The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.
An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for The Independent has established that since 2010, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has revoked the passports of 16 individuals, many of whom are alleged to have had links to militant or terrorist groups.
Critics of the programme warn that it allows ministers to “wash their hands” of British nationals suspected of terrorism who could be subject to torture and illegal detention abroad.
They add that it also allows those stripped of their citizenship to be killed or “rendered” without any onus on the British Government to intervene.
At least five of those deprived of their UK nationality by the Coalition were born in Britain, and one man had lived in the country for almost 50 years. Those affected have their passports cancelled, and lose their right to enter the UK – making it very difficult to appeal against the Home Secretary’s decision. Last night the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Simon Hughes said he was writing to Ms May to call for an urgent review into how the law was being implemented.
The leading human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce said the present situation “smacked of mediaeval exile, just as cruel and just as arbitrary”.
Ian Macdonald QC, the president of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, described the citizenship orders as “sinister”.
“They’re using executive powers and I think they’re using them quite wrongly,” he said. “It’s not open government; it’s closed, and it needs to be exposed.”
Laws were passed in 2002 enabling the Home Secretary to remove the citizenship of any dual nationals who had done something “seriously prejudicial” to the UK, but the power had rarely been used before the current government took office.
The Bureau’s investigation has established the identities of all but four of the 21 British passport holders who have lost their citizenship, and their subsequent fates. Only two have successfully appealed – one of whom has since been extradited to the US.
In many cases those involved cannot be named because of ongoing legal action. The Bureau has also found evidence that government officials act when people are out of the country – on two occasions while on holiday – before cancelling passports and revoking citizenships.
Those targeted include Bilal al-Berjawi, a British-Lebanese citizen who came to the UK as a baby and grew up in London, but left for Somalia in 2009 with his close friend the British-born Mohamed Sakr, who also held Egyptian nationality.
Both had been the subject of extensive surveillance by British intelligence, with the security services concerned they were involved in terrorist activities.
Once in Somalia, the two reportedly became involved with al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group with links to al-Qa’ida. Mr Berjawi was said to have risen to a senior position in the organisation, with Mr Sakr his “right-hand man”.
In 2010, Theresa May stripped both men of their British nationalities and they soon became targets in an ultimately lethal US manhunt.
In June 2011 Mr Berjawi was wounded in the first known US drone strike in Somalia and last year he was killed by a drone strike – within hours of calling his wife in London to congratulate her on the birth of their first son.
His family have claimed that US forces were able to pinpoint his location by monitoring the call he made to his wife in the UK. Mr Sakr, too, was killed in a US airstrike in February 2012, although his British origins have not been revealed until now.
Mr Sakr’s former UK solicitor said there appeared to be a link between the Home Secretary removing citizenships and subsequent US actions.
“It appears that the process of deprivation of citizenship made it easier for the US to then designate Mr Sakr as an enemy combatant, to whom the UK owes no responsibility whatsoever,” Saghir Hussain said.
Mr Macdonald added that depriving people of their citizenship “means that the British government can completely wash their hands if the security services give information to the Americans who use their drones to track someone and kill them.”
The campaign group CagePrisoners is in touch with many families of those affected. Its executive director Asim Qureshi said the Bureau’s findings were deeply troubling for Britons from an ethnic minority background.
“We all feel just as British as everybody else, and yet just because our parents came from another country, we can be subjected to an arbitrary process where we are no longer members of this country any more,” he said.
“I think that’s extremely dangerous because it will speak to people’s fears about how they’re viewed by their own government, especially when they come from certain areas of the world.”
The Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes said that, while he accepted there were often real security concerns, he was worried that those who were innocent of Home Office charges against them and were trying to appeal risked finding themselves in a “political and constitutional limbo”.
“There was clearly always a risk when the law was changed seven years ago that the executive could act to take citizenship away in circumstances that were more frequent or more extensive than those envisaged by ministers at the time,” he said.
“I’m concerned at the growing number of people who appear to have lost their right to citizenship. I plan to write to the Home Secretary and the Home Affairs Select Committee to ask for their assessment of the situation, and for a review of whether the act is working as intended.”
Ms Peirce, a leading immigration defence lawyer, said, “British citizens are being banished from their own country, being stripped of a core part of their identity yet without a single word of explanation of why they have been singled out and dubbed a risk,” she said.
Families are sometimes affected by the Home Secretary’s decisions. Parents may have to choose whether their British children remain in the UK, or join their father in exile abroad.
In a case known only as L1, a Sudanese-British man took his four British children on holiday to Sudan, along with his wife, who had limited leave to remain in the UK. Four days after his departure, Theresa May decided to strip him of his citizenship.
With their father excluded from the UK and their mother’s lack of permanent right to remain, the order effectively blocks the children from growing up in Britain. At the time of the order the children were aged between eight and 13 months.
The judge, despite recognising their right to be brought up in Britain, ruled that the grounds on which their father’s citizenship was revoked “outweighed” the rights of the children.
Mr Justice Mitting, sitting in the semi-secret Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac), said: “We accept it is unlikely to be in the best interests of the appellant’s children that he should be deprived of his British citizenship...
“They are British citizens, with a right of abode in the UK.
“They are of an age when that right cannot, in practice, be enjoyed if both of their parents cannot return to the United Kingdom.”
Yet he added that Theresa May was “unlikely to have made that decision without substantial and plausible grounds”.
In another case, a man born in Newcastle in 1963 and three of his London-born sons all lost their citizenship two years ago while in Pakistan.
An expert witness told Siac that those in the family’s situation may be at risk from the country’s government agencies and militant groups. Yet Siac recently ruled that the UK “owed no obligation” to those at risk of “any subsequent act of the Pakistani state or of non-state actors [militant groups] in Pakistan”.
The mother, herself a naturalised British citizen, now wants to return here in the interests of her youngest son, who has developmental needs. Although 15, he is said to be “dependent upon [his mother and father] for emotional and practical support”.
His mother claimed he “has no hope of education in Pakistan’. But the mother has diabetes and mobility problems that mean she “does not feel able to return on her own, with or without [her son].”
Mr Justice Mitting ruled that the deprivation of citizenship of the family’s father had “undoubtedly had an impact on the private and family life of his wife and youngest son, both of whom remain British citizens”. But he added that the father posed such a threat to national security that the “unavoidable incidental impact” on his wife and youngest son was “justifiable”, and dismissed the appeal.
A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Citizenship is a privilege not a right. The Home Secretary has the power to remove citizenship from individuals where she considers it is conducive to the public good. An individual subject to deprivation can appeal to the courts.”
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
No pause to think in a world that's in touch while on the go
I confess to a having an old fogey's ambivalence towards mobile phones. There are times when it suits me to keep in touch, but most of the time I don't want a phone taking over my life - or even interrupting it. And I figure I'm old and odd enough to get away with rarely using one.
But of all the amazing things going on in the digital revolution - the spread of computers, the internet, the declining cost of telecommunications - nothing is more remarkable than the growing ubiquity of the mobile.
According to a report by Ric Simes and John O'Mahony of Deloitte Access Economics, ''it is undeniable that mobile telecommunications are altering the way the world conducts business''.
Now, the report says, everything digital is going mobile: software, the internet, the cloud and social media.
What are young people doing when you see them incessantly fiddling with their phones? They may be playing games, but they're more likely to be checking emails or reviewing their ''twitter feed''.
Do you realise that we 23 million Australians now use more than 30 million mobile services? As well as phones, this would include tablets such as iPads and the dongles that link laptop computers to the internet.
Because the sales of the mobile telecommunications industry have largely been driven by increasing subscriptions, this penetration rate of well over 100 per cent means the industry's sales are faltering. Last financial year they actually fell by 1.5 per cent. The report predicts no sales growth in real terms this year, with a modest recovery in 2013-14.
But just because sales revenue has stagnated doesn't mean the use of mobiles isn't continuing to balloon. In 2011, mobile broadband traffic averaged 8.8 petabytes a month. Cisco Systems predict this will grow by 68 per cent a year until 2016.
It's worth noting that if industry revenue is stagnant while usage continues to explode, the use of mobiles is becoming cheaper.
It may help make sense of all this to know that, according to Ericsson, voice calls now make up only a quarter of the time people spend on their mobile devices. In June 2009, less than 10 per cent of people used the internet via a handset; three years later, almost a third did.
Old fogeys like me think email and mobiles are a very mixed blessing in terms of the efficient use of our time, but the report argues valiantly that they increase the productivity of businesses.
Mobile technology can improve the productivity of employees by allowing communication on the go. Workers who are travelling can be in touch with others in the office by making calls as well as by sending and receiving emails. They can use their mobiles to access information on the internet.
Mobiles allow workers to make more productive use of down time. Time previously underutilised because of lack of access to a desktop computer is no longer so. Smartphones and tablets can be used to review documents and make changes without being in the office.
Some applications (or apps) can increase productivity. ''Voice notes'' allow people to store audio information, calendar apps help with time management and various apps allow you to streamline repetitive tasks. And as well as increasing the productivity of labour, mobiles can make capital equipment more productive. Desktop computers can be replaced by laptops or sometimes smartphones. Employees can be allowed to bring their own laptops or mobiles.
If mobiles and laptops allow more people to work at home, businesses can save on office space. Retailers who sell more over the internet can save on the cost of bricks and mortar, or store more of their stock in warehouses rather than city shops.
To its credit, the report considers those implications rather than ignoring them, as economists and business people tend to. On the plus side, it notes that, for the individual, mobile devices offer not just communication but ''rich digital experiences on the go'' - photos, music, games, location-based services (such as getting directions to a place), maps, the internet and the millions of features offered by apps. And all this fits in your pocket.
But being always contactable can make you feel ''always on''. And Hugh Mackay, the social researcher, offers a more sceptical perspective: ''You have this sense of continuous connection; it's like being in a strand of a web which is continually vibrating. Part of this feeling of being in a 'cyber crowd' is illusory, but some of it is real; it is important to note that some of this tribalism is purely cyber . . .
From just two guys at rented desks to a $715 million sale to Facebook, a second wind on Android and a mess of privacy scares, Instagram today announced 100 million people use it every month to share the way they see the world. The startup hedged its bets by being acquired just as it expanded beyond iOS, but despite what it could have sold for now, there’s no disputing Instagram’s success.
In a heartfelt blog post that smooths over the rough patches, co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom explains the journey to building an app that’s created “a world more connected and understood through photographs.”
The untold story is that Instagram made a tough decision right after its April 3rd launch on Android. Before that it had 30 million installs on iOS. Whether it would succeed outside of the design-focused iPhone was a gamble. It could have flopped, attrition could have set in, and it was still small enough to be vulnerable to competitors. So despite racking up 1 million new users in the first 12 hours, there was a lot to lose. $1 billion (at the time) in cash and stock from Facebook for a company with just 13 employees was too good to pass up, so it sold.
If Systrom had foreseen what would happen next, he may have held out longer. The Android app maintained its sprint, and the iPhone version continued to pick up steam. Even without much help from Facebook, and in fact despite Facebook’s own competitor Camera, the Instagram juggernaut could not be stopped.
At over three times as many users now as when it sold, and seemingly beyond quick disruption, would Instagram have sold for $2 billion or even $3 billion today? Would anyone have been willing to pay that? Remember this was when fervor was frothy for the coming Facebook IPO. Social companies still saw going public as a lucrative option.
But Systrom chose to become a made-man (and make made-men out of many of his employees), rather than roll the dice. He chose greater impact by aligning with the world’s premier social network over total control. He still runs Instagram somewhat independently from Facebook, so he may be getting to have his cake and eat it too.
But of all the amazing things going on in the digital revolution - the spread of computers, the internet, the declining cost of telecommunications - nothing is more remarkable than the growing ubiquity of the mobile.
According to a report by Ric Simes and John O'Mahony of Deloitte Access Economics, ''it is undeniable that mobile telecommunications are altering the way the world conducts business''.
Now, the report says, everything digital is going mobile: software, the internet, the cloud and social media.
What are young people doing when you see them incessantly fiddling with their phones? They may be playing games, but they're more likely to be checking emails or reviewing their ''twitter feed''.
Do you realise that we 23 million Australians now use more than 30 million mobile services? As well as phones, this would include tablets such as iPads and the dongles that link laptop computers to the internet.
Because the sales of the mobile telecommunications industry have largely been driven by increasing subscriptions, this penetration rate of well over 100 per cent means the industry's sales are faltering. Last financial year they actually fell by 1.5 per cent. The report predicts no sales growth in real terms this year, with a modest recovery in 2013-14.
But just because sales revenue has stagnated doesn't mean the use of mobiles isn't continuing to balloon. In 2011, mobile broadband traffic averaged 8.8 petabytes a month. Cisco Systems predict this will grow by 68 per cent a year until 2016.
It's worth noting that if industry revenue is stagnant while usage continues to explode, the use of mobiles is becoming cheaper.
It may help make sense of all this to know that, according to Ericsson, voice calls now make up only a quarter of the time people spend on their mobile devices. In June 2009, less than 10 per cent of people used the internet via a handset; three years later, almost a third did.
Old fogeys like me think email and mobiles are a very mixed blessing in terms of the efficient use of our time, but the report argues valiantly that they increase the productivity of businesses.
Mobile technology can improve the productivity of employees by allowing communication on the go. Workers who are travelling can be in touch with others in the office by making calls as well as by sending and receiving emails. They can use their mobiles to access information on the internet.
Mobiles allow workers to make more productive use of down time. Time previously underutilised because of lack of access to a desktop computer is no longer so. Smartphones and tablets can be used to review documents and make changes without being in the office.
Some applications (or apps) can increase productivity. ''Voice notes'' allow people to store audio information, calendar apps help with time management and various apps allow you to streamline repetitive tasks. And as well as increasing the productivity of labour, mobiles can make capital equipment more productive. Desktop computers can be replaced by laptops or sometimes smartphones. Employees can be allowed to bring their own laptops or mobiles.
If mobiles and laptops allow more people to work at home, businesses can save on office space. Retailers who sell more over the internet can save on the cost of bricks and mortar, or store more of their stock in warehouses rather than city shops.
To its credit, the report considers those implications rather than ignoring them, as economists and business people tend to. On the plus side, it notes that, for the individual, mobile devices offer not just communication but ''rich digital experiences on the go'' - photos, music, games, location-based services (such as getting directions to a place), maps, the internet and the millions of features offered by apps. And all this fits in your pocket.
But being always contactable can make you feel ''always on''. And Hugh Mackay, the social researcher, offers a more sceptical perspective: ''You have this sense of continuous connection; it's like being in a strand of a web which is continually vibrating. Part of this feeling of being in a 'cyber crowd' is illusory, but some of it is real; it is important to note that some of this tribalism is purely cyber . . .
From just two guys at rented desks to a $715 million sale to Facebook, a second wind on Android and a mess of privacy scares, Instagram today announced 100 million people use it every month to share the way they see the world. The startup hedged its bets by being acquired just as it expanded beyond iOS, but despite what it could have sold for now, there’s no disputing Instagram’s success.
In a heartfelt blog post that smooths over the rough patches, co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom explains the journey to building an app that’s created “a world more connected and understood through photographs.”
The untold story is that Instagram made a tough decision right after its April 3rd launch on Android. Before that it had 30 million installs on iOS. Whether it would succeed outside of the design-focused iPhone was a gamble. It could have flopped, attrition could have set in, and it was still small enough to be vulnerable to competitors. So despite racking up 1 million new users in the first 12 hours, there was a lot to lose. $1 billion (at the time) in cash and stock from Facebook for a company with just 13 employees was too good to pass up, so it sold.
If Systrom had foreseen what would happen next, he may have held out longer. The Android app maintained its sprint, and the iPhone version continued to pick up steam. Even without much help from Facebook, and in fact despite Facebook’s own competitor Camera, the Instagram juggernaut could not be stopped.
At over three times as many users now as when it sold, and seemingly beyond quick disruption, would Instagram have sold for $2 billion or even $3 billion today? Would anyone have been willing to pay that? Remember this was when fervor was frothy for the coming Facebook IPO. Social companies still saw going public as a lucrative option.
But Systrom chose to become a made-man (and make made-men out of many of his employees), rather than roll the dice. He chose greater impact by aligning with the world’s premier social network over total control. He still runs Instagram somewhat independently from Facebook, so he may be getting to have his cake and eat it too.
Monday, February 25, 2013
The Ten Best National Park Webcam Sites In America
They allow armchair travelers to follow activity outside a Dublin pub, monitor traffic on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, and check on what’s happening at the International Space Station. Webcams also provide windows on nature, some of the best of which comes by way of cameras stationed in our national parks.
Below are ten of our favorite sites for viewing activities and scenery in our national parks (click on the park's name to go to their webcam sites). Most provide access to several webcams that cover a range of impressive views throughout a park. For example, eight webcams in Glacier National Park offer views from both the east and west sides of the park. A streaming webcam in Yellowstone allows viewers to follow Old Faithful’s eruptions in real time. A cam on the Statue of Liberty torch focuses on the picturesque New York skyline.
Webcam junkies will be familiar with the occasional electrical or mechanical problems that can result in downtime, sometimes for extended periods. Repairing the cameras is not always a high priority on a park’s maintenance list. In addition, cameras in remote locations or locations with particularly severe winters may occasionally be taken out of service.
Views from many of the Western parks vary depending upon the season. Rugged summer mountain peaks become majestic snow-covered mountains during the heart of winter. Snow and ice may occasionally adhere to the camera lens and obscure views during winter months. Still, viewing a location like Mount Rainier’s Paradise area in February can be awesome on a clear day.
During winter the webcam focused toward the Steel Visitor Center is likely to display the building buried in snow. This isn’t surprising because this national park annually averages over 44 feet of snow that remains visible much of the year. Portions of Rim Road that circles beautiful Crater Lake may close in October and not open until late June. A link near the bottom of the page provides access to additional webcams of Rim Village and Crater Lake.
The Tetons are considered by many travelers to be the most picturesque mountain range in the lower 48 states. This site offers three webcams, one with views of the Teton Range from West Gros Ventre Butte. A second cam provides a view of Climbers Ranch, a lodging facility for mountain climbers near Jenny Lake. The third webcam offers a view from Lost Creek Ranch on the east side of the park. The Tetons are especially beautiful at sunrise on a clear morning.
This scenic and uncrowded northern California park has been one of our favorite stops since our first visit in the early 1970s. Even many Californians don’t seem to know much about Lassen which is fine by us. The site offers three webcams in different areas of the park. The view of Lassen Peak from the Manzanita Lake area is particularly spectacular. Lassen last erupted in 1915. Another cam offers a good view to the north from the visitor center.
The Mount Rainier site provides access to six webcams in the Paradise area and one in the Longmire area where park headquarters is located. During summer, a webcam provides views of the Sunrise area. Paradise offers spectacular views of picturesque Mount Rainier during summer and some amazing views during the winter when 70 to 90 feet of snow can cover most of historic Paradise Inn.
This busy Colorado park offers four webcams, including one that provides a view of the park’s best-known feature, 14,259-foot high Longs Peak. A seasonal cam at the Alpine Visitor Center offers views of Fall River Canyon and the Mummy Mountains. Another webcam on the park’s west side provides a view of the Never Summer Range where the Colorado River begins.
Access to five interactive webcams (zoom in and out) at the Statue of Liberty requires a one-time log in. Four of the webcams are located in the Statue’s torch, with one offering a view inside the torch, an area closed to the general public. Another focuses downward toward the ground where visitors may be walking. One webcam is aimed across the harbor to show the New York City skyline, an amazingly beautiful scene on a clear night. A panoramic harbor view is available on another cam. The fifth cam, located in Brooklyn, provides a full view of the Statue of Liberty and frequently shows boats chugging by or airplanes flying over.
The Yellowstone site opens windows on the world's first national park and includes a live-streaming webcam of Old Faithful Geyser, along with other steaming geysers in the background. An eruption of another geyser or the appearance of bison will likely cause the webcam to change direction and focus for a better view. Two additional webcams in the Old Faithful area include one that provides a view of Upper Geyser Basin. The site also includes webcams at Mammoth Hot Springs near the park’s northern entrance and in the Mount Washburn area.
Yosemite has one of the best national park webcam sites with seven webcams providing views of this popular park. The majority of webcams are focused on features in the valley, such as Upper Yosemite Falls. Half Dome can be seen in three webcams: viewed from the valley floor‘s east side; from an elevation of 8,000 feet with the surrounding mountains; and with El Capitan in the foreground. The scenes are especially beautiful when scenery glistens in the afternoon sun. Additional webcams are on Turtleback Dome looking to the west of the valley and near the Merced River at Happy Isles. The park’s concessionaire operates a webcam that offers a good view of the Badger Pass Ski Area.
Below are ten of our favorite sites for viewing activities and scenery in our national parks (click on the park's name to go to their webcam sites). Most provide access to several webcams that cover a range of impressive views throughout a park. For example, eight webcams in Glacier National Park offer views from both the east and west sides of the park. A streaming webcam in Yellowstone allows viewers to follow Old Faithful’s eruptions in real time. A cam on the Statue of Liberty torch focuses on the picturesque New York skyline.
Webcam junkies will be familiar with the occasional electrical or mechanical problems that can result in downtime, sometimes for extended periods. Repairing the cameras is not always a high priority on a park’s maintenance list. In addition, cameras in remote locations or locations with particularly severe winters may occasionally be taken out of service.
Views from many of the Western parks vary depending upon the season. Rugged summer mountain peaks become majestic snow-covered mountains during the heart of winter. Snow and ice may occasionally adhere to the camera lens and obscure views during winter months. Still, viewing a location like Mount Rainier’s Paradise area in February can be awesome on a clear day.
During winter the webcam focused toward the Steel Visitor Center is likely to display the building buried in snow. This isn’t surprising because this national park annually averages over 44 feet of snow that remains visible much of the year. Portions of Rim Road that circles beautiful Crater Lake may close in October and not open until late June. A link near the bottom of the page provides access to additional webcams of Rim Village and Crater Lake.
The Tetons are considered by many travelers to be the most picturesque mountain range in the lower 48 states. This site offers three webcams, one with views of the Teton Range from West Gros Ventre Butte. A second cam provides a view of Climbers Ranch, a lodging facility for mountain climbers near Jenny Lake. The third webcam offers a view from Lost Creek Ranch on the east side of the park. The Tetons are especially beautiful at sunrise on a clear morning.
This scenic and uncrowded northern California park has been one of our favorite stops since our first visit in the early 1970s. Even many Californians don’t seem to know much about Lassen which is fine by us. The site offers three webcams in different areas of the park. The view of Lassen Peak from the Manzanita Lake area is particularly spectacular. Lassen last erupted in 1915. Another cam offers a good view to the north from the visitor center.
The Mount Rainier site provides access to six webcams in the Paradise area and one in the Longmire area where park headquarters is located. During summer, a webcam provides views of the Sunrise area. Paradise offers spectacular views of picturesque Mount Rainier during summer and some amazing views during the winter when 70 to 90 feet of snow can cover most of historic Paradise Inn.
This busy Colorado park offers four webcams, including one that provides a view of the park’s best-known feature, 14,259-foot high Longs Peak. A seasonal cam at the Alpine Visitor Center offers views of Fall River Canyon and the Mummy Mountains. Another webcam on the park’s west side provides a view of the Never Summer Range where the Colorado River begins.
Access to five interactive webcams (zoom in and out) at the Statue of Liberty requires a one-time log in. Four of the webcams are located in the Statue’s torch, with one offering a view inside the torch, an area closed to the general public. Another focuses downward toward the ground where visitors may be walking. One webcam is aimed across the harbor to show the New York City skyline, an amazingly beautiful scene on a clear night. A panoramic harbor view is available on another cam. The fifth cam, located in Brooklyn, provides a full view of the Statue of Liberty and frequently shows boats chugging by or airplanes flying over.
The Yellowstone site opens windows on the world's first national park and includes a live-streaming webcam of Old Faithful Geyser, along with other steaming geysers in the background. An eruption of another geyser or the appearance of bison will likely cause the webcam to change direction and focus for a better view. Two additional webcams in the Old Faithful area include one that provides a view of Upper Geyser Basin. The site also includes webcams at Mammoth Hot Springs near the park’s northern entrance and in the Mount Washburn area.
Yosemite has one of the best national park webcam sites with seven webcams providing views of this popular park. The majority of webcams are focused on features in the valley, such as Upper Yosemite Falls. Half Dome can be seen in three webcams: viewed from the valley floor‘s east side; from an elevation of 8,000 feet with the surrounding mountains; and with El Capitan in the foreground. The scenes are especially beautiful when scenery glistens in the afternoon sun. Additional webcams are on Turtleback Dome looking to the west of the valley and near the Merced River at Happy Isles. The park’s concessionaire operates a webcam that offers a good view of the Badger Pass Ski Area.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
PIMS in deplorable condition
Pakistan Institute of Medical Science (PIMS), the largest public hospital of the federal capital, is in a pathetic condition because of the unhygienic environment, lack of burning incinerators and basic facilities like beds, latest medical equipments and an adequate amount of staff.
Talking to Pakistan Today, patients complained that many sick and injured people were not getting the care that they needed because of a massive shortage of medical equipments, beds and doctors, which undermined the quality of healthcare in the hospital.
A senior member of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) told Pakistan Today that there was no burning incinerator in the hospital while the MRI machines and oxygen flow meters of medical wards were dysfunctional since the last three years.
“The patients here are advised to approach private outlets for common medical tests,” he said.
He admitted that because of the shortage of beds, patients are usually discharged prematurely and thus face the danger of relapsing.
“Over 80 percent of the people have no medical aid, and have no choice but to seek treatment at PIMS which lacks basic facilities of beds, medicines and staff,” he maintained.
Ramiz Mugal, a 70 years heart patient from Mianwali said that the hospital’s laboratory had no proper equipment and was unable to carry out reliable tests.
“We are compelled to go to private laboratories in the blue area,” he added.
The YDA leader further said, "There is no proper ventilation system for the air-conditioning system in the emergency ward. This results in emanation of a bad odour. The toilets were in a deplorable condition and were source of infection. Scores of patients use them daily and these are not even cleaned twice a week"
The General Report Section, where only three staff members were setting, told Pakistan Today that doctors work on 12-hour shifts and had to treat around 1,700 patients in this time. Many patients in the emergency wards were not given proper care due to lack of proper facilities.
A huge number of people from far flung rural areas of Punjab could also be seen at every section of the hospital, particularly outside the X-ray and ultrasound rooms where only two out of four X-ray machines were operational in the evening due to lack of staff. Therefore, patients and their attendants had to wait for hours to get their test report.
A shortage of staff such as nursing assistants, cleaners and porters meant that nurses often had to carry, wash and feed patients, which kept them from nursing responsibilities.
Meanwhile, all the wards and departments of the largest public hospital in Islamabad gave a dirty look due to irregular cleanliness, while Out-Patient Department (OPD), Orthopedic and Neurology Departments, Gyne Ward, Emergency Centre and the laboratory needed urgent attention of the higher authorities.
PIMS spokesman Waseem Khawaja confirmed that there was no burning incinerator and added that the waste was sent to the Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi for disposal. He said the emergency wards, including the operation theater, was equipped with latest machines.
“Nevertheless, it has yet to be determined why these desaturation events occur,” Dr. Brinkman added. “One suggestion is that it may be due to decreases in cardiac output, so we sought to determine its relationship, if any, with cerebral desaturation.”
Dr. Brinkman and his colleagues enrolled 23 patients into the trial, each of whom was undergoing surgery with one-lung ventilation. Cerebral oxygenation was monitored using a cerebral oximeter (Fore-Sight, Casmed) and cardiac indices were measured with the FloTrac system (Edwards Lifesciences).
Each participant underwent a standard anesthetic regimen, with an FiO2 of 1.0 for the duration of the case. Anesthesiologists provided positive end-expiratory pressure and continuous positive airway pressure to the nondependent lung to maintain peripheral oxygen saturations of at least 90%. Serial blood gases were drawn before induction and then every 15 minutes for two hours. A cerebral desaturation event was defined as a decrease of at least 10% from baseline, which was defined as the highest recorded saturation on two-lung ventilation with an FiO2 of 1.0.
As Dr. Brinkman reported at the 2012 annual meeting of the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (abstract 1310840), data from 18 patients were analyzed; 10 of these patients (55.5%) had significant cerebral desaturation events.
“We didn’t find a statistically significant difference between groups in terms of cardiac output, blood pressure or heart rate,” he told Anesthesiology News. Similarly, there was no correlation between cardiac output, mean arterial pressure, stroke volume, or cardiac index and cerebral desaturation events.
“We also calculated the area under the curve for the amount of time patients were desaturated,” Dr. Brinkman added. “And we showed that heart rate would go down in patients with longer desaturation time, but stroke volume would increase significantly to maintain cardiac output. It was something we didn’t expect to find, but it’s an interesting reflex that hasn’t been shown before, as far as I can tell.” No correlation was found between peripheral arterial saturation and cerebral oxygen saturation.
Dr. Brinkman suggested that future research should focus on outcomes of patients who sustain cerebral desaturation. “And if down the road we show that there is potential for harm in these individuals, then maybe a device like the Fore-Sight needs to be a more standard monitor, even if it’s just in selected high-risk groups.”
Bruce D. Spiess, MD, professor of anesthesiology at Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, said physiologic effects of one-lung ventilation are farther reaching than merely a reduction in blood flow to the nonventilated lung.
Talking to Pakistan Today, patients complained that many sick and injured people were not getting the care that they needed because of a massive shortage of medical equipments, beds and doctors, which undermined the quality of healthcare in the hospital.
A senior member of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) told Pakistan Today that there was no burning incinerator in the hospital while the MRI machines and oxygen flow meters of medical wards were dysfunctional since the last three years.
“The patients here are advised to approach private outlets for common medical tests,” he said.
He admitted that because of the shortage of beds, patients are usually discharged prematurely and thus face the danger of relapsing.
“Over 80 percent of the people have no medical aid, and have no choice but to seek treatment at PIMS which lacks basic facilities of beds, medicines and staff,” he maintained.
Ramiz Mugal, a 70 years heart patient from Mianwali said that the hospital’s laboratory had no proper equipment and was unable to carry out reliable tests.
“We are compelled to go to private laboratories in the blue area,” he added.
The YDA leader further said, "There is no proper ventilation system for the air-conditioning system in the emergency ward. This results in emanation of a bad odour. The toilets were in a deplorable condition and were source of infection. Scores of patients use them daily and these are not even cleaned twice a week"
The General Report Section, where only three staff members were setting, told Pakistan Today that doctors work on 12-hour shifts and had to treat around 1,700 patients in this time. Many patients in the emergency wards were not given proper care due to lack of proper facilities.
A huge number of people from far flung rural areas of Punjab could also be seen at every section of the hospital, particularly outside the X-ray and ultrasound rooms where only two out of four X-ray machines were operational in the evening due to lack of staff. Therefore, patients and their attendants had to wait for hours to get their test report.
A shortage of staff such as nursing assistants, cleaners and porters meant that nurses often had to carry, wash and feed patients, which kept them from nursing responsibilities.
Meanwhile, all the wards and departments of the largest public hospital in Islamabad gave a dirty look due to irregular cleanliness, while Out-Patient Department (OPD), Orthopedic and Neurology Departments, Gyne Ward, Emergency Centre and the laboratory needed urgent attention of the higher authorities.
PIMS spokesman Waseem Khawaja confirmed that there was no burning incinerator and added that the waste was sent to the Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi for disposal. He said the emergency wards, including the operation theater, was equipped with latest machines.
“Nevertheless, it has yet to be determined why these desaturation events occur,” Dr. Brinkman added. “One suggestion is that it may be due to decreases in cardiac output, so we sought to determine its relationship, if any, with cerebral desaturation.”
Dr. Brinkman and his colleagues enrolled 23 patients into the trial, each of whom was undergoing surgery with one-lung ventilation. Cerebral oxygenation was monitored using a cerebral oximeter (Fore-Sight, Casmed) and cardiac indices were measured with the FloTrac system (Edwards Lifesciences).
Each participant underwent a standard anesthetic regimen, with an FiO2 of 1.0 for the duration of the case. Anesthesiologists provided positive end-expiratory pressure and continuous positive airway pressure to the nondependent lung to maintain peripheral oxygen saturations of at least 90%. Serial blood gases were drawn before induction and then every 15 minutes for two hours. A cerebral desaturation event was defined as a decrease of at least 10% from baseline, which was defined as the highest recorded saturation on two-lung ventilation with an FiO2 of 1.0.
As Dr. Brinkman reported at the 2012 annual meeting of the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (abstract 1310840), data from 18 patients were analyzed; 10 of these patients (55.5%) had significant cerebral desaturation events.
“We didn’t find a statistically significant difference between groups in terms of cardiac output, blood pressure or heart rate,” he told Anesthesiology News. Similarly, there was no correlation between cardiac output, mean arterial pressure, stroke volume, or cardiac index and cerebral desaturation events.
“We also calculated the area under the curve for the amount of time patients were desaturated,” Dr. Brinkman added. “And we showed that heart rate would go down in patients with longer desaturation time, but stroke volume would increase significantly to maintain cardiac output. It was something we didn’t expect to find, but it’s an interesting reflex that hasn’t been shown before, as far as I can tell.” No correlation was found between peripheral arterial saturation and cerebral oxygen saturation.
Dr. Brinkman suggested that future research should focus on outcomes of patients who sustain cerebral desaturation. “And if down the road we show that there is potential for harm in these individuals, then maybe a device like the Fore-Sight needs to be a more standard monitor, even if it’s just in selected high-risk groups.”
Bruce D. Spiess, MD, professor of anesthesiology at Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, said physiologic effects of one-lung ventilation are farther reaching than merely a reduction in blood flow to the nonventilated lung.
Monday, February 18, 2013
Point Phillips to reopen in Moore Township
For decades, LeRoy Eckert looked down the hill from his front yard and watched as his birthplace seemed to sink into the water that gathered around its foundations.
By the time it closed five years ago, mud was climbing the Point Phillips Hotel's exterior walls. The business, once known in different circles for its cheesesteaks, video poker machines and barroom brawls, had become a crumbling stack of asphalt shingle siding. The centuries-old tavern it had been — the place where Eckert's parents carved out a living —- had long since dissolved.
Then Dan Tanczos stepped in. In 2008, he sold his interest in a Bethlehem beer distributor and bought the old tavern, namesake of the unincorporated Moore Township village of Point Phillips. Tanczos spent the next five years researching its history, damming the water and buffing the place to a sheen it never had .
In a few weeks, Tanczos says, he'll reopen the hotel as a bar and restaurant with two apartments.
"I'm looking forward to giving the people of this area a nice place to go," he said, pressing his palms to the polished bar he installed in a room where a grocer once sold flour and salt. "Something they can be proud of."
Tanczos, a broad-shouldered guy with a smile stamped above a dimpled chin, hopes visitors will come from all over the Lehigh Valley. But he renovated it — learning how to install floors and Victorian ceiling tiles on the fly — for people like Eckert and himself.
On Aug. 6, 1928, in the same room where Tanczos recently planted his bar, Eckert was born. Growing up, he could step out the front door of his parents' house behind the hotel and find forest and swampland to hunt deer and squirrels. He played shortstop and second base on the old Point Phillips Hotel baseball team. In the bar, his dad served Horlacher, Old Dutch and Neuwiler, three mugs for a quarter. State law required you to offer hotel rooms, so, in six rooms on the second floor, they changed sheets on beds nobody ever slept in.
Since those days, ranchers and Cape Cods have pushed the forest aside. The one-room Point Phillips School, where Eckert learned English and math, closed eons ago. Even the 4-foot-high concrete letters that spelled "Point Phillips" his father installed on the embankment across from the hotel — the town's version of the Hollywood sign — eventually toppled.
When Eckert built the stone house next to the hotel in 1956, his mom asked him to take over running the place. Eckert said no. Tavern ownership wasn't for him. In those days, he explained, the place was pretty rough. Brawls were par for the course for neighborhood bars all over the area, in Petersville and Beersville, for example.
The quickest way to add a fresh look to a room or any part of a home (door or even a floor) is a fresh coat of paint. Every year - paint manufacturers come out with a new color to satisfy whatever trends might be going on. “Neutrals such as C2’s Scout - which is a kind of taupe and Reindeer which is a darker brown, are still popular. But eggplant and lime green are among the trendy colors this year,” said Frank Agrusa, who owns Van Jaarsveld Decorating Center in Utica.
You can also add richness and depth by applying a specialty paint treatment. As one decorator explains Trompe L’oeil is French for an art technique that involves using realistic imagery to create an optical illusion. Instead of rolling out two coats of flat paint you can use several paints to create the look of linen or leather. There are also metallic paints that can be used to create patterns. One of the home office photos on Houzz showed a walls covered with a black paint - once dry becomes a chalkboard surface.
Sculptures, hand blown glass vases, tile work and jewelry sparkled in the sunlight Sunday as people made their way through artists’ displays at Frances Stevens Park.
The three-day Desert Art Festival continues from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today with more than 100 artists presenting original work in all mediums of two- and three-dimensional art, including paintings in acrylic, oils and watercolors, photography and etchings, all sprawled out on the corner of North Palm Canyon Drive and Alejo Road.
It’s the diversity of art and the quality of the work that keeps festival-goer Marilyn Dorman of Boise, Idaho, coming back, she said, along with the scenery of the surrounding mountains.
She and her daughter, Diane Dorman, also of Boise, were looking over the mixed media work of Fortune Sitole of Oakland.
Sitole’s depictions of life in South Africa are made with recyclable materials — wood, sand, aluminum, oil and acrylic paint, sticks, bottle caps, soup cans, and other objects on a plywood background.
Across the way from Sitole, Marquis Leo of Palm Desert was surrounded by his brightly painted, glossy, ceramic tiles that varied in size from coasters to wall hangings.
The figures on each were painted on canvas first and embedded into the ceramic through a firing process.
By the time it closed five years ago, mud was climbing the Point Phillips Hotel's exterior walls. The business, once known in different circles for its cheesesteaks, video poker machines and barroom brawls, had become a crumbling stack of asphalt shingle siding. The centuries-old tavern it had been — the place where Eckert's parents carved out a living —- had long since dissolved.
Then Dan Tanczos stepped in. In 2008, he sold his interest in a Bethlehem beer distributor and bought the old tavern, namesake of the unincorporated Moore Township village of Point Phillips. Tanczos spent the next five years researching its history, damming the water and buffing the place to a sheen it never had .
In a few weeks, Tanczos says, he'll reopen the hotel as a bar and restaurant with two apartments.
"I'm looking forward to giving the people of this area a nice place to go," he said, pressing his palms to the polished bar he installed in a room where a grocer once sold flour and salt. "Something they can be proud of."
Tanczos, a broad-shouldered guy with a smile stamped above a dimpled chin, hopes visitors will come from all over the Lehigh Valley. But he renovated it — learning how to install floors and Victorian ceiling tiles on the fly — for people like Eckert and himself.
On Aug. 6, 1928, in the same room where Tanczos recently planted his bar, Eckert was born. Growing up, he could step out the front door of his parents' house behind the hotel and find forest and swampland to hunt deer and squirrels. He played shortstop and second base on the old Point Phillips Hotel baseball team. In the bar, his dad served Horlacher, Old Dutch and Neuwiler, three mugs for a quarter. State law required you to offer hotel rooms, so, in six rooms on the second floor, they changed sheets on beds nobody ever slept in.
Since those days, ranchers and Cape Cods have pushed the forest aside. The one-room Point Phillips School, where Eckert learned English and math, closed eons ago. Even the 4-foot-high concrete letters that spelled "Point Phillips" his father installed on the embankment across from the hotel — the town's version of the Hollywood sign — eventually toppled.
When Eckert built the stone house next to the hotel in 1956, his mom asked him to take over running the place. Eckert said no. Tavern ownership wasn't for him. In those days, he explained, the place was pretty rough. Brawls were par for the course for neighborhood bars all over the area, in Petersville and Beersville, for example.
The quickest way to add a fresh look to a room or any part of a home (door or even a floor) is a fresh coat of paint. Every year - paint manufacturers come out with a new color to satisfy whatever trends might be going on. “Neutrals such as C2’s Scout - which is a kind of taupe and Reindeer which is a darker brown, are still popular. But eggplant and lime green are among the trendy colors this year,” said Frank Agrusa, who owns Van Jaarsveld Decorating Center in Utica.
You can also add richness and depth by applying a specialty paint treatment. As one decorator explains Trompe L’oeil is French for an art technique that involves using realistic imagery to create an optical illusion. Instead of rolling out two coats of flat paint you can use several paints to create the look of linen or leather. There are also metallic paints that can be used to create patterns. One of the home office photos on Houzz showed a walls covered with a black paint - once dry becomes a chalkboard surface.
Sculptures, hand blown glass vases, tile work and jewelry sparkled in the sunlight Sunday as people made their way through artists’ displays at Frances Stevens Park.
The three-day Desert Art Festival continues from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today with more than 100 artists presenting original work in all mediums of two- and three-dimensional art, including paintings in acrylic, oils and watercolors, photography and etchings, all sprawled out on the corner of North Palm Canyon Drive and Alejo Road.
It’s the diversity of art and the quality of the work that keeps festival-goer Marilyn Dorman of Boise, Idaho, coming back, she said, along with the scenery of the surrounding mountains.
She and her daughter, Diane Dorman, also of Boise, were looking over the mixed media work of Fortune Sitole of Oakland.
Sitole’s depictions of life in South Africa are made with recyclable materials — wood, sand, aluminum, oil and acrylic paint, sticks, bottle caps, soup cans, and other objects on a plywood background.
Across the way from Sitole, Marquis Leo of Palm Desert was surrounded by his brightly painted, glossy, ceramic tiles that varied in size from coasters to wall hangings.
The figures on each were painted on canvas first and embedded into the ceramic through a firing process.
Artist Rutherford Chang's "We Buy White Albums" and the origins of fandom
The blog Dust & Grooves has a new interview with the artist Rutherford Chang, who currently has an exhibit showing at Recess gallery in New York called "We Buy White Albums." It consists of Chang's collection of nearly 700 copies of the Beatles' self-titled 1968 double LP, starting with his first one, which he picked up at a garage sale in California as a teenager. The show's set up like a record store devoted entirely to the White Album, with shelves of them sorted by the serial number printed on its original pressing (Chang only collects numbered copies, which he says, "[implies] that it is a limited edition, although one running in excess of 3 million"). Select specimens are displayed on a "staff picks" wall, and the album itself plays perpetually over the "store" stereo. True to the exhibition's title, Chang will buy any numbered copies of the White Album that you bring him.
Chang's obsessively single-minded curatorship has turned up a few interesting facts about the record. For instance, his collection is entirely devoid of copies numbered between 2,700,00 and 2,800,00, which Chang says is "statistically unlikely" and suggests that something weird happened to 100,000 copies of the White Album to keep them off the market. He's also collected a large number of copies with sleeves decorated by their former owners, who seem to have taken Richard Hamilton's brutally minimalist cover art as an invitation to supply their own.
From what I can tell from the D&G post, most of the fan-drawn covers are of around a "stoned doodle" level of execution, but this hand-painted one has its own 70s-mellow charm, and the copy where the previous owner seems to have used it as a kind of countercultural guest book is fairly fascinating. And who can resist the folksy charms of this lovingly rendered portrait of a roach clip?
What's really interesting is how spontaneously emergent it is. If you wrap a Beatles record in a plain white sleeve, a certain percentage of listeners will naturally use it as the platform for their own visual interpretations. Humans raised in the modern media-rich environment seem to almost instinctively want to interact with the cultural artifacts that they love by creating more artifacts in various media. The extent of that drive is only recently becoming clear, as the Internet has begun connecting creatively minded devotees of specific cultural properties into the massive, noncanonical content-generating hive mind known collectively as "fandom."
Modern-day fandom can be remarkably serious and sophisticated, not to mention strange. Hatsune Miku, the computer-generated Japanese pop star, has intensely devoted groupies who write songs and choreograph dance moves for her, and others who design her outfits or create the Hatsune Miku-themed pornography that her owners seem remarkably OK with. And One Direction fan-fiction writers have created a romance between two of the boy-band members that, remarkably, has made the transition into the real world, at least in the minds of some fans.
The Japanese, who remain the gold standard for obsessive fandom, have a name for this:niji sousaku, literally, "secondary creation." But the phenomenon isn't limited to the Japanese. It's cross-cultural, and may be a natural reaction of the human mind to the amount of information it's being fed in Internet-enabled societies. Maybe one day the drive to make niji sousaku will be considered just as much a part of the human condition as the need to make art in the first place. In that case these hand-decorated White Albums might be fandom's equivalent of the cave paintings of Lascaux.
An allergy is defined as an abnormal sensitivity to a substance normally tolerated and generally considered harmless such as pollen, food, drugs or even an insect sting. This means that while some substances are as a rule well tolerated by most people, they can induce an allergic reaction in others, mainly due to the presence of the IgE antibody.
Our immune system can produce five distinct classes of immunoglobulins: IgA, IgG, IgM, IgD and IgE. IgA, IgG and IgM protect our bodies against foreign organisms. Despite its presence in our body in only a minute quantity, IgE is a key player in allergic reactions. The reason why some substances induce IgE production and others do not, or why only some individuals develop an allergic reaction is still not fully understood. However, we do know that genetic predisposition plays a significant role in developing allergies.
Allergic reactions are linked to allergen-IgE- mast cells/basophils and chemical mediators that induce immediate symptoms which can be easily controlled with antihistamine. Typically, sneezing, a runny, itchy nose, or wheezing peaks rapidly, but subsides within a few hours. However, some patients can also experience a so-called "delayed phase reaction" after the initial allergic reaction. The delayed phase reaction usually appears about four to six hours after allergen exposure. Delayed phase reaction is caused by inflammation which can only be treated with nasal or inhaled steroids.
Chang's obsessively single-minded curatorship has turned up a few interesting facts about the record. For instance, his collection is entirely devoid of copies numbered between 2,700,00 and 2,800,00, which Chang says is "statistically unlikely" and suggests that something weird happened to 100,000 copies of the White Album to keep them off the market. He's also collected a large number of copies with sleeves decorated by their former owners, who seem to have taken Richard Hamilton's brutally minimalist cover art as an invitation to supply their own.
From what I can tell from the D&G post, most of the fan-drawn covers are of around a "stoned doodle" level of execution, but this hand-painted one has its own 70s-mellow charm, and the copy where the previous owner seems to have used it as a kind of countercultural guest book is fairly fascinating. And who can resist the folksy charms of this lovingly rendered portrait of a roach clip?
What's really interesting is how spontaneously emergent it is. If you wrap a Beatles record in a plain white sleeve, a certain percentage of listeners will naturally use it as the platform for their own visual interpretations. Humans raised in the modern media-rich environment seem to almost instinctively want to interact with the cultural artifacts that they love by creating more artifacts in various media. The extent of that drive is only recently becoming clear, as the Internet has begun connecting creatively minded devotees of specific cultural properties into the massive, noncanonical content-generating hive mind known collectively as "fandom."
Modern-day fandom can be remarkably serious and sophisticated, not to mention strange. Hatsune Miku, the computer-generated Japanese pop star, has intensely devoted groupies who write songs and choreograph dance moves for her, and others who design her outfits or create the Hatsune Miku-themed pornography that her owners seem remarkably OK with. And One Direction fan-fiction writers have created a romance between two of the boy-band members that, remarkably, has made the transition into the real world, at least in the minds of some fans.
The Japanese, who remain the gold standard for obsessive fandom, have a name for this:niji sousaku, literally, "secondary creation." But the phenomenon isn't limited to the Japanese. It's cross-cultural, and may be a natural reaction of the human mind to the amount of information it's being fed in Internet-enabled societies. Maybe one day the drive to make niji sousaku will be considered just as much a part of the human condition as the need to make art in the first place. In that case these hand-decorated White Albums might be fandom's equivalent of the cave paintings of Lascaux.
An allergy is defined as an abnormal sensitivity to a substance normally tolerated and generally considered harmless such as pollen, food, drugs or even an insect sting. This means that while some substances are as a rule well tolerated by most people, they can induce an allergic reaction in others, mainly due to the presence of the IgE antibody.
Our immune system can produce five distinct classes of immunoglobulins: IgA, IgG, IgM, IgD and IgE. IgA, IgG and IgM protect our bodies against foreign organisms. Despite its presence in our body in only a minute quantity, IgE is a key player in allergic reactions. The reason why some substances induce IgE production and others do not, or why only some individuals develop an allergic reaction is still not fully understood. However, we do know that genetic predisposition plays a significant role in developing allergies.
Allergic reactions are linked to allergen-IgE- mast cells/basophils and chemical mediators that induce immediate symptoms which can be easily controlled with antihistamine. Typically, sneezing, a runny, itchy nose, or wheezing peaks rapidly, but subsides within a few hours. However, some patients can also experience a so-called "delayed phase reaction" after the initial allergic reaction. The delayed phase reaction usually appears about four to six hours after allergen exposure. Delayed phase reaction is caused by inflammation which can only be treated with nasal or inhaled steroids.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Ducab showcases range of energy cables
Ducab will be prominently represented at stand 7E10, Hall 7, at the 38th edition of Middle East Electricity running from February 17th to 19th 2012 at the Dubai International Exhibition Centre. Held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, MEE is not just the largest power event in the region but also the longest-running.
Ducab's participation at MEE will see it network with existing suppliers and customers, and also reach out to potential clients in new markets. The company's presence at MEE comes on the back of a string of recent project wins, including an Dhs140m contract for the South Al-Shamkha Infrastructure Development project in Abu Dhabi, Dhs57m for Abu Dhabi's Cleveland Clinic project, Dhs20m for Abu Dhabi's Presidential Palace Development project in Abu Dhabi worth Dhs20m, and Dhs10m for the Ras Al Khair project. The company has also scored projects from the US Government worth Dhs4.4m in Afghanistan.
"Ducab's participation at MEE 2013 helps it reach out a diverse audience of potential channel partners, suppliers and customers while reaffirming ties with existing ones. Ducab wants to maintain leadership in local market, but also take its UAE-manufactured, high quality products to regional and international markets. We believe MEE is the right platform to facilitate that expansion," said Colin McKay, GM- Sales & Marketing, Ducab while introducing the new range of "Tuff DuFlex" wires and cables. Ducab is the only BASEC approved cable and wire manufacturer to offer wires operating in stringent conditions ranging from -40deg C to 105deg C
Ducab's MEE participation will serve as a showcase for the company's extensive range of copper and aluminium cable products, including those in the 400kV class, which will soon be offered from its Ducab-HV plant. Other products on display will include the company's FlamBICC fire resistant cables for residential and industrial use, flexible indoor wiring cables, and control & instrumentation cables for the OGP sector.
Ducab's regional project wins in the recent past have also included an Dhs5m contract for the King Abdullah Financial District Development in Saudi Arabia, Dhs100m for the Dubai Airport Congress Building, Dhs17m for the New York University in Abu Dhabi, Dhs51m for GASCO's Habshan Field Development, Dhs40m for Qatar Petroleum and Dhs37m for Al-Shuaiba Power Station in Kuwait.
Ashish Chaturvedy, Marketing Manager, Ducab, said "Ducab's participation at MEE 2013 will allow us to capitalize on the momentum generated by our recent project wins, and show customers and stakeholders what we offer in terms of world class energy infrastructure for a variety of products. For us, MEE is an excellent event to showcase our achievements and products, and develop sustained, mutually beneficial relationships for the future."
MEE 2013 will host over 1000 exhibitors from 56 countries. It is the region's largest power event, attracting leading names in the power, lighting, new, renewable and nuclear sectors.
"Power is a vital component for modern urban and industrial development. At MEE 2013, we look forward to demonstrating how we can contribute to infrastructural development for iconic projects with our range of extremely high quality, stringently tested wire and cable products," concluded Chaturvedy.
Favourite to win a final, four-year term in today’s presidential election, Correa has brought stability to this notoriously unstable nation, which shuffled through seven presidents in 10 years before he took office in 2007.
He has become a forceful voice of Latin America’s left, befriending ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez while leading a softer socialist “revolution” than his more radical ally.
“The characteristics of my personality are positive for Ecuadorans. I am decisive, direct, objective, rational,” says the US-educated economist. “But if I don’t please someone, what can we do?”
“They didn’t elected me to be Mr Nice Guy to please everybody, but to move the nation forward. And we are undoubtedly making history,” says Correa, 49, who is constitutionally limited to one more run at the presidency.
Correa has become popular in this Andean nation of 15mn people through social programmes funded with the Opec nation’s oil proceeds, and his job approval rating has soared to 80%.
His closest rivals in today’s election are conservative banker Guillermo Lasso and former president Lucio Gutierrez, but they are far behind and Correa is expected to secure enough votes to avoid a run-off.
“People feel that there is someone steering the ship and this generates trust because it brings more work,” said sociologist Hernan Reyes.
“He generates trust with the level of work he delivers, the demands he has on his subordinates and the amount of finished public works.”
Correa has insisted that he is not “anti-capitalist or anti-Yankee,” stating that the left has committed the mistake of denying space to the market and capitalist economy.
But he has also antagonised big business and media groups, seizing the assets of bankers involved in corruption scandals and accusing private news organisations of conspiring to destabilise him. And his plans for large-scale mining have angered indigenous communities.
Correa was born into a lower middle-class family in the southwestern port of Guayaquil, the country’s industrial centre. His father spent time in jail in the US after he was caught carrying narcotics as a “drug mule.”
He was able to study thanks to scholarships which took him to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, before earning a doctorate’s degree in economics from the University of Illinois in the US.
Ducab's participation at MEE will see it network with existing suppliers and customers, and also reach out to potential clients in new markets. The company's presence at MEE comes on the back of a string of recent project wins, including an Dhs140m contract for the South Al-Shamkha Infrastructure Development project in Abu Dhabi, Dhs57m for Abu Dhabi's Cleveland Clinic project, Dhs20m for Abu Dhabi's Presidential Palace Development project in Abu Dhabi worth Dhs20m, and Dhs10m for the Ras Al Khair project. The company has also scored projects from the US Government worth Dhs4.4m in Afghanistan.
"Ducab's participation at MEE 2013 helps it reach out a diverse audience of potential channel partners, suppliers and customers while reaffirming ties with existing ones. Ducab wants to maintain leadership in local market, but also take its UAE-manufactured, high quality products to regional and international markets. We believe MEE is the right platform to facilitate that expansion," said Colin McKay, GM- Sales & Marketing, Ducab while introducing the new range of "Tuff DuFlex" wires and cables. Ducab is the only BASEC approved cable and wire manufacturer to offer wires operating in stringent conditions ranging from -40deg C to 105deg C
Ducab's MEE participation will serve as a showcase for the company's extensive range of copper and aluminium cable products, including those in the 400kV class, which will soon be offered from its Ducab-HV plant. Other products on display will include the company's FlamBICC fire resistant cables for residential and industrial use, flexible indoor wiring cables, and control & instrumentation cables for the OGP sector.
Ducab's regional project wins in the recent past have also included an Dhs5m contract for the King Abdullah Financial District Development in Saudi Arabia, Dhs100m for the Dubai Airport Congress Building, Dhs17m for the New York University in Abu Dhabi, Dhs51m for GASCO's Habshan Field Development, Dhs40m for Qatar Petroleum and Dhs37m for Al-Shuaiba Power Station in Kuwait.
Ashish Chaturvedy, Marketing Manager, Ducab, said "Ducab's participation at MEE 2013 will allow us to capitalize on the momentum generated by our recent project wins, and show customers and stakeholders what we offer in terms of world class energy infrastructure for a variety of products. For us, MEE is an excellent event to showcase our achievements and products, and develop sustained, mutually beneficial relationships for the future."
MEE 2013 will host over 1000 exhibitors from 56 countries. It is the region's largest power event, attracting leading names in the power, lighting, new, renewable and nuclear sectors.
"Power is a vital component for modern urban and industrial development. At MEE 2013, we look forward to demonstrating how we can contribute to infrastructural development for iconic projects with our range of extremely high quality, stringently tested wire and cable products," concluded Chaturvedy.
Favourite to win a final, four-year term in today’s presidential election, Correa has brought stability to this notoriously unstable nation, which shuffled through seven presidents in 10 years before he took office in 2007.
He has become a forceful voice of Latin America’s left, befriending ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez while leading a softer socialist “revolution” than his more radical ally.
“The characteristics of my personality are positive for Ecuadorans. I am decisive, direct, objective, rational,” says the US-educated economist. “But if I don’t please someone, what can we do?”
“They didn’t elected me to be Mr Nice Guy to please everybody, but to move the nation forward. And we are undoubtedly making history,” says Correa, 49, who is constitutionally limited to one more run at the presidency.
Correa has become popular in this Andean nation of 15mn people through social programmes funded with the Opec nation’s oil proceeds, and his job approval rating has soared to 80%.
His closest rivals in today’s election are conservative banker Guillermo Lasso and former president Lucio Gutierrez, but they are far behind and Correa is expected to secure enough votes to avoid a run-off.
“People feel that there is someone steering the ship and this generates trust because it brings more work,” said sociologist Hernan Reyes.
“He generates trust with the level of work he delivers, the demands he has on his subordinates and the amount of finished public works.”
Correa has insisted that he is not “anti-capitalist or anti-Yankee,” stating that the left has committed the mistake of denying space to the market and capitalist economy.
But he has also antagonised big business and media groups, seizing the assets of bankers involved in corruption scandals and accusing private news organisations of conspiring to destabilise him. And his plans for large-scale mining have angered indigenous communities.
Correa was born into a lower middle-class family in the southwestern port of Guayaquil, the country’s industrial centre. His father spent time in jail in the US after he was caught carrying narcotics as a “drug mule.”
He was able to study thanks to scholarships which took him to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, before earning a doctorate’s degree in economics from the University of Illinois in the US.
Soccer faces epic fight against match-fixing
Soccer is falling under a cloud of suspicion as never before, sullied by a multibillion-dollar web of match-fixing that is corrupting increasingly larger parts of the world’s most popular sport.
Internet betting, emboldened criminal gangs and even the economic downturn have created conditions that make soccer — or football, as the sport is called around the world — a lucrative target.
Known as “the beautiful game” for its grace, athleticism and traditions of fair play, soccer is under threat of becoming a dirty game.
“Football is in a disastrous state,” said Chris Eaton, director of sport integrity at the International Centre for Sport Security. “Fixing of matches for criminal gambling fraud purposes is absolutely endemic worldwide ... arrogantly happening daily.”
At least 50 nations in 2012 had match-fixing investigations — almost a quarter of the 209 members of FIFA, soccer’s governing body — involving hundreds of people.
Europol, the European Union’s police body, announced last week that it had found 680 “suspicious” games worldwide since 2008, including 380 in Europe.
Experts interviewed by The Associated Press believe that figure may be low. Sportradar, a company in London that monitors global sports betting, estimates that about 300 soccer games a year in Europe alone could be rigged.
“We do not detect it better,” Eaton said in an interview with the AP. “There’s just more to detect.”
Globalization has propelled the fortunes of popular soccer teams like Manchester United and showered millions in TV revenue on clubs that get into tournaments like Europe’s Champions League.
Criminals have realized that it can be vastly easier to shift gambling profits across borders than it is to move contraband.
“These are real criminals — Italian mafia, Chinese gangs, Russian mafia,” said Sylvia Schenk, a sports expert with corruption watchdog Transparency International.
Ralf Mutschke, FIFA’s security chief, admits that soccer officials had underestimated the scope of match-fixing. He told the AP that “realistically, there is no way” FIFA can tackle organized crime by itself, saying it needs more help from national law enforcement agencies.
The growing threat has prompted the European Union’s 27 nations to unite against match-fixing.
“The scale is such that no country can deal with the problem on its own,” said EU Sport Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou.
Gambling on sports generates hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and up to 90 percent of that is bet on soccer, Interpol chief Ronald Noble told the AP in an interview. Eaton, the former FIFA expert, has cited an estimated $500 billion a year.
The total amount of money generated by sports betting would equal the gross domestic product of Switzerland, ranked 19th in the world.
Match-fixing — where the outcome of a game is determined in advance — is used by gambling rings to make money off bets they know they will win. Matches also are rigged to propel a team into a higher-ranking division where it can earn more revenue.
FIFA has estimated that organized crime takes in as much as $15 billion a year by fixing matches. In Italy alone, a recent rigging scandal is estimated to have produced $2.6 billion for the Camorra and the Mafia crime syndicates, Eaton said.
Soccer officials are well aware that repeated match-fixing will undermine the integrity of their sport, driving away sponsors and reducing the billion-dollar value of lucrative TV contracts.
FIFA earned $2.4 billion in broadcast sales linked to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and already has agreed to $2.3 billion in deals tied to the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The U.K.’s Premier League earned $2.8 billion in broadcast rights for Britain alone in its last multiyear contract. Membership in Europe’s Champions League is worth nearly $60 million a year to each team, according to a lawsuit filed by the Turkish club Fenerbahce.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter has proclaimed “zero tolerance” for match-fixing, and FIFA has pledged $27 million to Interpol to fight it. Computer experts working for FIFA and UEFA — the European soccer body — monitor more than 31,000 European games and thousands of international matches every year, trying to sniff out the betting spikes that can reveal corruption.
So far, however, sports authorities are “proving to be particularly helpless in the face of the transnational resources” available to organized crime, according to a 2012 study on match-fixing. The report warned that the risk of soccer “falling into decay in the face of repeated scandals is genuine and must not be underestimated.”
Some top soccer officials shy away from the dire warnings of academics and law enforcement officials. UEFA chief Gianni Infantino said in a statement that, on average, 203 games — 0.7 percent of the matches that UEFA monitors a year — show some signs of irregularities, “which does not mean they are fixed.”
“It is a small problem, but it’s like a cancer,” Infantino said. “We don’t say 0.7 is nothing. We say 0.7 is 0.7 too much. We can say generally that UEFA competitions are very healthy in this respect.”
Match-fixing has been around for decades, of course, and is not limited to soccer. It has also infected sports like cricket, tennis, horse racing and even volleyball. The U.S. has its own sordid history of gambling scandals, from baseball’s Black Sox in the 1919 World Series to a handful of point-shaving schemes in college basketball over the years, to an NBA referee taking money from a professional gambler for inside tips on basketball games, including some that he officiated in 2007.
Still, nothing approaches the scale of the match-fixing allegations now hitting soccer, because of the sheer number of games played and the enormous Asian betting interest in European games, according to David Forrest, an economist at the U.K.’s University of Salford Business School, one of the co-authors of the 2012 report.
In January alone, FIFA banned 41 players in South Korea from soccer for life due to match-fixing. That follows 51 worldwide bans last year — 22 of them for life — on players, officials and referees from Croatia, Finland, Guatemala, Italy, Nicaragua, Portugal, South Korea and Turkey.
FIFA bans include some elite figures in the sport. Antonio Conte, coach of the Italian club Juventus — a team whose winning tradition rivals that of baseball’s New York Yankees — returned in December after a four-month ban for failing to report match-fixing.
Forrest’s report said that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., the war on terror relegated the fight against organized crime to a distinct second place, and that allowed gangs “to invest in new areas of the economy with relative impunity for nearly 10 years.”
Eaton attributes the surge in match-fixing to an exponential rise in online gambling — “at least 500 percent, and likely far more” — in the last decade.
Criminals have targeted every level of the game: the World Cup, regional tournaments such as the Champions League, high-powered divisions like England’s Premier League and Italy’s Serie A, “friendly” exhibition contests between national teams, all the way down to semipro games in the soccer wilderness.
Criminals are always trying to find the sweet spot between how poorly the players are paid and how much bettors want to wager on a game, Forrest said. That’s why fixers don’t try too hard to target the Super Bowl, he says, because “the bribes would be so high to convince the athletes to join.”
Internet betting, emboldened criminal gangs and even the economic downturn have created conditions that make soccer — or football, as the sport is called around the world — a lucrative target.
Known as “the beautiful game” for its grace, athleticism and traditions of fair play, soccer is under threat of becoming a dirty game.
“Football is in a disastrous state,” said Chris Eaton, director of sport integrity at the International Centre for Sport Security. “Fixing of matches for criminal gambling fraud purposes is absolutely endemic worldwide ... arrogantly happening daily.”
At least 50 nations in 2012 had match-fixing investigations — almost a quarter of the 209 members of FIFA, soccer’s governing body — involving hundreds of people.
Europol, the European Union’s police body, announced last week that it had found 680 “suspicious” games worldwide since 2008, including 380 in Europe.
Experts interviewed by The Associated Press believe that figure may be low. Sportradar, a company in London that monitors global sports betting, estimates that about 300 soccer games a year in Europe alone could be rigged.
“We do not detect it better,” Eaton said in an interview with the AP. “There’s just more to detect.”
Globalization has propelled the fortunes of popular soccer teams like Manchester United and showered millions in TV revenue on clubs that get into tournaments like Europe’s Champions League.
Criminals have realized that it can be vastly easier to shift gambling profits across borders than it is to move contraband.
“These are real criminals — Italian mafia, Chinese gangs, Russian mafia,” said Sylvia Schenk, a sports expert with corruption watchdog Transparency International.
Ralf Mutschke, FIFA’s security chief, admits that soccer officials had underestimated the scope of match-fixing. He told the AP that “realistically, there is no way” FIFA can tackle organized crime by itself, saying it needs more help from national law enforcement agencies.
The growing threat has prompted the European Union’s 27 nations to unite against match-fixing.
“The scale is such that no country can deal with the problem on its own,” said EU Sport Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou.
Gambling on sports generates hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and up to 90 percent of that is bet on soccer, Interpol chief Ronald Noble told the AP in an interview. Eaton, the former FIFA expert, has cited an estimated $500 billion a year.
The total amount of money generated by sports betting would equal the gross domestic product of Switzerland, ranked 19th in the world.
Match-fixing — where the outcome of a game is determined in advance — is used by gambling rings to make money off bets they know they will win. Matches also are rigged to propel a team into a higher-ranking division where it can earn more revenue.
FIFA has estimated that organized crime takes in as much as $15 billion a year by fixing matches. In Italy alone, a recent rigging scandal is estimated to have produced $2.6 billion for the Camorra and the Mafia crime syndicates, Eaton said.
Soccer officials are well aware that repeated match-fixing will undermine the integrity of their sport, driving away sponsors and reducing the billion-dollar value of lucrative TV contracts.
FIFA earned $2.4 billion in broadcast sales linked to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and already has agreed to $2.3 billion in deals tied to the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The U.K.’s Premier League earned $2.8 billion in broadcast rights for Britain alone in its last multiyear contract. Membership in Europe’s Champions League is worth nearly $60 million a year to each team, according to a lawsuit filed by the Turkish club Fenerbahce.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter has proclaimed “zero tolerance” for match-fixing, and FIFA has pledged $27 million to Interpol to fight it. Computer experts working for FIFA and UEFA — the European soccer body — monitor more than 31,000 European games and thousands of international matches every year, trying to sniff out the betting spikes that can reveal corruption.
So far, however, sports authorities are “proving to be particularly helpless in the face of the transnational resources” available to organized crime, according to a 2012 study on match-fixing. The report warned that the risk of soccer “falling into decay in the face of repeated scandals is genuine and must not be underestimated.”
Some top soccer officials shy away from the dire warnings of academics and law enforcement officials. UEFA chief Gianni Infantino said in a statement that, on average, 203 games — 0.7 percent of the matches that UEFA monitors a year — show some signs of irregularities, “which does not mean they are fixed.”
“It is a small problem, but it’s like a cancer,” Infantino said. “We don’t say 0.7 is nothing. We say 0.7 is 0.7 too much. We can say generally that UEFA competitions are very healthy in this respect.”
Match-fixing has been around for decades, of course, and is not limited to soccer. It has also infected sports like cricket, tennis, horse racing and even volleyball. The U.S. has its own sordid history of gambling scandals, from baseball’s Black Sox in the 1919 World Series to a handful of point-shaving schemes in college basketball over the years, to an NBA referee taking money from a professional gambler for inside tips on basketball games, including some that he officiated in 2007.
Still, nothing approaches the scale of the match-fixing allegations now hitting soccer, because of the sheer number of games played and the enormous Asian betting interest in European games, according to David Forrest, an economist at the U.K.’s University of Salford Business School, one of the co-authors of the 2012 report.
In January alone, FIFA banned 41 players in South Korea from soccer for life due to match-fixing. That follows 51 worldwide bans last year — 22 of them for life — on players, officials and referees from Croatia, Finland, Guatemala, Italy, Nicaragua, Portugal, South Korea and Turkey.
FIFA bans include some elite figures in the sport. Antonio Conte, coach of the Italian club Juventus — a team whose winning tradition rivals that of baseball’s New York Yankees — returned in December after a four-month ban for failing to report match-fixing.
Forrest’s report said that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., the war on terror relegated the fight against organized crime to a distinct second place, and that allowed gangs “to invest in new areas of the economy with relative impunity for nearly 10 years.”
Eaton attributes the surge in match-fixing to an exponential rise in online gambling — “at least 500 percent, and likely far more” — in the last decade.
Criminals have targeted every level of the game: the World Cup, regional tournaments such as the Champions League, high-powered divisions like England’s Premier League and Italy’s Serie A, “friendly” exhibition contests between national teams, all the way down to semipro games in the soccer wilderness.
Criminals are always trying to find the sweet spot between how poorly the players are paid and how much bettors want to wager on a game, Forrest said. That’s why fixers don’t try too hard to target the Super Bowl, he says, because “the bribes would be so high to convince the athletes to join.”
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Vaccine centre awaits certification from national bodies
Nearly 17 months after construction finished on the $140-million International Vaccine Centre, researchers have yet to do benchwork in one of its high-end labs.
InterVac, which will draw researchers from around the world to develop and test both human and animal vaccines, is the biggest facility of its kind constructed in Canada in the last two decades, says VIDO-InterVac CEO and director Andrew Potter.
Before anyone can begin handling infectious agents in the facility, it needs certification from both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
"This is a big event and I think everybody on both sides wants to make sure we are doing this right," Potter said.
Joined by an overhead walkway to the existing Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) building on the University of Saskatchewan campus, the 145,000-square foot InterVac facility has six "containment Level 3" labs, which are equipped for the safe handling of organisms that transmit through the air and can cause life-threatening diseases. Experiments with tuberculosis, rabies, hepatitis C, avian influenza, hantavirus and anthrax will one day take place in these labs.
The necessary precautions are tremendous. Associate director of operations and maintenance Cam Ewart scans his fingerprint while holding up a magnetic card bearing the same signature before the security system matches them and unlatches the door to the labs. In each lab, a continuous whoosh of air is audible as negative pressure continually replaces it, drawing in clean air from outside and sending old air to be filtered.
A researcher must pass through four doors to get into a lab - a clean room, a decontamination shower and a dirty room - and each one won't open until the one behind it latches. Any used material must be baked in a sterilizer before it leaves. To contain any potential contamination to one lab or room, every pipe must be perfectly sealed in place.
In another wing, 18 rooms for experiments on animals from mice to livestock have submarine-like, airtight doors. A gating system for corralling larger animals is bolted to walls and hangs from the ceiling inside some of the labs.
In what will be Canada's only aerosolized pathogen lab, workers wearing protective suits with respirators will use a Madison aerosol chamber (one of 25 in the world) to infect animals with airborne diseases.
Once it is operating, Inter-Vac will be one of a handful of places in the world where development of both animal and human vaccines takes place.
Regulation of these types of facilities is strict, as the stakes for mishaps are high. In 2004, three workers at a Seattle infectious diseases lab were exposed to tuberculosis when a Madison aerosol chamber leaked.
"The danger to the public is non-existent, but the danger to the staff working over there is very real," Potter said.
Designed to keep ticking if any system fails, backup generators and extra fans will keep the air within each lab contained in the event of a breakdown.
When construction finished in fall 2011, Ewart was tasked with commissioning the building, meaning he pushed each system to its limit to see if it would trip. The testing took months.
"The ramifications of air stopping flow in this building are very significant," Ewart said.
Because the nature of the work requires strict security measures to stave off bioterrorist threats, staff must also be trained as first responders, Potter said.
In an email, CFIA spokes-man Rod Lister said that agency and the public health agency performed a certification inspection on InterVac in October 2012. The inspectors are experts in containment standards, and check all equipment and systems are functioning properly, test the ventilation systems and check each surface is perfectly in tact to prevent any leakage.
Meant to attract publicly and privately funded re-search alike, InterVac can't sign any contracts with researchers until the facility is certified. The federal government must also approve any experiments taking place in InterVac, but that process is more efficient, Potter says.
But the VIDO-InterVac director isn't worried about losing clientele. Waiting lists for Level 3 facilities are long, and demand for the labs is high.
Many similar facilities are owned by the military or governments and are not as accessible to university researchers, he says.
University of Saskatchewan researchers waiting to use the facility aren't stalled, either - they're using other facilities such as the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. What these officials clearly are anxious about, though, is the next possible pandemic.
InterVac, which will draw researchers from around the world to develop and test both human and animal vaccines, is the biggest facility of its kind constructed in Canada in the last two decades, says VIDO-InterVac CEO and director Andrew Potter.
Before anyone can begin handling infectious agents in the facility, it needs certification from both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
"This is a big event and I think everybody on both sides wants to make sure we are doing this right," Potter said.
Joined by an overhead walkway to the existing Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) building on the University of Saskatchewan campus, the 145,000-square foot InterVac facility has six "containment Level 3" labs, which are equipped for the safe handling of organisms that transmit through the air and can cause life-threatening diseases. Experiments with tuberculosis, rabies, hepatitis C, avian influenza, hantavirus and anthrax will one day take place in these labs.
The necessary precautions are tremendous. Associate director of operations and maintenance Cam Ewart scans his fingerprint while holding up a magnetic card bearing the same signature before the security system matches them and unlatches the door to the labs. In each lab, a continuous whoosh of air is audible as negative pressure continually replaces it, drawing in clean air from outside and sending old air to be filtered.
A researcher must pass through four doors to get into a lab - a clean room, a decontamination shower and a dirty room - and each one won't open until the one behind it latches. Any used material must be baked in a sterilizer before it leaves. To contain any potential contamination to one lab or room, every pipe must be perfectly sealed in place.
In another wing, 18 rooms for experiments on animals from mice to livestock have submarine-like, airtight doors. A gating system for corralling larger animals is bolted to walls and hangs from the ceiling inside some of the labs.
In what will be Canada's only aerosolized pathogen lab, workers wearing protective suits with respirators will use a Madison aerosol chamber (one of 25 in the world) to infect animals with airborne diseases.
Once it is operating, Inter-Vac will be one of a handful of places in the world where development of both animal and human vaccines takes place.
Regulation of these types of facilities is strict, as the stakes for mishaps are high. In 2004, three workers at a Seattle infectious diseases lab were exposed to tuberculosis when a Madison aerosol chamber leaked.
"The danger to the public is non-existent, but the danger to the staff working over there is very real," Potter said.
Designed to keep ticking if any system fails, backup generators and extra fans will keep the air within each lab contained in the event of a breakdown.
When construction finished in fall 2011, Ewart was tasked with commissioning the building, meaning he pushed each system to its limit to see if it would trip. The testing took months.
"The ramifications of air stopping flow in this building are very significant," Ewart said.
Because the nature of the work requires strict security measures to stave off bioterrorist threats, staff must also be trained as first responders, Potter said.
In an email, CFIA spokes-man Rod Lister said that agency and the public health agency performed a certification inspection on InterVac in October 2012. The inspectors are experts in containment standards, and check all equipment and systems are functioning properly, test the ventilation systems and check each surface is perfectly in tact to prevent any leakage.
Meant to attract publicly and privately funded re-search alike, InterVac can't sign any contracts with researchers until the facility is certified. The federal government must also approve any experiments taking place in InterVac, but that process is more efficient, Potter says.
But the VIDO-InterVac director isn't worried about losing clientele. Waiting lists for Level 3 facilities are long, and demand for the labs is high.
Many similar facilities are owned by the military or governments and are not as accessible to university researchers, he says.
University of Saskatchewan researchers waiting to use the facility aren't stalled, either - they're using other facilities such as the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. What these officials clearly are anxious about, though, is the next possible pandemic.
Sought to improve safety for officers at state prisons
Gov. Nikki Haley wants South Carolina lawmakers working on next year’s state budget to come up with an additional $18 million for the state Department of Corrections to improve safety for state corrections officers and the public.
She included the money in her budget proposal after two hostage situations at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville last year. A corrections officer was stabbed during one of them.
In her State of the State address on January 16th, Haley said, “As a legislator, it was always my belief that giving money to corrections was giving money to criminals, and that there were better, more noble places our tax dollars should go.”
Now, she says, she realizes the money isn’t going to prisoners; it’s going to the officers and protecting them.
Lee Correctional Warden Michael McCall says, “Locking up an inmate and throwing away the key? I was raised that way, too. That doesn’t work. These guys are going to be our neighbors someday, and just locking ‘em up and throwing away the key is not making them a better human being.”
The additional money the governor is asking for would build two guard towers at Lee, which now has none. The towers would allow officers to not only watch for inmates trying to escape, but also let them watch for friends and family members of inmates coming up to throw contraband over the fences.
The Department of Corrections says it confiscated about 3,300 cell phones last year. McCall says a cell phone now goes for around $800 inside a prison. “They can coordinate an escape. They can also get a hold of a victim out there with these cell phones, which we’ve had cases like that — they’re calling the victims and hassling them with these cell phones,” McCall says.
The extra money would also buy hand-held metal detectors for officers to use to find shanks and other contraband on inmates. Gov. Haley’s plan would also give a 3 percent pay raise to officers who work in the state’s maximum security prisons, like Lee.
McCall has 54 vacancies right now and has a hard time finding qualified officers willing to work there. The starting salary for corrections officers is $25,000.
Some of the money would also be used to change the ventilation system in the prison cells. Now, four or six cells share vent shafts. When an officer comes to search a room for contraband, the inmate will tie string to the contraband and “fish” it to another cell. McCall says he doesn’t have enough staff to have officers watch the connected cells while another searches.
Five large courtrooms were created along with meeting rooms and suites for the judges including private kitchens, toilets and showers. Three former holding cells are expected to be used for storing valuable archives, according to Adam McCormack of the selling agent.
The court fixtures have been removed and the building, which extends to 2,029sq m (21,839sq ft), has been redecorated to appeal to new owners. Although modernised, the building still features the timber panelled, tiled entrance hall dedicated to the former hospital’s benefactors and a stair hall to the west with arches supported by tapered marble columns.
The Richmond originally formed part of a complex of three hospitals – the others were the Whitworth and Hardwick – collectively known as St Laurence’s. Developer Liam Carroll of Zoe Developments converted the Hardwick into an apartment block and built about 600 apartments in the immediate area during the property boom. He attempted but failed to buy the Richmond. The Whitworth has been owned since 2002 by the Irish Nurses’ Organisation, which uses it for meetings, training and study.
In 1994, the Richmond and the Whitworth were converted for use as business incubation centres to help deal with high unemployment in the inner city. The experiment led to the launch of a range of new enterprises which capitalised on the impressive redbrick, copper-domed Richmond to show as the address of the businesses.
The Richmond opened as a hospital in 1901 with the two wings of the U-shaped building accommodating the wards. There was one window for each bed. The double loggias at the ends of the wings allowed sheltered access to fresh air for patients. The Irish Times report on the opening, on April 22nd, 1901, boasted that it was “practically fireproof”, was fitted with modern ventilation including warmed filtered air for the theatres and “the whole building is raised from the ground upon high arches”.
Now 110 years later, Space Property Group has been looking at the likely uses that the Richmond could be put to by a new owner. These could include an office headquarters, educational or medical use, nursing home, museum, library, residential scheme or serviced offices. The agency also suggests that the building could end up as a casino.
She included the money in her budget proposal after two hostage situations at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville last year. A corrections officer was stabbed during one of them.
In her State of the State address on January 16th, Haley said, “As a legislator, it was always my belief that giving money to corrections was giving money to criminals, and that there were better, more noble places our tax dollars should go.”
Now, she says, she realizes the money isn’t going to prisoners; it’s going to the officers and protecting them.
Lee Correctional Warden Michael McCall says, “Locking up an inmate and throwing away the key? I was raised that way, too. That doesn’t work. These guys are going to be our neighbors someday, and just locking ‘em up and throwing away the key is not making them a better human being.”
The additional money the governor is asking for would build two guard towers at Lee, which now has none. The towers would allow officers to not only watch for inmates trying to escape, but also let them watch for friends and family members of inmates coming up to throw contraband over the fences.
The Department of Corrections says it confiscated about 3,300 cell phones last year. McCall says a cell phone now goes for around $800 inside a prison. “They can coordinate an escape. They can also get a hold of a victim out there with these cell phones, which we’ve had cases like that — they’re calling the victims and hassling them with these cell phones,” McCall says.
The extra money would also buy hand-held metal detectors for officers to use to find shanks and other contraband on inmates. Gov. Haley’s plan would also give a 3 percent pay raise to officers who work in the state’s maximum security prisons, like Lee.
McCall has 54 vacancies right now and has a hard time finding qualified officers willing to work there. The starting salary for corrections officers is $25,000.
Some of the money would also be used to change the ventilation system in the prison cells. Now, four or six cells share vent shafts. When an officer comes to search a room for contraband, the inmate will tie string to the contraband and “fish” it to another cell. McCall says he doesn’t have enough staff to have officers watch the connected cells while another searches.
Five large courtrooms were created along with meeting rooms and suites for the judges including private kitchens, toilets and showers. Three former holding cells are expected to be used for storing valuable archives, according to Adam McCormack of the selling agent.
The court fixtures have been removed and the building, which extends to 2,029sq m (21,839sq ft), has been redecorated to appeal to new owners. Although modernised, the building still features the timber panelled, tiled entrance hall dedicated to the former hospital’s benefactors and a stair hall to the west with arches supported by tapered marble columns.
The Richmond originally formed part of a complex of three hospitals – the others were the Whitworth and Hardwick – collectively known as St Laurence’s. Developer Liam Carroll of Zoe Developments converted the Hardwick into an apartment block and built about 600 apartments in the immediate area during the property boom. He attempted but failed to buy the Richmond. The Whitworth has been owned since 2002 by the Irish Nurses’ Organisation, which uses it for meetings, training and study.
In 1994, the Richmond and the Whitworth were converted for use as business incubation centres to help deal with high unemployment in the inner city. The experiment led to the launch of a range of new enterprises which capitalised on the impressive redbrick, copper-domed Richmond to show as the address of the businesses.
The Richmond opened as a hospital in 1901 with the two wings of the U-shaped building accommodating the wards. There was one window for each bed. The double loggias at the ends of the wings allowed sheltered access to fresh air for patients. The Irish Times report on the opening, on April 22nd, 1901, boasted that it was “practically fireproof”, was fitted with modern ventilation including warmed filtered air for the theatres and “the whole building is raised from the ground upon high arches”.
Now 110 years later, Space Property Group has been looking at the likely uses that the Richmond could be put to by a new owner. These could include an office headquarters, educational or medical use, nursing home, museum, library, residential scheme or serviced offices. The agency also suggests that the building could end up as a casino.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Iraq stock sale sign of investor confidence
An Iraqi telecom company raised nearly $1.3 billion Sunday on Baghdad's small stock exchange in one of the region's biggest share offers in years - a sign of investor confidence in the fledgling private sector despite violence that still plagues the country.
In a reminder of Iraq's volatility, several suicide attackers on foot and in two explosives-laden cars assaulted a provincial police headquarters in northern Iraq, killing at least 15 people and wounding 90. Rescue workers led away dazed survivors, including veiled women climbing over debris, and pulled several mangled and scorched bodies from the rubble.
The level of violence has dropped sharply since the worst sectarian fighting in 2006-2007, yet bombings and shootings still kill dozens of people every month. Investors say the continued security risks, along with concerns about official red tape and corruption, have restricted the growth of Iraq's private sector.
Iraq sits on vast oil reserves, and foreign investment has focused heavily on the government-controlled energy sector.
So it was good news for the Iraq economy when nearly two-thirds of the money raised by the telecom company came from foreign buyers.
"Iraq is a very difficult place to do business in," said Shwan Taha, head of Rabee Securities, the brokerage firm that organized Sunday's share float of Asiacell, one of Iraq's three main mobile phone service providers. "Iraq came out of a long dictatorship. We had 30 years of war and sanctions. We missed a lot of trains, not only one."
Iraq is now catching up, he said. "No foreign investors come to Iraq thinking they are investing in Switzerland, and for Iraqis themselves, these bombings are becoming daily occurrences."
Sunday's share sale by Asiacell more than doubled the market capitalization of the low-volume Iraq Stock Exchange in a single day, from $4.7 billion to $9.65 billion, said Rabee Securities.
Asiacell had offered a quarter of its shares, or 67.5 billion. The initial share price was set at 22 Iraqi dinars, or just under 2 cents. Foreigners bought about 70 percent of the float and Iraqis bought 30 percent, for a total of $1.24 billion, the brokerage firm said.
Regular trading of the shares is to begin Monday.
It was the first stock float on the ISX, which was set up in 2004, a year after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Taha al-Rubaye, the head of the exchange, said he believes it's also the largest initial public offering, or IPO, of shares in the Middle East in nearly five years.
Al-Rubaye said he hoped the Asiacell deal will send a signal to the government that investor interest is high and that it must do more, such as carrying out regulatory reforms, to encourage private business - in not just energy.
Iraq has a Gross Domestic Product of some $130 billion, largely due to its oil wealth, and 95 percent of the state budget comes from the proceeds of oil exports.
"It's not easy to change ... the mentality," al-Rubaye said of Iraq's decision-makers. "There are delays. They are not in a hurry. But I believe it's also time because the relationship between Iraqis and the world is growing up."
Padraig O'Hannelly, editor of Iraq Business News, an online newsletter, said Iraq offers significant opportunities outside the oil sector.
"Concerns about security, bureaucracy and corruption have clearly deterred many potential foreign investors, while others with a long-term view have chosen to engage with Iraq and work through the difficulties," he said.
During Sunday's trading session in Baghdad, several dozen Iraqis, many of retirement age, followed developments on large screens in the stock market.
First-time investor Adnan Jassim, 63, a retired government employee, said he bought 10,000 shares of Asiacell and would have bought even more if he could have afforded them. "It's a well-known company," he said, explaining his decision to enter the stock market.
Asiacell, which has nearly 10 million subscribers, competes against Zain Iraq, part of Kuwait's Zain, and Korek, an affiliate of France Telecom. The Gulf state of Qatar's government-backed Qatar Telecom had a majority stake in Asiacell before Sunday's sale.
All three Iraqi mobile phone companies had been required to list shares on the stock exchange as a condition of their 15-year operating licenses. All three missed a deadline in August 2011 to offer shares to the public.
As the trading was under way in Baghdad, the suicide attackers struck in the disputed city of Kirkuk, some 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of the capital.
Kirkuk is home to a mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen - all with competing claims to the oil-rich area. The Kurds want to incorporate it into their self-ruled region in Iraq's north, but Arabs and Turkomen are opposed.
In the attack, a car bomber drove his vehicle into the Kirkuk police headquarters, two police officers said. Then a bomb placed in a parked car was detonated. After the second explosion, two suicide attackers armed with machine guns and grenades tried to storm the station. They were killed before they could enter the building or detonate their belts rigged with explosives.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, car bombs and coordinated attacks are favorite tactics for Sunni insurgents, such as al-Qaida's Iraq branch.
The insurgent attacks are part of Iraq's persistent sectarian strife. In recent months, tensions have been mounting between the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the country's Sunni and Kurdish minority.
In a reminder of Iraq's volatility, several suicide attackers on foot and in two explosives-laden cars assaulted a provincial police headquarters in northern Iraq, killing at least 15 people and wounding 90. Rescue workers led away dazed survivors, including veiled women climbing over debris, and pulled several mangled and scorched bodies from the rubble.
The level of violence has dropped sharply since the worst sectarian fighting in 2006-2007, yet bombings and shootings still kill dozens of people every month. Investors say the continued security risks, along with concerns about official red tape and corruption, have restricted the growth of Iraq's private sector.
Iraq sits on vast oil reserves, and foreign investment has focused heavily on the government-controlled energy sector.
So it was good news for the Iraq economy when nearly two-thirds of the money raised by the telecom company came from foreign buyers.
"Iraq is a very difficult place to do business in," said Shwan Taha, head of Rabee Securities, the brokerage firm that organized Sunday's share float of Asiacell, one of Iraq's three main mobile phone service providers. "Iraq came out of a long dictatorship. We had 30 years of war and sanctions. We missed a lot of trains, not only one."
Iraq is now catching up, he said. "No foreign investors come to Iraq thinking they are investing in Switzerland, and for Iraqis themselves, these bombings are becoming daily occurrences."
Sunday's share sale by Asiacell more than doubled the market capitalization of the low-volume Iraq Stock Exchange in a single day, from $4.7 billion to $9.65 billion, said Rabee Securities.
Asiacell had offered a quarter of its shares, or 67.5 billion. The initial share price was set at 22 Iraqi dinars, or just under 2 cents. Foreigners bought about 70 percent of the float and Iraqis bought 30 percent, for a total of $1.24 billion, the brokerage firm said.
Regular trading of the shares is to begin Monday.
It was the first stock float on the ISX, which was set up in 2004, a year after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Taha al-Rubaye, the head of the exchange, said he believes it's also the largest initial public offering, or IPO, of shares in the Middle East in nearly five years.
Al-Rubaye said he hoped the Asiacell deal will send a signal to the government that investor interest is high and that it must do more, such as carrying out regulatory reforms, to encourage private business - in not just energy.
Iraq has a Gross Domestic Product of some $130 billion, largely due to its oil wealth, and 95 percent of the state budget comes from the proceeds of oil exports.
"It's not easy to change ... the mentality," al-Rubaye said of Iraq's decision-makers. "There are delays. They are not in a hurry. But I believe it's also time because the relationship between Iraqis and the world is growing up."
Padraig O'Hannelly, editor of Iraq Business News, an online newsletter, said Iraq offers significant opportunities outside the oil sector.
"Concerns about security, bureaucracy and corruption have clearly deterred many potential foreign investors, while others with a long-term view have chosen to engage with Iraq and work through the difficulties," he said.
During Sunday's trading session in Baghdad, several dozen Iraqis, many of retirement age, followed developments on large screens in the stock market.
First-time investor Adnan Jassim, 63, a retired government employee, said he bought 10,000 shares of Asiacell and would have bought even more if he could have afforded them. "It's a well-known company," he said, explaining his decision to enter the stock market.
Asiacell, which has nearly 10 million subscribers, competes against Zain Iraq, part of Kuwait's Zain, and Korek, an affiliate of France Telecom. The Gulf state of Qatar's government-backed Qatar Telecom had a majority stake in Asiacell before Sunday's sale.
All three Iraqi mobile phone companies had been required to list shares on the stock exchange as a condition of their 15-year operating licenses. All three missed a deadline in August 2011 to offer shares to the public.
As the trading was under way in Baghdad, the suicide attackers struck in the disputed city of Kirkuk, some 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of the capital.
Kirkuk is home to a mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen - all with competing claims to the oil-rich area. The Kurds want to incorporate it into their self-ruled region in Iraq's north, but Arabs and Turkomen are opposed.
In the attack, a car bomber drove his vehicle into the Kirkuk police headquarters, two police officers said. Then a bomb placed in a parked car was detonated. After the second explosion, two suicide attackers armed with machine guns and grenades tried to storm the station. They were killed before they could enter the building or detonate their belts rigged with explosives.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, car bombs and coordinated attacks are favorite tactics for Sunni insurgents, such as al-Qaida's Iraq branch.
The insurgent attacks are part of Iraq's persistent sectarian strife. In recent months, tensions have been mounting between the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the country's Sunni and Kurdish minority.
The fight for Joe Frazier’s Philadelphia gym signals
Outside of Joe Frazier’s Gym in north Philadelphia, the sidewalk is littered with an empty handle of Gordon’s gin, a yellow flash of caution tape and scattered pebbles of broken glass.
More than a year after Frazier’s 2011 death, preservation advocates are seeking protective designations for the building in a campaign that is a sign of a larger cultural shift in the historic preservation community. At the movement’s heart is a push for inclusiveness in a field that has long privileged the stories and accomplishments of influential white men and paid little if any attention to anyone else.
“We’ve done an analysis over the past year,” said Stephanie Toothman, the National Park Service’s associate director for cultural resources. “The percentage of sites that specifically represent women and groups such as African-Americans, Native Americans and Asian-Pacific Americans ranges from 3 to 8 percent.”
Compared with the makeup of the U.S. population, that percentage is minuscule. Women make up slightly more than 50 percent of the population in the United States, and white men account for about 36 percent of the overall population, according the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“They often say that history is written by the winners, but it’s also narrated by the people who have the podium,” said Page Harrington, executive director of Sewall-Belmont House and Museum, the Washington, D.C., headquarters for the National Woman’s Party throughout much of the 20th century. “So if you have fewer women in leadership positions — in universities, or writing textbooks, or in Congress — you have fewer of those stories that are necessarily making their way into the public spectrum that the next generation of scholars looks at, and so on, and so on.”
The fight to save Frazier’s gym seems appropriately symbolic for a man who fought his way to the top. Frazier was an underdog before he became a champ. He worked in a Philadelphia slaughterhouse, where he practiced throwing punches on slabs of beef hanging in a freezing meat locker. Sylvester Stallone borrowed that training habit for a montage in the boxing film “Rocky.” And while Philadelphia erected a statute of Stallone’s fictional boxer, the fate of Frazier’s gym is uncertain.
Her photograph, "The Grape Escape," features tiny men picking a life-size grape and hoisting it onto a miniature pickup figurine. Then there's "Family Fun," which depicts a tiny figurine riding a giant bottle rocket as a crowd cheers.
"I just can't stop looking at them, I've never seen anything like it," said 32-year-old Rex Irving of Orlando, looking at another one of Honeycutt's collection on Saturday where miniature figures are standing atop a donut brushing on the glaze.
Irving was one of an expected 250,000 expected to come to the city's downtown today for the two-day Mount Dora Arts Festival.
Beth Miller, executive co-chair for the Mount Dora Center for the Arts, said it's not a surprise that such a picturesque city would attract large crowds.
This weekend's show has almost every type of art imaginable, including paintings, prints, sculptures and ceramics. Multi-media artist Kwang Cha Brown, a South Korea native, combines her personal philosophy with her American training to create color and image. She displayed a dozen of works Saturday, mostly oil paintings of landscapes with muted colors.
According to his online page at Bowling Green State University where he teaches painting, Briggs’ aesthetic focus is “Representational drawings and paintings investigating the nature of human vulnerability as it relates to subcultural social structures.” Threshold also got a $500 prize in a painting category.
Second place ($500) went to Jessica Summers for her inviting Cooking in Pajamas: Portrait of My Mother: In a golden hue, a gray-haired woman cooks up a storm, but it’s not breakfast. Summers also won $500 for another oil painting, a retro-riff called Self Portrait as Domestic Goddess, in which the dark-haired artist is garbed in a lacy black cocktail dress, holding her casserole in the kitchen. It took second place in the Findlay Art League’s contest in November.
Both of the two fiber pieces received nods. Monica Edgerton-Sperry’s Self Portrait is a cluster of shells, buttons, beads, leather, and embroidery on linen. Look at the eyes, the hair holding a paintbrush, and the tiny red beads in the upper right.
Susan Krueger’s large Guilt Quilt disturbs with its female target and selection of knives ready for tossing: Are they her guilts or the tools with which to attack her guilt?
Winning no formal prize other than perhaps the “did you see...?” is William Barry Roberts’ 36-inch-square oil/charcoal/pencil painting, Drunken Pirate Scoundrels Manning their Cannons. A little lewd and absurdly macho, two big-bellied, bearded chaps lift their shirts and push their flabby breasts together. One’s hair sports a peacock feather, the other has a lit fuse on either side of his head a la Blackbeard the pirate.
More than a year after Frazier’s 2011 death, preservation advocates are seeking protective designations for the building in a campaign that is a sign of a larger cultural shift in the historic preservation community. At the movement’s heart is a push for inclusiveness in a field that has long privileged the stories and accomplishments of influential white men and paid little if any attention to anyone else.
“We’ve done an analysis over the past year,” said Stephanie Toothman, the National Park Service’s associate director for cultural resources. “The percentage of sites that specifically represent women and groups such as African-Americans, Native Americans and Asian-Pacific Americans ranges from 3 to 8 percent.”
Compared with the makeup of the U.S. population, that percentage is minuscule. Women make up slightly more than 50 percent of the population in the United States, and white men account for about 36 percent of the overall population, according the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“They often say that history is written by the winners, but it’s also narrated by the people who have the podium,” said Page Harrington, executive director of Sewall-Belmont House and Museum, the Washington, D.C., headquarters for the National Woman’s Party throughout much of the 20th century. “So if you have fewer women in leadership positions — in universities, or writing textbooks, or in Congress — you have fewer of those stories that are necessarily making their way into the public spectrum that the next generation of scholars looks at, and so on, and so on.”
The fight to save Frazier’s gym seems appropriately symbolic for a man who fought his way to the top. Frazier was an underdog before he became a champ. He worked in a Philadelphia slaughterhouse, where he practiced throwing punches on slabs of beef hanging in a freezing meat locker. Sylvester Stallone borrowed that training habit for a montage in the boxing film “Rocky.” And while Philadelphia erected a statute of Stallone’s fictional boxer, the fate of Frazier’s gym is uncertain.
Her photograph, "The Grape Escape," features tiny men picking a life-size grape and hoisting it onto a miniature pickup figurine. Then there's "Family Fun," which depicts a tiny figurine riding a giant bottle rocket as a crowd cheers.
"I just can't stop looking at them, I've never seen anything like it," said 32-year-old Rex Irving of Orlando, looking at another one of Honeycutt's collection on Saturday where miniature figures are standing atop a donut brushing on the glaze.
Irving was one of an expected 250,000 expected to come to the city's downtown today for the two-day Mount Dora Arts Festival.
Beth Miller, executive co-chair for the Mount Dora Center for the Arts, said it's not a surprise that such a picturesque city would attract large crowds.
This weekend's show has almost every type of art imaginable, including paintings, prints, sculptures and ceramics. Multi-media artist Kwang Cha Brown, a South Korea native, combines her personal philosophy with her American training to create color and image. She displayed a dozen of works Saturday, mostly oil paintings of landscapes with muted colors.
According to his online page at Bowling Green State University where he teaches painting, Briggs’ aesthetic focus is “Representational drawings and paintings investigating the nature of human vulnerability as it relates to subcultural social structures.” Threshold also got a $500 prize in a painting category.
Second place ($500) went to Jessica Summers for her inviting Cooking in Pajamas: Portrait of My Mother: In a golden hue, a gray-haired woman cooks up a storm, but it’s not breakfast. Summers also won $500 for another oil painting, a retro-riff called Self Portrait as Domestic Goddess, in which the dark-haired artist is garbed in a lacy black cocktail dress, holding her casserole in the kitchen. It took second place in the Findlay Art League’s contest in November.
Both of the two fiber pieces received nods. Monica Edgerton-Sperry’s Self Portrait is a cluster of shells, buttons, beads, leather, and embroidery on linen. Look at the eyes, the hair holding a paintbrush, and the tiny red beads in the upper right.
Susan Krueger’s large Guilt Quilt disturbs with its female target and selection of knives ready for tossing: Are they her guilts or the tools with which to attack her guilt?
Winning no formal prize other than perhaps the “did you see...?” is William Barry Roberts’ 36-inch-square oil/charcoal/pencil painting, Drunken Pirate Scoundrels Manning their Cannons. A little lewd and absurdly macho, two big-bellied, bearded chaps lift their shirts and push their flabby breasts together. One’s hair sports a peacock feather, the other has a lit fuse on either side of his head a la Blackbeard the pirate.
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