchanges with other countries.
Music director Osmo Vänskä performed with the SA National Youth Orchestra in Cape Town and Soweto in 2014. “And the moving experience of that event persuaded us to tour South Africa next.”
The tour aims to showcase music from South African, American and European musical traditions, and will draw together South African and US performers, offering musical exchanges with student groups and large-scale performances in colleges, city halls and churches.
“Music plays a central role in South African culture, both choral music and a growing orchestral tradition, and we are excited to experience and be part of this movement,” said Vänskä.
The musical tribute to Mandela forms part of nearly 50 projects planned by the Nelson Mandela Foundation to commemorate the Mandela legacy. Sello Hatang, chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said: “Madiba’s centenary is about helping build a values-based society.”
In 2014, the Minnesota Orchestra won the Best Orchestral Performance Grammy Award. With multiple nominations under their belt, Vänskä and the orchestra have just received a further nomination for the 2018 Grammys taking place at the end of January.
The ensemble is highly acclaimed for its performances on the world’s great stages.
Ticket prices for the Sunday, August 12 show, at 5pm in the Durban City Hall, range from R100 to R600 and bookings can be done through Computicket at www.computicket.com/music.
For more information, visit minnesotaorchestra.orgThe Independent on Saturday


WARNING: This story contains distressing details. The Vatican says Pope Francis has accepted an invitation to come to Canada and meet with Indigenous groups who have long wanted an apology for the church’s role in residential schools. But it’s still not known when the Pope will visit or whether he’ll apologize.
Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting


text:
Great Pucklands by novelist Alison Alison MacLeod appears in the anthology These Our Monsters, published in 2019 by English Heritage. The story focuses on the close bond between Charles Darwin and his daughter Annie. I found myself deeply bound up in both the story and the history that underlay it. A print-out of what I believe to be the only known photograph of Annie sat on my desk throughout the work, though I had no intention of making a direct likeness of it for the illustration. Somehow that wouldn’t have fitted with what I wanted to convey of Alison’s story. I needed to absorb the mood of the piece and somehow create something that had Annie in it, but transformed. Here’s the drawing.
I loved making it, and I kept all the sketches and studies preparatory to it. The ammonite and trilobite are from my small collection of fossils. Sometimes a story gets under your skin, and you have an imperartive to serve it well and to do it justice. That was the case with this one. But I also wanted to honour the person at the heart of it. This image was made for Annie Darwin, who died aged just ten in 1851, one hundred years before the year I was born.
The only image of Annie is a lovely one captured in a daguerrotype. In a world where lives are charted every hour of every day, snapped on smartphones and loaded onto social media sites, and when it seems everyone on the planet is photographed incessantly from birth to death, a single, beautifully accomplished portrait of a child who clearly prepared and gravely composed herself for the momentous occasion, tugs at the heartstrings. Annie left behind so little: this photograph, a gravestone and the ‘box’ in which her parents preserved a small handful of mementoes. Perhaps it’s the modesty of what survives her that opens the door to creativity, because it gives the freedom to writers and artists to ‘imagine’ versions of her into life.
It was only back in 2019 that I spent a year as artist-in-residence with English Heritage, and yet it seems a lifetime ago. Anyone with the romantic notion that I spent a year motoring around the countryside visiting English Heritage properties in care and making artworks at a leisurely pace, would be way off the mark. It was deadlines from beginning to end, and I spent the entire time pinned to the worktable in my studio, creating images that were the results of my own research. There wasn’t time to visit a single site. Nevertheless there were exciting creations during the year, even when technically and creatively challenging in the allotted time.
The first project was to design and render all the ‘assets’ (artworks, to you and me) for the online, interactive English Heritage ‘Myths Map’ that was produced by the digital agency, Gravitywell, in Bristol. I suggested a cartouche of the type used on historic maps as a portal to the experience, and produced a number of rough designs to kickstart discussions with the Gravitywell and EH teams.
The EH team were very keen to use the iconography of Saint George and the Dragon, which I used to surmount the cartouche. They were also enthusiastic to include an animated element. Because time was incredibly short, I decided to render the image so as to look rather like a paper-cut, as it would have a graphic dynamic and yet be relatively quick to make.
All aspects of the map were initially made in black and white and the colour added later. It was such a complex project that it could have been misleading to decide the palette at the outset. It was much easier to assemble everything and then play with options.
The image had to be flexible enough for it to be adapted to several formats across various EH platforms.
The animated element was a gentle joust between the Saint and the Dragon, and the ‘maquettes’ I designed needed to be very simple as there would be no close-ups. The figures had to work pretty much as reverse silhouettes. I would have preferred to make the animation myself, but Gravitywell wanted to produce it in house, and so made the sequence guided by a thumbnail animation storyboard I created for them.
The puppets were designed and assembled by me and photographed in key positions. I then took them apart, scanned the components and sent the files to the company to be digitally reassembled and animated.
The animation was brief and added a little liveliness to the viewers’ experience. Once through the cartouche and sailing down to the map, there were animated cloud elements and passing flocks of birds to sweeten the interaction. Sea-monsters emerged from waves and a masted ship went down in the tentacles of a Kraken. I’m of the opinion that while tight deadlines and tight budgets are challenges to creativity, they shouldn’t necessarily be impediments.
There was a plan to make a more complex George and the Dragon animation for another EH platform later in the year. I’d made a trial, rough maquette of a dragon in preparation for that, but in the end it was cancelled. A shame as the maquette tests were good.
The 2019 English Heritage Story-Telling Competition
In 2019, while I was artist-in-residence for English Heritage, one of the briefs suggested to me was that I might create illustrations as prizes for the winners of the five categories of an English Heritage story telling competition. It was a new experience to consider, inasmuch that I’d have to agree to be involved from the start so that the announcement could be made at the launch of the competition. This meant that I’d be committed to the project before getting to read any of the stories, which is not my usual way of working. But because I thought the idea had the potential to be stimulating for the young writers, I accepted.
The 5-7 category winner was Sophie from the Midlands with her story of The Dragon and the Princess, set at Kenilworth Castle. Most of the stories submitted for the five categories were based on history, but Sophie had written one in which she had a protagonist who appeared to be channeling her inner Daenerys Targaryen – though without the attendant carnage.
I thought the story charming, and believed I could contribute something to it. In an ideal world I would have enjoyed having dialogues with the winners so that I could exchange ideas with them and have a sense of what they wanted for their stories, the way I would when illustrating a commercial publication. But this was deemed by English Heritage to be too complicated, and so I worked using only the winning texts as my guides and inspirations.
Below: developmental drawings toward the illustration for The Dragon and the Princess:
There were so many directions I could have taken with the illustration, and it felt limiting to produce only one when I could see so many possibilities. (I loved the idea that Perdita ‘torched’ the castle before setting off for her new life with Dennis, presumably so that there was no chance of her being forced to return!)
All five illustrations for the competition winners were started and completed during lockdown, framed and then collected by a specialised art-carrying service that delivered them to the recipients. There was no contact between any of us. But then quite unexpectedly Sophie’s mother messaged me at Facebook.
“Hi Clive, I’m the mum of one of the English Heritage short story winners that has received your wonderful Illustration of her story. She is absolutely thrilled with it – you have bought her story to life and she couldn’t be happier! Thank you so much for a wonderful bit of art that will stay with my daughter – and with us as a family – for ever!”
Later she added:
“Sophie would love to see the process you took, as would we. Her headteacher is very excited to see the illustration too, and so it is going into school on Monday to be shown in a full school assembly, albeit via Zoom ‘beamed’ into each classroom, but the excitement is still valid!“
Above: Sophie, the Age 5 -7 Category Winner of the English Heritage Storytelling Competition, with her prize of an illustration of Dennis the Dragon and Princess Perdita.
The Dragon and the Princess
Once upon a time, a king called Titon lived in Kenilworth Castle. The knights of the castle were fearless, the guards were strong, and the castle was expertly built. The king wanted it this way because of his big secret: his daughter, Princess Perdita. King Titon loved Perdita so much that he would have kept her in a little jewellery box if he could have! But he did not realise that this was bad for Perdita. She was lonely because her father wouldn’t let her do anything.
One day a fierce dragon by the name of Dennis came to the castle. He breathed out fire in rage as if he were in a terrible tantrum. Everyone in the castle was scared so the knights and guards started to fight Dennis. They fired arrows at him and tried to cut him with their swords, but Dennis was too strong and too fast. What they didn’t know was that Dennis was only angry because everyone he met was scared of him and he was sad because he was friendless.
The last few knights and guards fled, and they took the king with them. When they came to take Perdita too, she hid from the guards in a wardrobe. Princess Perdita looked out of the window and saw the last few guards and her father leave. She knew what it felt like to be lonely and understood Dennis’s feelings, so she ran downstairs and outside to meet him. Dennis went up to her, but he wasn’t angry anymore.
Princess Perdita bravely walked right up close and looked straight at him. “Hello, I’m Perdita. Would you like to be my friend?” she asked.
Dennis couldn’t believe his ears. “Yes, please!” he roared with a big smile on his face. “I’m Dennis. Pleased to meet you.”
Then Princess Perdita had an idea. She asked Dennis if he could breathe fire over the whole castle because she didn’t want to be a princess anymore. She would rather be a dragon’s best friend and fly on his back all over the kingdom. Dennis was so happy to finally have a friend he agreed at once. And that is how Kenilworth Castle fell into ruins.
Today I completed my final work for English Heritage on the year-long Telling Tales project that arrived entirely unexpectedly just before Christmas 2018.
It began with a commission via English Heritage Magazine to make an illustration of Saint George for a series of articles on English myths, legends and folk tales, and ended today with the last in a group of paintings commissioned as prizes in the five categories of a short story competition for young people, for which I made an illustration for each winning story.
One of the winning competition stories tells of an unhappy young Princess who makes friends with a fierce and much reviled fire-breathing beast, so my year with English Heritage began and ended with dragons.
Throughout it there has been a relentless schedule of deadlines. The first was to conceptualise and then complete all the visuals for an interactive ‘Myths Map’ that required daunting quantities of artwork from me, including producing thirty drawings of EH sites and designing and building the many puppets required for the map’s animation sequences.
Following that I designed retail products and produced illustrations for EH Magazine, for several educational projects and for the anthology of short stories titled ‘These Our Monsters’.
In November 2019 much of my output was on show in Grand Tour: Works Commissioned from Clive Hicks-Jenkins by English Heritage at Martin Tinney Gallery, Cardiff.
In some ways producing illustrations as prizes for the Telling Tales short story competition winners was the most challenging part of the project, because there was the added responsibility of wanting the experience for the young writers to be the best.
Telling Tales was English Heritage’s theme of 2019, designed to promote interest in the many sites around which the project had been built. Had it come a year later things would have turned out quite differently as right now all the sites are closed until future notice, and their retail outlets with them. Most of the EH team I worked with are on furlough. Even so a few weeks ago it was suggested I work on an extension to the project, and while pleased and flattered to be asked, I declined. Any commission is hard work, but this one was particularly challenging because the briefs were demanding and I was answerable to a great many stakeholders over a long period. Sustaining concentration and the energy to deliver to schedule throughout it was exhausting, and while I greatly appreciated being the artist entrusted with the challenges, now feels like the moment to be moving on.
‘These Our Monsters’ is the only book for which I’ve been commissioned to make two covers in order to appeal to different markets. It was soft-launched in November with a cover bearing an image based on Graeme Macrae Burnet‘s Bram Stoker themed story set in Whitby, The Dark Thread, and now bears a cover with a hare from Paul Kingsnorth’s Goibert of the Moon. The two covers were a clever idea by Editor Katherine Davey that, with promotion and in circumstances other than we‘re currently in, would have been eye-catching. But with most English Heritage staff having been furloughed for the duration of the crisis, the change of cover has been slipped out unannounced, and I think the sleight-of-hand is now likely to go un-noticed.
The first cover was to catch the attention of a readership attracted to the horror genre. There was a lot of anticipation last year at the prospect of the new Mark Gatiss three-part adaptation of Dracula at the BBC, which I hoped our cover with the vampire count might benefit from by dint of zeitgeist. By contrast the second was a subtler mood-drenched image drawing on current interests in Folk Horror Revival that might attract those for whom the more overt grotesquerie of the Dracula cover was not so appealing. (Though look closely and those foliate elements are not as pretty or innocent as they at first appear, and the building on the back cover has been tweaked into the likeness of a skull.)
On the cover of the myths and legends-inspired short story anthology These Our Monsters just out from English Heritage, I depicted Dracula because both the undead Count and his creator, Irish author Bram Stoker, appear in Graeme Macrae Burnet’s The Dark Thread. Burnet’s brief Whitby-set conjuring of Dracula as imagined by his author sent me to my bookshelves to take a look at how the Count is described by Stoker in the 1897 novel. In films Dracula has been depicted as darkly handsome with a deadly allure and sensuality. But that’s simply not the way Stoker introduced him:
Below: the first ‘Dracula’ sketch in my These Our Monsters project-book
“His face was very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth.”
From Christopher Lee in the 1958 – 1973 Hammer franchise to Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) via Frank Langella reprising his Broadway success as the Count in a Dracula (John Badham, 1979) with a distinctly erotic charge, the ‘Prince of Vampire’s’ cinematic appearances have been constantly in flux, endlessly reinvented to suit the tastes of the age. But the bushy eyebrows and the mouth-obscuring moustache were left between the pages of the original novel, film-makers preferring the undead to be smooth-faced. (Gary Oldman sported a trim moustache and goatee with shoulder-length curls as he pursued Winona Ryder throughout much of Coppola’s film, more dreamy musketeer than vampire Count, so she understandably buckled at the knees when he swooped in for a lick!)
The changes wrought in translation are understandable. A film is not a book and an illustration doesn’t have to follow to the letter the text that underlies it. For my own Dracula I invented an ancient-parchment complexion, criss-crossed with lines. I ditched Stoker’s description of pointed ears (too Spock-like for a post-Star-Trek generation) but stuck with the straggly moustache because I liked the idea of the unholy trailing and dripping mess it would make when the vampire fed. I retained the unibrow, though replaced Stoker’s description of the Count’s sombre dark garments with the dandy’s delight in exuberant colour. My sartorial Dracula has a very fancy waistcoat!
Below: the cover art underway. Whitby Abbey is just an outline at this stage.
Stoker can’t have known and couldn’t possibly have imagined the popularity of his monster reinvented into a plethora of iterations, and that’s not including the Dracula-inspired inventions that go by other names in cinema and fiction, starting with director F. W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film Nosferatu which unwisely drew on the novel without acquiring permissions from the author’s widow. First she lobbied the producer with demands for compensation, but when it turned out there was no money to be had, gained a court order requiring that all the prints of the film be destroyed. Today there would be no Nosferatu had a few prints not slipped through the net.
The Count from Transylvania has stuck like a burr in the imaginations of creators and audiences. We can’t get enough of him. I loved honouring the tale on the cover of These Our Monsters. I read not only Burnet’s story in order to make the cover, but Stoker’s novel too. (Twice.) I’d illustrate it in a heartbeat were the offer to come my way.
Below: my first version of the cover, with the lettering given more space and the EH logo placed bottom left.
Below: wrap around dust-jacket in a storm of my trademark oak leaves.
Among the contributors to the short story anthology that’s being published by English Heritage this month, is Edward Carey. When I saw his name on the list of writers responding to some of the English Heritage sites with mythic/folkloric associations, I recalled reading a glowing review for his novel Little. I duly acquired a copy and read it.
Edward is both a writer and an artist. He makes images to accompany his novels. Little, illustrated throughout with many drawings, is a staggering feat of research married to imagination, a compelling, page-turning history of Anne Marie Grosholtz, better known today – thanks to waxworks attractions around the globe bearing her name – as Madame Tussaud.
The book nailed my attention. Here was a writer who’d uncannily entered the mind of a known eighteenth century woman, channeling her into a first person account with her character fully formed and vibrant throughout the narrative. The Marie of Carey’s Little feels utterly real and present. Moreover he magnificently and dreadfully sets her down in that bloodiest period of civil unrest, the Revolution. A clammy sense of dread pervades the second half of the book as Paris sinks into malign chaos. The aristocrats and their supporters may have been the first to be rounded up and executed, but in the ensuing upheavals of rival factions, civil dissolution and score-settling, you could go to the guillotine at the whim of a jealous neighbour because you’d violated a dress-code. The world had turned in on itself and gone mad.
It’s been said that in later life – and with her waxworks a famous attraction in London – Marie Tussaud’s published account of her early life may have stretched the facts to better make a story. She claimed to have been a teacher of art to the King’s young sister Elizabeth, living for nine years by invitation of the royal family in the palace of Versailles. She claimed to have known the King and Queen. Later, back in Paris in the cataclysmic turmoil of ‘la Terreur’, the story goes that she was forced to take plaster casts from the decapitated heads of people she had once known in order to make wax effigies of them to be displayed and ridiculed. Whatever the truth of that, Carey makes the idea viscerally plausible, and his accounts of what it must have been like to carry out such grim work are convincingly and startlingly detailed. If Marie Tussaud – a great show-woman and self-promoter – did partially manufacture her history, adding a darker lustre to justify the more outrageous elements of her waxworks attraction, then Carey has done a magnificent job of adding flesh to the bones. She owes him a huge debt of gratitude, because she’s now going to be better known as the Marie of Little, than as the Madame Tussaud of her biography. He’s even made her portrait for the book in a pastiche of her times, which will now be the one I feel most truly represents her.
Ed’s short story for the English Heritage collection gave me wonderful inspiration for the illustration I made to accompany it. A few weeks after I’d completed and submitted it, the editor Katherine Davey told me that he’d asked her to pass on how much he liked the image, and enquire whether I’d agree to be contacted by him. We started e-mailing each other almost immediately, and we’ve been e-mailing ever since. We’ve exchanged drawings. I’m now the owner of a delicate pencil image he made for Little, one of many in the book which are supposed to be the work of Marie’s hand. By way of exchange Ed has the drawing of a ‘goblin child’ I made for his title story of the English Heritage anthology, These Our Monsters.
It’s a wonderful swop. I particularly like that the drawing I have is of a model of Marie created – in the novel – by the young man she loves. It’s a rather grotesque wooden doll that could be mistaken for Mr Punch’s Judy, so it couldn’t have been better chosen for me given my passion for puppets. What a happy experience working on this project has been, and what a lovely drawing transaction.
This project for English Heritage has been under wraps for months but is now being publicised ahead of launch. It’s been a lovely to work on contemporary stories steeped in the traditions of folklore, myth and legend, inspired by eight sites in the care of English Heritage. I’ve made the cover and sixteen illustrations.
It’s been my great good fortune on These Our Monsters to have Katherine Davey at English Heritage as my editor. We’ve discussed all aspects of the book at every stage, and her unflagging enthusiasm has been a tonic during the occasionally gruelling schedule to get the work completed within the deadline.
The dust wrapper image is of Bram Stoker’s Vlad Dracula, who makes an appearance in Graeme Macrae Burnet’s story The Dark Thread set in and around Whitby. Macrae’s Count references Stoker’s original description in his novel Dracula, which is far from the darkly handsome vampire played Christopher Lee in the glorious Hammer Horror films of the 1960s and 70s. Women willingly surrendered themselves/swooned into the enveloping folds of Lee’s crimson-lined cloak, whereas Stoker’s Count is monstrous without a hint of sex-appeal. However, to make up for his parchment-like skin and dreadfully straggly moustaches, I’ve dressed him with the dandy’s attention to detail in all things sartorial. A high-collared shirt, a well-tied stock and a waistcoat to die for.
The authors and the English Heritage sites they selected are:
My thanks to Gravitywell, the award-winning digital media company in Bristol, for sharing this example of how my artwork for the English Heritage Myths Map was layered by them to create an interactive experience across diverse platforms. This is just a small corner of the map, but you can experience the full effect by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page.
I produced all the artwork for the map, and the entire project was designed, built and launched by Gravitywell in a six week schedule. There were times when it seemed an almost impossibly short time in which to achieve everything, but we did it!


text:
CONFEDERATION OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
EMPLOYEES AND WORKERS.
Manishinath Bhawan A-2/95 Rajouri Garden
New Delhi. 110 027.
E mail. email@example.com
Dated: 17th May, 2009
The BSNL Employees Union have decided to organize two days strike on 19th and 20th May, 2009. There had been an impasse in their wage settlement especially on the issue of tenure of the agreement. The management of BSNL is insisting upon a settlement period of ten years instead of five years which is the case with many of the PSUs and which matter was agreed upon by the Prime Minister when the Central Trade Unions had appealed to him to stick to the existing practice of agreement period of five years. This apart we are told that there had been consistent efforts on the part of the BSNL management to bypass the recognized Union, which have won the verification process very recently. No doubt no management would like to negotiate with the Union which stands for the interest of the workers and which is not shy of choosing the path of struggle. The BSNL employees union in the past with their consistent and persistent efforts has brought about many benefits and facilities to its employees. They have now signed an agreement for ensuring that every employee, like the Management personnel get time bound promotions in their career. The BSNL managerial personnel do get like our all India organized Group A Services time bound five promotions in their career irrespective whether posts exists or not or the creation of such high level posts are needed or not while this facility is denied to its workers. On the eve of the last verification process and backed up by a determined trade union action, they could negotiate and settle atleast four promotions in every individual's career.
Their struggles and advancement should be heartwarming for us and our endeavor should be to draw lessons from such struggles and shape our future actions for better wages, benefits and career advancement for our members. It should be our bounden duty to ensure that the struggles of BSNL employees become successful. They have sought our solidarity and support. We, therefore, request all our affiliates to advice their units and Branches to hold demonstration in front of their office in support of the striking employees and send the following telegram to The Chairman Cum Managing Director, Bharath Sanchar Nigam Limited, Janpath, New Delhi. 110 001..with copy to the General Secretary, BSNL Employees Union, Dada Ghosh Bhawan, 2151/1/ New Patel Nagar, Opp. Shadipur Bus Depot, New Delhi. 110 008.
Com. V.A. N. Namboodiri, General Secretary, BSNL Employees Union, 2151/1 New Patel Naghar, Opp. Shadipur Depot. New Delhi 110 008. to be sent by e mail.

domain: economics


text:
This list displays selected new books and other items added to the Library's collection during the past month. The list is updated once per week on Monday morning.
If your department is not listed, no new items were added in your department's area during the last month.
An R companion to applied regression
Antennas and radar for environmental scientists and engineers
Anthropocene poetics : deep time, sacrifice zones, and extinction
Anthropology of Los Angeles : place and agency in an urban setting
Anthropology: why it matters
Anti-fandom : dislike and hate in the digital age
A perfect day
Applied ecology : monitoring, managing, and conserving
Applying mathematics : immersion, inference, interpretation
Approaches to teaching Langland's Piers Plowman
Approaching Hegel's logic, obliquely : Melville, Moliere, Beckett
Appropriations of the German minimum income scheme and life planning : individualisation as a way to exit long-term benefit receipt
Arabic historical dialectology : linguistic and sociolinguistic approaches
Archaeological Perspectives on Warfare on the Great Plains
Archaeologies of rock art South American perspectives.
Archaeology and Archaeological Information in the Digital Society
Arctic Ocean shipping : navigation, security and sovereignty in the North American Arctic
Are chief executives overpaid?
Arendt, natality and biopolitics : toward democratic plurality and reproductive justice
Aristotle, democracy and political science
A river in the city of fountains : an environmental history of Kansas City and the Missouri River
Ark encounter : the making of a creationist theme park
Art as worldmaking : critical essays on realism and naturalism


text:
OH YES I DID. I most definitely DID make cauliflower burgers.
With cauliflower (as in the veg-e-ta-bel cauliflower) and quinoa and almonds and eggs and other non-meat stuff. I absolutely, for surely, deliciously did that. It is part veggie-burger, part rule-breaker. We are just straight up defying traditional food categories over here.
Guess what? Even regular-burger-loving Bjork loved these little babes.
Here’s what’s about to go down:
- a golden brown, cheesy, spicy cauliflower+quinoa burger
- a layer of Magic Green Sauce ()
- a layer of cilantro lime slaw bcz crunchy is necessary
- a layer of creamy chipotle mayo compliments of Christmas gifting – one thing, though: do normal people get things like chipotle mayo for Christmas?
- a jalapeño cheddar bun, because who can even walk by those in the grocery store without buying them?! be real with yourself.
- A VERY HAPPY EATER
These burgers are literally everything. Is that the right use of literally? Cool and fresh because of that avocado-based sauce and all the lime and cilantro in the slaw, but also a little fiery because those cauliflower burgers are packin’ the heat, just the right amount of crunchy thanks to the purple slaw, and a little smooth+creamy because of the smooth chipotle mayo on top.
HOW TO MAKE OUR CAULIFLOWER BURGERS (50 SEC):
As with almost all meatless burgers that I’ve encountered, these want to crumble a bit. See also: fails.
But after several rounds with the recipe, I discovered that with enough eggs and enough, umm, cheese (so maybe I just used cheese as a key binding ingredient – can we move on already?), they hold together beautifully.
Not only do they hold together, but they get a lusciously golden brown exterior that is screaming to be smeared with sauces and toppings and packed into a jalapeño cheddar bun.
Here’s the deal: Over the last year or so, I’ve realized that I don’t really like to make healthy trades when it comes to cooking. Like, if you’re going to have a burger, just eat a regular burger. **With the exception of a few things, like cauliflower sauce instead of cream-based sauce. But in general, that’s mostly how I feel about it.
But friends, I truly, honestly, deeply and very seriously LOVE a good meatless burger. I might even love a made-from-scratch veggie burger MORE than a traditional burger. The texture? The flavor? It is so much more interesting and satisfying tha– okay, I’m getting glares. I’ll stop.
So around here we love veggie burgers, we also love cauliflower, and we mostly love quinoa except when it tastes a little dirty, but we forgive these things for the versatility and health factors, no? So this cauliflower burgers recipe is not so much a “healthy swap” for a burger and more of something that our type of food peeps truly love to eat.
It’s cauli-burger go-time!
CHIPOTLE MAYO SITUATION:
Guys, the chipotle mayo is an important deliciousness factor – don’t skip it.
The brand we got for Christmas (which is linked here) is called Sir Kensington’s and I LOVE IT. It uses good, normal ingredients like cage-free eggs and tomato paste and chipotle powder, and it has a spot-on balance of creamy and spicy.
Chipotle Mayo: http://amzn.to/2f5QfPJ
See also: chipotle mayo on oven roasted vegetables. Potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, you name it. It’s our winter obsession.
More Cauliflower Yum
- Spring Detox Cauliflower Salad (herby, fresh, and everything you need)
- Korean BBQ Style Cauliflower Lettuce Wraps (a lil’ sweet, a lil’ sticky)
- 30-Minute Vegetarian Meatballs (dinner game-changer)
- General Tso’s Cauliflower (so so good)
Recipe for Spicy Cauliflower Burgers with avocado sauce, cilantro lime slaw, and chipotle mayo! Meatless, filling, and delicious!
For the Cauliflower Burgers
- 3/4 cup uncooked quinoa
- 1 head cauliflower (about 6 cups florets)
- 3–4 tablespoons oil, divided
- a few generous shakes of spicy seasoning – cumin, chili powder, cayenne, etc.
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt OR just a minced garlic clove or two
- 3/4 cup breadcrumbs or ground almonds
- 3/4 cup shredded Pepperjack cheese
- 3 eggs
- 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cook the quinoa according to package directions but only using 1 cup broth of water to keep it from getting too heavy.
- Cut the cauliflower into florets, transfer to a baking sheet, drizzle with 1 tablespoon oil and sprinkle with spices to taste. Roast for 20-30 minutes. Let cool. Pulse through a food processor to form small pieces that stick together (see picture). We don’t want PUREE here, but we do want enough mushiness to help it all stick together.
- Combine the cooked, pulsed cauliflower with the quinoa, garlic salt, breadcrumbs, Pepperjack cheese, eggs, salt, and another teaspoon or two of spicy seasoning (cayenne will make it hot-spicy, so just add a few shakes of that one). Form 10 patties.
- In an oiled or nonstick pan over medium heat, cook the burgers until golden brown on each side, flipping very carefully to avoid breaking. Set aside on a paper towel lined plate.
- Toss the lime juice, cilantro, cabbage, and a quick stream of oil together. Season with salt.
- Arrange the burgers with: magic green sauce, the cauliflower burger, the slaw, and the chipotle mayo on top.
In terms of level of spiciness, that is totally up to you! and it happens mostly at step two when you’re mixing up the burger mixture. Don’t be shy to add more spices or adjust – especially after you fry and taste one of them. Mine turned out a little bit differently every time I made them depending on what spices I used more or less of. For a gluten free version, be sure to use the almond meal instead of the breadcrumbs. It won’t hold together quite as nicely, but it’s still delicious. We added a few cloves of roasted garlic to one of the versions – highly recommend. It was delicious. We just roasted the cloves at the same time as the cauliflower, but wrapped in foil and drizzled with oil. Cooked burgers can be kept in the fridge for 2 days but they freeze really nicely, too. Nutrition information is for 1 burger out of a total of 10 burgers, not including bun, topping, etc.
- Prep Time: 30 mins
- Cook Time: 30 mins
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: cauliflower burgers, cauliflower recipe, vegetarian burger, vegetarian recipe
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.
One More Thing!
This recipe is part of our magical cauliflower recipes page. Check it out!


text:
We love a good shopping spree here at OnePopz, but we particularly love a good One Direction merchandise shopping spree!
What could be better than being surrounded by loads of 1D merch, and heading home with bags full of stuff with all of their lovely faces on?
IT’S LIKE ONE DIRECTION HEAVEN!
The stores sell a whole bunch of merchandise, from posters to t-shirts to life size cardboard cutouts of the boys!
The world got it’s first 1D pop-up store in August 2012. The store opened in Northbrook, Illinois (Chicago Suburb) and remained open from August 25th – September 12.
The store was a massive hit which obviously resulted in them replicating the same success all over the USA.
From then on, the stores have travelled all over the USA for them lucky American fans!
The store travelled from Chicago to New York in November 2012, for the second and one of the biggest One Direction pop-up stores.
Being the biggest city in the USA, the NYC store attracted an unbelievable amount of visitors from all over the world!
Oh how we wish we lived in New York
Saying that, the store still sold the same merch as all the others, but being that it’s in New York it was clearly much bigger and better, as are most things over there.
After that, it was a while until another pop-up store was launched, as Minneapolis didn’t see their store until March 2013.
The store opened in the Mall Of America for just 6 weeks on March 16. C’mon guys, we don’t think that 6 weeks is NEARLY long enough to be able to take in the wonderfulness of what is a One Direction store. The people of Boston were the next lucky ones in the USA to be get the store in their town, in April 2013.
The store then travelled to Canada where it visited Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton.
We were particularly excited to hear about the European pop-up stores, where the first one launced in Barcelona in August 2012. They then visited Stockholm, Verona, Oslo, Milan and Madrid.
And then… IT WAS THE MOMENT WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! THE UK GOT THEIR VERY FIRST ONE DIRECTION POP-UP STORE!
Yep, the store opened in Leeds from 23rd March 2013 – 24th April. The UK went CRAZY with excitement, and we even got to visit it! We have to say, it was THE most amazing experience of our lives!
And of course, the lads couldn’t let Australia miss out, as they opened stores in Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne last year.
As of 16th July 2013, the most recent One Direction pop-up store was in Dallas, Texas. The store opened on 22nd June and unfortunately closed on 7th July. They sold all the usual merchandise including One Direction’s staple onesies selling for $100.
And now, the boys are to unleash their merchandise upon the people of Glasgow, Scotland. The store is due to open on Saturday 20th July and Liam Payne raved about their new venture: “We are thrilled that 1D World is opening in Glasgow and can’t wait to get back to Scotland ourselves.”
Oosh, we can’t wait to see it!
Wonder where the next One Direction store will pop up?
Don't forget to follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest celebrity news!Follow @OnePopz


text:
I-Case for Wii “Black Knight”, reviewed
I got a hold of the new “I-Case” case mod from Total Console yesterday and was REALLY surprised.
I don’t know why but for some reason when I first heard about this case a week or so ago, I was under the impression that you would litterally put your current Wii inside of the I-Case and it would snap on over top of it.
That “cover case” reason I had in my head made me note too excited about the I-Case and thought it would just bulk up my Wii.
Well, I was wrong:
The Black Knight I-Case came in 14 pieces, each one identically matching the Wii’s case components.
They even went as far as to include black stickers for the screw holes and black stoppers for the bottom, very impressive (Pictured Below).
The case itself feels just like the Wii too, the paint/gloss/texture on the I-Case plastic is a perfect match to the original Wii case. I was afraid that it might be to matte or sticky (like my own spray paint case mods in the past…).
The I-Case is VERY sleek, precise and I wouldn’t have been surprised if this came from Nintendo themselves, it’s a really well put together casing.
I was surprised that they included the two screwdrivers needed to remove the Wii’s case with the I-Case. Included was a magnetic tipped Philips that worked perfect and the (oh so hard to find) tri-wing screwdriver, which alone would run you about 10$.
Complete installation time was about 30 minutes. The hardest part was removing what’s directly behind the front panel (where the power, eject, and reset button are), there are some wires and circuits to disconnect, but no biggie.
Order at Total Console
Review 2, 2nd opinion (reefinyateef): I also recieved a copy of the case. It was very well packaged – everything fit inside of the Wii case itself, making for a small parcel size. The addition of the screwdrivers very, very user friendly. As hey_suburbia stated, it seems as if the I-Case is a Nintendo-made product. Total Console does a very nice job of not presenting itself as a lesser third party accessory maker.
The biggest fault with this product is the lack of any sort of instruction or manual. I was shocked that a product that requires you to literally pry off the screw covers doesn’t give you any idea of where there may be (some of the covers don’t hide screws at all). I had to keep my own record of what screw went where, since there were several different sizes.
Still, the installation went well, and the pieces appear to be high quality. I recommend this product, but be very careful as there is no guide or manual to refer to during the process.

domain: hobby


text:
An open door, missed opportunity, 'wrong decision': List of what went wrong in Texas school massacre grows
The massacre of 19 children and two teachers in a Texas elementary school this week started and continued amid numerous instances of mistakes, misjudgments or misfortune, according to newly released details.
A Texas official on Friday laid out the clearest picture yet of what authorities believe happened before, during and immediately after the rampage. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, spoke to a crowd of reporters frustrated by the changing narrative of what happened Tuesday morning.
He detailed numerous points where the shooter could have been stopped.
"Ultimately, this is tragic," McCraw said. "What do you tell the 19, the families of 19 kids, or the families of two teachers?"
Door left open, allowing gunman to enter school
At 11:27 a.m. Tuesday morning, a teacher at Robb Elementary School propped open a door to the building, McCraw said.
One minute later, the gunman crashed a vehicle into a ditch nearby. The teacher ran to one of the classrooms to retrieve a phone and then walked back to the exit door, which was still propped open.
Meanwhile, two men at a nearby funeral home heard the crash and went to the scene, where they saw a man with a gun and backpack exit the vehicle. The men "immediately" began running as the gunman shot at them, McCraw said. They were not shot.
'THERE ARE NO WORDS':Families mourn as names of Uvalde victims emerge
The teacher, "in a panic," called 911 at 11:30 a.m. to report a crash and a man with a gun, McCraw said.
The next minute, the gunman reached the last row of vehicles in the school parking lot and began shooting into at least three classrooms, just as law enforcement vehicles arrived at the funeral home. The gunman entered the school through the open door two minutes later, at 11:33 a.m., McCraw said.
"That back door was propped open. It wasn’t supposed to be propped open. It was supposed to be locked, and certainly the teacher that went back for her cellphone, they propped it open again. So that was an access point that the subject used," McCraw said.
Officer 'drove right by the suspect'
There was not a school resource officer at the school when the shooter arrived Tuesday, McCraw said. Uvalde has a part-time SWAT team, and the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District has six officers, McCraw said.
Instead, a resource officer who was not on campus heard the 911 call of a man with a gun and "drove immediately" to the school, McCraw said. The officer "sped to what he thought was the man with the gun" near the back of the school, but it "turned out to be a teacher," McCraw said.
"In doing so, he drove right by the suspect," who was hunched behind a vehicle, where he began shooting at the school, McCraw said.
NOT THE RIGHT DECISION:Stunning revelations about Texas school shooting fill intense Friday press conference
Once inside the building, at 11:33 a.m., the gunman began shooting in one of two classrooms and shot more than 100 rounds, McCraw said.
Two minutes later, three Uvalde Police Department officers entered the same door the gunman entered, McCraw said. They were "later followed" by three more police officers and a county deputy sheriff, McCraw said.
During the incident, the gunman "came out one time" into the hallway before going back in, McCraw said, not specifying exactly when the gunman came out.
Officers close enough to suspect to be wounded, but rampage continues
Two of the initial three officers went directly to the door and "received grazing wounds from the suspect while the door was closed." McCraw did not say if the officers fired back.
At 11:37 a.m., another 16 rounds were fired, he said. At 11:51 a.m., a police sergeant and U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived, he said.
At 12:03 p.m., as many as 19 officers were in the hallway, he said. "There was 19 officers in there. In fact, there was plenty of officers to do whatever needed to be done," he said later.
That same minute, 12:03 p.m., is when a 911 call came in, McCraw said. The call was from someone in room 112 and lasted more than a minute. The person called back at 12:10 p.m. and said "multiple dead," McCraw recounted. The caller rang again at 12:13 p.m. and 12:16 p.m. and said there were "eight to nine students alive."
About that same time, members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) arrived, along with three ballistic shields, at 12:21 p.m., McCraw said. That's when the gunman fired again and was believed to be at the door, he said.
No immediate effort to break through locked door
The doors to the two adjoining classrooms were locked, McCraw said, and no efforts were made to open the doors.
"The on-scene commander at the time believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject," McCraw said.
He later added: "A decision was made that this was a barricaded subject situation, there was time to retrieve the keys and wait for a tactical team with the equipment to go ahead and breach the door and take on the subject at that point."
McCraw later identified the incident commander as the chief of police of the school district, who was not at the news conference.
In retrospect, it is clear "there were children in that classroom that were at risk, and it was, in fact, an active shooter situation and not a barricaded subject," McCraw said.
"It was the wrong decision. Period. There's no excuse for that," McCraw said. "There should have been an entry."
In an active-shooter situation, officers are not required to wait on tactical gear, McCraw said. "If shooting continues and you have any reason to believe there’s individuals alive in there, you’ve got an obligation to move back to an active shooter posture, and that means everybody at the door," he said.
Asked by a reporter how many children could have been saved if the door had been breached earlier, McCraw responded: "I don’t know."
911 calls from classroom didn't change police response
Officers "moved down the hallway" at 12:21 p.m., McCraw said. But they didn't breach the door until 12:50, McCraw said.
In the meantime, several more 911 calls came in from people inside the two classrooms.
At 12:19 p.m., someone in the adjoining room, room 111, called. "She hung up when another student told her to hang up," McCraw said. At 12:21 p.m., "you could hear, over the 911 call, that three shots were fired," he said.
At 12:36 p.m., a "student, child" called 911 said "he shot the door," McCraw recounted. At 12:43 p.m. and 12:47 p.m., "she asked 911 to please send the police now."
At 12:46 p.m., she said she could "hear the police next door," McCraw said. At 12:50 p.m., shots were fired and could be heard on the call, he said. At 12:51 p.m., "it is very loud and sounds like officers are moving children out of the room," McCraw said.
Officers waited to retrieve keys
The officers breached the door at 12:50 p.m. "using keys that they were able to get from the janitor because both doors were locked."
That's when officers killed the gunman, McCraw said.
Thirty-five spent law enforcement cartridges were found in the school, McCraw later said. Eight were in the hallway, and 27 were in the classroom where the gunman was killed.
As the attack unfolded, neighbors and parents screamed and pleaded with officers to enter the school and save the children, the Austin American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported.
Questions emerge about gunman, 'other access points'
One reporter asked McCraw why the gunman wasn’t on the "radar" of law enforcement.
"I wish he was," McCraw said. He later added: "Ideally, we’d have been able to identify this guy as a suspect and address it before he even thought about attacking on the 24th."
One reporter asked McCraw if law enforcement could have shot into the classrooms from the outside rather than focus on entering through the locked doors along the hallway.
"As for if someone could have shot opposite in that regard, I don’t have the answer to that," McCraw said. "Keep in mind, you’ve got children in here." McCraw added: "There’s other access points as well."
Asked by a reporter why the school was not placed on lockdown, McCraw became emotional and did not answer the question.


text:
The dataset has been developed for the pathological reporting of biopsy and resection specimens of paediatric peripheral neuroblastic tumours.
Most such tumours in adults are benign ganglioneuromas; there is a paucity of evidence to support classification and treatment guidelines of neuroblastomas and ganglioneuroblastomas in patients over 10 years old due to their rarity.
Treatment, especially traditional chemotherapy and radiotherapy, can alter the histologic appearance and composition of neuroblastic tumours. These changes may or may not reflect the original classification of the tumour or its original or future biologic behaviour. Thus, much of this dataset is not suitable for use with post-treatment tumours.
In those rare cases where more than one primary tumour is present, separate datasets should be completed for each neoplasm.
This dataset was developed with the kind support of the International Paediatric Pathology Association (IPPA), Paediatric Pathology Society (PPS) and Society for Pediatric Pathology (SPP).
1st edition – November 2023
The 1st edition of the dataset for Neuroblastoma was developed by the following international team:

domain: biology


WASHINGTON — The Army is looking for potentially more vendors and capabilities for its Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool.
EWMPT, which provides for mission planning and management within the electromagnetic spectrum, has been developed thus far by Raytheon and has taken advantage of what it calls software capability drops to add incremental capabilities. The system is also thought to be the front runner for the joint force to manage the electromagnetic spectrum.
A new request for information published Nov. 24 is looking to add to what’s been already been developed. The notice states that the software for the program is entering sustainment and the request is to continue development of capability drop 4.
The request lists six specific needs:
- Electronic warfare mission planning, which will provide data to identify particular signals.
- Electronic warfare effectiveness, which will identify friendly vulnerabilities in areas of operations exploited by enemy actions, provide damage assessments of electromagnetic attacks to determine if desired effects were achieved and display current and post mission analysis for battle damage assessment purposes.
- Reprogramming of electronic warfare assets such as the forthcoming Multi-Function Electronic Warfare (MFEW) system the Army’s first organic brigade electronic attack asset mounted on an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone – the Army’s first organic brigade electronic attack asset mounted on an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone – and the Terrestrial Layer System (TLS) – the Army’s first integrated electronic warfare, signals intelligence and cyber platform. This function would allow the capability to remotely control these and other assets over the network.
- Provide electronic warfare alert to warn of impending threats or attacks.
- Support the targeting process from electronic warfare assets such as MFEW and TLS.
- Provide electromagnetic spectrum management information for the ability to assess a unit’s emission of electromagnetic, acoustic or other emitters to optimize friendly operations and capabilities while minimizing detection by enemy sensors and friendly interference.
Mark Pomerleau is a reporter for C4ISRNET, covering information warfare and cyberspace.


Contact Centers are an ideal market for Marcatel SIP Trunking services, providing high-speed and reliable connectivity for a large volume of both inbound and outbound call traffic. However, outbound contact centers that use automated dialers come with a new challenge.
Sergio R. López, Engineering Manager at Marcatel summarized their challenge as: “Without some means to manage aggregate call attempt traffic, customers that use high-speed dialers could overwhelm our core switch, degrading services across our entire customer base.”
To address this issue, Marcatel required a solution to intelligently manage the call requests from their SIP Trunking customers, capping call traffic to a prescribed calls-per-second limits before entering the Marcatel network (i.e. at the customer’s premises). Any over-capacity situation would require graceful degradation, using a rate-limiting algorithm to bring the call traffic into compliance with their SLA.
“Call traffic must be intelligently managed at the edge – namely at the customer premises”, explained Sergio.
Beyond the call-rate limiting challenges Marcatel had other needs including:
• Caller-ID and ANI substitution to improve call completion rates
• Simplified One-visit installation
• Deployment flexibility, allowing for installation on a COTS server or as a Virtualized Network Function (VNF) in service virtualization switches
• A low cost of ownership
• 24/7 Support
“Cost and installation complexity of customer-premises equipment were concerns during our evaluation process” noted Sergio, “We needed something that was very affordable, could be quickly installed and was fully supported”.


UK-based GKN has signed a deal to acquire Netherlands-based Fokker Technologies from Arle Capital for â‚¬706m, in order to strengthen its presence in the aerospace industry.
Fokker is a Tier 1 supplier to commercial, military, and business jet segments, including lightweight aero-structures, electrical wiring interconnection systems and landing gear.
The company also provides maintenance, modification and logistic services to aircraft owners and operators, and has a workforce of around 5,000 with operations in Europe, North America and Asia.
For the year ended 31 December 2014, Fokker recorded revenues of â‚¬758m.
The transaction will combine two technology companies with a wide range of products designed for major aircraft platforms.
With this acquisition, GKN will become the second major aero-structures supplier, and third-largest player in electrical wiring systems for aircraft.
GKN Aerospace CEO Kevin Cummings said: “Strategically, this acquisition strengthens GKN Aerospace’s position as a market leader, enhances its global manufacturing footprint and adds new technology.
“It also increases GKN’s shipset value on key growth programmes in both the commercial and military markets.”
“The combination of GKN Aerospace and Fokker will create a world-leading, innovative multi-technology aerospace company with a global footprint.”
The company plans to finance the acquisition using â‚¬500m cash and existing debt facilities, with â‚¬206m through equity placement.
Following completion of the deal, Fokker will continue to be based in the Netherlands, and will become a new operating unit within GKN Aerospace.
Subject to consultation procedures and regulatory approvals, the acquisition is expected to be concluded in the fourth quarter of thefiscal year.
Fokker Technologies CEO Hans BÃ¼thker said: “The combination of GKN Aerospace and Fokker will create a world-leading, innovative multi-technology aerospace company with a global footprint.
“The innovation and technology driven culture in this larger company will provide broader and new opportunities for our employees who will be participating in some of the world’s largest and most challenging aerospace projects.”


text:
I've been thinking a lot about what I've been doing right and what im doing wrong, when it comes to this whole dating game. And honestly I don't really believe that there is a right or wrong way to date.
I think that it when two people meet and they just click. When things feel right, things are going right, there isn't any reservations in either person's mind and both choose to go with the flow then its all good. Theres really no wrong or right, you know?
The reason I feel this way is because I've done quote unquote the right things and I've done quote unquote the wrong things and supposedly all the wrong things that I did during a lot of those relationships didnt cause a bad result. In fact, they lasted for quite some time.
For example, women arent supposed to have sex on the first date. Well, Ive had sex before on the first date and we ended up in a long lasting relationship for more than a year.
On the other hand, Ive done all the "right" things and the relationships never got off the ground.
My two cents is, when its meant to be, it doesnt matter too much what you do. You can call the first night, have sex the first night, and be up under each other. LOL As long as the feeling is mutual.
The problem arises when one person is trying to make the other person right for them in their own mind, when that person really isnt a good match. And so, the relationship fizzles eventually. Why are we trying to be with someone who isnt for us?
And you know what? Im guilty of that myself.But I still don't know why I do it, or why people do it in general.
Any ideas? Comment below and let me know your thoughts.

domain: sociology


The Greater Los Angeles Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) held a media breakfast at its offices Tuesday morning with reporters and editors from various Southern California news outlets to discuss how the American media portrays Islam and Muslims.
The regional office of the Muslim American advocacy and civil liberties group organized the event mainly to give media representatives information, resources and ideas on how to cover Muslims in a more positive light, as they are often typecast.
“Present Muslims like common people,” said Ahlam Muhtaseb, assistant professor of communications studies at Cal State San Bernardino.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Muslims’ loyalty to the United States has been questioned, and they have been scrutinized and lumped into one group that is seen as untrustworthy and not American enough, said Munira Syeda, CAIR-LA spokeswoman.
Lately, the coverage of the proposed building of an Islamic center, Park51, near the former World Trade Center site in New York City; the abandoned plan by a Florida church to burn the Koran on the ninth anniversary of 9/11; and the upcoming midterm elections has thrust Muslims into the national spotlight.
Typically when there is coverage of Islam or Muslims, it is done in a negative frame of mind, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR-LA. (More)


text:
As a result of the a lot of means this medicine can be utilized ensure you consult your wellness care supplier before you begin taking it.
For the full listing of possible adverse effects consult your pharmacist or check out the tag. It's vital you understand that, although Prednisone is not likely to create side impacts in a lot of patients, a few ones are still possible. You will certainly have to know the difference in between those negative side effects and be able to identify which ones are major and need to be reported to your medical professional and which ones are moderate and normally disappear.
Several of the adverse effects that Antabuse could cause include moderate frustration, impotence, skin breakout, sleepiness, metal taste in the skin, acne and mouth breakout. There is not sufficient details on that. The common beginning dose may vary from 5 mg to 60 mg depending upon the disorder that needs to be dealt with, which is why it's so crucial to understand exactly just what the medicine will certainly be considered. Such clinical problems as heartburn, enhanced hair development, pimples, headache, thin, vulnerable skin, severe tiredness, insomnia, boosted sweating, reduced sexual wish, lightheadedness, severe adjustments in state of mind, weak muscles, or slowed down healing of bruises and cuts could disrupt the excellence of your procedure and ought to be thought about thoroughly prior to your physician prescribes a particular amount of prednisone.