Firm offering 3-D models of fetuses

Expectant parents who can't wait to show the world what their baby will look like can now buy a 3-D model of the fetus to pass around to their friends.

The 9-cm resin model of the white fetus, encased in a transparent block in the shape of the mother's body, has been fashioned by printer Fasotec Co. after an MRI scan.

"As it is only once in a lifetime that you are pregnant with that child, we received requests for these kinds of models from pregnant women who . . . do not want to forget the feelings and experience of that time," said Tomohiro Kinoshita of Fasotec.

The model, titled "Shape of an Angel" and priced at 100,000, comes with a miniature version that could be a nice adornment to a mobile phone, Kinoshita added. Many young Japanese women have decorations attached to their cellphone straps.

Fasotic said the ideal time for a scan is around 8 or 9 months into the pregnancy. For those who would like a less-pricey version,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. the company will start offering a 3-D model of the face of the fetus for 50,000 in December, using ultrasound images taken at a clinic in Tokyo the firm has forged a tieup with.

Originally a supplier of devices including 3-D printers, Fasotec uses a layering technique to build up 3-D structures. The technique has been touted as a solution to localized manufacture on a small scale.

The company also produces 3-D models of internal organs that can be used by doctors to plan surgery or by medical students for training purposes, a company spokesman said. It is also possible that models can be used in hospitals to better inform patients what their problems are, instead of relying on difficult-to-understand diagrams.

The technology "realizes not only the form but also texture of the model — for example making it hard or soft," Fasotec said.Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products. "By making a model that is similar to a real organ or bone, one can simulate operations and practice different surgical techniques."

Kinoshita said the company hit upon the idea of making 3-D models of unborn babies in the hope that people would become more aware of the technology. The company said some medics could also foresee diagnostic possibilities with the models that might help predict difficulties in the birthing process.

The technology behind 3-D printers has been around for several decades, but recent advances have seen it gain popularity in several fields. The machines work in a similar way to inkjet printers,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. but deposit layers of material on top of each other, gradually building up the product they are making, instead of using ink.

Whereas traditional techniques only become efficient through economies of scale because of the need to produce molds, 3-D printers can make single copies of relatively complicated objects.

Starting a snowboarding design business was a matter of putting all the right pieces together for Adam Reed. He realized there was nothing stopping him: He knew how to use computer-controlled machining tools, he'd learned about 3-D modeling, and he had the know-how to create the designs.

"I thought, why am I not doing this? That was a cool realization, that I've learned so much and I can just go right at it--and it worked out pretty well too," Reed says.

Reed is both a skateboarder and a snowboarder, one of the reasons he chose Marquette and NMU. So it was natural that when he began designing skateboards, he looked for a way to combine the two hobbies.

He created a brand, preliminary designs and even some boards for his senior project in Northern Michigan University's art and design program last semester. His brand, called ReeDesigns, already includes two boards that Reed has found successful, which he has named nu(GEE) and oh(GEE), and are made of a variety of materials including bamboo, Kevlar, fiber, aluminum and foam.

Reed lights up when he talks about finding the best ways to make the boards, including what materials work the best and under what pressure they break.

He describes this experience in his video for the crowd-funding website Kickstarter.

He created the Kickstarter to continue his business beyond just a school project, and raised $4,000 to produce the boards and increase his research and design work. He's used the money, so far, to create an area in his basement with molds for making the skateboards. With this start, he plans to push the boundary of commonly-held ideas about skateboarding.

"What can I come up with that's new and original that people haven't seen before that's really going to challenge the envelope even more? And then (I'll) give that out to someone and say,The oreck XL professional air purifier, do you like that? Does it ride well? Is it good, is it bad? And then kind of go from there," he says.

For this part of the process, having people try out his designs, Reed says he wouldn't be so successful without the growing skateboard community in Marquette. The implementation of a new skate park in front of the YMCA has helped generate interest in skateboarding in general, but also in his designs.

To get a feel for whether he's moving in the right direction,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale agate beads from china, Reed goes to skateboarders and asks them to try out his designs. He says those who regularly skateboard know what they like and they're really honest about what works.

"I feel like when I've won over the skateboarding crowd is when I feel like I'm ok with my product," he says. "Toward the end they were saying, 'Oh wow, this deck is really light, it's really responsive.' They still obviously had some complaints and critiques because the product's always going to be getting better, but I felt like once I convinced them, everyone else will be happy with my product."

Reed plans to stay in Marquette after he graduates in December. His hope is to eventually get a manufacturing contract so that he can keep prototyping and designing the boards, but put manufacturing in the hands of a company that specializes in it. Eventually, he'd like to create new designs for snowboards, too, but he says that's further down the line as he gets more of a community behind his brand.

Deep thoughts on a panfish hotspot

I would venture a guess that every angler who manages to “connect” with a decent fishing hole is hesitant in sharing the spot with someone he or she doesn’t know well. Some fishermen guard their secret spots so strongly that it becomes an obsession.

That happened on the Fox Chain with two walleye anglers who guarded their walleye sweet spot with extreme vigilance. I begged one of them every year to point me in the right direction, promising in every breath I would not reveal the special location in print or on the air. My efforts went unrewarded.

Because Frank “PanMan” DeFrancisco doesn’t read the Daily Herald, I’m hoping I can get away with this. Actually, there’s nothing really to reveal, except a secretive exercise.

I’ve decided to pay homage to him while also pointing you to a couple spots that could result in some of the best panfishing ever.

Frank loved finding the treasure-troves of big panfish on Lake Michigan as well as the cooling lakes west of Chicago. Over the years I learned just how good an angler Frank happened to be. And my admiration covered soft-water as well as ice fishing.

I, too, go nuts when I discover a hot bluegill spot, like Deep Quarry Lake as well as some of our local ponds I’ve encountered. But Frank had a major, top-shelf obsession about his “secret spots.” And now, after years of prospecting and discovery, I can understand his passion and how he guarded the spots like a Knight Templar.

The Monroe Street Harbor shoreline is loaded with a lot of species of panfish,We are pleased to offer the following list of professional mold maker and casters. as well as some largemouth and smallmouth bass. It was quite common to see the PanMan working the rocks and weed lines locating schools of fish.

Years ago, Outdoor Notebook publisher Bob Maciulis hooked up with Frank to get the word out that the PanMan was a natural when it came to bluegills, crappie, rock bass and the like.

I was told Frank didn’t have a computer and keyboard to record his ideas and techniques, so he spent hours handwriting everything so Maciulis would have material to put in the next issue.

"This launch coincides perfectly with an ongoing trend we see in the Middle East; the appreciation for and adoption of advanced technology including intelligent infrastructure management," said Ciaran Forde,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, vice president of Enterprise Sales, Middle East and Africa region, CommScope.

"CommScope continues to develop solutions that address these trends. We are committed to ensuring that our customers not only have access to this new technology, but also have a support system in place to fully take advantage of it," he added.

The upcoming regional events are intended for IT managers, directors, data center managers and those responsible for IT infrastructure. Attendees will include key consultants and customers, business and alliance partners and key industry associates.

Potential and existing customers will have direct access to CommScope representatives and partners, opportunities to understand the solution in the context of their business and learn how they can benefit from intelligent solutions, along with recommendations for an upgrade path.

With imVision, CommScope now offers IT managers a complete solution that provides them a real-time view of their global network that is accurate and easy to maintain while also preparing them for future network demands.

"Featuring the web-based imVision System Manager 7.0 software platform and the imVision Controller,Trade platform for China crystal mosaic manufacturers the solution provides IT managers with unprecedented control over their infrastructure with state-of-the-art intelligent management of the physical layer using SYSTIMAX iPatch intelligent panels," said Matias Peluffo, vice president, Growth Solutions, CommScope.

Managers maintain control of the infrastructure by using intelligent panels and shelves managed with the color touch-screen imVision Controller and imVision System Manager 7.0 software.High quality stone mosaic tiles. The imVision solution allows IT staff to view real-time, end-to-end circuit information during moves, adds and changes using a unique visual 'trace while you patch' feature.

"What was once an automated patching administration with real-time monitoring and management of physical layer connectivity has become a holistic solution enabling location services that are integrated into the overall fabric of the IT service infrastructure," Peluffo added.

"This vision into the physical layer enables IT professionals to ensure the security of their network with the ability to quickly eliminate blind spots, immediately detect and locate physical layer breaches and constantly monitor all moves or changes within the network," he concluded.

The post office building isn't the only property up for sale along Kellogg Boulevard. Closer to the Ramsey County Courthouse, the county has cleared workers out of the old county jail and the government buildings that once housed West Publishing. The sites, which span nine riverfront blocks of property, have been on the market for years.

With downtown's resident population on the rise, city officials have expressed concern about the possible loss of a visible post office site. A U.S. Postal Service official appeared before the St. Paul City Council in August 2011 to explain that they were looking to consolidate two downtown locations into one.

"Declining mail volumes and dramatic changes in the way mail is processed and delivered have occurred over the last several years," wrote Gary Mattox, a real estate specialist with the U.S. Postal Service, in a letter to Mayor Chris Coleman at the time.

When a doctor gets a patient with meningitis, she can use a new iPhone app to report the case and location. If the app catches on around the world, as the developers of the app hope, the mobile software could support a global system for real-time infectious disease surveillance.

The University of Liverpool, which developed the app called ClickClinica, isn't alone in the quest to use new information technologies to help track and prevent the spread of infectious bugs. At Kansas State University, researchers are leading an effort to study the use of social media to get the word out about bugs. It's a work in progress, but the study could lead to better models and approaches to use online tools to prevent outbreaks of, say, the flu.

More than 1,000 users have downloaded the University of Liverpool's free app, with physicians around the world beginning to report diseases. The developers see an opportunity for the app to improve reporting of infectious diseases after research found that one in 10 cases of meningitis weren't reported to the Health Protection Agency, an independent group that the U.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing,K. government set up in 2003 to protect the public from infectious diseases and other health threats.

Celebrity 'swatting' problem may be tough to swat

The distress call came Sunday around 1 p.m.: emergency in Beverly Hills. Someone was being held hostage at "Simon Cowell's." The victim, reported a female caller, was tied up with duct tape inside a bathroom at the brash British "X Factor" judge's hillside mansion.

A similar call reached the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on Oct. 10 before 2 a.m. Someone inside a gated Calabasas mansion reported shots fired and said the gunman was threatening residents, making clear he'd put police in his cross hairs when they showed up.

Unbeknown to sheriff's deputies, that mansion belonged to the most famous teenager on the planet, Justin Bieber. Multiple squad cars were scrambled and heavily armed deputies arrived. They swept Bieber's residence and two others on the street before discovering it was all a hoax. The pop star, on tour at the time, was nowhere near the mansion.

Cowell was home when Beverly Hills police arrived at his residence. But there was no hostage negotiation, no armed standoff, nor were any arrests made. "The dispatcher believed the call was a hoax," said Lt. Lincoln Hoshino of the Beverly Hills Police Department.

Count Bieber and Cowell as the latest high-profile victims of "swatting," a fast-growing phenomenon masterminded by anonymous mischief-makers who alert police to a bogus crime situation, prompting a tactical response — sometimes by SWAT officers — that involves a high-risk search for phantom assailants. Several officers have already been injured responding to such calls, and officials, including Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, fear that it's only a matter of time before events turn deadly.

Within Hollywood, in an era when breaches of celebrity privacy have never been more invasive — by paparazzi, hacker journalists or even websites that provide detailed information about stars' homes and street addresses — the pranks have taken on troubling dimensions.

"Swatting is a very real problem for those in the public eye," said Blair Berk, a criminal lawyer who has represented stars including Mel Gibson, Kanye West and Lindsay Lohan. "It is only a matter of time before someone dies because of this stupidity."

What started a decade ago as a malicious prank among computer gamers is quickly evolving into a Grade-A crisis for law enforcement nationwide, encouraging new legislation aimed at stiffer punishments for swatters as well as redoubled attempts to defeat the "spoofing" technology that enables such cyber-troublemaking.

Chief Beck acknowledged that swatting has stretched the LAPD's emergency response capacity while also endangering victims by placing them in potential confrontation with police firepower.

"It not only draws public safety resources away from real emergencies, it places people at significant risk by the dispatch of armed police officers," said Beck.Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic injection mould manufacture, "Our big fear is that [swatting] will become more prevalent."

Chief Bill McSweeney of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department says that the most sophisticated swatting maneuvers involve tricking caller ID so that a 911 call can be registered as having been placed from inside the very household being swatted.

Investigators say a 911 call reporting an armed home invasion that sent firefighters plus a dozen police officers swarming down on Miley Cyrus' unoccupied Studio City home in August may have originated from a cellphone, then bounced over several Internet providers to hide its origin. Bieber's swatting was called in through a device that allows hearing-impaired callers to send messages over the phone.

That kind of "spoofing" technology — an elaborate computer fake-out that falsifies data, obscures a person's digital identity and location and can even make a man's voice sound female — is legal and widely available on the Web.

"Any time you use a telephone or a computer, there is an electronic trail," said Philip Lieberman, founder and president of Lieberman Software, which specializes in computer security. Phone carriers and Internet providers monetize every digital communication and have a vested interest in tracking caller origination. "It is virtually impossible not to get caught unless they have a heavy level of sophistication."

But even with the advanced software used by the LAPD, tracing spoofed calls or teletexts can be difficult. "If these calls originate with a throwaway phone," McSweeney said, "sometimes those are hard to track."

Two months after Cyrus was swatted, someone claiming to be a woman locked inside a closet at Ashton Kutcher's Lake Hollywood residence sent a text to 911 reporting that shots had been fired and individuals identified as "Russian men" were robbing the house. Kutcher was away shooting his TV show "Two and a Half Men" when dozens of heavily armed officers from several LAPD divisions and a helicopter rushed to the scene and detained three workmen at the property. The incident came with a steep price tag for the city: $10,000.

I visit this Osaka one night not to sample its yellowtail, but its jazz. Geoff Neuman, a bassist/music instructor who has dabbled almost equally among the rock, classical and jazz worlds, was heading a trio (now a duo, with exceptions), playing mostly cool, straight-ahead, if melancholy jazz. After a busy day, it’s just what I need, but I’m in the minority. On this Thursday,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. the lounge area is, like the restaurant in general, pretty empty. The man to my right has his head down on the bar, which the bartender just shrugs off. “Small or large Sapporo?” she asks me. Better make it a small.

“We have had our share of slow nights as would be expected with a steady gig,” says Neuman later. “Luckily, there’s never any pressure except to play our best.” Which is what the trio does on the night of my visit, with a perfect pre-bedtime soundtrack.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Other nights, they might play some standards, or even apply rock and pop songs to their particular jazz aesthetic.

“It’s like a mini Yoshi’s,” says musician and radio producer/engineer Ginger Bruner, comparing Osaka to the famous Oakland jazz club.

Neuman has been spoiled. A long-running jazz gig is rare in this city, and he’s almost a decade into his Osaka residency, started casually when drummer Masashi Tanaka asked him and pianist John Matteson to play a one-off at the restaurant.Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. “That one gig ended up being a lot longer than we expected,” says Neuman,Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology. who credits Osaka owner (and former trumpeter) Gene Nakanishi, whose restaurant is an unconventional jazz spot. But the scenario is indicative of how jazz and its enthusiasts have had to adapt to the cultural temperature of Las Vegas.

“It’s sad because there are some amazing musicians in this town that are at a world-class level,” says Neuman. “But there has not been many places for them to play. That’s one of the reasons we are so grateful for our gig at Osaka and for Gene’s support of the trio. There has been a few places that have recently added regular jazz nights to their calendars, but even those seem to be losing the momentum they had when they first started. Hopefully this will change.”

Fire-breathing fun

One can only take Sarah McCreanor's answer as a bit of an understatement, since the question is about what it's like to fly on the back of a dragon.

Not a real dragon, of course, but as close to the real thing as any living person ever has or perhaps ever will. As one of the young stars of the How To Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular, McCreanor spends part of every show night aboard the back of an 81/2-metre-long animatronic Night Fury named Toothless, soaring four storeys above the arena floor at speeds exceeding 30 km/h.

The 20-year-old native of Brisbane, Australia, is one of two performers who share the role of Astrid, the feisty young Viking girl who is both rival and friend to Hiccup, an unlikely teenage hero whose decision to befriend a wounded dragon causes the mythical ancient village of Berk to reconsider its reputation as the home of dragon slayers.

"In my role, I get to run around onstage, I get to do flips, I do flying, and I even get to fly on a dragon, so it's like a big circus," says McCreanor, during a break between afternoon rehearsal and evening performance at a tour stop in Saskatoon. "I love all the things I get to do, and I never get bored with it. It's really thrilling to do it every night.

"I never imagined I'd be doing something of this scale at any point in my life, let alone at 20 years old. It's overwhelming, and even a year into it, I'm still pinching myself.A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet,"

The massive live adaptation of the 2010 Dreamworks Animation feature, based on a popular book by Cressida Cowell, opens a four-day run at MTS Centre that includes evening performances Thursday through Saturday and daytime shows (11 a.m. and 3 p.m.) on the weekend.

It's one of the most ambitious live entertainment shows on tour today, bringing 13 massive robotic creatures (representing nine different dragon species) to life in front of a projection screen that covers more than 1,900 square metres (the equivalent of nine full-sized movie screens combined).

The human cast provides the acrobatic heroics, but there's no question that it's the dragons that steal the show. Each of the massive (and, even close up, amazingly lifelike) creatures is controlled by a team of puppeteers -- some stationed inside the animatronic beasts,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, others working from a remote location -- responsible for everything from huge, sweeping head and wing movements to the most subtle of facial expressions.

"It's pretty awesome," says lead puppeteer Gavin Sainsbury, "because they're so huge, yet they're so responsive. It's not typical that a puppeteer gets control over so much on something so large. As lead puppeteer on this job, I have control of everything from the eyes moving left and right, and the blinks, to the head movements, neck movements, all the major body movements and the tail movements. That's a lot for one puppeteer to look after.

"And there's a person standing at my side, another puppeteer, who activates all the effects (including smoke and fire), all the sounds, the mouth, the wings and some of the trickier bits involved. It's pretty cool -- there aren't many other big puppet shows like this travelling around the world, so we consider ourselves to be pretty lucky."

In the case of the ground-bound dragons that move around on the arena floor, there's also a "driver" stationed inside a small, cleverly camouflaged chassis beneath the dragon's body.

"The driver is a crucial part of our team, responsible for the path and the speed of the creature," says Sainsbury. "So it's three people working very closely (or, in the case of Toothless, four, because of the added complexity of that creature's facial expressions); if any one of those people gets out of sync, it looks foul. We work very hard, constantly, to make sure it looks right."

How To Train Your Dragon builds on the technology developed by The Creature Technology Company for the Walking With Dinosaurs live show that toured the world a few years ago. What makes Dragon different, however, is that it's a fictional yarn filled with mythical creatures and a storyline that requires its human and robotic stars to create drama and emotion.

"It's a lot more fun,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. actually," says Sainsbury. "With Dinosaurs, we had to follow what the BBC had created (for television), and it had to be 'correct.' With this show, based on the Dreamworks film that had these great characters that are very funny and expressive,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. they've kind of let the director and us run riot with it to some degree.

"There's a lot of room for comedy, and we've actually discovered things during performances that we find that we can build on...Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability.. We can have a load of fun developing these characters as we go. Dinosaurs equals historical; Dragon equals mythical; it's a good step forward for us. Don't get me wrong, I loved Walking With Dinosaurs, but this is a step up on the fun level."

Clearly, both the puppeteer and the actor agree that the How To Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular is providing an experience that they won't soon forget. And they're confident that Winnipeg audiences will leave the MTS Centre feeling that they've seen something pretty special.

"We all love it," says Sainsbury. "I think we all really enjoy it every time we do it. ... They are very cool toys, and to have it be your job to perform with them is highly desirable, in my eyes. I get to brag about what a cool job I have."

Whats so great about telematics?

Telematics is the use of wireless technology to transmit information. Some construction equipment manufacturers have been using telematics on their machines for 10 years or more. Others are only just starting to use it.
As it becomes increasingly mainstream and standard fitment, more fleet owners appear to be gradually realising the advantages that it offers.

At the most basic level, telematics systems offer a tracking system for stolen machines. A desire to reduce plant theft – and insurance premiums – is a significant driver in the take-up of telematics, but it is really only the starting point. Telematics also offers the ability to monitor machine use and operational data remotely, even from across the other side of the world, if necessary. All kinds of detail can be accessed by computer or smartphone, pumping out daily, weekly or monthly reports, or in some cases real-time live data. Fuel efficiency, engine output, fluid levels, brake pad wear, utilisation,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. productivity, error code tracking and much more can all be included in reports in widely varying formats.

How that information is used also varies widely. Some equipment owners do absolutely nothing with it. Others use it for preventative maintenance planning or even to determine their investment plans.A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. For contractors, telematics can be useful; for plant hire firms, for whom the machinery is the core asset, the revenue generator and the centre of the business, the information that is increasingly on offer really should not be ignored any longer.

Professor David Edwards of the Off-highway Plant and Equipment Research Centre thinks that the construction industry is proving too slow on the uptake. “I don’t think telematics is being used as widely as it should be,” he says.

Some OEM systems use satellite communications and some use cellular communication. JCB, for example, uses cellular, which it says allows for greater data volumes and better coverage in built-up areas and indoors. Satellite, on the other hand, provides a signal when out of cellular coverage in even the most remote places. As cellular co improved, the tendency has been for manufacturers to move from satellite-based systems to GSM.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability.

The only problem is that every OEM has its own different system – a point that has been picked up by the European Rental Association (ERA). At the Construction Equipment World Economic Forum last month ERA secretary general Michel Petitjean called for more standardisation, saying: “Many OEMs have implemented telematics to their lines of equipment, and it is very cumbersome to make rental equipment compatible with all of these. The rental market is calling for standardisation in some data feeds such as geo-fencing,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, immobilisation, safety devices and alerts.”

For A-Plant, its investment in the A-Trak system, developed with Enigma Vehicle Systems, has been driven by security concerns. It has GPRS (general packet radio service) devices attached to some 10,000 items of plant and equipment. The system proved itself in January last year when a telehandler was stolen from site out of hours. As soon as the customer reported the theft from its site, A-Plant’s local service centre manager logged onto the A-Trak system from home through the extranet system on A-Plant’s website to locate the position of the stolen machine. He generated an aerial photograph of a transport yard where the equipment was being hidden and got on to the police. Before the police got there, the machine was being moved. The movement was tracked and, eventually, the thieves were caught red-handed on their way out of the country with the stolen machine. More than 98% of stolen A-Plant equipment protected with A-Trak is recovered, compared to an industry average of just 5-10%. Since A-Trak was launched seven years ago, it has led to the recovery of machines valued at more than ￡100m, APlant says. Aside from being used to track the location of a machine, many OEM telematics systems can be used to aid security by programming in ‘virtual walls’, setting perimeters outside of which the machine cannot and will not operate.

These can either be physical boundaries, typically restricting the machine to the site or quarry in which it is meant to be working, or time restrictions, perhaps to prevent unauthorised night use, for example. Like many larger hire firms, A-Plant is moving beyond the security aspects and, along with its customers, starting to exploit the operational opportunities. With any A-Trak tagged machine,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. the customer can access the system via the extranet to check not only that the machine is at its intended location but also that it is operating – and being operated – as desired. With an A-Trak virtual wall, if the machine strays out of bounds the customer receives an e-mail or text. They can send text messages to remotely immobilise and/or release equipment. The ability to monitor running hours is one of a number of sensor options that can be provided by using the information ports available on the device at the centre of the A-Trak system. Functions that can be monitored also include towing speeds, fuel level, battery level, coolant, engine on/off, ignition on/off, engine covers open/closed and so on.

Even the simple tracking system function of telematics has benefits beyond the recovery of stolen machines, however. Sussex-based access hire firm Facelift, has no telematics system at the moment but it is in discussions with a couple of providers for installing trackers on its delivery vehicles. Operations director Paul Standing explains why he is keen to start using it. “The latest software can monitor driver behaviour. We hope that this will not only assist us in controlling our diesel spend but will also assist us with reducing unnecessary maintenance work caused by driver abuse and may well also reduce our accidents.” He adds: “We will be able to see how far away from site our trucks are when customers are asking what time their machine will turn up and we will also be able to prove what time our machine arrived on site.” He is also looking to fit trackers to mobile engineers’ vans “so we can easily see who is closest to either a breakdown or average has customer’s machine that requires a repair, thus hopefully minimising unnecessary downtime and also giving our customers a quicker service”.

On the same basis, Hewden has the Masternaut system fitted to its HGV delivery vehicles. This is a web-based system that can be accessed via a PC or smartphone so that it can track delivery progress. If a customer wants to know where his delivery has got to, Hewden knows.

HE Services, which reports a 99% success rate on recovering stolen plant thanks to GPS, also finds that tracking technology on its diggers aids collection of the machine at the end of a job on remote or hard-to-find sites. “Although security is the main benefit of the systems we find that it also benefits our customers in other ways,” says HE Services’ Chris Holloway. “It allows quicker reporting of machine faults. This allows us to respond to breakdowns more efficiently with the correct service parts. Human error on fuel measurement is eliminated in many cases meaning customers are not over charged for fuel/oil when returning a machine. And it reduces customers’ insurance in many cases, where a professionally fitted GPS unit is available.” He adds: “We use our systems to remotely monitor our plant and advise our customers where general maintenance can be made. We also keep track of hours worked and engine levels.”

One of these forecasts will be wrong

Tired of the politicians and the talking heads on TV trying to interpret polls for you and tell you who's going to win the presidential election on Tuesday?

There are other ways to predict the winner, many of them fun, all of them that you can determine on your own just by keeping an eye out yourself.

Frank Mackaman, head of Pekin's Dirksen Congressional Center, recently gave a presentation at Bradley University in which he described several.

They include Allan Lichtman's 13-point survey of political, economic, social, foreign affairs and policy conditions in the country. In essence, it posits that the more successful a president is and the more stable social and economic conditions are at home, the more likely an incumbent is to be re-elected. If six or more of the 13 conditions aren't met, the president is defeated. The model has proven correct in every election since 1860.

But that's very detailed and, dare I say,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale agate beads from china, wonky. There are some more entertaining methods to help predict the winner.

Perhaps most popular is the Washington Redskins model.Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile,

Mackaman explains: "When the team loses or ties in its final game before Election Day, the party in the White House is ousted. This method correctly predicted every outcome of every race from 1936 to 2000. It missed in 2004, but predicted correctly in 2008."

The likelihood of game results and election results matching up that frequently, he says, are one in 263.5 million - more than 2,600 times the chance of being killed by a lightning strike.

Meanwhile, CNN Money points out that whichever candidate ends up with more Halloween masks of himself sold ends up the victor. This has been true in every election since 1980.

Or you could listen to your kids. Scholastic News has correctly called the winner of every election since 1964 in its quadrennial poll of the nation's schoolchildren. Those results are out already, and kids re-elected the president by a 6-point margin. (Regardless of the actual winner, I think it's safe to predict that the popular vote will be closer than that.)

Or look at Mason County. Former Journal Star reporter Mike Smothers, now working for our sister paper in Pekin, wrote last week that the rural county has correctly picked the winner in the last four presidential elections.High quality mold making Videos teaches anyone how to make molds.

We'll also see soon how accurate Peoria Rivermen fans are at picking the president. Their Saturday giveaway of presidential candidate bobblehead dolls (fans could select either an Obama doll or Romney doll) was won by those picking up Obama bobbleheads.Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers, It's a wholly unscientific measure, of course. But,The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry, then, so are all of the other options above except for Lichtman's.

By the time this is published, the presidential campaign season will be (mercifully) just about over. A few more days will bring an end to the incessant calls, mailings, and media ads from supplicant politicians, and then we can turn our attention to the more exciting (or not) pastime of shopping for the holidays!

But just in case you're a political junkie still looking to acquire something other than the usual banners, pins, t-shirts, and hats, here are a few suggestions for items that may hold or increase in value because they're cross-collectible. Not a collector yourself? They make great birthday or holiday gifts for the politicos in your life. Who knows, these items may make the hard-core laugh instead of yelling at the TV!

Why Twinkie Will Survive

Life is short, except for shelf life. All the rivers run into the sea, but the Twinkie abides. It will long be an icon of comfort food, a spongy link with a time when coffee was a nickel,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. Camels made you healthy, and your brother was the Beaver. This world never existed in reality, and now even our Twinkie is gone, in the blink of an eye. We must press on, somehow.

High in the aisles of junk that passes for food today, the everlasting Twinkie is on display no more. This sweet icon of Americana will now be collected, not consumed, its cash value qua artifact rising even as its food-value stays frozen forever, at the number zero. There may be heavy trading and speculation, Atlantic crossings, perhaps even a Twinkie Bubble and a Twinkie Crash. In its natural state, which is dropped on the ground for a lucky dog to find, it resembles something that should be poked with a stick.

A Twinkie passes rapidly through the human or canine gut like the masticated chyme it becomes after chewing, and from there we draw a curtain. But any whole specimens saved by the fall of Hostess will be stored like holy relics in a deep vault, for future archaeologists to unearth.

Scientists will not eat it, not even lab rats. It will wind up in a museum, probably.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , Too bad about the library at Alexandria, the Mona Lisa, all the lost empires grown stale and sucked down into the dustbin of history, but Twinkies will remain. It is what they do best.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china,

In my long life, I have eaten many, many Twinkies, and Sno(man’s)Balls, as we used to call them, Ho-Hos, Ding-Dongs, plus numerous insect parts and crunchy pelletized rat exhaust. On a reservation in South Dakota in 1967, I once traded my last Twinkie to an old man in a blanket for a piece of homemade fry bread, and thus made a new friend: Seven Teeth Left.

That’s what he mumbled when I asked him his name, but we were both chewing. He taught me to say Fuck You in the Crow tongue. I will tell you, to pay that Twinkie gift forward: Epi-Ha! It is an excellent battle cry, and can be said to Death when it comes for you or takes a friend, as a joke, he said. Ah, golden days of my lost youth, with ever-fresh Twinkies in my backpack and a thousand yearning horizons.

One summer in Colorado, when a black bear decided to stroll alongside my parked Volkswagen convertible,Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products. tossing a Twinkie in a far arc over the windshield helped steer the beast away, the correct direction. The Twinkie belonged to my first ex-wife. She loved them very much. We are no longer together, perhaps even because of them.

The best Twinkies of my life have been the ones I didn’t eat. In childhood, they were a kind of mysterious, expensive holiday food, but the holiday was on no calendar. My Danish mother did all the baking, for which she had the same natural aptitude as clubbing seals. Growing up with woodstoves, the only heat setting she ever learned was Full Fracking On, ignoring the scientific principle that baked goods tend to incinerate at prolonged high temperatures.

Finding a Twinkie in my school lunch box would have meant the magic holiday had finally arrived. But it never did. My mother’s cookies were tarry, burned ceramic-tile biscuits that the local squirrels walked around.

So in the fifth grade, when I found a Twinkie in the school bathroom, way up on a tiled windowsill, wrapped and uneaten, my amazement and wonder totally redlined, not to return at that intensity for a whole decade…

That was the night of my first acid trip. There was a Twinkie on the outdoor table, and after several subjective months of planning, it occurred to me to eat it, somehow. Everything seemed very simple and basic, full of Zen and the Holy Spirit. Such being the case, eating or not eating that single Twinkie became a moral and philosophical issue.

It followed that if I unwrapped the cellophane and it spoke to me, this would prove its consciousness at some level. I already suspected a degree of sentience, because it had been communicating telepathically about unwrapping it. Eating it was either very wrong, or very right. Somehow it compelled me to open the wrapper, with a label reading “HOSTess.” I elevated it, to my nose.

The sense of smell is most closely connected to memory, but 300 micrograms of lysergic acid boosts the effect, much like connecting your laptop to all the Crays in Langley. And then a dim,Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices. dusty, smelly vision came out from its cranny between my ears, of that long-ago Twinkie on a bathroom sill. Are you kidding, absolutely not. No, I didn’t eat it, not out of logic or good sense, nor even because it was suspect. There was no reason. Maybe it told me not to.

This one said the same, for sure. Not in so many words, perhaps, but I understood what it wanted: to be given as a gift to the universe, set free from the cellophane, not added to the plaque on my arteries. I peeled the wrapper and floated out to the edge of the deck, casting it out into the darkness of the Rocky Mountains. It may have been eaten by Coyote himself, this ancestor of the Last Twinkie Left On Earth. Goodbye, old snack. Epi Ha!

Charles Ray, Contemporary Art’s Most Obsessive Perfectionist

A few years ago, Los Angeles–based artist Charles Ray had heart trouble that required surgery. After he recovered, one of his doctors told him that he should start walking as much as possible. “So I was taking these really long walks,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.” he told The Observer last week at the Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea, where an exhibition of his work has just gone on view. Every day, he said, he would find himself walking by the same bench at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Seventh Street, in Santa Monica, “and usually a homeless guy was on it, and I would talk to him and give him some money and stuff like that.”

In Matthew Marks, Mr. Ray was standing next to a life-size,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. realistic metal sculpture he has made of that bench with a woman lying on top of it. She leans over on her side, slumbering peacefully on a blanket like a contemporary Ariadne. Her jacket is pulled up, exposing part of her back. She is based on a homeless woman he saw while he was walking by one day. He went on to spend years on the sculpture—three of them on her shoes alone.

Asked why he invested so much time in what would appear to be a banal scenario—a woman on a bench—he began his answer by retreating from his sculpture. “I came up from this direction,” he said quietly, approaching it from behind. The shape her body made on the bench was, he recalled, “so big and transcendental in a way, you know? I saw the underwear and the lace, I just immediately knew I wanted to machine it. I knew I wanted to make a sculpture out of it. What would happen with the machine tool? I was trying to push her, to bring her ka, or her soul, up through her physicality and out across her clothes, that was sort of the attempt.” As far as he knows, the woman is unaware that she has been shown in art galleries twice, a few months ago at Matthew Marks’s new Los Angeles branch, and now in New York.

It’s an old cliché that you can get a pretty good idea of what an artist is like by the work they make. Though it’s not universally true, big, bold paintings tend to be made by big, bold people. But who makes a delicate, detailed sculpture of a homeless woman or, for that matter, a work like Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley… (1992), a set of eight identical, terrifyingly lifelike, self-portrait nude sculptures engaged in an orgy?

On the day he met with The Observer, Mr. Ray, who will turn 60 next year, was weathering the chilly gallery in a blue knit cap and scarf—the heat had not yet been restored following Hurricane Sandy. Aside from those moments when he is really excited, which are few and far between, he speaks slowly and deliberately, in a voice just a notch or two above a whisper. He has a guarded warmth that betrays his Midwestern roots—Chicago-born, he went to college at the University of Iowa.

Unlike the artist who made them, Mr. Ray’s sculptures are often unsettling, frequently because of their mind-bending proportions, and they defy the reigning attitudes of much high-end sculpture.

A key characteristic of art in the market boom that started in the late 1990s was that art got very big, and very shiny. Artists became almost as well known for their staggering fabrication costs as they did for the works themselves. Something was born that one writer referred to as “bling conceptualism.” Many of the pieces made in the “bling” mode tend to have more than a whiff of luxury goods about them, like Jeff Koons’s mammoth candy hearts and beveled diamonds. Which makes Mr. Ray’s sculptures startling—a perfect replica of a crashed car, assembled part by part (Unpainted Sculpture, 1997), for instance, or here,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. a woman sleeping on a bench. His pieces include a female mannequin, dressed in a pantsuit,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , 30 percent larger than life-size, and a family of four, all the same dwarf height, completely naked.

Because of his slow, deliberative process, Mr. Ray’s exhibitions are relatively infrequent, and are greeted with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for auteur filmmakers. He may be his generation’s greatest sculptor, for his relentless inventiveness and ability to flout convention with grace. He’s appeared in five Whitney Biennials and two Venice Biennales, and—if you’re someone who judges these sorts of things using dollar signs—he is one of only a handful of artists working today who can command more than a million dollars for a new piece. All three sculptures in the Marks show have sold.

His art has always rewarded extended viewing. He packs artworks with details, and fashions them in unorthodox, irreverent ways. In the 1980s, when he was focused on abstract sculptures that resembled common objects (tables, shelves) and minimalist forms with unexpected quirks, he made what appeared to be a black string that extended from floor to ceiling. In fact, it was a thin band of heated ink, continually circulated via a pump system. Another piece from that time looks at first glance like a nondescript cube but, on closer inspection, reveals itself to be a black steel box filled to its brim with 200 gallons of newspaper ink. His art reveals and plays in the gap between the eye and the mind.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability.

Study links breast cancer risk to plastics employment

Women who have worked for companies that make plastic injection molded parts for the automotive industry have a significantly higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who have not been exposed to that type of working environment, say a team of 12 researchers, whose work was funded by a number of Canadian groups, including Health Canada.

The report, published Nov. 19 in the Journal of Environmental Health, examined the occupational backgrounds of 1,006 women with breast cancer in the Ontario counties of Essex and Kent and compared them to a control group of 1,The oreck XL professional air purifier,146 women in the region who did not have breast cancer.

The report said that the breast cancer study group of 1,006 women included 26 women who worked in the plastics automotive sector. Based upon that group of 26 women, the report said women in the plastics automotive sector were almost five times more likely than women in the control group to develop breast cancer prior to menopause.

“One year in plastics (auto) employment is estimated to increase the odds of breast cancer by 9 percent,” said the report, with the cases of “excess breast cancer” largely “limited to small automotive parts suppliers, which would include some plastics operations.”

The report does not contain information directly linking the exposure of those 26 women to any particular chemical or identify any specific chemicals to which those women had been exposed on their jobs. It simply notes that the women in those environments are exposed to a wide number of chemicals that have been suspected of causing cancer.

The American Chemistry Council, based in Washington, took exception to that analysis.

“It is concerning [to us] that the authors could be over-interpreting their results and unnecessarily alarming workers,” ACC said in a statement issued on Nov. 19, after it had the opportunity to review the full study. “This study included no data showing if there was actual chemical exposure, from what chemicals, at what levels, and over what period of time [exposure might have occurred] in any particular workplace.”

“Although this is a worthy and important area of research,” ACC said, “it is inappropriate to use such research as the basis for speculation about causes of patterns of cancer rates among occupations without any information of substance about whether there are actual exposures, to what actual substances, and how big [those exposures] might be.”

John Heinze, a scientist who works for a non-profit research association in Washington, concurred.

“This is ... basically a survey of the jobs held by over 1,000 Canadian women who had breast cancer compared to an equal number of women who didn’t have breast cancer,” Heinze told Plastics News.

“Since the case and controls were supposedly matched on other health and demographic variables, any difference in breast cancer incidence was assumed [by the researchers] to be due to occupational exposure to carcinogens and endocrine disruptors,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory.” he said.

“However,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. occupational exposures were not measured, nor were questions asked specifically regarding occupational exposures,” said Heinze. “So the results ... only demonstrate statistical associations, not cause and effect. Without measurement of exposure levels, the statistical comparison of job histories between the two groups is not meaningful [and] the paper offers very little but speculation.Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products.”

The 12-person research team does not cite specific evidence or link the higher cancer rate among the automotive workers to any specific chemical exposure.

Instead, the report simply noted that a number of plastics used in plastic manufacturing have ‘identified’ as endocrine-disrupting chemicals and that there are a number of ways workers making plastic-injection molding parts can be exposed to ‘harmful’ chemicals.

“Many plastics have been found to release estrogenic chemicals [and] such additives as phthalates, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers have been identified as endocrine-disrupting chemicals,” said the report.

“Additionally, some of the monomers present in the manufacturing of polymers have been identified as mutagenic and/or carcinogenic [and] several monomers, additives, and related solvents, such as vinyl chloride, styrene, and acrylonitrile have been identified as mammary carcinogens in animal studies,” said the report. “Cumulative exposure to mixtures of various estrogenic chemicals may compound the effect.”

Similarly, the report did not delineate any specific ways the women in the study had been exposed to such chemicals. It simply pointed out how such workers could potentially be exposed to those chemicals.

Why Thailand is crazy over AEC

At the Asean foreign ministerial meeting over the weekend in Phnom Penh, the Asean leaders still struggled with the date when the Asean Community (AC) would start. Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, the Cambodian chair, told the meeting that the AC should begin on 1st of January 2015 not on 31st December as agreed by the Asean economic ministers in their earlier meeting. The key reason was quite simple - a delay of 364 days would allow most of the Asean members additional time and room to implement remaining measures and prepare for the AC arrival with better preparedness. The majority of Asean members seemed to prefer the last day of 2015 as they thought the AC is a process that would continue beyond 2015. Rightly so, during the summit on Sunday, Prime Minister Hun Sen decided to go for 31st December as the date.

Within Asean, Thailand has been the only Asean member with a comprehensive plan to prepare for the 2015 deadline. At the end of October, the government has adopted the eight-point strategic plan prepared by the National Economic and Social Development Council. The plan outlines the strength and weakness of Thailand's overall capacity to engage the one Asean community. The Thai concerned officials drafted the strategic plan mainly from documental sources such as the Asean Charter, hundreds of agreements and blueprints, the Master Plan of Asean Connectivity as well as data and information collected from all government agencies related to all the three pillars - economic, political/security and social/culture. Judging from the plan, the Yingluck government will be spending a lot more money in months to come.

The strategies focus on eight priorities: the ability to compete in trade in goods and services as well as investment, the development of quality of life and social safety net, the infrastructural and logistic development, the human resource development, regulatory reform, promotion of awareness of Asean,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products.Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products. strengthening the country's national security and the capacity building for key Thai cities to link up with the rest of Asean.

Deep down, these strategies reveal extremely high anxieties as well as the lack of confidence of the country's ability when Asean becomes a single production base. They fear of the unknown consequences. Doubtless,A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. the narrative of the day is how to compete with other Asean countries instead of collective spirit to promote the grouping's bargain power. General speaking, Thailand as the Asean's second largest economy would benefit from the AEC because of its location in the mainland Southeast Asia and dynamic private sector. Indeed, Asean is the number one market for absorbing around 23 per cent of Thailand's total exports. Somehow, there is a lingering fear that the government, the SMEs sector and the Thai people are not ready for the borderless Asean.

As far as the government agencies are concerned, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are the three key driving forces. Kudos must go to the first because in the past two years for implanting the AEC slogan in the Thai psyche due to the non-stop bombardments from commerce officials and advertisements.

The Ministry of Commerce has the largest chunk of overall budget. It also knows very well all the serious problems the country is confronting in implementing various AEC measures, especially on liberalizing the services sector. It is not surprising that there are a lot of spins about the country's state of preparedness and readiness.

It must be noted that the Ministry of Education has turned the AEC campaign into "Let learn English" campaign, which is the major component of its long-term strategy.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , It has an elaborated plan to quickly provide English education to the Thai people both in urban and rural areas and equipped vocational students with skills and language ability that can communicate with other Asean countries.

Throughout Thailand, the AEC has now become the main justification to study more English.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. There is a surge of English language schools in provincial towns. Some regional universities in KhonKaen and UbonRatchathani teach languages in Asean countries including Bahasa Indonesia, Burmese, Vietnamese.

Amazingly, nobody really tackles the real issue of the country's rotten education system, which has produced walking human tape-recorders than the much needed innovative minds. Now, all the Thai citizens are encouraged to learn and speak English to prepare the Asean community while the education plan continues with the status quo. Currently, at any given day, hundreds of officials from district, provincial and national levels are taking part in English language training and the so-called Asean awareness campaign.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working hard to maintain the country's Asean profile which is not easy under the leadership and working style of Yingluck government. Within the country, the ministry has to constantly inform and remind the public that the AEC is only one of the three AC pillars. The other two - political/security and social/culture - are equally important. All three must progress in tandem to transform the borderless Asean.

Sad but true, on the social and cultural pillar, Ministry of Culture so far has not been unable to catch up or get the necessary budget for its own projects.

There is an urgent need to educate the Thai people about their immediate neighbors about the challenges posed by the AC. One of the ministry's long standing flagship projects to establish a museum that tells the history of Asean and its key players could not obtain necessary funding. Asean was found in LaemThaen, Bang Saen, Chon Buri in August 1967.

After the Asean Charter was adopted, Thailand has been at the forefront to promote the people-oriented Asean community ensuring that the voices of at the grassroots are heard. Dr Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary General of Asean, whose term is ending in six weeks, has also helped to channel the inputs of civil society organizations. Thailand has become the most open-minded, along with Indonesia, when it comes to human rights and democracy. At the summit last week, the Philippines returned to its root of liberalism by stating that unless there were changes in the draft Asean Declaration of Asean Human Rights, Manila would opt out completely, prompting Indonesia to come to a rescue with a proposal to include the preamble of UN Universal Human Rights Declaration in the working document, which will be read by the Asean chair.

Awild family adventure in Canada's natural

For the first 30 minutes after launching, the river is mostly calm and flat, allowing the six of us in Andrea's inflatable vessel to practise whitewater rafting's essential skills. For example, on the command of 'get down!', the ability to crouch in the bottom of the boat and cling on for dear life is vital.

After that gentle introduction, the rapids barely relented throughout the following hour. Clad in helmets, wetsuits and waterproof jackets, we rode the river at what felt like the same downward angle as the winter ski pistes on the craggy mountains above us.

We paddled frantically on Andrea's orders, negotiating narrows between pairs of giant boulders and swinging at speed through sweeping curves, determined not to collide with the jagged, rocky banks.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles.

All too soon (in fact, after a total of two hours) it came to an end. But much as we might have liked to continue, we knew that beaching the raft at the correct location was very important. Two hundred yards further on, the river plunges over Sunwapta Falls - a vertical drop of 300ft, which, remarkably enough, one young canoeist is said to have survived.

The Sunwapta plunges into a vertiginous gorge less than 6ft wide. There's a path that runs parallel to the river - and it's a thrill in itself as one strolls by the side of huge vertical drops.

Rafting the Sunwapta was only one of many highlights of two weeks in Alberta in August with my wife Carolyn, and sons, Jacob, 13, and Daniel, eight.

To Daniel's lasting disappointment,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. he was deemed to be too light to risk the Sunwapta rapids, although he was able to enjoy two earlier, somewhat less tumultuous trips - on the nearby Athabasca, and the Bow, 180 miles further south at Banff.

Our trip began with a flight from London to Calgary, where we spent three nights at the stylish Hotel Arts. Thankfully, given that the boys were waking up at 2am as they struggled to adjust their body clocks, the hotel has soundproof rooms.

To be honest, as a city Calgary isn't all that interesting. It's a bit like an American oil town such as Houston, only much further north. But just outside the city is the park built to stage the 1988 Winter Olympics. Still a winter sports mecca, the site contains one fantastic attraction in summer which even Daniel was able to enjoy: one of the world's longest and fastest zip-wire rides, a 1,600ft thrill rigged from the top of the big ski jump. It's so fast you have to deploy a mini-parachute in order to stop - something no 53-year-old child (ie, me) could possibly resist.

Calgary was also a convenient base from which to drive to the Royal Tyrrell Museum at Drumheller, amid the shale canyons where about half of the dinosaurs ever dug up have been discovered.

Apart from its vast and extremely imaginative galleries, where tyrannosauruses seem still to be leaping at their prey, the museum offers visitors the chance to join palaeontologists at their excavations, and to make casts from real dinosaur teeth.

However, the Rockies were the main event and as a reporter almost as grizzled as the two bears we managed to glimpse from the stupendous Icefields Parkway it embarrasses me to admit I cannot properly find the words to describe them. What I can say is the scenery we travelled through was so continuously magnificent, the things we did in it were so thrilling, and the people we met so unaffectedly warm, one really does run out of superlatives.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china,

For a highland resort, Banff is unusually swish, with a number of excellent restaurants, hotels and trendy boutiques. But from our perch 3,000ft above its streets, it shrank into insignificance, revealed as a tiny outpost amid a colossal wilderness that even now remains untamed. Ridge after precipitous ridge stretched to every horizon, many adorned with snow and glaciers.

In the Alps, a big, deep valley such as the one we gazed into would sport roads, farms and villages. Here it was empty of all but forest and the wildlife for which it provides a habitat. At the base of the Sulphur Mountain you find the hot springs of the Cave and Basin Historic Site.

The next morning, we rode round the mountain on horseback. Half an hour from the road and stables on a rough muddy trail between the trees, it felt truly remote - the kind of place where you could, if not careful, find yourself in serious trouble.

A day or two later we went for a stunning high-level walk around the lakes above one of the winter ski areas with Alex Mowat, a fearsomely knowledgeable local guide. As we set off, he gave the Canadian version of a yodel: not to express the simple joy of hiking in the mountains, 'but to let the bears know we're here, knocking at the door of their home'. Bears not taken by surprise, he explained, are much less likely to attack.

But unless you're stupid or very unlucky, the bears you might happen to meet in Alberta are, in general, unlikely to do you much harm.

Much more dangerous - and far more common - are elks. At the Banff tourist office there's a photograph of a man who got too close to one that charged straight at his car - and virtually destroyed it.

In Banff, we stayed at the Fairmont Banff Springs, a faux baronial castle with an epic view down the Bow River and to the peaks beyond. One of Canada's grandest hotels, it's the sort of place you can't help but be sorry to leave.

However, any sadness we might have felt was soon mitigated on arrival at another Fairmont property, the Jasper Park Lodge. This low-rise complex of spacious chalets sits on the shores of a still, silent lake. Its waters reflect the dazzling white sail that is the north face of Mt Edith Cavell, which we later explored on foot close up.

Here you need to be careful. Occasionally, thousand-ton icebergs tumble down the mountain's Angel Glacier and explode, blasting everything in the vicinity.

Our guide, Paula Beauchamp, showed us photos she had taken of one such moment of impact that happened two weeks before our hike.Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, Had anyone been strolling beneath the glacier snout at that time, they would probably have been killed.

Overall, Jasper, first built as a Canadian Pacific railway town, is a little more laidback than Banff, and its surroundings even wilder. Nearby Maligne Lake, its azure waters fringed by ice peaks, has to be one of the world's most exquisite beauty-spots. You can rent a canoe or a rowing boat at the lake, or take a cruise up towards the glaciers.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability.

Engineers at Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center

When a malfunctioning U.S. spy satellite threatened to fall out of orbit in February 2008, military officials took the unusual step of blasting the spacecraft to bits with a well-aimed missile.

Most disabled space hardware breaks up on its own when it hits Earth's upper atmosphere. Any pieces that survive usually smack down harmlessly in uninhabited areas, or plop into the ocean.

So why the perilous, pricey trick shot, which required intercepting the 17,000 mph target with a $10 million missile fired from a warship 133 miles below?

While skeptics cited darker motives -- to keep secret technology out of competitors' hands, or to one-up an earlier Chinese satellite-killing display -- the official reason was environmental protection. The space hit was to prevent a toxic spill of the satellite's 1,000 pounds of hazardous fuel.

Hydrazine is a versatile, workhorse propellant. Its various formulations have powered everything from the Nazis' World War II rocket-engine Komet fighter to the space shuttles' orbital maneuvering system.

All sorts of NASA, military and commercial satellites use hydrazine-firing thrusters to hold or alter their positions. The 35-year-old Voyager I spacecraft, now more than 11 billion miles from Earth, relies on the propellant to stay on course as it forges into deep space.

But hydrazine is nasty stuff. It's poisonous and cancer-causing. Its fumes badly sickened astronauts on the final Apollo flight in 1975. When loading the propellant, satellite and spacecraft fueling crews must take extraordinary handling precautions, which add to already steep launch costs.

That's why a government-industry team including engineers from Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center and Dayton's Air Force Research Lab is preparing to test a safer "green" space propellant. The ambitious project aims to fly a small unmanned spacecraft in 2015 with modified thrusters powered by an experimental alternative fuel called AF-M315E. It's far less noxious but has more "oomph," than hydrazine.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing,

The team calls itself the "Green Propellant Infusion Mission," a name more akin to a sports-energy drink or a Seattle garage band than a $45 million space venture. But if the propellant and its modified engine perform as hoped,Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products. it could pave the way for cheaper, cleaner satellites and spacecraft.

"We think the payoff for this is going to be really huge if we can take the first step in getting rid of toxic propellant," said Randy Lillard, an aerospace engineer with NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist who's leading the mission.

Satellite operators won't gamble a quarter-billion-dollar spacecraft on unproven fuel or technology. So the demonstration mission will have to provide clear evidence that AF-M315E works -- in real space conditions, not just in ground-based testing -- and that there are enough advantages over hydrazine to outweigh the costs of making the switch to a green propellant.

Hydrazine has been a proven performer for decades, but at considerable cost, in dollars, time and risk.

Special permits and driver training are required for its transport. It's stored in remote bunkers. A whiff of its stinging, ammonialike vapors can irritate throat and eyes, and a splash can raise a rash on skin. High-level or long-term exposure may damage the lungs, kidney, liver and nervous system and spawn tumors, and could cause seizures,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. coma or death.

NASA got a sobering reminder of hydrazine's potential for harm on July 24, 1975. As three astronauts from the U.The oreck XL professional air purifier,S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz mission headed for splashdown, the capsule's course-correcting thrusters fired and a fresh-air valve inadvertently let fumes from a hydrazine derivative and another propellant leak into the crew cabin for nearly 10 minutes.

The protective measures contribute to satellites' soaring costs, at a time when operators who use them for vital jobs such as navigation, weather forecasting,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , global communication and national defense face money crunches.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, will spend more than one-third of its $5.1 billion 2013 budget on satellite procurement, Scientific American reported recently. That's an increase of 11 percentage points from NOAA's 2010 satellite spending, and probably not an amount the agency can continue to afford.

If it passes muster, the new green propellant may help take a bite out of those costs, possibly opening access to space for some potential satellite operators who've been priced out of the market until now.

"It could allow customers from academia or small customers from the government to lower the cost of preparing and launching spacecraft into orbit," said Brian Reed, an aerospace engineer with NASA Glenn's space propulsion branch who's part of the green propellant team.

First, Air Force testing shows it's not a poisonous-vapor or cancer-causing risk, Lillard said, eliminating the need for extreme handling measures. "The current assessment is when you load it in, you would wear just a splash guard," he said. "The SCAPE suits would not be required."

The green propellant's vapor pressure is lower than hydrazine's. That means that it doesn't boil or explosively expand when exposed to the atmosphere and that extra-thick tank walls aren't needed to contain it.

AF-M315E also is denser than hydrazine, so its fuel tank can be as much as 40 percent smaller. That frees up precious room on a satellite or spacecraft for additional science gear or other payloads.

Slaying the Fungus Among Us

More than a half-century after it was first used on patients, amphotericin B (AmB) made news again last month after it was recommended as part of a combination therapy for many of the patients who contracted noncontagious fungal meningitis from injections of steroids compounded by the New England Compounding Center.

According to CDC’s Interim Treatment Guidance for Central Nervous System and Parameningeal Infection Associated With Injection of Contaminated Steroid Products, updated November 8, “Providers should strongly consider giving liposomal amphotericin B in addition to voriconazole to patients who present with severe disease, and patients started initially on voriconazole monotherapy who do not improve or who experience clinical deterioration.” CDC added that liposomal AmB “may also be considered as an alternative to voriconazole in patients who are unable to tolerate voriconazole.”

With the advent of voriconazole and other newer drugs, from the -azole class to the echinocandin class, amphotericin drugs have been much less frequently used now than in decades past. “The reason is because we have less toxic alternatives now. Their use has declined significantly in the past 10 to 20 years,” Helen W.A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet, Boucher, M.D., director, infectious diseases fellowship program and associate professor of medicine at Tufts Medical Center’s Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases, told GEN.

“However, amphotericin is still valuable in several cases, such as the recent meningitis outbreak. For these rare molds, it’s still valuable in treatment, especially when it’s used in combination,” Dr. Boucher added.Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic injection mould manufacture, “It’s useful in Cryptococcus, which is another fungal infection that infects many people throughout the world,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , but fortunately not so many in the U.S. anymore because of all our good HIV therapies. It’s useful in a couple of other rare fungal infections.”

The meningitis outbreak and resulting advice to use AmB in combination with voriconazole is likely to aggravate concerns, most recently voiced in a study published last month in Nature Scientific Reports about the rise seen over the past 20 years in the frequency of invasive fungal infections. Those infections have been followed by corresponding increases in illnesses and deaths —and more worrisome, to increased dosages in the use of AmB, following by increased resistance to the antifungal and complications such as kidney failure.

At such doses, about half of patients suffer from some form of kidney poisoning; 15% of patients on AmB in a 1999 study (Wingard, et. al., Clinical Infectious Diseases) were forced into kidney dialysis. Less commonly but more frighteningly, AmB use can result in complete failure of the kidneys, liver,Installers and distributors of solar panel, or heart. Kidney toxicity explains why two decades ago the lipid forms of AmB were developed, but they only reduce nephrotoxicity.

“The blood vessels in the kidney and the cell membranes of the kidney tubules seem to be particularly susceptible to amphotericin; the drug damages the membranes of these cells and causes changes to the body’s sodium levels. Both directly and indirectly, therefore, the drug causes a constriction of the renal blood vessels and thereby makes the kidney less efficient in removing unwanted waste from the blood,” the study’s corresponding author, David Barlow, Ph.D., of King’s College London’s (KCL) Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, remarked.

Dr. Barlow, who is head of KCL’s pharmaceutical chemistry teaching section and also a reader in computational & molecular biophysics, joined two research colleagues from his institute and from France’s Institut de Laue Langevin in the study, which featured results from neutron diffraction studies of AmB’s incorporation within lipid-sterol membranes.

In the study, Dr. Barlow and colleagues used neutron diffraction of oriented lipid-sterol multi-layers to determine the structures of AmB-perturbed lipid-sterol membranes and—more specifically—to determine the differences in the drug’s interactions with synthetic human and fungal cell membranes, to help establish which if any of the various models proposed for its interaction with membranes is correct.

Researchers modeled human and fungal cell membranes with layers of lipids combined with either cholesterol or ergosterol. The team introduced deuterium,Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices. a heavier isotope of hydrogen, to either the membrane model or the drug, tagging that part of the system to follow it during the interaction.

The team found that while “barrel-like” structures formed in both membranes upon the introduction of AmB, the barrels penetrated more deeply into the fungal membranes than human membranes at a low dose, which may explain why AmB can open up pores more readily in fungal cells than in human cells. But at higher doses, the pores pass right across both types of membranes, resulting in damage to healthy tissue.

Farish Jenkins

INDIANA JONES is the ultimate action-hero academic: played by Harrison Ford, the indomitable professor outwits Nazis and other villains in search of religious relics, lost temples and alien artefacts. Farish Jenkins preferred a rifle to a bullwhip, and it was palaeontology, not archaeology, that he made glamorous. But he did have a stylish hat, a military background and adventures in wild places. His adoring students dubbed him the real life version of the cinematic creation.

A Marine Corps captain,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. he trained as an artillery officer, “cascading expensive, high explosive ordnance onto stockpiles of junk cars”. Unlike most modern academics, he defied categorisation into narrow specialism. A “hybrid” as he put it, he was anatomist, zoologist and vertebrate palaeontologist in equal measure.

Arriving at Yale to study geology in 1964,Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products. he was told that all major aspects of vertebrate evolution were already understood. He feared that he and his friends would be left “to build our careers with carefully stacked minutiae”. In fact, “titanic” discoveries awaited. But to crack the secrets of the fossil world, he had to master not only the rocks but the organisms they hid. He was the first Yale Graduate School student to cross over to the Medical School, to study anatomy and embryology.

Later, he illustrated his lectures with fine anatomical drawings, painstakingly rendered with what he proudly called Harvard’s best collection of sharpened chalks (he was not a PowerPoint person). When necessary, he would draw bones and muscles on his own suit. To illustrate the body’s natural shock-absorbers, he would stomp round the room on a peg leg, reading the description of Captain Ahab’s gait in “Moby Dick”. Students loved that, and how he timed his lectures to the second.

He had no time for academic squabbles and protocol, brushing off rebukes and bureaucratic constraints. Charm was his first weapon, obstinacy his second. It was not just his clothes and vocabulary that were old-fashioned. He prized thoroughness. Unusually for modern academia, he showered praise on colleagues and deprecated his own triumphs. But he was a mighty foe when roused. He could swear like a Marine, “without repeating myself” and helped oust the abrasive Larry Summers from the Harvard presidency.

The first field trip was to Africa, where his “very close and extremely naive encounters” with the local fauna included a self-portrait with a black rhino (plentiful as “rats in a dump” in those days). The beast took offence and charged; Mr Jenkins made it back to his car minus a lens cap. Living vertebrates, he decided, were just as interesting as their extinct relatives.

High speed cineradiography (making moving pictures from X-rays),The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. plus treadmills and a wind tunnel gave him new insights into how animals move: walking, trotting, galloping, flying and brachiating (the way monkeys swing). His efforts reached, he said proudly,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. “circus-like” proportions. “Tree shrews ricocheted across my bookshelves and desk,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals.” he recalled. University bosses were appalled. His students and colleagues were captivated.

But fieldwork was even more fun. The most arduous expeditions were to east Greenland and arctic Canada, armed with lavatory paper to wrap the fossils, and chocolate bars for the diggers. Mr Jenkins was a distinctive addition to the landscape: invariably well-dressed, and sporting a beloved Czechoslovak rabbit-fur hat, a pocket-watch, a flask of vodka and a gun. He rigged trip wires and automatic rifle fire to deter polar bears from the camp at night. A cast of a huge paw print in his office was a souvenir of a particularly narrow escape.

The trophies of those trips were carefully chipped open at Harvard. One proved to be the great find of his life: Tiktaalik roseae. “Rose” was the Christian name of an anonymous benefactor who subsidised the expeditions. Tiktaalik was a homage to his Inuit hosts: their word for a large freshwater fish. In fossil-speak the discovery was “the elpistostegalian central to understanding the emergence of tetrapods”. In layman’s language, it was a 375m-year-old fish with legs, a rudimentary ear and a snout for catching prey—a vital clue to how living beings first moved from sea to land.

Another big find was what he called the “ugliest animal in the world” (therefore named Gerrothorax pulcherrimus, or “most beautiful wicker chest”). It was a 210m-year-old armoured marine creature. Mr Jenkins spotted its distinguishing feature: that it opened its mouth by lifting its upper jaw. He was crucial in discovering the world’s earliest known frog, which unlike its salamander-like ancestors had hind legs for jumping. He found that in 1981 in the Arizona desert. It initially looked like “road kill”, his colleague Neil Shubin said: a 190m-year-old mash of four different frog skeletons. The two men spent the next 14 years picking them apart and putting them back together. They named their find Prosalirus bitis, combining a Latin word meaning “leap forward” with a Navajo word for “high above it”.

JBG Expands Car Charging Stations

The three-block site was once a part of the historic Washington City Canal that connected the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers. The canal was paved over in the 1870s and most recently served as a parking lot for school buses. Inspired by the canal's heritage, CanaThe oreck XL professional air purifier,l Park's design evokes the history of the area with a linear rain garden reminiscent of the Washington Canal and three pavilions, designed by STUDIOS Architecture, which recall floating barges that were once common in the canal. The park will feature diverse amenities, including a café with outdoor seating, an interactive fountain, an ice skating path, play and performance areas, and sculptures by artist David Hess. Each block is given its own unique identity within a cohesive urban experience. The Canal Park Development Association, in partnership with the Capital Riverfront Business Improvement District, will host numerous events throughout the year, such as movies and concerts, holiday and seasonal festivals, farmers markets, art expositions, educational and environmental programming, storytelling events, and more.

In addition to being a vibrant social destination,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china, Canal Park is a model for green infrastructure strategies. The former brownfield has been transformed into a landscape that restores vital ecosystem services that were lost when the site served as a parking lot. Contaminated soils were replaced with a healthy growing medium and the native plant habitat was re-introduced. Canal Park's stormwater system includes a linear rain garden that spans the length of the park,Installers and distributors of solar panel, Low Impact Design tree pits, and two underground cisterns which can collectively hold 80,000 gallons of water. The stormwater system captures, treats and stores almost all of the stormwater runoff generated by the park and neighboring city blocks, which averages to 1.5 million gallons of reused water each year.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , The treated water is used to satisfy up to 95 percent of the park's water needs for fountains, irrigation, toilets and the ice skating path. Underneath the park, 28 geothermal wells provide a highly efficient energy supply for park utilities. The wells are forecasted to reduce Canal Park's overall energy consumption by 37 percent. Other sustainable features include the use of sustainably harvested wood for benches and architectural elements, electric car parking stations, ample bicycle racks and cross-streets designed to calm traffic speeds around the park and provide a safe pedestrian environment.

"Canal Park is a unique place that delivers an artful assembly of social, economic and environmental performance," stated Steve Benz, OLIN Partner and Director of Green Infrastructure. "As a successful social space, people can enjoy the re-established natural systems previously lost to development while providing an economic stimulus for the surrounding area."

Through a close collaboration with OLIN, STUDIOS Architecture designed three permanent pavilions. The largest pavilion, at 9,000-square-feet, will host a café and dining area, as well as utilities that support the park and ice skating path. The structure is made of reclaimed and sustainably harvested wood from black locust trees and is expected to earn LEED Gold certification. The roof also serves as a public plaza and features a large lantern with translucent acrylic panels which will become a medium for projection art and light displays. The pavilion's sustainable features include geothermal heating and cooling, vegetated roof surfaces,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. natural ventilation, low-flush toilets and fixtures, energy/water monitoring dashboard systems, and utilization of the park's stormwater treatment system for non-potable water. Made of similar materials and approximately 150-200-square feet each, a second pavilion appears to float above a linear fountain, while a third pavilion bookends the park at the north and provides storage for park amenities.

The OLIN team, led by Partner and Director of Green Infrastructure Steve Benz and managed by Associate Sophie Robitaille, directed a team of fourteen consultants on the project, including architects STUDIOS Architecture; stormwater engineers Nitsch Engineering; civil engineers VIKA Capitol, Inc.; lighting designer and sustainability energy consultants Atelier Ten; MEP engineers Joseph R. Loring & Associates; structural engineers SK&A Structural Engineers; irrigation designers Lynch & Associates; ice path designers & fountain engineers Stantec Bonestroo; geotechnical consultants Soil Consultants; sculptor David Hess; signage designers The Design Theorem; audio visual consultants Shen Milsom & Wilke; dry utility consultants Richter & Associates; and cost estimator Davis Langdon, an AECOM Company.