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(PhysOrg.com) -- Mouseless is a computer mouse that allows you to interact with a computer with a mouse in the same way as usual - except that there is no mouse hardware. The researchers call it an "invisible mouse."
A group of scientists working with the Fluid Interfaces Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge Massachusetts, were interested in removing the requirement for a physical mouse, while still allowing computer users to interact with their computers in a way with which they were familiar.
The researchers, Pranav Mistry, Liyan Chang, and Pattie Maes, developed an infrared (IR) laser beam and associated camera that could be incorporated into the computer so that a plane of IR laser would be created just above the surface on which the computer is resting. The user acts as though a physical mouse were present and the laser beam is intersected by the hand, and parts of the hand are shown up as bright spots of light that change position as the hand moves. The built-in camera then interprets the changes in position of the hand and fingers and translates them as moves of the mouse and clicks on the two buttons, and the cursor on the screen moves as if the user was operating a physical mouse.
Mouseless is an invisible computer mouse.
There are no plans for commercializing the "invisible mouse," but the prototype Mouseless was built for around $20 USD. The MIT group of researchers are now working on improvements to the recognition and tracking algorithms with the aim of building up an expanded command library. This may in the future lead to more complex gesture recognition than is possible at present, and could ultimately give the Mouseless a number of advantages over a physical mouse, since the number of functions handled by a physical mouse is limited.
The MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group works on ways of integrating the world of digital information and services more naturally into our normal lives, by designing intuitive and intelligent interfaces.
Pranav Mistry is a PhD student and research assistant at MIT Media Lab. His project “SixthSense” won the Popular Science Invention of the Year award in 2009.
I can't see this ever being accurate enough.
For most people maybe, but for someone who is fast on a PC, you will NEVER replace a good mouse and keyboard.
Only a direct brain interface has that potential.
I do think people would buy this though if it was commercialized.
How do you click and drag? ... Gotcha.
I have a seven button mouse, and use six of those buttons constantly (the regular three buttons, plus copy, cut, and paste). Are they going to reproduce that? Also, there were non-physical laser keyboards at one point, and those obviously didn't catch on. I don't think this would be any different.
It looks like every "click" is a double tap of the finger. So I'd imagine a drag would be a single tap of the finger, until there's another single tap.
You know before the web - almost everyone used double clicking - and outside of a browser you have to double click to do everything except changing context.
it would seem the click drag is safe -- this is implemented in the OS. the click on the border gives the border context, written into the program that describes border windows ( in windows everything on the screen except text is technically a window and they all have slightly different rules -- this is hidden from the user but programmers are aware of the difference) -- anyway clicking on a border to drag, once the initial click down is detected you enter a new part of the program that allows you to resize until a release of the mouse button is detected.
This is just a working prototype I wouldn;t expect that to be addressed at this stage but looks highly feasible.
this will probably not cut into anyones bottom line as hardware that has to move tends to be expensive to engineer. This is a sensor with software.
It looks a bit laggy in the video, though maybe it is just the recording.
Also, the camera & laser would need to be MUCH smaller for this to be marketable.
And unlike a wireless mouse that can go anywhere (including switching to other side for lefties), this can only be used in a fairly small section to the right of the laptop.
there is something there though.... if they can package it better and improve the software so that it becomes more accurate... i think they got a winner... ont surpised if apple gets to it in the near future!
" This may in the future lead to more complex gesture recognition than is possible at present, and could ultimately give the Mouseless a number of advantages over a physical mouse, since the number of functions handled by a physical mouse is limited."
I think once the research hits this point it will be much more commercially viable. Cool concept though.
Mouseless mouse? Last three laptops I've owned have had mouseless mouses, they call it a touchpad, and it's already multi-gesture capable.
For the type of work I do on a computer I'd still rather have a multi-gesture capable 24" LCD, or better still, as others have mentioned, neural input.
I can no longer live without the scroll wheel. I suppose you could try to approximate that with middle finger gestures. Responsiveness and accuracy would be the key here. I think the camera better be faster than 30fps. More like 100fps.
1. Humans need a certain amount of tactile feed-back. I guess there is some from the desktop surface, but I'm not sure if that is enough to make it feel natural enough.
2. Once they get to the point where is can detect more sophisticated hand gestures, then it might work.
3. Move the camera around in front of the monitor, and turn the laser into a 3-d grid and you could have the old-school VR-type interface without the gloves.
But as-is, I don't see people buying into it.
Seems like the cursor was floating about even when the hand changed direction. Touch screen is the only alternative until we just have a neurological interface.
OK - so why didn't the video camera shooting the YouTube video pick up the IR light?
Because that camera isn't designed to pick up that part of the spectrum. Some cameras will be able to detect infrared in black and white mode.
I really have to laugh when they try and take an input device and SHAZAM make it better! All they are doing is substituting a table surface for the mouse.
The table does not move like the mouse so you get that wonderful sensation, there is nothing revolutionary about how you tell it what you want to do, you do exactly the same basic thing you do with.. gasp, existing mice.
My physical mouse is set so sensitive I do not move my hand for some operations, merely flex my fingers. I too am skeptical for the accuracy and lack of anything tactile. Then there is one quality of the 'traditional' mouse that many attempts to 'better' it fail on, I can lift my hand away from the physical mouse and leave the pointer to be still in one place. I can also lift the mouse to 'reset' the relative location on the table - distinguishing it from a tablet device.


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Your Rock Valley home is like a book — it gets judged by its cover.
Our network of lawn care companies in Rock Valley, IA will give you a lush green lawn and can improve the overall look of your home, improving curb appeal and even increasing your property value.
In Rock Valley, IA Trugreen is our featured partner. Rock Valley homeowners can depend on TruGreen for year-round care that is specifically meant for lawns in the city of Rock Valley. Trugreen consists of lawn care experts who are highly qualified to provide the best recommendations for you and your lawn, no matter where you live in Rock Valley. A TruGreen specialist can take a look at your lawns grass type and soil condition and come up with the best lawn care service for your home.
Rock Valley homeowners can depend on Lawncare.net for year-round care that is specifically meant for lawns in the city of Rock Valley.
Lawncare.net is a team of lawn care experts who are highly qualified to provide the best recommendations for you and your lawn, no matter which part of Rock Valley you live in.

industry_corpus2: Real Estate & Construction


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Many times she filled his empty stomach but more importantly she filled a void of neglect as she took the time to teach him how to hunt squirrel and rabbit. My friend attributes this little woman with saving his life.
In 1978 Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to address the best interests of Indian children and promote stability of Indian tribes and families. The act set standards for Indian children removed from their families that reflect the unique values of Indian culture.
In 2010 an average of 300 Choctaw children in Oklahoma have been in the state’s custody. They are waiting and hoping for adoption or Foster Care. Our Choctaw children need stable homes and families that can support these standards. It is the Choctaw Nation’s belief and vision that with the help of loving, caring Choctaw homes, our families can once again become strong.
When Choctaw children fall victim to abuse or neglect, they are temporarily placed into foster care until it is appropriate to be reunified with their parents or caregiver. Throughout 2010 an average of 300 Choctaw children have been in the care and custody of the state of Oklahoma waiting and hoping for adoption or Foster Care placement.
Choctaw children need stable, safe homes that honor the Choctaw culture and can keep their traditions alive until the children can return to their homes. If the children can’t return CFS looks for permanency for the child through adoption into a home that will maintain the child’s connection to their unique Choctaw heritage.
American Indian and Alaskan Native children are over represented in the nation’s foster care system at more than 1.6 times the expected level, according to a 2007 report by the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA).
Assist the family to obtain services needed.
Provide cultural enrichment programs to foster/adoptive homes.
Actively recruit within our service area for adoptive and tribal foster homes.
Ensure that adoptive/foster care homes complete at least 12 hours of yearly continuing education in areas such as culture, parenting, foster care and adoption.
Choctaw foster families are more than just providing a home to an Indian child. They are part of a team that works toward unifying a child with their family. This includes maintaining a child’s social and cultural heritage, serving as a temporary parent to the child, and providing for their basic needs such as food, clothing and safety.
Choctaw foster families encourage the child’s family to become a stronger family unit for their child to return home, and can actively help in the reunification process. A strong foster care program exists today, but the need is greater than most people realize.
Are You Ready to Become a Choctaw Foster Family?
Some children stay in a foster home for days or weeks; some stay for several years. In other cases, children are placed permanently with another family. When out-of-home placement is needed to keep a child safe, Children and Family Services will make diligent efforts to identify, evaluate and consider relatives, family friends and those culturally tied to the family as the primary placement option.
When relatives cannot be a placement option for the child, CFS will make efforts to actively recruit and support families within the child’s home community and in as close proximity as possible to the child’s parents, to assure that the child may continue to maintain important and lasting cultural, ancestral, educational and community-based connections.
What are the requirements to become a Choctaw Nation Foster Family?
You or your spouse must be an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation.
You must ensure that no household member has a prior conviction of a sexual offense.
You must ensure that no household member has confirmed child welfare history.
Many Choctaw children who enter foster care can never be returned to their homes. Choctaw foster families who have a child in their home that becomes elgible for adoption will have first chose in adoptiong that child. That’s why the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma actively seeks Choctaw foster families to become foster/adopt parents. We are in great need of Choctaw families to open their homes and their hearts to these children. Children and Family Services is not accepting "adoption only" applications at this time.
Children and Family Services deals with two types of adoptions - children who are in a state’s custody as well as children who are eligible for private adoptions - the majority of the CFS effort is focused on Choctaw children in state custody.
The Indian Child Welfare Act requires private adoption agencies working on an adoption plan with a Choctaw family to contact us if the family is voluntarily placing a Choctaw child up for adotion. Once we are contacted, CFS will determine if the child is Indian and, if so, will submit Choctaw family home studies to the adoption agency so they can present them to the biological family. We encourage the agency to present our Choctaw homes as they would their own. We want our Choctaw children placed in Choctaw homes.
If you are interested in becoming a Choctaw foster home, please complete the application form. Please click on the link below (or the image to the right) to download and print the application form.
Children and Family Services is committed to the preservation of Choctaw Families and our heritage.

industry_corpus2: Others


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Any word on SK? I hope he can catch on somewhere at least for one more year and then maybe part of next year.
I know with every draft class his time in the league is nearing an end. But he can score so easily. there’s got to be some team that needs that.
He's active on Twitter and seems to stay pretty positive on there.
I personally would like to see him back with the Nets.
Like you I would love to see him back on a NBA roster but if that doesn't work out how about him being part Of Coach Cronin's coaching staff?
I guess that could be a possibility.
I would definitely love to see him back on the nets.

industry_corpus2: Sports


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Compared to the makeshift tents that sports brands usually use at sporting events, cycling brand Shimano’s customised mobile showroom is an impressive new kid on the block.
Described by creators as ‘The Shimano Experience‘, the blue shipping container showroom is a transportable and unique brand experience that can be dropped in at major cycling events.
Converted using shipping containers by Profile Projects, the pop-up showroom includes a display system, change room, coffee/kitchen area, bicycle workshop and wooden rooftop decking.
The Shimano Experience first appeared at the 2014 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships.
This year, it has appeared at sporting events around the country, as far afield as Adelaide, Huskisson and Cairns.
The pop-up brand experience has raised Shimano’s profile in a highly competitive market by shifting the focus at sporting events onto a portable consumer shopping experience.
The showroom is designed to be easily transportable and built entirely using durable shipping containers, which resist damaging weather and deter vermin.
The self-sufficient container is also fitted out with a power supply and air-conditioning for the hotter summer months, designed to mirror a typical consumer experience inside a Shimano retail outlet.


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Living room furniture makes a personal statement of style and décor. That is why choosing the right furniture for the living room is a crucial task for every homeowner.
If your house is based on a modern design, you will need to look for modern furniture for your living room. Various furniture designs are suitable for bungalows, traditional houses, and contemporary houses. You do not want to find yourself in the square peg in a round hole situation, given that the living room is the focal point of the entire house. In the same line of thought, it is important to choose your themes carefully, and in accordance with the house design. For instance, contemporary furniture is mainly beige or white in color.
Take measurements where possible and design the room in the best way possible, creating enough space for walkways and doorways. You need to know where to position whatever you are going to buy in the room, be it sofas, occasional chairs, coffee tables and side tables, benches, or stools. If your living room is designed in a way that allows positioning of certain furniture, take advantage of that design element. It is important to place the basics first before creating space for additional furniture.
In most cases, the choice of material and style is a matter of personal preference. Some people prefer glass coffee tables for instance, while others prefer wooden ones. The living room is a place where you take a rest from the madness of this world, so whichever material you choose, it should make you feel as close to Mother Nature as possible.
If you have pets and young children, glass furniture is not the best for you. The living room is occasionally the playing ground for pets and children, and glass furniture is dangerous to them because it is both brittle and sharp. Wooden furniture is thus more suitable in this case. Whenever you buy furniture made of fabric, choose natural fabrics that are resistant to stains. Otherwise, you will have to replace it after a short while.
be expensive for no reason, while another may be cheap because it is made of synthetic material. Here, it is up to you to decide whether quality and style matter more than cost. There is living room furniture for all classes and costs, so there is something for everyone.
All in all, go for what works for you. Don’t buy the type of living room furniture that your neighbor or friend has bought. Listen to your heart and pick your choice.


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We can trace the origins of trade unions back before modern industry and capitalism to the medieval craft guilds.
This has served to embed occupational (rather than class) interests deep within the assumptions of trade-union organisation. And this applies not just to those in craft industries, but also to those in extractive industries and the public sector.
State-socialists are therefore wide of the mark in seeing trade unionism as a stepping stone, forming a ‘united working class’ as a basis for their ideal society of public ownership and national planning. In this way, the Old Left is simply trying to make use of the unions for its own centralising purposes.
In contrast, pluralists not only accept but celebrate the occupational nature of British trade unionism. They see it as one foundation of a society based on decentralised decision-making, which will produce a welcome diversity of outcomes.
Moreover, occupational trade unionism is compatible with a number of other forms of decentralised organisation: consumers’ and producers’ cooperatives, active participation in municipal service provision, and the voluntary associations of churches and other social groups.
This was the vision of social change advocated by what we might call ‘Original Labour’, from the foundation of the party in 1900 up to its adoption of state planning after 1931: a vision which it labelled not socialism but ‘The Co-operative Commonwealth’.
On the one hand, today’s Labour Party leadership needs to be reminded of this vision of its founders, not only because that is what huge numbers of its supporters are already engaged in, but also because it has affinities with the values of potential progressive allies, such as the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
On the other hand, today’s Conservative Party leadership needs to be reminded that its claim to progressive policies, whether packaged as the ‘Big Society’ or the ‘Shared Society’, will have to allow real freedom of action for voluntary associations to pursue the interests of their members and users, not only through collective self-help, but also through political lobbying.
The first thing to stress is that trade unions in Britain have a much longer history than we might normally think. It is true that they first achieved a degree of legitimacy in wider public opinion in the 1870s, and that they later became almost another estate of the realm during and after the Second World War, but their roots in British society are much deeper and longer than this. There was something of a debate about this issue among the first historians of the field.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb in their massive History of Trade Unionism published in 1894 emphasised the differences between guilds and unions, and denied that there had been any continuity between them. This was in deliberate opposition to the view of earlier, and apparently less thoroughly informed, books by Lujo Brentano and George Howell. State-socialists such as the Webbs, and later well-known Marxist historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and Edward Thompson, wanted to see trade unions as, at least potentially, one of the major vehicles that would bring about a socialist future … so they presented them as an expression of the distinctive interests of wage workers under capitalism, inevitably in conflict with the system which had brought them into being. However, since the research of R.A. Leeson published in his book Travelling Brothers in 1979, there can be little doubt that this is simply wrong, and that Brentano and Howell were right: trade unions in Britain had a much longer pre-industrial and pre-capitalist history.
There was already a long tradition of village guilds, officially recorded in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and probably going back to very early roots in German tribal associations. These would have been broadly speaking friendly societies, that is small local informal mutual insurance clubs: indeed, it is likely that the word ‘guild’ derives from the Anglo-Saxon ‘geld’ meaning to pay or contribute. So, they collected small subscriptions as a way of spreading the risks of illness, old age and funerals; and they also periodically held social events for their members, usually on significant saints’ days. With the movement to the towns and the development of a division of labour, it was a natural step for these clubs to reorganise themselves along trade lines, giving rise to the more high-profile urban craft guilds for groups such as masons, carpenters and painters. Of course, these were not trade unions in the modern sense as they included both the small masters/employers and their skilled men/employees; and they organised themselves to protect their common interests against the merchants and thus implicitly against the consumers, trying to keep control over the quality and the price of their products, partly by controlling the number of young people admitted as new trainees.
a long-established expectation that it was legitimate to control the entry of new workers into the locality and to take direct action against any productive activity which broke their local rules. Under the guilds, these accepted practices came under the headings of ‘the power of search’, to allow the expulsion of ‘illegal’ men and the destruction of ‘deceitful’ goods. From which it is but a short step to the trade-union methods of the closed shop and the withdrawal of labour.
It is safe to think of a process of the journeymen beginning to separate from their masters and establish recognisable unions from around the middle of the seventeenth century, and it was possible for this to take place in a fairly uninterrupted way because the state in Britain was much less interventionist in economic life than its neighbours on the European continent. Just like the craft guilds before them, the early craft unions combined the provision of friendly society benefits with collective organisation to control the level of effort and pay.
Something which has already been implicit in this exploration of the deep roots of trade unionism in Britain and which should now be brought into sharper focus is their occupational basis. Again, this is in marked contrast to the widely-held assumption that they are bodies which represent class interests, aiming to challenge the capitalist system in the interest of the whole class of wage workers. On the contrary, what we have seen in the early years, and what remained characteristic of more recent times, is that British trade unions became deeply embedded representatives of occupational interests within the existing economic, social and political framework. Whether or not this was and is a good thing, or a betrayal of their true role, is a matter for debate, but however we choose to evaluate the unions it is important to recognise what they really were and still are, despite the occasional rhetoric of some of their more colourful leaders.
The craft unions, which we have seen evolving out of the guilds, carried on emphasising the provision of a wide and relatively generous range of welfare benefits for their individual members. Maintaining financial solvency for this purpose was then the main basis of their calculations about which workers to admit to their ranks, and which other bodies to amalgamate with. They could often see that they had a real interest in recruiting further down the hierarchy of skill to increase their collective bargaining power, but sometimes reckoned that would not be financially sustainable. Thus, the craft unions were not intrinsically closed or elitist organisations, but were built up along pragmatic lines.
However, there were other large groups of workers for whom this skills-based, craft model of organisation was not appropriate. For, while some of the workers in ‘process’ industries such as coal and cotton did have relatively high levels of aptitude, their skills were tied to the particular sector they were trained to operate in, and indeed usually to a particular pit or mill. This crucial difference meant they could not use labour mobility as a threat or as a source of financial support during industrial disputes. Moreover, since skills in these industries were picked up simply by observation on the job, it was almost impossible to control the large numbers of potential strike breakers already in place among those juniors and assistants who had been working near them and watching them for years. Having initially tried to copy the methods of the craft unions, these process workers only really made headway with self-organisation when they began to function as pressure groups for favourable national legislation over such issues as shorter working hours and improved safety from the 1840s through to the 1880s. Indeed, once this strategy had been adopted, the stability and geographical concentration of these workforces turned out to be a positive advantage, for the miners and cotton workers were able to dominate the electorates in their parliamentary constituencies and eventually (after the electorate was widened for a third time in 1884) get significant numbers of their own MPs elected to parliament.
While this was indeed the emergence of a new sort of trade unionism, it was no more based on working-class opposition to capitalism than craft unionism was. Thus, the nationalisations of British industry which eventually came after 1945 were not the beginning of a new society, but rather the culmination of a long tradition of pressure through existing parliamentary processes on behalf of particular groups of workers. For, of course, the process workers’ unions were in their own way occupationally specific: each one separately represented the interests of coalminers, cotton operatives, and steelworkers. As a result, when those industries went into long-term decline over the course of the twentieth century the once mighty unions went with them. In 1920 there were 1.2 million coalminers and almost a million members of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain: today there are no more deep coal mines, open-cast mines employ only a few thousand men, and the National Union of Miners has an active membership of around 100, many of whom are its paid officials. Similarly, in cotton in 1920 there were over half a million workers and the powerful spinners’ union had 50,000 members: today the Lancashire textile industry has just about disappeared, and indeed the union was formally dissolved in 1970. Even the best survivor from this era, the steel industry, grew for much of the twentieth century but only to see its terminal decline postponed: the workforce has fallen from around 300,000 in the 1970s to under 20,000 today; and the massive Iron and Steel Trades Confederation formed in 1917, and growing to over 100,000 members, has now been replaced by Community with only 20,000 members in total, including many in other occupations. This is one of the most remarkable changes in the British trade-union movement to have taken place over the course of the twentieth century; another, and quite closely linked, one being the rise in the proportion of trade union members who are women, often with a higher education.
So we now have two main historic forms of trade unionism in Britain, both based on occupational interests and loyalties: craft unions organising specific groups with clearly defined skills which could be transferred between firms involved in assembly work, such as joiners, painters, engineers, electricians; and what we might call ‘seniority’ unions (because of the way their members’ skills were picked up by progression), aiming to organise all the workers in particular process industries, such as coal mining and textiles.
But this still left large numbers of other workers unorganised, especially among those who did not so much produce things as move them around or provide the public utilities required by the new urban environment: so here we are thinking especially of carters, dockers and gasworkers. As the reserves of rural labour began to dry up in the late-nineteenth century the informal bargaining power and the prospects of trade-union organisation among these groups improved. Partly because so many of them were working in the centres of the large cities, and partly because it was a surprise to see them becoming more assertive, the ‘New Unionism’ of the late 1880s and 1890s did indeed seem like a highly dramatic departure from tradition. However, this can be highly misleading if it is taken too much at face value. The longer-term sustainability of these organisations still depended on particular occupational circumstances. Thus, those that survived the initial burst of enthusiasm tended to focus on specific groups such as the stevedores, who did the more specialised ship-board work on the docks, and to scoop up random groups of workers from their less successful rivals.
This remained characteristic of the structures of the so-called ‘general’ unions as they became better established over the twentieth century, in large part because of labour shortages during the two world wars. Actually, they did not become general unions for the whole workforce, nor even for all of the less skilled in particular industries, so it makes sense to think of them instead as ‘federal’ unions, not because they had federal constitutions, but because they recruited loose federations of different types of workers. The Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), for example, in its heyday had to maintain separate ‘Trade Groups’. Then in 2007 when it merged with Amicus, already an amalgamation of mostly craft unions with the engineers as its backbone, to form ‘Unite the union’ (now the biggest of Britain’s union with almost 1.5 million members), it had to set up a very complex internal structure of committees for distinct sectors of employment. The TGWU’s main rival was the General and Municipal Workers’ Union which anticipated the formation of Unite by over twenty years when it amalgamated with the craft boilermakers and renamed itself the ‘GMB’ in 1982. Now with over half a million members, it continues with its traditional method of dealing with its highly diverse recruitment through a robust structure of regional organisation. For the sake of completeness, we should also consider the third of Britain’s massive unions, the relatively new Unison formed in 1993, now with around 1.3 million members, covering all types of workers in the public sector and divided into distinct ‘Service Groups’.
Alongside the disappearance of the seniority industries and organisations, and the rise of female membership, this is the third outstanding feature of the current trade union scene in Britain: the emergence of three massive federal conglomerates, each with a complex internal structure to cope with the diversity of its members’ interests.
If the state-socialist view of British trade unions as based on class interest is so misleading, is there any alternative approach we might use in its place? Actually, there is one, not so widely appreciated but just as long-standing and much more helpful, both as a form of analysis and as a form of prescription: the approach of pluralism. This view embraces diversity in two main ways: firstly, in terms of a variety of forms of organisation and secondly, in terms of the role of those organisations in the wider society. Thus, whereas Fabians, such as the Webbs, saw an inevitable line of evolution leading towards gradualist ‘legislative enactment’, while Marxists, such as Hobsbawm and Thompson, saw a similar line of evolution leading towards a revolutionary ‘transition to socialism’; the pluralists tried to understand how different types of unions have served, and could and should, continue to serve, the interests of different groups of workers. In addition, rather than working towards a uniform society under the control of a socialist state, whether social democratic or communist, the pluralists advocated that trade unions have formed, and could and should continue to form, a permanent opposition within the sphere of employment, mainly against unilateral control by their employers but also, when necessary, against the intervention of the state. From this perspective, it becomes clear that the state-socialist intellectuals of the past and the hard left of today are both in the end simply using trade unions: however sincere they are in their pursuit of the interests of working people, their future state will require the subordination, or even the dissolution, of the unions. Pluralists on the other hand have a more direct and transparent agenda, championing collective organisation and collective bargaining as ends in themselves: accepting, and indeed hoping for, a plurality not only of types of organisation but also of centres of power within society.
The first explicit pluralist position was laid out just before and during the First World War by G.D.H. Cole, one of the leading intellectuals of ‘Guild Socialism’, advocating a counterweight to the growth of the state in the form of workers’ control of the organisation of industry. This built on the optimism of a period of rapid trade-union growth. However, as the interwar depression worsened, the wind went out of the union sails and Guild Socialism collapsed. Nevertheless, it had attracted a number of other leading public intellectuals, including R.H. Tawney, Bertrand Russell and Harold Laski, with Laski in particular continuing to have a significant influence through his role as a professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) where his pupils in the 1920s included Walter Milne-Bailey, head of the research department at the Trades Union Congress (TUC). Milne-Bailey in turn produced a book on Trade Unions and the State in 1931, not particularly high-profile but widely enough read by those who were interested in such things to have passed the pluralist torch on to a younger generation: in the form of Allan Flanders, who also worked at the TUC research department, and Hugh Clegg, who was a pupil of Cole’s at Oxford.
Flanders, Clegg and a number of other colleagues then became what was for a while known as the ‘Oxford School’ of industrial relations, founded on the core principle of pluralism rather than state control, and exercising a decisive influence on the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations under Lord Donovan which sat for three years beginning in 1965, then reporting in 1968. This Donovan Report, with its central recommendations drafted by Clegg, effectively restrained the impulses of those on the left of the Labour Party, such as Barbara Castle, who wanted more government intervention in industrial relations. The key recommendation of the Royal Commission was to leave the ‘voluntarist’ inheritance of British industrial relations intact, and indeed to strengthen it at the grass roots by recognising new forms of adversarial bargaining such as the shop stewards, then particularly powerful, and potentially disruptive, in the Midlands motor industry. Thus, the traditional jostling for position of employers and unions through collective bargaining and individual actions in the common-law courts was to be left untouched.
Of course, this was not to be a permanent settlement, as the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 led to a gradual but relentless process of statutory legislation which added up to an unprecedented government intervention in what had for the previous three hundred years been a largely self-regulating part of British society. But the current general neglect of the pluralist tradition is highly unfortunate, for it not only overlooks a significant force in twentieth century British history but also leads to a serious misunderstanding of our present predicament. For the Donovan Report of 1968 was in effect a victory of pluralism over state-socialism. Thus, the extension of the legal restriction over union organisation which came under Margaret Thatcher ten years later was not, as she declared, a victory over ‘the enemy within’ and a rolling back of state-socialism, but just the opposite: a determined assault on the freedom of association and the deliberate destruction of a long tradition of liberalism in a central arena of British society. It is, therefore, no coincidence that an accelerating sense of unease over the collapse of participation in public life has accompanied the entrenchment of so-called ‘neo-liberalism’.
Another of Laski’s pupils at the LSE in the interwar years was Michael Young, best known nowadays as the seminal influence behind the foundation of the Open University. But Young started out on the staff of the Labour Party’s research department and was the major draftsman of the 1945 election manifesto. Not that he decided everything that was in it but, given his closeness to the centre of the party’s policymaking, it is striking how quickly he had become disillusioned with its iconic post-war achievements already by the late 1940s. For Young was dismayed by the bureaucratic nature of the nationalisation of industries and the centralised welfare state, and he was dismayed by the refusal of Labour’s senior figures to take seriously his advocacy of consumers as an important interest group to recognise alongside the producers organised in trade unions. After he quit the research department and the party, the first of his many innovations as a multifaceted social entrepreneur was therefore to set up the Consumers' Association and its high-profile magazine Which? in 1957. Young then went on to champion families, neighbourhoods and formative learning experiences in an updated version of ethical socialism: aiming to change society from the bottom up, by changing its individual members, rather than from the top down, by passing parliamentary legislation.
This sort of ethical-socialist experimentation with small-scale communities, usually run on a shoe-string, is clearly very different from the organisation of workers in national unions with large financial reserves, capable of effective bargaining with employers and the state. But placing them alongside each other as two aspects of the British tradition of pluralism is not quite as eccentric as it might at first seem. For in the nineteenth century this was exactly how trade unionists themselves envisaged desirable progress: in the days when they formed the popular backbone of Gladstonian Liberalism their ideal society was to be organised, not by the central state, but by the unions themselves alongside consumers’ and producers’ cooperatives, and municipal reforms, decided and controlled at the local level, often by working class women activists. This indeed remained the vision of the early Labour Party even after its famous adoption of a socialist clause in the constitution of 1918, for what we can think of as ‘Original Labour’ still saw the future in traditional radical-liberal terms and labelled its vision not socialism but ‘The Co-operative Commonwealth’.
The change to what we now think of as ‘Old Labour’ came as a result of the interwar depression and the political crisis of 1931, and was consolidated by the government controls of the Second World War: so that the party and the unions came increasingly to redefine both their goals and their methods in terms of national economic policy managed by the central state, rather than local social improvement managed by the municipalities in collaboration with a network of civil society organisations.
Another very important contributory factor in this transformation of ‘Original Labour’ into ‘Old Labour’ was the decline of religious affiliation and church attendance, for in the earlier years the leaders of the various wings of ‘the labour movement’ had also been held together by their joint membership of Protestant Nonconformist denominations. There is a famous catchphrase that ‘the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than to Marxism’, attractive for its alliteration and partly true, but actually the early Labour Party owed more to Congregationalism and Presbyterianism than to Methodism. In addition to the general Christian ethic of brotherhood, the adoption of decentralisation and local democracy in these churches had a powerful influence on their working-class members. Thus, it was no coincidence that the foundation conference of the Labour Party in 1900 should have been held in Memorial Hall in London: which had been built by the Congregationalists in 1862 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Act of Uniformity which restored the Anglican church after the Cromwellian Commonwealth; in turn leading to the refusal of two thousand Puritan ministers to take the requisite oath and thus to the foundation of modern Protestant Nonconformity.
The trade unions in Britain are, then, the heirs of two long-standing traditions of civil liberties: the medieval liberties of the urban guilds, free to regulate their occupations without outside interference; and the insistence on freedom of conscience and local democracy, won through two hundred years of struggle by the religious Nonconformists. Looking back in a European context, it is remarkable to observe how these traditions survived what we might call the ‘three world wars’ of 1793-1815, 1914-1918 and 1939-45 in large, and increasingly larger, part because of the contributions of the unions and their members to the British war efforts. The appropriate place of trade unions today is, therefore, not to serve as stepping stones towards state-socialism, or to be stripped of all their autonomy by intrusive ‘neo-liberal’ legislation; but rather to flourish as one effective form of voluntary association alongside many others, within a free, diverse and self-governing society.
Ackers, P., and Reid, A.J., (eds), Alternatives to State-Socialism in Britain. Other Worlds of Labour in the Twentieth Century (London, 2016).
Biagini, E.F., and Reid, A.J., (eds), Currents of Radicalism. Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850-1914 (Cambridge, 1991).
Leeson, R.A., Travelling Brothers. The Six Centuries’ Road from Craft Fellowship to Trade Unionism (London, 1979).
Milne-Bailey, W., Trade Unions and the State (London, 1934).
Reid, A.J., United We Stand. A History of Britain’s Trade Unions (London, 2004).
Alastair J. Reid is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. In 2002 he was one of the co-founders of History & Policy, and in 2009 one of the founding convenors of its Trade Union Forum.
Trade unions and the law - history and a way forward?
Trade unions: a foundation of political pluralism?


text:
I am writing to enquire about the following item which I saw on the William Walter Antique Silver website: "Reference W80x26 - A Large George III Sterling Silver Salver"
This superb extra-large George III Antique Sterling Silver Salver is of circular form with a shaped moulded edge which is an unusual design for the 18th century. The Salver is raised on four everted scrolled feet. The center is engraved with an elaborate cartouche containing the crest of George Pitt 1st Baron Rivers of Stratfield Saye . (Later owned by the Duke of Wellington from 1817). Dimensions 18.30 inches, 46.5 cm Weight 71.34 oz. This is one of the largest Salvers ever made by Matthew Boulton & John Fothergill .


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Newjojie, Bella, & Tinkerbell – A smiley selfie before the race!
This morning, despite losing an hour of sleep to Daylight Savings Time, Tinkerbell, NewJojie, and I all met at 7:30am to head to the Mardi Gras Madness 5K, which benefited the Leukemia & Lymphoma society. NewJojie is a wonderful lady I met on MyFitnessPal who has been supporting me (and Tinkerbell) for over a year. After Tink and I did the Jenny’s Light 5K, NewJojie emailed me and said to let her know when our next 5K was, because she’d drive the two hours from her house to meet us and join in on the fun. Can you believe that she was willing to drive 4 hours total (2 hours here, 2 hours back) just to meet us and do a 5K?! How special!
It doesn’t take much for Tink and I to plan a cute race outfit, but knowing that NewJojie was putting in that much effort, we had to make these extra special. Tink found these awesome, purple, sparkly running skirts from Rock City Skirts, as well as a cool iron-on Fleur-de-lis that said “Laissez les bons temps rouler!” (Let the good times roll!) on it, and because Mardi Gras colors are purple and green, she found cool green Calvin Klein Jeans tanks at Marshall’s (mine’s a L!!). We were all set to turn heads for this race!
You can’t tell from this pic, but the skirt is sparkly, adding just the right amount of Mardi Gras bling to the morning.
Everyone who saw us told us how much they loved our skirts, our matching outfits, our entire look. It was fun to hear before the race, and even better as we were running the 5K.
I woke up way before my alarm, probably because I was so worried that I’d have a hard time getting up and losing the hour. So I had a leisurely morning starting at 4:30am – time to shower, get dressed, begin writing my weigh-in blog post, and have half a cup of coffee before I left.
It wouldn’t be a race day if I didn’t take my ritual bathroom selfie before leaving the house for the race.
Since they were handing out bibs and shirts on race day, we wanted to make sure to get down to the race with plenty of time to spare. What would we do with the extra time? Take pre-finish photos, of course! Our thinking was that we wanted make sure we got a good shot with the Finish line in the background.
I love the cool angle Newjojie used for this pic!
Then it was time to put down the phone cameras and get ready to race. Newjojie and Tinkerbell are both more experienced runners than I am, but they were sweet and agreed to run at my pace, which was 2min run/1min walk. On the treadmill my pace for the run is 4.5mph and the walk is 3.5mph and it’s a great pace. I feel strong and comfortable. Outside, it’s a whole other story.
I always start out too quickly when I’m running outside, and today was no different. In fact, I’d shot ahead so fast that Tinkerbell told Newjojie, “just let her go” with a smile. I’d warned them both that the momentum and adrenaline gets to me at the beginning of a race and I go much faster than I can sustain for an entire race. And within a minute or so, I realized I needed to slow down and go at a more moderate pace. Tinkerbell matched my pace, and Newjojie was leading our way, a few paces ahead of us.
We were running for what seemed like forever, and I was wondering why my interval timer hadn’t beeped to indicate we should start walking when I looked down and discovered it wasn’t on. Doh!! I apologized, turned it on, and we started the true run/walk.
The beginning of the race, until about mile 1.3 was good. I was running well, and felt strong. And then right before the turnaround, my breath became more labored and I was having a much harder time with the runs. Being outside is just so much more difficult, and I probably should’ve paced myself even slower so that I didn’t get that slight burning feeling in my lungs when I ran. But all it took was Tink holding my hand and encouraging me during one of the walking portions for me to know I was going to keep this up, even if I had to slow down a bit to do it. Twice, I stopped my run portion about 30 seconds early, apologizing profusely to Tinkerbell and Newjojie, as I told them to run ahead without me and I’d catch up. Tink told me I had nothing to apologize for, and she and Newjojie actually did a loop around to meet me at my pace when I was back to my run. What awesome running pals these two are!
Newjojie snapped this action shot of us.
Once we hit 2.85 miles, I felt a renewed energy. We agreed we’d continue the run/walk pace until we could see the finish line in sight, and then we’d run into the finish line, as Carina taught me. It must be a surge of adrenaline that comes with that FINISH sign, because I felt amazing as we ran into it!!
The race organizers captured this great shot of the three of us running into the finish line (bottom left). They loved our outfits so much that they used the pic on their FB wall. How cool is that?!
After the race, with water and banana in hands.
All told, I hit another PR today!! I completed the race in 42:21.44, which is a pace of 13:39/mile! That’s 3.87 minutes quicker than my pace at the Hot Chocolate 5K in SF!!!!! I’m so proud of myself! It goes to show that I’m much too hard on myself when I’m running. I was getting so down on myself and frustrated that breathing was getting challenging and that I had to add 30 seconds to my walk a couple of times. In reality, I had my best time yet, so I need to cut myself a break on the next 5K and really just enjoy the day. I would’ve never been able to do any of this 126 pounds ago, so I need to relish that fact!
Beyond my personal accomplishment, the best part of the day was doing the 5K with these amazing ladies. Tinkerbell is one of my best friends, and now Newjojie has become an “in-real-life” friend, too. We’re already planning our next 5K, when Tink and I will drive up to Newjojie’s neck of the woods. I can’t wait!!
This morning FaveCousin, KE, and I woke up before dawn in order to participate in the SF Hot Chocolate 5K, benefiting Ronald McDonald House. I’d first heard about the Hot Chocolate 5K back when I went to the SJ RocknRoll expo. The name sounded so fun, and I knew it would be a great way to start off the new year. I was so happy that FaveCousin wanted to do it with me and said I could stay overnight with her. She and I had a good time at the Mermaid, and this time KE (FaveCousin’s cousin’s wife (in Italian families things can get complicated)) was going to do it with us, adding to the fun.
It was freezing this morning in Golden Gate Park, but after yesterday’s drizzly weather, we were glad that it was clear. I am so glad that I had the wherewithal to bring my earmuff headband (is that what you call it?), because it helped keep me a bit warmer.
Check out the cool technical hoodie they gave us as a race shirt. I’m so proud that I fit into a Women’s XL.
For me, the worst part of any 5K is waiting for the race to start. To get myself in the right frame of mind and get past my nervousness about running more of the 5K than I ever have before, I got my playlist going. Music is phenomenal for calming nerves isn’t it?
The line of people waiting behind me to get this 5K started!
Soon enough, we were at the starting line. The pic on the left is the one I took, the one on the right is the one from the 5K’s FB page. For a small race that few people had heard of, there sure were a lot of us out there.
The thing I didn’t really think about when planning my 5min run/3min walk intervals was the fact that this is SF, and even in Golden Gate Park, which is relatively flat compared to some streets in the city, it still has some steep inclines. It became pretty clear to me that I was going to have to wing it – I ran as long as I could and walked when I needed to. I made sure that I was running at every down hill slope and I pushed myself to walk as fast and hard as I could during the inclines. In fact, I was walking fast enough that I was passing some of the slower joggers. I know I’m going to feel some of that tomorrow. So while I didn’t keep my intervals perfectly timed or regulated, I am proud of what I did out there today.
Look at these beautiful views that I got to enjoy while I was out there today. San Francisco is such a gorgeous city!
I mean, c’mon: “It’s not where you are, but where you’re going. It’s not about the things you’ve done, it’s what you’re doing now.” These were the absolute perfect lyrics to keep my feet running even after my body told me I was getting tired. I was completely inspired. (Both songs are on the Wogging My World mix from RockMyRun, if you’re interested).
And just was the song was finishing, I saw the mile 3 marker and the Finish line in the distance. I took knew I was going to run myself through that line no matter what. Talk about a moment of pride!
In fact, I was so overcome at the end of this race for all that I’d just done, that I got really emotional again. Tears in the eyes and everything. I almost went into the ugly cry, but stopped myself. It just hits me every time I run a new race about how far I’ve come, all that I’ve accomplished, and how grateful I am for this new life I’ve created for myself.
I think you can see the tears in my eyes in this shot.
Soon after, I met up with FaveCousin and KE, and we all enjoyed our Finisher’s Mug of chocolate fondue, complete with the fixings – a mini rice krispie treat, a petite banana, some mini pretzels, and a marshmallow, along with a steaming mug of hot chocolate. I allowed myself a bit of the fondue with the banana, rice krispy, and marshmallow, but skipped the hot chocolate and the pretzels. So delicious!
The entire race was so well run and organized that I’ll definitely do it again next year. If it comes to a city near you, I highly recommend that you join in on all the fun.
Oh, and the sweetest part? I shaved 2 minutes and 50 seconds off of my Santa Run time, even with all the inclines in this race!!! I completed this one in 46 minutes, 8 seconds – a new PR!!


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I am reasonably tall, good figured man with fair skin. I am very caring, honest, open, friendly, respectful. I love beaches, movies, walking, window shopping. I like to see that women are treated nicely and as equals. I like to make a woman happy.
I am looking for a nice figured woman who speaks a bit of English, is gentle, loving and caring. I like to have someone who has same interests as I do. I am looking to have intimate relationship for long time. It is important that the woman likes to be treated as equal. I am looking to come to Thailand in next few months and would like to spend time with the woman to go around Thailand and have fun.


text:
FREEHOLD – A South Jersey man was sentenced to 10 years in state prison for his role in an April 2014 fatal motor vehicle collision that took the life of a 21-year-old Howell women, announced Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni.
Edwin Martinez, 24, of Camden, was sentenced Friday to a term of 10 years in a New Jersey state prison, subject to the provisions of the “No Early Release Act” (NERA) requiring that he must serve 85 percent of any sentence imposed prior to becoming eligible for parole on the Vehicular Homicide. He also received a three year concurrent sentence on the Assault by Auto. Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Joseph W. Oxley imposed the sentence pursuant to a negotiated plea. Martinez also lost his driver’s license for five years.
Martinez pleaded guilty in March to first degree Vehicular Homicide in a School Zone, third degree Assault by Auto, and a motor vehicle summons for Driving While Intoxicated before Judge Oxley. In compliance with the plea agreement, the State dismissed the remaining counts of the Indictment that remained against Martinez.
The fatal collision occurred shortly after 2 a.m. on April 20, 2014 at the intersection of 8th Avenue and Route 35 in Belmar. A joint investigation by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, Monmouth County Serious Collision Analysis Response Team (SCART) and the Belmar Police Department revealed Martinez was the driver of a Honda Civic, where the victim was a passenger.
Prior to the fatal crash, the victim arrived at Connolly Station, located on 8th Avenue in Belmar, to pick up Martinez. Instead of getting into the passenger side and allowing the victim to drive, Martinez entered the driver’s side door and sped away from the bar on 8th Avenue toward Route 35. As Martinez approached the intersection at 8th Avenue and Route 35, he ignored the red traffic light, entering Route 35 where he lost control of the car causing the victim, his passenger, to be ejected from the car sending her into the Shark River.
First responders located the victim, removed her from the river and transported her to Jersey Shore University Medical Center, where she eventually succumbed to her injuries. Martinez was also transported to Jersey Shore University Medical Center to be treated for injuries he sustained.
A blood sample taken from Martinez after the crash revealed his Blood Alcohol Concentration was .207 percent, more than two-and-a-half times the legal limit in New Jersey.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant Prosecutor Meghan Doyle. Martinez is represented by John Klamo, Esq., of Cherry Hill.

industry_corpus2: Law & Justice


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Researchers are now gathered for the Perdigão field campaign, an effort to study wind flow physics at scales down to tens of meters. The effort should help engineers harness wind energy in Europe.
Right now, dozens of scientists from the European Union and the United States have converged on central Portugal’s picturesque Vale Cobrão, a valley nestled within a double ridge (Figure 1). They have gathered to conduct a field campaign designed to understand wind energy physics and improve short-time predictability of airflow in mountainous terrain.
Researchers also hope to create a new digital wind atlas of Europe.
Drawing its name from the town nearest the project location, the field campaign has been dubbed Perdigão, which means partridge in Portuguese. One of five similar campaigns that spread across Europe, Perdigão aims to provide the wind energy sector tools to map wind vectors at spatial resolutions on the order of tens to hundreds of meters and temporal resolutions from seconds to hours (the so-called microscales). With these tools, researchers also hope to extrapolate observations and create a new digital wind atlas of Europe.
To help accomplish these goals, researchers are monitoring the Vale Cobrão for 45 days, will combine their data with longer-term observations of the region, and then will use the complete set of observations to create new models or refine existing ones. Once validated, the models will map wind resources at resolutions that the energy sector needs so that it can more efficiently determine where to locate industrial windmills and predict wind strength, duration, and direction hours in advance.
Until recently, practical applications like routine weather prediction, air pollution, aviation, and Alpine warfare drove mountain meteorology research. For these purposes, wind prediction at mesoscale resolution (on the order of a few kilometers in space and hours to days in time) is generally sufficient. Consequently, there have been a host of field and modeling studies at these scales [Fernando et al., 2015].
Now, however, the rapid increase in wind energy production and threats from airborne contamination demand improved predictive accuracy at microscales. For example, gustiness is an unsteady phenomenon due to instabilities and turbulence arising at microscales and is a major factor determining mechanical longevity of wind turbines. Another challenge is the volatility, or rapid variability, of winds [Giebel et al., 2011], particularly on two timescale windows, one determining turbine control (milliseconds to tens of seconds) and the other related to integration of turbine power to the electric grid (minutes to weeks).
Scales of 1 hour or less are not usually monitored in practice. This lack of monitoring contributes, in some cases, to uncertainties in wind predictions that exceed 100%. Detailed observations on this scale are rare, and Perdigão is designed to fill this niche. The project is particularly important in view of the European Union’s vision of increasing its wind energy share of total energy consumption from the current 16.5% to 25% by 2030. The United States aspires to increase its share to 20% by 2030, up from the current 6%.
Perdigão will survey a swath of the Cobrão valley approximately 6 kilometers long and 2 kilometers wide. Depending on where one is in this valley, wind speeds at 10 meters above ground typically can range from 1 to 5 meters per second. At 200 meters above the ridgetop, wind can flow as fast as 10–15 meters per second.
An important design consideration is to collect a rich set of flow and turbulence data particularly relevant for positioning wind turbines.
Vertically, instruments pointed or ascended upward will extend measurements to tens of kilometers, up into the stratosphere, with dense measurements up to several kilometers above the ridge height (which in itself is about 500 meters above the plain below). An important design consideration is to collect a rich set of flow and turbulence data extending from the surface to 300 meters above ground level, particularly relevant for positioning wind turbines.
A pilot experiment conducted by the European Union (EU) group in May–June 2015 with three lidar systems scanning the valley provided critical insights for designing the Perdigão campaign. The results guided the instrument placement to best capture diurnal flow variability, thermal circulation, turbine wake, and topographic effects.
Perdigão’s instrument array is uniquely dense (Figure 2) and includes 54 flux towers with heights of 10–100 meters that hold sonic anemometers for measuring mean flow, turbulence, and fluxes; thermistor arrays; LiCORs® to measure carbon dioxide and water vapor; and radiometers to measure incoming, outgoing, and net radiation. Augmenting the flux towers are state-of-the-art remote sensors to measure flow (sound detection and ranging systems, or sodars; lidars; and radar wind profilers) as well as temperature and humidity (microwave radiometers, radio acoustic sounding systems, atmospheric emitted radiation interferometers, differential absorption (water vapor) lidar, and ceilometers). Other platforms such as tethered lifting systems that help make profiles of fine-scale turbulence, microbarographs and nanobarographs that record pressure and acoustic propagation, and radiosondes that help capture vertical profiles of wind vectors, temperature, and relative humidity are also used.
The Perdigão deployment promises a leap forward from the early microscale experiments conducted in the late 1970s, such as the landmark Askervein (Scotland) experiment. Askervein focused on flow past a single hill, and the data set is still used extensively. Building on the contributions of Askervein, the double-ridge study at Perdigão will deploy 67 sonic anemometers, compared with 28 at Askervein.
Even more significant, Perdigão capitalizes on recent advances in remote sensing to probe the lower atmosphere in innovative ways. The campaign’s lidar coverage in particular is unparalleled, with 30 scanning and profiling units operating to map the valley atmosphere in coordinated or autonomous modes. In a major leap from previous field studies, the average and turbulent velocity fields will be measured by six triumvirates of scanning Doppler lidars at 25- to 75-meter resolution.
The pooled, coordinated measurement and modeling capabilities of investigators from the EU and the United States will provide a holistic view of microscale processes in complex terrain. The current Perdigão effort is cofunded by ERANET+, an EU funding instrument, and by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Physical and Dynamical Meteorology Program. The EU program (€13 million) spans 2014–2019 and includes five field programs in Europe, with Perdigão being the most comprehensive. The U.S. counterpart ($3.4 million) will focus only on the entire Perdigão project, from experimental setup to observations to data analysis, during 2016–2019.
Perdigão’s extended observation period with limited instrument deployment started in December 2016, and an intense operation period with “all systems go” started on 1 May and will continue through 15 June 2017.
Vale Cobrão offers unique scientific features. The ridges are approximately parallel, and airflow is predominantly perpendicular to ridges. Frequent flow reversals also occur.
The reversals of flow allow scientists to capture multiple scenarios involving topography in a single observation period. The valley’s size is equivalent to one grid box for a mesoscale model, so the researchers hope to study how a mesoscale model can be downscaled to microscales, ensuring adequate spin-up of the microscale model congruent with the coarser mesoscale model.
The campaign site experiences significant seasonal variability, as recorded over several years by a meteorological station on a ridge. Deformities such as canyons and ridge gaps will allow researchers to study how inhomogeneities in topography influence wind patterns. Plus, repeated tessellations of land use (e.g., farms and managed forests scattered throughout the area) will allow researchers to examine microcirculation: the wind’s fine-scale relationships to surface roughness, temperature variations, and other factors. The site also has one existing full-scale windmill, allowing researchers to study wind features in the windmill turbine’s wake without confounding interference from other turbines’ wakes encountered in typical wind farms.
In all, Vale Cobrão is a dream observatory for modelers and observers alike.
The Perdigão project is a giant step forward in gathering massive data sets in complex terrain.
The Perdigão project is a giant step forward in gathering massive data sets in complex terrain at microscale using cutting-edge measurement platforms, probing down to a spatial resolution of meters and timescales of deciseconds. The outcomes will include improved wind energy and microscale physics in complex terrain and new model-usable parameterizations. Researchers hope eventually to scale up models to help develop wind maps spanning all of Europe with spatial resolution of tens to hundreds of meters.
The researchers hope that the Perdigão field campaign will lead to a “gold standard” data set for high-fidelity microscale simulations and forecasting as well as process studies. The broad scientific community will be able to join the data analysis after quality assurance and quality control are completed, which is expected to be in about 1 year. For more information, see the project’s website.
Perdigão’s EU group is headed by Jakob Mann of the Technical University of Denmark, with Jose Palma of University of Porto as the Portuguese lead principal investigator. Other European participants include DLR (Germany), INEGI (Portugal), and the Portuguese Meteorological Service (IPMA). The U.S. group includes the University of Notre Dame (lead); the University of Colorado Boulder (colead); Cornell University; the University of Oklahoma; the University of California, Berkeley; and the Army Research Laboratory. The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s (NCAR) Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) is providing logistical, scientific, and data support as well as an array of measurement equipment. We thank the 50+ scientists, students, and technical staff who have committed to the field campaign, along with generous support from the area municipalities and landowners.
Fernando, H. J. S., at al. (2015), The MATERHORN: Unraveling the intricacies of mountain weather, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 96(11), 1945–1967, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00131.1.
Giebel, G., et al. (2011), The state of the art in short-term prediction of wind power: A literature overview, 2nd ed., technical report, 36 pp., ANEMOS.plus, ANEMOS Consortium, https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.2581.4485.
—Harindra J. S. Fernando (email: [email protected]), University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Ind.; Julie K. Lundquist, University of Colorado Boulder; and Steven Oncley, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo.
Citation: Fernando, H. J. S., J. K. Lundquist, and S. Oncley (2017), Monitoring wind in Portugal’s mountains down to microscales, Eos, 98, https://doi.org/10.1029/2017EO074745. Published on 31 May 2017.

industry_corpus2: Power & Energy


text: Dr. Daniel Joseph “D.J.” Verret was born and raised in the heart of Cajun country, Lafayette, LA. He attended Tulane University where he earned a degree in biomedical engineering with honors. He went on to attend the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas for both his medical degree and residency training. For further refinement of his skills, he applied for and was awarded one of only 38 nationwide one year fellowships through the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. After living in the Dallas Metroplex for nine years, Dr. Verret became enamored with the area and moved back to Plano to open his practice. Dr. Verret continues to stay abreast of the latest innovations in facial plastic surgery through attendance at various local, national, and international facial plastic surgery meetings. He regularly teaches at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and volunteers at various local civic organizations. He has been invited to speak at national and international facial plastic surgery meetings and he has been rewarded with numerous peer reviewed articles and book chapters. Dr. Verret is double board certified by the American Board of Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, the American Board of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, and fellowship trained in facial plastic surgery.

industry_corpus2: Health & Medicine


text:
SJP leaders are setting to work immediately to plan a new series of events and a renewed presence on campus, invigorated by the gains in membership and attention made during the suspension.
The lawyers from the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild who have been assisting SJP will continue to monitor the university’s treatment of SJP. “SJP’s reinstatement is a victory for freedom of expression which is a crucial aspect to any quality university,” said ACLU attorney Sarah Wunsch.

industry_corpus2: Subject Education


text:
This beautiful wood panel print is the perfect accent for your kitchen or living room! Features stunning reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper. Large size makes this piece suitable anywhere in your home or even in your chapel! Made in Italy.
18" x 9.5" x 0.5"


text: So if you desire to be captivated, mesmerized, adored and truly appreciated. All while having the time of your life then I am the tantalizing temptress for you. You will never be disappointed in the time that we spend together. I am reliable, punctual, discreet, and I will always value your time and privacy. You will be satisfied when you see me, I promise.


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It’s that age-old dilemma: Christmas at home by the fireside, or on a sunlounger under the sun? This Christmas, around 71% of holidaymakers aged 51 or over will be heading out for some winter sunshine, according to a new survey by UK travel retailer Holiday Hypermarket.
The survey also reveals the top destination for this Christmas – it’s top timeshare favourite Tenerife! And out of the 71%, 81% who confirmed they’d be jetting off were couples, indicating that they’ll be away from their families for at least part of the holiday.
Tenerife topped the list with almost one quarter, 24% of those surveyed, saying they’ll be flying to the island on 20 December.
However, the go abroad trend seems to “end” in the fifties, as holidaymakers in their sixties indicated that instead they’d mainly be staying close to home. This age group makes up just 14% of bookings for Christmas in the sun this year.
Traditionally, the most popular Christmas sunshine destinations are: The Canary Islands (Tenerife, Lanzarote and Gran Canaria, with Fuerteventura more popular with the windsurfing crowd), Malaga, with its cheap, wide network of flights in and out, Cyprus, a perennial favourite, and for longer haul trips, Florida. Some California destinations like Palm Springs and Las Vegas, which are dry and warm in winter, are also regular destination picks at this time of year.
Marrakech is also a favourite for guaranteed winter sun with constant daytime temps in the mid 20s and it is fast becoming a winter sun long weekend destination for those who don’t have time to take off a week but can hop on a 3.5hr flight from the UK on a Friday (a shorter flight than the Canary Islands) and be back home on Monday night.
One theory why couples in their sixties stay home (with just 14% spending Christmas abroad this year, according to the research) is that they may want to spend the holiday season with the grandchildren.
However, why the number of winter sun holidaymakers drops at the age of 60 plus is something of a mystery.
Will you be going away this Christmas, taking a staycation or celebrating at home to avoid the Christmas airport chaos? Tweet us at @Gotimeshare.

industry_corpus2: Travel & Geography


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Why Are Little Ones So Obsessed with Halifax seo.
Website Marketing Is Useful For Your Business. Discover Why.
Whenever a booming company is your ultimate goal, your focus must be on Internet marketing to get your customer base. This post is loaded with great tips on online marketing. Read on for more information on successfully internet marketing.
You need to use whatever you can in Web marketing. In case your business falls behind on these technologies, customers might begin to doubt you. It is important to demonstrate up-to-date knowledge as a means of convincing customers that you run a quality enterprise.
Website marketing is focused on finding problems and their solutions. Every day, you will have to solve problems within your business and help others also. If you assist somebody by using a tricky situation, you can expect to earn their loyalty in addition to their recommendations.
Your website tag should very clearly define your business. This tag will show you in a small blurb what your internet site is all about. A crowd member will determine within just seconds regardless of whether your site is worth their time based upon that tag. If you use an inaccurate tag, or waste that space with something meaningless, people could leave your web site, or otherwise click on it in the first place.
Develop a FAQ on your site. Provide an reply to each question, and mention products you are offering as a solution to the trouble when it is appropriate. Try to write inside a relaxed manner, and mention your merchandise without seeming to force them on your reader.
To transform a prospective buyer into an actual buyer, guide these people to a page that has the product. As an example, a youtube video page having a helpful demonstration of this product actually in operation. Having information this way about the product available can certainly make people feel more at ease making the buying. This educates them on your own product without appearing like a tacky sales hype simply because they can decide to purchase it or pass.
Whenever you devote some time and discover the fundamentals of web designing you can expect to succeed. There are several websites that will show you about key aspects of web site design such as HTML and cascading style sheets. Spend 30 minutes daily educating yourself on web page design and, in a matter of weeks, you’ll be able to apply what you’ve learned to your website.
You should utilize e-mail marketing to cultivate your business. Make sure these emails contain interesting information. The emails must be loaded with interesting content you may not want the recipients to perceive them as spam. Even though your prospects leave your internet site, your newsletters will help you to maintain exposure to them and assure them that you are currently dedicated to their continued business.
Ensure you have internal links with keywords. By providing visitors other links to previous posts, you may drive a boost in traffic to your website. The proper consumption of internal links could keep customers on the pages and possess search engines offering your website for some other people making web queries.
As you may already have seen, the usage of marketing on the Internet is just about the most effective way to develop your organization and reach new customers all over the world. When regular advertising doesn’t supply you with the exposure you desire, Internet marketing is actually a handy tool. Take advantage of the helpful suggestions here, and see what works for you..
← The Wonder Of Pittsburgh SEO.

industry_corpus2: Computing & Telecommunications


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OH I love this linkup. Isn't it so funny how we spend so much time in our lives writing in our blogs and all of our guys have one sentence answers. haha.
I do the same thing as you with the questions each month!
You should! This is my all-time favorite link up.
OMG yes! It drives me crazy.


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Quick tips to save money for your ticket Zandvoort Aan Zee to Ans?
Advance rail tickets from Zandvoort Aan Zee to Ans are the cheapest. You may book up to 3 months in advance and up to 6 months for Eurostar.
The most wanted times and dates of departure to go to Ans are almost always more expensive, so try to be flexible if possible.
Our booking system will always propose you the cheapest prices for your rail e-ticket from Zandvoort Aan Zee to Ans.
Do you need help to buy your rail ticket from Zandvoort Aan Zee to Ans?
Questions , remarks about your rail trip Zandvoort Aan Zee to Ans?

industry_corpus2: Transportation


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Radio Adelaide » Are Electric Cars Realistic for the Everyday Person?
Are Electric Cars Realistic for the Everyday Person?
Electric cars shape up as a viable means to dramatically decrease a country’s carbon emissions and tackle global warming.
Indeed, these cars have been rolled out with increasing regularity across parts of Europe with positive effects on the environment evident in these regions.
However, Australia’s policy in the area still falls short and needs significant adjustment for electric cars to become a realistic option for the everyday person.
Dr Anna Mortimer from Griffith University says, ‘We only have 4,000 on the road at the moment, and there are pretty much no incentives for consumers to buy electric vehicles’.
Dr Mortimer joins Breakfast’s Tom and Casey to talk about the advantages of electric cars, and some potential shifts in policy that would make them more affordable.

industry_corpus2: Automobiles


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Andarine (s4) is an extremely strong and effective SARM. It is often viewed as the strongest SARM in its class and has been compared to winstrol in terms of positive effects it can provide. Andarine is very powerful and effective, and if one can sustain a 12 week cycle, the results are astounding.
1.Very minimal growth on secondary sexual organs such as the prostate.
2.The LDL/ HDL ratio is not affected which makes it a low cardiovascular risk.
3.0% chance of aromatization, male breast lactation, or rise in any other female characteristic during the post cycle recovery.
4.Testosterone is not diminished in any capacity during the post cycle recovery.
5.Very exclusive in tissue selection and growth which means it will not cause heart enlargement or damage to neighboring organs.
6.SARMs do NOT require the utilization or devouring of liver enzymes to activate their anabolic effects. This eliminates any risk of hepatotoxicity or hepatitis.
7.Although SARMs such as S-4 are not as powerful as comparable steroids such as Winstrol, they do not require the extensive post cycle therapy and can be cycled back to back throughout the year. Over the course of a year, obtaining the same results is very possible.
8.SARMs is very female friendly and does not cause excessive masculine features such enlarged sexual characteristics.
9.S-4 has overall presented larger increases in muscle mass than DHT.
An effective dose to get the very best SARMS results from S4 starts at around 50mg, for cutting, recomping and strength. This is typically taken in a divided dose because of the short half life (see below).
The half life of andarine is just between 4-6 hours, making it a short-acting drug. For this reason, many users opt to split the dose.
The most commonly reported side effect of S4 is yellow-tinged vision, and also a reduction in quality of night vision. The dose at which this occurs varies widely from individual, and is more consistently seen in high dosing schemes (75mg/ED++). Symptoms disappear when the compound is discontinued.

industry_corpus2: Biopharmaceuticals


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How to use LeadGrabber MF Pro?
I need technical notes / developer notes to be shared with my IT team before installing eGrabber software.
You can find the notes here https://www.egrabber.com/blog/it-documentation-for-egrabber-product-installations/ any further questions contact us at support@egrabber.com and we would be happy to help.
What’s the difference between LI Management-Finder and C-Level Management Finder?
Either Sales Navigator or Recruiter. No.
Does not require any LinkedIn subscription.
However, if you do have a LinkedIn subscription, you may get much better results.
Example: If you ask for CEO, and a company does not have CEO, it will search for Owner and Founder.
LI Management-Finder relies heavily on LinkedIn to do the matching.
Example: If you ask for CEO, and a company has a "Chief of Staff to CEO", this record matches and will be captured.
C-Level Management-Finder relies heavily on its own intelligent algorithms and heuristics to do the matching.
Example: If you ask for CEO, and a company has a "Chief of Staff to CEO", this record will NOT be captured.
I need more than 7,000 names from LeadGrabber MF Pro. What should I do?
You can add 1,000 more for $495. You can also buy in multiples of 1,000.
Call us on +1-866-299-7314, we’ll help you get this. Refer to this link for more info.
How does the count / billing work in LeadGrabber MF Pro?
If you buy the $3,495 pack of LeadGrabber MF Pro, you get to append 4,000 executives. And to get this list of executives the product will scan up to 12,000 companies.
LeadGrabber MF Pro utilities one Executive Count for every person’s name it finds and adds to the grid. And it utilizes one Company Count for every input company.
You need to get a re-fill when either the executive count reaches 0, OR the company count reaches 0.
So please be careful NOT to avoid companies and businesses that have a very low chance of having executives on the Internet. For instance, bakeries, barber shops and pizza outlets don't have company websites, and neither are their owners on LinkedIn®.
You can track both these counts in the product. Click the "Add-ons Check Meter" in the product menu. The window that pops up has these two counts in it.
We recommend you test out a small sample list with Management-Finder. And if you find that the company count is reducing quickly, without giving you any executive names, you should consider trashing that company list. Or, at least don't use Management-Finder on it.
How many Names/ Prospects can I capture in one day?
It’s hard to estimate, because this depends on what companies that you put in, and on how extensive your LinkedIn network is.
The product restricts usage to 500 profile/search downloads a day. This is for your account safety. For each company search, the product uses at least 2 of these downloads, irrespective of whether it finds matching prospects or not. The number of matching profiles count for 1 download each.
We suggest you try LeadGrabber MF Pro for a list of your target companies and estimate your daily throughput yourself.
I want to increase / decrease the number of prospects that are being captured to the grid. How do I do that?
If you are using the LI Management-Finder, you can read about that here.
If you are using the C-Level Management-Finder, you can read about that here.
I notice that there are matching records deep in my LinkedIn® search (somewhere on page #2) but LI Management-Finder is stopping short of finding it. What can be done?
LI Management-Finder does not scan all the records returned by the search. It scans up to 3x times the number of records you asked it to capture.
So if you ask it to capture 5 records, it scans up to 15 records. This limit on scans has been put for safety of your account.
I am using the LI Management-Finder, the records that got captured are not what I intended. If I need to inspect the search which was done for a company, how do I do that?
If you think the records which were captured are not what you intended, then chances are, you need to change the search template that you provided LI Management-Finder.
You will find the search list in the browser.
I am using the LI Management-Finder, have setup my search template asking for Current Title = CEO. Why am I getting “Chief of Staff to CEO” captured?
LI Management-Finder relies on LinkedIn to serve relevant and matching records. When you ask for Title = CEO, LinkedIn may serve “Chief of Staff to CEO”, or “Executive Assistant to CEO”, or “Deputy CEO”. Notice that LinkedIn® is giving you records with a partial match.
If this is not the results that you expect, then you can make use of the Ignore Setting.
Type the titles you want to ignore.
I am using the LI Management-Finder, have setup my search template asking for Seniority = “C-Level”. Why am I getting non-C-Level profiles captured?
LI Management-Finder relies on LinkedIn to serve relevant and matching records. When you ask for Seniority = C-Level, LinkedIn may serve non-C-Level people as well.
LI Management-Finder does not heavily filter such records.
You need to edit your search template so that such records are not served by LinkedIn®.
However, beware of making your search criteria too tight - you may lose the records you intend to find. From a search strategy point of view, it is better to have a loose criteria which gets a handful of non-matching records, than have a tight criteria which ignores your target records.
Are eGrabber tools GDPR compliant?
GDPR focuses on how businesses should treat personal data of EU citizens.
eGrabber products are designed for the US market & compliant with all US laws. Our products can however be used by users in any part of the world.
eGrabber does not give legal advice on compliance with any laws around the world – however here is the data points you can consider to determine if our solution is appropriate for your needs.
eGrabber tools do a fast-copy-and-paste of contact data, and also perform fast Internet research on publicly available web pages and documents. We use several 3rd party vendors for accessing data and verifying data & email addresses. eGrabber has no control over where our users get the data from, or what our users do with the data that our tools find.
eGrabber tools run on individual user's desktops and not in the cloud. All contact data is stored on the user's local PC.
Here are some useful blog posts that may help you with your understanding. We have no affiliation with any of these companies.
My company requires our paper work to be signed by vendor before we purchase. Or Can I send our company vendor contract for you to sign?
Our software is a standard package we have been offering for 10+ years. We have been in business for 20+ years.
To keep our Price competitive, For standard license purchases we provide the following license agreement and this FAQ.
We can provide additional info if required, for deal sizes closer to $100K. The deal has to cover the costs of legal review by our attorneys.
The information on our products and our company can be researched on the web and through our FAQ.
How is LeadGrabber able to provide the Best Quality at the Lowest Price?
Our technology architecture results in lower operating costs. LeadGrabber Pro runs on your PC, and NOT on our servers. We don’t have to undergo maintaining a huge web-server infrastructure, like other competitors, to support you. Our solution uses your PC and your internet resources to do the research – saving us costs that we pass on to you.
We have lower R&D overhead, resulting in cost savings to customers. By having a large part of R&D done offshore, our costs are small fraction of what other companies incur. Our high ROI Sales tools have enabled 100,000+ US Companies over the past 20+ years to be more productive. We have already amortized our cost of R&D over many years.
We have lower marketing costs, resulting in lower cost overhead. We don’t tend to have priced marketing executives flying to expensive tradeshows to seek visibility. We don’t have to recover those expenses by charging our customers. This strategy has enabled us to deliver lower priced high quality solutions, helping us organically to accumulate 100K+ companies as paid customers.
We have lower sales costs, resulting in lower prices. We don’t seek Enterprise Customers; Our typical customer has a 1 to 5 man team; is an entrepreneur, owner or department manager who is very ROI focused in cash allocation. They can determine within hours our products are accurate, provide great ROI, within their budget – resulting in pretty short purchase cycle. They see we provide solid features, without all the marketing fluff that doesn’t help them sell more.


text: Ready For Real Results? Get Started Now by ordering your Upside Down Tomato PlantersTODAY! Yes, they really are THAT good! Orders are shipped within 24 hours of receiving your cleared payment!

industry_corpus2: Agriculture & Fisheries


text:
The basic difference between OpenVZ & KVM is that OpenVZ can only host Linux OS, where KVM can host Linux, Windows, & custom OS too.
Both have pro and con. A con of OpenVZ is the complete sharing of resources it allows. OpenVZ uses a shared kernel with a layer of virtualization on top of the actual Linux OS. Since the kernel is shared by all VPS users on this node, the kernel is not customizable. Once you have reached your allocated RAM limit, the remaining RAM becomes free for all users on the server. There won't be any problem if you run small applications, but might be issue to run something more resource hungry applications.
KVM allows to set minimum & maximum values for resources, so only use the resources a applications need. This is real hardware virtualization, meaning better performance from lower requirements on the Hypervisor. 100% of the RAM and disk resources are dedicated to one individual user. KVM provides a more isolated environment and gives users their own kernel.
OpenVZ provides the end-user with speed and scalability, and it’s more affordable. KVM offers private virtualized hardware including network card, disk and graphics adapter, and guaranteed resources for increased reliability and customize-ability. KVM packages are ideal for serious resellers, game servers, small businesses, and medium-sized enterprises.
If you are a host selling to your clients, OpenVZ is easier to set-up and maintain properly, while KVM takes much more networking knowledge. OpenVZ and their templates are more beginner friendly in that aspect. If you are simply an end-user, don’t worry and go with a managed infrastructure provider.


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I am Sassy, Unique, Passionate, and Sweet! I am also very Professional, and i do quality work.
HipHop, R&B, Rap... Any style, really. I am capable of being very versatile.

industry_corpus2: Film & Entertainment


text:
Donation Line proudly accepts vehicle donations for Caldwell Animal Rescue. We have towing agents in all areas of the United States ready to pickup your car donation ASAP. Non-Running, junk and salvage cars are also accepted. In addition to auto donations we accept donations of boats, trucks, RVs, motorcycles, jet skis, snowmobiles, planes and real estate.
Caldwell Animal Rescue is a 501(c)(3)non-profit organization dedicated to eliminate the need for euthanasia of healthy, adoptable animals in Caldwell County through compassionate intervention and community education. We envision a community that values animals and treats them with love and respect.


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June 14, 2019, 7-9pm. Local Author Event @ Bethany Beach Books, 99 Garfield Pkwy, Bethany Beach, DE 19930.
Nov. 16, 2019, 10am-1pm. Exercising the Mind’s Eye: Writing and Drawing Workshop @ The Biggs Museum of American Art,406 Federal St, Dover, DE 19901.

industry_corpus2: Literature & Emotions


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Banning After Banning! WHATS GOING ON!
Prisma has a report option key so you can report anybody who is harassing you or posting improper pictures! What’s happening people is abusing this report option key to report anybody they don’t like. So you pay a 20 dollars a year subscription and you still get banned. They won’t unbanned you! Prisma forcé you to create a new account. Then all of the followers and pictures and people you are following arte lost. The the second account get banned again because haters already know who you are! And so on! Prisma please! Create a block people option or get rid of the report portion.
Try it on portraits, nature photography, or every day objects and transform photos into amazing art.
Why should I, or you, surrender so much personal data to use ANY app? Who do these people think they are? Deleted.