text:
They must all work together to help you maximize your functional mobility and have a positive outcome after a lower extremity amputation.
- Above-Knee Amputation. Your physical therapist can help you after an amputation. …
- Below-Knee Amputation. …
- Hemipelvic Amputation. …
- Toe Amputation. …
- Partial Foot Amputation. …
What is hindquarter amputation?
An operation involving removal of an entire leg and part or all of the pelvis associated with it. It is usually performed for soft tissue or bone sarcomas arising from the upper thigh, hip, or buttock.
What is transtibial amputation?
Transtibial amputation, or below-knee amputation, is a surgical procedure performed to fully remove a lower limb that has been damaged due to trauma, congenital defect, or disease.
What is shoulder amputation?
An interscapular-thoracic amputation is the surgical separation of the humerus (upper arm bone), scapula (shoulder blade), and a portion of the clavicle (collar bone) from the body. In this procedure the entire shoulder and arm are removed.
What are the four classifications of an amputee?
A5 through A8 are for people with upper limb amputations. A9 is for people with combinations of upper and lower limb amputations. The classification system is largely medical, and generally has four stages. … Classes.
|Descriptions||Bilateral above the elbow upper limb amputations|
What is the cost of a below the knee amputation?
Typical costs: For patients not covered by health insurance, the typical cost of an amputation ranges from $20,000 to $60,000 including the surgeon’s fee, facility fee, anesthesia and medical supplies.
What is a Boyd amputation?
The Boyd amputation is a surgical technique used to treat osteomyelitis of the foot. This amputation is a technically more difficult procedure to perform than the Syme amputation, but it offers certain advantages. The Boyd amputation provides a more solid stump because it preserves the function of the plantar heel pad.
What is a Gritti Stokes amputation?
Abstract. Background: The Gritti-Stokes amputation procedure is a modification of the traditional transfemoral amputation, with resection of the bone at a supracondylar femoral level and fixation of the patella to the distal part of the femur as an end-cap.
What is a Hemipelvectomy surgery?
A hemipelvectomy is a surgical procedure that may be performed to address certain bone and soft tissue tumors that developed in or spread to the pelvis. An uncommon type of lower-extremity, above-the-knee amputation, hemipelvectomy involves the removal or resection of the pelvis.
What is a transfemoral amputation?
Transfemoral (above knee) amputation is a surgical procedure performed to remove the lower limb at or above the knee joint when that limb has been severely damaged via trauma, disease, or congenital defect.
What is a Symes amputation?
Background: Syme amputation (SA) is a term used to describe an amputation at the level of the ankle joint in which the heel pad is preserved. It is performed for a number of indications in a pediatric population. SA is purported to hold the advantage of allowing weight bearing without a prosthesis.
What is guillotine BKA?
Guillotine amputations are performed either for speed or for control of infection before a second, definitive amputation. In guillotine ankle amputation, all of the tissues from the skin to the bone are cut at the level of the ankle without creating flaps of soft tissue.
What is the most common upper limb amputation?
Finger amputations are the most common of upper limb amputations and mostly involve single digits. Upper limb amputations from trauma occur at a rate of 3.8 individuals per 100,000; finger amputations are the most common (2.8 per 100,000). Hand amputations from trauma occur at a rate of 0.02 per 100,000.
Can you be amputated at the waist?
The rarely performed surgery is called a hemicorporectomy or translumbar amputation, and involves removing the entire body below the waist, including legs, pelvic bone and urinary system.
What are the levels of upper limb amputation?
Levels of Upper Extremity Amputations At the wrist (wrist disarticulation) Below the elbow (transradial) At the elbow (elbow disarticulation) Above the elbow (transhumeral)
What is the most common lower limb amputation?
Of the approximately 1 million unilateral lower-extremity amputations due to dysvascular conditions, the most common were toe (33.2%), transtibial (28.2%), transfemoral (26.1%), and foot amputations (10.6%).
What is the most common amputation?
Amputation is the surgical removal of all or part of a limb or extremity such as an arm, leg, foot, hand, toe, or finger. About 1.8 million Americans are living with amputations. Amputation of the leg — either above or below the knee — is the most common amputation surgery.
What is the ideal length of stump in below elbow amputation?
The optimum length of the residual bone is approximately 7.5-10cm proximal to the superior border of the patella. Very short trans-femoral stumps often end up in abduction because there is an imbalance between the adductor and abductor muscles.
How can I get a free prosthetic leg?
Amputee Blade Runners is a nonprofit organization that helps provide free running prosthetics for amputees. Running prosthetics are not covered by insurance and are considered “not medically necessary,” so this organization helps amputees keep an active lifestyle.
What is the price of artificial leg?
A prosthetic leg from a private centre can cost anywhere from Rs 8 lakh to more than Rs 10 lakh, depending on its functionality. Meanwhile, government centres offer prosthetic limbs at a flat rate of Rs 38 each. These limbs are made based on the requirements of the patients, and offer amputees mobility.
How much does a below the knee prosthetic leg cost?
If you want a basic, below-the-knee prosthetic, the average cost is around $3,000 to $10,000. A more flexible, below-the-knee prosthetic costs a little bit more, while one with special hydraulic and mechanical assistance ranges between $20,000 and $40,000. The computerized leg is the priciest option.
What is a Lisfranc amputation?
Lisfranc amputation – amputation of the foot at the tarsometatarsal joint, the sole being preserved to make the flap.
What is a fifth ray amputation?
The traditional partial fifth ray amputation technique for treatment of wounds isolated to the fifth toe and metatarsal phalangeal joint (MPJ) area involves removal of the fifth toe and metatarsal head.
What is a Myodesis?
Myodesis. Myodesis is performed to attach and stabilize muscle directly to bone in order to provide fixed resistance against which a muscle can move, to maintain function, and to provide distal padding of the bone.
What is an above the knee amputation?
An above-the-knee amputation is surgery to remove your leg above the knee. Your doctor removed the leg while keeping as much healthy bone, skin, blood vessel, and nerve tissue as possible.
What is a through the knee amputation?
Through-knee amputation typically consists of surgical disarticulation of the knee joint with ligation of the popliteal vessels and sciatic nerve . Crucially, there is maintenance of the adductor and quadriceps muscle groups and formation of a long posterior soft tissue envelope for closure of the stump .
How do you do BKA?
- tibial cut 2-3cm proximal from anterior skin edge with sagital saw perpendicular to bone.
- fibula cut at least 1cm proximal to avoid skin irritation.
- bevel distal tibia cut at 45° …
- can perform Ertle procedure to create fibula strut. …
- use amputation knife to cleanly debulk distal extremity.
How many Hemicorporectomy have been performed?
Including this clinical series, a total of 66 hemicorporectomies have now been reported in the literature.
What is partial foot amputation?
Partial foot amputation is removal of any portion of the foot (Fig. 12-1). The most common levels for this type of amputation are phalangeal, transmetatarsal, and midtarsal disarticulation (also known as Chopart’s disarticulation). Ray resection refers to removal of a metatarsal and its phalanges.
Can you amputate a pelvis?
With an amputation at the hip or pelvis, the core’s junction with the limb has been lost. In every amputation where part of the limb is retained, the socket fits over the residual limb.
Graduated from ENSAT (national agronomic school of Toulouse) in plant sciences in 2018, I pursued a CIFRE doctorate under contract with Sun’Agri and INRAE in Avignon between 2019 and 2022. My thesis aimed to study dynamic agrivoltaic systems, in my case in arboriculture. I love to write and share science related Stuff Here on my Website. I am currently continuing at Sun’Agri as an R&D engineer.

domain: medical


text:
Crude Oil Prices Test 3-Week Lows as US-China Trade Deal Looms
What's on this page
Crude Oil and Gold Talking Points:
- Crude oil prices didn’t move far in Asia but showed no sign of gains despite trade-deal optimism
- The market may well be waiting to see the substance of the deal
- Gold prices continued their recovery from Tuesday’s lows
Crude oil prices were steady through Wednesday’s Asia-Pacific session with the market like all others looking toward the day’s main business: the signing of an interim trade deal between China and the United States scheduled to take place in Washington DC.
Despite some rational optimism that improved economic relations between the world’s two largest national economies will lead to higher energy demand, oil prices have retreated very sharply since peaking out at eight-month highs on January 6. The market added substantial risk premium after the killing by the US of key Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. But the stripping out of that premium has been perhaps surprisingly sharp for a market ostensibly looking to increased demand at a time when traditional producers are limiting supply. Russian news agency Tass reported that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and others, including Russia, the so-called ‘OPEC Plus’ group, want to postpone a decision on maintaining production cuts until June, from March.
Investors already feel they know much of what will be in the interim accord for hydrocarbon markets before the fact, with a putative Chinese commitment to buy $50 billions’ worth of energy from the US over two years already widely reported as part of the deal.
Still, the wait for that trade deal signoff will probably dominate the market at least through the European session, although there are some points of likely market interest beyond it. German Gross Domestic Product data for 2019 are coming up. The forecast 0.6% annualized rise would be well under half 2018’s gain. Closer to the oil market Department of Energy stockpile numbers are also coming up. The market is looking for a modest drawdown according to Reuters’ survey.
Gold Prices Pick Up From Two-Week Lows
Gold prices picked up a little on Wednesday, continuing the modest recovery seen since Tuesday’s lows. Prices have also fallen sharply as the markets move to price out the risk of military escalation between the US and Iran, but they remain quite close to 2019’s highs even as trade optimism rises.
Reuters reported US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as saying that tariffs will remain on Chinese goods until a more substantive, phase two trade deal is agreed and this too may be supporting the gold price.
The underlying prognosis that global interest rates seem likely to remain very low by historical standards through 2020 continues to provide this market with its fundamental underpinning, even if a crowd-pleasing US-China trade deal could see prices head lower.
Crude Oil Technical Analysis
Prices have edged below both their medium-term uptrend channel and also 50% Fibonacci retracement of the rise from October to January.
They have not yet done with any conviction however, with Wednesday’s close promising to be interesting on this chart. Weakness could see the 61.8% retracement point come into view at $56.48/barrel but there’s plenty of support from last November between the two Fibonacci levels and a test of the lower bound looks unlikely in the near term.
Gold Technical Analysis
Gold prices are holding on, just, above the broad range which formerly dominated proceedings between August 2019 and January this year.
Tuesday’s bounce at the upper bound of this range has seen the bulls attempt to build a new higher range above it but, given the struggle the market has had to remain for long at this altitude, it seems likely that the price will retreat back into its former band, at least for as long as risk appetite holds up.
Commodity Trading Resources
- See our guide to learn about the long-term forces driving crude oil prices
- Having trouble with your strategy? Here’s the #1 mistake that traders make
- Join a free webinar and have your commodity market questions answered
--- Written by David Cottle, DailyFX Research
Follow David on Twitter @DavidCottleFX or use the Comments section below to get in touch!
DailyFX provides forex news and technical analysis on the trends that influence the global currency markets.

domain: news


text:
May 18, 2019, 12:34 PM. My East German friend and colleague, Heinz-Uwe Haus, sends me the link to an online announcement of an exhibition in Berlin of Roger Melis’s photographs from the GDR era. Melis (born October 20, 1940; died September 11, 2009) was an East German photographer specializing in portraiture, photo-journalism, and fashion photography. He was one of the first to present a wide-ranging portrait of the GDR and the people who inhabited it. Above all, he was known for his powerful portrait photographs of the GDR’s leading literary and artistic figures including Anna Seghers, Christa Wolf, Thomas Brasch, Wolf Biermann, Franz Fühmann, Heiner Müller, and Sarah Kirsch. According to the announcement, “Hardly any other photographer documented the East Germans and their everyday experience for so long, so intensely, and in so many respects as Roger Melis. For three decades the co-founder and ‘Master of East German Photorealism’ (Die Zeit, June 21, 2007) travelled far and wide across the GDR, a country that he often found ‘silent’ and ‘ossified’ under the rule of the SED. As a critical observer and chronicler, Melis captured the urban and rural lives of people in atmospherically dense, often symbolic photographs. His empathetic portraits and careful reportages create a complex picture of East Germans in the years between the construction and fall of the Berlin Wall.”
In the introduction to his book In a Silent Country, Photographs 1969-1989, Melis writes: “My most important task has always been to create powerful portraits of people, whenever possible in their natural living and working environments, and to avoid stealing their souls and instead to approach them sensitively, remaining—and I use this antiquated expression deliberately—in awe of the individual, a respect which the police and Party secretaries also deserve. You cannot choose the yardstick by which you are measured, but if I could, it would be this one above all.” (Leipzig: Lehmstedt, 2007, 12-13)
In the summer of 1975, while on my first sabbatical leave from Oberlin College, I travelled to East Berlin to begin work on a project that would become the three-volume book DDR-Literatur im Tauwetter (GDR Literature During the Thaw). The objective of this book was to introduce readers to the leading East German writers of the day, especially to those who were shaping the new sociocritical direction of writing during the 1970s. Each author would be introduced by a bio-bibliographical sketch, portrait photograph, and a personal statement about his or her goal as a writer; this would be followed by a recent representative text—a short story, poems, essay, or chapter from a novel—a text focusing on some problem in GDR society that was of concern to the writer as a writer; and finally, there would be an interview based on a questionnaire I had designed to elicit each writer’s responses to issues in contemporary GDR society.
Klaus Schlesinger, the first GDR writer I interviewed, contacted Roger Melis and arranged for me to meet with him. In mid-November 1975, I stopped by Melis’s apartment in the central district of Berlin and had tea with him while we discussed my project. He was extremely accommodating and offered to give me (free of charge!) portrait photos of any writers I wanted, as long as I had their permission and would give him credit in my book. I would meet with Melis again in the summer of 1976, as well as in late fall of 1977, and once more in the spring of 1978. In his apartment Melis had a separate file for each of the writers he had photographed and in advance of our meetings would select some photos for my consideration. In all instances, I followed his recommendations—with one exception. The exception was Jurek Becker, with whom I got together frequently and who over time had become a friend. Jurek had a splendid sense of humor and was a remarkable storyteller. For the most part, the stories and anecdotes he told would make people laugh—and Jurek would often laugh as well. But there also was a quiescent sadness that Melis had managed to capture in his black and white photos of Jurek, as if he had looked through the lens of his camera and been able to see beneath the surface. One photo in particular captured my attention: It showed Jurek sitting on a swing in his yard, relaxed and smiling broadly. That was the photo I wanted, the happy Jurek, not the sad and pensive one depicted in the other photos. That photo was not one of Melis’s favorites, nor was Jurek fond of it. Still, that photo found its way into my book and to this day Jurek’s comment reverberates in my mind: “You Americans always want to have smiling people in your photos. That is not natural!”
There are black and white portrait photos, taken by Roger Melis, of twenty of the forty-five GDR writers represented in DDR-Literatur im Tauwetter. Those authors are: Erich Arendt, Jurek Becker, Volker Braun, Günter de Bruyn, Fritz Rudolf Fries, Franz Fühmann, Peter Hacks, Stephan Hermlin, Bernd Jentzsch, Rainer Kirsch, Sarah Kirsch, Karl Mickel, Irmtraud Morgner, Heiner Müller, Erik Neutsch, Siegfried Pitschmann, Hans Joachim Schädlich, Klaus Schlesinger, Anna Seghers, and Martin Stade. If you want to view these marvelous photos, go to my website (https://richard-zipser.com) and click on the tab labelled “Photos of GDR Writers.”
In retrospect, I realize how very fortunate I was to have met the master of East German photorealism and received from him, as a gift, those twenty portrait photographs. Roger Melis’s stature as an artist has grown considerably during the years that have gone by since we met back in 1975, and his contributions to my book have enriched it and enhanced its value as a literary-historical document. Moreover, Melis and I have something very important in common: he was the chronicler of a world that ceased to exist—and so am I.

domain: artistic


text:
A Fort Worth veterinarian was arrested and charged with animal cruelty Wednesday after he was accused of keeping a dog alive for blood transfusions.
Investigators visited Millard Tierce’s Camp Bowie Animal Clinic at 5709 Lovell Ave. on Tuesday after a family reported he had kept a dog as a blood donor despite saying it needed to be euthanized. The family reclaimed the dog after learning it was at the clinic.
Tierce has declined to comment on the accusations.
Police ask that people who think their pets may have been mistreated at the clinic to call 817-335-4222.

domain: pet


text:
In a major step toward safer speed limits in Australia, Yarra Council in Victoria voted on 14 November 2023 (minutes) to support an increase to the area covered by the safe 30km/h speed limit, by around 200%. If it is supported by the Victorian Government the 30km/h speed limit zone will be expanded from the existing area in northern Fitzroy and Collingwood to cover the expanded area to the south (in blue).
In making their decision the Council considered a safety study compiled using data from the Victorian Government's Road Crash Information System database. The safety study found that in the five years since the 30km/h speed limit zone was implemented, serious crashes in the area dropped by 70 per cent compared to the five years prior, while noting the added effect of COVID lockdowns. The report to Council can be accessed (here at item 7.2) and on ABC news here.
However, two days later on 16 November, the Chief Commissioner of Victorian Police Shane Patton was on ABC Radio Melbourne saying he was not aware of any evidence that 30km/h speed limits would reduce road trauma. He said, “I think no one is going to obey it ... it’s ridiculous”. You can listen here around minute 15:30.
His views are similar to those of many people in the community for whom driving is a central part of their identity and life, and driving fast is celebrated. It is problematic however that as police commissioner he is unaware of the large body of evidence that lower speeds reduce trauma, put forward very recently to a state parliamentary inquiry looking into reducing road deaths by the Victorian Government’s Road Safety Partnership (made up of the Transport Accident Commission and the Transport, Justice and Health Departments).
More problematic is that the way he expressed himself might give people the impression that Victorian Police would not enforce the speed limit if it became law. The Safe Systems approach, that underpins most of Australian road safety, relies on consistent and comprehensive enforcement as a foundational element to shifting community views and behaviours to achieve lower injury and death rates.
Fortunately, the Chief Commissioner has been publicly called out in Victoria’s newspaper of record. In an editorial in the Age (Nov 2023) Patrick Elligett described how far behind international best practice Australia is in relation to adopting safe 30 km/h speed zoning in urban areas. His column explains how 30km/h speed limits that initially seem problematic to a lot of people can quickly become normalised: ‘often, once unpopular decisions are implemented, it can be hard to believe there was ever resistance.’ That in the past Australia has been a leader in adopting new road safety measures but has not kept pace more recently. Examples that he cited may sound shocking to modern ears, like wearing seatbelts (in 1970 considered an affront to personal liberty!) or not driving while affected by alcohol or drugs (introduced in Victoria in 1976).
It is a long road to get from where we are to safe streets for everyone. As a community we are all relying on the support of police and their leaders. This mini-drama highlights the importance of the relationships between ministers with responsibility for transport and police portfolios. When politicians talk to police leadership they must prioritise discussions about how enforcement efforts can be used to promote community safety, not perpetuate social attitudes where many people feel entitled to drive at dangerously high speeds that result in killing and wounding of other people.
Read more about safer speeds here.


What is Biodiversity Net Gain?
DEVELOPMENT THAT LEAVES BIODIVERSITY IN A BETTER STATE THAN BEFORE.
In terms of planning policy Biodiversity Net Gain seeks to reverse natures' decline across England (and beyond). It places a requirement on developers to increase biodiversity levels in measurable units for a defined area of land, to secure planning permission.
Most Local Planning Authorities already request development to demonstrate positive outcomes for nature, however the new Environment Bill proposes making Biodiversity Net Gain of 10% mandatory for nearly all new development.


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Broken Pencil Zine Award 2021 Nominee
Perk up, sweetie. Smile wider. Don’t blink, and don’t scratch that! After all, mother knows best.
More than a decade after she stepped out of the public eye and retired from a fruitful career as America’s Sweetheart Lil’ Peggy, Melanie Graves just wants to live a normal life... one without cameras or autographs or fans without boundaries.
In I Don't Want to be Famous, what Melanie sees as her only way out, someone else sees as their way in…
Az Sperry (she/her) is a Mexican-American cartoonist currently based in Minneapolis, making comics about sex, drugs, and physics. Some of those stories are real, some are made up, but she can no longer tell the difference.


Kopf Percussion's Cuban Segundo Cajon offers sharp slaps, clear open tones, and a deep bass tone. It is constructed from the best baltic birch plywood available and is finished with a hand rubbed gloss finish.
This model is what many consider the best cajon drum in the Hybrid Series. Every player could use this addition to their cajon percussion arsenal.
11" Playing Surface
Baltic Birch Construction
Reviews Hide Reviews
The Search Is Over
i have been looking for this style of cajon for a while now. I just couldnt find one that sounded good or even looked like it had any quality to it. This is the ticket. Nice bass and slaps. It fits the bill for me.
Love this drum
Sounds like a snareless cajon but played between the legs. I was having pain in my back playing my meinl cajon so this was the remedy. Great product that sounds really good.
Very nice tones......
I was pleasantly suprised at the amount of bass that this cajon has. It also has these great overtones and the slap tones are just wonderful. Beautiful cuban cajon
Rumberos will love it!
I really like the drum. It has a nice tone. The bass is strong and the slap and midtone is mellow. Great drum. I love it.
A great addition to my drumcircle events
I purchased this instrument to take to my drum circle events. I wanted something that would be different from a djembe, but would still work. I am very pleased with the cajon, it has a really nice bass tone and the slap and mid tones really cut through all the other instruments. I love it
Very Happy with my purchase.
I needed a drum that I could take to small acoustic gigs. I looked at djembes, bongos, congas, and other cajones. I read the reviews and I listened to the audio samples. I thought that the Kopf Segundo sounded the best. All I can say is, what at amazing instrument. It has great slap and bass tones and the volume is just amazing. I am a very happy customer.
Such a fine instrument!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I purchased the Segundo Cajon 2 weeks ago. I have used it on 3 gigs and the response from the audience was very positive. I use it during my drum solo. The size is perfect to play like a djembe and the sound quality is out of this world. I really love it. It has a very impressive bass tone for a drum its size. Great price for a drum of this caliber.


Warwick District Council has cancelled the planned meeting for Wednesday 25 March.
The Chairman of Warwick District Council has taken the decision to cancel the meeting of Warwick District Council planned for Wednesday 25 March. This is in response to the Prime Minister’s coronavirus guidance issued on 23 March 2020.
Had this meeting taken place, councillors would have voted on a recommendation to withdraw their proposal for excessive council tax in Warwick District, to create a ring-fenced fund to tackle climate change. However this meeting will not now be possible and neither will the referendum due to the current restrictions in place.
As the referendum cannot take place, by law, the Council will revert to the lower Council tax increase of £5 a year for a band D property. This lower increase was approved by Council in February 2020 to cover the core Council services but by law cannot take effect until after the date the referendum was scheduled.
This means that your April and May instalments will be paid at the higher rate you have already been billed for, which equates to an over-payment of around £10. Any overpayment will be automatically incorporated into your next bill, and reduced on that basis.
Councillors regret that this approach has to be taken, but they have to act lawfully and respect the challenges faced by the nation at the moment.
Whilst dealing with coronavirus is the main priority, Councillors are unanimous in their ambition to combat the effects of Climate Change and continue to support action that needs to be taken, as set out in their Action Programme. They will consider the financing required to tackle it in their 2020/21 budget review.
Comments are closed.
All blogs are written or edited by Cllr Pam Redford & Cllr Trevor Wright


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|To Downtown||1.4 mi|
|Nearest airport||Montego Bay Sangster Intl|
|Distance to airport||9.5 mi|
|Check-in time||3:00 PM|
|Check-out time||11:00 AM|
|Internet||Wi-Fi available in all areas|
|Policy||Pets not allowed|
|Payment & Cancellation||Policies vary by room type and provider.|
|Front desk number||+1 876 680 0000|
There are 9.5 mi between the closest airport, Montego Bay Sangster Intl Airport, and Iberostar Grand Rose Hall. The drive to the airport from the hotel should take you 0h 18m with a normal traffic flow. It’s important to take high traffic times into consideration, especially in metropolitan areas.
Yes. HotelsCombined users traveling to St.Bran's Burg often look for hotels with a pool available. Most hotels have pool hours, so be sure to ask the front desk at Iberostar Grand Rose Hall for pool rules and guidelines.
For questions about Iberostar Grand Rose Hall and your reservation, contact the front desk directly at +1 876 680 0000.
Yes, Iberostar Grand Rose Hall has Wi-Fi available to hotel guests.
There is a hotel fitness center accessible to guests of Iberostar Grand Rose Hall. Most hotels do not have 24-hour fitness centers, so be sure to contact the front desk for gym hours and availability.
Iberostar Grand Rose Hall has a normal check-in time of after 3:00 PM, and check-out time of before 11:00 AM.
A good deal at Iberostar Grand Rose Hall right now is between $256 and $732 per night. Prices change based on dates and room type, so enter your requirements in the form above to see the best deals currently available.
There is an on-site restaurant - contact Iberostar Grand Rose Hall for opening and last order times. There is also a bar and lounge area in the hotel.
This accommodation does offer laundry services. The property also has irons and ironing boards available for guest use.

domain: travel


PLANT HIRE MELBOURNE
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We have a variety of machines for hire, ranging from mini machines designed for tight access projects to large excavators for major earthmoving works. If you’re unsure which machine will suit your job, call our experienced team for expert advice.
With a width of just 990mm, the mini excavator is perfect for tight access projects.
The 5-tonne excavator has the perfect balance of versatility, efficiency and power, ideal for most civil and residential works.
For major projects, consider the robust 11-13-tonne excavator designed to handle large excavations and site cuts.
This user-friendly, fast-moving machine is a powerful steer loader able to assist in a range of projects.
How can we help you?
If you’re looking to hire machinery in Melbourne, contact the SS Hire team today.


The app discussed in this chapter is limited to support the minimum functionality of a data management app only. It does not take care of preventing users from entering invalid data into the app's database. In Chapter 8, we show how to express integrity constraints in a model class, and how to perform data validation both in the model/storage code of the app and in the HTML5-based user interface.
Notice that in this
chapter, we have made the
assumption that all application data can be loaded into main memory
(like all book data is loaded into the map
This approach only works in the case of local data storage of smaller
databases, say, with not more than 2 MB of data, roughly corresponding
to 10 tables with an average population of 1000 rows, each having an
average size of 200 Bytes. When larger databases are to be managed, or
when data is stored remotely, it's no longer possible to load the entire
population of all tables into main memory, but we have to use a
technique where only parts of the table contents are loaded.
Another issue with the do-it-yourself code of this example app is
the boilerplate code needed per model class for the data
storage management methods
destroy. While it is good to write
this code a few times for learning app development, you don't want to
write it again and again later when you work on real projects. In
we present an approach how to put these methods in a generic form in a
meta-class, such that they can be reused in all model classes of an
Serializing an attribute value means to convert it to a suitable
string value. For standard datatypes, such as numbers, a standard
serialization is provided by the predefined conversion function
String. When a string value, like "13" or "yes", represents
the value of a non-string-valued attribute, it has to be de-serialized, that is, converted to the range
type of the attribute, before it is assigned to the attribute. This is
the situation, for instance, when a user has entered a value in a form
input field for an integer-valued attribute. The value of the form field
is of type string, so it has to be converted (de-serialized) to an
integer using the predefined conversion function
For instance, in our example app, we have the integer-valued
year. When the user has entered a value for this
attribute in a corresponding form field, in the Create or Update user interface, the form field holds a
string value, which has to be converted to an integer in an assignment
like the following:
this.year = parseInt( formEl.year.value);
One important question is: where should we take care of de-serialization: in the "view" (before the value is passed to the "model" layer), or in the "model"? Since attribute range types are a business concern, and the business logic of an app is supposed to be encapsulated in the "model", de-serialization should be performed in the "model" layer, and not in the "view".

 ISBN: <input id="isbn" name="isbn" />

This technique for associating a label with a form field is
getting quite inconvenient when we have many form fields on a page
because we have to make up a great many of unique
and have to make sure that they don't conflict with any of the
id values of other elements on the same page. It's
therefore preferable to use an approach, called implicit labeling, where these
id references are not needed. In
this approach, the
input element is a child element of its
label element, as in

 ISBN: <input name="isbn" />

input elements as child elements of their
label elements doesn't seem very logical. Rather, one would
label to be a child of an
element. But that's the way it is defined in HTML5.
A small disadvantage of using implicit labels may be the lack of support by certain CSS libraries. In the following parts of this tutorial, we will use our own CSS styling for implicitly labeled form fields.
When an app is used by more than one user at the same time, we have to take care of somehow synchronizing the possibly concurrent read/write actions of users such that users always have current data in their "views" and are prevented from interfering with each other. This is a very difficult problem, which is attacked in different ways by different approaches. It has been mainly investigated for multi-user database management systems and large enterprise applications built on top of them.
The original MVC proposal included a data binding mechanism for automated one-way model-to-view synchronization (updating the model's views whenever a change in the model data occurs). We didn't take care of this in our minimal app because a front-end app with local storage doesn't really have multiple concurrent users. However, we can create a (rather artificial) situation that illustrates the issue:
Open the Update UI page of
the minimal app twice (for instance, by opening
updateLearningUnit.html twice), such that you
get two browser tabs rendering the same page.
Select the same learning unit on both tabs, such that you see its data in the Update view.
Change one data item of this learning unit on one of the tabs and save your change.
When you now go to the other tab, you still see the old data value, while you may have expected that it would have been automatically updated.
A mechanism for automatically updating all views of a model object whenever a change in its property values occurs is provided by the observer pattern that treats any view as an observer of its model object. Applying the observer pattern requires that (1) model objects can have a multi-valued reference property like observers, which holds a set of references to view objects; (2) a notify method can be invoked on view objects by the model object whenever one of its property values is changed; and (3) the notify method defined for view objects takes care of refreshing the user interface.
Notice, however, that the general model-view synchronization problem is not really solved by automatically updating all (other users') views of a model object whenever a change in its data occurs. Because this would only help, if the users of these views didn't make themselves any change of the data item concerned, meanwhile. Otherwise, their changed data value would be overwritten by the automated refresh, and they may not even notice this, which is not acceptable in terms of usability.
From an architectural point of view, it is important to keep the app's model classes independent of
the user interface (UI) code because it should be possible to re-use the same model classes with different UI technologies;
the storage management code because it should be possible to re-use the same model classes with different storage technologies.
In this chapter, we have kept the model class
Book independent of the UI code, since it does not contain
any references to UI elements, nor does it invoke any view method.
However, for simplicity, we didn't keep it independent of storage
management code, since we have included the method definitions for add,
update, destroy, etc., which invoke the storage management methods of
localStorage API. Therefore, the separation of
concerns is incomplete in our minimal example app.
We show in Volume 2 how to achieve a more complete separation of concerns by defining abstract storage management methods in a special storage manager class, which is complemented by libraries of concrete storage management methods for specific storage technologies, called storage adapters.


Want to manage payroll efficiently but don’t know where to start? Managing payroll is an important part of every business, but many still use outdated methods. Payroll management has become more complex, especially when employee wages are based on hours worked or project-based payments, as is the case with freelancers.
There are also bonuses typically received by frontliners and field workers. This article will discuss what payroll is and how to manage payroll with the right systems and tools.
According to Indeed, payroll refers to a company’s financial records of payments made to its employees, such as salaries, bonuses, and incentives. Payroll is commonly known as the activity of paying employees. Many businesses use software to manage their payroll systems.
There are various names attached to payroll management software products, ranging from payroll software to HRIS or HR management software. However, their functions are relatively similar as platforms that include payroll management as one of their features.
Before delving deeper into tools for managing payroll, let’s understand the components, stages, and types of payroll systems in general.
Components of Payroll Systems
Although there are many components in the payroll process, there are at least three main components:
1. Employee Information
New employees are usually required to complete several administrative tasks, one of which is providing their personal data. The basic information that needs to be completed includes full name, residential address, taxpayer identification number (NPWP), and social security number. This data can facilitate the finance department in processing payroll and handling tax deductions.
2. Salary Payment
The salary amount is the main component of the payroll system. The salary record will detail everything related to the payment of wages to employees, including gross salary, deductions, net salary, total working hours, overtime pay, reimbursement, bonuses, and more.
The salary will be transferred to employees after all deductions are calculated. These deductions include the amount to be paid for income tax, social security contributions, and various benefit deductions such as health insurance.
Stages of the Payroll System
According to Multiplier, payroll processing involves a series of stages consisting of five main steps:
1. Data Collection
Every payroll period, relevant data needs to be collected, such as working hours, attendance, leaves, overtime, and so on. All this information can be obtained from employee attendance records or routine reports from managers.
2. Net Salary Calculation
Net salary is the result after deducting taxes from the gross salary. These deductions usually include social security contributions, insurance, allowances, and unpaid leave deductions.
3. Payment Distribution
After deductions are made and the net salary amount is recorded in the system, the payroll administrator will send the salary to each employee’s account. The salary payment mechanism can vary from company to company, ranging from direct deposits to bank accounts or through checks.
4. Tax Filing
After the distribution of salary payments is completed, the company still needs to file income tax with the relevant authorities. Tax filing is one of the company’s obligations carried out on behalf of each employee.
5. Tax Payment
In this stage, the company remits taxes and other obligations such as social security contributions. In Indonesia, income tax payment is part of the company’s obligations, while reporting still needs to be done by employees annually.
Example of Employee Payroll Calculation
Salary calculations for employees in Indonesia follow Law Number 6 of 2023 concerning Job Creation (Cipta Kerja Law), which eliminates the District/City Minimum Wage (UMK) and Sectoral Minimum Wage (UMSK), leaving only the Provincial Minimum Wage (UMP) applicable.
The UMP amount is now the benchmark for companies in determining employee salaries. Based on the applicable regulations, the salary components can consist of:
- Basic salary without allowances
- Basic salary and fixed allowances
- Basic salary, fixed allowances, and variable allowances; or
- Basic salary and variable allowances
For example, a marketing staff in Jakarta receives a salary with the components of basic salary and fixed allowances. The minimum amount of basic salary that the employee should receive is 75% of the total basic salary and fixed allowances, calculated using the following formula:
Received Salary = Basic Salary (minimum 75%) + Fixed Allowances (maximum 25%)
Let’s say the company sets the salary for the marketing staff with the following details:
Basic Salary: Rp5,025,000
Fixed Allowances: Rp1,675,000
The calculation above is in accordance with the regulations because the percentage of the basic salary is 75% of the total salary received by the employee, with 25% of it being fixed allowances. If totaled, the received salary amounts to Rp6,700,000, which is also not less than the local UMP in 2023, which is Rp4,901,798.
What if there are deductions for income tax, social security contributions, and others? The calculations should always refer back to the UMP in each respective region as the minimum standard for the net salary that employees should receive.
Types of Payroll Systems
Each company has different payroll systems. There are several options that can be used, as quoted from Intuit QuickBooks:
1. In-house Payroll
This system is implemented when the company manages its payroll system manually in each payroll period. With this method, the business owner is usually directly involved in managing employee salaries, either independently or with the help of HR personnel.
Although it can be an economical choice for small-scale businesses, this system becomes challenging to sustain as the workforce grows.
Companies can hire the services of an accounting firm to manage payroll and income tax payments. All payroll-related matters, including taxes, will be handled by the accountant from start to finish, including providing consultation throughout the process.
3. Payroll Service
There are businesses that specialized in providing payroll management services to other companies. These businesses operate as B2B service providers, handling the full management of payroll for their clients. They often also offer tax filing services on behalf of the company.
4. Payroll Software
With the help of dedicated payroll software, companies can automate payroll processing entirely. The use of software provides a solution to minimize human errors and speed up repetitive tasks that can be monotonous and replaced by machines. For example, salary deductions can be automatically calculated by the software, including adjustments to the final amount received by employees.
Why Use Software to Manage Payroll?
Among the types of payroll systems mentioned earlier, the option of using software has several advantages in terms of process automation. In addition, there are many other benefits compared to using traditional payroll systems. Some of them include:
- Speeding up the onboarding process for new employees because payroll software can consolidate various data, such as salary lists, bank account details, tax status, and deduction information.
- Generating in-depth reports on employee performance and benefits, such as attendance reports and reimbursements for expenses incurred by employees.
- Tracking average employee salaries to have a better understanding of the compensation provided compared to industry wage standards.
- Streamlined accounting and financial management processes by synchronizing payroll with record-keeping systems and conducting financial analysis. With payroll management software integrated into the platform, the finance team can easily track business expenses.
What Makes a Good Payroll System?
There are many payroll software and HR management solutions available, offering various features at competitive price points. How do you choose the one that suits your company’s needs? Consider the following factors:
Technology is gradually eliminating manual and repetitive tasks. Payroll software and HR management tools also offer automation to complete payroll-related tasks. Some automation functions that can be considered when choosing the appropriate software include:
- Tax calculation
- Bonus or incentive calculation
- Automatic deductions
- Reimbursement management and tracking
- Invoice generation and sending
Integrated Accounting Features
A good payroll software should be integrated with accounting software, whether it is an internal system or a third-party platform. With integration to accounting features, companies can synchronize payroll data with their bookkeeping and financial reporting tools. This makes managing employee wages and tracking expenses easier.
Some integration features offered include:
- Real-time updates between payroll software and connected accounting platforms
- Detailed reports on payroll costs, taxes, bonuses, and more
- Billing options with customizable invoice templates
Ease of International Transfers
Many companies now hire foreign workers, both residing in Indonesia and abroad. The salary disbursement procedures differ between local and international employees due to different legal regulations. To ensure efficient payroll management, consider software features that can help with international transfers, such as:
- Fund transfers for international payments
- Adequate recipient account limits, such as the ability to transfer to 100 accounts at once
- Archiving transfer transactions for administrative completeness
The complexity of payroll management is why many companies now use software for payroll processing. By adopting this technology, companies can reduce the risk of human errors and save costs and time.
Use Jack for your business needs
An integrated and automated payroll management process in one platform allows companies to redirect resources to focus on other strategic tasks, particularly repetitive and monotonous work that can be replaced by machines.
Additionally, employees can benefit from instant, accurate, and transparent salary payments.


text:
A summary of questions
If your question isn't answered here, please send an email to: email@example.com
The Big Ask is about people across Europe questioning whether their governments are doing enough to tackle climate change. The campaign’s ‘Big Ask’ – or its big demand - is that European governments commit to binding annual targets for reducing emissions.
The Big Ask is engaging hundreds of thousands of people across Europe. People are being empowered to take action against climate change by making this demand to their politicians.
Eighteen Friends of the Earth groups have so far joined the campaign or are supporting its demands: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, EWNI (England, Wales and Northern Ireland), Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
Friends of the Earth in the UK has been running a Big Ask campaign for the last three years. Through the Big Ask, almost 200,000 people contacted their MPs to demand a climate change law. This resulted in the groundbreaking climate change law - the first of its kind in the world - which will bind the current and future governments to reduce emissions on a year-on-year basis (averaged over five years).
These short term targets are significant because the UK Government has until now failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, despite having set long-term reduction targets. Friends of the Earth identified that annual targets were needed, to make each Government accountable and to prevent politicians from putting off taking action on climate change.
Thom Yorke has been an advocate of the Big Ask campaign in the UK since its launch and now supports the Europe-wide campaign.
Long-term targets are important to set Europe’s emission reduction path so that it does its share in the fight against climate change. But it is short-term targets which ensure that emissions cuts actually happen, across the EU and across sectors.
Short-term targets make today’s politicians accountable for fulfilling these targets and put pressure on them to actually deliver. Often politicians at national level avoid legislation to combat climate change as they are fearful of the impact on their own short-term political popularity or of short-term economic impacts. With annual targets they are committed to delivering within their period in government and cannot blame previous administrations for failures in reaching targets.
The Big Ask focuses on individuals taking politically targeted action against climate change. People are urging politicians to act across Europe – at the levels of both national government and the European Union.
The campaign is different in every country, but people can take action by visiting their local MPs, signing postcards and petitions and staging local actions. Friends of the Earth groups have organised concerts, exhibitions, and other events, and have worked with national celebrities to inform people about and engage people in the campaign.
Across Europe, Friends of the Earth is demanding that national governments commit to legally binding annual cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Many Friends of the Earth groups are demanding a Climate Change Law to enforce these annual emissions cuts. However, as the national political systems and contexts are different across Europe, not all groups are taking exactly the same approach. For example, Global 2000/Friends of the Earth Austria is also campaigning for their law to be embedded in the Austrian constitution. The grassroots structure of the Friends of the Earth network allows the campaign to be shaped to specific national circumstances.
The exact targets vary from one country to another depending on the reductions it has already achieved and its target for reducing emissions by 2020. For example, Friends of the Earth Netherlands is asking for a 30 percent reduction by 2020, whereas Friends of the Earth in the UK asks for 40 percent emission cuts by 2020, compared to 1990.
Our Big Ask is that EU member states make legally binding commitments to cut emissions year-on-year. These cuts should be equal to 40% reduction of EU-wide domestic emissions by 2020 and 100% by 2050.
As well as national laws committing governments to year-on-year emissions cuts, the Big Ask is demanding an EU-level mechanism that forces member states to make annual cuts. Friends of the Earth wants the European Commission to have the necessary tools to guarantee that Member States are really achieving annual emissions cuts.
There are two legislative proposals from the European Commission aimed at reducing the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. One is an amended directive about the European Emissions Trading Scheme  and the other is an ‘effort-sharing’ directive about how much each Member State will do to reduce their non-ETS emissions in order to reach the overall EU target .
Both of these proposals do introduce the idea of annual emissions reductions and predict a linear annual emission reduction path. But neither proposes a specific direct compliance and penalty provisions against Member States if they fail to deliver. The effort-sharing directive is particularly weak on enforcement and compliance. Under this proposal EU Member States are only required to report their progress towards their reduction targets.
Friends of the Earth is calling for these EU climate proposals to be amended so that the European Commission can use the strongest enforcement tools available to it, including direct penalties towards Member States. The reporting about emission reductions in the Member States should be speeded up and take place every year. An independent agency should be set up and could be in charge of compiling emission data from Member States, monitoring the advancements of the Member States towards their emission reduction targets, and it possibly could have the power to manage the fund raised by the direct penalty procedure proposed.
Why are you calling on both national governments and the European Union to take action? How do the two systems fit together?
A two-pronged approach is the most effective way to achieve legally binding annual cuts: the most progressive countries will lead the way and introduce Climate Change laws, then the EU will pressure less progressive countries to catch up.
The annual emission reduction targets set by the EU will provide direction for each country, then the national laws will set out the exact details of which measures that country will take to achieve its targets.
A country would be free to introduce national legislation going above and beyond its EU target, but would be penalised if it did not meet its EU target.
Under the Big Ask model, the European Commission would apply heavy fines to Member States that did not meet their annual targets for reducing their emissions.
Scientific evidence points to 40 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as necessary by 2020.
The EU has up until now only committed to unilaterally cut its emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and by 30 percent if other industrialised countries are willing to do the same, and if developing countries take on adequate responsibilities. The 20 percent lies well below the scientifically needed range of 25-40 percent emission reductions for industrialised countries that were supported by the EU and agreed at the United Nations climate talks in Bali in 2007. Even this may still lead to an increase in global temperatures of 2-2.4 degrees.
Setting off to cut emissions by 40 percent now will be economically beneficial in the long term and will create jobs and trigger technological development. The Stern Review from October 2006 estimates that dealing with the costs of climate change could be equivalent to 20% of GDP or more. In contrast, the costs of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year. In Europe, a 20% increase in energy efficiency would create about a million jobs. The same applies in emerging and developing countries.
The term domestic cuts refers to emissions reductions that result from European governments actually taking steps within Europe to reduce their emissions, by improving energy efficiency and by using sustainable renewable energy sources.
Current EU proposals include the possibility of a very high number of climate projects outside the EU that both governments and industry will be allowed to use to offset their emissions. There is often insufficient guarantee that these projects will deliver the stated cuts. Also many overseas projects, for example within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), have been strongly criticised by NGOs for causing harm locally to communities and the environment.
The Big Ask is calling for domestic emissions cuts that amount to 40% by 2020, instead of governments taking part in projects through e.g. the CDM and then ‘counting’ this as their own emissions reduction. Any external emission cuts should only be in addition to the 40% of domestic reduction and only be allowed if it is guaranteed that real emission cuts take place and guaranteed that the emissions reductions contribute to sustainable development and do not cause any social or environmental damage.
Scientific evidence is clearer than ever that urgent action needs to be taken to combat climate change. So far the European Union is not on track to meet the commitments it has made to reduce its emissions, for example, under the Kyoto Protocol. This shows we need a new approach to guarantee that emissions targets we set will actually be met.
The Big Ask approach will apply mass public pressure on politicians at a time when it is possible to make the cuts we need, if we start right now.
 Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on the effort of Member States to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to meet the Community’s greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments up to 2020
 UNEP study “Green Jobs: Can the Transition to Environmental Sustainability Spur New Kinds and Higher Levels of Employment?“ from December 2007: http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=523&ArticleID=5717&l=en/


Monday night at the opening reception of Millennial Week, four outstanding Millennials were given top honors for their influence on culture, entrepreneurship and social good. During a lively party at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery, awards were given to the people most dramatically shaping the Capital City — and the country at large.
Darla Bunting, founder of First Book-DC won the Social Good recognition for her work supplying schools and programs with books (and the funds to buy books), as well as her role as capital director of Capital Cause, which trains teams to fund grants for local nonprofits.
In the category for Entrepreneurship, Jonas Singer and Cullen Gilchrist were honored as co-founders of Union Kitchen, which lowers the barriers for entry into the food business and helps change kitchen and restaurant spaces throughout the DC Metro.
Ariana Austin, founder of Art All Night: Nuit Blanche DC, was praised in Arts + Culture for organizing the mash-up of 20 venues, 50 visual artists, 11 cultural partners, and more than 15,000 attendees. She is the founder of the production agency French Thomas Creative, and her writings on travel, culture and foreign affairs have appeared in several major publications.
And Millennial of the Year?? Steven Olikara took that title — honored for founding the Millennial Action Project, the country’s first national nonprofit organization dedicated to disrupting political gridlock with innovative, post-partisan Millennial leadership. Steven also organized the bipartisan Congressional Future Caucus, the nation’s first Millennial-led Congressional Caucus.
The reception was the first in a series of events focusing on the impact the Millennial generation (born between 1977 and 2001) is making on culture, enterprise and society, and was kicked off with an energetic speech by restaurateur and philanthropist Andy Shallal. He says Generation X was revolutionary… but Generation Y is more solutionary… what do you think?
*Photo credit: Gee James / @CMediaUSA of www.CMediaUSA.com


text:
You can draw invisible lines with the Stroke tool. These lines can be used to delimit or close off colour areas when you colour drawing with the Paint tool.
- Select a drawing from the Drawing Thumbnails panel.
- Make sure strokes are visible in your drawing space by doing one of the following:
- In the top menu, select View > Show Strokes
- Press K.
- Select the Stroke tool by doing one of the following:
- In the Tools toolbar, double-click on Paint. In its drop-down menu, select the Stroke tool
- Press Alt + V.
In the Drawing view, start drawing.TIPS
- If you press and hold the Shift key before or while you are drawing, your stroke will be a straight line until you stop drawing or release the Shift key.
- If you press and hold the Shift and the Alt keys before drawing, your stroke will be a straight line in an angle that is a multiple of 15 degrees.
- If you press and hold the Ctrl (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ (macOS) key while drawing, your stroke will be a closed shape.
- If you press and hold Alt before drawing a stroke, and you start your stroke near another stroke, the start of your stroke will connect to the other stroke. Likewise, if you press and hold the Alt key and end your stroke near another stroke, the end of the stroke will connect to that stroke.
If the Show Strokes option is not enabled, the following message will appear after you draw a stroke. To remedy this, refer to step 2.

domain: hobby


text:
In a recent speech to Grey Power, Winston was back to his old tricks, threatening Grey Power that The Yellow Peril is coming for their superannuation cheques (I have merged a lot of the paragraphs together because it was waaaaaaay long):
You will hear the media scream about xenophobia because we mention China but China’s domestic policies have a huge effect on this country. Here is why.
When an immigrant from India or the UK comes to New Zealand, any application they might make for family reunification is treated identically.
But with China, for the most obvious reason, it is different. Say we get one immigrant from China. Say he comes with his wife and child. China has had a one child policy for decades. What does this mean?
It’s clear as daylight, isn’t it. If you’ve only got one child, and that child becomes an immigrant to New Zealand, he can bring his parents and his wife can bring her parents. So we get the wife, child and four parents all from one immigrant under the ‘centre of gravity’ policy.
People are telling me that they think it’s wrong, that it’s not fair, and it’s unfair to the New Zealand taxpayer and the remaining immigrant community. Even Chinese journalists and academics have referred to this as being wrong.
Fifty per cent of healthcare spending and resources in New Zealand are on people aged over 65 years. The waiting lists for elective surgery are getting longer and longer. So any artificial spike in the numbers affects everyone. The biggest hits are on New Zealand Superannuation.
On our figures, there are tens of thousands of immigrants who have acquired Superannuation this way. Instead of addressing these anomalies, there’s talk of raising the age and means testing.
The problem is who we are giving Superannuation to. A migrant only has to be resident for 10 years, and from age 65, they are entitled to full New Zealand Super without any prior requirement to work.
Of course, the media may also “scream xenophobia” because China’s one-child policy neither technically limits every family to a single child, nor practically, as China’s continued population growth might suggest.
The media may also “scream xenophobia” because it is kind of xenophobic to single out elderly Chinese migrants for exclusion from superannuation.
But as far as I can tell, the media hasn’t given a fuck about Winston yet again trying to stir up populist racism. So I just thought I’d put it out there in case his utterly obnoxious performance during the marriage equality debate wasn’t enough of a reminder that he’s a disingenuous shitheel who will say and do whatever it takes to get 5% of the population to vote him and a few of his peons back into Parliament.
What a pity he won’t be one of the panellists on The Vote’s upcoming debate on “Is New Zealand a racist country?” though. It would be the only thing which could make that utter farce any more of a must-not-watch.

domain: sociology


Now, I've searched around before I decided to throw this out there, and found nothing. So, I've always had the heated and cooling seats/heated steering wheel set to auto on for all starts, and it has worked flawlessly until the last few mornings. The strange thing is that it's working every other time I start the car throughout the day. It's just that first startup in the morning, when you expect it to work considering, it's been consistently in the teens every morning for the last week or so. It's just that first startup, weird right??? Has anyone else experienced this seemingly unexplainable situation???


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Origami and Poetry
Revel in the beauty of the natural world—and try your hand at making something new—with this beginner's origami kit. Thirteen illustrations by artist Clover Robin are the inspiration for a series of origami creations, including a shell, an owl, a minnow, a fox, a flower, and a sparrow. Each step-by-step origami construction is accompanied by a snippet of poetry from Amy Lowell, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, and more. The kit also includes fifty sheets of patterned origami paper, plus links to how-to videos. For ages 10 and up.


The flashcards below were created by user
on FreezingBlue Flashcards.
What are the 3 methods of fire attack?
- 1. Direct
- 2. Indirect
- 3. Combination
What are the 4 methods of water application?
- 1. Solid Stream
- 2. Fog Stream
- 3. Straight Stream
- 4. Broken Streams
What 4 things must all fire streams have?
- 1. Pressurized Device (Pump)
- 2. Hose
- 3. Agent (Water)
- 4. Nozzle
What are the forces that effect a fire stream?
Fire Stream Definition
a fire stream is a steam of water or other extinguishing agent as it leaves a fire hose nozzle until reaching the desired target.
What are the two commonly used handlines used by HFD capable of flowing?
- 38mm - 360 L/min
- 65mm - 750 L/min
How does water extinguish fire?
- Excluding Oxygen
What is the expansion capability of water to steam?
- 1700 times its original volume at 100 degrees celsius
By what methods can fire be extinguished?
- 1. Remove the fuel
- 2. Remove the oxygen
- 3. Remove the heat
- 4. Break the chemical chain reaction
What are the characteristics that make water valuable for fire extinguishment?
- Readily available and relatively inexpensive
- Has greater heat absorbing capacity than most other common agents
- Water can be converted to steam to aid in extinguishment
- Water can be applied in a variety of ways
Define Friction Loss
Friction Loss is the reduction in pressure caused by the waters contact with the side of the hose. This contact requires additional force to overcome the drag created by the hose wall.
Factors that increase friction loss are,
- Rough linings in fire hose
- Damaged hose couplings
- Kinks/sharp bends in hose
- More adapters then necessary
- Hose lines longer then necessary
- Hose diameter too small for the volume needed
Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion
What is the expansion ratio of propane?
270 to 1


PARIS — Standard and Poor's downgraded Egypt's rating on Tuesday to BB-, citing weak prospects for public finances and rising risks to macroeconomic stability during the nation's political transition.
The agency lowered its long-term foreign-currency sovereign credit rating to BB- from BB and said that outlook remains negative.
"The downgrade reflects our opinion that risks to macroeconomic stability have risen during the transition period for Egyptian political reform, which we expect to evolve over the next two years," it said.
"These risks centre on the government's fiscal stance but also encompass price stability and balance of payments pressure."
The agency said that it expected the government to continue with the policies of cabinets under longtime now ousted leader Hosni Mubarak and run high general government deficits, which have averaged eight percent of GDP over the past five years.
"The negative outlook reflects our view that downside risks outweigh upside risks," the agency said, adding that it could lower Egypt's ratings further either later in 2011 or in 2012 "if the political transition falters in a manner that leads to renewd political turmoil".
Egyptians will start voting for their representatives in the legislature, the People's Assembly, starting November 28 and in the senate, the Shura Council, on January 29 next year, in a multi-round process expected to last four months.
Following the parliamentary and senate election, a committee is scheduled to draft a new constitution and then presidential elections are to be held.
The committee has up to six months to finish its work, meaning the presidential election might not be held until the end of August.


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About this listing
**Please note due to California's severe drought the hot tub will be shut down starting June 1 until the next rainy season.
The Fishermen’s Oasis is a lovely home located in the pristine Yosemite Forks subdivision of Oakhurst, above 3000 ft elevation. It’s only 11 miles to the South gate of Yosemite and 4 miles to Bass Lake where you can enjoy year-round fishing. Walk to Lewis Creek and cool off after a day of hiking in Yosemite, and enjoy the private resident park and BBQ on the creek.
This home has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. The master has a Cal-king bed, fall asleep listening to the sound of the water flowing from the granite waterfall right outside the sliding glass door. The second room has a Cal-King bed; the third room has a full/twin bunk bed with a twin trundle. All mattresses are memory foam. Each room has a TV and DVD player or netflix. The living room sofa has a full size sofa bed. This home can accommodate up to 10 guests. For your comfort, we recommend a maximum of 6 adults with 4 children. In the winter time enjoy snuggling up to a fire in the wood burning stove, or watch a movie on the 60” LED TV. There is Wi-Fi, two Xboxes and lots of games to keep the kids entertained. Enjoy a BBQ on the large deck, or cook a meal in the well-stocked kitchen. There is a Jacuzzi Premium Therapeutic spa outside for you to relax in after a long day of hiking!
The Fishermen’s Oasis caters to all fishermen from beginner to expert. You will be provided with up to 6 fishing poles, tackle and bait. All set up for use at one of the many surrounding fishing lakes and streams.
There is different pricing during summer and winter months. Please note:
Holiday rates are $345/night plus tax for up to 10 people.
Winter rates are for up to 4 people.
Summer rates are for up to 6 people.
Please note: This home is located in a VERY quiet family community. Please respect your neighbors. If your looking for a place to party, this is not the rental for you
No smoking inside the home. Please dispose of butts properly.
Quiet hours are 10pm to 8am, please respect your neighbors.
Disruptive behavior will not be tolerated, you will be asked to leave.
Young children should be monitored while playing the xbox video game consoles, we have games rated E-M.
Do not allow children to climb on the waterfall area, watch young children closely around the pond and waterfilled areas.
Tidy up throughout your stay, no major cleaning is required.
No unapproved pets allowed, bringing pets into home without permission shall result in forfeiture of deposit.
We have strict pet guidelines and charge a $25 pet fee per dog. Please inquire if brining a dog.
Fisherman's Oasis is a great home. With updated amenities and all creature comforts, it was an excellent home away from home! The waterfall in the backyard, especially in the night provided a great setting to unwind. The home is also conveniently located not far from the south entrance to Yosemite.
Our stay at the Fisherman's Oasis was amazing! The house is very well appointed and has everything you would need! Tiffany is also very responsive and helpful! Overall a great trip! (Only one other thing worth mentioning... If you do decide to cook, there are spices, coffee, etc, but no cooking oil of any kind, so make sure you pick that up with the rest of the your groceries!)
The condo is literary as tidy as it's described. It's located in a private area in Oakhurst, which has 20mins drive to Yosemite National Park(south gate). The house is full equipped & provide convenience to us. It's highly recommended to my friend to rent this house when they travel in Yosemite.
Great house, has everything we need, very quiet area, we had great time in Tiffany house.
My family and I loved the house! The location was perfect driving distance to Yosemite and bass lake! Although the weather was somewhat chilly most of our stay we enjoyed the hot tub and the fireplace.. The kids loved playing all the games they had for the Xbox! I loved how everything was labeled with instructions on how to use it so we had no trouble figuring out how to use anything. The kitchen was fully stocked with all the appliances we needed. Overall my family loved our stay in this home!
The house was great and spacious and had everything we needed. Nicely decorated and also an easy drive into Yosemite for a day of hiking.
This host has 20 reviews for other properties.View Other Reviews
About the Host, Tiffany
Our family has been Yosemite residents for over 8 years. We purchased this home with the hopes of providing memorable Yosemite Vacations to other families. We are fans of the outdoors and enjoy fishing, hiking and exploring Yosemite's vast wilderness. We know you will find our home cozy and well equipt for your whole family, even the 4-legged members. We are always available for questions and help during your stay.

domain: geography


- Input power: 2150W
- No load speed: 3200/ 4500rpm
- Maximum depth of cut: 90mm
- Maximum cross cut capacity: 305mm
- Blade diameter/ bore: 255/30mm
- Bevel Left: ±45Degrees
- Weight: 15.8kg
Full product description
The Clarke C2MS250MP comes with a two speed motor with soft start for multi-material cutting, including hard and softwoods alongside non ferrous metals (aluminium, copper etc) and plastics. The maximum mitre angle for this saw is 45° left/right and it also features a maximum bevel angle of 45°.
Completing this mitre saw is a laser cutting guide for added accuracy, and a fully enclosed blade 48 tooth TCT blade for ensured safety.
This model includes 1x workpiece clamp, 2 x workpiece supports and a dust collector bag for easy clean up.
Watts 2150 W Volts 230 V Max Depth of Cut 90 mm Max Cross Cut Capacity 305 mm Blade Dia 255 mm Bevel Left/Right Both
£294.84 (£353.81 incl VAT)
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Contact us for more info on Clarke C2MS250MP 10” 255mm Sliding Mitre Saw (230V) Price includes UK mainland delivery on orders over £100 plus VAT. Use the livechat below or email us.
For heavy Clarke items please contact us for a delivery quote. All Clarke Tools comply with the latest British and European safety standards. Clarke products are backed by a fast after-sales service including spare parts, warranty and service work. WE DON'T SELL CLARKE SPARE PARTS, CALL CLARKE SERVICE ON - t: 0208 9887400 or 08714101270. We only deliver Clarke Tools to the UK mainland.


Verify that all servers are switched off.
Start all storage systems, beginning with the expansion enclosures.
Wait until the disk LEDs on all of the expansion enclosures have stopped blinking (which indicates that they are spinning up) or two minutes, whichever comes first, then start the storage system RAID controller enclosures. Note that the disk drives in some storage enclosures do not spin up until commanded to do so by the RAID controller, so the LEDs may continue to blink until after the RAID controller enclosure has sent those commands and the drives have spun up.
For a cluster configuration, verify the virtual SMU has been installed and configured in the customer VMware or HyperV environment.Wait one minute to allow the external SMU to start.
If you are starting a cluster, wait 5 - 10 seconds before powering on the next node in the cluster.


After two unsuccessful attempts to collar Australia's second largest ISP iiNet for copyright infringement in court, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) which represents major film companies and the Seven TV network is lodging an appeal in the High Court of Australia. AFACT is alleging that iiNet authorised copyright infringement by users of its service.
The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, AFACT, which now has just two days left to file an Appeal with the High Court if it wants to further pursue internet service provider, iiNet, over its allegations of copyright theft, may be interested to learn of a new independent study which suggests that fines and tougher laws are unlikely to stall piracy of films, books, music or software.
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The future of finance
It’s beyond cliché for a Strategist to use a chess analogy so I’ve opted for poker instead. Having an effective strategy is often about anticipating what’s likely to happen and plotting a course of action that will achieve success whilst the context continually changes.
Like poker, if you have the right strategy, your opponent’s moves have often been anticipated and sometimes fit neatly into your plan – it’s almost reassuring when they do. If you don’t, then you’re probably reacting in a knee-jerk way to what your competitors are doing and it feels like the control rests with them.
So let’s consider what might happen in banking and finance tech over the next few years, whilst keeping in mind that it’s really easy to make predictions but you’re highly unlikely to get them right. As Evan Esar said "An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today. "
Open Banking and PSD2
In summary, Open Banking and PSD2 mean that should you want to, you’ll soon be able to share financial information like your balance and transactions with regulated third party sites and apps and also use these third parties to make online payments straight from your current account.
If you want to know more, Equator’s Director of Innovation wrote a great piece on open banking here.
The result of this is that there’s going to be a fair bit of pressure on banks over the next few years because up until recently, they were the only commercial organisations who had access to that data. Now that customers can share it with other companies should they want to, there’s likely to be a raft of new and existing companies looking to address any unmet customer needs.
Aggregators and the supermarkets of finance
In anticipation of these changes, a lot of businesses are already attempting to bring all your accounts and finances into one place – this is called account aggregation. For example, the likes of Money Dashboard, Cleo, OnTrees (owned by MoneySuperMarket) and HSBC/FirstDirect.
This could make a lot of sense as people often have a current and savings account with one bank, a mortgage with someone else, a pension with another provider and sometimes a credit card elsewhere too. If you could manage all of it from one place, it could be significantly easier in the same way that supermarkets are more convenient than a separate baker, butcher and grocer.
But it’s also an absolute goldmine for whoever you entrust with your data because they’ll have a full picture of all your finances. This is why account aggregation is of so much interest to a comparison site like MoneySuperMarket (who bought OnTrees back in 2014 and MoneySavingExpert in 2012) as they’ll be able to see what services you use and how much you’re paying for them. That allows them to make recommendations for alternatives and take a commission should you switch. As a customer, you can potentially benefit from those recommendations.
As Finance & Technology Research Centre director Ian McKenna said at the time: “Such services are likely to be the cornerstone of next-generation advice propositions as they make it easy to build a detailed picture of a consumer’s finances. Most UK financial institutions have yet to grasp the potential of these services. This move by MoneySuperMarket means they may learn the hard way.”)
AI and financial assistants
Managing all your finances on one platform and getting relevant recommendations for utilities and finance products is all well and good but the real benefit to a customer will happen when a company solves a much larger problem – automated and pre-emptive independent financial advice.
That’s no mean feat as doing it properly requires having data from across the whole marketplace, all of an individual’s financial data, the processing capabilities to provide the correct advice on a one-to-one basis and the ability to stay on the right side of some very complex regulations.
In short, it’s might require AI and the technical capabilities of a larger player like Google, Amazon or a smaller organisation who are right on the cutting edge and likely to be bought out eventually anyway. Alternatively, it could be a big, innovative and tech-focused bank.
If the companies that do this play their cards right, then the benefits are huge as they could become the middle-man in almost all financial transactions and the customers main or only financial relationship.
From a customer’s point of view, this means that my finances are essentially looked after for me by a digital personal assistant (think Google Assistant or Alexa but quite a few versions later) who can compare the entire market and shift my money around wherever it’s going to work best for me.
Assistant: “Ian, due to some recent changes in the market, if I switch your mortgage from [traditional bank] to [plucky challenger] I can save you £90 a month. I also reviewed your pension funds and would recommend switching 15% of your pension from [Fund A] to [Fund B]. In total, I estimate these two changes could provide you with an extra £3,160 across the next two years. Are you happy for me to proceed?”
Assistant: “Great, I’ll start processing that for you now.”
You get the gist.
Changes in the market and what to consider
Although, if this does start to happen, there might not be many providers in this new marketplace that need to be compared. A concentration of providers occurs naturally as those with the highest numbers of customers typically have the most funds to work with and therefore can reduce their rates in order to attract even more customers. Once the relationship with all my providers is managed through one app or assistant – their branding and service become less and less relevant and the rate more so.
So, in summary – if I were a betting man (which I’m not), my money would be on the following scenarios playing out:
- We know Amazon are already looking at banking and some of the larger tech companies will also have decided that there’s even more money to be made in finance than there is in advertising (Google, Facebook) and many other services (Tencent) along with the many startups already in this space
- They expand their assistants further into finance, initially with account aggregation and market comparison then into advice
- They consider that since they now hold the key customer relationship, their trust and the necessary capital, it might be easier if they ran the bank too
Where does this leave financial service providers in the UK?
Well, it will be increasingly important to:
- Use technology to create value as efficiently as possible because rates could become even more important over the next few years
- Thoroughly research and analyse everything that’s going on within these spaces (and not just the usual competitors either) so that there are as few surprises as possible
- Be ready to compete with tech companies in the areas where they are stronger and really clear about what you have and do better than them
- Bring together the personnel, partners, budget, tools and processes to innovate and explore unmet customer needs before someone else does. For example, if you’re the only ones holding your customers financial data at the moment – how can you better use it to add value to them?
- Be willing to open up through APIs etc. as those that don’t risk getting moved to one side but also wary and incredibly well-informed regarding the long-term consequences of doing so
- Have a long-term strategy in place that considers all these different elements and plots a suitable yet flexible course of action
Going back to the poker analogy for a second, the banks and providers that fail to do this might find their chips slowly declining outwith their control whereas the ones that do it really well will stay in the game much longer.
It’s also vital to try and assess what the other companies are thinking. Keep an eye on any organisation joining the table who you weren’t expecting – they might be a card shark who knows something you don’t and doesn’t necessarily play by the same rules as the rest of you.
Lastly, like business, you can’t always control the hand you’re dealt but it’s important to play your cards right.

domain: finance