2012年4月26日星期四

Chance for new home in Northwest

While plenty of suburban residents long for an urban lifestyle, new homes rarely become available within the District’s borders.

At Foxhall Ridge in Northwest, buyers have an unusual opportunity to purchase a newly constructed home with all the amenities today’s buyers expect. Designed to blend with the historic architecture of Georgetown and the Palisades neighborhood, Foxhall Ridge is a new community of 34 town homes built by Stanley Martin in an enclave off MacArthur Boulevard.

Residents of Foxhall Ridge will live within walking distance of the Potomac River and the C&O Canal as well as shops and restaurants in the Palisades. Georgetown,A wireless indoorpositioning is described in this paper, Georgetown University, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and all of the District are easily accessible from the community, which also offers quick access to the Beltway and Chain Bridge to reach the Virginia and Maryland suburbs.

So far, 17 homes have been released for sale at Foxhall Ridge, with base prices ranging from $944,990 to $1,675,910. The homes in the Enclave section, which are Spencer models, range in size from 2,058 to 2,099 square feet. The larger Augusta model homes, in the Terrace section, are three- or four-story homes with optional elevators and range from 2,943 to 4,293 square feet. Both models include a two-car garage.

Homeowner association fees will range from $108 to $210 per month and will include maintenance of the common areas, which include guest parking, a rain garden, a central park and a butterfly garden.

Both models have 9- and 10-foot ceilings, oak floors on the main level and in the halls, tile or hardwood flooring in the foyer, oak stairs throughout the home, crown molding, and birch cabinets with granite counters and ceramic tile flooring in the baths. Each master bath has an oversized shower with a tiled floor, a frameless glass enclosure and a rain shower head or a soaking tub and separate shower.

The kitchens in both models include birch or maple cabinets, granite counters, a ceramic tile backsplash,Broken chinamosaic Table. stainless steel appliances and a stainless steel undermounted sink.

Perhaps the most dramatic feature of both models is the finished loft level, which has a roof terrace with a two-sided fireplace that warms both the terrace and the loft.

The Spencer model has a lower-level entrance into a foyer with an adjacent study. This level also has a closet and an entrance into the garage.

The main level features an open floor plan with a living room at the front with three windows, an open dining room and a center-island kitchen with an adjacent powder room and a sliding glass door to a deck.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking.

The upper level has a master bedroom with a tray ceiling, a walk-in closet and a luxury bath. This level has a closet for laundry equipment and a second bedroom with a tray ceiling and a private full bath. The loft level has an open loft, a powder room and two doors to the roof terrace. Buyers can add a bedroom and full bath with a smaller loft if desired.

The Augusta model has a lower-level entrance into a foyer with a closet and access to the garage. This model has an optional elevator to all four levels. At the back of the main level is a recreation room with a powder room and a door to a patio. Buyers can shift to a one-car garage and add a study and a full bath to this level.

The main level has a formal living room and a formal dining room at the front of the house, each with two windows. At the back of the house are a center-island kitchen that opens to a morning room with an adjacent family room. This level has a powder room, a pantry and a door to a deck.

The upper level has a master suite with a tray ceiling, a walk-in closet, a standard closet and a luxury bath with a soaking tub, a separate shower with a seat, and a double-sink vanity.Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete? A laundry room, a second full bath and a second bedroom with a walk-in closet complete this level.

The loft level has an open loft with a window seat, a full bath and a two-sided fireplace shared with the roof terrace.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. Buyers can add a third bedroom with a walk-in closet and a window seat with a smaller loft.

Braving the deep in the name of ocean exploration

Michael Harlow has been scuba diving for more than half of his life, seeking underwater adventure in every corner of the earth. He has explored picturesque coral reefs and dramatic shipwrecks as a PADI divemaster for more than 20 years, but never in all his aquatic exploits had he encountered something like what he came upon in a shipwreck in the South Pacific several years ago.

Harlow and a couple of other divers were exploring a World War II-era sunken Japanese freighter when Harlow separated from the group, fascinated by a dark hole in the wreck above his head. He ascended into the void, keeping one hand above his head in case he bumped into anything. The panic started to set in when his dive light went out.

“I started freaking out. I couldn’t see anything in the pitch black,” he said. “But when I brought the light up to my face, it would turn back on.”

When the light illuminated, Harlow saw it was covered in a dark brown goo. And when he brought it back down to his side, the light went out again. Harlow began to realize he had penetrated a thick oil sheet, and as soon as he discovered that, another development in his predicament hit him: his arm, still above his head,Choose from our large selection of cableties, suddenly felt heavy. Why, he wondered, would his arm feel heavy if he were under water? As the pieces of the puzzle began to fall in place, Harlow realized he was no longer under water. He had found his way inside a large air pocket, probably created when the ship sank and festering 130 feet below the ocean surface for 70 years. Fortunately, his vast diving experience stopped him from taking his regulator out of his mouth. The air, he said, was probably so toxic it could have killed him instantly.

“I was tripping out a bit,” he said. “There were a number of factors I was aware of. I knew I was in a 70-year-old wreck, in oil-saturated air, and at any moment I could die from any number of things happening.”

Harlow brought his dive light up near his face and dared to get a better understanding of his situation. What he saw when he illuminated the light nearly took his breath away.

“I started looking around and was amazed at what I saw,” he said. “Everywhere I turned, there were these crystals,Welcome to projectorlamp.3rd minigame series of magiccube! on every surface, reflecting back at me.”

Harlow looked further into the abyss and was shocked to see that,Find the cheapest chickencoop online through and buy the best hen houses and chook pens in Australia. through a small passageway, the air pocket extended and opened up into a giant hold. The space was so large his light couldn’t penetrate the other end. He estimated it held about 125,Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services.000 cubic feet of trapped air.

“The air hold was so huge, you could get out and play football in it,” he said.

Feeling that his good fortune at surviving in such an inhospitable environment could not hold out forever, Harlow began to consider a descent back down to his diving partners in the lower level of the wreck. First, however, he wanted to take a sample of the peculiar crystals. When he tried to pull on a large one (the biggest, he said, reached about one foot in length), it wouldn’t budge. He tried for a smaller one, but even that wouldn’t give an inch. Not wanting to risk triggering an explosion with a spark from trying to chip off a piece, he decided to cut his losses and get out of the chamber while he still could.

His partners located him, still covered in gooey oil — which burned his skin as it seeped into his pores — and they left the wreck. The experience, however, stayed with him for the better part of a decade.

“It’s been eating at me for years and years,” he said. “I kicked myself for not going back and documenting what I saw. I’ve dived all over the world, and have never seen anything like this.”

Now, finally hoping to quell his curiosity and perhaps make some scientific discoveries in the process, Harlow is returning to the wreck — and this time he won’t come back empty handed. In July or August, he and his wife will once again try to locate the giant air hold, and he will collect samples of the crystals — using a rubber mallet and chisel, to avoid the possibility of creating sparks — to turn over to the scientific community.

Already, Harlow said, scientists are taking notice. Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography have expressed interest in working with Harlow once he returns with hard evidence of his bizarre discovery in determining what the crystals are and what could cause them to grow inside the air hold.

The dive site, Harlow said, is fairly popular with adventure divers. The site is remote — and thus expensive to get to — but noted enough in the dive world that Harlow went so far as to describe it as a “wreck-diving Mecca.” Why then, one might ask, has no one else discovered what Harlow did on his trip years ago?

“They probably weren’t stupid like me to try to penetrate an oil sheet,” he said simply. “And to dive right into a pitch-black hole.”

At the moment, Harlow is collecting donations for his data-gathering trip. Using funding platform Kickstarter, he hopes to gather enough funds to make the costly trip possible. When he returns with air and crystal samples, he said, his hope is that the scientific community will take even more notice and that his discovery may lead to official explorations of the wreck.

Corn researchers develop in-field aflatoxin approach

Scientists at Mississippi State University’s Delta Research and Extension Center are researching new ways to reduce aflatoxin in infected corn.

Corn is one of the state’s leading row crops, but it is susceptible to aflatoxin, a fungus that can reduce profits and hurt marketability.

MSU plant pathologist Gabe Sciumbato and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service plant pathologists Hamed Abbas and Mark Weaver have obtained strains of the fungus that do not produce aflatoxin.

Sciumbato, a Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station scientist, has been conducting research on aflatoxin for more than 10 years.Welcome to the online guide for do-it-yourself Ceramic tile. Aflatoxins are naturally occurring chemicals produced by the fungi Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus.Silicone moldmaking Rubber, The fungi appear as yellow-green or gray-green molds on corn in the field or in storage.

“We are applying granules of Aspergillus flavus that do not produce aflatoxin but do compete with the native Aspergillus flavus. In essence, we are using a good fungus to fight a bad one,” Sciumbato said.

Aflatoxin levels are not normally high in corn, but Mississippi’s hot, humid climate encourages the growth of the fungus that produces the toxin. Heat, drought, high humidity, insect infestation and anything else that stresses the crop favor fungal growth, he said.

Aflatoxin can build up in crops such as corn, cotton, peanuts and tree nuts. Aspergillus infects corn by invading through corn silks or through insect damage to kernels or ears.

To date, methods of reducing aflatoxin infection have included crop management techniques, such as planting early, irrigating, avoiding infected areas and sanitizing equipment. Despite these techniques, grains of many Mississippi farmers have been rejected at elevators because of high levels of aflatoxin.

Onsite screening is done two ways. Blacklight or ultraviolet light tests and commercial test kits indicate aflatoxin presence. Commercial test kits use chemical analyses to test for specific proteins.

The USDA has set rejection levels for aflatoxin in corn at 20 parts per billion or greater. An individual kernel of corn can contain 400,000 ppb aflatoxin, so one infected kernel in 20,000 could lead to the shipment being rejected.Glass Tile and Glass Mosaics for less at the glassmosaic Outlet. Contaminated corn is sold at much lower prices.

Some rejected corn is used in livestock feed,Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete? which the Food and Drug Administration still screens. Corn containing aflatoxin also can be used to make ethanol or to make anhydrous ammonia for agricultural use. However, the aflatoxin is a toxic waste, and its disposal is expensive.

“Because corn is used in so many products for human consumption, we have been working to increase producer profits while maintaining food safety,” Abbas said.

Government guidelines keep aflatoxin contamination a low-level threat for food supplies in the country.At Blow mouldengineering we specialize in conceptual prototype design.

Using non-aflatoxin-producing A. flavus strains has the potential to protect much of the state’s corn harvest, Sciumbato said.

In 2011 corn ranked fifth in agricultural production in Mississippi. Last year the state’s farmers planted about 810,000 acres in corn.

2012年4月25日星期三

Homes: A labor of love

As an architect and interior designer, Marla Haber-Goldstein, who made aliya from Canada 28 years ago, has worked on some magnificent homes for her clients.

When it came to creating her own home, she did not have access to an unlimited budget like some of her clients do,There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cubepuzzle, and had to work within the budget of an average family with three grown children.

Haber-Goldstein is well-known in Jerusalem circles, but her husband Avi even more so – he is the repairman all the American immigrants call when anything goes wrong with their big imported appliances.

When they acquired their four-room apartment in Talpiot three years ago, they were delighted to find something that was crying out to be renovated.

“We found the ideal place, a first-floor apartment in a standard building which had been constructed in the Sixties,” she says. “It had eight apartments and we were able to acquire a small extra room in the basement, which we use as an office.”

With her many years of experience in renovation, the new home presented a challenge even for Haber- Goldstein’s seasoned eye.

“It had small, dark rooms and a lot of little spaces cut up,” she says. “There was a feeling of being caged in.”

The first step was to remove some of the interior walls; once that was done, the high ceilings showed to better advantage. One wall got knocked down unintentionally and she immediately saw the potential, turning the wall leading intThe best rubbersheets products on sale,o the sitting area into an elegantly curved separation.

“I worked together with the contractor. We took a regular flexible pipe and tried out different shapes until we created the most attractive curve we could,” she says. “It also complemented the ceiling curve of the entrance hall.”

For the living room she utilized the blue and white sofas she already had and added two neutral, off-white easy chairs. The floor in the lounge is made of polished Halila stone. The big innovation was the built-in wall unit containing the television, designed to hold a huge variety of things: an aquarium,3rd minigame series of magiccube! wine bottles, loudspeakers, family photos, all topped off with an antique Singer sewing machine perched at the top.

The lower cupboards are made of stained walnut veneer while the upper units are in shades of cream and deeper beige.

The solid dining room furniture is made of African walnut and the floor is created from different shades of polished beige tiles with a dark brown frame that simulates the look a carpet. An old Ikea glass cabinet blends into the scene.

The kitchen was redone and Haber- Goldstein is very happy with the large amount of counter space and the bleached oak wood veneer of the cabinets.

“We kept the backsplash very simple as there’s so much going on in the granite counter space,” she says.

There is plenty of room for her very large American oven,Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete? an eat-in table-and-chairs arrangement and lots of storage.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking.

As could be expected from an electrician’s home, the lighting is quite complex.

“We have four different kinds of lighting in the apartment,” she says. In the entrance is a fluorescent ceiling light, as the window doesn’t give enough natural light. Spotlights in the ceiling are placed strategically, while in the kitchen, undercabinet lights create a warm look. Finally, regular light fittings hang over the diningroom table.

Bankruptcy dispute, deterioration marring plans

The windows are smashed,Proxense's advanced handsfreeaccess technology. the doors stand agape and the keys in the rusting padlocks have not been turned for years. Still, despite the plaster clinging to the crumbling bricks in leprous sheets, the front looks salvageable.

The back, however, tells a different story. Piles of debris block gaping holes knocked through the walls when the owners tore out the big textile machines. Nearby, the erstwhile camp hospital decays in a sodden mess.

This is the place where in the waning days of World War II, Oskar Schindler saved 1,200 Jews from near-certain death.

The Schindler buildings were last used by a company called Vitka, a once-thriving textile manufacturer. But after Vitka went into bankruptcy in 2004, a series of corporations sold off its machines for lump iron and stripped the buildings of anything of value.

In the course of last year, the latest owner of the property, Blue Fields, razed 80 percent of the factory buildings. Blue Fields also failed to pay the bank, which put a lien on the property. The bankruptcy administrator immediately put a halt to further demolitions, and the entire property, including the Schindler buildings, is now mired in litigation that could take years to resolve.

“Those buildings are going to stand there in that condition for years to come,” said the bankruptcy administrator, Jiri Krejcerik. “No one is going to invest into property that isn’t theirs.”

Blahoslav Kaspar, the mayor of Brnenec, the town where the factory stands, long has dreamed of turning the Schindler buildings into a Holocaust memorial. The town submitted a plan for the center to the regional authorities with a request for about $1 million. But it has no chance of acquiring the funds until the ownership issues are resolved.

Horrified by the rapid destruction, historical preservationists scrambled to have the site declared a national monument. But the request, now pending in the Czech Culture Ministry, hinges upon the concurrence of Blue Fields,Silicone moldmaking Rubber, which has stopped communicating except via an electronic mailbox. Until a company representative re-emerges, the authorities say their hands are tied.

Though a preliminary ban on demolition has been placed on all buildings, Blue Fields still destroyed several 19th-century buildings in better shape earlier this year, Eliska Rackova of the Pardubice Historical Authority told JTA.

“The owner produced a statement from the construction authorities saying that the buildings were decrepit and a danger to the public, and we were powerless to stop it,” she said.

Now there is concern that the same fate awaits the rest of the Schindler buildings, possibly condemning a key piece of Jewish history to the dustbin.

In the winter of 1944, as the war neared its end and the Nazis rushed to destroy concentration camps and prisoners, Schindler moved some 1,200 Jews from his enamelware factory in Krakow, where they faced near-certain death in Auschwitz, to Brnenec in the Czech Sudetenland.

At the time, Brnenec resident Eduard Kubin was a 17-year-old worker at a munitions plant adjacent to the Schindler buildings. Kubin, now 86, still remembers the freezing winter night when the transport arrived.

“It was the coldest winter anyone could remember, and 15 prisoners froze to death on the way,” he recalled. “They took them to the cemetery in the village of Brezova, but the priest wouldn’t let them be buried on cemetery ground. They had to dump them in a nearby hollow and pile old wreaths on them.

"After the war, the Czechs made the local Germans dig them up with their bare hands and place them in a mass grave inside the cemetery. Schindler even brought in a rabbi to consecrate the ground.”

Relics of those cruel times are everywhere: the latticework balcony where the guards took their smoke breaks; the courtyard where prisoners assembled; the iron gate with the peephole that still creaks open to grant a glimpse of the world; the low door (now marked with a sloppily painted D) that Schindler would emerge from for the review.Welcome to the online guide for do-it-yourself Ceramic tile.

“Around back there’s a window where we used to leave loaves of bread,” said Kubin, pointing to a narrow alley next to the factory wall. “It was next to the electrified fence, in a spot where the guards in the towers couldn’t see. We’d wrap them in oily rags to camouflage them.”

“Giving them food was tricky,” said Petr Henzl, 83, whose father worked at the factory during the war. “A lady who lived behind the wall threw them some fruit once,Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. but the guards caught them picking it up and gave them an awful beating.”

Both Henzl and Kubin give much of the credit for the survival of the prisoners to Schindler's wife, Emilie.

“He was off on business mostly,” Kubin said. “She ran the kitchen and the hospital and got the headman at the mill to give them the leftover groats and husks to make gruel. She was also the one who took in the last transport in December.”

The few local residents who remember that time now look on in frustration as the property falls into further and further disrepair.

JTA’s efforts to contact Blue Fields, which does not list telephone or email contacts, were unsuccessful.

House Hunting in ... Prague

This penthouse is in a six-story building that includes shops and offices but has apartments on its top two floors. Sections of the building date to the 16th century, but the structure was expanded and refurbished in 1998. The contemporary design is by the prominent Czech architect Eva Jiricna. An elevator ascends from the basement parking garage to a hallway on the fifth floor, which this unit shares with the other two apartments in the building.Aeroscout stone mosaic provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking.

Off the foyer in addition to a half bath and a coat closet, the rectangular living and dining area has a sloped double-height ceiling and a floor of polished gray limestone tiles warmed by an under-floor heating system. A low glass shelf for displaying artwork runs the length of the back wall, opposite four pairs of French doors that open onto the balcony. Off the living area, the kitchen is hidden behind a stainless steel door inlaid with a ship’s porthole. Equipped with a glass-topped breakfast bar in the shape of a candy cane and a gas cooktop set into an island, the room has a sleek design. Appliances, including the washer and dryer, the dishwasher, and the oven, are concealed behind stainless steel cupboard doors. The upper cabinets, also stainless steel, are set with frosted glass.

A limestone staircase in the foyer leads to a glass-and-steel bridge that runs the length of the second floor. All three bedrooms are off one side of the bridge, which has glass safety railing overlooking the living area. The master bedroom has abundant natural light from a glass wall and a panoramic view of the city. White lacquered cabinets line two of its walls. The windowed master bath has a round glass sink, two wall-mounted mirrors and a limestone tiled floor.The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good , The shower stall is lined with stainless steel, as are the walls and cabinets.

In sloped ceiling of the guest bedroom, dormer windows provide views of the Vltava River and the Prague Castle. The third bedroom, which is larger than the other two, functions as a den and home office.

The apartment comes with a parking space in the basement, a rare amenity in Old Town Prague. It’s possible to buy an espresso or a meal within a few blocks. The building faces the Vltava and the flowering fruit trees in Petrin Park.

Swans from the river sometimes fly past the windows, and the National Theater is close enough that the current owner can come home during intermission. The nearest subway stop is a two-minute walk, and the airport is a 30-minute drive from the apartment.

The market in the Czech Republic boomed from the late 1990s through 2007, said Ondrej Novotny, head of research for the Prague office of Jones Lang LaSalle. “The crisis hit us in late 2008 and 2009,” he said. Prices dropped 20 to 30 percent, depending on location.

Now there are strong signs of recovery. High inflation rates have pushed up the demand for real estate investments. “People buy properties to secure their money against inflation,” said Prokop Svoboda, a partner in the luxury real estate company Svoboda & Williams.

Low interest rates are helping stimulate the market, said Marketa Mikova, the head of public relations for Jones Lang LaSalle’s Prague office. She added that 80 to 90 percent of Czech buyers use mortgages, so interest rates have a big impact. Interest rates are around 4 percent at the moment, although most banks require a higher loan-to-value ratio than they did during the boom years.

In the Old Town, housing development is a challenge because of limited space and restrictions on demolition. In the New Town area, however,If you have a kidneystone, new or recently refurbished properties area cost about 100,000 koruna per square meter ($491 per square foot,Stone Source offers a variety of Natural stonemosaic Tiles. at 19 koruna to the dollar). In the Old Town, prices are higher — around 130,000 koruna per square meter, Mr.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. Novotny said. The property profiled here is priced at 158,000 koruna per square meter, higher than the average because it was designed by a highly regarded architect and has river views, according to the listing agent.

2012年4月24日星期二

Post-literate media

Media were to be understood as “make-happen agents” rather than as “make-aware agents,” not as art or philosophy but as systems comparable to roads and waterfalls and sewers. Content follows form; new means of communication give rise to new structures of feeling and thought.

To account for the transference of the idioms of print to those of the electronic media, McLuhan examined two technological revolutions that overturned the epistemological status quo. First, in the mid-15th century, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type, which deconstructed the illuminated wisdom preserved on manuscript in monasteries, encouraged people to organize their perceptions of the world along the straight lines of the printed page. Second, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the applications of electricity (telegraph, telephone, radio, movie camera, television screen, eventually the computer), favored a sensibility that runs in circles, compressing or eliminating the dimensions of space and time, narrative dissolving into montage, the word replaced with the icon and the rebus.

Within a year of its publication, “Understanding Media” acquired the standing of Holy Scripture and made of its author the foremost oracle of the age. The New York Herald Tribune proclaimed him “the most important thinker since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein and Pavlov.Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete?Our porcelaintiles are perfect for entryways or bigger spaces and can also be used outside,” Although never at a loss for Delphic aphorism — “The electric light is pure information”; “In the electric age, we wear all mankind as our skin” — McLuhan assumed that he had done nothing more than look into the window of the future at what was both obvious and certain.

In 1964 I was slow to take the point, possibly because I was working at the time in a medium that McLuhan had listed as endangered — writing, for The Saturday Evening Post, inclined to think in sentences, accustomed to associating a cause with an effect, a beginning with a middle and an end. Television news I construed as an attempt to tell a story with an alphabet of brightly colored children’s blocks, and when offered the chance to become a correspondent for NBC,Get information on airpurifier from the unbiased, independent experts. I declined the referral to what I regarded as a course in remedial reading.

The judgment was poorly timed. Within five years The Saturday Evening Post had gone the way of the great auk; news had become entertainment, entertainment news, the distinctions between a fiction and a fact as irrelevant as they were increasingly difficult to parse. Another 20 years and I understood what McLuhan meant by the phrase,A Hybrid indoorpositioningsystem for First Responders. “The medium is the message,” when in the writing of a television history of America’s foreign policy in the twentieth century, I was allotted roughly 73 seconds in which to account for the origins of World War II, while at the same time providing a voiceover transition between newsreel footage of Jesse Owens running the hundred-yard dash at the Berlin Olympics in the summer of 1936, and Adolf Hitler marching the Wehrmacht into Vienna in the spring of 1938.

McLuhan regarded the medium of television as better suited to the sale of a product than to the expression of a thought. The voice of the first person singular becomes incorporated into the collective surges of emotion housed within an artificial kingdom of wish and dream; the viewer’s participation in the insistent and ever-present promise of paradise regained greatly strengthens what McLuhan identified as “the huge educational enterprise that we call advertising.” By which he didn’t mean the education of a competently democratic citizenry — “Mosaic news is neither narrative, nor point of view, nor explanation,Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services. nor comment” — but rather as “the gathering and processing of exploitable social data” by “Madison Avenue frogmen of the mind” intent on retrieving the sunken subconscious treasure of human credulity and desire.

Dog stairs help Fido get back in the boat

The target market for Jim Perkins' upstart manufacturing company consists of swimmers with hairy backs who often stink when they get wet.Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete?

Perkins has developed, built and begun marketing a set of floating plastic stairs designed to help dogs easily and safely climb back into a boat after going for a swim.

The inspiration for the new business venture: his golden retriever, Katie.

"I certainly didn't expect that the dog would cause me to pursue a second career," said Perkins, 57, a retired engineer who spent most of his career at Kimberly-Clark Corp., and also worked at Harley-Davidson Motor Co. and Ford Motor Co.3rd minigame series of magiccube!

A few years ago, Katie jumped off the family boat and went for a swim. That was great - until it came time to get her back in the boat.

"The dog jumped in, and we're in 60 feet of water," Perkins said. "What the heck do we do? She's swimming around having a great time.

"It was crazy."

Perkins and his wife, Jennifer, managed to muscle the dog into the boat.

"We were soaked and covered in dog hair," he said. They also realized that was not going to be a long-term solution if they wanted to keep taking Katie on weekend boat outings. Empty nesters with three grown sons,Diagnosing and Preventing coldsores Fever in the body can often trigger the onset of a cold sore. they wanted to keep bringing the dog out on the water with them.

That prompted Perkins to find a way to help mesh Katie's love of the water with the need to get her back into the boat.

Nothing seemed to work simply. So he decided to create a set of dog-friendly stairs designed to quickly hook onto a boat's swim ladder.

"I was trying to come up with the utmost in flexibility," he said.Buy high quality bedding and bed linen from Yorkshire Linen. "I wanted a design that popped on literally in seconds.A culture af Mizukabi molds."

wimming can pose a hazard for dogs, especially when they are trying to get back into a boat, said Kristen Temo, a critical care veterinarian at the Wisconsin Veterinary Referral Center, an emergency and specialty care animal hospital with locations in Grafton and Waukesha.

"It's really hard to pull a large dog out of the water when you are leaning over the boat," Temo said. "It's hard to get them out of the water. The water is a lot further down from the boat deck than you think."

That could mean trouble if you have a big dog who loves to swim.

"They can drown if they can't get back into the boat," Temo said. "Most of the time that I see problems, it's drowning. They can't get into the boat."

Keeping some breeds out of the water is tough.

"Some dogs really love it," Temo said. "They love doing that splash right off the boat, but they have got to have a way to come back in.

"Dogs really can't do ladders, the way they're built," she added. "They don't have the kind of strength to do that. They need steps or a ramp or something to get back in."

Temo says that in a typical year she sees a couple of cases of dogs that drown because they are too heavy for their owners to lift out of the water.

Perkins' dog stairs use a patent-pending combination of aluminum, stainless steel and plastic. Part of the design includes a patented spring that helps the stairs mount quickly to a boat's swim ladder.

The stairs have a weight capacity of 130 pounds and are not designed to be used by humans, Perkins said.

Draft day wasn't always an event

Once upon a time, in a world far different from ours, professional football drafts were held as people tended to other matters. Players were chosen without fanfare; without hugs from the commissioner; and without the instant analysis of 42 million television viewers with couch sores from watching seven rounds extended over not one but three days.

"My first job in football, I'm 13 or 14 years old and I'm a runner during the AFL draft in the early '60s," said Joe Horrigan, a vice president of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "There were 28 rounds or whatever it was. And it was all held in one day, so I'm running the streets of New York at all hours of the morning."

"I'd sit in (AFL Commissioner) Joe Foss' office until teams called their picks in to him," Horrigan said. "Every round, he'd write the picks on a sheet of paper, stick it in an envelope and hand it to me. I'd run over to the Waldorf Astoria to a room with maybe half a dozen newspaper reporters in it. I'd hand them the sheet of paper and, well, that was it."

The NFL wasn't any different. No Chris Berman. No squadrons of former players to break it all down. Heck, there wasn't even a senior version of Mel Kiper Jr.

The draft has come a long way since it was born in 1936.Broken chinamosaic Table. Player evaluation began to evolve in 1963 with a rudimentary precursor to today's scouting combine. Then came the 1970s and a Pittsburgh Steelers team that validated the increased emphasis on the draft by masterfully hand-picking the pieces that would form one of the most dominant dynasties the league has ever seen.

Things were progressing off the field, too. ESPN was launched. A few months later, the network asked then-commissioner Pete Rozelle if it could televise the 1980 draft in its entirety. Rozelle's answer - "Why would you want to do that?" - proved that not even a true league visionary could have anticipated this much hype.

"When you're picking, you know you're not always going to be right," Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman said. "No one is ever perfect in this business. Everybody makes mistakes. The key is getting to a point where I know I can sit there at the end of the draft and say to myself, 'There is nothing I can think of that I could have done more to be better prepared for the decisions I made.'"

In addition to Spielman, the Vikings have a director of player personnel, a director of college scouting, an assistant director of college scouting, seven college scouts and two personnel consultants - Paul Wiggin and Jerry Reichow - with a combined 96 years of NFL experience. They also can walk down the hall and chat with a guy named Bud Grant if the need arises.

In other words, the Vikings have the manpower to handle a detailed scouting process that takes 11 months to piece together before draft day arrives. Most teams do, which certainly wasn't the case on Feb. 8, 1936, when the NFL's nine teams traveled to the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Philadelphia for the first draft.This page provides information about 'werkzeugbaus;

The first-ever pick was Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger, who never played a down in the league. The Eagles traded him to Chicago, where Berwanger asked Bears owner George Halas for $25,000 over two years. Halas said no, so Berwanger went into the foam-rubber business and also worked as a sportswriter for the Chicago Daily News. Talk about a different era,Find the cheapest chickencoop online through and buy the best hen houses and chook pens in Australia. financially.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking.

The third pick that year was William Shakespeare. No, not that William Shakespeare. This one was a star at Notre Dame. But he,Welcome to projectorlamp. too, never played a down in the NFL, choosing a life in business instead.

Yes, twice. After World War II, the Washington Redskins were a team in disrepair under owner George Marshall, who didn't believe in spending money on scouts. In 1946, the Redskins drafted Rossi ninth overall only to discover that Rossi was a junior, which was a problem since only seniors were eligible for the draft.

"George was embarrassed by his stupidity and drafted Cal again the next year," Horrigan said. This time, the Redskins used the fourth overall pick on Rossi.

"The only problem is everyone in the league knew Rossi wasn't going to play pro ball," Horrigan said. "Everybody, except the Redskins."

Rossi, a top-10 pick two consecutive years, not only never played a down in the NFL, he never even intended to. Somewhere, JaMarcus Russell has to feel a little better.

2012年4月20日星期五

It’s what you do with space that matters: Maurizio Pellizzoni

Maurizio Pellizzoni was a 24-year-old graphic designer living on the shores of Lake Como when he decided to leave Italy for a rather less glamorous life in a dingy shared flat in Earl’s Court and a job at McDonald’s while he learned English.

When his command of the language was good enough,Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services. he found work on the shop floor at H&M, then with Calvin Klein, and eventually landed a job as a window dresser in the flagship Ralph Lauren shop in Bond Street. It often meant working through the night so that he could study by day for a degree in interior design and architecture.

With the degree under his belt he was offered promotion and took charge of Ralph Lauren’s homeware collection in shops across Europe.

For three years he jetted around the world in search of product ideas — then came a big setback. In 2007 he fell seriously ill and was diagnosed with a brain infection that almost paralysed him.

His illness gave him time to think. When he recovered he was ready to change direction and to create his own company, Maurizio Pellizzoni Design. Far from standing in his way, Ralph Lauren gave him encouragement, recommending potential clients and helping him secure commissions.

Now 38, in the past five years Maurizio has helped create homes for some of the wealthiest men and women in Britain.Proxense's advanced handsfreeaccess technology. His client list includes premiership footballers (he helped Joe and Carly Cole re-do their Chelsea townhouse), leading bankers and lawyers, as well as a crop of Russian squillionaires.

He is also now the proud owner of a very glamorous duplex apartment — a far cry from those Earls Court days. However, by moving through a series of rented flats, via New Cross Gate, Poplar and then to Finchley Road, he learned a great deal about how he wanted to live.

“Back then, the mortgage situation was a lot better than it is now,I found them to have sharp edges where the injectionmoldes came together while production.” he says. “I calculated that I could spend up to about 100,000.”

He decided to concentrate his search in south-east London, and Lewisham in particular, because it was affordable and he had friends in the area. There would also be fast trains to central London (Charing Cross in only 20 minutes).

After viewing 20 properties, he spent 80,000 on a one-bedroom flat at the top of a Victorian house. The flat was grotty, but it had an untapped resource — the loft space. Maurizio immediately realised he could dramatically increase the size of the flat (it was a compact 50 square metres) if he could use the loft.

His first task was to charm his new downstairs neighbours into agreeing to club together to buy the freehold of the building.Find rubberhose companies from India. Their landlord originally demanded 20,000 — but after protracted negotiations reduced this to 1,000 per flat.

Owning a share of the freehold freed Maurizio to apply to Lewisham council for permission to extend into the loft. Since other homeowners on the street had already done the same, his application sailed through.

He then set to work on reconfiguring the flat.Silicone moldmaking Rubber, “It took me years but was finished six months ago. I didn’t have the money or the time to do it all at once.”

His first project was to divide the existing bedroom into a smaller guest room and separate bathroom. To save money he painstakingly applied the midnight blue mosaic tiles himself, learning valuable practical skills along the way.
Then he designed a black-painted steel spiral staircase to give access to the loft, and turned the space into a second bedroom with dressing room. Finally he opened out the kitchen and living room into an open-plan room. The project cost 30,000 to 40,000 — a price Maurizio kept down by doing as much of the work as possible himself.

Ghanaweb and its competitors

In the beginning of the internet era,Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. there was Okyeame network which was mainly patronised by the university community where internet had an early spread. Then came Ghana Review sent out by email as a free newsletter to subscribers. Ghana Review became a glossy print edition called Ghana Review International.At Blow mouldengineering we specialize in conceptual prototype design. On their heels came ghanaweb in the mid 90s as a fully-fledged website. And ghanaweb became very popular and has come to dwell with us since then.

Ghanaweb has been joined by many other Ghanaian websites. Many of them may have taken inspiration from ghanaweb. They all look alike.The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good , They have sections on news, sports, entertainment, opinions/features, and business. All carry ads with space for ads from local servers. The news reports all tap on the same news sources so it is common to see the same news items on all the sites.

Many Ghanaians, especially those living outside the country,Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete? have come to depend on these sites for the latest happenings in the homeland. The opinion articles have become very popular. Most of them are on our politics. The likely reason for the popularity of political pieces is the relatively easy nature of the subject. Everyone can talk about politics in Ghana since everyone has an opinion about the actions and inactions of our politicians. Topics like the workings of our economy, education, science, literature, are too technical for many people to discuss while silly articles on tribal issues attract a lot of equally silly comments. Sports and entertainment may be popular but these do not have the same appeal to all Ghanaians. Book reviews do particularly badly underlying the fact that Ghanaians, like most Africans, do not like reading. But our politics is fodder for everybody.

All the sites freely lift articles from each other. Copyright infringement laws on the internet are inchoate which means those “stealing” articles may not be breaking any known laws. The situation becomes dire only if articles are stolen from the internet without the permission of the authors and published in a book that is sold for profit. It is only the best features or most juicy news items that are poached by other sites. So if you send a badly written article to any of the sites, you can’t expect other sites to spread that article. Some of the more serious sites may edit the articles they steal. Many just lift them and post them – complete with all the mistakes in the originals.

A full demographic survey of the sites is impossible in the absence of information some of which will be private. But it can be easily seen that, even though some people use monikers, there is a preponderance of male generators of, and contributors to, items on all these sites. Many may also be young. This fact can be gleaned from the nature of the comments. The old, especially in Ghana,There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cubepuzzle, are not likely to take on to a new technology like the internet. Most of the visitors are living outside Ghana/Africa if only for the simple reason that those living in the advanced countries have better access to the internet than those at home. Indeed, commentary on Ghanaian websites is dominated by foreign based Ghanaians. Access to ipaddresses may throw more light on some of these demographic factors but the exposure of such addresses may be undesirable since the internet thrives on the preservation of anonymity.

A pioneer of pastel painting

Haroun El-Touni,The best rubbersheets products on sale, chair of the Heliopolis Sporting Club, inaugurated the 34th Fine Arts Exhibition at the Club this week, an event which has been going since 1978. This year's exhibition was curated by Esmeralda Haddad, and the inauguration was attended by Hamdi Abul-Maati, president of the Fine Artists Syndicate, MP Amr Hamzawy, and actress Basma.

Some 50 artists had paintings, sculptures, photographs and mosaic works in the exhibition. The guest of honour this year was Mohamed Sabri, a pioneer of painting in pastels, with two of his recent pieces being shown, one of riLearn all about solarpanel.ver boats in Aswan and another of a street scene in a popular neighbourhood. Mohamed Sabri himself was unfortunately not able to attend the exhibition for health reasons.

Among other artists whose work was on show were Salah al-Meligi, head of the Fine Arts Sector of the ministry of culture, Esmeralda Haddad, Samir Fouad, Abu Bakr El-Nawawi, Sabri Nashed, Emad Ibrahim, Fares Mohammad Fares, George Bahgoury, Gamil Shafiq, Merkem Hunein, Adel Thabet, Hoda Morad, the Club's resident curator, Khaled al-Semahi, Lotfi Abu Samra, Mervet El-Shazli,Diagnosing and Preventing coldsores Fever in the body can often trigger the onset of a cold sore. Mostafa Abdel-Fattah, Omar Abdel-Zaher, Omar El-Fayoumi and Madiha Mewalli.

Sabri himself was born in Cairo on 21 December 1917, obtaining a diploma in applied arts in the city before going to Spain in 1950 to join the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he studied painting. In 1954, Sabri returned to Spain, this time to take part in a two-year programme in restoration. He has been an important figure on the Egyptian art scene since 1936.

Sabri is considered to be a pioneer in painting in pastels, though in his works he uses a range of materials and has maintained a fresh outlook, as if drawing on an endless supply of inspiration. His interest in Egyptian subjects has been noticeable in almost every exhibition he has held since 1936, when he took part in the 16th Cairo Salon organised by the Society of Fine Art Lovers.

"A Young Wife," one of Sabri's earliest paintings, was exhibited in the 20th Cairo Salon in April 1940. It was shown again in his first solo exhibition in April 1943 and also in his second exhibition in March 1946. In both exhibitions, Sabri showed paintings having a social focus, such as "Midnight," "Good Morning," "Friday," and "A Religious Lesson."

Sabri studied for two years at the Luxor Atelier, a time he considers to be a unique period in his life during which he finished many paintings depicting the ruins of Medinet Habu, the Ramesseum, the Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings. His depictions of the village of Gourna and of various mountain and river scenes in Upper Egypt are well known to all art lovers.Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete?

A further trip to Spain in 1961 allowed Sabri to tour the Islamic monuments in Cordoba, Granada, Seville and Malaga. In 1962, his paintings of such monuments in Andalusia were shown in Madrid, London, Rome and Frankfurt to much critical acclaim, even if Sabri himself continued to spend his summers in the old districts of Cairo, mostly in a house in Khosh Qadam. His impressions of old Cairo and his paintings of Egypt's popular districts shine with beauty and compassion.

Sabri travelled to the High Dam during its construction in the early 1960s,Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. and one of his paintings of it was offered as a gift from the Egyptian parliament to the USSR as a token of appreciation for Soviet help in the construction of the Dam.

In addition to this major project, Sabri has also recorded other important events in the recent history of Egypt in his paintings, including in works entitled "The Battle of Port Said," "The Great Crossing," "The Peace Speech" and "The Cairo Treaty."

An accomplished portraitist, Sabri has produced many important portraits, including "The Coppersmiths." Despite the large number of important works he has completed over a long artistic career, Sabri has sometimes been heard to complain that "time is too short" to do all that he wants to do, as he wrote in the catalogue for the Egyptian Vision exhibition held in April 2007 at the Opera House in Cairo.

Sabri has been given countless awards, including a knighthood from the Spanish government in 1961 and the Spanish Queen Isabella Medal in 1988. He won first prize in the painting category at the Autumn Salon in Madrid in 1964, and he has been a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts since 1967, the only Arab artist to be awarded this honour.

Sabri won Egypt's State Merit Award in 1997, adding to the Gold Medal for Painting he was awarded in 1948 and the First Prize for Painting he won at the Luxor Atelier in the same year. In 1949, Sabri was awarded the Gold Medal for Painting at that year's Industrial Fair, and his work continues to be bought by private collectors and public collections worldwide.

2012年4月18日星期三

Busted by the Crafts Cops

Etsy Inc. has tapped into the consumer craze for all things local, artisanal and authentic since its founding six years ago. The online crafts fair, where anyone can set up shop and sell handmade or vintage goods, has grown to 15 million members, up from 3.8 million in 2009, according to Etsy.

Yet a problem is hitting the site, which promises shoppers handmade items: Factory-made goods lurk on the site amid the hand-knit cupcake pin cushions, purses constructed of birch bark, and floral cotton iPad covers.

To try to keep its offerings true to its mission, Etsy is increasing the number of young detectives the company uses to police its website, sort of a CSI: Etsy team. (Etsy's CSI-related products include a "Future CSI" baby bib for $7.) The company calls the investigators the Marketplace Integrity and Trust & Safety teams. They spend their days scouring Etsy's site to uphold its rules: No factory-made goods,Find the cheapest chickencoop online through and buy the best hen houses and chook pens in Australia. items that violate copyright, or offensive material. They shut down sellers' shops that break its rules. Newly developed software is also used to police the site.

Tania Ginoza says she shops for items like vintage glassware, jewelry, art and letter press stationery about once a month from Etsy. "It's a really good feeling to support someone who may just be starting out with crafting and jewelry making," says the 43-year-old financial comptroller in Maui, Hawaii. "When you correspond with a seller a lot of times you are talking directly to an artist,Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete?A Plastic injectionmoulding company," she says. "That's pretty cool because you can develop a relationship with an artist."

About 230 employees work in the company's Brooklyn, N.Y., headquarters, which features a 10-foot-tall cardboard owl in its entryway, a huge bicycle parking area and colorful murals on the walls. A small section of the exposed duct work is wrapped with a sort of decorative duct tea cozy knit by an artist who sells on the site.

As Etsy grows, policing the site becomes more important,I found them to have sharp edges where the injectionmoldes came together while production. says Chad Dickerson, who replaced one of Etsy's co-founders as chief executive last summer. Consumers want "a sense of authenticity and buying from people who they know," he says.

Without the handmade shopping experience, "Etsy loses its core," says Mr. Dickerson.

Online sales of "handicrafts" like sewing, woodworking and making jewelry are expected to reach $2.2 billion in 2016, up from $1.4 billion in 2011, growing faster than the approximately $30 billion handicraft industry overall, says a report on Etsy by GreenCrest Capital Management LLC, a firm that analyzes private companies.

Etsy seller Jaime Core says the company sent her an email with a "long" survey asking about her items, specifically a soy strawberry candle. The survey requested the names and ages of anyone working with her in her candle-making business and for step-by-step photos of her production process. "I was flipping out," says Ms. Core, 26, from Orlando, Fla. About two hours after she sent in the photos and answers, Etsy responded by email: "Thanks for being part of the Etsy community," she says. It didn't close her shop. She says she doesn't know why her candles were flagged. Julian Wong, a manager of the Etsy integrity and safety teams, says, "We open up dialogues with sellers and most instances (well over 80%) result in outcomes like Jaime's."

Enforcing the rules is "sort of a crazy part of our business," says Dan Christofferson, marketing director of Etsy rival Big Cartel, a website in Salt Lake City, Utah., that helps artists and crafters create online shops.

Some cases are clear-cut.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. A shop of Nazi-themed T-shirts will be taken down instantly, says Mr. Christofferson. But when employees found a seller listing "molds of their naked body," company employees debated if the shop should be closed, says Mr. Christofferson. They decided it wasn't "real pornography," which violates the site's rules, he says.

In the last year, Etsy, by far the largest global online crafts retailer, almost doubled the size of its policing staff to 16 people. Most of its hires are experts in a specific area—say, handbag making or vintage goods—so they can "help us ask the right questions," of potential problem sellers, says Kruti Patel Goyal, director of Etsy's policing groups.

"Our team is now reviewing seven times more accounts overall each week" versus the same week last year, said Ms. Patel Goyal, in a February blog post on Etsy's company blog. Etsy declined to specify the number of accounts.

US Navy’s New Drone Hunts Mines Wherever They Hide

The US Navy is building a fleet of mine-hunting ships that investigators say aren’t all that hot at finding mines. So in the coming years, those ships are going to get drone supplements to dive deep below the sea to spot the underwater weapons. Think of ‘em as pairs of robotic glasses.

This is a scale model of the Navy’s newest drone sub, called the Knifefish. Manufactured by General Dynamics, the Navy unveiled it for the first time on Monday at its annual Sea Air Space convention just outside Washington DC.

The Knifefish — named after a real fish that emits an electric field — will be a 6m robot with a 21-inch (53cm) diameter that launches from a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS),GOpromos offers a wide selection of promotional items and personalized gifts. the new US Navy ship built to fight close to shore. The robot is basically a solution to a chief LCS vulnerability discovered by the Pentagon’s top weapons tester: although one of its missions is hunting mines, its chief mine-spotting systems are “deficient” for exactly that task.

Enter the Knifefish. Starting in roughly 2015, according to General Dynamics, each LCS will be able to launch two Knifefish modules, with the primary task of finding mines buried in the sea floor.Learn all about solarpanel. It’s an autonomous robot: sailors aboard an LCS will program the Knifefish’s navigation systems with instructions on where to swim ahead of launching it. It can swim for 16 hours at a time.

But the chief asset of the Knifefish’s autonomy isn’t navigation, it’s analysis. It uses a set of low-frequency wideband frequencies to spot a mine that gives off a resonance “very near” that of the particular mine it’s hunting, says Capt. Dwayne Ashton, the US Navy’s program manager for unmanned maritime systems. That “allows you to fingerprint the object being looked at”, instead of having a human sailor spending hours discovering and cataloging the types of mines he or she encounters — something Ashton calls a “significant game-changer”.

The Knifefish won’t neutralize mines that it finds, though — it just relays data back to the mothership about the mines’ location.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. That, at least, may take some of the pressure off the LCS’ other mine-spotting systems, the AN/AQS-20A Sonar Mine Detecting Set and the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System, neither of which have impressed Pentagon testers.

But the Knifefish won’t transmit that data in real time. It’ll store up to 12 terabytes of data collected by its acoustic sensor package. Data recovery will have to occur after the Knifefish swims back up to its LCS parent. Which might be a problem, since the LCS can’t survive a blast from any mines it doesn’t detect.

“We’re talking about a large amount of data,Silicone moldmaking Rubber, terabytes of data,” Ashton explains,Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services. adding that the Navy doesn’t believe it needs real-time data reporting right now, although it might reevaluate after the first Knifefish missions. The robots should arrive in the fleet not long after the first of two LCSes are permanently stationed in Singapore.

The Knifefish is also a step toward diversifying the Navy’s robotic portfolio. Successive Navy chiefs have been keen to build underwater robots that can swim across entire oceans, but the propulsion and fuel systems necessary aren’t technologically mature yet. The Knifefish is decidedly not a long-range robot sub, although General Dynamics and the Navy won’t say specifically how fast it can swim or how far it’s expected to patrol.

Chicken coop sparks neighborhood debate over Alabama city's zoning ordinance

Bayne and Melissa Searcy hoped having six egg-laying chickens in the backyard of their Jasper home would teach their two boys something about responsibility. The project has been more of a civics lesson than anything, however.

Several weeks ago,Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. a zoning administrator told Bayne Searcy that the family's chickens are a violation of a city zoning ordinance. Speaking at a City Council work session, Searcy said he was confused because he called City Hall eight months ago and spoke with a city clerk before building the coop or purchasing the animals.

Searcy said the clerk reviewed the city's ordinance with him, and they both agreed his chicken coop would be lawful. According to the city's ordinance, the only stipulations are that the chickens must be kept in an enclosure.

"We've done this," he said. "I was told I was fully within the city ordinances and allowed to do this."

The administrator that visited Searcy, however, said his chickens were in violation of a zoning ordinance, which is different from the city ordinance regarding livestock. City Planner Keith Pike explained the zoning ordinance at the session, saying residents must qualify as a hobby farm to possess chickens.

According to the measure, hobby farms must be at least 5 acres and have 8,000 square feet of property for every 20 chickens. The chicken coops must also be built 100 feet from any adjacent lot.

Searcy said his family's project is not a hobby farm, and he believes the ordinance does not prohibit pet chickens. He also said he does not understand how a city ordinance can conflict with a zoning ordinance.

City attorney Russ Robertson said the laws are exclusive from one another, and residents must follow both.

"You have to comply with more than one law. And perhaps that's confusing, and that's a fair criticism," Robertson said. "Perhaps it's capable of other criticisms. But every activity in the city is governed by the zoning ordinances."

The Searcys' neighbors,Our porcelaintiles are perfect for entryways or bigger spaces and can also be used outside, Dot and Ray McAdams, have a petition signed by 32 residents in the family's neighborhood who are opposed to the chicken coop. The petition included the signature of Morris Studdard, the Jasper City Council member who represents the Pinecrest neighborhood.

"A lot of our children are no longer attached to that association of a homestead or having the responsibility of taking care of animals and seeing that animal go through and have a process and caring for that animal whether it be egg production or having a litter of kittens," she said.

The McAdams said they are concerned that, by allowing the Searcys' chicken coop, city leaders would set a dangerous precedent that would lower property values in the area.

"If we started allowing this, people might start increasing the size of them and the city would never know without someone policing this," Dot McAdams said.

Dot McAdams said she worked for city hall in 1946 and can remember a time when chicken coops were popular within the city limits.

"I just don't see us going back to those days," she said.Offers Art Reproductions Fine Art oilpaintings Reproduction, "I just feel like we have a progressive city, and we want to see it go forward and not backwards."

Melissa Searcy said her family doesn't view the chickens simply as poultry. The animals are pets,Dimensional Mailing magiccubes for Promotional Advertising, and their children learn by taking care of birds, she said.

"A lot of our children are no longer attached to that association of a homestead or having the responsibility of taking care of animals and seeing that animal go through and have a process and caring for that animal whether it be egg production or having a litter of kittens," she said.Buy high quality bedding and bed linen from Yorkshire Linen.

Melissa Searcy also said her family wanted to stop buying heavily processed eggs from factory farms that keep chickens in deplorable conditions. She told council members that backyard chickens are a growing fad among people who favor sustainable living and organic foods.

2012年4月16日星期一

Proto Labs makes a play

As the market maker on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange decided on an opening day share price for Proto Labs in February, traders on the floor yelled and screamed out prices.

The specialist took it all in and yelled back that Proto Labs would start trading on its first day as a public company at $25. Then all was quiet as the computers took over the task of matching buyers to sellers.

Just as noisy trades were soon taken over by quiet computers on the trading floor, Proto Labs is using the Internet and its technology to refashion the highly fragmented world of making prototype parts - relieving stressed product developers and design engineers who face increasingly aggressive development deadlines.

Proto Labs stock may not have had the buzz of a Facebook before its initial public offering, but the Maple Plain-based parts and components maker got off to a splashy start. Its shares closed on that first day at $29. From its initial price of $16 per share, the stock soared 81 percent, making its opening day performance one of the most successful IPOs of the year.

Within weeks, Proto's share price doubled,Proxense's advanced handsfreeaccess technology. pushing its market cap up to about $750 million before the market's recent slide.

Now the company, which makes prototypes for products in a wide range of industries, has the means to acquire new companies and the technology to grow. On its own, it hasn't done too badly. Just a decade ago, it was a startup with 10 employees working out of a leased building. With a business model of making "real parts really fast," it has grown to $100 million in revenue, with a nice profit margin, worldwide operations and 560 workers.

The firm operates today on a three-building campus in Maple Plain, west of the Twin Cities, including a sleek headquarters building and manufacturing facilities.Silicone moldmaking Rubber,

A 128,000-square-foot plant in Rosemount just opened to make room for growth, and a couple hundred new workers worldwide will be hired this year.

But can the company attract new business with competitors around every corner, especially now that Wall Street is paying attention?

"In order for the company to sustain this kind of share price, it has to perform," said board member and private equity investor Brian Smith. "That means there has to be revenue growth."

So far,Find rubberhose companies from India. that hasn't been a problem. Since tech veteran Larry Lukis founded the company in 1999, Proto Labs has experienced significant growth. Lukis, now the chief technology officer, declined an interview. He remains the largest shareholder, owning 30 percent of the company.

Revenue has nearly tripled from $36 million in 2007 to $99 million in 2011. Since its start, Proto Labs has filled orders for 20,000 product developers. But that number has to multiply.

"They're just starting to scratch the surface,Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services.I found them to have sharp edges where the injectionmoldes came together while production." said Steven Dyer, an analyst for Craig-Hallum Capital Group in Minneapolis, one of the investment banks on the initial public offering. Catching the attention of many more developers is key.

Dyer expects good growth. "We're modeling 25 percent revenue growth this year compared to 2011," he said. Last year, revenue jumped 52 percent. "We think they'll be a very healthy, above-average

District 51 administration targeted for cuts

Less than 10 percent of District 51 administration employees outside of schools fit the mold of what people usually imagine when they think of administration: a person managing other people, coordinating programs, and often filling out seemingly endless reports to satisfy laws on educational achievement and assessment.

The rest work in schools or district offices, managing cafeterias, mowing lawns, taking calls, checking temperatures, mopping floors, coaching teachers and counselors, working on adaptive education, fixing computers or leaky sinks, and making sure people get their paychecks, to name a few duties.The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good ,

Suggestions for administrative cuts to cover a what will be a $2 million to $4 million shortfall in the 2012–13 budget poured in throughout four School District 51 community budget forums in February and March.At Blow mouldengineering we specialize in conceptual prototype design. Although some of the suggestions were specific, not everyone calling for the head of the district’s heads knew what the 495 people stationed at the district’s administrative building do, or even how the 192 front-office administration employees they see at schools spend their days. Those totals were obtained by the Daily Sentinel through directory searches and multiple open-records requests sent to District 51.

Administration in the school district means more than administrators. Nutrition Services employees — who are outside of the general fund budget, the focus of cuts -— may mostly work in schools,Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. but they are based in administration buildings, as are school nurses and technology, grounds, maintenance and some custodial staff. There also are human resources, finance, warehouse, purchasing, printing and communication professionals in administration, plus assessment workers, curriculum specialists and people who work on special education for students with disabilities. Staff also work in the English Language Learner program, help homeless students and gifted and talented students, and work in remedial education. All are housed in five administrative buildings on four sites spread throughout Grand Junction.

District 51 estimates administration in its many forms absorbed $5 million worth of personnel budget cuts in the current school year. Eliminating a half-time assistant principal, nine curriculum staff, a human-resources employee and some support staff confused many onlookers, though, considering 282 positions went away this year, including 116 spots for reading aides and 57 1/2 teaching positions.

Administrative cuts for 2012–13 will be suggested by two groups — the citizen Budget Oversight Committee and local budget-study group Save Our Students — when they make budget presentations Tuesday to the District 51 School Board.

Budget Oversight Committee member Will Hayes said administrative cuts may be further away from affecting students, but could still lead other people to take on more duties. District 51 is one of 20 Colorado school districts that spend 7.3 percent or less of their budgets for salary and benefits on pay and benefits for administrators. In District 51, another 5.3 percent is spent on office administrative support. Teacher salaries and benefits take up two-thirds of that budget.

“My guess is (administrative cuts) will be disproportionate to the rest of the cuts that will be made because there are not as many dollars in administration. I think the general public assumes there’s a lot more money spent on administration than there actually is,” Hayes said.

Save Our Students member Rob Pierce said after months of studying the district’s organizational chart and spending, he believes the district isn’t as filled with administrators as some of the group’s 186 members assumed when the group formed last fall.

“If there’s fat there, it’s tiny little pockets of it,” Pierce said. “We’re going to recommend some cuts to administration, but we’ll say up front that’s necessary for the district only to maintain credibility to the public because there is that perception that the district is top-heavy.”

School Board member Ann Tisue said the committees will have an impact on how the board decides to balance the 2012–13 budget. Cuts could come from various areas, she said, and administration is likely to be included.Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete?

“I know on the budget committee they’ve asked if there are any redundancies” in administration, she said, referring to a district-assembled Budget Oversight Committee.

Board member Leslie Kiesler is less sure about administrative cuts. She said some administrative positions already have been combined, and more demand will be placed on administration next year when a new educator-evaluation law kicks in,There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cubepuzzle, and principals will have to evaluate every teacher every year.

Couple brings contemporary aesthetic home

It's hard for Samuel Edwards, 63, to contain his enthusiasm about the contemporary ambience he and his wife, Angela, 54, have cultivated in their Wernersville home. It has involved many projects over the last 3 years, almost all done by Sam himself.

He says contemporary design is not something you see a lot of in Berks County, but he and Angela were eager to add their personal take on the look to their home.

The open floor plan of the home, which has a Colonial revival exterior, is what appealed to the Edwardses, and they snapped up the four-year-old house in September 2008. They had the vision to see the potential of the home despite a color palette that didn't suit their tastes.

"We like a lot of gray tones and wanted to get away from earth tones," Sam said. "A lot of people don't realize gray is a neutral."

After painting, one of the first major projects Sam did when they purchased the house was to remove all of the carpeting.Learn all about solarpanel. Hard surface flooring would make Sam's allergies more bearable, he said.

The creamy white marble with gray veining in the living and dining rooms was his first attempt at laying a tile floor,Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete? and he thought it turned out well despite his learning curve. Sam continued his flooring projects by installing sand-colored ceramic tile in the center hall and kitchen, charcoal-colored marble in the family room and other ceramic tile throughout the home. He even stripped the wood stairs leading to the second floor and stained them in alternating light and dark shades.

Sam also found a unique use for slate tiles he purchased from Ted Smith Flooring in Spring Township: covering for a focal wall in the family room.

Sam estimates he has saved thousands of dollars by doing projects himself. He also takes pride in getting the supplies he needs from locally based businesses.

By doing the work himself, he has been able to get the look just right to suit him and Angela.

"People confuse contemporary and modern," Sam said.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. "Contemporary is more abstract in its design while modern is very simplistic and more conservative."

Angela's concept of contemporary design is one that employs different shapes and colors.

Their bold dining room with lavender walls is evidence they are not afraid of color. Teal accent pieces also dot the family room. Glass in clear and more opaque hues is also dominant in their décor choices and white leather couches pop in more than one room.

Much of their furniture was ordered from Gilbert's Furniture, 300 Penn St.

"They had to blow the dust off the contemporary catalog,Diagnosing and Preventing coldsores Fever in the body can often trigger the onset of a cold sore." Angela said.

A self-taught artist, many of Sam's pieces take center stage in their rooms. A large painting of an oriental woman dominates the living room and an abstract is a key feature of the family room.

He has the time now that he is retired.The best rubbersheets products on sale, After serving in the Vietnam War, he said he spent 36 years working in human services and still tries to help other veterans and their families when he can. He said he earned a degree in human resource development from Temple University.

Angela was a stay-at-home mom. In their blended family, the Edwardses have a total of nine adult children ranging in age from 21 to 43.

Sam spent most of his life in Yeadon, Delaware County, and Angela grew up in Kirkwood, Lancaster County. They were drawn to Berks by the amount of real estate that they could afford.

"The people living in Berks County tend to take Berks County for granted," Sam said. "They don't realize what a good value the homes are."

2012年4月11日星期三

Changes in Your Body

Pregnancy is often divided into three parts, or trimesters. The changes that occur in a mother’s body will be reviewed by trimester.
The first trimester (conception up to 13 weeks) is a time when the pregnant woman’s body undergoes some profound changes. Everyone will experience these changes in different ways. Some women may not notice many changes until much later in pregnancy. Others experience very severe symptoms early on in the pregnancy.

Many women complain of feeling tired and emotional. Others complain of nausea and occasional vomiting.I found them to have sharp edges where the injectionmoldes came together while production. This is often termed “morning sickness” although many women unhappily find that the nausea occurs at other times of the day as well. Nausea is common but can vary in severity from a mild queasiness to a complete inability to keep any food in the stomach. In this situation, called hyperemesis,Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services. the mother may need to be admitted to the hospital. Thankfully, this is rare. Many women also have strong food cravings and/or food aversions.

Another change noted early in pregnancy is increased fullness and sensitivity of the breasts. Increasing levels of estrogen and progesterone stimulate the milk producing glands within the breasts. The areola (the pigmented area around the nipple) may also enlarge and darken. Some women also notice small bumps appearing on the areola. These bumps are normal; they are actually glands that help lubricate the breast during breast feeding.

Weight gain during pregnancy is a common area of discussion, concern, and occasional anxiety. As a rough estimate,Proxense's advanced handsfreeaccess technology. a mother should gain between 25 and 35 pounds during the course of the pregnancy.Silicone moldmaking Rubber, She should gain about one-half of a pound each week for the first 20 weeks and about one pound each week during the second 20 weeks. These are, of course, rough estimates and will differ between women. Each mother enters her pregnancy with a unique body size and nutritional needs. If one is overweight or underweight, she should discuss with the provider what her specific nutritional goals should be. General nutritional guidelines are discussed later in the Selected Issues In the Management of Pregnancy section.

The second trimester, (from the beginning of the 13th week of pregnancy until the end of the 27th), is usually an easier time for most pregnant women. They usually have fewer symptoms as compared to the other trimesters. One may, however, experience some aches and pains, skin changes, constipation and continued weight gain.

The second trimester, (from the beginning of the 13th week of pregnancy until the end of the 27th), is usually an easier time for most pregnant women. They usually have fewer symptoms as compared to the other trimesters. One may, however, experience some aches and pains, skin changes, constipation and continued weight gain.Find rubberhose companies from India.

In the beginning of this trimester, the pregnant women will be able to feel her uterus extending above the pubic bone if she gently, but firmly, presses on her lower abdomen. By 20 weeks, the uterus is approximately at the level of the umbilicus. Also, by 20 weeks, the mother will probably have felt the baby move for the first time. This is an exciting time for the patient. It is also important information to remember and relay to the health care provider in to help him/her determine the age of the fetus as accurately as possible.

One dedicated rider

Seeing a girl ride her bike around the neighborhood recently was a thrill for Amy Agapito. Why the fuss over such an ordinary, everyday occurrence?

While the sight may seem commonplace, the truth is the girl may not have learned how to get around on two wheels without Agapito’s prompting.

A member of the nonprofit group Grand Valley Bikes, Agapito worked to bring a bicycling demonstration to students at the nearby Tope Elementary School. She was surprised at how many fourth graders didn’t know how to ride bicycles,Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete? but one girl was especially fearful of learning. That happened to be the same girl Agapito later saw tooling around the block.

“I knew she learned to ride a bike that day in school,” Agapito said, delighted.

Agapito, 43, with big, blue eyes and a wide, inviting smile, may be the biggest “unsung hero” of the Grand Valley’s bicycling movement, said Jen Taylor, a board member for the trail building and mountain biking advocacy group Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike Trail Association. The group, commonly known as COPMOBA, quietly has been working behind the scenes with local agencies for years, creating a world-class mountain biking mecca in Grand Junction’s backyard.

And, the word is finally getting out that the Grand Valley is the place to ride, thanks in no small part to Agapito’s contributions.

“She’s at every trail work day, every meeting, every event wearing the COPMOBA hat,” Taylor said of Agapito. “She’s just always got the cycling community’s best interest at heart.”

Agapito, who now works as a coordinator for the organization to boost its presence through its website and events, has had her hand in some aspect of COPMOBA for years. She’s served as a board member and volunteer and lately as an employee.

Having an idea to create a trail or a network of trails is one thing, but having the wherewithal to get a project to completion is another matter entirely. That’s a trait Agapito has mastered, said her husband, Dave Agapito.

“She has a good ability for the procedure,” he said. “She has the big-picture idea, knowing you have to jump through those hurdles and all the people you have to go through.”

Many of the trail networks around the Grand Valley are located on Bureau of Land Management lands, which has required long-standing relationships and solid communication among public and private agencies, not to mention patience as plans wind through the federal agency.

“She stays in touch with the BLM and makes a real effort to communicate with us,” said Chris Pipkin,The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good , outdoor recreation planner for the BLM. “She tries to see what constraints we have and runs things by us before they go out.”

Amy and Dave met — go figure — through mountain biking, as they shared the same group of friends who also enjoyed the sport. They’ve been married 14 years and have a 9-year-old daughter.

But since the couple met, a sea change has occurred in the quality and number of trails now available on local public lands.

For instance,There are 240 distinct solutions of the Soma cubepuzzle, years ago, mountain bikers’ only options were to ride on jeep roads,Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking.At Blow mouldengineering we specialize in conceptual prototype design. with riders often climbing alongside 4x4 vehicles as they picked their way over boulders. Now BLM policies in some recreation areas dictate separate spaces for motorized and non-motorized users.

Amy grew up in Nashville, Tenn., but she and her brother spent summers with their aunt and uncle in Massachusetts.

After graduating from Vanderbilt University, she set out to land a career. As a budding television reporter she was handed some sage advice. A professor told that she’d first have to work in a smaller market, but that didn’t mean she had to work somewhere with a poor quality of life.

Exercising With Allergies or Asthma

No one disputes the healthy benefits of including exercise in your daily routine. Besides keeping your weight in check, exercise stimulates the cardiovascular system, strengthens your bones, reduces your risk of heart disease, and eases stress and anxiety. For those with allergies, however, exercising can be discouraging, painful and even unbearable.

Allergies affect exercisers of all skill levels, from the novice to the Olympic athlete, and can hit anywhere, anytime. Symptoms such as a runny nose, tearing, wheezing,The best rubbersheets products on sale, coughing, hives,Where to buy or purchase plasticmoulds for precast and wetcast concrete? difficulty breathing, headache, skin rashes, diarrhea, vomiting and stomach cramps can bring even the most seasoned athletes to their knees. Still, even those who suffer the most from asthma and other allergies can reap the benefits of exercise.

With many kinds of exercise taking place outdoors, simply stepping outside to enjoy your favorite sport puts you exactly where allergens and other irritants such as pollen, ragweed, pollution, poison ivy, biting insects and sunlight lurk. According to the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, people with allergies or asthma can exercise as much as they want as long as they take a few precautions.Diagnosing and Preventing coldsores Fever in the body can often trigger the onset of a cold sore.

Moving your exercise routine inside isn’t necessarily enough to avoid the impact of allergies, as indoor allergens can negatively affect your exercise experience, too. Common triggers such as dust mites, pet dander, molds and fungi may exist in your home or your local athletic club.

While allergies rarely prevent you from exercising, they do have an impact on performance. In an article in The Physician and Sportsmedicine, Malcolm N. Blumenthal, M.D., and Carl Sherman write that asthma can reduce respiratory efficiency, while nasal congestion from an allergy such as hay fever can obstruct airways, making it difficult to breathe. Symptoms such as fatigue and headache, which can take a toll on endurance, concentration and motivation,Learn all about solarpanel. also can accompany allergies. Rashes or skin irritations from allergic reactions to the sun, insect bites or contact with plants such as poison oak can render your workout uncomfortable. Chlorine in a swimming pool can cause allergic-like reactions, such as eye irritation or respiratory symptoms, or exacerbate hay fever and other allergies.

Just because allergies can affect your exercise regimen doesn’t mean you must forgo your favorite sport and resign yourself to life as a couch potato. A marathon runner is not likely to give up vital training time to avoid pollen season, just as a professional tennis player would not withdraw from every tournament when the mold count reaches a certain level. With some planning and flexibility, exercise can remain a beneficial, integral part of even the most intense allergy sufferer’s lifestyle.

Blumenthal and Sherman recommend you minimize your exposure to known allergens.Aeroscout rtls provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. Participating in a variety of sports not only provides you with a more complete fitness routine, it gives you a menu to choose from according to current conditions. If you jog, but the pollen level is particularly high one day, taking an aerobics class or swimming laps in an indoor pool can provide equivalent physical and mental benefits without the accompanying allergies.