Twitter has announced it will sell shares and float on the stock market in secret IPO
- From: News Corp Australia Network
- September 13, 2013
TWITTER is going public. The short messaging service aptly tweeted on Thursday it has filed confidential documents for an initial public offering of stock.
But the documents are sealed, as Twitter is taking advantage of federal legislation passed last year that allows companies with less than $1 billion in revenue in its last fiscal year to avoid submitting public IPO documents.
San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. posted on its official Twitter account that it has ``confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO.''
The confidentiality will likely help Twitter avoid the public hoopla that surrounded the initial public offerings of other high-profile social networking companies, including Facebook Inc., which went public in May 2012.
We've confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013
Twitter was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and has grown to more than 200 million users who share their thoughts in bursts of no more than 140 characters at least once a month, with estimates of total users surpassing 500 million. Twitter's massive growth has produced strong IPO buzz for years, but neighbour Facebook's rough Wall Street debut quieted much of the excitement: The Menlo Park, California, company exercised a record-breaking IPO in May 2012 that valued CEO Mark Zuckerberg's creation at more than $US100 billion, but problems with initial trades and doubts about Facebook's ability to generate revenues helped push shares from an initial price of $US38 to less than $US20 in the first year of public availability.
Facebook Inc. stock has rebounded of late, however, pushing to an all-time high of more than $US45 Wednesday after the company's most recent earnings report showed strong gains in mobile revenues. The IPO market has also fully rebounded after a lull following Facebook's debut, with seven San Francisco Bay Area companies filing to go public in August.
"There's more of an appetite for IPOs than there's been in some time,'' Thomas Kellerman, an attorney with Morgan Lewis in Palo Alto, California, who co-chairs the firm's tech practice, told the San Jose Mercury News last month.
Twitter's IPO has been long expected. The company has been ramping up its advertising products and working to boost ad revenue in preparation.
Goldman Sachs is to be the lead underwriter for the IPO.
Now, back to work. pic.twitter.com/e4lK8e7pY9— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013


Your editorial about farmed salmon states that without fish we would be missing out on important omega-3 "fish oils" (17 January, p 3). I would not expect
No doubt omega-3 oils are beneficial to a healthy cardiovascular system and brain development, but fish are not the best source. Linseed or flaxseed has a far greater concentration of omega-3. Even green leafy vegetables are a source of omega-3. Preformed DHA (from omega-3) can now be synthesised without ever involving any fish. Why not leave the fish alone, cut to the chase and consume these "fish oils".
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Seismologists say a minor earthquake occurred in Alaska, and was felt in Anchorage.
The Alaska Earthquake Center says the quake occurred at 11 a.m. Sunday.
It was located about 30 miles southwest of Anchorage and had a magnitude of 3.7.
© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Ursid Meteor Shower
Earth is heading for a stream of comet dust that could produce a pleasing outburst of "shooting stars" this weekend (Dec 21-23). Forecasters say dozens of meteors per hour could emerge from a spot in the sky near the North Star (Polaris) when Earth encounters the dust on Saturday evening, Dec. 22nd. These meteors are called "Ursids" after Ursa Minor, the constellation where the North Star is located. If forecasting models are correct, the shower's peak will occur between 2100 and 2200 UT (4-5 pm EST) with meteors visible as much as four hours before and after that time.
The source of the dust is Comet 8P/Tuttle, which is traveling through the inner solar system this month and next. The comet itself can be seen through binoculars not far from the radiant of the shower. This gives sky watchers a rare opportunity to see a comet and its meteors in the same observing session.
Ursid meteors, which appear in small numbers annually, have a reputation for faintness and delicacy. Dark skies are usually required to see them; bright moonlight on Dec. 22nd will only exacerbate the problem of visibility. However, say forecasters, during an outburst of Ursids there may be a fair number of bright meteors. No one knows what will happen--all the more reason to look!
Unfortunately, though, a nearly full moon will drown out the fainter meteors.
For more information on the Ursids, see:
Next page: Green Comet Approaches Earth
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Ursid Meteor Shower News
'Weak' New Meteor Shower Due To Fragile Comet Dust - Universe Today23 Jul 2014 at 9:38am
'Weak' New Meteor Shower Due To Fragile Comet Dust
A Camelopardalid seen frame-by-frame in a recording taken May 24, 2014 at 1:58:08 a.m. UT (9:58:08 p.m. ET). Credit: Original recording by Peter C. Slansky; compilation by Jim Albers and Peter Jenniskens. While the Camelopardalid shower only produced ...
New meteor shower "just a memory" of what once was therePhys.Org
all 5 news articles »
2014 Meteor Shower: Where and How to Best View Delta Aquarids Meteor ... - In...21 Jul 2014 at 2:48am
2014 Meteor Shower: Where and How to Best View Delta Aquarids Meteor ...
International Business Times AU
The months of July and August will offer sky watchers the viewing experience for the 2014 Delta Aquarids meteor shower. The sky display started on July 12 and it can be viewed until Aug 23, 2014 with the peak scheduled to take place from July 28 to 29 ...
Meteor shower peaking next week, increasing shooting stars right nowTucson News Now
Delta Aquarid meteor shower is under wayiTWire
all 4 news articles »
Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower 2014: Dates for Entire Shower, and the Peak Time...12 Jul 2014 at 10:28pm
Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower 2014: Dates for Entire Shower, and the Peak Time
The Epoch Times
The Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower is basically here, starting on July 12 and running all the way through August 23. The meteor shower is slated to peak on July 28 and July 29. ?This year's peak occurs during a new moon, which means dark skies for ...
and more »
Astronomy in July: Meteor shower, Milky Way and moon - The News-Press3 Jul 2014 at 8:31am
Astronomy in July: Meteor shower, Milky Way and moon
Humans are watchers of the skies, romantics, dreamers. And nothing has inspired the dreamers among us more than the moon. There are nights when it seems close enough to touch, its reflective full light shimmering on our creations below. Other nights ...
Spot Planets and a Meteor Shower In July 2014 | Skywatching Video - Space.com30 Jun 2014 at 10:45am
Spot Planets and a Meteor Shower In July 2014 | Skywatching Video
Saturn and Mars are visible in the evening and Venus and Mercury can be found before sunrise. At the end of the month, the annual Delta Aquarid peaks with 20 meteors per hour. (Skywatching Guide). Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute, Office of ...


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NEWARK — Newark has seen a 40 percent surge in gun violence this year, but the city’s top cop said today that despite a recent rash of shootings, his "Safe City" anti-violence campaign is helping to reverse the trend.
Between Jan. 1 and July 10, there were 175 shootings in Newark, leaving 213 people dead or injured, according to police statistics. During the same period last year, there were 125 shootings and 161 victims.
The statistics were obtained today by The Star-Ledger less than 24 hours after a spate of drug-related violence on Monday left 11 people injured and a 15-year-old high school football player dead.
"We’re not going to turn everything around in one month. That’s an impossibility. But we’re heading in the right direction," Acting Police Director Samuel DeMaio said in an interview. "We weren’t doing the right thing in January, February, March, April or May. That’s when it kept going up and up and up."
DeMaio was named police director in May when Garry McCarthy resigned after four years to become superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. Within a month of taking over, DeMaio launched his "Safe City" campaign, the goal of which is to increase police presence in dangerous neighborhoods and boost community involvement.
While there were more shootings in June 2011 than June 2010, according to the statistics, the number of incidents dropped from May to June of this year. In addition, DeMaio said, the number of homicides between June 1 and today is slightly lower than the same period last summer.
"We’re not going to have a crime that’s up 60 percent in a six-month period, and take it to where it’s going positive in one month," DeMaio said, referring to the city’s homicide rate. "If you have it cut down almost in half in a five-week period, that’s pretty good."
Authorities said Monday’s violence was the result of a growing rivalry between drug crews. Around 6 p.m., four people were injured when shots were fired on Halsey Street in the city’s bustling downtown area. Four hours later, 15-year-old Al-Aziz Stewart was killed and seven others were injured in a shooting on Scheerer Avenue in the city’s South Ward.
During a morning news conference at City Hall, DeMaio and Mayor Cory Booker said the attacks were linked to warring drug crews, who have been embroiled in a "back and forth" that led to several shootings this month.
"This is not a whole bunch of people. We’re not talking hundreds or even dozens here," Booker said. "We’re talking about a small group of individuals who may be responsible for a number of the shooting victims we’ve seen over this month."
DeMaio said a car rolled to a stop at each location Monday, and multiple gunmen opened fire into crowds at both scenes. Booker said the assailants wore rubber gloves and masks in one attack.
Authorities would not say if the drug crews have gang affiliations, or how many shootings they are linked to.
This morning on Scheerer Avenue, a neighbor opened a water valve to rinse the blood from the driveway where Stewart was killed. Across the street, Stewart’s sister, Naja Jenkins, wept as she remembered the popular teen who was the starting quarterback for West Side High School’s freshman football team.
"He was a comedian. He was well known throughout this neighborhood," she said. "Everybody loved my brother."
Jenkins said her brother wasn’t involved in the Newark drug trade and didn’t have any connection to gangs.
Stewart’s football coach, Brian Logan, said the teen was a "real nice kid" who excelled on his freshman team.
"He was a happy guy, smart guy, happy kid, you know? He loved life," Logan said. "He looked forward to getting back into football."
Jenkins broke down as she recalled her last conversation with her brother.
"I just thank God I told him every single day that I love him. And the last thing I told him was to be careful, and that I love him," she said. "Every single day I told my brother that. Every day. So he knew, going out, that we love him."


PubMed® Notes 2011
Other pertinent articles: |
MEDLINE/PubMed Year-End Processing Activities
2011 MeSH Now Available
Cataloging News 2011
MEDLINE Data Changes 2011
PubMed Notes 2011
What's New for 2011 MeSH
Newly Maintained MEDLINE for 2011 MeSH Now Available in PubMed
The 2011 PubMed system will be available in mid-December. Links to other articles pertinent to the new system are provided to the right.
There are a few changes to PubMed this year:
Changes to the Limits page were reported in the article, Comings and Goings for PubMed® Limits.
- Users of XML data may want to see additional information including DTD and XML changes for the NLM 2011 production year:
XML users can keep up to date by subscribing to an announcement mailing list at this site: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mailman/listinfo/utilities-announce.
- The Abstract display will be modified to accommodate changes to Supplementary Concept Records in the MeSH® vocabulary (see below).
PubMed Abstract Display Modified for Supplementary Concepts
The MeSH Vocabulary includes nearly 200,000 records known as the Supplementary Concept Records (SCRs). Until recently these were primarily records for drugs and substances plus a small percentage of protocols. Beginning with 2011 MeSH, SCR records will also include disease terms that are not MeSH headings as explained in the forthcoming article, What's New for 2011 MeSH®. [Editor's Note: This article was published on December 10, 2010.]
PubMed will display SCR terms in the expandable section for supplemental information of the Abstract format as follows:
- Chemicals and substances will continue to display under the header, Substances.
- Protocols and disease terms will display under the new header, Supplementary Concepts.
All SCRs will display on the MEDLINE format with the RN field tag.
All SCRs can be searched using these search tags:
- [supplementary concept]
- [substance name]
Example: kindler syndrome [nm]
[Note: The changes described above appeared in PubMed on December 13, 2010. At the same time the link to the Journals Database on the PubMed homepage was replaced with the link, Journals in NCBI Databases which connects to the NLM Catalog (see: NLM Catalog: New Search Features for Journals Cited in Entrez Databases.)]
Nahin AM. PubMed® Notes 2011. NLM Tech Bull. 2010 Nov-Dec;(377):e16.


Closing in on the Higgs BosonWhen: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 11:15 am
Where: DA 114
Speaker: Joseph Haley
Organization: Northeastern University
Sponsor: Physics Colloquium
The Higgs mechanism was proposed nearly fifty years ago as a way to explain how fundamental particles can have mass. In addition to explaining the origin of mass in the Standard Model of particle physics, the theory requires the existence of a yet undiscovered particle called the Higgs boson. After year of searching for this “last puzzle piece,” we are finally on the verge of either finding the Higgs boson or shattering the long standing Standard Model. The stage has been set by recent hints from the CMS and ATLAS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider of a Higgs boson with a mass around 125 times the proton mass. I will present brand new results from Fermilab’s Tevatron collider, which achieve similar and complementary sensitivity to a Higgs boson in this most interesting mass range.


Expect Dry Conditions and Warm Temperatures Through the First Half of This Week
Monsoonal weather patterns have moved into the Grand Canyon area decreasing fire danger. As a result, on Tuesday, July 8 at 8 a.m. fire managers lifted fire restrictions within Grand Canyon National Park. More »
Two Bats Collected in the Park Have Tested Positive for Rabies
One on the North Kaibab Trail and the other at Tusayan Ruin/Museum. Any persons having physical contact with bats in Grand Canyon National Park, please call 928-638-7767. Rabies can be prevented if appropriate medical care is given following an exposure. More »
River Trip Orientation Video - Chapter 1
Continue to the Next Chapter (2) Water Temperature and Flow Variations
River Trip Orientation Video Chapter Menu
Watch the River Trip Orientation Videos on YouTube
Here is the link to the YouTube playlist with all the videos:
Here are links to the individual video chapters on YouTube:
Part 3: Low Impact Camping Tips - 04m:18s
Part 10: Diamond Creek to Lake Mead Pearce Ferry Take-out/ Rapid- 04m:01s
Did You Know?
In November of 1934, the Grand Canyon Civilian Conservation Corps began working on a telephone line through the canyon. They started at Indian Garden and moved down to the Colorado River. They needed to complete this portion of the line first before the extreme summer heat started. More...


PRELUDE TO SYSTEMATIC FEDERAL MANAGEMENT (continued)
Modern Military Training
The Mojave Desert, a "wasteland" with easy railroad access, seemed to General George S. Patton to be an excellent place to train his troops during World War II. In early 1942, Patton established the Desert Training Center, and stationed troops throughout the Mojave. Much of the heaviest activity took place to the south of the current Mojave National Preserve boundaries, but some of these wartime camps and much of the maneuver areas were inside the present Preserve. A major division-size camp, Camp Clipper, was located north of Essex, with its northern boundary located inside the Preserve, north of I-40. A support division, including an ammunition dump, several large warehouses, and a military hospital, were located at Goffs, along with an emergency airfield a mile north of the hamlet. Later, the training grounds were expanded and renamed the California Arizona Maneuver Area, and remained in use until mid-1944. At least one million soldiers spent time in the area. Tanks and other military vehicles roamed throughout the desert, conducting exercises in the valleys of the Preserve and surrounding areas.
During World War II, many places in the greater Mojave desert received permanent designation as military training areas, but lack of such a status did not preclude the military from again using the eastern Mojave for practice. In May 1964, the Army staged a training exercise in the public lands west of Needles with 89,000 troops. Soldiers practiced amphibious landings on the banks of the Colorado River, troops constructed machine-gun emplacements at major crossroads, and heavy weaponry rolled across the sweeping valleys. The operation, known as "Desert Strike," caused significant impact to desert plants and animals. At least some locals attempted to halt the operation, but were unable to get support from the BLM or conservation groups.  One author pointed out that the maneuver "laid environmental waste to sizable swaths of the East Mojave."  Fortunately for the fragile lands of the east Mojave, Operation Desert Strike was the last major military use of the area now encompassed by the Preserve.
The army's training exercises left permanent scars on the desert. Tank tracks remain visible in many places inside and outside the Preserve. Rock alignments laying out huge tent camps dot the desert, especially in the southeast corner of the Preserve, and military debris still litters the desert floor in some places. Military use compacted the soil and changed the natural ecology of the desert.
Military use of the Mojave for training purposes had civilian ramifications as well. The military systematically mapped the entire Mojave desert in detail for the first time, utilizing aerial photography and traditional land-based methods to create maps for their training operations. After the war, many of the Army maps were sold to the public, and the U.S. Geological Survey utilized Army Map Service data to produce a series of 15 minute quads of the desert in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  The experiences of soldiers at the wartime desert camps translated to increased recreational use of the desert after the war. War surplus jeeps and camping gear enabled former soldiers and their friends to explore the desert in four-wheel drive, as they had done during their training, with new maps of the Mojave to guide their travels.  One U.S. Army photo, dated 1942, shows a soldier in full battle gear steering a huge military Harley-Davidson motorcycle down a Mojave sand dune - a stunning prelude of recreation to come.
Recreational use of the desert began before World War II, but accelerated tremendously after that conflict concluded. The rise of recreation by off-highway vehicles (OHV) eventually prompted increased management of the entire desert by the BLM , and will be addressed in the following chapter. In addition to OHV users, others made attempts to encourage recreation in the eastern Mojave.
Jack Mitchell, a Los Angeles businessman who lost almost everything in the 1929 stock market crash, initiated an early attempt at recreational tourism in the present-day Preserve. Mitchell became interested in three magnificent limestone caverns after a local rancher, Mark Pettit, showed him the caves. By 1932, Mitchell had explored the caves, offered tours, and set up signs along Route 66 to direct visitors to the site. He continued to guide visitors for the next two decades. As Mitchell grew closer to retirement age in the early 1950s, he began deliberations with California's state park system to take over operation of the caves as a state park. Mitchell was killed in an accident before negotiations could be finalized, and the California state park system added Mitchell's Caverns to its holdings in 1956. The state promoted the tourism and development of the caverns and the surrounding Providence Mountains State Recreation Area, and dug a connection between the two main caves in Mitchell's Caverns to produce a single-loop tour experience. The caves and the state park continue to draw thousands of visitors every year to the area, and are the oldest formal tourism-related activity in the Mojave National Preserve. Originally, two more state parks were planned for Cima Dome and the Cinder Cones, but these were never built.
The California Department of Fish and Game (CDF&G) long encouraged recreational hunting in the eastern Mojave desert, as in the rest of the state. During the 1940s, CDF&G stocked non-native mule deer in what later became the Preserve. Deer are native to some parts of the desert, but the eastern Mojave, by 1940, was a landscape constructed by ranchers for production of beef. Hunting was seen by the ranchers as an undesirable intrusion of animals that would compete with their cattle and people who might damage their property. One local angrily categorized the action as "dumping them on land where ranchers were paying for the forage rights and where, with hunting, they have been a source of trouble ever since." Winnie Southcott, wife of the owner of the Gold Valley Ranch, died after she was attacked in her front yard by a large buck who apparently had no fear of humans.  By the mid-1980s, hunters harvested an average of 25 deer each year from the area of the Preserve, about a quarter of the total for San Bernardino County. California Department of Fish and Game also introduced chukar, an upland game bird popular with hunters, in the mid-twentieth century. Hunting of bighorn sheep had long been prohibited in the desert, but beginning in the fall of 1987, limited hunting was allowed to resume by CDF&G.  From the 1940s to the beginning of the twenty-first century, the state of California actively attempted to increase recreation opportunities in the eastern Mojave by locally implementing statewide programs designed to promote and sustain hunting.
While CDF&G attempted to make the desert amenable to hunters and Jack Mitchell tried to profit by showcasing its wondrous caves, a controversial preacher promoted an alternative vision of recreation in the Mojave. In September 1944, "Dr." Curtis Howe Springer, a radio evangelist and alternative-medicine salesman, staked mining claims at the site of Soda Springs, which he gradually developed into his famous Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Resort. Springer was a curious historical character who can be painted as a swindling quack or a misunderstood visionary. Springer constructed most of the buildings at Zzyzx today before 1955, utilizing men from the slums of Los Angeles for labor. Treatment at Zzyzx included good food and plenty of rest, along with an alcohol-free environment, which certainly helped some visitors. Lodging and meals were provided free of charge, though donations were encouraged.
Over time, Zzyzx proved very popular. The post office in Baker was upgraded to first-class status, largely because of Springer's mail volume, and motels there often lodged prospective visitors waiting for their turn at Zzyzx. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, after a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times raised the public's awareness of the seemingly illegitimate side of the Zzyzx business, several agencies, including the BLM and the Food and Drug Administration, pursued charges against Springer for allegedly false advertising, misleading labels, and misusing mining claims. BLM rangers bodily evicted Springer and his wife in April 1974 on the grounds that Springer was trespassing on public lands because he was living on his mining claims rather than extracting minerals from them. The BLM showed the Springers little sympathy, threatening them with handcuffs and giving them thirty-six hours to gather their possessions and vacate the property. Two years later, after some BLM consternation about what to do with Zzyzx, the California State University Desert Studies Consortium was granted a renewable lease to run the property as a research and education facility.
After World War II, recreational use of the desert grew to substantial importance. From Jack Mitchell's attempts to make a living by giving tours of limestone caves to Curtis Springer's decades-long development and promotion of Zzyzx Mineral Springs, private interests used the eastern Mojave for economic gain through recreation and tourism. The State of California also sought to increase recreational opportunities by introducing non-native animals to the area as a means of increasing hunting. Recreation by off-highway vehicle users became so substantial that it prompted the first major systematic federal management of the desert. Beginning recently and growing rapidly, few could have predicted the speed with which recreation became a major activity on the lands of the east Mojave.
One of the least populated areas in the United States, the eastern Mojave saw relatively little management of any sort for much of its recent history. Euro-American traders chose to avoid the Mohaves when possible, but even after the establishment of a wagon road, military presence was limited to a thin corridor. Miners extracted wealth from the land, subject to only the permissive provisions of the General Mining Law of 1872. Ranchers used federal land as their own, possessing genuine title only to land around water sources. Homesteaders futilely plowed their personal portion of the public domain, but few were able to patent their holdings and none were subject to more oversight than that provided by hostile local ranchers. Military exercises used the eastern Mojave as a playground, and railroads, interstate freeways, electrical transmission lines, and petroleum pipelines were all constructed across the land. Increased management appeared on the distant horizon with the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, which required Mojave ranchers to change their practices and their landscapes to fit the new regulations. Only in the 1960s did the desert face an issue large enough to demand major attention. Recreation in the desert surged in popularity, and forced the federal government to move toward systematic management of the desert for the first time.
Last Updated: 05-Apr-2004


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Jan. 20, 2010
Maryville, Mo. - Northwest students can develop new leadership skills and enhance existing skills during a variety of workshops at the university's first Bearcat Leadership Training conference.
BLT, which is free, will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30, in the J.W. Jones Student Union. Check-in will be 8:15 a.m. to 9 a.m. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
In addition to guiding students, the conference is designed to assist student organizations and their leaders with improving and advancing operations and group management.
The conference will feature keynote speakers Alumni Association President Neil Neumeyer and Tim McMahon, Northwest's vice president of marketing and university relations.
Workshop topics will include leadership styles and personality traits, goal setting, motivation, event planning, interculturalism and diversity, teamwork, balance and well-being, conflict management, running effective meetings and organizational structure.
Students must register by 5 p.m. Jan. 25. Students can register by clicking this link:
For more information, contact Beyza Aydar, leadership graduate assistant in the Office of Campus Activities, at 660.562.1226 or email@example.com.
Mark Hornickel, Media Relations Specialist
firstname.lastname@example.org | 660.562.1704 | Fax: 660.562.1900
Northwest Missouri State University
215 Administration Building | 800 University Drive | Maryville, MO 64468


Since last month and continuing to present, several outbreaks of hemorrhagic conjunctivitis have been reported in various Central American and Caribbean countries. In Central America, the disease has mainly affected four countries:
- Nicaragua presented a radical increase during the month of May. People from 5 to 14 years were the most affected, and the counties with the highest number of cases were Managua and Chontales. Honduras suffered a big outbreak mainly among factory workers. The cities most affected were San Pedro Sula, El Progreso, La Lima, and Chomola.
- Guatemala reported 2,035 cases to 20 September 2003 in the 14 health zones. The national incidence rate is 13 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Of the cases, 81% are concentrated in five areas: Izabal, Chiquimula, San Marcos, Petén Suroriente and Guatemala City.
- In El Salvador, 335 cases of hemorrhagic conjunctivitis occurred up to 16 September. The more affected health zones were the Center zone, Santa Ana and New Concepción. Samples have been taken from three health zones. Results to identify the causal agent are pending, although viral infection is suspected by the symptoms presented.
- In the Caribbean, eight countries reported having had cases of hemorrhagic conjunctivitis. The start and end of the outbreaks, and the description of them, are showed in the following table:
- Caribbean Epidemiology Center (CAREC): Caribbean Surveillance Network (Carisurvnet).
- Laboratory reports and Department of Epidemiology of the respective countries.
- Boletín Epidemiológico de Guatemala (Guatemala Epidemiological Bulletin), Week 37-03.
- Boletín Epidemiológico de El Salvador (El Salvador Epidemiological Bulletin), Week 38-03.
Ante el inicio de la temporada de mayor transmisión de conjuntivitis hemorrágica en países tropicales, la Organización Panamericana de la Salud (OPS) enfatiza en la necesidad de reforzar la vigilancia e implementar las recomendaciones que contribuyen a controlar la diseminación de la enfermedad.
Central America: The following outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic conjunctivitis are still active:
Guatemala: To 29 September 2003, there have been 2,269 cases in 18 health districts. The national incidence rate is 18 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, and the trend is still rising. The health districts with the greatest number of cases are Izabal (247), Petén Suroriente (200) Chiquimula (77), Santa Rosa (34), Petén Norte (30), San Marcos (23) and Escuintla (18). The illness is primarily affecting persons over the age of five.
El Salvador: To 30 September 2003, the health districts most affected continue to be El Centro (84), Santa Ana (52) and Nueva Concepción (52). The age group most affected is from 20 to 59 years; and regarding gender, the cumulative number of cases reported among women is higher than among men
- Boletín epidemiológico de Guatemala (Epidemiological Bulletin of Guatemala) No. 38, 2003.
- Boletín epidemiológico de El Salvador (Epidemiological Bulletin of El Salvador), 30 September 2003.
Mexico: The conjunctivitis outbreak has affected 32 states. To 26 September 2003, 67,513 cases of conjunctivitis were reported. The three states with the highest number of cases are Campeche (14,309), Quintana Roo (11,169), and Tabasco (11,092).
Source: Boletín epidemiológico de México (Epidemiological Bulletin of Mexico), No. 38, 2003.


One Click Table Sorting
How to one click table sorting.
To sort records in a table with one click, open a table in Datasheet View. Highlight one or more adjacent columns. Click either the Sort Ascending or the Sort Descending button to sort the records in the datasheet. They'll be sorted, starting with the left-most column and moving to the right.


But the files are transferred and the other print statements are executed?
If I understand Net::SFTP::Foreign correctly, the callback function should be executed at least once per call to ->get.
Maybe it is overwritten too quickly - what if you remove the \r or replace it with \n?
Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
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Re^2: Possible pairings for first knockout round of UEFA champions leagueby LanX (Canon)
|on Dec 22, 2012 at 15:36 UTC||Need Help??|
It's a branch and bound-algorithm, by early cutting unnecessary branches I avoid calculating all permutations, which is (far╣) more efficient.▓
And it gave me the opportunity to check some mathematical approaches (which are more challenging for me)
But you're welcome to show us your way to do it!(BTW: I saw your approach already been done in Python, if you're interested)
╣) since 8! is only ~40000 it's not too obvious in this special case.
▓) Furthermore branching allows to cache/memoize results for subtrees to go even faster.


It seems that so many individuals are
unsatisfied with their relationship with their parents. During
adolescence I heard from many of my friends the frustrations they
were feeling towards their parents. Sometimes they felt annoyed,
other times they felt over-controlled by them. I've also talked to
older individuals who still have problems with their parents. They
say that they just don't get along anymore, or they reflect on
resentment that they felt towards them in their younger years. What
is it that makes parent-child relationships so difficult? I mean,
they are our own flesh and blood.
I have always had a hard time relating to people when they talk about their issues with their parents. To me, my family is the most important part of my life, and therefore I do everything I can to cherish that relationship. Maybe I see the parent child relationship a little bit differently, or maybe my parents really aren't difficult to get along with, it's hard to say. Regardless, I have always tried to recognize that they are real people too, and I truly do appreciate all the time and money they've spent on me. I also understand that a relationship is a two way street.
Regardless, it has been shown that the relationship we have with our parents can affect the life an personality of their children. First off, several studies have been conducted on parenting styles. The most popular being the model created by Diana Baumrind. She created four different parenting styles depending on the amount of demanding-ness and responsiveness they expressed. Authoritative parenting style, which was high in both of those domains, has been shown to have the best outcome in children.
Parent relationships also affect their children in other ways. It has been shown that children whose parents don't supervise them as much engage in greater adolescence risk taking. This seems to be especially true in regards to adolescence alcohol use. The reverse relationship is also true, as adolescent alcohol use has actually been shown to predict less effective parenting supervision. This could be because children who choose to engage in that sort of behavior resist parenting supervision, or it could be because the children use alcohol because their parents didn't supervise them in the first place. (Clark, 2008).
This phenomenon stems further than
just alcohol use though. Parenting style and the relationship with
ones parents can affect psychological aspects of an individuals life
as well. Those with authoritarian parents tend to be less confident
and show sign of depression. The indulgent parenting style tends to
create individuals who are under appreciative and self-entitled.
(Baumrind, 1991). To make things more confusing, the structure of
one's family can actually predict adolescence outcomes as well. It
has been shown that in father only households, adolescence are most
likely to engage in alcohol use. (Hoffman & Johnson, 1998).
So, what can be done about all this? I believe that it is important to educate parents about the importance of a specific parenting style. Since many adults don't go out of their way to seek this knowledge, it should be presented to them when they are receiving their education. Children play a part in this too, which is why they should be taught effective communication skills during their adolescence. I believe a more modern approach should be taken in our school systems. Our youth spends so much of their time in school, which means there is so much opportunity for them to gain valuable life information.
Baumrind, D. (1991). The influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 11(1), 56-95. Retrieved from www.sagepub.org
Clark, D. (2008). Parental supervision and alcohol use in adolescence: developmentally specific interactions. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 29(4), 285-292. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18562983
Hoffmann, J., & Johnson, R. (1998). A national portrait of family structure and adolescent drug use. Journal of Marriage and Family, 60(3), 633-645.


Ireland's medicines shortages have worsened significantly in the last 12 months, and the government must intervene to ensure that patients get the drugs they need, pharmacists have warned.
98% of pharmacists have told the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) that they have noticed drug shortages in the last year, while 91% say these have got worse over the period and 93% expect them to worsen over the next 12 months.
44% of pharmacists believe that patients' health outcomes have been harmed by the shortages, and the IPU also reports that pharmacy staff spend an average eight hours each month working to resolve the problems.
This is time that would be better spent tending to patients’ needs, said IPU president Rory O'Donnell, and he warned: "the longer the situation is allowed to continue, the greater the impact on patients' health."
Currently, pharmacists are particularly reporting shortages of Eli Lilly's antidepressant/fibromyalgia treatment Cymbalta (duloxetine) and Pfizer's Lyrica (pregabalin), used in epilepsy, fibromyalgia and neuropathic pain, among other products.
The IPU also warns that Ireland's planned introduction of reference pricing will only exacerbate the situation, particularly if the reference price is set too low.
"Adding to these concerns is the fact that pharmacists typically receive little or no warning that these medicines are going out of stock and there is often little information on when these stocks will be replenished," said Mr O'Donnell.
"Ultimately, it is up to the Department of Health to ensure that patients have continuity of supply of medicines and we would ask that steps be taken as a matter of urgency to solve the existing problems of medicines shortages and to ensure that further shortages do not occur," he concluded.
Responding, the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA), representing the branded drugmakers, pointed out that key provisions of the state/IPHA supply agreement, which was renewed last October, are designed to ensure continuity as far as is possible.
From time to time, disruptions can emerge with individual products because of manufacturing processes. However, more recently shortages have resulted from products being traded across European markets when the price in one country has been pushed well below that in other countries, says the IPHA, pointing out that these cross-border trading issues are beyond its members’ control.
The Department of Health says it is working to manage drug shortages, so that the impact on patients is minimised, say local reports.


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SAE Unveils Combined Charger System
Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche and Volkswagen strongly support a "harmonized single-port DC-fast charging technology" and will be present at the unveiling of the Combined Charging System at the EVS26 event currently running in Los Angeles, California.
The system is "intended to optimize customer ease of use and to accelerate more affordable deployment of electrified vehicles," according to Volkswagen. It's believed that the Combined Charging System will be used on electric vehicles in Europe and the US starting in 2013. Only the eight automakers listed above have agreed to adopt the use of the Combined Charging System.
The Combined Charging System "integrates one-phase AC-charging, fast three-phase AC-charging, DC-charging at home and ultra-fast DC-charging at public stations into one vehicle inlet." This setup will "allow customers to charge at most existing charging stations regardless of power source and may speed more affordable adoption of a standardized infrastructure," according to VW.
The International Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has chosen the Combined Charging System as its standard and will publish official guidelines this summer. Aside from the SAE, the ACEA—the European association of vehicle manufacturers—has announced that it selected the Combined Charging System as its AC/DC-charging interface for all plug-in vehicles sold in Europe beginning in 2017.
Charging stations compatible with the Combined Charging System will become available in late 2012. Compatible vehicles will launch in 2013.
New to EVs? Start here
What Is An Electric Car?
Before we get going, let's establish basic definitions.
A Quick Guide to Plug-in Hybrids
Some plug-in cars have back-up engines to extend driving range.
Electric Cars Pros and Cons
EVs are a great solution for most people. But not everybody.
Eight Rules of Electric Vehicle Charging Etiquette
Thou shalt charge only when necessary. And other rules to live by.
Seven Things To Know About Buying a Plug-In Car
A few simple tips before you visit the dealership.
Eight Factors Determining Total Cost of Ownership of an Electric Car
EVs get bad rap as expensive. Until you look at TCO.
Federal and Local Incentives for Plug-in Hybrids and Electric Cars
Take advantage of credits and rebates to reduce EV costs.
Guide to Buying First Home EV Charger
You'll want a home charger. Here's how to buy the right one.
Electric Car Utility Rate Plans: Top Five Rules
With the right utility plan, electric fuel can be dirt cheap.
The Ultimate Guide to Electric Car Charging Networks
If you plan to charge in public, you'll want to sign up for charging network membership (or two).


The name Pound Cake comes from the fact that the original pound cake contained one pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. No other ingredients were used other than the air whipped into the batter. In the days when many people couldn't read, this simple convention made it simple to remember recipes.
The pound cake dates back to the early 18th century, and was favored because its ingredients were easy to remember: one pound each of four things. It was improved immeasurably by the invention of rising agents in the 19th century.
The pound cake is known as the following names in their respective countries:
France: Gâteau Quatre-Quarts, which means “Four Fourths,” referring to the equal portions of eggs, flour. sugar, and butter.
Spain: Queque Seco.
Pound cake originated in the 1700s in England. It was discovered by Hannah Glasse in her Art of Cookery (published in 1747). By the mid 1800’s, Pound Cake recipes started to add liquids and in the 1900’s, baking powder was added to the recipes. And though butter, eggs, flour, and sugar are still used, the proportions have been adjusted to make the cake less heavy.
The Pound Cake is subtle, balanced, and robust. The texture is spongy but not flaky. It is moist without having the uncooked pudding-like quality you get from those "extra-moist" box jobs you get at the store. Nor it is puffy and dry as so many homemade cakes can be
This site gives the ingredients to extremely popular FREE pound cake recipes along with photos and other Pound Cake goodies. So, let’s get started and make some fantastic pound cake!
Pound Cake | Original Pound Cake | Chocolate Pound Cake | Lemon Pound Cake | Key Lime Pound Cake | Strawberry Pound Cake | Rum Pound Cake | Cream Cheese Pound Cake | Fudge Marble Pound Cake | Cranberry Orange Pound Cake | Almond Pound Cake | Vanilla Bean Pound Cake | Sour Cream Pound Cake | 7 Up Pound Cake | Orange Pound Cake | Coconut Pound Cake | Buttermilk Pound Cake |
Blueberry Pound Cake |


Earthrace, the bio-fuelled UIM powerboat is speeding up the Red Sea heading for Suez on Day 55 of her Round the World record run, just three thousand miles from the Sagunto in Spain and the finish line.
In the last 24 hours the giant trimaran has travelled 516 nautical miles, at an average speed of 21.5 knots, and she is now 3,017 miles ahead of the 1998 Cable & Wireless World Record.
On Day 54 Earthrace averaged 20.5 knots and her New Zealand skipper Pete Bethune commented ‘We’ve lost some boat speed. For the amount of fuel we’re burning at the moment we should be doing around 24 knots, and yet we’re just over 22.
‘It is a combination of things. Certainly the propeller we changed in Singapore has had an impact. The previous one was the very latest from Hytorque in Canada and it was super-efficient, especially compared with the older prop we have now put on.
‘Also the repairs we did in Singapore will have had an adverse affect. The P-Bracket is now fatter and with a slightly rough surface, similarly the repairs to the bow and rudder were relatively rough, and these would all add slightly to drag.’
Conditions are excellent for Earthrace as she runs fast up the Red Sea, she has a ¼ to ½ metre following sea and she will, at current pace, reach the mouth of the Suez Canal on Monday.
If she has a fast transit and a good run across the Mediterranean, she could complete her round the world run 12 or 13 days inside the record.
Her two sat tracking units are current U/S; the one on the roof top has cracked and taken on water but a second one up higher on the horn might be able to be repaired.
Listen to the latest report from Earthrace below.


Global Panda Conservation Campaign Launched in Hong Kong
HONG KONG, Aug. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Organizers and panda ambassadors urged the public to step up efforts to protect pandas and other endangered species as the Global Panda Conservation Tour kicked off here Friday.
Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, main organizer of the event, said in a statement that protecting pandas is also a process of conserving bio-diversity.
"We need to protect pandas not only because they are our national treasures, but also because their habitats are bio-diversity hotspots in China," it said. "Through protecting pandas and their habitats, other animals and plants in the area can also be preserved."
At a press conference held at the Ocean Park, Chen Yinrong, one of the three panda ambassadors, or "Pambassadors" selected from 1.16 million global applicants, said protecting pandas is not merely the duty of Pambassadors.
"I hope everyone can take part in the protection of pandas and other wildlife," she said.
The three Pambassadors, Chen from China, Jerome Pouille from France and Melissa Katz from the United States, were chosen in a recruiting campaign for ambassadors for the most iconic animal in China, which began in September 2012.
Ju Mengjun, director of Asia-Pacific Bureau of Xinhua News Agency, another organizer of the project, said this tour is also a tour of peace.
"We expect the tour, starting from its first stop in Hong Kong, can bring the voice of peace and a harmonious mindset from China to the world," he said.
The three Pambassadors will start their tour to cities around the world that currently house pandas, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Paris and Edinburgh.
The Pambassadors visited the four pandas living in the Ocean Park's Panda Village and talked to visitors about the importance of panda preservation.
"I think we should all take actions to protect pandas and their habitats, otherwise our future generations can only see these lovely creatures in televisions," said He Jianming, a tourist from China's eastern Jiangxi Province, after signing his name on a poster board for the event.
The four pandas living in Hong Kong - An An, Jia Jia, Ying Ying and Le Le - were given in pairs as gifts to the city, marking the second and 10th anniversary of its return to China.
Pandas, also known as giant pandas, are native to China and one of the most endangered animal species in the world. About 1,600 pandas live in the wild, mostly in the mountains of China's western Sichuan Province, while more than 300 live in captivity.
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SOURCE Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding


A new study confirms that men's minds come from Mars and women's from Venus. In an article recently published in the online journal PLoS ONE, Italian cognitive
psychologist Marco Del Giudice and his collaborators compared the personality
traits of men and women in a sample of over 10,000 people and found huge differences. Women scored much higher than in men in Sensitivity, Warmth, and Apprehension, while men scored higher than women in Emotional Stability, Dominance, Rule-Consciousness, and Vigilance. When many personality traits were considered simultaneously, there was only a 10% overlap between the distributions of these traits in men and women. Essentially, the study suggests that when it comes to personality men and women belong to two different species.
Although many of us have long known - on the basis of personal experience - that women are generally more sensitive than men, and men are slightly more emotionally stable than women, previous studies comparing personality traits in men and women found few or no quantitative differences. Del Giudice and his collaborators argue that these previous studies didn't use an appropriate methodology. Their argument is that measuring personality at the level of the Big Five - the way it was done before - can potentially hide some important differences between the sexes because this approach lacks resolution. They suggest, instead, that in order to get the most accurate picture of sex differences, researchers need to (a) measure personality with a higher resolution than that afforded by the Big Five, (b) estimate sex differences on latent factors rather than observed scores; and (c) assess global differences between males and females by computing a multivariate effect size. And this is exactly what they did in the study reported in the PLoS ONE article.
The personality data for this study were obtained from an existing database, in which 10,261 adults of US nationality were interviewed in 1993 to validate a particular personality questionnaire (16PF). The people in the sample were 50.1% female and 49.9% male. The sample was primarily white (77.9%), was proportionally geographically distributed, and on average, the educational level and years in education of the sample was greater than that of the US population. Personality was assessed with 15 primary scales, corresponding to the following traits: Warmth (reserved vs. warm), Emotional Stability (reactive vs. emotionally stable), Dominance (deferential vs. dominant), Liveliness (serious vs. lively), Rule-Consciousness (expedient vs. rule-conscious), Social Boldness (shy vs. socially bold), Sensitivity (utilitarian vs. sensitive), Vigilance (trusting vs. vigilant), Abstractness (grounded vs. abstracted), Privateness (forthright vs. private), Apprehension (self-assured vs. apprehensive), Openness to Change (traditional vs. open to change), Self-Reliance (group-oriented vs. self-reliant), Perfectionism (tolerates disorder vs. perfectionistic), and Tension (relaxed vs. tense). These 15 primary scales were further organized into the following 5 global scales: Extraversion (Warmth, Liveliness, Social Boldness, Privateness, and Self-Reliance), Anxiety (Emotional Stability, Vigilance, Apprehension, and Tension), Tough-Mindedness (Warmth, Sensitivity, Abstractedness, and Openness to Change), Independence (Dominance, Social Boldness, Vigilance, and Openness to Change) and Self-Control (Liveliness, Rule-Consciousness, and Perfectionism.
Del Giudice and collaborators used a statistical technique called multigroup latent variable modeling to estimate sex differences on individual personality dimensions, which were then aggregated to yield a multivariate effect size (Mahalanobis D). They found a global effect size D = 2.71, corresponding to an overlap of only 10% between the male and female distributions. This is an extremely large effect by any psychological standard, which suggests that the sex differences in personality are of the same magnitude as the sex differences in aggression or vocational interests.
From an evolutionary perspective, large differences in personality between the sexes make perfect sense. Divergent sexual selection pressures on men and women are expected to produce substantial differences in personality traits that influence mating and reproductive strategies. For example, sexual promiscuity is predicted by extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism (especially in women), positive schizotypy, and the ''dark triad'' traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism). Negative predictors of promiscuity and short- term mating include agreeableness, conscientiousness, honesty, and autistic-like traits. Relationship instability is associated with extraversion, neuroticism, low agreeableness, and low conscientiousness. In addition to their direct influences on predispositions for sexual promiscuity and relationship instability or sexual monogamy and parental investment, personality traits may also influence competitive tendencies such as status-seeking and risk-taking.
Del Giudice and colleagues conclude that from an evolutionary perspective personality traits are clearly not neutral with respect to sexual selection. "Instead, there are grounds to expect robust and wide-ranging sex differences in this area, resulting in strongly sexually differentiated patterns of emotion, thought, and behavior - as if there were two human natures."
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Del Giudice, M., Booth, T., and Irwing, P. (2012). The distance between Mars and Venus: Measuring global sex differences in personality. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29265.


If you are hosting a luncheon and soup will be served, include a soup bowl in your place setting. Whether your luncheon is casual or formal, the basic setting is the same. A casual setting includes mostly the same dinnerware as a formal setting, and it is arranged in the same manner. If your luncheon is informal, feel free to choose a variety of colors and patterns to add a bit of your personality to the table.
Positions of Dinnerware
The proper placement of your dinnerware is important. If you are using a placemat, position it on the table so that it centers the chair. The plate is then placed squarely in the center of the placemat. If a placemat is not used, set the plate two inches from the edge of the table, ensuring it is placed on the table so that it centers the chair. Place your soup bowl on top of the plate. If you are serving salad, position the salad plate to the left of the plate and slightly above it, leaving adequate room for your silverware. For informal luncheons, choose plates and bowls of contrasting colors or patterns to add a lively touch to your table setting.
Proper Placement of Silverware
The dinner fork is placed on the left side of the plate with the tip of the handle aligned with the bottom edge of the plate and the tines pointing away from the table edge. If you are serving a salad or dessert with the meal, place a second fork on the left of the dinner fork. If you are using a salad plate and it is not properly positioned above the forks and near the plate, move it to its proper position. A knife is placed on the right side of the plate with the tip of its handle in alignment with the bottom edge of the plate. Ensure the blade is facing the plate, as it is considered impolite for the blade to face the next diner. A soup spoon is placed to the right of the knife with the tip of its handle aligned with the tip of the knife.
Tumblers and Stemware
It is perfectly acceptable to use tumblers and stemware together in a place setting. Tumblers are placed above the spoon. If you are using a stemmed glass, place it beside or behind the tumbler. If you are using more than two glasses, the glasses are often arranged in a triangle above the spoon, but there is no particular way to arrange the glasses. When a water glass is used, place it where it is most convenient for the guest as this is often the frequently used glass.
Napkins and Salt-and-Pepper Shakers
Napkins are traditionally placed to the left of the forks on the left side of the plate or on the plate. A setting that includes a bowl for soup does not allow you to place the napkin on the plate. It is acceptable to arrange the napkin inside stemware in an attractive manner. Use brightly colored napkins to add flair to your table settings. Always place your salt-and-pepper shakers in the center of the table so they are convenient for all guests.
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The rapid economic growth and population expansion of Cambodian and Vietnam presents opportunities for impacting the livelihood of many people, where horticulture remains an important undeveloped business sector supported by small farmers. This team's goal is to empower small-scale farmers (59% of whom are women) with integrated experiential education and training for sustainable vegetable production that limits postharvest losses, increases food safety, increases market access and, importantly, increases income.
The project team designed a participatory approach to meet these goals by networking experts in horticulture production through marketing. Including stakeholders of farmer communes, regional universities, local governments and national communications companies provides continuity needed for continuation of farmer outreach training and education beyond the lifetime of project funding. The successful completion of the project in Vietnam will serve as a model for implementation of the participatory action network in other, more challenging, countries like Cambodia and Laos with similar, but less developed, horticulture business sectors. Completion of this project will address essential capacity-building needs of Cambodia including an assessment of capabilities, research training, outreach development and promotion of communication between policy makers, universities and the agribusiness community.
One extension of this project will work with savings groups in Cambodia that will be trained in financial literacy and cell phone-related savings technology. The savings and lending groups will also be introduced to improved horticultural technologies investigated by other Horticulture Innovation Lab projects and provided with the opportunity to invest in these technologies. The project team will collect data on the demand and use of these technologies in rural farming systems. This model will enable information to flow in two directions, as farmers and savings groups gain access to “leapfrog technologies,” and the Horticulture Innovation Lab learns how rural farmers in Cambodia reinvent new technologies to accommodate local, on-the-ground realities. This project will also help determine which horticulture technologies are in demand among Cambodian farmers, and what specific conditions create demand for these technologies.


This is a second in a two-part series on Housing Market Realities. Please click here to read part I-
Fourth, there is the distinction between want and need. People need housing, as they need food and clothing. These are not optional choices that can be foregone in favour of other spending preferences. Housing is not an optional choice because there is no product that can be substituted for it. If I don’t like the price for a particular fruit at the grocery store, I have the option of choosing a different fruit, or buying no fruit at all. This is not the case with housing. There is no product that can substitute for it.
These realities create a supply and demand gap for low-income households. Housing demand is based on ability to pay. If a would-be renter cannot pay for housing at the price for which offered there is no effective demand. The need of low-income households for housing is undiminished but it is not supported by purchasing power: the market cannot supply rental housing at a price low-income households can afford. This is the gap that the free market cannot bridge. Meanwhile, everyone needs suitable housing that they can afford.
Thus the price of rental housing cannot simply be left to open market conditions because to recap, housing is not an optional commodity that people can do without. Everyone needs housing. The rental housing supply is inelastic in the short and medium term; increased demand will not alter the supply of purpose-built rental housing, but will raise its price. There are no products that can be purchased instead of housing that will meet shelter needs. And finally, the affordable housing needs of low-income (and even moderate-income households in many markets) cannot be met through free-market supply and demand.
Overcoming the supply and demand gap
First, consider the regulatory technique of rent control. Rent controls exist in many jurisdictions, with landlords, in many but not all cases, being subject to government-determined maximum rent increases.
Rent controls are favoured by tenant rights organizations and activists. It can be argued, however, that rent controls are in fact counter-productive because they provide a disincentive for investors to expand the stock of private rental housing or even to repair and maintain existing properties to an adequate standard. And landlords can be exempted from rent controls in many different ways, such as under new tenancies or when renovations are carried out. They are a flawed system of controlling rent levels in the residential tenancy market.
So if the private rental market cannot on its own supply housing to low-income households at a price they can afford, and with rent controls offering a inadequate solution at best, what is the policy answer for low-income households?
There are three complimentary policy solutions for government which taken together can in large measure address the housing affordability crisis facing Canada. (A fourth and equally important housing policy goal must be to launch a Canada-wide initiative to end homelessness. This is not addressed in detail here only because the present focus is on affordability for Canadians who are already housed.)
First, there is the question of addressing the situation facing co‑operative, non-profit and public housing – the stock of existing community housing in Canada – that has been supported by government assistance programs. The total stock housing of this housing amounts to some 630,000 homes, of which 200,000 house low-income households that have depended on government financial assistance to pay rent. The programs that have provided this support are ending. Unless they are replaced, which can be most effectively achieved through multilateral government cost-sharing programs, Canada runs the real risk of losing existing housing affordability even as we explore policy intitatives to add other affordable housing options. This is a critical and urgent matter. It would be illogical to say the least not to address it, given the cost effectiveness of continuing to support affordability in stock we already have.
For tenants in the private market without any immediate prospect of getting into existing affordable social housing, the most effective, immediate and comprehensive solution is a government system of portable housing benefit that is paid directly to households according to their incomes. Paying the benefit to the tenant and not the landlord reduces the risk of inflation in the rental market because a landlord need not be aware that a tenant is receiving the benefit. Inflation risk can be further mitigated if the benefit is only provided to assist the tenant up to a median market rent, based on an appropriate unit size for the household, and not up to the actual rent charged by a landlord if that rent is above the market median.
Allowing the benefit to be portable, to go where the tenant goes rather than being tied to a particular housing unit, as has been the case with most low-income rent subsidies in Canada, would be a real step forward in allowing mobility, whether to a job opportunity, a more suitable location or for reasons of personal safety. A Housing Benefit has been in place in the UK for decades and it has worked well.
Introducing a housing benefit will not on its own address Canada’s housing challenges without a supply-side solution. Here lies the third policy solution There is an opportunty for government to stimulate growth in the supply of purpose-built rental housing, both in the private and social rental markets. New financing and equity models are needed to attract private capital to the development of new rental stock, thus allowing supply to come into a better balance with demand over time. This approach should encompass both the the social and private rental sectors. The latter has generated significant growth in Canada’s rental stock when government incentive programs have been available in the past. Private market actors should not be excluded if new supply programs are to have maximum impact on rental stock expansion.
But as we noted earlier, the supply of rental housing is inelastic in the shorter term – it can take years for development incentive programs to deliver new housing. Hence the critical need for the more immediate solutions of replacing community housing rental assistamce programs and launching a comprehensive housing benefit program will lift hundreds of thousands of Canadians out of housing poverty in very short order. Government should not delay the introduction of either of these measures.
The argument has been made that state rental subsidies single out low-income households for favoured treatment at taxpayers’ expense. This is not reasonable. The labour market conditions that create income disparity in the first place disfavour the same households. And because our income-tax system is progressive, the taxpayer “burden” of a housing benefit, if it can be called that, is borne to a greater degree by those taxpayers who are favoured in the economy through higher incomes.


This letter to the editor, written in 1986 by my dad’s friend and fellow Bravo Company “Sky Trooper,” sadly still resonates today. Below are excerpts of that letter.
“Vietnam veterans and nation still recovering”
Last week this letter came to me in the mail. And, though it was addressed to me, clearly it was written to you, too – to all of us. So I wanted you to see it:
“I have been following [this] column on the situation of the Vietnam veteran. It is encouraging to know that there are a few who still consider his plight.
“The Vietnam vets I’m in contact with are in one stage or another of turning their lives around. They’re trying to get on with it. These stages have been fairly common to us all. We were confused, as we tried to fit ourselves back into a world that had drastically changed for us. We denied any war-related problems as the first inklings of unusual behavior or attitudes appeared in us.
“Ultimately we were forced to recognize the problem – and this was rough – when our images of ourselves and others could not for an instant longer be supported by our inner feelings. Then came delayed grief, depression and anxiety, intermixed with bitterness, rage and fear as each of us tried to place blame on whomever we considered the cause of our problem.
“And then the final stage – and this one the toughest of all: forgiving those who ravaged our young lives, for they knew not what they did. And perhaps still don’t know.
“ These stages aren’t this smooth of orderly, of course. They intermingle, collide, and a guy might regress a little if some citizen irritably calls his attention to some petty peacetime rule, while the vet remembers how he was ordered to brutally break some very major human rules to keep this same citizen safe. But the vet moves on…
“I, myself, I think, am edging toward this last stage. I am beginning to view the Vietnam war as something other than the preconceived atrocity that I was assuming it to be. I am starting to see it as, perhaps, the social equivalent to a ‘Black Hole’ in outer space – an all-encompassing negative energy, anti-everything that sustains life, and not understandable in and of itself. Who do you blame for a “Black Hole’ in space? Nobody. Period. You accept it.
“And, yet, something is still awry.
“The veteran was the most obviously damaged by this ‘Black Hole’ event in American history. But the Vietnam war hurt us all.
“The veteran feels all to acutely the emptiness of spirit this has left in him. He wonders why this burden continues to remain his alone. But it may not.
“Perhaps, as a society, we all carry the load.”
This letter, published Wednesday, November 12, 1986, was written by Bill Hardin to The Daily News columnist Phyllis Miletich.


148f77 Color Code
148f77 color RGB value is (20, 143, 119). This hex color code is also a web safe color which is equal to #148f77. 148f77 hex color red value is 20, green value is 143 and the blue value of its RGB is 119. Cylindrical-coordinate representations (also known as HSL) of color 148f77 hue: 0.47, saturation: 0.64 and the lightness value of 148f77 is 0.32.


Drop sets are an exercise intensity buildup technique that are incorporated in one's routine when he or she is short on time. For those undergoing the rather tedious task of muscle buildup, slacking off is not an option especially if you are expecting results. In order to maintain a good training volume you must be willing to spend a good portion of your spare time in the gym. However, many times we do not have that kind of time on our hands. That is where drop sets come into the picture.
Essentially, a drop set is executed by taking a workout to transitory muscular failure after which the load is decreased and then made to hit failure again. The concept behind this practice is to increase greater muscular fatigue that in turn results in more muscular growth. Multiple drop sets enable the lifter to increase his or her time under tension, ischemia, and metabolic stress and total volume in a reduced amount of time as opposed to the time it would take them to complete their regular workout sets.
Studies have approved the use of drop sets when the eventual goal is to achieve muscle hypertrophy. These researches studied lifters who employed drop sets in the gym and exhibited good results by spending less than half the amount of time spent by their normal set practicing counterparts. The two groups studied were instructed to follow the same training volume however; the group that incorporated drop sets in their workout revealed twice the amount of muscular growth in just over 6 weeks. This proved that spending a limited amount of time in the gym has nothing to do with the amount of muscular gain.
While studies show exceptional results with the use of drop sets, there is no denying the possibility of contracted revenues because pushing a muscle to failure several times during one exercise and then forcing it to go through the same stress a few days later may lead to overstraining of the muscle, reduced recovery as well as neuromuscular problems. The best way to go about drop sets is to use them tactically over the course of the week by performing a set with several drops on a muscle group no more than twice or thrice a week.
Weight selector machines are ideal because a fixed ROM will help you maintain your form without the risk of sustaining injuries due to muscle fatigue and boosts recovery time. Opt for isolation movements when performing drop sets as opposed to compound movements because isolation movements exhaust your targeted muscle down to the fiber.
Drop sets are the closest thing to a substitute of traditional intense straight set training because they tend to come in handy when you are at a time crunch or if you are looking to increase your muscle volume without having to slave for hours and hours.
We would really like to here from you. Please leave your comment below.


ImpactAlpha, April 11 – More than 300,000 private schools in India serve 80 million students, the majority of them poor. Many parents perceive these low-fee schools to be of higher quality than the country’s public schools, and enrollment is rising. But difficulties in finding financing “puts quality at risk,” according to the Omidyar Network. Varthana, a Bangalore-based financial institution, provides loans to affordable private schools to build or rehabilitate facilities, purchase classroom resources and train teachers. The company works with schools to develop quality improvement plans and offers financial incentives to schools to achieve their improvement goals. Varthana says it supports more than 3,500 schools serving 2.5 million students.
- Impact investors… Omidyar Network, which has been an investor in Varthana since 2014, joined the company’s recent Series C funding, along with Elevar Equity, LGT Impact and Kaizen Private Equity.
- Commercial capital… Significantly, the round was led by ChrysCapital, an Indian private equity firm, signaling the availability of more capital for education financing.
“We are humbled that [ChrysCapital] are as convinced as we are about Varthana’s potential to have a significant, positive impact on the Indian education ecosystem,” Varthana’s founders said in a statement.


– Congratulations Charlottesville, Virginia! The First City to Pass Anti-Drone Legislation (Liberty Blitzkrieg, Feb 5, 2013):
This simple piece of legislation proves that you can make a difference at the local level. We need a lot more of this type of thing all over these United States. As I have said many times, it’s not that I am against drones in all capacities; however, we must be vigilant about how these things are used and must have serious safeguards in place to protect civil liberties. Kudos to the Rutherford Institute for leading the charge here.
From US News:
Charlottesville, Va., has become the first city in the United States to formally pass an anti-drone resolution.
The resolution passed by a 3-2 vote and was brought to the city council by activist David Swanson and the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group based in the city. The measure also endorses a proposed two-year moratorium on drones in Virginia.
Councilmember Dede Smith, who voted in favor of the bill, says that drones are “pretty clearly a threat to our constitutional right to privacy.”
“If we don’t get out ahead of it to establish some guidelines for how drones are used, they will be used in a very invasive way and we’ll be left to try and pick up the pieces,” she says.
“With a lot of these resolutions, although they don’t have a lot of teeth to them, they can inspire other governments to pass similar measures,” she says. “You can get a critical mass and then it does have influence. One doesn’t do much, but a thousand of them might. We want this on [federal and state lawmakers’] radars.”
Full article here.


As many of you know, in spring 2015 we ran an altered version of our very successful project “Mechanical MOOC”. At the heart of this MOOC we offered a course titled A Gentle Introduction to Python. It is a six week course offering exercises and learning materials from MIT OCW’s course combined with Codecademy exercises that were carefully incorporated into the curriculum of the course. This time around we tried to answer some of the deeper learning hypothesis in particular how to grow academic mindsets during a MOOC.
If you are saying: “OK, but what exactly does that mean?”, here it comes. According to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s research, when learning one needs to increase the sense of the following in order to achieve that deeper learning:
- I belong in this academic community (Belonging)
- I can succeed at this (Self-efficacy)
- My ability and competence grow with my effort (Growth mindset)
- This work has value for me (Relevance)
There were a few things that we changed on the course in comparison to previous iterations in order to increase deeper learning of people who took this course, such as:
- Location – When learners signed up, we introduced them to a global map where each of the learners could set their own location. This way people had a sense that they are a part of global community and also get the feeling of the existence of the fellow co-learners in their local vicinities.
- Introductions – To increase the sense of belonging in the course community we asked learners to introduce themselves to others and share their stories about why they want to learn about programming with Python.
- Working on a project – Continuation is nice, so we also extended the curriculum of the course for learning to happen through work on a project and this left learners with a nice game of Tetris in the end.
- Community -We made it our business to constantly remind learners to support each other through community space that was opened for them. Each of the learner received two emails per week into their inbox. One informed them of the materials for that particular week and other encouraged them to seek and give support to each other in various ways.
- Finding out the interesting stuff about the topic you learn – One of the ways of connecting with each other was invitation to search and share for programs that were built with the language they are learning. They were asked to share a Python project that they know of or they could find on the internet and are at least a bit familiar with it prior to taking this course. We called this activity a Python Safari.
- Goals – One way to achieve a goal is to break it into few micro goals and then slowly take one by one. With this in mind we asked learners to do this, share their goals for a week with others and then speak to each other about the goals and the ways to achieve them.
- Failing party – As long as there is learning, there will always be failing too and we made sure that learners knew that failing is part of learning process and we need to celebrate it just the same. We introduced an activity called a Fail Party for this reason. In this activity we invited them to share about their fail and talk about why they think they are failing
P2P done F2F
Historically we have been advocates for online learning, but per our name we have also been strong advocates for peer learning. As our strategy says we wish to teach people to get the most out of their time studying in order to really learn and improve their lives. What better way of achieving that, then to do a great online course together with peers in a study group, or as we like to call it, Learning Circle?
For this course we invited everyone to try and find folks near them, who want to learn Python as well and organize their own Learning Circle. We provided some guidelines for everyone on how to do that.
In the end 3 Learning Circles happened during the course(that we are aware of!). Places where they were held were:
- Chicago Public Library, Chicago, USA, facilitated by Emily who is a cybernavigator in Chicago Public Library
- Cape Town, South Africa facilitated by Hamish who runs the IT department for the Observatory in Cape Town
- Ljubljana, Slovenia, facilitated by Erika our professional software developer and her friends from the Codecatz group
Three different continents! That is pretty sweet.
The facilitators of these Learning Circles couldn’t be more different to each other. Hamish and Erika were well-versed in computer science but Emily had no experience and knowledge about programming from before. All of their experiences with facilitation of the Learning Circle was interesting, but one difference really stood out: While Emily wished she would know more about programming and be able to help learners more, Erika wished she would know less about it, so other participants in the Learning Circle would not look her way every time a hurdle needed to be jumped over. To support each other more.
We found that a lot of the time learners are reserved about helping one another when they feel that their level of knowledge is not up to par. That happens especially, when there is an expert in the room. The fear of being judged and being wrong is always present.
With that experience it is safe to say that a little bit of facilitator’s knowledge about the topic is a good thing, but a lot of knowledge is not so much.
Midway through the course we organized a facilitator’s meeting, where all of the facilitators could share experiences from their group and ask for advice, if they needed some realignment. This meeting provided a lot of insight into what are the expectations of learners coming to the Learning Circles.It was very productive gathering for us, as we also got a lot of feedback from facilitators on the structure of the course and in particular got direct information about experiences of the course takers.
For that reason we didn’t want to leave out the people who could not join face to face Learning Circles, so we also invited Glenn Richards, who is a champion of the online community. He was ever so helpful for his fellow learners, with the course content or just sparking up the conversations about it. In the future we hope to meet many more Glenns!
It seems that very traditional way of learning, where there is a teacher in the middle of the process, is deeply rooted in our society, however as a cognitive beings, we are very quick to embrace different ways of learning as for example peer learning.
Peer learning FTW!


NGO representatives at the Asia Pacific regional SAICM meeting in Kuala Lumpur
Numerous IPEN Participating Organization representatives attended the 4th Asia-Pacific regional meeting on the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) and related workshops, which occured from 23 - 27 March in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting and workshops were preceded by a South East Asian sub-regional wokshop in support of the ratification and early implementation of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. The SAICM meeting covered issues such as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), lead in paint, nanotechnology, highly hazardous pesticides and other subjects in the SAICM.
This week at the 5th African regional meeting on the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) and related workshops in Pretoria, South Africa, Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Développement (CREPD) from Cameroon received the award for "Outstanding Quick Start Programme project in Africa" for their project on lead in paint.


Design of LDPC codes for BP algorithm with channel estimation error
When belief propagation (BP) algorithm is used to decode low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over the binary input additive white Gaussian noise (BIA WGN) channel, the knowledge of the channel noise power is necessary for the algorithm to achieve its predicted performance. If the noise power is estimated erroneously, we refer to this as "signal to noise ratio (SNR) mismatch". In this paper, irregular LDPC codes are designed that perform better (have a lower SNR threshold) in the presence of mismatch compared to conventionally designed irregular LDPC codes that are optimized for zero mismatch. It is shown that with a negligible performance loss at zero mismatch, highly irregular codes that are more robust against mismatch can be designed. A method to generate EXIT curves in the presence of mismatch is proposed that will be used to design such irregular codes. Finite block length simulation results are provided to confirm the asymptotic analysis results.
|Conference||6th International ITG-Conference on Source and Channel Coding and 2006 4th International Symposium on Turbo Codes and Related Topics, TURBOCODING 2006|
Saeedi, H. (Hamid), & Banihashemi, A. (2006). Design of LDPC codes for BP algorithm with channel estimation error. In Turbo Codes and Related Topics; 6th International ITG-Conference on Source and Channel Coding (TURBOCODING), 2006 4th International Symposium on.


Laplace-domain approximation to the transfer functions of a rotor blade in forward flight
A continuous frequency domain method with roots on the classic Hill's determinant analysis is presented to approximate the time-varying characteristics of a linear periodic system. The method is particularly useful to derive a time-invariant equivalent form of the time-varying aeroelastic problem of a rotor blade in forward flight. The proposed technique allows methodology usually employed in fixed wing aircraft to obtain closed-loop control laws be extended to rotary wings. The method is first validated solving Mathieu's equation. Next, the two-degree-of-freedom (flap bending and torsion) problem of rotating beam subject to unsteady and incompressible aerodynamics in forward flight is solved in the laplace domain. As a demonstration of the proposed method, the transfer functions in the 's' plane between a sudden and uniformly distributed input pressure perturbation applied along the beam and the output response of the two elastic degrees of freedom considered are obtained at a set of local sections.
Nitzsche, F. (2001). Laplace-domain approximation to the transfer functions of a rotor blade in forward flight.


- Poster presentation
- Open Access
Evaluation of RV and LV mass by CMR and comparison to recipient heart following heart transplant; the first-ever CMR human autopsy study
© Reddy et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014
- Published: 16 January 2014
- Heart Transplant Recipient
- Orthotopic Heart Transplantation
- Explanted Heart
- Cardiac Transplant Patient
- Recipient Heart
CMR is considered the 'gold standard' for non-invasive LV and RV mass quantitation. To our knowledge, this information is solely based on GRE sequences, with its dependence on flow conditions having never been prospectively or retrospectively validated in humans undermining its credibility. SSFP, with intrinsic contrast dependent on T1/T2 characteristics, offers superior image contrast between blood and myocardium and might redefine the CMR gold standard for cardiac mass. Herein we validate an SSFP approach using explanted hearts obtained from heart transplant recipients.
To establish a correlation between SSFP-CMR derived LV and RV mass vs. autopsy mass of ex vivo hearts from cardiac transplant patients.
Over 3 years, 48 explantations were obtained immediately upon orthotopic heart transplantation from the OR. They were quickly cleaned, prepared (removal of PM/AICDs and/or LV/RVADs), suspended in a saline-filled container and scanned ex vivo via SSFP-SA slices definingCMR LV/RV mass (g). Using a readily available automatic thresholding program, segmentation of the slices was achieved in combination with manual trimming (ATMT) of the extraneous tissue using a 3D model by an independent and blinded reader (implemented on a 1.5 GE, Milwaukee, WI). The explanted hearts were dissected with ventricles surgically separated at the inter-ventricular septum. The weight of the total including papillary and trabecular myocardium for the LV and RV was measured using a high-fidelity scale. Correlation between the 3D CMR method and pathology were performed along with Bland-Altman plots.
SSFP-CMR accurately determines total myocardial, LV and RV masses as compared to weighed explanted hearts, despite variable surgical removal of instrumentation (LVAD/RVAD, AICDs and often apical core removals). Thus, while GRE was the original 'gold standard' for LV mass, SSFP despite its universal acceptance as the 'de facto gold standard is now formally validated in a first-ever human autopsy study. Further, the regression equation now includes, not excludes papillary and trabecular mass supporting that our Society should now incorporate both into standard cardiac measurements.
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.


Publishers are spending millions revamping journal websites. What were formerly simple portals where you accessed articles are being radically redesigned as online content delivery platforms. As the website for the JAMA Network of journals announced late last year:
We have aimed to make the platform more usable, discoverable, and faster on any device.
In case you haven’t noticed, many journals no longer publish articles on paper, which are bound in journals and stored on library shelves.
Many journals still preserve the appearance of publishing articles organized in “issues” scheduled on particular dates. But articles no longer have to wait being organized in an issue. They now typically appear as quickly as possible as “early views.”
[There is a sneaky trick here. Journal impact factors are supposedly calculated based on the number of citations articles receive within two years of publishing. But Web of Science starts the two-year window from what is an increasingly artificial date of publication. Journals can exploit early views to get citations coming before that publication date. Journal impact factors can be manipulated with lots of early view articles available months before being assigned an issue and page numbers.]
You can still download old-fashioned PDFs resembling the pages of paper journals, but PDFs no longer must be papercentric, modeled after what was printed on dead trees and bound in volumes. Online enhanced content delivery platforms increasingly offer enhanced PDFs. As described by Wiley –
Whilst keeping the clear layout and simple design of the standard PDF, PDFs opened in the ReadCube Enhanced PDF format, feature hyperlinked in-line citations and clickable author details, allowing quick look up and cross reference. Supplementary information, figures and other valuable article data, are always just a click away, making it easier for researchers to discover, access and interact with our scientific literature. Integrated social sharing and social metrics data are also available from Altmetric, connecting our articles in new, innovative ways.
Wiley, like other for-profit publishers capitalizes on enhanced PDFs to make money in new ways, by providing:
More flexible options for “Pay-Per-View” journal article access, replacing our existing PPV service for individual users with affordable rental, cloud and PDF download options, ensuring we give users a range of options in how they view and access that content.
Particularly with publishers of medical journals like the American Medical Association, you may have noticed that email alerts have for a while had links for temporary free access to articles. However, when the links take you to the online platform, you find that you can’t download the PDFs without paying a fee, but must read them in the ReadCube or other enhanced PDF platform.
Scientific publishing is is also digitalized, with journals no longer accepting submissions by snail mail, but requiring that submissions be uploaded through portals like ScholarOne.
Digitalization also means that access to articles can be monitored, with readers, individually and collectively, put under surveillance concerning their viewing habits. Once harvested , these data become extremely valuable in guiding decision-making.
Big data also provide instant feedback about what topics and what specific articles are getting attention and can even be used to make judgments about how successful particular authors in drawing traffic to their website.
In the process of converting to online content delivery platforms, publishers have followed the lead of Amazon, Netflix and Uber. Sometimes hiring programmers from these organizations , publishers have created algorithms to collect and process big data to personalize what is being offered to readers accessing their websites.
You may have noticed that when you access an article, it is accompanied by recommendations about other articles that may interest you.
Yup, journals are evaluating topics and authors in terms of their ability to draw traffic to their websites, keep visitors at their websites and coming back.
In authors’ cover letters accompanying submissions, it has become strategic to inform the editor how specifically acceptance of your manuscript would serve this aim of the journal. Authors might do well to cite altmetrics of their last paper published in a journal:
We are submitting our manuscript [title] to your journal because of the extraordinary altmetrics achieved by our last paper published there.
Depending on the value editors attach to your submission, journals may expect you to collaborate with them in increasing traffic to their website, once your manuscript is accepted.
For papers promising to be particularly successful, the journals may expect you to provide press releases; write additional shorter, more engaging abstracts; and even prepare audio and video presentations and especially podcast interviews.
Over the coming months, I will be writing a series of blog posts about these huge changes in scientific publishing.
I’ll also be making available free videos about the opportunities and challenges these transformations mean for you as an author. This summer I will be releasing a web-based course of five, one hour videos entitled How to Write High Impact Papers: a Strategic Approach. I’ll still be offering live workshops, such as at the European Health Psychology Conference in Padova at the end of August, but I am seeking to reach a broader audience by going to the web. The videos will be in English, but they will have subtitles in a variety of other languages, as well as English.
You can sign up now for email alerts about my blogs, web-based courses, and e=books at @CoyneoftheRealm.com.
But for now, I will simply point to the temptations that the aims of these online content delivery platforms pose for authors.
Editors seek manuscripts with newsworthy, attention-grabbing story lines, not just another brick in the wall. They want claims of –God save us- paradigm-changing findings. They are less concerned what is robust and enduring, but in what draws in traffic to their platforms. Yet, so much well executed and transparently reported science does not fit this picture. Are you tempted to make your manuscript attractive in these terms, even if you have to get flexible in what data you report and how you analyze and interpret these data?
Basically, publishers are transforming their websites based on big data that suggests that if they going to maximize the success and profit, they must adapt to new readers.
These readers are being profoundly changed by mobile devices and the internet. Their behavior has been shaped by their experience with social media and digital devices. The new wave of readers is accustomed to ordering pizzas and Uber cars easily and to being guided by the ratings of other uses of these services. They expect similar experiences accessing scientific articles.
I don’t think we can ignore all this and still get the best benefit in reading and writing scientific papers.
The old ways of doing things are working less and less well.
Are you gearing your manuscripts and cover letters to the new wave of readers that publishers want to attract to their platforms and keep coming?