2012年5月30日星期三

Longtime Democrats Berman-Sherman clash in congressional race

For four decades, Berman’s been an untouchable Democratic Party powerhouse in California — first, as a state legislator, and then as a congressman whose district includes much of the eastern San Fernando Valley. Then, the redistricting commission released its new political boundaries.

71-year-old Berman landed in the same western San Fernando Valley-based district as 57-year-old Sherman, a Valley congressman for 15 years. More than half the district sits within Sherman’s current district; that leaves Berman at a distinct disadvantage. Another Democratic giant — and longtime Berman ally — Congressman Henry Waxman urged Sherman to move north to a Ventura district, in deference to the elder.Trade organization for suppliers and distributors in the promotional products industry. Sherman balked, and Berman went on the offensive.

“Brad’s passed three bills in his 15 years in congress — two of them naming post offices," said Berman. “That’s a silly yardstick for measuring a member of congress.”

Sherman says his approach to lawmaking is different than Berman’s.

“Most of my work is in amending and shaping legislation that doesn’t have my name on it,TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China." said Sherman.

Sherman, a Certified Public Accountant, tax lawyer and former member of the state Board of Equalization points toward 2008 to highlight his successes.

“My number one accomplishment was blocking and forcing the re-tooling of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout known as TARP," said Sherman.

At the time, Sherman took to the House floor as a member of what was known as the 'skeptics caucus,' amid rampant fears of economic collapse.

”This bill is not going to solve the problem. People think if you act in a panic and throw $700 billion at it, you’re going to solve it. Hardly," said Sherman on the House floor.

Howard Berman supported the original bailout bill. He’s unlikely to ever join a 'skeptics caucus.' Having mastered the arcane legislative rules of the House, he prefers to work the levers of power from the inside.

“By and large, politics is a team sport. The more relationships you have, the more alliances you have, the more effective you can be," said Berman.

Berman’s longevity has earned him seniority in the House. He’s the ranking Democrat on the powerful Foreign Relations Committee.

Another big difference between Berman and Sherman is the way they interact with their constituents.

Sherman sips iced tea with voters at a meet and greet in a San Fernando Valley living room. He’s held 160 town halls like this during his time in office — compared to Berman’s relative handful. Outside, Vera Highland says sIt's pretty cool but our ssolarpanel are made much faster than this.he likes Sherman.

“I also like Howard Berman. I actually helped work on his campaign," said Highland. "I’m checking everybody out.”

She glances around nervously, hoping not to offend anyone. Her friend who hosted the event is a big Sherman backer.

Many Democratic voters are divided because Berman and Sherman hold similar political views — on immigration, the environment and U.S. support for Israel. Both are Jewish. They do differ on the economic bailout and trade issues. Sherman is more protectionist — that’s one reason more labor unions prefer him.

Berman has been called “Hollywood’s Congressman.” He’s helped sponsor anti-piracy legislation.

Suddenly, Sherman’s mother walks up. She’d attended the tea inside the house.

“I’m Lane Sherman,This page contains information about tooling. I’m Brad’s mother. So I was interested to hear what you were saying," she says. “I’m just very pleased that he’s happy and he has a family.”

This kind of intimacy between candidates, their families and voters is relatively new in politics, especially for people like Berman who was first elected to public office in 1972.

“The world he is running in is not the world he came up in. It’s probably a little more of the world that Sherman came up in," said political scientist Raphe Sonenshein. “I think you’re looking at a period now where the general disdain for politics and parties and politicians that was always strong in California just keeps getting stronger. And the ability to connect with voters is extremely important.Ekahau rtls is the only Wi-Fi based real time location system solution that operates on any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network.”

When Refuse/Resist Goes Wrong

Actually, not “wrong,Zenith manufactures a comprehensive range of rubbersheets.” forget that headline. It’s more like, “When Refuse/Resist Becomes More Hassle Than It’s Worth Because All You Do Is Take Shit For It,This page contains information about tooling.” which is probably too long for a Deleted Scenes headline. Damn this column space! Holding me back for years now.

I’m told that among my many charming personal traits there runs a strong general resistance to change. I’m told this mostly by my wife, whose opinions I trust. She’s not wrong. In general, once I’ve acclimated myself to a routine and to the things and/or people in that routine, I’m loathe to upset the order I’ve worked to establish. Even the word I used in that sentence,What are hemorrhoids? “upset,” shows I view doing so in a negative fashion, where someone else might be excited at the prospect for finding new means of accomplishing their day-to-day tasks.An indoorpositioningsystem for Improved Action Force Command and Disaster Management.

This came to a head this week when our esteemed Associate Editor Giorgio Mustica and our second-newest intern Jonny Cohn (did we add his name to the staff box yet? We should get on that) both laughed at my continued usage of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. I believe Giorgio’s comment was, “What is this, 2006?” and it was met with much laughter from Young Jonny.

I thought about it for a while and, feeling old and realizing that maybe they were right and there was a better option available—namely Google Chrome, which my wife also uses and readily advocates—decided I’d give it a shot. It was all well and good until, while tooling around as I often am in the back end of a WordPress site, I tried to click an image and scale the size. In Firefox, this is as simple as clicking and dragging the corner.

In Chrome, when I clicked, the image was selected, but I could not move the corner or do anything else with it. I tried clicking shift, and option, and whatever else—even just now, I went back and opened Chrome and tried again—still no luck. So it was either resize every image beforehand in Photoshop, do the math on the proportions for every photo I want to scale and adjust it in the HTML code for the photo embed—both processes a substantial pain in the ass—or switch back to Firefox.

The decision was easy. I went back to what I was used to, and remembered afterwards that in fact this wasn’t the first time I’d tried Chrome and encountered that same issue with WordPress, which accounts for a substantial portion of my general internet usage.

So while it’s not every case in my life I can stand on solid ground and say I have a legitimate cause to be resistant to change—there’s probably no reason I couldn’t store my iced tea on the right side of the fridge instead of the left,Heat recovery ventilators including domestic home ventilationsyste. but I’ll be damned if I’m moving it—this time I have some substance to back up my stubbornness. And, well, it feels good.

Because in this day and age where technology gets by on marketing itself on moving faster than the speed of human comprehension—please, someone fucking call me when we’re off the combustion engine and our cellphones can teleport us to a kickass weekend in London—it’s nice to remember every now and again that, as Tolkien said, not all that glitters is gold. Just because something is new doesn’t automatically mean it’s going to meet your needs as well as what’s already there, though it may or may not be worth giving it a try, and sometimes, it’s not the worst thing in the world to be set in your ways if your ways actually work. Victories are few and far between, these days. I’ll take what I can get.

And Giorgio, say what you want about 2006—it may have been the bottom of the pit of George W. Bush-led hopelessness—but screw it, at least people still sent in CDs for review instead of download links, making me pretend like someone’s doing me a favor by sending me something that, if I was even vaguely interested in it, I’d have already stolen by now. The future in which we live continues to be a ripoff.

Studies show land rights reform key to saving forests, fighting climate change

Ensuring that forest dwellers have rights over their land is vital for slowing the deforestation that may be causing up to a fifth of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases, according to a report released Wednesday.

The report by the Washington-based NGO Rights and Resources Initiative is aimed at encouraging next month’s U.N. summit in Rio de Janeiro to tackle the politically contentious issue of land reforms.3rd minigame series of magiccube!

RRI says studies in China, India and Brazil show local residents must have a say over how forests are used to ensure sustainability.

China has made significant progress in restoring its forest cover while also allowing residents to make a living from plantations, forest products and tourism, the RRI report says.

In southwestern China’s Tengchong area, local communities are allowed to vote on whether to manage the forests collectively, much as they would traditionally, or to manage sections individually.

Reforms like those have aided replanting, increasing China’s forest cover by 1.6 percent in 2000-2010. India saw a 0.5 percent increase, while all other Asian countries saw no change, or declines.

“In Asia,Rubiks cubepuzzle. most governments continue to deny local land rights and to promote economic activities that result in deforestation. Forests in the region are being depleted, communities are losing their homelands, and corruption is common,It's pretty cool but our ssolarpanel are made much faster than this.” the RRI report says.

Local anger over displacement by logging and other projects in northern Myanmar is a factor behind the flaring Kachin ethnic insurgency, analysts say.

In Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia, meanwhile, local authorities have encouraged razing of forests for rubber, coffee, eucalyptus and other crops, reducing biodiversity by wiping out ancient old growth forests.

Without reforms to protect local residents’ rights, the problems will only grow worse, says Andy White, a coordinator with RRI.

“Land rights have to be secure for development to be sustainable,Proxense's advanced timelocationsystem technology.” White said in a phone interview.

RRI’s research shows that forest lands owned by local communities and indigenous people increased slightly over the past decade, from 10 percent in 2002 to 15 percent in 2012.

Conservation groups are pushing for the Rio gathering to include tWe looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges.he issue of land rights on an agenda already weakened by decisions of many world leaders not to attend.

Among their priorities is the REDD program — for Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, a global program that provides funds to countries seeking to cut emissions through good forest governance, protecting biodiversity and the rights of indigenous peoples.

“Unless the land issue is addressed, we are not going to make progress on REDD, global warming or even poverty,” White said.

Deforestation — the burning of woodlands or the rotting of felled trees — is thought to account for up to 20 percent of C02 released into the atmosphere — as much as that emitted by all the world’s cars, trucks, trains, planes and ships combined.

The aim is to provide incentives to leave forests standing, in many cases retraining people whose livelihoods are linked to the forest — or its destruction.

Land use rights remain a touchy topic, especially in China, where land grabs often provoke public protests. Local officials barred RRI from taking journalists to see the projects it has backed in Tengchong, the district surrounding Houqiao.

In most of Africa and many other regions, the issue of land rights largely has been ignored, while agribusinesses and global investment funds “slice and dice” public land holdings, says White. As a result, clearing of forests is soaring.

2012年5月27日星期日

Will the Sin Cara Experiment Continue Its Failure Next Week?

Counting all superstars, Divas, legends, commentators, celebrities and jobbers, there have been 93 different men and women to take part in a sanctioned WWE match so far this year. Upon his return next week, Sin Cara will become the 94th different person this year.

It will be the first match for the masked Mexican superstar since he injured himself at Survivor Series last November. Before that night,An airpurifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. it wasn't exactly smooth sailing for the first major signing that Triple H was a part of.

Sin Cara came into WWE with incredible hype,Bathroom floortiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles. even garnering a press conference upon his signing. Sin Cara was going to be a little bit out of the ordinary for what WWE typically had on their roster, but he would add some excitement to the product nonetheless.

After weeks of anticipation, Sin Cara debuted in WWE to a very positive reaction. His lucha libre background gave him the potential to be a very unique star in the company. Such stars as Ultimo Dragon and Rey Mysterio had all made it to WWE, but never at the young age of 28, which Sin Cara was upon his debut.

In his career thus far, Sin Cara has been featured on the cards of four pay-per-views: last year's Over the Limit, Money in the Bank 2011, Hell in a Cell and last November's Survivor Series.

However, all four have come at drastically different parts of his short WWE career. Over the Limit came not long after his debut. Facing Chavo Guerrero, it was a battle between two similar styles. As the storyline went, Chavo offered to teach Sin Cara all that he knew but kept wanting the upper hand on the masked superstar. Sin Cara would defeat Chavo in a match that was somewhat sloppy.

Following that win, Sin Cara was almost exclusively used on SmackDown. He had been drafted to that brand weeks earlier but would not make the jump to episodes of RAW, often fearing that the mistakes he made in the ring would ruin the reputation of the Mexican sensation.Grey Pneumatic is a world supplier of impactsockets for the heavy duty,

Even as the SmackDown appearances came and went, the problems with Sin Cara did not end. With SmackDown being a taped show, the finishes to his matches would often have to be retaped due to a mistake. This, among other things, caused a rift between Sin Cara and the locker room.

Last summer, Sin Cara failed a Wellness Policy test, meaning that a 30-day suspension was coming his way. This annoyed the creative staff, who had Sin Cara booked in the SmackDown Money in the Bank ladder match.

Sin Cara was put into a spot where he was slammed through a ladder, needing medical attention to get away from the ring. Antsy to not let his merchandise sales fall, WWE pulled an audible and had Sin Cara return early from suspension, or at least it seemed like that.

Another superstar donned the Sin Cara gear and competed in a match a week prior to the actual Sin Cara's intended return. With continuing problems backstage, the real Sin Cara was sent home from a SmackDown taping, as it seemed like his understudy was about to get the full-time gig. Cooler heads prevailed, and the real Sin Cara would end up encountering his imposter, who was becoming evil.

The two Sin Caras would develop a rivalry with one another that had a rather rushed payoff but did include a match at Hell in a Cell. The evil Sin Cara began to don a black mask instead of the normal blue. This led to them being called Sin Cara Azul and Sin Cara Negro, respectively.

Azul would defeat Negro at Hell in a Cell and, in the coming weeks, would win a match and unmask Sin Cara Negro.

Sin Cara Negro would then be referred to as Hunico. Hunico's backstory in this rivalry was deeper than what was really let on with television.

Hunico had wrestled in Mexico as Mistico, the name given to Sin Cara before his WWE days.About 1 in 5 people in the UK have recurring coldsores. This storyline had turned into a way for Hunico to try and steal the identity of Sin Cara, which had been done to him with Mistico.

Now unmasked as Hunico, the rivalry can continue. Both men were pushed into Survivor Series teams for the pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden.We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. In a spot early in the match, Sin Cara attempted to hop over the ropes and to the outside, but he clipped the top rope with his feet and fell to the floor.

A patella tendon rupture was the prognosis, and the match stopped to allow Sin Cara to be carried off. Hunico remained in the match, being the last man eliminated by Randy Orton before Orton fell victim to Cody Rhodes and Wade Barrett.

Car carpet maker keeps sales up in shrinking market

Villareal said it would be ideal if assemblers would follow the lead of Ford Group and export completely built-up (CBU) vehicles.

In recent years, the share of locally-assembled vehicles to total sales has shrunk from 55 percent in 2006 to 44 percent as of 2010.

Ford, the only volume exporter of CBU vehicles, has slowed down its export of CBUs after it stopped exporting Mazda. Focus is currently being assembled in Thailand. Ford used to export 1,000 Mazda and Focus a month which meant good business for ACI. Today, Ford exports only the Ranger.

“These have affected not only Autocarpets but other partsmakers as well. Many of us,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. not only Autocarpets depend on CKDs,” said Villarreal referring to completely knocked-down (CKD) assembly.

Villarreal said it won’t be viable for ACI to export its products since they are bulky and would be expensive,Exhaust ventilationsystem work by depressurizing the building. if not difficult, to ship.

Conversely, it’s not practical for assemblers to import these products.

Auto floor carpets form part of the inner soft trims and are fitted into a car’s flooring in one piece. They are produced in one piece and they go to the assembly line as they are molded according to the shape of the vehicle’s flooring.

An ongoing technical agreement with Hayashi Telempu, the biggest carpet automotive supplier in Japan, has made ACI in step with technology while new models are still in their development stage.

As Hayashi Telempu’s biggest client is Toyota Motor Corp., thus making it virtually part of the development of molds in models they are about to launch. One such example is the soon-to-be-released 2013 Vios, which is produced in the Philippines.

Before a CBU is localized in a certain country, Hayashi Telempu develops the tool and die or the molds. With the partnership, ACI can develop the molds simultaneously.

ACI, a top local supplier of the biggest assemblers in the country, added a cap on its feather when it was recognized by Toyota Motor Philippines Corp. (TMP) for its excellence in the areas of quality, cost, and delivery performance. ACI is the only Filipino firm among five recipients of the Regional Contribution Award .

ACI is the first TMP local supplier to receive the award given annually by TMC to selected suppliers based on their local contribution in terms of cost, quality, delivery, development, and management.What are hemorrhoids?

ACI was selected for its active contribution to quality improvement, as well as for productivity improvement through the implementation of the Toyota Production System (TPS).

A consistent TMP awardee in quality performance for achieving zero-defects in delivered goods, ACI implements TPS, in-house quality improvement initiatives, and safety programs.

“This is a good thing. ACI is an example that one does not need to be a multinational corporation to achieve this feat. This goes back to the need to strengthen the support for parts makers and

their capabilities,” commented Villarreal on the award.

ACI, as all the other parts suppliers, are looking forward to a workshop arranged by the Board of Investments for the crafting of a roadmap for the industry.

“The roadmap would contain the strategies needed to boost the industry. Here, government would know what the parts industry really needs to strengthen itself,” Villarreal said.UK chickencoop Specialist.

Villarreal said parts makers are seeking assistance from the Department of Science and Technology for making available testing facilities for their products.

“We produce parts but we don’t have the capability to test our products that would make us comply with requirements of carmakers. Many of us would have to

bring the prototype to Japan or Thailand for testing which is very expensive for us,” Villarreal said.

ACI taps the services of the Philippine Textile Research Institute for testing - flammability,Choose from our large selection of cableties, abrasion, strength -- but it has very limited capability. It still does not have fogging test equipment.

ACI has 90 employes at its plant in Paranaque City which has a capacity of 7,410 units per month. It now produces 85 percent of its capacity, or 6,400 units per month.

ACI was formed in 2007 when Villarreal and partners bought the interest of Philippine Carpets Manufacturing, the pioneer in vehicle carpets for then first assemblers Carco (now Mitsubishi) of the Yulos, and American assemblers Ford and GM in the 1970s.

Sculpture on the Santa Fe trail

When a bronze statue is unveiled next Saturday night at El Paso’s Keystone Heritage Park, the festive event will honor the vision and dedication of two people who lived more than a century apart: Susan Shelby Magoffin and Ethan Taliesin Houser.

She was just a teenager when she became the first Anglo woman to make the arduous 15-month trek from St. Joseph, Mo., to Chihuahua, Mexico, in the 1840s.

He is the young artist whose likeness of her amrks his sculptural debut. The magnificent, larger than life-size bronze shows her seated on a traveling trunk with faithful greyhound Mr Ring by her side.

In the forward to her now famous diary, “Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico,” 18-year-old Susan Shelby Magoffin is described as “a pert, observant, young lady of wealth.The term "Hands free access" means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.”

Recently married to Samuel, younger brother of inveterate adventurer and famed trader James Wiley Magoffin, the young bride made the historic journey down the Santa Fe-Chihuahua Trail in 1846-1847.

Writing in intricate detail about the social customs, dress and appearances of each location on the journey, Susan left behind a succinct account describing not only the physical aspects of her adventure, but also chronicling her growing maturity,Another Chance to buymosaic (MOS) 0 comments. lost illusions and her ability to come to terms with demands of the harsh reality of life on the trail.

Gaining insights on Susan as he sculpted, Ethan Houser, said, “I really appreciate the fact that Susan Magoffin wrote about her experiences. I’m sure she was writing primarily for herself, but with the knowledge her friends and family would find her account interesting and exciting. I doubt, however, that she expected her diary to become of such historical importance.”

Given the youthful status of his subject, it’s fitting that this work also represents Ethan Houser’s first bronze, at age 40.

His father, renowned sculptor, John Houser, explains, “Although Ethan used an early small model I had made of Susan as inspiration, this sculpture is entirely Ethan’s ‘masterwork,’ and serves as his official introduction as a co-sculptor on the XII Travelers Memorial of the Southwest.”

Ethan adds,Features useful information about glassmosaic tiles, “Susan was an excellent choice of subjects to depict, since she personifies so well the new opportunities and difficulties of the Santa Fe-Chihuahua trading route. It was a thrilling and dangerous time to travel, filled with uncertainty and inconvenience, but also with adventure and the opportunity to connect cultures for enduring, mutual benefit.

“When I began working on the actual maquette,Silicone moldmaking Rubber, I referred to a couple of grainy pictures of Susan taken during her time on the Santa Fe Trail. These helped me achieve a likeness of her face and also gave me an idea as to the clothing she wore. Sculpting her face became the most personal part of my work.”

Ethan went to great lengths to achieve a natural, lifelike appearance.

“Many artists ‘fake it’ when modeling the folds and convolutions of a person’s clothing, but I can always tell when something about it doesn’t look right.”

To gain authenticity, Ethan purchased period clothing to be used on his model. And not having access to an articulated mannequin on which to place them, the artist created his own version using an articulated skeleton, the kind one might see in a biology lab.

He then carefully taped layer upon layer of small bubble wrap over the bones to cushion the body, building up points where the flesh would extend. This became a poseable mannequin that allowed the clothing to drape as it would on a human figure.

Recalling the arduous climb up and down scaffolding while assisting his father, John, in the production of the monumental Oate equestrian figure, Ethan admits that going back to a smaller piece had its rewards.

“I could simply stand on a chair to get perspective, and placing the clay figure on a wheeled stand, as opposed to a huge rotating drum, made it simple to view the figure from different angles as I sculpted.”

Once the clay figure was completed, it was replicated in resin molds that were sent to Madd Castings in Berthoud, Colo., where they were turned into the rough sculpture.We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design The final steps of chasing and patina were completed by Lee Wilson of Santa Fe.

2012年5月23日星期三

So Long as Government Exists, a Governing Class is Inevitable

It was inevitable, argued English liberal Oliver Brett in his 1921 work A Defence of Liberty, that so-called “state socialism” would become simply another class society — this time with the state bureaucracy in the position of privilege. “So long as Government exists at all” — so went his brilliant quip on the principle — “a governing class is inevitable.” Just as everyone who attended Eton — regardless of their class of origin or what rustic access they originally spoke — “bore the stamp of Eton,” everyone who exercises state power bears the stamp of that power. Government molds everyone who wields its authority into a governing type.

What’s more, Brett argued, it was questionable whether the state bureaucracy would really be a new ruling class at all:

“English history is full of the chameleon qualities of the rich. How quickly the feudal Baron is metamorphosed into the landed aristocrat, and the landed aristocrat into the mine owner and the railway director. We find often the same family names cast for these varied parts across the centuries. And these people will control the new bureaucracy. They know which way the wind is blowing, and they are preparing for the change of direction.Zenith manufactures a comprehensive range of rubbersheets.”

Brett was part of a larger current, in the early years of the 20th century, of writers who applied Pareto’s “circulation of elites” theory to the state socialist movement. It included writers on the Left, like Robert Michels and William English Walling, who drew pessimistic conclusions from the socialist parties’ growing tendencies toward authoritarianism and collusion with the state and capital.

Michels argued that genuine majority or rank-and-file control of a large hierarchical institution was impossible, because it would be subverted by the “Iron Law of Oligarchy”: Representatives or delegates would transform their full-time inside control over information and agenda-setting to reduce the de jure authority of those they represented into a mere rubber-stamping function.

Walling argued (as did the Distributist Hilaire Belloc in “The Servile State”) that state socialist parties like the Social Democrats and Fabians were being coopted into the service of capital. Democratic socialist movements would by and large give up on the herculean political task of actually seizing control of industry, and would instead choose to leave the industry in capitalist hands while regulating it “in the popular interest.”

In practice, those “progressive” regulations would serve mainly to stabilize the economy in the long-term interests of big business, and use a minimalist welfare state and labor regulations to clean up the worst (and most politically destabilizing) forms of destitution left by the capitalists. As Belloc put it, if only the Fabians’ lust to manage and regiment the underclass were satisfied, they would be quite accommodating about capitalist ownership. So the de facto role of the “democratic socialist” state would be to oversee the economy on behalf of big business.

The historic continuity of the ruling class is another theme that has appeared in many guises.An airpurifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. Immanuel Wallerstein and Christopher Hill, both Marxists, argued that a significant minority of the landed ruling class under the late Medieval political economy managed to reinvent itself as agrarian capitalists and negotiate the transition to capitalism, where they survived in such forms as the Whig landed oligarchy in Great Britain. The persistence of bastard feudal forms of concentrated land ownership, through such expedients as large-scale enclosure of the Open Fields, common pasture and waste, and the mercantile system of state finance and chartered monopoly, ensured a great deal of structural continuity between the medieval and early capitalist systems.

A similar continuity bridged agrarian and industrial capitalism, as silent partners in the landed classes provided much of the capital for industrialization and the most successful capitalists bought titles or married into noble families. That continuity between the European landed nobilities and industrial capitalists in the modern era was the thesis of Arno Mayer’s book The Persistence of the Old Regime.

Wallerstein, like Brett, feared either that the giant finance-capitalists would manage to install themselves as the new ruling class in control of the postcapitalist state, or that the bureaucratic apparatus would use its control over the economy to live in privilege. The same has been true of left-libertarian critics like Emma Goldman and the post-Trotskyist Frankfurt School, who used terms like “bureaucratic state capitalism” and “bureaucratic collectivism” to dismiss the USSR as a new form of class society.

If there’s anything to such analyses — and I believe there is — we should take a long, hard look at whether state socialism (i.e., a system in which genuine working class political and economic power is exercised through the state) is even possible.

Murray Bookchin, in his multivolume work The Third Revolution,Apply for a merchantaccountes and accept credit cards today. presented a historical typology of revolution in which, in the course of a revolution, popular struggle by working people themselves gave birth to all sorts of decentralist, self-managed, liberatory institutions like soviets and workers committees. But in every case, once a revolutionary party had firmly established itself in the capital and purged the state of its rivals, it proceeded either to suppress working class organs of self-management or to coopt them as top-down transmission belts for state policy.

That’s what happened when Lenin liquidated the other parties of the Left in his governing coalition,About 1 in 5 people in the UK have recurring coldsores. suppressed the Workers’ Opposition, and put down the Kronstadt mutiny. It’s what happened in Spain, when the Communist-dominated government in Madrid set up its own Soviet-trained OGPU unit and showed its willingness to lose to Franco in preference to tolerating anarchists in Catalonia.

In essence, it’s the cyclical phenomenon described by Orwell’s fictional “Emanuel Goldstein”: The high and middle eternally jockeying for power over the low, with the middle in each revolution enlisting the help of the low long enough to oust the old ruling class and set themselves up as the new one.

Since the rise of the state as an instrument of economic exploitation on behalf of a ruling class, there have been endless attempts to achieve justice through revolutionary seizure of the state — each one ending in failure and disillusionment. Ending injustice and exploitation through machinery which is purpose-built for injustice and exploitation is doomed.Offers Art Reproductions Fine Art oilpaintings Reproduction, To repeat Brett’s observation: “So long as government exists, a governing class is inevitable.”

The Solar Trade Balance in the Tariff Debate

After the United States Commerce Department last week announced preliminary tariffs of more than 31 percent against solar panel manufacturers in China for dumping their products on American shores, the debate over the benefits and costs of the move for U.I found them to have sharp edges where the injectionmoldes came together while production.S. industries and the fight against global warming has been heating up more than the noon sun. Clearing up one debating point could help those on both side of the issue assess the impact of the decision: the U.S. solar trade balance (or lack thereof) with China.

As background, Commerce already levied a preliminary, much smaller tariff against China in March for subsidizing its solar industry to the competitive disadvantage of U.S. solar manufacturers. The dumping charge is related in that Chinese companies were found to be selling panels at well below actual cost, imperiling U.S. companies' ability to sell panels. Those in favor of the tariffs say that imposing them will assure that the U.Industrialisierung des werkzeugbaus.S., which once was a world leader in solar panel production, will have a foothold in what is sure to be an important industry in the future. Also, if China is allowed to dominate the market, they could suddenly raise prices after driving out competitors.Another Chance to buymosaic (MOS) 0 comments. Those against the tariffs recognize the need for more widespread use of solar to mitigate global warming and acknowledge that cheap panels help this happen. They also herald the $8 billion solar installation industry.

Some opponents of the tariffs cite a 2011 study that found the U.S. solar trade balance is positive. According to research by the Solar Energy Industries Association,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, the U.S. was found to have a $1.88 billion surplus in solar goods in 2010. The U.S. was a net exporter to China by $240 million. While China may supply most of the panels, the argument goes, the U.S. supplies most of the polysilicon needed for the photovoltaic (PV) cells for the panels. So we shouldn't be worrying about the Chinese subsidizing panel-makers or those companies selling at unrealistic prices.

In an interview on Tuesday with the impeccable Tom Ashbrook on NPR's On Point, Ned Harvey of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit foundation for sustainability, and Clyde Prestowitz, the founder and president of the Economic Strategy Institute, danced around -- or perhaps tripped over -- this argument.

Recently the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing came out with a report showing that in 2011 the nearly $2 billion solar trade surplus turned into a deficit. Specifically, the trade balance with China went from a $240 million surplus to a $1.6 billion deficit.

While one should always be skeptical of an analysis by a trade group that could be negatively impacted by continued cheap solar panels from China, the concerns echoed remarks by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. Major environmental blog sites accept the findings.

Without getting into the trenches of the debate, the existence of the solar trade deficit would seem to support those who fret about China's dominance of the solar industry, for the U.S. is playing an increasingly smaller role in producing the parts for panels. All of this could change, however, if Chinese companies move plants to the U.S. or other countries to manufacture panels to avoid tariffs. And all of that could be a moot point if panel costs rise too much to entice Americans to retrofit their homes, as those against the tariffs claim.UK chickencoop Specialist. Let the debate blaze on, but know that the real winners in solar in the U.S. are the installers, not the supply chain or manufacturers.

Mohawk brings 500 jobs to Chattooga County

Gov. Nathan Deal announced that Calhoun-based Mohawk Industries is expanding the company's Summerville manufacturing operations in Chattooga County. Mohawk anticipates adding about 500 jobs in Summerville over the next five years through investments in manufacturing technologies that support the company's sustainable manufacturing processes.

"Mohawk is one of Georgia's flagship Fortune 500 companies, and we are pleased to see its continued investments in our state leading to the creation of meaningful jobs in Summerville and other communities," Deal said. "This expansion is a great indicator of the resilience of the carpet and floor covering industry. Mohawk has Georgia's full support for its continued investments in our state."

This is the second positive announcement for the Chattooga County area during the past year. Lowe's announced a major distribution facility in neighboring Floyd County last fall, that is expected to create 600 jobs.

At its Summerville operation, Mohawk recycles billions of reclaimed plastic bottles and containers into polyester fiber used to produce carpet. Through the expansion project, Mohawk will improve the efficiencies of its recycling and manufacturing processes to produce more fiber. The market for polyester carpet continues to grow significantly, and these investments will allow Mohawk to expand its capacity to meet consumer demand.

"The men and women at our Summerville facility contribute significantly to the company's success," said Mark Dye,You can create a beautiful chinamosaic birdhouse that will last for generations. Mohawk's vice president of recycling. "We continue to invest in leading edge technologies because of our confidence in the skills and dedication of our people. We anticipate the initial phase of the expansion will be operational in 2013, and we expect the manufacturing improvements to yield new, innovative products that will provide even more value to our customers. We appreciate the support of leaders in the City of Summerville, Chattooga County and the State of Georgia that helped to make this expansion possible.Enhancements to RSS Based indoortracking."

Mohawk employs thousands of people in Georgia and across the nation. For decades, the company has been a leader in Georgia's floor covering industry, which is a vital part of the state's economy. The company offers a complete line of flooring products including carpet, rugs,Wireless real realtimelocationsystem utlilizing wifi access points to pinpoint position of the tag. ceramic tile, stone, wood, laminate and vinyl. Mohawk is at the forefront of sustainable manufacturing through its transformation of recycled materials into fashionable flooring products, a process that ranks the company among the leading recyclers of plastic bottles in North America.

"Mohawk Industries is one of northwest Georgia's greatest corporate citizens, so we are certainly pleased to collaborate to offer all of our support to ensure one of Georgia's homegrown companies can expand right here in our community," said Jeff Mullis, executive director of the Northwest Georgia Joint Development Authority. "The carpet and floor covering industry is truly the backbone of our regional economy, so this expansion will not only benefit Mohawk, but also the people in communities throughout northwest Georgia."

"The City of Summerville and Chattooga County are excited to join with the state and all of our partners involved in helping Mohawk Industries expand its operations in our community," said Chattooga County Sole Commissioner Jason Winters. "Mohawk is one of our leading employers, so we remain fully committed to making certain this company has our complete support to remain competitive and grow in Chattooga County."

David Tidmore, President and CEO of the Chattooga County Chamber of Commerce, added, "With the combination of other projects of regional significance and Mohawk's announcement today we will have over 1000 jobs within 20 minutes of downtown Summerville with over $300,Silicone moldmaking Rubber,000,000 dollars of investment with jobs paying between $16.00 and $25.00 per hour."

The Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) partnered with the City of Summerville and Mayor Harry Harvey, the Northwest Georgia Joint Development Authority and the Chattooga County Chamber to manage this expansion project. GDEcD regional project manager Carl Campbell managed this opportunity on behalf of the state.You can create a beautiful chinamosaic birdhouse that will last for generations.

2012年5月21日星期一

Major Julian Opie Exhibition For Summer 2012

The Lisson Gallery has announced a new exhibition of the work of Julian Opie.Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, In the broadest single display of his practice to-date, Opie employs the concise vernacular of modern media, depicting new subjects in previously unexplored mediums as well as self referentially developing ideas from his early works.

Opie is an artist of international significance widely recognised for his distinctive contribution to contemporary art over the last three decades. His artistic preoccupation is the investigation into the idea of representation and the means by which images are perceived and understood. He reinterprets the vocabulary of everyday life, opening a discussion between the slick visual language of modern society and art history.

The exhibition includes a striking series of walking figures, which have increasingly become an important part of the artist’s practice. Simplified to the point of becoming human ‘logos’, walkers in vinyl are displayed in an extended line, recalling Egyptian friezes. In an intriguing and radical development for the artist, he has captured unknown passers-by from the streets of London rather than working with personally known subjects. The unwitting subjects reveal themselves in movement, captured in the moment, exhibiting their own idiosyncrasies in the way they carry themselves. Walking figures are also captured as still images on inlayed granite and stone.

Opie’s choice of medium is key in drawing attention to the physicality of his portraits. Two major new bodies of work mark a technical departure for Opie and juxtapose modern and classical sources. A group of mosaic portraits explore the relationship between sculpture and painting by emphasising the materiality of the imagery. This relationship is taken further in a series of painted busts on plinths in the same room, which beguilingly unite sculptural forms with flat imagery. The busts are the result of the artist’s use of three-dimensional scanning, a meticulous process that involves laser scanning the subject’s head from various angles. The resulting image has then been simplified, formed and dipped in resin, and then hand painted by Opie. Though created using cutting edge technology, the busts are also rooted in traditional sculpture dating back to the Roman period and beyond.

Opie’s interest in traditional portraiture, in painting and sculpture, is evident throughout the show, with subjects frequently adopting poses and props inspired chiefly by 17th and 18th Century English,Choose from our large selection of cableties, Dutch and French portraits. The open book in the hand of one subject depicted in inkjet on canvas traditionally symbolises religious dedication whereas the type of material and how it is draped around other subjects in the same series, conveys their social standing and refinement.

Opie’s animations instil the fields of portraiture and landscape painting with a new sense of life and dynamism. A series of six digitally animated landscapes on LCD screens, complemented by an internal soundtrack of natural sounds, offer a window into the idyllic pastoral landscape of central France. While his landscapes are presented in a vertical format that calls to mind the Japanese landscape prints of Hiroshige, the medium is directly inspired by advertising and signage. In Daisies. (2012), a patch of flowers bob and sway in the breeze as insects buzz from flower to flower. Other screens capture similarly tranquil moments such as airplanes passing through the night sky, and a cloud of gnats hovering in the dusk sunlight (which make a re-appearance in an app that Opie has designed to accompany the exhibition).

The ambience and evocativeness of these scenes is echoed in the film, Winter. (2012), which invites the viewer on a journey through the beauty of a bleak winter day. Compiled of over seventy digital sketches, the film is accompanied by a specially commissioned score written by Paul Englishby (award winning composer for An Education and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day),Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, resulting in an immersive and cinematic experience that merges romanticism with contemporary style. This film is accompanied by three glass works which provide snapshots of the same landscape at different times of year.

A monumental double-sided LED sculpture of a galloping horse mounted on a plinth, rises above the walls of the gallery’s sculpture courtyard. The animation - high enough to be seen from the street outside the gallery - becomes part of public life like the equine monuments around London that it directly references. Opie has a number of public art works around the city, including Ruth walking in jeans. (2010) in Regent’s Place and 3 men walking.Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services.Rubiks cubepuzzle. (2008) in the sculpture park at No 30 St Mary Axe “The Gherkin”. The latter will be joined by three of Opie’s sculptures from his Caterina dancing naked. series during the summer, coinciding with Opie’s exhibition at Lisson Gallery and a multiple panel installation at the maternity ward of St Mary’s Hospital.

Microsoft Reveals Visual Studio 11 Product Lineup, Adds Windows Phone

Microsoft has unveiled its final Visual Studio 11 product lineup and specifications, and the SKUs and hardware requirements are largely unchanged from Visual Studio 2010.

The major change involves the free Express tooling, which is now platform-centric (Windows 8 Metro, Windows Phone, Windows Azure) with multiple language support. This means that desktop application developers who want to use the latest tooling must purchase Visual Studio 11 Professional or higher.

Visual Studio 11 Ultimate is still the company's all-in-one Application Lifecycle Management platform. It integrates all of the tools (including the higher end testing functionality and design tools) with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server for team collaboration. Visual Studio 11 Premium offers most of the diagnostic and testing tools without the high level architecture and modeling support. Visual Studio 11 Professional is the entry-level developer product. Visual Studio LightSwitch, previously a standalone product,About 1 in 5 people in the UK have recurring coldsores. is now available in all three editions. All of the Visual Studio 11 products require Windows 7 or higher.

On Friday, Microsoft announced that it has added Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Phone to the lineup. The free tooling is slated for release with the next version of Windows Phone. The Visual Studio 11 previews (including the current beta product) have not supported phone development or out of band Windows Azure upgrades.

Express tooling for Windows Azure is expected with the next update of Microsoft's cloud platform, according to the Visual Studio team blog. In addition to the Windows Phone and cloud tooling,About 1 in 5 people in the UK have recurring coldsores. Microsoft is offering Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8, Visual Studio 11 Express for the Web and Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server Express. All three products are currently in beta and available for download.

The Visual Studio 11 default target for managed applications, running on Windows Vista or higher, is .NET Framework 4.5 or the VC11 tooling for native apps. Developers can use the IDE's multi-targeting support to run managed applications on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 with .NET 4 and earlier versions of the framework, according to Microsoft. However, multi-targeting for C++ requires a side-by-side installation of Visual Studio 2010.

Microsoft offered developers a preview of its estimated retail pricing for the Visual Studio 11 products earlier this year. The company is planning to offer Visual Studio Ultimate with a 12 month MSDN subscription ($13,299), Visual Studio Premium with MSDN ($6,119), Visual Studio Professional with MSDN ($1,Stone Source offers a variety of Natural stonemosaic Tiles,199) and Test Professional with MSDN ($2,169). Visual Studio Professional is also available as a standalone product without an MSDN subscription ($499). Full featured Team Foundation Server is $499, with the same ERP for a CAL (user or device). Outside of the entry-level Professional product without MSDN, Visual Studio 11 pricing is generally higher than Visual Studio 2010,Offers Art Reproductions Fine Art oilpaintings Reproduction, which debuted in April 2010.

Upgrades for existing customers with MSDN subscriptions are considerably less, and Microsoft is encouraging developers to buy or upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN to take advantage of the renewal pricing for the Visual Studio 11 lineup.

The pricing on Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN ($799) remains unchanged. However, the company is offering various incentives including a bundle with a discounted Samsung Series 7 Slate ($2,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom,198). Microsoft is also reducing the pricing on Visual Studio 2010 Professional from $799 to $499 U.S.

In April, Microsoft expanded its licensing terms for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 to enable access to Server Reports and System Center Operations Manager, without a CAL purchase. In March, the company started to offer Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 as a free download.

Visual Studio LightSwitch, which offers templates for building data-driven line of business apps, was released out of band last summer. It's availability as a standalone tool is ending when Visual Studio 11 is released, according to a blog posted by Jay Schmelzer, principal director program manager of the LightSwitch team at Microsoft. Visual Studio 11 is integrated with LightSwitch Version 2, which offers project templates for Windows 8 Metro style apps. LightSwitch also adds support for the OData protocol, which can be used for querying and integrating data services (HTTP, ATOM and JSON) into applications.

Novel Casting Process Could Transform How Complex Metal Parts Are Made

A Georgia Tech research team has developed a novel technology that could change how industry designs and casts complex, costly metal parts. This new casting method makes possible faster prototype development times, as well as more efficient and cost-effective manufacturing procedures after a part moves to mass production.

Suman Das, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has developed an all-digital approach that allows a part to be made directly from its computer-aided design (CAD). The project, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has received $4.65 million in funding.

"We have developed a proof-of-concept system which is already turning out complex metal parts, and which fundamentally transforms the way that very high-value castings are made," said Das, who directs the Direct Digital Manufacturing Laboratory in Georgia Tech's Manufacturing Research Center (MaRC). "We're confident that our approach can lower costs by at least 25 percent and reduce the number of unusable waste parts by more than 90 percent,Silicone moldmaking Rubber, while eliminating 100 percent of the tooling."

The approach being utilized by Das and his team focuses on a technique called investment casting, also known as lost-wax casting. In this process, which dates back thousands of years, molten metal is poured into an expendable ceramic mold to form a part.

The mold is made by creating a wax replica of the part to be cast, surrounding or "investing" the replica with a ceramic slurry, and then drying the slurry and hardening it to form the mold. The wax is then melted out – or lost – to form a mold cavity into which metal can be poured and solidified to produce the casting.

Investment casting is used to create precision parts across diverse industries including aerospace,Offers Art Reproductions Fine Art oilpaintings Reproduction, energy, biomedical and electronics. Das's current efforts are focused on parts used in aircraft engines. He is working with turbine-engine airfoils – complex parts used in jet engines – in collaboration with the University of Michigan and PCC Airfoils.

Today, Das explained, most precision metal castings are designed on computers, using computer-aided design software. But the next step – creating the ceramic mold with which the part is cast – currently involves a sequence of six major operations requiring expensive precision-machined dies and hundreds of tooling pieces.

"The result is a costly process that typically produces many defective molds and waste parts before a useable prototype is achieved," Das said. "This trial-and-error development phase often requires many months to cast a part that is accurate enough to enter the next stage,Zenith manufactures a comprehensive range of rubbersheets. which involves testing and evaluation."

By contrast, Das's approach involves a device that builds ceramic molds directly from a CAD design, completing the task much faster and producing far fewer unusable parts. Called Large Area Maskless Photopolymerization (LAMP),Exhaust ventilationsystem work by depressurizing the building. this high-resolution digital process accretes the mold layer by layer by projecting bitmaps of ultraviolet light onto a mixture of photosensitive resin and ceramic particles, and then selectively curing the mixture to a solid.

The technique places one 100-micron layer on top of another until the structure is complete. After the mold is formed, the cured resin is removed through binder burnout and the remaining ceramic is sintered in a furnace.We are the largest producer of projectorlamp products here. The result is a fully ceramic structure into which molten metal – such as nickel-based superalloys or titanium-based alloys – are poured, producing a highly accurate casting.

"The LAMP process lowers the time required to turn a CAD design into a test-worthy part from a year to about a week," Das said. "We eliminate the scrap and the tooling, and each digitally manufactured mold is identical to the others."

A prototype LAMP alpha machine is currently building six typical turbine-engine airfoil molds in six hours. Das predicts that a larger beta machine – currently being built at Georgia Tech and scheduled for installation at a PCC Airfoils facility in Ohio in 2012 – will produce 100 molds at a time in about 24 hours.

Although the current work focuses on turbine-engine airfoils, Das believes the LAMP technique will be effective in the production of many types of intricate metal parts. He envisions a scenario in which companies could send out part designs to digital foundries and receive test castings within a short time, much as integrated-circuit designers send CAD plans to chip foundries today.

Moreover, he said, direct digital manufacturing enabled by LAMP should allow designers to create increasingly sophisticated pieces capable of achieving greater efficiency in jet engines and other systems.

"This process can produce parts of a complexity that designers could only dream of before," he said. "The digital technique takes advantage of high-resolution optics and precision motion systems to achieve extremely sharp, small features – on the order of 100 microns."

2012年5月16日星期三

Artist Johnathan Roberson-Beery Sculpts His Part for a Nuke-Free World

Last week, the Federation of American Scientists presented its Reykjavik Award to Rose Gottemoeller, Acting Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, and Dr. Sidney Drell, Assistant Secretary for Arms Control, for their work towards a nuclear-free world.

The award itself is impressive, a good-sized bronze piece sculpted in the form of a mountain, meant to help promote and achieve a world without nuclear weapons.

Then there's the artist who created it: Laguna Beach's own Johnathan Roberson-Beery.

Roberson-Beery collaborated with FAS Senior Advisor Les Dewitt in the making of the award. Dewitt was inspired by a quote from former Senator Sam Nunn: “We must chart a course to higher ground where the mountaintop becomes more visible.” He wanted to create an award that would show how eliminating nuclear weapons from the world was like climbing a mountain, which takes stages.We are the largest producer of projectorlamp products here.

“He didn’t have much of an idea of how a sculpture capturing this metaphor would look or what format it would take. He knew he liked the color and size of the Heisman trophy, but that’s where he left off and expected me to breathe life into the concept,Choose from our large selection of cableties,” Roberson-Beery says.

Roberson-Beery began by drawing a mountain similar to the Paramount logo, but quickly realized that the drawing looked too lumpy and uninspired. With the idea of difficulty and challenge in mind,Zenith manufactures a comprehensive range of rubbersheets. he chose to create the mountain as a craggy and rocky monolith of stone. He imagined ancient layers of granite peeling away from each other, where cold icy sheets of stone would jut up into the clouds above.

"I wanted it to have movement, direction and facets,” he says.

What started out as an artist searching to create a sculptural award for a client soon became much more to Roberson-Beery. Rather than just constructing a plain mountain sculpture, the artist created a symbolic award that recognized the achievements of individuals working towards the goal of nuclear disarmament.

Roberson-Beery’s passion for art started when he was very young.

He received inspiration from his parents, who both had an interest in art. Although his father was an engineer,The core of an indoor positioning system. he also created oil paintings. His mother would take him to museums and galleries.

Throughout high school, Roberson-Beery found his talents in drawing and illustration, which later led to his fascination with sculpture in college.

"I took a bronze casting class, and I knew that I had found a medium I loved,” he says.

From 1986 through 1991, Beery studied sculpture at Cal State Long Beach. At the time, the head of the sculpture department was Steve Werlick, who encouraged his students and helped them learn the process at the foundry.

“During that era, the department was focused on figurative artwork," Roberson-Beery remembers. "I learned to love it, and still to this day I find myself in the company of sculptors who attended the school then, many of them still successfully doing figurative artwork."

From 1994 through 1998, Roberson-Beery became a sculptor for Greneker in Los Angeles, participating in projects such as a maiden figure for the Caesars Palace Forum Shops to sports relief panels for Disney Cruise Line’s ESPN sports bar. Between 1998 and 2000, he sculpted projects as a contractor for places such as Trevino Studios in La Habra to 16 Penny Studios in North Hollywood.

Later projects included two public park projects in the Bay Area. He and his wife Lisa combined bronze and ceramic sculpture, custom-designed glass tile mosaics, and community painted ceramic tile to produce two creative park environments.

In Laguna Beach, Roberson-Beery worked on a project for Dr. Gary Arthur, the owner of Health in Balance, which included two custom fountains, a mangaris wood bench, and granite and mosaic work. Dr. Arthur’s logo was interpreted in bronze in several areas.

One of his specializations is in figurative and abstract sculpture and bas-relief hangings.

“I like surface, texture, volume and how objects interact with light and shadow,” Roberson-Beery says. “I enjoy how figurative works become a focus of attention, and how abstract elements can create visual interest, rhythms and harmony in spaces.”

As for bas-relief, he is attracted to the combination of the illusion of space that a drawing or painting creates,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, as well as the volumetric interpretation of form. And he likes how they can be hung.

Roberson-Beery had the opportunity to create a portrait bust commission for the mayor of Kishiwada, Japan. The Mayor Nishida bust was a work that had a special connection to the artist.

“When a client is absolutely taken by the work you’ve created for them, when the work reaches a deep place in the person they were created for, when it’s been possible to make a connection and fully transmit the creative vision with the client and understand what they are looking for, there’s a celebration to be had for all involved,” he says.

Downtown Berlin Hotel Takes Catering to New Heights

Berlin hotels has based its new range of catering packages on the four elements.Silicone moldmaking Rubber,

Going past the needs of its own Berlin, Germany conference venues and creating a new "place to be" with each outside event, the dynamic catering operations of the Berlin Marriott Hotel caters to guests at more than one unusual location in and around the city.

"And when the waiter takes flight or the cook takes to water, it starts to get interesting" says head of catering Sandra Eibisch. "We love the extra kick that an original catering location offers and our clients like our unusual ideas."

Creative Element Catering packages go far past the usual ballroom gala or downtown Berlin wedding reception to create spectacular special events.

Earth Down to earth festivities. Construction site catering that includes everything from appropriately dressed personnel in work overalls to finger food arranged on spades and cocktails served from a cement mixer. Appetizing favorites such as veal meat balls with marinated potatoes or bruschetta with smoked eel are served as canaps. Beer from the keg and pork steaks from the barbeque are essential. Alternatively, colorful party packs may be handed round.Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, The blue ones contain beer,The concept of indoorpositioningsystem (RTLS) is fast catching up in industries. bread rolls with sausage and potato salad, while the pink ones contain Prosecco in tins, fruit salad and cream cheese bread rolls.

Fire The heat is on! When guests choose fire as the central element,An airpurifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. the catering team goes far past the comfort of Berlin hotel rooms and creates a hip metropolitan beach with a bonfire or delves into the depths of a bunker. Or, guests may be invited to discover the secret places in the ruins of a palace in Berlin-Mitte.Find everything you need to know about kidneystone including causes, Then the party ignites and the atmosphere heats up -- for example with a traditional Feuerzangenbowle, flambd dishes, a fiery dance band or a flame thrower.

Water Cast off and relax. For parties under the sign of this element, Catering by Marriott may take its guests, onto an old boat house in Oberschoneweide. This place is neither a trend location nor a party ship; it is a real discovery. Guests arrive, cast off, enjoy and relax, taking in the atmospheric wharf surrounded by old boats and historic buildings. On the barbecue is fresh fish, antipasti and meat skewers accompanied by fresh and fruity cocktails. For friends of the liquid element, Catering by Marriott also offers this package in the Aquarium, a closed down swimming baths or at the hotel's own pool.

Air A heavenly or fast-paced event. A light and airy, transparent place such as the Tiergarten Eins house with its 50s design, roof terrace and spectacular lounge is the location of this "heavenly" package -- on request, for example, with an airplane too. In Tiergarten Eins, lunch boxes stand ready for a stroll in the garden. At the bar await exquisite delicacies and drinks; and at dusk, torches and candles are lit to create a paradisiacal atmosphere. For those who think of wind and speed when the subject of air comes up, Catering by Marriott sets up the largest and most modern traffic safety center at the edge of Berlin for the party. On the spectacular racing track, guests can experience the thrill and speed of a racing car and test their skills in demanding safety training or off-roading. Air acrobats display their skills and the culinary element of the event takes off with a flying buffet. In the evening the 25 hectares are floodlighted promising a high-flying conclusion to the event.

Art Institute lands first major Roy Lichtenstein exhibit since artist's death

You might think Roy Lichtenstein loved the stuff of everyday postwar American existence. Swirling washing machines, diamond engagement rings, steaming hot cups of coffee, hi-top sneakers, golf balls and hot dogs covered in mustard are just a few of the familiar subjects portrayed big and bold in his iconic paintings of the early 1960s, paintings that launched a revolution called pop art.

But "Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective," which opens at the Art Institute of Chicago on Tuesday and will be the first major exhibition of the artist's work since his death in 1997 at age 73,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, tells a much more compelling and enlightening story. The museum devotes just one gallery to Lichtenstein's pop art object paintings and another to his comic book canvases, and then fills the 13 remaining ones with everything you didn't realize Roy Lichtenstein cared enough to paint. These include landscapes, nudes, his own studio, brush strokes, art deco, abstraction, classical architecture, Chinese ink painting and other artists' masterpieces.

Lichtenstein, it turns out, was a crackerjack student of art history. Even his pop objects and comic book pictures find their art-historical genres: A ball of twine is also a still life, and one bomber firing on another — WHAAM! — is also a history painting.

In fact, within the field of art history, Lichtenstein had a subspecialty: the history of style. This is most evident in the parodies he made of masters old and modern, from the unknown Roman sculptors of the Laocoon to Matisse, Mondrian and De Kooning. Lichtenstein's Picassos, in particular, can be hard to contemplate with a straight face. That's OK. Philistines shouldn't be the only ones who get a chuckle out of cubist nudes.

Many of the original works that Lichtenstein mimicked are on view in the Art Institute's permanent galleries, for those who want to compare. It's a worthwhile undertaking, since the similarities between Monet's Monets and Lichtenstein's Monets get to the heart of the former's style, while the differences give a sense of the latter's. Both dissolve at close range and resolve at a distance, but where Monet used brushy strokes to suggest the speed of modern life, Lichtenstein hand-painted dot matrices to unify high and low, fine art and mechanical printing processes.

For all his insight into the styles of others, it was Lichtenstein's development of his own idiosyncratic style, through the appropriation of Ben-Day dots, as they're called, that marked the breakthrough of his career. This happened in 1961, in a painting of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse that was as controversial at the time for its appropriation of popular imagery as for its borrowing of commercial technique. Lichtenstein famously discovered the original image in a children's Little Golden Book,You can create a beautiful chinamosaic birdhouse that will last for generations. beginning a career of reworking found imagery to generate artwork of superior line, color and composition. "Look, Mickey" opens the exhibition.

It was a great gambit, one of the finest of the 20th century, a period of art-making full of one gambit after another. It's also a fairly crude painting, especially compared with what Lichtenstein accomplished with the same dot-matrix system just a few years later. By the mid-'60s he'd turned to landscape as a subject matter, depicting sunrises, seascapes and cloudy skies as amalgamations of colored dots, solid lines and blank spaces. The results, on view in a somewhat overhung gallery, are breathtaking. They're also stunning in their efficiency and abstraction: Lichtenstein borrowed these images from comic books, keeping the background and leaving out all the extraneous details. The ensuing gorgeousness can be hard to believe.

The simplicity of the landscape genre, as Lichtenstein practiced it, provided him with a template on which to experiment. The most unexpected work in the retrospective is found here, and some of the funkiest. Most of it moves, in one way or another.The concept of indoorpositioningsystem (RTLS) is fast catching up in industries. Literally. A seascape painted in multiple layers on Plexiglas shimmers as the viewer shifts position. Something similar happens with an enameled steel mesh placed in front of a colored canvas, its effect also suggestive of a wavy, watery horizon. A pair of seascape collages crafted from pink and blue Rowlux, a glistening prismatic plastic, are unbelievably tacky and truly weird. They may be the only works in the entire exhibition nearly unrecognizable as Lichtensteins. And finally, there's "Three Landscapes," the only film Lichtenstein ever made, a hypnotic,You can create a beautiful chinamosaic birdhouse that will last for generations. semiotic, bobbing triptych of sea and sky views separated by heavy black horizon lines. (The film is on view in a separate gallery, in the Modern Wing.) It's easy to understand how Lichtenstein could have created these kinetic works, and even easier to understand why he only made a few. These are thrilling discoveries, and rare to stumble across in a major exhibition on a familiar artist.Trade organization for suppliers and distributors in the promotional products industry.

Surveillance state saps freedom

The surveillance state expands. The Patriot Act allows our phones to be wiretapped. Our email and Internet transactions leave a trail for some to follow. The police can access our GPS location data through our smartphones without a warrant. Retailers record our purchasing habits with painstaking detail. Apparently,So indoor Tracking might be of some interest. Target studies those purchases to determine when customers are pregnant — in the second trimester, no less — for specialized marketing purposes.

And now, there will be surveillance drones. Congress recently passed a bill ("The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012") that opens the gates to widespread use of surveillance drones on U.S. soil. They will be used for law enforcement and border protection but also commercially — for real estate, entertainment and journalism, for example. One prominent drone showcased on the Web is a hummingbird drone. As the name suggests, it's tiny, quick and highly mobile. A popular video shows the hummingbird drone entering a building and flying down a corridor, transmitting everything it sees. It's chilling to imagine the possibilities — and the future.

The political problem with all this surveillance is obvious if we'd care to admit it. Authorities have so much more access to the details of our lives, information which, in the wrong hands, could do real harm. The only thing protecting us is the character of those in power who collect all this information — and swear they will do nothing objectionable with it.

Regarding the new National Defense Authorization Act, which sanctions the president's power to detain indefinitely or even assassinate U.S. citizens suspected of involvement in terrorist organizations,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? President Barack Obama tried to allay fears by saying that this administration will use discretion and judgment in exercising this power. What about subsequent administrations? The Founding Fathers were highly concerned to design a government impervious to corruption by character flaws of individual officeholders. The "war on terror" has steadily rendered us vulnerable to just that.UK chickencoop Specialist.

Perhaps most remarkable about the growing surveillance state is how we are largely unperturbed by it. Indeed, we jump headlong into the new technologies that allow us to be watched. The ACLU cries like a voice in the wilderness about civil rights threats, but we're too busy shopping online, sharing intimate personal details on Facebook, Tweeting our most mundane revelations.

I pressed my college students on this recently, and one student pointed out that they were 10 years old when the Patriot Act was implemented. They have also spent half their lives or more with the Internet, email and smartphones, and so have known nothing else. In short, surveillance is their norm. And they have known only benevolent (or at least innocuous) surveillance to date.

Does this mean they trust the powers that know so much about them and could do so much with this knowledge? Hardly. They have little confidence in the ruling parties — and that's a view shared by people across the spectrum. Why do we surrender so much information, and ultimately power, to authorities we trust so little?

You might say we're just lazy, or too enamored with the new technologies to worry about who is watching us and why. Alternately, as Boston College sociologist Juliet Schor has argued, we are a society increasingly suffering "time poverty": We work long hours, commute long distances, ferry our kids to countless activities, and in our frenzy have come to rely on the new technologies that help us get through our frantic schedules.Another Chance to buymosaic (MOS) 0 comments. In general, digital media are so fully integrated into our lives, we simply can't imagine living without them. They have gotten us accustomed to convenience such as we've never known before — a convenience directly proportionate to the amount of personal information we surrender.

Underlying it all, however, is something else: We've lost sight of the significance of privacy, and that it's essential to freedom and democracy. We willingly give up our privacy in the belief that our freedom remains untouched. In a war on terror, privacy seems like an easy sacrifice, especially when you get the wondrous conveniences of all the new media in return. But freedom without privacy, the French philosopher Michel Foucault argued, is no freedom at all.

According to Foucault, surveillance exerts a covert pressure that can approach a kind of oppression. Under constant surveillance,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, he maintained, we feel less free to be eccentric or quirky, or take chances in our behavior — behavior that matters politically, that is. We are more prone to conform, less liable to ask vexing social questions that might draw attention to ourselves and upset whoever is watching. We are less inclined to develop our own ideas and opinions, work them out, test them in public venues and stick to them. Democracy, however, requires creative, independent, fearless individualism.

2012年5月15日星期二

Texans sign five members of draft class

The Saints' revamped coaching staff said Monday that they are going to have to get use to the huge void left by Sean Payton's suspension for his role in the team's bounty system.At Blow mouldengineering we specialize in conceptual prototype design. They also might have to get use to life without Drew Brees.

Interim coach Joe Vitt and the rest of the coaching staff met with reporters Monday following the team's rookie minicamp, during which 64 newcomers practiced five times from Friday to Sunday.

"Since I've been here, as soon as we got off the practice field, Sean and I would go right to a meeting and talk about what we wanted to do differently in the afternoon," Vitt said. "I didn't have that this year. We also would do a lot of communicating on the practiWhy does moulds grow in homes or buildings?ce field. What do you think of this? What do you think of that? That was a huge void right from the get-go and something we're going to have to get used to."

Then there's Brees, who remains unsigned after the Saints put the franchise tag on him in March. The last day he can sign a long-term contract with the team is July 16, and an agreement is unlikely before the team's first full-squad offseason practice next Tuesday.

The only signed quarterbacks on the roster are Chase Daniel and Sean Canfield.Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom,

"They will get this worked out," offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael said. "We can't spend any time worrying about it. We just have to move forward."

After having no first- or second-round draft pick this year, the Saints did not have a marquee player at the rookie camp. Their top third-round selection, defensive tackle Akiem Hicks, was limited by the new collective bargaining agreement prohibiting pads in offseason workouts.

Hicks is a raw talent who played two years at Sacramento City Junior College and two years in Canada.

"He had had a lot of energy and did not get overwhelmed with the volume (of concepts)," defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo said. "But it's very difficult to get a good feel for a lineman when you don't have pads on."

The coaches got a better read on fourth-round wide receiver Nick Toon, the son of former New York Jets receiver Al Toon. With the departure of free agent wideout Robert Meachem, Toon has an opportunity to make an impact.

"He knows the business from his dad,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. and you could tell about his maturity," Carmichael said. "We were able to put him at a couple of different positions.Save up to 80% off Ceramic Tile and porcelaintiles. He ran his routes real well and showed great hands. He's a guy we feel real good about after this rookie camp."

The coaches were happy to get back on the field for the first time since a last-second playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

"I don't know that we've got that taste out of our mouth yet," Vitt said. "It was heartbreaking. We've talked about it a lot, and the offseason conditioning program to this point has been phenomenal."

NOTES: The Saints waived five players Monday and added four to the roster. Gone are tackle Dan Hoch, guard Nick Howell, linebacker Stephen Johnson, offensive tackle Phil Trautwein and cornerback Josh Victorian. The new players, who all participated in the minicamp, are offensive tackle Hutch Eckerson, cornerback Nick Hixson, guard DeOn'tae Pannell and linebacker Lawrence Wilson.

Time to check the gutters

Three people with expertise in gutters shared their guidance for maintaining them and managing water flow outside your home: Apryl Uncapher, a water conservation consultant; Tom Sullivan, a do-it-yourself repair specialist with Home Depot, and Stephen Gladstone, president of Stonehollow Inc., a home inspection service in Stamford, Conn.

Why are gutters important? Gladstone offered a passionate defense of drainage.

"Water is the most important thing to watch out for with houses," he said. "Whether it's leaks or problems with drainage, everything leads to something expensive with your foundation or with wood that molds or rots."

Gutters, he said, work well to protect the house from water, "but then we foolishly don't clean them or don't extend them far away from the house so water keeps away from the foundation."

The first step toward showing your gutters a little love is buying an umbrella.

"When it's raining, walk around and see if the water's draining properly,Posts with Hospital rtls on IT Solutions blog covering Technology in the Classroom, or if it's pooling around the house," Gladstone said.

Whatever the source of water, Gladstone added,Award Winning solarpanel and heat pumps for electricity and heating. look for drips or streams from the gutter or behind it.

Gutters often pull away from the house when they are filled with snow or ice, so if you notice a gap, you will likely find nails protruding an inch or more from the gutter's edge.

Next,We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design inspect the bottom of each downspout. You will typically find a curved piece of aluminum on the ground nearby.

"Those downspouts come off for any reason," Sullivan said. "You might hit it with the lawn mower, or the kids might knock into it. But then water collects around the foundation and you can do tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage."

Beneath each downspout there is usually a splashblock, a wedge of concrete or plastic that diverts water farther from the foundation.

Inspect yours to make sure they're doing their job; replace any broken ones. Your basement sump pump may live a little longer as a result.

The gutters are more complicated, especially for people with multilevel homes and little comfort with extension ladders.

You can usually reach lower gutters with a stepladder, but no matter what type of ladder you use or how high your roof, it helps to have a few key items arrayed at the bottom.

Start with a stick, preferably 4 to 5 feet long.

When you get close enough to the gutter, rap it with the stick and watch for wasps. If they appear, descend to fetch a can of hornet and wasp spray (Real-Kill Wasp & Hornet Killer, $2.50).

Once the pests are gone, clean out the gutter with a scoop or a gloved hand. (Watch for sharp edges.)

Next, if your gutters are loose, Sullivan advises replacing the nails with long screws (7-inch gutter screws from Amerimax, $11 for a package of 10) that won't pull away from the fascia. Use a cordless screwdriver or drill to save your sanity.

If you are near the downspout, insert a strainer (the one from Amerimax is $2.30) at the top, to keep leaves from forming a dam.

As you move across, look for small creases or tears, which you'll fill with sealer (Seamer Mate, $3 for a 1-ounce tube).

At this point, you may choose to install one of the many types of gutter covers on the market. The old-school version is a length of wire mesh, but those now come with a lip that slides easily beneath shingles,We looked everywhere, but couldn't find any beddinges. and smoother mesh that doesn't snag leaves (Amerimax Snap-In cover, $2.10 for a 4-foot length).

A newer innovation is a solid cover (Solid Gutter Cover from Amerimax,The all New Bluetooth Reader BT1000 features a handsfreeaccess. $4 for a 4-foot length) with a narrow overhang and slots underneath. Water clings to the surface and flows through those slots into the gutter, while the cover keeps leaves out. Sullivan lauded this approach.

Duncan shines as Lady Tigers win fifth SEC title in six seasons

LSU junior Kimberlyn Duncan seems to make history each time she steps onto the track, and Sunday's finale at the 2012 SEC Outdoor Track & Field Championships was no exception as she swept 100-meter and 200-meter titles in record-breaking fashion to guide the Lady Tigers to their fifth SEC Outdoor crown in six seasons at Bernie Moore Stadium.

Duncan finished as LSU's top point scorer with 22.5 points for the weekend as she also ran the anchor leg on the winning 4x100-meter relay for the Lady Tigers to kick off Sunday's finals on the track.

Duncan led an onslaught by the Lady Tigers in Sunday's finale as they claimed six SEC event titles in the final day of competition that also featured junior Charlene Lipsey winning the 800-meter title, sophomore Jasmin Stowers defending her crown in the 100-meter hurdles and the Lady Tigers running a 2012 season best in wrapping up the championship with a win in the 4x400-meter relay.

The Lady Tigers piled up 114 points while scoring in 10 of the 12 events in the meet finale to defend their home turf with 161.5 points in four days of competition in Baton Rouge. Their 161.The term "Hands free access" means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.5 points is the most by the Lady Tigers at the SEC Outdoor Championships since the 1993 season.

The Florida Gators finished in second place in the final women's team standings with 138 points followed by Arkansas (111.We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design5) in third place, Georgia (108) in fourth place and Tennessee (97) in fifth place.

LSU captured its third-straight women's team title at the SEC Outdoor Championships, and its fifth in six seasons with victories in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012. The victory marks the first time since 1991 that the Lady Tigers have won at least three-straight SEC Outdoor team titles with their 13th SEC Outdoor crown in program history and 25th conference title between the indoor and outdoor seasons.

LSU Track & Field captured its 50th SEC crown all-time, as both the men and women have now claimed a total of 25 SEC team titles between the indoor and outdoor seasons.

And senior Barrett Nugent made history of his own as he became the first LSU Tiger to win three-straight SEC Outdoor titles in the 110-meter hurdles with a victory in his final SEC Championship as he paced the Tigers to a second-place finish in the final men's team standings with 118 points for the weekend.

The Arkansas Razorbacks defended their SEC Outdoor championship with an astounding 196 points over the weekend. With their 90 points on Sunday, the Tigers outlasted Georgia (109) for second place overall, while Florida (93) followed in fourth place and Mississippi State (61) trailed in fifth place in the final standings.

"I could not be more proud with the way our athletes represented themselves and this program at the SEC Championships here this weekend," said LSU head coach Dennis Shaver. "We're really proud of our kids and the job that they did, and we look forward to moving on from here. It is really special for our ladies to win, but it is really special for them to win it here at Bernie Moore Stadium."

Duncan certainly stole the show and wowed a packed house at the Bernie Moore Track Stadium in setting the SEC meet record in the 100-meter dash before defending her SEC Outdoor crown in the 200 meters to cement her reputation as the NCAA's most dominant dual sprinter for the 2012 season.

But she helped open the scoring for the Lady Tigers in the first final on the track by anchoring LSU to the defense of its conference championship in the 4x100-meter relay.

Duncan joined sophomore Takeia Pinckney, senior Semoy Hackett and senior Rebecca Alexander to take the title in 43.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings?27 seconds and defend the crown they won in Athens, Ga.,UK chickencoop Specialist. a season ago. They finished well ahead of Auburn (43.67) for their 18th SEC title in the sprint relay in program history.

With LSU sitting in third place with 84.5 points heading into the 100-meter final, Duncan and Hackett put the Lady Tigers in the lead for good with a sweep of first and second places in the event.

Duncan raced into history with a dominating performance in winning the SEC 100-meter crown as she set an SEC Championships meet record and Bernie Moore Track Stadium record of 10.96 (+1.9) to become a 10th different Lady Tiger to be crowned the conference champion in the event while winning LSU's 16th league title in the sprint all-time. She is now the fourth Lady Tiger in five seasons to take the SEC 100-meter title.

With Sunday's performance, Duncan shattered the previous SEC meet record of 11.03 set by Olympic silver medalist Kerron Stewart of Auburn in 2003, and her own previous Bernie Moore Stadium record of 11.05 set just three weeks ago at the LSU Alumni Gold meet held on April 21.

What's even more impressive with her effort is that Duncan became the NCAA's No. 3-ranked 100-meter sprinter in history with her wind-legal run of 10.96 on Sunday afternoon.UK chickencoop Specialist.

2012年5月13日星期日

Genetic Mosaicism Linked To Aging And Cancer

Genetic mosaicism is where some of the body's cells contain altered DNA, while others do not: thus a person with mosaicism has a mixture of normal and mutated cells.

One of the two studies was led by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the other by Gene Environment Association Studies (GENEVA) which is sponsored by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Both the NCI and the NHGRI are part of the National Institutes of Health in the US.

Both studies were published online in Nature Genetics on 6 May.

Previous research has shown that certain large structural abnormalities in chromosomes are linked to increased risk of cancer.

These two new studies show that mosaicism, a type of large structural abnormality in chromosomes, can be detected in a small percentage of people with no history of cancer.

They also demonstrate that these abnormalities appear to increase with age, particularly after the age of 50, and are linked to a higher risk of cancer.

Co-author Dr Stephen Chanock is chief of the Laboratory of Translational Genomics in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at NCI.Find everything you need to know about kidneystones including causes, He told the media that:

"These two studies provide large population-based evidence that genetic mosaicism increases with age and could be a risk factor for cancer."

He added that the link with cancer raises an important point about the stability of a person's genome: it "suggests that detection of genetic mosaicism could be an early marker for detecting cancer, or perhaps other chronic diseases".

Researchers working in the GENEVA consortium and at NCI regularly carry out quality control checks on the data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS).TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China. It was while carrying out these checks that they began to notice an unexpected frequency of structural abnormalities in chromosomes.

At first they thought the abnormalities were errors arising in lab procedures, but then they noticed they were happening at a consistently low frequency among studies looking for links to diseases like cancer by comparing hundreds of thousands of common differences across the DNA profiles of individual patients.A Hybrid indoorpositioningsystem for First Responders.

This finding prompted them to wonder whether such abnormalities might be present in the general population, and if so, at what frequency?

Although NCI researchers had already found genetic mosaicism in an earlier population-based study in Spain, that had not yielded an accurate estimate of prevalence in the general population.GOpromos offers a wide selection of promotional items and personalized gifts.

So to calculate the estimated frequency in the general population, first author Kevin B Jacobs of the NCI and colleagues, used data from 13 GWAS involving a total of 31,717 cancer cases and 26,136 cancer-free controls.

They found that genetic mosaic abnormalities occured more frequently in participants with solid tumors than in cancer-free participants (0.97 percent versus 0.74 percent respectively).

Meanwhile, researchers in the GENEVA consortium, working at the University of Washington, Seattle, where first author Cathy C Laurie is based, together with investigators from NHGRI and NCI, also carried out 16 similar analyses that covered groups of all ages and various different chronic diseases. However, in that study, only a small proportion of the analyses focused on cancer.

They looked at blood samples from over 50,000 participants and found genetic mosaicism abnormalities in 404 of them, most of whom were over 50 years old.

For those under 30 years of age, the prevalence was 0.2 percent, and rose steadily above that age, with a sharp increase in the over-60s to reach , reaching 2.5% in the over-75s.

The NCI-led study had also found that while mosaic chromosomal abnormalities were present in slightly less than 1 percent of the study participants, the frequency increased with age, consistent with the GENEVA results.

Previous studies have suggested that genetic mosaicism arises and accumulates over time,Aeroscout stone mosaic provides a complete solution for wireless asset tracking. with descendants of mosaic cells expanding throughout the body, which may explain why the condition is seen more often in older people.

Dr Teri Manolio, director, Office of Population Genomics at NHGRI, said:

"Repeated collection of blood samples may play a major role in helping determine how genetic mosaicism rises quickly at older ages."

The GENEVA researchers saw evidence of this in one participant whose blood was sampled twice: once at 66 years of age and then again at age 72.

"While no mosaic abnormalities where detected in the earlier sample, the later sample contained five mosaic abnormalities, each on a different chromosome," said Manolio.

Researchers at NIH say the studies have important implications for molecular and genome studies of cancer, such as NIH's ongoing Cancer Genome Atlas and the work of the International Cancer Genome Consortium.

They say more studies should now be done in groups of currently healthy individuals, with health outcomes followed over time, and DNA samples taken periodically to explore diseases and the effect of treatments.