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The Municipal taxes and WOZ news alert addresses interesting developments and court rulings concerning local taxes and the Valuation of Real Estate Act (WOZ). The news alert is published in principle every four months. Hereby we present you the August 2014-edition.
Which care homes qualify for the landlord levy?
The return for the 2014 landlord levy must be filed before October 1, 2014. This also applies to care facilities. However, self-contained accommodation, which is part of an intramural residential care complex whose residential component is funded through the Exceptional Medical Expenses Act (Algemene Wet Bijzondere Ziektekosten; AWBZ) or the Medical Research (Human Subjects) Act (Wet medisch-wetenschappelijk onderzoek; WMO) or by a health insurer, does not qualify for the landlord levy. The accommodation is covered by the landlord levy if the individual resident pays the residential expenses.
Major water consumers, such as those in the food and industrial sector, can heave a sigh of relief. The Deputy Minister of Finance has decided to maintain the 300 cubic meter tax ceiling. Nevertheless, the rate has been doubled to EUR 0.33 per cubic meter of tap water. The Tax Plan 2015 will probably provide more clarity on the future of the tax on tap water.
Is the property (WOZ) value too high? Beneficiaries can also file an objection. Beneficiaries have the option to request a new WOZ decision and may then lodge an objection against it within six weeks. Even if the WOZ decision was sent to one of the beneficiaries and this beneficiary has allowed the six-week objection period to expire without taking any action, another beneficiary may request a decision that is open to objection. An objection can certainly make sense if the inherited property has already been sold for less than the WOZ value.
With effect from 2010, the WOZ value serves as the starting point for the determination of the value of the inherited property. From 2012, the taxpayer may – in view of the deteriorating housing market – choose between the WOZ value that applies in the year of death or in the subsequent year.
Municipal authorities must provide the addresses of reference properties to the taxpayer during the objection stage. In an objection against the WOZ value of a retail outlet, a municipality had – for privacy reasons – refused to provide the addresses of the reference properties it used. Because of this anonymizing, the taxpayer was unable to verify the value. The situation is different during an appeal and municipal authorities are required to provide the courts with complete, non-anonymized data. Unlike the District Court, the Court of Appeals (ECLI:NL:GHSHE:2014:1818) ruled in the taxpayer's favor. It is essential to know which reference property is involved, because without this information, the taxpayer cannot verify the information provided by the municipality.


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A phytase gene was identified in a publicly available metagenome derived from subsurface groundwater, which was deduced to encode for a protein of the histidine acid phosphatase (HAP) family. The nucleotide sequence of the phytase gene was chemically synthesized and cloned, in order to further overexpress the phytase in Escherichia coli. Purified protein of the recombinant phytase demonstrated an activity for phytic acid of 298 ± 17 µmol P/min/mg, at the pH optimum of 2.0 with the temperature of 37℃. Interestingly, the pH optimum of this phytase is much lower in comparison with most HAP phytases known to date. It suggests that the phytase could possess improved adaptability to the low pH condition caused by the gastric acid in livestock and poultry stomachs.
This research was supported in part by grants awarded by The Special Fund for Strategic Emerging Industry Development of Sichuan Province (SC2013510104007), and SAAS Young Scientists Fund (2015QNJJ-015).
 H Tan , X Wu , L Xie , Z Huang , B Gan , and W Peng , “Cloning, Overexpression, and Characterization of a Metagenome-Derived Phytase with Optimal Activity at Low pH”, Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology, vol. 6, no. 6, Jun 2015.

industry_corpus2: Biopharmaceuticals


text:
Talent mobility is about organizations understanding how to optimize their organizations for growth, productivity and success, while keeping employees engaged in their future.
Cornerstone Succession provides organizations tools that allows them to effectively think about the movement of talent within the organization – across roles, teams, locations, projects ,etc. – in response to business needs and to drive employee engagement and retention. It enables employees to take a more active role in their career development.

industry_corpus2: Others


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Package of support including a Building Scotland Fund £26.8m loan.
More than 3,000 new homes are to be built in West Lothian – creating one of the UK’s biggest housing-linked infrastructure projects and generating up to £1 billion value to the economy over 15 to 20 years.
The Scottish Government’s Building Scotland Fund will provide a £26.8 million loan to assist the development as part of a support package agreed under the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.
West Coast Capital (WCC) the private equity partnership, owners of Winchburgh Developments Limited, has agreed a joint venture with CALA Homes to take forward the development. As well as the new homes and associated infrastructure, West Lothian Council will build a number of new state-of-the-art schools.
“As we support the continued growth of the Scottish economy, developments like Winchburgh are crucial. I am pleased the Building Scotland Fund, has been able to support this development; to unlock the construction of 3,450 new homes and the infrastructure required to make Winchburgh a reality.
“The Winchburgh development is a leading example of a joined up approach between the private sector, government and local council. It will help stimulate the economy and bring new homes, schools, transport and community facilities to the area.
“We are delighted to have reached a deal with the Scottish Government and Winchburgh Development Ltd that supports the plans to expand Winchburgh.
“Winchburgh represents the right development in the right place and will help meet the demand for people looking to find a home for their family or business in West Lothian, which is one of the fastest growing areas in Scotland.
The total package of support from Scottish Government includes a standby facility of up to £15 million to West Lothian Council in support of its borrowing for schools as well as a £26.8 million loan to Winchburgh Development Ltd, from the Building Scotland Fund to support the delivery of housing related infrastructure.
The Building Scotland Fund is a precursor to the Scottish National Investment Bank and will aim to make available up to £150 million by 2021 for the development of new affordable and private sector housing, the development of modern industrial and commercial property and business-led research and development.
A package of support to unlock the Winchburgh development formed part of the Scottish Government’s commitment through the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.
The Scottish Government’s overall investment in the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal will contribute towards 41,000 new homes, 21,000 jobs and improve the skills of an estimated 14,700 people in the area.
The Building Scotland Fund loan to Winchburgh is in addition to £50m already pledged as part of the City Region Deal for housing related infrastructure.
More on the plans for the Winchburgh Village development.

industry_corpus2: Real Estate & Construction


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GBG, the global leader in Identity Intelligence, has announced the appointment of Karyn Bright to the role of Group Marketing Director.
Karyn has strong experience in marketing B2B brands internationally and joins GBG from Gazprom Energy, where she had global responsibility for marketing and communications for the Russian energy giant's retail division.
GBG, the global leader in Identity Intelligence, has announced the appointment of Karyn Bright to the role of Group Marketing Director. Karyn has strong experience in marketing B2B brands internationally and joins GBG from Gazprom Energy, where she had global responsibility for marketing and communications for the Russian energy giant's retail division.
This included working within international communities including Japan, Germany and Russia. Karyn's technology experience includes senior European marketing roles at SAS institute and Sybase and she was Head of Marketing at GBG from 2005-2009 during the development of its first generation of ID Verification Solutions.
Karyn's international experience will be crucial in helping GBG further raise its global profile, particularly following the recent acquisition of the Australian fraud solutions provider, DecTech Solutions, to extend operations into the Asia-Pacific region.
Richard Law, CEO of GBG says: "Karyn's arrival marks the next stage in the development of GBG as an internationally recognised brand. As more businesses seek to understand their customers better - wherever they reside - GBG's message is that we can capture, verify and analyse the data that is shared to produce meaningful identity intelligence and facilitate a far better customer experience."
Karyn was equally excited about the new role: "It's great to be returning to GBG. Both the company and I have greatly developed in the last five years and I'm looking forward to helping it continue this exciting growth on a global scale."

industry_corpus2: Technology & Research


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A move over to the Sparrow label didn’t seem to hurt Barry none. C’Mon Along is another fine work in the same mould as Lighten Up, where rockers like ‘Peppermint Candy Man’ and ‘Let The Dead Bury The Dead’ are balanced with moody loner-vibe acoustic ballads such as ‘Sometimes I Cry’ and ‘Whom The Gods Would Destroy’. Some light country touches via Al Perkins’ pedal steel and dobro along with Doug Dillard’s banjo, as heard on ‘Clouds’, ‘Crosses In The Sand’ and ‘Follow The Light’. Background vocalists include Matthew Ward and Terry Talbot. Co-producer Richard Souther provides keyboards while Mike Deasy returns on guitar. (The Archivist, 4th edition by Ken Scott).
Barry’s online music store can be found here. Barry’s online web site ca be found here, it contains his bio, pictures, a place to contact him, also Frequently Asked Questions and many other features.

industry_corpus2: Film & Entertainment


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00:07 <+iant> can you open an issue?
00:07 < anticw> yeah ...  where should it live?
...  how would gccgo normally even find that?
00:16 < anticw> so i would need -c *.go ?
00:16 < anticw> or equiv ?
00:25 <+iant> does it work with 6g?
00:25 <+iant> what is the error message?
00:32 < anticw> this is some fe input parsing weirdness then?
leave you to file in in gcc-land?
00:38 < anticw> iant: what's the highest safe level for optimization?  O2?
00:39 < anticw> how do i make it go up to 11?
00:41 < anticw> want me to just file these and let you reject them later?
00:48 < anticw> |Craig|: what cpu are you testing with?
01:06 < |Craig|> meaning that fetch is a huge portion of the execution time.
01:23 < |Craig|> anyone here tried goclipse ?
12:18 < nsf> lol, documentation generator..
pretty-print (possibly complex) Go variables.  Is there a way?
17:14 < exch> Guest95927: fmt.Printf("%v", myvar) will print it's contents.
had a 177M file i needed to read.
amount to read all at once.
19:58 < Tv> SoniaKeys: you mean ioutil.ReadAll?
to just give it a file name and get back all the data.
20:02 < SoniaKeys> yes, no argument.
able to print to the socket?

industry_corpus2: Programming


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composite lumber for raised beds - The Green Life: Ideas for . We have a controversy over raised beds in a community garden. Should we use cedar wood or composite lumber for the beds? . they are considered safe for many .
Whether you are starting a new garden bed or trying to control weeds in an existing bed, covering the bed in plastic is a quick way to clear the bed with minimal labor. Black plastic mulch also warms the soil, allowing you to plant in the garden bed sooner in spring.
Gardener's Supply specializes in raised beds and raised garden beds made of cedar, recycled plastic, corrugated metal and more. Raised garden beds help maximize harvests by efficient use of space, and we carry a wide variety of sizes and depths to work with any location.
More Details The perfect raised garden bed for fitting into a corner, or creating unique landscaping areas and details to change the look and flow of your garden. If you’d like an out-of-the-way garden, tucking this raised bed into a corner of your yard is a great use of space.
Vegetable gardening is a great pleasure of the summer months for many gardeners. But for many of us, space does not allow a full garden. If this is your problem, try growing a vegetable garden on a deck. So many vegetables can be grown in large planters and having the garden nearby makes it much easier to manage.
Raised beds can be built at a good height for a wheelchair. ? To add an aesthetically pleasing ... non-porous plastic, as it can retain too much water and discourage beneficial insects and worms. A lining can make an ... building and gardening tools available for those with a Berkeley library card.
Putting a raised bed on a deck is a very cool idea. It puts your vegetables closer to where you want them – right outside your door which obviously will be very convenient. Convenient is an awesome word when applied to a garden since it usually makes for a better maintained garden.
Laying plastic over your garden beds is best done before planting or in late winter and early spring when the plants are still dormant. Prepare the bed for laying plastic. Remove any weeds or debris from the garden bed.
Growing a Deck, Balcony, or Patio Vegetable Garden. Updated on September 8, 2018. Garden Boy. more. ... deck or patio veggie garden, you'll get a good yield of potatoes with these inexpensive, light, smart, and reusable bag planters. 5) Recycled Plastic Wall Planter Pockets. Source.
The Drip Mate watering kit is designed to fit the Stratco Raised Garden Bed. The kit features 12 ft. flexible micro irrigation tubes 5 adjustable flow shrubbler spikes 2 tidy bow micro tube elbows and a faucet connector.

industry_corpus2: Agriculture & Fisheries


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The report, produced and launched jointly by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), assesses the impact of the recent financial and economic crises on the MDG progress in the region. Prior to the crises, the region had been making steady progress in a number of areas, including halving the proportion of people living below the $1.25-a-day poverty line, reducing gender disparities in education, and arresting the spread of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. However, these impressive gains have been threatened by the recent crises.
While the crises have exposed the vulnerabilities of the Asia-Pacific region which is connected to the global economy through multiple channels, including trade, tourism, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Official Development Assistance (ODA) and remittances, they also present an opportunity to address those vulnerabilities and identify a more sustainable growth path conducive to the achievement of the MDGs. Examining the fiscal impact of the crisis, the report also advocates biasing stimulus packages towards the MDGs with a strong component of social expenditures, as this will likely produce a double dividend of not only boosting growth more rapidly but also aiding progress towards the MDGs.
At the same time, in order to be more resilient under the impact of globalization, the countries must strengthen their social protection systems. This would include employment guarantee, old age pension, health insurance, education and health related social assistance, especially for women and children. From the pro-poor perspective, it is a significant step forward that social protection is now finally getting the attention that it deserves and that the critical role it plays in achieving the MDGs is recognized. Asia-Pacific countries already have various forms of social protection, but these usually reach only a small proportion of the workforce. For example, only 20 percent of the unemployed and underemployed across the region have access to labour market programmes such as unemployment benefits, training or public works programmes. Only 30 percent of older people receive pensions. Expenditure on social protection in most Asia-Pacific countries also tends to be small relative to GDP.
The reports also highlights that women are the most adversely affected by the crises, as they compose the majority of the region’s low-skilled, low-salaried, and temporary workforce that can easily be laid off during economic downturns. Moreover, the current global economic crisis has reduced the demand for migrant labour – and women form nearly two-thirds of the total Asian migrant population.
The UN Millennium Campaign echoes the importance of challenging the existing export-led growth model which has excluded many from the fruits of development and thus has contributed to widening disparities in many countries in the region. Although Asia-Pacific has been experiencing a rapid urbanization, it must be noted that more than half of the population still live in the rural areas, many of whom rely on subsistence agriculture.
With less than six years left before the 2015 deadline to achieve the MDGs, the global economic crisis is a wake-up call for all the countries that the existing development model needs to be fundamentally reviewed. Bouncing back strongly from the impact of the crisis and accelerating the speed of poverty reduction and human development can be possible, only by supporting the governments in re-orienting their policy framework and directing their resources as well as political will towards more balanced, sustainable and equitable development. This, in turn, calls for active citizen engagement in monitoring the implementation of such policies and keeping the government accountable for delivering on their commitment.

industry_corpus2: Finance & Economics


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Our products and services include car crushing and salvage services.
If you have used the services of Tom Goode Service & Salvage we'd love to hear from you! Use the form below to review and comment on your experience.

industry_corpus2: Automobiles


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From bop to pop…the evolution of a sound! Three parts Jersey Boys, two parts Motown: The Musical and "not your grandma's doo wop", these five charismatic, handsome, triple-threat Broadway stars – with their hot 5-piece band -- tear it up, with musicality, dancing and showmanship not found with any other group in the world!
They “re-doo” classic Doo Wop songs from the 50’s and 60’s and make ‘em sound fresh and new…and they take contemporary pop hits by stars like Jason Mraz, Amy Winehouse, Adele and Maroon 5, and “doowopify” them! Perfect entertainment for people ages 10 to 100!


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Cataract is not a disease. It is a natural ageing process causing the normally clear lens of the eye to become increasingly cloudy. This happens at different ages and different rates in each person.
Left untreated, your vision will slowly deteriorate but you will come to no harm. In early and moderate cataract, the same result will be achieved whenever the operation is done, so there is no advantage to operating sooner rather than later. Only when cataract becomes very advanced does surgery become more difficult.
The right time to have the surgery is only when you feel you are sufficiently troubled to justify the risks involved and we will help you to decide when this is.
Please do discuss any concerns you have with your optometrist or email vision@cameronoptom.com.
Find out more in this informative video.

industry_corpus2: Health & Medicine


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According to this report, while the “real world” of 600 participants from 71 countries met this weekend in Crimea at the 4th Yalta International Economic Forum to discuss global co-operation and the building of a better planet, and without the Western “neocon thought police” being anywhere near, the Ministry of Energy sanctioned the launching of the most environmentally friendly floating nuclear power plant ever built named the Akademik Lomonosov—which is a ship weighing 21,500 tonnes that provides 70 megawatts of electricity and can power a city of 100,000—and whose use in the Arctic will insure the environmental protection of this region as it undergoes oil and natural gas exploration.
With the Akademik Lomonosov able to operate for 40 years, and another 10 with refueling, and being the first of many more such floating power plants to be built by Russia, this report continues, one would think that the West would be celebrating such a triumph, as vessels such as these can be used to immediately power entire cities devastated by natural catastrophes—such as Puerto Rico, that last year had its entire power grid destroyed by Hurricane Maria causing the worst blackout in American history.
Instead of celebrating this vital Russian environmentally friendly technological achievement, though, this report notes, and immediately upon the launching Akademik Lomonosov, the Western mainstream propaganda media establishment went into “full hysteria mode” pumping out comical warning headlines such as: “Floating NUCLEAR PLANT Labeled A ‘Dangerous Experiment’ By Campaigners Launches In Russia”—“Russia To Move Floating NUCLEAR PLANT Branded 'Sitting Duck For TERRORISTS' This Week”—“Russia’s ‘Floating Chernobyl’ Nuclear Power Plant Heads Out To Sea”—and—“Russia's Floating Power Plant Branded 'Nuclear Titanic' Sets Sail On Controversial First Voyage”, to just name a few.
Left unanswered by all of these hysterical Westerners writing such comically absurd headlines and articles, this report points out, is exactly how nuclear power plants are in any way a “dangerous experiment” as their technology has existed for nearly 80 years—or how “terrorists” could venture into the sub-freezing temperatures of the Arctic by passing though thousands of miles of protected Russian territory to attack this “sitting duck” surrounded by tens-of-thousands of military and police forces.
Even worse, this report says, none of these hysterical Westerners even mentioned that the largest floating nuclear power plants the world has ever known are the American Nimitz-class aircraft carriers—whose weight of 100,000 tonnes far exceeds that of the Akademik Lomonosov’s 21,500 tonnes—and whose nuclear power plants are able to generate a staggering 194 megawatts of power, compared to the Akademik Lomonosov only generating 70 megawatts—none of which has ever been sunk or destroyed in a typhoon or other natural disaster—which cannot be said about the “land based” Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan that was destroyed by a tsunami in 2011—and that, just this past week, officially became the worst nuclear disaster in the history of the world.
In an examination into why the mainstream propaganda Western media chose to scare their citizens with “fake news” stories about the Akademik Lomonosov, this report details, MoE analysts discovered that it was due to a shocking and devastating report recently issued by hundreds of the world’s leading scientists titled “Scientists Warn Of Potential Serious Health Effects Of 5G”—and wherein they warned of the potential deaths of millions of people due to massive radiation poisoning caused by cell phones.
5G, this report explains, is an abbreviation for 5th generation wireless network technologies just starting to be deployed throughout the United States this year as part of what is called “The Internet of Things”, that will require augmenting today’s 4G technology with 5G, thus “massively increasing” the general population’s exposure to radiation—and explains why the massive 5G deployment now occurring in the US is being done in secret—with New York being the only place where alert environmental activists were able to halt it, at least for now.
Important to know about this secret 5G deployment in America, too, this report continues, is that the only media source reporting on this issue is The Nation, that is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States—and whose just issued article titled “How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation” shockingly documents how the entire wireless phone industry in the US has hijacked the tactics of the tobacco industry to keep hidden from the American people the grave and deadly dangers of cell phone use—and whose dangers include the causing of brain tumors and massive genetic damage—with The Nation noting that only force in the US standing against these monsters is its powerful insurance industry—none of whom will issue an insurance policy protecting against cell phone radiation poisoning.
With the American people now being led like sheep by their Western mainstream propaganda media to fear a nonexistent calamity involving the “nuclear Titanic” Akademik Lomonosov, this report concludes, these people, once again, have had their attention misdirected to the “Russian Bogyman” always hiding under their beds—instead of them looking at the real monsters who live among them, and who couldn’t care less for them, their children, or their families—as in the US today, human beings are nothing but “deplorables” worthy of death, at least according to their ruling elites.
April 30, 2018 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.

industry_corpus2: Power & Energy


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Discussion in 'Comedy Corner' started by Storm, Apr 12, 2019.
After Rogan interview, they found Jones at the local sausage bar..
Wow poor Alex man. Jesus why waste your time with those lunatics, but even worse start acting like one, let those socialists eat their burgers in peace.
It is night time soon. Then it is time to brake some mirrors, and see what lies behind.


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Learning at Our Lady of Lourdes Primary uses flexible, innovative and creative teaching practices, coupled with modern technology to motivate our students to become the best learners they can be.
With a focus on professional learning for staff and the regular evaluation of teaching practices and programs, students are encouraged to become lifelong and engaged learners.
If you have further questions about the curriculum or other programs on offer at Our Lady of Lourdes, please do not hesitate to contact us.

industry_corpus2: Subject Education


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As politicans from across the world met at the NATO summit in Wales, the crisis in Ukraine saw an escalation in rhetoric. The same people who told us about Saddam’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” are now raising a hue and cry about thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Russian troops having invaded Ukraine and are demanding swift action to counter them.
This is rich, coming from a country which has never hesitated to resort to invasions, military coups, covert destabilisation all over the world, splitting countries and redrawing their borders whenever it suited the interests of US capitalism. And we are not just referring to the 19th and 20th centuries. The more recent examples of the coup in Honduras, the coup in Venezuela, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombing of Libya, the support for reactionary fundamentalist insurgents in Syria, the support for reactionary dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and a long list of other cases. When US imperialism talks of “the right of nations to determine their own future” what it really means is “our right to determine any nation’s future according the interests of our bankers and capitalists”.
To make a lot of noise about alleged Russian intervention in Ukraine is one thing, but the US is finding it increasingly complicated to be the world’s policeman in a period of capitalist economic crisis worldwide and the accompanying turmoil and instability. Obama was therefore very strong in his denunciation of Russia but very vague in stating his concrete commitment to responding in the only way that would amount to anything: that is, by providing a military response. In fact, the whole conflict over Ukraine has revealed openly the limitations of US imperialist power, the divisions between America and its European allies and the even deeper divisions among the latter.
US imperialism had already been forced to exit Iraq and Afghanistan leaving behind a situation which was less stable from the point of view of its own interests. To that we now have to add the rise of the IS (the direct result of US meddling in the region), Israel’s criminal bombing of Gaza and the crisis in Ukraine. These growing demands on the US as the world’s policeman come at a time when its relations with key European ally Germany are at an all time low and the US public is extremely wary of any more costly foreign military operations.
To return to the Ukraine, it was the provocative actions of Western imperialism which unleashed the present crisis. The US backed the removal of Yanukovych and the instalment of a government firmly committed to bringing Ukraine into an alliance with the EU and possibly membership of NATO. This was like a red rag to a bull for the Kremlin, and US strategists must have known it. The annexation of Crimea was the only logical step to take from the point of view of Russia in order to secure continued control over a Russian naval base of great strategic importance. For all the talk on the part of the US of “red lines which cannot be crossed” and “consequences” which were supposed to follow, the truth is that they were unable to do anything about it. The “inviolable borders of a sovereign state” had been “redrawn at the barrel of a gun” and the US was completely impotent.
Crimea was not the only Russian aim in this conflict. The Kremlin cannot allow Ukraine to fall completely into the West’s sphere of influence and has used the uprising in the East of the country, as well as its control over gas supplies, as bargaining chips to ensure it continues to have a major say in Ukrainian politics. Despite this, US officials backed the reactionary Turchynov-Yatseniuk-Poroshenko government in Kyiv and pushed it to launch a war on its own people in the Donbass. Every major offensive of the so-called “anti-terrorist operation” was preceded by a visit of a high ranking US official to Kiev. And every one of them failed.
In the middle of August it looked like the Ukrainian Army and the far-right “patriotic” Battalions set up by Kiev were finally advancing in their war against the Donbass rebels. They forced them out of their strongholds in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk by means of a brutal siege. Then they managed to surround Luhansk and Donetsk, moving to cut them off from the Russian border.
The Ukrainian forces engaged in the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, schools, hospitals, markets, apartment blocks, water supply systems in important urban centres like Donetsk and Luhansk as well as smaller cities and towns. All were seen as legitimate targets in Kiev’s war against the Donbass. Over 2,000 people have been killed, tens of thousands injured and up to one million have been forced to flee the region. Yet there were no protests, no signs of outrage coming from the “international community”. These crimes were met with a deafening silence in Washington, London and Berlin.
In order to whip up public support for the war, the Kiev government had to resort to a campaign of increasingly virulent patriotic hysteria, which led to the suppression of any opposition voices. Left-wing organisations were forced underground, legal proceedings started to ban the Communist Party, Russian language newspapers were attacked, members of parliament physically assaulted during the sessions, social media monitored, Russian channels banned, left-wing and anti-war activists arrested without a warrant, etc. Again, not a single word of condemnation from the West.
Even at this time the military situation was not completely under the control of Kiev’s forces. Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were trapped between rebel forces and the Russian border, without access to supplies. Kiev was unable or unwilling to send them food or ammunition, but ordered them to resist and not to surrender. Hundreds finally crossed the border and gave themselves up to the Russian army. Some were then put on trial for desertion.
For the Kiev authorities, the Ukrainian soldiers are nothing more than cannon fodder. It is therefore no wonder that there have been continued protests by soldiers’ relatives all over the country. With the new wave of mobilisation, hundreds of ordinary working people are being drafted. These unfortunates are being sent to the Donbass with very little training, poor equipment and very little food. Meanwhile, the sons of the wealthy and state officials are paying bribes to prevent being sent to the front. One of the slogans raised by the mothers’ and wives’ movement was: “send the sons of judges and politicians to the front first!” Others argued that the war had been provoked by the Euromaidan movement and therefore those who engineered it should be sent to do the fighting. The movement against mobilisation into the army was particularly strong in regions where there are national minorities, but not only there.
The offensive drive of the Kiev forces seemed to be unstoppable. But then, as the end of August approached, the tide started to turn. The rebels fought back, breaking the encirclement of Donetsk and Luhansk, taking control of the airport in both cities, opened a new front in Novoazovsk and are now advancing on the key port of Mariupol. The fascist paramilitary Battalions (Azov, Donbass, Dniepr) took a particularly severe beating in the crucial battle of Ilovaisk and some of their main leaders were injured.
Now thoroughly alarmed, the Kiev government started to shout loudly about “thousands of Russian troops” on Ukrainian soil and whole tank battalions that were allegedly crossing the border. It was at this point that the Western capitals started to raise the alarm - not about the Kiev forces’ use of artillery and aerial bombardment against civilian targets, but about a so-called “Russian invasion”. In order to back up this claim, NATO has produced some grainy satellite pictures. These are the same people who assured us that Saddam Hussein not only had weapons of mass destruction, but also that he possessed means to deploy them and was ready to do so. Any “evidence” coming from them should be considered with a large degree of scepticism.
Kiev is also interested in hyping up the potential threat from Russia in a bid to get some concrete military support from the West for a war it is now clearly losing. Its claims about a “Russian invasion” are therefore heavily suspect. Of course, the Kremlin cannot allow the Donbass rebels to be crushed. First of all it would lose an important card in its bargaining to achieve its aims in Ukraine. Secondly, it would deal a severe blow to Putin’s popularity in Russia if he was seen as abandoning them to their fate. In order to prevent that from happening, Russia has undoubtedly helped the rebels with surveillance and intelligence, a regular supply of weaponry, “volunteers”, and a small number of special troops.
There is no reason to doubt the presence of some Russian troops in East Ukraine. Russian claims that border troops could have crossed the border “by mistake” cannot be taken seriously. But to speak of a Russian invasion is an invention of the Kiev regime intended to conceal the real reasons for its military setbacks. The reversal of fortunes of the Ukrainian troops in the East is explained by other factors: the incompetence of the high command of the “anti terrorist operation”, the fractured nature of the forces fighting on Kiev’s side (which includes Ministry of Internal Affairs troops, the Army, neo-Nazi volunteer Battalions, other volunteer forces ascribed to different political forces or to individual oligarchs), rampant corruption and outright treason.
Even before the current rout, the self-appointed commander of the volunteer “Donbass” Battalion Simon Semenchenko, was complaining: “there is a growing gap between unit commanders and the leadership of the ATO (they say ‘why are we being driven to slaughter and why no one is punished’); an absolute mess regarding weapons, lack of coordination and communication management; corruption and chaos in support in feeding and clothing the volunteers."
The humiliating retreat of Kiev’s forces further widened the divisions in their camp. The “patriotic volunteer” Battalions accused the Ministry of Defence and the president of lack of support and about a thousand gathered at a protest in Kiev at the end of August demanding more weapons, more men and more funding for the war. Another joint protest of all the volunteer battalions was planned for September 4 and there are constant rumours of attempts by these fascist thugs to remove the current government in a “new Maidan”.
What this means is that the Ukrainian army is an accurate reflection of all the contradictions of Ukrainian society and the rottenness and corruption of Ukrainian capitalism. Above all, the defeat of the Ukrainian forces is the result of the lack of morale of the conscript and reserve soldiers who see no reason for this war and lack the will to fight. On the other hand the rebel forces are fighting a war to defend their homes and families. They are fighting with their backs to the wall and therefore they fight with a courage and determination born out of desperation.
The fact that Kiev’s forces are in effect fighting in enemy territory, not against “gangs of foreign mercenaries” but rather against a hostile local population which has raised a militia army, will have further undermined the morale of the ordinary Ukrainian conscript. The mood of civilians in Donetsk was faithfully conveyed by a report by CNN, which cannot be accused of being a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda: (See the report here).
The mood of the population has changed in recent weeks as the vicious nature of the occupying forces has become clear to ordinary people. Previously, many ordinary people regarded the war as a temporary thing, an unwelcome interruption of their normal lives that would eventually disappear, allowing them to return to their daily routine. While they regarded the new regime in Kiev with deep suspicion, they remained passive spectators, unwilling to engage actively in the struggle. But now the mood has hardened.
This very point was made by journalist Tim Judah in an article for the NY Review of Books entitled “A Catastrophic defeat”: “"Rebel-held Luhansk came under a virtual siege, and was heavily shelled by Ukrainian forces, though bizarrely it is still possible to get to the town on a suburban train. Large parts of Donetsk too came under shelling from Ukrainian forces. Some areas have been badly damaged and targeting has been so woefully inaccurate that hundreds of civilians have been killed in the process. The result is that, by August, many ordinary people who did not care that much about who ruled them hated the government in Kiev and Ukraine as a whole."
An article by Roland Oliphant in the Telegraph described the attitude of local residents of Komsomolskoye towards the fascist paramilitary battalions of the National Guard which had occupied their area for a few days in early September: "They didn't defend us, they just stole from us. They showed up, said they were going to blockade the town, and took over the police station for their HQ. When we complained we'd get shelled because of this they said that was none of our business. After this my doubts are gone. We're just waiting for the DNR to get here."
By comparing the mood on both sides of the war it is not difficult to conclude that one does not require the hypothesis of a “Russian invasion” to explain the latest rout of the Kiev forces.
War is a complex and dynamic equation. The attempt by Kiev to smash the rebels (calculating that Putin would be unwilling to get further involved in helping the rebels) completely backfired and now it is Kiev which has been forced into a humiliating retreat. Poroshenko is desperate to get support from NATO and has been given a guest seat at the organisation’s summit in Wales.
Emboldened by provocative statements made by the flint-faced Great Dane General Rasmussen, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yatseniuk insists that his country wants “first class ally” status and will apply for NATO membership after the forthcoming parliamentary elections. Brave words indeed! But the fact is that Poroshenko’s attempt to get NATO to take military action to stop the “Russian invasion” failed miserably and Kiev’s request for NATO membership was met by a polite but non-committal and very lukewarm response.
The US has made a lot of noise about the need to support Ukraine and its national integrity, but in reality her European allies are extremely reluctant to commit themselves and the mess in Iraq now occupies a higher place in its order of priorities. At the NATO meeting in Wales they thundered condemnations, raised their hands to the Heavens and called down Divine Wrath on the head of Vladimir Putin, and – did nothing.
Once again there was talk of “tough economic sanctions”. But we have heard all that before. The truth is that, although the Russian economy could be badly hurt by any serious sanctions, the economies of Europe, already in a very fragile state, would suffer still more. Several European countries, including Germany, are already on the verge of falling into recession again. Implementing harsher sanctions could be the last straw. Russia could then cut off gas supplies to Europe on which Germany and other countries are heavily dependent.
The prospect of German families shivering in the dark while German factories grind to a halt with the onset of winter is not the most attractive one for Angela Merkel. Therefore Germany wants a negotiated solution to be reached, and that means one which is acceptable to Russia. We have not the slightest doubt that even while the noisy denunciations continue, such a deal is being worked out under the table.
The attempts of NATO and the West to frighten the Russians with threats of more economic sanctions have had the opposite effect to that which was intended. Far from being intimidated, Putin immediately upped the ante and now says that any negotiated settlement must include “statehood” for the Donbass. The Russians see that things are moving their way in East Ukraine and see no reason to make compromises. By contrast, the Kiev regime is in a state of confusion that borders on panic.
All of a sudden everyone wants to get to the negotiating table as quickly as possible to work out an agreement in which everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. All eyes are on the talks in Minsk, but in reality matters will be settled by fighting on the ground, and there the rebels are now on the offensive. At this moment of writing they are attacking checkpoints just outside the crucial port town of Mariupol. As long as there is no agreement they will continue to take advantage of their momentum on the ground to consolidate and expand their gains.
Meanwhile in Kiev there is a mood of panic and division in the ruling elite. When president Poroshenko published an official statement on his website on September 3 announcing that in a phone conversation with Putin he had agreed a plan for a “permanent ceasefire” (the word “permanent” was later deleted), prime minister Yatseniuk immediately contradicted him and said that “peace will be achieved through battle”.
A Russian spokesperson then confirmed the veracity of the phone conversation but added that there was no agreement, as “Russia was not a party to the conflict” and that any ceasefire had to be agreed with the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. Representatives of both Republics said that there was no ceasefire on the ground, that they had not been consulted and that a pre-condition for any agreement was the complete withdrawal of Kiev’s troops. They added, correctly, that they doubted the ability of Poroshenko to enforce any ceasefire on the punitive Battalions. Members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion confirmed to the media that they would not respect any deal with the rebels and would continue fighting.
Any deal which Poroshenko signs with the Donbass rebels will provoke rage amongst the far-right volunteer battalions which might move to attempt to overthrow him. All these are unknown variables which can prevent a deal or even provoke a further escalation of the conflict.
Meanwhile, the economic crisis Ukraine already faced has been severely worsened by the civil war. The country’s GDP, which was already forecast to collapse by 5%, could now end the year with a terrifying 8% fall. The IMF is already talking of the need for a further bailout. Private investors are already counting on some sort of default on the country’s debt.
The war is affecting two of the most industrial regions in the country and in July industrial output was down 29% in Donetsk and 56% in Luhansk. There have already been a number of high profile announcements of factories either closing down or stopping their operations, like that of ZAZ carmaker. Inflation is soaring and is expected to reach 20% by the end of the year. This is particularly affecting the prices of utilities. At the same time the conflict over gas supplies with Russia is leading to hot water being cut off in several cities, including Kiev. That is already a problem in the summer, but it will lead to an unbearable situation in the freezing Ukrainian winter.
At a certain point economic and social issues must come to the fore and dissipate the poisonous clouds of nationalist hysteria. Already there have been a number of small scale protests against utility price hikes, in some cases combined with protests against drafting of soldiers to the front. On September 3, a conflict over the removal of a design manager at the state owned Antonov aircraft factory led to a clash between workers and Ministry of Interior troops which surrounded the plant. The workers are fighting a move to privatise and restructure this flagship company. These are small signs but they show the way forward.
All history shows that defeats in war have a habit of turning into revolutions. Today Ukraine is in the grip of counterrevolution, White Terror and bloody civil war. But the march of events can produce all kinds of sudden and dramatic changes. One thing is clear: 25 years of capitalism in Ukraine have produced nothing but economic and social, cultural collapse, political upheavals, corruption, crime, chaos, wars, poverty, death and suffering. On this basis, there is no future for the people of Ukraine. Sooner or later that lesson will be learnt.

industry_corpus2: Politics & Administration


text:
Has your team bowed out of the finals race over the weekend in devastating fashion? Sorry, you aren’t entitled to refund on your new merchandise for a ‘change of mind’ (or missing out on the premiership).
However, it was announced recently that 21 AFL and NRL clubs had made changes to their refunds and returns policies following an investigation by the consumer watchdog, the ACCC. The ACCC commented that each club’s statement only provided a right to refund in very specific circumstances.
- items must be returned within a limited timeframe to receive a remedy.
In fact, a consumer’s rights under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) are much broader than this.
Frustratingly for some retailers, there is no specified cut off time after which a refund on an otherwise faulty item can be refused after purchase. If an item has a fault or defect, the test is whether that product has a “failure” under the ACL and a range of factors are taken into account to determine this. These might include how long such an item would usually be expected to last, or whether, in the event the consumer knew the item had such a defect, they have still chosen to buy it.
If the product is considered to have a “major failure” the consumer will be entitled to a choice of refund, repair or exchange. If the product is considered to have had a “minor failure” the retailer will be able to make this choice and limit the remedy to a repair or exchange.
Purchasing an item on sale or wearing an item will not, of itself, exclude any rights to refund or return the item. Retailers also must not mandate, as some clubs did, that an original receipt be presented when returning an item, as there may be other ways the consumer can evidence it was purchased from the retailer.
The investigation is a good reminder to other businesses with refunds and returns policies, or that provide warranties on their products and services, to review their policies with the broad scope of the ACL in mind and especially consider any statements made that appear to limit a consumer’s rights.

industry_corpus2: Law & Justice


text:
Yes. New Jersey has a law that protects employees who act as whistleblowers by reporting their employer for committing misconduct. The law is called the “Conscientious Employee Protection Act”, or CEPA for short.
What CEPA does is prohibit employers from retaliating against an employee who discloses employer actions or policies that are in violation of the law. This also covers employees who provide information on company violations to an investigation committee or before a board hearing.
In other words, your employee is not allowed to punish you for blowing the whistle at your workplace. They cannot fire, deny benefits, or reduce your wages for your actions.
Is New Jersey’s Law Any Different from Other Whistleblower Laws?
Yes, in two ways. First, New Jersey’s Conscientious Employee Protection Act places a great deal of emphasis on employees who work in the health care industry. For example, the law protects any employee who is a certified health care professional in cases of reporting improper or sub-quality patient health care. CEPA also includes a reference to the public policy of maintaining good health care provisions for the community. This is a unique feature of the law that reflects the standard of care in New Jersey’s local economy.
Next, the law also protects employees who refuse to participate in company actions or policies that are against the law or are in violation of public policy standards regarding health care. Many whistleblower laws do not specifically address employee participation in questionable company practices; they tend to focus only on reporting issues. Employers are held to a higher standard of care under CEPA. States are allowed to require more protection than Federal standards.
You should make a report both internally with your employer and with an employment discrimination agency such as the OSHA or the EEOC. You are usually required to file with such an agency before you can file a civil lawsuit. If your case involves a New Jersey health care organization, you may also wish to report with a local health care governance board.
If your employer has taken retaliatory action against you, you may be able to recover losses like back pay or obtain reinstatement if you have been fired.
Do I need a New Jersey Employment Lawyer to Handle My Report?
You are not required by law to obtain an employment lawyer if you are going to file with OSHA or EEOC. However, it is a good idea to consult with one, so that they can help you prepare all the necessary documents for filing. In the event of a lawsuit, your documents may be used to support your claim in court. Keep detailed records of any incident that may be relevant to your case.


text:
For the third consecutive year, Chopard is presenting a timepiece from its couture capsule collections. L.U.C XP comes fitted with a Merino wool strap, made from a breed of sheep renowned for the finesse of the yarn it produces. In addition, a cognac alligator leather strap with brown alligator lining is included. Dyed in deep blue, the braided fabric is a natural follow-on from the blue cashmere strap launched in 2017 on a previous L.U.C XP model and the embossed leather one introduced in 2018 with the L.U.C Quattro.
The case, in stainless steel, measures 40mm x 7.2mm. It has an AR-coated sapphire crystal, a sapphire display back, and it is water resistant to 30 meters.
Movement is the Swiss automatic Chopard in-house caliber L.U.C 96.53-L with 27 jewels, 28,800 vph and a power reserve of 58 hours. It features the two barrels Twin technology, and an engraved tungsten micro-rotor. Bridges adorned with Côtes de Genève motif. Black engravings.
It has a navy blue dial with vertical satin-brushed finishes. Applied rose gold-plated numerals and hour-markers. Applied rose gold-plated Dauphine-fusée hands.
It comes on a hand-sewn blue Merino wool strap with brown alligator leather lining with a steel pin buckle. A second strap is included, done in cognac-colored alligator leather with brown alligator leather lining, hand-sewn.


text:
Rapidly rising undergraduate fees and textbook costs are serious factors impeding access to higher education for many students. In particular, high textbook costs are a serious barrier for under-served, at-risk students. The amount students are asked to pay for textbooks overburdens governmental and familial financial resources. A 2005 US Government Accountability Office study estimated that the average annual cost of textbooks for a student in 2003-04 was $898 at four-year colleges with an average 3.8-year lifespan per textbook. Textbook costs continue to rise at a rate twice of inflation; according to the College Board, the average budget for textbooks and supplies during the 2012-2013 was $1,200. The high cost leads many students to sell their textbooks onto the secondary market to raise money for the next semester’s book budget.
While open-access textbook resources are clearly beneficial in reducing educational costs, additional pedagogical benefits make their development and use additionally appealing to both faculty and students. Ideally, open-access textbook resources could be used to guide students toward a centralized and integrated "enhanced learning environment" capable of not only providing vetted textbook materials, but also capable of self-consistently tracking student-specific activity and performance to identify weaknesses in study habits. The proposed LibreTexts project is one such resource that upon sufficient development can provide exceptional flexibility in addressing current and future education needs. Moreover, the LibreTexts provides a powerful platform for digital evaluation of cross-disciplinary learning and can be leveraged as a powerful mechanism for the dissemination of content and evaluation of emerging education technologies and pedagogies.
Authorship and development are done by both students and faculty. The content of these libraries is both horizontally (across multiple fields) and vertically (across multiple levels of complexity) integrated within a massively interconnected network that provides, not just single textbooks, but an infinitely large library through which interconnected textbooks can be built. Grounded in social constructivism, the Libretexts project allow learners to cooperatively construct and organize knowledge. Because of their flexible and modular-based approach to instruction, the LibreTexts provides an important alternative to the “one-size-fits-all” approach to instruction where content is presented in a static prepackaged manner. LibreTexts is a next-generation learning system that promotes personalized, flexible, and interactive learning experiences.
Figure 1: (Left) The Libretexts project encompasses 12 pseudo-independently operating “Libraries” dedicated toward enhancing post-secondary education in all fields of study. (Right) The LibreTexts project has confirmed over half a millennium of students reading and has served 180 million pages since 2008.
The LibreText project consists of 12 pseudo-independently operating and interconnected libraries that host over 42,000 (web) pages of content in specific fields with a current emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Given that the greater Libretexts has evolved from the ChemWiki project, with an emphasis on chemistry textbooks, it is not surprising that the chemistry library is currently most developed library. The chemistry library hosts approximately 80% of the project’s content and is responsible for 90% of current web traffic with an accumulated 200 million pageviews (approximately 4.5 million per month) and over a millennium of confirmed reading since 2008. Libraries containing content from other STEM disciplines have also been developing rapidly over the short time that the project has been expanded to the multidisciplinary LibreText platform.
Each library is developed around the same general organization centered around three principal components: (1) the Core, (2) the Libretexts and (3) the Textbook maps. However, other key components include Exercises, Worksheets, Exemplars/Case Studies, Visualizations, and Demonstrations/Labs. There is also an extensive set of reference tables along with the Periodic Table of Elements accessed at the top bar of any page in the library.
The LibreTexts core content is separated into the primary disciplinary sections and is meant as supplementary material to augment the LibreTexts (that are custom designed and developed "textbooks" for individual instructors, classes or schools) or Textbook Maps (content organized to "recreate" existing textbooks).
LibreTexts are custom developed for individual instructors/classes and schools. Faculty do not need to recreate the wheel to generate a LibreText for their class and can peruse the existing LibreTexts; then these can be adapted to the instructor’s specific desires.
Textbook Maps are an attempt to recreate the content structure of existing textbooks to facilitate adoption.
We separate the Textmaps in terms six broad categories discussed below with associated testimonials.
We classify GOB (general-organic-biology) and introductory chemistry courses as free-standing courses that focus on a less rigorous presentation of content. We have two GOB texts in the system: the Ball et al. text and the CK-12 text. The non-GOB texts include another CK-12 text and another Ball’s text along with Young’s “Introductory Chemistry Online” text. Several textmaps that re-envision existing commercial textbooks are under development in this category with Tro’s “Introductory Chemistry” text as the most developed (organized in part by Marisa Agnew at Sacramento City College). Below are three testimonials regarding the application of the LibreTexts into GOB or Introductory Chemistry courses.
University of Kentucky (Allison Soult): My classroom is an active learning (flipped) classroom so having access to resources such as the content of my LibreText are essential for my students both in and out of the classroom. Whether it is for assigned readings, using reference data, or looking up terms, the students can easily access the appropriate section of the book with one click from our learning management system. The flexibility of this strategy allows me to custom design my course materials in the way I wish to teach. The ability to edit it in real time allows me the opportunity to update content and provide additional information (or remove unnecessary information) for students as needed throughout the semester.
Sacramento City College (Dianne Bennett): I began working in the summer of 2014 to develop a LibreText for my Chemistry 309 course at Sacramento City College (SCC). Chem 309 is a content heavy course for allied health students, which surveys general, organic, and biochemistry in a single semester to prepare students for anatomy, physiology, and microbiology. In addition, Chem 309 is part of an Allied Health Learning Community (AHLC) as a pathway from high school to allied health career programs.
The Chem 309 LibreText has supported innovations in teaching in my class. Student success for a very high-risk student demographic increased by 250% using a flipped format that was supported by a LibreText. LibreTexts also provide additional insights into student learning habits that help us continue to develop and innovate how we teach. This type of information cannot be found through traditional texts. It is also important to know that 67% of the students at SCC live at or below the poverty level. Students are saving approximately $17,000 each semester in my Chem 309 courses. Since the fall of 2014, students have saved over $100,000 from the Chem 309 LibreText. While students greatly appreciate this financial savings, student surveys also show that students recognize the additional benefits of their LibreText.
Diablo Valley College (Ron Rusay): For my “Chemistry for Non-Science Majors” course (Chem-106), we use the Libretext as a platform for student engagement. The general vocabulary assignment is to define and build a comprehensive list of the Key Vocabulary Terms from lectures & Libretext or library resources, which are pertinent to and used in Chem 106. Other projects are posted and edited via personal accounts on a “private” in-course page as graded assignments. Student then used the vocabularies as exam questions after being reviewed and vetted for accuracy; they are then made public.
Significant effort has been placed on developing and optimizing the general chemistry content on the LibreTexts. Since General Chemistry courses cover content across a wide range of chemistry sub-fields, no specific “General Chemistry” section exists in the Core although the content has been organized in corresponding sub-fields. The General Chemistry Textmaps include the integration of OpenStax textbooks (both Atom’s first and “traditional” organized), Stephen Lower’s “Chem1” virtual text, John Moore’s “ChemPrime”, Melanie Cooper and Mike Klymkowsky’s “CLUE” text, and Averill and Eldridge’s “Chemistry” text among many other contributions. Working Textmaps have been constructed for Brown and LeMay’s “Chemistry” Text, Tro’s “A Molecular Approach” text, Oxtoby’s Text and Petrucci’s “General Chemistry” text. Students have used these resources in many general chemistry courses across the world and have avoided many millions of dollars to date in textbooks expenses. Below are four testimonials regarding the application of the LibreTexts in General Chemistry courses.
Mount Royal University (Brett McCollum): Many of our students at Mount Royal University struggle to afford postsecondary tuition, and even more avoid purchasing textbooks due to financial barriers. This widespread student behavior has a profound effect on instructional pedagogy. After learning of the LibreTexts project, I was able to curate and create content appropriate for my class. Within four months, my LibreTexts was used by 50,000 learners in over 30 countries. My students appreciated that the text was free, that it was accessible anywhere with an internet connection, that it was tailored to our course, and that the quality was comparable to a commercial textbook. The next semester, LibreTexts was adopted by four more faculty in my department, and even more the following semester. Since hearing testimonials from MRU students, other disciplines on campus are now investigating the process for transitioning to LibreTexts. We estimate that LibreTexts has saved our students over one quarter of a million dollars.
Valley City State University (Samuel Keasler): I’ve been using a Libretext for general chemistry for the last two years, involving about 25 students total, and have adopted a LibreText for use in my non-majors introductory chemistry class this past fall, involving another 20 students. The experience has been overwhelmingly positive and I’ll be continuing to use and update them in the future.
The fact that students do not have to pay for a commercial textbook is an obvious benefit of a format like this. Less obvious, but just as important, is the pedagogical advantages of a customizable, webbased resource. If the cost savings were the only advantage, there are other open textbooks available. The reason I’ve gone to the effort of assembling a LibreText is that I’m excited about the opportunity to create the resource best suited to the classes and students that I’m teaching. I think that a major reason the LibreText project has been so successful and has grown so much is the work that Dr. Larsen is doing to assist faculty like me in getting our texts up and running.
One of my teaching goals for the next few years is to directly integrate some of the video content I’ve developed into the text alongside other more interactive supplements. This has the potential to make students more active while reading and improve comprehension, which is essential for the successful implementation of a flipped classroom. There is no other platform that offers this level of flexibility, and it’s that flexibility and the open licensing of all the content that makes the site such a valuable tool for innovative chemistry teaching. Faculty can build resources that meet the needs of their students and adapt these resources, as their teaching requires. With relatively little effort, faculty can add, remove, and rearrange topics, change how content is presented, and add new supplements. This adaptability is crucial for faculty who want to try new things.
Not only can faculty use Libretexts as a valuable tool to improve their own teaching, but the open content makes the site a hub for sharing ideas and looking at what other faculty are doing. In a matter of minutes, I can look at ten different ways of presenting a concept and if one of them is particularly appealing, I can integrate it directly into my own course.
Howard University (Joshua B. Halpern): With my collaborators at Prince George's Community College, Scott Sinex and Scott Johnson, we built a LibreText General Chemistry book for a one-semester course for engineers. It is the first of a new, coordinated engineering curriculum, integrating Introduction to Engineering, Chemistry, Physics and Calculus taken by engineering students. Particularly in the case of chemistry, the normal courses assume that students do not know many things that engineering students do such as the SI system, emphasize many things that are superfluous to most engineers such as biochemistry, repeat things that they will encounter in other courses such as General Physics and, because most engineers only take the first semester, leave out important topics such as chemical kinetics and equilibrium. Our Atoms First text starts by discussing atomic structure, the periodic table and molecules. After this, chapters describe states of matter and simple chemical reactions, followed by discussion of chemical kinetics, equilibrium, thermodynamics, electrochemistry, and nuclear chemistry using materials science examples and applications relevant to engineering. Tailoring of the text to engineering students enables teaching at a higher level including the calculus and encompassing almost the entire intellectual content of the normal two-semester General Chemistry course.
Integrate YouTube videos including self-made problem solving videos showing various techniques and other videos that I found on the web.
Mixing Q&A format in with normal textbook format. I think digital native students who have so much information readily available and find this format is easier to navigate for certain topics. LibreText allowed me to integrate the Fourth Paradigm of Science into my course textbook. This complements the more traditional format.
Integrate Lab Material into my text. Create calibration and technique videos for lab equipment and link to videos through QR codes that can be placed into the lab manual or taped to the laboratory equipment. This will allow better integration of lecture with lab activity. The Libretexts also hosted ChemCollective Virtual Lab Activity. Note, students are assigned unknown numbers, and this is a prelab activity.
We are in the process of integrate hypothes.is, a social annotation technology, into the system that will create a class group in hypothes.is and will require students to annotate readings before class and use these annotations to help “flip” class. Integration of hypothes.is has been successful into Drupal homepage to aggregate annotations (see next paper of this Newsletter). This new infrastructure will create homepage for each chapter that aggregates annotations on any page in LibreText, or open access resource on the web. It will also filter annotations in aggregator by tag that allows me to navigate LibreText and other material in class based on student annotations.
Significant effort has been placed on developing the organic chemistry content. The Organic Chemistry Core has been recently restructured. The Textmaps included the recently completed Basic Principles of Organic Chemistry by Roberts and Caserio, Tim Soderberg’s Organic Chemistry with a Biological Emphasis and William Reusch’s Virtual Textbook of OChem among others. Recently effort has been placed on developing the Textmap for McMurry’s Organic Chemistry for use on several campuses. Development of the organic content on the LibreText has been slower than the Introductory and General chemistry content, but we are making steady progress. Below are four testimonials regarding the application of the LibreTexts in Organic Chemistry courses.
University of Minnesota, Morris (Tim Soderberg): Organic Chemistry With a Biological Emphasis has undergone a complete revision over the past several years, as I have rewritten many sections and added a substantial number of in-chapter exercises and end-of-chapter problems, and written introductory passages to each chapter in which I attempt to 'bring to life' the material of that chapter in the context of an interesting real-life story. Most recently, I have completed revisions on solutions to all in-chapter exercises and selected end-of-chapter problems. The next step is to finish loading the new content onto the LibreText platform.
University of Illinois at Springfield (Layne A. Morsch): In summer of 2015, I adopted the LibreTexts as the textbook for my Organic Chemistry 1 course. Through use of the LibreText, my students have continued to grow in their understanding of organic chemistry as well as learning valuable skills in digital literacy. As I witnessed the students’ exam scores unchanged from previous courses where I used a traditional textbook, I decided to expand use of the LibreText to two additional courses. In addition to the technological training and data access from the LibreText, the economic value cannot be overlooked. Compared to buying new textbooks, my students have saved over $90,000 from our use of the LibreTexts. This is of particular value on our campus as the #1 reason students are not retained from one term to the next is financial. Shifting to high quality Open Educational Resources (OER), like the LibreText, is reducing the financial burden on our students. It is also highly valuable that the access to information does not end when the semester ends and many students report that they refer back to the freely available materials when they study for MCAT and GRE exams. Having the LibreText has also allowed me to monitor when my students are studying by examining pageview data. I could not get this sort of data when we used a traditional textbook.
Purdue University (Mark Lipton & Paul Wenthold): We noted that our students’ first source of information for our classes was no longer the assigned textbook but rather it was a Google search, which led almost inexorably to Wikipedia. The second was that I had just radically redesigned my organic chemistry class and no existing textbook adequately reflected the organization of my class. The class I teach is a two-semester organic chemistry sequence for Chemistry majors here at Purdue University. Typically, this class has 70-90 of our Chemistry majors in it. I have now used the LibreText I created for my class for three years. In that time, student test scores have increased and student evaluations indicate strongly positive support for the LibreText and its value. Anecdotally, many students have told me that they turn to the LibreText rather than Wikipedia and its Google ranking reflects that (it’s often the #1 hit in a Google search for a given topic in organic chemistry). In sheer numbers, my LibreText pages are getting 432 page views per day in the first semester and 787 page views per day in the second semester. That works out to about 5-6 and 10 page views per student per day, respectively. As a user, I found the LibreText easy to establish and the content already present on the site sufficient to create a “textbook” that mirrors the eclectic organization of my class. At this point, I have absolutely no desire to return to a printed text and am firmly committed to the use of the LibreText site.
Athabasca University (Dietmar Kennepohl): I teach organic chemistry for about 250 students per year who are now using a LibreTexts that is custom designed for them. The LibreTexts is much more than just a new technology for teaching and learning. Its approach of continuously building educational materials through collaborations and contributions from both teachers and students is an academic ideal. It moves the textbook away from merely a commercial product to be consumed to a vehicle of participation and engagement that also happens to have a strong social mandate of accessibility.
The Analytical Chemistry core is currently being expanded to with content from the Analytical Sciences Digital Library and the outstanding Chromedia website. We have multiple smaller projects that have been or are in the process of being integrated in the Core. The LibreText project has not been used as the exclusive textbook for any analytical chemistry course (to our knowledge), although David Harvey’s “Analytical Chemistry 2.0” Textbook has been in the library for several years and has recently been upgraded. This summer a development team will be focusing on constructing the Textmap for Skoog’s Principle of Instrumental Analysis” text, which has recently been referred to as the most expensive chemistry textbook at over $400 on many campuses. The LibreText system has been used for much of the past decade to host the lab manual for UCD’s Instrumental Analysis (Chem 115) class and has recently been expanded to include the lab manual for the introductory Analytical chemistry course (Chem 105). Below is a testimonial regarding the application of the Libretexts in an Analytical Chemistry course.
University of California, Davis (Kristie Kosti): For my instrumental analysis course (Chem 115), I used the Libretext laboratory manual that was specifically written for UC Davis without any additional editing to the site. The nice part about the LibreTexts is that it is in html code and easy to fix for the next time the course is taught. As a benefit to the students and to this lab manual in the future, I gave extra credit asking the students to keep track of things they would change in the manual to make it clearer to the next generation of student users. The students enjoyed being able to interact with the lab manual in this way. The neatest part was seeing students generate images and photos to help update the manual. It really is not easy to do that with any other manual.
The Physical Chemistry Core has been under developed since the beginning on the project, in part since a poorly crafted and expensive at the time physical chemistry for biologists textbook was the impetus for initiating the project. The available Physical Chemistry Textmaps range from DeVoe’s “Thermodynamics” text, Simon al al.’s Advanced Theoretical Chemistry and Quantum Mechanic texts, Zielinksi’s Quantum Text, and Valance’s Symmetry notes. Under construction are two Textmaps that have garnered some interest recently: McQuarrie and Simon’s Physical Chemistry Textmap and Atkin’s Physical Chemistry textmap. Both of which are incomplete, although the McQuarrie textmap has been used for four Introductory Quantum (Chem 110A) courses and one second quarter Quantum course at UCD. Below are two testimonials regarding the application of the Libretexts in Physical Chemistry courses.
(i) Individual Course Website and Lecture Host - A “Libretext” site can be set-up for an individual class where an instructor can generate their own text/textbook while integrating many of the figures, videos, and problems at other parts on the LibreTexts. Each course can then be directly edited and adapted to the student body that it serves. The adaptation is generally that LibreTexts is a textbook substitute and lecture note repository. The instructor intimately controls the direction of the students learning. It allows videos and messaging (which you can’t get from a normal textbook even with the fancy DVD and online resources that cost the students extra).
(iii) Resource repository - LibreTexts is an enormous repository of problems, figures, text, videos, and online resources. These single resources can be directly integrated into a Powerpoint lecture, problem set, or other. Students can be referred to more reading. Equations are saved as a mathtex. For someone who uses LaTex a lot, it means equation code can be copied and pasted (eliminating errors in PPT files or other lecture media). This is my own personal favorite way to use the LibreTexts.
In using the LibreTexts in all of these different iterations, I have found that it is a very flexible tool with an almost infinite multitude of usability. The amount of data, homeworks, lecture notes, videos, and other materials uploaded by other faculty at other institutions is substantial. I believe the Libretexts is a larger-than-life learning resource that has the potential to really alter the way that teaching and learning is performed.
Development of the Inorganic content in the LibreTexts has been slow, but steady. The Inorganic Core is full of content and recently, we have integrated Bertini et al.’s Bioinorganic Chemistry textbook into the system and the Wikibook’s Inorganic Chemistry built in Pennsylvania State University. A goal this summer is to complete the Textmap for Housecroft’s “Inorganic Chemistry” textbook.
Saint Mary’s College (Kathryn Haas): My students and I initially found LibreText’s Chemistry library useful in supplementing the traditional text in my Advanced Inorganic Chemistry course, beginning in 2013. More recently I had the opportunity to develop a new interdisciplinary Bioinorganic and Materials Chemistry (BMC) course, for which an ideal traditional text does not exist. The first iteration of the BMC course heavily relied on LibreText and other web-based materials in addition to a rather expensive traditional textbook. Students in this first rendition of the course were disappointed with the cost and content of the traditional textbook and commented that they preferred the content (and no cost) from the web-based tools like LibreText and Wikipedia. After attending one of Dr. Larson’s workshops and learning how to customize LibreText to my liking, I built and used a custom LibreText for the latest rendition of BMC in Fall 2016, and used this LibreText as the only required resource for BMC. Although the LibreText for this course is still in a fledgling state, students thanked me regularly for using this free resource which was customized to their needs. Further, the LibreText has transformed my teaching and has been essential to my ability to evolve an interdisciplinary course to the students’ and my needs and interests without the constraining “walls” of a traditional text. I was able to easily pull from and customize material already in the interdisciplinary LibreText libraries and was able to write new content, with student help, when desired topics did not yet exist.
In addition to being the primary course text in my BMCcourse, LibreText is also now a platform for sharing student work. The creation of new open-access content for LibreTexts serves as an excellent opportunity for student projects. In the Fall of 2016, my students each picked a topic in bioinorganic chemistry on which they would write a new LibreText page including original figures and a new educational YouTube video about their topic. My course of eight students has developed four new pages in LibreText which are linked to their YouTube videos about the topic. This new content is based on the latest research literature on Fe-siderophores, Pt-chemotherapies, Cu-chaperones, and Mn-superoxide dismutase, much of which is not available in even the most recent versions of any traditional textbooks. Development of these projects took a significant amount of my time, and student work, however creating and editing these articles was unusually rewarding for both my students and I. Student feedback indicates that they value LibreText as a resource in their learning and appreciate both the experience of creating work for an authentic audience and the opportunity to contribute free open-access resources for other students.
The experience of building my own LibreText has been facilitated by the quick and thorough technical support provided by Dr. Larson and his team. I plan to use LibreText for future iterations of my BMC and Advanced Inorganic Chemistry courses and to continue to develop new open-access inorganic chemistry content for LibreText.
We encourage faculty with existing materials created for use in one or multiple classes to contribute vetted content to the LibreText libraries. We especially appreciate quality content such as homework questions, answers, solution manuals, supplements, and any other textbook materials that are intrinsically copyrighted by the faculty member that developed the material. All content would be transcribed from the original format directly into the libraries via primarily student effort and no additional effort is necessary. Author bylines and hyperlinking to contributed Modules are added.
Faculty desiring a more active involvement in the project can contribute in by: (1) mentoring student efforts in building content, (2) directly editing or creating new modules, (3) providing feedback or consulting on existing Modules, or (4) evaluating new pedagogical approaches and application of the Libretexts. Particularly active faulty contributors may also consider participating as co-PIs on future grants. Libretexts development effort can also be used to address education components (e.g., “Broader Impacts”) in research grants and promotions. Contact Delmar Larsen or any of other Libretext developer for more information about taking the next step in education.
Thanks for your leadership in creating ChemWiki and teaching numerous instructors how to develop textbooks for their courses. The amount of information encompassed by the LibreText continues to impress me.
I'm wondering if you can explain the relationships between core content for different subdisciplines and the textbook maps. Do the various general chemistry textbooks all include the same core material? Or are there distinct treatments of a particular topic from the different textbooks that have been contributed to the library? Is the overlap/approach used in general chemistry the same for the more advanced courses that have fewer textbooks that have been contributed? How much does the McMurry textbook map have in common with the core material? Does it overlap at all with the material in Soderberg's text? Reusch's text? I don't have a clear vision of how the various textbook maps are developed and how the different contributed textbooks relate to the core.
The original plan when we constructed the Libretext system (then ChemWiki) was all content would be stored in the core and that the Modules in Libretexts (then Wikitexts) and Textmaps copied (or transcluded) that content within the context and organization of the other Modules in their respective groupings. We have deviated from that greatly and most of the content in the Core is not found in the Textmaps and Libretexts. That is why we consider the modules in the Core to be more supplementary and of stand-alone nature to the other two sections.
This approach is fairly consistent across the sub-fields; it is even encouraged to favor a diversity of presentations. Sort of a fostering of free evolution without a natural selection to favor a specific outcome(s).
The McMurry TextMap is being developed independently of the Core by Dietmar Kennephol (Athabasca University) and others. When Steven Farmer (Sonoma State Universe) originally built the Textmap infrastructure, he used a lot of the Core content and a lot of Soderberg’s content (which is more focused on biological O-chem rather than a traditional synthetic approach) and Reusch’s content. However, this has gradually grown (and is still growing) to be expanded or substituted with other content including some of Roberts and Casserio’s textbook material. We hope to get the JSMol finally integrated this summer so students will work with 3D molecules in the Libretext for their course.
A clear vision? We know where we want to go, but much of our efforts favor taking advantage of our current Development Team’s strengths, immediate needs and obviously proposal goals. This is truly an organic (pun intended) approach, since we are trying to build a community to push the project forward.


text:
A larger number of tourists were attracted to Yalong Bay in Sanya for the opening of a mammoth offshore recreational platform on Dec 1st, news.163.com reports.
With a total investment of over 20 million yuan, this new offshore recreational platform in Yalong Bay is known as "Sunday on the Sea". This is a unique offshore recreational platform in China at present, according to the report.
With a total area of 1600 square metres, the platform is equipped with all kinds of facilities for guests.
According to the director of the Sanya Tourism Development Bureau, after the platform is put into use, this new high-end entertainment product in Yalong Bay are expected to attract more domestic and international tourists to the city.

industry_corpus2: Travel & Geography


text:
You searched for city. Showing 1 - 7 of 3276 results.
Links to things Twin City Elementary students and teachers use regularly at home and school.


text:
“The president’s declaration is reckless and unconstitutional,” Gov. Tony Evers said.
MADISON - Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul joined a multistate lawsuit Wednesday challenging President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration to free up billions to pay for a U.S-Mexico border wall.
“The president’s declaration is reckless and unconstitutional,” Evers said in a statement. “This isn’t how a democracy is supposed to work."
The decision comes weeks after Evers and Kaul said they began exploring the idea of joining the legal challenge.
Evers said in a statement there "is simply not ample evidence to support the president’s contention that there exists a national security crisis at our southwestern border."
"The real crisis at our border is the separation of children from their families," he said, referring to a policy that has since been blocked by a judge of separating children from parents when families illegally cross the southern border.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a top Wisconsin Republican, disagrees with Evers' characterization of the situation at the U.S. border with Mexico.
In a tweet last month, Fitzgerald pushed back against Evers' decision to pull back troops from the border over concerns similar to those that prompted Evers' decision to join the federal lawsuit Wednesday.
"Drug smugglers and human traffickers cross our southern border every day — Wisconsin should be doing our part to keep our country secure," Fitzgerald said.
The lawsuit is brought by 19 other attorneys general and alleges the emergency declaration is unconstitutional.
The states allege in their lawsuit that Trump's emergency declaration exceeds the power of the president and unconstitutionally redirects federal money that Congress had set aside for other purposes. Trump made the declaration after lawmakers sent him a government funding bill that included $1.4 billion for the wall, far short of the $5.7 billion he initially requested.
White House officials said they believe they can unlock an additional $6.6 billion through the emergency declaration and other budget maneuvers. The White House believes the money would allow the administration to build at least 234 miles of the border wall, which was a central promise of Trump's 2016 campaign.
Wisconsin Republicans in December passed a number of laws limiting the power of Kaul and Evers, including barring both from withdrawing from federal lawsuits.
But the action did not prevent Kaul and Evers from joining lawsuits.


text:
Thirty years of experience. One international network.
Since 1985, Goshen Coach has given people better, safer, and more reliable ways to get from point A to point B. We lead the transportation industry in the areas that matter most, with a team of dedicated experts and rigorous quality testing that goes well beyond industry standards.
BECAUSE YOUR JOURNEY IS OUR FIRST PRIORITY.
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve product safety, value, design, and quality specifications and options are subject to change without notice. Some items featured include optional equipment available. Please refer to an authorized Goshen representative for complete specifications and pricing.

industry_corpus2: Transportation


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This weekend was great fun, I went for a Rafting trip to Rishikesh. It was a rather sudden trip, I had known about it for a little while but wasn’t thinking about going for it because of work and stuff. On Thursday morning I found out that I would be free over the weekend so my Dad suggested that I should go for the trip (I had mentioned it to him earlier in the week). So at about 8 am I emailed Mitali who was the organizer for the trip and asked if there were places available, she said yes and after a couple of phone calls I had confirmed my place at the camp.
Then I booked my train tickets so that I could reach Haridwar at the same time as the rest of the group. We left Delhi at 11:15 pm on Friday and I had a nice journey just chatting with some of the other passengers. I did manage to sleep for about an hour but not much more than that. We got to Haridwar at 4 am and there I got to meet everyone else in the group for the first time. We then got on the car that had been rented for us and drove down to the camp which took almost 2 hours. It was a nice bumpy journey as they are widening the roads over there in the area. The route we took was a very scenic one and the moon light made everything appear to be magical.
We got to the camp at about 6am and after meeting the camp director Ajay everyone decided to take a quick nap before breakfast. I couldn’t sleep so I walked around the camp just enjoying the peace and quite. The sun rose at ~6:45 am after which the mist was burnt away and I could see the valley in its whole glory.
After a few hours the rest of the group woke up and we had breakfast (the food was great). We headed off into the water at about 10 am for rafting. The water was extremely cold (~10 Deg C If I remember it correctly) which made swimming in it a lot more interesting and fun. We went through a couple of class 3 rapids and even body surfed through a few rapids which was fun.
We rafted about 10 kms down the river and called it a day. We left the raft over there at the beach and drove back to the camp. Once we got back we had lunch (every one was starving by the time we got back) and then spent a few hours just lazing around the camp. After Tea Advait (I hope I have the spelling correct) and I played a little Beach Vollyball. After the sun set we lazed around the campfire and talked about everything under the sun from astrology to politics.
The next day we drove down to the beach where we had left the raft the previous day and rafted down to Rishikesh (~18 kms). This time we went through a few class 4 rapids in addition to the class 3 rapids. The water felt a bit less cold than the day before which could be because the day was clear and the sun was very bright.
There was a place on the way where you could jump in the water for a rock 6 mtrs above the water. Only Chirag and me had the courage to jump and it was a lot of fun. It didn’t look that high from the river but when you saw it from up there it felt a lot higher.
After we arrived at Rishikesh we spent a few hours over there sightseeing. We had lunch at the famous Choti wala restaurant where all of us had the Royal thali which had about 6 different vegetables and other assorted foods. Then we walked around for a little while and then drove back to camp.
Back at the camp we lazed around a bit more, then Advait, Chirag, Navraj and me played a game of badminton. Then we had Tea and soon after the campfire was lit again and we spent a few hours talking and having fun.
The next day we left the camp at 8 am (had gotten up at 6 am) because our train was at 10:30 am. We got there about 1/2 an hour early so we walked about a bit in Haridwar and had tea. Tom was spending the next few days in Haridwar so there were only four of us who were coming back to Delhi. Ajay mama had some work at Delhi so he also was taking the same train to Delhi. Ajay and me had tickets in the AC 3 tier while Mitali, Chirag and Advait had tickets in the AC 2 tier. However they had originally booked tickets for 5 people but two of them had dropped out at the last minute so the two of us just switched seats and we all traveled together to Delhi. The train was supposed to be in Delhi at 2:30 pm but it got there at 4 pm. Mitali and Advait had a flight to Bombay at 6 pm so they had to rush to the airport.
I drove back home with Mom and dad and spent the next few hours resting. Over all the trip was awesome and I had a great time. Special thanks to Mitali for organizing the trip and inviting me.
Took a lot of photos (~160) so will be posting some of them in the photogallery within the next few days. Will keep you posted.


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Want a second? Superbly rich, smooth and fresh coffee. You can’t resist licking your lips and ask for another cup.
Fresh-steeped fruity iced tea, jazz up with big, fat and juicy fruit meat for you to bite into. A cool and relaxing way to beat the heat.
Shocked your taste buds with the extra zing of flavor. A splosh of vinegar meets fruit meat and fruit puree. The taste? Earth-shattering!
Bright, sophisticated and luxurious in collagen and other skin beautifying ingredients.
Speedy beverages, some high in vitamins and minerals, some high in fiber, some have it all.
Makes your beverages more nutrilicious!
GOURMET BLENDS & FUNCTIONAL INGREDIENTS.
CHEERY service crew. IT coffee pit-stop.
Rainy days. Scorching days. Warm up. Cool down.
Yielding to temptation. Quenching thirst.
Whatever you WANT, you’ll get it HERE.

industry_corpus2: Hospitality & Catering