CRITERIA TO SELECT CROPS IN SEQUENCE FOR ROTATIONAL CROPPING
Non –leguminous crops should be followed by leguminous crops and vice-versa, eg. green gram – wheat / maize. If preceding crops are legume or non-legume grown as intercrops or mixed crops, the succeeding crop may be legume or non legume or both. Restorative crops should be followed by exhaustive or non-restorative crops.eg. seasame – cowpea / green gram / blackgram / groundnut. Leaf shedding crop should be followed by non-leaf shedding or less exhaustive crops.eg. pulses / cotton – wheat / rice. Green manuring crop should be followed by grain crops.eg. dhaincha - rice, green gram/ cowpea – wheat / maize. Highly fertilized crops should be followed by non-fertilised crop.eg. maize - black gram/gourds. Perennial or long duration crops should be followed by seasonal /restorative crops. eg. napier / sugarcane - groundnut /cowpea /green gram. Fodder crops should be followed by field or vegetable crops. eg. maize + cowpea-wheat/potato/cabbage/onion. Multicut crops should be succeeded by the seed crops. eg. green gram/maize. Ratoon crops should be followed by deep rooted restorative crops. eg. sugarcane/jowar-pigeonpea/Lucerne/cowpea. Fouling crops should be followed by cleaning crops.eg. jowar /maize potato/ groundnut. Cleaning crops should be followed by nursery crops. eg. potato/ colocasia/ turmeric / beet/ carrot-rice nursery/ onion nursery/ tobacco nursery/ vegetable nursery. Deep rooted crops should be succeeded by shallow rooted crops. eg. cotton/ castor/ pigeonpea – potato / lentil /green gram etc. Deep tillage crops should be followed by zero or minimal tillage crops. eg. potato / radish / sweet potato/sugarcane - black gram/green gram/green manuring crops. Dicot crops should be followed by monocot crops. eg, potato / mustard / groundnut / pulses – rice / wheat / sugarcane / jowar or dicot + Monocot crops should be followed by dicot + monocot or either dicot or monocot crops. Stiff stubble leaving crops should be followed by minimum intercultivation requiring crops. eg. sugarcane / sorghum/cotton /pigeonpea- fodder crops. The crops of wet (anaerobic) soil should be followed by the crops of dry (aerobic). eg. rice-Bengal gram/Lathyrus/pulses/oilseeds. The tendency to buildup difficult-to-control weeds becomes less in such rotation than in continuous wet land rice culture. The crops that are susceptible to soil-borne pests and pathogens should be followed by tolerant / break / trap crops. eg. sugarcane-marigold for pathogenic nematodes, tomato / brinjal / tobacco / potato-rice / pulses for Orobanche, jowar-castor for Striga and berseem-oats for Cuscuta. The crops with problematic weeds (weeds that are difficult to distinguish at any one stage of crop, may be seedling or seed stage) should be followed by cleaning crops / multicut crops / other dissimilar crops or varieties. eg. wheat-wet rice for Phalaris minor , berseem-potato / boro rice for Cichorium intybus , mustard early potato for Cleome viscose, rice-jute /sugarcane / vegetable/ maize + cowpea for Echinochloa crusgalli , jute- multicut fooder / vegetable or Corchorus acutangulus . Pasture crops should be followed by fodder or seed crop. eg. para grass – maize + cowpea / cowpea / rice bean / tetrakalai for seed. Silage / hay / cleaning crops should be followed by seed crops. eg. maize / groundnut - onion, cowpea / jowar for seed crops. Crops with the same symbiotic / associated microbes should be followed by common host crops, such as, Rhizobium melilote - lucerna, sweet clover, fenugreek R. trifolli - berseem, Persian clover R. leguminosorum - peas, lentil, Lathyrus R. phaseoli - beans, green gram, pillipesara, black gram R. lupine - Lupines R. japonicum - cowpea, pigeonpea, guar, sunhemp, Bengal gram, soybean, kudzu
The rotational use of crop varieties, and cultural practices in addition to rotational cropping provides more and assured benefits than that of adopting only crops or land rotation.


Intangible forms of capital are being recognized in both research and practice as essential resources for fueling company growth. Forms of intangible capital include: intellectual, organizational, human, relationship, social, political, innovation, and collaborative. This volume consists of papers that focus on collaborative capital - broadly defined as the organizational assets that enable people to work together well. It is manifested in such outcomes as increased innovation and creativity, commitment and involvement, flexibility and adaptability, leveraging of knowledge, and enhanced learning. 'Collaborative capital' represents a core competency or strategic resource essential for building competitive advantage by enabling the creation of networks of conversations and relationships. However, it is seldom developed in a deliberate and systematic way, but rather as an incidental outcome of formal and informal organizational change. It may be deliberately increased by change in organizational systems, practices, design, learning, and culture. The term collaborative capital has seldom been used in research literature dealing with how people work together.Consequently, the meaning, measurement, and impact of collaborative capital in practice have not been explored to any significant extent. The papers in this volume launch that process with teaming contexts ranging from alliances and partnerships, to cross-national teams and cross-disciplinary teams.
Research Teams in an Australian Biotechnology Field: How Intellectual Property Influences Collaboration. Creating Cultures of Collaboration that Thrive on Diversity - A Transformational Perspective on Building Collaborative Capital. Exploiting Intellectual and Collaborative Capital for Innovation in Knowledge-Intensive Industries. Connecting Across Miles and Wires: Examining Collaborative Capital Development in Virtual Spaces. Striving for a New Ideal: A Work Environment to Energize Collaborative Capacity Across East and West Boundaries. Team-Member Exchange and Individual Contributions to Collaborative Capital in Organizations. Leading Together, Working Together: The Role of Team Shared Leadership in Building Collaborative Capital in Virtual Teams. Leadership, Collaborative Capital, and Innovation. Minimizing the Impact of Organizational Distress on Intellectual and Social Capital Through Development of Collaborative Capital. From Work Group to Team: The Growth of a City. Knotworking to Create Collaborative Intentionality Capital in Fluid Organizational Fields.


As the year transitions to dusk and a fresh New Year is about to rise like the glorious brilliant sun on a clear day, it is often easy to neglect the importance of appreciation and reflection due to our busy schedules. The holiday season provides an excellent opportunity to consider what we are truly thankful for and demonstrate gratitude and appreciation for individuals who assist with our successes and aid in our difficult times. Some holidays have a tradition of gift exchange, which I believe, is one opportunity to demonstrate our appreciation. I believe the simple traditions of unselfish friendship and providing assistance can be of greater value then any monetary gifts. I understand some of us are in need of the basic necessities, such as shelter, food, caregivers, medicine or medical assistance, and monetary gifts can truly be a valued necessity. Beyond life’s necessities, I believe the gift of life and friendship is an invaluable gift that should be cherished. Although we may have had challenges and unforeseen difficulties in the past year, I hope we can find reasons to celebrate the joyful season and reflect on the passing year with gratitude.
I have many reasons to smile, rejoice, reflect and celebrate. All I need to do to reestablish a gratitude mind-set is to think about my first Christmas after losing my eyesight. Lying in a hospital bed for seven months listening to patients experiencing pain and other unpleasant medical treatments, reinforces how very grateful I was and still am to receive the gift of life and the ability to leave the hospital to pursue my dreams.
Special Thoughts during Holidays describes some details of my first blessed New Year as a blind person.
After reflecting on this year, I plan to increase my effectiveness at acting unselfishly and demonstrating gratitude towards friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and other individuals who truly make a difference in my personal and professional life. I also plan to appreciate the many new acquaintances I will be able to meet on my walks.
After reflecting on this year, what are you thankful for? What traits will you attempt to enhance to promote success and gratitude? Did others play an important role in your life? Do you have any stories to share with examples of how valuing friendship increased your success or happiness, or the individual you were assisting? Any examples of priceless gifts? We all look forward to hearing from you.
As this year closes, I wish you the very best in the New Year.
Bill Tipton
Contributing Author,
Global Dialogue Center
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wdtipton
Facebook: http://profile.to/wdtipton
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wdtipton


Walking Through Jelly: Language Proficiency, Emotions, and Disrupted Collaboration in Global Work Executive Summary — As organizations increasingly globalize, individuals are required to collaborate with coworkers across international borders. Many organizations are mandating English as the lingua franca, or common language, regardless of the location of their headquarters, to facilitate collaboration across national and linguistic boundaries. What is the emotional impact of lingua franca adoption on native and nonnative speakers who work closely together and often across national boundaries? This study examines the communication experience for native and nonnative English speakers in an organization that mandates English as the lingua franca for everyday use, and the impact of the lingua franca on collaboration among globally distributed coworkers. HBS professor Tsedal Neeley and coauthors describe in detail how emotions and actions were intertwined and evolved recursively as coworkers attempted to release themselves from unwanted negative emotions and inadvertently acted in ways that transferred negative experiences to their distant coworkers. Their findings have implications for managers who are charged with overseeing internationally distributed projects. Key concepts include:
Disparities in English language proficiency were a major challenge for workers in the study. These disparities not only disrupted information sharing, they often triggered a cycle of negative emotional responses that interfered with collaborative relationships on the teams. It is important that workers engage in perspective taking with the goal of understanding the experiences and constraints of their colleagues. Building awareness of the experiences of coworkers with different language backgrounds and proficiencies and empathizing with those experiences can circumvent the negative cycle. Author Abstract In an ethnographic study comprised of interviews and concurrent observations of 145 globally distributed members of nine project teams of an organization, we found that uneven proficiency in English, the lingua franca, disrupted collaboration for both native and non-native speakers. Although all team members spoke English, different levels of fluency contributed to tensions on these teams. As non-native English speakers attempted to counter the apprehension they felt when having to speak English and native English speakers fought against feeling excluded and devalued, a cycle of negative emotion ensued and disrupted interpersonal relationships on these teams. We describe in detail how emotions and actions evolved recursively as coworkers sought to relieve themselves of negative emotions prompted by the lingua franca mandate and inadvertently behaved in ways that triggered negative responses in distant coworkers. Our results add to the scant literature on the role of emotions in collaborative relationships in organizations and suggest that organizational policies can set in motion a cycle of negative emotions that interfere with collaborative work. 38 pages.


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There is a plethora of recent research on high performance wireless communications using a cross-layer approach in that adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) schemes at wireless physical layer are used for combating time varying channel fading and enhance link throughput. However, in a wireless sensor network, transmitting packets over deep fading channel can incur excessive energy consumption due to the usage of stronger forwarding error code (FEC) or more robust modulation mode. To avoid such energy inefficient transmission, a straightforward approach is to temporarily buffer packets when the channel is in deep fading, until the channel quality recovers. Unfortunately, packet buffering may lead to communication latency and buffer overflow, which, in turn, can result in severe degradation in communication performance. Specifically, to improve the buffering approach, we need to address two challenging issues: (1) how long should we buffer the packets?, and (2) how to choose the optimum channel transmission threshold above which to transmit the buffered packets? In this paper, by using discrete-time queuing model, we analyze the effects of Rayleigh fading over AMC- based communications in a wireless sensor network. We then analytically derive the packet delivery rate and average delay. Guided by these numerical results, we can determine the most energy-efficient operation modes under different transmission environments. Extensive simulation results on NS-2 have validated the analytical results, and indicates that under these modes, we can achieve as much as 40% reduction in energy dissipation.
Date of Conference:
10-14 Sept. 2007


All faith traditions challenge us to engage in healing, to act with justice, and to treat one another with compassion. But our health care delivery system distributes services unjustly, rations care inequitably, and offers compassion only to those who can afford it.
The Faith Caucus, including Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other traditions, pulls from across the state of Illinois to assert the moral imperative of health care for all. We recognize that equal access to health care is not only a socio-economic issue, but also a moral issue whose impact is felt strongly within our communities and congregations.
Together the Faith Caucus has been bringing the moral crisis of health care disparity to policymakers through educational awareness events, thoughtful discussion, and prayer.


Sustainability Initiatives Pájaro Campana Biological Corridor UGA Costa Rica campus is located within the Pájaro Campana Biological Corridor (PCBC), which spans from the cloudforests that straddle the continental divide down to the mangrove forests along the shores of the Gulf of Nicoya. The PCBC follows the course of three major watersheds—the Aranjuez, Guacimal and Lagartos Rivers—through approximately 664km2 on the way down the Pacific Slope of the Tilarán Range. The Pájaro Campana Biological Corridor forms part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which stretches from southern Mexico through Panama.
Despite its relatively small total area, the region reflects Costa Rica’s astounding biodiversity and is an area of high endemism and speciation, including over 500 species of orchids among over 2,000 identified plant species (Nadkarni and Wheelwright 2000). The region spans 11 of 16 Holdridge Life Zones (Holdridge 1987) and includes six Central American forest types as designated by the World Wildlife Fund. Of the 83 mammal species identified in the PCBC, 12 are listed as endangered. Over half of Costa Rica’s nearly 900 bird species have been identified within the PCBC, including 29 endemic species, with 20 species on the IUCN Red List.
UGA Costa Rica's General Manager, Fabricio Camacho, serves on the Local Advisory Commission for this Corridor, which is recognized by the Costa Rican Government as part of the country's national biological corridor program. Other PCBC Advisory Board members include representatives from the Tropical Science Center, the Costa Rican Conservation Foundation, the Monteverde Institute, the Monteverde Conservation League, the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), and the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC).


A recent CFPB report disclosed that outstanding student loan debt now totals over $1 trillion, and the debt burden is causing problems for many first-time home buyers. According to mortgage industry experts, many first-time buyers are turned down for mortgages because their student loan debt significantly raises their overall debt level. This is particularly true given that some student loan payments are as high as a mortgage. Mark Kantrowitz, the founder of FinAid.org, recommends that borrowers restructure or consolidate student loans at a reduced interest rate to lower monthly payments.
Why is the student debt crisis such a hot issue, with President Obama and Mitt Romney supporting efforts to extend loan subsidies that expire in July? The answer is the debt burden negatively impacts the economy because young people are strapped and unable to buy homes or start businesses.Additionally, like risky mortgages, risky private student loans have been packaged into securities that are sold to the public. Concerns are growing that a pileup of student-loan defaults could jeopardize these investments, resulting in a burst similar to the housing bubble breakdown.


April 19, 2007
Jefferson City, Mo. — Payments to the state of Missouri from the 1998 agreement between Attorney General Jay Nixon and the major tobacco companies have surpassed the $1.2 billion mark, Nixon announced today. The state received a total of $136,995,817 in two payments this week; added to the $1,101,267,653 previously paid, it brings the total Nixon has brought in from the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) for Missouri taxpayers to $1,238,263,470. “This historic agreement was the result of our lawsuit to hold Big Tobacco accountable for decades of misrepresentation and deceit, particularly as those efforts were aimed at getting young people hooked on cigarettes,” Nixon said. “I'm proud that our efforts have obtained well over a billion dollars so far for Missouri, with those payments extending into perpetuity.
“I continue to urge our legislators to follow the example of other states and dedicate meaningful portions of these payments to help anti-smoking efforts, especially those aimed at youth,” Nixon said. “Missouri has lagged behind too far on this issue, and we're paying the price for it with higher smoking rates.”
According to a report from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Missouri has an adult smoking rate of 23.4 percent—the eleventh highest adult smoking rate among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, higher than the national average of 20.9 percent, and higher than the neighboring states of Illinois, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. The December 2006 report cites Missouri as one of only five states that have allocated no significant state funds for tobacco prevention.
The annual payments to Missouri and the other 45 states that participated in the MSA are based on consumption of tobacco, inflation and other factors. The payments will continue into perpetuity.


Abstract: A reliable, safe, supply of drinking water is essential to the survival of communities. In many places the water supply is under stress-a condition that is expected to get progressively more challenging in the future. There are several ways that municipalities can improve their drinking water supply, including conservation, purchases from external suppliers, desalination, and recycling. Recycling wastewater into potable water is attractive in many situations. However, this alternative has not always been successful-in some cases, public opposition has defeated recycling plans, while public concerns have been successfully addressed in others. This case gives an overview of water supply issues and examples of successful and unsuccessful attempts to implement recycling programs. Programs in Singapore and Orange County, California are profiled as examples of successful recycling efforts, while failures in San Diego, California, and Toowoomba, Australia are described.


Abstract: References to procrastination have been dated back to as long as 3,000 years ago. However, research on procrastination is ironically enormously behind the curve in active research on its antecedents and effects. Academic procrastination is a unique outlet of procrastinatory tendencies and is the object of much less scientific research. Academic procrastination occurs when students needlessly delay completing projects, activities or assignments and has been linked to lower academic grades, poorer well-being, and more stress. Studies have found procrastination to be a vital predictor of success in college and the development of a scale upon which to measure it could be quite profitable to colleges and universities. Numerous scales such as the Lay (1986) General Procrastination Scale, the Solomon and Rothblum (1984) Procrastination Assessment Scale for Students, and the Choi and Moran (2009) scale have been used to measure procrastination. However, the Tuckman (1991) Procrastination Scale is the most widely-used scale to identify academic procrastinators.The current study examined these scales as compared to a new scale, the Academic Procrastination Scale (APS). The main goal of the current study was the development of a superior academic procrastination scale. The 25-item APS was originally developed in a pilot study using 86 undergraduate college students and was based on six different characteristics of procrastinators: Psychological belief about abilities, distractions of attention, social factors, time management skills, personal initiative, and laziness. The current study examined the relationship between the APS and the personality trait of conscientiousness and the predictive ability of the APS in regards to academic success as compared to the other procrastination scales.In the current study, a total of 681 participants responded to a survey. Participants were, on average, 21 years of age and came from diverse academic majors and demographic backgrounds. The APS exhibited greater reliability and internal consistency, á = .94, as compared to the four other scales. The APS also exhibited ample convergent validity and was significantly correlated with the other scales. The APS was also significantly related to Grade Point Average (GPA); as individuals procrastinated more, they possessed a significantly lower GPA. Yet, the APS proved far superior at predicting grades in school as compared to the four most widely-used procrastination scales. The APS even added incremental validity beyond these four scales in predicting semester grades. The APS also predicted variance in grades beyond a well-known personality predictor, conscientiousness. Moreover, scores on the APS fully mediated this established relationship between conscientiousness and grades.A factor analysis of the APS revealed one underlying factor, seemingly indicating that the scale was measuring academic procrastination. Test bias could possibly destroy a scale's validity and was therefore assessed using two different procedures. An Analysis of Variance revealed that scores on the APS did not systematically vary with such irrelevant variables as gender, ethnicity, academic major or academic year. The Lautenschlager and Mendoza (1986) approach found that scores did, however, vary across ethnicity with Caucasians exhibiting a higher GPA across all levels of the APS when compared to African Americans. This trend was also found for the Tuckman scale, however. However, this bias could potentially be explained by GPA varying across ethnicity with Caucasians exhibiting a significantly higher cumulative GPA as compared to Hispanics or African Americans. Although the internal consistency of the APS was quite high, it is also symptomatic of redundant items. Thus, the possibility of reducing the scale to five items was assessed and validated. This shortened scale also exhibited adequate reliability, á = .87.Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores are used across the country to select students on the basis of success in college. However, both the APS and SAT uniquely predict college grades and together, account for 16% of the variance in college grades. It is even proposed that the current scale be used in conjunction with SAT scores to predict success in college. The APS could add significant validity to such a collegiate selection procedure. If procrastination is consistently found to have negative consequences, then students who exhibit higher scores on the APS could also be remediated in educational settings. Thus, based on results from the current study, the APS could be used as a valid, reliable, and instrumental tool within the educational community.


The average per-gallon price of regular gas in Tennessee was $3.53 as of yesterday, a decrease of five cents compared to the figure from the previous week, according to AAA.
This marks the second straight week the state has seen prices, on average, dip five cents. Last week was the first time since January that the weekly average for a gallon of regular gas, both statewide and throughout the country, retreated. Gas prices steadily climbed from mid-January until last week, breaking records and making February’s national average of $3.65 the highest in history.
As of Sunday, the national average price was $3.70, also a five-cent per-gallon decrease. More specifically, and to compare to Tennessee, Georgia’s per-gallon average of $3.64 decreased seven cents.
In Nashville, the average per-gallon price of regular gas was 3.56 as of Sunday, a drop of five cents compared to the figure from the previous week. (See chart below.)
Currently, oil prices stand at $91.95 a barrel, $1.27 more than the mark from the week prior, AAA reports.
The market is currently pulled in both directions, with a positive economic outlook based on the recent employment data and bearish fundamentals as oil stockpiles increase, AAA reports. The U.S. Labor Department reported an increase in U.S. jobs, putting the jobless rate at a five-year low and boosting the fuel demand outlook. However, the nation's crude stockpiles rose by 3.8 million barrels last week, the most since June, according to the Energy Information Administration. The dollar also reached a high against the euro this year, helping to weigh down oil prices, AAA reports.
"Gas prices are expected to decrease further in the short-term and will likely stay below year-ago levels,” Jessica Brady, AAA spokeswoman, The Auto Club Group, said in a release.
“However, motorists are not in the clear yet,” she added. “Pump prices may inch back up in April, before peaking as initially forecast by the EIA at the start of the year."


Moving past the challenges of alternative fuel usage
With the mounting burden of energy costs, concerns with the long-term availability of fossil fuels, and increasing awareness of greenhouse gas emissions, cement manufacturers are growing more focused on developing and instituting cost-effective alternatives. The hurdles to change have proven challenging, but several are leading the charge in overcoming those roadblocks.
Historically, coal has been the primary fuel source for the Indian cement sector, with petcoke largely filling the balance. However, domestic coal suppliers are unable to meet the growing coal demand, thus pushing cement producers to either import at higher prices or look for other solutions.


Additional product details This unique text explores both the foundations of diversity and a variety of cultural groups while providing practical strategies for shaping and implementing a multicultural curriculum.
In Part I, this text provides a definition of multicultural education that includes all types of diversity and explores a variety of foundational issues and models. In Part II, the text hones in on various cultural groups to help pre-service teachers better understand the backgrounds of diverse learners. Finally, Part III offers teacher candidates a series of applied chapters that focus on planning a multicultural curriculum, using the most effective instructional practices with diverse learners, and working successfully with families of diverse students, and collaborating with school personnel and administrators to implement a multicultural program.


The Second Amendment to the Constitution states that "A well regulated militia being necessary … the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
The arms referred to were muzzleloading single-shot muskets and citizens were expected to bring their own to conflicts.
Today, we are defended by paid armed forces and the citizen soldiers of the Reserves and National Guard. They and law enforcement are armed with weapons designed for their use and whose purpose is often to kill.
The Second Amendment gives citizens these rights, but it need not extend to the weapons designed for and used by the military. There is no legitimate civilian use for automatic or semi-automatic weapons. These are not target weapons or sporting weapons, but killing weapons. Otherwise, why the term "assault rifle"?
Despite the opinions of Wayne LaPierre and the National Rifle Association, our legislators should show some backbone and remove these weapons from Second Amendment protection.
Thelma Iker
Salt Lake City


Technology is creeping into our nighttime routine, and it might be making us lose sleep. Watching television, surfing the Internet, making a call, or texting before turning in is commonplace. Why should we care? Many of us are already sleep-deprived, and that could result in falling asleep at our desks — or worse, while driving.
It's on your
To-Do List ! Get your friends involved too.Comment and share your experience, and invite friends toDo It too!


The brain is a unique and enigmatic organ. It cannot be transplanted, and is one of the most complex entities in the known universe. Unusually, this book asks not what our brains do for us, but what we have done to brains, following the long quest to manipulate and decipher this most exceptional of human organs.


The popularity of mobile phones has driven the uptake of new mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and netbooks. This has had a significant impact in the digital media we consume, as well as how we consume it. This report examines the reach of the ‘digital omnivore’ trend and explains how mobile devices are changing the media landscape forever.


On August 6, 1906, three African American men—Nease Gillespie, John Gillespie, and Jack Dillingham—were lynched in Salisbury, North Carolina. These mob murders were ostensibly precipitated by the axe murder a month earlier of a local white family for whom the men had worked. Following the abduction of the men from the local jail and their midnight hanging before an audience that some estimated to be in the thousands, one of the lynchers was arrested and prosecuted for his role in the mob executions. Given the rare nature of such a trial, the courtroom action was full of drama, anticipation, and anxiety as the case went all the way to the North Carolina Supreme Court. Ultimately, the high court upheld the fifteen-year sentence of George Hall for conspiring to murder Nease Gillespie, John Gillespie, and Jack Dillingham. This conviction of a lyncher was the first in North Carolina history and one of the earliest in American history. However, in only prosecuting Hall for this communal breach of the law, the symbolism of the punishment conveyed mixed meanings. It simultaneously signaled that lynchings were becoming unacceptable expressions of extralegal retribution and confirmed that local and state authorities were limited in their willingness to pursue lynch mobs.
Within the context of its times, the prosecution of George Hall highlighted a confluence of political and cultural trends that had characterized southern history since emancipation. Lynching as a social phenomenon had largely evolved into a white-on-black crime, a stark method of dramatizing the racial boundaries that protected white privilege and domination from black encroachment. Mob murders of African Americans for various alleged offenses—especially murder or rape—were as much aimed at terrorizing black communities into silence and deference to white supremacy as they were about lethally penalizing individual blacks for putative transgressions against (white) communal norms. In conjunction with codified segregation, disfranchisement, and other assaults on black liberty and citizenship, lynching consolidated the power of white reactionary forces. Aspiring politicians, yellow journalists, and domineering employers tolerated and even cultivated a climate of mob violence in North Carolina and elsewhere, confident that federal officials would not find it politically expedient to come to the defense of African Americans who were being removed en masse from voter rolls. Importantly, the practice of lynching appealed to the worst biases and fears of white voters and workers, who were often anxious about their own place in a social order facing the vagaries of modernity.
If the 1906 Salisbury lynching was a microcosm of the forces of race, class, and history that had influenced the larger American experience, then its aftermath pointed, hopefully and cautiously, to new possibilities regarding North Carolina race relations. The conviction of Hall did, in fact, coincide with a lull in lynchings in the state. By the end of World War I and the advent of the Great Migration, North Carolina governors, ever-conscious of the state’s image as a harbinger of the “New South,” were in correspondence with the recently formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which had taken a strong public stance against mob murder. While lynching would not disappear completely from North Carolina prior to World War II, the number of incidents diminished greatly over the four decades following the Salisbury murders.
Claude A. Clegg III is professor of history at Indiana University. Among his publications is Troubled Ground: A Tale of Murder, Lynching, and Reckoning in the New South (2010), which focuses on a 1906 lynching in Salisbury, North Carolina.


The water conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is a key element of the wider political feud between the two parties, and its resolution is essential for a final peace accord. The main source of water for both Israelis and Palestinians is the shared Mountain and Coastal Aquifers. These aquifers have suffered significant degradation as a result of mismanagement and overexploitation during the past several decades. This degradation has had harmful effects on both the Israeli and Palestinian populations, and will influence the long-term capacity of the aquifers. Most Israeli and Palestinian water professionals agree that it is necessary to devise a mutually acceptable solution for jointly allocating, managing, and monitoring their shared water resources. The main outstanding question is what the comonents of this agreement will be. In this report, I argue that if a fair and satisfactory solution is to be reached, Israelis and Palestinians will have to first reallocate their water resources, and then build an adequate joint management regime.


People with exceptional longevity share similar lifestyle choices with the general population
THURSDAY, Aug. 4 (HealthDay News) -- Individuals with exceptional longevity are not distinct from the general population in terms of lifestyle factors, including body mass index, smoking, physical activity, or low-calorie diet, according to a study published online Aug. 3 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society .
Swapnil N. Rajpathak, M.B.B.S., Dr.P.H., from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., and colleagues evaluated the probable lifestyle factors, including physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption, and dietary habits, of individuals with exceptional longevity. Data on lifestyle factors and anthropometry were collected through questionnaire, and compared between 477 Ashkenazi Jewish individuals with an average age of 97.3 years (74.6 percent women) and 3,164 participants with an average age of 69 years (52.7 percent women) from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), who represented the same birth cohort.
The investigators found that there were no statistically significant differences for individuals with exceptional longevity compared to individuals from the NHANES cohort for body mass index (men, 25.4 versus 25.6 kg/m²; women, 25.0 versus 24.9 kg/m²), proportion of daily alcohol consumption (men, 23.9 versus 22.4; women, 12.1 versus 11.3), proportion of regular physical activity (men, 43.1 versus 57.2; women, 47.0 versus 44.1), and proportion of low-calorie diet (men, 20.8 versus 21.1; women, 27.3 versus 27.1).
"People with exceptional longevity are not distinct in terms of lifestyle factors from the general population, suggesting that people with exceptional longevity may interact with environmental factors differently than others," the authors write.
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Prospects Brighten for State Assistance Good news for education, health care, public safety, human services, and – oh yes – good news for the economy:
The jobs package that Senate Democratic leaders unveiled today includes a six-month extension of extra federal funds to states.
Failure to extend these funds would lead to even bigger cuts in services than states are already making, as we outline in a new paper.


Plastic Feedstock Supply The Company’s feedstock sources primarily include post-commercial and industrial waste plastic. The P2O processor accepts unwashed, unsorted waste plastic, composites and commingled materials, which are difficult to dispose of and are typically found in industrial waste streams. The Company believes its P2O process offers a cost-effective, environmental solution for businesses and communities.
JBI is also partnering with businesses and municipalities who collect waste plastics. Typically, this waste plastic is delivered to independent Material Recycling Facilities (MRFs), where it is often sent to landfill. Our vision is to help redirect these waste plastic streams, preventing them from entering local landfills.Optimal Plastic Feedstock Types #2 - HDPE or High-Density and Polyethylene – This grade of plastic is commonly used in bottles, grocery bags, milk jugs, recycling bins, agricultural pipe, plastic lumber, barrels, pails, food container, oil containers, wire rolls and gas tanks.#4 - LDPE or Low-Density Polyethylene – This grade of plastic is commonly used in plastic bags, 6 pak rings, various containers, tubing, agricultural film, natural gas piping and various molded laboratory equipment.#5 - PP or Polypropylene – This type of plastic is commonly used in auto parts, industrial fibers food container, agricultural films and dish¬ware.#7 - Other or O – These types of plastics are commonly composed of combinations and composites of the above grades.Unacceptable Plastic Feedstock Types #1 - PET or Polyethylene Terephthalate – This grade of plastic realizes optimal value when traditionally recycled.#3 - PVC or Polyvinyl Chloride – PVC is primarily composed of chlorine and contains a low percentage of hydrocarbons.#6 - PS or Polystyrene Other – Foams, Nylons and Fiberglass
Examples of industrial waste plastic currently being processed are shown below.
The images below show plastic feedstock as it arrives at the Company's Niagara Falls facility prepared and loaded into "super sacs". The super sacs are lifted above the base of the feed system conveyor belt and suspended while the feedstock drops into the hopper before being fed into the conveyor system.


In the game of chess, a sacrifice is a move giving up a piece or pawn in the hopes of gaining tactical or positional compensation in other forms. A sacrifice could also be a deliberate exchange of a chess piece of higher value for an opponent's piece of lower value.
Any chess piece except the king can be sacrificed. Because players usually try to hold onto their own pieces, offering a sacrifice can come as an unpleasant surprise to one's opponent, putting him off balance, and causing him to waste much precious time trying to calculate whether the sacrifice is sound or not and whether to accept it. Sacrificing one's queen, or a string of pieces, adds to the surprise, and such games can be awarded brilliancy prizes.
Types of sacrifice True vs. Pseudo Sacrifices can either be true sacrifices or pseudo sacrifices:
*In a true sacrifice, the sacrificing player will often have to play on with less material than his opponent for quite some time. *In a pseudo sacrifice, the player offering the sacrifice will soon regain the sacrificed material, or he may even gain more material than was originally sacrificed. A pseudo sacrice of this latter type is sometimes known as a sham sacrifice, and will often lead to mate. Because a true sacrifice produces less direct results, it may not even be clear even after several moves that the chances of the player who offered the sacrifice are any better than they were before the sacrifice was initiated. Because of this, true sacrifices are also called speculative sacrifices.
True sacrifices Attack on the king. A player might sacrifice a pawn or piece to get open lines around the vicinity of the opponent's king, to get a kingside space advantage, to destroy or damage the opposing king's pawn cover, or to keep the opposing king in the center. However, the path to checkmate might not be clear, and one might not exist. If the opponent fends off the attack while managing to keep the material, they will usually win the game. The
Greek gift sacrifice is a canonical example.
Development. It is common to give up a pawn in the
opening to speed up one's development.
Gambits typically fall into this category. Developing sacrifices are frequently returned at some point by the opponent, else the development edge might be leveraged to create more substantial threat such as a kingside attack.
Strategic/positional. In a general sense, the aim of all true sacrifices is to obtain a positional advantage. However, there are some speculative sacrifices where the compensation is in the form of an open file or diagonal or a weakness in the opponent's pawn structure, and it is not even clear how this might potentially be turned into something more tangible. These are the hardest sacrifices to make; they require deep strategic understanding.
Bishops Sacrifice. This involves sacrificing a bishop in the beginning of the game to get an extra pawn and not allow the opponent to castle.
Pseudo sacrifices Checkmate. A common benefit of making a sacrifice is to allow the sacrificing player to
checkmate the opponent. Since checkmate is the ultimate goal of chess, the loss of material (see
chess piece point value) should not matter in a successful checkmate. Sacrifices leading to checkmate are typically
forcing, and often
checks, leaving the opponent with only one or a few options (example, checking the king with the knight, queen takes the knight, then rook checkmates the king with absence on the queen).
Avoiding loss. The counterpart to the above is saving a lost game. A sacrifice could be made to force stalemate or perpetual check, to create a fortress, or otherwise force a draw, or to avoid even greater loss of material.
Material gain. A sacrifice might initiate a combination that results in an overall material gain, making the upfront investment of the sacrifice worthwhile. A sacrifice leading to a pawn promotion is a special case of this type of sacrifice.
Simplification. Even if the sacrifice leads to net material loss for the foreseeable future, the sacrificing player may benefit because they are already ahead in material and the exchanges simplify the position making it easier to win. A player ahead in material may decide that it is worthwhile to get rid of one of the last effective pieces the opponent has.
Other types of sacrifices Forced vs. non-forced Another way to classify sacrifices is to distinguish between
forcing and
non-forcing sacrifices. The former type leave the opponent with no option but acceptance, typically because not doing so would leave them behind in material with no compensation. Non-forcing sacrifices, on the other hand, give the opponent a choice. A common error is to not recognize when a particular sacrifice can be safely declined with no ill-effects.
Miscellaneous sacrifices A tactical sacrifice can be categorized further by how the sacrifice works, although some sacrifices may fall into more than one category. In deflection sacrifices the aim is to distract one of the opponents pieces from a square where it is performing a particular duty. In destruction sacrifices a piece is sacrificed in order to knock away a materially inferior, but tactically more crucial piece, so that the sacrificing player can gain control over the squares the taken chessman controlled. A magnet sacrifice is similar to a deflection sacrifice, but the motivation behind a magnet sacrifice is to pull an opponent's piece to a tactically poor square, rather than pulling it away from a crucial square. In a clearance sacrifice the sacrificing player aims to vacate the square the sacrificed piece stood on, either to open up for his own pieces, or to put another, more useful piece on the same square. In a tempo sacrifice, the sacrificing player abstains from spending time to prevent the opponent from winning material because the time saved can be used for something even more beneficial, for example pursuing an attack on the king or guiding a passed pawn towards promotion. In a suicide sacrifice, the sacrificing player aims to rid himself of the remaining pieces capable of performing legal moves, and thereby obtain a stalemate and a draw from a poor position. Examples A deflection sacrifice In the diagram , GM Aronian's queen on d3 is at the top of the ladder, and his rook on d1 represents the bottom. He mistakenly played 24. exd4??, opening up the e-file for black's rook. After Svidler played 24. ...Re1+!, Aronian was forced to resign, because Black's move forces the reply Rxe1 (or Qf1 Rxf1+ Rxf1 which amounts to the same thing), after which White's queen is undefended and therefore lost.
This particular type of sacrifice has also been called the "Hook and Ladder trick", for the White queen is precariously at the top of the "ladder", while the rook is at the bottom, supporting it.
A sacrifice to avoid losing Black played
1...Qxg3? and White drew with
2. Qg8+! Kxg8 (on any other move black will get mated)
3. Rxg7+!. White intends to keep checking on the seventh
rank, and if Black ever captures the rook it is stalemate.
This save from Evans has been dubbed "The Swindle of the Century". White's rook is known as a desperado.
A non-forcing sacrifice This time Reshevsky is at the receiving end of a sacrifice. White has just played h2-h4. If Black takes the knight he will soon get mated on the h-file, but he simply ignored the bait and continued developing.
A positional sacrifice Black played
1... d4! 2. Nxd4 Nd5. In exchange for the sacrificed pawn, Black has obtained a
semi-open file, a diagonal, an
outpost on d5 and saddled White with a
backward pawn on d3. However, it is by no means clear that this is adequate compensation. The game was eventually drawn.
See also References


Our team has a longstanding commitment to grow, educate and support Australians wanting to engage in philanthropy.
Our role includes:
Helping private families develop their own philanthropic plans. To date, we have established over 15 private foundations or Private Ancillary Funds with a network of professional advisers,Advising trustees of larger Foundations on how to manage their investments and comply with their legal responsibilities, andProviding direct financial support to a range of organisations including the Sydney Burns Foundation, Salvation Army Oasis Youth Network, MCA Bella Program and various organisations in East Timor, including Operation Lifeline and scholarships in association with the Mary MacKillop East Timor Foundation.The following papers may assist you in deepening your understanding of how you can develop your own private philanthropic plan:
What is a Private Ancillary Fund? A Handbook for Trustees of Private Ancillary Funds The legal guidelines that all Private Ancillary Funds must adhere to In recent years, many philanthropists have sought greater transparency and understanding on how their time and resources are making a difference in the community. Many no longer regard their efforts as ‘charity’ but rather ‘social investing’.
The following articles from Harvard Business School outline how philanthropists who have developed a strategy for social change may benefit from having greater visibility and evidence of the outcomes of their efforts:


As the primary text of the psychiatric establishment, the DSM-IV has been criticized for contributing to the stigmatization and marginalization of individuals with mental illness. The rapid rise of the internet as a communication tool has enabled previously marginalized and isolated sociocultural subgroups to create virtual communities where they can share their unique understandings and experiences of living with a mental illness. Individuals with eating disorders constitute one such subgroup who have created virtual spaces via pro-anorexia communities. Free of the discursive constraint present in their day to day lives, these dialogical spaces are at the same time anonymous and highly intimate; thus, the accounts contained within and across these communities are a beneficial source from which to investigate the meaning of anorexia from the patients’ perspective. Through a feminist, post-structuralist discourse analysis of (anorexic) narrative and the theory of the dialogical self, I suggest a model of collective voices of (anorexic) identity.


One…two… I gripped the steel bar tighter as if that would make the weight lighter. Three…four… my biceps were already burning. Five…six… I was eagerly anticipating when this set would finally be completed. Seven…eight… I took a deep breath, only two more. Nine… that’s when I heard it. He blurted it out, perfectly centered between the ninth and tenth reps. In the next few seconds, I had a decision to make. My trainer, Clayton Halls, had just shouted, “Two more Rich.” Our original goal was ten. My biceps were ready to fail. Yet, following his suggestion, two more reps were completed. I immediately began to contemplate this phenomenon. Clayton had made a simple suggestion. Even though I was ready to stop, I pushed myself and accomplished a better result. Twelve repetitions instead of ten, measured in business terms, is a twenty percent increase in productivity—that’s significant.
“The power of suggestion” is a familiar phrase. McDonald’s has made millions utilizing the suggestive phrase, “Would you like fries with that?” Yet considering my interaction with Clayton, a new thought entered my mind. I didn’t push myself further, work harder, and endure more pain simply because a suggestion was made. My actions were directly tied to the person who made the suggestion. Clayton was the reason I continued. The suggester has greater power than the suggestion itself.
A powerful suggester pulls more out of others. They encourage people to go beyond self-imposed limitations. Suggesters cause others to accomplish something they may not do on their own. Let’s consider a few qualities that make for a powerful suggester:
Trust —Clayton is a powerful suggester because I trust him. Trust is built over time. It begins with rapport and grows with multiple interactions. If you’re trustworthy, your suggestions have more power.Have your best interest in mind —Clayton wasn’t focused on making his job easier. He understands my goals and made the suggestion based on what’s best for me.Personal example —Clayton applies the suggestion of “two more” in his own life. He’s credible because he walks the talk. He never asks me to do what he hasn’t or wouldn’t do himself. How are you impacting people’s lives as a suggester? Have you earned the right to ask, “two more” of others? If you are trustworthy, have their best interest in mind, and set a personal example, you can help others push beyond self-imposed limitations. Leave a lasting mark on people as a powerful suggester—that’s one way to live and work in an engaging manner.
Leave your comments: Who has impacted your life as a powerful suggester?


This is a guest post by Jordan Denari. Sitting on a cliff overlooking the Potomac River, I noticed a bird, gliding high over the water, never once flapping his wings. As I watched him, I noticed an uneasy feeling growing in my stomach, a feeling much like the one I’d get when worried about my future plans or long to-do list. I thought to myself, “Why aren’t you flapping, bird? Don’t you want to control where you’re going? You don’t know where the wind will take you!” But he continued to fly, holding his wings out in quiet strength, trusting that the wind would hold him.
As he floated out of sight, I realized that the bird was my prayer, that God was trying to tell me that this bird approached life in a way completely opposite from the way I lived it.
Like many people, I had spent most of my life trying to guide the course without letting God in to help. I found myself flapping incessantly, trying to keep myself from falling, while ignoring the wind. Like the bird, I needed to learn to hold out my wings steadily, to trust the wind, to trust God.
Since this retreat experience, I’ve rarely felt the anxiety and stress I used to feel. And even when those feelings creep up, I’m able to let them go more easily. I remember the wind that exists under my wings, and I stop flapping as hard.
When have you found “birds of pray” in your life—God’s signs in nature that sparked a crucial moment of prayer and reflection?
Jordan Denari is a senior at Georgetown University and a graduate of Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her writing on Muslim-Christian relations has been featured in The Washington Post and America.


all about comfort when it comes to sleeping. And I'm not just talking about the bed itself. I'm talking about the box spring, the mattress, the frame, a foam cover, the sheets, the comforter, and of course, the pillows. Usually, men will complain when a woman shops for sheets, but notmy husband. He is the one who will spend hours deciding which material is best.Today, I came across an article about bamboo bed sheets. This was fascinating to me, as I had never heard of bed sheets being made from such a hard, fast-growing plant. I always pictured bamboo as a rock-hard rod, shoved into the ground as a tiki torch stand. As it turns out, it's a versatile plant and can be used for numerous purposes, including bed sheets, duvet covers, pillows, pillow cases, and more. Who knew?
I'll tell you who knew. SleepBamboo knew! "We sell bamboo sheets," was the first thing that caught my eye. After coming across their Facebook page, I was quite surprised with the information I was presented.
Did you know that SleepBamboo's products are made from 100% bamboo fibers, are environmentally friendly, and are completely organic? They've been producing bamboo bed products for over 9 years and are dedicated to providing customers with luxurious bedding that is biodegradable and safe for the planet.
Going green never sounded so good.
My husband is going to be impressed.


The Persian poet Jelalluddin Rumi wrote poems so alive and clear that even today—eight centuries later—they shimmer with freshness. Their wisdom and humor are timeless; whenever I have an a-ha moment with one of Rumi's poems, I feel connected to the people throughout the ages who have climbed out of their confusion on the rungs of Rumi's words.
In several of his poems and commentaries, Rumi speaks of the Open Secret. He says that each one of us is trying to hide a secret—not a big, bad secret, but a more subtle and pervasive one. It's the kind of secret that people in the streets of Istanbul kept from each other in the 13th century, when Rumi was writing his poetry. And it's the same kind of secret that you and I keep from each other every day. You meet an old acquaintance, and she asks, "How are you?" You say, "Fine!" She asks, "How are the kids?" You say, "Oh, they're great." "The job?" "Just fine. I've been there five years now."
Then, you ask that person, "How are you?" She says, "Fine!" You ask, "Your new house?" "I love it." "The new town?" "We're all settling in."
It's a perfectly innocent exchange of ordinary banter; each one of us has a similar kind every day. But it is probably not an accurate representation of our actual lives. We don't want to say that one of the kids is failing in school, or that our work often feels meaningless, or that the move to the new town may have been a colossal mistake. It's almost as if we are embarrassed by our most human traits. We tell ourselves that we don't have time to go into the gory details with everyone we meet; we don't know each other well enough; we don't want to appear sad, or confused, or weak, or self-absorbed. Better to keep under wraps our neurotic and nutty sides (not to mention our darker urges and shameful desires.) Why wallow publicly in the underbelly of our day-to-day stuff? Why wave the dirty laundry about, when all she asked was, "How are you?"
The irony of the open secret


Language: English 85 Pages Published: July 2012 Region: United States Ankylosing Spondylitis: How Have Biological Therapies Affected the Market? Published: March 2009 Region: World 35 Pages Decision Resources, Inc
The availability of TNF-a inhibitors fueled a tremendous year-on-year increase in the ankylosing spondylitis (AS) market from 2006 to 2007, and we expect significant growth to continue over the next ten years. Although these agents may establish themselves as the gold-standard treatment for AS, emerging agents can still capitalize on the need for lower-priced, convenient, and efficacious agents. Thus, the AS market continues to represent an opportunity for companies. Get the Answers You Need to Shape Your Strategy - AS is a chronic, debilitating disease that significantly affects patients’ quality of life. How many people in the United States and Europe have AS? How will this population grow over the next ten years? What are the issues surrounding the diagnosis of AS? - Diagnosis of AS is often delayed for years after the onset of symptoms. What are the symptoms of AS? How is the disease diagnosed? What are the risk factors for the disease? - The availability of TNF-a inhibitors has changed the approach to AS treatment. What are rheumatologists’ preferred treatments for AS? How robust is the pipeline of developmental AS agents? How will these agents
READ MORE >
Executive Summary - Strategic Considerations - Stakeholder Implications Introduction Disease Overview - Disease Definition, Pathophysiology, and Etiology - Symptoms and Peripheral Involvement - Diagnosis and Disease Progression Current Treatment - Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs - Conventional Disease-Modifying Antirheumatic Drugs - TNF-Alpha Inhibitors - Corticosteroids - Bisphosphonates Epidemiology - Overview - Methods Emerging Therapies for Ankylosing Spondylitis - Centocor/Schering-Plough/Janssen/Mitsubishi Tanabe’s Golimumab - Pozen/AstraZeneca’s PN-200/PN-400 - Novartis’s AIN-457 - Array BioPharma’s ARRY-371797 2007 Market and Outlook Bibliography - Ankylosing Spondylitis List of Tables - Criteria Used in Evaluating Ankylosing Spondylitis - Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Agents Commonly Prescribed for Ankylosing Spondylitis - Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha Inhibitors Approved for the Treatment of Ankylosing Spondylitis - Agents in Development for the Treatment of Ankylosing Spondylitis - Sales of Drugs to Treat Ankylosing Spondylitis in the United States and Europe, 2007 List of Figures - Rheumatologist-Estimated Percentage of Ankylosing Spondylitis Patients with Specific Ankylosing Spondylitis Symptoms - Survey question: Please indicate your first-, second-, and third-line therapy choice for the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis - Survey question: What percentage of your ankylosing spondylitis patients require new or additional therapies within these time frames? - Surveyed Rheumatologist Opinion on Why Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha Inhibitors Are Not Prescribed as a First-line Therapy for Ankylosing Spondylitis - Prevalent Cases of Ankylosing Spondylitis - Survey question: Would you switch your ankylosing spondylitis patients currently taking other tumor necrosis factor-alpha inhibitors to golimumab once the agent is available? - Survey question: Will you prescribe Pozen’s PN-200/PN-400 to your ankylosing spondylitis patients? - Survey question: What agents do you think are most likely to be replaced by Pozen’s PN-200/PN-400? -Survey question: Will you prescribe Novartis’s AIN-457 to your ankylosing spondylitis patients?
- Abbott - Amgen - Array BioPharma - Astellas - AstraZeneca - Boehringer Ingelheim - Centocor - Daiichi Sankyo - GlaxoSmithKline - Johnson & Johnson - Merck - Mitsubishi Tanabe - Novartis - Ovation - Pfizer - Pozen - Procter & Gamble - Roche - Schering-Plough - Takeda - Wyeth
Format Properties
Electronic (PDF)
The report will be emailed to you. The report is sent in PDF format. This is a single user license, allowing one specific user access to the product.
Enterprisewide
The report will be emailed to you. The report is sent in PDF format. This is an enterprise license, allowing all employees within your organisation access to the product.


You're probably familiar with the deduction choice you must make when you file your tax return. You either have enough deductions (such as mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and medical expenses) to itemize, or you take the standard deduction, a set amount that doesn't require you to list specific deductible items.
What you may not be as familiar with are those deductions that you are allowed to take above the line; that is, deductions that you can take in addition to your itemized deductions or your standard deduction.
Here's a quick rundown of above-the-line deductions you shouldn't miss on your 2010 tax return.
- A deduction of up to $250 for classroom supplies purchased by teachers for use in their classrooms.
- A deduction of up to $2,500 for interest paid on student loans.
- A deduction of up to $2,000 or $4,000 for college tuition and fees, depending on your income level.
- A deduction of up to $5,000 for individual retirement account contributions if you're under age 50. If you're 50 or older, the deduction limit is $6,000.
- A deduction for the expenses connected with a job-related move.
- A deduction for 50 percent of the self-employment tax and 100 percent of health insurance premiums paid if you are self-employed.
- A deduction for alimony paid. (Note that child support is not deductible.)
- A deduction for contributions to health savings accounts (HSAs).
Most of these deductions have qualification requirements or income limitations. Don't overlook above-the-line tax deductions. An added benefit: These deductions decrease your adjusted gross income, an important number on your tax return. The lower your adjusted gross income, the more likely you are to qualify for credits and deductions subject to income thresholds.
For details or assistance in finding all the deductions to which you're entitled, contact your accountant.
Sandra J. Sunken is a CPA at Sunken Accountancy Corp., 1891 Goodyear Ave., Suite 618, Ventura, CA 93003. Her phone number is: 805-658-1272.


In this paper we offer a preliminary examination of the securitisation of HIV/AIDS. In the first half of the last decade there was a widespread assumption that HIV/AIDS had been successfully securitised. We argue that in 2000 the UNSC made a securitising move which fulfilled the three facilitating conditions identified by Buzan et al for a successful speech act. However, we suggest that HIV/AIDS was only partly securitised, as seen by the reaction of the intended audience, the policy community. We suggest that the reason for this was that the securitising move was weakened by a lack of consensus within the securitising actor, and empirical evidence undermining the case made. In so doing we suggest that political consensus and the ability to support securitising claims with empirical evidence contribute to the facilitating conditions necessary for successful securitisation. This analysis also serves to draw a distinction between a securitising move and successful securitisation. However we would wish to nuance this significantly by suggesting that securitisation is not a binary condition, neither are the results of a securitising move homogenous. Rather some actors have accepted HIV/AIDS’ status as a security issue more readily than others. This variety may in part be a reflection of the disease itself, that its effects are not homogenous but diverse depending on context; but it also suggests that different actors (often at the level of ministries or even individuals) were more easily persuaded than others.
Description:
McInnes, C., HIV, AIDS and Securitisation, Paper for 2010 International Studies Association Annual Conference, New Orleans Sponsorship: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme - Ideas Grant 230489 GHG.


It's been awhile since I've blogged- we've had an awesome summer filled with family fun and vacations. I'm going to work on a big vacation post over the next couple days, but in the meantime wanted to do a quick update with a little project we're working on. While in MN, we were talking to our friends, Joe and Brooke about a 30 day food challenge/ lifestyle makeover they did. They managed to convince us that the Whole 30 challenge was worth a try. (The extra 5 pounds we each brought back from vacation helped convince us too!) The Whole 30 is based on the Paleo diet, also known as the caveman, primal, or similar names. The idea is that our genes date back to cavemen, and our bodies are programmed to consume only the foods we can hunt and gather. Animals and plants. Basically, the diet is a 30 day "reset" or cleanse for your body. Remove all possibly inflammatory foods from your diet, let your body heal and then slowly reintroduce thoughtful healthy choices after the 30 days is over. The tough rules- no dairy (goodbye cheese and creamy coffee), no grains, no legumes, no sugar, no processed foods for 30 days. No cheating or the "reset" doesn't work. Eeek! The good news is that we can still eat big meals filled with lean proteins- steak, hamburger, chicken, pork, eggs and eggs and eggs. Instead of starchy side dishes, we just pile on a big healthy dose of veggies. I buy a lot of frozen veggies and we've been loving fresh seasonal veggies too. We're on day 10 of 30. The sugar/bread cravings are subsiding, and I'm confident we'll make it until the end! Things I've discovered so far: 10 days in, we both notice a difference. No weigh-ins until the end, but we both feel noticeably skinnier! Black coffee is not nearly as good as coffee with a little milk and sugar, but I might be convinced after 20 more days. Jicama is not a valid substitute for potatoes. Not the same. But rutabaga is pretty awesome!


SCIE Guide 29: Changing social care: an inclusive approach Adult social care is changing, to ensure that the people who use services are at the heart of their own care and support. This change, outlined in 'Our health, our care, our say' (Department of Health 2006) and confirmed in 'Putting people first' (Her Majesty's Government 2007), will result in greater choice and control for individuals and better support for carers and families. To achieve this, the social care workforce will need to change its approach.
This guide first identifies the actions crucial to successful change and improvement, and the second explores the experience of people using services who are trying to achieve cultural change.


Safari Books Online is a digital library providing on-demand subscription access to thousands of learning resources.
Summary 55 about. Fortunately, various errors in the worm's programming limited its infection attempts to only one other device, keeping its propagation small and manageable. This virus and others contributed to a small but growing industry for mobile device antivirus solutions. While not as common as its Internet-borne cousins, Bluetooth- based malware continues to be a potential issue that users have to understand and manage. summary Despite everything that you hear about Bluetooth security and its failings, it is not as bad as it seems. Many of the failings were initially due to poor implementations by manufacturers. As time has progressed, manufacturers have caught on about how to implement Bluetooth devices properly, avoiding these issues. However, with so many new devices coming on the market every day, it is very likely that issues will potentially creep back in, particularly from manufacturers new to making Bluetooth devices. Care should be taken in any environment to ensure that users understand the risks associated with their Bluetooth devices. At the least, cursory testing should be done


Let's face it. The lifeblood of your business is data. But even the best storage policies and security practices fall short of where they need to be in terms of data protection -- leaving your data vulnerable to theft or loss while your organization's reputation hangs in the balance. All while this stringent compliance and e-discovery concerns loom ever present.
In this new reality, your organization's storage and security teams must communicate effectively to avoid unnecessary trouble.
Because of these challenges, the editors of Storage magazine and Information Security magazine have developed an intensive 1-day training seminar that brings both security and storage pros to the table and discusses how to identify, assess and respond to critical data risks within your technology infrastructure.
You're invited to participate in this seminar where noted storage expert W. Curtis Preston reprises the highest-rated and best-attended session at the Storage Decisions conference – focusing on the storage team's role in data protection
For a detailed agenda, speaker bios, dates, and locations please
This was first published in April 2007


INFLUENZA
VIRUS SURVEILLANCE SUMMARY UPDATE
Week
ending November 23, 2002-Week 47
Carina
Blackmore, M.S. Vet. Med., Ph.D.
Florida:
During week 47
(November 17-23, 2002) influenza activity, calculated based on the proportion of
patients with influenza-like illness (ILI) seeking care by physicians
participating in the Florida Sentinel Physicians Surveillance Network was 1.3%.
Although the activity is increasing over time it is below the national baseline
of 1.9%. Higher flu activity than expected for this time of year (>2%)
was reported by physicians in Duval, Leon. Okaloosa, Orange, Palm Beach, Polk
and Seminole counties. Six influenza cases confirmed by rapid tests were
reported from Miami-Dade this week. Influenza viruses (Influenza A (H1N1)) have
also been detected in Broward and Holmes counties this season.
National
report:
Twenty-one isolates (5 influenza A and 16 influenza B viruses) were made from 923 specimens
tested by the World Health Organization (WHO) and National
Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS) collaborating
laboratories this week. Since
September 29, 0.5% (n=47) of the 10,036 specimens tested nationwide have been
positive. Seven (35%) of the 20 influenza A viruses have been subtyped; 6 were
influenza A H1 viruses and 1 was an influenza A (H3N2). Influenza A activity has
been detected in Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina
and South Carolina and Virginia. Influenza B isolates have been identified in
Louisiana, New York, South Carolina and Texas. CDC has characterized one
influenza A (H1N2), one influenza A (H3N2) and five influenza B isolates
antigenically. All strains were similar antigenically to corresponding vaccine
strains. The proportion of patient visits to sentinel physicians for
influenza-like illness (ILI) was 1.3% nationwide. Outbreaks were reported from
Louisiana and Texas. Sporadic influenza activity was reported from 18 states
(Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan,
Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, West
Virginia and Wyoming). The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and
influenza as reported by the vital statistics offices of 122 U.S. cities was
7.1% during week 47. This percentage is
below the epidemic threshold of 7.4% for this time.


Food manufacturers risk wasting millions in capital investment by failing to plan how new machinery will integrate with existing operations according to international food consultancy Coriolis.
"The drive for greater productivity can lead to rushed and ill-considered investment decisions," said Paul Eastwood, Coriolis' operations director. Organisations attempting to increase productivity could be guilty of looking first to automation to secure productivity improvements, he said. Such moves were not always suitable for manufacturers’ products, which could require the process flexibility which people bring.
Too often seen as panacea While full automation made sense for the large scale production of standardised products, it was too often seen as the panacea for all food production, rather than a catalyst to growth, said Eastwood. "It is a blinkered belief that productivity improvements will always follow immediately from investment in automation."
Investment and automation projects needed to involve those working directly on the factory floor, he added. “Real issues can set in when investment decisions are made without the involvement of the people at the coal face of the operation.
"This rush to automation can lead to companies going too far, too fast and once made, those investment decisions are incredibly difficult to row back from.” Stuck in limbo A lack of people-centred investment – training and leadership – could result in a stand-off and investment projects becoming stuck in limbo, said Eastwood. In these scenarios, manufacturers had to work hard with staff to establish where projects were heading, working backwards to enable the project to move forwards.
"These negotiations can get personal as management have staked a tremendous amount on the new kit, while operators can feel like the new systems are not the right solution or are unwilling to take ownership of the line. "Calm heads are required on all sides and the role of the independent arbiter becomes crucial to moving the process forward." Engaging the right people in the project at the beginning was the vital step in ensuring this, he said.
Investing in bottlenecks Investment in automation in reaction to short term demand or to secure a ‘quick win’ also rarely produced the productivity savings originally envisaged, said Eastwood.
“Capital investment is not always planned especially well in the food manufacturing sector. We’ve seen many examples where investment has been made into semi-obsolete machinery for immediate cash savings. "Two years later, with surrounding parts of the production line upgraded, the original investment results in a bottleneck, which is a bad decision in anyone’s book.” He stressed that manufacturers should have a clear capital journey and a long-term strategy for capital investment.
"Food manufacturing productivity levels could be significantly higher in the UK and as a key economic driver, the sector could play an even greater role in helping the economy out of the worst recession for a generation.” Concluded Paul.


Biodiversity conservation in today’s world is a complex and increasingly challenging undertaking. It requires coordination and collaboration among a broad range of stakeholders, including donor agencies, US-based NGOs, international and multi-lateral organizations, local organizations and networks, government agencies and academic institutions.
Foundations of Success works with a wide variety of these organizations and individuals who make important decisions about resource use and conservation. We have provided these organizations and individuals with customized technical assistance in one or more of our five strategic areas.


At its November board meeting, the Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC) announced its 2011 board of directors. Currently 120 laundries have received HLAC accreditation and more are currently preparing nationwide.
The HLAC 2011 officers are:
- Chair: Nancy Bjerke, BSN, RN, MPH, CIC, Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) representative
- Vice Chair: Rocco Romeo, CEO, HLS Linen Services
- Secretary/Treasurer: Rob Potack, Vice President, Unitex Textile Rental Services
The HLAC 2011 board of directors also includes:
- HLAC immediate past chair, Patti Costello, Association for the Healthcare Environment (AHE) representative
- Brad Bushman, American Reusable Textile Association (ARTA) representative
- Sandra Hensley, RN, MSEM, BSN, CIC, Consumer representative
- Rick Kislia, COO, Crescent Laundry
- Bill Mann, Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA) representative
- Ed McCauley, president/CEO, United Hospital Services
- Judy Reino, president, Reino Linen
- Lynne Sehulster, PhD, M (ASCP), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention representative
Joining the board is Chuck Rossmiller, CEO/general manager, Healthcare Laundry Systems/Crothall, Wheeling, Ill.
"I am honored to be leading such a distinguished team of laundry and healthcare leaders," says Nancy Bjerke. "Patient care and comfort remain a high priority for healthcare facilities. HLAC-accredited laundry providers offer the level of quality and consistency that directly aligns with the increasing supply chain needs of healthcare clients. In 2011, HLAC and the board will continue its focus on key initiatives of standards development, creation of value-added tools for accredited laundries, inspection consistency and education to healthcare professionals at all levels."
Founded in 2005, HLAC is an independent council that has developed a comprehensive set of standards for healthcare textile processing. It is the only organization that exclusively inspects and accredits laundries that process healthcare textiles. To learn more about the Standards, and the inspection and accreditation program, visit www.hlacnet.org.


Wrist fractures lead to greater functional decline among elderly, research shows Older women who experience a wrist fracture tend to develop more disabilities, according to new research.
Wrist fracture is the most common upper-extremity injury sustained by elderly individuals, according to the new report from researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago. Of the 6,107 older women followed sampled for the report, 268 experienced a wrist fracture during the 7.6-year study period. Over that time, women with a wrist fracture were 50% more likely to experience functional decline than women without a wrist fracture.
Wrist fractures are as clinically significant for older individuals as arthritis, diabetes or falls, according to report author Dr. Beatrice Edwards. Osteoporosis outreach efforts should include information about preventing wrist fractures, she suggests. The report was published online July 9 in BMJ.


GlobalData has released its new PharmaPoint Drug Evaluation report, "Actonel (Osteoporosis) - Forecast and Market Analysis to 2022". Despite its maturity, the osteoporosis market is expected to undergo substantial change between 2012 and 2022. Most importantly, the 'gold-standard' bisphosphonates will lose patent protection by end-of-year 2013, flooding the marketplace with less expensive generic versions of these physician-preferred medications. Additionally, Eli Lilly's blockbuster Evista, the only available SERM in the US, will lose patent protection in 2014, flooding the market with yet more affordable generic options. Also during the forecast period covered by this report, osteoporosis drug development research will lead to the launches of a wave of novel anabolic drugs with greater efficacy and safety, causing a major market shift away from anti-resorptive drugs. The number of companies vying for patient share will shrink by as much as 50%, as established players exit the market or acquire smaller players. Lastly, the aging of the population in developed markets will result in a larger patient pool.


The first year of college is a crucial transition period. It's when you'll lay the foundation for academic and personal success, and we'll support you every step of the way.
The community seeks to help you make a successful transition to college by offering a comprehensive curriculum and support services to engage you in active learning and growth, living among and valuing all members of our diverse community and making vital and meaningful connections both within and beyond the College. In doing so, Saint Mary's seeks to assist each first year student in establishing effective strategies to explore, connect, and engage through the completion of their programs of study. The knowledge and skills Saint Mary's students gain their first year will last them a lifetime.
As a result of participating in the First Year Experience (FYE), students will complete their first year at Saint Mary's with the following:
Understanding the College's Liberal Arts, Catholic and Lasallian traditions. Knowledge of available academic and student support services, and the ability to use them effectively when necessary. Knowledge of Saint Mary's programs and activities. Understanding of local resources. Cohort identity centered on a first year theme and common reading. Engagement with the concept of personal and social responsibility. As part of first year experience a theme is selected to provide a social and academic construct by which you will base your learning in and outside the classroom.


VISANOW News Release VISANOW Outlines Immigration Options for Hospitals Challenged to Fill Nursing Positions Pending legislation would expedite wait for foreign nurses CHICAGO, IL September 24, 2008 – In recent years, the U.S. healthcare system has faced the growing challenge of staffing hospitals and medical centers in the midst of a nursing shortage that, at its current rate, could restrict many facilities from providing the expected levels of care. VISANOW, the industry leading immigration solution provider, has highlighted the impact of pending legislation that would revamp the hiring landscape for hospitals and other medical facilities.
“A large pool of foreign nursing candidates and physical therapists is available to address hospital staffing concerns,” stated Bob Meltzer, CEO of VISANOW. “However, current immigration regulations have significantly limited hospitals’ ability to hire these qualified workers and, as a result, repercussions are being felt throughout the healthcare system.”
Although many foreign nursing students study in the U.S. and graduate from U.S. nursing programs, they are often unable to work following the expiration of their Optional Practical Training (OPT) due to limited immigration options. The majority of nursing candidates file for permanent residency to secure a green card and the ability to gain legal employment in the U.S. Due to a significant backlog in such applications, however, many have to wait two to three years for approval of their cases.
Although H-1B visas – originally designed for applicants qualified to fill a specialty occupation on a temporary basis – would be a stop-gap for some, the mandated number of H-1Bs available annually has significantly reduced this as a feasible option. A limited number of alternative non-immigrant visas are available, but each caters to a very specific niche demographic. For example, the TN visa is available only for Canadian and Mexican applicants, the E-3 for Australian applicants, and the H-1C is available only for hospitals located in disadvantaged areas and is rarely a fit.
With the introduction of recent legislation, however, changes to the limiting immigration process for foreign employees of hospitals and other medical facilities may soon be on the way. The Emergency Nursing Supply Relief Act would remove registered nurses and physical therapists from the current green card caps – allowing for an additional 20,000 available applicants per year. In addition, the legislation would require the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to review the I-140 of the nurse petitions within 30 days of submission. Currently, that review process is averaging 8 to 12 months.
“Obviously, this bill is a significant step in the right direction for hospitals that struggle with staffing concerns,” commented Meltzer. “The requirement of an expedited review process by the USCIS and the removal of these applications from the current green card caps indicate that the severity of this challenge is understood by some in Washington. Hopefully, this will lead to a workable solution as a piece-by-piece approach to comprehensive immigration reform begins to move forward.”
About VISANOW VISANOW has redefined the way immigration services are delivered with a process that consistently provides faster responses, allows greater access to information and saves time. Since 1998, VISANOW has combined superior client support and innovative technology designed to simplify the immigration process for corporations and their foreign employees.


DISCLOSE Act Exempts Unions from Central Disclosure Requirements Expected to come to the House floor today, the now infamous DISCLOSE Act (H.R. 5175) places onerous regulations on activists interested in affecting the political process. Far from being evenhanded, the DISCLOSE Act gives unjustified preference to organized labor.
The DISCLOSE Act marks a stark departure from the traditional treatment of corporations and unions by applying punitive measures to associations in the corporate form, but not to labor unions, even though these groups have traditionally been treated similarly in campaign finance law:
Companies that received federal money during the financial crisis face restrictions on speech, but not unions: General Motors cannot engage in express advocacy, urging voters to support a candidate by name, while the United Auto Workers union can Corporations, unions, non-profits and 527 groups will be required to report donors who give more than $600 if they engage in express advocacy, -- average union dues, the source of the majority of their funds, in 2004 were $377 Businesses with government contracts worth more than $7 million are not allowed to engage in express advocacy while public sector unions that receive their dues from the taxpayers are exempt from such restrictions Companies where a foreign entity owns 20 percent or more of a company’s shares are not allowed to engage in express advocacy while international unions are free to tell Americans how to vote For these reasons and more, the Alliance for Worker Freedom urges all members to vote “no” on H.R. 5175, The DISCLOSE Act.


The rapid increase of intensive (confined) livestock production and the land and livelihood needs of extensive production (range-land grazing) are crucial challenges. The livestock sector emerges as a very significant contributor to environmental problems at every scale from local to global, including land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and pollution and loss of biodiversity. Formulating responses to the wide range of consequences remains a complex task, but there are many promising solutions.


Internationalisation of R&D and Global Nature of Innovation: Emerging Trends in India By V.V. Krishna and Sujit Bhattacharya September 2009 ARI Working Paper Series, WPS 123 Published by: Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Abstract: The corporate model of R&D pursued within home country locations of the corporate firm is fast eroding. Important magazines such as The Economist (3 March 2007, p69) has begun to talk about, 'The rise and fall of corporate R&D'. The internet and telecommunication revolutions have dismantled geographical barriers creating a new innovation potential at different levels of value chain which are now dispersed at different locations. The Asian region has come to occupy a significant space in these trends. India and China are becoming major locations for off-shore R&D and innovation affiliations. The last decade witnessed two trends in the pattern of global science and technology systems in the Indian context. The first concerns the internationalisation of R&D and the second the increasingly global nature of innovation.
This paper explores three main issues in the Indian context. Firstly, it explores the significant changes in the macro economic and science and technology policies which have propelled changes during the last decade and a half. Secondly, through various indicators the paper maps the growth of internationalization of R&D and global nature of innovation. Thirdly, the paper explores the context of innovation to see whether these trends signify a 'new international division of labor' between North and South or whether there is a significant transformation underway for global nature of innovation.
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Date of this Version 2011
Abstract Recent efforts have identified the p38α Ser/Thr kinase as a potential target for the treatment of inflammatory diseases as well as non-small cell lung carcinoma. Despite the significance of p38α, no direct activity probe compatible with cell lysate analysis exists. Instead, proxies for kinase activation, such as phosphospecific antibodies, which do not distinguish between p38 isoforms, are often used. Our laboratory has recently developed a sulfonamido-oxine (Sox) fluorophore that undergoes a significant increase in fluorescence in response to phosphorylation at a proximal residue, allowing for real-time activity measurements. Herein we report the rational design of a p38α-selective chemosensor using this approach. We have validated the selectivity of this sensor using specific inhibitors and immunodepletions and show that p38α activity can be monitored in crude lysates from a variety of cell lines, allowing for the potential use of this sensor in both clinical and basic science research applications.


The Heart of Fear “I don’t like Fear,” I once told a friend, “It scares me!” That had been my relationship with Fear until seven years ago when I attended a workshop called “Beyond Fear”. I secretly hoped it would give me a workaround for Fear — how to avoid it altogether. But no, the idea was to create a rapport with Fear, feel it, then move beyond it. Not get stuck in it. Not run from it. (Have you noticed that when you run from Fear, it chases you?) The workshop was life changing. I discovered that when I’m afraid and refuse to feel it, I attempt to control. Control Doesn’t Work. “News flash” right? Sometimes I forget and reach for control anyway. Which is exactly what I did with my mother last week. She had gone to the ER and released with a nonspecific diagnoses. Under the guise of concern, I told her she shouldn’t drive until she sees her doctor. While that might be good advice, my mother is a capable, adult woman who has managed to make her own decisions for longer than I have been alive. The conversation didn’t go well. She was offended (rightly so) and I was righteous (wrongly so).
Righteous Yields to What’s Right. Days passed. I was uneasy about the conversation but convinced I was right . Then, while shuffling papers on my desk, my eyes landed on a random note: “Attempts to control always fail. Control, no matter the origin, comes down to fear.” Hmmmm. In my refusal to feel fear, I had reached for control which hadn’t worked, of course.
I called my mother and started a new conversation: ”I’m sorry for trying to control you by telling you not to drive. The truth is, I was/am scared…” We then had a beautiful, easy conversation about what really matters and about how challenging it can be to stay in the present moment when we are afraid. I noticed how close I felt to her and how surprisingly grateful I was for my Fear. When I simply let myself feel it, it led me to my heart and brought me closer to a precious relationship with my mother.


Milind Tambe This paper focuses on flexible teamwork in dynamic and real-world multi-agent domains. Such teamwork is not simply a union of agents’ simultaneous execution of individual plans, even if such execution pre-coordinated. Indeed, uncertainties in complex, dynamic domains often obstruct pre-planned coordination, with a resultant breakdown in teamwork. The central hypothesis in this paper is that for durable teamwork, agents should be provided explicit team plans, which directly express a team’s joint activities. When agents execute such team plans, they abide by certain "commonsense" conventions of teamwork. Essentially, such conventions provide a deeper model of teamwork, facilitating flexible reasoning about coordination activities. Such a framework also frees the planner or the knowledge engineer from specifying very detailed low-level coordination plans. This framework has been implemented in the context of a real-world synthetic environment for helicopter-combat simulation.
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Tunisia’s trade deficit worsened by 897.6 million Tunisian dinars (MTD) during the first 7 months, compared with the same period last year.
According to indicators of the National Institute of Statistics (INS), the rate of coverage of imports by exports fell by 7.4 percentage points, from 78.4% during the same period in 2011 to 71% in 2012.
The INS attributes this increased deficit to the differences observed in the rate of development of exports compared to imports.
Tunisia’s exports, estimated during the first 7 months of 2012 at 15,575.5 MTD increased by only 3.7%, while imports recorded a significant rise of 14.6% to reach a value of 21,941.9 MTD (same period).
According to the same source, the increase in exports is explained by the growth of exports of agricultural and food products (2.5%), phosphates and derivatives (3.2%), energy (22.4%), mechanical industries (12.9%) and manufacturing industries (15.2%).
However, exports of electronic industries registered for the first time during this year, a slight decrease of 0.3% and the textile, clothing and leather continued to decline (-8, 6%).
Regarding imports, the INS attributed the (14.6%) increase recorded during that period to the increase in imports of food industries (13.4% against 38.7% in 2011), non-food consumer products (15.7% against 0.7% in 2011), raw materials (7.1%) and equipment (12.1%).
The INS has explained the deficit in foreign trade by the decline in imports from several countries including China (-1,276.7 MTD), and European partner countries such as Italy (-216. 5MTD), Germany (-126MTD) and Spain (-500.4 MD).
However, Tunisian exports to Libya and France increased by 770.2 MTD and 656.5 MTD, respectively.


WARM WINTER TEMPERATURES CAUSING EARLY TERMITE SWARMS Arrow Exterminators Urges Homebuyers to Protect Themselves from
Potential Infestations
According to the State of Florida Department of
Agriculture and Consumer Services, more than 2,000,000 homes in the
U.S. will require treatment for an active termite infestation this
year and Florida's temperate climate provides a perfect environment
for these destructive pests. This winter has been even warmer than
normal triggering an early swarm season and indicating that termite
population could reach an all-time high.
Termites swarm when seeking to expand their territory and
form new colonies. This is often the first time a homeowner
becomes aware of a potential infestation, but termites are usually
established in a home before they swarm. However, the absence
of swarming around a home does not mean the home is free of termite
activity. Additional signs of an infestation include mud
tunneling and/or darkening and blistering of wood.
Subterranean termites will take advantage of the smallest defect to
enter and infest a home and once inside will chew 24 hours a day
through concrete, wood, floors, carpeting and wallpaper causing
more damage each year than storms and fires combined - an estimated
$5 Billion that is rarely covered by homeowners
insurance.
To protect their families and their investment, Arrow
recommends that homeowners invest in a 24/7/365
Florida termite protection plan and have their property
inspected annually by a licensed pest professional.
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Organizations today strongly believe in open environments for innovation, and many are using virtual tools for internal and external collaboration. Now, they face the challenge of integrating these tools into an organizational structure that will unlock the value of open innovation, drive superior business performance and build competitive advantage. This report reveals key findings from our survey about the tactics, tools and strategies used by forward-thinking businesses that are successfully engaging in open innovation.
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Game Changers that Drive Business Innovation
Six Technologies to Watch
Four Forces Facing the Future
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