Peak Education’s offices are tucked into the third floor of a Victorian on north Nevada. It’s a historic building, meaning it’s a walk-up, so the folks who work there climb up and down the stairs all day long.
But that’s nothing compared to the many hurdles that must be overcome by the low-income students who are helped by Peak Education’s efforts.
They are the kids who live in some of our toughest neighborhoods, places where poverty is an everyday fact of life, where parents are often absent, jobs scarce and hardship a constant accompaniment.
You might have seen the story about Peak Education in The Gazette recently. Dalton Conner, who co-founded the organization 13 years ago, told me it took him a lot longer than usual to get out of church last Sunday. People who had read the piece kept stopping him to applaud his work and express their support.
Conner and Peak Education co-founder Steve Mullens deserve the kudos. Over the years, the nonprofit they established has helped some 90 students make it into college.
As importantly, Peak Education has helped those kids make it through college by helping them to prepare for an environment that can be intimidating and certainly foreign.
Dee Beaudette, the CEO of the nonprofit, shared some depressing statistics on the issue that underscore the need.
According to a 2005 study, only about one in 17 young people from the nation’s poorest families, those earning less than $35,377 a year, can expect to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24. By comparison, students from the nation’s wealthiest families, those who earn about $85,000 or higher, the number is better than one in two.
A USA Today analysis several years ago found only one in four degree-seeking students at two-year colleges go on to earn a degree or certificate. And although graduation rates at selective public colleges rose sharply from 1990 to 2002, from 61 percent to 74.6 percent, graduation rates at open-admissions colleges, which admit anyone with a high school diploma, dropped from 42 percent to 25.8 percent.
The problem, in part, is that too many of our schools are doing a poor job of preparing these kids, but that’s a topic for another column.
The figures reflect how big a challenge Peak Education faces in trying to help just a handful of students each year to embark on a life they might never have imagined without a bit of help.
Hoping to reach even more kids, Peak Education is about to embark on a new road itself.
Historically, it has written checks out of its small endowment and helped students find additional grant and scholarship dollars from various sources.
Moving forward, Peak Education is now looking to help companies that offer scholarships maximize their generosity.
It wants to create alliances with these companies, foundations and others to help them shepherd their scholarship dollars and, as importantly, the students as they make their way through their undergraduate years and beyond.
The local Moniker Foundation, which has provided a number of scholarships to low-income students over the years, was the first to align with Peak Education in this way. It found that Peak Education’s approach of following the kids from their middle school years all the way through college just made sense and could help reverse some of the more negative stats.
I can imagine that companies that regularly award scholarships also regularly wonder what happened to the student who received their gift.
The job of tracking scholarship recipients typically falls onto the shoulders of an already stretched human-resources department.
Peak Education is offering to take over that job, assuming the responsibility of shepherding a child through some of the most critical years of their life and ensuring the dollars invested by right-minded donors aren’t wasted.
If it succeeds, Peak Education will have as many as 400 students under its wing at any given moment, or about four times as many as it now guides through the process.
It will have grown considerably, with little more than perhaps a slight adjustment in how companies it works with handle the distribution of their scholarship dollars.
In other words, Peak Education hopes to do a lot of good by leveraging what individual companies and others might find difficult to pull off on their own.
That makes good business sense to me.
One more thought on the topic of education this week: Be sure to read Business Journal reporter Rebecca Tonn’s story in this issue about plans by Junior Achievement of Southern Colorado to develop what it calls BizTown and Finance Park.
These initiatives are designed to help develop a better-prepared workforce; they both merit your support.
Allen Greenberg is the editor of the Colorado Springs Business Journal. He can be reached at email@example.com or 719-329-5206.


#72: Building a Website (2 of 3): HTML/CSS Conversion
In part 2 of this series, we begin the HTML/CSS conversion of the Photoshop mockup we created in part one. We start with a very skeletal project framework. Then we take a look at the Photoshop file layer organization. Then we start from the bottom up, creating the pieces we need from the Photoshop file and writing the HTML and CSS we need to get the job done. Much of the work isn't actually "slicing" the Photoshop file, but looking closely at it and trying to mimic what is done there with correct markup and CSS techniques.


Sunday, July 10, 2011
Tennessee Tops In Storing Radioactive Waste
East TN actress Park Overall has been a most vocal promoter demanding complete accountability when it comes to the deeply dangerous radioactive waste which is ending up Hawkins County and other sites in our Tennessee.
At a recent radio interview with WRGS, cited in the Rogersville Review, she continues her efforts to - at the least - inform residents of what is happening in their communities and says standards basically do not exist to protect our communities:
"One night it was decided that low level radioactive waste, secretly and you all don't know about this, will be stored in a kitchen dump. What is a kitchen dump? It is a landfill with no liner," Overall charged. "You have a kitchen dump in Hawkins County."
"Tennessee is the only state accepting nuclear waste at this time. If you want to do anything about it you had better call (U. S. Senators) Lamar Alexander or (Bob) Corker or (Congressman) Phil Roe. You need to let it be known that we don't want to be the nuclear dumping ground of the United States and right now we're it," she said.
Overall suggested the Nuclear Information Resource Service Website, www.nirs.org, as a valuable tool for public information.
"That will tell you that they are chopping up the world's waste and burning up the world's waste and putting it right here in Tennessee," Overall said. "No one asked you if that was okay."
The actress also questioned the standards the NRC uses, including the acronym ALARA, which stands for "as low as reasonably achievable."
She also claimed government agencies and officials were to blame.
"I'm sorry to bad-mouth our government but they're not protecting us," Overall claimed."
Meanwhile documentary filmmakers are working hard to establish the funding needed to detail the steady dumping of radioactive waste into the Nolichucky River from NFS in Erwin. The film is titled "Atomic Appalachia" and you can learn more about that here., and on their Facebook page.
Just this Spring, the Tennessee legislature voted against installing any controls or oversight of the dumping of nuclear waste in Tennessee, despite the reality that:
"The committee discussed the bill for about 50 minutes Wednesday before amending it so that its provisions would not interfere with any current private waste-processing contracts until they are renewed. The committee then killed the entire bill, with only two Democrats' votes for passage and five Republicans' votes against.
"The Environmental Council, citing government reports, says about 40 million pounds of low-level radioactive waste is processed in Tennessee annually. After processing, much of it is shipped out of state, but about 49 million pounds was dumped into the Tennessee landfills from 2004 through 2009."
Worse news - most of the landfills in Tennessee are leaking into the groundwater and beyond.
"TDEC issued civil fines and penalties at Carter Valley Landfill in October 2006 after 2005 groundwater monitoring found contamination in the groundwater.
Additionally, TCWN found that of the 69 landfills across the state known to be leaking, TDEC required corrective action for groundwater contamination at less than 5 of those landfills, including Dickson County, Sevier County, City of McKenzie, and Smelter Services Class 2 landfill in Mt. Pleasant.
Dickson County's landfill received national attention for what is believed to be the community's exposure to trichloroethene from leachate in drinking water supplies causing birth defects. The contamination occurred despite the landfill being built under stringent EPA guidelines and the old landfill's closure in 2003.
Bliss said Hawkins County has the second highest incidence of birth defects in the state. "We should have a concern about Hawkins County."
More background info here.


This may be remembered as the year of the bee at Curbstone Valley. It started when we installed a few hives of honey bees on the farm this spring, but we also greatly understand the importance of the native bees that frequent our crops and flowers.
Research has demonstrated that diversification of pollinators is critical for farms, and that organic farms situated close to wild-land habitats may depend more on native bees for pollination, than conventional farms. Most conventional farms are almost wholly dependent on European honey bees for pollination as they lack the habitat necessary to sustain native pollinators.
Here we’re striving to do what we can to support both our honey bees, and our native bee populations.
It’s important to recognize that many of the same threats to honey bee populations, including some diseases , and risks from exposure to pesticides, may have similar detrimental effects on native bee populations.
The most obvious single threat to native bees, however, is habitat degradation.
Native bee populations co-evolved with regionally adapted native plant species, which tend to become sparse in populated areas, where landscapers, and gardeners select plants for their aesthetic value, and farmers choose plants solely for their economic value, rather than their importance to the survival of native pollinator species.
Approximately 1600 native bee species have been recorded in California . We’ve noticed a number of native bees here in the last couple of years, including green sweat bees (Agapostemon spp.), carpenter bees (Ceratina and Xylocopa spp.), bumble bees (Bombus spp.), leaf cutter bees (Megachile spp.), and now, these intriguing looking long-horn bees (Melissodes, Diadasia, or Svastra, spp. — trust me, unless you’re an entomologist, this group of bees can be tricky to nail down a definitive ID).
Long-horn bees are in the family Apidae, and the tribe Eucerini. By recognizing some of the different native bees present on the property, and learning about their foraging habits, nesting habits, and significance as pollinators, we can ensure that we take the necessary steps to encourage, and support, their populations on the farm.
Until this summer we hadn’t noticed any long-horn bees in the gardens, perhaps because the gardens didn’t hold much of interest to these particular bees. Many long-horned bees are specialist foragers, targeting only plants in the Asteraceae family, such as our native Asters, and Encelia, as well as our garden Sunflowers, and Rudbeckias. In fact long-horn bees are one of the key native bee species for pollinating commercial sunflower crops .
Although we’re not exactly sure which species of long-horn bee this is, the Rudbeckias, and sunflowers we’ve planted this year near the greenhouse, seem to be enticing these particular bees. Our best educated guess is that this bee might be Melissodes robustior, one of the most common long-horn bee species in California. Regardless, once the sun’s rays hit these blooms in the morning, it’s almost impossible to miss these bees. I almost feel as if I owe the bees an apology for not planting the Rudbeckias sooner.
Long-horn bees range from from 7.5 to 18 mm in length. Male long-horn bees have remarkably long antennae, as shown in some of these photographs, for which they acquired their common moniker, and an elongated body shape. Whereas females have shorter antennae, and a more rounded body shape.
In addition to long antennae, the most notable physical characteristic of these bees is that their legs are significantly more hairy than their honey bee cousins.
The females are responsible for gathering pollen on their brush-like leg hairs (scopae), as well as foraging for nectar, and depositing food in their underground nests to sustain developing larvae.
Any native-bee-friendly garden is only enhanced by planting a diversity of nectar and pollen-rich native, and heirloom flowers. However, suitable nesting sites are also critical for helping to sustain native bee populations.
Native bees don’t live in hives like their honey bee counterparts, and many species construct underground nests. Desirable nesting sites, and nests however, can easily be damaged, or destroyed, as a result human activity.
To encourage native ground-nesting bees, it’s important that some areas of bare soil are left in the gardens. Although mulches are important for conserving moisture for plants, and improving soil texture, mulching every square inch of garden space eliminates important nesting habitat for ground-nesting native bees.
Here we mulch individual plants, not entire surfaces, mostly our vegetables and fruits, to avoid providing too much cover for ravenous rodents, like our meadow voles.
For any ground nesting bee species it’s also imperative that nesting sites aren’t disturbed, as these bees spend much of their lives developing underground, many only emerging to mate and forage for a few short weeks each year. One of the worst gardening practices for ground nesting bees, other than the obvious use of pesticides, is rototilling garden soils. This not only destroys soil structure, but can also destroy nests.
Next time you consider reaching for the rototiller, ask yourself, do you have ground nesting bees, like these long-horn bees, in your garden? Hand digging is not only healthier for the gardener, but it’s also better for the bees!
Although we’ve been judicious about planting flowers in the Asteraceae family, as generally they tend to cause the rapid crystallization of honey, the fact these long-horn bees seem to favor plants in this family, highlights the importance of planting a diverse variety of flowers in the gardens. With careful planning we hope to keep both the honey bees, and the native bees happy.
Next time you think you see a honey bee in the garden, take a closer look, it may in fact turn out to be a native bee!
To learn more about identifying, and providing suitable habitat for native bees, see:
 Kremen, C. et a. 2004. The Area Requirements of an Ecosystem Service: Crop Pollination by Native Bee Communities in California. Ecology Letters. Vol: 7 p. 1109-1119.
 Singh R, Levitt AL, Rajotte EG, Holmes EC, Ostiguy N, et al. 2010 RNA Viruses in Hymenopteran Pollinators: Evidence of Inter-Taxa Virus Transmission via Pollen and Potential Impact on Non-Apis Hymenopteran Species. PLoS ONE 5(12)
 Frankie, G.W., et al. Native Bees Are a Rich Natural Resource in Urban California Gardens. July-September 2009. UCANR Publication.
 Xerces Society Fact Sheet: Native Bee Pollination of Hybrid Sunflowers.


Oh noes, global warming hates Canada:
Backyard hockey rinks may become extinct in Canada if climate change goes unchecked, a renowned McGill University scientist says. “In the next 50 years, the skating season could disappear in most of the regions across Canada,” Lawrence Mysak told CTV Montreal.
If only there were indoor rinks that made it possible to skate in any weather, or even for hockey to be played in places like Miami, Tampa and Phoenix. Oh, wait.
But wait, there’s more. Simon Fraser University says no matter how much carbon Canada saves, or how many hippies wander the BC interior, we’re toast:
“Let’s be honest, it’s totally unrealistic to believe that we can stop all emissions now,” says Zickfeld, an assistant professor of geography at SFU. “Even with aggressive greenhouse gas mitigation, it will be a challenge to keep the projected global rise in temperature under 2 degrees Celsius,” emphasizes Zickfeld.
The geographer wrote the paper with Damon Matthews, a University of Concordia associate professor at the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment.
The duo used an earth system climate model developed by the University of Victoria to study the impact of greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions on the world’s climate. The study was based on emission levels that are consistent with data from the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
They used a computer model and data from the IPCC. What could possibly go wrong?
Before you panic and run for the indoor skating rinks to escape slightly milder weather, here’s the Motley CRU’s own Phil Jones on the all-important 2 degree Celsius limit:
The 2 deg C limit is talked about by a lot within Europe. It is never defined though what it means. Is it 2 deg C for the globe or for Europe? Also when is/was the base against which the 2 deg C is calculated from? I know you don’t know the answer, but I don’t either! I think it is plucked out of thin air. I think it is too high as well. If it is 2 deg C globally, this could be more in Europe – especially the northern part. A better limit might be maintaining some summer Arctic sea ice!
Climate scientists making stuff up? Say it ain’t so.
Round-Up tomorrow, unless you behave.


Thanks to Michigan’s film subsidies, the production of Disney’s “Oz the Great and Powerful” forced the state to pay nearly $40 million to Hollywooders critics consider the Wicked Witch of the West.
Back in 2010, Michigan’s film incentive program was the most generous in the nation, offering studios a 42 percent refund of all in-state production costs. It was enough for Disney to click its heels three times and say, ‘There’s no place like Michigan.’ Thus production of its “Wizard of Oz” prequel film, which premiered last week, took place in the Great Lakes State.
With a $100 million in-state budget, the estimated cost to taxpayers is about $40 million, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
“It just comes right out of taxpayers’ pockets,” said James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at Mackinac, in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The costs continue to roll in. The film’s production company, Emerald City Film Inc., had trouble making its bond payments — forcing the state to provide even more financial assistance.
“I don’t like that [the money] went out of the state and continued to enrich millionaires and billionaires with government subsidies,” said state Rep. Tom McMillin in a statement.
The goal of the incentive program is to persuade film studios to relocate to Michigan and create a long-term source of economic growth for the state. But in practice, Michigan’s quest to become the Hollywood of the Midwest is as troubled as a Kansas farm during tornado season.
“Despite having subsidized this industry more than anyone else had been, we don’t have a single viable film studio,” said Hohman. “Even if we did, it wouldn’t be worth the hundreds of millions of incentive dollars we’ve offered this industry.”
Film studios tend to hop from state to state, chasing the latest and greatest subsidy. They seldom establish long-term operations anywhere but California.
“MPIs [motion picture incentives] create mostly temporary positions with limited options for upward mobility,” concluded William Luther, an adjunct scholar at the Tax Foundation, in a 2010 report.
After taking office in 2010, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder capped the subsidy at $25 million to prevent studios from cashing in on what Luther called a “preposterously generous” incentive. Snyder and the legislature later agreed to raise the cap to $50 million for fiscal year 2013.
The incentive isn’t worth continuing in any amount, said Hohman.
“It’s not producing a viable film industry, and even if it did, it still would never be worth the expense,” said Hohman.
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A recent comment by actress Jennifer Aniston that “women are more and more realizing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child” might seem to indicate that deviancy has irrevocably been “defined down” and that a culture of permissiveness has been permanently entrenched in our nation’s society.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the percentage of teens who believe that it’s okay for an unmarried female to have a child has increased to nearly 64 percent (among males) and to more than 70 percent (among females.
Yet throughout the country there are oases of excellence that provide evidence to the contrary.
One example is Teen Talk, a program for at-risk adolescent girls that was initiated by a community-based project in Milwaukee called the Family House. Though the Family House was primarily and originally established to provide hospice care for the low-income elderly, the project evolved to meet needs of others in the community, including the youths who would gather on the front steps in after-school hours.
“When we started the program in 2004, Milwaukee had the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the nation, and there was a rash of STDs at the elementary school that was just a block from the Family House,” said Vicky Edwards, Teen Talk’s first coordinator. “Some of those girls were having babies just because they were looking to be loved and wanted someone to love. But when their babies started growing up, the responsibility and reality of motherhood set in.”
“We had an after-school program, and we were seeing so many of our 13- and 14-year-olds becoming pregnant. And we were finding out that they weren’t getting any medical care and didn’t know what to expect,” said Cordelia Taylor, the founder and director of the Family House.
Teen Talk helps pregnant teens access the care, nutrition, and information they need. In addition, it prepares the girls to make wise life choices through conversations about the benefits of remaining abstinent and how to resist unwanted sexual advances.
The outreach also includes peer counseling, field trips, visits to museums, outings to restaurants (where they receive etiquette tips), a fashion show at a local department store, and movie dates followed by discussion groups—all of which contributes to greater self-esteem and a larger vision for their future.
Teen Talk began with a group of 17 adolescents in 2004. To date, more than 170 teens have participated in the program. Of those, only two became pregnant. Those two young women stayed in touch with the program and came back to serve as peer counselors.
Teen Talk participants were young women who lived in high-crime, drug-infested neighborhoods where the odds were clearly against them. Some lived with their grandmothers because their own mothers were incarcerated or addicted to drugs. The expectations and attitudes they embrace provide hope that the bar can be set higher for peers in much less daunting situations as well.
Here’s hoping for high-profile voices to champion successes like Teen Talk that are teaching responsibility, affirming the significance of marriage, and restoring community.


URBANA – Consumers have reason to celebrate the approach of June Dairy Month, said Mike Hutjens, University of Illinois Extension dairy specialist.
Not only have dairy products remained a “good buy” for consumers, but the nutritional importance of dairy products in the diet continues to play a foundational role in human health and development.
June Dairy Month originally celebrated the time of the year when surplus milk needed to be sold due to cows producing more milk after receiving pasture in the spring, Hutjens said. During the month of June, consumers will notice more focus on dairy products and dairy product recipes in displays near the dairy case.
“Milk prices have remained constant in most areas with specials on milk as low as $2 to $2.50 a gallon,” Hutjens said. “Milk prices remain below break-even at the dairy farm gate with dairy managers receiving $1.20 to $1.30 a gallon.”
In addition to cost, consumers have many choices when they go to the grocery store today. From method of production to nutritional content, there are many factors to consider when buying dairy products.
“Organic milk is available at $6 to $7 a gallon,” Hutjens said. “Or consumers can purchase ‘green’ milk from dairy farmers using approved FDA technologies to produce milk resulting in a lower carbon footprint.”
Perhaps the most controversial milk in the news is raw milk, or milk that is not pasteurized.
“Consumers should never purchase raw milk due to potential bacteria risks,” Hutjens warned.
The nutritional value of dairy products helps them remain popular today.
“Dairy products contain high-quality protein with all essential amino acids in addition to whey proteins that are important in weight control,” he said. “Milk contains high levels of calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorous and added vitamin D, which are critical for human health and bone formation. Dairy products can be particularly important for older consumers.”
Daily U.S. dietary guidelines include two servings of dairy products for children from 1 to 8 years of age, and three dairy servings for children over 9 years and adults. These dietary guidelines served as the foundation for the popular “Three a Day” dairy theme used in radio, television, and other media advertising.
So, what kinds of milk and milk products are most favored by U.S. consumers?
In 2008, the average U.S. consumer consumed 85.3 pounds of reduced or low-fat milk, 50.4 pounds of whole milk, 27.1 pounds of fat-free milk, and 14.2 pounds of flavored milk. In addition, each person consumed 32.5 pounds of cheese, 20.7 pounds of ice cream, and 11.8 pounds of yogurt.
Hutjens added that vanilla ice cream remains the No. 1 flavor at 28.7%, chocolate followed behind at 10.4 percent, and cookies and cream ranked third at 4.4%.
Dairy products that sold well in 2008 include skim milk (up 0.5 percent), low-fat milk (up 5%), and yogurt (up 3.6%). Meanwhile, whole milk dropped 2.7% and cottage cheese dropped 7.7%.
“These trends reflect consumers’ desire for lower caloric products such as yogurt,” Hutjens said. “The advantage of producing a wide variety of dairy products is that it allows consumers to pick their favorite product based on fat content, caloric intake, flavor, taste, cost, and food recipe alternatives.”
Last year, the U.S. dairy industry included 54,942 dairy farm operations with 9.2 million dairy cows, down 1.2 percent from 2008. These cows produced 189.3 billion pounds of milk, down 0.3% as compared to 2008. U.S. dairy cows averaged 20,576 pounds of milk per cow. In comparison, the European Union of 27 countries has 24.2 million dairy cows producing 12,165 pounds of milk per cow.
“The continued improvements in efficiency in the U.S. dairy industry reflect higher milk yield per cow which results in lower-priced milk and dairy products for U.S. consumers,” Hutjens said.
In addition, he said exports of dairy products continue to improve as the world recession eases and demand increases.


IDFA: Cornell study shows DSA will cost more
Source: International Dairy Foods Association
A new study from Cornell University shows that the proposed Farm Bill dairy program will cost more than a bipartisan amendment that will be offered this week by Representatives Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and David Scott (D-GA). The study, “2013 Farm Bill Dairy Title Proposal Redistributes Program Benefits toward States with Larger Farms,” also finds that the currently proposed Dairy Security Act is significantly weighted to benefit large farms.
“As did the Congressional Budget Office, the Cornell report finds that the Dairy Security Act will cost taxpayers more than the alternative,” said Jerry Slominski, senior vice president of legislative affairs and economic policy for the International Dairy Foods Association. “The report also contradicts a previous study from the University of Missouri, which claimed the opposite.”
According to the Cornell report, “the government loss ratio is significantly higher for the [Dairy Security Act] proposal than the Goodlatte-Scott proposal,” which is also known as the Dairy Freedom Act. The expected loss ratio is the ratio of expected payments divided by premiums, and thus it represents the multiple of losses the government expects to pay relative to premiums paid by producers. “For example, for $4.50 margin coverage, the expected loss ratio is 20.56 for DSA, versus only 6.71 for DFA.”
The study also refutes the argument that the Dairy Security Act will help small farms. “The implication of the [supply management program in the DSA] would be further government flows towards regions dominated by larger producers – many of which are in the process of contracting production growth – at the expense of consumers, taxpayers and regions dominated by smaller producers.”
Both the Dairy Security Act and the Goodlatte-Scott proposal will replace the current Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program with a new margin insurance program for producers. Under both alternatives, larger producers will be provided an improved and effective safety net to help them through difficult economic times. But only the Dairy Security Act adds a second program for dairy farmers that is intended to increase milk prices by imposing government limits on milk production.
The Goodlatte-Scott amendment helps small farmers by requiring lower premium payments from smaller farms and higher premiums for larger producers than does the Dairy Security Act. In fact, more than 90% of all dairy farmers, those with fewer than 200 cows, will pay less for margin insurance under Goodlatte-Scott than the Dairy Security Act.


Hinai made of twined ieie (Freycinetia arborea). The twining is tightly done using split ieie in a consistent twill over the entire surface. Some cordage, used to suspend the hinai, is attached around the rim. The hinai tapers at the rim.
This object is associated with Liliuokalani
Collection Name: Liliuokalani Collection


The World Bank has collected a database of all major (i.e. at least USD 1mn) known privatizations of public companies from 1988 to 2008.
The source data is available at the studies web site. Excellent documentation on methodology is available. Quote:
This site contains data on the sale price of privatization transactions of over $1 million, carried out in developing countries between 2000 and 2008. It only includes transactions which generate proceeds or monetary receipts to the government resulting from partial and full divestitures, concessions, management contracts, and leases. Thus, only those transactions that generate revenue for the government from privatization or private sector participation in an existing state-owned enterprise or other government assets (such as wireless license sales) are included. The data give information on the sale price of transactions on an "announcement" basis rather than on the basis of actual flows of receipts, which may be paid for over several years.
Transactions that did not generate revenue for the government are excluded from the database. As such, the database does not include firms transferred to the private sector through mass or "voucher" privatizations (as in Eastern Europe). It also does not include new greenfield investments that did not involve payments to the government, funds committed or invested by new owners, and build-operate-transfer schemes which do not involve payments to the governments.


Time to Whoop Ass and Write
Well, we're into January, a new year, so time to make a few resolutions. One of them being to actually get something done this year. So I present to you, in hopes of motivating the both of us, the Official Shut Up and Write User Manual. Sections and sub-sections are subject to change in future versions. Have fun, take heart, and Shut Up and Write, will'ya?
At first glance the term ‘Shut up and Write’ may come off as rather crude and low-brow terminology; after all, our language is filled with plenty of subtle and elegant ways to communicate ideas. Seeing as how writers can be a little thick, sometimes we need to cut right through the bullshit and get right to the heart of the matter.
To wit: You talk too much. Shut up and write!
Shut Up And Write is a rather broad statement, of course, and is not meant to be rude, or mean, or insulting. It’s really just a humorous nudge, a reminder, that you’re wasting valuable oxygen yapping away or Tweeting to friends instead of writing. It also applies to people who talk a lot about writing, but don’t actually write. This is a problem, and must be corrected. Here then is a compendium of things you do that are stunting your writing, so you’ll know when to Shut Up And Write:
Staring at your computer screen – Do not do this. Type anything. Type your name, what you had for dinner, what color your socks are, but do not stare at that screen for longer than 5 minutes. Headaches ensue, and your soul turns to mush. Shut Up And Write.
Itchy Bum Syndrome: You type a sentence, and then go to the refrigerator for some Oreo Cookie Ice Cream, leaving your sentence hanging and your flow disrupted. Please do not do this. You could spill ice cream all over your computer, or get sticky fingers, or grow lethargic and apathetic and not want to write anymore. Oreo Cookie ice cream is great for the synapses, but bad for writing. Plus, this is not really about ice cream, it’s about not wanting to write, or being afraid to write. This is characterized by constant shifting of the ass in your chair and thoughts other than writing begin invading your skull (IE did I pay the phone bill? Should I take the dog for a walk? Why is there a mushroom cloud on the horizon, and should it concern me?)
Tweeting, Facebooking, Foursquaring, etc etc Blah blah blah – This is the bane of writers: Tweeting too much. I know it’s fun, and that guy named @ShitMyDadsays is endlessly hilarious, but come on! You gotta pull it together! Only you can prevent a book not being written! Unless you can get your pet Shitzu to write your book for you, it’s probably best to get a move on and start writing. I suggest curbing your 12 hours of Twitter down to, say, 2. There! Then you’ll have lots of time to write!
That stupid Television – Yeah, Jersey Shore is filled with entertaining idiots who make us feel exponentially more intelligent when we watch their antics, but Mike ‘The Situation” and "Snooki" already have book deals. If that doesn’t motivate you, nothing will!
The Stupid Blog hasn't been updated for 12 hours! Oh No! – The land of the damned! The blog is what I turn to when I’m not feeling the prose flow on my novel, but the problem is the blog is too easy, we could write posts in our sleep because it’s largely plotless and free association. If you find that you’re using your blog as a crutch for not writing, then rectify it immediately. Only blog after you have made a significant contribution to your novel.
Section 2, Article A: You Know You're In trouble as A Writer If ...
You start talking about your book, again, and your friend's eyes begin to roll upwards in exasperation and you hear these sentences all the time:
"God, just shut up and write a book already!"
"I'll take you seriously when you've written something."
"How can you be a writer? You haven't written anything!"
"Is that the little book you been working on? For 10 years? Are you gonna finish it sometime this century?"
Section 2, Article B: Looking mournful while walking through a Chapters book store because your book isn't even finished, much less stacked in a display alongside Stephenie Meyers and Stephen King and Tom Clancy in a giant retail bookstore.
Okay this one is self-explanatory.
Section 3, Article A: Doubt fills your soul, so you just ... stop.
You think you suck.
The guy you got to Beta Read your manuscript has the IQ of a piece of wood and he only reads the backs of cereal boxes anyway. Yet you are devastated when he tells you there isn't enough sex or death in the book and he fell asleep after the first chapter.
Your friend looks at the manuscript in your hand and asks you dubiously how many pages they have to read because the longest thing they ever read was a Newspaper and they are unsure of it and are too lazy to actually do you a favor and read it for you (Friendship may be on rocky ground after this little encounter.) So you take it the only way a writer ever takes it: you suck.
Every word you type, every sentence you mangle, every phrase you torture, it's like being forced to listen to a John Denver greatest hits CD on repeat - Torture! Torture! But neither your writing, or John Denver, are that bad. Stop the soul sucking doubt! Just shut up, keep writing, it'll all work out.
Section 3, Article B: It's not you, it's them.
In conclusion it, it's wise to remember that nobody cares about you until you've written something, which is not to say you suck or you're useless, but merely talking about writing amounts to just that: talk. And, it's not you, it's them. People are results oriented; it is the rare human being (usually an elderly person, or an extremely positive and enlightened and inebriated Uncle) who will take you at your word that you are writing a book, will finish the book, will become rich and famous because of that book. The human race is wary by nature; so you must prove to the sneering jerk at your office that one day you too will wear elbow patches and smoke a pipe and do the lecture circuit talking about your book. This is the only way! You must Shut Up and Write!
ShutUpAndWrite: A Master's thesis


Welcoming the Iron Tiger at Deer Park
This would be a celebration of aspirations, of hopes and intentions for the next trip around the sun, a simultaneous appreciation of both the coming of spring and of the harvest, an outpouring of gratitude for the opportunity for renewal.
“In Vietnam,” Thay Phap
Dung explained, “the celebrations go on for weeks.” He smiled, “For
as long as they can, really - until all the treats run out.”
the basket is overflowing-
in front of the altar
And so the number of treats prepared is no small issue.
While the Tet Retreat at Deer Park is a very special time, the weekend before also holds it’s own uniqueness. For at Deer Park, the weekend before Tet is devoted to making Earth Cakes.
Earth cakes – cakes of mung bean and sticky rice boiled inside a banana leaf wrapping – are the traditional treat of Tet. They follow from a Vietnamese folktale that I won’t try to reproduce, so as not to rob you of the chance to hear it directly from one of the nuns. The cakes are perfect for celebrating Tet, we were told, because the banana leaves seal the rice inside, preserving it. The beautiful shining green-wrapped packages are hung by strings around the house as you relax into the abundance of the new year. Guests arrive? Just pull one down and cut it open. They can be hung over the stove, in fact, so a warm earth cake is always available.
And so the weekend before Tet the monks, nuns and guests spend all day and – literally – all night making earth cakes.
The dining hall of Clarity Hamlet is turned into Earth Cake Central. The dish-washing tables are now used to wash banana leaves. Inside, every square inch of dining space is used to artfully wrap those banana leaves around rice and mung beans. Raging fires are made outside on the concrete, where enormous pots of water will boil the cakes all night long.
The visitors are encouraged to learn the careful art of the earth cake, using square wooden frames to wrap them as perfectly geometric shining packages. Many of the visitors, applying their skills from holiday wrapping paper, proved surprisingly adept. More than once Thay Phap Dung held up a neatly wrapped square, “This is their first time! Amazing!”
As evening rolled round the wrapping was complete, and the boiling began. This year rain was ever-present, and we all took shelter under a dripping awning, singing songs in both Vietnamese and English, as lay brothers and Thay Chinh Quang played the guitar. For that one evening the back porch of Clarity Hamlet’s dining hall resembles more a Vietnamese village, alive with smoky cooking fires, endless pots of tea, and song.
As we visitors eventually retired
to our rooms, many of the brothers and sisters stayed on through the
night, tending the fires.
eyes stinging, hair wet, we sing -
white smoke rises
into the rain clouds
When the weekend of Tet came, and the accompanying retreat, the monks and nuns of Deer Park did anything but relax and eat Earth Cakes. The Year of the Iron Tiger would be welcomed with nothing short of a festival, a grand party to make sure everyone there could feel the currents of renewal flowing deeply inside them.
Dragons danced brilliantly down the center of the meditation hall, Thay Chinh Quang corralling them with a paper fan and the smiling mask of a Buddha. We were invited to draw fortunes from the Hall’s bell – slips of paper referring to verses of a classic Vietnamese poem, which the brothers and sisters would then interpret for us. Gifts were formally presented from the greater sangha to the monks and nuns, and to the Monastery. Venerable Thich Phuoc Tinh had small gifts presented to each visitor, hundreds of them all combined.
On the eve of the New Year we walked together outside long long after dark, and then burned aspirations for the new year in a metal cauldron outside the mediation hall.
We all then sat in meditation
in the Hall, waiting for the arrival of the Iron Tiger. And oh, did
the Tiger arrive. At the stroke of midnight, with no warning, one of
the brothers began drumming on an enormous temple drum. Many of us nearly
leapt out of our skin, greeting the new year with a surge of adrenaline
that left us vibrating. The drumming went on and on, filling the Meditation
Hall, and driving out the dust from the corners of our minds.
quietly under the stars
the embers of our aspirations
Abbott Thay Phap Dung had told us we would be seeing a side of Deer Park that we wouldn’t see as clearly the rest of the year: Deer Park’s Temple aspect. Vietnamese culture, he told us, holds that it is auspicious to visit as many temples as possible on the first days of the new year. So tour buses would be arriving, five or six at a time, from the region’s Vietnamese communities, filled with families to be welcomed at the Meditation Hall.
Thay Phap Dung warned us that the lively chaos would be a very different energy from the usual tranquility of Deer Park. He passed on advice from Su Co Dang Nghiem: “When the tour buses show up, put yourself in the calm at the center of the storm.”
“That’s good practice,” he continued, “So when the tour buses show up in your head, put yourself at the center of that storm too.”
We watched from the quiet safety
of the upper hamlet as bus after bus of visitors pulled up to the Meditation
Hall, smiling grandmothers and grandfathers, uncles, aunts and parents
walking their children into the meditation hall to watch the dragons
that woman’s face-
a memory of my great aunt,
a tangerine from the Temple
In Vietnam, the weeks following Tet are filled with visiting – visiting your elders, visiting your teachers, visiting your friends, and hosting them all in return. At the monastery, this important part of the Tet tradition is expressed with a once-a-year delight: the monks and nuns open their rooms to us, and welcome us in for tea.
We went in curious about what a monastics’ quarters would be like. How much stuff did they have? How much space? What we found though, sitting with the brothers and sisters, chatting, laughing and singing, was a clearer picture of the monastics themselves. Seeing them in their own private rooms, often beneath pictures of their family and of Thay, goofing around with their roommates – we got to see the people beyond the robes. We went in looking for stuff, but found humans instead.
In the early part of the day we sat on the floor of the brothers’ rooms and were offered tea, nuts, candied ginger and lotus seeds. Vietnamese culture holds that it is good luck not to sweep out your house for the first three days of the new year. They insisted we help them gain good fortune, therefore, laughing and encouraging us to toss pistachio shells and tangerine rinds around the floors of their small rooms.
Thay Phap Ho’s room escaped the mess: he received us on the veranda outside. Lest he not meet with good fortune, however, I threw a tangerine rind into his window, “May the new year be filled with health and so much happiness.”
The sisters received us warmly in their rooms in the early evening. The homemade treats offered were exquisite, candied cranberries with chilies and ginger. But no one, at least no one male, dared to toss the remains on the floor.
Coming and going from each
monk or nun’s quarters, gratitude was offered with blessings for the
new year: “Thank you, our dear sisters and brothers here at Deer Park,
for all that you give to us.”
your lights burn so brightly
on this hillside,
they are beacons
Soren Kisiel, True Land
of Serenity, is an award-winning playwright and actor, and is part of
Deer Park’s Dharmacast team. His home sanghas are the
Open Way and Flowing Mountain Sanghas in Montana.


Monday 22 March 2010 Tara Lohan | AlterNet
It took six years for residents of tiny McCloud, California, to give Nestle Waters North America its walking papers. The water bottler had hoped to build a 1 million square-foot facility in the town of less than 2,000 and was given a backroom 50-year contract (renewable for an additional 50 years) to annually take 1,250 gallons per minute of delicious spring water from the town, hunkered in the shadow of Mount Shasta, and unlimited groundwater. But after years of opposition from community and environmental groups, Nestle scrapped its plans and left with its tail between its legs.
However, the bottling giant didn’t have to look very far for its next target. Last summer as Gov. Schwarzenegger was warning that parched California was in its third year of drought, and residents of the capital city of Sacramento were facing water restrictions, Nestle was getting a behind-the-scenes welcome mat rolled out and the keys to the city’s water pipes.
The food and beverage giant is king when it comes to bottled water — it controls one-third of the U.S. market and sells water under 70 different brand names such as Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Perrier and Poland Spring. It shares the stage with two other giant bottlers, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, although Nestle is the big culprit in targeting rural communities for spring water, a move that has earned it fierce opposition across the U.S. from towns worried about losing their precious water resources.
As small, rural towns across the U.S. started to organize in opposition to Nestle, the company tried to rope in a bigger city. In July it was announced that Nestle would be opening a bottling plant in Sacramento, but how much water the company would be taking is in dispute. The company says it will take 150 acre-feet of water (close to 50 million gallons) in the first year. Reportedly about 30 million of this will come from the municipal water system and 20 million from undisclosed private springs in nearby counties.
But an October article in the Sacramento Bee reported that the city’s utilities director estimated instead that the plant would take 80 million, and not 30 million gallons a year from Sacramento. Other city departments have reportedly placed the number as high as 116 million, but the estimates are really inconsequential. Nestle is allowed to draw as much water as it can fit through its pipe; there’s no maximum to how much it can bottle.
While residents are asked to conserve water, Nestle gets an all-you-can-bottle buffet. Expectedly, this has some folks worried. “We have concerns about conflicting numbers and the fact that this was supposed to be replacement for McCloud, which was hundreds of millions of gallons,” said Evan Tucker, of the citizen’s group Save Our Water Sacramento.“There is no limit on how much water they can pump, there is a flat rate. They can pump as much as they want, the city says there is nothing they can do about it.”
While Nestle faced problems with its environmental impact in McCloud, Sacramento residents have no idea what the potential impact would be because the company was not required to hold public hearings or perform an environmental review.
Under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a project is either “ministerial” or “discretionary.” The city says that Nestle’s bottling plant, which would be in an area zoned for industrial would pass as ministerial, which means all it has to do is fill out the necessary forms and pay the fees, but there is no public say in the process and no environmental review needs to be completed.
Save Our Water Sacramento felt differently. The group challenged the city on the decision, arguing that because Nestle had requested a second water line be added to the plant those changes actually pushed the project into the discretionary category of CEQA, where there should be ample review. But when legal challenges were raised, Nestle quickly withdrew its plans for a second water line and the city gave its stamp of approval.
The Business of Bottled Water
The world faces a global crisis of fresh drinking water. An estimated 3.6 million people, including 1.5 million children, die each year from water-related diseases. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement last week, “More people die from unsafe water than all forms of violence, including war.” Yet, in rich nations like the U.S., where potable water flows from taps in most everyone’s homes and costs pennies, people are still shelling out extra bucks for bottled water and the industry is making a killing.
The bottled water business has climbed steadily over the last few decades, only falling off slightly in recent years. TriplePundit reported in November 2009:
According to data from Beverage Marketing, a U.S.-based data and consulting firm, retail sales of single-serving plastic bottles increased from 1.4 billion gallons in 2000 to 5.2 billion gallons last year, lifting their share of total bottled water volume from 29 percent to more than 60 percent. And, over the past decade, per-capita consumption of bottled water in the U.S. has more than doubled to about 200 bottles per year, per person, according to MarketWatch.
Still, leading bottled water companies like Nestle saw a dip in sales beginning in 2008 — perhaps a signal that people are waking up to the environmental and economic costs of bottled water. It may also be a sign that during cash-strapped times, people are finding their way back to tap water instead.
In response to the downturn in sales, the industry has responded by trying to “bluewash” its image and make itself seem more environmentally friendly. A new report from Food and Water Watchreveals that bottled water companies are using awareness-raising initiatives like World Water Day to advertise contributions they make to water charities, especially in the developing world, and to claim they are making their businesses more green.
But, “Bottled water is inherently not a water-friendly product,” theF&WW report says. “Bottling companies take water out of local water systems and ship it elsewhere — which is one reason that many residents worried about their local water have opposed water bottlers in their communities. … No mater how much water bottlers talk about the steps they are taking to reduce their water footprint, as long as water generates profit, bottlers will never have an incentive to reduce overall water consumption.”
It may be a no-brainer for many people to stop buying bottled water, but government has been slow to catch on in many places. A report by Corporate Accountability International found that four Northeastern states — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Vermont — spend nearly $2 million on bottled water that comes out of taxpayers’ pockets. This seems especially troubling because we face a $24 billion annual shortfall of funding for public water systems and many cities and states are feeling the pinch of a slowed economy and cutting public services.
Ironically, last year Sacramento’s city council voted to ban bottled water at its meetings, “in recognition that plastic water bottles are littering the world and the precious water they once contained is often wasted,” as city councilor Kevin McCarty said. But the rest of the city government doesn’t seem to be on the same page.
The Sacramento Bee found that water use went up 22 percent at the city’s metered properties during the last three years of drought. (Shockingly, water meters are an altogether new concept for Sacramento.) In response Mayor Kevin Johnson told the Sacramento Bee:
“We’re going to have to learn to use water smarter, which is a new way of thinking in our city where residents have tapped into two major rivers for generations. We need to light a fire under the city’s efforts to save water so we can be a shining example of how to use water more efficiently instead of being a showcase of waste and inefficiency.”
But as Johnson was issuing that statement he was also offering other rather contradictory ones. “I appreciate the concerns of citizens who worry about water use and conservation. The city has asked residents to conserve. The city can’t ignore industrial water use. Those concerns should be discussed and addressed,” he said, but apparently that doesn’t apply to Nestle.
“When I heard Nestle was bringing a plant to Sacramento, I was excited. I believe Sacramento should do everything possible to encourage businesses to move here and hire our citizens,” he said. “For me, the Nestle story is pretty simple. It’s all about jobs. Nestle is bringing jobs to Sacramento with the company’s new water bottling plant.”
So, 40 jobs trumps the potential impact of untold million and millions of gallons of water, as well as the environmental impact of the plastic bottles, themselves. Even Nestle’s lowest estimate of 50 million gallons would mean 800 million new plastic water bottles a year, Treehugger reported. Across the country, the environmental impact of our bottled water addiction is huge. In just the U.S. in 2007, water bottling used the equivalent of 32-54 millions barrels of oil. That’s how much it would take to fuel average consumption levels in 1.5 million cars for a year.
Consumers are also often duped about the quality of water. The Sacramento plant is the perfect example — much of it will actually simply be from the same source as tap. This is true for 40 percent of water bottled in the U.S.
Consumers are paying upwards of a thousand times the price for virtually the same product as tap and are instead putting an extra burden on the environment by using single-use plastic bottles, of which over 80 percent are likely to end up in landfills.
While bottled water companies may spend millions convincing you that you’re drinking the cleanest water from pristine mountain springs, the truth is that in many cases, bottled water could be less safe for consumers. The EPA, as well as state and local governments, regulate tap water, but bottled water is checked only by the FDA and the standards are much less strict. Food and Water Watch reports that municipal water systems must test for coliform bacteria 100 or more times a month. But bottled water plants only have to test once a week.
The impact on local water sources is a big question, too — such as in Sacramento. “It doesn’t make sense,” said Tucker of his city’s decision, “The city fines people if they don’t comply with water restrictions, but Nestle can use as much as they want and pay very little for it.”
Because rates aren’t tiered in Sacramento, he says, the company has no reason to want to conserve. “Unlike other industrial water users who may use water as a part of their industrial process, like for cooling, their product is water,” he said. “So they have a disincentive to conserve.”
The Sacramento News and Review reported in October that one of the mayor’s top volunteer advisors, Michelle Smira, was stepping down in order to run her consulting business, MMS Strategies. Guess who her big client was? That would be Nestle.
“It just happens that MMS was hired, over the weekend, by Nestle Waters, to help win hearts and minds, and building permits, for its controversial water bottling plant in South Sacramento,” the News and Review wrote. “Johnson has been a major cheerleader for the project, despite concerns among some citizen groups and council members about the bottled water industry and the process by which the Nestle plant has been pushed forward.”
City Councilmember Kevin McCarty has been one of the few local leaders to oppose Nestle’s project. “At current rates, they would pay the city about 65 cents per 100 cubic feet of water, or 750 gallons,” he said. “That works out to a payment to the city of $186 for the 215,000 gallons of water taken on an average day. By the time that water is bottled and put on a grocer’s shelf, the consumers would pay more than $2.1 million for those 215,000 gallons — a profit margin of roughly 10,000 percent!”
Tucker is worried that Nestle has found a new model of operating that draws less heat than its previous plans to build bottling plants in small towns and pilfer rural spring water.
“They’ve taken the thing that has caused the most problems for communities, building the bottling plant,” said Tucker, “and located it in a place like an industrial area of a bigger city, where they can do it relatively easily. They are taking a lot of our municipal water and that is a concern for us, but most people in cities don’t worry about their water sources the way rural residents do. We don’t have wells that could run dry from pumping plants or aren’t concerned with local streams. We just turn on our taps and it comes out. I have a concern that this is a model they’ll proliferate.”
For many communities, the privatization of water by big companies is becoming an issue that threatens local control of the most vital resource for survival. Groups like Food and Water Watch and Corporate Accountability International are waging campaigns to help communities fight for public control of their water and for clean, safe and affordable tap water for all.
Even Annie Leonard, whose hit Internet film (and now book) The Story of Stuff, has produced a new film (that you can view below), called “The Story of Bottled Water.” The film is a call to action to all of us. We don’t have to live in a place like McCloud or Sacramento to join the fight against bottled water.
“It’s time we took back the tap,” Leonard says in the movie. “That starts with making a personal commitment to not buy or drink bottled water unless the water in your community is truly unhealthy. Yes, it takes a bit of foresight to grab a reusable bottle on the way out, but I think we can handle it.
“Then take the next step — join a campaign that’s working for real solutions. Like demanding investment in clean tap water for all. In the U.S., tap water is underfunded by $24 billion partly because people believe drinking water only comes from a bottle! Around the world, a billion people don’t have access to clean water right now. Yet cities all over are spending millions of dollars to deal with all the plastic bottles we throw out. What if we spent that money improving our water systems or better yet, preventing pollution to begin with?”


Saccharina latissima is usually found in the lower intertidal and higher subtidal area, well below a band of Ribbon Kelp (Alaria marginata). It occurs both in protected waters and on the outer coast, yet it does not thrive in areas with more vigorous wave action. Saccharina Latissima, however, rarely appears in rock pools. This species usually occurs in sheltered conditions and may attach to unstable substrata such as clam shells.
Saccharina latissima is one of the most abundant brown algae in the world. Although it is distributed widely around the globe, it is cofined to the Northern hemisphere including the British Isles from the Shetlands to the Channel Islands, Europe (Portugal, Atlantic coasts of Spain and France, Netherlands, Helgoland, Baltic Sea, Norway, Sweden, Faroes, Jan Mayen and Bjornoya, Spitzbergen, Iceland and Greenland) and Atlantic coast of North America (Canada, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connetricut and Long Island) and Pacific coast of North America from Alaska to California.
(Check Algabase for detailed distribution source)
Locally, Saccharina latissima has been found at Meadow Point, Davis Bay, Open Bay and Echo Bay on San Juan island, WA.
O’Claire R. M. and Lindstrom, S. C. North Pacific Seaweeds.


The phylum Arthropoda encompasses a tremendous range of marine species and body plans, as well as an amazing diversity of terrestrial insects and spiders. Coastal and nearshore marine habitats, including the plankton, feature a number of these forms, such as copepods, crabs, and barnacles. While the mobile, highly jointed bodies of crabs and copepods may seem quite different from the sessile, immobile carapaces of barnacles, these groups share important traits: a chitinous exoskeleton and a need to molt that exoskeleton in order to grow larger.
Invertebrates in the Plankton: Arthropoda
In our observations of the plankton, we found both larval and fully planktonic species to be very abundant: during our night-lighting from the Lab dock, we caught many hundreds of two crab larval stages, zoea and megalopae. And in our daytime plankton tow in the Straits area close to Friday Harbor, we caught great numbers of several different types of copepods. Photos of these and our other discoveries follow.
|This crab megalopa (4 mm in length) was one of hundreds captured by night-lighting during the last week of June. It swam strongly at the water's surface, its legs occasionally splaying energetically. This megalopa is the final larval stage of true crabs, preceding the benthic juvenile stage and following several zoeal stages. One of the most recognizable brachyurans (also known as true crabs) along the Pacific coast is the Dungeness crab (Cancer magister), a species with considerable commercial and cultural value in the region.|
|This zoea of a porcelain crab (Petrolisthes eriomerus, 3 mm in length) is well defended from potential predators; notice its long, inflexible rostral spine. The porcelain crab belongs to the group known as anomuran crabs, which include hermit, porcellanid, lithodid, and galatheid crabs. The zoea uses its first two pairs of thoracic appendages, the maxillipeds, to swim, making it one of the more agile planktonic animals. The zoea will develop into a megalopa form, sometimes referred as a glaucothoe, and then into a functional adult.|
|Copepods are the most abundant multicellular animals in the world, living in both freshwater and marine environments. The most abundant free-living marine copepod is the calanoid (seen on the right); it is recognizable by the long first antennae, which it flicks in swimming locomotion. This type of copepod uses mouth parts called maxillae to scoop phytoplankton, small invertebrates (including other copepods), or fish larvae from the water. Copepods are also the primary consumers of phytoplankton and are an important food source to fish, baleen whales, and other invertebrates.|
In all copepods, fertilization occurs when the egg passes out the female genital tract. Many copepods carry the eggs in sacs on the body; calanoids carry one egg sac as seen above. Development of the eggs depends strongly on sea temperature (see development of eggs at different temperatures), species, and egg size. The reproductive season depends on the species and its location.
This larval stage, called a nauplius, is found in barnacles, copepods, penaeid shrimps, and ostracods. It swims by using its jointed appendages that are moved by muscle contraction. These larvae have a nauplier eye, made up of photoreceptor cells that are thought to give rise to the photoreceptors in some adult forms. They frequently molt (shed their hard outer skeleton) to enable growth during this phase. Barnacles are hermaphrodites. They release their larvae into the water column at the nauplius stage. After several moltings, the final larval stage before settling is called a cyprid. The cyprid stage is non-feeding. For more information on adult barnacles see the Cattle Point page.
|An example from a group of crustaceans called cladocerans is seen here. These adult animals swim using the second antennae and they feed by either filtering microscopic algae or preying on small animals. Most cladoceran females reproduce by parthenogenesis, which produces males and females without sexual recombination. However, they also have sexual reproduction that produces females. This marine representative, Evadne. uses the carapace as a brood chamber (a place to store eggs). A more commonly known freshwater species is Daphnia.|


1) Callistemon sieberi (Alpine Bottlebrush)
- This small, spreading shrub is currently showing off its creamy-yellow flowers in bottlebrush-like spikes.
- Native to Australia, C. sieberi can be found along the footpath of the Australian Entry Garden within the Pacific Connections Garden.
2) Cytisus battandieri (Pineapple Broom)
- Sometimes referred to as Argyrocytisus, this genus of Brooms fall within the family, Fabaceae.
- Native to Morocco, C. battandieri is an upright tree-like shrub with pineapple-scented flowers.
- Located on the east side of Arboretum Drive in the Legumes.
3) Liriodendron tulipfera (Tulip Tree)
- A member of the family Magnoliaceae, Liriodendron is a genus of two deciduous trees, L. chinense and L. tulipfera.
- The solitary, cup-shaped flowers, inconspicuous from a distance, add interest in summer, but are not produced on young plants.
- Located in the Magnolias, these cuttings came from a tree over 100 feet tall.
4) Staphylea pinnata (European Bladdernut)
- The flowers of this upright shrub have come and gone, but it is the curious bladder-like fruit now on display.
- Located near Azalea Way amongst the True Ashes.
5) Tsuga sieboldii (South Japan Hemlock)
- Glossy, dark green foliage and smooth, dark gray bark give this tree some distinction within its genus.
- This Tsuga can be found between the Woodland Garden and the top of Loderi Valley.


Who we are
The University of Washington Memory Health Research Program is dedicated to the research of memory in order to improve the cognitive health of all people. Past research has included the link between hormones and memory, Alzheimer’s Disease research, and the prevention and early detection of memory issues.
Our current research is focused on cognitive rehabilitation in cancer survivors. Our research is directed at providing resources and support for survivors who are suffering from memory and thinking abilities as a result of cancer treatment.
Interested in participating?
Click here to find out more about our cognitive rehabilitation study.


The fixed part of the event data goes under different names, depending on which source file, work log, bug report, etc. you are reading:
Sometimes it is called the "fixed data" part, as in this discussion.
Sometimes it is called the "post-headers" part.
To make things notationally interesting, sometimes the
fixed data part is referred to as the "event-specific
headers" part of the event. That is, the word "header" is
used in reference to a portion of the data part. One
manifestation of this notational phenomenon appears in
log_event.h, where you will find the
defined as 19 (the header length for v3 and v4), plus
other symbols with names of the form
XXX_HEADER_LEN for different event
types. The former symbol is the size of the event header
(always 19). The latter symbols define the size of the
fixed portion of the data part that is to be treated as
the event-specific headers. For example,
ROTATE_HEADER_LEN is 8 because a
ROTATE_EVENT has an 8-byte field in the
fixed data part that indicates the position in the next
log file of the first event in that file.
The variable part of event data also goes under different names, such as the event "payload" or "body."